Gates of Fire Page 2

  If indeed you have elected me, Archer, then let your fine-fletched arrows spring from my bow.

  Lend me your voice, Far Darter. Help me to tell the tale.

  Chapter Two

  Thermopylae is a spa. The word in Greek means hot gates, from the thermal springs and, as His Majesty knows, the narrow and precipitous defiles which form the only passages by which the site may be approached-in Greek, pylae or pylai, the East and West Gates.

  The Phokian Wall around which so much of the most desperate fighting took place was not constructed by the Spartans and their allies in the event, but stood in existence prior to the battle, erected in ancient times by the inhabitants of Phokis and Lokris as defense against the incursions of their northern neighbors, the Thessalians and Macedonians. The wall, when the Spartans arrived to take possession of the pass, stood in ruins. They rebuilt it.

  The springs and pass themselves are not considered by the Hellenes to belong to the natives of the area, but are open to all in Greece. The baths are thought to possess curative powers; in summer the site teems with visitors. His Majesty beheld the charm of the shaded groves and pool houses, the oak copse sacred to Amphiktyon and that pleasantly meandering path bounded by the Lion's Wall, whose stones are said to have been set in place by Herakles himself. Along this in peacetime are customarily arrayed the gaily colored tents and booths used by the vendors from Trachis, Anthela and Alpenoi to serve whatever adventurous pilgrims have made the trek to the mineral baths.

  There is a double spring sacred to Persephone, called the Skyllian fountain, at the foot of the bluff beside the Middle Gate. Upon this site the Spartans established their camp, between the Phokian Wall and the hillock where the final tooth-and-nail struggle took place. His Majesty knows how little drinking water is to hand from other sources in the surrounding mountains. The earth between the Gates is normally so parched and dust-blown that servants are employed by the spa to oil the walkways for the convenience of the bathers. The ground itself is hard as stone.

  His Majesty saw how swiftly that marble-hard clay was churned into muck by the contending masses of the warriors. I have never seen such mud and of such depth, whose moisture came only from the blood and terror-piss of the men who fought upon it.

  When the advance troops, the Spartan rangers, arrived at Thermopylae prior to the battle, a few hours before the main body which was advancing by forced march, they discovered, incredibly, two parties of spa-goers, one from Tiryns, the other from Halkyon, thirty in all, men and women, each in their separate precincts, in various states of undress. These pilgrims were startled, to say the least, by the sudden appearance in their midst of the scarlet-clad armored Skiritai, all picked men under thirty, chosen for speed of foot as well as prowess in mountain fighting. The rangers cleared the bathers and their attendant perfume vendors, masseurs, fig-cake and bread sellers, bath and oil girls, strigil boys and so forth (who had ample intelligence of the Persian advance but had thought that the recent down-valley storm had rendered the northern approaches temporarily impassable). The rangers confiscated all food, soaps, linens and medical accoutrements and in particular the spa tents, which later appeared so grimly incongruous, billowing festively above the carnage. The rangers reerected these shelters at the rear, in the Spartan camp beside the Middle Gate, intending them for use by Leonidas and his royal guard.

  The Spartan king, when he arrived, refused to avail himself of this shelter, deeming it unseemly.

  The Spartiate heavy infantry likewise rejected these amenities. The tents fell, in one of the ironies to which those familiar with war are accustomed, to the use of the Spartan helots, Thespian, Phokian and Opountian Lokrian slaves and other attendants of the battle train who suffered wounds in the arrow and missile barrages. These individuals, too, after the second day refused to accept shelter. The brightly colored spa tents of Egyptian linen, now in tatters, came as His Majesty saw to protect only the beasts of transport, the mules and asses supporting the commissariat, who became terrorized by the sights and smells of the battle and could not be held by their teamsters. In the end the tents were torn to rags to bind the wounds of the Spartiates and their allies.

