She had promised him a terrible choice, on a day then far ahead, between the destruction of Sparta, and his own death.

He smiled as he walked along, remembering her surprise when he’d laughed. He’d been so young! So certain of his strength and youth. He’d feared the revelation of some greater catastrophe, some twisted riddle of the gods that would lead to betrayal or dishonour. Instead, she had offered him a choice he would always have made, a thousand times over. His death, to save Sparta? Leonidas knew he could throw it away with a shrug. He would fling his life from him.

As the priest had touched his bare shoulder, he understood the time had come upon him. In quiet dignity, he had thanked the old man and knelt to him for his blessing. When he rose, Leonidas had summoned his personal guard of three hundred. After that, he had called the perioikoi – the warriors who lived around Sparta but were not of the elite. They had not been bound by the laws of the ephors, any more than his personal guard. Leonidas frowned as he considered the thousand men who had answered that call. They owed him loyalty unto death. Had he skirted his oath? No, he was certain. The men who marched with him that day were of the Peloponnese, but not of Sparta. With his helots, with those who had joined him from Plataea and Thespiae, he had six thousand, marching towards the mountains.

As the land rose near the coast, Leonidas could see galleys out on the waters, with the red sails of Spartan ships leading them. More ships than he could believe. He knew Eurybiades for a good man. Leonidas turned his head and whistled to the helots trotting in his wake, calling the name of the one he wanted. Dromeas was one who seemed born to run, who loved the freedom of it. The young man was in his twenties, with a black beard marked by the jagged scar that had brought him to Leonidas’ personal group of helots. Dromeas had outrun a group of three young Spartiates in training and, of course, they had beaten him savagely in response, leaving him with a great scar from his forehead to his chin. Leonidas had offered the man a place in his retinue – if he managed to beat them again. Though blood had run down his chest and spattered his thighs, Dromeas had summoned his will and left them in his dust for a second time that day. Two of them had left the training – one to join the perioikoi, another to family in Corinth. Dromeas had run a thousand days since then for the Spartan king who had seen his value and his will.

Leonidas clapped Dromeas on the shoulder as the bearded young man came alongside.

‘I have a task for you, Runner,’ he said.

Perhaps another would have taken the nickname as an insult. Dromeas wore it with pride. Leonidas was a man to follow.