Killer of Men lw-1

by Christian Cameron

  I made it.

  Simon didn't. I wonder what he might have done had he made it to the front, but the run left him behind. About sixty men stayed in the rear. This always happens. So the phylarchs say a few words to the men who make it to the fight, and then they close the files.

  Suddenly I was in the fourth rank. My hand was cold and clammy on Deer Killer. I had a heavy javelin to go with her, and that's all I had. I had no sword. On the other hand, I had armour like the best men.

  Epictetus put me in the fourth rank because, in his opinion, I was more fit for combat than the eight men behind me. He was right. But at the time I thought him a monster for putting me so close to the front.

  I was one file from the far right. Bion was my file-leader, and Pater was about a spear's length away when we closed our ranks and files in the synaspismos.

  Then we sang the Paean. Usually men sing it before they charge, but not always. I don't know what happened to the Paean at Oinoe – whether I have forgotten it, or whether we didn't sing it. But I was in the phalanx at Parnes, and I remember singing, roaring my fear out inside the bronze helmet that my brother had died wearing.

  In the closed ranks, you are three feet from the men on either side, so that the rim of your shield can just touch if you move to tap them – something men do all the time as they wait. You start a few feet from the men in front and behind, but as a fight goes on, everything closes in. Well, that's what usually happens. You end up in a tight-packed mob that pushes together and sees only with the eyes of the front rank. In that fight, I had no idea what was happening in front of us from the moment that our files closed up. I could see Dionysius's leather-clad back, and I could see Pater's plumes and the rim of my own aspis.

  We pushed forward.

  We marched together to the sound of the Paean. We had a slight hill behind us and we went down the hill and then our front slammed into the fight. Friends? Enemies? The front of a phalanx has no allies. We went down into the fight, and the only sign I had that Pater was facing death was an increased pressure on my shield.

  But they melted in front of us. I stepped over a man who was down. I looked down – hard enough in a helmet – and saw his eyes peeking over the rim of his shield, and the black blood on his legs. I let him live, and so did everyone else.

  We started to plough through the maelstrom. Dust rose with the sun, and the battle was not ending. We pushed forward a step at a time, and I was hot and miserable, my spear held point-up so that it wouldn't foul the men ahead of me. Sometimes the man behind me – a middle-aged farmer from two farms beyond us, a bitter man named Zotikos – pushed too hard, and I was sandwiched between the curved front of his aspis and the curved back of my own. I was too small for this, and it hurt.

  Zotikos always apologized to me every time he slammed in. 'Sorry, kid!' he'd grunt. 'No good at this shit!' He was pale with fear – but he pushed.

  I know – now – what happened in the front rank, but at the time I knew nothing except that Pater was alive, because I could see his plumes and hear his voice. And we should have been winning an easy victory – we were the only formed troops on the field, and the Thebans were outnumbered.

  Maybe they were stubborn Boeotians, just like us.

  Maybe the phalanx isn't as important as men think. To be honest, I've seen unformed mobs stop a phalanx several times. Only Ares knows. We pushed forward and our front-rankers stabbed with their spears, Athenians rallied on our right and Thebans melted away, and then, suddenly, we stopped.

  Calchas was right – it is the killers who are dangerous. The rest of war is very like a sport. Like pushing and pulling and spear-fencing all together. But when the killers come, it is nothing like a sport.

  I don't know who they were. A brotherhood? Some men who had trained together as boys? Or more likely, a band of aristocrats. They had good armour and they knew their business. Perhaps they were mercenaries. At any rate, they hit our phalanx when we were tired and lazy and confident that nothing would stand against us. Epictetus went down and, as I raised my head to look, Dionysius took a blow to the helmet and down he went.

  And just like that, I was in the front rank, facing a killer. I had all the time it took him to push past Dionysius to see that he was clad from head to foot in bronze, with thigh guards and arm guards and knuckle guards like a professional, and he had a bronze-faced shield and a heavy spear and a double plume of red.

