Gates of Fire

by Steven Pressfield

  Here was the word:

  Four morai, five thousand men, would be mobilized for Thermopylae. The column, reinforced by four perioikic regiments and packing squires and armed helots two to a man, would march out as soon as the Karneia, the festival of Apollo which prohibited taking up arms, expired. Two and half weeks.

  The force would total twenty thousand men, twice the number at Tempe, concentrated in a pass ten times narrower.

  Another thirty to fifty thousand allied infantry would be mobilized behind this initial force, while a main force of the allied navy, a hundred and twenty ships of war, would seal the straits at Artemisium and Andros and the narrows of the Euripus, protecting the army at the Gates from flank assault by sea.

  This was a massive call-up. So massive it smelled. Dienekes knew it and so did everyone else.

  My master humped back to the city accompanied by Alexandros, now a full line warrior of the platoon, his mates Bias, Black Leon and their squires. A third of the way along we overtook the elder Charilaus, shambling home with painful slowness, supported by his attendant, Sthenisthes, who was as ancient as he. Black Leon led an ass of the train on a halter; he insisted the old man ride. Charilaus declined but permitted the place to his servant.

  Cut through the shit for us, will you, old uncle? Dienekes addressed the statesman affectionately but with a soldier's impatience for the truth.

  I relay only what I'm instructed, Dienekes.

  The Gates won't hold fifty thousand. They won't hold five.

  A wry expression wizened the old-timer's face. I see you fancy your generalship superior to Leonidas'.

  One fact was self-evident even to us squires. The Persian army stood now in Thessaly. That was what, ten days to the Gates? Less? In two and a half weeks their millions would sweep through and be eighty miles beyond. They'd be parked upon our threshold.

  How many in the advance party? Black Leon inquired of the elder.

  He meant the forward force of Spartans that would, as always in advance of a mobilization, be dispatched to Thermopylae now, at once, to take possession of the pass before the Persians got there and before the main force of the allied army moved up.

  You'll hear it from Leonidas tomorrow, the old man replied. But he saw the younger men's frustration.

  Three hundred, he volunteered. All Peers. All sires.

  My master had a way of setting his jaw, a fierce clamping action of the teeth, which he employed when he was wounded on campaign and didn't want his men to know how bad. I looked. This expression stood now upon his face.

  An all-sire unit was comprised only of men who were fathers of living sons.

  This was so that, should the warriors perish, their family lines would not be extinguished.

  An all-sire was a suicide unit.

  A force dispatched to stand and die.

  My customary duties upon return from training were to clean and stow my master's gear and look to, with the servants of the mess, the preparation of the evening meal. Instead this day Dienekes asked Black Leon for his squire to do double duty. Myself he ordered on ahead, at a run, to his own home. I was to inform the lady Arete that the regiment had been dismissed for the day and that her husband would arrive at home shortly. I was to issue an invitation to her on his behalf: would she and their daughters accompany him this afternoon for a ramble in the hills?

  I raced ahead, delivered this message and was dismissed to my own pursuits. Some impulse, however, made me linger. From the hill above my master's cottage I could see his daughters burst from the gate and dash with eager enthusiasm to greet him upon the way. Arete had prepared a basket of fruit, cheese and bread. The party was all barefoot, wearing big floppy sun hats.

  I saw my master tug his wife aside beneath the oaks and there speak privately with her for several moments. Whatever he said, it prompted her tears. She embraced him fiercely, both arms flung tight about his neck. Dienekes seemed at first to resist, then in a moment yielded and clamped his wife to him, holding her tenderly.

  The girls clamored, impatient to be off. Two puppies squalled underfoot. Dienekes and Arete released their embrace. I could see my master lift his youngest, Ellandra, and plant her pony-style astride his shoulders. He held the maiden Alexa's hand as they set off, the girls exuberant and gay, Dienekes and Arete lagging just a little.

