At this point in the recounting of the tale, an unfortunate incident occurred regarding the Greek Xeones. A subordinate of the Royal Surgeon, during the ongoing attendance upon the captive's wounds, unwittingly informed the fellow of the fate of Leonidas, the Spartan king and commander at Thermopylae, after the battle at the Hot Gates, and what sacrilege, to the Greek's eyest His Majesty's troops had performed upon the corpse after it was recovered from the heaps of the dead following the slaughter. The prisoner had hitherto been in ignorance of this.
The man's outrage mas immediate and extreme. He forthwith refused to speak any further on the subjects to hand and in fact demanded of his immediate captors, Orontes and the officers of the Immortals, that they put him also to death, and at once. The man Xeones stood clearly in a state of extreme consternation over the beheading and crucifixion of the body of his king. All arguments, threats and blandishments failed to dislodge him from this posture of grief.
It was clear to the captain Orontes that, should His Majesty be informed of the prisoner's defiance, however much He Himself desired to hear the continuance of the man's tale, the captive Xeones must, for his insolence to the Royal Person, be put to death. The captain, truth to tell, feared as well for his own head and those of his officers, should His Majesty be frustrated by the Greek's intransigence in His desire to learn all He could about the Spartan enemy.
Orontes had become, through various informal exchanges with the fellow Xeones during the course of the interrogation, something of a confidant and even, if the word's meaning may fee stretched to this point, a friend. He sought upon his own initiative to soften the captive's stance.
To that end he attempted to make clear to the Greek the following:
That the physical desecration performed upon the corpse of Leonidas was regretted keenly by His Majesty almost as soon as He had ordered it. The actual command had been issued amid the grief of the batik's aftermath, when His Majesty's blood was raging over the loss before his own eyes of thousands, by some counts as many as twenty thousand, of the Empire's finest warriors slain by the troops of Leonidas, whose defiance of God Ahura Mazda's will could only be perceived through Persian eyes as an outrage against heaven. In addition two of His Majesty's own brothers, Habrocomes and Hyperanthes, and more than thirty royal kinsmen had been sent down to the house of death by the Spartan foe and their allies.
Moreover, the captain appended, the mutilation of Leonidas' corpse was, when viewed in the apposite light, a testament to the respect and awe in which the Spartan king was held by His Majesty, for against no other commander of the enemy had He ever ordered such extreme and, to Hellenic eyes, barbarous retribution.
The man Xeones remained unmoved by these arguments and repeated his desire to be dispatched at once. He refused all food and water. It seemed that the telling of his tale would be broken off here and not resumed.
It was at this point, fearing that the situation could not be kept from His Majesty much longer, that Orontes sought out Demaratos, the deposed king of Sparta residing within the court as a guest exile and advisor, and urged his intercession. Demaratos, responding, betook himself in person to the Royal Surgeon's tent and there spoke alone with the captive Xeones for more than an hour. When he emerged, he informed the captain Orontes that the man had experienced a change of heart and was now willing to continue the interrogation.
The crisis had passed. Tell me, the captain Orontes inquired, much relieved, what argument and persuasion did you employ to effect this turnabout?
Demaratos replied that of all the Hellenes the Spartans were acknowledged the most pious and held the gods most in awe. He declared it his own observation that in this regard among the Lakedaemonians, the lesser rankers and those in service, particularly the outlanders of the captive Xeones' station, were almost without exception, in Demaratos' phrase, more Spartan than the Spartans.
Demaratos had, he said, appealed to the fellow's respect for the gods, specifically Phoebus Apollo, for whom the man clearly evinced the most profound reverence. He suggested that the prisoner pray and sacrifice to determine, as best he could, the god's will. For, he told the fellow, surely the Far Striker has assisted your tale thus far. Why would he now order its discontinuance? Did the man Xeones, Demaratos asked, place himself above the immortal gods, presuming to know their unknowable will and stopper their words at his own whim?
Whatever answer the captive received from his gods, it apparently coincided with the counsel proposed to him by Demaratos.
We picked up the tale again on the fourteenth day of the month of Tashritu.
Polynikes was awarded the prize of valor for Antirhion. This was his second, achieved at the unheard-of age of twenty-four years. No other Peer save Dienekes had been decorated twice, and that not until he was nearly forty. For his heroism Polynikes was appointed Captain of the Knights; it would be his honor to preside over the nomination of the Three Hundred king's companions for the following year. This supremely coveted distinction, coupled with his sprinter's crown from Olympia, established Polynikes as a beacon of fame whose brilliance shone forth far beyond the borders of Lakedaemon. He was perceived as a hero of all Hellas, a second Achilles, who stood now upon the threshold of unbounded and undying glory.
To Polynikes' credit, he refused to become puffed up over this. If any swelling of the head could be discerned, it manifested itself only in a more fiercely applied self-discipline, though this zeal for virtue, as events were to tell, could spill over into excess when applied to others less spectacularly gifted than himself.
As for Dienekes, he had only been honored with inclusion in the company of Knights once, when he was twenty-six, and had declined respectfully all subsequent nominations. He liked the obscurity of a platoon commander, he said. He felt more himself among the ranks. It was his conviction that he could contribute best by leading men directly, and that only to a certain number. He refused all attempts to promote him beyond the platoon level. I can't count past thirty-six was his standard disclaimer. Beyond that, I get dizzy.
I will add, from my own observation, that Dienekes' gift and vocation, more so even than warrior and officer, was that of teacher.
As all born teachers, he was primarily a student.
He studied fear, and its opposite.
But to pursue such an excursus at this time would lead us astray from the narrative. To resume at Antirhion:
On the return passage to Lakedaemon, as punishment for accompanying Alexandras in following the army, I was removed from that youth's company and forced to march in the dust at the rear of the train, with the sacrificial herd and my half-helot friend Dekton. This Dekton had acquired at Antirhion a new nickname-Rooster-from the event that, immediately following the battle, he had delivered the thank-offering cock to Leonidas half-strangled in his own fists, so frenzied was he with excitement from the battle and his own frustrated desire to have participated in it. The name stuck. Dekton was a rooster, bursting with barnyard belligerence and ready to scrap with anything, his own size or three times bigger. This new tag was picked up by the whole army, who began to regard the boy as something of a good-luck talisman, a mascot of victory.
This of course galled Dekton's pride beyond even its accustomed bellicose state. In his eyes the name embodied condescension, yet another reason to hate his masters and to despise his own position in their service. He declared me a blockhead for following the army.
You should've flown, he hissed sidelong as we trudged in the choking flyblown wake of the train. You deserve every lash you get, not for what they blame you for, but for not drowning that hymn-singer Alexandras when you had the chance – and churning your shanks straight to the temple of Poseidon. He meant that sanctuary in Tainaron to which runaways could flee and be granted asylum.
My loyalty to the Spartans was rebuked with scorn and ridicule by Dekton. I had been placed in this boy's power shortly after fate had brought me to Lakedaemon, two years earlier, when both he and I were twelve. His family worked the estate of Olympieus, Alexandras' father, who was related to Dienekes via his wife, Arete. Dekton himself was a half-breed helot, illegitimately sired, so rumor had it, by a Peer whose gravestone, Idotychides in war at Mantinea lay along the Amyklaian Way, opposite the line of syssitia, the common messes.
This half-Spartiate lineage did nothing to advance Dekton's status. He was a helot and that was it.
If anything, the youths his age, and the Peers even more so, regarded him with extra suspicion, reinforced by the fact of Dekton's exceptional strength and athletic skill. At fourteen he was built like a grown man and nearly as strong.
He would have to be dealt with someday, and he knew it.
I myself had been in Lakedaemon half a year then, a wild boy just down from the hills and consigned, since it was safer than risking ritual pollution by killing me, to the meanest of farm labor. I proved such an infuriating failure at this that my helot masters took their complaints directly to their lord, Olympieus. This gentleman took pity on me, perhaps for my free birth, perhaps because I had come into the city's possession not as a captive, but of my own uncoerced will.