  You must lock your shield with your neighbour's, put your head down and refuse to take chances. That's what Calchas said.

  When you are faced with a killer in the bronze storm, there are two things that tempt you. One is to run. That way lies instant death. The time to run has long passed when the man in bronze is at the end of your spear. The other temptation is to attack. This is a twin child born of the same parent – fear. You attack to prove to yourself that you are not afraid, and because you have no real hope. Or to get it over with. I have seen lesser men kill greater, but it doesn't happen often, so the second is as hopeless as the first, although it makes a better story for your mother. Because you'll be dead.

  Calchas's way is the way that takes care, and time, and discipline. But as Dionysius fell, his aspis fouled the killer's spear and I got a breath to think.

  I backed one step and shoved my aspis high and hard against the man next to me. He was Eutykos, a young man from a good family. Later on we were friends, and I loved his sister. I'd met her, of course, at festivals, and she was pretty – but at thirteen you don't look at girls as much as you should. Hah!

  So I locked my shield with Eutykos and the killer's doru crashed into my aspis – high. He was going for my helmet, but I had tucked my head so that only the top of the helmet came above the rim of my aspis. He swung again and his doru glanced off my helmet, but I had no crest to catch the point and he lost his balance and crashed against me, breast to breast.

  Old Zotikos stood his ground. He threw his shoulder against my back and held me against the killer's shove, bless him. And he went one better. While the killer rained blows of his spear on my head and aspis, Zotikos rammed his spear into the killer's shield, full force.

  I got to breathe.

  Eutykos poked at him, too.

  On my left, Straton, Myron's older son, locked his aspis against mine.

  Only then did I realize that the voice shrieking 'Lock up!' was mine.

  Now the killer was facing three men – six, really, because none of our followers flinched – and the spear points were coming for him.

  Locked up and secure, we began to kill him. I have no idea who got him. Later, my spear point was bloody and the blood dripped down the shaft and over my hand. But Zotikos also had blood on his and so did Straton. Perhaps we all took him. It doesn't matter. No man – no man born of women – can face six steady hoplites, even if they are so scared that shit runs down their legs.

  That one fight was the battle, for me. I'm sure that other men did great deeds, and I am sure that the prize of honour went to Miltiades the Younger, who cut a red swath through the Thebans and broke their centre. His sword was like a thunderbolt, so men said.

  I never saw him. By Ares, I didn't even see Pater, and I could have touched him with my spear point.

  But I saw the killer, and I held my ground.

  Still makes me smile, honey.

  And then the Thebans broke and we ran them down.

  I killed some poor exhausted sod who begged me to spare him. But he didn't drop his sword and I was too tired to take a chance. Hard to tell what was in my head. I asked his shade for pardon the next day. I think that if he'd let the sword go, or stopped waving it, I'd have let him live. When the pursuit starts, the shield wall collapses, winner or loser, and every man fights on his own. Eutykos stuck by me, but none of the rest of my file-mates were anywhere to be seen, and we picked up prisoners and fought our last fight in the middle of a thousand screaming Attic farmers. Some brightly armoured aristocrat knocked me flat and another yelled 'Can't you see the yok
el is a Plataean?' and they ran off elsewhere. We had no dead. Dionysius was deeply unconscious, and he slurred his words for ten days and missed the third fight, but he lived to thank me for covering his body. That's what his father thought I did, and it saved my life later.

  We picked up our wounded and treated them as best we could. The Athenians had taken it much worse. They had hundreds of dead.

  The Thebans had more. The north end of the valley was carpeted with Theban dead. We stripped them with gusto. Their herald came and they made their submission, and Myron hobbled off – Pater couldn't even walk, he was so tired – and on that very spot on the south bank of the Asopus, the boundaries of free Plataea were settled between archons and heralds, a deputation of Corinthians – neutrals, and honest men – settling the matter and guaranteeing it.

  Myron was no fool – by settling the borders and not making high demands, he ensured that the treaty would last, and he ensured that he would be elected archon. And by enlisting the arbitration of Corinth, he won us another ally.

