He walked away.
I let him go.
I still think about it. I’ve changed that conversation a thousand thousand times, said better things, chased him and wrestled him to the ground.
That’s not what happened, though.
Maybe, if I had, a great deal of pain might have been averted.
I never promised you a happy story, thugater.
In the morning, we formed early. I was in the front rank now, and for the first time I could see the whole army. The Athenians were on a slight hill, with the remnants of an old town under our feet. I rested my shield on the edge of an old wall buried in the ground. This had been a village with a tiny acropolis a thousand years ago, I could see. Then I looked south along our lines, and I could see what a worthless army we were.
No two contingents would form together, except the hereditary enemies from Athens and Euboea. The rest of them were in little regiments, and their lines weren’t even level. Aristagoras had put his Milesians slightly in front, to show us all how brave they were, and every time another contingent tried to match shields with them, he’d shuffle a few paces forward.
Aristides put us up on our little hill. He placed Eualcidas and his men on our right. They had a talk, and then Aristides came over and pointed behind us. ‘If the army breaks,’ he said, ‘we go north. We can go all night and reach the estuary in the morning, and let the Medes catch the locals.’ He shrugged.
Heraklides pointed at the Lydian cavalry who were coming up on Artaphernes’ left – so they’d come at us. ‘Why don’t we just leave now?’ he asked.
Aristides shook his head. ‘Because no man will say that the Athenians ran first.’
Behind me, Cleon spat. ‘I’ll die knowing that I gave my life so that my city had a good reputation with the fucking Ionians,’ he said. ‘They already hate us. Let them do the dying.’
These sentiments were widely echoed, but Aristides ignored them, and we stood our ground while the Carians came and formed against us.
They glittered. Not for nothing did the Medes call them the men of bronze. They had more armour than any men I’d ever seen, and every man in the front rank had a bronze corslet and greaves, and most had thigh pieces and armlets and some had cuffs of bronze and even bronze foot armour that covered their sandals. Their shields were faced in bronze, and they were big men. I’ve always hated fighting men who were bigger than me.
Artaphernes rode up and down his line, and they cheered him, even though he was the foreign overlord. He had more Ionian Greeks in his army than we had in ours, I’d wager.
Aristagoras didn’t give a speech. We stood around all morning and then, just before midday, the Milesians sang their Paean and went forward.
The rest of the rebels went forward, too, but they did it by fits and starts, and the left hung back. Aristides didn’t seem in a hurry to leave our hill.
The Lydian cavalry rode forward at a brisk trot, determined to flank our phalanx and rip us apart. I watched the cavalry and I feared them. Greeks don’t have much cavalry, and we aren’t always good at standing against it.
But Aristides had done his job, and over on the flank of our hill there were orchards and vineyards – small, but walled – and all our slaves and skeuophoroi were inside those walls. They ripped into the flanks of the cavalry with slings and javelins, and the Lydians didn’t stay to fight. They turned and rode off. I’ve always thought that the fatal flaw with cavalry is the ease with which they ride away.
Then the Carians came forward. From my ripe old age, I now suspect they had intended to hit us while the cavalry chewed our flanks to ruin, but as with most plans that require men to cooperate on a battlefield, they screwed it up, so that the men of Caria came forward alone.
Aristides came and said a few things. They sounded good, and we cheered him, but all I could see was that wall of bronze coming at us, and how big the Carians were. I didn’t feel like a hero at all – I kept waiting for that wonderful feeling to come, and it wouldn’t come.
‘When they reach the foot of the slope,’ Aristides said, finally, ‘we will sing, and go forward into them.’
I could see that this surprised the men around me, and that meant it would surprise the Carians. We had a nice secure hilltop, and they had to climb to us in the sun.
‘Fuck,’ Cleon said behind me. ‘Look at that.’
We all stopped watching Aristides and looked south instead. We had a superb view of the battlefield, so we were able to watch as the Milesians broke and ran.
