Tyrant (52 page)

The men stared at him in astonishment, not knowing what to think. Some yelled out unreasoning, incoherent phrases, others fell to their knees, still others burst into tears.

‘Throw down your arms and follow me,’ said Leptines. ‘No one will harm you. If anyone attacks you, I will order my own troops to defend you.’

Upon hearing those words, the warriors on the hillside threw their swords and shields to the ground one after another and, beginning with the oldest, set off after Leptines, passing between the files of armed barbarians still lusting for blood.

They advanced in silence, staring off into a void, until they reached the beach, where they collapsed on to the sand.

The Lucanian chieftain had them counted one by one. He then boarded the ship and counted those survivors as well, and added up the sums.

Leptines paid over one hundred and seventy talents in silver coins without batting an eye, then personally negotiated a peace settlement between the barbarian tribal chieftains and the most highly ranked surviving officers representing the city of Thurii. He ensured the Greeks’ right to gather the dead and burn them on pyres.

At dusk he reboarded the
Boubaris
and ordered them to point the bow in a southward direction, towards Messana, where Dionysius awaited him, and, perhaps, the most difficult encounter of his life.

Dionysius knew everything. He received his brother at his headquarters in Messana, his back turned to him.

‘I know what you’re thinking . . .’ began Leptines, ‘but you should have been there; you didn’t see the carnage, those heaps of cadavers mangled and hacked to pieces, the blood staining the land and the sea . . .’

‘I’ve never seen massacres?’ roared Dionysius, turning all at once. ‘I’ve seen nothing but massacres all my life! And so have you, by Zeus! You can’t tell me this is the first time you’ve seen blood.’

‘But they were Greeks, damn it! Greeks slaughtered by barbarians who were doing it for us! You had spoken of an agreement with the Lucanians, of strategic support, skirmishing, you never said you’d give them free reign in exterminating an entire city!’

‘That’s enough!’ shouted Dionysius, even louder. ‘Enough, I say! You have committed a serious act of rebellion. You signed a peace settlement which goes against my political design and against my military strategy. You have dissipated an enormous sum of money that was to serve for operations of war. Do you realize what this means? High treason, insubordination, collusion with the enemy on the field of battle!’

Leptines dropped his head, crushed by the harsh reaction of his brother as though he hadn’t expected it. When he raised his eyes and saw the bloodshot eyes before him, the face purple with rage, the veins in his neck swelling as he yelled out still more accusations and insults, he felt that he had a stranger in front of him, a cruel, inhuman being.

He waited until his brother had finished and, as he was still panting with the rage of his unchecked ire, Leptines replied: ‘I know, and I am ready to pay the consequences. But there’s one thing I must tell you first: when I saw all that horror, I suddenly realized what a Greek city is; I had nearly forgotten. I’m not talking about Syracuse or Selinus or Catane, I’m not talking about friends or enemies. I’m talking about any city whose people descend from a fistful of wretches forced years ago to cross the sea in search of a little fortune. They arrived here with nothing more than their lives and their hopes. Not to build empires; all they desired was the semblance of their original homeland: a little spot with a harbour for trade, a hill for their gods, fields for wheat and for olives. For every one of the cities that found a future, many others were never born. For every group that managed to find a place to land, many more finished up on the bottom of the sea, in the jaws of fish. It’s true, we’ve fought each other many times in useless wars over stupid rivalries, but I will never again permit savages to annihilate a Greek city through any fault of my own. I did what I did because I believed I was right.’

Dionysius turned his back to him again and said: ‘As of this moment, you are dismissed from command of the fleet and are under arrest. You will be taken to Syracuse and held under custody in your quarters at the Ortygia barracks, pending my definitive decision. And now free me of your presence. I never want to see you again.’

Leptines left without saying a word. As soon as he crossed the threshold he found two guards who took him into custody and escorted him directly to the port.

He asked for a last look at the
Boubaris
and his wish was allowed. He left her, passing a callused hand over the shiny railing of the stem from which he had led so many battles; a final caress for a friend.

Those who were close to him could see the tears in his eyes.

