The rear face sloped up in stacked steps for the defenders to mount to the battlements, atop which had been anchored a stout timber palisade sheathed in hides which the standing watches could cast loose so that the tow arrows of the enemy would not set the palisade alight. The masonry was ragged stuff but sturdy. Towers stood at intervals, reinforcing redoubts right, left and center and secondary walls behind these. These strong-points had been built solid to the height of the primary wall, then stacked with heavy stones to a man's height beyond. These loose boulders could be tumbled, should necessity dictate, into the breaches of the lower sallyports. I could see the sentries now atop the Wall and the three ready platoons, two Arkadian and one Spartan, in full panoplia, at each redoubt.

Leonidas was in fact awake. His long steel-colored hair could be distinguished clearly beside the commanders' fire. Dienekes attended him there among a knot of officers. I could make out Dithyrambos, the Thespian captain; Leon-tiades, the Theban commander; Polynikes; the brothers Al-pheus and Maron, and several other Spartan Knights.

The sky had begun to lighten; I became aware of forms stirring beside me. Alexandras and Ariston had come awake as well and now roused themselves and took station beside me. These young warriors, like myself, found their gaze drawn irresistibly to the officers and champions surrounding the king. The veterans, all knew, would acquit themselves with honor. How will we do? Alexandras put into words the anxiety that loitered unspoken in his youthful mates' hearts.

Will we find the answer to Dienekes' question? Will we discover within ourselves 'the opposite of fear!?

Three days before the march-out from Sparta, my master had assembled the warriors and squires of his platoon and outfitted a hunt at his own expense. This was in the form of a farewell, not to each other, but to the hills of their native country. None spoke a word of the Gates or of the trials to come. It was a grand outing, blessed by the gods with several excellent kills including a fine boar brought down in its charge by Suicide and Ariston with the javelin and the foot-braced pike.

At dusk the hunters, beyond a dozen with twice that number of squires and helots serving as beaters, settled in high spirits about several fires among the hills above Therai. Phobos took a seat as well. As the other huntsmen made merry around their separate blazes, diverting themselves with lies of the chase and good-fellow jesting, Dienekes cleared space beside his own station for Alexandras and Ariston and bade them sit. I discerned then my master's subtle intent.

He was going to speak of fear, for these unblooded youths whom he knew despite their silence, or perhaps because of it, had begun in their hearts to dwell upon the trials to come.

All my life, Dienekes began, one question has haunted me. What is the opposite of fear?

Down the slope the boar flesh was coming ready; portions were being shared out to eager hands.

Suicide came up, with bowls for Dienekes, Alexandras and Ariston, and one apiece for himself, Ariston's squire Demades and me. He settled on the earth across from Dienekes, flanked by two of the hounds who had noses for the scraps and knew Suicide as a notorious soft touch. To call it aphobia, fearlessness, is without meaning. This is just a name, thesis expressed as antithesis.

To call the opposite of fear fearlessness is to say nothing. I want to know its true obverse, as day of night and heaven of earth.

Expressed as a positive, Ariston ventured.

Exactly! Dienekes met the young man's eyes in approval. He paused to study both youths' expressions. Would they listen? Did they care? Were they, like him, true students of this subject?

How does one conquer fear of death, that most primordial of terrors, which resides in our very blood, as in all life, beasts as well as men? He indicated the hounds flanking Suicide. Dogs in a pack find courage to take on a lion. Each hound knows his place. He fears the dog ranked above and feeds off the fear of the dog below. Fear conquers fear. This is how we Spartans do it, counterpoising to fear of death a greater fear: that of dishonor. Of exclusion from the pack.

Suicide took this moment to toss several scraps to the dogs. Furiously their jaws snapped these remnants from the turf, the stronger of the two seizing the lion's share.

Dienekes smiled darkly.

But is that courage? Is not acting out of fear of dishonor still, in essence, acting out of fear?

Alexandros asked what he was seeking.

Something nobler. A higher form of the mystery. Pure. Infallible.

He declared that in all other questions one may look for wisdom to the gods. But not in matters of courage. What have the immortals to teach us? They cannot die. Their spirits are not housed, as ours, in this. Here he indicated the body, the flesh. The factory of fear.

Dienekes glanced again to Suicide, then back to Alexandras, Ariston and me. You young men imagine that we veterans, with our long experience of war, have mastered fear. But we feel it as keenly as you. More keenly, for we have more intimate experience of it. Fear lives within us twenty-four hours a day, in our sinews and our bones. Do I speak the truth, my friend?

Suicide grinned darkly in reply.

My master grinned back. We cobble our courage together on the spot, of rags and remnants. The main we summon out of that which is base. Fear of disgracing the city, the king, the heroes of our lines. Fear of proving ourselves unworthy of our wives and children, our brothers, our comradesinarms. For myself I know all the tricks of the breath and of song, the pillars of the tetrathesis, the teachings of the phobo-logia. I know how to close with my man, how to convince myself that his terror is greater than my own. Perhaps it is. I employ care for the men-at-arms serving beneath me and seek to forget my own fear in concern for their survival. But it's always there.

The closest I've come is to act despite terror. But that's not it either. Not the kind of courage I'm talking about. Nor is beastlike fury or panic-spawned self-preservation. These are katalepsis, possession. A rat owns as much of them as a man.

He observed that often those who seek to overcome fear of death preach that the soul does not expire with the body. To my mind this is fatuousness. Wishful thinking. Others, barbarians primarily, say that when we die we pass on to paradise. I ask them all: if you really believe this, why not make away with yourself at once and speed the trip?

Achilles, Homer tells us, possessed true andreia. But did he? Scion of an immortal mother, dipped as a babe in the waters of Styx, knowing himself to be save his heel invulnerable? Cowards would be rarer than feathers on fish if we all knew that.

Alexandros inquired if any of the city, in Dienekes' opinion, possessed this true andreia.

Of all in Lakedaemon, our friend Polynikes comes closest. But even his valor I find unsatisfactory. He fights not out of fear of dishonor, but greed for glory. This may be noble, or at least unbase, but is it true andreia?

Ariston asked if this higher courage in fact existed.

It is no phantom, Dienekes declared with conviction. I have seen it. My brother Iatrokles possessed it in moments. When I beheld its grace upon him, I stood in awe. It radiated, sublime.

In those hours he fought not like a man but a god. Leonidas has it on occasion. Olympieus doesn't. I don't. None of us here does. He smiled. Do you know who owns it, this pure form of courage, more than any other I have known?

None around the fire answered.

My wife, Dienekes said. He turned to Alexandras. And your mother, the lady Paraleia. He smiled again. There is a clue here. The seat of this higher valor, I suspect, lies in that which is female. The words themselves for courage, andreia and aphobia, are female, whereas phobos and tromos, terror, are masculine. Perhaps the god we seek is not a god at all, but a goddess. I don't know.