They had never even reached the Persian lines.
Aristides stared at them with disgust.
The Carians would have done better to give us a few minutes. We’d have marched away. The battle was over. Our strategos was already running.
Instead, they did as they’d been ordered and came forward.
‘We beat them, and then we get out of here,’ Aristides said. Then he gave orders for something we’d practised but never actually done in combat. ‘Rear-half files!’ he cried. ‘Close to the front! March!’
We formed a dense wall – what Spartans call the synaspismos, where we put shield on shield. But we were only half as deep – only four men instead of eight.
As soon as we formed close, we raised our voices and sang, and we moved down the hill.
In many ways, this was my first fight in a phalanx. Oh, I know – it was my fourth or fifth, but in all the others I’d been at the back, and the fighting had broken up quickly, or I’d been alone, as in the fight at the pass.
This time, both sides fought like lions.
When you are in the front rank, there’s an instant just before the lines close when a skilful man can hurt his opponent with a spear thrust. Once the lines come together, there’s no fine spear-fighting – you just thrust as fast and hard as you can until the shaft breaks, and then you draw your sword.
I had two spears – most of us had a pair, balanced for throwing, with long leather thongs. When we were five paces apart, I stepped forward with my left foot in time to the Paean and threw my first spear. Most of us did, and two hundred heavy spears crashed into the Carians as their spears came right back at us. If the pounding of the Medes’ arrows had been like the fall of hail on my shield, the jar of a Carian spear was like being hit with a log.
I had my second spear in my hand in the last three paces. I remember being pleased at how well I threw and changed hands, and I stepped forward, planted my foot and thrust overhand, diagonally right.
We crashed into their front and they stopped us dead. And we stopped them.
My spear went in under the Carian’s helmet and he went down.
I let the spear go. I was locked up against a big man and his spear was over my right shoulder, trying to kill Cleon. Ares, that press was close! We were doubled up, and we had the hill behind us. They had armour and size.
No one gave a foot.
I got my sword from under my arm and I thrust under my shield, because the crush was too close for a cut. The point glanced off his thigh armour and I thrust again and again, and finally – gods, it seemed to take for ever – I got the blade around his out-thrust leg and cut his sinews and he went down.
I raised my sword up over my head in the single breath before his file-mate slammed his shield into mine. I cut at his helmet and scored, shearing off part of his crest and slamming the helmet against his cheek. He stumbled and I pushed into his shield – and he fell, tripping over his mate, and quicker than thought my sword went left and right at waist level or a little below. I cut at their buttocks and the backs of their legs – back-cut, fore-cut – and then the third-ranker got past the tangle into me, and I hammered my sword into his helmet. He had no crest and his helmet rang and I hit him again. He dropped his spear to get at his sword and Cleon put his spear right into the tau of his faceplate – a magnificent thrust.
I knew my job – and now I felt the power. I roared and pushed past the dying man, slammed the fourth-ranker with my shield and back-cut a
t the third-ranker without even looking at him, so that my sword broke on his helmet, but he went down, probably unconscious.
Cleon thrust over my shoulder and I took his spear. He let go and I started fighting with it, and he must have got another from the men behind him, because when that spear broke he gave me another.
They were pushing away from me now, the fourth- and fifth-rankers in the Carian host. None of them wanted to face me and I began to hurt them, sniping against their thighs and necks with accurate spear thrusts. A killer like me is most dangerous when no one will face him. Never give a man time to plan his hits, or he’ll reap a whole rank.
I didn’t kill them. I just made them bleed and they fell. No one is brave with the red flowing from an open vein.
Beside me, Aristides and Heraklides and all the files on either side of mine pushed forward into the hole I was cutting, and they pushed.
