4.
Using an old trick, the party kept to the stony patches of the trail to avoid raising dust. Leochares went in front, furrows of worry besetting his brow as he tried all at once to take in the view both near and far; behind him, a trio of Athenian peltasts-light infantry-marched with their helmets off and the bronze parts of their shield faces covered with burlap. Farther back a dozen Messenian exiles, likewise draped so their equipment would not glint in the sun, proceeded upcountry in reverent silence. For most of them, it was the first time they had walked free in the land of their ancestors.
The night before, the trireme dropped them off behind the Lacedaemonian lines. The vessel had gone on an overcast night without lanterns or pipes, feeling its way up the coast to a landing place scouted the day before. The steersman, whom Leochares had known only from his muffled curses, was obliged to pick his way north, guided by nothing but the sound of the waves on the beach and the black profiles of the rocks against the somewhat lighter gray of the water. At the worst moment the forward oars to starboard crashed against something submerged-probably more rocks-and there was yelling as the boatswain ordered the blades raised. For several anxious moments the vessel floated free, every soul on it frozen in silence, as they waited for the enemy lookouts to raise the alarm. But they heard nothing.
They went ashore a few miles behind the enemy positions north of old Pylos. About the location of the helot village that had sent supplies to the Athenians, Leochares could only guess: the boys who had first visited the stockade had never specified it, and in fact had forbidden the invaders from incriminating the villagers by contacting them. With the end of the truce all bets were off, however. To make mischief in Lacedaemon’s own backyard was an opportunity both rare and irresistible, now that Messenian exiles from Naupactus had arrived.
The exiles were the descendants of the Messenian rebels who had, in the days of Cimon, held out against the Spartan army on Mount Ithome. Lately they had become little more than semi-civilized freebooters. They came by their own initiative in a ship of thirty oars, sporting shields, spears and cuirasses stripped from victims all around the Corinthian gulf. Their most valuable contribution lay not in their arms, however, but in their mouths: unlike the Athenians, they stood a chance of convincing the local helots to revolt. No self-respecting Messenian, after all, would believe promises made in the mincing dialect of Attic dandies. The exiles could speak to them in their native, barnyard Dorian. If they did manage to spark an uprising, and the unrest spread as it once had after the Great Earthquake, the Lacedaemonians would be so beset they would have to make peace on Athens’ terms.
The party struck east through a scrubland of pine dwarfed by the breeze from the sea. As the water receded behind them, Leochares led them down to a stream bottom wet by a winding trickle and lined by oleanders. It was a fair guess that the helots sited their village near this rivulet; they would proceed along its bed until they found signs of a settlement. They had been walking a long time, though, when Leochares began to wonder just how far the Messenian boys could have lugged those sacks of meal and skins of wine.
Doubling back, he searched for the village, risking detection by sticking his head up over the crest of the slope. They had backtracked almost to their landing place when he was rewarded at last by a cluster of thatched roofs. The helots had placed their houses within a grove of broad cypress to moderate wind and sun. Coming closer, Leochares made out stockpens and wagons parked at the margins of the settlement, and crops marching in neat rows toward the eastern highlands.
He turned to the leader of the Messenian exiles, a rawboned giant with the charmingly Homeric name of Protesilaus. “We’ve found them. It’s up to you, now.”
The other never took his eyes off the line of roofs ahead. “I think not,” was all he said.
Leochares snorted at this rustic bloody-mindedness. Perhaps the only charming thing about Protesilaus was his name. But as he came closer to the village he understood the Messenian’s caution. Though the houses were intact, none of them showed smoke for cooking or cleaning. The black-faced sheep, which he thought would be driven up to pasture at that time of day, seemed to doze in their folds. And it seemed inconceivable that the Lacedaemonians would leave the place unguarded with the enemy so close by.
He had almost reached the rail of the enclosure when he saw that the sheep were not asleep, and did not have black faces. With muzzles pressed against the earth, their wool was stained by puddles of their own congealed blood.
“Take guarding positions!” commanded Leochares.
They entered the village in a defensive circle, with shields up and visors down. In this way, with their noses assaulted by the stench of slaughtered livestock, they inspected the settlement, peering into every house and granary. The place was emptied of people in a manner that hinted at some sudden evacuation. There were water jugs set next to half-filled cauldrons, abandoned in midpouring, and half-clad spindles left in stoolside baskets, and axes stuck midway through logs. A clay figure of a warrior lay in the dust of one threshold, as if it had been dropped by a child roughly snatched away.
“Stand down,” Leochares said at last, and pointed at one of the other Messenians whose name he had never learned. “You there-get up on that hill and keep watch.”
Closer examination did nothing to lift the mystery. They found no bodies and no sign of a struggle. None of the houses were damaged by fire. The people had gone in a hurry, but someone had taken the time to cut the throats of the larger animals. He looked to Protesilaus, who remained silent but offered a rueful expression.
“All right, then,” Leochares addressed him. “Do you know what happened here?”
“What happened,” the Messenian replied with weariness, “is what always happens, and what you Athenians should have expected. The Spartans have cleared the villages.”
“Cleared them all? Can they do that?” asked one of the peltasts.
Protesilaus gazed pityingly at the man. He opened his mouth to say something, but closed it again, as if judging himself too perturbed to speak.
Leochares led a more thorough examination of the village to see if any of the helots had hidden away or been forgotten. They found not a living soul in the whole place, and indeed discovered that every possible source of food, down to the last piglet, had been destroyed. He was at a loss to decide where to go next when the lookout cried that he had seen something.
There was a large area of trampled grain a short distance to the east. When the lookout reported it, Leochares thought at first that someone must have camped there. But on investigation they found not a camp but a zone of disturbed soil with a mound in the center. It seemed that something had been buried underneath.
It took only a few minutes digging with knives and swords to find the first helot body. Brushing away the soil, Leochares was looking into a rot-blackened face, the maggots congregated around the soft tissues of the eye. The body was of a beardless young male. Fighting the sickening effect of the stench, the Messenians pushed this first corpse aside and dug deeper through dirt thick with the effluvia of the dead. The exiles were hip deep in their countrymen and standing on more when they pushed their spear butts down through the stinking mass.
“It’s bodies all the way down,” said Leochares.
“There’s a story the Messenians remember in times like this,” Protesilaus began, unprompted. “It was in my grandfather’s time, in a town just a few miles east of here. The great revolt had already swept through most of the country, but in this one place the helots had stayed on the land. The Spartiates came one day with a proposaclass="underline" if the fittest of the men agreed to serve garrison duty along the Arcadian borders, the state would emancipate them and their families. With the prospect of seeing their sons free, and the pledge that they would not be forced to fight their countrymen, 211 of the strongest, brightest, most hopeful Messenians of the town agreed to serve terms of seven years.