Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium) (49 page)

He was persistent, though, and finally
Demosthenes heard:

"Dekelea! Dekelea!"

Alkibiades was right. The mountain town was
farther off than Athens, but its freshly built walls presumably
remained uncompromised. There was a small risk that the Thebans had
already taken Dekelea, and a greater one that they blocked the path
from here to there, but it was their only hope. The mass flight now
unfolding all but ensured that this day would end with Brasidas the
master of Athens. However much it weighed on the heart, which now
resided in Demosthenes' throat, to stake Laonome's life, and the
lives of a thousand wives, on the chance that Brasidas would show
the city restraint, retreat to Dekelea was now the only choice.

Fording the human river atop Akmos with
Thalassia's lashed form draped in front of him in the saddle,
jostling with each move, Demosthenes rode to where Nikostratos
stood alone on the hill. His perpetual cloud of aides and unit
commanders had scattered in the effort to restore control, and now
the junior general gazed blankly, resignedly out over the plains of
Eleusis.

When he reached the general's side,
Demosthenes stared, too, for the invasion had begun.

Brasidas's force was on the move, marching
double time, shields and glinting spears bobbing above the tall
grass, collective voice raised in a slow war chant which belied the
speed of their charge into glory.

"Fuck."

The inelegant remark earned Demosthenes a
disapproving glance from Nikostratos, whose mood was already foul.
Ignoring it, he said to the strategos urgently, "We have no chance
here. We must get as many men as we can to Dekelea."

"Too late for that." Nikostratos' knuckles
were white on the shaft of his yet unused ash spear. Drawing a deep
breath, he came to life, whirling and setting vehemently to the
task of rallying his diminished army.

"We stand fast here!" he screamed. "Stand
fast, do you hear me! 
Stand fast!
"

There was no telling how many men remained
in the ranks to heed his command. Rather than waning, the exodus
seemed to be gaining in strength, with more and more men making the
late decision to join it in the belief that their cause now was
hopeless with the army in such a shambles.

Maybe it was. But it was the chaos itself
more than the dwindling numbers which posed the greater threat to
Athenian hopes. So greatly had Brasidas been outnumbered when the
morning began that even now the Athenian force could not but still
be larger than his. But an army was only as strong as its
discipline, and that of the Spartans was legendary while discipline
this day had failed Athens utterly.

Leaving the general, Demosthenes galloped
back down the slope to the road behind the hill, where Alkibiades
and a small fraction of the citizen cavalry persisted in the effort
to stem the tide of shirkers.  The rest of the hippeis had
given up and now sat astride their mounts in clusters on the
hillside awaiting instruction. Donning his white-plumed helm,
Demosthenes gave it.

"Form up on me!"

Hearing him, Alkibiades took up the call.
"You heard him!"

Within minutes the bulk of Athens' citizen
cavalry had regrouped, and over the snorting and braying of their
steeds, Demosthenes belted out his simple orders. A third of their
own number, perhaps a hundred men, was absent, he noticed. They
were likely far ahead of the mass of men on foot in the race back
to Athens to defend their homes. If they rode hard, maybe they
would even succeed in carrying away whatever people or possessions
were foremost in their hearts. By law the price would be charges of
cowardice, the charge Demosthenes himself had beaten months ago.
But the only verdict for these men was likely to be that imposed by
their own souls, for at present it looked as though it would be
some time before any jury again convened to try an Athenian.
Demosthenes wanted to curse those hippeis who had gone, but knew
that some of his anger came from envy. Perhaps their selfishness
was worth the price.

Those horsemen who remained, every one of
whom had as much to lose if Athens burned this day, followed their
hipparch east and south along the course of the infantry's
spontaneous, disorderly retreat. At a place where the road bent
sharply and the land dropped straight into the sea, Demosthenes
gave a signal. The horsemen inserted themselves into the flow of
running and shuffling footsoldiers, cutting off their paths and
penning them in like sheep.

