Lion of Macedon (40 page)

The debate had continued until just before dawn. Bachylides of Megara and Pelopidas had supported him, but it was not until they convinced Ganeus of Plataea that they won a majority.

Now, as he marched down the long slope to the plain, Epaminondas could not help but worry at the decision. For many years he had plotted and planned, risking his life to free the city he loved. But now, if he was wrong, the city would be destroyed—the statues broken, the homes razed—and the dust of history would blow over the deserted Cadmea. His hand was sweating as he gripped his sword, and he could feel rivulets of perspiration running down his back.

A quarter of a mile ahead the Spartans waited silently, their forces spread out in a great crescent. To the right the Spartan battle king, Cleombrotus, in gold-embossed armor, could be clearly seen surrounded by his bodyguard.

Slowly the distance between the armies closed, until at two hundred paces Epaminondas called a halt. The Spartan right was facing him, while in the center the enemy archers and slingers were preparing their weapons. Glancing nervously to the enemy left, he saw six hundred Spartan cavalry galloping along the enemy front to take up a position at the center, in front of the archers.

Now everything depended on Parmenion. Epaminondas lifted his sword high into the air.

Led by Parmenion, the Theban cavalry kicked their horses into a gallop, heading straight for the enemy left. Dust swirled around them, and the thunder of hooves filled the air. But behind the cavalry the Thespians, led by Ictinus, turned and fled from the field. “Curse you, coward!” screamed Epaminondas.

“We’ll do it without them, General,” said the man alongside him.

“That we will,” Epaminondas agreed, tearing his gaze from the fleeing men and switching it to Parmenion as he galloped at the head of the Theban cavalry.

Parmenion’s mind was strangely calm as he led the four hundred horsemen. Dust rose in a choking cloud, but he was ahead of it, the black stallion moving at ferocious speed toward the enemy. He had no thought of victory or defeat. In the night he had dreamed of Thetis and of Derae, and in his haunted sleep he had seen Leonidas and endured his mocking laughter. All he desired now was to come face to face with the Spartan, to cleave and cut, to crush and kill.

With the enemy left locking shields and preparing to withstand the charge, Parmenion dragged on the left-hand rein, turning the stallion. Behind him the Theban cavalry also swerved, angling now toward the Spartan horsemen waiting at the center of the line. Parmenion dipped the point of his
lance and located his target, an officer in a long red cloak sitting on a gray horse.

Too late the Spartan cavalry realized they were to bear the brunt of the first charge. Their officers yelled orders and tried to countercharge, but the Thebans were upon them, screaming battle cries, lances smashing men from their mounts. Parmenion’s spear glanced from the officer’s breastplate to plunge into his jaw and on through his brain. The man was lifted from his horse’s back, the weight of his body snapping the spear shaft. Parmenion threw the broken weapon aside and drew the sword of Leonidas.

All was milling chaos now, the Spartan cavalry forced back into the ranks of archers, slingers, and javeliners. Unarmored men fell beneath the hooves of panicked mounts, and the enemy center fell back in confusion.

A cavalryman slashed his sabre toward Parmenion’s head. Parmenion swayed away from the cut and plunged his own sword into the man’s neck.

An enormous dust cloud obscured the front of the battle lines now, and the air was thick and choking.

At the rear of the Spartan ranks on the right, Leonidas watched the attacking cavalry swerve and strike the center. At first he was unconcerned, for the javeliners and archers were hardly significant; as always, the battle would be won by the Spartan phalanx. But something stirred deep in his memory, a cold, whispering thought that he could not quite grasp. In some strange way he felt as if he had fought in this battle before, the enemy cavalry striking the center. He swung his gaze to the front and the swirling dust cloud.

And remembered.…

At that moment the battle king, Cleombrotus, saw moving shapes within the dust and realized that the Thebans were advancing on him. He was exultant. He had expected the Boeotians to fortify the ridge and dare him to attack them, but for them to have the temerity to advance on him was a gift he had not anticipated.

“Rear four ranks right spear, right flank!” he bellowed. The warriors, Leonidas among them, moved smoothly to the right, thinning the Spartan line to twelve deep and preparing to encircle the advancing enemy.

