Spartans at the Gates

by Noble Smith

  Working fast, he bent over one of the Dog Raider’s corpses and traded his own short gray cape for the warrior’s black cloak. He pulled off the man’s helm and squeezed it over his head, then hunched over the man’s body, kneeling with his back to the approaching riders. He stared at his dead father’s signet ring on his middle finger—a boxing Minotaur carved from jasper.

  “Steady,” he said to himself. “Stay calm.”

  But his brain screamed at him to run. And his hand trembled.

  He heard the sound of approaching riders. Keeping his back to them, he stole a glance over his shoulder and saw eight riders enter the killing grounds. They reined in, stopping fifty paces away from him. The raiders eyed the scene warily, but none dismounted.

  “Where is he?” asked one of the Dog Raiders.

  “Come,” said Nikias, gesturing at the corpse and imitating the enemy’s harsh accent. “I killed him.”

  Nikias waited without turning around, hunched under the black cloak. His heart beat wildly. He listened hopefully for the sounds of feet hitting the road. But the only noises he heard were horses puffing air through their cheeks.

  The Dog Raider who’d spoken before gave a malicious laugh and spat, “Clever. But none of us has pretty blond hair like you, beardless one.”

  Nikias felt as though his stomach had been pitched down a well. He’d forgotten to tuck his long hair under the helm!

  He thought of his beloved, Kallisto. She would never know what happened to him now. The thought filled him with despair. There was no chance of escape. But he wouldn’t let the Dog Raiders torture him. He glanced down at his belt and saw his long dagger in its tooled leather sheath.

  “There’s an artery in your neck,” his grandfather had told him when he was a boy, instructing him never to let himself be taken alive by Dog Raiders or Thebans. “Slice your neck there and you’ll soon be dead.”

  He would take a few of them down first, though. “I am Nikias, son of Aristo of the Nemean tribe,” he said under his breath, readying himself for death, forcing back the urge to piss himself with fear.

  He got up slowly, letting the whip uncoil as he stood, and turned to face the Dog Raiders. He saw the black-robed horsemen lined up in a semicircle, far out of range of his whip, with their javelins and bows raised, and their dark eyes regarding him with hate from under their helms.

  His gaze flashed to a warrior seated on a dun-colored horse in the center of the pack. He had a long, black, forked beard, like a satyr. And he stared down the shaft of a tautly strung bow, a glinting bronze arrowhead pointing directly at Nikias’s head.

  “Stand still,” ordered the Dog Raider commander.

  Nikias didn’t have time to make a move. An arrow, unloosed by one of the other riders, slammed into his gut and his knees buckled. He hit the road in a heap and lay there, blinking, trying to breathe, but his lungs wouldn’t work. He felt as though he’d been punched by a Titan’s fist. He lay very still, with the sound of his heart throbbing in his ears, his mind dazed.

  “Who shot that arrow?” shouted the Dog Raider commander. “Damn you! The Spartans wanted him alive!”

  A roaring sound filled Nikias’s ears. He squinted in pain, gazing up at the sky, and realized that the fog had burned away to reveal a few patches of bright blue sky. And then he heard a harsh voice snarl, “Let’s peel his face before he dies!”

  TWO

  Chusor the smith rubbed his callused hands over the dome of his recently shaved scalp, as if he might massage a clever idea from his brain. But he couldn’t think of anything to convince Diokles the Helot to come out of the storage room where he hid, and so Chusor could only grit his teeth in frustration.

  He pounded on the door with the flat of his hand. “Come out, you great goat-stuffing ape!” he snarled. He tried to force the door open but Diokles had barricaded it from within. The Helot race—the thralls of the Spartans—were a spectacularly stubborn people. And, thought Chusor with annoyance, Diokles was the exemplar of his kind.

  Chusor coughed and rubbed his watering eyes. “Gods, that damnable smoke!” he muttered.

  It was just after dawn and the citadel of Plataea was starting to come to life. Thousands of farmers and shepherds—terrified of the Spartan army camped two miles away from Plataea—had sought protection inside the city walls. Now they were cooking their breakfasts on campfires, and the overpowering reek of woodsmoke wafted in through the open windows of the smithy, giving Chusor a queasy feeling and stinging his eyes.

