Marathon: Freedom or Death lw-2

by Christian Cameron

  And they died.

  The last man to face me was brave, and he died like a hero, covering the flight of his companions. He went shield to shield with me, and held me, and twice his big sword bit into my shield, the second blow cutting through the thick oak rim — but while his sword was stuck in my shield, I put my sword into his throat. He was a man. Thanks to Ares, his companions were not of his measure, or I’d have died there.

  We had cleared the deck. And as I came to the rail, I cut a man’s fingers off where he grasped it. I was a horse-length from the terrified men on one of the vessels grappled to Trident, and I leaped on to the rail.

  ‘If you come to me, every one of you will die,’ I roared.

  The Aegyptians cut their grapples and poled off.

  That, my thugater, is who I was in the hour of defeat.

  Wine, here.

  By the will of the gods, or the temerity of men, the Aegyptians let us go. My decks were red with blood, and empty — my deck crew was dead, almost to a man — I had no officers but Black, and my marines — both of them — sat in the scuppers, white with fatigue — and watched their hands shake.

  All my best men were dead.

  All of my friends were dead, too. Nearchos, Epaphroditos, Herakleides, Pelagius, Neoptolemus, Mal, Philocrates and two dozen others I had known for years. Phrynichus and Galas lay in their own blood on my deck.

  We crawled away, like a wounded lion or a boar with the spear in him.

  But for whatever reason, the Aegyptians just let us go.

  And it was not for nothing. As we crept — oh, for the rowing of the morning — past the edge of the Aegyptian line, Chian ships began to come up behind us. First a few, and then more — a dozen. Two dozen. One of them was towing a prize, and I laughed, and then I saw a Lesbian ship I knew, and I hailed him. It was he who told me Epaphroditos was dead.

  But we’d burst the bubble, and now the trapped rebels boiled out of the trap as fast as they could. I have no idea who survived, only that there were enough of them that the Aegyptians simply drew off and let us all go together. We might have had eighty ships, with a handful of Milesians mixed in. And Dionysius of Phocaea. Men tell me he had cut deepest into the enemy centre, all the way through, and put fire in an enemy ship on their beach before the battle collapsed around him.

  He waved and rowed past, and his men were raising their boatsail. That wave was all the thanks we got, but it said enough.

  Black crouched by my feet. I had the steering oars in my trembling hands, and he was the only officer left, except Idomeneus, who had rallied my rowers behind me as I fought aboard Trident. He, too, was a hero. He was covered in wounds, as was I, now that I stopped to assess. I had a bloody gash inside my right thigh that should have killed me — I’d never felt it. It must have missed the vital artery by the thickness of a thread, and I was able to see deep into my flesh.

  ‘What now, boss?’ Black asked.

  I looked across the bay — ships turned turtle and ships afire, the smell of smoke, the ocean littered with dead men, swimming men and sharks.

  ‘We should run for Chios,’ I said. But Miltiades had lit a fire in me to save something.

  Harpagos brought Stephanos’s ship Trident alongside. He told me that Stephanos was dead. I groaned aloud — I had hoped he was merely wounded. It was the hardest blow of the day.

  I got up on the rail — how my thighs hurt! — and called out to him. ‘Miltiades is standing straight on for Samos,’ I said, pointing to where Cimon, Aristides and Miltiades were raising their boatsails.

  ‘I’m your man, not his,’ Harpagos said. ‘Stephanos never left you, lord. Nor will we!’

  I was still grappling with the notion that solid, big, reliable Stephanos was dead. My best man — my first friend as a free man.

  ‘I’m making for the camp,’ I said. The decision came to me as if from Athena, grey-eyed at my side. ‘I want my mainsail, and my rowers are done in.’

  Black nodded, and Idomeneus shrugged, and Harpagos fell away and took station under my stern.

  My rowers were done in, but I’ll note that they landed like champions. We got our ship ashore despite the wind, and Harpagos landed Trident next to us in a camp almost devoid of life.

  Black shook his head over a cup of wine. ‘Boss, we’ll just die here.’

