When the hymn was finished, we stood silently for some heartbeats, and then all the women and old men and boys raised a howl of joy to the heavens.
Myron went over to the heralds and handed them a scroll.
‘Tell your masters that we seek no quarrel with mighty Thebes,’ he said. ‘But if Thebes seeks a quarrel with us. .’ He did nothing grand or dramatic, merely flicked his glance down our ranks and over the new towers, one half-built and the other with its foundations complete. He looked back at the heralds. ‘If Thebes seeks some quarrel, she may find us a tougher vine to hack away than ever she imagined.’
My wife loved that I was polemarch, and when I donned my armour for the muster, she embraced me, sharp scales and all. She had come to terms with her husband the smith, but her husband the polemarch was perhaps the figure she had expected in her maiden dreams.
She wove me a new cloak with her own hands, a fine red one dyed scarlet with some rare dye from the east, and with her own hands she dyed a new crest for my new helmet, so that mere days after I finished the helmet, the horsehair and the cloak appeared on my worktable in my forge. That chlamys was as thick as a fleece and as warm as a mother’s embrace. It hangs just there, and moths have troubled it, but any woman among you can see how well woven it is.
The day I found it, I put it on and wore it for her, and then I carried her up to her room and we made love on it. I wore it proudly when I mustered the phalanx before the Theban heralds, and I wore it whenever I wore my armour, for many years after.
I came straight back to the farm after the muster, with all the epilektoi at my heels. I kissed Euphoria, patted her belly, which now had the smallest, sweetest swelling, and gathered a pair of my shop boys to carry my gear. Then in full armour, my picked men and I ran and walked by turns all the way up the mountain to the shrine of the hero. There, Idomeneus and Ajax said the words, and we sacrificed a couple of big steers and ate like kings, and then we lay in our cloaks like real soldiers and woke with the first light to run along the flank of Cithaeron to Eleutherai.
By noon on the second day, I had them all tired and surly, with the cockiness of the muster sweated out of them, and by the fourth day of the hunt even the Milesians were flagging, and my veterans were watching them with a certain callous satisfaction.
I was tired too — try wearing armour for five days! It chafes on your ribs, rubs your hips, weighs on your shoulders. Your helmet becomes a ring of fire on your head, and greaves — greaves become your enemy, not your ally. But the only way to become accustomed to armour is to wear it. There is no other way. I made my picked men run in it, cut firewood in it, gather brush in it, skin deer in it.
My name was taken in vain — often.
‘Curse me now,’ I said. ‘When you fight the Medes, you’ll praise me.’
The sixth day I let them rest. The complaining increased — this is the way with men, slave or free, soldier or priest. Real carping requires breath and time.
The seventh day was supposed to be the last, and we had games. Or rather, we were supposed to have games. The sun was up in the sky, and we had made the sacrifices, and Idomeneus was staring at the guts of a rabbit he had sacrificed. He had the oddest look on his face.
‘I’ve never seen a liver like this,’ he said.
I looked — not that I’d know one liver from another — and past him I saw two things to give me unease.
Over towards Eleutherai, I could see a pair of men on horses, riding the hill road, flat out.
And down in the valley in the direction of my farm, I saw a column of smoke rising.
In Boeotia, fires happen. Woods catch fire in the dry of summer, and men start fires to open up new farmland or simply to get a better view. Men burn off their fields. Houses catch fire when lamps are left unattended.
So I had no need to panic, except that the juxtaposition of the riders and the fire worried me. It was a big fire. And Idomeneus was not happy with the animal he had just sacrificed.
Bion came up next to me. ‘That’s our place,’ he said, and my stomach flipped.
‘How can you be sure?’ I asked.
‘I’m sure,’ he said. ‘Did you bank your forge fire?’
‘By Hephaestus,’ I said, ‘of course I did.’ You are always a feckless young man, to people older than you.
‘Hmm,’ he said.
Idomeneus killed a lamb, slit it open and cursed. ‘I don’t really know much about divination,’ he said from the growing pool of blood at our feet. He was kneeling in the dead lamb’s entrails. ‘But something is wrong. Dead wrong.’
So I ordered the epilektoi to muster, instead of preparing for the games. They cursed at being so early into their armour, but by then they were cursing anything I ordered. Even the young feel pain, or so we old men joked. Our muscles had had years to harden, and theirs were still soft.
About the time the first files were falling in, another column of smoke leaped to the heavens.
‘That’s our beacon fire!’ Tiraeus shouted.
It was true. It was lit in the right place, and it let out smoke in a thick column and then stopped — and then started again. I watched two repeats.
It was the will of the gods that we were already assembled — and that we had armour, and that we were so high up that we could read the signal clearly and see, too, the very moment it burned into life.
But fear reached icy fingers down my throat. If it was Simon, then he had struck at my home and I was not there.
But Euphoria was. Lovely, pregnant Euphoria.
I didn’t scream. I was a good soldier, and a man who had seen a few fights, but I drank a cup of wine to steady my nerves and told myself the truth — that if she was dead, raped or stolen, I was forty stades distant and there was nothing I could do for her.
