Marathon: Freedom or Death lw-2

by Christian Cameron

  ‘I need you to get your men off the walls and into the ships,’ I said.

  ‘There are fifty women and children, as well,’ he said. ‘When the lower town fell, the smart ones ran here.’

  ‘I have two ships,’ I said. ‘I will leave no one behind, even if it means I have to swim.’

  Then he embraced me again and ran off through the courtyard, calling for his officers.

  The hard part would be holding the stairs and the gate until the boats were loaded. The men on the stairs would be unlikely to live — and it is harder to get men to die when they know there is hope.

  But Istes’ men loved him. He told off ten to take the places of those fighting at that moment, who were the first to go to the boats — still dazed from combat and from their turn of fortune.

  The next trick was to get the archers off the citadel walls without letting the Persians and Lydians know they were leaving.

  I saw Teucer and waved. He came down off the walls. ‘I heard you were here,’ he said, a grin covering his face. ‘It’s true — you’ll take us all off?’

  I laughed. Despair had left me. Save a hundred lives and you’ll find it hard to despair. Every Milesian going on board my ships gave heart to my rowers. Every woman with a babe in her arms was like new life for a wounded marine.

  I tapped Idomeneus when I saw him flag. The Persians were relentless. They came in waves, determined to finish us. And they still didn’t know we were leaving.

  He hamstrung an archer with a thrust under his shield, pivoted as the man screamed and I was in his place before the man had fallen to the ground.

  The Persian behind the falling man had a long spear with a heavy ball of silver on the end. I stabbed at him — three fast strokes, the same attack every time. The third time went past his defences and my spearhead went through his wrist, into his neck.

  The man to my left fell — I have no idea what happened — and suddenly our line was gone.

  I powered forward into the press, and my spear played on them like a stork taking frogs. I felt faster and stronger than other men, and I felt no fear. I was the saviour of Miletus that night, and the flames of the dying city framed my victims.

  I cleared the stairs. What more can I say? I put down eight or ten men, and the rest fled. I took blows on my armour, and my opponents were not fully armed men, but it was still one of my best moments, and yet I remember little, save that I stood alone at the head of the stairs and breathed like a horse after a race, and behind me the line restored itself and the men began to call my name.

  ‘Ar-im-nes-tos! Ar-im-nes-tos!’ they called.

  Down at the base of the steps, I heard officers calling, and men were forming. I picked up a heavy spear that lay discarded, hefted it and then I stepped out into the arrows of the Persians.

  Two thudded into my shield, but I knew that the gods had made me immune. I stepped up and threw that spear into one of the Persian officers. He took it under his arm, and I stepped back and laughed. I took advantage of the lull to look at the citadel doors, but they were smashed, and nothing could close the gate but a line of men.

  ‘Come to me,’ I yelled at the Milesians, and they shuffled forward warily — I might be their saviour, but I was a stranger. ‘Stand here.’ I beckoned to the men in the courtyard. ‘Close up — like a phalanx. No spaces. Listen to me. Their arrows can’t reach you here. When we retreat, the left files retreat up the left wall stairs, and the right files up the right wall stairs. Understand?’

  We still had a minute. I grabbed the rightmost and leftmost men. ‘Follow me!’ I called, and I took them in the gate. ‘You go that way — single file, like forming or unforming the Pyrrhiche.’

  He didn’t understand, but another man did, and I pushed the first man into the third rank. ‘Sorry, lad. I need a thinker. You — can you live long enough to get them up these stairs?’

  The new phylarch shrugged.

  ‘Here they come!’ the men at the gate called.

  I got back there with my two appointed phylarchs. We had time to take our places — me in the centre of the line, they at either end. We were seven men to a rank, three ranks deep.

  ‘Listen up,’ I said. ‘We take their charge, and hold. On my word, we give ground to the edge of the courtyard — and then charge. Can you do it? No shirking — all together.’

  And then they came at us. It was the bodyguard. Cyrus led from in front, and I knew him as soon as he came up the steps, and he knew me, as I heard it later, from my shouted commands.

