My right hand. Its severed sinews would never produce the warrior's grasp upon the shank of a spear. But its forefingers could catch and draw the twined gut of a bowstring. My left, though ever denied power to close upon the gripcord of a hopbn shield, could yet hold stable the handpiece of a bow and extend it to full stretch.
The bow.
The bow would preserve me.
The Archer's eyes probed mine, gently, for one final instant. Had I understood? His glance seemed to inquire not so much Will you now serve me? as to confirm the fact, unknown to me heretofore, that I had been in his service all my life.
I felt warmth returning to my midsection and the blood surging like a tide into my legs and feet. I heard my name being called from below and knew it was my cousin, she and Bruxieus in alarm, scouring the hillside for me.
Diomache reached me, scrabbling over the snowy crest and lurching into the grove of pines.
What are you doing up here all alone? I could feel her slapping my cheeks, hard, as if to bring me around from a vision or transport; she was crying, clutching and hugging me, tearing off her cloak to wrap about me. She called back to Bruxieus, who in his blindness was clambering as fast as he could up the slope below.
I'm all right, I heard my voice assuring her. She slapped me again and then, weeping, cursed me for being such a fool and scaring them so to death. It's all right, Dio, I heard my voice repeating. I'm all right.
Chapter Seven
I beg His Majesty's patience with this recounting of the events following the sack of a city of which he has never heard, an obscure polis without fame, spawner of no hero of legend, without link to the greater events of the present war and of the battle which His Majesty's forces fought with the Spartans and their allies at the pass of Thermopylae.
My intent is simply to convey, through the experiences of two children and a slave, some poor measure of the soul terror and devastation which a vanquished population, any population, is forced to endure in the hour of its nation's extinction. For though His Majesty has commanded the sack of empires, yet, if one may speak plainly, he has witnessed the sufferings of their peoples only at a remove, from atop a purple throne or mounted on a caparisoned stallion, protected by the gold-pommeled spears of his royal guard.
Over the following decade more than six score battles, campaigns and wars were fought between and among the cities of Greece. At least forty poleis, including such in-pregnably founded citadels as Knidos, Arethusa, Kolonaia, Amphissa and Metropolis, were sacked in whole or in part. Numberless farms were torched, temples burned, warships sunk, men-at-arms slaughtered, wives and daughters carried off into slavery. No Hellene, however mighty his city, could state with certainty that even one season hence he would still find himself above the earth, with his head still upon his shoulders and his wife and children slumbering in safety by his side. This state of affairs was unexceptional, neither better nor worse than any era in a thousand years, back to Achilles and Hektor, Theseus and Herakles, to the birth of the gods themselves. Business as usual, as the emporoi, the merchants, say.
Each man of Greece knew what defeat in war meant and knew that sooner or later that bitter broth would complete its circuit of the table and settle at last before his own place.
Suddenly, with the rise of His Majesty in Asia, it seemed that hour would be sooner.
Terror of the sack spread throughout all Greece as word began coming, from the lips of too many to be disbelieved, of the scale of His Majesty's mobilization in the East and his intent to put all Hellas to the torch.
So all-pervasive was this dread that it had even been given a name.
Phobos.
The Fear.
Fear of you, Your Majesty. Terror of the wrath of Xerxes son of Darius, Great King of the Eastern Empire, Lord of all men from the rising to the setting sun, and the myriads all Greece knew were on the march beneath his banner to enslave us. Ten years had passed since the sack of my own city, yet the terror of that season lived on, indelible, within me. I was nineteen now.
Events which will in their course be related had parted me from my cousin and from Bruxieus and carried me, as was my wish, to Lakedaemon and there, after a time, into the service of my master, Dienekes of Sparta. In this capacity I was dispatched (myself and a trio of other squires) in attendance upon him and three other Spartiate envoys- Olympieus, Polynikes and Aristodemos-to the island of Rhodes, a possession of His Majesty's empire. It was there that these warriors, and I myself, glimpsed for the first time a fraction of the armored might of Persia.
The ships came first. I had been given the afternoon free and, making use of the time to learn what I could of the island, had attached myself to a company of Rhodian slingers in their practice. I watched as these ebullient fellows hurled with astonishing velocity their lead sling bullets thrice the size of a man's thumb. They could drill these murderous projectiles through half-inch pine planks at a hundred paces and strike a target the size of a man's chest three times out of four. One among them, a youth my own age, was showing me how the slingers carved with their dagger points into the soft lead of their bullets whimsical greetings-Eat this or Love and kisses-when another of the platoon looked up and pointed out to the horizon, toward Egypt.
We saw sails, perhaps a squadron, at least an hour out. The slingers forgot them and continued their drill. What seemed like moments later, the same fellow sang out again, this time with startlement and awe. All drew up and stared. Here came the squadron, triple-bankers with their sails brailed up for speed, already turning the cape and bearing fast upon the breakwater. None had ever seen vessels of such size moving so fast. They must be skimmers, someone said. Racing shells. No full-size ship, and certainly no man-of-war, could slice the water at speeds like that.
But they were warships. Tyrian triremes so tight to the surface that the swells seemed to crest no more than a hand-breadth beneath their thalamites' benches. They were racing each other for sport beneath His Majesty's banner. Training for Greece. For war. For the day their bronzesheathed rams would send the navies of Hellas to the bottom.
That evening Dienekes and the other envoys made their way on foot to the harbor at Lindos. The warships were drawn up upon the strand, within a perimeter manned by Egyptian marines. These recognized the Spartans by their scarlet cloaks and long hair. A wry scene ensued. The captain of the marines motioned the Spartiates forward, calling them forth with a smile from the throng who had assembled to gawk at the vessels and taking them through a full inspecting admiral's tour.
The men speculated, through an interpreter, about how soon they would be at war with each other, and whether fate would bring them again face-to-face across the line of slaughter.
The Egyptian marines were the tallest men I had ever seen and burned nearly black by the sun of their desert land. They were under arms, in doeskin boots, with bronze fish-scale cuirasses and ostrich-plume helmets detailed with gold. Their weapons were the pike and scimitar. They were in high spirits, these marines, comparing the muscles of their buttocks and thighs with those of the Spartans, while each laughed in his tongue unintelligible to the other.
Pleased to meet you, you hyena-jawed bastards. Dienekes grinned at the captain, speaking in Doric and clapping the fellow warmly upon the shoulder. I'm looking forward to carving your balls and sending them home in a basket. The Egyptian laughed uncomprehending and replied, beaming, with some foreign-tongued insult no doubt equally menacing and obscene. Dienekes asked the captain's name, which the man replied was Ptammitechus. The Spartan tongue was defeated by this and settled upon 'Tommie, which seemed to please the officer just as well. He was asked how many more warships like these the Great King numbered in his navy. Sixty came the translated response.