And then, as suddenly as the storm of bronze had begun, it was over. The pressure on my chest faded and then it was gone. The dust rose and I punched my borrowed spear at a man as he turned away, knocking him sprawling without killing him. As I stepped over him, he tried to roll and get his shield up, but I put my spear point into the unguarded spot at the top of his back and it grated on his spine and he thrashed like a gaffed fish, dead already and alive enough to know it.
Cleon grabbed one of the wings on my scale shirt that covered my shoulders and tugged.
‘Let’s go!’ he said.
The whole Athenian phalanx was turning away into the dust. The Carians were running, and we were running, too – unbroken, but we knew what was coming.
I wanted to run every fucking Carian down and kill them. They were just men, under all that bronze, and now that the power was on me I wanted to punish them for making me afraid.
That’s how men feel when the enemy breaks – for a little while, they all become killers, and many husbands and fathers die before they regain their wits and realize that the enemy is running and they can sit down and revel in victory.
Men are fools.
Cleon was not a fool, and he’d held my back like a champion in story and probably saved my life. So when he turned uphill, I followed him and we moved fast, up through the dust and over the hilltop, and then down the other side, heading north.
I stopped at the top and looked south. Even through the rising swirls of battle haze, I could see that the whole Greek army was in flight. In the centre, where Artaphernes stood with his bodyguard against the Ephesians, the great Eagle of Persia shone like the sun and the Ephesians ran like frightened children.
I looked back over my shoulder and saw the Lydian cavalry moving forward.
I called a warning to Aristides and got back in my place. We trotted along together, down the old acropolis and out on to the plain, then around a farm pond.
Aristides shouted and we turned. There was a moment of confusion and then our shields locked – and the cavalry turned away, throwing spears.
Six times we turned and stood our ground. The last time, I’d had enough, and as they turned to run, I broke from the front of the phalanx and ran after them. They were contemptuous of us and the dust was high, and I caught my man before he’d even begun to ride away. My spear killed his horse, and then I put my point in his eyes as he lay under the animal. Other horsemen began to turn to come back, and that was their error. Aristides charged them, the whole Athenian phalanx changing directions like a school of fish, from prey to predator in a heartbeat. The Lydians wrestled to control their horses and we must have killed fifteen or twenty of them before they broke away.
The first Lydian I killed had gold on his sword strap, and Cleon helped me pull it over his head. Then I saw the sword, and it was a fine weapon – a long leaf-blade, thin near the hand and wide and sharp near the point. See – there it is on the wall. Take her down – that’s my raven’s talon. Her blade snapped on me later and I got her a new one. Same scabbard – long story there, she took some time to come back to me once, like an angry wife.
Touch that blade, honey. Fifty men’s lives fell across that edge. Aye, maybe more. That Lydian had a good sword and a good horse and later I heard that he was a good man – a friend of Heraclitus, more’s the pity, but Ares put him under my hand and I took him. He thought we were beaten and he and his mates died on our spears.
And then we got back in our ranks and scampered off.
We went ten stades at something like a run, and then we stopped. It was mid-afternoon, and the sun was still high. We drank water – we’d run clear and we were safe enough.
The Euboeans were weeping.
Eualcidas had fallen, and they had left his body.
I never heard how it happened. He must have gone down in the first moments of the fight against the Carians, because that’s when mistakes happen. And when we turned to run, no one was quite sure he’d been hit. The Euboeans took more casualties than we did, and perhaps all the men around him died, too.
But the shame of leaving his body to be spoiled was more than could be borne.
Aristides, for all his nobility, couldn’t understand what they were talking about. We’d lost two dozen men in the fight, and we were leaving them so that we could run for our ships. To Aristides, base as that was, abandoning the corpses was the price of saving his command, and he was never a man to put his own honour above the saving of his men – which is why we loved him.
But the Euboeans began to shout, and they were weeping, as I said.
‘Will the Medes accept a truce to bury the dead?’ Heraklides asked.
Aristides shook his head. ‘We’re rebels against the Great King,’ he said. ‘Artaphernes won’t accept a herald from us.’
