“So I feared what came to pass. I think now we know where Gorgos is. He is the servant of Lichas his true master. They will know him as Kuniskos-‘Puppy’ in the south. Nikon, the leader of the helot firebrands, sends word to me from the Messenians who once knew of his trickery. And he talked such nonsense on the hill above the fight, as I said. A loyal man-footed helot-so he will serve Sparta once more, if he has not all these years.”
Melon was tired of all these speeches. Neto ignored Melon. She went on with more in a shrill voice that replaced her tears. “He didn’t save Lophis. I see that now. And you see, too, that he joined Lichas. I speak true things, always t’alethe. Over the fire before the battle, he was talking of the good days with Brasidas. The best helot killers were always helots. I can smell his stink, even from here.”
Melon stopped her. “Leave it be. Tomorrow, tomorrow. This is all a dream. All a nightmare. I will hear all this when the sun rises. Not now, not any more.”
Ainias grabbed Melon’s arms. “Look, your head rings. But don’t listen to your wounds. Gorgos is over there. Maybe it was his work that Lichas has your dead son. Or at least he found his way or wanted to. Maybe Gorgos is dead or maybe breathing, we don’t know. Lophis I fear is gone or will be after they dragged them to their camp. The Spartans, what is left of them, stand at their camp, and with spears ready. There’s at least a thousand or two left ready to march home. The son of Agesilaos, the young Eurypontid Archidamos is almost here with another Spartan army on the coast road. The dregs of Lakonia are on the way here. We must decide tonight to let them all go home or kill them all.”
Melon was glad to change the talk. “Then we can kill two royals this season. Finish off the rest who will never see their Eurotas. And then we will rescue Lophis.”
Proxenos looked over at Ainias. “That’s my wish as well. No doubt Epaminondas will soon tell us as much himself. But look at us, Thespian. The Boiotians have gone mad in their victory. The allies are plundering the field. Our army is going home. The battlefield is nothing but shit and flies now. We stopped Sparta today, but we did not end it.”
As they argued, Epaminondas walked up. Before he reached them he threw down his shield. “Ainias and Proxenos. Where is my Thespian? Stand up. All of you. The war goes on.” With that Epaminondas pointed at them in the torchlight. “Our friend Lichas is in command over there. He’s sent us a herald for parley. He wants out of Boiotia. Pelopidas is over there, meeting with his henchmen. All their other big men are dead.”
Proxenos, as always, thought more clearly than most. “Lichas will want free passage for his hoplites to the coast. So the rub is whether we want to lose five hundred hoplites to kill Lichas and maybe a thousand that are alive or not scattered. He has enough men to get across the Isthmos. Or maybe he hopes the young royal Archidamos can do the same coming up from the south to save him. Those Spartan allies who ran away-well, they are scattered in the hills and will rejoin him tomorrow. They have nowhere else to go. If they can all meet up with Agesilaos’s son, the red-capes will easily make it out of here. So let them skulk home instead right now and in shame. Let them go.”
“No, no,” Melon pleaded as he got to his feet a third time, limped around, and then slowly sat down again, as the dizziness returned and his head throbbed. If he once had been reluctant to march out to fight, now he was adamant to finish what Epaminondas had started, even though he was in no shape to pick up a shield. Lophis was all that mattered now. But he would have to break through the Spartan camp this very night, and, as a half-dead hoplite, take back his son, dead or alive-or perhaps kill Lichas at parley or go back into battle this evening.
Melon had changed, into what he didn’t quite know-just that he was no more the same recluse he once had been on Helikon. If his son were captured, he would take him back. If he were dead, then his life as he knew it on the farm was over, and his vineyards would be a mere respite between the unending campaigning for Epaminondas against the Spartans. Either way he wished to find out this very evening-and do something about it.
“Do not be fooled by such men. The Spartans are hungry now, without food. Trapped here in our country. Surround them. They came here to destroy our democracy. Lichas will be back to finish us off soon. Winning a battle is not the same as winning a war-unless we destroy the army who started it. Remember, the Thessalonians will be here soon as well as our newfound friends. We will have even more spears to deal with them when the word gets out about the victory here at Leuktra. The Hellenes like to pile on the loser.”
“Melon is right. We beat them all day, Ainias. Didn’t they lose, or am I possessed?” Epaminondas was talking to tough folk of his own rank who had just killed the king of Sparta. But they were tired. They wanted to enjoy, not second-guess, their victory. Still the Theban went on, “Nothing in war is as dangerous as to wound but not to kill the enemy. Sparta is defeated, but not humiliated.”
“Enough of this idle talk.” Melon struggled a bit before Proxenos offered both his hands to pull him up. “They wish to kill Lophis, so be it. I will kill them. Ten for my boy, twenty if I can. Re-form the ranks, such as they are. Tonight all together, one more time, all of us on this long day. We will kill this Lichas, hang his Antikrates up by his feet. If the light is already gone, we can at least muster the troops by our torches. I did not ask to fight this battle. But now that I am here, I finish what we started.”
Proxenos cut in one last time. “With what? You were lame before the battle and are lamer still after. Count us. Most have gone home as we already said. We have no more than a thousand-if that still. Good men all. But not everyone is alive who was this morning. The best are dead or will be. I could build walls for us-but in one year, not one day. There are far more than Antitheos that lie over there. The flies are on them already. My Plataian Lakon, of our city’s oldest family, has no throat and his nephew Archias with a bashed-in head won’t make it until dawn. The work of Lichas again. Sour Philliadas has done his hard work and taken his bunch back to Tanagra. The men near Kalamos are all gone or dead. No, our Ainias even without his charts and maps is right. Have words with this Lichas and we will let him run in shame out of Boiotia to spread the word of our warcraft.”
Melon then gave up as his head beat inside harder and in a quieter voice sighed, “But if the beast limps home, if it crawls away, well then like every wounded lion of your fables, it will lick its wounds to healing. It will come back right here and many of us will die in other battles-some far from Thebes. Lophis knows that, he would tell you the same.” Epaminondas and the rest picked up their arms. With a hundred or so Theban hoplites, the small band of bloodied veterans headed with torches for the nearby hill to parley with the Spartans. There under light Pelopidas and the rest of the phalanx-maybe a thousand or so in armor, it turned out-were squared off against Lichas’s formations.
Only the ditch and some rough thrown-up brush stockade separated the spears of what was left of the two bloodied armies. Melon looked around at his men in arms. Ainias and Proxenos were with him, dressed in their full armor. Dozens of guards followed around Epaminondas, all of them covered with the gore of battle. The Boiotarchs had already dismissed the ranks for the night. But Pelopidas’s men had cobbled together enough of an army to guard the Spartan camp through the moonlit darkness. Melon had left Neto with this new fellow Myron, the ungainly slave whose wide neck at least rested on broad shoulders and could help her shoo looters away from the wagon. Myron watched over Chion and put him under blankets on straw in the wagon-since he knew this hoplite was not quite dead but might prove a fair sort with a good memory if he lived.