  When I say Spartiates, I mean the formal term in Greek, Sparriatoi, which refers to Lakedaemonians of the superior class, full Spartans - the homoioi - Peers or Equals. None of the class called Gentleman-Rankers or of the perioikoi, the secondary Spartans of less than full citizenship, or those enlisted from the surrounding Lakedaemonian towns, fought at the Hot Gates, though toward the end when the surviving Spartiates became so few that they could no longer form a fighting front, a certain leavening element, as Dienekes expressed it, of freed slaves, armor bearers and battle squires, was permitted to fill the vacated spaces.

  His Majesty may nonetheless take pride in knowing that his forces defeated the flower of Hellas, the cream of her finest and most valiant fighting men.

  As for my own position within the battle train, the explanation may require a certain digression, with which I hope His Majesty will be patient.

  I was captured at age twelve (or, more accurately, surren-dered) as a heliokekaumenos, a Spartan term of derision which means literally scorched by the sun. It referred to a type of nearly feral youth, burned black as Ethiopians by their exposure to the elements, with which the mountains abounded in those days preceding and following the first Persian War. I was cast originally among the Spartan helots, the serf class that the Lakedaemonians had created from the inhabitants of Messenia and Helos after they in centuries past had conquered and enslaved them.

  These husbandmen, however, rejected me because of certain physical impairments which rendered me useless for field labor. Also the helots hated and mistrusted any foreigner among them who might prove an informer. I lived a dog's life for most of a year before fate, luck or a god's hand delivered me into the service of Alexandras, a Spartan youth and protege of Dienekes.

  This saved my life. I was recognized at least ironically as a freeborn and, evincing such qualities of a wild beast as the Lakedaemonians found admirable, was elevated to the status of parastates. pats, a sort of sparring partner for the youths enrolled in the agoge, the notorious and pitiless thirteen-year training regimen which turned boys into Spartan warriors.

  Every heavy infantryman of the Spartiate class travels to war attended by at least one helot.

  Enomotarchai, the platoon leaders, take two. This latter was Dienekes' station. It is not uncommon for an officer of his rank to select as his primary attendant, his battle squire, a freeborn foreigner or even a young mothax, a noncitizen or bastard Spartan still in agoge training. It was my fortune, for good or ill, to be chosen by my master for this post. I supervised the care and transport of his armor, maintained his kit, prepared his food and sleeping site, bound his wounds and in general performed every task necessary to leave him free to train and fight.

  My childhood home, before fate set me upon the road which found its end at the Hot Gates, was originally in As-takos in Akarnania, north of the Peloponnese, where the mountains look west over the sea toward Kephallima and, beyond the horizon, to Sikelia and Italia.

  The island of Ithaka, home of Odysseus of lore, lay within sight across the straits, though I myself was never privileged to touch the hero's sacred soil, as a boy or later. I was due to make the crossing, a treat from my aunt and uncle, on the occasion of my tenth birthday. But our city fell first, the males of my clan were slaughtered and females sold into slavery, our ancestral land taken, and I cast out, alone save my cousin Diomache, without family or home, three days before the start of my tenth year to heaven, as the poet says.

  Chapter Three

  We had a slave on my father's farm when I was a boy, a man named Bruxieus, though I hesitate to use the word slave, because my father was more in Bruxieus' power than the other way round. We all were, particularly my mother. As lady of the house she refused to make the most trifling domestic decision-and many whose scope far exceeded that-without first securing Bruxi
eus' advice and approval. My father deferred to him on virtually all matters, save politics within the city. I myself was completely under his spell.

  Bruxieus was an Elean. He had been captured by the Argives in battle when he was nineteen.

  They blinded him with fiery pitch, though his knowledge of medicinal salves later restored at least a poor portion of bis sight. He bore on his brow the ox-horn slave brand of the Argives. My father acquired him when he was past forty, as compensation for a shipment of hyacinth oil lost at sea.