  I shrugged. ‘Let’s save something,’ I said.

  I don’t remember saying anything else. I fell on my sleeping rug, and I didn’t move until Idomeneus awoke me.

  Fill my cup, thugater. And leave me.

  8

  The day after a battle is always horrible. A sea battle hides the worst — the stink and the visible horrors of the dead, and the screams of the wounded. Not many wounded in a sea-fight.

  By wounded, I mean those with a spear in the guts or a cut so deep that only a physician can save them, or not save them, as the gods would have it. Because after a fight like Lade, every man has cuts, skinned knuckles, pulled muscles. Every man who has fought hand to hand on ships has small wounds — a deep cut on the arm, a burn, an arrow through the bicep. Some men have two. The fighters — the hoplites, the marines, the heroes — have all the little injuries that come with fighting in armour — the abrasions, the bruises where your armour turned a blow, the punctures where a scale was driven in through the leather. Add to that the sheer fatigue, no matter how high your conditioning, and you can see why a camp is silent after a battle. Tempers flare. Men curse each other.

  I had never experienced so total a defeat as Lade. After the battle at Ephesus, I was busy rescuing a corpse and such heroic stuff. I missed the despair. Or perhaps I was too young.

  Despair is a killer, children. I’ve seen it in women whose childbirth goes on too long, and I’ve seen it in sick men, but it is worst in a beaten army. Men kill themselves. The poets don’t sing of it, but it happens too often. Men cut themselves or walk into the sea. Men die from wounds that ought to have healed.

  Priests are busy, saving what they can. Good doctors make a difference. But on the day after a defeat, the men who matter are the leaders. Anyone can lead men after a victory. Only the best can lead after a defeat.

  I awoke the day after Lade to the realization that Stephanos was dead. And Philocrates. And Nearchos. One by one, the weight of them came to my mind, so that it was as if their shades were gathering around me.

  Philocrates was on my ship, wrapped in his chlamys, and Stephanos was wrapped in his himation on Trident. To a Greek, that’s some consolation. We would honour them in death.

  But not today.

  I got up, poured myself a cup of wine and felt the pain of all my muscles and all my wounds, new and old. My head hurt. I said a prayer to my ancestor Heracles for strength — and I began to clean my armour, promising that if ever I came through this to my farm in Boeotia, I would build a shrine to Heracles and put his lion on the inside of my shield. Do you sheltered children know what armour looks like after a fight? Sprayed with blood, with all the fluids inside a man, with ordure — shit — and the leather full of sweat and fear. But I had no hypaspist to do it, and I needed to look like a hero.

  When my armour was clean and bright, I began on my shield. The rim was broken where the brave Aegyptian had almost killed me, and the raven of Apollo seemed to me a mockery. Apollo had promised me victory. Apollo had allowed the Samians to betray us. Apollo had allowed treachery to triumph over virtue. Fuck him.

  Let me say now, before I go on with the story, that we would have won Lade if the Samians hadn’t cut and run. I know that’s not the popular view. I know that today, Athenians suggest that the Ionians were an effeminate bunch incapable of defeating Persia without the spine of Sparta and Athens to hold them to the task — but that’s all crap. The Phoenicians came to that battle wary of us, and the Aegyptians wanted no part of it and, in effect, only fought to defend themselves. If the Samians had held their place in the line, Epaphroditos would have routed the Aegyptians, and we would have won.

  Why
do I tell you this? Because my rage and bitterness were boundless. The cupidity, the foolishness, the greed of a few men had killed my friends and robbed me of my love.

  The day after Lade, I wanted revenge.

  Let me be clear, honey bee. I still do.

  I washed in the sea — that hurt, believe me. Nothing like salt water on new wounds. Then I put on a clean wool chiton and boots, and my newly cleaned shirt of Persian scales. I put my sword belt on my shoulder.

  Black came into my tent as I finished arming myself. ‘So?’ he asked.

  ‘Gather the men.’ I said no more, and he went.

  Idomeneus took his cue from me, and he had a Tyrian cloak on his shoulder and my good bronze breastplate on his back when he came to me. Harpagos looked like a fisherman in a wool cap. I beckoned him to me, walked him into my tent and bade him dress like a trierarch.

