The Gates of Athens Page 37

  Themistocles was a hard man, he knew it. He had seen death in many forms; he did not think it could ever make him weep. Even so, he felt his breath catch as he witnessed a ship of his own city rammed and sunk with horrible speed, barely an arrow-shot off his prow. Some galleys rolled right over when they were rammed, showing grey hulls. Others just went under, slipping away.

  The small drama was over quickly enough. The Persian pulled back and rowed clear, while the cries and prayers of Greeks were silenced in a hissing sea. Only a few figures bobbed to the surface as Themistocles passed by. His people, face down and still.

  He felt himself trembling in rage and grief on their behalf. It was not enough to be better than the Persians. The awful tragic truth was that no matter how well the Athenian crews fought, they were still only men. They grew weary and the pace slowed. As the day wore on, crews who had boarded three ships and rammed two more, who had avoided being sent down half a dozen times, would find themselves faced with a fresh Persian galley, rowed hard and recklessly. Heroes were brought down by their own exhaustion.

  Themistocles blessed the name of Xanthippus then. The only response was to call back entire groups of ships, to replace them in the battle line with fresher crews of their own. In open sea, the Persians might have overwhelmed them. In the strait, the captains under Xerxes had the same problem. Too little space to manoeuvre, with so many pressing behind that it meant every galley fought until it was overwhelmed and sunk. It was made worse as sea lanes slowly choked up with broken or burning vessels, with bodies like flotsam, rising and falling with the waves.

  In the late afternoon, Themistocles called back Xanthippus with a group colour flown from the prow. Each captain of that group raised his own until they were all ready to ease clear in good order rather than turn and risk being rammed amidships. They came back as veterans, with blood on the decks, panting and weary, but still proud. They cheered and raised spears to Themistocles as they came to rest.

  The ships under Cimon moved through them and took the brunt of fresh Persian crews. The truth was, Athens was such a key part of the fleet, they had to be called on more than any of the others. They would bring more destruction, but their losses would be much greater.

  Themistocles found his stomach was painful to the touch, the muscles aching from standing tense for so long. The Persians seemed to know their king watched them, that their army fought on the coast to reach the plain beyond. They were terrible in their fierceness. Some of them broke men and oars recklessly to engage, fighting even as their ships sank, with freezing waters rushing in below their feet. A few of those vessels rested almost on the surface of the sea, submerged and yet sitting there like ghosts. Persian warriors waded across wet decks then, until Greek archers picked them off or just rowed past, leaving them behind.

  Cimon was directing his crews well, Themistocles saw. Even as his own trireme moved to ram a lone Persian, he watched Cimon’s ship halt and reverse at good speed, the rowers working blind and praying the lookout was sharp. The triremes were fantastically fast in calm waters, darting like dagger blows. Themistocles showed his teeth as Cimon let the enemy slide on through and then called for ram speed, taking that ship in the middle. It was a death strike, the ram holing it deep and then pulling back.

  Themistocles braced as his own ship thumped into an enemy galley. The blow was not hard or fast enough to shatter the timbers, though he thought he saw cracks in the hull. Instead, enemy soldiers readied themselves to leap. Before his trierarch could order the rowers to back oars, half a dozen men landed on the deck. They were all young soldiers and they rushed at Themistocles, ignoring the threat of hoplites reacting at their backs. He shoved his helmet on and picked up a long spear at his feet. His shield was too far and so he drew his sword and waited for them.

  The man who reached him first was grinning in delight. He did not expect a spear to flicker out between his legs, making him stumble. The Persian’s first blow turned into a flail for balance. His eyes widened as Themistocles chopped the short blade into his neck, then eased back a step to let him fall. The spear was wrenched from his hand by the action, making Themistocles curse. Three more rushed him, but they were cut down from behind with quick, savage blows. Themistocles nodded thanks to his panting hoplites.

