The End of Sparta: A Novel (62 page)

The long talk ended and finally Lichas raised his slashing blade of black iron, to cut down this Makedonian upstart first. “You, you …” Then came a loud crash, as if the rafters had been ripped off the house. Lichas was cut off before “
humeis
” fully left his lips. The Spartan tottered, blood spurted out his nose. Then only for a moment he let out a wild shriek as he vomited more blood. His helmet flew off his head as he fell face first to the stone floor, with a long spear stuck firm into the base of his skull, cast from twenty paces outside the door. Just like that, Lichas, of forty years in the first rank, killer of a hundred and more—he just fell over, a man, not a god, after all.

The spear throw had come from outside the threshold. Was Ares or Apollo in his armor roaming Taygetos? No mortal with mere blood in his veins could fell such a peer with a single throw, surely not tall Lichas, whom the prophets said was sacrosanct and immune from the blades of free men. There he lay in a growing pool of red, on the ground gurgling and twitching about, a spear point gone almost out through his mouth. A moment later his killer was at the threshold and leapt over the fallen Lichas. The Spartans were frozen in place, stunned as the stranger burst upon them. Then he stabbed the retainer of Lichas, tall Lakrates. That Spartan too toppled over. The sword stroke hit well above the shoulders and came out through the upper throat. Was the house under attack by Pelopidas and the Sacred Band?

No. A sole figure had come through the front doorway and stood over the two bodies. He was deliberate in his sword and spear work, and now almost motionless as he looked about. A wild dog barked behind him. The stranger still paused and then finally stomped on the corpses and let out a piercing war cry as he at last turned toward Elektra. He picked her up by the back of the neck with his good right arm, and then swung her head against the hut wall—three, four, and five times before she quit her pleas. “Lichas! Help, Lichas. My Lichas!” So ended the granddaughter of Agesilaos. She had come to kill the leashed Nêto and earn five hundred silver owls from the strongbox of Phrynê—and yet never got in a single swing of her grandfather’s black ax. Chiôn of Taygetos finally stopped slamming Elektra into the mud brick, as he looked up at the three Spartans at the other end of the cabin turning to flee. Should he first deal with Kuniskos, and then go after the other assassins? He yelled to Nikôn to the side as he threw down the pulp of Elektra and carefully stepped ahead. “Kill Gorgos. Kill him now—and I’ll get the others.” As he stopped, Chiôn punched Gorgos in the gut and sent him stumbling backward.

So broke in Chiôn of the good right arm, long thought dead here in the south in the tumult of liberation, always on the scent of his Nêto whom at last he found to be alive in the remote hut of Gorgos. He for weeks had followed Gorgos’s trail on Taygetos, waiting for this moment to finish what he had promised. Now Chiôn lumbered on through the room, half-crouching to avoid jabs to come if the three Spartans ahead should choose to turn back and fight. The wolf-dog followed to guard his Nêto. Mêlon immediately turned to take on the Spartans at the rear door and kept himself between their spears and Nêto.

Behind Chiôn in the din, Kuniskos stood up again, still off balance from the blow to his midriff. “Get the slave one-arm. Where is my Lichas? Lichas. Lichas. Lich—.” He too was cut off. Nikôn and Melissos in near unison slammed their blades—wide choppers that were hard to poke with, but made a larger hole if they got through flesh—into Kuniskos’s lower gut. The man had been made dizzy by Chiôn’s blow, and his head was still crackling with fire, when he had turned to his left to warn the Spartans on the other side and fell to the floor cursing them. Nikôn was then atop the dying helot even as he tumbled to the dirt. He plunged his knife five more times into the back of Gorgos to keep him silent. At the same time Nêto, weak, lame, and dizzy still, took up her stick with both hands and clubbed the bald head. Melissos jumped on him as well. He had no beard, but he had once learned in Makedon to kill with a careful jab to the big neck vein, and his thin arm was as strong as any ephebe’s in Boiotia.

In a wild frenzy, her stick now broken, Nêto kept thrashing with her nails and fists at the backside of the dying Kuniskos. She was tearing his two braids right off the sides of his head. “Helot to helot, old man,” she kept repeating as Nikôn rolled her off. “Helot to helot. For Erinna and all the rest. For Erinna. For Erinna. For Chiôn. For Lophis. For our Proxenos.”