  These were the best of Artaphernes’ men, picked swordsmen, nobles all, and men of discipline. They came into us together, and our line gave a step, and then we were fighting.

  Cyrus didn’t come against me — by luck or the will of the gods. He had a big wicker shield, and he pushed it into the man next to me.

  I didn’t await the onset of my man. I threw a spear — low — and took my man in the ankle, and down he went, and I went forward into the space, right past Cyrus. I had my second spear, and my shield was better than theirs. My second spear — like my old deer-killer — had a wicked tapered point like a needle, and I used it ruthlessly in the firelit dark, ramming it through wicker shields into their shield arms. I don’t know how many men I wounded that way, but it was more than three, and then I stepped back into my place in the ranks, leaving a hollow behind me.

  ‘Break!’ I called, and we turned like a school of fish threatened by a dolphin and fled, just ten steps in the tunnel, and I turned. ‘Stand!’ I said, and the Milesians turned and stood like heroes. ‘Charge!’ I called, and we went at the startled Persians.

  We had men down, and so did they, and the footing was treacherous, and on balance, it was foolish of me to charge like that, but foolish things are unexpected things, and we crashed into them and pushed them right off the platform of the steps, so that one of my file-leaders took an arrow in the side — we’d over-charged, and we were in the open.

  ‘Back!’ I called. We shuffled back as a storm of arrows fell on the portico. I tripped — a man grabbed at my leg, and I was looking into Cyrus’s helmet. My sword point stopped a finger’s width from his eye.

  ‘Doru,’ he said. He managed a smile, although I was about to slay him.

  I stepped over him. ‘Can you walk?’ I asked, and he managed to get to one knee. Another wounded guardsman rose, holding his left arm — where I’d put a spear into it, no doubt.

  ‘Let them go,’ I told my men. Apollo, witless lying god, witness my mercy.

  Six Persians shuffled away. They didn’t meet our eyes. But they lived, and they had fought well. As my hero Eualcidas of Eretria told me once, everyone runs sometime.

  I could hear argument in the darkness.

  Istes came up beside me.

  ‘We’re out,’ he said. ‘All but ten archers up on the walls with all our remaining arrows.’

  ‘No time like the present,’ I said. ‘By files, to the right and left, retire!’

  Istes laughed. ‘You Dorians have orders for everything,’ he said.

  We backed up the tunnel, and then they came at us.

  Greeks. In armour.

  They came fast, hard and silent, and the man who led them had a great scorpion on his shield. He put my right file-leader down and sent his shade away screaming at the first contact, and the line couldn’t rally because the end men were retreating up the stairs.

  Suddenly, our orderly flight was chaos.

  Istes went forward into the fight, and all I could do was go with him. For ten heartbeats — maybe twice that — the two of us held ten armoured men.

  Istes killed a man in that time. He was that good.

  I didn’t. I was facing three men, and one of them was the man with the scorpion on his shield. It was Archilogos.

  It was bound to happen sometime.

  I had sworn to save him and his family, before all the gods, at the shrine of Artemis. And he was one of the best fighters in the Greek world. We had the same training. We’d
been in the same battles.

  The gods send us these challenges to see what we’re made of, I think.

  The last thing I wanted Archilogos to know was that he was immune to my blade. I rammed my shield into his and made him stumble, and then I thrust at each of his two companions, fast as a cat, and then I jumped back.

  Istes, as I said, killed his man.

  He felt me back away, and he backed, and then we backed together.

  Archilogos shouted for his men to get around me. ‘They’re abandoning the gate!’ he roared.

  As the leftmost man sprang forward, I threw my second spear and caught him in the outstretched leg, and down he went.

  I was out of spears, but I felt the right-hand stairs to the wall under my right heel.

  Archilogos came for me again, and I backed up a step and then another, and then he cut at my feet — remember, I had boots on, not greaves, because of my wounds. I got my shield in late — too late — and he got a piece of my leg, his blade slicing through my boot, through my bandages, to lay a line of icy fire across my calf.

  But my shield rim caught his helmet as he leaned into the blow, and staggered him, and he fell.

