They had no order, and I got my feet under me and my spear licked out and ripped the back of a man's knee behind his greave. Blood spurted, red as red in the dying sunlight, and then I looked at a second man, my eyes locking with his under the bronze brows of our helmets, and my spear shot out and caught another man – oldest trick in the world – caught him between his thorax and his helmet, ripping up his chest and plunging deep into his neck, stealing his life. He fell off the spear point and I reversed my spear, thrusting underarm with the butt-spike. I thrust deliberately into the aspis of a fourth man. He was trying to retreat – under my feet, the sand thumped as other men came off the Storm Cutter's bow. I knew that in a fight like that, I had to attack – attack and keep attacking until my arm failed me, because as soon as they recovered from the shock, they'd turn back into warriors and kill me.
My butt-spike stuck in the bronze face of his shield. I ripped it out and thrust again, knocking him back and off balance by attacking his shield. I could feel Idomeneus behind me, so I pushed forward, thrust into my opponent's shield and when the tip stuck I used it as a lever and prised his aspis to the right. Idomeneus killed him with a quick thrust over my shoulder.
All my marines were on the beach, and my deck crew was pouring in behind them, the shield wall forming, hardening the way bronze hardens when you pour the molten stuff on a slate floor to make a sheet, and even as the wall solidified we pressed forward up the beach.
The Ionian Greeks I had been fighting were in flight, and I risked a look – pushed my helmet back on my brow and looked left and right. To the left, the town burned, throwing an evil light on the beach. On the road from the town were two hundred or more Thracians. Their leader was inciting them to deeds of valour, or simply promising them loot – I didn't understand a word of his language, but I knew what that body language and those gestures meant.
The other ships were landing. Briseis was stern to stern with my Storm Cutter and Herakleides was sending his marines right down Storm Cutter, over the bow and onto the beach, leading his men himself. Oh, I loved him like a brother that hour.
To my right, the big knot of Persians and Phoenician marines was wheeling towards me, intent on pushing me off the beach before the other ships were ashore.
My men were like the runners in the fight at the pass. We were drawing all the enemy to us, while the other ships got their marines ashore. I knew the game. I roared defiance at them. I was Ares. I raised my spear over my head and told them they were all dead men, in Persian.
I had no intention of awaiting the onset of the enemy. If I waited, the Persians and the Thracians would hit me together – and each of them outnumbered me. On the other hand, my rowers were coming over the sides now, and every breath put three more men in the rear ranks.
'The Persians!' I shouted, and I ran forward a few paces and held my spear parallel to the enemy line. 'On me!'
We'd been together all summer. My crew knew what I wanted, and they were beside me in three long breaths, more than a hundred men. A ship's length to my right, I saw Herakleides' black horsetail and I knew his big aspis was locked into the line.
'Heracles!' I roared.
'HERACLES!' came the response like the thousand-fold voice of the god, and we were off up the beach. The Phoenicians had no bows, and the handful of Persian officers got off one volley – I know that I got an arrow in my shield – and then we were into them.
That was hard fighting, no quarter given, and the sun was set low enough that skill was replaced by luck. Twice I caught heavy blows on my sword arm – one bent my vambrace without cutting through into my arm and a second blow was the flat of an axe and not the blade, thank the gods, or my life would have spurted out of my arm. Even so, I dropped my spear and Idomeneus stepped past me while I fell on my knees. A blow that hard unmans you – I thought I was finished for a long heartbeat, then my eyes told me that my sword hand was intact, my arm ached but was not broken, and again the vambrace had held and saved my life.
But while I was on my knees, a Mede in a gold helmet and bronze aventail cut at my head with his short akinakes. His blow landed, and my ears rang. But Hermogenes stood by me, and he made clumsy parries with his spear over my shoulder.
When you are in a real fight, your world is a tunnel formed by the walls of your helmet and the width of the eye slits. I had no idea whether we were winning or losing, but even with my ears ringing and my arm afire, I knew that having their heroic captain on his knees in the sand was not going to help my men win their way up the beach.
