Alcibiades at this time, one learned later, was very nearly losing his life in the following manner. His cavalry had swept through the suburbs, outpacing Adeimantus' infantry, and were making for the northern gate to link with the marine companies landed on the Pteron by Antiochus and Erasinides. They had a guide, Alcibiades' troop did, who led them through the maze of lanes and alleys which constitute that quarter. They emerged to a square.
Astonishingly a corps of women had seized this choke point and, barricading its lone egress with benches and overturned wagons, made bold to defend it. These were no Amazons but dames of the district, marshaling to preserve their hearths and infants.
The women attacked Alcibiades' cavalry from the rooftops, hurling tiles, bricks, and stones with fabulous daring. Nor did they give back beneath the return volleys, but kept up a din of such profane contumacy as, the troopers testified, evoked sterner terror than any phalanx of Spartans or horde of shrieking savages.
Alcibiades himself was struck by a brick on the shoulder. The blow fractured his collarbone; he must be assisted from the fray by Mantitheus, fighting as ever at his side. Alcibiades, as was his habit, fought helmetless; a handsbreadth more and the missile would have staved his skull.
In the city, the foe's battalions swept along the Exposition Road.
Now came the struggle for the Pteron, the great seawall upon which men and horses and ships were dueling, it seemed, for every yard. Scaffolding ascended on both flanks, all pine and all blazing.
Cofferdams abutted the final furlong, spiked with construction debris, brick and timber, mortar sleds, pumpworks, and great piles of iron fittings which made them jagged death pits. Horses and men were tumbling into these in numbers as ghastly as they were uncountable.
Antiochus made signaclass="underline" “Advance!” I had stationed Calliope at the left of the line, to pass close abeam of the Pteron to evaluate the situation. We returned signal and kicked off.
The riot upon the seawall was absolutely spectacular.
Alcibiades with the cavalry and heavy infantry had punched through now, though we did not know this yet from our vantage.
Their lane of advance down Exposition Road had been blocked by masses of the foe, a hundred shields across and what looked like a mile deep. Some four or five thousand of the enemy, including cavalry, had got aboard the seawall before Alcibiades and Adeimantus and now hacked and heaved toward the Windlass House at the extremity. They were going for the cable, to reseal the harbor and trap the vessels inside. Defending the final furlong of seawall were the Athenian marines who had taken the Quay and cut the chain. Flanking these, Erasinides' engineering vessels had set themselves broadside against the seaward palisade and were applying winch and tackle to the enemy's submerged stakes while simultaneously disembarking more marines from transports moored outboard hull-to-hull. Passing the terminus of the Pteron aboard Calliope, I could see in the van of the foe a personage magnificently mounted and appareled, compassed by a guard of knights.
This could be none but Lysander.
At once I determined to strike for him, forswearing all other objects. I resolved to sacrifice my own life and all my crew if I must.
I signaled to my second, Lycomenes, aboard Theama to take the squadron forward on his own, then made to Damodes, trierarch of Erato, these signals: “Follow me” and “Land marines.”
I could see Damodes, called the Bear, upon his sternpeak. He, too, had spotted the foe and hopped with frenzy to get at him. As these turns eventuated, Antiochus' Tyche, within the harbor, had had her stem staved and must withdraw. He brought her out stern-first, backing water, and now approached the Pteron from the landward side. To moor a triple against a twenty-foot seawall is no mean feat in broad daylight. Under fire Calliope came in like a garbage scow helmed by a drunk. Antiochus simply rammed Tyche stern-first between two cofferdams and, slinging the last of his hello-theres, mounted behind a screen of fire.
The struggle aboard the Pteron had reached that state of compaction where even the most elementary tactics may not be implemented, such is the press of mayhem. The enemy had five thousand on the wall, massed shield-to-shield, with thousands more pressing from the land. The main of our cavalry fought dismounted now, as the foe in his swarm carved the horses out from under them. These unfortunate creatures wailed in agony upon the block, hooves thrashing, wounding others, while more struggled in the water, drowning. My foot slipped mounting a dam and I fell hard, all my weight plus armor, beating my helmet crown-first into the stone. I blacked both eyes and tore thumb's web so that it still has not knitted. In this shape I clambered at last onto the Pteron, seeking the Spartan.
It was not Lysander but the prince.
Cyrus of Persia, who had sworn to break up his very throne to bring low the might of Athens. Cyrus! Cyrus!
Our men cried his name and hurled themselves at the champions who defended him. The prince's knights dueled with breathtaking valor, the riders' prowess exceeded only by that of their mounts, specimens trained to maintain cohesion flank to flank and to rear and strike both with fore hooves and the spiked armor on their chests. The look in their eyes I shall never forget.
“Kill him!” Antiochus bellowed from Tyche's stern.
Now through the mob punched cavalry and heavy armor, Alcibiades and Adeimantus. Marines pressed about, crying that they had Prince Cyrus trapped. At once an alteration overcame our commander both wondrous and profound. Though beneath his breastplate his clavicle had been fractured, as we learned later, such an injury as would carry away any man with incapacity and pain, he straightened and elevated his eighteen-pound shield upon that forearm above which the bone had been shattered.
He went after the prince. So did everyone. We were driven, all, before that tide which was the mass of flesh and armor being propelled toward the Pteron's extremity by the advancing press of Spartan and Peloponnesian reinforcements surging from the shore.
Now came Lysander at these battalions' fore. He called to Cyrus to make for him. Break through, I will preserve you! A space separated the two, packed shield-to-shield with Athenian marines, such orphans as myself off marooned men-of-war and our commanders, Alcibiades and Adeimantus with the last of the cavalry. Ships roared, afire port and starboard; warhorses' muzzles seemed to belch live steam; men's cries ascended in a din ungodly.
“Do you see, men of Greece?” Alcibiades cried toward the foe. “A Spartan fights at the barbarian's shoulder!”
“For freedom from thou, prideful villain!” Lysander bawled back.
The Spartan dug his knees into his mount and slung, so proximate across the press that the shaft of his javelin traversed barely thrice its length before seating with thunderous concussion upon his enemy's shield. Alcibiades took the stroke flush on his shattered arm. The warhead tore through the bronze and split the oak beneath, penetrating to a handsbreadth of his flesh.
“He is wounded!”
Men of both sides cried in exigency, Spartans and Persians rallying to press for the kill; Athenians and allies closing yet more densely, if that were possible, to erect a wall of their own flesh before their commander. An infantryman at Alcibiades' side elevated before him the shield his strength could no longer bear.
Darts transfixed the hero's back. Shafts riddled Alcibiades' mount.
Clouds flew about his head.
Lysander's knights heaved upon him. Alcibiades slung his ax across a sward of plumes and pike blades. I myself was within feet of the Spartan, so close I could see his beard beneath the cheek pieces of his helmet, as he beat the weapon apart with his shield.