Read Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium) for Free Online

black water in innocuous maneuvers meant to
disguise their true, less innocuous intent: attack.
    The island was still a black shape in the
distance when a low, clear wail split the air from the direction of
the island.  Demosthenes, son of Alkisthenes, standing on the
deck of one of the four Athenian ships, loosed a bitter curse.
 How had the Spartans known?
    It mattered not.  The invasion would go
forward regardless; it just would not be the one-sided slaughter
for which he'd hoped.
    " Auloi! " Demosthenes cried.
  Spear-points .  
    To the soldiers cramming the triremes'
decks, it was the code which meant their landing would be
contested.  Athenians would only set foot on Sphakteria behind
the lowered points of their spears.  He repeated the cry, and
his voice competed with a second blast of the Spartans' alarm.
    Shifting his weight constantly against the
tossing of the trireme that had him, like all the closely packed
men aboard, constantly bouncing off shoulders and shields and
rails, he gazed out over the prow.  On the moonlit beach of
the island's southern shore, dark blots were already darting about:
Spartan soldiers spotting the long-awaited invasion and hurrying to
arm.  A Helot runner would be on his way inland by now,
bringing word to the main body of Spartan troops, probably
somewhere near the island's center, where sat Sphakteria's sole
source of water, the one thing which which kept the tenacious enemy
alive.  Demosthenes had stared out over the harbor at the ugly
island all summer from his quarters on the acropolis of Pylos, and
he had dreamed of the day he would capture it.  Today.
    The four triremes drove for shore, while on
the beach fully armed Spartans trickled out from the tree line.
 The polished iron blades of their tall spears caught the
moonlight.  From this distance, in the dark of night, their
shields were dark circles, but soon enough the feared crimson
lambda would show.  
    Rather than forming up in the conventional
wall of shields, the Spartans spread across the beach in loose
clusters, poised to descend on the ships as they beached.
 That was just how his own force had repulsed the Spartan
marine assault on the city of Pylos months ago, their attempt to
recapture the city, the very engagement which had left this Spartan
force trapped on Sphakteria.
    Three of the four ships in the first wave
were loaded with Athenian citizens in full hoplite panoplies of
helmet, round shield, bronze breastplate and leg-greaves.
 Demosthenes stood among the hoplites on the deck of his own
ship,  Leuke , but unlike the men around him he had yet
to don his helmet.  Its cheek pieces gave wide enough berth to
his mouth that his voice could escape it unimpeded, but the bronze
covered his ears, erasing any hope of hearing a reply.  The
sea wind whipped his head of sand-colored curls, a feature as
distinctive as the red crest of rank adorning his helmet.  In
youth, boys had mocked him for the 'womanly' attribute, along with
his wide, brown doe-eyes, but no longer.  Not to his face,
anyway.
    " Atraktoi! " Demosthenes yelled in the
direction of the fourth trireme.  That ship held bowmen, and
the word meant  Spindles .  It was the derisive term
by which the Spartans referred to arrows.  Why not use it as
his command to fire, Demosthenes had decided.  Since Athens
maintained no formal force of archers, the bowmen were Ionians from
cities that paid tribute to Athens.  The Ionian captain heard
Demosthenes' shouted command, and seconds later his men loosed a
volley at the beach.
    Not much could be expected of archers firing
in darkness from the swaying deck of a ship, and sure enough, not
one of the spear-wielding shadows on the shore crumpled to the
beach or wailed in pain.  But the bowmen, and soon the
targeteers, too, with their iron-tipped javelins, would keep up a
hail of missiles until the melee began and the risk became too
great of their missiles lodging in friendly backs.
    Demosthenes
vessel