Lion of Macedon (4 page)

Xenophon shivered and walked to the window, staring out over the rooftops, but he did not see them. What he saw was sunlight on lance points, what he heard was the screams of the dying and the cacophonous clash of sword on shield at
Cunaxa as the Greeks, in four-deep formation, routed the barbarians.

Victory was theirs. Justice had prevailed, as all men of good heart knew that it would. And then?

Xenophon sighed. And then a common Persian soldier—a peasant by all accounts, unable to afford armor or sword—had thrown a rock that struck Cyrus on the temple, toppling him from the saddle. The enemy, in the process of flight, saw him fall. They regrouped and charged, coming upon the valiant Cyrus as he struggled to rise. He was stabbed a score of times, then his head and right hand were cut from his body.

Victory, like a fickle wife, flew from the Greeks.

The gods died that day in Xenophon’s heart, though his intellect battled on to sustain a tenuous belief. Without gods the world was nothing, a place of torment and disillusion lacking order and reason. Yet after Cunaxa, he had rarely known peace of mind.

The general took a deep breath and struggled to suppress the bitter memories. A discreet knock came at his door. “Enter,” he said, and his senior servant, Tinus, came in, bringing him a goblet of heavily watered wine. Xenophon smiled and thanked him.

Two other male servants fetched spring water for his bath, then toweled him dry. His armor had been polished until the bronze gleamed gold and his iron helm shone like purest silver. One servant helped him into his white linen tunic, while the second lifted the breastplate over his head, fastening the straps at Xenophon’s side. A bronze-reinforced leather kilt was slung around his waist and tied at the hip. Bronze greaves were fastened to his shins. Xenophon waved the servants away and took up his sword belt. The leather was pitted, the bronze scabbard showing many dents, but the sword within was iron and keen-edged. He drew it, enjoying the exquisite balance of its short blade and leather-bound grip. Sighing, he slammed the blade home in the scabbard before
buckling the sword belt at his waist. He lifted his helm and brushed the white horsehair crest.

Holding the helm under his arm, he turned toward the door. Tinus opened it, and Xenophon walked out into the courtyard. Three female servants bowed as he passed; he acknowledged them with a smile and lifted his face to the sunlight. It was a fine day.

Three helots were preparing the sand pit to the judges’ instructions, shaping hills, valleys, and streams. Xenophon stopped to examine their work. “Make that hill higher and more steep,” he told one of the men, “and widen the valley floor. That is where the battle will be fought, and there must be room to swing the line.”

He walked on through the open courtyard gates and out toward the hillside and the shrine to Athena of the Eyes. It was not a large shrine, three pillars supporting a low roof, but within was the sacred altar. Xenophon entered the building, removing his sword and standing it in the doorway. Then he knelt beneath the altar, upon which stood the silver statue of a woman, tall and slender, wearing a Doric helm pushed back upon her head and carrying a sharp sword.

“Praise be to thee, Athena, goddess of wisdom and war,” said Xenophon. “A soldier greets thee.” He closed his eyes in prayer, repeating the familiar words he had first used five years before when leaving the lands of the Persians.

“I am a soldier, Athena. Do not let this be an end to my glories. I have achieved so little. Let me live long enough to carry your statue into the heartlands of the barbarian.”

He glanced up at the statue, hoping for a response yet knowing that only silence would follow. Xenophon rose and backed from the shrine. He saw movement on the acropolis and watched two boys embracing. Narrowing his eyes, he recognized one of them as Hermias. The other, then, must be the half-breed, the one they called Savra: a strange boy often seen running across rooftops and high walls. Xenophon had only seen him twice at close quarters. With his curved, hawk-like
nose he was neither handsome like Leonidas nor beautiful like Hermias, yet there was something about him. His blue eyes had a piercing look, both guarded and challenging, and he bore himself with a pride his poverty did not warrant. Once Xenophon had seen him running along Leaving Street, pursued by four other boys. On the second occasion Savra had been sitting with Hermias by the temple to Aphrodite. He had smiled then at some light comment from Hermias, and his face was transformed, the brooding glare disappearing. The change had shocked Xenophon, and he had stopped to stare at the boy. Savra had looked up then, seeing that he was observed. Swiftly his expression changed, like a mask falling into place, and the Athenian felt a sudden chill as those pale eyes focused on him.