  As I said, we stripped their dead. Our boys and slaves brought the camp up, and we loaded carts with Theban camp furniture and Theban armour. Pater got quite a bit – he was strategos.

  A tribunal met and discussed Simon. He was not the only man to miss the fight, but he was no man's friend and his cowardice was a public disgrace. Even other men who had missed the fight – too tired to keep up, they claimed – complained about him.

  Simon spoke well enough in his own defence. And he knew, as we all knew, that we still had to fight the Euboeans. So he asked that he be allowed to fight in the front rank.

  The phylarchs discussed it and refused, but they put him in the second rank, behind Bion. Two men in front of me. To earn back the respect of other men.

  After the tribunal, Pater told me that he'd asked that I have that spot. And so the gods speak to us, thugater. If I had stood there – well, I would be a bronze-smith in Boeotia and you would never have been born.

  I was tired after the fight and I slept before the light failed, but the next day I was full of energy. That's how it is for the young, honey. You recover fast. Pater and Epictetus and Myron took much longer.

  We sent the spoils home over Cithaeron and marched east, into the rising sun, to fight the Euboeans. It was insane – three battles, in a week. Ah, you brighten – you've heard of the 'Week of Three Battles', eh?

  I was there, honey. And after the first two, the Plataeans thought that they were gods. And the Athenians the same. I said that every army has a heart, a soul, eyes and ears. After the Thebans, that army was as one. We were still Atticans and Boeotians, Athenians and Plataeans, but we shared water and wine and jokes.

  Not one of us doubted that we would rout the Euboeans.

  They were soft. Their days of greatness were in the past and they had hoped to ride on a chariot of war driven by Thebes and Sparta. Now their mighty allies were gone, and their army marched back out of Boeotia, over the bridge at Chalcis, and stood waiting for us.

  It was just seven days since the Spartans had sent their herald to Pater when we marched over the bridge around midday. We did it well – we'd been together for two weeks and by Greek standards we'd become veterans. I was in my second fight as a hoplite and my shin still hurt from the rock a week before. And I could see Simon, two places in front of me, as we closed our files to the right.

  The Euboeans formed very close and stood with their shields overlapping, awaiting our charge. They didn't come forward, and to me, at thirteen, they didn't look soft at all.

  We marched in easy, open order until we were a stone's throw away. If they had any psiloi, they didn't come out. Neither did ours.

  Then we closed. We closed by doubling our files from the rear, so that seventh-rank men became front-rank men – the 'half-file' leaders. This was the closest order. I remained in the fourth rank, and Zotikos was now in the front. He swore and complained and grumbled as we closed, and Bion told him to keep it clean for the gods, and Zotikos said something under his breath and older men laughed.

  Now we were a spear's throw from them. We were locked up in the same close order. We were on the left, and again we were facing the cream of their warriors – the men with the best armour, the right of their line.

  Pater stood clear of our line. It was the only time I ever heard him speak before a fight, at least for so long. 'We're going to walk forward in time to the Paean, just as we did at Parnes. And when we hit their shield wall, we push straight on. Use your shoulders. Their line is thin, and they are already afraid. We have faced Sparta. We have nothing to fear here.'

  Men beat their spears on the face of their shields.

  Miltiades came running down the face of the army. When he was in front of the left-most Athenians, he raised his spear.

  'Sing!' he called, even as an enterprising Euboean threw a spear at him.

  Insults were called. We ignored them, although they were so close we could see faces, shield devices, bad teeth and good teeth. Pater started the song and every voice picked it up. We sang the first verse standing and then the whole army – Athenians and Plataeans – moved forward.

  Perhaps our line wasn't perfect, but I remember it as perfect. And when we were a spear's length from the Euboeans, I knew we'd won. A veteran at the age of thirteen, I knew as surely as if Athena sat on one shoulder and Ares on the other that the men of Euboea would break when our shields hit theirs.