  No main-force army would be dispatched to Thermopylae; that tale was for public consumption only, to shore up the allies' confidence and put iron in their backbones.

  Only the Three Hundred would be sent, with orders to stand and die.

  Dienekes would not be among them.

  He had no male issue.

  He could not be selected.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I must now recount an incident of battle several years previous, whose consequences at this present juncture came powerfully to affect the lives of Dienekes, Alexandros, Arete and others in this narrative. This occurred at Oenophyta against the Thebans, one year after Antirhion.

  I refer to the extraordinary heroism demonstrated on that occasion by my mate Rooster, Like myself at the time, he was just fifteen and had been serving, green as grass, for less than twelve months as first squire of Alexandras' father, Olympieus.

  The armies' fronts had clashed. The Menelaion, Polias and Wild Olive regiments were locked in a furious struggle with the Theban left, which was stacked twenty deep instead of the customary eight and was holding its position with terrific stubbornness. To augment this peril, the foe's wing overlapped the Spartan right an eighth of a mile; these elements now began to wheel inboard and advance, taking the Menelaion in the flank. Simultaneously the enemy's right, which was taking the most grievous casualties, lost cohesion and fell back upon the massed ranks of its rearmen. The foe's right broke in panic while his left advanced.

  In the midst of this melee Olympieus received a crippling lizard-sticker wound through the arch of the foot, from the butt-spike of an enemy spear. This came, as I said, at a moment of extreme dislocation upon the field, with the enemy right collapsing and the Spartans surging into the pursuit, while the foe's left wheeled in attack, supported by numbers of their cavalry coursing uncontested across the broken field.

  Olympieus found himself alone upon the open gleaning ground to the rear of the enrolling battle, with his foot wound rendering him crippled, while his cross-crested officer's helmet provided an irresistible target for any would-be hero of the enemy's ranging horse.

  Three Theban cavalrymen went after him.

  Rooster, unarmed and unarmored, sprinted headlong into the fray, snatching a spear from the ground as he ran. Dashing up to Olympieus, he not only employed his master's shield to protect him from the missile weapons of the enemy but took on the attacking horsemen single-handedly, wounding and driving off two with spear thrusts and caving in the skull of the third with the man's own helmet, which he, Rooster, in the madness of the moment, had torn off the fellow's head with his bare hands as he simultaneously ripped him out of his seat. Rooster even succeeded in capturing the handsomest of the three horses, a magnificent battle mount which he used in the aftermath to draw the Utter which evacuated Olympieus safely from the field.

  When the army returned to Lakedaemon after this campaign, Rooster's exploit was the talk of the city. Among the Peers his prospects were debated at length. What should be done with this boy?

  All recalled that though his mother was a Messenian helot, his father had been the Spartiate Idoty-chides, Arete's brother, a hero slain in battle at Mantinea when Rooster was two.

  The Spartans, as I have noted, have a grade of warrior youth, a stepbrother class called a mothax. Bastards like Rooster and even legitimate sons of Peers who through misfortune or poverty have lost their citizenship may be, if deemed worthy, plucked from their straits and elevated to this station.

  This honor was now proffered to Rooster.

  He turned it down.

  His stated reason was that he was already fifteen. It was too late for him; he pre
ferred to remain in service as a squire.

  This rejection of their generous offer enraged the Peers of Olympieus' mess and created an outrage, as much as the affair of a helot bastard could, within the city at large. Assertions were made to the point that this headstrong ingrate was notorious for his disloyal sentiments. He was a type not uncommon among slaves, prideful and stubborn. He sees himself as Messenian. He must either be eliminated, and his family with him, or secured beyond doubt of betrayal to the Spartan cause.

  Rooster eluded assassination at the hands of the krypteia that time, largely due to his youth and to Olympieus' intercession, man-to-man among the Peers. The affair faded for the moment, rekindling itself, however, upon subsequent campaigns when Rooster again and again proved himself the boldest and most valorous of the young squires, surpassing all in the army save Suicide, Cyclops, main man of the Olympic pentathlete Alpheus, and Polynikes' squire, Akanthus.

