He turned to Alexandros. That is why Leonidas chose you for the Three Hundred, my young master, though he knew you had never before stood among the trumpets. He believes you will sing here at the Gates in that sublime register, not with this-he indicated the throat-but with this. And his hand touched his heart. Suicide drew up, suddenly awkward and abashed. Around the fire each face regarded him soberly and with respect. Dienekes broke the silence with a laugh.

You're a philosopher, Suicide.

The Scythian grinned back. Yes, he nodded, week up to thees!

A messenger appeared, summoning Dienekes to Leoni-das' council. My master motioned me to accompany him. Something had changed within him; I could sense it as we picked our way among the network of trails that crisscrossed the camps of the allies.

Do you remember the night, Xeo, when we sat with Ariston and Alexandras and spoke of fear and its opposite?

I said I did.

I have the answer to my question. Our friends the merchant and the Scythian have given it to me.

His glance took in the fires of the camp, the nations of the allies clustered in their units, and their officers, whom we could see, like us approaching from all quarters the king's fire, ready to respond to his needs and receive his instructions.

The opposite of fear, Dienekes said, is love.

Chapter Thirty Two

Two sentries covered the west, the rear of His Majesty's pavilion. Dienekes chose this side to attack because it was the dreariest and least prominent, the flank most exposed to the gale. Of all the fragmented images that remain from this brawl which was over no more than fifty heartbeats after it began, the most vivid is of the first sentinel, an Egyptian marine, a six-footer with a helmet the color of gold, decorated with stubby silver griffin's wings. These marines, as His Majesty knows, wear as a badge of pride brightly colored regimental sashes of wool. It is their custom on station to drape these pennants crosswise over the chest and belt them at the waist.

This night this sentry had wound his over his nose and mouth to protect against the gale and the scoring of the driven dust, enwrapping ears and brow as well, with the merest slitted sliver held open for the eyes. His body-length wicker shield he bore before him at port, wrestling its unwieldly mass in the blow. It took little imagination to perceive his misery, alone in the cold beside a single cresset howling in the blast.

Suicide advanced undetected to within thirty feet of the fellow, snaking on his belly past the buttoned-up tents of His Majesty's grooms and the loudly snapping windbreaks of linen which shielded the horses from the gale. I was half a length behind him; I could see him mutter the twoword prayer-Deliver him, meaning the foe-to his savage gods.

Blearily the sentry blinked up. Out of the darkness, tearing directly for him, he beheld the hurtling form of the Scythian clutching in his left fist a pair of dart-length javelins, with the bronze-sheathed killing point of a third poised in throwing position beside his right ear. So bizarre and unexpected must this sight have been that the marine did not even react with alarm.

With his spear hand he tugged nonchalantly at the sash that shielded his eyes, as if muttering to himself at the obligation to respond to this sudden and unwonted irritation.

Suicide's first javelin drove so powerfully through the apple of the man's throat that its point burst all the way through the neck and out the spine, its ash extending crimson, half an arm's length beyond. The man dropped like a rock. In an instant Suicide was upon him, tearing the darning needle out with such a savage wrench that it brought half the man's windpipe with it.

The second sentry, ten feet to the left of the first, was just turning in bewilderment, clearly disbelieving yet the evidence of his senses, when Polynikes blindsided him on a dead sprint, slamming the man on his unshielded right a blow of such ferocious impact with his own shoulder-driven shield that the fellow was catapulted off his feet and hurled bodily through the air. The breath expelled from the guardsman's lungs, his spine crashed into the dirt; Polynikes' lizard-sticker punched through his breast so hard you could hear the bone shiver and crack even over the gale.

The raiders dashed to the tent wall. Alexandras' blade slashed a diagonal in the bucking linen.

Dienekes, Doreion, Polynikes, Lachides, then Alexandros, Hound, Rooster and Ball Player blasted through. We had been seen. The sentries on either side bawled the alarm. It had all happened so swiftly, however, that the pickets could not at first credit the substance their eyes beheld. Clearly they had orders to remain at their posts and this they half did, at least the nearest two, advancing toward Suicide and me (the only ones yet outside the pavilion) with an abashed and befuddled tenta-tiveness. I had an arrow nocked in my bow, with three more clutched in my left fist around the grip, and was raising to fire. Hold! Suicide shouted into my ear in the gale. Give 'em a grin.

I thought he was mad. But that's just what he did. Gesturing like a crony, calling to the sentries in his tongue, the Scythian put on a performance, acting as if this were just some kind of drill which perhaps these sentries had missed at the briefing. It held them for about two heartbeats. Then another dozen marines roared from the pavilion's front. We turned and plunged into the tent. The interior was pitch-black and filled with shrieking women. The rest of our party was nowhere to be seen. We saw lamplight flare across the chamber. It was Hound. A naked woman had him about one leg, burying her teeth into the meat of his calf. The lamplight from the next chamber illuminated the Skirite's blade as he drove it like a cleaver, slicing through the gristle of her cervical spine. Hound gestured to the chamber. Torch it!

We were in some kind of concubines' seraglio. The pavilion as a whole must have had twenty chambers. Who the hell knew which was the King's? I dashed for the single lit lamp and jammed its flame into a closet of women's undergarments; in an instant the whole brothel was howling.

Marines were pouring in behind us, among the shrieking whores. We raced after Hound, in the direction he had taken down the corridor. Clearly we were all the way at the pavilion's rear. The next chamber must have been the eunuchs'; I saw Dienekes and Alexandros, shield by shield, blast through a pair of skull-shaved titans, not even pausing to strike but just bowling them over.

Rooster disemboweled one with a swing of his xiphos; Ball Player chopped another down with his axe. Polynikes, Doreion and Lachides emerged ahead, from some kind of bedchamber, spearpoints dripping blood. Fucking priests! Doreion shouted in frustration. A Magus staggered forth, gutted, and dropped.

Doreion and Polynikes were in the lead when the party hit His Majesty's chamber. The space was vast, big as a barn and studded with so many ridgepoles of ebony and cedar that it looked like a forest. Lamps and cressets lit the vault like noon. The ministers of the Persians were awake and assembled in council. Perhaps they had risen early for the morrow, perhaps they had never gone to bed. I turned the corner into this chamber just as Dienekes, Alexandros, Hound and La-chides caught up with Polynikes and Doreion and formed in line, shield by shield, to attack. We could see the generals and ministers of His Majesty, thirty feet away across the floor, which was not dirt but platformed wood, stout and level as a temple, and carpeted so thick with rugs that it muffled all sound of onrushing feet.

It was impossible to tell which of the Persians was His Majesty, all were so magnificently appareled and all of such surpassing height and handsomeness. Their numbers were a dozen, excluding scribes, guards and servants, and every man was armed. Clearly they had learned of the attack only moments earlier; they clutched scimitars, bows and axes and seemed by their expressions not yet to believe the evidence of their eyes. Without a word the Spartans charged.