Epaminondas laughed at the brute, but sensed also that he was a keen judge of the polis, having survived the killer gangs at Argos to come out on top. “Maybe. But babies can’t walk, yet at five they run faster than those in their seventh decade. Hellas has lots of democracies, my dear Epiteles. But they are old and tired, and need these toddlers and crawlers to keep us young and remind us what we once were. We gave them freedom, and they in turn have saved us from what we might have become, new barbarians of leisure and affluence who won’t put a toe outside of our city gates if there is a cloud in the sky. Now freedom is theirs to keep or lose. Either way it does not detract from our gift.”
Epiteles did not back down. “I and my Argives, we feel no better or worse from freeing them, and hardly think their freedom is a gift. Sparta is weak. Finished as we know it. She has no farmers to feed her phalanx, and won’t march out of Lakonia, at least for a while. That is good enough for me and mine. These helots can do what they like.” Epiteles laughed and for the next few days kept patrolling with his guard to hunt down more thieves who were stealing from the bread carts next to the scaffolds. He knew men by nature to be bad. They would kill and worse if they were not tired from work or scared of punishment. It was not in his nature to build, so he did what he knew best, he punished and hoped he killed more guilty than innocent-and worried little when he did not. “These Thebans can free anyone they please. But then who can’t do that? But they have no idea how to knock heads and keep these half-tamed on their leashes. Zeus in heaven, I think these Boiotians want to be liked rather than feared.” That the helots slacked off from the walls was of no real concern to Epiteles, other than as reason enough to kill those who were probably stealing rather than working. When enough were executed to discourage the no-goods, Epiteles would head home to Argos and the hard life among the murderous factions there. And so he did soon, and passed out of the history of the Hellenes.
Epaminondas thought he had Epiteles right when he had said of him, “Don’t wonder that he will leave us soon, but instead ask why this man in fur has even come. He is a warrior, one who wakes up in the morning promising to cut down Spartans and goes to bed each night in lamentation that he has not killed enough of them. We won’t see his like again in Hellas. He’s the good coin side to Lichas, though both are at home killing and so more alike than we think. Maybe our Chion, if he lives, is a third who could join this cabal of Aiases. But for now thank our One God that Epiteles was on our side.”
The friends of Erinna were also hunting down Spartans with Nikon’s old band, always on what they claimed was the scent of a live Kuniskos. Still, they kept their distance from the trails in the uplands of cloudy Taygetos in fear of the man-animal-wolf, bear, panther or whatever he was supposed to be-that killed wayfarers. As the walls reached their sixth course, and the buds swelled on the fruit trees, all gave up on the Spartan stragglers-except Nikon, who would not believe that Gorgos, the killer of Erinna, was dead and so went out after his ghost each morning. Finally, when the grain stalks bent, and the night frosts quit as the top courses were laid on the northern sections of the walls, he came late into the camp of the Boiotians.
“Gone. I know that now. Neto must be long dead. But her killer Kuniskos I wager lives in the wild. He’s in the high pines, Melon. Your Gorgos-he has gone to the highlands. We hear that from some of those Spartans who are left on Taygetos, thinking Agesilaos will come back yet. But both banks of the Alpheios are now free and wide open and our boys are throwing their Spartans and their friends off our lands all the way to Elis in the north. Only a few grandees remain on their estates, lackeys of the Spartans, but we will get to them by the time the grain droops.”
Melon scoffed at Nikon. He thought all of his Helikon people were now dead-his Neto, along with Gorgos and Chion. All were gone to join Lophis. “Gorgos? He’s dead. Gone to the other shore, you mean, to meet the killers and robbers in the gloomy pools and pits of Tartaros where he belongs. How could he have escaped when his compound was said to be surrounded and his men hunted down? Nikon, remember that the ghost you are hunting is only one man. Just one old Gorgos you run after. I wager he was surely run down amid the mob of fleeing Spartans-and forgotten in the carnage. I wish he were alive, so I could kill him five times over for his taking of Neto.”
Nikon raised his tone. “No, no. I sense it, even if the Spartan rumors are false. The soul of Neto speaks to me, warns me of our danger. Gorgos at least lives. He’s alive but gone from here. He’s with Antikrates. Both are fated to no good unless we kill them now. They will lead an army against new Messene. Ask the souls of your Proxenos and our Erinna; they’d be alive now if those two were dead. Doreios and I will go back out, one last time, and scour the valleys from the altis at Olympia to the summit on Taygetos. We can smell him from here. I will come back before Epaminondas leaves with news of your Gorgos or the head of our Kuniskos.” Nikon went back up to Taygetos and all word of him went as well.
The builders from Thebes had taught the helots how to cut and dress stones, and how to swing their block and tackle over the walls’ rise with cranes mounted on oak beams. After the bloody work of Epiteles, there was no need for patrolling any more for bandits as spring came on, and the blue lupin of the month of Agrionios began to bloom amid calm. The helots stacked their stones, and it was agreed that the Spartans were all either dead or on the other side of Taygetos. Ainias sat atop the first tower and with a clay-baked cone barked out orders to those below. Epaminondas was drilling Messenian hoplites and teaching them the spear work of the phalanx-just in case Agesilaos came before the seventh or eight circuit was finished.
Alkidamas had reclaimed his hostage servant Melissos. The boy, for all his tough talk of armies and killing, was quieter as he took in the rising walls of Messene-as if the stones held him in a trance and were no longer ramparts to copy, but almost had voices that spoke to him about the power of democracy. He, like Ainias, had thought the helots would only kill and loot, but was learning that they were better wall builders than the men even of Mantineia and Megalopolis-and wondered why the Spartans themselves could never build a citadel like Messene. Alkidamas and Melissos took Melon and Ephoros up to the high perch of Ainias, where the five could see the entire circuit of the new polis and the terraced fields of the spring-green valleys beyond. Off in the distance they could spot Epaminondas at dawn, coming back into the valley of Ithome, after a final march from Pylos by the sea with his new army of Messenian hoplites. They saw the outline of an entire city-the people of Messenia in constant motion, up and down Ithome, as walls rose higher by the day, the towers elegant with dressed stones and polished embrasures. Pelopidas’s men were leading hundreds of teams of oxen, bringing down the latest batch of gray blocks from the mountain crest. Alkidamas pointed in every direction, as if he were charting the stars, in a slow methodical circle. “What are we to call all this, my conspirators in democracy? Has any in Hellas ever seen men working on through the dark-and yet back sweaty as well by the sunrise? No wonder the men of Sparta ate well with slaves like these. But how much harder they work when their fruits are their own. They are Hellenes all along, better than any of the free Peloponnesians.”
Ainias kept pacing around the parapet, unsure himself whether to be proud over Proxenos’s city or angry that in his mind it rose so slowly-or madder that he was here at all. But for now, he was confident that the helots would at last shackle the Spartans and keep them home for good. “There is a natural law, Alkidamas, at work, that always winnows out the chaff from wheat. So now with these fields and stones, all the Hellenes can see cities of the Spartans and Messenians side-by-side, and determine who are the better folk after all.”