Terror overran the pavilions of His Majesty, heightened not only by the great quake which shook the city precisely at the hour of sunset but also by the apocalyptic aspect of the siting of the army's bivouac, there within the razed and still-smoldering city of the Athenians. Midway through the second watch the general Mardonius sealed His Majesty's chamber and debarred entry to any further officers. His Majesty's Historian was able to procure only the scantiest of instructions as to the disposition of the day's records. Upon dismissal, I inquired purely as an afterthought for orders concerning the Greek Xeones and his papers.

Kill him, the general Mardonius replied without hesitation, and bum every page of that compilation of falsehoods, whose recording has been folly from the first and the merest mention of which at this hour will serve only to drive His Majesty into further paroxysms of rage.

Other duties held me several hours. These at length completed, I proceeded in search of Orontes, captain of the Immortals, whose responsibility it must be to carry out these orders of Mardonius.

I located the officer upon the shore. He was clearly in a state of exhaustion, overwrought both with the grief of the day's defeat and with his own frustration as a soldier at being unable, other than by pulling dying sailors out of the water, to aid the valiant mariners of the fleet. Orontes composed himself at once, however, and turned his attention to the matter at hand.

If you'd like to find your head still upon your shoulders tomorrow, the captain declared when he had been informed of the general's order, you will pretend you never heard or saw Mardonius.

I protested that the order had been issued in the name of His Majesty. It could not be ignored.

It can't, can't it? And what will be the general's story tomorrow or a month hence, after his order has been carried out, when His Majesty sends for you and asks to see the Greek and his notes.

I will tell you what will happen, the captain continued. Even now in His Majesty's chambers, His chancellors and ministers press upon Him the necessity to withdraw the Royal Person, to take ship for Asia, as Mardonius has urged before. This time I think His Majesty will take heed.

Orontes declared his conviction that His Majesty would order the bulk of the army to remain in Hellas, under command of the general Mardonius and charged to complete the conquest of Greece in His name. That task accomplished, His Majesty will possess His victory. Today's calamity will be forgotten in that bright glow of triumph.

Then in the delectation of conquest, Orontes continued, His Majesty will call for these notes of the Greek Xeones, as a sweetcake to cap the banquet of victory. If you and I stand before Him empty-handed, which of us will point the finger at Mardonius, and who will believe our declarations of innocence?

I asked then what we must do.

Orontes ' heart was clearly torn. Memory recalled that he, as chief field commander of the Immortals beneath Hydarnes, their general, had tramped in the van during the Ten Thousand's night envelopment of the Spartans and Thespians at Thermopylae and had served with extraordinary valor in the final morning's assault, facing the Spartans hand-to-hand and securing for His Majesty the conquest of the foe. Orontes ' own arrows had been among those fatal shafts flung at close range into the final defenders, perhaps into the flesh of the very men whose histories had been recounted within the captive Xeones' tale.

This knowledge, one could not help but read upon the captain's countenance, increased further his reluctance to deal harm to this man with whom he so clearly identified as a fellow soldier and even, one must at this point state, a friend.

All this notwithstanding, Orontes summoned himself to duty. He dispatched two officers of the Immortals with orders to remove the Greek from the Surgeon's tent and deliver him at once to the staff pavilion of the Immortals. After several hours attending to other more urgent business, he and I proceeded to that site. We walked in together. The man Xeones sat up conscious upon his litter, though drawn and gravely enfeebled.

Clearly he divined our purpose. His aspect was one of good cheer. Come, gentlemen, he spoke before I or Orontes could give voice to our mission. How may I assist you in your task? His dispatch would not require the blade, he adjudged. For the stroke of a feather, I feel, will be blow enough to finish the job. Orontes inquired of the Greek Xeones if he grasped fully the magnitude of the victory his countrymen's navy had achieved this day. The man affirmed that he did. He expressed the opinion, however, that the war was far from over. The issue remained very much in doubt.

Orontes imparted his extreme reluctance to carry out the sentence of execution. In light of the present disorder within the Empire's camp, he declared it a matter of slender difficulty to spirit the fellow out unobserved. Did the man Xeones, Orontes inquired, possess friends or compatriots yet within Attika to whom we could deliver him? The captive smiled. Your army has done an admirable job of driving any such off, he observed. And besides, His Majesty will need all His men to bear more important baggage.

Yet did Orontes seek any excuse to postpone the moment of execution. Since you ask no favor of us, sir, the captain addressed the prisoner, may I request one of you?

The man replied that he would gladly grant all that remained within his power.

You have cheated us, my friend, Orontes declared with wry expression. Deprived us of a tale of which your master, the Spartan Dienekes, so you said, promised to speak. This was around the fire during that last hunt of which you spoke, when he and Alexandras and Ariston addressed the subject of fear. Do you remember? Your master cut off the youths' discourse with a pledge that, when they reached the Hot Gates, he would tell them a tale of Leonidas and the lady Paraleia, on the subject of courage and of what criteria the Spartan Icing employed to select the Three Hundred. Or did Dienekes in fact fail to speak of this?

No, the captive Xeones confirmed, his master had found occasion and did in truth impart this tale. But, the prisoner asked, absent His Majesty's imperative to continue documenting the events of this narrative, did the captain indeed wish to keep on?

We whom you call foe are flesh and blood, Orontes replied, with hearts no less capable of attachment than your own. Does it strike you as implausible that we in this tent, His Majesty's historian and myself, have come to care for you, sir, not alone as a captive relaying an account of battle but as a man and even a friend?

Orontes requested, as a kindness to himself who had followed with keen interest and empathy the antecedent chapters of the Greek's tale, if the man would, as a comrade and so far as his strength permitted, relate to us now this final portion.

What had the Spartan king to say of women's courage, and how did your master, Dienekes, in fact relate it to his young friends and proteges?

The man Xeones propped himself with effort, and assistance from myself and the officers, upright upon his settle. Summoning his strength, he drew a breath and resumed;

I will impart this tale to you, my friends, as my master related it to me and to Alexandros and Ariston at the Hot Gates-not in his own voice, but in that of the lady Paraleia, Alexandros' mother, who recounted it in her own words to Dienekes and the lady Arete, only hours after its occurrence. The time of the conveying of the lady Paraleia's tale was an evening three or four days before the march-out from Lakedaemon to the Hot Gates. The lady Paraleia had betaken herself for this purpose to the home of Dienekes and Arete, bringing with her several other women, all mothers and wives of warriors selected for the Three Hundred. None of the women knew what the lady wished to say. My master stood on the moment of excusing himself, that the ladies may have their privacy. Paraleia, however, requested that he remain. He must hear this too, she said. The ladies seated themselves about Paraleia. She began: