Killer of Men

by Christian Cameron

  The thing is, hardly anyone is such a coward as to stand out. You are there with the whole community around you. Courage is asking a girl to marry you, alone against her parents. Courage is standing before the assembly and telling them they’re a pack of fools. Courage is fighting when no one will ever see your courage. But when the phalanx is locked together, it’s hard to be a coward.

  Fucking Simon. He was no coward in other ways, but when the phalanx formed, he lost his wits. Gods, how I still hate him.

  Our phalanx looked a poor thing next to the Athenians. They had blue and purple and bright red and blinding white, and we had all the homespun colours of peasants. Pater had a good cloak, and so did a dozen men – all Miltiades’ friends. The son of the basileus’s sister looked as good as the Athenians. The rest – even some of the better men – looked drab and dun.

  We formed our boys in a thin line in front of our fathers. We saw the Athenian psiloi. They were a poor show compared to us – all slaves, and half of them didn’t even have rocks. So we joked that there was one thing we did better than the men of Athens.

  We were still forming when the Spartan helots came across the ground at us. They had rocks in bags, and they threw hard. I caught one on my shin and I fell. That was the glory of war. Just like that – the first rock, and I was down.

  Two or three of us fell, and the rest of the boys ran like deer on the mountain. I hadn’t even had time to think about how I might be a hero. I hadn’t even thrown a spear. But my pater was right there, so close I could almost touch him, and I was not going to run. Besides, as I got up, I found that I couldn’t. My shin hurt too much and there was blood.

  The helots were almost close enough to touch, too. In fact, two of them had just begun to lob rocks at our phalanx. They ignored me.

  I killed the one closest to me. Deer Killer knocked him flat, just as she had done a dozen times to deer.

  That got their attention. A rock came so close that it brushed my ear like the whisper of a god, telling me that I was mortal. I planted my feet, ignoring my shin, and a beautiful blue-tipped spear killed a second helot. They died. This is no boyish boast. We were as close as your couch and mine, honey – and I threw to kill.

  They broke. They were slaves, and like our slaves, they had nothing to gain from bravery. They didn’t even care about avenging their comrades. Slaves have no comrades. They turned and fled as our boys had just moments before.

  That’s when I learned that Calchas had come into my body when I burned his corpse, because when they fled, I killed another. I liked it. I cocked back my arm and threw my spear into the back of a fleeing slave and I liked it.

  Then I hobbled forward and retrieved my javelins.

  Behind me, the left-most Athenians and the right-most Plataeans were cheering. They were cheering me. It went to my head like unwatered wine.

  The other boys came back fast enough. They weren’t cowards. They just hadn’t understood the game.

  We still didn’t understand. Callicles slapped my back and we ran forward together. I tried to angle across the Spartan front, because I knew we’d be safer on the flank, but I was slowed by my shin.

  When I looked up, the Spartans terrified me. It’s not like being in the phalanx, out there in the middle between the armies. And the Spartans – they all look the same, with matching shields of bronze, like the richest Athenians, and with almost identical helmets. I actually wondered who made all those helmets. They looked very fine. And they scared me.

  But I couldn’t flinch now. Although a curious reaction hit me – I still remember it. I felt cold as I hobbled forward and I began to shake. Then the other boys began to throw. We were too far away and Callicles started to yell like a real officer, pushing them forward. He turned his back on the Spartans and yelled at us to come on, come on, throw from closer.

  I was near him when I saw the Spartan file-leader call an order and four hoplites burst out of the front of the shield wall. They came so fast, they were like javelins themselves. They were all athletes in high training, of course, not boys. I knew from the first long leg kicking that they were faster than I was when I wasn’t injured. There were only four of them against thirty of us.

  Callicles died first. The fastest Spartan singled him out. I remember that the Spartan had a smile on his face under the helmet. I screamed at Callicles to run, but the fool stood his ground and threw my second-best spear, and the Spartan ducked his head and it passed him. He never even slowed, and his long doru went into Callicles above the groin and drove out of his back like some wicked growth, and then there was an explosion of blood, front and back. I’d seen it a hundred times hunting. Callicles was a dead boy.

