Spartans at the Gates Read Free Page B

wall, moping.
    Chusor put his mouth to the crack in the doorframe and tried to mask the frustration in his voice. “Listen, Diokles, my friend. The Spartans are merely trying to threaten the Plataeans into breaking their alliance with Athens. The Spartans do not know how to besiege a high-walled citadel like Plataea. They never have and never will. Because they’re as dumb as doorknockers outside of forming up a phalanx. They don’t even know how to till the soil, the poor buggers, and that’s why they had to enslave your happy race of Helots to do their labors! So why don’t you come on out and get back to work in the smithy. I need your help.”
    There was a long pause before Diokles said in his halting voice, “The masters are smarter than you think. They smart enough to find other people. To help them lay siege this city. They find smart men like you . They find a way in. They will capture me and cut off hands, lips, eyes, ears, and cock and make me eat them.”
    Leo cringed. “Gods! That is horrible.”
    Chusor took in a deep breath, puffed out his cheeks, and exhaled slowly. He tugged on his long braided goatee for a few seconds, then turned and strode up the stairs to the sunlit workshop above. Leo raced up behind him, immediately shielding the lamp flame and blowing out the wick lest it start a fire—this part of the workshop contained highly flammable items. They stood next to each other, staring off into space, grimly contemplating what Diokles had said.
    The two were an odd pair. Leo was a short, pale, and notoriously homely eighteen-year-old prone to acne, with a head of thick black hair and overlong arms. Chusor—the tallest man in Plataea—was over forty years of age yet still in the prime of his manhood, with skin the color of roasted sesame, the musculature of an Olympian, and the proud face of a Phoenician god.
    The men and women of Plataea called Chusor “the Egyptian” because of his dark brown skin and exotic features. To them he was a barbaroi —one who babbled “bar bar bar” like a savage. Except this so-called barbarian spoke their language fluently and with the accent of an educated man born and bred in Athens.
    Chusor and Leo had been thrown together a week ago during the Theban sneak attack, and had come to admire each other’s unique skills. Leo worshipped Chusor for the way he’d taken control of the panic-stricken Plataeans and led the citizens to victory against the Theban barricades with his invention: a deadly liquid fire that stuck to the enemy’s skin. And Chusor respected Leo’s tenacity—his wrestler’s will to never let go of an opponent.
    â€œWho would the Spartans get to help them lay siege to Plataea?” Leo asked.
    â€œPersians,” said Chusor. “Something I’ve been worried about. There’s many a Persian siege-master who’d gladly give his balls for the honor of bringing down Plataea.”
    Fifty years ago, not a mile from the citadel, the Persian king Xerxes had watched nearly half a million of his men die in the Battle of Plataea—the greatest loss in the history of their ancient empire. Xerxes’s own siege-master had been captured and put to work for the rest of his life improving the walls and towers of Plataea—the city he had come to destroy.
    â€œWell, I’ve got work to do grinding the sulfur stones,” said Leo as he went into the other room. Chusor had taught Leo how to make the fire pots they’d used against the Theban invaders. The sticking fire was composed mainly of a highly combustible distilled pine resin called naptha, and the explosive gray-colored mineral gypsum. Chusor added to this a secret ingredient that he’d learned from the great Naxos of Syrakuse: the volatile niter crystals extracted from bat guano. These three ingredients—when contained in a pot, set alight with a fuse, and hurled at an enemy—would