'My father fell fighting your phalanx,' I said quietly. 'I was behind him, and I stood over his body for a little.' I stopped, because it was a bitter memory – how I had been too weak to stand my ground, and how the rain of bronze and iron had beaten me to my knees and knocked me down.
I told it just like that. 'When I awoke, I was a slave,' I finished.
Eualcidas shook his head, and his teeth gleamed in the dark. 'You need to go to Delphi,' he said. 'You are god-touched, and you have been betrayed. No man of Euboea sold you as a slave. We ran. I ran,' he said, and he smiled that boy's smile. 'If you live long enough, you'll run, too. The day comes, and the moment, and life is sweet.'
I found that I was holding his hand. He had hard calluses on his palm.
I felt better. 'I don't think there's shame in running when everyone runs,' I said. I'm not sure that's really what I thought, but he was a great man, and suddenly he was looking for my comfort.
He smiled, and it wasn't his boy's smile. It was a very old smile indeed. 'Wait until you run,' he said. He shrugged. 'You're a good young man. I like you, but I have a feeling you won't come and share my blanket.'
I shook my head. 'Sorry, lord,' I said. I was, to be honest, tempted. He was kind. He was a killer of men, but something in him was basically good. And just sitting with him taught me – I don't know what, but maybe that what I was becoming could be greater than the sum of the corpses I left.
In many ways, Aristides and Miltiades were better men. They built to last, and they did things for their city that will live for ever. Aristides was a noble man in every way, and his mind went deep. And Miltiades was the best soldier I've ever known, except maybe his son.
But Eualcidas was a hero, a man from the age of gold. Almost like a god.
He kissed me. 'Let's be heroes tomorrow,' he said. And went off among the rocks, back to his own men. They tried us in the dawn, but we were cold, surly and awake, and the shower of thrown spears bounced off our shields and we chased them down the pass without trouble. My part of the line wasn't even engaged.
The slaves brought us some dried meat and some cheese, and I ate what I could get down and drank my share of water. My canteen was still full, and I kept it and my leather bag on under my shield, while most of the Athenians sent all their gear away with their slaves.
Late in the morning, I saw men on horseback round the bend and come forward, and I saw that it was Artaphernes, his right arm in a sling. We were standing in our ranks, and he rode quite close, but had the sense to stay a spear's cast away from us. Then he shook his head, made a quip to one of his aides and rode away.
It was perhaps an hour before they made their effort. We were bored, and nervous, and Aristides and Eualcidas kept walking along our front and talking – which made the boys nervous. You – the writer with the wax tablet – if you ever lead men to war, let me tell you something not to do. Don't have long conferences with your subordinates. Got that?
What an old bastard I am. My pardon, sir – you are a guest in my house. Have some more wine. And send some to me – talking of battle is thirsty work.
Do you know that most of what men say about war is a tissue of lies? All the girls know it – women get a distrust of male bragging in their mother's milk, eh? Hah, you aren't blushing now, my pretty. No – what I say is true. When the spears go down and the shields smack together, who in Tartarus remembers what happens? It all goes by in a blur of panic and desperation, and you are always one sword thrust from the dark, until you stand there breathing like the accordion bellows in my father's shop and someone tells you it is over.
What soldiers remember is the time before, and sometimes the time after. At the fight in the pass, I remember Cleon – my second-ranker – had to piss four times, even though he hadn't had enough water for two days. And Herk's best spear's head was loose, and he kept making it rattle in irritation – not that we could hear it, but the vibration annoyed him, and he kept at it the way a man will pick at a sore.
Heraklides – in the front rank on the right – had the finest horsehair plume of any men among the Athenians. He removed it, combed it out and remounted it, which was a nice way of showing his contempt for the Medes, and did a lot for the rest of us.
Then Eualcidas threw one of his spears. He didn't run or hop – he just stepped forward and threw with all his might, and, Ares, he was a hero. I had time to say something while it was in the air – I said, will you look at that?, or something equally inane while it cleft the heavens.
It struck point first, and then he ran along the front. 'Unless you bastards think you can out-throw me,' he said, 'no one throws a spear until the Medes are closer than that. No waste!'
We cheered him.
And then the Medes came. They knew their business. They poured around the corner of the pass – the bodyguard itself and then more Persians, their high hats and scale armour obvious, less than half a stade away. They halted and formed their front in a matter of instants, much faster than any of us had anticipated.
The first flight of arrows hit while we were still watching them in admiration. We were mostly veterans, and all our shields were off our insteps, up on our arms and held high. I doubt a man died in that first flight, but a few men took an arrow in the instep. Cleon had one ring his helmet and it dazed him, and all of us had shields moved by the weight of the arrows. Two arrows punched through the thin bronze on the face of my aspis, and the heavier one went right through the rim.
And that was just one volley.
The second volley came in and the third was in the air, and already men were losing their nerve. After the second volley there were screams, and I can't remember the next five or six, except that it was as if a big man was throwing stones at my shield. I took a graze along the outside of my left thigh and another arrow hit my left greave so hard that I almost fell – but the bronze held despite the mediocre work.