  ‘Part of leading is play-acting,’ I said. ‘You must dress the part. Today, we have to pull them up a hill the way an ox pulls a cart. Everything matters.’

  He shrugged. ‘Yes, lord,’ he said.

  I dressed him in a red wool himation and a plain linen chitoniskos with a leather stola. Idomeneus brought him a fine Cretan helmet from a dead Phoenician officer.

  The helmet was covered in repousse, a work of art.

  ‘I’ve never owned anything so fine,’ Harpagos said.

  I shrugged. ‘Enjoy it,’ I said.

  Idomeneus grinned. I frowned at him. ‘You are the only man in this camp smiling,’ I said.

  ‘Good fighting yesterday,’ he said. ‘We lived. No reason to cry.’

  That was Idomeneus — a man who lived at the edge of madness, I suspect.

  Black wore a magnificent chiton when we emerged — purple with red and blue edge-stripes like waves, as nice a piece of cloth as I’d ever seen. And he had the sword I’d taken from the old Persian — not that I begrudged him it.

  So we made a good show. The men were surly and quiet, but when they saw us, they understood immediately, and I saw men wipe their faces and look at the dirt on their hands. Good.

  ‘We lost,’ I said. There were about three hundred men on the beach, where the day before fifteen times that many had eaten breakfast and offered sacrifice. ‘We lost, but life goes on. Lord Miltiades will not stop fighting. Neither will we, as long as there are fat Aegyptian merchants to take and gold to spend.’

  All that got was a grumble.

  ‘The Persians won’t stir today,’ I said, pointing across the bay. ‘We hurt them badly, and they’ll lick their wounds. But tomorrow, they’ll come for us. So we’ll have to be gone — away downwind to Chios, where we’ll put Philocrates and Stephanos in the ground. And say the rites for all those who went down.’

  That got a better reaction.

  ‘But first. .’ I said, and every head came up — every set of eyes locked on mine. ‘But first, I mean to complete our crews in Miletus, and take off every man, woman and child we can save. Before the Persians storm it. Which will happen any hour.’ I looked around, and the only sound was the wind making the empty tents flap like untended sails.

  ‘We came here to save those people,’ I said. ‘We can still save some. Anyone with me?’

  Not bad, thugater. Not bad at all. They were all with me, as it turned out.

  We kept a good watch all day, so we knew when the Persians launched their assault on Miletus, just a few stades distant. They didn’t take it by surprise, or anything like — but they knew that the town was nearly empty, and probably further lost to despair than we were on the beaches.

  Most of the fleet of Miletus was lost in the fighting. The handful of ships who survived ran for Samos and Chios. Not a single ship ran for their own port — not even Histiaeus himself, who left Istes in ‘command’ of a city denuded of fighting men.

  As I say — we kept watch. Twice we saw patrols set off from the beaches opposite, but neither came any closer than ten stades. My two ships were hidden by the bulk of the island. Who would have expected us to hide in plain sight?

  At sunset, we launched. Most men had slept all day. Our muscles were stiff, but we ate every animal we found on the beach — cows, goats, all abandoned by the Greeks — and we’d stowed carefully the best of the loot from the rest of the campaign, our weapons and little else.

  Once afloat, we lay on our oars in the channel between Lade and Miletus, our oars muffled and every man silent. The rocks hid us from the town and from the besiegers. But we could hear the fighting. The town was falling. There was no question of it.

  I was in a curious race with time. I couldn’t let my ships be seen against our shore when we moved — or the Phoenicians and the Aegyptians and the Cilicians would be on us like vultures. But if I waited too long, the town would fall.

  Black waited with apparent impassivity, but Harpagos walked up and down the command deck of his trireme, and his bare feet were the loudest noise in the channel. Gulls moved and cried. The wind blew through a camp devoid of Greeks. In the distance, there was a murmur like summer thunder.