This is what it is to be a veteran, honey bee. You see too clearly. I counted her dead, or brutalized, and went on with my business. Because war is serious, and I was the commander, and my rage was not yet to be unleashed.
So I finished my wine, ate an apple and didn’t fret while the last ranks fell in. Outside, I didn’t fret. In my gut, I lost a year of my life.
We had started down the road to Eleutherai by the time the riders came up the hill. They knew where to find us — my Thracian freedmen.
‘Lord,’ the lead rider said. ‘Men came — a hundred or more. Your mater says we are to tell you that the farm is closed to them, and safe. But they came from Thebes, and they will go home the same way, on the old road.’
‘Where is my wife?’ I asked.
The older of the two shrugged. ‘Your mater ordered us,’ he said. ‘I know no more.’
While we spoke, another beacon sent its smoke to the heavens.
‘Mater is right,’ I said. ‘They’re running back down the old road to Thebes.’ I turned to my boys. ‘Ares has sent us a serious contest,’ I shouted. ‘Are you ready?’
They shouted — a roar that echoed off the rock walls of the mountain. Later, men said that they heard it out on the farms and thought that Cithaeron had come awake.
I put myself at the head of the first file. ‘Let’s run,’ I said, and we were off.
I sent out the two Thracians as scouts — they had horses and they were good riders. In my head, I did my best to estimate what might happen. The Thebans — if they were Thebans — had a thirty-stade head start. On the other hand, they must have marched all night. They must have been tired.
My boys had had a day of rest.
Most of my boys had never seen a spear thrust in earnest.
I had a long run down the mountain to think about it, and my thoughts were dark. I wanted to run home first. I wanted to know. I wanted to know why it was Mater who had sent these men, and not my wife.
But my farm was in the wrong direction now. From Eleutherai, I would lead my men north and east — the farm was due west.
We passed through Eleutherai like a summer storm. Eleutherai is, technically, in Attica. I told the basileus to send
word to Athens — but that help, if it came at all, would be ten days away.
I led my boys out of Eleutherai, down the mountain, down the pass and along the rocky road to Thebes.
As we entered our own territory, we met Lysius and a dozen of his neighbours, all armed, and Teucer, coming across the fields with some light-armed men — and as soon as they met with me and my mounted scouts, they ran off ahead of us. Teucer caused me to writhe with frustration and fear — he’d seen the fire at my farm, and the beacon, but he hadn’t gone up the hill to investigate. He knew nothing.
Lysius and his men fell in with us — they’d met the Thracians on the road. And a dozen stades further on, we met another party, small farmers and Milesian settlers under Alcaeus, so that I had almost two hundred men behind me as we ran across Asopus at mid-morning. I gave them all a break. Swift as I had to be, these men had run almost forty stades, most of them in armour. If we were going to fight, we needed a rest.
The two Thracians were brilliant, covering the ground in front of us and raising the farmers, and I wished I had cavalry like the Lydians and the Medes had. But I didn’t. I rested the men an hour, and then we were off again, cutting across the fields of the eastern township to try and gain a few stades on the men we were pursuing.
It was noon when we found the first body — a man in a dog-cap with a pair of spear wounds in his body. His name was Milos, and he was a farmer from along the Asopus.
We moved his body off the road and ran on. After a stade, there were three dead men all together — all Asopus-side farmers.
‘The men of the Asopus district must have made a stand here,’ Bion said as he panted. ‘Listen, boy — I’m finished. I can’t run another step. I’ll stay and bury these men, and send on anyone who can follow.’
Bion wasn’t the only man who was finished. I told off ten men, so that there would be no shame — and told them to guard the bodies. The rest of us went on at a slow jog.
My Thracians found the next bodies — all strangers. Two of them had arrows in them — Teucer’s arrows. And at the road junction, where the old road to Thebes and the new crossed, there were a dozen more strangers, some wounded and some dead, and two of our men to tell us that our Plataeans were harrying the column as it retreated, and that there were more than a hundred enemies, and perhaps two hundred.
We were close. But I knew we were not going to catch them. We were just ten stades from Theban territory.
Every man in the column knew it, too.
But we said our prayers to Ares and ran on. My slaves had dropped out by then, and I had my shield on my arm and my helmet on top of my head, and most of me hurt as much as if I had already fought. My legs burned, and my left arm felt like a bar of iron sagging from my shoulder, and even my shield strap was an unbearable burden. If I felt like that, what were my boys feeling like?
But we were close.
At the top of the next hill, I was jogging so slowly that walking might have been faster. But when I came over the hill, I could see them — a dozen armoured stragglers in a dense shield wall, trying to avoid a steady rain of arrows.
We were close. My heels grew wings and I ran on.
Behind me, my boys began to shout. I looked back, and men were stripping their greaves off and casting them aside to run faster. Some stopped and threw up, others stripped off their breastplates — and then they ran on.
The dozen stragglers broke when they saw us coming, and the fleetest two made it, but the rest died in a shower of arrows and javelins, and then Teucer was next to me, and other men I knew — about twenty, all light-armed men that Teucer had rallied. I wanted to embrace him, but I didn’t have time.
