A soldier's arms

[Richelieu]

Great stuff!

[TheGuitarist]

Beyond description. Truly a masterpiece of realism and in-your-face authenticity.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Part 7. Thermopylae, 6th day

We were rested on the second day of the battle. Leonidas ordered us back to our base at the southern entrance to the pass, and moved up the Thespians and a reserve company of Athenians to take our place at the front. There they fought Xerxes' Cissian spearmen. Eumolpas and Simoniedes couldn't resist nipping back down the pass occasionally to insult the Persians- they had spent the morning trying to come up with new and breathtakingly obscene curses and wanted to try them out on the enemy.

That meant that we were kept informed of events at the front. Simoniedes was so keen to make sure he had an attentive audience that he would scramble up the mountain's face to scream his insults at them, getting a clear view of the fighting in the process. Eumolpas was scared of heights, so he settled for shouting his insults up to Simoniedes to relay on to the Persians. From their reports we learned that the Thespians had been badly shaken when their shield wall was broken and were driven back to the second line of barricades. For the first time the Persians held the northern mouth of the pass, but the Athenians held them at bay at the second line which was set at a particularly narrow stretch of the pass. At that point they held the Cissians back with a shield wall just four men wide, and the Cissians lost many men in the crush.

It was a strange day. We idled and tried to talk while the sounds of battle echoed down the pass. Among my friends, only Eumolpas and Simoniedes were unscathed. Philotas was dead. Perdiccas had only a scabbing gash across his eyebrow from a blow to his helmet, but was inconsolable at the loss of his pair, Philotas. Iannis carried the worst injuries- a Persian spear had stabbed clean through his thigh and his collarbone had been broken as he fell. He had come close to bleeding to death, and was carried back south on a stretcher before we had a chance to say goodbye.

My spear-gash was stitched up by Simoniedes and bandaged. I wasn't leaving the battlefield, so I limped around and winced with pain whenever my stitches pulled.

As dusk fell, the sounds of battle eased again as the two sides disengaged. The Persians had fallen back to the captured first barricades while the Athenians held the line just before the second barricades. It was an uneasy stand-off, with occasional flurries of arrows flying in both direction throughout the night. Surprisingly, the Persians started up the drumming and clamour again- the first time since the third night. We settled down around our fires and tried to grab what sleep we could.

*******************************

It must have been around midnight when I woke from a fitful sleep. Simoniedes was lying next to me, and from his breathing I could tell he was awake. I rolled over towards him.

"Can't sleep?"

"No" he replied. "I nodded off for a while, but I had a bad dream."

"What did you dream about?"

"About you, partly". He turned over onto his elbow and grinned at me, but he looked strained. "Should have been a good dream, shouldn't it?"

"Come on. What happened? It could be an omen"

"I was in a field of wheat. It was all swaying in the breeze- you know how it makes that whispering sound that's sort of quiet and loud all at once?"

"I know."

He lay back, looking up at the stars. "I had a sickle in my hand and I was harvesting the wheat. Just me in this great golden sea that went on for ever. Slash, slash, slash, leaving rows of cut wheat behind me. Then you were standing in front of me, screaming at me."

He paused a while, troubled by the memories. "What was I screaming?" I asked.

"Just screaming. Like you were terrified of something. Then I felt my hand was wet, and I saw that the sickle was dripping with blood. I was covered in it. I looked back and there was row after row of hacked bodies behind me, lying in pools of blood and guts. Millions of them- they stretched back as far as I could see. Some were still moving and thrashing about."

He paused again, for several minutes. This time I didn't try to prompt him, but he continued anyway.

"Perdiccas, Eumolpas....their bodies were there. Then Iannis was in front of me, and I hacked him to pieces with my sickle. There was this sea of blood and bodies, and I couldn't get out of it. All I could do was keep hacking away at everything and try to cut a path out. Philotas tried to run away, but I caught up with him and cut him down. All the time I was screaming and crying for forgiveness."

