14.
The scroll was still in Antalcidas’ hand when he returned to the ruins. All the surviving Spartiates glanced down at it, as if curious over what it said, but too proud to ask outright.
Frog had no such trouble. “So what do our elders require of us?”
Antalcidas gave it to him. Reading the words, Frog grimaced.
“What does this mean?” he asked. “Is it some kind of code?”
“The men will prepare themselves for the attack.”
Pushing their helmets down low on their heads, the men settled down in their positions. Antalcidas saw that a few had used the reprieve to stack several small blocks at the back of the fort, making a small stretch of cover from the bowmen behind them. But this position offered no refuge from arrows shot from the other side.
Frog had not finished his interrogation. “Tell me, Antalcidas, why are you so sure they expect a sacrifice?”
“I’m not sure. When in doubt, the Spartiate will always make the most honorable choice.”
“There are many good men here,” the other persisted. “If there’s a chance to them to serve again in the line-we should be sure. You might petition the ephors to clarify.”
Antalcidas rounded on him, sneering, “Would that make your father proud? For us to prattle back and forth like women? No-I will not embarrass our elders by begging them to make our choice for us. If you must know, that is the duty of the command you wanted so desperately. Now leave me alone.”
Frog stared at him with eyes wide. Then he bent at the waist in a mocking bow.
“Well, then! Let us all hail our lord Antalcidas, third king of the Spartans!”
Before the other could straighten up again, Antalcidas shoved him to the ground. Looking back, Frog wore a face of such undiluted hatred that it might as well have been a theatrical mask.
“You’ve made a mistake, Antalcidas.”
Antalcidas reached for his sword. “And you’ve plagued your commanders for the last time. Get up.”
Frog rolled to his feet, his blade at the ready. Facing each other, a fight was inevitable, with Frog whipping himself up into an emotional froth and Antalcidas staring back, expressionless but with every intention of making the other suffer before he died. He had not fought another Lacedaemonian since that day on the Plane Stand, and never killed one. He found himself strangely attracted to the prospect: his love of country, which was unshakable, had somehow made him more contemptuous of certain Spartans than he knew. It was nothing so simple as resenting those of modest talent but legitimate birth. Instead, he felt a powerful need to purify and ennoble his love by removing irritants like Frog from the life of his city.
Suddenly the scream of wind through bowfeathers descended on them. Antalcidas looked up-and saw the sky again filled with Athenian arrows. He and Frog crouched together next to a wall as the volley hit the ground; neither of them was struck, but a handful of the other men were caught in the open without their shields.
“You men get your equipment!” Antalcidas cried. “Forward positions, prepare to receive the enemy-”
But the Athenians had changed tactics. The wounded Lacedaemonians were limping and crawling to where their shields lay, or injuring themselves further by ripping the arrowpoints from their flesh, when another volley came on. More went down as missiles tore through their flimsy piloi. Desperate, some of the Spartans darted out to strip a few of the heavier, closed helmets from the Athenian dead.
Demosthenes had decided to send no more human waves against the breaches: he would no longer gratify the Spartans by offering them the sort of death they preferred. The conference with Antalcidas, whom Demosthenes took to be a petulant fool, had relieved him of all chivalric scruples. He would now grind the Lacedaemonians down constantly, mercilessly, and from a distance.
Reading this fury, Cleon saw there was no longer any chance for live prisoners. Looking to sea, he visualized bringing a severed human head-perhaps Antalcidas’-to the Squeezing Place. No, the institution’s traditional decorum would never allow it. Yet would they not talk about that day forever, when Cleon brought such vivid evidence of his newfound military prowess?
“The archers are running out of arrows,” Leochares reported.
Cleon supposed that this was bad news. He looked to Demosthenes, who spared him only a glance before turning to Leochares.
“Tell the line officers that a ship is already on its way from the stockade,” he said. He then added-more to gall Cleon that to inform Leochares-“I called for resupply hours ago.”
15.
The bombardment went on as dark clouds appeared over the Ionian and spread east, glowering over Sphacteria. Showing bottoms of grayish purple, the clouds seemed to groan with moisture; Doulos would have called their arrival the best evidence of rain in months. Sure enough, a thin, desultory mist fell, increasing the Spartans’ misery as they clung to whatever crevices gave them refuge. The mist became a downpour; rivulets formed immediately in the thin soil, scattering the cyclops bones Doulos had so carefully fit together. Meanwhile, some of the men removed their helmets, so useless against the arrows, and used them to collect precious rainwater. Antalcidas didn’t bother. For rain to fall now, when their fate was sealed, could only be some sort of divine joke at his expense.
The Athenian bowmen kept shooting. Those arrows that didn’t hit a Spartan were now sticking upright in the mud; looking at one of these, Antalcidas noticed that a message had been cut into the wooden shaft. It read, in clumsy letters, For the Acharnians, against the Lak-. The writer appeared to have run out of room before he could finish the taunt.
“Is this your virtuous stand, Antalcidas?” Frog called through the storm. “Tell us, do you feel like Leonidas now?”
“Shut up, trembler!”
“I’ll show you,” replied the other. “You and your brother have insulted me for the last time. I’ll show you…”
The rain fell for only a brief time. Soon an uncertain sun shone through, making the water beads gleam on the masonry and the ground with slicks of blood-soaked mud. A cry went up behind the Athenian lines, answered by another from the Messenians. Antalcidas did not always understand the Attic lingo, but the command sounded like an order to stop shooting.
The volleys ceased. A voice came to them then from below-one he did not recognize as belonging to either Cleon or Demosthenes.
“Lacedaemonians, this is your last chance!” the voice cried. “Surrender now, and we will let you carry your shields to the ships.”
So they would allow the Spartans to go down with their shields, thought Antalcidas. How desperate they must be to make trophies of us! And yet, how long before they confiscate those arms as they push us into the hold? He looked to the under-thirty who shared cover with him behind a block. He was making a brave face of it, but his fear was there to see, in the subtle trembling of his lips.
“Take heart, son,” Antalcidas told him. “It will be over soon.. . and your family will have the honor of cutting your name into your tombstone.”
There was more murmuring from behind the enemy line. He heard the archers draw back their bowstrings-an act that was individually silent, but when done in numbers made a distinct sound, like a sharp intake of breath. Antalcidas put a reassuring hand on the under-thirty’s back: this, at last, would be it.
A memory seemed to seep out from within, from the core of his bones. Antalcidas was alone, hungry, trapped between blackness and a damp rigidity pressing against him. His brothers and sisters were whispering to him now from their stony cradles, dressed in only bits of scalp, fine hair, residues of blood scattered across the gorge. As their mothers lived their days on the plain, weaving their shrouds of forgetting, the children of Sparta collected in rising numbers against that hard teat…