our enemy's skill and observe that ours is yet unequal. The sagacious commander honors his enemy's might. His skill is to strike not at the foe's strength, but at his weakness, not where and when he is ready, but where he is lax and when he least expects it. The enemy's weakness is time.
Thrasytes is perishable. It is like that fruit, luscious when ripe, which stinks to heaven when it rots.
“Therefore possess your hearts in patience, brothers. I tell you: I am glad we are not ready. Were we, I would seek pretext to hold even longer. For every hour we deprive the foe of victory is another we turn his own strength against him. Alcibiades in his godless vanity flatters himself that he is a second Achilles. Well, if he is, boldness is his heel and, by heaven, we will strike that heel and send him sprawling!”
More acclamation, deafening and unbroken.
“Lastly, men, let me tell you of this Alcibiades, and what I know of him. Brave men tremble at his name, so many are the victories he has brought his nation. Yet I tell you, and stake my life upon it, that he will fade away, by the hand of heaven or his own countrymen's. He must; his own nature calls this fate forth. For what is this man but the supreme embodiment of Athenian thrasytes? His victories have all come from boldness, none from courage. Let him strike us with terror and we will hand him his triumph. But only hold firm, brothers, undaunted by whatever flash and dazzle he throws at us, and he will crack and his nation with him.
“I know this man. He slept under my roof at Lacedaemon when he had fled there, condemned by his own countrymen for outrage against heaven. I loathed him then and despise him now. Before God I swore a mighty oath, that if He brought this man before my prow, I would break his pride and free Greece of his blasphemy and the tyranny of Athens with which he seeks to enslave us all.
“I plant my trust in you, brothers, in our arms and our andreia.
But before all I place it in God. Nor is this wishful thinking but objective observation of heaven's laws, for I perceive these faithworthy as the tides and immutable as the transit of the stars:
“Boldness produces hubris. Hubris calls forth nemesis. And nemesis brings boldness low.
“We are nemesis, brothers. Called into being by heaven's outrage at this would-be tyrant's pride, and at his city's presumption. We are the Almighty's right arm, God's holy agent, and no force between sea and sky may prevail against us.”
XLI
The alarm sounded deep into the third watch. I was dead asleep, in the villa at which Telamon and I had been billeted, which housed a dozen other officers and their women. These staggered now into the street. “Is it a drill?” one bawled from a terrace. The harbor lay a quarter mile below; you could see fire ships pouring in over the chain and, in their flare, Athenian triremes pulling fast in two columns with tow arrows and flame catapults arcing fire in all directions.
We armed and raced down the hill. You know the city, Jason.
Mount Coressus overstands the eminence, her shoulders embracing the sprawl of suburbs spilling back from the port. The great seawall, the Pteron, spans the harbor mouth. Behind its base extend the commercial wharves, the Emporium, and beyond these the Toll, the inner fortifications, and the naval bastion, Huntress'
Hood. The river Cayster debouches, dense with silt, between the temple of the Amazons and the great square of the Artemisium, with the dredging works and the marsh on the south side, the cavalry grounds, and more suburbs outside the walls. These are all on hills and were all ablaze.
It was clear to any who understood Alcibiades' frame that this assault was his answer to Lysander's speech and a leap upon the main chance of Prince Cyrus' presence on-site. Given the audacity of his generalship, he could have landed every regiment he had or even called in his Thracians, heaven help all who must face them. “I'm not too keen on this,” I shouted to Telamon amid the waterfront crush, meaning I was in no mood to go epitaph- hunting for either side. “Let's find a rat hole and sit this son of a whore out.”