  Some of the Persians were still dying as they were heaved over the side. One tried to hold the man who kicked at him and had his throat cut in reply. The rest of their crew watching on the enemy ship howled and jabbed the air in frustration, but the gap was too great – further every instant as the galleys slipped apart. A few of them raised bows and Themistocles ducked for his shield, holding it up. He heard the clatter of shafts on metal as his men did the same, but there was still a cry cut short. He set his mouth in anger. Forty paces separated them by then. He could see where the sea hissed and frothed around a broken point in the enemy hull. The plunge and rise of the sea had lifted the ram, he could see. The broken timbers lay right on the waterline rather than below. Left alone, the Persians could patch it with a piece of sail and a bucket of tar.

  ‘Ram speed!’ he called at the top of his lungs. ‘Ready shields and spears. Hit them again.’

  47

  Leonidas looked out on a landscape where arrows grew thick as hog bristles or stems of lavender. He tossed his shield to one of his helots, waiting to wrestle the shafts out that had pierced the metal skin, leaving it puckered.

  The battle king flexed his hands and looked left and right, at those men in thick red cloaks who made his personal guard. Every one of them was over forty and had fathered at least one son for Sparta, safe and well at home while they defended the king. As importantly, every one of them had earned their place at his side. He had known most of them his entire life, from rituals to drunken brawls, like sons or brothers to him, every one. They were his family. He knew every ailment, scar, strength and weakness in them.

  They were in good spirits, he was pleased to see. The storm of arrows had not troubled them unduly. Each Greek soldier carried some form of wide, round shield, large enough to crouch and shelter beneath. On a broader battlefield, they might have looked for a moment to rush and scatter the force of archers, but on that coast such a move would have taken them away from the narrowest point.

  Leonidas had given and repeated his orders. There would be no counter-attacks, no wild rushes forward, not even if the enemy seemed to break and run for their lives. Under his command, they would hold the pass. The task was simple, with a beginning and an end.

  Leonidas knew there was dismay in the ranks, at least beyond his own Spartiate guard and the perioikoi. He saw it in the faces of the others, as they understood and came to terms with it. The men of Corinth and Thespiae had expected to join the armies of Sparta and Athens, not a tiny force holding a pass against numbers so vast they could not even guess how many stood against them.

  The battle king felt a touch of guilt at that. They did not know he had come to that place to die. He was the sword master of Sparta, descendant of a demigod. He had chosen his own fate, without regrets. Yet the path along the coast was wider than he had known. He needed them to hold it, even at the narrowest point.

  Ahead, the archers of a foreign king had pulled back. The strange weeds of their shafts littered every part of the ground, in fragments and shifting pieces where they had struck rock. Steam rose in wisps in some places, hissing as it touched pools of seawater. The land actually was warm underfoot there.

  The archers had indeed blotted out the sun for a few moments. The Spartans and their allies remained even so, defiant as the storm fell away. Their helots had cheered then, to show they were alive. It had been a good feeling.

  Leonidas watched as the pass ahead filled with marching soldiers. They came with banners and drummer boys, he saw. They wore panelled coats and carried long shields of their own. He noted swords too, ready to stab and lunge. Leonidas nodded. Well disciplined, well equipped. He had faced the same sort a dozen times in his life. He was still standing.


  He had a long spear in his right hand, with a sword and kopis knife on his belt. His helmet was a weapon when he lunged with it, as was the shield his helot brought forward and settled on his left arm. He rolled his neck, feeling bones click and crunch. He was no longer a young man.

  ‘Give thanks to Apollo and Ares for this opportunity,’ Leonidas called over his shoulder. ‘There is no retreat from here. This is where we die.’

  The Persians broke into a run, coming at him in a line sixty or eighty wide, crammed in tight in dozens of ranks behind. It seemed they meant to smash the force of Spartans and perioikoi, to fling them away with a single charge. Leonidas set his feet on the land. His land, under him. He felt his blood thrill as the Spartan front rank locked shields and raised spears. The wall of thorns. Every man of his guard was a master of his weapons, hardened by battle and training. They held that pass like an iron bar laid across it.

