A Victor of Salamis
saluted his officers, and said that the Greeks of the lesser states had
retreated far to the rear, that Amompharetus still refused to move his
division, that the Spartans waited for him, and the Athenians for the
Spartans.
“Noble tidings,” whispered the giant, as the two stood an instant, before
each went to his own men. “Behold how Hermes helps us—a great deity.”
“Sometimes I think Nemesis is greater,” said Democrates, once again
refusing Lycon’s proffered hand.
“By noon you’ll laugh at Nemesis, _philotate_, when we both drink Helbon
wine in Xerxes’s tent!” and away went Lycon into the dark.
Democrates went his own way also. Soon he was in the fallow-field, where
under the warm night the Athenians were stretched, each man in armour, his
helmet for a pillow. A few torches were moving. From a distance came the
hum from a group of officers in excited conversation. As the orator picked
his way among the sleeping men, a locharch with a lantern accosted him
suddenly.
“You are Democrates the strategus?”
“Certainly.”
“Aristeides summons you at once. Come.”
There was no reason for refusing. Democrates followed.
CHAPTER XXXIX
THE AVENGING OF LEONIDAS
Morning at last, ruddy and windy. The Persian host had been long prepared.
The Tartar cavalry with their bulls-hide targets and long lances, the
heavy Persian cuirassiers, the Median and Assyrian archers with their
ponderous wicker-shields, stood in rank waiting only the word that should
dash them as sling-stones on Pausanias and his ill-starred following. The
Magi had sacrificed a stallion, and reported that the holy fire gave every
favouring sign. Mardonius went from his tent, all his eunuchs bowing their
foreheads to the earth and chorussing, “Victory to our Lord, to Persia,
and to the King.”
They brought Mardonius his favourite horse, a white steed of the sacred
breed of Nisæa. The Prince had bound around his turban the gemmed tiara
Xerxes had given him on his wedding-day. Few could wield the Babylonish
cimeter that danced in the chieftain’s hand. The captains cheered him
loudly, as they might have cheered the king.
“Life to the general! To the satrap of Hellas!”
But beside the Nisæan pranced another, lighter and with a lighter mount.
The rider was cased in silvered scale-armour, and bore only a steel-tipped
reed.
“The general’s page,” ran the whisper, and other whispers, far softer,
followed. None heard the quick words passed back and forth betwixt the two
riders.
“You may be riding to death, Artazostra. What place is a battle for
women?”
“What place is the camp for the daughter of Darius, when her husband rides
to war? We triumph together; we perish together. It shall be as Mazda
decrees.”
Mardonius answered nothing. Long since he had learned the folly of setting
his will against that of the masterful princess at his side. And was not
victory certain? Was not Artazostra doing even as Semiramis of Nineveh had
done of old?
“The army is ready, Excellency,” declared an adjutant, bowing in his
saddle.
“Forward, then, but slowly, to await the reconnoitring parties sent toward
the Greeks.”
In the gray morning the host wound out of the stockaded camp. The women
and grooms called fair wishes after them. The far slopes of Cithæron were
reddening. A breeze whistled down the hills. It would disperse the mist.
Soon the leader of the scouts came galloping, leaped down and salaamed to
the general. “Let my Lord’s liver find peace. All is even as our friends
declared. The enemy have in part fled far away. The Athenians halt on a
foot-hill of the mountain. The Laconians sit in companies on the ground,
waiting their division that will not retreat. Let my Lord charge, and
glory waits for Eran!”
Mardonius’s cimeter swung high.
“Forward, all! Mazda fights for us. Bid our allies the Thebans(16) attack
the Athenians. Ours is the nobler prey—even the men of Sparta.”
“Victory to the king!” thundered the thousands. Confident of triumph,
Mardonius suffered the ranks to be broken, as his myriads rushed onward.
Over the Asopus and its shallow fords they swept, and raced across the
plain-land. Horse mingled with foot; Persians with Tartars. The howlings
in a score of tongues, the bray of cymbals and kettledrums, the clamour of
spear-butts beaten on armour—who may tell it? Having unleashed his wild
beasts, Mardonius dashed before to guide their ragings as he might. The
white Nisæan and its companion led the way across the hard plain. Behind,
as when in the springtime flood the watery wall goes crashing down the
valley, so spread the thousands. A god looking from heaven would not have
forgotten that sight of whirling plumes, plunging steeds, flying steel, in
all the æons.
Five stadia, six, seven, eight,—so Mardonius led. Already before him he
could see the glistering crests and long files of the Spartans—the prey he
would crush with one stroke as a vulture swoops over the sparrow. Then
nigh involuntarily his hand drew rein. What came to greet him? A man on
foot—no horseman even. A man of huge stature running at headlong speed.
The risen sun was now dazzling. The general clapped his hand above his
eyes. Then a tug on the bridle sent the Nisæan on his haunches.
“Lycon, as Mazda made me!”
The Spartan was beside them soon, he had run so swiftly. He was so dazed
he barely heeded Mardonius’s call to halt and tell his tale. He was almost
naked. His face was black with fear, never more brutish or loathsome.
“All is betrayed. Democrates is seized. Pausanias and Aristeides are
warned. They will give you fair battle. I barely escaped.”
“Who betrayed you?” cried the Prince.
“Glaucon the Alcmæonid, he is risen from the dead. _Ai!_ woe! no fault of
mine.”
Never before had the son of Gobryas smiled so fiercely as when the giant
cowered beneath his darting eyes. The general’s sword whistled down on the
skull of the traitor. The Laconian sprawled in the dust without a groan.