  As nearly as I could tell, Bruxieus knew everything. He could pull a bad tooth without clove or oleander. He could carry fire in his bare hands. And, most vital of all to my boy's regard, he knew every spell and incantation necessary to ward off bad luck and the evil eye.

  Bruxieus' only weakness as I said was his vision. Beyond ten feet the man was blind as a stump.

  This was a source of secret, if guilty, pleasure to me because it meant he needed a boy with him at all times to see. I spent weeks never leaving his side, not even to sleep, since he insisted on watching over me, slumbering always on a sheepskin at the foot of my little bed.

  In those days it seemed there was a war every summer. I remember the city's drills each spring when the planting was done. My father's armor would be brought down from the hearth and Bruxieus would oil each rim and joint, rewarp and reshaft the two spears and two spares and replace the cord and leather gripware within the hoplon's oak and bronze sphere. The drills took place on a broad plain west of the potters' quarter, just below the city walls. We boys and girls brought sunshades and fig cakes, scrapped over the best viewing positions on the wall and watched our fathers drill below us to the trumpeters' calls and the beat of the battle drummers.

  This year of which I speak, the dispute of note was over a proposal made by that session's prytaniarch, an estate owner named Onaximandros. He wanted each man to efface the clan or individual crest on his shield and replace it with a uniform alpha, for our city Astakos. He argued that Spartan shields all bore a proud lambda, for their country, Lakedaemon. Fine, came the derisive response, but we're no Lakedaemonians. Someone told the story of the Spartiate whose shield bore no crest at all, but only a common housefly painted life-size. When his rankmates made sport of him for this, the Spartan declared that in line of battle he would get so close to his enemy that the housefly would look as big as a Hon.

  Every year the military drills followed the same pattern. For two days enthusiasm reigned. Every man was so relieved to be free of farm or shop chores, and so delighted to be reunited with his comrades (and away from the children and women around the house), that the event took on the flavor of a festival. There were sacrifices morning and evening. The rich smells of spitted meat floated over everything; there were wheaten buns and honey candies, fresh-rolled fig cakes, and bowls of rice and barley grilled in sweet new-pressed sesame oil.

  By the third day the militiamen's blisters started. Forearms and shoulders were rubbed raw by the heavy hoplon shields. The warriors, though most were farmers or grovers and supposedly of stout seasoned limb, had in fact passed the bulk of their agricultural labor in the cool of the counting room and not out behind a plough. They were getting tired of sweating. It was hot under those helmets. By the fourth day the sunshine warriors were presenting excuses in earnest. The farm needed this, the shop needed that, the slaves were robbing them blind, the hands were screwing each other silly. Look at how straight the line advances now, on the practice field, Bruxieus would chuckle, squinting past me and the other boys. They won't step so smartly when heaven starts to rain arrows and javelins. Each man will be edging to the right to get into his rankmate's shadow.

  Meaning the shelter of the shield of the man on his right. By the time they hit the enemy line, the right wing will be overlapped half a stade and have to be chased back into place by its own cavalry!

  Nonetheless our citizen army (we could put four hundred heavy-armored hoplites into the field on a full call-up), despite the potbellies and wobbly shins, had acquitted itself more than honorably, at least in my short lifetime. That same prytaniarch, Onaximandros, had two fine span of oxen, got from the Kerionians, whose countryside our forces allied with the Argives and Eleuthrians had plundered ruthlessly three years running, burning a hundred farms and killing over seventy men. My uncle Tenagros had a stout mule and a full set of armor got in those seasons. Nearly every man had some-thing.

  But back to our militia's maneuvers. By the fifth day, the city fathers were thoroughly exhausted, bored and disgusted. Sacrifices to the gods redoubled, in the hope that the immortals' favor would make up for any lack of pokmike techne, skill at arms, or empeiria, experience, on the part of our forces. By now there were huge gaps in the field and we boys had descended upon the site with our own play shields and spears. That was the signal to call it a day. With much grumbling from the zealots and great relief from the main body, the call was issued for the final parade.

