The End of Sparta

I will live for better kills yet, kill better than this Chion. It will be sung a hundred years from now in new, better Sparta, that I Antikrates killed the best pigs that Boiotia offered. I kill today so I can kill more tomorrow. I killed Chion of Helikon. I will kill his master soon enough and then Epaminondas too.”

Such were his mad unspoken thoughts, but those behind heard only one refrain echoing back out the mouth of the cave: “Chiona apektenon, Chiona …” I killed Chion. Chion was down amid the dung. He had tried to grab the fence rung before sinking back into the muck of the pigsty. Chion had been foretold to be a killer of the royal ones of Sparta. For his part Antikrates likewise, the gods said, was to live on to kill the best man of Boiotia. These two prophecies dueled. Chion lost out. Perhaps the goddess Artemis forsook this believer in Pythagoras, ruing his lack of good meat on her sacrifice table. Perhaps she figured the slave had already killed enough of the royal guard at Leuktra, as she had promised. So the Messenians later would argue to explain the death of the godlike Chion and the win of the coward Antikrates. Had Chion not sent his spear into Lichas and killed Lakrates, or had he not kept smashing Elektra long after she gave up the ghost, or had he chosen to rest on his laurels while Melon and Ainias finished all three of the Spartans off, he would have come back to the farm with his master, once more the heroic pair returning from their defeat of the Spartans.

Yet Antikrates was relish, no more. Chion had gone wild anyway on Taygetos and was no more Damo’s farmer. He had long since finished with Helikon and would leave Melon with no enemies at his back, and Damo and the boys safe with Myron from the likes of Dirke and her henchmen. In a moment Melon and Ainias rushed past the dying Chion and chased the Spartan into the mouth of the cave. Antikrates had peeled off his armor and was sprinting ever deeper into the mountain. All they heard was that distant echo off the walls: “Chion. I killed Chion.”

By the time Ainias and Melon reemerged from the tunnel and ran back to the hut, Chion was white. Neto was wobbly on her legs and now had come out of the hut. Fury had revived her, that and the blood of Gorgos. She had not dared pull the spearhead out of Chion, since it had an ugly barb that had barely broken through the skin on his backside. Ainias somehow broke the shaft off at the socket. This time no hot poker he knew could close such a hole. The wound was a half palm or more wide and showed a ripped vein and blood squirting over Chion’s torso. Neto tore off a strip of her cloak and stuffed all of it into the mess around the spear socket. At the sight of the old ugly lambda brand burned into the flesh of the poxy cheek of Chion, Neto shrieked out at the hated Taygetos.

Chion whispered after her yells died down. “That damned ship. Five days lost. Our Neto warned me of water. No fear of the sea.” He caught a breath. “Gorgos, Lichas no more, Master. Antikrates won. Too late for Erinna. Up in the ice and snow, to pay back for Lophis, for Proxenos, for our Netikon. But Netikon, our Netikon lives. And Damo and the boys.”

He was gasping. Then his eyes went shut, and he sputtered out, “Live on Melon. Last of the Malgidai, last of the way Hellas once was.”

Chion went quiet. He smiled at his beaked Ker who was on the corner on the hut’s roof shrieking, ready to swoop. If she neared, he would strangle her as his last victim, even as the two tumbled into Hades. His chest heaved up and down with the deep, methodical breathing of death’s embrace that not even he could escape. Chion slipped off with visions of the evening at the lever of the press and the reflection of his master’s face in the pond above the farm.

Melon whispered an epitaph. “I will hunt this Antikrates. That I promise.” But even in his furor Melon promised nothing about killing the fleeing Spartan, since no Boiotian had managed that yet. And now he was gone and headed down the slopes to Sparta.

Chion was far distant, with both good arms, skimming the moss out of the pond on the farm, as Damo called for him to go up to the tower and gaze with her down at the grids of their trees and vines of Helikon. Neto was skipping on the farm path, her deer legs as long as they were hale. His lips froze at last in a smile that did not end. He could leave this forest after all, and at last go home to his high, his sunny vineyard.

Not far away, the young Klopis stirred and staggered to get up, woken by the echoes of the wailing of victory from Lichas’s son deep in the cave. Then his ragged cloak caught a fence rail. Ainias had stabbed the brute only with a single blow, deep, but not enough to drain his blood. So there was some beating for a while longer in the heart of the Spartan. The keen eye of Nikon missed him. Hatred gave this Klopis power still, even though he had been groaning in the dirt. Klopis thought it enough to win some glory for his one son back home, perhaps soon to be made into song by his dead father’s killing of Melon of Helikon. Half-dead Klopis thought he could rise to spear one or two of the four as they crouched over Chion, or maybe tear out dead Chion’s windpipe as a trophy.