Dionysius made Iolaus commander of the fleet and proceeded with operations as if nothing had happened. He had mustered an impressive army: twenty thousand foot soldiers, three thousand five hundred horses and fifty brand new warships, which were added to the others already at anchor in the port of Messana. He set sail as soon as the wind was favourable and landed his troops on the Ionian coast of Italy, a little north of Rhegium. He began to march north.

In the meantime, the Italian League had united all her federal forces and put them under the command of Heloris, the old aristocrat who had once been Dionysius’s adoptive father and was now his most relentless adversary. They marched for five consecutive days until they reached the banks of a little river called the Eleporus, which flowed between bare, sun-scorched hills. The army stopped here, but Heloris decided to push forward with his advance guard, made up mostly of Knights anxious to come into contact with the enemy and perhaps to succeed at some surprise attack. In doing so, they distanced themselves nearly two stadia from the bulk of the League forces.

Dionysius’s native scouts had already been posted everywhere, on foot and horseback, hidden amidst the brushwood and the groves of pine and holm oak, so that the command was immediately informed of the situation.

Dionysius did not wait an instant, and personally guided the attack with selected troops in a series of rapid waves: first the archers, then the assault troops and last, the heavy line infantry. Heloris and his men were overrun and slain before their requests for help even got back to the army that was camped on the other side of the river.

The commanders of the various divisions of the federal forces decide to engage in battle nonetheless, but they were attacking without their generals and were demoralized by the loss of their vanguard contingent, and they were soon overwhelmed. A good number of them, about half of the army, managed to withdraw in closed ranks and reach the top of a hill overlooking the narrow Eleporus river.

Dionysius surrounded the hill, preventing any access to the river. He would not need to do anything but wait: the baking sun and the absolute lack of water would do the rest. Iolaus landed before dusk, had a horse brought and reached the ground army command before the sun set behind the mountains. He beheld the battlefield strewn with dead bodies and the arid hill on which the survivors of the Italian League had dug themselves in. He felt as if time had stopped. What he found before him was the same scene that he had already seen at Leptines’s side just a few days before at Laos.

Dionysius noticed how shaken he was by the sight and said: ‘You seem upset. It’s certainly not the first time you’ve seen a battlefield.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ agreed Iolaus. ‘It’s that I’ve already seen this very scene.’

‘I know,’ replied Dionysius.

‘I imagine you must have already made your decision.’

‘That’s right.’

One of the guards entered just then. ‘
Hegemon
,’ he said, ‘the Italians want to negotiate. They are outside.’

‘Have them come in.’

Four Crotonian officers entered the tent and approached Dionysius, who received them on his feet, a sign that their meeting would be short.

‘Speak,’ he said.

The oldest of them, a man of about sixty with a deep scar on his face, began to speak. ‘We are here to negotiate an agreement. There are ten thousand of us. We are well armed and we stand in an advantageous position. We can still . . .’

Dionysius raised his hand to interrupt. ‘My point of view,’ he said, ‘is very simple. You have no way off this dry, barren hill and as soon as the sun rises, the heat will become unbearable. You have neither food nor water. And so it doesn’t seem to me that you have a choice. All I can accept from you is an unconditional surrender.’

‘Is that your last word?’ asked the officer.

‘It is,’ replied Dionysius.

The officer nodded solemnly then gestured to his comrades and left the tent.

Iolaus bowed his head in silence.

‘Go to sleep,’ said Dionysius. ‘It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.’

The sun rose over a desolate landscape, illuminating the land all around the Eleporus, still cluttered with corpses. Swarms of green flies buzzed over the death-stiffened bodies, and the monotonous song of the crickets had already given way to the harsh screeching of the cicadas.

There was not a breath of wind and the rocks on the river bed were soon red hot, making the air quiver and creating the illusion of shiny pools of water where there was naught but sand and stones. There was not a single tree to cast a bit of shade on top of the hill, not a shelter where one could seek a little relief from the merciless blaze of the sun.

The shrieks of crows could be heard in the midday heat; they had come to feast on that field of death. A little further over, big black-and-white-winged vultures with long featherless necks were swooping down from the tree branches.