My bed a slant of stone stained with soft moss,

My blanket the gods' realm of star-draped dawn,
I awoke with sores and a bitter taste
In my mouth. It was the mountain water
And my dried blood. My bed now a ladder,
I climbed as if it were to Olympus
And not Oeta I reached. I saw a man,
His tunic bloody and Theban, his hands
On a spear. My Spartan-wear spoke to him
And I passed. I saw King Leonidas,
No more royal than I or my Theban friend.
He was staring down at Thermopylae,
The valley that was to be our pyres.
A thousand Persians glared back, the fire.
Beyond them was ocean, the sapphire world
We lived around, imperfect now with sails.
Mountain and distance were natural shields
From their red-tipped spears and arrow tempests,
But the sight from our precipice moved us;
We descended into the hazy depths
Of rock and despair where the king's men were.
Tunnels, faults, caves, these were what we fought for,
Halls a few men wide that looked like Hades
But were testament to Ares' blood thirst,
Tapestries of crimson smears on gray pillars,
Shadows that hid Spartans and Persians alike.
A thousand more, they said, were poised right there,
Behind that ledge, or in the cracks below,
We, once some hundreds, now some dozens,
For two days had held them and dark at bay.
I saw them coming now, their Immortals;
We fought them, but this third dawn was different.
Despite the red sky -- Ares appeared quenched --
We did not make sacrifices of them.
Perhaps he sided with the heathens now.
I heard the king's calls, speared into the black,
But I was just a marionette now.
My thrusts were mechanical, while my mind
Thought of wine to smother the taste of blood,
Or a soft bed to soothe all the blunt aches.
Then silence; I stopped and looked to the king.
He looked back at us, his puppet army,
As if disappointed yet inspired --
-- And then he ran back up to Oeta's peak.
It was folly, we cried, they were too close,
But he climbed and speared at them from above
Just as an arrow struck him. His eyes grew;
He tripped and fell into an Immortal sea.
We were enraged and clawed for his body.
Crying for his return, damning the fates,
Carving our way through flesh, rock and shadow,
We fought to the king's broken, mangled form.
Now surrounded, dazed, I slipped; my head hit
My pillow of moss on my rock altar
To Ares, the warmonger, always thirsty.
The sky grew so deeply red it verged black.