Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium) (5 page)

Styphon pulled the horn from his belt, drew
back and hurled it into the darkness over the fort's half-crumbled
wall.

Thalassia's head hung once more.  When
she looked up, she said calmly, "I was afraid you might do that.
 That's why I climbed the heights a while ago and a had a chat
with your watchmen.  They're much more superstitious than
you."

Breathless, Styphon demanded, "What have you
done?"

Instead of answering, she craned her neck to
the north and up to the crown of the heights which loomed black
against the nighttime sky.  Styphon followed her gaze and saw
what she saw: a spark of light, a thin finger of smoke cutting the
cloudless sky.  It was the watchmen's flame, the signal of an
Athenian assault.

Her pale eyes returned to him, and Thalassia
said, tauntingly, "If you don't sound the alarm now, you'll be
shirking your duty, no?"

"You bitch..." Styphon said, but there was
little fire in his voice.  She was right, of course.  The
warning beacon having been lit, it was his responsibility to raise
the alarm.

He knitted the fingers of one hand into his
long, unkempt locks and tugged them in frustration before
clambering over the wall to hunt for the horn.

To a Spartan, duty trumped even Fate.

Well before dawn's glow obscured the dome of
stars over Pylos harbor, four red-beaked, angry-eyed Athenian
triremes churned black water in innocuous maneuvers meant to
disguise their true, less innocuous intent: attack.

The island was still a black shape in the
distance when a low, clear wail split the air from the direction of
the island.  Demosthenes, son of Alkisthenes, standing on the
deck of one of the four Athenian ships, loosed a bitter curse.
 How had the Spartans known?

It mattered not.  The invasion would go
forward regardless; it just would not be the one-sided slaughter
for which he'd hoped.

"
Auloi!
" Demosthenes cried.
 
Spear-points
.  

To the soldiers cramming the triremes'
decks, it was the code which meant their landing would be
contested.  Athenians would only set foot on Sphakteria behind
the lowered points of their spears.  He repeated the cry, and
his voice competed with a second blast of the Spartans' alarm.

Shifting his weight constantly against the
tossing of the trireme that had him, like all the closely packed
men aboard, constantly bouncing off shoulders and shields and
rails, he gazed out over the prow.  On the moonlit beach of
the island's southern shore, dark blots were already darting about:
Spartan soldiers spotting the long-awaited invasion and hurrying to
arm.  A Helot runner would be on his way inland by now,
bringing word to the main body of Spartan troops, probably
somewhere near the island's center, where sat Sphakteria's sole
source of water, the one thing which which kept the tenacious enemy
alive.  Demosthenes had stared out over the harbor at the ugly
island all summer from his quarters on the acropolis of Pylos, and
he had dreamed of the day he would capture it.  Today.

The four triremes drove for shore, while on
the beach fully armed Spartans trickled out from the tree line.
 The polished iron blades of their tall spears caught the
moonlight.  From this distance, in the dark of night, their
shields were dark circles, but soon enough the feared crimson
lambda would show.  

Rather than forming up in the conventional
wall of shields, the Spartans spread across the beach in loose
clusters, poised to descend on the ships as they beached.
 That was just how his own force had repulsed the Spartan
marine assault on the city of Pylos months ago, their attempt to
recapture the city, the very engagement which had left this Spartan
force trapped on Sphakteria.

Three of the four ships in the first wave
were loaded with Athenian citizens in full hoplite panoplies of
helmet, round shield, bronze breastplate and leg-greaves.
 Demosthenes stood among the hoplites on the deck of his own
ship, 
Leuke
, but unlike the men around him he had yet
to don his helmet.  Its cheek pieces gave wide enough berth to
his mouth that his voice could escape it unimpeded, but the bronze
covered his ears, erasing any hope of hearing a reply.  The
sea wind whipped his head of sand-colored curls, a feature as
distinctive as the red crest of rank adorning his helmet.  In
youth, boys had mocked him for the 'womanly' attribute, along with
his wide, brown doe-eyes, but no longer.  Not to his face,
anyway.