  I remember the darkness of that hour, and the despair I hid. If I must remind you, the disaster of Lade lost me Briseis. For ever, as it seemed. The Persians have a phrase — they tell a condemned nobleman to ‘go and hunt his death’. Well — I was on the edge of hunting my death, or perhaps past it — but I had my men in order, and I had fired them for this task, and I meant to do an honourable job before I hunted my death.

  The sun was a line of crimson in the west, and our shore was dark as new pitch. ‘Let’s go,’ I whispered.

  ‘Give way, all,’ Black said.

  Every oar dipped, and we ghosted down the channel, followed by Harpagos. We made the turn, and there was the town.

  Miletus was afire. The palace on the acropolis was burning, great gouts of fire leaping into the air like live daimons, and the summer thunder sound we’d heard was now the great-throated roar of a city being destroyed by fire and sword.

  Miletus, the richest city in the Greek world.

  We crept up the passage to the harbour, our oars carefully handled, our hulls tight against the mainland shore to avoid being seen. I began to curse. I could see soldiers in the streets of the lower town and people running and being killed, but there was no resistance.

  ‘Apollo, render justice,’ I said aloud. ‘You owe me better than this.’

  And just then, I heard the horn from the Windy Tower.

  Of course, that citadel on the harbour was the last to fall — I should have guessed it from the first. I could see men on the walls — archers — and my heart leaped.

  ‘Lay me under the sea wall by the tower,’ I said to Black, pointing.

  ‘Aye, lord,’ he said.

  We turned in the mouth of the harbour and I loved my men — every oarsman of them — as we raced for the tower.

  I leaped to the jetty and Idomeneus followed me.

  ‘Pole off,’ I called, ‘or we’ll be swamped. Wait for my word.’

  Black waved.

  They were fighting hand to hand on the steps of the tower when I slipped in the postern with Idomeneus. The startled sentry took one look at us — and at the two great dark hulls behind us on the tower’s jetty — and he fell to his knees. ‘You-’

  ‘We came for you,’ I said. ‘Take me to Istes, if he lives.’

  We ran along the walls, all my wounds and all my fatigue forgotten, where men were leaning and pointing at the ships. It was worth it — all the waiting and the strain on muscles — to see those men, who had thought that they were dead, realize that they were going to live.

  Istes was in the arch of the courtyard steps with a dozen other hoplites, holding the entrance. I watched him fight for a minute. In that time, three souls went to Hades on his blade, and as many fell back, wounded or simply too frightened to face him.

  To fight that well — when you have no hope — is a great gift. Or a great curse.

  In the Pyrrhiche, we practise replacing one another in combat. It is pract
ised in every town, in every polis, in every gymnasium. No man can fight for ever.

  ‘You switch with him,’ I said to Idomeneus. ‘I’ll get this organized.’

  Idomeneus flexed his shoulders and set his aspis and grinned. ‘Aye, lord,’

  ‘Don’t go and get killed,’ I said. ‘I’m low on friends,’ I added.

  His mad grin flashed and he kissed me. ‘I’ll do my best, lord,’ he said.

  He stepped up behind Istes — none of the other men in the courtyard seemed to feel any need to give their lord a rest. Then, in between kills, he tapped twice — hard — on Istes’ backplate.

  Istes flashed a backwards look.

  Idomeneus tapped a rhythm on his shield — and one, and two — Istes pivoted on his hips and slid diagonally to the right rear, and Idomeneus lunged forward, right foot first with a sweeping overhead cut that forced the Persian facing Istes to back a step, and then Idomeneus filled the spot and killed the Persian with a feint and a back cut, and the line was as solid as it had been a moment before.

  Istes sank to a knee and breathed. Then his helmet came off, and he raised his head and saw me.

  For a long moment, all he did was breathe and look at me.

  ‘You came to die with us?’ he asked.

  ‘You’re as mad as he is,’ I said, pointing at Idomeneus. ‘I came to rescue you, you soft-handed Asiatic.’

  Then he embraced me. ‘Oh gods, I thought we were all dead and no man would even sing of our end. There’s no counting the fucking Persians. And there’s Greeks with them — armoured men, fighting for their slave-masters.’