I was reassigned to the goat and kid detail.
I would be a herd boy for the sacrificial animals, minding the train of beasts that serviced the morning and evening ceremonies and followed the army into the field for training exercises.
The head boy was Dekton. He hated me from the first. He saved his most blistering scorn for my tale, imprudently confessed, of receiving counsel directly from Apollo Far Striker. Dekton thought this hilarious. Did I think, did I dream, did I imagine, that an Olympian god, scion of Zeus Thunderer, protector of Sparta and Amyklai, guardian of Delphi and Delos and who knows how many other poleis, would piss away his valuable time swooping down to chat in the snow with a cityless heliokekaumenos like me? In Dekton's eyes I was the dumbest mountain-mad yokel he had ever seen.
He appointed me the herd's Chief Ass Wiper. You think I'm going to get my back striped for handing the king a shit-caked goat? Get in there, make that puckerhole spotless!
Dekton never missed an occasion to humiliate me. I'm educating you, Bung Boy. These assholes are your academy. Today's lesson is the same as yesterday's: in what does the life of a slave consist? It is in being debased and degraded and having no option but to endure it. Tell me, my freeborn friend. How do you like it?
I would make no response, but simply obey. He scorned me the more for that.
You hate me, don't you? You'd like nothing better than to chop me down. What's stopping you?
Give it a try! He stood before me one afternoon when we and the other boys were grazing the animals in the king's pasture. You've lain awake planning it, Dekton taunted me. You know just how you'd do it. With that Thessalian bow of yours, if your masters would let you near it. Or with that dagger you keep hidden between the boards in the barn. But you won't kill me. No matter how much disgrace I heap on your head, no matter how miserably I degrade you.
He picked up a rock and threw it at me, point-blank, striking me so hard in the chest it almost knocked me over. The other helot boys clustered to watch. If it was fear that stopped you, I could respect that. It would at least show sense. Dekton slung another stone that struck me in the neck, drawing blood. But your reason is more senseless than that. You won't harm me for the same reason you won't hurt one of these miserable, stinking beasts. With that, he kicked a goat furiously in the gut, bowling it over and sending it bawling. Because it will offend them. He gestured with bitter contempt across the plain to the gymnastic fields, where three platoons of Spartiates were going through spear drill in the sun. You won't touch me because I'm their property, just like these shit-eating goats. I'm right, aren't I?
My expression answered for me.
He glared at me with contempt. What are they to you, moron? Your city was sacked, they say.
You hate the Argives and think these sons of Herakles – he indicated the drilling Peers, spitting the final phrase with sarcastic loathing – are their enemies. Wake up! What do you think they would have done had they sacked your city? The same and worse! As they did to my country, to Messenia and to me. Look at my face. Look at your own. You've fled slavery only to become lower than a slave yourself.
Dekton was the first person I had ever met, man or boy, who had absolutely no fear of the gods.
He didn't hate them as some do, or mock their antics as I had heard the impious freethinkers did in Athens and Corinth. Dekton didn't grant their existence at all. There were no gods, it was as simple as that. This struck me with a kind of awe. I kept watch, waiting for him to be felled by some hideous blow of heaven.
Now, on the road home from Antirhion, Dekton (I should say Rooster) continued the harangue I had heard from him so many times before. That the Spartans had gulled me like they gull everyone; that they exploit their chattel by permitting them the crumbs off their table, elevating one slave a fraction above another and turning each individual's miserable hunger for station into the invisible bonds which held them in chains and in thrall.
If you hate your masters so much, I asked him, why were you hopping like a flea during the battle, so frantic to get into the fight yourself?
Another factor, I knew, added to Rooster's frustration. He had just got his barnfriend (as the helot boys called their illicit wenches) pregnant. Soon he would be a father. How could he flee then?
He would not abandon a child, nor could he make his getaway lugging a girl and a babe.
He stomped along, cursing one of the other herd boys who had let two goats stray, chasing the urchin back after these stragglers behind the herd. Look at me, he growled as he fell again into step beside me. I can run as fast as any of these Spartan dick-strokers. I'm fourteen but I'll fight any twenty-year-old man-to-man and bring him down. Yet here I trudge, in this fool's nightshirt, holding the leash on a goat.
He vowed he would steal a xyele and cut a Spartan's throat one day.
I told him he must not speak like this in my hearing.
What'll you do? Report me?
I wouldn't and he knew it.
But by the gods, I swore to him, raise your hand once against them, any one of them, and I'll kill you.
Rooster laughed. Pluck a sharp stick from the roadside and drive it into your sockets, my friend.
It couldn't make you any blinder than you are already.
The army reached the frontier at Oion at nightfall of the second day, and Sparta herself twelve hours later. Runners had preceded the troops; the city had known for two days the identities of the wounded and the slain. Funeral games stood already in preparation; they would be celebrated within the fortnight.
That evening and the following day were consumed in decamping the battle train: cleaning and refitting weapons and armor, reshafting spears which had been shivered in combat and rewrighting the oaken hubs of the hoplon shields, disassembling and storing the riggings of the waggons, tending to the pack and draught animals, making sure each beast was properly watered and groomed and dispersed with their helot teamsters to their various kleroi, the farmsteads they worked. That second night, the Peers of the train at last returned to their messes.
This was customarily a solemn evening, in the aftermath of a battle, when fallen comrades were memorialized, acts of valor recognized and dishonorable conduct censured, when errors were reviewed and turned to instruction and the grave capital of battle stored up against future need.
The messes of the Peers are customarily havens of respite and confidentiality, sanctuaries within which all converse is privileged and private. Here after the long day friends may let down their hair among friends, speak as gentlemen the truths of their hearts and even, though never to excess, embrace the mellowing comfort of a bowl or two of wine. This night, however, was not one for ease or conviviality. The souls of the twenty-eight perished hung heavily over the city.
The secret shame of the warrior, the knowledge within his own heart that he could have done better, done more, done it more swiftly or with less self-preserving hesitation; this censure, always most pitiless when directed against oneself, gnawed unspoken and unrelieved at the men's guts. No decoration or prize of valor, not victory itself, could quell it entire.
Well, Polynikes called the youth Alexandras forward and addressed him sternly, how did you like it?
He meant war.
To be there, to see it raw and entire.
The evening stood now well advanced. The hour of the epaikla had expired, that second course of the meal at which game meat and wheaten bread may be contributed, and now the sixteen Peers of the Deukalion mess settled, hunger satisfied, upon their hardwood couches. Now the lads who stood-to the mess for their instruction might be summoned and roasted upon the griddle.
Alexandras was made to stand forth before his elders at the position of boy's attention, hands tucked from sight beneath the folds of his cloak, eyes glued to the floor as not yet worthy of rising to meet a Peer's full in the face.
How did you enjoy the battle? Polynikes queried.
It made me sick, Alexandras replied.
Under the interrogation the boy confessed that he had been unable to sleep since, neither aboard ship nor on the march home. If he closed his eyes even for a moment, he declared, he saw again with undiminished horror the scenes of slaughter, particularly the death spasm of his friend Meriones. His compassion, he acknowledged, was elicited as much by those casualties of the enemy as for the fallen heroes of his own city. Pressed hard upon this point, the boy declared the slaughter of war barbarous and unholy.
Barbarous and unholy, is it? responded Polynikes, darkening with anger.
The Peers in their messes are encouraged, when they deem it useful for the instruction of youth, to single out one lad, or even another Peer, and abuse him verbally in the most stem and pitiless fashion. This is called arosis, harrowing. Its purpose, much like the physical beatings, is to inure the senses to insult, to harden the will against responding with rage and fear, the twin unmanning evils of which that state called katalepsis, possession, is comprised. The prized response, the one the Peers look for, is humor. Deflect defamation with a joke, the coarser the better. Laugh in its face. A mind which can maintain its lightness will not come undone in war.
