(eng) P. K. Lentz - Hellennium 01 by Athenian Steel

Author:Athenian Steel [Steel, Athenian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

III. AMPHIPOLIS \ 5. Brasidas

He stood unhelmed, flowing dark Spartiate locks clinging to his high forehead and angular, bloodied cheekbones. His right hand rested defiantly on the hilt of his sheathed sword, and on his left arm hung a battered lambda-blazoned hoplon.

That Brasidas was not among the dead would disappoint Thalassia—wherever she was. (Why did he sense she was somewhere near, watching the battle with her overkeen eyes?) Let her call his survival a failure if she would. By any reasonable human measure, a great victory had been won this day.

And the day was not yet over. There was still time yet for Brasidas to join the ranks of the dead.

The bridge was packed from bank to bank, rail to rail with soldiers. They spilled onto the land, too, forming walls of shields facing east and west. Half the Spartans and allies were bloody and battered while the rest were fresh, as though they had been caught between the two battles on the east bank and west, participating in neither. All of the holdouts were hoplites, and the gentle, chaotic motion of their tall, closely packed spears made the bridge seem almost a living thing.

At the head of the pack, on the side facing Amphipolis, Brasidas stood. Around him and comprising the front two ranks were perhaps thirty more survivors of his army's core of freed Helots. At the Spartans' feet stood a tangled heap of corpses of Athenians and Amphipolitans, a makeshift palisade of flesh bound to interfere with any further attempt to dislodge them.

Of course, the standoff had an obvious solution, and it did not escape Demosthenes. After the end of the battle's first phase, Straton had brought his troop of gastraphetes-wielders down from the walls of Amphipolis; but consulting with the huntsman now, Demosthenes learned that the belly-bows could not be put to further use until a stock of used bolts could be harvested from the frosty earth and from the bowels of enemies already slain.

There was nothing to lose by talking, then, and something to gain, if not the holdouts' surrender: time for ammunition to be collected.

"You men!" Demosthenes called down over the bridge from his lines a safe distance away. "Spartans and their allies! You have nothing to be ashamed of this day! There is no dishonor in suffering an honest defeat, and so I offer you the chance to leave this place with your honor intact. Surrender only your arms and your general, and you may keep your lives and your freedom!"

Brasidas, long hair matted with blood and cheek bearing a deep gash, did not give his men time to consider deserting him. He shouted back, "That is ever the way with you Athenians, is it? Willing to fight so long as the going is easy, but when the real work begins you start throwing about something even cheaper than your arrows: words! Come finish us if you've got the balls, hippopornoi!"

The term was new to Demosthenes. Horse-whores. Perhaps Brasidas had invented it, or

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