Tides of War (64 page)

A compound was afire. Men of the estate rushed upon our site in terror. We saw the boy, youngest of the five Odrysian brothers, dismounting breathless. Their party had doubled back from the west, the tale burst from him, having picked up the prey’s trail, and skirted our camp in the night to beat us to him.
“Etoskit Alkibiad!”
the youth cried, gesturing toward the flames. “Alcibiades is taken!”

All sprang to their horses’ backs. The party raced at a gallop, at terrific hazard to the animals and ourselves as the ground had been staked to receive vines and was pocked with trenches and voids. One saw a house. A farm cottage. The brothers had apparently encircled it in darkness and piled faggots against its walls. The place blazed like a tinderbox. No doubt the flames had driven the quarry forth from his bed to such exposed position as permitted the hunters to shoot him down without hazard to themselves. My heels beat the ribs of my mount. The party raced onto the site. You could not see Alcibiades (he was obscured by the wall of the forecourt) but only the brothers. Two were horseback, at the gate, pouring bowfire point-blank from their elevated vantage. The others, and their attendants, occupied positions atop and behind the wall;
these slung javelins and darts. The brothers, even at this remove, stood so flush upon the conflagration that their garments and hair caught and smoked.

I was first upon the court. The heat was monumental. My mount balked and pinwheeled; I sprang to earth.

Now I saw Alcibiades. He was naked, save shield and runt
xiphos
sword. His back was charred like meat. Shafts and missile bolts made a stubble field of his shield. The woman Timandra sprawled flat at his heels, a carpet or some heavy garment over her, cloaking her from the flames.

As our party roared upon the site, the brothers did not break off but intensified their attack, ejaculating in their savage tongue that the prize was theirs and they would slaughter any who sought to rob them of it. The Spartans and Persians overran them at once.

Endius, Telamon, and I rushed to the gate. The holocaust howled, sucking the breath from our throats. The Spartan dashed in first, snatching up the woman and bearing her from the court. She clutched at her lover’s limbs, crying something we could not hear. Telamon and I, elevating cloaks to our faces, ploughed in next. Alcibiades turned toward our sound, as if to attack, then dropped the way a dead man does, not breaking his fall with the strength of his arms, but pitching face-foremost. His shield crashed first and then he, forearm yet within its sheath, plunged upon it. His skull struck like a stone. I have never seen a man shot through with so many bolts.

We hauled him from the inferno. I propped him upright on the far side of the wall. I had no doubt he was dead. My intent, deranged no doubt, was that these cowards not behold their prey stretched forth in the dust.

He was alive and sought to rise.

He cried Timandra’s name, in such anguish as I have never heard. She responded in equal affliction, from Endius’ arms bearing her clear. Alcibiades relented, reckoning her safe. His hand clutched me by the hair.

“Who is it?” he shouted.

He was blind. The flames had taken half his face. I called my name. He could not hear. I cried louder, at his ear. I was riven with such
distress as words may never compass. Behind, the Thracians put up a clamor ungodly, claiming their prize. The cottage continued collapsing by sections. Again I shouted into his ear. This time he heard. His fist held me like a griffin’s claw. “Who else?”

I told him Endius and the Persians.

A terrible groan escaped his breast. It was as if this was what he had expected and, expectation fulfilled, he recognized his fate. His grip clenched me fast.

“The woman…she must not be left undefended in this country.”

I swore I would protect her.

His great shield, the same he had borne down thrice nine years since our first blooding beneath those cliffs called the Boilers, rested yet across his chest and shoulders. I had set it thus to cover his nakedness. He shifted now, straining against its weight. With what strength remained he declined the bronze, exposing the flesh of his neck and throat.

“Now, my friend,” he said. “Take what you came for.”

Polemides here elevated his glance and met my eyes. For a moment I thought he could not continue, nor was I at all certain I wished him to.

Lysander had said of Alcibiades that in the end Necessity would bring him low. Perhaps she did, but it was my hand which drove the fatal blade. Nor did I slay a general or statesman, as history will memorialize him, but a man, hated by many and loved by more, myself not last among them. Set aside his feats and felonies. In this I honor him: that he drove the vessel of his soul to where sea and sky conjoin and contended there, without fear, as few before, save perhaps only your master, his first instructor. Who will sail so far again?

And I, who took upon himself such freight of self-condemnation for my acts of the Plague and after, discovered myself experiencing on Deer Mountain, to my wonder, no such grief or remorse. I did not act so much as enact. Do you reckon the distinction, my friend? I was Alcibiades’ own arm, as I had been since that night of our youth upon the storm-bound strand, striking that blow which he himself called down.
Who is guilty? I and he, and Athens and all Greece, who have fashioned our ruin with our own hands.

Polemides finished. It was enough. No more need be narrated.

Later, within his sea chest, I discovered this correspondence in Alcibiades’ hand. It bore no salutation and was salted with misspellings, indicative of a preliminary draft—to whom one may only guess. By its date, the tenth of Hecatombaion, it may be the last he ever wrote.

I passed Socrates’ final day
[Grandfather continued]
in his cell with the others. I was exhausted and dozed. I had this dream:

Weary and wishing to attend our master with the clearheadedness he deserved, I hunted through the prison for a recess in which to catch a catnap. My search delivered me to the carpenter’s loft. There, horizontal, spread the
tympanon
on which Polemides would this day meet his end. “Go ahead, sir.” The carpenter motioned me in. “Take a snooze.” I lay down and fell at once into a blissful slumber. I awoke with a start, however, to discover officers binding me to the instrument. My wrists and ankles were fettered beneath the cramp irons; the chain strangled me about the throat. “You’ve got the wrong man!” I shouted. But my cry was throttled by the iron. “I’m the wrong man! You’ve got the wrong man!”

I snapped-to to discover myself in Socrates’ cell. I had cried out and disquieted him. He had taken the hemlock already, I was informed, and, awaiting its effect, had settled to rest upon his pallet, compassed by those who loved him, his face shrouded beneath a cloth. I begged the company’s pardon. It was clear that agitation was the last thing our master needed. In distress I excused myself and hastened from the cell.

It was late in the day. As I emerged at the head of the Iron Court, I glimpsed a woman and a boy vacating toward the vestibule. Eunice. This was odd, as Polemides had thus far refused to see her. Had something happened?

At once the lad reappeared. Polemides’ son Nicolaus. He had not been departing, only assisting his mother upon her way. He strode straight up to me and took my hand, narrating his gratitude for my exertions on his father’s behalf. A sea change had overtaken the youth. Though lank and cranelike as ever, he had acceded to manhood. He greeted me equal-to-equal, so much so that I found myself abashed and, seeking to allay what I imagined to be his distress, addressed him to this effect: that though his mother had been the
engine of this grief, he must recall that her object was his own preservation, that is, to keep him from harm, running off to war.

The boy regarded me queerly. “That is not how the land lies at all, sir. Has my father not told you?”

His mother, the lad insisted, had not engineered anything. She was no instigator of this prosecution but its pawn. That perjurer Colophon who had brought suit against my father, the youth said, acted as stooge for those who had hired him, Polemides, during the reign of the Thirty, to assassinate Alcibiades.