hadn’t seen him since the fighting started, and there he was,
covered in dirt as if he’d roled in the fields. Perhaps he had. I
had. His right arm was caked in crusted blood to the elbow, his
spearhead dripped blood, and flies buzzed thickly around his
spearhead dripped blood, and flies buzzed thickly around his
head.
Miltiades took a deep breath. He was the eldest of us, over
forty, in fact, and his face beneath the cheekplates of his Attic
helmet was grey with fatigue, and below his eyes he had black
lines and pouches like a rich man’s walet. But as I say, none of
us looked much better apart from Sophanes, who looked as
fresh as an athlete in a morning race, and Belerophon, who was
grinning.
‘We have to clear the olive grove as quickly as we can,’
Miltiades said. ‘We can’t leave them behind us – we’l have to
march for Athens.’
There was a groan. I think we al groaned at the thought of
walking a hundred stades to Athens.
Miltiades stood straighter. ‘We are not done,’ he said. ‘If the
old men and boys we left behind surrender the city to their fleet –
and there are people in the town who might do it – then al this
would be for nothing.’ He sighed.
Phidippides, the Athenian herald, pushed forward. ‘Give me
leave, lord,’ he said, ‘and I’l run to Athens and tel them of the
battle.’
Miltiades nodded, his face ful of respect. ‘Go! And the gods
run with you.’
Phidippides was not a rich man, and had only his leather
cuirass, a helmet and his aspis. He dropped the aspis and helmet
on the ground and eager hands helped him out of his cuirass. He
stripped his chiton off and put his sword belt on his naked
stripped his chiton off and put his sword belt on his naked
shoulder.
Someone handed him a chlamys, and he gave us a grin.
‘Better than mine in camp!’ he said. ‘I’l be there before the sun
sets, friends.’
He’d fought the whole day, but he ran off the field, heading
south, his legs pumping hard – not a sprint, but a steady pace
that would eat the stades.
Miltiades turned to me – or perhaps to Aristides. ‘I have to
get the army ready to march,’ he said. ‘I need one of you to lead
the assault on the grove.’
I’l give Miltiades this much – he sounded genuinely regretful.
‘I’l do it,’ I said.
‘Then we do it together,’ Aristides said. He looked at his
men – the front-rankers of his tribe. ‘We need to do this,’ he
said quietly. ‘We broke. We must find our honour in the grove.’
Miltiades nodded curtly. ‘Go with the gods. Get it done and
folow me.’ He took his hyperetes and began to walk across the
fields. The boy at his side blew his trumpet, and al across the
field, Athenians and Plataeans looked up from their fatigue,
summoned back to the phalanx.
Many of my Plataeans were right there – perhaps a hundred
men. They were a mix of front- and rear-rankers, the best and
the worst, and the Athenians were in the same state, although
there were more of them, and they had more armour and better
weapons.
Mind you, the Plataeans were working hard to remedy that,
stripping the Persians at our feet.
stripping the Persians at our feet.
‘They can’t have many arrows left,’ I said.
‘Why not?’ Cleitus asked.
‘They’d be shooting us,’ Teucer answered.
Aristides smiled a little sheepishly. Then he frowned. ‘You
have a plan, Plataean?’
I shrugged, and the weight of my scale corslet seemed like
the weight of the world. Even Cleitus – bloody Cleitus, who I
hated – looked at me, waiting.
The truth is, I didn’t have enough energy to hate Cleitus. He
was one more spear – and a strong spear, too. So I raised my
eyes and looked at the grove. The precinct wal was about half a
man tal, of loose stones, but wel built, and beyond the wal the
grove climbed a low hil – completely inside the wal, of course.
It was a virtualy impregnable position.
‘Seems to me they’re as tired as we are – and their side lost.
Nothing for them now but death or slavery.’ I was buying time,
waiting for Athena or Heracles to put something in my head
besides the black despair that comes after a long fight.
I remember I walked a little apart, not realy to think, but
because the weight of their expectations was greater than the
weight of my scale thorax and my aspis combined, and I wanted
to be free of it for a moment.
And it was as if a goddess came and whispered in my ear,
except that I stil fancy it was Aphrodite, whose hymn had been
on my lips when I fel asleep. Because I turned my head, and
there it was.
I put my helmet back on my head and my shield on my arm. I
I put my helmet back on my head and my shield on my arm. I
was only a few steps from the others. ‘I see a way to distract
them and save some fighting. I think you Athenians should go for
them – right over the wal, at the low point by the gate. The rest
of us – you see the little dip in the ground there?’ I nodded my
head. ‘Don’t point. If fifty of us go there, up that little guly, I
doubt they’l see us coming. The rest of you form up twenty
shields wide and ten deep. When we hit the grove, wel, you
come at the gate, and it’s every man for himself.’