I turned and looked because Cleon's shield wasn't pressed against my back. He wasn't far away – an arm's length – but he was also looking back.
'Close up and get your fucking shields up!' I yelled, and then the next pair of volleys hit. More screams. Now we had men down, and other men pressing back.
Heedless of the arrows, Eualcidas ran across the front of the phalanx. 'Ten men to run with me!' he shouted.
I had no idea what they had planned, but if Eualcidas was leading it, I was going.
'Front rank!' I shouted at Cleon. I stepped out as the next arrow storm hit.
Aristides was no coward. He stepped right out from his place as the strategos. 'As soon as you rush them, we'll march!' he shouted.
Oddly, ten paces in front of the phalanx, only one arrow hit my shield. The Persians were lofting their arrows.
Now I understood what we were doing. And how suicidal it was.
Most of the men who stepped up were Euboeans. I think there were eight of them, and Eualcidas wasn't waiting for more.
'First man into the Medes will live for ever!' he said.
And we ran.
We ran as if we were running in the hoplitodromos, the race in armour. We ran right at their line – three hundred Persians, a front rank of spearmen with big shields, scalloped like Boeotian shields, and then eight more ranks of men with heavy bows and short swords. Cyrus would be there, and Pharnakes, if I hadn't put him down, and all the others I knew.
I thought all that in one step, as my sandal crunched the gravel.
I had about two hundred more strides to run, or die. We must have surprised them, and we surprised them again by being so fast. We were fast. When I think of that run, I remember what it was to be young – to be so stupid that I would dare to cross a field of Persian arrows alone, and to be so strong that it seemed a reasonable risk.
We set the Medes a quandary – shoot the runners, or shoot the phalanx? The phalanx came in behind us, and they were not slow. They began to sing the Paean, and it wasn't the best I've ever heard, but it was loud in the narrow confines of the pass.
Then you have to understand the Persian way. The front rank, as I say, is spearmen – sometimes the second rank as well. So all the archers have to shoot over the first two ranks, and that means that they lose the ability to pick off individual men. Master archers – the officers – decide how they will shoot. It is hard for them to detail a few men to shoot one target while the rest shoot another.
Not that I knew any of this. I just ran, and the only sound I could hear was my feet on the gravel. It was like running for a prize.
I ran fifty paces – perhaps more – before they began to shoot at me. It wasn't the storm from before, either – it was a steady impact of single shafts against my shield. Something stung my foot, and then I felt a blow like the kick of a mule against my shin, but again the greave held and still I ran forward.
And then the world cleared for me. It is hard to describe, really. I was running and then, as if my eyes had been closed, I was running like a god. I felt as if I was a god. I had been running with my aspis held in front, and high, which made me blind to everything but the ground under my feet. Now I let my shield go down a fraction, and I ran looking at the Medes.
And they were close.
I have so much to say about this that I will only bore you, thugater. Except that something changed, and it was as if I could see, having been blind. I could see that I was going to live. I could see that I was about to be a hero. Athena granted me this, I think, or my ancestor Heracles.
Twenty paces from their shield wall, I decided not to slow down.
It is worth saying that when men run at a shield wall, they slow as they close in the last three or four paces. They have to, or they risk being spitted in the knee or thigh by a cool hand. And most men correctly dread the moment when they crash into the enemy's shield. You are vulnerable, then. You could fall.
I didn't even slow. I lengthened my stride like a runner finishing a race, as if a garland or a crown of laurel waited for me.
An arrow rang off the front of my helmet so hard that I almost lost my balance. And then I smashed into their wall, and all the sight and sound and smell of it hit me at once.
I killed men.
No man killed me. I didn't know it at the time, but I was one of just two men to reach their wall. But we did reach it, and I was told afterwards that we knocked holes in their shield wall like a big iron awl punching bronze.
The phalanx was close behind us, and no arrows were falling on them. They roared, although I didn't hear it. I was in a world no bigger than the blood-soaked ground beneath my sandals and the limits of my helmet. I remember that blows fell on that helmet like Pater's hammer on his anvil, and more blows glanced off the scales on my back and slashed my outer thighs and my right arm, but I refused to stop. I remember that. I remember deciding that I would go all the way through them and see what happened then. I pushed and stomped and killed, and I have no memory of fighting the spearmen, but only of killing archers, hacking their faces and their bows and pushing forward, always forward, and the pain of the blows on my back and my helmet, and then, faster than I tell it, I was through. I was against the rock face of the pass, and I turned. Both my spears were gone – the gods know where – and I drew my sword, put my back to the rock and cut at every Persian who came forward.
They were brave. A dozen of them, rear-rankers, inexperienced men, pressed at me. They had neither shields nor spears, and they were not much, hand to hand, and they pressed me clumsily, and despite the ringing in my head, I killed them. Not all of them. Just enough to make the rest pause and doubt themselves.
Then there was pressure, the kind of pressure you get in a nightmare, and I was crushed against big rock, and the aspis pushed into my neck and thighs, and I cried out from the pain of it.
And then men were screaming my name, and it was over.
Eualcidas was the first to embrace me. He pushed his helmet back on his brow and he was shaking from head to foot and had an arrow clean through his helmet.
