Here next went down Mindauros and his son, Isidias. The boy had failed the brutal training of the agoge and was later branded a treson-a “shaker” who trembled in battle. With them fell bald Glaukon with his twin boys of twenty, Deinokrates and Adamantos. These two grandees proved to Chion to be neither “terribly powered” nor “unbreakable.” The beardless bad-eyes Kleomenes too fell to a Boiotian brute, Polyneikes, who farmed near the Phokian border. The mother of Kleomenes had ordered her near-blind son to the front ranks, hoping he might kill a Theban lord and then die with wounds on his breast. Only that way might he match the fame of his unhinged grandfather, the Argive-killer who had burned his captives alive. Fool-he never saw the spear thrust from Polyneikes to his gullet until it came out the other side and three Keres came shrieking his way.
CHAPTER 7
Shattered islands of Spartan hoplites-all that was left of the king’s proud phalanx-were completely surrounded by the Boiotians. Most of these attackers held their shields high and unbroken, so sure that this pathway behind the farmers of Helikon led straight to the threshing of the king and, with his fall, to glory. A few more hotheads, Boiotian rustics from the backside of Ptoon, kept pushing past Melon. Even when defeated and trapped, the Spartans were still deadly. They drove their spears deeply into the Thebans who rushed too far in the front of their lines. These southerners welcomed the final moments to ensure their king matched the fame of Leonidas at Thermopylai, who had gone down and into legend with all his guard. The king’s hoplites knew all retreat was forbidden-and by now futile anyway. Only within a final ring of spearmen was there any chance to kill more of these Theban pigs, to take as many with them into Hades as they could, to end the nonsense of freeing helots, and to bring renown to their wives and boys at home. The phalanx of the Spartans was broken. But a smaller force made a crescent moon, five or six men deep, around Kleombrotos to ward off any foolish enough to leap in after their king.
Melon began to hear a little-and, if only for a bit, to sort out the cries of the living and the groans of the wounded. Then he sensed a louder voice on his left cut the air, with the refrain, “One more step-O give me one more step, my men, and we can break these southerners!” Epaminondas. Or was this an apparition of a hero with his spear and shield in each hand, raised for a moment to the skies, as he rallied the ranks forward? Later Melon swore that this strutting hoplite was something more than Epaminondas-huge, twenty feet and more tall, and his shield the size of three normal men, a towering ghost striding ahead into the mist, his step worth six of others. Then this Megas Epaminondas, or whatever it was, vanished in a sort of smoke wafting toward the Spartan ring, pointing out the pathway to Kleombrotos.
In the open-rank fighting, the slave Chion was at least ten cubits ahead of his master, battering the wall of the Spartans. What was left of his spear had long since been thrown away. His shield was cracked and had finally been abandoned, its foil blazon shredded. Greaves were gone as well. Only his helmet and breastplate kept away the Spartan iron. With his lone sword and in the free-for-all attack on the shrinking Spartan circle, Chion, like an unshielded hillman from Akarnania, finally made his way up toward Sphodrias himself, the leader of the royal guard and tent-mate of the king. Sphodrias had once boasted to his peers that he had cut down a hundred Thebans and Athenians in his thirty years of work on the Spartan front line. The killer saw an easy target in this onrushing slave without either a spear or shield, but in glee he let down his guard, and so ensured his own destruction.
Sphodrias paused, thinking he knew the stride of his attacker. He did not, even though the Spartan had once been harmost at Thespiai under the rule of Agesilaos and should have recognized the slave coming his way. In his swagger as occupying lord of those Boiotian rustics, Sphodrias had once promised two Athenian silver owls to the young sandy-haired slave in the food stall with Neto in exchange for fetching him grapes and apples from the farm of the Malgidai on Helikon. But when he got his fruit, Lord Sphodrias had given the unarmed young Chion a kick and had ordered that his henchmen run Chion out under the town arch. Ten summers earlier was that, but Chion-now the jury and executioner in his own capital court-remembered the slight far better than did Sphodrias. He had planned to kill this man for all those hundred months. To find Sphodrias out in front of his kin was just what Chion had hoped.
As Sphodrias hesitated, trying to place the Boiotian who faced him, another Theban had bolted in front of Melon from the left side. It was the tall loudmouth, Antitheos, eager to make good on his boast that he would be first to cut down Kleombrotos. And now the Theban raced at the Spartan off balance and with his neck and groin wide open-worried too much for his own glory, his kudos to come in the agora of the Thebans, and not for the advance of the men at his side. Antitheos got nowhere near the enemy before being hit by two spears. Both points caught him on a downward arc in the lower stomach. Blood spurted out right beneath the breastplate.
Deinon, next in line to Sphodrias, was one of the pair who tore the guts from Antitheos with his spear. Now as he yanked out the shaft from the dying Theban, Chion was on him, too. He could do that much for dead Antitheos. So he hit the Spartan stabber on the neck with his sharp blade. It cut through halfway to the bone. Deinon yelled to warn Sphodrias at his side for help, but got no more out than “erchete” before falling. Without a pause, the slave swung his sword back and stabbed into the face of the frozen Sphodrias. He tried to cry out, but all that came out of his mouth was a gurgle of blood.
Now at his end, Sphodrias remembered that he knew this Thespian Chion. Then he knew no more. A sword plunge for an old kick, and the ledger for Chion was at last even. Nor did the slave care that he was bathed in the blood of the two Spartan lords, that with ease he had just ended Deinon and Sphodrias-heroes both, who claimed Lysander and Gylippos as their uncles. Hardly, Chion thought; I curse only that these dead men shower me with their own gore. I care that a third of my blade slid inside beside the nose guard of Sphodrias and was rammed between his eyes. Yes, I care only for that.
Chion thought to himself this war has no balance scales, nothing quite fair at all in it. The phalanx looked as if all were equal, but the man with the best right arm, and quickest feet, and stoutest heart, he was king of the faceless mass. Let these Spartan invaders fear a slave on Helikon, not talk in their drunken boast of long-dead Leonidas. The Thespian looked for more who barred his way to the king, in fear the Spartans would be called off and flee to camp, as the battle ended. He ignored the weak spear-jabs that either missed or now and then glanced off his cheek plates, as the Spartans targeted this lone raging slave without spear or shield. “For Helikon and Malgis, for Thespiai,” Chion yelled. He ducked, lurched, and jumped ahead after Kleombrotos through the gap of the circle left by the dying, thinking always, “Freer than any man on this battlefield.”