cracked reed stuck like a dart right through his cheek.
Still another crazed Spartan threw himself at Melon. He no longer held a shield or spear. This brave Eurypon was trying to tear off a Theban helmet or an arm maybe. Or maybe he wanted a bite out of Melon’s wrist. He was a Spartan of the past age who thought his sacrifice might save his king or at least the name of Spartan prowess. But Melon had put both hands on his sword, pointed it upright, waited, and caught the Spartan in the lower belly as he had come on, lifting him a palm or so high, as his blade went through the groin and nearly hit the backplate. It took all his strength to yank it out and then kick the shrieking Spartan off with his good knee. Then he stepped on this Eurypon’s shoulder and lumbered ahead. Eurypon had a high farm above the Lakonian gulf, near Aigeiai and the lakeside temple of Poseidon. His cross-eyed wife Kuniska, toothless father Eurysthenes, and tiny girl Chloe-they were all this summer safe in the tower and on watch for pirates while the men of Sparta were far to the north fighting Epaminondas. But all Eurypon did this day was ensure that no one would be there next year to protect his father’s olives and vines when the mob of ravagers under Lykomedes of Mantineia swept down to the port at Gytheion-tearing down his tower and dragging his now orphaned Chloe in ropes to the slave-sellers. But what Spartan here at Leuktra ever might imagine that his family would soon be unsafe, far to the south in the stronghold of their tribe?
Melon and Chion then saw something not Antander nor Malgis nor Melon himself had ever before witnessed. Not more than a few feet behind the shredded king’s guard, straight ahead of them were the crests of their own Boiotians, who had rushed out from their left wing, outflanked the king, and gotten to the Spartan rear. This final pocket around King Kleombrotos was sealed and surrounded. The Sacred Band of Pelopidas now headed toward Chion and Melon, slicing in two what was left of the final Spartan circle. Melon slowed at the sight of these last efforts of the king’s hoplites and their Spartan empire. For a moment only, he lowered his sword and looked sideways and back for his Boiotians. Not since the Persians had cut off the head of Leonidas at Thermopylai had any man seen a Spartan king go down in battle.
To pause was a mistake even for a moment, since in that one stop Melon forgot that Spartans never do. Kleonymos, favorite of the Agiads, the son of the dead Sphodrias-who hated Lichas and his Antikrates for their claims of preeminence-came from his side and bashed Melon with his shield. It was a blow with the boss to the side of the head, hard enough to brain most men. Melon’s horsehair crest flew off. The concussion sent Melon’s helmet rattling against his temple and cheek and nearly knocked him off his feet. His skull’s insides crackled deep from within.
He could no longer quite make out all the blurred shapes of battle. In this new netherworld of the wounded and dead, Melon strained to hear the garbled cries of Epaminondas, “One step more. Give me one more.” But then Melon heard something else: the screeching of one of the stinking Keres he had seen before battle, but no more than ten feet above the fray, circling and diving into the melee-and headed for him? Suddenly he was given proof by this blow that the vulture women did live and kill and were no myth after all. For the first time this day, Melon in his dizziness, swaying on the threshold of death, could easily make out these hazy women birds that must have been hovering all along above the battlefield. Two of them, Nyx and Melaine, flew with talons outstretched, just as the wounded veterans had warned-the winged and deep-breasted daughters of Night, who swooped down over the heroes to pull them skyward by their ankles.
For now the son of Malgis managed to stay on his feet. He beat these harpies off and sent his sword right through the mouth of Melaine fluttering above him. She without flesh let out a shrill laugh nonetheless at the effort, veering away in anger at her lost meal. Swinging his sword in frenzy, the Thespian kept both these carrion
Drops of blood ran out Melon’s mouth. He knew that what he had done to ten or so Spartans that day, Kleonymos had nearly done to him, with far greater strength and youth. After these brief moments of daze he discovered that five Boiotians or more had fallen while he had spun and thrashed at the Keres. There was nothing of the enemy now but the towering Kleonymos, stabbing and swinging his shield wildly in the air, like the crazed she- bear that bellows and paws the very air between her cubs and the oncoming hunter. As Melon stumbled to regain his balance, he had enough sense to raise his shield to eye level. He saw that he had been pushed almost to the king himself. For now he heard no more cries of the Keres, just the final pleas of the Spartan Kleonymos, calling out to keep his King Kleombrotos alive.
CHAPTER 8
In the camp above the swale of Leuktra, not all were so scared or unhappy at the sight of their own shaking hoplites of Boiotia lining up for battle. “Loud and proud, my Spartans-big thing to see.” Gorgos winked in a manner Neto had not quite seen before. He stood up on the wagon bed. He had a better view than any below and thought he could predict what those lining up for the collision could not. Gorgos scoffed at the idea that anyone in Boiotia would dare go up against such men of Lakedaimon. “Look, look, Neto. At the hills beyond-how our rabble of Boiotia awaits slaughter below. They’re hoggies backing into the corners of their pens as their butcher enters. Ah, look. Even the blood-fanged Keres will soon fly in the air. They will have their pork feast as they land on your Boiotians. You should have gone home as ordered last night, and been spared the sight of your bloodied Boiotians below.”
Gorgos was freed of Melon, freed of Proxenos, freed of all memories of his twenty seasons and more as a slave on Helikon, so sure he was of a grand Spartan victory below. He too was a Messenian, and, like Neto, born a helot. But the old man cared not a whit for any of those serfs, and he liked their masters better than their slaves. There was no law that said Spartans must prove strong, and helots weak. Sly Gorgos knew that the weaker usually hide behind their race, their color, their homeland-refuges all for failure. So now for the first time Neto talks of her helot birth. More than that still, a liberator of her people-this slave who can’t remember the look of Mt. Ithome or even tell helot talk from the Spartan Doric. She was not like him, not like Gorgos, he thought, who chose his race, his people, his land as he saw fit and so trumped a mere accident of helot birth. Spartans were his because they, like him, were better than the helots. In contrast, his master was worse and only by silly laws kept the true master Gorgos his slave. How odd that these Boiotian liberators brought their slaves like Gorgos to battle. But then again, Gorgos still liked his master and was, after all, born a helot as well, whose people were underfoot from the Spartans that he now boasted about. He figured that he could hate helots and their masters, both Spartans and Thebans, praise Lichas and at times his master, too-mixed up at least for a while more before battle.
Gorgos climbed down from the wagon. “So much, Neto, for your gods yesterday. Your omens will get Boiotian men killed. Close your mouth, and we all live-paying money, fair tribute to Spartan occupiers and their ruling harmosts, and as you know, keeping our masters alive. These are our betters-yes they are-from Sparta, who rule with the iron hand. We helots, you and me both, know they earn what they enjoy-and how the two of us can prosper with them. But bet me-will our Boiotians run like Thespians or die fighting as they do in Sparta?”
Neto paid this two-shoe no heed in his dotage; traitor long ago to the cause of the helots, traitor he seemed now to her master Melon. She packed her bedroll and then moved farther away from the wagon where she had slept the previous night. Neto led the ox Aias over to taller grass. The master and Chion were far below. Apparently, Neto thought, Gorgos cared little who heard him as he yelled out at what he saw below. For the first time in their lives the two farm slaves, Neto and Gorgos, were alone without Chion or Melon somewhere nearby in the vineyard. They kept eyeing each other as the sun rose and the armies below marched out to crash. Neto gasped when she suddenly realized that Gorgos no longer limped. She was struck mute when he pulled off his ragged cloak to reveal the broad chest of a man more forty summers than seventy. Maybe he been faking his age to avoid
