by Steve White
He really ought, Jason knew, to return to his aircar while the Transhumanists’ attention was riveted on the road and get back to Marathon. But curiosity held him. He compromised with caution by ducking behind the boulder and watching as Pheidippides reached a point almost directly below. He saw one of the Transhumanists manipulate a remote control unit. A concealed device by the side of the road erupted into a flash of light and a thunderclap of sound. With a cry, the runner staggered and fell to his knees. While his eyes were still dazzled, one of the Transhumanists shoved Pan forward and up into plain sight. When Pheidippides could see again, the “god” stood on the ridge looking down at him.
“Pheidippides of Athens,” said Pan in more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger tones, “why have the Athenians failed to worship me?”
Pheidippides groveled in the dust of the road. “We do, Great God, we do,” he stammered frantically.
“No. My sacred grotto on the slope of the Acropolis is neglected, save by a few. The smoke of sacrifice does not rise from my altar there.”
“We will neglect you no longer, Great God. I swear it! After I tell what I have seen, we will make amends. We will offer sacrifice.”
“It is well. Continue on your journey, and assure the Athenians of my affection for their city. Tell them also that I know the peril in which Athens now stands, and that I mean to come to its aid very soon, because I trust that your promise to me will be kept.”
Pheidippides looked timidly up. “Aid us how, Great God?” he dared ask.
“You know, Pheidippides, the power I possess to arouse unreasoning fear in men,” Pan replied obliquely. “Now go, and complete your errand, and bear my words to the Athenians!”
The hidden Transhumanist touched his remote again, and the bogus thunder and lightning sent Pheidippides flat on his face with a wail. Pan scurried back to join his two handlers. After a few moments, Pheidippides cautiously looked up and rose to his feet. Still blinking, he cast nervous glances all around. Then a slow smile awoke on the young face—a smile of serenely confident hope, the kind of smile rarely seen among Athenians these days. The smile broadened into a grin as he resumed his run.
The Transhumanists crouched, preparing to leave as soon as the runner was out of sight, and Jason dared delay no longer. He retraced his steps, flung himself into the aircar, reactivated the invisibility field, and set his course back to the clearing on Mount Kotroni, overlooking the Greek camp on the plain of Marathon.
Once in the air, he had leisure to reflect wryly. Of course I didn’t kill Pan. History says Pheidippides claimed to have met him on the road.
Only . . . if I had killed him, then maybe Pheidippides would have hallucinated him anyway, as historians think he did.
He shook his head and flew on, with the westering sun behind him.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Mount Agriliki rose two thousand feet to the southwest of the plain of Marathon, with the Athenian camp backed up against its lower slopes. Jason found a clear ledge about halfway to the summit and shielded from the view of those below. He doubted if the Transhumanists had a means of locating it when it was powered down. Of course they might have installed some kind of beacon that had enabled them to track its flight, but concealing the aircar was worth a try. He might well want to use it again, and what Rutherford didn’t know wouldn’t cause him to have a stroke.
He scrambled down the forested slope in the late-afternoon shadows. He slipped into the camp without difficulty, as nobody was being particularly careful about guarding its mountain-protected rear when the Persians were bottled up on the plain.
Mondrago, who had not been required to account for Jason’s absence, greeted him with relief. They found a relatively private spot toward the rear of the camp and Jason recounted his story.
“It would be nice to think you stranded them there on that ridge in the Peloponnese,” Mondrago remarked when Jason was finished. “I can’t believe the Transhumanists could have displaced more than one aircar almost twenty-nine hundred years into the past.”
Jason shook his head dourly. “They must be able to call in Teloi aircars, even if those are restricted to flying at night because they lack invisibility fields. In fact, they must be using them already. The aircar I took can only carry two, and I saw four: the pilot I killed, two more on the Tegea heights, and Pan.”
“And that nauseating little mutant is still alive!” said Mondrago venomously. The look he gave Jason was accusing.
“I’m still hoping to turn him. I’ve told you how much he resents his own existence.”
“He should. And I’ll bet it’s not just the things you told me about.” Mondrago grinned nastily. “That gigantic dong of his must have been designed for nothing but show. It probably hurts him to piss.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Jason admitted with a grimace.
“So what’s the plan?”
“I’m just going to have to improvise. Remember, they’ll be bringing him here before the battle—come to think of it, that must have been what their aircar was doing on Mount Kotroni, scouting out a suitable landing spot. Maybe that will be my chance.”
“You say they’re going to have him appear here so he can take credit for spreading panic among the Persians. That sounds like they’re planning to create the panic themselves. I can think of ways that might be possible.”
“So can I,” nodded Jason. Such effects could be achieved in ways involving focused ultrasonic waves affecting the human nervous system, sent along a laser guide-beam. And the Teloi might have other techniques.
“Well, then, sir,” Mondrago continued, his tone changing to one of formal seriousness, “has it occurred to you that maybe this is why the Greeks end up winning the battle?”
“You mean, that the Transhumanist intervention has always been part of history? That it’s the reason Western civilization survives?” Jason knew his voice probably reflected his unwillingness to believe it.
