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

Nobody seemed to give a damn. The great bulk of the army, it was clear, were grudging draftees whose nations had been conscripted into service against their will. These now in the dank and gale-torn dawn sought only to warm their own backsides, fill their bellies and get through the day's fighting with their heads still attached.

The raiding party even received unwitting aid for Alex-andros from a squad of Trachinian cavalrymen, struggling to ignite a fire for their breakfast. These took us for Thebans, the faction of that nation who had gone over to the Persian, whose turn it was that night to provide innerperimeter security. The cavalrymen provided us with light, water and bandages while Suicide, with the hands of experience surer than any battlefield surgeon's, secured the hemorrhaging artery with a copper dog bite. Already he, Alexandros, was deep in shock.

Am I dying? he asked Dienekes in that sad detached tone so like a child's, the voice of one who seems to stand already at his own shoulder.

You'll die when I say you can, Dienekes answered gently.

The blood was coming in surges from Alexandras' severed wrist despite the arterial clamp, sheeting from the hacked-off veins and the hundred vessels and capillaries within the pulpy tissue. With the flat of a xiphos gray-hot from the fire, Suicide cauterized and bound the stump, lashing a tourniquet about the pinion point beneath the biceps. What none was aware of in the dark and the confusion, not even Alexandros himself, was the puncture wound of a lance-point beneath his second rib and the blood pooling internally at the base of his lungs.

Dienekes himself had been wounded in the leg, his bad leg with the shattered ankle, and had lost his own share of blood. He no longer had the strength to carry Alexandros. Polynikes took over, slinging the yet-conscious warrior over his right shoulder, loosening the gripcord of Alexandras' shield to hang it as protection across his back.

Suicide collapsed halfway up the slope before the citadel. He had been shot in the groin, sometime back in the pavilion, and didn't even know it. I took him; Rooster carried Lachides' body. Dienekes' leg was coming unstrung; he needed bearing himself. In the starlight I could see the look of despair in his eyes.

We all felt the dishonor of leaving Doreion's body and Hound's, and even the outlaw's, among the foe. The shame drove the party like a lash, impelling each exhaustion-shattered limb one pace more up the brutal, steepening slope.

We were past the citadel now, skirting the felled wood where the Thessalian cavalry were picketed. These were all awake now and armed, moving out for the day's battle. A few minutes later we reached the grove where earlier we had startled the slumbering deer.

A Doric voice hailed us. It was Telamonias the boxer, the man of our party whom Dienekes had dispatched back to Leonidas with word of the mountain track and the Ten Thousand. He had returned with help. Three Spartan squires and half a dozen Thespians. Our party dropped in exhaustion. We've roped the trail back, Telamonias informed Dienekes. The climbing's not bad.

What about the Persian Immortals? The Ten Thousand.

No sign when we left. But Leonidas is withdrawing the allies. They're all pulling out, everyone but the Spartans.

Polynikes set Alexandras gently down upon the matted grass within the grove. You could still smell the deer. I saw Dienekes feel for Alexandras' breath, then flatten his ear, listening, to the youth's chest. Shut up! he barked at the party. Shut the fuck up!

Dienekes pressed his ear tighter to the flat of Alexandras' sternum. Could he distinguish the sound of his own heart, hammering now in his chest, from that beat which he sought so desperately within the breast of his protege? Long moments passed. At last Dienekes straightened and sat up, his back seeming to bear the weight of every wound and every death across all his years.

He lifted the young man's head, tenderly, with a hand beneath the back of his neck. A cry of such grief as I had never heard tore from my master's breast. His back heaved; his shoulders shuddered. He lifted Alexandras' bloodless form into his embrace and held it, the young man's arms hanging limp as a doll's. Polynikes knelt at my master's side, draped a cloak about his shoulders and held him as he sobbed.

Never in battle or elsewhere had I, nor any of the men there present beneath the oaks, beheld Dienekes loose the reins of self-command with which he maintained so steadfast a hold upon his heart. You could see him summon now every reserve of will to draw himself back to the rigor of a Spartan and an officer. With an expulsion of breath that was not a. sigh but something deeper, like the whistle of death the dai-man makes escaping within the avenue of the throat, he released Alexandras' life-fled form and settled it gently upon the scarlet cloak spread beneath it on the earth. With his right hand he clasped that of the youth who had been his charge and protege since the mom of his birth. You forgot about our hunt, Alexandras. Eos, pallid dawn, bore now her light to the barren heavens without the thicket. Game trails and deer-trodden traces could be discerned. The eye began to make out the wild, torrent-cut slopes so like those of Therai on Taygetos, the oak groves and shaded runs that, it was certain, teemed with deer and boar and even, perhaps, a lion.

We would have had such a grand hunt here next fall.

THIRTT-fOUR The preceding Pages were the last delivered to His Majesty prior to the burning of Athens.

The Army of the Empire stood at that time, two hours prior to sunset, some six weeks after the victory at Thermopylae, drawn up on line within the western walls of the city of Athena. An incendiary brigade of 120,000 men there dressed at a double-arms interval and advanced across the capital, putting all temples and shrines, magistracies and public buildings, gymnasia, houses, factories, schools and warehouses to the torch.

At that time the man Xeones, who had hitherto been recover' ing steadily from his wounds sustained at the battle for the Hot Gates, suffered a reverse. Clearly the witnessing of the immolation of Athens had distressed the man profoundly. In fever he inquired repeatedly after the fate of the seaport Phaleron wherein, he had told us, la} the temple of Persephone of the Veil, that sanctuary in which his cousin, the girl Diomache, had taken refuge. None could provide intelligence of the fate of this precinct. The captive began to fail further; the Royal Surgeon was summoned. It was determined that several punctures of the thoracic organs had reopened; internal Weeding had become severe.

At this point His Majesty stood unavailable, being on station with the fleet, which was drawing up in preparation for imminent engagement with the navy of the Hellenes, expected to commence with the dawn. The morrow's fight, it was anticipated eagerly by His Majesty's admirals, would eliminate all resistance of the enemy at sea and leave the unconquered remainder of Greece, Sparta and the Peloponnese, helpless before the final assault of His Majesty's sea and land forces.

I, His Majesty's historian, received at this hour orders summoning me to establish a secretaries' station to observe the sea battle at His Majesty's side and note, as they occurred, all actions of the Empire's officers deserving of valorous commendation. I was able, however, before repairing to this post, to remain at the Greek's side for most of the evening. The night grew more apocalyptic with each hour. The smoke of the burning city rose thick and sulphurous across the plain; the flames from the Acropolis and the merchant and residential quarters lit the sky bright as noon. In addition, a violent quake had struck the coast, toppling numerous structures and even portions of the city malls. The atmosphere bordered upon the primordial, as if heaven and earth, as well as men, had harnessed themselves to the engines of war.