We ran down the last hill, and I could see the dark mass of them, crossing the stream that made the border between my city and Thebes. There were quite a few of them. And most were already in Theban territory.
I knew immediately what I had to do — what Myron would say if he was here. I ordered the boys to halt.
‘Form up,’ I shouted. ‘Get in your ranks. Form up, form at normal order.’
The ground down to the stream was a single hayfield, and on the far side, another the same. Not for nothing do foreigners call Boeotia the Dance Floor of Ares. Flat ground, perfect for war.
Men and boys came down the road. They were strung out over several stades, and while my little phalanx formed, the enemy scrambled up the banks of the stream to safety on Theban territory. In my heart, I wanted to run down and kill them all — myself, if I had to.
There was more at stake, though. More even than my own revenge, although the image of Euphoria’s death — rape, torment, horror — came before me every time I paused or thought about anything but the task at hand.
My child. She was carrying my child. If this raid came from Simon, how he would enjoy slaying my unborn child.
The mind is a dark place, friends.
I held the line in my head, though. I gathered my men, formed them in ranks and then, and only then, did I take them down the hill.
The enemy now stood in neat ranks on the far side of the stream. They weren’t even trying to make more ground.
They were good fighters. I could see by how quiet they were, how little shifting there was in their ranks. Of course they were tired, and they had lost men — and lost their bodies, as well, which humiliates any soldier.
When we were half a stade away, they began to shout insults at us.
We halted. I walked forward with Teucer. He already had his orders.
There he was — Simon, son of Simon. He wore plain armour and a big crest, and he came out of the ranks to meet me like a long-lost brother.
‘Look who it is,’ he laughed. ‘The polemarch of Plataea. Better stay on your own side of the river, little cousin, or big, bad Thebes will eat your pissant city the way a lion eats a foal.’
‘Nicely put,’ I shouted at him. ‘You brand yourself a whoreson of Thebes, traitor.’ I spat. ‘You are, in fact, your father’s son.’
‘Laugh while you can, Plataean,’ he shouted back. ‘I left your wife dead in your dooryard and burned your fucking house, and there is nothing you can do but cry like a boy. And next time, I’ll get you — and all the men who stand between me and what is mine.’
In that hour, my fate dangled in the wind — along with the battle we were about to fight, and perhaps the fate of Athens, too. With the words ‘dead in your dooryard’, I think that most of my sense of reason left me. Not that I hadn’t expected it, after the sacrifices went foul and the riders appeared and the column of smoke.
I never promised you a happy story, thugater.
Simon taunted me again — something about what he’d done to her body, and how ugly she was. I started forward at him. Had I reached him, he and his two hundred friends would have cut me down, and then what might have happened?
Teucer didn’t flinch, or ask permission. He shot my cousin down, right there, in cold blood. His arrow flew true, and Simon died with a look of complete disbelief on his hateful face and an arrow coming out of the top of his chest, just above his breastplate. And that changed everything. Suddenly, the hired men knew that their paymaster was dead — and I was alive.
My boys charged without a word from me. We sang no Paean, and we were not in any proper formation, but we went over that stream, up the bank, into trained men.
I remember none of it. Oh, that’s a lie — I remember going up the bank, almost losing my footing, the jar of a spear on my aspis and another ringing off my beautiful new helmet. And then I was into them, killing.
After a while, we pushed them off the stream bank, and then they must have known that they’d had it. I remember Teucer at my back, shooting men in the face or foot when they troubled me. Apollo guided his hand, and he was like death.
They were hired men, and their employer was already dead. After a while they broke. I suppose I killed my share of them, but there were far more alive than down when they broke. It is always the way. Men only die when they tu
rn their backs to run.
Our light-armed men were not tired; most of them hadn’t got engaged, except perhaps to lob a few javelins on the unshielded flank. My rage communicated itself to them — and they followed the hired men.
Anyone can kill a man who turns his back.
I followed on wings of rage and revenge, so that when I surfaced from my flood tide of blood, I was far down the road to Thebes. I had no spear, just a sword — my shield was cast aside. Beside me was Idomeneus, and at my back was Teucer, and around us were thirty freedmen and slaves, all busy stripping the corpses.
We were ten stades into Theban territory. My body would scarcely obey me — I couldn’t have raised my sword arm to defend my poor Euphoria.
I looked down the road to Thebes, and it was empty.
Idomeneus laughed aloud.
‘We fucking killed them all!’ he said.
I’ve heard since that over two dozen survived. So we didn’t, in fact, kill them all.
But close enough.
I don’t remember much after that, except that I made my way back to the stream, and men tried to talk to me, and I ignored them. I stripped my armour and left it on the ground with my helmet and my weapons, and I ran — naked — back up the road. I was exhausted, but I ran anyway.
I remember nothing, except that I made the run all the way. Perhaps I walked. Perhaps I lay down and slept. But I doubt it.
The column of smoke from the burning barn rose over all of Plataea, mingling high up with the smoke of three signal fires. I ran across fields, ripping my legs on briar and my feet on the small, hard, spiky nuts that litter our fields at high summer. Not that I noticed.
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