“Can you rule out the possibility? And if it’s true, and if our theories about time travel are correct, you won’t be able to undo it. Something will prevent you—maybe something lethal. And if those theories aren’t correct. . . .” Mondrago left the thought dangling.
Jason drew a deep breath. “Remember when we were at the Athenian Assembly? This is sort of the opposite side of the coin from that. Once again, I don’t deny that there are risks involved. But if the opportunity presents itself, I plan to try again to offer Pan our help in exchange for his cooperation.”
Mondrago looked disgusted.
Pheidippedes half-ran and half-staggered into the camp the following night. He had paused only briefly at Athens to impart the news he now brought to the army. In the immemorial way of armies everywhere, Rumor Central promptly conveyed that news to everyone.
“Carneia!” old Callicles snorted, with his patented eloquent spit. “The Spartans are celebrating Carneia, their holy festival—quite a big festival, I’ve heard—and they can’t march until the moon is full!”
Mondrago shared his feelings. “Greatest warriors in history!” he muttered to Jason in an English aside. “More like the greatest party animals!”
“Mark my words,” Callicles continued, “if that bastard Cleomenes was still running things in Sparta, he wouldn’t let any stupid ‘period of peace’ stop him. But now he’s dead, and the Spartans are shitting in their chitons with fear that they may have offended the gods by throwing those Persian emissaries down that well, not to mention burning that sacred grove at Argos. So they’re being very careful to observe their religious holidays—and never mind that we Athenians get butt-fucked by the Persians while they’re doing it!”
A pair of men passed within earshot, heading toward the tents of the Aiantis tribe. One of them paused. In the light of the campfires, Jason saw he appeared to be in his mid-thirties, beginning to go prematurely bald. “But,” he called out to Callicles, “if they set out at the full moon and march as fast as Pheippides says they promise to, shouldn’t they be he
re in a week? Surely we can hold the Persians at bay that long.”
Jason expected a scornful reply accompanied by another expressive spit. But Callicles’s “Maybe you’re right” was no worse than grudging. He sounded as though he knew the man, at least by reputation.
“Come on!” the man’s companion called. “We’re already late.”
“Coming, Cynegeirus.” The man waved to them and hurried on.
“Who was that?” asked Jason.
“Fellow named Aeschylus, from Eleusis,” said Callicles. “Writes plays.”
Jason stared at the retreating back of the man who was to become Greece’s greatest dramatist—but whose epitaph would say nothing about that, only that he had fought at Marathon. And the familiar tingle took him.
“You’ve heard of this guy?” Mondrago asked him.
Jason nodded. “In our era he’s going to be known as the Father of Tragedy.”
“He seemed pretty cheerful to me.”
“He may not be quite as much so after what is going to happen to the man with him—his brother Cynegeirus.” Jason shook himself, recalling what Landry had told him. In the final phase of the battle, on the beach, Aeschylus would watch as Cynegeirus had a hand chopped off as he tried to grab the stem of an escaping Persian ship, a wound from which he would subsequently die. “I’ve got to go. The generals must be meeting now to decide where we go from here, and I want to get that meeting on my recorder—there have always been a lot of unanswered questions about it.”
“They’re going to just let anybody listen in?” Mondrago sounded scandalized by such sloppy security.
“Maybe not. But I’ll never know if I don’t try.” And Jason slipped away through the camp.
Security almost lived down to Mondrago’s expectations—indeed, it was a barely understood concept in this place and time. In the heat of the August night, Callimachus and the ten strategoi were meeting under an open tent. Herodotus had claimed that command of the army had been rotated among those ten tribal generals, one on each day, and that as the day of battle had approached the others had handed command over to Miltiades on their allotted days. Mondrago had scoffed at that, declaring roundly that no army could or would have tried to function under such a nonsensical system. He had turned out to be right. Their initial impression—that Callimachus the war archon was in actual as well as honorary command, assisted by Miltiades as primus inter pares among the strategoi—had proven to be correct. Mondrago, whose sole intellectual interest was military history, had mentioned the names “Hindenburg” and “Ludendorff.”
Jason had a great deal of experience at making himself inconspicuous. He now brought all the subtle techniques he had learned to bear as he moved among the campfires and approached the open tent. He saw Pheidippides walking groggily away from that tent, where he must have finished rendering his formal report and would now doubtless collapse into a very long sleep that no one would begrudge him. Jason continued on in his unobtrusive way toward that tent and its murmur of voices, working his way inward until he could see the figures within, illuminated by flickering torchlight, and his implant’s recorder function could pick up the voices.
“You heard Pheidippides,” said someone Jason didn’t recognize. “All we have to do is hold out until the Spartans arrive: seven days if they keep their promise, and he’s convinced they will.”
“And there’s no reason why we can’t keep this stalemate going that long,” said someone else. “All we have to do is stay here, in this fortified camp on ground of our choosing.”
A murmur of agreement arose from what seemed to be a clear majority of the generals. The murmur rose to a pious pitch when one voice added, “And remember, according to Pheidippides we have Pan’s promise of assistance!”
