woman. Yet now she found herself embracing another of her kind, close enough now to smell the dampness on her face, and feel both her trembling and the capsule of her womb, hard as a full wine sack, pressed against the pit of her abdomen.
Melitta, feeling left out, grasped the thighs of her mother and grandmother. Had he seen it, Zeuxippos would have approved the girl’s early taste of the portion of mortal females. But he was already gone, down the path to mess with the Spit Companions.
IX
The Starlings
1.
They heard the flock before they saw it. The sound was like that of a second sea on the landward side-a rhythmic rising and falling of sibilant waves washing the island. When Antalcidas poked his head from beneath his cloak he saw a flickering cloud conceal the dawn. As the starlings came nearer, he made out their individual forms in the mass. Each was a black, pointed, busy thing, fluttering in synchronized fashion with the whole. Of their number he could not guess; the Lacedaemonians, who had little use for figures above ten thousand, could only look at the immensity and think, “Many birds.”
The fire had burned for three days, scorching the island from end to end. The Spartans had lost no one to the flames, yet stood bereft of cover, pregnable, on a smoking spit of ash. The provisions they had hoarded from the truce were ruined, as were whatever shields, cloaks, and spears were left in the fire’s path. As if smelling their vulnerability, the enemy ships made ever tighter circles around the island. Every man, from the youngest under- thirty to Epitadas himself, understood that the Athenians could now gauge their exact numbers from the heights of old Pylos. An attack would come soon.
But the misfortune of the Lacedaemonians presented an opportunity for the birds. Approaching in their hundreds of thousands, the starlings broke into two cohorts-one making for the vertical cliffs on the lee shore, the other directly for the Spartan camp. Along the cliffs, they intruded into the nesting holes of the swallows and doves, stabbing at whatever moved inside. The mothers fled by thousands into the air, flying over the bay and wheeling around to protest their nestlings’ slaughter. But they were still outnumbered by the frantic invaders, who flew in patterns alternating between chaos and unity, tips of beaks wet with blood, feathers gleaming an iridescent purple-black like the carapaces of beetles.
“This kind of bird,” observed Doulos, “is rare so far south, over water.”
“A foul portent,” said Frog.
“Foul for the Athenians.”
The starlings at the top of the island came to feast on the seeds that littered the ground after fire. The flock descended in a broad wedge, crowding onto the ashes. The birds in the vanguard pecked as others flew over them from the back, rushing for the uneaten seeds a few inches ahead. In this way the mass resembled a liquid wave that rolled forward but never broke. Now and again they would come upon some insect or lizard baked in its tracks, and a knot of inky opponents would gather around the carcass, picking it apart as the great black wave rolled on, leaving them behind until the contestants had split their prize.
The Lacedaemonians said nothing as the birds worked their way down the slope. The visitors took wing at last as they reached a line of sterile boulders, forming themselves into a pliant cloud that seemed to flash white and black as the birds, in choral unison, alternately exposed dark backs and pale bellies. Rising, they merged with the other cohort ascending from the cliff. The reunited host formed itself into a twisting tower, then a sphere, then a flattened disk as it flitted in indecision. By whatever reason moved them, the birds finally went south. A moment later they were over the Athenian base on Little Sphacteria. A pair of birds dove toward it, trailed by a game few, but when the majority refused to follow, the deviators reversed course and rejoined the mass. The flock was far over the water, halfway toward a double-humped mountain on the shore, when Antalcidas lost sight of it.
2.
“Epitadas, I would speak with you,” said Frog as he planted his defiant squatness athwart the path. Epitadas, bending to the inevitable, turned an impassive face on the other; Frog had been insisting on yet another public confrontation since they had driven the enemy from the island, but had been frustrated so far. At least this time he chose a place away from the other men.
“I am concerned about the tactics we used against the Athenians from the ship,” he stated.
Epitadas replied, “Do you mean the tactics we used with such success?”
“If we must call it that. I call it a foretaste of disaster. The threat of their archers-you have not solved it.”
“I recall that they had archers last time.”
“They came with only a handful. But ask your brother, who killed more than his share: did the arrows slow him down? Ask him.”
Antalcidas stood nearby, blowing into his clenched hands. The days dawned colder now. He had been listening to the exchange between Epitadas and Frog, but chose this time to play the stolid Equal who responded to questions only when directly asked.
“Brother, were you bothered in the least by their arrows?”
“No.”
“He’s lying,” asserted Frog. “I saw him shifting his feet to avoid them. And did he not have an arrow stuck in his helmet?”
“It barely went through.”
“But it could have! These buckets will be useless if the Athenians shoot their arrows down on us. If they aim high-”
“If need be, we can fight without helmets at all,” replied Epitadas. “Recall that is why our fathers invented boxing.”
“Zeus save us, are you suggesting the Athenians want to box with us?”
“I am always amazed at those like you, elder, who can turn a success into a defeat for the sake of what might have been!”
Frog squared his shoulders, hand on swordhilt. “If we are fated to die-so be it. But it is not for us to throw our lives away for want of taking simple precautions-a few dozen slingers, for instance-”
“And where would you find anything to make slings, with everything burned?”
“I’ve thought of that. We can strip the carrying straps from the backs of a few shields. Slingers don’t need shields anyway.”
Epitadas strode up to Frog, staring down at him from a distance only slightly more than the length of his nose. With his arms hanging easily at his sides, he seemed unconcerned by Frog’s hand on his sword.
“Hear me, elder. If I die, you can waste as many shields as you want. But not until then.”
“I do believe Epitadas thinks he is Leonidas,” Frog said to no one in particular. “His own little Thermopylae- and we are his three hundred.”
Epitadas smiled. “Say another word. Just one more word.”
Frog scowled, spat on the ground, but said nothing more.
That evening the breeze freshened from the east. The wind brought with it the smell of the live trees on the hillsides. Only then did Antalcidas realize how the odor of fire had come to permeate everything in his world, from his clothes and beard to the hides of the men around him and, of course, the still-smoking ground. He was walking
