drawn the boxes up without you. You know that.” Now Chion looked up and talked bolder to his former master. “But a strange helot from the south met me when I was pruning in the red grape vines two days ago. A Nikon, he said his name was, as he ran up. A proud label for a slave, this man called “Victory.” But Nikon could hardly stand. His sandals were worn to the soles, and he was about through and shaking. Even if he had been fresh, he was a scarred and leathery sort, an ugly one with whip scars on his neck and back, and with a stink of hides on him. Begging for money, he claimed, so that he could ransom our Neto. In chains to the south, he swears, she was. A prisoner in the log fort of Lord Kuniskos, he swears. He hands me a note, with the block letters scratched on bark from a woman who wrote the Attic way-why in the south I don’t know. At least that’s what he said. He looked like he’d run the whole way. But he was at least a Pheidippes, an iron legs.”
Melon grabbed his forearm as Chion continued. “I needed a thousand good silver pieces, Master. I only skimmed the top of the iron boxes, and didn’t touch the gold below. So I told this Nikon the ransom money would follow in five days. I will take it myself to free our Neto to keep her alive. I promised Nikon the helot that. We gave pledges. I sent word to Alkidamas, who is on the side of Kithairon by the sea waiting for a ship. But Nikon took off back southward out to the harbor town Kirrha on the gulf like he was running the race in armor at Olympia. Here is the letter that Damo read better than I. I memorized what she said was scratched on the bark:
Erinna tes Ithomes to Meloni. O Melon Malgidos. Pempe nun chremata pros ten Erinnan en te ge te ton Messenion. Auten apoagorazein dei tina Netona apo ton Spartiaton. Pempete auta meta toude Nikonos, andros men agathou, agrammatou de.
“Erinna of Ithome to Melon, son of Malgis: Send money to Erinna in the land of the Messenians. She must buy back Neto from the Spartans. Send it with this here Nikon, a good man, but an illiterate.”
Chion remembered more or less the way Damo had read it, but half the words on the bark were unclear to him. So he handed it over to Melon and kept talking. “What do these scratches mean? That stringy helot Nikon went to his knees in begging, an odd thing for a tanner by his smell who says he will set all of Messenia on fire. So our Damo had me pull up the coin box. I had no wish to trust this helot, even if Neto had long said that she spoke to him while asleep. But Nikon told Damo well enough what our Neto looks like. So he does not lie, at least not completely. But who is this Erinna? When I asked Nikon, he said, ‘Ask Alkidamas.’ ”
Melon at least knew as much as Chion. “I am sworn to march with Epaminondas, but it is southward all the same, and I will be over Taygetos perhaps before any of you. I see that you know that Alkidamas is not here. He left the assembly for the bay at Aigosthena and has some grand plan to sail into the port of Messenia with helot rowers, no less, that he rounded up at Athens. He was supposed to send me word when he was to leave and where we were to meet in the south. Maybe he had wind of your Nikon last night. But I see you planned to row with him all along or at least the two of you cobbled together some sort of plan on your chance meeting when I had set out with Xiphos to Thebes. Chion, you did well enough. Don’t worry about the silver. But now there is no need to go yourself. We can send the pay-off with Alkidamas, who as it works out is going south anyway, even if you were his agent after all. I see that now. Trust this Erinna. I’ve heard from Alkidamas at Thebes she is with Neto. Stay on the farm. I am marching at sunrise. As I said, I hope to beat all of you to Messenia and still keep my vow to march with Epaminondas into the vale of Lakonia. I may get there first anyway.”
“If Gorgos is this Kuniskos,” Melon went on, “then he will not kill her, at least not yet. He knows us, that we will send ransom money. You or I will even up with him. The man Alkidamas, I saw just these last two days in the assembly at Thebes. He is on his way. He must know this Nikon and is close with Neto and what she was up to. She never said anything much of her plans to me before she left.” Melon finished slowly. “So take the money from the farm to him at the port. Do it this day. Then it will go by sea to Ithome, while I try to get south first. Yes, go to the port and find your Alkidamas.”