  All four of them killed a boy, like farmers cutting weeds. The leader killed a second boy next to Hermogenes.

  Hermogenes fell to the ground without being touched, and then used his javelin to trip the lead Spartan. He went down in a clatter of armour, but he was up in less time than it takes to tell the sentence. Yet he was off balance and he was using his shield hand to push himself off the ground. Calchas had taught me better than that.

  It was my worst throw of the day. I was terrified and elated at the same time, and my Deer Killer went into his left arm behind his shield, pinning the arm against the shield back. And he couldn’t get it out.

  The others stopped to help him, because he was bellowing, and then Hermogenes grabbed me and helped me run.

  By all the gods, my thugater – I thought those were my last moments, and when we were clear of the Spartans, I vowed that I would never, ever put my body in front of the phalanx again. I vowed it like a drunkard vowing not to drink.

  Hermogenes and I got clear of the right flank. We had no idea where the other boys were. Then we lay down in the grass and heaved. Ares! We were alive. Wait until you bear a child, honey – you’ll feel the same rush of eudaimonia unless Artemis comes for you. Avert!

  But when we looked up, the Spartans were charging.

  They came forward to the music of pipes. And all the giants going to war with Father Zeus couldn’t have looked more dangerous or noble.

  The rest of the Peloponnesians hesitated, and the Athenians came forward cautiously, but they came on, and the Plataeans weren’t cowards. They went forward into the Spartans.

  The two lines hit each other like – well, like two phalanxes coming together. Imagine every cook in this town with every bronze kettle and a wooden spoon flailing away at it. Imagine every man bellowing with all his might. That is the sound of the storm of bronze, the battle line.

  Hermogenes and I watched from the safety of the far right. And we saw what happened when the Spartiates hit our fathers.

  They reaped them like wheat, that’s what happened.

  What made the reputation of Plataea was not that our men were great fighters – at least, not that day. What forged our reputation for ever was that our men wouldn’t run. But Hermogenes and I watched men die. It was horrible – and awe-inspiring. The two blocks of spearmen crashed into each other at the same speed, and not a man flinched. Spartans tell me that they remember that day well – because so few foes withstand the impact, yet the men of Plataea slammed in, aspis to aspis. And then the killing started.

  We watched as the helmet plumes in the front rank went down. It took only seconds and it seemed as if the whole front rank was gone. And then the Plataeans gave ground – grudgingly – but they lost ten steps.

  I think it was Pater who stopped it from being a rout. Pater gave ground, but Bion says he killed a man – a spear thrust to the throat against a Spartiate file-leader. Then he and Bion pushed into the gap and Bion says they each took a man down. No one cares in the heat of a fight whether you kill your man as long as you put him down.

  In that little eddy of the overall whirlpool of Plataean defeat, the Spartans hesitated. How often did men push through their front rank? I think it was Pater. I could see the plume on his helmet when the others, like Myron’s, were gone. And then the file-closers pl
anted their feet and pushed at the back of the Plataean lines, and suddenly the Plataeans weren’t moving back – they were standing firm.

  But some of the Spartans had broken through the front ranks, where men were capable and expected to fight. Soon they were pounding the rear ranks to ruin, killing like the machines that they were.

  A few men broke from the rear of our phalanx and ran – and Simon must have been one of them. But elsewhere, our neighbours closed their files and shocked the Spartans who’d broken their ranks, crushing them like insects, stabbing them front and rear. There’s a reason why breaking ranks is punishable by law, and a reason why veterans call it foolish. The Spartans thought that we’d break – but we didn’t, and their young men died.

  Who knows how long the men of Plataea would have held the Spartans? Another fifty heartbeats, perhaps. Perhaps less. The Spartans were going to win. The miracle of Ares is that our men stood their ground at all. They held for the time a goat takes to birth a kid – the time it takes a smith to make a sheet into a bowl with a few quick blows of skill.

  But the Peloponnesians didn’t know any of this. What they saw was that the Athenians outnumbered them, and that their precious masters were being held up by a bunch of farmers from Boeotia.