  Now the Persians stood at the threshold of Greece. Now the Three Hundred were being selected for Thermopylae. Olympieus would be prominent among them, with Rooster at his shoulder in his service. Could this treasonous youth be trusted? With a blade in his fist and himself a handbreadth from the polemarch's back?

  The last thing Sparta needed at this desperate hour was trouble at home with the helots. The city could not stand a revolt, even an abortive one. Rooster by this time, aged twenty, had become a force among the Messenian laborers, farmers and vineyardmen. He was a hero to them, a youth whose courage in battle could have been exploited by him as a ticket out of his servitude. He could be wearing Spartan scarlet and lording it over his mean-birthed brothers. But this he had disdained. He had declared himself Messenian, and his fellows never forgot. Who knows how many of them followed Rooster in their hearts? How many absolutely vital craftsmen and support personnel, armorers and litter bearers, squires and victualry men? It is an ill wind, they say, that blows no one good, and this Persian invasion could be the best thing that ever happened to the helots. It could spell deliverance. Freedom. Would they stand loyal? Like the gate of a mighty citadel which turns upon a single tempered hinge, much of the Messenian sentiment focused its attention upon Rooster and stood ready to take its cue from him.

  It was now the night before the proclamation of the Three Hundred. Rooster was summoned to stand-to before Olympieus' mess, the Bellerophon. There, officially and with the goodwill of all, the honor of Spartan scarlet was again offered to the youth.

  Again he spurned it.

  I loitered deliberately in that hour outside the Bellerophon, to see which way the issue would go.

  It took no imagination, hearing the murmur of outrage within and beholding Rooster's swift and silent exit, to read the gravity of the issue, and its peril. An assignment for my master detained me for the bulk of an hour. At last I found opportunity to scamper free.

  Beside the Little Ring where the starter's box stands is a grove with a dry course branching in three directions. There Rooster and I and other boys used to meet and even bring girls, because if you were found, you could dash away easily in the dark down one of the three dry riverbeds. I knew he would be there now, and he was. To my amazement Alexandros was with him. They were arguing. It took only moments to see it was the clash of one who wishes to be another's friend and the other who rejects him.

  What was startling was that it was Alexandros who wanted to be friend to Rooster. He would be in calamitous trouble if he was caught, so immediately subsequent to his initiation as a warrior.

  As I skittered down into the shadows of the dry course, Alexandras was cursing Rooster and declaring him a fool.

  They'll kill you now, don't you know that?

  Fuck them. Fuck them all.

  Stop this! I burst down between them. I recited what all three of us knew: that Rooster's prestige among the lower orders precluded him from acting for himself alone; what he did bore repercussions for his wife, his son and daughter, his family. He had cooked himself and them with him. The krypteia would finish him this very night, and nothing would suit Polynikes more.

  He won't catch me if I'm not here.

  Rooster had set his mind to flee, this night, to the Tem-ple of Poseidon at Tainaron, where a helot could be granted sanctuary.

  He wanted me to come. I told him he was insane. What were you thinking when you turned them down? What they offered you is an honor.

  Fuck their honors. The krypteia hunts me now, in darkness, faceless as cowards. Is that honor?

  I told him his slave's pride had bought his own ticket to hell.

  Shut up, both of you!

  Alexandras ordered Rooster to his shell, that term the Spartans use to describe the mean huts of the helots. If you're going to run, run now!

  We sprinted away down the dark watercourse. Harmonia had both children, Rooster's daughter and infant son, packed and ready. In the smoky confines of the helot's shell, Alexandras pressed into Rooster's hand a clutch of Aeginetan obols, not much, but all he had, enough to aid a runaway.

  This gesture struck Rooster speechless.

