Free Lion of Macedon by David Gemmell Page A

stone. He stared up at the
hoplite
statue. The warrior’s long spear was broken, yet still he looked mighty.
    Was he Leonidas or Pausanius, Parmenion wondered, or just a soldier?
    Leonidas? Why did the king slain at Thermopylae appear on the monument to Plataea? He was killed months before. The Greeks had asked the Spartans to spearhead their army against the coming Persian invasion, but the Spartans were celebrating a religious festival, and the priests refused to sanction such a move. However, the Spartan king, Leonidas, wasallowed to take his personal bodyguard of three hundred men to the pass of Thermopylae. There they had fought the Persian horde to a standstill, and even when betrayed and surrounded, the Spartan line still held. The Persians, too frightened to attack, finished off the defenders with arrows and javelins.
    Like the sun coming through cloud, the answer to Xenophon’s question shone in Parmenion’s mind. What was the lesson of Plataea? Even in defeat there is victory. The Persians, too frightened to tackle even the remnants of the three hundred, had finally come face to face with five thousand Spartan warriors. They had watched the line advance, spears leveled—and they had run. That was why the monument was shared. Plataea was also a victory for Leonidas the king, a victory won by courage and defiance and a hero’s death.
    He gazed up at the marble
hoplite
. “I salute you, Leonidas,” he said.
    Xenophon’s servants moved back as the old woman entered the gates of his home. None dared to approach her. She could see their fear and smiled mirthlessly as she stood leaning on her staff, waiting for the lord of the house.
    She felt the pressure of many eyes upon her. Once those eyes would have glowed with lust; once the mere sight of Tamis would have inflamed passions and had men willing to kill their brothers merely for the right to hold her hand. The old woman hawked and spit. Once upon a time … Who cared any longer about once upon a time? Her first husband had died in a war against Athens, her second in a battle in Thrace. The third had contracted a fever during a hot summer when the water went bad and had died in agony while Tamis was visiting Delphi. The last she could have saved—had she known of his illness. Could have? Might have? What did it matter now? The past was dead.
    She heard a door open and the confident steps of the Athenian general approaching her. She watched him with the eyes of her body and her talent, seeing both the handsome general and the glow of his soul fire.
    “Welcome to my home, lady,” he said.
    “Lead me to the shade and allow me a drink,” she told him. His hand touched her arm, and she felt his power. It disconcerted her, reminding Tamis of days of youth. The strength of the sunlight faded as he led her to an alcove to the right. Here she could smell the perfume of many flowers and feel the cool stone of the wall. She sat and waited in silence until a servant brought her a goblet of cold water from the well.
    “You have a message for me from the goddess?” inquired Xenophon.
    Tamis sipped the water. It touched a raw nerve in a rotting tooth, and she placed the goblet on the stone table. “You will not find what you desire, Athenian. No more distant wars for you. No more glory on the battlefield.” She felt his disappointment, sharp and raw. “No man achieves all his dreams,” she said more softly. “Yet you will be remembered by men for a thousand years.”
    “How so, if my glories are ended?”
    “I do not know, Xenophon. But you can trust my words. However, I did not come here to speak of you. I came to talk of the cub.”
    “Cub? What cub?”
    “The boy who buried his mother. The one who is to be. He will know glory, and pain, and tragedy, and triumph. He is the important one.”
    “He is just a child. He is not a king, nor even a gentleman. What can he do?”
    Tamis drained the water. She was comfortable here and yet unwelcome. It would have