Aristides nodded. ‘If they see you coming, you’l be shot to
pieces,’ he said.
‘Then we’d best hope they’re low on arrows,’ I said. ‘No
time for anything fancy.’
Someone shouted, ‘Can we fire the grove?’
‘No time,’ I said. In truth, it was the best solution.
Let me tel you something, young man. I believe in the gods.
One of them had just shown me the guly. And that olive grove
was sacred to Artemis. And the gods had stood by me al day.
To me, this was the test. It is always the test of battle. How good
are you when you are wounded and tired? That’s when you find
out who is truly a hero, my children. Anyone can stand their
ground with a ful bely and clean muscles. But at the end of day,
when the rim of the sun touches the hils and you haven’t had
water for hours and flies are laying eggs in your wounds?
Think on it. Because hundreds of us were measured, and by
Heracles, we were worthy of our fathers.
‘You man enough for this, Plataean?’ Cleitus asked, but his
voice was merely chiding – almost friendly.
‘Fuck off,’ I said, equaly friendly.
‘Let’s get to it,’ Aeschylus said. He put the edge of his aspis
between Cleitus and me. ‘This isn’t about you, Cleitus.’
I remember that I smiled. ‘Cleitus,’ I said softly, and he met
my eye. ‘Today is for the Medes,’ I said. I offered my hand.
He took it and clasped it hard.
Aeschylus nodded. ‘I ask to be the first into the grove,’ he
said. ‘For my brothe
r.’
Athenians and aristocrats. Not a scrap of sense.
So the Athenians formed a deep block the width of the low
wal. Behind the screen they provided, I took my Plataeans –
household first – in a pair of long files and ran off to the south,
around the edge of the low hil. I pushed my legs to do their duty.
I think ‘run’ may be a poor description of the shambling jog we
managed – but we did it.
We ran around the edge of the hil and there was the entry to
the guly, as I’d expected. That guly wasn’t as deep as a man is
tal – but it was shaped oddly, with a smal bend just before the
west wal of the grove, and I trusted my guess and led my men
forward – stil in a file.
The Persians had formed a line – not, to be honest, a very
thick line – facing Aristides’ smal phalanx. We could see them,
and by a miracle, they stil hadn’t seen us. It was, wel,
miraculous. But on the battlefield, men die because they see what
they expect to see.
Then Aristides and Aeschylus led their men forward. They
Then Aristides and Aeschylus led their men forward. They
were so tired that they didn’t cheer or sing the Paean, but simply
trotted forward, and al the Persians shot into them.
The clatter of the arrows on their shields and the solid
impacts drowned the sound of our movement.
‘Form your front!’ I caled softly, but my men needed no
order.
The men behind me started to sprint forward. I didn’t slow.
The neatness of our line was immaterial. And by the gods,
Aphrodite was there, or some other goddess, lifting us to one
more fight, raising us above ourselves. Two or three times in my
life I’ve felt this, and it is . . . beyond the human. And at
Marathon, every one of us at the grove felt it.
I was at the edge of the guly, and it sloped steeply up, head
height, to the base of the stone wal. The Persians had assumed
this part was too tricky for us to storm.
I was first. I ran up the guly lip – and at the top a Persian
shot me.
His arrow smacked into my aspis at point-blank range, and
then I was past him, over the wal in a single leap, and a flood of
Plataeans poured in behind me. I have no idea who kiled that
man, or, to be honest, how I got over the wal – but we were in,
past the wal, among the trees.
I crashed into the end of the Persian line – most of them
never saw us coming, so focused were they on Aristides and his
men to their front.
They died hard.
When they stood, we slew them, and when they ran – some
When they stood, we slew them, and when they ran – some
in panic, more just to find a better place to die – we chased
them, tree to tree. Those with arrows shot us, and those without
protected the archers. Some had spears and a few had aspides
they’d picked up from our dead, and many had axes, and they
fought like heroes.
No man who survived the fight in the olive grove ever forgot
it.
Desperate, cornered men are no longer human. They are
animals, and they wil grasp the sword in their guts and hold on
to it if it wil help a mate kil you.
The fight eventualy filed the whole grove, and some of them
must have climbed the trees – certainly the arrow that kiled
Teucer came from above, straight down into the top of his
shoulder by his neck. And Alcaeus of Miletus, who had come al
this way to die for Athens, went down fighting, his aspis against
two axemen, and I was just too far away to save him.
A Persian broke my spear, dying on it, and another
clambered over his body and his short sword rang off my scales,
but didn’t go through or I’d have died there myself. I put my
arms around him and threw him to the ground, roled on top of
him to crush him, got my hands on his throat and choked the life
out of him. That’s the last moment in the battle I remember – I
must have got back on my feet but I don’t remember how, and
then I was back to back with Idomeneus, but the fighting was
over.
