pleased to look down my front rank and see how many of those
helmets were my own manufacture – almost twenty. And behind
them were ranks of men with good shields and good helmets,
even if most of them were dog-caps of bronze. Every man in the
front rank had a good spear and a sword, and most of the
second-rankers, and some of the third- and fourth-rankers, as
wel.
The Milesians were the best equipped, with armour al the
way back to the fifth rank. My brother–in–law’s men were the
next best, and they would get better al autumn as I hammered
out their bronze. My neighbours looked almost as good – Bion
was armoured like Ares, as was Hermogenes, and Tiraeus,
Idomeneus and Styges – al of us in ful panoply, with thigh
guards and arm guards, too.
guards and arm guards, too.
Fifteen years of peace may rob a town of the fine cutting
edge of war practice, but it does give a town the riches to spend
on armour.
I had asked every man to have his wife make him a red
cloak. I didn’t expect them to be dyed Tyrian red, like the
Spartans, although a few rich men did. Most were brick red,
from madder, and striped in white or black, as is our way in
Plataea. But most men had done it – even those who had no
armour – and with those cloaks and our new dog-caps of bronze
in every rank, we made a fine show in the agora, and many
women stopped to watch and older men clapped to see us.
Myron wore his armour, but he watched. I intended to put
him in the fourth rank, dead centre in the phalanx – because he
was too important to risk, even though he was a decent fighter
and a brave man and owned good armour. He stood at the
edge, swapped jokes with men, and finaly came up and slapped
me on my scaled back.
‘Very good, Arimnestos.’ He pointed at the three Theban
heralds, who stood silently off to the side, watching as our men
laughed, joked and shone.
Then I caled out the epilektoi – most of them eighteen or
nineteen years old, although not al, by any means. And while the
phalanx sang the Paean of Apolo, we danced our Pyrrhiche.
It is one thing to dance for the war god when musicians play
and men sing. It is another to dance in the ful light of day, when
a thousand men beat the time with their spear–butts and sing
a thousand men beat the time with their spear–butts and sing
from inside their helmets, and the song rebounds from the bronze
and rises like a pure offering to the war god and the Lord of the
Silver Bow.
Idomeneus and I had changed our dance many times by then.
It had been a simple dance that alowed men to learn their place
in the ranks and not much more. Our new dance exchanged
ranks, taught spear-thrusts and parries, and had men duck to the
ground, leap in the air over a thrust, even fight to the rear. My
young men danced with unbated weapons, and more than once a
sharp spear ripped a furrow across a new–painted shield – but
the rhythm went on, and as we sang of the deep-breasted
nymphs who served Apolo, we stomped with our left feet and
pivoted together, ducked, clashed our spears and exchanged
ranks again.
When the hymn was finished, we stood silently for some
heartbeats, and then al 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 scrol.
‘Tel 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
My wife loved that I was polemarch, and when I donned my
armour for the muster, she embraced me, sharp scales and al.
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 wel 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 al the
epilektoi at my heels. I kissed Euphoria, patted her bely, which
now had the smalest, sweetest sweling, and gathered a pair of
my shop boys to carry my gear. Then in ful armour, my picked
men and I ran and walked by turns al 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 al tired and surly,
By noon on the second day, I had them al 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 calous 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 aly. 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’l
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 hil road, flat out.
And down in the valey in the direction of my farm, I saw a
And down in the valey 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 kiled a lamb, slit it open and cursed. ‘I don’t
realy 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 stil soft.
About the time the first files were faling in, another column of
smoke leaped to the heavens.
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 wil 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 fel 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 hil. 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 tel you that the farm is closed to
them, and safe. But they came from Thebes, and they wil 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 wals 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 al 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
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, technicaly, in Attica. I told the basileus to send
word to Athens – but that help, if it came at al, 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, al 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 hil to
investigate. He knew nothing.
Lysius and his men fel in with us – they’d met the Thracians
on the road. And a dozen stades further on, we met another
party, smal 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 al 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 briliant, covering the ground in front
of us and raising the farmers, and I wished I had cavalry like the
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 al together – al 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’l stay and bury these men, and send on
anyone who can folow.’
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 – al 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 tel 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.
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 hil, I was jogging so slowly that
walking might have been faster. But when I came over the hil, I
could see them – a dozen armoured stragglers in a dense shield
wal, 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, al light-armed men that Teucer had
ralied. I wanted to embrace him, but I didn’t have time.
We ran down the last hil, 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.
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.
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