Chion looked troubled. So Melon warned him a last time. “Chion. This is not your fight. Your one arm, wife, your son to come, and the farm, too-all that means you stay on Helikon. You give the money to Alkidamas at the port, and then go home. That is enough. I’ll race the old man by land to Messenia, and see if I can beat his ship to deal with Gorgos wherever and whatever he is. That way one of us at least will get to Messenia, by land or sea.”
Chion paused. “Maybe. But I fear I can do far better in hunting Neto down than you, Master. Besides, I’ve only seen the Spartans twice. At Tegyra and Leuktra. Not in their home. I can even up with Lichas for my arm. I’ll make him bow to Lophis in Hades-or worse still. No one knows Gorgos better than his fellow farm slave. I can figure out where he is before either you or Alkidamas. And we hear still of the boast of that Antikrates. We missed him at Leuktra. The tongues of your Olympians say he will do harm to our Epaminondas. So I will give the money to Alkidamas and come back and march with you to the Isthmos.”
“No. No. All in good time, Chion. I let Neto go off, and it is my debt to bring her back safely. I have waited far too long this autumn in my anger at her leaving. These other debts are on my ledger as well, along with seeking Nemesis for Lophis and Malgis. The reckoning is soon. Lichas, or so my
Chion frowned at that. “How silly. Proxenos was not to cross the Isthmos, and yet he is now a hero down there in the south. I will swim in the sea anyway if I give the silver to Alkidamas at Aigosthena late this night. But, yes, I go to the sea and then home to Helikon.” With that he nodded, took the reins of their Xiphos, and led the horse away. Then he was gone as abruptly as he had appeared. Melon almost thought he saw Myron, or some brute, in torchlight waiting for his friend on a crest not far from camp.
As Chion headed toward Helikon, he seemed to see visions again in the starry night, as if, amid the stars and moon, there were bright outlines of a timber stockade. Then he paused and the trance was clearer and right before his eyes. Inside this fort he saw through the lamplight the head of Neto shaved-was it on a pole? Neto was either dead or close to it. Gorgos was near or at the center of this crime, though he seemed to go by different names and had altered his look, or so they said of the helot lord with the shaved head and fine cloaks. So Neto spoke all this to him for a moment from across the Isthmos far to the south. His dreams had stayed with him in the waking hours, and now were even stronger enough to stop him in mid-stride. Myron shook him and the visions ended as the two picked up their pace.
After Chion left, Melon and Melissos slept for only half the night, and then arose well before sunrise. Melon was eager to press ahead to find Neto, but he was still not sure whether this Nikon was a scoundrel who had heard Neto’s master had coin, or was an agent of Alkidamas, or was a lover of Neto. In any case, for now all Melon could do was send Chion with his money for Alkidamas at Aigosthena. He would march with the army into the Peloponnesos, and then hope by burning Lakonia that the helots on the other side of Taygetos would rise up and so free Neto wherever she was-though he thought he would slip away at some point and arrive at Messenia before the army.
Others this morning were stirring even before Melon and Melissos. Soon they were waiting impatiently at the head of the column, nervous to move out. There was a growing noise of horse and leather and wood and bronze, with plenty of clatter and cursing in almost every dialect of the Hellenes. Everywhere arose the din of the heavy tread of thousands of feet milling about as they readied to march out. “Look back toward Thebes,” Melissos yelled. “The torches, a myriad of them. Even more, below.” Then they heard the voice of Epaminondas. “March out!”
With that the mob at the back of the hoplites let out, “On to Sparta. To Sparta.” Then a roar of just “Sparta, Sparta …” The columns at the van moved out toward the mountain passes, in the gloom as the winter sun was behind the mountains. In quiet the army knew it was late in the year for war, on this the shortest day of the year- the great brooding solstice when all shuddered that the colder times were ahead. This northern horde was perhaps three or four times larger than the one mustered at Leuktra. All Hellas north of the Isthmos seemed to be on the move, either to fight or follow the throng peddling food and drink and women. Even more would join up in the south. Northerners had never marched in mass before, much less had they joined with islanders and the men of the Euboia to the west, soon to be alongside hoplites mustering at Elis, Argos, and Arkadia to the south. In the early darkness most appeared strange folk. Some had open-faced
