Melon tried to keep up with Chion. But what mortal could? His slave was unrecognizable, his face, arms, and breastplate all scarlet with gore, almost indistinguishable from the red-shirts under the armor of the Spartans. In this free-for-all, once the Thebans had broken inside these last Spartan ranks, it was a pankration of sorts, tooth against nail, finger in the eye, stomping the man who fell. Kleonymos, the king’s best surviving man, tried to blurt out from the Spartan island, “We live for this, for this we live! Where is that damn melon? Pick the apple. Kill that Thespian and we win. Kill him and our king lives.” Some Spartans kicked. Others slapped and clawed. Spears, swords were for most long lost. The enemy flute players were dead or silent. Chion saw two of them at his feet-one youth without a beard, but with a cracked reed stuck like a dart right through his cheek.
Still another crazed Spartan threw himself at Melon. He no longer held a shield or spear. This brave Eurypon was trying to tear off a Theban helmet or an arm maybe. Or maybe he wanted a bite out of Melon’s wrist. He was a Spartan of the past age who thought his sacrifice might save his king or at least the name of Spartan prowess. But Melon had put both hands on his sword, pointed it upright, waited, and caught the Spartan in the lower belly as he had come on, lifting him a palm or so high, as his blade went through the groin and nearly hit the backplate. It took all his strength to yank it out and then kick the shrieking Spartan off with his good knee. Then he stepped on this Eurypon’s shoulder and lumbered ahead. Eurypon had a high farm above the Lakonian gulf, near Aigeiai and the lakeside temple of Poseidon. His cross-eyed wife Kuniska, toothless father Eurysthenes, and tiny girl Chloe-they were all this summer safe in the tower and on watch for pirates while the men of Sparta were far to the north fighting Epaminondas. But all Eurypon did this day was ensure that no one would be there next year to protect his father’s olives and vines when the mob of ravagers under Lykomedes of Mantineia swept down to the port at Gytheion-tearing down his tower and dragging his now orphaned Chloe in ropes to the slave-sellers. But what Spartan here at Leuktra ever might imagine that his family would soon be unsafe, far to the south in the stronghold of their tribe?
Melon and Chion then saw something not Antander nor Malgis nor Melon himself had ever before witnessed. Not more than a few feet behind the shredded king’s guard, straight ahead of them were the crests of their own Boiotians, who had rushed out from their left wing, outflanked the king, and gotten to the Spartan rear. This final pocket around King Kleombrotos was sealed and surrounded. The Sacred Band of Pelopidas now headed toward Chion and Melon, slicing in two what was left of the final Spartan circle. Melon slowed at the sight of these last efforts of the king’s hoplites and their Spartan empire. For a moment only, he lowered his sword and looked sideways and back for his Boiotians. Not since the Persians had cut off the head of Leonidas at Thermopylai had any man seen a Spartan king go down in battle.
To pause was a mistake even for a moment, since in that one stop Melon forgot that Spartans never do. Kleonymos, favorite of the Agiads, the son of the dead Sphodrias-who hated Lichas and his Antikrates for their claims of preeminence-came from his side and bashed Melon with his shield. It was a blow with the boss to the side of the head, hard enough to brain most men. Melon’s horsehair crest flew off. The concussion sent Melon’s helmet rattling against his temple and cheek and nearly knocked him off his feet. His skull’s insides crackled deep from within.
He could no longer quite make out all the blurred shapes of battle. In this new netherworld of the wounded and dead, Melon strained to hear the garbled cries of Epaminondas, “One step more. Give me one more.” But then Melon heard something else: the screeching of one of the stinking Keres he had seen before battle, but no more than ten feet above the fray, circling and diving into the melee-and headed for him? Suddenly he was given proof by this blow that the vulture women did live and kill and were no myth after all. For the first time this day, Melon in his dizziness, swaying on the threshold of death, could easily make out these hazy women birds that must have been hovering all along above the battlefield. Two of them, Nyx and Melaine, flew with talons outstretched, just as the wounded veterans had warned-the winged and deep-breasted daughters of Night, who swooped down over the heroes to pull them skyward by their ankles.
For now the son of Malgis managed to stay on his feet. He beat these harpies off and sent his sword right through the mouth of Melaine fluttering above him. She without flesh let out a shrill laugh nonetheless at the effort, veering away in anger at her lost meal. Swinging his sword in frenzy, the Thespian kept both these carrion daimones and the hoplites around off him as he regained his senses. Not quite yet was his thread cut, even after taking the last and best blow of the fading Spartan elite. His head had stopped ringing. The greedy Nyx knew that when she alighted instead on the nearby groaning Eurypon, who was far closer to death, and picked him up by the heels. Chion later swore that his master for an eye blink or two had been stabbing at shadows, as had Aias in his madness. But Melon saw them as clear as crows nonetheless. After the winged Nyx flew off with Eurypon, Melaine lighted on Boiotian Manto of Oinoi way, the tile-baker whom Eurypon had stabbed before he went down. Then Nyx returned and the two hags were flapping their stinky wings, shrieking at each other in the air to let go of their prize, each with a foot of the dead Boiotian, trying to fly off in different directions.
Drops of blood ran out Melon’s mouth. He knew that what he had done to ten or so Spartans that day, Kleonymos had nearly done to him, with far greater strength and youth. After these brief moments of daze he discovered that five Boiotians or more had fallen while he had spun and thrashed at the Keres. There was nothing of the enemy now but the towering Kleonymos, stabbing and swinging his shield wildly in the air, like the crazed she-bear that bellows and paws the very air between her cubs and the oncoming hunter. As Melon stumbled to regain his balance, he had enough sense to raise his shield to eye level. He saw that he had been pushed almost to the king himself. For now he heard no more cries of the Keres, just the final pleas of the Spartan Kleonymos, calling out to keep his King Kleombrotos alive.
CHAPTER 8
In the camp above the swale of Leuktra, not all were so scared or unhappy at the sight of their own shaking hoplites of Boiotia lining up for battle. “Loud and proud, my Spartans-big thing to see.” Gorgos winked in a manner Neto had not quite seen before. He stood up on the wagon bed. He had a better view than any below and thought he could predict what those lining up for the collision could not. Gorgos scoffed at the idea that anyone in Boiotia would dare go up against such men of Lakedaimon. “Look, look, Neto. At the hills beyond-how our rabble of Boiotia awaits slaughter below. They’re hoggies backing into the corners of their pens as their butcher enters. Ah, look. Even the blood-fanged Keres will soon fly in the air. They will have their pork feast as they land on your Boiotians. You should have gone home as ordered last night, and been spared the sight of your bloodied Boiotians below.”