'By Ares,' he said. 'I knew you were beautiful!'
And in those five minutes, in the time that the water-clocks give a man to speak his mind in the assembly, I was no longer a man.
I became a hero.
Most of the other eight men who ran with us were dead or badly wounded. Only Eualcidas and I had made the enemy line. And we had hurt the Medes badly, killing fifteen and downing another twenty. We had captives.
I was so dazed that I was sick. I threw up on the rocks, and Heraklides held my hair. Then we went back down the pass to where we had started. The slaves buried our dead and we waited in the sun. I drank the water men gave me, and then I drained the water and wine in my canteen.
Eualcidas came by. 'If they come back, will you do it again?' he asked.
I grinned. 'Of course,' I said.
It was like madness, or the smell of fine wine, or that moment when a woman lets her peplos fall but before you can touch her.
You want to know what makes Achilles different from the other men among the noble Achaeans? Homer must have known some killers of men. He knew us. Because any man – any good man, and the world is full of them – can stand his ground one fine day. He sets his mind – or he is angry, or simply young. And he will stand his ground and kill, fighting his fears and his enemies together. We honour those men.
But the killers come alive when there is nothing left but that fear and the rush of spirit, when all of your life falls away and you are the edge of your sword and the point of your spear. The killers will fight every day, not one fine day. Eualcidas was serious. He knew we might have to run into the arrow storm again – and now that he had my measure, he wanted me to run with him.
And of course, I wanted to go.
No, that doesn't mean I wasn't afraid. I was terrified. But I had to feel that terror again – and again.
But they didn't come back, and an hour after dark, we marched away into the torch-lit darkness, down the rest of the pass and on to the plain.
14
Artaphernes followed us on to the plains, but now he had Lydian cavalry and some Medes, and they harried our retreat. We had bought Aristagoras a day, only for him to squander it like the fool he was. And so, just two days later, while my wounds were still un-healed and the aches from the fight at the pass were at their height, he forced us to battle.
Aristagoras arrayed us. He hated the Athenians by then, and he was visibly afraid – a traitor in a losing rebellion. Eualcidas didn't hide his contempt, and Aristagoras retaliated like any petty tyrant, by putting us on the left and questioning our courage. He put his Milesians on the right, opposite the Medes, and he put the Ephesians in the centre with the Chians and the Lesbians. He set the lines in full view of Artaphernes. The satrap responded by moving his best infantry – Carians, who later joined the rebellion – against us. Unlike Aristagoras, Artaphernes never believed his own propaganda. He knew that the Athenians and the Euboeans were the most dangerous.
Aristagoras set our lines in the late afternoon of the second day after the fight in the pass. We stood in our places until the shadows were long, and then we walked back to our fires and ate. I didn't have a slave, but Cleon's slave, a surly Italian boy, made me stew and took my coppers with carefully hidden delight.
Eualcidas and I sat together after we ate. Most men thought us lovers. Perhaps, if things had gone otherwise, we might have been lovers, because he was Patroclus in every way that mattered, and perhaps I was Achilles. At any rate, we sat and talked, and other men came and sat with us – not just Athenians or Euboeans, either. Epaphroditos came with some men of Lesbos, and there were Chians and even Milesians around that fire. We drank wine and Eualcidas's singer – he had a rhapsode – gave us a thousand lines of the Iliad. His son sang another poem, and Stephanos came, clasped my hand and drank wine with me.
Men treated me differently. I liked it. I liked being lord. I was a hero, and other heroes accepted me as such. We lay on sheepskins and listened to the Iliad and drank wine, and life was good
.
Here's a truth for you, thugater. War is sweet, when you are one of the heroes.
Late in the evening, Archilogos turned up. He stood in the firelight until I saw him. I rose and went to embrace him, but he held his hand between us.
'We are not friends,' he said.
I remember nodding. I understood then, perhaps for the first time, that it was not possible for us to be friends and for him to retain his place in the world.
'I heard that you had the name of a hero,' he said. 'That you slew ten Medes in combat.'
I nodded.
He smiled, but only for a moment. 'Damn it, Doru! Why did you fuck my sister? We could have been brothers! My father loves you!' I reached out again, but he turned his head away.
'Pater intends to prosecute you in the courts,' he said. 'Aristagoras pretends he does not know what happened, but he has suggested that we revoke or deny your manumission and have you taken as an escaped slave. Neither Pater nor I will accept this.' He crossed his arms. 'Why?' he asked me, and suddenly he was angry. He had come to talk – but I had ruined his life, or so he reckoned it.
I knew that a shrug might start a fight. 'I don't know,' I said carefully.
'Was it because of Penelope?' he asked, his face towards the new moon.
I tried to reach him. 'The – the first time, I thought that she was Penelope.'
That made him turn. 'I didn't even know that you and Penelope were – anything,' he said.
'Yes you did. You just forgot – because you were the master and I the slave,' I said. Then I shrugged. 'Penelope liked you better. And like all of us, she wanted her freedom.'
'She's pregnant,' he admitted. 'I'll free her. And see to it she has employment. Mater will take her to weave.'
'She'll like that,' I said.
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