The End of Sparta: A Novel (39 page)

Then Pelopidas continued. “You know that the larger the army is, the larger it will become. That’s why you see out there wagons pulling in from over the pass. The mob has decided it is a fine thing to march southward. But that’s not the half of it. We will need more than even these two myriads. If Proxenos and Ainias have done their work, if they keep that slippery Mantineian Lykomedes in line, maybe more than two ten-thousands are already mustering to the south at Arkadia.” He paused and spoke slowly, as if Pelopidas himself could not quite believe the numbers of Hellenes on the move toward Sparta. “Altogether I’d wager sixty thousand and more will pour into Lakedaimon, with us and them combined. Don’t forget the firebrand Epitêles and his Argives. There is no better friend of the
dêmos
. He will bring Dorian hoplites with him. These are the sorts that will continue over Taygetos into Messenia if they have to. King Agesilaos can’t thwart us. We know Alkidamas with his Nêto has stirred up the helots. So the Spartans will have enemies in every direction.”

Pelopidas waved at the throng below. “Ainias promised me that thousands of Arkadians will join us in the south, all with the club of our Herakles—the
ropalon
of Thebes—painted on their shields. I think before we’re through, all of Hellas will be on the road. Ten myriads, and from every polis in Hellas.”

Mêlon wondered how many Spartans would meet them. Maybe a myriad red-capes, from the allies and the Spartiates who had survived Leuktra, together with some more in the south and the home guard. Some Lakonian helots who wouldn’t bolt over—be sure to count on those. Then there were the loyal
perioikoi
and the other half-citizens of Lakedaimon. Put them all together and Agesilaos might have thirty thousand with spears to guard his acropolis. If Epaminondas and his invaders had twice that number, or three times the army, the odds still were with the Spartan defenders, who only need not lose, not ford the icy waters of the Eurotas and break into the city.

Mêlon thought that even if they did not storm into the streets of Sparta, at least they could claim this horde might make it alive into the borders of Lakonia. That would make them the first invaders to have done so in nearly twenty generations of the Hellenes—not since the sons of Herakles of the myths and stories depicted on the pots and temple stones. Then Mêlon quit his dreaming and checked his pack. If the army were to leave in less than two days, he would have to send Melissos over to the farm for provisions. As an afterthought Mêlon had roped his own battle gear on Xiphos for the trip from the farm to Thebes, so it was just a question of food, not armor, and to let Damô know that he was marching south.

Melissos came up closer. “Master, I’ve already fetched Xiphos, fed from the stables. There’s food right now. On the back of our stallion I’ve got dried fish, cheese, and wine—and our bronze breastplates and helmets. Last night Alkidamas had me empty his house of provisions. He has already left.”

Mêlon laughed, “
Our
armor?”

“That’s right. I have my breastplate, and the shield of Kalliphon, that dead son of Alkidamas. I fetched that with the food from the house of Alkidamas. So we are ready to march? I’m eager to see what you Hellenes can do in a day.”

“So we will, boy, first to Sparta with Epaminondas and then on to Messenia, alone, if need be, to find my Nêto.” With that, Mêlon patted the northerner’s head, as he led Xiphos behind them.

The two of them walked the horse out through the gate to find the field camps of Epaminondas, a half-morning march to the south, where they would spend the first night. As they walked, Mêlon repeated what his father Malgis had once taught him before his own first outing at Haliartos. “There is an art, Melissos, to a muster. It’s not like a pack of dogs that snarl and sprint out after the first hare that crosses their paths. Epaminondas is already forming up the columns, right over there under the clouds of Kithairon. The first thousands will leave in the morning, over the pass with us at the van. Then the hamlets from the eleven districts drift into Thebes. Their officers will have these latecoming regiments fall into line by companies, six men wide along the road—all the baggage in the middle of their column. We at the head will be over the mountain and halfway to Megara by nightfall tomorrow.”

“Or by midday, master,” piped up Melissos. He went on as he gazed at the long columns behind. “We are a snake then, Master Mêlon. A long snake, always ahead as its coils unwind to the rear. We’re getting longer even as we get farther from Thebes?”

“Longer? I’d say when we head down the pass our tail will just be leaving Thebes, seventy stadia back. Who knows, Melissos, it may be snowing on us on the pass yet sunny on those behind in the plain—and all in this same winter army.” Later, near the foothills of Erithryrai, Mêlon got word that Epaminondas was waiting for him at the head of the column. The generals were already high on the Plataian road, camped outside the walls of the city that Proxenos had rebuilt years earlier. This was where Mêlon wished to go anyway, since Alkidamas had told him that one of his agents would be meeting him there by nightfall. Before sunset the two slipped into camp. They tethered Xiphos beside a fire. Maybe a half-myriad of northerners were busy around them, and at least that many Thebans all along the road back to the Kadmeia. Officers kept the road clear. The winter rains were late here. The road was free of the deep red winter mud of the valleys of northern Boiotia.

