Out beyond the Narrows the enemy trumpets sounded. Clearly now could be seen the vanguard of the Persians and the chariots and armored convoys of their King. Now eat a good breakfast, men. For we'll all be sharing dinner in hell.

Book Eight. Thermopylae

Chapter Thirty Five

His Majesty witnessed at close range, with His own eyes, I the magnificent valor demonstrated by the Spartans, Thespians and their emancipated squires and servants upon this, the final morning of defense of the pass. He has no need of my recounting the events of this battle. I will report only those instances and moments which may have escaped the notice of His Majesty's vantage, again, as he has requested, to shed light upon the character of the Hellenes he there called his enemy.

Foremost among all, and indisputable in claim to preeminence, may be only one man, the Spartan king, Leonidas. As His Majesty knows, the main force of the Persian army, advancing as it had on the previous two days along the track from Trachis, did not commence its assault until long after the sun was fully up. The hour of attack in fact was closer to midday than morning and came while the Ten Thousand Immortals had not yet made their appearance in the allied rear.

Such was Leonidas' disdain for death that he actually slept for most of this interval. Snoozed might be a more apt description, so free from care was the posture the king assumed upon the earth, cushioned upon his cloak as a ground cloth, legs crossed at the ankles, arms folded across his breast, his eyes shaded fay a straw sun hat and his head pillowed insouciantly upon the bowl of his shield. He might have been a boy, herding goats in some sleepy summer dale.

Of what does the nature of kingship consist? What are its qualities in itself; what the qualities it inspires in those who attend it? These, if one may presume to divine the meditations of His Majesty's heart, are the questions which most preoccupy his own reason and reflection.

Does His Majesty recall that moment, upon the slope beyond the Narrows, after Leonidas had fallen, struck through with half a dozen lances, blinded beneath his helmet staved in from the blow of a battle-axe, his left arm useless with its splintered shield lashed to his shoulder, when he fell at last under the crush of the enemy? Can His Majesty recall that surge within the melee of slaughter when a corps of Spartans hurled themselves into the teeth of the vaunting foe and flung them back, to retrieve the corpse of their king? I refer neither to the first time nor the second or third, but the fourth, when there stood fewer than a hundred of them, Peers and Knights and freedmen, dueling an enemy massed in their thousands.

I will tell His Majesty what a king is. A king does not abide within his tent while his men bleed and die upon the field. A king does not dine while his men go hungry, nor sleep when they stand at watch upon the wall. A king does not command his men's loyalty through fear nor purchase it with gold; he earns their love by the sweat of his own back and the pains he endures for their sake. That which comprises the harshest burden, a king lifts first and sets down last. A king does not require service of those he leads but provides it to them. He serves them, not they him.

In the final moments before the actual commencement of battle, when the lines of the Persians and Medes and Sacae, the Bactrians and Illyrians, Egyptians and Macedonians, lay so close across from the defenders that their individual faces could be seen, Leonidas moved along the Spartan and Thespian foreranks, speaking with each platoon commander individually. When he stopped beside Dienekes, I was close enough to hear his words.

Do you hate them, Dienekes? the king asked in the tone of a comrade, unhurried, conversational, gesturing to those captains and officers of the Persians proximately visible across the oudenos chorion, the no-man's-land.

Dienekes answered at once that he did not. I see faces of gentle and noble bearing. More than a few, I think, whom one would welcome with a clap and a laugh to any table of friends.

Leonidas clearly approved my master's answer. His eyes seemed, however, darkened with sorrow.

I am sorry for them, he avowed, indicating the valiant foemen who stood so proximately across. What wouldn't they give, the noblest among them, to stand here with us now?

That is a king, Your Majesty. A king does not expend his substance to enslave men, but by his conduct and example makes them free. His Majesty may ask, as Rooster did, and the lady Arete, why one such as I whose station could most grandly be called service and most meanly slavery, why one of such condition would die for those not of his kin and country. The answer is, they were my kin and country. I set down my life with gladness, and would do it again a hundred times, for Leonidas, for Dienekes and Alexandros and Polynikes, for Rooster and Suicide, for Arete and Diomache, Bruxieus and my own mother and father, my wife and children. I and every man there were never more free than when we gave freely obedience to those harsh laws which take life and give it back again.

Those events of the actual battle I count as nothing, for the fight was over in its profoundest sense before it began. I had slept, sitting upright against the Wall, following Leonidas' example, while we waited that hour and the hour after and the hour after that for His Majesty's army to make its move.

In my doze I discovered myself again among the hills above the city of my childhood. I was no longer a boy but myself of grown years. My cousin was there, in years still a girl, and our dogs, Lucky and Happy, exactly as they had been in the days following the sack of Astakos. Diomache had given chase to a hare and was climbing, bare-legged with extraordinary swiftness, a slope which seemed to ascend to the heavens, Bruxieus waited atop, as did my mother and father: I knew, though I could not see them. I gave chase too, seeking to overtake Diomache with all my grown strength. I could not. However swiftly I mounted, she remained ever elusive, always an interval ahead, calling to me gaily, teas-ingly, that I would never run fast enough to catch her.

I came awake with a start. There awaited the massed Persians, less than a bowshot away.

Leonidas stood upon his feet, out front. Dienekes as always took his stance before his platoon, which was drawn up at seven-and-three, wider and shallower than on either previous day. My place was third in the second file, for the first time in my life without my bow but clutching instead in my right hand the heavy haft of the eight-footer which had last been Doreion's. Around my left forearm, braced tight against the elbow, stood wrapped the linen-cushioned bronze sleeve bolted through the oak and the bronze facing of the aspis which had been Alexandras'. The helmet I wore had belonged to Lachides and the cap beneath had been that of Ariston's squire, Demades.

Eyes on me! Dienekes barked, and the men as always tore their glance from the enemy, who marshaled now so near across the interval that we could see the irises beneath their lashes and the gaps between their teeth. There were ungodly numbers of them. My lungs howled for air; I could feel the blood pounding within my temples and read its pulse upon the vessels of the eyes.

My limbs were stone; I could feel neither hands nor feet. I prayed with every fiber, simply for the courage not to faint. Suicide stood upon my left. Dienekes stood before.

At last came the fight, which was like a tide, and within which one felt as a wave beneath the storming whims of the gods, waiting for their fancy to prescribe the hour of his extinction. Time collapsed. Elements blurred and merged. I remember one surge carrying the Spartans forward, driving the enemy by the score into the sea, and another which propelled the phalanx rearward like boats lashed gunwale-to-gunwale driven before the irresistible storm. I recall my feet, planted solid with all my strength upon the earth slick with blood and urine, as they were driven rearward, in place before the push of the foe, like the fleece-wrapped soles of a boy playing upon the mountain ice.