  “Not coming out,” came Diokles’s muffled voice.

  “He’s not coming out,” said Leo confidently. The short teenager stood next to the towering smith, holding an oil lamp that lit the dark hallway. “His wits have left his body for another place.”

  “Leave the Oxlands and join the school of Athens, lad,” replied Chusor sarcastically in his clipped Athenian accent. “You’ve got the makings of a philosopher.” He glared at the young Plataean who served as his apprentice.

  Leo ignored Chusor’s sarcasm and spoke in a serious whisper. “Maybe if we offered him breakfast?”

  “He’s got enough desiccated goat in there to feed a trireme’s crew.”

  Ever since the morning of the battle with the Theban army one week ago, when Diokles had seen the thin line of Spartan Red Cloaks snaking their way down a path on the Kithaeron Mountains toward the citadel of Plataea, the escaped Spartan slave had fallen into a morbid stupor. But when the hideous noseless Spartan emissary, Drako, and his contingent had actually been allowed inside the city walls to discuss terms with the Arkon—the leader of the Plataeans—well, Diokles had nearly lost his mind with fear and had hidden in the storeroom like a dog.

  Chusor knew that Diokles had suffered the torments of Hades at the hands of his former masters, and the Helot had been terrified for years that one day the savage Spartans would track him down. But Chusor was shocked that Diokles had reverted to this state—he was like a child hiding from monsters. Years ago they had been shipmates on a privateer’s crew and had become fast friends. During those years on the sea they had been through many perils together. But Chusor had never seen the Helot this frightened before. And it galled him.

  “He’s got it in his head, the daft bull,” Chusor explained to Leo, pitching his voice so Diokles was sure to hear, “that the Spartans have come for him alone.”

  “The Red Cloaks aren’t here looking for you, Diokles,” Leo said soothingly, as if he were a cheery grandmother speaking to a frightened little boy. “They’ve come to kill us all.”

  A whimper emanated from the locked chamber and Chusor rolled his eyes. He pushed Leo away from the door and said, “You’re not helping a bit, Leo.”

  “Sorry,” Leo said, and leaned against the wall, moping.

  Chusor put his mouth to the crack in the doorframe and tried to mask the frustration in his voice. “Listen, Diokles, my friend. The Spartans are merely trying to threaten the Plataeans into breaking their alliance with Athens. The Spartans do not know how to besiege a high-walled citadel like Plataea. They never have and never will. Because they’re as dumb as doorknockers outside of forming up a phalanx. They don’t even know how to till the soil, the poor buggers, and that’s why they had to enslave your happy race of Helots to do their labors! So why don’t you come on out and get back to work in the smithy. I need your help.”

  There was a long pause before Diokles said in his halting voice, “The masters are smarter than you think. They smart enough to find other people. To help them lay siege this city. They find smart men like you. They find a way in. They will capture me and cut off hands, lips, eyes, ears, and cock and make me eat them.”

  Leo cringed. “Gods! That is horrible.”

  Chusor took in a deep breath, puffed out his cheeks, and exhaled slowly. He tugged on his long braided goatee for a few seconds, then turned and strode up the stairs to the sunlit workshop above. Leo raced up behind him, immediately shielding the lamp flame and blowing out the wick lest it start a
fire—this part of the workshop contained highly flammable items. They stood next to each other, staring off into space, grimly contemplating what Diokles had said.

  The two were an odd pair. Leo was a short, pale, and notoriously homely eighteen-year-old prone to acne, with a head of thick black hair and overlong arms. Chusor—the tallest man in Plataea—was over forty years of age yet still in the prime of his manhood, with skin the color of roasted sesame, the musculature of an Olympian, and the proud face of a Phoenician god.

  The men and women of Plataea called Chusor “the Egyptian” because of his dark brown skin and exotic features. To them he was a barbaroi—one who babbled “bar bar bar” like a savage. Except this so-called barbarian spoke their language fluently and with the accent of an educated man born and bred in Athens.