Xenophon’s thoughts turned to the brilliant Leonidas. Now
there
was a true Spartan, tall and beautifully proportioned, proud of stance, with hair like spun gold. There was a greatness in Leonidas, Xenophon believed, a true gift from the heavens. It was not often that the Athenian looked forward to the general’s games, but today he was relishing the battle of wills to come.

The general approached the training ground known as the planes. Here, usually at dusk, the younger boys would fight mock battles, using sticks instead of swords. But every sixth morning the Spartan army would engage in maneuvers. Today was special, Xenophon knew, as he crossed the low bridge to the south of the planes; today saw the manhood parade. His admiration for the Spartan military system was undiminished, despite causing his banishment from Athens. The Spartans had evolved the perfect army, using principles so simple that it was a source of wonder to Xenophon that no other city-state had copied them. Men were ranked according to their years from manhood at twenty. Children who had grown together, learned together, and forged friendships in infancy would stand together, in the phalanx. And as the years passed they would stay together, fighting
alongside one another until they reached the perfection of twenty years from manhood, when they would be eligible to retire.

That was what made the Spartan army invincible. The phalanx formation was multilayered, the first line made up of men of thirty, ten years from manhood—tough, seasoned, yet still young and strong, men used to iron discipline, who had fought in and won many battles. Behind them were the warriors twenty years from manhood, proud, battle-scarred, and mighty. One row back were the new recruits, seeing at first hand how Spartan warriors fought. And behind them the manhood lines from two to nineteen. Was it any wonder that no Spartan army had ever been defeated in the field by a foe of equal numbers?

“Why will you never understand?” Xenophon wondered aloud, picturing his native city of Athens. “You wanted to be supreme. You should have been supreme. But no, you would not learn from your enemies.” Athens and Sparta had fought a long and costly war across the Peleponnese. It saw the worst period in Xenophon’s life, when the Spartan army had besieged Athens twenty years before. The city of Athena, blessed by the gods, had surrendered. Xenophon would never forget the shame of that day.

Yet as a soldier studying the art of war, how could he hate the Spartans? They had lifted the art to heights undreamed of.

“As always you come equipped for battle,” said Agisaleus, and Xenophon blinked. His mind had been far away, and he grinned almost sheepishly. The Spartan king was sitting on a narrow bench seat of stone under the shade of a cypress tree.

“My apologies, my lord,” said Xenophon, bowing, “I was lost in thought.”

Agisaleus shook his head and stood; only then did his twisted left foot become apparent. A handsome, dark-bearded man with piercing blue eyes, Agisaleus was the first Spartan king in history to suffer a deformity, and it would have cost him the crown had not the General Lysander argued his case before gods and men.

“You think too much, Athenian,” said the king, taking Xenophon’s arm. “What was it this morning? Athens? Persia? The lack of campaigns? Or are you longing to return to your estates at Olympia and deny us the pleasure of your company?”

“Athens,” Xenophon admitted. Agisaleus nodded, his shrewd eyes locking to the other’s face.

“It is not a simple matter to be called a traitor by your own people, to be banished from your homeland. But perspectives change, my friend. Had you held a senior position in Athens, perhaps the war would not have been so terrible—perhaps there would have been no war. Then you would have been a hero. I, for one, am delighted you did not command an army against us. Our losses would have been much higher.”

“But you would not have lost?” queried Xenophon.

“Perhaps the odd skirmish,” Agisaleus conceded, chuckling. “For a battle is not just about the skill of generals but also the quality of the warriors.”

The two men walked to the crest of a low hill and sat on the first row of stone seats overlooking the planes.

The manhood line, numbering two hundred and forty men, was being incorporated into the eight formation, and Xenophon watched with interest as the new recruits practiced—alongside three thousand regulars—the charge and the wheel, the surge and the flanking hook.

There was a marked difference in their enthusiasm as the sweating men saw the king on the hill above them. But Agisaleus was not watching them; he turned to Xenophon.

“We have been too insular,” said the king, removing his own red-plumed helm and setting it on the seat beside him.

“Insular?” responded Xenophon. “Is that not Sparta’s greatest strength?”

