“Never, as you hope me to be anything save your mortal enemy, mention that name again.”
“As you like it—it’s no very pretty tale, I grant, even amongst Medizers. Yet it was most imprudent to let him live.”
“You have never heard the Furies, Lycon.” Democrates’s voice was so grave as to dry up the Spartan’s banter. “But I shall never see him again, and I shall possess Hermione.”
“A pretty consolation. Eu! here are our outposts. We must pass for officers reconnoitring the enemy. You know your part to-morrow. At the first charge bid your division ‘wheel to rear.’ Three words, and the thing is done.”
Lycon gave the watchword promptly to one of Pausanias’s outposts. The man saluted his officers, and said that the Greeks of the lesser states had retreated far to the rear, that Amompharetus still refused to move his division, that the Spartans waited for him, and the Athenians for the Spartans.
“Noble tidings,” whispered the giant, as the two stood an instant, before each went to his own men. “Behold how Hermes helps us—a great deity.”
“Sometimes I think Nemesis is greater,” said Democrates, once again refusing Lycon’s proffered hand.
“By noon you’ll laugh at Nemesis, philotate, when we both drink Helbon wine in Xerxes’s tent!” and away went Lycon into the dark.
Democrates went his own way also. Soon he was in the fallow-field, where under the warm night the Athenians were stretched, each man in armour, his helmet for a pillow. A few torches were moving. From a distance came the hum from a group of officers in excited conversation. As the orator picked his way among the sleeping men, a locharch with a lantern accosted him suddenly.
“You are Democrates the strategus?”