"
Atraktoi!
" Demosthenes yelled in the
direction of the fourth trireme.  That ship held bowmen, and
the word meant 
Spindles
.  It was the derisive term
by which the Spartans referred to arrows.  Why not use it as
his command to fire, Demosthenes had decided.  Since Athens
maintained no formal force of archers, the bowmen were Ionians from
cities that paid tribute to Athens.  The Ionian captain heard
Demosthenes' shouted command, and seconds later his men loosed a
volley at the beach.

Not much could be expected of archers firing
in darkness from the swaying deck of a ship, and sure enough, not
one of the spear-wielding shadows on the shore crumpled to the
beach or wailed in pain.  But the bowmen, and soon the
targeteers, too, with their iron-tipped javelins, would keep up a
hail of missiles until the melee began and the risk became too
great of their missiles lodging in friendly backs.

Demosthenes
vessel 
Leuke
 was not the first to reach the shore.
 The chance currents of the harbor bestowed that honor on
another ship, 
Habra
.  Her hull ground up on the
pebbly beach and pivoted sharply to starboard, the rowers shipped
the oars on that side, and hoplites began vaulting the topstrake to
plunge six feet into the breaking surf.  Most failed to land
on their feet and had to scramble upright in the knee-deep waters
by frantically digging spear-shafts and shields into the sand, even
as ten or more Spartans, about a quarter of the total number
waiting on the beach, bore down on them at a full run,
man-skewering spears held high.  The rest hung back to await
the arrival of the other ships, lest one be allowed to land
unchallenged.

The first handful of Athenians
from 
Habra
, those who had managed to keep their footing
against the tide, waded onto Sphakteria.  Water still lapped
their greaves when the defenders, who by now had gathered
considerable momentum, slammed into them.  The two sides
converged, battle roars going up from both sides alike, and the
invasion began in earnest.  The fighters became black shapes
engaged in a frenzied dance of flashing moonlit spear blades and
splashing seawater.  For some seconds there was utter chaos, a
suspended moment in which Demosthenes and forty other watchers held
their collective breath—and then the result became clear: the
defenders had got the better of the initial clash.  Most of
the sharp death groans that pierced the night came from Athenians,
whose silent corpses soon rocked back and forth on the
breakers.

The Spartans fell back and regrouped in a
line on the shore to meet the next challenge,
for 
Habra
 was not yet done disgorging her marines.
 But Demosthenes could not watch what befell those men, for
now it was 
Leuke
's turn to hit the beach.  At the
prow, Demosthenes pulled his crested helmet onto his skull, turned
and exhorted his men, "I know you are afraid.  These are true
Spartans, bred to kill.  But look at them!  They can
hardly stand from hunger, and they come from a city that's too poor
to even equip them properly.  Instead of helmets they wear
metal hats that leave their necks and faces exposed!" 

These things were true, but if they'd yet
caused Sparta to lose a battle, Demosthenes did not know of it.
Some even said the uncovered faces of modern Spartiates were more
intimidating than the encompassing faceplates of bronze their
fathers had worn. But this was an exhortation to battle, and it
needed not take such details into account. 

"Do not hold back!" Demosthenes continued.
 "The sooner this island is ours the sooner we put this cursed
desert city behind us!  There is much Spartan blood in the
harbor already.  Let us fill it with more!"

He raised his hoplon of bronze-sheathed
wood, with its Pegasos blazon, and a cheer erupted from the sea of
brazen helms that their wearers had coated with pitch to prevent
them catching moonlight, a stealth measure of no use now.
 Likewise, to avoid the glinting of their blades, not to
mention accidents on the wave-tossed ships, the Athenians' heavy
spears had been stowed in a bundle on the deck.  While
Demosthenes spoke, the spears were distributed, and by the
time 
Leuke
 began her broadside pivot into the
surf, the hoplites aboard were fully armed and waiting to leap the
rails, five by five, into the surf.  One of the waiting
clusters of Spartiates raced down the beach in Leuke's direction,
spears raised over long tresses that bobbed under the rims of their
cheap bronze pilos caps.