  Whatever allies the city possessed that year (the Argives had sent their strategos autokrater, that great city's supreme military commander) were marshaled gaily into the reviewing stands, and our rein-vigorated citizen-soldiers, knowing their ordeal was nearly over, loaded themselves up with every ounce of armor they possessed and passed in glorious review.

  This final event was the greatest excitement of all, with the best food and music, not to mention the raw spring wine, and ended with many a farm cart bearing home in the middle watch of the night sixty-five pounds of bronze armor and a hundred and seventy pounds of loudly snoring warrior.

  This morning, which initiated my destiny, came about because of ptarmigan eggs.

  Among Bruxieus' many talents, foremost was his skill with birds. He was a master of the snare.

  He constructed his traps of the very branches his prey favored to roost upon. With a pop! so delicate you could hardly hear it, his clever snares would fire, imprisoning their mark by the boot as Bruxieus called it, and always gently.

  One evening Bruxieus summoned me in secrecy behind the cote. With great drama he lifted his cloak, revealing his latest prize, a wild ptarmigan cock, full of fight and fire. I was beside myself with excitement. We had six tame hens in the coop. A cock meant one thing - eggs! And eggs were a supreme delicacy, worth a boy's fortune at the city market.

  Sure enough, within a week our little banty had become the strutting lord of the walk, and not long thereafter I cradled in my palms a clutch of precious ptarmigan eggs.

  We were going to town! To market. I woke my cousin Diomache before the middle watch was over, so eager was I to get to our farm's stall and put my clutch up for sale. There was a diaulos flute I wanted, a double-piper that Bruxieus had promised to teach me coot and grouse calls on.

  The proceeds from the eggs would be my bankroll. That double-piper would be my prize.

  We set out two hours before dawn, Diomache and I, with two heavy sacks of spring onions and three cheese wheels in cloth loaded on a half-lame female ass named Stumblefoot. Stumblefoot's foal we had left home tied in the barn; that way we could release mama in town when we unloaded, and she would make a beeline on her own, straight home to her baby.

  This was the first time I had ever been to market without a gtown-up and the first with a prize of my own to sell. I was excited, too, by being with Diomache. I was not yet ten; she was thirteen.

  She seemed a full-grown woman to me, and the prettiest and smartest in all that countryside. I hoped my friends would fall in with us on the road, just to see me on my own beside her.

  We had just reached the Akarnanian road when we saw the sun. It was bright flaring yellow, still below the horizon against the purple sky. There was only one problem: it was rising in the north.

  That's not the sun, Diomache said, stopping abruptly and jerking hard on Stumblefoot's halter.

  That's fire.

  It was my father's friend Pierion's farm.

  The farm was burning.

  We've got to help them, Diomac
he announced in a voice that brooked no protest, and, clutching my cloth of eggs in one hand, I started after her at a fast trot, hauling the bawling gimpy-foot ass.

  How can this happen before fall, Diomache was calling as we ran, the fields aren't tinder-dry yet, look at the flames, they shouldn't be that big.

  We saw a second fire. East of Pierion's. Another farm. We pulled up, Diomache and I, in the middle of the road, and then we heard the horses.

  The ground beneath our bare feet began to rumble as if from an earthquake. We saw the flare of torches. Cavalry. A full platoon. Thirty-six horses were thundering toward us. We saw armor and crested helmets. I started running toward them, waving in relief. What luck! They would help us!

  With thirty-six men, we'd have the fires out in- Diomache yanked me back hard. Those aren't our men.

  They came past at a near gallop, looking huge and dark and ferocious. Their shields had been blackened, soot smeared on the blazes and stockings of their horses, their bronze greaves caked with dark mud. In the torchlight I saw the white beneath the soot on their shields. Argives. Our allies. Three riders reined in before us; Stumblefoot bawled in terror and stamped to break;