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

Ball Player assumed a stance to urinate. Don't, Alexan-dros nudged him. Or the deer will never use this nest again.

What's that to you?

Piss down the slope, Dienekes commanded.

Odd as it sounds, the feeling within that cozy copse evoked a hearth of home, a haven. One could still smell that deery smell, the gamy scent of their coats. None of the party spoke, yet each, I will wager, was thinking the same thought: how sweet it would be, right now, to lie down here like the deer and close one's eyes. To allow all fear to depart one's limbs. To be, just for a moment, innocent of terror.

It's good hunting country, I observed. Those were boar runs we passed through. I'll bet there are bear up here, and even lion.

Dienekes' glance met Alexandras' with a glint. We'll have ourselves a hunt here. Next fall. What do you say?

The youth's broken face contorted into a grin.

You'll join us, Rooster, Dienekes proposed. We'll take a week and make an event of it. No horses or beaters, just two dogs per man. We'll live off the hunt and come home draped in lionskins like Herakles. We'll even invite our dear friend Polynikes.

Rooster regarded Dienekes as if he had gone mad. Then a wry grin settled into place upon his features.

Then it's settled, my master said. Next fall.

From the succeeding crest the party followed the watercourse down. The torrent was loud and discipline got careless. From out of nowhere arose voices.

Every man froze.

Rooster crouched in the lead; the party was strung out in column, the worst possible lineup to fight from. Are they speaking Persian? Alexandras whispered, straining his ears toward the sound.

Suddenly the voices froze too.

They had heard us.

I could see Suicide, two steps below me, silently stretch behind his shoulder, slipping a pair of darning needles from his quiver. Dienekes, Alexandras and Rooster all clutched eight-footers;

Ball Player readied a throwing axe.

Hey, fuckers. Is that you?

Out of the darkness stepped Hound, the Skirite, with a sword in one hand and a dagger in the other.

By the gods, you scared the shit out of us!

It was Polynikes' party, pausing to gnaw a heel of dry bread.

What is this, a picnic? Dienekes slid down among them. We all clapped our mates in relief.

Polynikes reported that the out route his party had taken, the lower track, had been fast and easy.

They had been in this clearing a quarter of an hour.

Come down here. The Knight motioned to my master. Take a look at this.

The whole party followed. On the opposite bank of the watercourse, ten feet up the slope, stretched a track wide enough for two men to pass abreast. Even in the deep shadow of the gorge, you could see the churned-up earth.

It's the mountain track, the one the Immortals are taking. What else can it be?

Dienekes knelt to feel the earth. It was freshly trodden, the passage no more than two hours old.

You could glimpse on the uphill side the ridges where the marching soles of the Ten Thousand had caved the hill in, and the slides on the downslope from the weight of their passage.

Dienekes chose one of Polynikes' men, Telamonias the boxer, to retrace the track their party had taken and inform Leonidas. The man groaned with disappointment. None of that, Dienekes snapped. You're the fastest who knows the trail. It has to be you.

The boxer sprinted off.

Another of Polynikes' party was absent. Where's Doreion?

Down the track. Taking a snoop.

A moment later the Knight, whose sister Altheia was Polynikes' wife, came loping into view from below. He was gymnos, naked for speed.

What happened to your dog? Polynikes greeted him merrily. The little fellow has shriveled into an acorn.

The Knight grinned and snatched his cloak from where it hung upon a tree. He reported that the track ended about a quarter mile down. There an entire forest had been felled, probably this very evening, immediately after the Persians had learned of the track. The Immortals had no doubt marshaled there, on the freshly cleared ground, before setting out.

What's there now?

Cavalry. Three, maybe four squadrons.

These were Thessalians, the Knight reported. Greeks whose country had gone over to the enemy.

They're snoring like farmers. The fog is soup. Every nose is buried in a cloak, sentries too.

Can we go around?

Doreion nodded. It's all pine. A carpet of soft needles. You can cross on a dead run and not make a sound.

Dienekes indicated the clearing in which the parties now stood. This will be our rally point. We'll assemble here after. You'll guide us back from this point, Doreion, or one of your party, by the way you came, the fast way.

Dienekes had Rooster rebrief both parties on the layout of the enemy camp, in case something happened to him on the way down. The last of the wine was shared out. The skin in its sequence chanced to pass from Polynikes' hand to Rooster's. The helot seized this moment of intimacy before action. Tell me the truth. Would you have killed my son that night with the krypteia?

I'll kill him yet, the runner answered, if you fuck us up tonight.

In that case, the helot said, I look forward with even greater anticipation to your death.

It was time for Ball Player to depart. He had agreed to guide the party this far and no farther. To the surprise of all, the outlaw seemed torn. Look, he offered haltingly, I want to keep on with you, you're good men, I admire you. But I can't in good conscience without being compensated.

This struck the entire party as hilarious.

Your scruples are stern, outlaw, Dienekes observed.

You want compensation? Polynikes clutched his own privates. I'll save this for you.

Ball Player alone did not laugh.

Goddamn you, he muttered, more to himself than to the others. With further grumbled curses, he took his place in the undermanned column. He was staying.

The party would no longer be divided; from here it would advance in teams of five, Ball Player attached to Polynikes' four to make up for Telamonias, but in tandem, each unit supporting the other.

The squads ghosted without incident past the snoozing Thessalians. The presence of this Greek cavalry was extremely good fortune. The way back, if there was one, would inevitably be in disorder; it would be of no small advantage to have a landmark as conspicuous in the dark as an acreswide swath of felled forest. The Thessalians* horses could be stampeded to create confusion, and, if the party had to flee under fire through their camp, its shouts to one another in Greek would not betray it among the Greek-speaking Thes-salians.

Another half hour brought the squads to the edge of a wood directly above the citadel of Trachis.

The channel of the Asopus thundered beneath the city walls. It roared in torrent, deafening, with a sharp cold wind keening down the throat of the gorge.

We could see the enemy camp now. Surely no sight beneath heaven, not Troy under siege, nor the war of the gods and Titans itself, could have equaled in scale that which now spread before our vision.

As far as the eye could see, three miles of plain extending to the sea, five miles across, with plain and more plain extending beyond sight around the shoulders of the Trachinian cliffs, thousands of acres square and all of it incandescent with the mist-magnified fires of the enemy. So much for them packing up. Dienekes motioned Rooster to him. The helot laid it out as he remembered:

Xerxes' horses drink upstream of all, before the rest of the camp. Rivers are sacred to the Persians and must be preserved unprofaned. The whole upper valley is staked out as pasturage.

The Great King's pavilion, so Rooster swore, stood at the head of the plain, within bowshot of the river.

The party dropped down, directly beneath the citadel walls, and entered the current. The Eurotas in Lakedaemon is mountain-fed; even in summer its snowmelt is bone-numb-ingly cold. The Asopus was worse. One's limbs went to ice within moments. It was so cold we feared for our safety; if you had to get out and run, you couldn't feel your own legs and feet.