"Hear me!" Demosthenes screamed over the
heads of the trapped infantrymen. Every second, every word counted,
for the human current was relentless and the pressure on its equine
dam would build and build. "Look to the sky above Athens," he
urged. "Look! Still just one fire! Your homes are not burning!
Athens is not yet theirs, but it will be if you continue doing as
your enemy wants! You think you run to save your wives when in
truth you doom them! Yes, there are Spartans inside the Long Walls.
Perhaps many, more likely just a few. Either way, the safety of
Athens is not in her walls, it is in your hearts and your set
spears, in this army! And as long as this army can kill Spartans,
Athens will be free!"

Some of the trapped men seemed to be
listening. Others were focusing on finding a way through or around
the barrier, only to be rudely shoved back by the cavalry.
Demosthenes took one foot from the stirrup and kicked a man hard in
the chest. The blow would have sent him to the well-trammeled earth
but for the steadily rising pressure at his back.

"None of you are cowards!" Demosthenes said.
"You run to Athens knowing there is danger there. But it is the
wrong danger, and now is the wrong time. I hold no office this day,
but you have elected me twice before as strategos, and I ask you to
follow me again now."

Amongst the hurled curses and grunts of
exertion, a few voices asked, "Where?"

Demosthenes gladly answered. "To Dekelea!
Come with me to Dekelea, and from there we will take back our
city!"

Somehow. Possibly.

By now, the river of deserters had swollen
into a lake behind the makeshift dam. The riders had already been
forced to give ground to relieve the pressure, but now the choice
came of whether to let the deserters pass or watch them crush each
other to death into the mud. Demosthenes chose the former. The
screen of cavalry parted, and the tide it had briefly contained
burst forth.

Demosthenes remained in the current,
shouting frantically, "To Dekelea! Dekelea!" Alkibiades and others
lent their voices, too, so that over the clatter of arms their
collective demand, more of a plea, could be heard. They devoted
some ten minutes to that thankless endeavor, then regrouped the
cavalry a short distance inland

For all the deaf ears upon which his
entreaties had fallen, some had heard. By the time the body of
footsoldiers clustered around the citizen cavalry stopped growing,
it numbered some six hundred hoplites and peltastes. No army at
all, by most measures, but it would have to do. Demosthenes was
forming them up for the march when a clap of thunder split the
western sky.

It was not the thunder made by Zeus, but
that made by men: the clash of shield walls. Paeans and battle
cries were drowned out by the crash and then by screams of pain and
the grunts and groans that marked the start of the pushing match.
No Athenian who heard it from a distance could help but whisper a
guilty prayer to Pallas on his countrymen's behalf, not even one
who scarcely was able to believe in gods. When he had finished
addressing the goddess he doubted, Demosthenes sent his miniscule
army on its way to the mountains, with ten riders as escort, while
six more of the cavalry went ahead at full gallop to round up a
work force from among the population of Dekelea and begin dragging
as many provisions as it could behind its gates.

Demosthenes, with the bulk of the Athenian
horse, remained behind. They took up a position behind the Athenian
right wing and there waited for the worst to happen. If and when it
did, if the diminished army of Athens under Nikostratos crumbled
and fled the field at Eleusis, a screen of cavalry might at least
deter pursuit. And perhaps some of the army's tattered remnants
could be steered to Dekelea.

Long minutes wore on, the air thick with
clashing iron and grating bronze and groans and wails and soaring
hymns and coarse insults.

"Those were some fine words back there,"
Alkibiades said over the echoes of the not-so-distant battle. "And
here I thought star-girl came up with all your speeches." Feeling
in no mood for chatter, much less levity, Demosthenes made no
reply. The youth's exquisite eyes, keen readers of men's minds,
fell to the carcass slung over the front of his friend's saddle,
and he changed his tone. "It'll be tough if you have to fight with
star-girl in your saddle," he remarked dourly. "You should have
sent her on ahead to Dekelea."

Demosthenes answered resolutely, without
sparing a glance for speaker or object: "She stays with me."

Alkibiades' chestnut mane, darkened by blood
and grime, bobbed in understanding.