  * * *

  Sunset came early for those who stood in the shadow of the mountains by Thermopylae. Xerxes could see great bands of gold still lighting the sea beyond, illuminating ships as they struggled wearily, like fighters clinging to one another rather than fall. It was the end of another day and an unnatural gloom fell across his army as they waited to go through the pass.

  He could not understand why no great cheer was going up, why his regiments weren’t surging forward. Mardonius had sent in Assyrians, then a hazarabam of Medes. Xerxes had heard the sounds of battle begin, the cries of pain and anguish over the clash of metal on metal. The hills on his right hand echoed them back at him. It was a clamour he had known from the cradle and he found it restful. Yet there had been no trumpet pealing victory, no chanting Persian voices raised in his honour.

  He saw bodies floating in the sea. At first, he thought it was some carpet of waterweed or broken oars from the fleet. Then he saw the tinge of blood in the waters like a cloud around them. He rode his horse closer to the edge and saw hundreds of the dead lying like cordwood, head to head, head to feet, face down and face up. There were no red cloaks amongst them, not that he could make out. He shivered as he sat his mount, wondering how many had drifted down and down, lost to sight, to be plucked and bitten by strange creatures on the seabed.

  He called his messenger, trying not to show how desperate he was for news.

  ‘Pass word to Mardonius. Tell him I would hear his report.’

  The young man raced away and Mardonius appeared in short order. The older man looked exhausted, the bags under his eyes seeming to have grown. Xerxes let him dismount and prostrate himself, not yet sure if the man deserved praise or censure.

  ‘Why are we not yet through, general?’ Xerxes asked, his voice carefully gentle.

  Mardonius knew he was in danger and kept his head bowed.

  ‘Majesty, they are like devils. They have killed a great number of our men.’

  ‘I see. And how many of these Spartans have fallen?’ Xerxes replied.

  Mardonius was not a weak man. Though he knew it might cost him his life, he answered firmly, praying the son had at least some part of his father’s strength of will.

  ‘Very few, Majesty, as far as I can tell. They are… unusually skilled. Our men could not break through.’

  Mardonius had gone deep into the pass to watch the Spartans fight. He had come away ashen at what he had seen. Yet they were men, he told himself, not demons, not truly. They would grow weary, they had to.

  ‘The arrows had no effect on them?’ Xerxes was saying. ‘What are they, men of bronze?’ He laughed, but it was a brittle sound and it had fear in it.

  ‘They are disciplined, Majesty. They use shields and spears well. I truly cannot say if they lost men today.’

  ‘Pull the rest back – and interrogate them. Speak to those who faced these Spartans and learn all they know. Tomorrow, we will send in my Immortals. Have the entire baivarabam come to the front and make ready. At dawn, I will send all ten thousand in.’

  Mardonius prostrated himself once more. He was not sure if his own command was in danger, or even his life, but it was the right decision and he did not hesitate. He had never seen anyone fight as well as the Spartan shield line. Mardonius had a vision of the Persian army slowly ground against them, a knife ruined on a spinning stone. The Immortals were the best soldiers of the empire, taken from every regiment and trained together as an elite. Only they could stand against the Spartans.

  Xerxes dismissed his general without praise or comfort. It was already growing dark and at sea the fleets were pulling apart in grumbling truce, seeking safe harbours for the night. As he mounted up and trotted his horse to where the Immortals pitched their tents, Xerxes was not sure if he felt dismay or not. He had brought a vast army to give him the edge in a land he did not know. He had gathered a huge fleet to steal away any advantage they might have had on the deep waters. The losses to that point had not changed those truths. His army would crush the Spartans in the pass, if he had to spend a hundred thousand men to do it. His fleet would break through, if they had to lose two ships for every Greek trireme. An empire had resources enough to smother the Greeks, like crops drowned in a great flood. If Xerxes stood in the end in Athens, he would not care how many had died to put him there.

  The Immortal officers wore white, panelled armour. Mardonius stood with a group of twelve of them, gesturing to the pass. They became aware of the king’s presence and scrutiny in the same moment, dropping to the ground and waiting for his command to rise.