But Alexandras possessed no gift for the wisecrack. It wasn't in him. All he could do was answer in his clear pure voice with the most excruciating candor. I watched him from my service station at the left of the mess entrance, beneath the carven plaque- Exo tes thyras ouden, Out this door nothing-meaning no word spoken within these precincts may be repeated elsewhere.
It was a form of high courage which Alexandras displayed, to stand up to the Peers' hammering without a joke or a lie. At any time during a harrowing, the object boy may signal and call a stop.
This is his right under the laws of Lykurgus. Pride, however, prevented Alexandras from exercising this option, and everyone knew it.
You wanted to see war, Polynikes began. What did you imagine it would be?
Alexandras was required to answer in the Spartan style, at once, with extreme brevity.
Your eyes were horror-stricken, your heart aggrieved at the sight of the manslaughter. Answer this:
What did you think a spear was for?
A shield?
A xiphos sword?
Questions of this kind would be put to the boy not in a harsh or abusive tone, which would have been easier to bear, but coldly, rationally, demanding a concisely expressed reasoned response.
Alexandras was made to describe the wounds an eight-footer could produce and the types of deaths that would ensue. Should an overhand thrust be aimed at the throat or the chest? If the tendon of a foeman's calf be severed, should you pause-to finish him off or press forward with the advance? If you plunge a spear into the groin above a man's testicles, should it be pulled straight out or ripped upward, blade vertical, to eviscerate the man's bowels? Alexandras' face flushed, his voice quaked and broke. Would you like to stop, boy? Is this instruction too much for you?
Answer concisely:
Can you envision a world without war?
Can you imagine clemency from an enemy?
Describe the condition of Lakedaemon without her army, without her warriors, to defend her.
Which is better, victory or defeat?
To rule or be ruled?
To make a widow of the enemy's wife or to have one's own wife widowed?
What is the supreme virtue of a man? Why? Whom of all in the city do you admire most? Why?
Define the word mercy. Define compassion. Are these the virtues of war or of peace? Of men or of women? Are they virtues at all?
Of the Peers who harrowed Alexandras this evening, Polynikes did not on the surface seem the most relentless or display the harshest severity. He did not lead the arosis, nor was his interrogation overtly cruel or malicious. He just wouldn't let it stop. In the tone of the other men's voices, no matter how ruthlessly they grilled Alexandros, resided at bottom the unspoken fundament of inclusion. Alexandros was of their blood, he was one of them; everything they did tonight and every other night was not to break his spirit or crush him like a slave, but to make him stronger, to temper his will and render him more worthy of being called warrior, as they were, of taking his place as a Spartiate and a Peer.
Polynikes' harrowing was different. There was something personal about it. He hated the boy, though it was impossible to guess why. What made it even more painful, to watch as it must have been to endure, was Polynikes' supreme physical beauty. In every aspect of his person, face as well as physique, the Knight was formed as flawlessly as a god. Naked in the Gymnasion, even alongside scores of youths and warriors blessed in comeliness and elevated by their training to the peak of condition, Polynikes stood out, without equal, surpassing all others in symmetry of form and faultlessness of physical structure. Clothed in white robes for the Assembly, he shone like Adonis. And armed for war, with the bronze of his shield burnished, his scarlet cloak across his shoulders and the horsehair-crested helmet of a Knight pushed back upon his brow, he shone forth, peerless as Achilles. To watch Polynikes train on the Big Ring, in preparation for the Games at Olympia or Delphi or Nemea, to behold him in the pastel light of day's end when he and the other sprinters had finished their distance work and now, under the eyes of their trainers, donned their racing armor for the final dressed sprints, even the most hardened Peers, training in the boxing oval or the wrestling pits, would pull up from their regimens and watch.
Four runners regularly trained with Polynikes: two brothers, Malineus and Gorgone, both victors at Nemea in the diaulos sprint; Doreion the Knight, who could outrun a racehorse over sixty meters; and Telamonias the boxer and enomotarch of the Wild Olive regiment.
The five would take their marks and a trainer would clap the start. For thirty meters, sometimes as long as fifty, the elite field remained a pack of straining bronze and flesh, laboring beneath the weight of their harness, and for a span of heartbeats the watching Peers would think, maybe this once, maybe this singular time, one will best him. Then from the fore, as the runners' accelerating power began to break the bonds of their burdens, Polynikes' churning shield would emerge, twenty pounds of oak and bronze sustained upon the pumping flesh and sinew of his left forearm; you saw his helmet flash; his polished greaves extended next, flying like the winged sandals of Hermes himself, and then, with a force and power so magnificent they stopped the heart, Polynikes would catapult out of the pack, blazing with such impossible swiftness that he seemed to be naked, even winged, and not belabored by the poundage upon his arm and across his back.
Around the turning pole he flew. Daylight burst between him and his pursuers. He vaulted forward to the finish, four hundred meters total, no longer in his mind competing with these lesser fellows, these pedestrian mortals, any one of whom in another city would have been the object of adoration, mobbed by throngs of admirers, but who here, against this invincible runner, were doomed to eat dust and like it. This was Polynikes, No one could touch him. He possessed in every pore those blessings of feature and physique which the gods allow to combine in a single mortal only once in a generation.
Alexandros was beautiful too. Even with the broken nose Polynikes had gifted him with, his physical perfection approached that of the peerless runner. Perhaps this, in some way, lay at the root of the hatred the man felt for the boy. That he, Alexandros, whose joy lay in the chorus and not on the athletic field, was unworthy of this gift of beauty; that it, in him, failed to reflect the manly virtue, the andreia, which it in Polynikes so infallibly proclaimed.
My own suspicion was that the runner's animus was inflamed further by the favor Alexandros had found in Dienekes' eyes. For of all the men in the city with whom Polynikes competed in virtue and excellence, he resented most my master. Not so much for the honors Dienekes had been granted by his peers in battle, for Polynikes, like my master, had been awarded the prize of valor twice, and he was ten or twelve years younger.
It was something else, some less obvious aspect of character which Dienekes possessed and which the city honored him by recognizing, instinctively, without prompting or ceremony.
Polynikes saw it in the way the young boys and girls joked with Dienekes when he passed their sphairopaedia, the ball-playing fields, during the noonday break. He caught it in the tilt of a smile from a matron and her maids at the springs or an old woman passing in the square. Even the helots granted my master a fondness and respect that were withheld from Polynikes, for all the heaps of honors that were his in other quarters. It galled him. Mystified him. He, Polynikes, had even produced two sons, while Dienekes' issue were all female, four daughters who, unless Arete could produce a son, would extinguish his line altogether, while Polynikes' strapping swift lads would one day be warriors and men. That Dienekes wore the respect of the city so lightly and with such self-effacing wit was even more bitter to Polynikes.
For the runner saw in Dienekes neither beauty of form nor fleetness of foot. Instead he perceived a quality of mind, a power of self-possession, which he himself, for all the gifts the gods had lavished upon him, could not call his own. Polynikes' courage was that of a lion or an eagle, something in the blood and the marrow, which summoned itself out of its own preeminence, without thought, and gloried in its instinctual supremacy.
Dienekes' courage was different. His was the virtue of a man, a fallible mortal, who brought valor forth out of the understanding of his heart, by the force of some inner integrity which was unknown to Polynikes. Was this why he hated Alexandros? Was it why he had splintered the boy's nose that evening of the eight-nighter? Polynikes sought to break more than the youth's face now. Here in the mess he wanted to crack him, to see him come apart.
You look unhappy, pais. As if the prospect of battle held for you no promise of joy.
Polynikes ordered Alexandras to recite the pleasures of war, to which the boy responded by rote, citing the satisfactions of shared hardship, of triumph over adversity, of camaraderie and Philadelphia, love of one's comrades-in-arms.