The fighting was over.
Al the Persians were dead.
Al the Persians were dead.
Idomeneus sank to the ground. ‘I’m done,’ he said. I had
never heard those words from him, and never did again.
That was Marathon.
Equaly, to be honest, I remember nothing of the march over the
mountains to Athens, in the dark, save that there was a storm
brewing out over the ocean and the breeze of that storm blew
over us like the touch of a woman’s cool hand when you are
sick.
I must have given some orders, because there were nigh-on
eight hundred Plataeans when we came down the hils above
Athens to the sanctuary of Heracles. And as each contingent
came up, Miltiades met them in person. That part I remember.
He was stil in ful armour, and he glowed – perhaps, that night,
he was divine. Certainly, it was his wil that got us safely over the
mountains and back to the plains of Attica. The Plataeans were
the last to leave Marathon apart from Aristides’ tribe, who
stayed to guard the loot, and the last to arrive at the shrine of
Heracles, and as we came in – not marching, but shuffling along
in a state of exhaustion – the sun began to rise over the sea, and
the first glow caught the temples on the Acropolis in the distance.
‘We’ve made it, friends,’ Miltiades said to each contingent.
Men littered the ground – shields were dropped like olives in
an autumn wind, as if our army had been beaten rather than
victorious.
My men were no different. Without a word, men fel to the
ground. Later, Hermogenes told me that he fel asleep before he
got his aspis off his arm.
I didn’t. Like Miltiades, I was too tired to sleep, and I stood
with him as the sun rose, revealing the Persian fleet stil wel off to
the east.
‘Even if they came now,’ he said, ‘Phidippides made it. See
the beacon on the Acropolis?’
I could see a smudge of smoke in the dawn light. I nodded
heavily.
‘By Athena,’ Miltiades said. He stood as straight as a spear-
shaft, despite his fatigue. He laughed, and looked out into the
morning. ‘We won.’
‘You should rest,’ I said.
Miltiades laughed again. He slapped my back, grinned ear to
ear, and for a moment, he was not ancient and used up – he was
the Pirate King I had known as a boy. ‘I won’t waste this
moment in the arms of sleep, Arimnestos,’ he said. He embraced
me.
I remember grinning, because few things were ever as
precious to me as the love of Miltiades, despite the bastard’s
way with money, power and fame. ‘Sleep would not be a
waste,’ I said.
He shook his head. ‘Arimnestos – right now, this moment, I
am with the gods.’ He said it plain – no rhetoric. And he wasn’t
talking to a thousand men, feeding on their adulation. I honestly
think every man in our army was asleep but us.
No – he was teling the plain truth to one man, and that man
No – he was teling the plain truth to one man, and that man
was me.
I remember that I didn’t understand. I do now. But I was too
young, and for al my scars and the blood on my sword arm, too
inexperienced.
He laughed again, and it was a fel sound. ‘I have beaten the
Persians at the gates of my city. I have won a victory – such a
victory.’ He shrugged. ‘Since Troy . . .’ he said, and burst into
tears.
We stood together. I cried too, thugater. I cried, and the sun
rose on the Persian fleet, turning away in defeat. Many men were
dead, and many more would die. But we had beaten the Great
King’s army, and the world would never be the same again.
Truly, in that hour, we were with the gods.
Epilogue
A day later, the Spartans marched in on the road from Corinth.
Their armour was magnificent, and their scarlet cloaks bilowed
in the west wind, and the head of their column was just in time to
see the last of the barbarian fleet as it turned away from the
channel by Salamis and started back for Naxos.
They marched over the mountains to Marathon and saw the
barbarian dead, and then they marched back to Athens to
shower us with praise. I think most of the bastards were jealous.
Many men died at Marathon – my friends, and men who had
folowed me. And worse awaited me at home, although I didn’t
know it.
As soon as our lightly wounded could walk, I took our men
back over the mountains to Plataea. We stil feared that Thebes
might move against us. Indeed, Athens sent us a thousand
hoplites to accompany us home, to show Thebes that they had
backed the wrong horse. Athens could not do enough for us – to
this day, thugater, the priestess of Athena blesses Plataea every
morning in her first prayer – and within the year, we were made
citizens of Athens, with the same citizen rights as Aristides and
Miltiades, so that al those freed slaves were able, if they wished,
Miltiades, so that al those freed slaves were able, if they wished,
to go back to Athens as free men.
We came down the long flank of Cithaeron, three thousand
men, new citizens and old, and the valey of the Asopus was laid
out before us, the fields like the finest tapestry a woman could
weave in soft colours of gold and pale green.
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