  ‘Up, all of you,’ Xerxes said. He watched how they leapt to their feet, strong and fit and healthy. It raised his spirits to see them so eager for the fight.

  ‘You are called,’ Xerxes said. ‘First in, at dawn.’

  ‘Our lives are yours, Majesty,’ the Immortal general replied.

  Mardonius gave a sharp nod – a promise – as Xerxes rode on. These were not Medes or Egyptians, or any one of the subject nations. They were pure-blooded Persian warriors. Their presence on the field of war would send a ripple of fear through their enemies. The white coats stood out against the darker earth. They would not fail.

  48

  Leonidas roared defiance at the men coming at him. He could feel blood seeping down his side and he had taken any number of blows. His arms felt so heavy he could barely lift them. He had rotated the lines, saving his guard and letting the perioikoi take their turn, until they too began to fail. He’d called the rest forward then, though they lacked the years of Spartan training that made flesh like bone and bones like bronze. He had lost count of how many times he’d rotated the Spartan guard back in to let the others rest, over and over, asking more of them than any of the others.

  The Persians had given them no respite. They had sent in their white-clad Immortals, rank after rank, as if there would never be an end to them. The Spartans had slaughtered them by the hundred, by the thousand. They’d heaved bodies into the sea just to keep the ground clear underfoot. All while their spears broke or were wrenched from their hands.

  They’d drawn swords then and found new strength. The perioikoi had surged forward at Leonidas’ command, men who had lived and trained around Sparta since boyhood, yet never been considered true Spartiates, true men. For the first time in their lives, they had been called to war by the battle king of Sparta himself. When Leonidas congratulated them, some of them had tears in their eyes.

  By noon, there were no spears left whole. The golden shields were cut and cracked, while even the Spartan guard stood panting, with many of them bleeding freely from cuts they could not stop to tend. The Immortals still came on, though the ground was littered with the dead, and gold buckles and brooches lay scattered like stones. Whenever there was a break in the slaughter, Leonidas ordered the helots to drag more bodies out of the way. He had noted how many seemed to have festooned themselves with the wealth of kingdoms.

  Leonidas did not reprimand them, though not one of his Spartiates had stooped for such treasure. They had no gold coins in Sparta, no silver. There were diffe
rent kinds of wealth. That had never been clearer to him than in that pass.

  Twenty-eight of his guard had been killed, dragged down by cloak and stabbing blades. Every one of their killers had been hacked from life by enraged men, but Leonidas felt their loss, both in the line and as king to them. It brought home the reality he had learned at Delphi. He would not walk away from this place, not if Sparta was the cost. His life would end between the sea and the cliffs.

  He knew too that he had won time for the army to take the field, behind him. Leonidas had tried to grant them three days, long enough for the festival of Apollo to come to an end. There was a symmetry to it, he thought, battering one shield aside and killing a yelling man half his age, gashing a throat under a beard as black as night. His own beard came through in patches of white, Leonidas thought ruefully. Age crept up on a man, on a king. It was a strange thought, given that he stood on his last day. His arms seemed to lighten at the thought, so that he moved well, almost in memory of his youth. They could not stand against him then. Those who came within his range fell dead, their blood spooling and curling in seawater.

  It was a good finish, he thought. He would go in the flower of his strength and be spared the weakness of the very old. That was its own blessing in a way. Leonidas thanked Apollo for the honour of dying as he had lived, without compromise or weakness forced on him. Old men grew mellow in their weakness. He had not been made to change and he was grateful.

  As the sun began to dip and vanish behind the crags, Leonidas looked up and felt his stomach sink, recalling the rocks he had jumped from into the sea as a young boy, the sense of space and falling that brought something like nausea. High on the cliffs, he could see men in white, panelled armour trotting like a line of Persian wolves behind a single figure. They had found some goat trail or shepherd’s path to take them around the pass.

  It was the end, he knew with sudden certainty. As soon as they had enough men behind him, they would come from both sides and catch his little force between.