Here ended the helot Kuniskos, once the terror of the Messenians, who had taken off so many heads and was about to lose his own. He was once the good servant of the Malgidai, but now pierced by Nêto, the freed woman of Helikon, and by Nikôn and Melissos, he bled out his life force on the floor of a dirty hut where the goats and cows of Taygetos sought shelter. Nêto had known, even with rope and chain these many months, that he was to die by the hand of a Messenian, but the goddess had told her only that—not that Nikôn or she herself would strike. Gorgos had wanted his way one last time with Nêto, but she got hers with him instead.

Kerberos, splattered in the gore of Lichas, took over and tore at the neck of the Kuniskos whose scent Keberos he now remembered from Helikon, along with the kicks he had endured. The wolf-dog locked onto him hard and bit so hard on his neck that the hound ripped off the head of Kuniskos from his body. Nêto stumbled up and let out a shriek—or was it laughter? “Pull it off for your dead Sturax. Look. The head cutter has his own cut by a dog, by a dog like him.” She let out her war cry and like a Bacchant grabbed the head of Gorgos and threw it over at the battered corpse of Elektra.

Amid the killing of the four Spartans, Ainias and Mêlon had turned to stab their way through the back entrance. They were eager to catch the three remaining Spartans who had backed out into the open pen and were turning to run through the stockade. Chiôn now was heading to the rear of the hut to join his friends for the final fight, but Mêlon first hit the backpedaling Spartan, a stab below his war belt into the groin. He was a youth of twenty seasons or so on his first patrol—Thibrachos by name, son of Elektra herself from her first marriage to the brother of Lichas.

This fool Thibrachos for a moment had turned back around to fight after all, once he saw the brains of his mother splattered over the flat stones of the opposite wall. He had his eye on the slashing sword of the approaching Chiôn in the distance and never saw in the shadows Mêlon’s jab with Bora that went in above hip and brought out the black blood from his insides, along with his guts as well. Though the thrust was underhand, Mêlon sent the sharp iron right under the bronze, three palms deep into the Spartan’s midriff. Thibrachos died too, not more than twenty paces from Kuniskos—the fifth of the ambushers to fall before any had a chance to strike back.

As Thibrachos crumpled, the last two Spartans had tried to turn and flee out to the courtyard beyond. Ainias was quick with his blade and stabbed the second Spartan from the side. The doomed hoplite had tripped over his cloak and for a moment only flashed his unarmored flank. That was enough for Ainias, who sent the iron right into his armpit, and the sword tip up toward the heart, lifting him off the ground. This second Spartan was a better man than young Thibrachos and was known as the chopper Klôpis, son of Deinon, and the enforcer to Lord Kuniskos in Messenia. As he fell back from the spear-thrust of Ainias, Mêlon came up behind and jabbed his spear butt through the back of his neck, and the Spartan hit the floor.

Chiôn for a second time halted in slow walk toward the back door, as his friends finished with his last two targets. Now in greater fury still, whether at his friends or enemies, the freedman suddenly headed through the back courtyard as he caught sight of Antikrates, the last Spartan alive. But Antikrates was a wiser sort than the two firebrands at his side. He had spied his planned way of escape the moment his father had fallen. Antikrates knew the perfidy of Gorgos—who had tolerated no rival to his return to Messenia—and so long ago had planned an exit should Kuniskos and his Klôpis try to kill him as well in their bloodlust. Antikrates had thirty paces at least on Chiôn, heading through the pen to the mouth of the cave and safety. A wiser Chiôn of two good arms and of earlier times in the high vineyard of Helikon would have stopped, and with raised shield defended himself from a spear toss.

But like all of the old breed in the hut, friend and enemy alike, Chiôn held life less dear here at the final reckoning—and more so for Chiôn with the loss of an arm, the deaths of Proxenos and Lophis, and the maiming of Nêto. Without breastplate and shield, Chiôn reckoned that he could catch the better-armored Spartan before he cleared the fences and was into the mountain. Why not? His legs and chest were tired but still stronger than most others’. And this Antikrates looked fat from his year after Leuktra, no longer the same man who had saved his father and the body of their king. Chiôn went right on past Ainias and Mêlon, who were finishing their iron work with the two henchmen of Antikrates. He began to trot with his sword in his good right arm stuck out in front of him for the final jab. Chiôn quickened his pace, and indeed closed much of the distance, but the running Antikrates was too far ahead, the mouth of the cave far too close.

