The patriarch and the polemarch spoke in private. The drills went on. No one looked up, yet every man knew.

This was it.

Dienekes' men got the word from Laterides, commander of the adjacent platoon, who passed it down the line.

It's the Gates, lads.

The Hot Gates.

Thermopylae.

No assembly was called. To the astonishment of all, the regiment was dismissed. The men were given the whole rest of the day off.

Such a holiday had only been granted half a dozen times in my memory; invariably the Peers broke up in high spirits and made for home at the trot. This time no one budged. The entire regiment stood nailed to the site, in the sweltering confines of the dry river, buzzing like a hive.

Here was the word:

Four morai, five thousand men, would be mobilized for Thermopylae. The column, reinforced by four perioikic regiments and packing squires and armed helots two to a man, would march out as soon as the Karneia, the festival of Apollo which prohibited taking up arms, expired. Two and half weeks.

The force would total twenty thousand men, twice the number at Tempe, concentrated in a pass ten times narrower.

Another thirty to fifty thousand allied infantry would be mobilized behind this initial force, while a main force of the allied navy, a hundred and twenty ships of war, would seal the straits at Artemisium and Andros and the narrows of the Euripus, protecting the army at the Gates from flank assault by sea.

This was a massive call-up. So massive it smelled. Dienekes knew it and so did everyone else.

My master humped back to the city accompanied by Alexandros, now a full line warrior of the platoon, his mates Bias, Black Leon and their squires. A third of the way along we overtook the elder Charilaus, shambling home with painful slowness, supported by his attendant, Sthenisthes, who was as ancient as he. Black Leon led an ass of the train on a halter; he insisted the old man ride. Charilaus declined but permitted the place to his servant.

Cut through the shit for us, will you, old uncle? Dienekes addressed the statesman affectionately but with a soldier's impatience for the truth.

I relay only what I'm instructed, Dienekes.

The Gates won't hold fifty thousand. They won't hold five.

A wry expression wizened the old-timer's face. I see you fancy your generalship superior to Leonidas'.

One fact was self-evident even to us squires. The Persian army stood now in Thessaly. That was what, ten days to the Gates? Less? In two and a half weeks their millions would sweep through and be eighty miles beyond. They'd be parked upon our threshold.

How many in the advance party? Black Leon inquired of the elder.

He meant the forward force of Spartans that would, as always in advance of a mobilization, be dispatched to Thermopylae now, at once, to take possession of the pass before the Persians got there and before the main force of the allied army moved up.

You'll hear it from Leonidas tomorrow, the old man replied. But he saw the younger men's frustration.

Three hundred, he volunteered. All Peers. All sires.

My master had a way of setting his jaw, a fierce clamping action of the teeth, which he employed when he was wounded on campaign and didn't want his men to know how bad. I looked. This expression stood now upon his face.

An all-sire unit was comprised only of men who were fathers of living sons.

This was so that, should the warriors perish, their family lines would not be extinguished.

An all-sire was a suicide unit.

A force dispatched to stand and die.

My customary duties upon return from training were to clean and stow my master's gear and look to, with the servants of the mess, the preparation of the evening meal. Instead this day Dienekes asked Black Leon for his squire to do double duty. Myself he ordered on ahead, at a run, to his own home. I was to inform the lady Arete that the regiment had been dismissed for the day and that her husband would arrive at home shortly. I was to issue an invitation to her on his behalf: would she and their daughters accompany him this afternoon for a ramble in the hills?

I raced ahead, delivered this message and was dismissed to my own pursuits. Some impulse, however, made me linger. From the hill above my master's cottage I could see his daughters burst from the gate and dash with eager enthusiasm to greet him upon the way. Arete had prepared a basket of fruit, cheese and bread. The party was all barefoot, wearing big floppy sun hats.

I saw my master tug his wife aside beneath the oaks and there speak privately with her for several moments. Whatever he said, it prompted her tears. She embraced him fiercely, both arms flung tight about his neck. Dienekes seemed at first to resist, then in a moment yielded and clamped his wife to him, holding her tenderly.

The girls clamored, impatient to be off. Two puppies squalled underfoot. Dienekes and Arete released their embrace. I could see my master lift his youngest, Ellandra, and plant her pony-style astride his shoulders. He held the maiden Alexa's hand as they set off, the girls exuberant and gay, Dienekes and Arete lagging just a little.

No main-force army would be dispatched to Thermopylae; that tale was for public consumption only, to shore up the allies' confidence and put iron in their backbones.

Only the Three Hundred would be sent, with orders to stand and die.

Dienekes would not be among them.

He had no male issue.

He could not be selected.

Chapter Sixteen

I must now recount an incident of battle several years previous, whose consequences at this present juncture came powerfully to affect the lives of Dienekes, Alexandros, Arete and others in this narrative. This occurred at Oenophyta against the Thebans, one year after Antirhion.

I refer to the extraordinary heroism demonstrated on that occasion by my mate Rooster, Like myself at the time, he was just fifteen and had been serving, green as grass, for less than twelve months as first squire of Alexandras' father, Olympieus.

The armies' fronts had clashed. The Menelaion, Polias and Wild Olive regiments were locked in a furious struggle with the Theban left, which was stacked twenty deep instead of the customary eight and was holding its position with terrific stubbornness. To augment this peril, the foe's wing overlapped the Spartan right an eighth of a mile; these elements now began to wheel inboard and advance, taking the Menelaion in the flank. Simultaneously the enemy's right, which was taking the most grievous casualties, lost cohesion and fell back upon the massed ranks of its rearmen. The foe's right broke in panic while his left advanced.

In the midst of this melee Olympieus received a crippling lizard-sticker wound through the arch of the foot, from the butt-spike of an enemy spear. This came, as I said, at a moment of extreme dislocation upon the field, with the enemy right collapsing and the Spartans surging into the pursuit, while the foe's left wheeled in attack, supported by numbers of their cavalry coursing uncontested across the broken field.

Olympieus found himself alone upon the open gleaning ground to the rear of the enrolling battle, with his foot wound rendering him crippled, while his cross-crested officer's helmet provided an irresistible target for any would-be hero of the enemy's ranging horse.

Three Theban cavalrymen went after him.

Rooster, unarmed and unarmored, sprinted headlong into the fray, snatching a spear from the ground as he ran. Dashing up to Olympieus, he not only employed his master's shield to protect him from the missile weapons of the enemy but took on the attacking horsemen single-handedly, wounding and driving off two with spear thrusts and caving in the skull of the third with the man's own helmet, which he, Rooster, in the madness of the moment, had torn off the fellow's head with his bare hands as he simultaneously ripped him out of his seat. Rooster even succeeded in capturing the handsomest of the three horses, a magnificent battle mount which he used in the aftermath to draw the Utter which evacuated Olympieus safely from the field.