  The allies broke like songbirds faced with an eagle. They broke before the Athenians even hit them. They ran before the spears crossed, and not one of them stood. The Spartan king cursed, no doubt, and then backed his phalanx away, step by step. Unbeaten. Virtually victorious. But they backed away, and the Plataeans had just barely clung to their formation. From where we stood, Hermogenes and I knew that more men had started to flee from the back of our deep block. But enough stood to hold on.

  Just barely.

  Plataea was never the same.

  No one cheered.

  I’ve been on a hundred fields, honey. I’ve won against the odds and seen black defeat, but that’s the only time I’ve seen men so shattered by victory that they couldn’t cheer. Nor did they pursue. The men of Plataea shifted and recovered their ranks, because they were good men, and then they stood, silent, awed by their own success. Then some of the fallen began to stand up – Myron got to his feet, bleeding from a thigh, the red coming in little spurts where something big had been cut.

  Let me tell you how it is in the line, honey. When you go down – and you can fall just because you lose your balance – why, then you won’t ever get up in that fight. Against honourable men, if you stay down and pull your shield over your body, no one will kill you just for sport. Maybe they will strip your armour if they win, but no one will kill you. You hope.

  Anyway, Myron stood and began to sing. He sang the ‘Ravens of Apollo’ from the Daidala and all the voices of Plataea took it up, boys and men. We all knew it. It was an odd song for a battlefield – the song men sing while they wait for the ravens to pick us a tree to make the statue of the fake bride. Who knows why Myron chose that song?

  Across the field, the Athenians were slowing. They’d never reached the Peloponnesians, and now, ranks untouched, they were coming to a halt and heads were turning to look at us.

  Just two stades away, the Spartans halted in perfect order, covering their camp.

  The Plataeans kept singing.

  Then Cleomenes made a mistake. He didn’t trust the Thebans, and his Peleponnesian allies were running all the way back to their homes. And the Plataean farmers were singing as if they could stop the Spartans every day, for ever. That song had more effect on the battle than Pater’s stand, honey. That song was defiance of a different sort. Whether it was true or not, the ‘Ravens of Apollo’ told Cleomenes that there were men opposing him who would not flinch if he came on again. And if we held him for a hundred heartbeats, then all the hoplites in Attica would be in his flank.

  Cleomenes sent a herald. He requested a truce to collect his dead.

  By our law of war, this ended the battle and allowed the defeated free passage home. And it meant that, whatever the Thebans might do, the Spartans were done.

  What changed our world was that Cleomones sent the herald to us rather than to the Athenians. That was respect. They knew they were the better men, and men who are better are never petty. They respect accomplishment, and they respected that we tried.

  So their herald came and he walked towards Pater. Pater looked around, but the archon was dead and Myron, who had started the song, was down again – sitting on a rock, supported by his sons. Pater had two wounds on his sword arm; I had his helmet under my arm and he was pouring his canteen over his head.

  ‘Hey!’ Bion called. ‘Hey – look sharp, Technes! The herald is coming.’

  Pater looked up, and there was the Spartan, resplendent in his scarlet cloak, with a heavy bronze staff to show his status. He bowed.

  Pater returned his bow, head dripping water. I remember how the water from his canteen mixed with the blood on his hands and arms.

  ‘Cleomenes, King of Sparta, requests your permission to retrieve and bury his dead,’ the herald intoned.

  Pater didn’t smile. I did – I was wearing a smile as big a wolf’s. Hermogenes had his father’s aspis on his own arm and he was grinning like a fool. Bion was grinning too. But Pater simply nodded.

  ‘Our archon is dead, and our polemarch is badly wounded.’ Pater turned to the Plataeans. ‘Am I in command?’ he asked.

  Again there was no cheer – just a soft grumble. But every man in the first two ranks nodded. So Pater turned back to the herald.

  ‘The Plataeans grant the truce,’ he said. No mention of himself or his own name. Oh, he made me proud.