I exploded to my feet, pushing with my Boeotian shield just as Hermogenes blocked another cut. I got the bronze spine in the Persian's face, trapped his sword arm high, dug my feet in the sand and pushed. He landed another blow, but it sheered my horsehair crest without connecting with my head, and I shook it off and pushed again. He tripped and fell. I punched him with the rim of my shield, the rim an extension of my fist. A Boeotian shield lacks the weight and authority of an aspis, but the rim is a weapon in a way that an aspis's rim can never be. I broke his nose with my first left-handed blow, broke his sword arm with the second and crushed his throat with the third as he tried to cover himself with his arms.
I had time to flex my numb hand once, and then I drew my sword from under my arm, fumbled it and dropped it. I remember looking at it lying in the sand and thinking – now I'm a dead man.
But the Phoenician marines gave ground, backed away from us ten paces and rallied. They were magnificent fighters, those men – they didn't lose heart, just backed off to give the Thracians time to take us in the flank. But their retreat showed them that all their officers were down, and that rattled them. I could see it in the movement of their shields in the fiery light.
Idomeneus was ahead of me, lithe limbs flashing. He harried their retreat and the best of my marines followed him, so that our taxis lost cohesion. The better men were willing to keep fighting; the others hung back, pleased to have beaten the Phoenicians and the Medes, and wanting a rest from terror. That's how it always is.
'Thracians!' one of my rowers shouted, just before he leaped from the ship's rail into the surf and ran to join us.
The Thracians were still hesitating, and their hesitation had already cost them the battle. But they might still wreck my men with their charge.
I could hear Miltiades calling his battle cry – 'AJAX!' – to my right, and I knew that the rest of our men would be coming ashore now, and in the time it took to beach a ship, the fight would be over. But there was plenty of time for things to go wrong.
I had to go forward.
'Stephanos is behind the Thracians!' I shouted. 'Follow me!' I stooped and picked up my sword – just about. I remember well how little grip I had. But a Greek cannot lead from the second rank. No one would follow such a warrior. So I pushed forward and bellowed 'Heracles!' like an angry bull, trying to get the daimon of combat to fill me and carry me up the beach.
Idomeneus was on his knees when I came up, using his big shield to cover his body against two Phoenician marines with axes. I ran full tilt over one man and his axe bit through my shield. The bronze plate over my left arm turned the blade and I hacked at him with my nerveless sword hand like any green ephebe who doesn't know how to hold a sword.
Sometimes, as Heraclitus says, when skill fails, passion must suffice.
Hermogenes took the second man. The man with the axe swung and for a long heartbeat I thought he was gone, but the shaft, not the blade, bit into his shield. Hermogenes had an aspis, and the tough face turned the shaft with a hollow boom and Hermogenes was on the man, stabbing wildly with his spear. What he lacked in accuracy he made up in ferocity.
Now that we had cleared the ground around Idomeneus struggled to his feet. We shamed the rest of our line forward. The Phoenicians might have rallied then – but they didn't. They hesitated for a moment – they were brave men, and they knew what the loss of their ships would mean. But they decided that retreat was the wiser option, and they went up
the beach, still cohesive enough to drag their wounded and one of their leaders with them.
The sun had set and the only light was the red autumn sky and the fires of the town. The Thracians still outnumbered us, but they were retreating, flowing up the hillside like a herd of deer, and Stephanos was harrying them from the left, his best runners trying to outrun the Thracians to the crest of the long hill above the town.
I flexed my hand. Some feeling was returning.
At that point, Aristagoras elected to bring his men out of the citadel in a sortie. It was typical of the bastard – too late to help win the victory, too soon to come out in safety. His sortie caught the Thracians in the flank, though, and suddenly they had to turn or be eaten by the new threat and by Stephanos's crew nipping at their heels like a hunting pack.
I could see it all happening in the red light on the hillside above me. It was unreal – I have never seen such light again, red as blood – and I knew that Ares himself was watching us, that we were on his dance floor, and he would judge us.