  I know you don't respect me, Alexandras told him. You think yourself my better in skill at arms, in strength and in valor. Well, you are. I have tried, as the gods are my witness, with every fiber of my being and still I'm not half the fighter you are. I never will be. You should stand in my place and I in yours. It is the gods' injustice that makes you a slave and me free.

  This from Alexandras utterly disarmed Rooster. You could see the combativeness in his eyes relent and his proud defiance slacken and abate.

  You own more of valor than I ever will, the bastard replied, for you manufacture it out of a tender heart, while the gods sat me up punching and kicking from the cradle. And you do yourself honor to speak with such candor. You're right, I did despise you.

  Until this moment.

  Rooster glanced at me then; I could see confusion in his aspect. He was moved by Alexandras' integrity, which pulled his heart strongly to remain and even to yield. Then with an effort he broke the spell. But you won't influence me, Alexandras. Let the Persian come. Let him grind all Lakedaemon into dust. I'll jig on its grave.

  We heard Harmonia gasp. Outside, torches flared. Shadows surrounded the shell. Its blanket flap was torn open. There in the rude doorway stood Polynikes, armed and backed by four assassins of the krypteia. They were all young, athletes nearly on a par with the Olympian, and pitiless as iron.

  They burst in and bound Rooster with cord. The infant boy wailed in Harmonia's arms; the poor girl was barely seventeen; she shuddered and wept, pulling her daughter in terror to her side.

  Polynikes absorbed the sight with contempt. His glance flicked over Rooster, his wife and babes and myself, to settle with scorn upon the person of Alexandras.

  I might have known we'd find you here.

  And I you, the youth responded.

  On his face was written plain his hatred of the krypteia.

  Polynikes regarded Alexandras, and his sentiments, with barely contained outrage. Your presence here in these precincts constitutes treason. You know it and so do these others. Out of respect to your father only, I will say this once: leave now. Depart at once and nothing more will be said. The dawn will find four helots missing.

  I will not, Alexandras answered.

  Rooster spat. Kill us all, then! he demanded of Polynikes. Show us Spartan valor, you nightskulking cowards.

  A fist smashed his teeth, silencing him.

  I saw hands seize Alexandros and felt others clamp me; thongs of hide bound my wrists, a gag of linen stoppered my throat. The krypteis snatched Harmonia and her babes.

  Bring them all, Polynikes ordered.

  Chapter Seventeen

  There stands a grove upslope behind the Deukalion mess, where the men and hounds customarily muster before setting off on a hunt. There within minutes a rump court stood assembled.

  The site is a grisly one. Rude kennels extend beneath the oaks, with their game nets and chase harnesses hanging bene
ath the eaves of the feeding stations. The mess kitchen stores its slaughtering implements in several double-locked outbuildings; upon the inner doors hang hatchets and gutting knives, cleavers and bonebreakers; a blood-black chopping board for game fowl and poultry extends along the wall, where the birds' heads are whacked off and topple to the dirt for the hounds to scrap over. Piles of plucked feathers collect as high as a man's calf, rendered sodden by the blood drippings of the next luckless fowl to stretch its gullet beneath the chopper. Above these along the runway stand the bars of the butchery with their heavy iron hooks for the hanging, gutting and bleeding of game.

  It was a foregone conclusion that Rooster must die, and his infant son with him. What remained yet at issue was the fate of Alexandros, and his treason which, if published throughout the city, would work grievous harm at this most peril-fraught hour, not only to himself and his station as a newly initiated warrior but to the prestige of his entire clan, his wife, Agathe, his mother, Paraleia, his father, the polemarch Olympieus, and, not least of all, his mentor, Dienekes. This latter pair now took their place in the shadows, along with the other sixteen Peers of the Duekalion mess. Rooster's wife wept silently, her daughter beside her; the baby squalled, muffled, in her arms. Rooster knelt in his cord bonds, on his knees in the dry high-summer dust.