Marathon

by Christian Cameron

  promontory to the north of Eresus.

  I lay by the rope I had been hauling and cursed, because the

  loss of Stephanos hurt me more than I’d expected. I hadn’t seen

  him in a year. I wanted him back.

  Idomeneus had his marines in hand and was driving oarsmen

  to work, gathering wood to put supports under the hul timbers.

  We propped Storm Cutter on sand that was only wet with rain,

  and then we drove the oarsmen into the sea to fetch the ram

  before it got buried in storm-wrack and sand. The ram was

  heavy bronze plate, but with thirty men helping we hauled it

  above the tide line. Then we colapsed.

  I sent Idomeneus to the citadel to get us help and hospitality,

  I sent Idomeneus to the citadel to get us help and hospitality,

  then I sat in my sodden chlamys and watched the storm, and

  sang a hymn to Poseidon and prayed that Stephanos might live.

  The news came back that Sappho’s daughter had died – an

  old, old woman, but a great teacher, as awe-inspiring and god-

  touched in her way as Heraclitus in his – and had been

  succeeded by another woman, Aspasia, who now led the school

  of Sappho. So much had changed in just a few years. But

  Aspasia was supported by Briseis’s largesse, and she accepted

  me without question when I told her who I was, and she lodged

  my men and fed them.

  I let myself into Briseis’s house and sat by her shuttered

  window, drinking her wine and eating her food. Surely it was

  she, and not Artaphernes, who had sent me that message.

  Hence, she must have need of me, I reasoned. And not a need

  she dared commit to paper. I reasoned – with a brain clouded

  by Eros, let me add – that she must need me.

  I would find Miltiades soon enough. But if I could get Storm

  Cutter rebuilt, I would cross the straits and run down the coast

  to Ephesus and visit my love, and see why she had summoned

  me.

  The storm took three days to blow out, and my men praised

  me openly for bringing them to such a safe haven, with lamb stew

  every night and good red wine for every man, as if they were a

  crew of lords. The folk of Eresus treated us like gods – as wel

  they might, since it was Briseis’s gold that kept the school going,

  and her political power that kept it free of outside control. And

  they feared us.

  they feared us.

  When the storm was gone, we had beautiful weather for

  autumn. I put men on the headlands to keep watch, and I prayed

  to Poseidon every day and gave offerings of cakes and honey on

  the Cyprian goddess’s altar, too – anything to bring back

  Stephanos. We cut good wood on the hilsides east of the town

  and rebuilt the bow, with two carpenters from the town helping

  us with the main beams that had cracked. We stripped the hul

  clean and rebuilt the bow, and found a fair amount of rot in the

  upper timbers. I built a marine platform – like a box, with

  armoured sides – into the new bow, and a little shelf where an

  archer or a lookout could stand high above the ram.

  I borrowed from the Temple of Aphrodite, and spent the

  money on tar and pine pitch, and blacked the hul, a fresh, thick

  coat so that he was armoured in the stuff, watertight and shining.

  I gave him a stripe of Poseidon’s own blue above the waterline,

  and we painted the oar shafts to match, al in a day, and the

  women of the town washed our great sail so that the raven was

  fresh and stark again.

  In such a way we propitiated Poseidon, but there was no sign

  of Stephanos. So after a week of good food and freely given aid,

  we prepared to sail away in a fresh ship. I was sombre at the

  loss of a friend, but the crew was wild with delight.

  ‘Boys are saying their luck has changed,’ Idomeneus said.

  I had appointed two Iberians who could speak some Greek

  to be officers. My new oar master was Galas, and he had more

  tattoos than a Libyan, for al that his skin was fairer than mine.

  He had blue eyes and ruddy hair and his scalp was shaved in

  He had blue eyes and ruddy hair and his scalp was shaved in

  whorls, but he knew the sea and his Greek was good enough.

  And he had taken command of the port-side oars during the

  disaster of the landing.

  My new sailing master had the same tattoos and his name

  was too barbaric for words, something like ‘Malaleauch’. I

  caled him Mal, and he answered to it. He spoke a pidgin of

  Greek and Italiote and Phoenician.

  I had thirty of the former slaves on my benches now. I’d lost

  more than a dozen men in that horrible landing – dead, or so

  badly injured that they stil lay in Lady Sappho’s Temple of

  Aphrodite, waiting to be healed or to die.

  The Iberians al viewed me as the author of their freedom. I

  explained to Galas how smal a role I’d played, and how much

  they owed to the gods, but I was not sorry to benefit from their

  gratitude.

  At any rate, we heaved Storm Cutter into the surf and got

  the rowers in position as if we knew what we were doing, and

  then we were away. Galas brought more out of the rowers than I

  had, and we spent two more days rowing up and down the sea

  off Lesbos to dril them until their oars rose and fel like the single

  arm of a single man.

  Then we rowed around to Methymna, and I put her stern on

  the beach and asked after Miltiades and my friend Epaphroditos,

  the archon basileus of the town. But the captain of the guard told

  me that Lord Epaphroditos was away at the siege of Miletus.

