“I have told you that you will have great honor on the battlefield,” the Oracle continued. “But that prophecy is contingent on Cyra traveling with you. Let me remind you, King, that the Valkyrie would have had your head last night if I had not told you its weakness. The paths of fate are very tenuous and easily swayed if one is not careful.”
“And let me remind you, Oracle, that I would not have been here to lose my head, if you had not sent a dream to me,” Leonidas replied. “And if I had not honored that dream.”
“The Persians are coming regardless of whether you came here or not,” the Oracle said.
“Women,” Leonidas muttered. The Oracle didn’t hear him, but Cyra did. The priestess smiled slightly but said nothing. “Let us be going then.” He slid his sword in the sheath and walked toward his hobbled horse.
“Master, remember the Greeks.”
King Xerxes, son of Darius, King of Medea and Persia, ruler of Libya, Arabia, Egypt, Palestine, Ethiopia, Elam, Syria, Assyria, Cyprus, Babylonia, Chaldea, Cilicia, Thrace and Cappadocia, and most blessed of God Ahurumazda, had heard the same admonishment every evening for five years, whispered into his ear by the woman who stood to his right rear. Five years, from the first day he was King in 485, succeeding his father, Darius. Who five years before his demise, in 490 BC, had his army defeated on the Plain of Marathon by the Greeks. It had been a stunning defeat given that Darius’s army had outnumbered their opponents by more than five to one. Xerxes was certain that his father’s death, even though it was years after the battle, began that day. The defeat was like a cancer that had eaten away at his father’s pride and life.
Time was indeed the enemy of all, Kings and peasant alike, Xerxes ruminated, listening to the rain and wind batter at his imperial tent as he began eating his breakfast. His campaign throne was at the head of a long wooden table. Along each side sat his generals and around the outer rim of the massive tent were fifty of his Immortals standing guard.
There were nine thousand, nine hundred and fifty more Immortals encamped directly around the Imperial tent to bring the total to ten thousand. That number, like the rising of the sun each morning, was a certainty. Even if one of the Immortals were to be struck this very second by one of the bolts of lightning that were crackling about outside, there would be a man ready to take his place. Because the number was kept always at ten thousand, the Imperial guard had gained its name of the Immortals, because it appeared as if the unit could never be depleted or destroyed.
Outside of the ring of Immortals another two hundred thousand troops were camped in varying degrees of discomfort. Most weren’t even Persian but levies raised by vassal states to answer the call of Xerxes rather than face his wrath. There were even Greeks camped there, Ionians, who had chosen to side with the powerful ruler from their side of the Aegean. Their decision was understandable given the reluctance of Athens and the other mainland Greek states to send troops or ships to their defense when the Persians came marching out of central Turkey.
There were also Babylonians, Arabs, Egyptians, Phrygians, Medes, Cissians and dozens of other states represented. The mixture of weaponry, armor and languages had not been seen in ten years, since Darius had set forth for Greece. There were soldiers from three continents, which encompassed the entire known world for the Persians.
The massive camp sprawled along the western edge of the Hellesponte, which separated Europe from Asia. Other than going around the Black Sea through southern Russia, this thin strip of water running from the Black Sea to the Aegean was the easiest place for an invading army to cross. At its narrowest, directly ahead of the army, the straight was only a mile and a quarter wide.
And on that water, even in the midst of the howling storm, engineers had been at work all night, adding boat after boat to the pontoon bridge they were constructing. It stretched almost a mile now, the far shore close enough to add impetus to the muscles laying the planks and stringing the ropes that connected the boats.
Each boat was a penteknoters, a fifty-oar galley. They were set about ten feet apart, side-to-side, and secured to each other first with rope, then heavy planks that constituted what would be the roadway. The entire affair was at a critical stage as water kicked up by the storm surged through the Hellesponte and the wind added its own fury. A cluster of penteknoters, oars manned by slaves, was tied off to the un-anchored end, desperately trying to keep it in place as another boat was brought into line.
Disaster struck slowly but irrevocably. One by one, minor lines to the anchor boats began parting, the strain too great. The main control line, over a foot and a half thick was soon the only thing holding the end of the bridge to the anchor boats. Men desperately tried throwing new lines to the boats, but the wind made the effort futile, whipping the ropes into the water with ease. A few intrepid engineers even tied lines to the bridge and the other end around their waists and attempted to swim out to the boats.
The six-foot swell and the weight of the rope took each of these men under. Then their dead weight added to that of the bridge, and their bodies, pulled by the current, added to the horizontal strain.
The main cable parted, the sound louder than that even of the thunder, the two ends whipping through the air, slicing men in half and cutting through wood like sand. The bridge gave way, curving, the road boards cracking and splitting, the remaining control ropes snapping easily.
Xerxes and his generals, alerted by the sound, ran out into the storm and watched futilely as the work of a week was destroyed in less than a minute.
What had never been bridged by man, would not give in so easily.
Thermopylae. In Greek it means ‘hot gates’. The name comes from numerous hot springs in the area. It is a pass southeast of Lamia, between Mount Oeta and the Malian Gulf. It is the primary passageway from Thessalia in northern Greece into Locris and the rest of southern Greece, where the major city-states were. Other than by sea, it was the main thoroughfare by which an invading army had to travel to conquer the southern half of Greece, where Athens and Sparta lay.
There were other passes to the west, but Thermopylae was next to the sea, where a fleet could cover an invading army’s flank and also, something most who were not military men did not understand, but was of utmost importance, resupply it. An army of a quarter million troops, along with their beasts, consumed vast quantities of supplies each day. Xerxes’ generals counted on finding little food or supplies as they marched into Greece as it was customary for retreating armies to scorch the earth, even if it were their own land, as they fell back.
Of course, an army taking the pass had to practically pass through the proverbial eye of the needle as the track narrowed to only fifty feet wide, between the mountain and a cliff overlooking the sea. Xerxes’ generals had assured him, though, that the pass would not be a place for defense as the heavy Greek infantry would not be able to deploy in their beloved phalanxes to fight in such a tight space.
There were spas with hot springs in the area just to the north of the pass that in more peaceful times were visited by people from all over Greece. But with the storm cloud of war to the east and north, the mountains were empty of people. The ruins of a defensive wall, known as the Middle Gate, and built by an unknown people against an unknown enemy sometime in the far past cut across the pass.