Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield Read Free Book Online Page B

in their hour of desperation? I was not there when they needed me. In my mind I imagined their slaughter again and again, and always myself absent. I wanted to die. The only thought that lent me solace was the certainty that I would die, soon, and thereby exit this hell of my own dishonored existence.
    Bruxieus intuited these thoughts and tried in his gentle way to disarm them. I was only a child, he told me. What prodigies of valor could be expected from a lad of ten? “Boys are men at ten in Sparta,” I declared.
    This was the first and only time I saw Bruxieus truly, physically angry. He seized me by both shoulders and shook me violently, commanding me to face him. “Listen to me, boy. Only gods and heroes can be brave in isolation. A man may call upon courage only one way, in the ranks with his brothers-in-arms, the line of his tribe and his city. Most piteous of all states under heaven is that of a man alone, bereft of the gods of his home and his
polis.
A man without a city is not a man. He is a shadow, a shell, a joke and a mockery. That is what you have become now, my poor Xeo. No one may expect valor from one cast out alone, cut off from the gods of his home.”
    He drew up then; his eyes broke away in sorrow. I saw the slave brand upon his brow. I understood. Such was the state he had endured, all these years, in the house of my father. “But you have acted the man, little old uncle,” I said, employing the fondest Astakiot term of affection. “How have you done it?”
    He looked at me with sad, gentle eyes. “The love I might have given my own children, I gave to you, little nephew. That was my answer to the unknowable ways of God. But it seems the Argives are dearer to Him than I. He has let them rob me of my life not once, but twice.”
    These words, intended to bring comfort, only reinforced further my resolve to die. My hands had swollen now to twice their normal size. Pus and poison oozed from them, then froze in a hideous icy mass that I had to chip away each morning to reveal the mangled flesh beneath. Bruxieus did everything he could with salves and poultices, but it was no use. Both central metacarpals had been shattered in my right hand. I could not close the fingers nor form a fist. I would never hold a spear nor grip a sword. Diomache sought to comfort me by equating my ruin to hers. I scorned her bitterly. “You can still be a woman. What can I do? How can I ever take my place in the line of battle?”
    At night, bouts of fever alternated with fits of teeth-rattling ague. I curled contorted in Diomache’s arms, with Bruxieus’ bulk enwrapping us both for warmth. I called out again and again to the gods but received no whisper in reply. They had abandoned us, it was clear, now that we no longer possessed ourselves or were possessed by our
polis.
    One fever-racked night, perhaps ten days after the incident at the farmstead, Diomache and Bruxieus wrapped me in skins and set off foraging. It had begun to snow and they hoped to use the silence, perhaps with luck to take unawares a hare or a gone-to-ground covey of grouse.
    This was my chance. I resolved to take it. I waited till Bruxieus and Diomache had moved off beyond sight and sound. Leaving cloak and furs and foot wraps behind for them, I set out barefoot into the storm.
    I climbed for what seemed like hours but was probably no more than five minutes. The fever had me in its grip. I was blind like the deer, yet guided by an infallible sense of direction. I found a place amid a stand of pines and knew this was my spot. A profound sense of decorum possessed me. I wanted to do this properly and, above all, to be no trouble to Bruxieus and Diomache.
    I picked out a tree and settled my back against it so that its spirit, which touched both earth and sky, would conduct mine safely out of this world. Yes, this was the tree. I could feel Sleep, brother of Death, advancing up from the toes. Feeling ebbed from