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

Each soldier's thoughts turned now toward his family, to those at home whom his heart loved.

Shivering, exhausted men scribbled letters to wives and children, mothers and fathers, many of these missives little more than scratches upon cloth or leather, fragments of ceramic or wood.

The letters were wills and testaments, final words of farewell. I saw the dispatch pouch of one runner preparing to depart; it was a jumble of paper rolls, wax tablets, potshards, even felt scraps torn from helmet undercaps. Many of the warriors simply sent amulets which their loved ones would recognize, a charm that had pended from the chassis of a shield, a good-luck coin drilled through for a neckband. Some of these bore salutations-Beloved Amaris… Delia from Thea-gones, love. Others bore no name at all. Perhaps the runners of each city knew the addressees personally and could take it upon themselves to ensure delivery. If not, the contents of the pouch would be displayed in the public square or the agora, perhaps set out before the temple of the city's Protectress. There the anxious families would congregate in hope and trepidation, awaiting their turn to pore through the precious cargo, desperate for any message, wordless or otherwise, from those whom they loved and feared to behold again only in death.

Two messengers came in from the allied fleet, from the Athenian corvette assigned as courier between the navy below and the army up top. The allies had engaged the Persian fleet this day, inconclusively, but without buckling. Our ships must hold the straits or Xerxes could land his army in the defenders' rear and cut them off; the troops must hold the pass or the Persian could advance by land to the narrows of the Euripus and trap the fleet. So far, neither had cracked.

Polynikes came and sat for a few minutes beside the fires around which the remains of our platoon had gathered. He had located a renowned gymnastes, an athletic trainer named Milon, whom he knew from the Games at Olympia. This fellow had wrapped Polynikes' hamstrings and given him a pharmakon to kill the pain.

Have you had enough of glory, Kallistos? Dienekes inquired of the Knight. Polynikes answered only with a look of surpassing grim-ness. He seemed chastened, out of himself for once.

Sit down, my master said, indicating a dry space beside him.

Polynikes settled gratefully. Around the circle the platoon slumbered like dead men, heads pillowed upon each other and their yet-gore-encrusted shields. Directly across from Polynikes, Alexandras stared with awful blankness into the fire. His jaw had been broken; the entire right side of his face glistened purple; the bone itself was cinched shut with a leather strap.

Let's have a look at you. Polynikes craned forward. He located among the trainer's kit a waxed wad of euphorbia and amber called a boxer's lunch, the kind pugilists employ between matches to immobilize broken bones and teeth. This Polynikes kneaded warm until it became pliable. He turned to the trainer. You better do this, Milon. Polynikes took Alexandras' right hand in his own, for the pain. Hang on. Squeeze till you break my fingers.

The trainer spit from his own mouth into Alexandras' a purge of uncut wine to cleanse the clotted blood, then with his fingers extracted a grotesque gob of spittle, mucus and phlegm. I held Alexandras' head; the youth's fist clamped Polynikes'. Dienekes watched as the trainer inserted the sticky amber wad between Alexandras' jaws, then gently clamped the shattered bone down tight upon it. Count slowly, he instructed the patient. When you hit fifty, you won't be able to prise that jaw apart with a crowbar.

Alexandras released the Knight's hand. Polynikes regarded him with sorrow.

Forgive me, Alexandros.

For what?

For breaking your nose.

Alexandros laughed, his broken jaw making him grimace.

It's your best feature now.

Alexandros winced again. I'm sorry about your father, Polynikes said. And Ariston.

He rose to move on to the next fire, glancing once to my master, then returning his gaze to Alexandros.

There is something I must tell you. When Leonidas selected you for the Three Hundred, I went to him in private and argued strenuously against your inclusion. I thought you would not fight.

I know, Alexandros' voice ground through his cinched jaw.

Polynikes studied him a long moment.

I was wrong, he said.

He moved on.

Another round of orders came, assigning parties to retrieve corpses from no-man's-land. Suicide's name was among those detailed. Both his shot shoulders had seized up; Alexandros insisted on taking his place.

By now the king will know about the deaths of my father and Ariston. He addressed Dienekes, who as his platoon commander could forbid him to participate in the retrieval detail. Leonidas will try to spare me for my family's sake; he'll send me home with some errand or dispatch. I don't wish to disrespect him by refusing.

I had never beheld such an expression of balefulness as that which now framed itself upon my master's face. He gestured to a flat of sodden earth beside him in the firelight.

I've been watching these little myrmidons.

There in the dirt, a war of the ants was raging.

Look at these champions. Dienekes indicated the massed battalions of insects grappling with impossible valor atop a pile of their own fellows' fallen forms, battling over the desiccated corpse of a beetle.

This one here, this would be Achilles. And there. That must be Hektor. Our bravery is nothing alongside these heroes'. See? They even drag their comrades' bodies from the field, as we do.

His voice was dense with disgust and stinking with irony. Do you think the gods look down on us as we do upon these insects? Do the immortals mourn our deaths as keenly as we feel the loss of these?

Get some sleep, Dienekes, Alexandros said gently.

Yes, that's what I need. My beauty rest.

He lifted his remaining eye toward Alexandros. Out beyond the redoubts of the Wall, the second watch of sentries was receiving their orders, preparatory to relieving the first. Your father was my mentor, Alexandros. I bore the chalice the night you were born. I remember Olympieus presenting your infant form to the elders, for the 'ten, ten and one' test, to see if you were deemed healthy enough to be allowed to live. The magistrate bathed you in wine and you came up squawling, with your infant's voice strong and your little fists clenched and waving. 'Hand the boy to Dienekes,' your fa-ther instructed Paraleia. 'My son will be your protege,' Olympieus told me. 'You will teach him, as I have taught you.'

Dienekes' right hand plunged the blade of his xiphos into the dirt, annihilating the Iliad of the ants. Now sleep, all of you! he barked to the men yet surviving of his platoon and, himself rising, despite all protests that he, too, embrace the boon of slumber, strode off alone toward Leonidas' command post, where the king and the other commanders yet stood to their posts, awake and planning the morrow's action.

I saw Dienekes' hip give way beneath him as he moved; not the bad leg, but the sound. He was concealing from his men's sight yet another wound-from the cast of his gait, deep and crippling.

I rose at once and hastened to his aid.

That spring called the Skyllian, sacred to Demeter and Persephone, welled from the base of the wall of Kal-lidromos just to the rear of Leonidas' command post. Upon its stone-founded approach my master drew up, and I hurrying in his wake overhauled him. No curses or commands to withdraw rebuffed me. I draped his arm about my neck and took his weight upon my shoulder. I'll get water, I said.

An agitated knot of warriors had clustered about the spring; Megistias the seer was there.

Something was amiss. I pressed closer. This spring, renowned for its alternating flows of cold and hot, had gushed since the allies' arrival with naught but sweet cold water, a boon from the goddesses to the warriors' thirst. Now suddenly the fount had gone hot and stinking. A steaming sulphurous brew spewed forth from the underworld like a river of hell. The men trembled before this prodigy. Prayers to Demeter and the Kore were being sung. I begged a half-helmetful of water from the Knight Doreion's skin and returned to my master, steeling myself to mention nothing.