We cracked into a warehouse adjacent the Armorers' Lane. You could see the fire ships brilliant as daylight now; crewless galleys stacked with pitch and blazing like Tartarus. I had never experienced an attack of Alcibiades from the receiving end. It struck like a terror show of shock and thunder, and it was pasting the piss out of the Peloponnesians. Twelve-oared longboats towed their incendiary trailers at a furious clip, sidescreens up to shield the oarsmen from the missile fire of the defenders, so far conspicuous only by its absence. A jig of Spartan six- stickers hauled to intercept the lead towboat. We could see the attacker dump her line; two enemy sixes struck her just as her fire ship, loosed now, ploughed into the roadstead where a dozen Spartan triremes rode at anchor. The impact snapped the incendiary's booms; they crashed thunderously, dumping their cargo of pitch and sulphur onto the decks of the foe.
Now a second line of fire ships lit up astern of the first. The eruption of these, invisible heretofore, produced among the Peloponnesians a disseverment of the senses both palpable and paralyzing. “Don't mill about like bloody sheep!” A Spartan colonel waded into the press. “Launch ships, curse you!”
At this instant Lysander himself thundered into the lane, horseback, compassed by his lifeguard of Knights. We could see the colonel dash before him, informing him of his order. Lysander countermanded it. Peloponnesian infantry were pouring onto the site. Athenian pinnaces continued to rake the ship sheds, slinging pinwheels and hello-theres. Shall we rush the Pteron? the colonel cried to Lysander, meaning make for the seawall to repel the landing.
Lysander rejected this as well. One must give the bastard credit.
Any other of his race would have hurtled mindlessly into battle's maw, seeking victory or glorious death. Lysander knew better. As he had baited Alcibiades, now his rival baited him. Lysander would not bite. He hauled toward the Artemisium and the great parade ground fronting the city. “Draw back! Marshal on the square!”
Lysander had built walls dividing the residential quarter of Antenoris from the dockyards, an undertaking scorned even by his own officers as make-work and folly. Now one perceived its brilliance. The ramparts funneled seaborne attackers-those striking from the Pteron, as the Athenians had-onto the Exposition Road, quayside, with water at one hand and wall at the other. Here was a pen made for slaughter. All Lysander need do was wait.
Where Telamon and I hid had become no-man's-land. From seaward rushed the Athenians and allies; landside marshaled the Spartans and Peloponnesians. They would clash in the rock-hemmed pound before us, and our troops would be massacred. So futile, however, are all designs of war. At once sprang an overthrow from the last quarter Lysander could have projected, for the lone motive against which he could not contend.
This was Prince Cyrus, on fire for glory.
We heard hooves on the Lane of the Armorers; into the open thundered a cohort of Royal Persian Horse. The troop galloped onto the square of the Artemisium, parting the massed Peloponnesians. The prince reined in before Lysander. The lad himself was but seventeen and slight as a stalk, yet so fired by the nobility of his blood and the impulsion to emulate the deeds of his ancestors that he seemed lit as though aflame.
“The enemy is there, Lysander! Why do you hold?”
Meet him! Attack!
The prince wheeled and spurred. His Guard thundered at his heels. Peloponnesians and allies could not be held; the throng flooded onto the Exposition Road. Our warehouse sat right in its path. Athenian rangers who had advanced thus far now spun and bolted, slinging their brands into every eave and alley.
Telamon and I peered about our coop. Paint. Our rat hole was a hive of pitch and encaustic. We flushed from this covert the instant she exploded. I felt hair and beard erupt; flaming turpentine spewed upon me. I careened into the lane, beating at the flames with my cloak, but it, too, was drenched with oil and blazing. Telamon pitched me into a mound of pumice, annexed to a construction site, moments before the hordes overran it. A Peloponnesian sergeant rounded upon us, beating at us with his staff to join the affray. My entire left side had been incinerated; I could not see nor feel of my face aught but charred meat. Telamon defended me. “By the gods, this man cannot fight!” He drew on the sergeant. “Go!” I propelled him, before he got himself arrested or worse.
Down the Exposition Road prince Cyrus galloped with the troops from the Artemisium, above thirty thousand, while Lysander in fury drove his Knights in the youth's train, to deliver the lad from his own mad valor..
Polemides continued his narration, to which we shall return.