In a moment of icy terror Leonidas saw again the sand pit at the home of Xenophon, the massed ranks of the enemy smashing the thinned Spartan line. “No!” he screamed. “Sire!” But his voice was lost as the Theban battle cry went up, the sound like rolling thunder.

Inside the dust cloud Pelopidas and the Sacred Band ran in front of the advancing Thebans, taking up a position at the head of the charge. “Death to the Spartans!” shouted Pelopidas.

“Death! Death! Death!” roared the army, and they began to run.

Eighty shields across and fifty ranks deep, the Thebans smote the Spartan front line like an ax blade against timber. The first two Spartan ranks buckled and fell beneath the stabbing swords, the phalanx sliced open by the weight of the charge.

The Spartans bravely tried to re-form, but no army twelve deep—no matter how courageous—could hope to contain an enemy with fifty concentrated ranks. Unable to lock shields, Spartan warriors were cut down where they stood.

At the head of the charge Pelopidas powered into the Spartan ranks, Callines beside him. A sword lanced toward Pelopidas’ head, but Callines blocked it with his shield, stabbing his own sword deep into the Spartan’s groin. The phalanx moved on, slowing now but still advancing. Pelopidas was stabbing and hacking, oblivious to the many small cuts that bled freely on his arms and legs.

Behind him Epaminondas, at the center of the phalanx and not yet brought into the fighting, peered through the dust, locating the Spartan king, Cleombrotus, who was fighting alongside his bodyguard a little to the right of the main advance.

“Pelopidas!” shouted the Theban general. “To your right! Your right!”

Pelopidas heard him even through his blood lust and glanced around. He saw Cleombrotus and began to fight his way toward the Spartan king. Callines moved alongside him, the two men protecting one another and fighting as a team. Behind them the Sacred Band also altered the line of advance, homing in on the Spartan battle king.

On the right Leonidas forced himself to the front of the two Spartan ranks ordered out to encircle the Thebans. Seeing the enemy closing on Cleombrotus, he ordered the men to close ranks. “The king! The king!” he bellowed. The Spartans surged forward, desperately trying to reach the beleaguered monarch. “Fall back, sire! Fall back!” yelled Leonidas.

Cleombrotus, realizing the danger, could not bring himself to retreat in the face of Thebans. “Stand firm,” he told his bodyguard. “They will break upon us like the sea against stone.”

Parmenion and the cavalry had pushed deep into the enemy center, the lightly armored archers fleeing before them. The Spartan cavalry had been routed. Parmenion swung left to see the Theban battle line slowing as it sought to turn and crush Cleombrotus. His eyes flickered to the Spartan right, where he saw that Leonidas had gathered two ranks to him and was forcing a path to save his king.

“Thebans to me!” shouted Parmenion. There were only fifty riders within hearing distance—the others were chasing down the fleeing archers—but the men galloped to him. “Follow me!” Parmenion cried, kicking his heels to the stallion and charging the Spartan line.

The Spartans had tried to lock shields against the Theban phalanx, but they were more open on their left, and the attacking horsemen cleaved the ranks.

The move surprised the Spartans, who tried to turn and defend themselves. But this only weakened the front of the
line, allowing Pelopidas and the Sacred Band to hammer through.

Cleombrotus cursed. His sword stabbed out, cleaving the teeth of an advancing man and piercing him to the brain. Another Theban, then another, fell to the battle king.

A scream came from beside him, and he twisted in time to see his lover and companion, Hermias, fall, his throat slashed open. A dark-bearded warrior with a death’s-head grin leapt at him. Cleombrotus parried a thrust, then a second. But Pelopidas crashed his shield against the king, forcing him back, then dropped to his knees to ram his blade through Cleombrotus’ groin. Still the king tried to fight, but his lifeblood drained away, and with it his strength. His shield arm dropped, and the Theban’s sword smashed his jaw to shards.

As the king fell, the Spartan center buckled. Leonidas and his men finally forced their way to the front, gathering up the dead king and fighting a rear-guard action back toward the defensive line of their night camp.

At last the battle petered out. Isolated groups of Spartan warriors were surrounded and destroyed, but Leonidas gathered the remnants into a strong defensive position on a nearby ridge. The Spartan allies, seeing the fall of Cleombrotus, fled the field without a fight.