Fool. He had hardly neared Chion, when Kerberos let out a howl and tore at his ankle, his jaws locked fast. Neto rolled over to him, and she shrieked with her own war cry, shorter and louder “Alale. Alale.” Kerberos held the dying man fast. Neto got to the side of the staggering Klopis, and then plunged her long knife between his thigh and the back of his knee. Ainias finished him off with a wide slash to his neck that nearly took the head of the head-cutter Klopis off altogether. “I cannot even kill a man right any more,” he offered.

“Get him off, get him off. Get that dung off our Chion,” Neto shrieked back. “That filth won’t touch our Chion.” She hit the dead man with her stick. It was all the two could do to tear off Kerberos. He was again the wolf on Kithairon, eager to chew on this head and take it over near that of Gorgos. As Neto’s rage subsided, Ainias turned to Melon. “Are we so short of men that we need women and those with one good arm? Are we so sightless that we did not see what he planned all along-or did we wish Chion to do all along what we said we did not?”

Now that they were surrounded by dead Spartans, Melon relaxed and answered slowly. “Chion lived as he wished, with faith in his One God. He could not-like you, Ainias, as well-live in peace, not a man like this, knowing that worse enemies walked free in Sparta and that Lichas and his son had paid no penalty for the good men they had killed at Leuktra and the more they planned to kill down here.”

Neto was crying. She leaned on the fence. Her cloak was soaked with the blood of Gorgos and Chion. “I saw him days ago on a ship, on the water near the Isthmos. His face was always hidden in the shore mist. Our Chion wandered cold and dirty on the mountain, always to our aid.”

Ainias calmed. “We will take him back to Ithome in the fashion of a king, and burn him as first citizen of a free Messenia. He saved us all at Leuktra and here on Taygetos. He killed the best of the Spartans even after he saw the Aegean.” Melon could not speak any more, for Chion was his second self, a man he cared for more than any but Neto, so he turned and readied a pyre. He dragged the twice-struck corpse of Klopis back into the cottage, its head trailing in the dirt, hanging by a sliver of tendon attached still to the spine. Then in fury Melon shuffled back out of the hut and with Ainias carried Thibrachos back in as well and threw him on the table above Klopis.

Nikon groaned, “That’s two and the worst are to come.” Melon grabbed the heels of Lichas across the room and dragged him over, then bent, picked him up, and dumped him on Klopis. His eyes were closed, but Lichas in his greed kept some of the life breath inside his chest, beat off a Ker, and sputtered, “Hit only from the back I was. I killed that man at Leuktra. I killed the slave at Leuktra. A daimon, not a slave.” Then he spat out a final boast, “From the back I die-tethneka. You all will miss me.”

Melon scoffed at the dead Spartan. “Fool. Chion was no slave. Remember that as you are winged away to the other side, foul man.” Then he put his hand around the throat of Lichas. The bane of the Thebans was already gone, gone with the truth that it was a free Chion who had sent him to his reckoning, gone with some choked-out noise that sounded like another faint “you miss me.” Meanwhile Melissos was busy and had pulled Lakrates over by the helmet crest, his chin strap holding the drag well enough. There were two Spartans on the long low table, two below on the floor nearby with the body of Gorgos and his head. Ainias blurted out, “Antikrates is halfway to Sparta now with big talk of killing Chion, always to boast over the better man. The stink of Hades is on that Spartan. Or maybe he’s no Spartan, but one of those daimones who have a secret door to go in and out of the darkness below with ease. Maybe he was the man-bear, since he knows the caves on this mountain better than any.”

Nikon answered. “Neto warned of the son of Lichas who lapped up the poisonous milk of Kuniskos. I fear he will do far worse than boast of killing our Chion. He has a bad date with one of us, or maybe many to come.”

The trunk of Gorgos was lying face down in two large puddles of blood. “He bled red,” Ainias offered. “I thought he would leak black like what has dribbled down his legs.”

Melon was already dragging over Elektra by the braids and stopped to grab a wider grip of hair from the backside of her head. The weight vanished from his hand, as he pulled off a thick black horse-hair wig. Below him fell the bald Amazon, old and wrinkled, her hairless skull hitting the stones, with its teeth all knocked out. Melon picked her up and tossed her on top of her husband Lichas, royal granddaughter of Agesilaos, as if the hag were no