  And with those words, the Battle of Oinoe came to an end. The Athenians killed a hundred Peloponnesians, more or less – the slow ones, I assume, since the Peloponnesian allies didn’t linger to fight. They put up a magnificent trophy on the Acropolis, a chariot and a set of slave fetters, to celebrate their victory over the Spartans. The Medes later pulled it down and took the bronze, but the base is still there with eight lines of verse. They don’t mention us. But on the day, they treated us like heroes come to earth. Miltiades ran up, his plume nodding, and embraced Pater and then every man he could find. His investment had paid off.

  Men began to trickle off the ground. We had our dead to bury, and the Spartan helots were coming for their own.

  We had forty-five dead. Seven of them died in the week after the battle, so on that morning, we had thirty-eight bodies. And one of them was my brother. He lay with his face to the enemy, a Spartan spear in his right side under his sword arm. He fell clutching the spear, and the other fifth- and sixth-rankers brought the Spartan down and killed him because my brother held that spear point with his dying hands.

  I wept. Pater wept. Bion and Hermogenes wept, and Myron and Dionysius wept. We all cried.

  The Spartans had nine dead. Two more died later – so we lost forty-five to their eleven. If you want to understand the heart of phalanx fighting, honey – and I can see you don’t – you need to see that Pater killed three of those Spartans and that our whole thousand lived or died by the actions of a few valiant men. Myron didn’t give a foot of ground. Bion followed Pater into the hole Pater made. Epictetus and his son gave ground, but then they locked their shields with men in the second rank and held the rush, and Dionysius killed a Spartan in the fifth rank when they broke through. Take away any of those actions and the result is different.

  Karpos, our best potter, died, and Theron, son of Xenon, who made all the harnesses and wineskins and much of the armor the men wore. Pater said he was the first to die, a Spartan spear in his throat at the first contact, and he didn’t live to see Cleomenes come to us for truce – after refusing our embassy.

  We buried the dead – the boys and the slaves did the work. The men sat and drank. They had endured the storm of bronze for the time it takes a man to run the stadion, and they were exhausted.

  That night it rained. We were wet and cold, but Pater came and wrapped his arms and his heavy Thracian cloak arou
nd me. He was still crying, but he held me tightly, and after a while I slept.

  The rain stopped, and I was cooking eggs – I’d purchased a Boeotian hatful from a shy girl who had crept into our camp with the dawn. I used Pater’s money, and his flash of a not-quite-smile told me I’d done right. I had a fine bronze patera with the figure of Apollo as the handle. It wasn’t Pater’s work – it was his father’s work, and the planishing on the pan was like a reminder of greater days. If we’d lost, it would have been loot for a Spartan.

  Miltiades came to Pater with a wagon. He had a dozen Athenians with him, important men with Tyrian purple in their cloaks. Pater was eating a bowl of eggs with a scrap of stale bread.

  ‘Technes of Plataea, all Athens mourns your losses.’ Miltiades bowed.

  He had a priestess of Athena with him, and she was dressed, even at that hour, in the whitest chiton I’d ever seen, with gold thread in the hems. Bumpkin that I was, I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

  Pater had a mouth full of egg. He swallowed. His eyes were red from weeping, and he wore a damp chitoniskos of linen that had once been off white and neatly pleated, and was now grey with age and shapeless. There were slaves in our force who dressed better than Pater.

  He rose to his feet. ‘I was not chosen in the assembly to lead the men of Plataea,’ he said formally. ‘But until the assembly chooses another, I accept your words on behalf of all the men of our city.’

  Miltiades spread his arms wide. It was interesting to watch him be a public man – I had only seen him at close range. He was about twenty-five then. Just coming into his powers.

  ‘Plataea brought one eighth of the force we had to face the Peloponnesians,’ Miltiades said. ‘We offer Plataea one quarter of all that we took with our spears, and we call you the bravest of the allies.’

  The wind ruffled their cloaks. Pater said nothing, but the men of Plataea behind him were gathering, and they began to shout – approval, almost a cheer. Then the priestess stepped forward and she chanted a prayer to the Lady, and all the men present joined her. Then she purified us, for killing. She was good – her voice was gentle and firm, and every man felt better for her words, and the spirit of the goddess that we call the Lady and Athenians call Athena was on all of us.