pile of corpses, bloody capes, sandals, helmets, and entrails. He drifted off, and his eyes closed. He was once again under a better blue sky on his vineyard beneath Helikon, where he saw the good Gorgos of old, and two-armed Chion in the vineyard driving in stakes in the rocky ground, calling to him to bring the iron bar to make more holes down the row. Lophis was the overseer of all, barking orders to get the planting done before the great ice storm came from off Helikon. He was happy to linger with Neto at a pond by the vines, gazing at the dark images of storm clouds piling on Helikon in the growing ripples of the water as Neto bent over for an icy drink. Wind rustled in the oaks and the scent of cedar came with the breeze from the storm. In the air always was that pipe music, the playing of that goat tune of Epaminondas, or was it Neto with the reed at her lips and her strain from Thisbe that loosened his limbs, that strain that always came to drive worry and care away?
“Wake up, Thespian, you cannot cross over. Not yet.”
It was the Stymphalian Ainias, the planner of Leuktra, who had sat down next to the son of Malgis. Throughout the entire battle the Arkadian had never been more than two files away in battle, always with Proxenos at his side batting away any thrusts aimed at Melon. Now from his wine sack Ainias poured some water into his bloody helmet. Then he beat away the flies that had covered Melon’s head and cleaned the wound.
CHAPTER 10
Melon’s head cleared a bit and the Thisbean music in it abruptly stopped-no more cedar scent in the air, no pond, no Neto, no Chion, no family at work on the slopes of Helikon. The sun of the long day was speeding westward on its home leg toward the mountains. He blurted out to anyone nearby, “Good men. That is all that matters. We had them. Hoplites like Lophis, Chion, and Ainias and Epaminondas can do anything-good men, far better than anyone in the king’s army. Good men, that’s all that counts.”
Now Melon went on with his ramble, “I paid Lichas back in kind. I think you will find something of his ear, and maybe of the king’s spear as well.” Melon vaguely sensed that Ainias was treating his wounds. For an eye blink, he thought it was Lichas back to finish him off-since this Ainias spoke Doric and was a rough-looking sort, a frightful thing to see as well on the battlefield, nearly as ugly a hoplite as Lichas himself. “Thespian. Your spear fell from the dead Kleombrotos, but only after your sword went into his head bone. Few hit a Spartan king. None twice. That spear-it will hang in the temple of Herakles at Thebes. Or perhaps the
Ainias was looking more carefully over Melon’s head wound, wondering whether the larger tear across his brow should be seared or stitched. “You are the only Boiotian who has ever drawn blood from Lichas. The prophetesses from the south say he is the favorite of their gods. These seers boast that even in his seventh decade that bald head cannot be killed by any Theban-or even perhaps any free man of Hellas. It is not easy to stand up to Spartan men in battle when they believe that the gods favor only the strong, and live and talk inside their chests.”
A growing circle of hoplites neared the dazed and bleeding Melon, wishing to walk over the very soil where he had just spilled the blood of the king Kleombrotos. The Thespian’s arms and neck were laced with gashes and scrapes. Ainias, who knew well the nature of mending torn skin and stopping oozing blood, put a cream of honey and animal fat in the deeper gashes. He rubbed olive oil on the bleeding shallow cuts, and wrapped them in linen to keep away the flies and gnats. He counted out loud eleven spear slices. Melon’s armor showed another batch of new dents. The blow from Kleonymos to Melon’s head had closed an eye. Half his face was unrecognizable. Where, he wondered, was his son?
Melon squinted back and at last weakly muttered, “Where is Lophis?” “Where is my Bora? At least go find the spear head at the
“Wait until we know more. We are sure only that your sword first went into the mouth of Kleombrotos. The king is chewing on it in Hades. His henchman Lichas can thank you for another cut. It made him look even more the dogface than he was. Though he won’t miss an ear since they say Lichas listens to none anyway. You and Chion have sent the royal house of Sparta across the Styx. Think of it-the king dead, and with a sword no less, a sword wielded by a farmer on Helikon.