  Chusor and Leo had been thrown together a week ago during the Theban sneak attack, and had come to admire each other’s unique skills. Leo worshipped Chusor for the way he’d taken control of the panic-stricken Plataeans and led the citizens to victory against the Theban barricades with his invention: a deadly liquid fire that stuck to the enemy’s skin. And Chusor respected Leo’s tenacity—his wrestler’s will to never let go of an opponent.

  “Who would the Spartans get to help them lay siege to Plataea?” Leo asked.

  “Persians,” said Chusor. “Something I’ve been worried about. There’s many a Persian siege-master who’d gladly give his balls for the honor of bringing down Plataea.”

  Fifty years ago, not a mile from the citadel, the Persian king Xerxes had watched nearly half a million of his men die in the Battle of Plataea—the greatest loss in the history of their ancient empire. Xerxes’s own siege-master had been captured and put to work for the rest of his life improving the walls and towers of Plataea—the city he had come to destroy.

  “Well, I’ve got work to do grinding the sulfur stones,” said Leo as he went into the other room. Chusor had taught Leo how to make the fire pots they’d used against the Theban invaders. The sticking fire was composed mainly of a highly combustible distilled pine resin called naptha, and the explosive gray-colored mineral gypsum. Chusor added to this a secret ingredient that he’d learned from the great Naxos of Syrakuse: the volatile niter crystals extracted from bat guano. These three ingredients—when contained in a pot, set alight with a fuse, and hurled at an enemy—would turn an armor-clad warrior into a human torch. Leo had shown a knack for working with the dangerous chemicals when he had helped Chusor prepare his “pandoras,” as he called them, for the battle with the Thebans.

  Chusor walked through the workshop and sighed as he took stock of all of the armor and weapons piled up. The place was a mess. He wasn’t the only blacksmith in the city, but he was—by his own admission—the very best, and so the Plataeans with money to spare wanted him to do the work on their valuable tools of war. A single well-made set of armor could cost a man three years’ wages. And Chusor stood to earn a small fortune in the coming months.

  If he were mad enough to stay in Plataea, that is.

  He sat down and chewed pensively on a piece of bread. His mind wandered back to the day he’d first seen the citadel of Plataea. It had been a hot spring morning and the air had been scented with flowering olives. He and Diokles had just crested the heights of the Kithaeron Mountains and caught sight of the green plains of the Oxlands below, stretching far north into the distance. Below they saw a walled city—the famous Plataea. The citadel was a rambling circular shape, over two miles in circumference with many guard towers, enclosing a collection of dwellings, public buildings, and temples. From the distance it had resembled a child’s creation made from stones and clay.

  Chusor had come here because of a legend telling of a vast treasure hidden in a network of underground tunnels beneath the city.

  As they got closer to town they saw that a celebration was taking place. The entire population of Plataea and the surrounding countryside—twenty thousand or so—had turned out to celebrate the Festival of Hermes. In his travels, Chusor had noticed, men prayed to the gods who were most important to their livelihoods. The Plataeans relied on sheep and wool for their economy. Hermes was said to be the protector of sheep and shepherds. And so they feted and feasted this particular god in hopes he would turn his attentions their way.

  The Plataeans encouraged Chusor and Diokles to enter the festival’s games. Strangers always brought luck to the city, they told them. Diokles politely refused and sat contentedly in the shade eating a leg of mutton bought from a vendor. Chusor always loved contests, however, and so he took part with enthusiasm. He won the long footrace, narrowly beating a sixteen-year-old blond farm boy. He outthrew this same competitor at the discus by no more than a foot. This infuriated the young Plataean and he challenged Chusor to enter the pankration tournament. But Chusor had no desire to humiliate the youth further. He had trained with the best pankrators in the city of Kroton and knew how to punch, grapple, and choke the strongest man into submission, let alone a beardless teen. He’d also been a member of a privateer’s crew for nearly five years where he’d fought for his life many times over.

  Chusor watched the pankration event from the sidelines. He was impressed by the young fighter’s skill. The Plataean lad destroyed all of his competitors except the last—a leonine old man with a black beard who was remarkably well preserved for his age. This pankrator fought dirty and knocked out the teenager with a sucker’s punch to take the olive wreath.