  We must have had a bow in our line – because Pater and Bion hit them a heartbeat before the rest of the line, or perhaps the Euboean line had a curve in it. We hit, and the front opened like a door. Pater's helmet flashed in the brilliant noontime sun, and his plumes shone like the wings of some god-sent bird, and we gave a great shout as the aspides clashed and their line broke up the way a pot breaks when dropped on flagstones from a height.

  Even as the Euboeans broke, I saw Pater fall. I saw the way his head turned, and I saw that he fell forward as if pushed, and I know now as if I had seen it that Simon had stabbed him in the back, under his back plate. But I couldn't see, and battle deprives a man of many of his wits. All I thought at the time was that Pater was down, though the battle was already won.

  Pater was down. Somehow I got my legs on either side of his chest and stood my ground, because the Euboeans weren't beaten. Their front ranks crumbled but then stiffened, much as ours must have done against the Spartans, and they came back at us like men. I saw Simon with a short sword in his hand, dripping blood. He was green, his lips were white with fear and his eyes met mine.

  I didn't see it – oh, I'll tell it in its place. But that's when the Euboeans counter-attack struck, and I wasn't in the fourth rank any more, because I wouldn't give over Pater's body. I had no idea if he was alive or dead, but I stood my ground like a fool, and then, in that moment, I found out why old men and poets call it the storm of bronze. I got my dead brother's aspis up, and the hammering knocked me down over Pater – I was too small to stand the pressure of ten or fifteen weapons beating against my shield.

  But other Plataeans crowded in around me. They saw who was down and they were men, too. They pushed and killed. I could smell the copper of blood, the heavy waft of excrement that men release when they go down, the cardamom and onions they'd eaten for lunch. I got a knee under me and pushed my spear under the press and felt the soft, yielding resistance of flesh as I cut some poor bastard's sinews.

  Then I took my first wound. It's this one, see? And it saved my life, as you'll hear. Right through the top of the thigh, honey – some big bastard stood over me and pushed his spear right down over my aspis. It didn't cut the muscle, praise to Ares, but I went down, blood spurting between my fingers, with Deer Killer forgotten in the Euboean grass. I fell on top of Pater.

  I made the mistake of falling forward over my shield, and some Euboean bastard hit me on the head.

  When I awoke, I was rolling in my own filth and vomit, wearing the shackles of a slave. Part II Some Made Slaves War is the king a
nd father of all, and some he shows as gods, others as men; some men are freed, and some are made slaves. Heraclitus, fr. 53

  6

  Hard to imagine what that awakening was like for me.

  I had a fever. My wound was oozing pus – not that I knew that yet, I was off my head. And I had never been on a ship. I had no idea why I was wet, why the world swayed, why it was so cold.

  It didn't take me long to know, to know, honey, that I was dead and in Tartarus for some forgotten sin. I didn't think that I was dead. I knew it. I flailed and swallowed my own filth. I was shackled under a rowing bench in the bottom rank of rowers. No one expected me to row – only free men rowed, back then – but I was shackled flat with eight other slaves, destined for market. Not that I understood. I knew nothing.

  I went down again.

  I awoke a second time when a tall man poured water over me while another man held his nose. They looked at the pus – that's when I saw my leg, red and angry and inflamed – and flinched. The tall man with the pointed beard prodded my leg and I was gone again.

  I surfaced a third time in a pen, somewhere in Asia, I learned. I wasn't shackled, but my thigh still bled pus like a boy's spots. I had a fever like a child. And the other slaves – there were hundreds – avoided me as if I had the plague. For all they knew, I did. Slaves don't help each other, honey. That lesson hits you right away, when you go from the brotherhood of the phalanx to slavery.

  I was never completely out again. I raved – and no one bought me. I wasn't worth an obol. The wound on my thigh wept pus, as they say, and because of it, no one buggered me, not even the sick bastards who live at the bottom of the muck of the slave trade. No one made me play their flute, or any of the other things they do to slave boys and girls. You ever wonder why Harmonia flinches every time you move your hand, honey? You don't want to know.