He smiled. An odd, sad sort of smile.
So now, Xeo, you know the secrets of my heart. And how I came to be the handsome fellow you see before you. I laughed, as my master had wanted. All merriment, however, had fled his features.
And now I am tired, he said, shifting upon the earth. If you will excuse me, it's time to deflower the straw maiden, as they say.
And with that he curled upon his reed groundbed and settled at once into sleep.
Book Two. Alexandros
Chapter Eight
The preceding interviews were transcribed over the course of I several evenings as His Majesty's forces continued their still-unopposed advance into Hellas. The defenders at Thermopylae having been vanquished, the Hellenic fleet suffering further severe losses of ships and men at the naval battle fought simultaneously opposite Artemisium, all Greek and allied units, army and navy, now fled the field. The Hellenic land forces retreated south toward the Isthmus of Corinth, across which they and the armies now massing from the other Greek cities, including the forces of Sparta under a full call-up, were constructing a wall to defend the Pelo-ponnese. The sea elements withdrew around Euboea and Cape Sounion to unite with the main body of the Hellenic fleet at Athens and Salamis in the Gulf of Saronika.
His Majesty's army put all Phokis to the torch. Imperial troops burned to the ground the cities of Drymus, Charada, Er-ochus, Tethronium, Amphikaea, Neon, Pedies, Trites, Elateia, Hylampolis and Parapotamii. All temples and sanctuaries of the Hellenic goo's, including that of Apollo at Abae, were razed and their treasuries looted.
As for His Majesty Himself, the Royal Person's time now became consumed, nearly twenty hours a day, with urgent matters military and diplomatic. These demands notwithstanding, yet did His Majesty's desire remain undiminished to hear the continuation of the captive Xeones' tale. He ordered the interviews to proceed in His absence, their verbatim record to be transcribed for His Majesty's perusal at such hours as He found free.
The Greek responded vigorously to this order. The sight of his native Hellas being reduced by the overmastering numbers of the imperial forces caused the man severe distress and seemed to fire his will to commit to record as much of his tale as he could, as expeditiously as possible.
Dispatches relating the overrunning of the Temple of the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi seemed only to increase the prisoner's grief. Privately he stated his concern thai His Majesty was growing impatient with the tale of his own and other individuals' personal histories and becoming anxious to move on to the more apposite topics of Spartan tactics, training and military philosophy. The Greek begged His Majesty's patience, stating that the tale seemed to be telling itself at the god's direction and that he, its narrator, could only follow where it led.
We began again, His Majesty absent, on the evening of the ninth day of Tashritu, in the tent of Orontes, captain of the Immortals. is Majesty has requested that I tecount some of the training practices of the Spartans, particularly those relating to the youth and their rearing under the Lykurgan warrior code. A specific incident may be illustrative, not only to impart certain details but to convey also the flavor of the thing.
This event was in nowise atypical. I report it both for its informative value and because it involved several of the men whose heroism His Majesty witnessed with his own eyes during the struggle at the Hot Gates.
This incident took place some six years prior to the battle at Thermopylae. I was fourteen at the time and not yet employed by my master as his battle squire; in fact I had at that time barely dwelt in Lakedaemon two years. I was serving as a parastates pais, a sparring partner, to a Spartiate youth of my own age named Alexandras. This individual I have mentioned once or twice in other contexts. He was the son of the polemarch, or war leader, Olympieus, and at that time, aged fourteen, the protege of Dienekes.
Alexandros was a scion of one of the noblest families of Sparta; his line descended on the Eurypontid side directly from Herakles. He was, however, not constitutionally suited to the role of warrior. In a gentler world Alexandros might have been a poet or musician. He was easily the most accomplished flute player of his age-class, though he barely touched the instrument to practice. His gifts as a singer were even more exceptional, both as a boy alto and later as a man when his voice stabilized into a pure tenor.
It chanced, unless the hand of a god was at work in it, that he and I when we were thirteen were flogged simultaneously, for separate offenses, on different sides of the same training field. His transgression related to some breach within his agoge boua, his training platoon; mine was for improperly shaving the throat of a sacrificial goat.
In our separate whippings, Alexandros fell before I did. I mention this not as cause for pride; it was simply that I had taken more beatings. I was more accustomed to it. The contrast in our deportment, unfortunately for Alexandros, was perceived as a disgrace of the most egregious order. As a means of rubbing his nose in it, his drill instructors assigned me permanently to him, with instructions that he fight me over and over until he could beat the hell out of me. For my part, I was informed that if I was even suspected of going easy on him, out of fear of the consequences of harming my better, I would be lashed until the bones of my back showed through to the sun.
The Lakedaemonians are extremely shrewd in these matters; they know that no arrangement could be more cunningly contrived to bind two youths together. I was keenly aware that, if I played my part satisfactorily, I would continue in Alexandros' service and become his squire when he reached twenty and took his station as a warrior in line of battle. Nothing could have suited me more. This was why I had come to Sparta in the first place-to witness the training close-up and to endure as much of it as the Lakedaemonians would permit.
The army was at the Oaks, in the Otona valley, a blistering late summer afternoon, on an eightnighter, what they call in Lakedaemon, the only city which practices it, an oktonyktia. These are regimental exercises normally, though in this case it involved a division. An entire mom, more than twelve hundred men with full armor and battle train including an equal number of squires and helots, had marched out into the high valleys and drilled in darkness for four nights, sleeping in the day in open bivouac, by watches, at full readiness with no cover, then drilling day and night for the following three days. Conditions were deliberately contrived to make the exercise as close as possible to the rigor of actual campaign, simulating everything except casualties. There were mock night assaults up twenty-degree slopes, each man bearing full kit and panoplia, sixtyfive to eighty pounds of shield and armor. Then assaults down the hill. Then more across. The terrain was chosen for its boulder-strewn aspect and the numerous gnarled and low-branched oaks which dotted the slopes. The skill was to flow around everything, like water over rocks, without breaking the line.
No amenities whatever were brought. Wine was at half-rations the first four days, none the second two, then no liquid at all, including water, for the final two. Rations were hard linseed loaves, which Dienekes declared fit only for barn insulation, and figs alone, nothing hot. This type of exercise is only partially in anticipation of night action; its primary purpose is training for surefootedness, for orientation by feel within the phalanx and for action without sight, particularly over uneven ground. It is axiomatic among the Lakedaemonians that an army must be able to dress and maneuver the line as skillfully blind as sighted, for, as His Majesty knows, in the dust and terror of the othismos, the initial battlefield collision and the horrific scrum that ensues, no man can see more than five feet in any direction, nor hear even his own cries above the din.