Melon hobbled up closer to the side of Ainias. In his own wounds, old and new, he looked as torn as Lichas himself; a knot on the side of his temple was as large as the egg of a hawk. Its blue sheen better reflected the torchlight. From the eyebrow to his jaw the side of his head was black with swabs of dirt and dried blood. Some cuts were wet and seeping, around the massive bruise to his face. His arms were bloody and his skin beneath his shoulders everywhere was torn like latticework. Every man, however small his stature and reasonable his nature, has his limits. Melon cared little whether he lived or slept for good, as he eyed the man who had killed his son. He had just woken from his trip to Hades, and did not find the change so much of a relief, this living without a son on his Helikon. Suddenly the fear of Lichas left him, and he quit scanning his enemy in worry about how to kill him. He knew he would kill the Spartan, and it mattered little whether it was here or next year in the south. Going to the house of the dead was a small coin to hand over-and would save the lives of others later on. This Lichas talked grandly of killing, but he had not killed either Melon or Chion. They had in turn sent most of his own to Hades.
Lichas first grunted as Melon came into his torchlight. “Hold up. I thought I killed you, yes, peasant boy of Helikon? So remind me. Did I hit you today? I am sure I killed you, cripple-leg. Is not this Melon, son of Malgis of the old women’s tales? I remember you, Thespian. You’re not the melon to fall, but the sheep to be slaughtered. I know our tongue and your melon-malon to me-means sheep, not apple. So bray for us.”
Melon laughed. Any small fear of the Spartan had vanished. Only hatred for the killer of his son remained. “Not yet, Lichas. You are old, only good for carrying away dead kings, not for protecting live ones. We meet again, not for the last time yet. The voices of Neto’s seers ring in my head as well. This time you gave me an ear. Now give me back my helot Gorgos and my son he carried in.”
“Your Gorgos? You mean my Kuniskos? Our long-lost puppy? That creaky helot would not fetch more than an Athenian drachma or two on the auction block in Delos.” Unlike the other Spartans, Lichas had been a harmost and had traveled all over the Aegean. If he wished, he could talk more like an Athenian than any Boiotian. “But Gorgos was-is-mine again. I missed his service these long years. I needed my puppy’s little teeth. He could have had better things to do for me than prune vines for you and drink in his stupor. He wagged his way back home to me. Of his own will. Like any good little dog that has lost his master and, when at last he picks up the scent, comes yelping back to his kennel, with a crushed hare in his mouth, a gift for good will.”
Lichas went on. “The body that Gorgos lugged into our camp just now I keep safe in good faith-or what is left of him. Ah. I see now, he is your son. I thought until now it was you I had killed, you who had taken to riding horses with your bad leg that I gave you at Koroneia. I see that I have these years killed both the father and son of yours, Melon.” Lichas smiled as he saw the Boiotians edging toward him. “Men like us sire plenty of boys to fight and die-at least if they are to be good men at all. I have another son you saw today, megas Antikrates. He killed Boiotians, better even than Kleonymos. Neither of you can escape, not from him. My big son, this one, is a sort even we fear at Sparta. You’re already dead-so’s your general and that branded slave we cut down this day.” Lichas stayed fixed on Melon. “But, Melon, why was your young upstart on a black pony with armor not earned or worn well? One thing for your son to wear Lysander’s plate, another to fight like a Spartan-a lesson your dead father learned at Koroneia.”
Melon replied, “Lysander was a thief himself. Like all you Spartans who make nothing, but steal all from others. You neither farm nor build yourselves. You live in a city of wood, not stone. You have no money, no iron, nothing except what you steal. You are the true polis destroyers. Without your helots, you can’t tell an oar from a winnowing fan. If we bind you, Lichas, perhaps your folk will hand over my Lophis in exchange.”
Epaminondas now stepped up. “Go, Lichas, before Melon puts a spear in your face. It is written that with you goes the last Spartan who will ever walk under arms in Boiotia,” He saw the logic of letting the enemy regroup his army for the long march to come. “It is better this way, Lichas, to settle it down south in your courtyard anyway. Some day when there is new snow on Parnon and Taygetos, look for me when you least expect a winter horde from the north. On the banks of your Eurotas, we will meet you when its waters roar in winter.”
With that the parley broke up and the two sides went back to their lines. Left unsaid was that the Spartans before light would be given passage to the mountains, and that the body of Lophis would be returned. As the two Spartans lumbered away to their awaiting guard, Melon kept silent, knowing now that his Lophis would not rot among dogs and birds, and that Lichas would not live long in the south.
The trailing Lykos turned around before the shadows swallowed him and faced the Boiotian. Lichas had already disappeared into the night. “Bother us no more, cripple of Helikon. Your time is past, Cholopous. The dreams of Pasiphai warned us that you would kill our king. So our king you have killed-the worse one. But we have another. The gods tell us that by tonight you have no more power over us.” Then Lykos, a peer of royal blood, gripped his sharp sword with his left and lowered his spear with his right, and backed off a few feet as he ended his lecture. For all his bristling, he was a Spartan man of his word, who did not break oaths or lie. “Gorgos leaves your son-or what is left of him-at the coast road tomorrow before night, with a hag at the seaside shrine. Lichas keeps his armor. It belonged to our big man Lysander. You keep the mess that was once your son. Lichas knocked him off his black horse. He was thinking it was you. Be proud, for he was a hard kill like your father, or so Lichas said. Four or five stabs and his eyes would not stay closed. And proud he was this day that he was the first of the Boiotians to die. He spat that in our faces when Gorgos laid him down. Lichas cut his throat to ease the pain of his spear wounds. Gorgos then turned to go home to Helikon, but we convinced him that he wanted to stay with us. And then he nodded he did.”
With that Melon fell silent as the five walked back to the phalanx of Thebans. Pelopidas in his melancholy quickly sent all the Boiotians on home who were sated with plundered armor and the coin pouches of the dead. Melon turned darkly to Epaminondas. “Not quite over. You and I will see this Lichas again, and it will not be in Boiotia.”
CHAPTER 11
Epaminondas fell in with Pelopidas and the Sacred Band as they trotted off in silence under the moonlight on the road back to Thebes. It was full night and Melon was alone. Proxenos and Ainias went south in the darkness in the opposite direction toward Plataia, promising to visit Helikon within the year. Proxenos had sent word to his wife, Arete, that both had survived the melee and would be home on the Asopos before the sun came up over Kithairon. Neither wanted any plunder and never liked the look of an army as it breaks apart. Both, as the new partners they had become, were plotting the rebuilding of Mantineia to the south and the greater citadel of the Arkadians at Megalopolis, the new democratic fetters that would hem Sparta for good inside the Peloponnesos.