Men started to look at me. I don’t know who started it – but soon a dozen heads were turned my way, and I knew what was expected. It’s the most unfair part of high reputation – once you choose to be a hero, you have no choice in the matter.
I reslung my new sword until I liked the way it hung, and hefted my borrowed spear. ‘I’ll go and fetch him, then,’ I said. ‘Shall I?’
I could see it all cross Aristides’ face. I wasn’t a citizen – I didn’t count against his numbers. My loss was – acceptable. And yet, he was a truly noble man.
He came over to me. He kept his voice low. ‘We all saw you,’ he said. He meant, we all saw you shatter the Carians. His eyes rested on mine. ‘Say the word, and I will forbid your going.’ He meant, if I wanted out, he’d provide me with an excuse. That, my fine young friends, is nobility.
Damn, he was a good man. A man who understood men like me. And remember, he stood in the front rank five or six times – not because he loved it, but because it was his duty. He was brave. Because he didn’t love it. Oh, no.
But I shook my head. ‘I’ll go,’ I said. ‘Give me two slaves to carry the body.’
Cleon volunteered his Italian, and the Euboeans pushed forward their hero’s Cretan boy. He was weeping.
I took a deep breath, searching for the power of combat and finding nothing. I didn’t even want to walk to the ships, much less turn and go back ten stades. I had no plan and no idea what I was up against.
But I knew my role already – Eualcidas had taught me. So I shrugged as if it was nothing. ‘I’ll meet you at the ships,’ I said, trying to sound reassuring, grand and noble.
I had taken three paces when Aristides caught me and embraced me. Our breastplates grated together, his bronze thorax and my scales. And then Herk came up.
‘Go straight to the river,’ he said.
‘How?’ I asked. I wasn’t really listening – I was trying to get my head around what I’d just said I would do.
He pushed an arm out and pointed down the long slope to the distant river. ‘I’ll set my rowers moving as soon as I get to the beach,’ he said quickly. ‘Go south with the body. I’ll come to you. I swear it by the gods.’
Suddenly, it didn’t seem so bad. It was still stupid and impossible – but Herk was going to come and rescue
me. ‘You’re a fine man,’ I said. ‘No matter what I say about you when your back is turned.’
He laughed – we all laughed, the way heroes are supposed to laugh. And then I turned to the slaves. ‘Let’s go,’ I said.
And we were off.
The first thing I did was to tell the slaves that they were free as soon as we got that body to the ships. That changed their demeanour. Desperate mission, impossible odds – but if freedom was the reward, they were game. Heh – I was a slave, thugater. I know the rules.
We walked forward. I wasn’t in a hurry – in as much as I had a plan, my plan was to lie low until dark and then go for the corpse. We made it back to the farm pond, and there were Lydian slaves burying the men we’d killed. We went around a thicket, well to the north of the corpses, and then we stopped in a copse of olive trees and had something to eat and drank some of the wine and water that the three of us carried – which, to be honest, was a fair amount. By now, I was afraid – afraid to turn around and quit, and afraid to go down to the battlefield.
The two slaves – Idomeneus and Lekthes – were not afraid. Idomeneus had been Eualcidas’s bed-warmer, a beautiful boy with kohl on his eyelashes, but the muscles in his arms were like ropes, and he had wept for his master until the kohl ran down his face. He looked like a fury, or a mourner at a funeral.
Lekthes was a different kind of boy, short and squat and just growing into heavy muscle, with a thick neck and a pug nose. He was brave enough to give me lip when I told him to polish my armour, so I had some faith in him.
I was a famous warrior, and a hero. They believed in me, and I could see it in them, which made me braver. Sad, but true. I drank in their admiration, and when I’d had enough food and enough wine, we walked down into the darkening fields where vultures already ripped at the corpses.
The little acropolis was easy to find, and the Carians hadn’t disturbed the bodies. They lay where they had fallen.
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