  Another man leaped into his place, and I backed another step and my heart fell to see the amount of blood I’d already lost. The step I abandoned glittered in the light of the doomed city.

  I backed again, and the new man cut at my legs. I had no qualms about killing this Ephesian, and I parried his blow with my sword and turned my xiphos over his blade and cut his throat — a nasty move learned in close-quarter fighting. Not very sporting. But I thought I was dying.

  Put yourself in my place. I had lost everything — friends, lover, ship. The rescue of the Milesians would make my name for ever, I thought. And if I died here — what more could I want? A sad end, but a great song. I could trust Phrynichus, if he survived his wound, to write of it.

  When I took that wound, I thought I was done. It was too damned far to the ships, and I was losing blood like a dying man.

  But nor am I a quitter. I killed the man with my xiphos and I got up another step.

  Idomeneus leaned past me with a spear and put it through the next comer’s faceplate, and I was up another step.

  Teucer shot the next man, and he fell back, an arrow in his upper thigh, and he swept the steps clean for a hundred heartbeats. Then Idomeneus got a hand under my arm and I was up on the wall.

  It is good to have companions.

  ‘I’m finished, friends,’ I said.

  Idomeneus picked me up bodily.

  ‘Like fuck you are,’ he said.

  Our wall was empty. Teucer was the last man behind us. He shot, ran to us, turned and shot again. No man of the Ephesians — even wearing full armour — wanted to be the first to put his head above the parapet.

  ‘Can you stand?’ Idomeneus asked. He could see something I couldn’t.

  ‘No,’ I responded. The world was going dark on me.

  He stood me up anyway. I sank to one knee.

  Teucer cried, ‘No!’ and shot, right over my head.

  The wall had a crenellated parapet on the city side, but on the courtyard side, just a low wall to keep foolish or drunken sentries from falling to their deaths on the flagstones benath. The stairs were recessed into the wall. We couldn’t see the enemy on our steps, but I could see — even as the curtain came down over my eyes — the line of armoured men racing up the far steps, and Istes, alone on the wall, taking them. I have never seen anyone fight as well, unless perhaps it was Sophanes, but that was later, and Sophanes wasn’t fighting in the last moments of a losing battle, doomed, against overwhelming odds. Istes threw them from the wall, he stabbed them, he baffled with his shield, his cloak, his sword, and they died.

  But he was flagging. I could see it. And he’d sent his men away — they all said as much later.

  In fact, Istes never intended to reach the ships. I saw him there, burning with godlike power on the wall, fighting so well that he seemed to glow with his own light. He had full bronze — cuirass, helmet, greaves, thigh guards, arm guards, shoulder cups, shield face — and his armour caught the fire of his city as it died, and rendered it a golden sun atop its last defended wall.

  Teucer had three arrows left and he used them all for his lord — three more Ephesians sent to Hades.

  Then Idomeneus was there, having put me down to run all the way around the wall to Istes. Idomeneus threw his spear over Istes’ shoulder, and then tapped his shoulder — but Istes shook his head and went shield to shield with a big man. Behind that man was the Scorpion. Archilogos had shaken off my blow.

  I dragged myself, one step at a time, paralleling Istes’ retreat. Helmeted heads began to peek above our stairs. On the far wall, the man behind Archilogos fell with an arrow in his side.

  Teucer cursed. ‘That was my last arrow, lord.’

  I managed a laugh. ‘Might have been better if you hadn’t told them,’ I said.

  There was a great black puddle under me. I got to my feet anyway.

  On the opposite wall, Archilogos, my boyhood friend, faced Istes, the best sword in the world. Istes glowed gold.

  ‘Miletus!’ he roared.

  Archilogos took his sword cut on his aspis and pushed forward with it, and Istes stumbled back and Archi cut up under the shield with his sword — once, twice, as fast as a hawk stooping — and Istes stumbled back, and I could see his shield arm was wounded.

  Now Istes had fought all day. And he knew he would die.

  But Archilogos showed himself to be a master. He gave the golden man no respite, and cut again — a heavy blow to the helmet.