  I needed money, and Epaphroditos’s absence left me no

  I needed money, and Epaphroditos’s absence left me no

  choice. I had to take a prize, and a rich one. My men needed

  paying, and I was down to no wine and no stores. I got one meal

  out of Methymna based on their memories of me and my famous

  name, but we sailed from that town like a hungry wolf.

  We ran south along the east coast of Lesbos, and the

  beaches were empty at Mytilene, where the rebel fleet ought to

  have been forming up. And just south of Mytilene, we saw a pair

  of heavy Phoenicians guarding a line of merchantmen –

  Aegyptians, I thought as I stood on the new bow.

  ‘Get the mainmast up,’ I caled to Mal, and motioned for

  Galas, who was steering, to take us about. We could no more

  face a pair of heavy Phoenicians than we could weather another

  storm. ‘Fuck,’ I muttered.

  They were none too happy to see us when we put on to the

  beach at Mytilene, but men remembered me there, and I

  arranged for a meal and some oil and wine on credit – Miltiades’

  credit.

  I was sitting alone at a smal fire on the beach, cursing my

  fate, or rather, my ignorance of events and my inability to

  accomplish anything, when a pair of local men – traders – came

  up out of the dark.

  ‘Lord Arimnestos?’ the shorter one asked.

  ‘Aye,’ I answered, and offered them wine.

  In short, they had a cargo of grain – several cargoes, in fact –

  and
they wondered if I’d like to have a go at smuggling it into

  Miletus. The rate of exchange they offered was good – good

  enough to give me some slack. So I loaded grain at their wharf

  enough to give me some slack. So I loaded grain at their wharf

  and filed the ship, so that she sat deep in the water and my

  rowers cursed.

  ‘We’re fucked if we have to run,’ Idomeneus said.

  ‘Realy?’ I asked, as if the thought had never occurred to me.

  We sailed at sunset, ran along the coast of Lesbos before ful

  dark fel and were off Chios in the light of a ful moon. My

  oarsmen were none too happy with me, because this was flirting

  with Poseidon’s rage and no mistake, or so they said.

  I made my sea-marks off Chios, and we passed silently along

  the beaches I had known like family homes in my youth. Just

  past false dawn, we passed the beach where Stephanos had

  lived before he went away to sea to be a kiler of men.

  There was a long, low trireme beached there.

  My heart rose in my chest, and I abandoned my plan and put

  our stern to the beach, and we went ashore.

  ‘I thought you were done for,’ Stephanos said. ‘And I thought I

  could weather the cape by Methymna and run free in the

  channel, with the two islands to break the fury of the storm.’ He

  shrugged. ‘Those Iberians don’t know how to row, but they

  have a lot of guts. I got us around the corner, and they kept the

  bow into the seas, and we determined to land at Mytilene, but

  there was a current – I’ve never seen anything like it. We went

  past Mytilene in the blink of an eye, and north of Chios we hit a

  log that was drifting, broke a board amidships and started to

  take on water.’ Stephanos was a big, plain-spoken sailor who

  had grown to manhood as a fisherman, and his hands moved like

  had grown to manhood as a fisherman, and his hands moved like

  an actor’s as he told the story.

  His sister Melaina was beaming up at him. She, too, was a

  friend of my youth, from the heady days when I was newly freed,

  just finding my power as a man-at-arms. We kept grinning at

  each other.

  ‘Then what happened?’ Idomeneus asked.

  ‘The back of the ship snapped like a twig, we sank and the

  fishes ate us!’ Stephanos laughed. His sister swatted him, and he

  ducked. ‘One of the rowers shouted that we weren’t done yet –

  a Greek felow, Philocrates. He put some heart in the boys and

  we got the head around, then the wind let up for a few moments,

  and in that time we got into a cove on the north shore – it was as

  if Poseidon agreed to let us live. I put the bow on the shingle,

  and to Hades with the ram – which took a right battering, and

  we’ve been a week repairing her. But we lived!’

  ‘As did we,’ I said, and we embraced again. I looked at his

  ship. ‘What do you cal him?’ I asked.

  Stephanos grinned his easy grin. ‘Wel, we thought of caling

  him Storm Cutter, but that’s taken, so we opted for Trident.’

  The sign of Poseidon. ‘A fine name.’

  He grinned again. ‘So – how do we make some money?’ He

  kissed his sister and pointed up the beach. ‘Go and find

  Harpagos, dear.’

  Harpagos proved to be Stephanos’s cousin. Melaina brought

  him down to the beach, and he was no smaler than Stephanos

  and his hands were hard as rock. Stephanos introduced him with

  flowery compliments.

  flowery compliments.

  ‘This is my useless layabout cousin Harpagos, who wants to

  ship with me. He’s never been to sea.’ Stephanos spat on the

  sand and laughed.

  Harpagos had the look of a man who’d kept the sea his

  entire life. His hair was ful of salt. But he stood, abashed.

  I winked at Stephanos. It was like old times. ‘You’re a

  trierarch now, my friend. No need to consult me on every raw

  man.’

  ‘I’ve been helmsman on a grain ship,’ Harpagos said.

