“Or by midday, master,” piped up Melissos. He went on as he gazed at the long columns behind. “We are a snake then, Master Melon. A long snake, always ahead as its coils unwind to the rear. We’re getting longer even as we get farther from Thebes?”
“Longer? I’d say when we head down the pass our tail will just be leaving Thebes, seventy stadia back. Who knows, Melissos, it may be snowing on us on the pass yet sunny on those behind in the plain-and all in this same winter army.” Later, near the foothills of Erithryrai, Melon got word that Epaminondas was waiting for him at the head of the column. The generals were already high on the Plataian road, camped outside the walls of the city that Proxenos had rebuilt years earlier. This was where Melon wished to go anyway, since Alkidamas had told him that one of his agents would be meeting him there by nightfall. Before sunset the two slipped into camp. They tethered Xiphos beside a fire. Maybe a half-myriad of northerners were busy around them, and at least that many Thebans all along the road back to the Kadmeia. Officers kept the road clear. The winter rains were late here. The road was free of the deep red winter mud of the valleys of northern Boiotia.
Melon grabbed Melissos by the shoulder. “Stay close. These northerners, folk like your own, can’t be trusted, especially the riders. The Lokrians would run us down for play. The Phokians, well, the Phokians, they’re worse than any Spartans I know. I’ve seen some outlaws from Thessaly, too. Temple robbers and shrine looters, all of them, neighbors of yours. Still, our Epaminondas can’t be choosy in his allies. And he wasn’t.” The two got directions. They were soon in among the tents of Epaminondas, on a rise with a view of the distant hills above the battlefield at Leuktra. Melon noted that from the slopes above the river Asopos they could see the last light of the short winter day flickering off the white marble monument where he had met Alkidamas only two days earlier, not far from where Lichas had taken Lophis down. To the west along a bank three stadia away they could see the majestic hilltop estate of Proxenos, son of Proxenos of Plataia. Its torches on the portico above the river were blazing before the sun even fell, perhaps the household’s eager beacon to guide their master home-as if he were not somewhere already far distant, wandering down in the Peloponnesos.
Melon helped Melissos unload their packs. “Sleep, Makedonian. Tomorrow we talk as we march. This twilight let the young bloods put our lochoi in their order. The peripoloi and the rangers rouse the countryside, as they search for the stay-in-beds and the hide-a-ways. Anyone is fair game that the muster officers can’t find on the first go-around. We strike out at dawn. They say we will be at the flatlands of Mantineia in five days or six. Then two more on to Sparta.”
Then from his back a familiar voice took over from Melon. “Maybe seven days for our tail end. The full muster won’t even pass out of Thebes until tomorrow night.” It was Epaminondas. He had no helmet but wore a leather broad-brimmed hat that nearly covered his face. “A bad habit of walking up behind you, Melon. No worry. You are no snoring sentry. So in peace sleep, Thespian. All is planned.” With that Epaminondas passed on by their camp with four or five hoplites. “Come to the head of the march at daybreak. We will be waiting for you.”
Melon and Melissos were drifting off to sleep even before full darkness and the Great Bear had yet taken over the sky. How had he ended up here on the ground at Plataia? Just three days earlier, he had been at work at his olive press, promising Proxenos only that he might ride over to see things at Thebes. From that sudden urge, he had fallen in with the stranger Alkidamas, taken on a new servant, watched the great debate in the council hall of the Boiotians, and been called to the head of an army on its way into the frontier of Sparta. Suddenly Melon jolted up. Someone had kicked him. The voice was Boiotian. He recognized the tongue as well. “Sleeping so soon? But it is not even full dark-the moon is still in hiding.”
Chion was standing over him.
“This sapling next to you, what is it? A slave boy? A helot? You were never a boy-lover, Melon. How did this mushroom clamp onto your trunk?”
“Careful to kick the sleeping dog, Chion, he may bite yet.”
Melon rose to greet Chion. “This Melissos comes as the hostage servant of Alkidamas. That man’s own son Kalliphon was cut down near us on the left at Leuktra. So he lent me a spare Makedonian hostage that General Pammenes brought back to the men of Boiotia. He is a truce pledge from the Makedonians of the north. If the peace holds, he goes back to the north after the barley harvest. Then we get our own captives back in the bargain. He claims he’s royal. But he won’t tell us more. In the north there every tribe boasts they have queens and kings. He watches more than he talks.”
Chion nodded. “I know, I know of those two. I met both in Thespiai and sent them after you. But so they found you. I had Eudoros and Neander show them the road, and where to find you at the trophy of Leuktra.”
Melon was puzzled. “Chion, are you here from Alkidamas? He was supposed to send me a messenger. Why you? Why leave Damo, even if she’s with the dogs and the boys? She’s with your child. The country is swarming with bad sorts.”
“But Master, forgive me. I come for a reason you won’t like. Your coins in the well are yours. I’ve never drawn the boxes up without you. You know that.” Now Chion looked up and talked bolder to his former master. “But a strange helot from the south met me when I was pruning in the red grape vines two days ago. A Nikon, he said his name was, as he ran up. A proud label for a slave, this man called “Victory.” But Nikon could hardly stand. His sandals were worn to the soles, and he was about through and shaking. Even if he had been fresh, he was a scarred and leathery sort, an ugly one with whip scars on his neck and back, and with a stink of hides on him. Begging for money, he claimed, so that he could ransom our Neto. In chains to the south, he swears, she was. A prisoner in the log fort of Lord Kuniskos, he swears. He hands me a note, with the block letters scratched on bark from a woman who wrote the Attic way-why in the south I don’t know. At least that’s what he said. He looked like he’d run the whole way. But he was at least a Pheidippes, an iron legs.”
Melon grabbed his forearm as Chion continued. “I needed a thousand good silver pieces, Master. I only skimmed the top of the iron boxes, and didn’t touch the gold below. So I told this Nikon the ransom money would follow in five days. I will take it myself to free our Neto to keep her alive. I promised Nikon the helot that. We gave pledges. I sent word to Alkidamas, who is on the side of Kithairon by the sea waiting for a ship. But Nikon took off back southward out to the harbor town Kirrha on the gulf like he was running the race in armor at Olympia. Here is the letter that Damo read better than I. I memorized what she said was scratched on the bark:
Erinna tes Ithomes to Meloni. O Melon Malgidos. Pempe nun chremata pros ten Erinnan en te ge te ton Messenion. Auten apoagorazein dei tina Netona apo ton Spartiaton. Pempete auta meta toude Nikonos, andros men agathou, agrammatou de.
“Erinna of Ithome to Melon, son of Malgis: Send money to Erinna in the land of the Messenians. She must buy back Neto from the Spartans. Send it with this here Nikon, a good man, but an illiterate.”
Chion remembered more or less the way Damo had read it, but half the words on the bark were unclear to him. So he handed it over to Melon and kept talking. “What do these scratches mean? That stringy helot Nikon went to his knees in begging, an odd thing for a tanner by his smell who says he will set all of Messenia on fire. So our Damo had me pull up the coin box. I had no wish to trust this helot, even if Neto had long said that she spoke to him while asleep. But Nikon told Damo well enough what our Neto looks like. So he does not lie, at least not completely. But who is this Erinna? When I asked Nikon, he said, ‘Ask Alkidamas.’ ”