Another pause.

"Then it was you in front of me. I hacked my sickle straight at your face."

He didn't speak again. Some time after that, he fell asleep and I joined him

*********************************

Panic. Confusion.

Still dark, but with the deep blue light of pre-dawn in the sky. Screaming.

I'm staggering upright, still fogged by sleep. Alarm calls on the trumpets. Simoniedes is scrabbling for his shield. Shouting. It's Eumolpas.

"THEY'RE BEHIND US!"

********************************

[ChrisiusMaximus]

Intense please keep it coming.

[Skanky Burns]

More!

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

You'll have to wait until Monday at the earliest. I'm off out for the weekend.

[Richelieu]

Panic. Confusion.

Still dark, but with the deep blue light of pre-dawn in the sky.

Screaming: "It's monday morning and you said maybe you'd post more monday and it's monday and i'm waiting!!!"



...please ?

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

I got sidetracked. I wrote a new "Historical Filth" which is now on the OT.

[Skanky Burns]

Well you gave us something, so we will let you off just this once...

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=79268

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Part 8. Thermopylae- final day.

It's funny how history hinges on the smallest things, isn't it? One word can bring down an empire....

In this case it was leaves. That's all- just fallen leaves. The usual autumn fall had covered the pathway, and the noise of feet crunching on dried leaves alerted a sentry's attention. Had it not been for that, the Persians would have pinned us in at Thermopylae and had a clear run to Athens before it could be evacuated fully.

The pass of Thermopylae was not the only path over the mountains. There were narrow and daunting goat-paths that ran over them. Leonidas knew of them, and had set a guard on the most obvious of them. On the others he took a gamble that they would not be found. He lost. He failed us.

Ephialtes was the name of the goat-herd. His name is now the most reviled in Athens and Sparta, for he revealed a path to the Persians. Though he’s known as a traitor, I can’t blame him. Having a Persian sword at your throat could turn near anyone into a traitor. Leonidas should have placed patrols on all the known paths. It wouldn’t have taken many men- a few dozen could have held those paths for weeks.

So Xerxes knew of the paths, and had known from the first day of the battle. He always seemed to know everything we did even before we had acted. If Leonidas had possessed half as much intelligence as Xerxes we’d control all Asia Minor by now. Xerxes had thrown wave after wave of assaults at us, while all along he was quietly threading soldiers along the goat-path, awaiting an assault on our flanks. To move his entire army along that narrow mountain path would have taken weeks, but in a couple of nights he had a few hundred men poised and ready to attack our supply depots and pin us in the pass. Without water, we would have been finished in a day or two.

His plan almost succeeded- they had enough men down to cause panic. In the semi-darkness we had no idea how many of them there were. Suspecting a much larger force than actually emerged, Leonidas pulled all the Athenians and Messenians out of the pass, and ordered them to retreat towards Athens in an attempt to hold up a Persian advance some miles back from the pass. The Thebans and Thespians were also pulled out, and launched at the Persian assault party that was already burning our supplies.

We Spartans were to hold the pass. We were to hold the pass in the face of an all-out frontal attack from the Immortals, while praying that the Thebans and Thespians could hold back the assault from behind. Just 250 of us to hold the last barricade.

This was bad. The Immortals had attacked furiously, trying to prevent us getting an orderly shield-wall up. Simoniedes and myself were a few rows back from the frontline, but the front rows were broken into disorganised fighting. We were the first row to form a tight line. I was on the right extreme, with the cliff-edge by my side and Simoniedes crouching into my shield. We braced hard, and watched the front rows get slaughtered.

[ChrisiusMaximus]

More please

[TheGuitarist]

Incredible! Can't wait for more.

[trevor]

outstanding work, please continue!

[Skanky Burns]

I wish I could add something to this thread other than "More Please", but I can't think of anything.



More please.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

More soon. I'm watching too much news right now.