“Strength and weakness, my friend, often seem as close as husband and wife. We are strong because we are proud. We are weak because our pride never allowed us to grow.” He flung out his arm, encompassing the land. “Where are we? Deep in the south, far from the trade routes, a small city-state.
Our pride does not allow for intermarriage, though it is not against any law, and the number of true Spartans is therefore held down. On that field are three thousand men, one-third of all our armies—which is why we can win battles but never build an empire. You feel the pain of Athens? She will survive and prosper long after we Spartans are dust. She has the sea; she is the center, the heart of Greece. We will beat her in a thousand battles yet lose the war.”

Agisaleus shook his head and shivered. “The ice beast walked across my soul,” he said. “Forgive my gloom.”

Xenophon swung his eyes back to the fighting men on the planes. There was a great truth in the king’s sorrowful words. For all her military might, Sparta was a small city-state with a population diminished by the terrible wars that had raged through the Peleponnese. He glanced at his friend and changed the subject.

“Will you present the prize at the general’s games?”

Agisaleus smiled, and the melancholy passed from him. “I have a special gift today for the winner—one of the seven swords of Leonidas the king.”

Xenophon’s eyes widened. “A princely gift, my lord,” he whispered.

Agisaleus shrugged. “My nephew is of the bloodline and carries the king’s name; it is fitting he should have the blade. I would have given it to him anyway on his birthday in three weeks’ time. But it will make a nice occasion and will give the boy a fine memory of the day he won the games. I won them myself thirty years ago.”

“It will be a fine gesture, my lord, but … what if he does not win?”

“Be serious, Xenophon. He is pitted against a half-breed Macedonian, one step from being a helot. How can he not win? He is a Spartan, of the blood royal. And anyway, since you are the chief judge, I am sure we can rely on a just result.”

“Just?” countered Xenophon, turning away to mask his anger. “Let us at least be honest.”

“Oh, do not be stiff with me,” said Agisaleus, throwing his
arm around his friend’s shoulder. “It is only a child’s game. Where is the harm?”

“Where indeed?” replied Xenophon.

Parmenion slowed in his run as he approached the white-walled home of Xenophon. Already the visitors were gathering, and he could see Hermias at the edge of the crowd, talking to Gryllus. Anger flared as he remembered the short, powerful hooked punches, and he felt the desire to stalk across the crowded street, take Gryllus by the hair, and ram his foul head into the wall until the stones were stained with blood.

Calm yourself!
He knew Gryllus would be present—as Xenophon’s son, this was his home; secondly, he would carry the black cloak for Leonidas. But it galled Parmenion that Gryllus was accepted—even liked—by other youths in the barracks. How is it, he wondered, that an Athenian can win them over but I can’t? He has no Spartan blood, yet my father was a hero. Pushing the thought from his mind, Parmenion eased himself through the crowds, closing in on the two youngsters. Gryllus saw him first, and his smile froze into place, his eyes darkening.

“Welcome to the day of your humiliation,” said the Athenian.

“Get back from me, Gryllus,” warned Parmenion, his voice shaking. “The sight of you makes me want to vomit. And know this: If you come at me again, I will kill you. No blows. No bruises. Just worms and death!”

Xenophon’s son staggered back as if struck, dropping the black cloak he carried. Swiftly he gathered it and vanished into the doorway of the house.

Turning to Hermias, Parmenion tried to smile, but the muscles of his face were tight and drawn. Instead, he reached out to embrace his friend, but Hermias drew back. “Be careful,” said Hermias. “It is a bad omen to touch the cloak!”

Parmenion gazed down at the dark wool draped across
Hermias’ arm. “It is only a cloak,” he whispered, stroking his fingers across it. The loser of the game would be led from the battlefield, cloaked and hooded to hide his shame. No Spartan could be expected to look upon such a humiliation with anything but loathing. But Parmenion did not care. If Leonidas won, that would be shame enough. Wearing the cloak would worry him not at all.

“Come,” said Hermias, taking Parmenion’s arm. “Let us walk awhile—we do not want to be early. How is your mother?”

“Getting stronger,” answered Parmenion, aware of the lie yet needing it to be true. As they walked away, he heard a cheer and glanced back to see the arrival of the golden-haired Leonidas. He watched with envy as men gathered around to wish him luck.