None of the Thebans around Epaminondas cared for the booty that drove on most of the coalition that had poured over the plain of Lakonia. Instead, battle was their desire, and so always they eyed the Spartans on the other side of the river. Red-capes were running about there, taunting and overturning wagons as they threw up a makeshift rampart at the fords and shook their spears. Their women on the rooftops yelled at the sight of the fires of Epaminondas-as angry at their own men who had let the unthinkable happen as they were at the Boiotian pigs across the water. A few of the younger girls had climbed the peaks of the roofs. They were prying up the roof-tiles with iron bars and handing them down to their mothers on the balconies, who stockpiled their weapons for the street-fighting to come.
“Hoa. You three. Hold up.”
It was Ainias again, marching in at dusk to the camp of Epaminondas. He was waving his hands in a way unlike the somber killer who usually stabbed first and spoke only later. “Come. Now get over here. Look at this. A Spartan party, a half lochos, maybe more. Look. They’re trapped on that farm over here just as the early sun sets. Some slow-coach Spartans are caught on our side on the river, the wrong side of the Eurotas. They will either go up in smoke with their shed or fight their way through us to their king across the water.”
Without waiting for a reply from his friends, Ainias pulled his helmet down over his face and headed back toward the Spartan holdouts.
CHAPTER 26
Epaminondas followed. As they neared the besieged farm, Ainias called over the Elean lords Talos and Philoxenos and the captains of their mounted rangers who had trapped the orphaned band of Spartans out in the plain of Lakonia. Talos broke in, “We’ve cornered something over here on this estate. Something big. A phantasma, a ghost from their Zeus is holed up there. My Eleans have plundered the field vats. But there is a hoplite bunch still in the house. And another hundred or more Spartans milling about in the courtyard. There is a big man with them that brings piss to our boys’ legs who won’t go near the tower. We were too busy with the booty in the sheds to notice this enemy island. Now we discover that we’ve surrounded a whole company of killers. They say it is the clan of Lichas-or even worse-inside.”
“Hold up. Stop your men. I know this place,” Epaminondas yelled. “I know this foul farm.” The general then sent a runner to Pelopidas and ordered after him, “Send in the Sacred Band. Send for another lochos or more if you can. Get Philliadas and his hard men from Tanagra over here. All of them before midnight.” Then he turned to Melon and pointed to the tower, still looming white as darkness fell. “Lichas may be here, or at least some of his own. This is the farm of his dead brother Leon. His kleros is somewhere close by. I passed right by here on the embassy last year to the taunts of Antikrates and his kryptes. I wager that either Lichas or his son, or maybe both are in there, or at least nearby. So maybe we have torched the grand estate of Leon.”
But it was far more than that. For the Boiotians had, in their ignorance, stumbled onto the compound of all the Lichades, all five farms, a thousand plethra of orchard and vineyard altogether near the Eurotas, with six tall towers, all built by their own hands, without the labor of slaves or helots, five of them by the grandfathers of Lichas-Xanthos and Prytanis-whitewashed purgoi all in shouting distance of each other. Little did they guess that Gorgos on his arrival from Leuktra had spent a half-year here himself, although Melon looked out among the bonfires and thought that one of the towers seemed strangely new with its fresh whitewash and a red border-and in the fashion of his own back on Helikon. Its roof and stones might easily have been built by the Malgidai.
Now Melon and Proxenos leveled their spears and advanced toward the fires and the hoplites who ringed the estate. Ainias headed to the outer field wall. It ran about twenty palms high around all the farms and had various gates, as paths from each farm led out of the family grounds. As they neared the path to the southernmost farm, maybe two hundred Eleans under their general, Talos, were throwing stones and javelins at Spartans behind the tower’s courtyard wall-a man’s height, its gate closed fast. A few were torching the door jambs of one of the abandoned towers. Talos was waving them forward. “They’re in there. No worry about that. Lichas must have an iron gut to dare to be on our side of the river.”
“Lichas has no gut, Talos. He feels nothing, but won’t give up his own estates without blood-our blood he thinks,” Melon said grimly.
“So let’s storm it and get the killing over.” Ainias pulled out his blade and put down his spear. “It will be too crowded for spear work in there, only sword killing. Man-to-man, hand-to-hand, a real blood feast for your night-loving Keres, Melon, that you so often warn us about.”
“No, no,” Proxenos broke in. “Better to let them die on the vine. They’re like a rotten grape cluster with the gnats once its stem has been nicked. Why go in there? It’s too dark. We have thousands in this plain. They are a good stade or two from the safety of the Eurotas. We have them trapped on the wrong side of the water. They’ll starve while we tighten the nets. All of them are not worth one of our dead. Let them be.”
Melon agreed. “Proxenos is right, Ainias. Talos-you back step a bit. Well before morning we’ll have enough men to surround the entire farm five deep. We can throw embers through the windows. So for now let the Spartans be.” Melon planned to keep his shield all night on his arm, as he sat against a plane tree that had grown into the stones. He watched the shadows of hoplites run up as the call went out that Lichas or at least his kin was trapped. “But don’t think they’ll starve. Hardly. They’ll charge a little after daybreak. We need more guards here, but the army is scattered for thirty miles plundering and burning. Our men are looking for cattle and sheep, not the spears of Spartan hoplites.”
Ainias nodded and looked over at the Spartan enclave. “Remember Leuktra. They’ll fight their way out through our circle. Break out with Antikrates or someone like him at the front. They’ll march out to the sound of pipes, with torches blazing. Maybe Lichas, maybe his son will lead. But they’ll come out that gate before dawn and head for the river. These men won’t die without killing some of our own. Still, there is enough of us to slaughter the whole herd.”
The hoplites and their generals were crouched behind the long low field and cross walls, as sentries slung lead bullets and cast javelins over the high courtyard into the Spartans, sure they could wear down Lichas and his men. For the present there were at least stout walls between the red-capes and the Boiotians. Proxenos was sitting quietly. Some around him were sleeping by the campfires; others were drowsy but waiting for the men of Tanagra to come up, half-convinced these Spartans were already dead or would give up. Then Proxenos himself dozed off only to awake to the sounds of Doric shouting.
“To me. Spartans to me. Rally to me.” It was not even dawn light yet. The Spartans had surprised them in their breakout by beating the sunrise. The waking Boiotians jumped up just as the Elean guards ran past them in terror. Ainias, who was on the front watch at the courtyard, flew frantically behind the Eleans. Then he ducked behind the road wall when he saw his Boiotians. “We were wrong. There’s not fifty there, not by a long way, but three hundred hoplites, maybe even more-peers all by the look of their armor. Maybe even five hundred coming down the lane, keeping the walls on each side, and nothing to stop them in front, like a bull with his horns lowered trapped in town. All royal guard I reckon. They march in their capes as on parade. Here they come in a phalanx. They broke right through our ring. Get out from this road, up over the field wall, before they roll us over.”