Lately he was consumed by another peeve: with time ashore rationed among all the ships, he had been forced to take far too many meals afloat. No one was meant to eat on the water, he decided; there was a reason the gods had given mortals legs instead of flukes. Nor were men made to spend all their days packed like sprats in a jar, struggling to breathe in sweltering middecks or stockades strewn with filth. He summoned Stilbiades.
“By the gods,” Xeuthes declared to the bosun, “we will eat our next meal on dry land!”
“Sir?”
“Stop the ship. Tell Sphaerus to find us a decent place to go ashore.”
Stilbiades sucked in a breath like a drowning man breaking the surface at last. “But isn’t that against orders? The Spartans-”
“Use your eyes, man! If we come ashore on this low section, we can see them coming from a long way off. I suspect they have no archers.”
“I suspect you’re right,” the other replied, his wind-chapped face cracking into a grin. In fact, he longed for the Lacedaemonians to attack. Anything to force the issue at last.
The men of the Terror went to the island in relays. They had very little food with them-just a few sacks of half-rotten onions and whatever remained of the rationed flour. Yet these seemed like a kingly repast to those privileged to recline ashore, free to stretch every limb beside a fine, fragrant, sleep-inducing pinewood campfire. Patronices, the beam man, lay dozing, his head cradled on a rock that, by the peace that shone from his face, might as well have been a silken pillow.
“I wouldn’t get too comfortable,” Timon advised. “The longhairs will spot our smoke sooner or later.”
“Let them come! They’ll learn a lesson they’ll never forget, coming between a sailor and his rest-”
Dicaearchus was sitting up, examining the soles of his bare feet. “These fucking rocks! I’ve never bled so much in seven years of war!”
“In seven years of war you’ve never stopped complaining.”
“Look for yourself, then! Here, here, and here…!”
“I’d dance on razors not to have to walk on sand again,” said Timon. “I believe my toes are permanently curled.”
“So your boyfriend tells us,” Patronices replied, the ends of his lips smugly twisted.
The next group to land included Xeuthes, Stilbiades, and the deck men Cleinias and Oreus. Old Sphaerus was invited as well, but refused. “Anyone who invites his enemy to dinner is a fool,” he said in a voice so dripping with portent everyone had to laugh. Philemon, the trierarch, meanwhile, made one of his rare appearances outside his cabana, sticking his head out when the ship came to rest ashore.
“Is the siege over?” he asked.
They had three large fires going now, each loaded with sap-filled twigs that made much smoke and noise. The Lacedaemonians obviously know we are here, thought Xeuthes as he leaned against a boulder, his eyes fixed north; if we bring enough men ashore that may be protection enough against an attack. It made no sense for their adversaries to reveal their numbers before the real battle, he judged. Yet he was also beginning to suspect that he had been precipitate in declaring the beach safe. A third of his crew was now on their backs, snoozing or roasting little buff-colored lizards they had caught in the brush. If the enemy managed a sneak attack, most of his men would be cut down before they got to their feet.
“You there! Keep your traps shut!” the captain snapped at the archers posted on the Terror’s foredeck. The bowmen straightened up, ceased their chatter. They were, after all, supposed to give cover if the Lacedaemonians came. “Remind me to trade away those idlers when we get back,” Xeuthes said to the bosun. Stilbiades agreed with a drowsy grunt.
The attack came just past noon. Before Xeuthes heard anyone cry out, arrows were whistling over his head. Scanning the hillside, he spotted them at last-not Spartans, but weird negative images of Spartans, with cloaks faded to gray and skins broiled red from the sun. They were spearless, swords in hand, zigging and zagging like oblong rocks bouncing down the slope to crush them. There seemed to be only a dozen-or in Lacedaemonian terms, there were only sixty Athenians to face twelve raging furies.
“They’re here! They’re here!” someone cried.
“Back to the ship!” Xeuthes commanded. “Archers… by the gods
…”
They were shooting, but hitting nothing as the lead Spartan approached the edge of the camp. He struck down the first Athenian he met-a hold man named Lysimachus-with a precise economy of effort: just a brief pointing of the end of his blade, a stab to the soft part of the throat, and on to the next one. Everything was in an uproar now, his crew breaking frantically for the water, the great crimson lambdas appearing over the rocks; the Terror’s little corps of six hoplites, having brought their armor with them, made a stand with shields presented. Three Spartans raised their own shields as they crashed against them, pushing the Athenians backward over the broken ground until the latter lost their footing. Five of Xeuthes’ men were killed where they lay; the last escaped by abandoning his shield.
Stilbiades was yelling something as he shoved Xeuthes back toward the gangplank. Philemon, for his part, was running with impressive speed, his bulk streaming back in great liquid waves across his torso. With the Lacedaemonians closing behind him, he seemed suddenly to be airborne, little feet churning on pointe as his piercing scream rose to a funereal crescendo.
Xeuthes was yelling at him, at the bosun, at everyone as he backed onto the plank. The archers seemed not to have hit a single attacker. The enemy were at last slowed down by the extraordinary efforts of a few ordinary oarsmen who threw flaming boughs. The smoking missiles seemed to give the Spartans pause-one of them stood still long enough for an archer to get a bead and put an arrow through his shoulder. He was propelled sideways, toppling on his side like a stone cairn blown down on a windy hillside. Two other Lacedaemonians converged to help him; the oarsmen kept throwing their burning sticks until they were distant enough to turn and run.
The crew took with them as many of their dead comrades as they could. Yet, as the Terror pulled away from the shore she abandoned ten bodies on the beach. The captain had Sphaerus take them out into the bay and back again in a wide loop, to rest again near shore, ram-forward. Xeuthes then went up to the stem and did what custom demanded: he asked for quarter and the Lacedaemonians’ permission to retrieve the dead.
The customary answer was to accede, but he got no answer from the island. Xeuthes repeated his plea, then turned to Stilbiades.
“Are those dogs ignoring me?”
“Feel that,” said the other, raising his open palm to the shore. “There’s quite a strong fire behind that smoke.”
Xeuthes could feel the heat through his beard. The island, of course, was a tinderbox, but could the blaze have spread so fast? And what was the precedent for claiming the fallen from a burning battlefield when the victors have fled? Pondering these questions, he left his ship floating, with oars poised in midstroke, as the rising inferno melted the crystals of sea salt on his brow to stinging tears.
6.
The Lacedaemonian emissary arrived the very evening the truce lapsed. Demosthenes received the man in his tent before joining one of the ships that would guard the island that night. It had lately turned cold on the bay; a hint of fall, of snow on some Balkan mountain and leaves beginning to moulder, hung on the northwest breeze. On his field bed his valet had left his equipment for the night: a pack with some bread and cheese, a woolen cloak, a little scroll of light poetry to divert him, and if that failed, a set of well-worn worry beads. That his visitor would perceive him to be a man willing to stand a post himself was all to the good, he thought-but in retrospect he regretted showing the beads.