Epikleos looked up at the man he admired above all others. One reason he had stayed so close over the previous days was that Xanthippus kept promising to seek vengeance against Themistocles. It was the sort of threat that got a drunk man killed. Even sober, he did not think Xanthippus could win, not against one who had earned his first coins in a boxing ring. Justice took a distant second place to speed and skill, at least when it came to fists.

He was about to repeat all that again when he saw a red-cloaked figure crossing the field. It came back to both men in the same instant. They’d come to warn Themistocles, climbing out of a three-day stupor to carry the news. It had not been the most successful of plans. Epikleos squinted, one eye pressed shut against a headache he still thought might split his skull into two neat pieces.

‘That one?’ he said, staggering to his feet.

32

Eurybiades had set out from Sparta a week before, on foot. He’d raised a cup of wine to Regent Pausanias and the Spartiates when they had returned home in triumph. Helot women and children had lined up in silence to be told if their husbands and brothers and sons were among the dead. Thousands of those had been left on the plain by Plataea. They would not be given graves. Crows and foxes would tug them apart; the wind would make them bones in the sun. Their women were not allowed to weep, not in that moment of victory. Names of the fallen had been collected by the helots who still lived. As they were recited aloud, the women simply turned and went back to their homes, or returned to work.

A great procession had formed from the centre of the city to the acropolis. Pausanias had knelt there to the son of Leonidas, a public display of fealty that would help to keep him safe when Pleistarchus became battle king. He gave an oath of obedience that was the very soul of their city.

Eurybiades heard Pausanias had asked for a position with the Spartan fleet, far away from politics and power. He would not become an awkward presence for a young king. It was a sensible move for a man who had led the city to the greatest battle victory they had ever known. On one day, on the plain of Plataea, Spartiates and perioikoi had justified their entire regime and all their discipline. The stories were told over and over, every detail recorded without vainglory of any kind.