Mêlon grabbed Melissos by the shoulder. “Stay close. These northerners, folk like your own, can’t be trusted, especially the riders. The Lokrians would run us down for play. The Phokians, well, the Phokians, they’re worse than any Spartans I know. I’ve seen some outlaws from Thessaly, too. Temple robbers and shrine looters, all of them, neighbors of yours. Still, our Epaminondas can’t be choosy in his allies. And he wasn’t.” The two got directions. They were soon in among the tents of Epaminondas, on a rise with a view of the distant hills above the battlefield at Leuktra. Mêlon noted that from the slopes above the river Asopos they could see the last light of the short winter day flickering off the white marble monument where he had met Alkidamas only two days earlier, not far from where Lichas had taken Lophis down. To the west along a bank three stadia away they could see the majestic hilltop estate of Proxenos, son of Proxenos of Plataia. Its torches on the portico above the river were blazing before the sun even fell, perhaps the household’s eager beacon to guide their master home—as if he were not somewhere already far distant, wandering down in the Peloponnesos.

Mêlon helped Melissos unload their packs. “Sleep, Makedonian. Tomorrow we talk as we march. This twilight let the young bloods put our
lochoi
in their order. The
peripoloi
and the rangers rouse the countryside, as they search for the stay-in-beds and the hide-a-ways. Anyone is fair game that the muster officers can’t find on the first go-around. We strike out at dawn. They say we will be at the flatlands of Mantineia in five days or six. Then two more on to Sparta.”

Then from his back a familiar voice took over from Mêlon. “Maybe seven days for our tail end. The full muster won’t even pass out of Thebes until tomorrow night.” It was Epaminondas. He had no helmet but wore a leather broad-brimmed hat that nearly covered his face. “A bad habit of walking up behind you, Mêlon. No worry. You are no snoring sentry. So in peace sleep, Thespian. All is planned.” With that Epaminondas passed on by their camp with four or five hoplites. “Come to the head of the march at daybreak. We will be waiting for you.”

Mêlon and Melissos were drifting off to sleep even before full darkness and the Great Bear had yet taken over the sky. How had he ended up here on the ground at Plataia? Just three days earlier, he had been at work at his olive press, promising Proxenos only that he might ride over to see things at Thebes. From that sudden urge, he had fallen in with the stranger Alkidamas, taken on a new servant, watched the great debate in the council hall of the Boiotians, and been called to the head of an army on its way into the frontier of Sparta. Suddenly Mêlon jolted up. Someone had kicked him. The voice was Boiotian. He recognized the tongue as well. “Sleeping so soon? But it is not even full dark—the moon is still in hiding.”

Chiôn was standing over him.

“This sapling next to you, what is it? A slave boy? A helot? You were never a boy-lover, Mêlon. How did this mushroom clamp onto your trunk?”

“Careful to kick the sleeping dog, Chiôn, he may bite yet.”

Mêlon rose to greet Chiôn. “This Melissos comes as the hostage servant of Alkidamas. That man’s own son Kalliphon was cut down near us on the left at Leuktra. So he lent me a spare Makedonian hostage that General Pammenes brought back to the men of Boiotia. He is a truce pledge from the Makedonians of the north. If the peace holds, he goes back to the north after the barley harvest. Then we get our own captives back in the bargain. He claims he’s royal. But he won’t tell us more. In the north there every tribe boasts they have queens and kings. He watches more than he talks.”

Chiôn nodded. “I know, I know of those two. I met both in Thespiai and sent them after you. But so they found you. I had Eudoros and Neander show them the road, and where to find you at the trophy of Leuktra.”

Mêlon was puzzled. “Chiôn, are you here from Alkidamas? He was supposed to send me a messenger. Why you? Why leave Damô, even if she’s with the dogs and the boys? She’s with your child. The country is swarming with bad sorts.”

“But Master, forgive me. I come for a reason you won’t like. Your coins in the well are yours. I’ve never drawn the boxes up without you. You know that.” Now Chiôn 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 Nikôn, he said his name was, as he ran up. A proud label for a slave, this man called “Victory.” But Nikôn 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 Nêto. 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.”

Mêlon grabbed his forearm as Chiôn 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 Nikôn the ransom money would follow in five days. I will take it myself to free our Nêto to keep her alive. I promised Nikôn 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 Nikôn 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 Damô read better than I. I memorized what she said was scratched on the bark:

Erinna tês Ithômês tô Mêloni. O Mêlon Malgidos. Pempe nun chrêmata pros tên Erinnan en tê gê tê tôn Messêniôn. Autên apoagorazein dei tina Nêtona apo tôn Spartiatôn. Pempete auta meta toude Nikonos, andros men agathou, agrammatou de.

“Erinna of Ithômê to Mêlon, son of Malgis: Send money to Erinna in the land of the Messenians. She must buy back Nêto from the Spartans. Send it with this here Nikôn, a good man, but an illiterate.”

Chiôn remembered more or less the way Damô had read it, but half the words on the bark were unclear to him. So he handed it over to Mêlon and kept talking. “What do these scratches mean? That stringy helot Nikôn 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 Damô had me pull up the coin box. I had no wish to trust this helot, even if Nêto had long said that she spoke to him while asleep. But Nikôn told Damô well enough what our Nêto looks like. So he does not lie, at least not completely. But who is this Erinna? When I asked Nikon, he said, ‘Ask Alkidamas.’ ”

Mêlon at least knew as much as Chiôn. “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 Nikôn 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. Chiôn, 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 Nêto. 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,” Mêlon 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 Nikôn and is close with Nêto and what she was up to. She never said anything much of her plans to me before she left.” Mêlon 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 Ithômê, while I try to get south first. Yes, go to the port and find your Alkidamas.”