You took that beating just to deliver this news? Listen to me. When I went over to the Persians, I told them I was a helot fresh from Sparta. The King's own officers interrogated me. I was right there, two squares from Xerxes' tent. I know where the Great King sleeps and how to deliver men right to his doorstep.

Alexandros laughed out loud. You mean attack him in his tent?

When the head dies, the snake dies. Pay attention. The King's pavilion stands just beneath the cliffs at the top of the plain, right by the river, so his horses can water before the rest of the army fouls the stream. The gorge produces a torrent coming out of the mountains; the Persians think it impassable, they have less than a company on guard. A party of half a dozen could get in, in darkness, and maybe even get out.

Yes. We'll flap our wings and fly right over.

The camp had come fully awake now. At the Wall the Spartans were already massing, if so grand a term may be applied to so meager a force. Rooster told us that he had offered to guide a party of raiders into the Persian camp in return for freedom for his wife and children in Lakedaemon.

This was why the Skiritai had beaten him; they thought it a trick designed to deliver brave men into the enemy's hands for torture or worse. They won't even relay my words to their own officers. I beg you: inform someone of rank. Even without me it can work. By all the gods I swear it!

I laughed at this reborn Rooster. So you've acquired piety as well as patriotism.

The Skiritai called to us sharply. They wanted to finish Rooster and get themselves into armor.

Two rangers jerked him to his feet, to lash him upright to the post, when a clamor interrupted from the rear of the camp. We all turned and stared back down the slope.

Forty men of the Thebans had deserted during the night. A half dozen had been slain by sentries, but the others had made good their escape. All save three, who had just now been discovered, attempting to conceal themselves among the mounds of the dead.

This luckless trio was now hauled forth by a squad of Thespian sentries and dumped into the open to the rear of the Wall, smack amid the marshaling army. Blood was in the air. The Thespian Dithyrambos strode to the breach and took charge.

What punishment for these? he shouted to the encircling throng.

At this moment Dienekes appeared at Alexandros' shoulder, summoned by the commotion. I seized the instant to plead for Rooster's life, but my master made no answer, his attention held by the scene playing out below.

A dozen mortal punishments had been shouted out by the thronging warriors. Blows of homicidal intent were struck at the terrified captives; it took Dithyrambos himself, wading into the fray with his sword, to drive the men back.

The allies are possessed, Alexandros observed with dismay. Again.

Dienekes looked on coldly. I will not witness this a second time.

He strode forward, parting the mob before him, and thrust himself to the fore beside the Thespian Dithyrambos.

These dogs must receive no mercy! Dienekes stood over the bound and Hindered captives.

They must suffer the most hateful penalty imaginable, so that no other will be tempted to emulate their cowardice.

Cries of assent rose from the army. Dienekes' raised hand quelled the tumult.

You men know me. Will you accept the punishment I propose?

A thousand voices shouted aye.

Without protest? Without a quibble?

All swore to abide by Dienekes' sentence.

From the knoll behind the Wall, Leonidas and the Knights, including Polynikes, Alpheus and Maron, looked on. All sound stilled save the wind. Dienekes stepped to the kneeling captives and snatched off their blinders.

His blade cut the prisoners loose.

Bellows of outrage thundered from every quarter. Desertion in the face of the enemy was punishable by death. How many more would flee if these traitors walked off with their lives? The whole army will fall apart!

Dithyrambos, alone among the allies, seemed to divine Dienekes' subtler intent. He stepped forward beside the Spartan, his raised sword silencing the men so that Dienekes could speak.

I despise that seizure of self-preservation which unmanned these cravens last night, Dienekes addressed the thronging allies, but far more I hate that passion, comrades, which deranges you now.

He gestured to the captives on their knees before him. These men you call coward today fought shoulder-to-shoulder beside you yesterday. Perhaps with greater valor than you.

I doubt it! came a shouted cry, succeeded by waves of scorn and cries for blood pelting down upon the fugitives.

Dienekes waited for the tumult to subside. In Lakedaemon we have a name for that state of mind which holds you now, brothers. We call it 'possession.' It means that yielding to fear or anger which robs an army of order and reduces it to a rabble.

He stepped back; his sword gestured to the captives upon the ground.

Yes, these men ran last night. But what did you do? I'll tell you. Every one of you lay awake.

And what were the coven petitions of your hearts? The same as these. The blade of his xiphos indicated the pitiful wretches at his feet. Like these, you yearned for wives and children. Like these, you burned to save your own skin. Like these, you laid plans to fly and live!

Cries of denial struggled to find voice, only to sputter and fail before Dienekes' fierce gaze and the truth it embodied.

I thought those thoughts too. All night I dreamt of running. So did every officer and every Lakedaemonian here, including Leonidas.

A chastened silence held the mob.

Yes! a voice cried. But we didn't do it!

More murmurs of assent, mounting.

That's right, Dienekes spoke softly, his glance no longer lifted in address to the army but turned now, hard as flint, upon the trio of captives. We didn't do it.

He regarded the fugitives for one pitiless moment, then stepped back so the army could behold the three, bound and held at swordpoint, in their midst.

Let these men live out their days, cursed by that knowledge. Let them wake each dawn to that infamy and lie down each night with that shame. That will be their sentence of death, a living extinction far more bitter than that trifle the rest of us will bear before the sun sets tomorrow.

He stepped beyond the felons, toward that margin of the throng which led away to safety. Clear a runway!

Now the fugitives began to beg. The first, a beardless youth barely past twenty, declared that his poor farmstead lay less than half a week from here; he had feared for his new bride and infant daughter, for his infirm mother and father. The darkness had unmanned him, he confessed, but he repented now. Clasping his bound hands in supplication, he lifted his gaze toward Dienekes and the Thespian. Please, sirs, my crime was of the moment. It is passed. I will fight today and none will fault my courage.

Now the other two chimed in, both men past forty, vowing mighty oaths that they, too, would serve with honor. Dienekes stood over them. Clear a runway!

The crush of men parted to open a lane down which the trio might pass in safety out of the camp.

Anyone else? Dithyrambos' voice ascended in challenge to the army. Who else feels like a stroll? Let him take the back door now, or shut his cheesepipe from here to hell.

Surely no sight under heaven could have been more baleful or infamous, so pitiful were the postures of the wretches and the slouching increments of their gait as they passed out along the avenue of shame between the ranks of their silent comrades.

I looked down into the faces of the army. Fled was the self-serving fury which had cried in false righteousness for blood. Instead in each chastened countenance stood graven a purged and pitiless shame. The cheap and hypocritical rage which had sought to vent itself upon the runaways had been turned inward by the intervention of Dienekes. And that rage, retired within the forge of each man's secret heart, now hardened into a resolution of such blistering infamy that death itself seemed a trifle alongside it.