Polynikes frowned. Do you feel pleasure when you sing, boy?
Yes, lord.
And when you flirt around with that trollop Agathe?
Yes, lord.
Then imagine the pleasure that awaits you, when you clash in line of battle, shield-to-shield with an enemy burning to kill you, and you instead slay him. Can you imagine that ecstasy, you little shitworm?
The pais is trying, lord.
Let me assist you. Close your eyes and picture it. Obey me!
Polynikes was keenly aware of the torment this was causing Dienekes, who held himself controlled and impassive upon his bare couch, just two places down.
To plunge a spear, blade-deep, into a man's guts is like fucking, only better. You like to fuck, don't you?
The boy doesn't know, lord.
Don't toy with me, you twittering sparrow.
Alexandras, on his feet for an hour by this time, had steeled himself utterly. He answered his tormentor's questions, frozen at attention, eyes riveted to the dirt, ready in his guts to endure anything.
Killing a man is like fucking, boy, only instead of giving life you take it. You experience the ecstasy of penetration as your warhead enters the enemy's belly and the shaft follows. You see the whites of his eyes roll inside the sockets of his helmet. You feel his knees give way beneath him and the weight of his faltering flesh draw down the point of your spear. Are you picturing this?
Yes, lord.
Is your dick hard yet?
No, lord.
What? You've got your spear in a man's guts and your dog isn't stiff? What are you, a woman?
At this point the Peers of the mess began rapping their knuckles upon the hardwood, an indication that Polynikes' instruction was going too far. The runner ignored this.
Now picture with me, boy. You feel the foe's beating heart upon your iron and you rip it forth, twisting as you pull. A sensation of joy surges up the ash of your spear, through your hand and along your arm up into your heart. Are you enjoying this yet?
No, lord.
You feel like God at that moment, exercising the right only He and the warrior in combat may experience: that of dealing death, of loosing another man's soul and sending it down to hell. You want to savor it, to twist the blade deeper and pull the man's heart and guts out upon the iron point of your spear, but you can't. Tell me why.
Because I must move on and slay the next man.
Are you going to weep now?
No, lord.
What will you do when the Persians come?
Slay them, lord.
What if you stand on my right in line of battle? Will your shield protect me?
Yes, lord.
What if I advance, defended by the shadow of your shield? Will you hold it high at port before me?
Yes, lord.
Will you bring down your man?
I will.
And the next?
Yes.
I don't believe you.
At this the Peers rapped more vigorously with their knuckles upon the tables. Dienekes spoke.
This is no longer instruction, Polynikes. This is malice.
Is it? the runner answered, not deigning to look in the direction of his rival. We'll inquire of its object. Have you had enough, you psalm-singing wad of shit?
No, lord. The boy begs the Peer to continue.
Dienekes stepped in. Gently, with compassion, he addressed the youth, his protege. Why do you tell the truth, Alexandras? You could lie, like every other boy, and swear you reveled in the witnessing of slaughter, you savored the sight of limbs cleaved and men maimed and murdered within the jaws of war.
I thought of that, lord. But the company would see through me.
You're fucking right we would, confirmed Polynikes. He heard the anger in his own voice and brought it swiftly under control. However, out of deference to my esteemed comrade-here he turned with a mock-courteous bow to Dienekes-I will address my next question not to this child, but to the mess as a whole. He paused, then indicated the boy at attention before them.
Who will stand with this woman on his right in the line of battle?
I will, Dienekes answered without hesitation.
Polynikes snorted.
Your mentor seeks to shield you, paidarion. In the pride of his own prowess he imagines he may fight for two. This is recklessness. The city cannot risk his loss, because he has eyes for the comeliness of your girlish face.
Enough, my friend. This from Medon, senior of the mess. The Peers seconded with a chorus of knuckle raps.
Polynikes smiled. I accede to your chastisement, gentlemen and elders. Please excuse my excess of zeal. I seek only to impart to our youthful comrade some insight into the nature of reality, the state of man as the gods have made him. May I conclude his instruction?
With brevity, Medon admonished.
Polynikes turned again to Alexandras. When he resumed now, his voice was gentle and without malice; if anything it seemed informed with something not unlike kindness and even, odd as it sounds, sorrow.
Mankind as it is constituted, Polynikes said, is a boil and a canker. Observe the specimens in any nation other than Lakedaemon. Man is weak, greedy, craven, lustful, prey to every species of vice and depravity. He will lie, steal, cheat, murder, melt down the very statues of the gods and coin their gold as money for whores. This is man. This is his nature, as all the poets attest.
Fortunately God in his mercy has provided a counterpoise to our species' innate depravity. That gift, my young friend, is war. War, not peace, produces virtue. War, not peace, purges vice.
War, and preparation for war, call forth all that is noble and honorable in a man. It unites him with his brothers and binds them in selfless love, eradicating in the crucible of necessity all which is base and ignoble. There in the holy mill of murder the meanest of men may seek and find that part of himself, concealed beneath the corrupt, which shines forth brilliant and virtuous, worthy of honor before the gods. Do not despise war, my young friend, nor delude yourself that mercy and compassion are virtues superior to andreia, to manly valor. He finished, turning to Medon and the elders. Forgive me for waxing long-winded.
The harrowing ended; the Peers dispersed. Outside beneath the oaks, Dienekes sought out Polynikes, addressing him by his praise-name Kallistos, which may be defined as harmoniously beautiful or of perfect symmetry, though in the tone Dienekes employed, it expressed itself in the converse, as pretty boy or angel face.
Why do you hate this youth so much? Dienekes demanded.
The runner replied without hesitation. Because he does not love glory.
And is love of glory the supreme virtue of a man?
Of a warrior.
And of a racehorse and a hunting dog.
It is the virtue of the gods, which they command us to emulate.
The others of the mess could overhear this exchange, though they affected not to, since, under the laws of Lykurgus, no matter discussed behind those doors may be carried over to these more public precincts. Dienekes, realizing this as well, brought himself under control and faced the Olympian Polynikes with an expression of wry amusement.
My wish for you, Kallistos, is that you survive as many battles in the flesh as you have already fought in your imagination. Perhaps then you will acquire the humility of a man and bear yourself no longer as the demigod you presume yourself to be.
Spare your concern for me, Dienekes, and save it for your boy friend. He has greater need of it.
That hour had arrived when the messes along the Amyklaian Way released their men, those over thirty to depart for their homes and wives, and the younger men, of the first five age-classes, to retire under arms to the porticoes of the public buildings, there to stand the night watches over the city or curl in their cloaks for sleep. Dienekes took these last moments to speak apart with Alexandros.
The man placed an arm about the boy's shoulder; they moved slowly together beneath the unlit oaks. You know, Dienekes said, that Polynikes would give his life for you in battle. If you fell wounded, his shield would preserve you, his spear would bring you safely back. And if death's blow did find you, he would swim without hesitation into the manslaughter and spend his last breath to retrieve your body and keep the enemy from stripping your armor. His words may be cruel, Alexandros, but you have seen war now and you know it is a hundred times crueler.
Tonight was a lark. It was practice. Prepare your mind to endure its like again and again, until it is nothing to you, until you can laugh in Polynikes' face and return his insults with a carefree heart.
Remember that boys of Lakedaemon have endured these harrowings for hundreds of years. We spend tears now that we may conserve blood later. Polynikes was not seeking to harm you tonight. He was trying to teach that discipline of mind which will block out fear when the trumpets sound and the battle pipers mark the beat.
Remember what I told you about the house with many rooms. There are rooms we must not enter. Anger. Fear. Any passion which leads the mind toward that 'possession' which undoes men in war. Habit will be your champion. When you train the mind to think one way and one way only, when you refuse to allow it to think in another, that will produce great strength in battle.
They stopped beneath an oak and sat.