The Thebans gathered around Pelopidas and Epaminondas, hoisting them to their shoulders and carrying them around the battlefield, their cheers echoing to the Spartan lines.

Parmenion, his horse dead, walked slowly over the battlefield, looking down at the twisted corpses. More than a thousand Spartiates had died for the loss of two hundred Thebans, but at that moment those figures meant nothing to him. He was dazed and emotionless. He had seen the battle king fall to Pelopidas, but worse, he had watched the Theban kill Hermias moments before. Parmenion knelt by the body, looking down at the face of a man and seeing the face of the boy who had befriended him.

He remembered the night when they had sat by the statue
of Athena of the Road, when he had learned there would be no victory celebration after winning the games.

“I will make them all pay!” he had promised. And Hermias had touched his arm
.

“Do not hate me too, Savra!”

“Hate you, my friend?” he had answered. “How could I ever hate you? You have been a brother to me, and I will never forget that. Never! Brothers we have been, brothers we shall be, all the days of our lives. I promise you.”

He closed the dead eyes and rose to his feet. The surgeons were coming onto the battlefield now, moving to the wounded Thebans. Most of these men would die, Parmenion knew, for physicians with the skills of Argonas or Dronicus were rare. He gazed around him. There to the left lay Callines, the man who had admitted to being a poor swordsman. Farther away was the body of Norac the smith. Later he would hear of the other dead, like Calepios the orator and Melon the statesman. He looked down at his hands, which were covered in blood, drying now to a dull, scabby brown.

Crows were already circling above the plain.

He recalled the general’s games, the cleanly carved soldiers in the box of sand. No blood there, no stench of open bowels. Just a child’s game fought without pain in the sunshine of another age.

“I will repay them all,” he had promised Hermias.

And he had. But at what price? Hermias was dead, as Derae and now Thetis were dead.

Sparta was finished, her invincibility gone. Now other cities dominated by Sparta would rise against her, and she would fade away, her power a memory. Not immediately, he knew; there would be other Spartan victories. But never again would they rise to rule Greece.

“I am the Death of Nations,” he whispered.

“Or the savior of them,” suggested Epaminondas.

Parmenion turned. “I did not hear you. You won, my friend. You won a famous victory. I hope Thebes proves a better ruler than Sparta.”

“We seek to rule no one,” said Epaminondas.

Parmenion rubbed at his tired eyes. “It will be thrust upon you, General. In order to be safe, you will carry the battle to Sparta and humble her. Then the Athenians and their allies will fear you and will come against you. Rule or die: they are the choices you have.”

“Do not be so glum, Parmenion. This is a new age, when we do not have to repeat the follies of the past. The Spartans will send an ambassador to ask permission to remove their dead; you will receive him.”

Parmenion shook his head. “Listen to me,” said Epaminondas softly. “You have carried your hate for too many years. With this victory you can bury that hate forever. You can be free. Do this for me.”

“As you will,” agreed the Spartan, his mind empty, his emotions drained. All his adult life he had dreamed of this moment, but now it was here, he felt dead inside. Thetis had asked him what he would do once his vengeance was complete. He had no answer then; he could find none now. He gazed around at the silent corpses. Where, he wondered, was the joy of victory? Where was the satisfaction?

Three hours later, with dusk approaching, a Spartan rider cantered into the Theban camp.

Leonidas was led to a tent where Parmenion waited.

“I knew it was your plan,” said Leonidas. “How does it feel to have defeated the army of your homeland?”

“You are here to concede defeat,” Parmenion told him coldly, “and to ask permission to remove your dead. I give you that permission.”

“You do not wish to gloat?” Leonidas asked. “I am here, Parmenion. Mock me if you will. Tell me how you promised this. Tell me how fine it makes you feel.”

“I cannot. And if I could, I would not. You almost held us. With a mere twelve ranks you almost turned the battle. Had Cleombrotus fallen back to link with you, you could have held. There has never been an army so disciplined, or so brave, as that of Sparta. I salute your dead, as I salute the
memory of all that was great in Spartan history.” He poured two goblets of wine, passing one to the stunned Spartan. “A long time ago,” he continued, “your sister wanted to buy you a gift. I would not sell it. But now is the time for it to be returned.” Unbuckling his sword belt he passed the legendary blade to Leonidas, who stared down at it disbelievingly.