Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium) by P. K. Lentz Read Free Book Online

before Sphakteria was taken.

I. PYLOS \ 7. Dirty
    By mid-morning, Helot runners bore word of
defeat to Nestor's fort.  First, defeat on the island's
southern tip, the outpost there slaughtered to the last man, just
as Thalassia had warned.
    Fate could run its course, it seemed,
without regard for the blowing of a horn.
    Hours later, defeat came at the isle's
center.  The Athenians were refusing to do battle like men and
instead relied on weapons which killed from afar and drew no line
between brave men and cowards.  By all accounts, the island
was now flooded with bowmen and targeteers whose stock of spindles
seemed unending.
    Looking south from atop the front wall of
Nestor's roofless fort, Styphon watched the volleys arc up and over
the distant, fire-ravaged landscape of the island, hang momentarily
in the air and then slash earthward, vanishing into the great cloud
of gray ash kicked up by the heels of Epitadas' main force of
Equals as it shuffled this way and that, advancing and falling back
in a desperate effort to engage its elusive, womanly foe.
    No, to call the Athenians womanly was an
offense to women.  Spartan women would never behave thus in
love or in war.
    A Spartiate's leather breastplate could only
half the time could stop an arrow, and even less often a javelin.
 The bronze pilos caps were little better.  The elders of
Sparta said 'the poorer the equipment the braver the man,' to
justify the melting down of the old heavy Corinthian helms, now
only worn by officers.  Whatever truth there was to that
adage, it could scarcely be put to the test against an enemy which
refused to stand face-to-face.
    Only the lambda-blazoned shields of
Lakedaimon had never changed, and today more than ever, beneath a
rain of missiles, the lives of Spartans would depend on their round
shields.  All that any of the twenty Equals at Nestor's fort
could do now was pray that under cover of the great ash cloud
Epitadas would make some brilliant move which would catch the
too-clever Athenians by surprise and drive them back into the sea
they loved so much.  But all knew, none better than Styphon,
that such hope was in vain.  Discipline forbade any Equal from
saying so, but all knew that the best they could hope for now was
that some number of their comrades would succeed in falling back to
the fort rather than dying where they stood and leaving twenty
alone to face a thousand.  A Spartiate might say that such
odds sounded good, but he'd only be boasting to cheer his fellows'
spirits for the imminent trek to Haides.
    It was past noon when a fresh Helot runner
burst out of the line of charred trees.  Panting and sweating
in the space below Styphon's perch atop the roofless fort's
south-facing wall, he shouted up his report.
    “Epitadas comes with three hundred!” the
Helot said, and Styphon's spirits sank, for even though he knew
this must be counted as good news, he had secretly harbored hope
for a better showing.  “Hippagretas is among the fallen.”
    The death made Styphon second-in-command on
the island.  It was one more thread thus woven on Fate's vast
loom, leaving only Epitadas standing in her inexorable path, one
life separating a  phylarch  from the curse of
command.  It seemed that the song sung by Fate as she worked
was an angry and pompous march, not some quiet lamentation so
delicate as to be thrown off tune by the single misplaced note of a
copper horn.
    Dismissing the Helot, Styphon addressed the
men arrayed in a defensive line ten paces in front of the fort.
 The rears of their inadequate helms gleamed in the late
morning sun, so many times had their bored owners and Helot
shield-bearers polished them with mud and sand over the last
seventy days.
    “Battle comes at last!” Styphon cried.
 The hoplites knew better than to turn their backs on the
distant enemy in order to look at him.  “It is battle such as
the feeble Athenians know it, but mark my words, they'll run out of
spindles before we run