Did I ever tell you about the goose we had on my father's kleros? This bird had formed a habit, God knows why, of pecking three times at a certain patch of turf before she waddled into the water with her brothers and sisters. When I was a boy, I used to marvel at this. The goose did it every time. It was compelled to.
One day I got it into my head to prevent her. Just to see what she would do. I took up a station on that patch of superstitious turf-I was no more than four or five years old at the time-and refused to let that goose come near it. She became frantic. She rushed at me and beat me with her wings, pecking me bloody. I fled like a rat. At once the goose recovered composure. She pecked her little spot of turf three times and slid into the water, contented as could be.
The older Peers were departing now for their homes, the younger men and boys returning to their stations.
Habit is a mighty ally, my young friend. The habit of fear and anger, or the habit of selfcomposure and courage. He rapped the boy warmly upon the shoulder; they both stood.
Go now. Get some sleep. I promise you, before you see battle again, we'll arm you with all the handiest habits.
When the youths began dispersing to their stations, Dienekes with his squire, Suicide, moved out to the road, joining a company of other officers assembling to proceed to the ekklesia, where they were to assist in the organization of the coming funeral games. A helot boy approached Dienekes there, before the mess, dashing up with a message. I was on the point of departing with Alexandros for the open porches around the Square of Freedom to take up my berth for the night when a sharp whistle summoned me.
To my astonishment it was Dienekes.
I crossed to him swiftly, presenting myself respectfully upon his left, his shield side. Are you acquainted with the location of my house? he asked. These were the first words he had ever addressed directly to me. I replied that I was. Go there now. This boy will lead you.
Dienekes said nothing more but turned and departed at once with the body of officers toward the Assembly. I had no idea what was required of me. I asked the boy if perhaps there was some mistake, was he sure it was I who was required? It's you, all right, and we'd better make the pebbles fly.
The town house of Dienekes' family, in contradistinction to the farmstead their helot families worked three miles south along the Eurotas, stood two lanes off the Eventide Road, on the west end of the village of Pitana. It was not conjoined to other dwellings, as many in that quarter were, but isolated at the edge of a grove beneath ancient oaks and olives. It had itself been a farmhouse at some point in the past and possessed yet the unadorned utilitarian charm of a country kleros.
The house itself was unassuming in the extreme, barely larger than a cottage, less prepossessing even than the house of my own father in Astakos, though its courtyard and grounds, nestled within a grove of myrtle and hyacinth, arose like a haven of refuge and charm. One arrived upon the site at the terminus of a series of flower-girt lanes, each seeming to draw one deeper into a space of serenity and seclusion, passing, as one went, the dappled clusters of other Peers' cottages, their hearths aglow in the evening chill, with the peal of children's laughter and the happy yapping of their hounds spilling over the founded walls. The site itself, and its bowered environs, could not have appeared farther removed from the precincts of training and of war, nor offered more contrast and comfort to those repairing from them.
Dienekes' eldest daughter, Eleiria, who was eleven at the time, let me in the gate. I perceived low white walls surrounding an immaculately swept courtyard of plain tile brick, decorated with flowers in earthen pots upon the sill, jasmine bloomed along the unvarnished beams of an axehewn pergola; wisteria and oleander nestled trim upon the face; a stonework watercourse, no wider than a handbreadth, gurgled along the northern wall. A servant girl whom I did not recognize waited beside a plaited wicker garden seat in the shadows.
I was directed to a stone bowl and told to rinse my hands and feet. Several clean linen cloths hung upon a bar; I dried myself and rehung them scrupulously. My heart was hammering, though for the life of me I could not have said why. The maiden Eleiria ushered me inside to the hearth hall, the solitary room, other than Dienekes' and his wife Arete's bedchamber, of which the house was comprised.
All four of Dienekes' daughters were present, including a slumbering toddler and a newborn; the second-eldest, Alexa, now being joined by her sister, both of whom sat to the side and proceeded to card wool as if it were the normal activity for the middle of the night. These maidens were presided over by the lady Arete, who sat with the infant at her breast upon a low uncushioned stool adjacent the hearth.
I discerned at once, however, that it was not Dienekes' lady upon whom I was to attend. Instead, at her side, and more toward the meridian of the room, sat the lady Paraleia, Alexandras' mother, the wife of the polemarch Olympieus.
This mistress began without ceremony to interrogate me on the harrowing her son had received not half an hour earlier in the mess. That she knew of this event at all, and so immediately, was surprise enough. Something in her eyes warned me I must choose my words with care.
The lady Paraleia declared that she was keenly cognizant of and held in profoundest respect the proscription against revealing any exchange spoken within the precincts of a Peers' mess.
Nonetheless I might, without violating the sanctity of the law, yet vouchsafe to her, a mother understandably concerned about her son's welfare and future, some indication, if not of the precise words and actions of the aforesaid event, then perhaps some portion of its tone and flavor.
She inquired by way of motivation, in the identical understated tone with which the Peers of the mess had interro-gated Alexandras, who it was who governed the city. The kings and the ephors, I replied at once, and of course the Laws. The lady smiled and glanced, just for a moment, toward the mistress Arete.
Yes, she said. Surely this must be so.
This was her way of letting me know that the women ran the show and that if I didn't want to find myself permanently back in the farmers' shitfields, I'd better start coughing up a satisfactory dose of information. Within ten minutes she had gotten everything there was to get. I sang like a bird.
She wished, the lady Paraleia began, to know everything her son had done in the hours after he had defied her wishes in the grove of the Twins and set off to follow the army to Antirhion. She grilled me as if I were a spy. The lady Arete did not interrupt.
Her eldest daughters never lifted their eyes toward me nor toward the lady Paraleia, yet they remained in their modest silence riveted to every word. This was how they learned. The lesson today was how to grill a boy in service. How a lady did it. What tone she took, what questions she asked, when her voice rose with a hint of threat and when it lowered to assume a more confidential, candor-evoking tone.
What rations had Alexandras and I taken? What arms? When our food ran out, how had we acquired more? Did we encounter strangers along the way? How did her son comport himself?
How did the strangers respond? Did they show him respect worthy of a Spartan? Did her son's demeanor command it?
The lady assimilated my responses, revealing nothing herself, though it was plain at certain junctures that she disapproved of her son's conduct. Only once did she permit actual anger to invest her tone, that when I acknowledged under compulsion that Alexandras had not secured the name of the boat captain who had ferried and betrayed us. The lady's voice shook. What was wrong with the boy? What had he learned all these years at his father's table and in the common mess? Didn't he see that this reptile, this fisher cap-tain, must be punished, executed if necessary, to teach these scoundrels the price of playing perfidy with the son of a Peer of Lakedaemon? Or if prudence dictated, that he, this boatman, could be exploited to advantage? If war with the Persian came, this blackguard, turned informer, could prove an invaluable source of intelligence for the army. Even if he attempted through falsehood to play the traitor, this could be discerned and valuable knowledge acquired. Why didn't my son find out his name?
Your servant does not know, lady. Perhaps your son did and his servant was unaware of it.
Call yourself I Paraleia scolded me sharply, You're not a slave, don't talk like one.
Yes, lady.
The boy needs something to wet his throat, Mother. This from the maiden Eleiria, with a giggle. Look at him. If his face gets any redder, he'll burst like a pomegranate.
The grilling went on for another hour. Adding to the discomfort I felt on this hot seat was the effect of the lady Paraleia's physical appearance, which bore an uncanny resemblance to that of her son. Like him, the lady was beauti-ful, and like him, her beauty took the unadorned, underplayed Spartan form.
The wives and maidens of my native Astakos, and those of every other city in Hellas, routinely employ cosmetics and facial paint to enhance their comeliness. These ladies are keenly aware of the effect the artificial sheen of their curls or the pink of their lips produces upon any male within range of their charms.