Ainias held up the huge iron tip with a broken shaft about an arm’s length left. A Tanagran had just found it near Chion. Melon was coming back for longer moments to his senses, “Where is my Lophis? Is he already at the gulf? Where Chion?” But there was no Chion to answer him. Melon finally began to fathom that his slave had toppled. “Chion? Did Lophis bring out his body?”
“Proxenos was near you all the time. That’s his nature. The hard stone in a crisis. He was there right behind you. To steady you; so much for your Neto’s warnings to him that he too would go down.” Ainias had spied a crowd around Chion with shouts that he lived. He also had forgotten that Neto had warned Proxenos not of Leuktra, but of crossing the Isthmos in its aftermath. “It was Proxenos who saved your brute. Chion is warm, but whether he will live, I’m not sure. Your son was with the horse, and our riders routed them easily. No doubt he is far off, in the shadows of Kithairon riding down those who bolted.” Melon nodded at news of his son and that Chion breathed, thinking that he must have been asleep as Ainias had searched the pile of the dead. He hadn’t really thought that any Spartan could kill Chion.
Melon was confused as Ainias finished, “Lichas’s spear cut into Chion well enough. But his bronze plate warded most of that hard blow away from his heart. The Plataian is sewing on him now, at least the smaller tear he cannot burn. They say he can patch flesh as well as build stones. Though I have healed more than he and I’ll go back there to check on the wound to make sure he has put in enough honey and wool. I don’t like thread. The hot poker is the only way to close a real tear. I brought my doctor box. I’ll need to take the bronze prong and scissors and cut away the bad skin, and pull out the splinters before we melt the wound closed. I may want to bleed him- and purge him too while I’m at it. Or maybe a leech or worm to eat away the rot to come.”
By now, as Melon alternately slept and awoke, it was almost dark and the torches were lit. Epaminondas had himself re-formed a tiny phalanx a few hundred yards ahead and his men right in the dark were squared off against Lichas and the Spartan survivors on a nearby hill. But Melon’s head seemed caved in. The pounding of the waves roared in his ear. Bodies-he could see them in the twilight-were dragged and piled in heaps. The battlefield was becoming an agora as thousands of Boiotians crisscrossed the carnage. Who was that strange man in the long cloak over there? he thought. He stares here too long. An aged white-haired fellow crossed by, with a lanky, bleary-eyed attendant carrying off a corpse, a mess of a hoplite of forty or so from Thebes. There was a severed arm tied flat to his chest with twine, at least something like that under the flies. Are they afraid the dogs will get it? That must be the work of that Kleonymos, or maybe Antikrates, or so Melon thought.
Ainias’s voice now kept Melon awake, as he muttered of this trio off in the distance, “There goes dead young Kalliphon, the orator and son of Alkidamas, the greatest speaker of the Hellenes, and the godhead behind the freedom of Messenia, tutor to Epaminondas himself. They all had no business out here. The man was no fighter. You can see from the sad look of the father and their thin slave from the north. That son Kalliphon’s first day in bronze was his last. His father and that sorry shield-carrier of his, they must burn him as they can. Though one is wrinkled and stiff and that other servant of his, a northerner with a half-Hellene tongue, thin and green.”
Was this Alkidamas again? Why did he hear always of the mythical Alkidamas somewhere? Melon heard a familiar voice at his back, “You breathe still, my master. But you look dead to me.”
Neto.
The Messenian girl put a cloak over the cold Melon. Now she poured him more warm water from her own pouch and swatted away the blue-black flies. But hadn’t he left her with Proxenos, just last dusk before the battle, with orders to start for home on the morning of the battle? He knew that he was not on the wrong side of the Styx. Or maybe this was Helikon, and he was working in the hot vineyard as his Neto brought them his afternoon water from the spring above.