  ‘I want him as my helmsman,’ Stephanos admitted. Then he

  said, ‘I need him where I can see him.’

  I liked Harpagos. His embarrassment at al this attention

  shouted of the sort of solid, quiet confidence that makes a man

  able to go to sea and fish every day for forty years. ‘On your

  head be it,’ I said. ‘Harpagos, can you fight?’

  He shrugged. ‘I wrestle,’ he said. ‘I teach the boys in the

  vilage. I can take this big fool.’ He indicated Stephanos.

  ‘Hmm,’ I alowed. ‘Wel, he can take me, and that would be

  bad for discipline. Ever used a spear and shield?’ I asked.

  Harpagos shook his head. ‘Can’t say I have.’

  ‘Ever kiled?’ I asked.

  Harpagos looked out to sea. ‘Yes,’ he said, voice flat.

  We al stood together in silence, and the fine wind blew

  across us. ‘Wel,’ I said, ‘welcome aboard. We’re pirates,

  Harpagos. Sometimes we fight for the Ionian rebels, but mostly

  we take other people’s ships for profit. Can you do that?’

  we take other people’s ships for profit. Can you do that?’

  He grinned – the first grin I’d seen. ‘Yes, lord.’

  Melaina listened to this exchange and brought more wine, and

  we ate fresh sardines and a big red fish I hadn’t eaten often –

  with flesh like lobster. We drank too much wine. Melaina

  pressed herself on me, and I flirted with her, smiled, even held

  her for a time while standing by the fire on the beach. But I didn’t

  take her into the dark. My head was ful of Briseis, and Melaina

  wasn’t a beach girl. She was Stephanos’s sister, and she dressed

  like a woman of property. Somewhere, she had a man she was

  going to marry. And to bed her would have been to betray my

  guest-friendship with Stephanos.

  In the morning, I gave him half the grain, and the next evening,

  ful of food and a little too much wine, we were off the beach,

  rowing soft in the moonlight for Miletus.

  Our plan was simple, like most good plans. We both had

  Phoenician ships – both newly repaired and looking fairly

  prosperous. We sailed due south, got behind the coastal islands,

  west around Samos, rowing al the way, and came into the Bay

  of Miletus from the south-west – that is, from the direction of

  Tyre and Phoenicia – as the sun set in the west, mostly behind

  us. We stood straight down the bay, bold as brass, apparently a

  pair of their own ships bound for the blockade fleet at Tyrtarus

  on the island of Lade.

  The fishermen of Chios had been able to lay the whole siege out

  like a scrol for us, because they smuggled fish to the rebels and

  sold them openly to the Medes, Persians, Greeks and

  sold them openly to the Medes, Persians, Greeks and

  Phoenicians who served the Great King, too. Miletus is an

  ancient city, founded before Troy, and she stands at the base of

  a deep inlet of the sea, just south of Samos, although the bay

  over towards Mycale is starting to silt up. Miletus has a steep

  acropolis, impregnable, or so men used to say, and her outer

  town is protected by a circuit of stone wa
ls with towers. The

  Persians began by moving their fleet to Ephesus, just a hundred

  stades up the coast. Once they had a base there, they moved in

  and stormed Tyrtarus, a fishing vilage with a smal fort, and used

  it as their forward base, so that ships from there could easily

  launch into the narrow channel and catch any vessel heading into

  Miletus.

  Mind you, it is possible to row north around Lade. The

  problem is that anyone holding the fort on Lade can see you

  coming fifty stades away, and when you turn north, they’re

  waiting – and the currents around the island favour the side that

  holds it.

  Once the Persians had the fort at Tyrtarus, they brought up

  their land forces on the landward side of the peninsula.

  Artaphernes came in person, and they built a great camp in the

  hils overlooking Miletus. After a few weeks of skirmishing, he

  started on the siege mound.

  Men tel me the Assyrians invented the siege mound, and

  perhaps they did, although as usual the Aegyptians claim they

  invented it. Either way, it was not the Greeks, who prefer a nice

  flat field and a single day of battle to a year’s siege. But the

  Ionians and Aeolian Greeks have fortified cities, and when the

  Ionians and Aeolian Greeks have fortified cities, and when the

  Lydians or the Medes come against them, they fight a war of

  shovels. The Persians dig a giant hil that runs from the flat of the

  plain to the top of the wals, and the Greeks in the city counter-

  dig, trying either to raise the wal by the mound or to destroy the

  Persian mound. And while both sides dig, the men outside make

  sure that the men inside receive no help, no weapons and, most

  of al, no food.

  Sometimes the men inside the wals triumph, boring their

  opponents into backing off. And sometimes a single load of grain

  can be a mighty weapon. First, because the men inside the wals

  can eat, and their hearts rise; second, because the men outside

  the wals know they must struggle for so much longer each time a

  cargo reaches their enemies.

  But in my experience, sieges are rarely settled by the hand of

  man. Usualy, the Lord Apolo hurls his fearsome arrows of

  disease into one side or the other – or sometimes into both – and

  the dead pile up as if Ares had reaped them with a sword, but

  faster. Sieges eat men.

  I didn’t know that then, as the sun set over my stern. I was