Miltiades rose to his feet, the torchlight glinting from the remnants of red in his beard. The self-convincing murmur gradually subsided. All the strategoi were veterans of wars against the enemies of Athenian democracy—Greek enemies. But Miltiades knew the Persian way of war from inside and outside, and they all appreciated that fact.
“We can’t just sit here behind our earthworks and wait for the Spartans,” he said as soon as he had absolute silence. “The Persians have spies and well-paid traitors everywhere. Anything we know, we must assume they know. So don’t you suppose they’re taking account of Spartan schedules themselves?”
The silence took on an inaudible but perceptible quality of uneasiness. “Military intelligence” was still a barely understood concept among the Greeks, and there was something sinister, almost uncanny about it. But the Persians were the first people in history to recognize that information was the key to control. And Miltiades knew the Persians.
“Furthermore,” Miltiades continued, “Datis is running out of time. Even on half rations, his food stores can’t last more than a few days. I know we’ve seen some coming and going of ships, bringing in supplies from islands under Persian control. But with harvest season coming on, even those supplies must be running low. Before the Spartans arrive, and before his army starves, Datis is going to have to try a new strategy.”
“What strategy?” someone demanded. “What can he do? He can’t attack us here in this position.”
“What he can do,” explained Miltiades patiently, “is embark his army and sail around Cape Sunium and land at Phalerum, with nothing between them and Athens, leaving us still sitting here, looking stupid.”
A shocked silence fell. None of these men, Jason was certain, were under any illusions as to the likelihood that the undefended city wouldn’t contain a single fifth columnist to open the gates as the gates of Eretria had been opened.
“When they begin to embark,” Miltiades resumed into the silence, “We will have no choice. We will have to advance onto the plain and attack.”
If possible, the silence deepened into still profounder levels of shock as the strategoi contemplated the prospect of doing exactly what Datis had been hoping they would do.
“But,” said Miltiades before anyone could protest, “that will be our opportunity. Think how difficult an operation that embarkation will be for them—especially because they’ll want to break camp at night, to conceal it from us. And the hardest part will be getting the cavalry aboard. Whenever they’ve loaded horses aboard ships before, they were able to use the docks in Ionia and at Eretria; they didn’t have to get them up gangplanks on a beach in shallow water. They’ll have to do that first, before daybreak. If we can strike them at exactly the right time, they’ll be without their cavalry, and off balance. We’ve never had such a chance! And we’ll never have it again!”
“But,” protested Thrasylaos, strategos of the Aiantis tribe to which Callimachus himself belonged, “we’ll need to know in advance when they’re preparing to depart.”
Even at a distance, Jason could see Miltiades’ teeth flash in a grin. “The Persians aren’t the only ones with spies. They have a lot of Ionian conscripts over there, and among them are some old associates of mine from the rebellion. I still have contacts among them. They and I have arrangements for meeting and exchanging information, over there in the Grove of Heracles.” Miltiades raised a hand to hush the hubbub. “That’s all you need to know at present.”
“But,” Thrasylaos persisted, although his voice was that of a man who was wavering, “if we advance out onto the plain, they’ll be able to outflank us, with their superior numbers.” An uneasy murmur of agreement arose, for a phalanx was always terrifyingly vulnerable to flank attacks. “And they’ll have their archers,” he added, in a tone that held a mixture of conventional disdain—the Greeks had always looked on archery as the unmanly expedient of such dubious heroes as Prince Paris of Troy—and healthy apprehension.
Callimachus rose to his feet. His bald scalp gleamed in the torchlight, but he looked younger than he had when Jason had first seen him in the Agora, for he no longer had the stooped, careworn look. He now exuded calm confidence.
“We will prevent them from outflanking
us,” he explained, “by lengthening our line. To accomplish this, our center—the Leontis and Antiochis tribes—will form up four men deep.” He gave Themistocles and Aristides, the generals of the two tribes in question, a meaningful look. “The right and left wings will be eight deep as usual.”
Themistocles and Aristides looked at each other, their mutual detestation for once in abeyance as they considered the implications of this order.
“Polemarch,” said Themistocles respectfully, “we have observed over the past several days that the Persian center is always the strongest part of their formation.” There was no fear in his voice. He was merely inviting his commander’s attention to certain facts, with scrupulous correctness.
Aristides amazed everyone present by nodding in agreement. “It’s where the Medes and the Persians themselves are concentrated, and the Saka from the east—the best troops they’ve got.”
Miltiades answered him. “Yes. That’s the standard Persian formation, with their weaker troops—levies from all over the empire—on the wings. And that’s precisely why we’re making our wings stronger.”
Callimachus quieted the hubbub that arose. “You’ll all understand why soon, for I mean to explain my plan to you so you can tell your men what to expect. And as for Thrasylaos’ other point, about their archers. . . .” For the first time, Jason saw Callimachus smile. “Well, we’ll just have to give them the least possible time to shoot their arrows!”
Out of the corner of his eye, Jason noticed men beginning to take notice of him. Reluctantly, he moved on, carefully projecting the casual air of a man who had paused for no particular reason. Given the reputation of the Persians for espionage, he couldn’t risk any suspicious behavior.
And besides, he had a very good idea what Callimachus was about to say.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Another day of deadlock went by, and then another, and another.