None of this entered into the scheme of the lady Paraleia, nor Arete either. Her peplos robe was split up the side in the Spartan style, revealing her bare leg to the thigh. This in any other city would have been lewd to the point of scandalous. Yet here in Lakedaemon it was unremarkable in the extreme. This is a leg. We women possess them just like you men. For Spartan males to leer at or ogle a lady in this dress would have been unthinkable. They had beheld their mothers and sisters and daughters naked since they were old enough to open their eyes, both in the girls' and women's athletic training and in the festivals and the other women's processions.
Still these ladies, both of them, were not unaware of their personal magnetism and the effect it produced, even upon a boy in service drawn up before them. After all, wasn't Helen herself a Spartan? The wife of Menelaus, she whom Paris had carried off to Troy, the cause of endless suffering among Trojans and Greeks, and for whose peerless beauty's sake so many brave Achaeans lost their lives in Troy far from their native country.
Spartan women surpass for beauty all others in Hellas, and not the least of their charms is that they make so little play upon it. Aphrodite is not their goddess, but Artemis Huntress. Look at the loveliness of our hair, their bearing seems to say, which reflects the lamplight not by the artifice of the cosmetician's art, but by the sheen of health and the luster of virtue. Look in our eyes which embrace a man's, neither lowering in contrived modesty nor fluttering behind dyed lashes like Corinthian whores. Our legs we groom not in the boudoir with wax and myrtle, but under the sun in the race and upon the Ring.
They were dams, these ladies, wives and mothers whose primary calling was to produce boys who would grow to be warriors and heroes, defenders of the city. Spartan women were brood mares, the pampered damsels of other cities might scoff, but if they were mares, they were racers, Olympic champions. The athletic glow and vigor which the gynaikagoge, the women's training discipline, produced in them was powerful stuff and they knew it.
Standing before these women now, my thoughts despite all efforts were wrung back into the past, to Diomache and to my mother. I saw in memory my cousin's bare legs flashing strong and well made when we raced after some hare or doe with our dogs sprinting ahead up some rock-strewn slope. I saw the smooth glowing flesh of her arm when she drew the bow, her eyes that shrank before nothing and the flush of youth and freedom that suffused the skin of her face when she smiled. I saw again my mother, who was only twenty-six at her death, and whose memory to my eyes was of surpassing gentleness and nobility.
These thoughts were like a room in the house of the mind that Dienekes spoke of, a room I had sworn since the Three-Cornered Way never to permit myself to enter.
But now, finding myself here in this real room of this real house, before these womanly rustles and scents, the feminine auroras of these wives and mothers and daughters and sisters, six of them, so much female presence concentrated in so close a space, I was driven back in mind against my will. It took all my self-composure to conceal the effect of these memories and to answer the lady's continuing questions in good order. At last it seemed the inquisition was approaching its conclusion.
Answer now one final question. Speak with candor. If you lie, I will know. Does my son possess courage? Evaluate his andreia, his manly virtue, as a youth who must soon take his place as a warrior.
It took no brains to see I was treading the thinnest of ice. How could one answer a question like that? I straightened and addressed the lady directly.
There are fourteen hundred boys in the training platoons of the agoge. Only one displayed the temerity to follow the army, and that in knowing defiance of his own mother's wishes, not to say full awareness of what punishment he must endure upon his return.
The lady considered this. It is a politic answer, but a good one. I accept it.
She rose and thanked the lady Arete for arranging this interview and for providing for its confidentiality. I was told to wait outside in the courtyard. The lady Paraleia's maidservant stood there still, smirking; no doubt she had overheard every word and would blab it to all the Eurotas valley by sunrise tomorrow. In a moment the lady herself emerged, deigning neither to look at nor speak to me, and accompanied by her maid, strode off without torchlight down the dark lane.
Are you old enough to take wine?
The lady Arete addressed me directly, speaking from the doorway and motioning me back within the dwelling. All four daughters slept now. The lady herself prepared a bowl for me, cut six to one as for a boy. I took a grateful swallow. Clearly this night of interviews was not over.
The lady invited me to sit. She herself settled at the mistress's station beside the hearth. She placed a chunk of alphita barley bread on a plate before me and brought a relish of oil, cheese and onion.
Be patient, this night among women will soon be over. You'll be back with the men, with whom you clearly feel more comfortable.
I am at ease, lady. Truly. It's a relief to be away from barrack life for an hour, even if it means dancing barefoot on the hot steel of the skillet.
The lady smiled at this, but it was apparent that her mind was held by a more sober subject. She drew my eyes to hers.
Have you ever heard the name Idotychides?
I had.
He was a Spartiate stain in battle at Mantinea. I have seen his stone before the mess of Winged Nike on the Amyklaian Way.
What else do you know of this man? the lady asked. I muttered something. What else? she insisted.
They say that Dekton, the helot boy called Rooster, is his bastard. By a Messenian mother, who died giving birth.
And do you believe this?
I do, lady.
Why?
I had stuck myself in a corner now; I could see the lady perceive it. Is it because, she answered for me, this boy Rooster hates the Spartans so much?
I was struck with dread that she knew this and for long moments could not find my tongue.
Have you noticed, the lady continued in a voice that to my surprise displayed neither outrage nor anger, that among slaves the meanest seem to bear their lot without excessive distress, while the noblest, those at the brink of freedom, chafe most bitterly? It's as if the more one in service feels himself worthy of honor, yet denied the means to achieve it, the more excruciating is the experience of subjection.
This was Rooster in a nutshell. I had never thought about it that way but, now that the lady had expressed it thus, I saw it was true.
Your friend Rooster talks too much. And what his tongue withholds, his demeanor announces only too plainly. She quoted, virtually verbatim, several seditious statements that Dekton had spoken, in my hearing alone, I thought, on the march back from Antirhion.
I was speechless and could feel myself breaking into a sweat. The lady Arete maintained her expression inscrutable. Do you know what the krypteia is? she asked.
I did. It is a secret society among the Peers. No one knows who its members are, just that they are of the youngest and strongest, and they do their work at night.
And what work is that?
They make men disappear. Helots, I meant. Treasonous helots.
Now answer this, and consider before you speak. The lady Arete paused, as if to reinforce the importance of the question she was about to put. If you were a member of the krypteia and you knew what I have just told you about this helot, Rooster, that he had expressed sentiments treasonous to the city and further declared his intention of taking action based upon them, what would you do?
There could be only one answer.
It would be my duty to kill him, were I a member of the krypteia.
The lady absorbed this, her expression still betraying nothing. Now answer: if you were yourself, a friend to this helot boy, Rooster, what would you do?
I stammered something about exculpatory circumstances, that Rooster was a hothead, he often spoke without thinking, much of what he said was bluster and everyone knew it.
The lady turned toward the shadows.
Is this boy lying?
Yes, Mother!
I spun in startlement. Both older daughters were wide awake, in their shared bed, glued to every word.
I will answer the question for you, young man, the lady said, rescuing me from my predicament. I think you would do this. I think you would warn this boy, Rooster, to speak no more of such things within your hearing and to take no action, however slight-or you yourself would dispatch him.
I was now utterly discomfited. The lady smiled. You are a poor liar. It is not one of your gifts. I admire that. But you tread dangerous ground. Sparta may be the greatest city in Hellas, but it is still a small town. A mouse cannot sneeze without every cat saying God bless you. The servants and helots hear everything, and their tongues can be set a-wag for the price of a honey cake.
I considered this.
And will mine, I asked, be loosened for the cost of a bowl of wine?
The boy disrespects you, Mother! This from Alexa, who was nine. You must have him striped!
To my relief the lady Arete regarded me in the lamplight with neither anger nor indignation, but calmly, studying me. A boy in your position should rightly stand in fear of the wife of a Peer of my husband's stature. Tell me: why aren't you afraid of me?
I hadn't realized until that moment that in fact I wasn't.
I'm not sure, lady. Perhaps because you remind me of someone.