I could see the swan on Aristagoras's helmet and I knew who he was. And thanks to the folds in the hill, I could see what neither he nor Stephanos could see – there was another contingent of Thracians behind a parallel crest.
And I was already tired.
Too bad. I wanted Aristagoras dead, and I would never have a better chance than now.
I've made all this seem to last a long time, but in truth, Miltiades' marines were still coming off his stern and some of our ships were just coming ashore – it had all happened that fast. But if you want to know what fatigue is, fight for your life for three or four hundred heartbeats, then run up a rocky hillside at dusk with a hundred men baying at your heels. My scale shirt felt as if it weighed as much as my body, and my helmet sat on my head like the weight of the world on Atlas's shoulders. Who am I to complain? Many of my rear-rankers had rowed all day.
Up we went, and the Thracians stood against us. I think they were shocked – appalled, even – that they were being charged. They weren't men who stood in a line to fight, they were wild tribesmen who killed with the ferocity of their charge. I think they stood only because they knew that their allies were in position to take us in the flank. But my men overlapped their flank, so that my own flank files were bound to push right up into their ambush. I didn't have to plan it that way – there was no other way it could happen. The hillside wasn't that wide, and its seaside edge was a cliff that rose above the beach.
Paramanos's men were pouring ashore from his ship, which was beached beside mine. Turning his ship hadn't taken long – yet in that time my crew had broken the Phoenicians, killed the Ionians and run up the hill, and now his men were eager to come up and get their share of the loot.
Thracians were famous for having gold.
My men slowed as we came up to the Thracians. I couldn't blame them – there is no such thing as a ferocious charge uphill, at least not on a hill that steep.
'Form tight!' I called, and the men pressed in.
Sorry, honey – I should explain. There's no phalanx in a fight like that. No order. We didn't form by rank and file on the beach, nor yet going up the hill. In a fight like that, you are a mob. But my mob had been together in fifty fights, and we didn't need a lot of orders. So when I roared 'Get tight', all the boys in the front rank crowded in on me, and all the rest pushed, and we made a shield wall in less time than it takes to tell it.
The Thracians threw spears and javelins with the whole weight of the hill behind them, and men fell. A spear came right through my torn Boeotian and the scale shirt turned the wicked point. Ares' hand had turned death aside – again.
The right end of my line was lapping over their shield wall and then extending further as Paramanos's men came up. I could hear his voice and his Cyrenian Greek as he ordered them into line.
'All together!' I sang. My voice held, steady and high. If you want an order to carry in a storm or on a battlefield, you sing.
My Boeotian shield was flapping in pieces. I used it to bat another javelin out of the air and the spine snapped.
'Shield!' I roared.
An oarsman behind me passed his forward and Hermogenes held it for me. I dropped the useless corpse of a shield off my arm and thrust my left hand into the leather porpax of the cheap aspis, and then I was ready.
'All together!' I called again.
'Heracles!' they called back. It wasn't the god's own roar of the first shout, but it was sufficient to get us forward, and we went up the rocky ground. Someone started the Paean, and our voices rose like sacred incense to Ares, and he must have smiled on us.
Thracians fight with ferocity, but they are not competitors in an athletic event, the way Greek warriors are, and they don't practise together, dancing the war dances and measuring the swing of their weapons. They stand too far apart to have a solid line, and their crescent-shaped shields are too small to use in a close fight, where men to the left and right – and men in the rear ranks – can all take a thrust at you when your tunnel-vision is turned on a single opponent.
They hit us hard with javelins as we started forward, though, and men fell. Gaps were opened in our wall and we weren't deep enough for those holes to close naturally. So the fight that resulted was sheer deadly chaos, and the carnage was grotesque. Skill in arms counted for little – it was too dark. But we had the burning town behind us, and they were above us, and we could see them much better than they could see us, and in that fight, a minute advantage of vision was sufficient.
And we sang. That's what I remember – the red light of the dying sun, and the Paean of Apollo.