As the shore approached, Demosthenes spared
a swift glance down the shore to where 
Habra
 had
landed.  He had no time to discern detail, but the fight there
did not seem to be going well, for it was still taking place in the
surf.  The Spartans further back, meanwhile, seemed to have
lost a man or two to the archers' white-fletched arrows, and now
javelins, as the Ionians' ship drew nearer.

"
Pallas!
"

Screaming the name of the goddess,
Demosthenes went first over the rail.  He plunged for a
stomach-churning second, then his sandaled feet struck wet sand
with a jarring force that buckled his knees and might have toppled
him were it not for the spear whose butt-spike he drove hard into
the ground for balance.  He sprang up and ran, barely
conscious of his fellow fighters splashing down to his left and
right and following, if their feet stayed beneath them.
 Screaming, he went to meet an onrushing foe doing its level
best to make Sphakteria's invaders unwelcome.  He went
straight for the foremost Spartan, who even in the dark could not
have missed the red crest adorning the helmet of his opponent.
 A general.  Here was his chance to be a hero, he would
be thinking.

The chance was lost, for Demosthenes braced
his left foot abruptly in the shifting pebbles, pushed off to his
right and slashed his spear in a  wide arc that tore out the
Spartan's throat, sending his body headlong to the rocks and his
shade into the mist-cloaked fields of asphodel.  Two of the
dead man's countrymen were right behind.  Twisting and ducking
behind his hoplon, Demosthenes took the first of them in the groin.
 Another Athenian fresh from the surf took the second in his
bare thigh, which gouted black blood onto the beach.  He
shrieked in agony, but only for as long as it took Demosthenes
drive his spear's butt-spike, the lizard-killer, as some called it,
down the man's throat.  

By now Demosthenes was flanked by at least
three of his countrymen, perhaps more, with others close behind,
judging by their piercing wails. They had a chance of success, but
only if they survived the imminent arrival of a half-dozen more
Equals just paces behind their fallen brothers.

"Hold fast!" Demosthenes said left and right
to whomever was there to hear.  He crouched behind his shield
and dug in his heels just in time.  One of the charging
defenders, slowing in his full-tilt run to avoid collision, brought
his own spear blade down in an overhead attack which Demosthenes
deflected with the rim of his shield before trading back a short
jab with his own spear.  The enemy dodged, but was unprepared
when Demosthenes, seeing he was in no danger from left or right,
let go of his spear and launched his body forward, putting all his
weight behind the bowl-shaped hoplon on his left arm.

Their two shields glanced off one another,
but it was the Spartan's which was flung aside. Demosthenes' shield
struck him a body blow, and as he fell back the Spartan's right
hand lost its grip on his own spear, which scythed away to clatter
on the pebble beach.  Atop his foe, Demosthenes yanked his
short sword free from the scabbard on his hip and drove it sidewise
up and under the Spartan's leather breastplate.  The man still
lived, flopping about on the ground and screeching like a stuck
boar, but he was out of the fight. Demosthenes worked his blade
free and readied it for the next challenger.

None came.  The absence inspired a
moment's triumphant exhilaration, after which Demosthenes turned
and went to the aid of a comrade by stabbing his opponent in the
spine.  He cut another down behind the knees, and within
moments the only men standing in the corpse-littered stretch of
shore were Athenians.  More were coming up behind every
moment, while not far off, the men of 
Habra
 were
relieved by the arrival of marines from the third and fourth ships,
finally overwhelming the beach's defenders.  

Soon Kleon, Demosthenes' distasteful partner
in this venture, would arrive with a second wave of troops to take
advantage of the foothold just gained.  But this was no time
for self-congratulation or even for taking count of the fallen,
those silent or groaning lumps on the dark earth.  It was no
time even to wonder how the Spartans had seen through what had
seemed so clever a ruse.  There were plenty of Equals left,
eager to avenge those who'd just died, and more killing yet to be
done before Sphakteria was taken.

By mid-morning, Helot runners bore word of
defeat to Nestor's fort.  First, defeat on the island's
southern tip, the outpost there slaughtered to the last man, just
as Thalassia had warned.

Fate could run its course, it seemed,
without regard for the blowing of a horn.