Even Kerberos could not reach the Spartan. Just then at the entrance to the mountain Antikrates himself had a wild idea. This Chiôn was one-armed and slower than he thought—and no doubt spent. So the son of Lichas turned and for a moment saw that he would be safer, now and in years to come, to attack his nemesis than to keep fleeing into the cave. Antikrates raised his spear and cast at the onrushing Thespian. This was not a light willow javelin, but a heavy cornel for stabbing with its broad iron head, like the spear Chiôn had just flung into Lichas. It took a man of Antikrates’s size to hurl the long shaft with any power. Still, his pursuer was an easy target, large and without armor, coming on without balance. Chiôn had no left arm for a shield—nor even a spear any longer to bat away the thrust. It was back inside the hut, buried deep into the head of Lichas.

Chiôn was using only the sword, an old blade that Mêlon had given him on Helikon that he had torn back out from the dead Lakrates. Chiôn saw the spear and swung at the incoming tip. Too late. Antikrates’s throw hit him under the chin. The iron went deep right through Chiôn’s neck above the left collarbone, not far from his old wound at Leuktra. The tip broke through on the other side, as the weight of the shaft itself brought Chiôn to a stumble.

Antikrates stopped for an instant and announced to the sky that he had killed Chiôn, the bane of the Spartans. Kerberos froze and then turned back to shield his downed master. With a wild yell of triumph at his felling of Chiôn, the better man, Antikrates ran through the cave on his way to Sparta and fame. He reckoned up his kill, bellowing
“Apektenon Chiôna, apektenon ton doulon, ton megan, ton doulon tôn Malgidôn.”
Even as he yelled, he had bigger thoughts held quiet in his chest, for he was wild in his escape and his freedom. “I run free of Chiôn. Free of my father Lichas who had lived too long anyway. Free and richer with my orchards and vines from the snake Elektra. Better they’re all dead and the old age of Sparta as well. I will live for better kills yet, kill better than this Chiôn. It will be sung a hundred years from now in new, better Sparta, that I Antikrates killed the best pigs that Boiotia offered. I kill today so I can kill more tomorrow. I killed Chiôn of Helikon. I will kill his master soon enough and then Epaminondas too.”

Such were his mad unspoken thoughts, but those behind heard only one refrain echoing back out the mouth of the cave: “
Chiôna apektenon, Chiôna
…” I killed Chiôn. Chiôn was down amid the dung. He had tried to grab the fence rung before sinking back into the muck of the pigsty. Chiôn had been foretold to be a killer of the royal ones of Sparta. For his part Antikrates likewise, the gods said, was to live on to kill the best man of Boiotia. These two prophecies dueled. Chiôn lost out. Perhaps the goddess Artemis forsook this believer in Pythagoras, ruing his lack of good meat on her sacrifice table. Perhaps she figured the slave had already killed enough of the royal guard at Leuktra, as she had promised. So the Messenians later would argue to explain the death of the godlike Chiôn and the win of the coward Antikrates. Had Chiôn not sent his spear into Lichas and killed Lakrates, or had he not kept smashing Elektra long after she gave up the ghost, or had he chosen to rest on his laurels while Mêlon and Ainias finished all three of the Spartans off, he would have come back to the farm with his master, once more the heroic pair returning from their defeat of the Spartans.

Yet Antikrates was relish, no more. Chiôn had gone wild anyway on Taygetos and was no more Damô’s farmer. He had long since finished with Helikon and would leave Mêlon with no enemies at his back, and Damô and the boys safe with Myron from the likes of Dirkê and her henchmen. In a moment Mêlon and Ainias rushed past the dying Chiôn and chased the Spartan into the mouth of the cave. Antikrates had peeled off his armor and was sprinting ever deeper into the mountain. All they heard was that distant echo off the walls: “Chiôn. I killed Chiôn.”

By the time Ainias and Mêlon reemerged from the tunnel and ran back to the hut, Chiôn was white. Nêto was wobbly on her legs and now had come out of the hut. Fury had revived her, that and the blood of Gorgos. She had not dared pull the spearhead out of Chiôn, since it had an ugly barb that had barely broken through the skin on his backside. Ainias somehow broke the shaft off at the socket. This time no hot poker he knew could close such a hole. The wound was a half palm or more wide and showed a ripped vein and blood squirting over Chiôn’s torso. Nêto tore off a strip of her cloak and stuffed all of it into the mess around the spear socket. At the sight of the old ugly lambda brand burned into the flesh of the poxy cheek of Chiôn, Nêto shrieked out at the hated Taygetos.

Chiôn whispered after her yells died down. “That damned ship. Five days lost. Our Nêto warned me of water. No fear of the sea.” He caught a breath. “Gorgos, Lichas no more, Master. Antikrates won. Too late for Erinna. Up in the ice and snow, to pay back for Lophis, for Proxenos, for our Nêtikon. But Nêtikon, our Nêtikon lives. And Damô and the boys.”