For several moments the lady did not speak, but continued regarding me with that same intense scrutiny.
Tell me about her, she commanded.
Who?
Your mother.
I flushed again. It made me squirm to think this lady divined the contents of my heart before I even spoke them. Go ahead, take some wine. You don't have to play tough in front of me.
What the hell. I took it. It helped. I told the lady briefly of Astakos, of its sack and of my mother and father's murder at the hands of the night-skulking warriors of Argos.
The Argives have always been cowards, she observed, dismissing them with a snort of contempt that endeared her, more than she realized, to me. Clearly her long ears had learned my poor story already, yet she listened attentively, seeming to respond with empathy to hearing the tale from my own lips.
You have had an unhappy life, Xeo, she said, speaking my name for the first time. To my surprise this moved me profoundly; I had to fight not to let it show.
For my part, I was summoning every ounce of self-composure I possessed, to speak correctly, in proper Greek worthy of a freeborn, and to hold myself with respect not only for her but for my own country and my own line.
And why, the lady asked, does a boy of no city display so much loyalty to this alien country of Lakedaemon, of which he is not, and can never be, a part?
I knew the answer but could not judge how much I dared entrust to her. I responded obliquely, speaking briefly of Bruxieus. My tutor instructed me that a boy must have a city or he cannot grow to be fully a man. Since I no longer possessed a city of my own, I felt free to choose any I liked.
This was a novel point of view, but I could see the lady approved of it. Why not, then, a polis of riches or opportunity? Thebes or Corinth or Athens? All that can come to you here is coarse bread and a striped back.
I replied with a proverb that Bruxieus had once quoted to Diomache and me: that other cities produce monuments and poetry, Sparta produces men.
And is this true? the lady inquired. In your most candid judgment, now that you have had opportunity to study our city, its worst as well as its best?
It is, lady.
To my surprise these words seemed to move the lady profoundly. She averted her gaze, blinking several times. Her voice, when she summoned herself again to speak, was hoarse with affect.
What you have heard of the Peer Idotychides is true. He was the father of your friend Rooster.
He was something other as well. He was my brother.
She could see me react with surprise.
You didn't know this?
No, lady.
She mastered the emotion, the grief, I now saw, that had threatened to discompose her.
So you see, she said with a smile brought forth with effort, that makes this young Rooster something of a nephew to me. And I an aunt to him.
I took more wine. The lady smiled.
May I ask why the lady's family has not sponsored the boy Rooster and put him forward as a mothax?
This is a special dispensation in Lakedaemon, a stepbrother category of youth, available to the lesser-born or bastard sons of Spartiate fathers primarily, who could despite their mean birth be sponsored and elevated, enrolled in the agoge. They would train alongside the sons of Peers.
They could even, if they showed sufficient merit and courage in battle, become citizens.
I have asked your friend Rooster more than once, the lady answered. He rebuffs me.
She could see the disbelief on my face.
With respect, she added. Most courtly respect. But with finality.
She considered this for a moment.
There is another curiosity of mind which one may observe among slaves, particularly those who spring from a conquered people, as this boy Rooster does, being of a Messenian mother. Those men of pride will often identify with the meaner half of their line, out of spite perhaps, or the wish not to seem to curry favor by seeking to ingratiate themselves on the better side.
This was indeed true of Rooster. He saw himself as Messenian, and fiercely so.
I tell you this, my young friend, for your sake as well as my nephew's: the krypteia knows. They have watched him since he was five. They watch you too. You speak well, you have courage, you are resourceful. None of this goes unobserved and unremarked. And I will tell you something more. There is one among the krypteia who is not unknown to you. This is the Captain of Knights, Polynikes. He will not hesitate to slit a treasonous helot's throat, nor do I think that your friend Rooster, for all his strength and spirit, will outrun a champion of Olympia.
The girls by now had all succumbed to slumber. The house itself and the darkness beyond its walls seemed at last entirely, eerily still.
War with the Persian is coming, the lady declared. The city will need every man. Greece will need every man. But just as important, this war, which all agree will be the gravest in history, will afford a mighty stage and arena for greatness. A field upon which a man may display by his deeds the nobility denied him by his birth.
The lady's eyes met mine and held them.
I want this boy Rooster alive when war comes. I want you to protect him. If your ear detects any hint of danger, the slightest rumor, you must come straightaway to me. Will you do this?
I promised I would.
You care for this boy, Xeo. Though he has scourged you, I see the friendship you share. I implore you in the name of my brother and his blood which flows in this boy Rooster's veins.
Will you watch over him? Will you do this for me?
I promised that what I could do, I would.
Swear it.
I complied, by all the gods.
It seemed preposterous. How could I stand against the krypteia or any other force that sought to murder Rooster? Still somehow my boy's promise seemed to ease the lady's distress. She studied my face for a long moment.
Tell me, Xeo, she said softly. Do you ever… have you ever asked anything just for yourself?
I replied that I did not understand the lady's question.
I command one other thing of you. Will you perform it?
I swore I would.
I order you one day to take an action purely for your own sake and not in service to another.
You will know when the time comes. Promise me. Say it aloud.
I promise, lady.
She rose then, with the sleeping infant in her arms, and crossed to a cradle between the beds of the other girls, laying the babe down and settling it within the soft covers. This was the signal for me to take my leave. I had risen already, as respect commanded, when the lady stood.
May I ask one question, lady, before I go?
Her eyes glinted teasingly. Let me guess. Is it about a girl?
No, lady. Already I regretted my impulse. This question I had was impossible, absurd. No mortal could answer it.
The lady had become intrigued, however, and insisted that I continue.
It's for a friend, I told her. I cannot answer it myself, being too young and knowing too little of the world. Perhaps you, lady, with your wisdom may be able to. But you must promise not to laugh or take offense.
She agreed.
Or repeat this to anyone, including your husband.
She promised.
I took a breath and plunged in.
This friend… he believes that once, when he was a child, alone at the point of death, he was spoken to by a god.
I pulled up, minding keenly for any sign of scorn or indignation. To my relief the lady displayed none.
This boy… my friend… he wishes to know if such a thing is possible. Could… would a being of divinity condescend to speak to a boy without city or station, a penniless child who possessed no gift to offer in sacrifice and did not even know the proper words of prayer? Or was my friend hatching phantoms, fabricating empty visions out of his own isolation and despair?
The lady asked which god it was, who had spoken to my friend.
The archer god. Apollo Far Striker.
I was squirming. Surely the lady will scorn such temerity and presumption. I should never have opened my cheesepipe.
But she did not mock my question nor deem it impious. You are something of an archer yourself, I understand, and far advanced for your years. They took your bow, didn't they? It was confiscated when you first appeared in Lakedaemon?
She declared that fortune must have guided me to her hearth this night, for yes, the goddesses of the earth flew thick and near at hand. She could feel them. Men think with their minds, the lady said; women with their blood, which is tidal and flows at the discretion of the moon.
I am no priestess. I can respond only out of a woman's heart, which intuits and discerns truth directly, from within.
I replied that this was precisely what I wished.
Tell your friend this, the lady said. That which he saw was truth. His vision indeed was of the god.
Without warning, fierce tears sprung to my eyes. At once emotion overwhelmed me. I buckled and sobbed, mortified at such loss of self-command and astonished at the power of passion which had sprung seemingly from nowhere to overcome me. I buried my face in my hands and wept like a child. The lady stepped to me and held me gently, patting my shoulder like a mother and uttering kind words of assurance.
Within moments I had mastered myself. I apologized for this shameful lapse. The lady would hear none of it; she scolded me, declaring that such passion was holy, inspired by heaven, and must not be repented or apologized for.
She stood now by the open doorway, through which the starlight fell and the soft babbling of the courtyard watercourse could be heard.
I would like to have known your mother, the lady Arete said, regarding me with kindness.
Perhaps she and I will meet someday, beyond the river. We will speak of her son, and the unhappy portion the gods have set out before him.
