Steven Pressfield - Gates of Fire - An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae

We learned that evening, from Hellenic deserters who had fled in the confusion, that the foe's rearmost ranks, thirty and forty back from the front, had been pressed rearward so resistlessly by the collapse of the men up front that they began tumbling off the Trachinian track into the sea.

Pande-monium had apparently-reigned along a section several hundred yards long, beyond the Narrows, where the trail ran flush against the mountain wall, with the gulf yawning eighty feet below. Over this brink, the deserters reported, hapless lancers and archers had toppled by the score, clinging to the men before them and pulling these down with them to their deaths. His Majesty, we heard, was forced to witness this, as his vantage lay almost directly above the site.

This was the second moment, so the observers reported, when His Majesty sprung to his feet in dread for the fate of his warriors.

The ground immediately to the rear of the Spartan ad' vance, as expected, was littered with the trampled forms of the enemy dead and wounded. But there was a new wrinkle. The Medes had been overrun with such speed and force that numbers of them, far from inconsiderable, had survived intact. These now rose and attempted to rally, only to find themselves assaulted almost at once by the massed ranks of the allied reserves who were already advancing in formation to reinforce and relieve the Spartans. A second slaughter now ensued, as the Tegeates and Opountian Lokrians fell upon this yet-unreaped harvest. Tegea lies immediately adjacent to the territory of Lakedaemon. For centuries the Spartans and Tegeates had battled over the border plains before, in the previous three generations, becoming fast allies and comrades. Of all the Peloponnesians save the Spartans, the warriors of Tegea are the fiercest and most skilled. As for the Lokrians of Opus, this was their country they were fighting for; their homes and temples, fields and sanctuaries, lay within an hour's march of the Hot Gates. Quarter, they knew, stood not within the invader's lexicon; neither would it be found in theirs.

I was dragging a wounded Knight, Polynikes' friend Doreion, to the safety of the field's shoulder when my foot slipped in an ankle-deep stream. Twice I tried to regain balance and twice fell. I was cursing the earth. What perverse spring had suddenly burst forth from the mountainside when none had shown itself in this place before? I looked down. A river of blood covered both feet, draining across a gouge in the dirt like the gutter of an abattoir.

The Medes had cracked. The Tegeates and Opountian Lokrians surged in reinforcement through the ranks of the spent Spartans, pressing the assault upon the reeling enemy. It was the allies' turn now. Put the steel to 'em, boys! one among the Spartans cried as the wave of allied ranks advanced ten deep from the rear and both flanks and closed into a massed phalanx before the warriors of Sparta, who at last drew up, limbs quaking with fatigue, and collapsed against one another and upon the earth.

At last I found my master. He was on one knee, shattered with exhaustion, clinging with both fists to his shivered blade-bereft spear which was driven butt-spike-first into the earth and from which he hung like a broken marionette upon a stick. The weight of his helmet bore his head groundward; he possessed strength neither to lift it nor to pull it off. Alex-andros collapsed beside him, on all fours with the crown of his helmet, crest-first, mashed with exhaustion into the dirt. His rib cage heaved like a hound's, while spittle, phlegm and blood dripped from the bronze of his cheekpieces in a frothing lather.

Here came the Tegeates and Lokrians, surging past us.

There they went, driving the enemy before them.

For the first interval in what seemed an eternity, the dread of imminent extinction lifted. The Lakedaemonians dropped to the earth where they stood, on knees first, then knees and elbows, then simply sprawling, on sides and on backs, collapsing against one another, sucking breath in gasping labored need. Eyes stared vacantly, as if blind. None could summon strength to speak.

Weapons drooped of their own weight, in fists so cramped that the will could not compel the muscles to release their frozen grasp. Shields toppled to earth, bowl-down and defamed; exhausted men collapsed into them face-first and could not find strength even to turn their faces to the side to breathe.

A fistful of teeth spit from Alexandros' mouth. When he recovered strength sufficient to prise his helmet off, his long hair came out at the roots in wads, a tangled mass of salt sweat and matted blood. His eyes stared, blank as stones. He collapsed like a child, burying his face in my master's lap, weeping the dry tears of those whose shattered substance has no more fluid to spend.

Suicide came up, shot through both shoulders and oblivious with elation. He stood above the collapsed ranks of men, fearless, peering out to where the allies had now closed with the last of the Medes and were hacking them to pieces with such a grisly din that it seemed the slaughter was taking place ten paces away instead of a hundred.

I could see my master's eyes, pools of black behind the hooded eye-slits of his helmet. His hand gestured feebly to the empty spear sheath across my back. What happened to my spares? his throat croaked hoarsely.

I gave them away.

A moment passed while he waited for breath, To our own men, I hope.

I helped him off with his helmet. It seemed to take minutes, so swollen with sweat and blood was his felt undercap and the tangled clotted mass of his hair. The water bearers had arrived. None among the warriors possessed the strength even to cup his hands, so the liquid was simply splashed upon rags and blouses which the men pressed to their lips and sucked. Dienekes swabbed the tangled hair off his face. His left eye was gone. Sliced through, leaving a ghoulish socket of tissue and blood. I know was all he said.

Aristomenes and Bias and others of the platoon, Black Leon and Leon Donkeydick, now surfaced into view, gasping upon the earth, their arms and legs sliced and lacerated with innumerable slashes, glistening with mud and blood. They and other scrambled men from other scrambled units lay heaped upon one another like a frieze on a temple wall.

I knelt now at my master's side, pressing the water rag as a compress into the hollow where his eye had been. The fabric welled with fluid like a sponge.

Out front, where the enemy were falling back in wild disorder, the victors of the moment could see Polynikes, on his feet, alone, with his arms raised toward the fleeing foe. He wrenched his helmet from his skull, dripping blood and sweat, and flung it in triumph upon the earth.

Not today, you sons of whores! he bellowed at the foe in flight. Not today!

I cannot state with certainty how many times on that first day each allied contingent took its turn upon the triangle bounded by the Narrows and the mountain face, the sea cliffs and the Phokian Wall. I can declare with conviction only that my master went through four shields, two whose oak underchassis were shattered by repeated blows, one whose bronze plexus was staved in and a fourth whose gripcord and forearm sheath were ripped right out of their sockets. Replacements were not hard to find. One had only to stoop, so many were the discards littered upon the field, with their owners dead and dying beside them.

Of the sixteen in my master's enomotia were slain on that first day Lampitos, Soobiades, Telemon, Sthlenelaides, Aris-ton and grievously wounded Nikandros, Myron, Charillon and Bias.

Ariston fell in the fourth and final siege, that against His Majesty's Immortals. Ariston was that youth of twenty years, one of Polynikes' broken noses, whose sister Agathe had been given as a bride to Alexandras. That made them brothers-in-law.