  He got Istes’ shield in the face, though, and he went back, and Istes backed a step. Idomeneus tapped him again, and he said something. Later he told me that he begged Istes to live. Istes didn’t reply, except to charge Archilogos. He had his arms out, and he ran like a man finishing a race, and he swept my childhood friend and slave-master off the wall in his arms, and they fell together to the courtyard, and as he fell he roared ‘Miletus’ one more time, and then he was gone, and his armour rang as he hit the flagstones.

  Teucer had got me to the ropes over the wall by then. I must have been lighter by the weight of all my blood, but I remember stepping on a spear that one of the men had dropped to slide more easily to the ships.

  ‘Go,’ I said to Teucer.

  He shook his head.

  ‘Go, you fool,’ I said.

  He let go of my shoulder, grabbed the rope and slid off towards the deck of Black Raven.

  I was the last man on the walls of Miletus — the last free Greek. I had no intention of leaving. The spear came to me as a sign, or so I thought. And Istes was dead. And Archilogos was dead.

  So I had no reason not to be dead, too.

  I had the strength to raise the spear over my head, and I set my shield, and waited for the rush. I could hear their feet on the walls, and I couldn’t see very well, but I knew they were coming.

  One Ephesian came out of the dark and his aspis hit my Boeotian, shield to shield, and mine broke like a child’s toy. The blows from the Aegyptian must have weakened it.

  But even blind with blood loss, I got my spear into his face, and he went down, cursing.

  I stepped back and caught a breath. I was still alive.

  I can only tell this as I saw it, honey. What I will say is what I saw.

  Helen came to me on the wall — or Aphrodite, or perhaps Briseis. I like to think it was Briseis. Her hair was unbound, and her skin glowed like a goddess.

  ‘This is not your fate, love,’ she said. And she was gone.

  That’s what I saw.

  So I threw the spear as hard as I could, right along the parapet. I stumbled backwards, my fingers reaching for the rope, almost blind. I found it even as a blow rang off the scale shirt on my back — a spear-thrust on the heavy yoke over the shoulders. I fell, my hands holding the rope, and my feet dropped free of the wall, and I slid down the rope. My pal
ms burned, but I wouldn’t let go.

  I’m told I hit the mast quite hard. I was already pretty far gone, and I fell to the deck as if dead, all my sinews cut. But my armour did its job, and the wool stuffed in my helmet.

  I remember the men crowding around me. I remember hands on my leg, and fire.

  I have never run the stade since.

  The women wept and keened, and men as well, as the oarsmen pulled us away into the dark. I lay cushioned in blood loss, far away and yet able to think clearly enough, and Black Raven unfolded his wings and swept us out to sea. The Phoenicians and the Cilicians and the Aegyptians never saw us, or thought we weren’t worth their trouble, or simply let us go. We saved Teucer and a hundred other soldiers, five gentlemen of property, and another hundred women and children. Four thousand died and forty thousand were sold into slavery.

  And that was just the start.

  We made Chios in three days — three desperate days, when Harpagos, Idomeneus and Black did the work of keeping us alive while my body made the hard choices between life and death. I missed the moment when Idomeneus made a speech — he ordered the treasure thrown over the side, and he told them that the babes of the Milesians would be their treasure, and asked them to count the weight of the silver and tell him which was the most valuable, and they cheered as they threw it over. I missed that, although it is all part of the story.

  The Milesians pitched in and rowed, and we shared what food we had, and everyone who had lived to flee the walls of Miletus lived to see the beaches of Chios.

  The next thing I remember was Melaina weeping. There was a pyre for Stephanos, and another for Philocrates, and Phrynichus wept as he said their elegies. Alcaeus of Miletus — one of the gentlemen we’d rescued — organized funeral games.

  Melaina cared for me, cleaning my wounds, bathing me, cleaning away the wastes of my body. My fever broke in the second week, and by the third week I could walk. Summer was almost over.

  ‘The Persians will come,’ I said. ‘Come with me. I owe you — and your brother’s shade — that much.’

  She shrugged. ‘I’ll stay anyway,’ she said. ‘I’m a fisherman’s daughter. I don’t like the change. And my father is here, and my sisters, and all the children. Can you move the whole of Chios?’