Mardonius laughed horribly.
“A fair price then for unlucky villany. Blessed be Mithra, who suffers me
to give recompense. Wish me joy,”—as his captains came galloping around
him,—“our duty to the king is finished. We shall win Hellas in fair
battle.”
“Then it were well, Excellency,” thrust in Artabazus, “since the plot is
foiled, to retire to the camp.”
Mardonius’s eyes flashed lightnings.
“Woman’s counsel that! Are we not here to conquer Hellas? Yes, by Mithra
the Glorious, we will fight, though every _dæva_ in hell joins against us.
Re-form the ranks. Halt the charge. Let the bowmen crush the Spartans with
their arrows. Then we will see if these Greeks are stouter than
Babylonian, Lydian, and Egyptian who played their game with Persia to sore
cost. And you, Artabazus, to your rear-guard, and do your duty well.”
The general bowed stiffly. He knew the son of Gobryas, and that
disobedience would have brought Mardonius’s cimeter upon his own helmet.
By a great effort the charge was stayed,—barely in time,—for to have flung
that disorganized horde on the waiting Spartan spears would have been
worse than madness. A single stadium sundered the two hosts when Mardonius
brought his men to a stand, set his strong divisions of bowmen in array
behind their wall of shields, and drew up his cavalry on the flanks of the
bowmen. Battle he would give, but it must be cautious battle now, and he
did not love the silence which reigned among the motionless lines of the
Spartans.
It was bright day at last. The two armies—the whole strength of the
Barbarian, the Spartans with only their Tegean allies—stood facing, as
athletes measuring strength before the grapple. The Spartan line was
thinner than Mardonius’s: no cavalry, few bowmen, but shield was set
beside shield, and everywhere tossed the black and scarlet plumes of the
helmets. Men who remembered Thermopylæ gripped their spear-stocks tighter.
No long postponing now. On this narrow field, this bit of pebble and
greensward, the gods would cast the last dice for the destiny of Hellas.
All knew that.
The stolidity of the Spartans was maddening. They stood like bronze
statues. In clear view at the front was a tall man in scarlet chlamys, and
two more in white,—Pausanias and his seers examining the entrails of
doves, seeking a fair omen for the battle. Mardonius drew the turban lower
over his eyes.
“An end to this truce. Begin your arrows.”
A cloud of bolts answered him. The Persian archers emptied their quivers.
They could see men falling among the foe, but still Pausanias stood beside
the seers, still he gave no signal to advance. The omens doubtless were
unfavourable. His men never shifted a foot as the storm of death flew over
them. Their rigidity was more terrifying than any battle-shout. What were
these men whose iron discipline bound so fast that they could be pelted to
death, and no eyelash seem to quiver? The archers renewed their volley.
They shot against a rock. The Barbarians joined in one rending yell,—their
answer was silence.
Deliberately, arrows dropping around him as tree-blossoms in the gale,
Pausanias raised his hand. The omens were good. The gods permitted battle.
Deliberately, while men fell dying, he walked to his post on the right
wing. Deliberately, while heaven seemed shaking with the Barbarians’
clamour, his hand went up again. Through a lull in the tumult pealed a
trumpet. _Then the Spartans marched._
Slowly their lines of bristling spear-points and nodding crests moved on
like the sea-waves. Shrill above the booming Tartar drums, the blaring
Persian war-horns pierced the screams of their pipers. And the Barbarians
heard that which had never met their ears before,—the chanting of their
foes as the long line crept nearer.
“Ah!—la—la—la—la! Ah!—la—la—la—la!” deep, prolonged, bellowed in chorus
from every bronze visor which peered above the serried shields.
“Faster,” stormed the Persian captains to their slingers and bowmen, “beat
these madmen down.” The rain of arrows and sling-stones was like hail,
like hail it rattled from the shields and helms. Here, there, a form sank,
the inexorable phalanx closed and swept onward.
“Ah!—la—la—la! Ah!—la—la—la!”
The chant never ceased. The pipers screamed more shrilly. Eight deep,
unhasting, unresting, Pausanias was bringing his heavy infantry across the
two hundred paces betwixt himself and Mardonius. His Spartan spearmen
might be unlearned, doltish, but they knew how to do one deed and that
surpassingly well,—to march in line though lightnings dashed from heaven,
and to thrust home with their lances. And not a pitiful three hundred, but
ten thousand bold and strong stood against the Barbarian that morning.
Mardonius was facing the finest infantry in the world, and the avenging of
Leonidas was nigh.
“Ah!—la—la—la! Ah!—la—la—la!”
Flesh and blood in the Persian host could not wait the death grip longer.
“Let us charge, or let us flee,” many a stout officer cried to his chief,
and he sitting stern-eyed on the white horse gave to a Tartar troop its
word, “Go!”
Then like a mountain stream the wild Tartars charged. The clods flew high
under the hoofs. The yell of the riders, the shock of spears on shields,
the cry of dying men and dying beasts, the stamping, the dust-cloud, took
but a moment. The chant of the Spartans ceased—an instant. An instant the
long phalanx halted, from end to end bent and swayed. Then the dust-cloud
passed, the chanting renewed. Half of the Tartars were spurring back, with
shivered lances, bleeding steeds. The rest,—but the phalanx shook now
here, now there, as the impenetrable infantry strode over red forms that
had been men and horses. And still the Spartans marched, still the pipes
and the war-chant.