She touched me once upon the shoulder in dismissal.
Go now, and tell your friend this: he may come again with his questions, if he wishes. But next time he must come in person- I wish to look upon the face of this boy who has sat and chatted with the Son of Heaven.
Alexandros and I received our whippings for Antirhion the following evening. His was administered by his father, Olympieus, before the Peers of that officer's mess; I was lashed without ceremony in the fields by a helot groundsman. Rooster helped me away afterward, alone in the darkness, down to a grove called the Anvil beside the Eurotas to bathe and dress my stripes. This was a spot sacred to Demeter of the Fields and segregated by custom to the use of Messenian helots; there had once been a smithy upon the site, hence the name.
To my relief Rooster did not treat me to his customary harangue about the life of a slave, but rather limited his diatribe to the observation that Alexandras had been whipped like a boy and I like a dog. He was kind to me and, more important, possessed expertise in cleansing and dressing that unique species of ruptured laceration which is produced by the impact of the knurled birch upon the naked flesh of the back.
First water and plenty of it, bodily immersion to the neck in the icy current. Rooster supported me from behind, elbows braced beneath my armpits, since the shock of the frigid water upon the opened weals rarely fails to knock one faint. The cold numbs the flesh swiftly, and a wash of boiled nettles and Nessos' wort may be applied and endured. This stanches the flow of blood and promotes the rapid resealing of the flesh. A dressing of wool or linen at this stage would be unendurable, even applied with the gentlest touch. But a friend's bare palm, placed lightly at first, then pressed hard into the quivering flesh and held down, brings a relief whose effects approach ecstasy. Rooster had endured his own share of thrashings and knew the drill well.
Within five minutes I could stand. In fifteen my skin could take the soft sphagnum, which Rooster pressed into the blotted mass to suck out the poison and to inject its own subtle anesthetic. By God, there's not a virgin left, he observed, meaning a space that was still God's flesh and not ruptured and reruptured scar tissue. You won't be humping that hymn-singer's shield across this back for a month.
He was just launching into another venomous denunciation of my boy-master when a rustle came from the bank above us. We both wheeled, ready for anything.
It was Alexandras. He stepped into view beneath the plane trees, his cloak furled forward, leaving his own throttled back bare. Rooster and I froze. Alexandros would buy himself a second whipping if he was found here at this hour, and us with him.
Here, he said, skidding down the bank to join us, I picked the surgeon's locker for this.
It was wax of myrrh. Two fingers' worth, wrapped in green rowan leaves. He stepped into the stream beside us.
What have you got there on his back? he demanded of Rooster, who stepped aside with a look of blank astonishment. Myrrh was what the Peers used on wounds of battle when they could get it, which they rarely could. They would beat Alexandros half to death if they knew he'd purloined this precious portion. Get it on him later when you peel off the moss, Alexandros directed Rooster. Wash it off good by dawn. If anyone smells it, it'll be all our backs and more.
He placed the wrapped leaves in Rooster's hands.
I have to be back before count, Alexandros declared. In an instant he had melted away up the bank; we could hear his footfalls vanishing softly as he sprinted in shadow back toward the boys' stations around the Square.
Well, bend me over and root me senseless, Rooster spoke, shaking his head. That little lark's got bigger globes than I thought. At dawn when we fell in before sacrifice, Rooster and I were called out from our places by Suicide, Dienekes' Scythian squire. We were white with dread.
Someone had peeped on us; there would be hell to pay for sure.
You little turdnuggets must be floating under a lucky star was all Suicide said. He conducted us to the rear of the formation. Dienekes stood there, silent, alone in the predawn shadows. We took our stations of deference on his left, his shield side. The pipers sounded; the formation moved off. Dienekes indicated that Rooster and I were to stay put.
He held stationary before us. Suicide stood on his right, with the quiver of sawed-off javelins he called darning needles angled nonchalantly across his back.
I've been examining your record, Dienekes addressed me, his first words, other than the summons two nights previous to follow the serving boy to his home, ever spoken directly to me.
The helots tell me you're worthless as a field hand. I've watched you in the sacrificial train; you can't even shave the throat of a goat correctly. And it's clear from your conduct with Alexandros that you'll follow any order, no matter how mindless or absurd. He motioned me to turn, so he could examine my back. It seems the only talent you possess is you're a fast healer.
He bent and sniffed my back. If I didn't know better, he observed, I'd swear these stripes had been waxed with myrrh. Suicide kicked me around, back to face Dienekes. You're an unwholesome influence on Alexandros, the Peer addressed me. A boy doesn't need another boy, and certainly not a trouble collector like you; he needs a mature man, someone with the authority to stop him when he gets some reckless stunt into his head like tracking after the army.
So I'm giving him my own man.
His nod indicated Suicide. I'm sacking you, he told me. You're through.
Oh hell. Back to the shitfields.
Dienekes turned next to Rooster. And you. The son of a Spartiate hero and you can't even hold a sacrificial cock in your fists without strangling it. You're pathetic. You've got a mouth looser than a Corinthian's asshole and it broadcasts treason every time it yawns. I'd be doing you a favor to slit your cheesepipe right here and save the krypteia the trouble.
He reminded Rooster of Meriones, the squire of Olympieus who had fallen so gallantly last week at Antir-hion. Neither of us boys had any idea where this was going.
Olympieus is past fifty, he possesses all the prudence and circumspection he needs. His next squire should balance him with youth. Somebody green and strong and reckless. He regarded Rooster with wry scorn. God knows what folly has inspired him, but Olympieus has picked you.
You will take Meriones' place. You will attend Olympieus. Report to him at once. You're his first squire now.
I could see Rooster blinking. This must be a trick.
It's no joke, Dienekes said, and you'd better not make it one. You're treading in the steps of a man better than half the Peers in the regiment. Screw it up and I'll spit you over the flame personally.
I won't, lord.
Dienekes studied him a long, hard moment. Shut up and get the fuck out of here.
Rooster took off after the formation at a run. I confess I was ill with envy. The first squire of a Peer, and not just that, but a polemarch and king's tent companion. I hated Rooster for his dumb blind luck.
Or was it? As I blanched, numb with jealousy, a picture of the lady Arete shot across the eye of my mind. She was behind this. I felt even worse and regretted bitterly that I had confided to her my vision of Apollo Far Striker.
Let me see your back, Dienekes commanded. I turned again; he whistled appreciatively. By God, if there were an Olympic event in back-striping, you'd be the betting man's favorite. He had me face about and stand at attention before him; he regarded me thoughtfully, his gaze seeming to pierce straight through to my spine. The qualities of a good battle squire are simple enough. He must be dumb as a mule, numb as a post and obedient as an imbecile. In these qualifications, Xeones of Astakos, I declare your credentials impeccable.
Suicide was chuckling darkly. He tugged something from behind the quiver at his back. Go ahead, take a look, Dienekes ordered. I raised my eyes.
In the Scythian's hand stood a bow. My bow.
Dienekes commanded me to take it.
You're not strong enough yet to be my first squire, but if you can manage to keep your head out of your ass, you might make a half-respectable second. Into my palm Suicide placed the bow, the big Thessalian cavalry weapon that had been confiscated from me at twelve, when first I crossed the frontier into Lakedaemon.
I could not stop my hands from trembling; I felt the warm ash of the bow and the living current that coursed its length and up into my palms.
You'll pack my rations, bedding and medical kit, Dienekes instructed me. You'll cook for the other squires and hunt for my pot, on exercises in Lakedaemon and beyond the border on campaign. Do you accept this?
I do, lord.
At home you may hunt hares and keep them for yourself, but don't flaunt your good fortune.
I won't, lord.
He regarded me with that look of wry amusement I had observed on his face before, at a distance, and which I would come to see many times more close-up.
Who knows, my new master said, with luck, you might even get in a potshot at the enemy.