It mattered little. Neither of those two talkers, Kleonymos swore to himself, had ever deserved their honor, their time-not over himself, the best son of Sphodrias. Kleonymos turned and aimed his spear once more at Melon. He would spike this apple and finish off the faker for good if he dared to come on again. But a hoplite on his right blocked the Spartan’s lunge. In the blur of bodies, Melon, as he would recall in the months to come, was pushed aside by one of his own, and so was not hit again by his attacker Kleonymos. Instead the Spartan pressed forward past him, eager to spear this new bigger target. Only later would Melon learn that Kleonymos would have stabbed his thigh, had he not been struck down almost at once by Chion-his Chion along with at least three retainers of Epaminondas. All their spears hit Kleonymos in the neck and groin. This legend of Sparta had gone down three times already at Leuktra-but always had regained his feet. This time the blows were mortal. The son joined the father Sphodrias in the dirt at the feet of their king.
As Kleonymos tottered, the melee cleared for a bit. Melon stared directly at the face of King Kleombrotos. The tall king was not more than five cubits distant. For a blink, he was alone. The royal had the look of a young man-far younger than Melon had imagined-even in these glimpses through the nose guard and bronze on his faceplate. This Kleombrotos had not wanted to be king, though the honors and the big house on the acropolis were good enough. His brother Agesilaos had fallen sick at Olynthos. So by accident the lot of the Agiad royal house had fallen to him, the lesser sibling. He was no leader in battle. The partner Eurypontid king, crippled Agesilaos of the lesser line, had shunned him as womanly. Now in his ninth year of kingship, Kleombrotos right here at Leuktra would crush the Boiotians and restore the honor to his Agiads. Or so the reluctant king had thought.
Again, where was his Lichas, the king now fretted, where was young Antikrates to save him? Traitors. Nothing in Kleombrotos had warranted royal rank other than birth and the unlooked-for fall of his elder brother. He was hardly the caliber of Agesilaos, the other king now sitting at home, who was glad when spears came his way, and-so the priestesses of Artemis had promised him-who would live on in his dotage to block Epaminondas from the acropolis of Sparta itself.
The rheuma polemou, the surge of war, gave Melon strength for a final burst, strength he had not known even in his youth. His spear was gone, his sword now in his right hand. He aimed his blade right over the edge of the king’s shield with all the power of his good farming arm. His royal victim was frozen-in faith perhaps that his wood of Mt. Taygetos would save him for a bit longer, or that Kleonymos would rise up a fourth time to his defense. Or that Lichas was not dead, but would come down from the air to lift him away.
Fool. Nothing of the sort followed. Melon’s thrust just cleared the top curved edge of the shield above the rivets. The sword’s point found Kleombrotos’s mouth. The tip entered between the cheek guards and beneath the bronze bridge over the nose. Melon’s arm rammed the blade a good way into the Spartan king’s head, snapping it back. Instinctively he raised his shield to prepare for the swarm of spears from the onrushing guard to follow. It came with no delay. Four or five blows knocked him back into shields of the Thebans to his rear. Too late. Melon had killed their king.
“King down. The king is down-Basileus epesen, peptoken hameteros basileus,” the guard called out. “Rally to us, men of Sparta, rally to us!” But there were few men of Sparta now to rally to anyone. Most of the guard were dead or wounded. A few even of the boldest had backed away looking to flee. Now others were trying to draw out of the circle to re-form the army or to prepare some rearguard to save the body of Kleombrotos. Losing their dead king would be worse even than losing this battle. Spartan hoplites such as these could not see their wives or boys again, even if they returned alive to Lakonia, if they did not save the body of Kleombrotos. They would be forever forced to live as spat-upon beggars, the tresantes-the tremblers who had lost their courage and their war and their king and their state.
The dark goddess Mania took hold of Epaminondas, the father of the Spartans’ disaster, and goaded him on toward Kleombrotos. The Boiotian general was enthused with the divine as he now cut in on Melon’s left. Boiotians from every direction reached at an arm or a leg of Kleombrotos, who had fallen to one knee and was about to keel over. “To the Kadmeia with him. Drag this dog to Thebes,” they yelled. Chion was at the fore. He was dodging spear thrusts to his chest, trying to join his general and help drag Kleombrotos out. In the confusion, the patched armor of Ainias caught Melon’s eye. Proxenos also was with Epaminondas, as the best men of Boiotia swarmed the body.
But just then from the retreating Spartans a spear thrust flew right under Melon’s jaw. Swoosh. It slammed instead into Chion, squarely inside the left upper arm at the shoulder. The blow knocked him off his feet-Chion, who thought he had killed nine of the red-capes so far without receiving even a scrape. The slave shuddered and struggled to rise, for the hit had come from someone as strong as himself. For a moment those to his rear froze as the white flame that had blazed a path for them flickered and went out. Then their Chion got halfway up, tottered, and fell again, not far from the dead Kleombrotos.
Melon tried to make out the blurry figures in the jumbled mass of fighters. Here came a shadow out of the Spartan past, one of the breed left of the type that once had broken the Persian Mardonios at Plataia, and smashed the Argives at Mantineia. The Spartan was splashed with blood, his helmet long since torn off. He cared little whether he wore any armor or none. Bald on top with a forked beard, he looked like a besotted Satyr, but with blood, not wine, his drink. This was Lichas. And he now stalked from the shadows to the fore. He had ranged across the battlefield to find twenty Spartan hoplites in isolated pockets, rallying them to march over to the last stand of the Spartans and save their king. Two braids of his side hair were swinging wildly in the air. As his mouth opened there was not more than a tooth or two in his ugly head. Melon thought he was not grimacing-but smiling. Yes, this was Lichas of legend, who had killed his father at Koroneia and ruined his own leg.
Wrinkled almost beyond recognition of being a Spartan hoplite, scarred, and bald, this monster stormed into the final killing, scoffed at the spears tips bobbing in his face, and tried to save his dying lord whom he had ridiculed the last nine years. His huge son Antikrates followed him, eager to outdo the father, and himself prepared to carry out both their corpses, if need be-father and king one on each shoulder. Lichas and his son were frantic. “Save the king! To the camp! All alive back to the camp! Eis to stratopedon. To me, rally to me!” Neither cared anything for the collapse of the Spartan ranks, much less the truth that the day of his parochial state was over. No, it was enough this day that they were Spartans-now in the joy of battle, with their grip on shield and spear, whether that be here in the north or far to the east. Lichas’s last son was with him. Good men lived-even if his other boy, Thorax, was gasping now for breath, after Chion’s spear had torn apart the sinews of his neck behind the ear.
Whether in the heyday of Spartan power or amid its twilight also counted for nothing. He was stalking proudly upright despite his age. If the Spartans were to lose, they would lose in the way of Leonidas and Lysander-and Lichas-killing as they protected their king with all blows to their front. The stabbing in this last battle grew fiercer still. But Lichas laughed as he heard the dying around him in vain begging the Keres to pass them by, the vultures of death back above Melon and Chion. The black deities kept their wide distance from Lichas-lest such a man strike even these deathless ones a fatal blow. No, Lichas laughed, even Nyx, queen of her dark brood, fears my smell.