It was no pushover. In the first contact, men fell like weeds cut by a housewife in the garden. I got three men so fast that when my borrowed spear fouled in the third, the first still hadn't given up his life and fallen on his face. I dropped my spear shaft and pulled my sword again. The marines who should have been either side of me were gone, and Idomeneus was in the front rank, and Herk, of all men, his scarlet plume nodding, pushed in beside me.
'Aren't you supposed to be on the beach?' I asked.
He laughed. 'Fuck that!' he shouted.
We all felt the impact as the Thracian charge struck Paramanos's end of the line. The Thracian sub-chief hadn't waited for Paramanos to come over the crest at him. He must have been wise enough to figure that we knew he was there.
I didn't see it, but I've heard the tale often enough. Paramanos went down – knocked from his feet by a barbarian – and Lekthes stood over his body until he rose. Lekthes died there, like a hero. He took three thrusts, but he didn't fall until Paramanos was back on his feet.
I didn't know it, but Lekthes' moment of heroism steadied the whole line.
Paramanos's men turned, unwilling to abandon their commander, and they stood where they might have broken. Even then, we felt the shock and our line bent back.
But Stephanos was on their other flank with Aristagoras and his sally, and the fortunes of the Thracians began to ebb like the tide from a salt flat when fishermen go into the surf to collect the catch. Their line disintegrated the way an old linen sail rips when the rope-edge is lashed to the mast and the wind begins to tear at a weakened corner, so that each gust rips a little more of the sail, and then the sail goes, faster and faster, the rip wider and the rate of the tear faster with every gust, and then with the noise of a thunderclap, the whole sail rips out of its harness of rope and flutters away into the storm. Just like that, the Thracian line tore asunder.
Towards the end, their centre gave way – or died. I began to kill men with every cut of my arm. My hand was growing better as I cut, and my opponents' eyes were elsewhere – looking up the hill and behind them, where Stephanos's men had climbed the ridge and now came back down on their left flank from above. Every cut and every thrust took another man down, and then none of them would stand against me. I killed twenty men, I think.
Yet even as they ran, they fought. Thracians are never more dangerous than when
they run – men will turn and throw spears, and they can form again as soon as they think you have lost your order. And my rowers had no stomach to follow them – nor could I blame them.
So we pushed left, trapping their left wing in a pocket formed of the three forces – the sally from the town, Stephanos's marines and my own left wing. My right separated from me, going up the hill with Paramanos, so that Herk and Idomeneus were the end men of our part of the line.
I couldn't see whether the Thracians were rallying in the trees beyond the crest or not.
One of their chieftains commanded their left, and he must have known that the end was on him. A handful of his men threw themselves at us – there were three of them, and there was still a gap between Herk and Stephanos as he came down the hill to close the circle. But I put my cheap shield into the face of one and knocked him flat, and his falling fouled the other two, then we put them down in less time than it takes to tell it, Herk thrusting hard past my shield with his spear and Hermogenes giving me a rap on the helmet in his haste to kill the third one over my shoulder.
It was clear to all that the Thracians were going to die. The chieftain had a scale shirt, a double-bitted hunting axe and a tall helmet of scales crowned with a boar's head in gold. He was bellowing challenges, but neither Stephanos nor Aristagoras intended that we would fight him man to man, and the circle tightened.
I had other plans. I ran at him – two paces, all the space that the dying melee allowed. His axe went up and I gave him the edge of my aspis and he split it, gashing my shoulder so that I saw white. But I had his axe trapped in my shield, and my good sword thrust into his face as if of its own accord. I stabbed him twice, but I think he was dead after the first.
And then I was helmet to helmet with Aristagoras. He was trying to claim my kill, and he cut at me, probably because his vision was blurred and it was dark – or because he knew me and hated me.
Now, I keep promising that I will be honest. I want to tell you that we duelled at the edge of the dark, me the hero and he the villain. But, in fact, I had lost the crest of my helm and had a rower's shield, and unless he knew me by my scale shirt, he had no idea who I was. But by the gods, I knew him. The last of the Thracians were dying noisily, and I had him all to myself.
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