Any further one-sided conversation was cut
short by a triumphant cheer. None among the citizen cavalry were
foolish enough to believe that the triumph in question could be
that of Athens. No matter how poorly Brasidas's army might have
fared, it could not have broken so quickly. Such a swift end to the
battle could only mean a Spartan victory.

A lone rider atop a nearby ridge, from which
a portion of the plains of Eleusis were just visible, kicked his
horse and sped down the hill bearing news which came as no
surprise: the Athenian right had begun to turn. Grim minutes later,
a clattering sound arose, and the first wave of retreating hoplites
appeared, streaming over and around the gentle hills at a full run.
Most had their shields, some spears, while others had cast one or
both down in the knowledge that speed was now life. No one could
blame them. The puncturing of a phalanx marked the end of a battle.
There was no point in heroics, no descent into single combat as had
been witnessed on the fields of Troy in bygone days. War these days
was a test of cities, not of individuals, and today Athens had been
judged unworthy.

The cavalry spread thin to act as a screen
which might let their countrymen pass and then close up swiftly to
block pursuit. As the fighters' retreat brought them within earshot
of the line of horse, Demosthenes called to them with his familiar
refrain.

"To Dekelea! To Dekelea!"

Men ran by in droves, a thousand of them or
more, and they ran with no single purpose in mind except escape.
Many were likely headed for their homes in the rural demes to
become civilians again, since that's what they all truly were, and
simply to pray that Sparta declined to impose the kind of brutal
retribution to which the gods and the unwritten laws of war
entitled them.

Demosthenes kept up the rallying cry until
his throat was raw. Following the lead of Alkibiades, he even began
to lie: "Regroup at Dekelea! Nikostratos commands it!"

At last, hot on the heels of their
vanquished foe, a band of Peloponnesians appeared, screaming
victory. Their shield blazons, Demosthenes noticed immediately and
with relief, were not the uniform crimson lambda of Lakedaimon but
rather a colorful menagerie of beasts and gods that marked them as
men of Corinth or Arkadia or some other Spartan subject or ally. No
surprise, since had they been Spartiates, they likely would not
have made the mistake of breaking formation to pursue a broken foe
blindly into the unknown, perhaps to learn too late of the presence
of heavy cavalry, as was the case today.

Man by man, the pursuers saw their mistake,
slowed, stopped, and turned back.

"Hold!" Demosthenes told his men. For
although the enemy hoplites were in disarray, they were atop a hill
and could quickly enough form a wall of spears. These
Peloponnesians had tasted victory enough for one day, it seemed,
for they chose the path of discretion and withdrew, vanishing from
sight down the rear face of the hill over which they had come.
After giving them some time in which to change their minds and
attack, and Athenian stragglers more time to find their way east,
the citizen cavalry of Athens turned their mounts north to take the
advice they had been screaming for some time at any of their
countrymen who would listen.

To Dekelea.

No roads led directly to the mountain
village of Dekelea, and so they rode hard through open country,
over hills and fields and farms. Whenever they passed a village,
they sent a pair of men to spread word of what had happened and ask
for weapons and food to be brought to Dekelea as quickly as
possible for the inevitable siege. Before long, they caught up with
the band of six hundred would-be deserters sent ahead. Rather than
racing on by, they kept pace with the infantrymen, as much to
ensure they did not change their minds along the way as to protect
them from ambush.

Along the way they encountered a trio of
scouts of the prodromoi, the light horse, and exchanged news. The
Theban cavalry, the scouts reported, had stayed close to the main
Theban body, which presently was investing the Attic town of Phyle.
It was good news which meant that for now, at least, the way to
Dekelea was clear.

At the foot of the steep, pine-covered
Parnes mountains, the ground became rough and the going more
difficult, but the column did not slow. With no sign of pursuit and
not a soul in sight, the sense of immediate danger began to fade.
Into the void rushed feelings of loss and despair that were visible
in the men's faces and their hollow eyes. Demosthenes tried to keep
his own eyes on the mountains, for if they sank to the vaguely
human-shaped mass draped in front of him, he began to think of
Thalassia as she had been in life, which in turn brought on
thoughts of home, of Laonome and Eurydike, whose fates he did not
know and surely would not for some time.