  Menesarkus was the old man’s name. General Menesarkus. Chusor had heard stories about this Plataean his entire life. He was famous in Athens and even far-off Syrakuse: a hero of the Persian Wars, a fighter who’d never been beaten in the arena, and the pankrator who’d killed Damos the Theban at the Olympics years before, nearly starting a riot. And the young fighter he’d just pummeled into the dirt was Menesarkus’s own grandson—Nikias. No wonder these Plataeans had stopped the Persians on their doorsill! They even fought their own kin.

  The Plataeans were unsophisticated, just as the Athenians always said, but Chusor felt welcomed in their city. He used the little money that remained in his purse to set up a small shop. He and Diokles built a forge and Chusor painted an old shield with an image of the patron god of smiths—the crippled Hephaestos—hanging it over the entrance. His first jobs were simple: fixing door hinges, mending cartwheels, and making plows.

  Over the next couple of months he got his hands on some good bronze and fashioned a breastplate with inlaid designs: bulging pectorals and rippled stomach muscles. He put this on display out in front of his shop and instantly drew crowds. One of the admirers was Menesarkus’s heir.

  “My name is Nikias,” announced the lad with a broad smile. He’d just come from the gymnasium and his face was covered in bruises and sweat. He touched the gleaming breastplate with awe, with reverence, with lust. “And you and I are going to be friends.”

  “Indeed?” asked Chusor, raising a bushy eyebrow. He forced himself not to smile at the young man’s ingenuous enthusiasm.

  “Of course,” said Nikias as he ogled the armor. “For I’m a warrior and you are the god of the forge. Our lives will be intertwined forever.”

  Chusor laughed. A great, rolling, mellifluous belly laugh.

  “I’m serious,” said Nikias with a roguish grin.

  Chusor squinted at the lad. The young athlete held out his hand—his ugly, scabbed, gnarled pankrator’s hand. Chusor took it in his own hoary palm and clasped it tight.

  “I can see you’re serious,” said Chusor.

  “Intertwined,” repeated Nikias, pumping his hand. “Whether you like it or not.”

  That meeting with Nikias had been two years ago. Chusor had watched him grow into the bravest man he’d ever known. He wondered where the young hero was now. He should be at least halfway to Athens if he hadn’t run into trouble. The road to Athens was dangerous enough, of course. But the capital of the Athenian Empire was worse. It was like entering the Minotaur’s labyrinth. It was a fool
hardy journey to make alone, but the young Plataean seemed to have Tyke—the goddess of luck—wrapped around his finger.

  So why did Chusor have such a sinking feeling in his gut? As if something terrible had happened to Nikias?

  He rubbed his bald scalp pensively. He had cut off his long black hair on an impulse the day before and then shaved his head. Afterward he had burned his locks on the coal fire of his forge. He didn’t know why he had made this burnt offering. The Plataeans incinerated their cut hair in honor of Zeus when they came of age: they believed they were the sons of the father of the gods. The strange Thebans set their shorn tresses alight in honor of Ares—the hateful god of war. Chusor had muttered the name of Hephaestos, the fire god, when he had set his own curls ablaze. But he didn’t really believe in any of the gods, and so his prayers were pointless. After he had done it Leo had told him that he looked fiercer without his hair. The truth was that Chusor felt fiercer after the events of the Theban invasion and the terrible things that had happened in Plataea … the barbaric punishments he had witnessed the enraged Plataeans inflict on the captured Theban prisoners. Something in him had withered. Perhaps it was his love for the Oxlanders.

  “‘Those whom the gods intend to destroy, they first turn mad,’” said Chusor to himself, quoting a play he had seen in Athens.

  He tossed the hunk of bread he held aside. He had no appetite this morning. He got up and went to check on the forge fire. He’d hired a pair of scrawny brothers to tend the charcoal flames, a tedious task that demanded constant vigilance. The boys had lost their father—a fellow smith and member of the Artisans’ Guild—in the sneak attack, and their mother had begged Chusor to take them on as apprentices.

  They were hopeless little fools. Skinny and stupid and full of mischief. The kind of boys who poked each other with hot irons, and got drunk on wine and pissed on one another for sport. Chusor had wanted Diokles to watch over them and keep them in line. But the Helot had been useless for weeks and Chusor had let the boys run wild.