Salamis

by Christian Cameron

  I tripped, and fell sprawling. My aspis didn’t break my arm, thank the gods, but I rolled over it the way Istes used to, more by Tyche’s blessing than any plan of my own. My knees were lacerated, and before I could breathe, there were hooves all around me.

  A horse struck me as I tried to rise and I fell again, this time pulling my aspis over me as Calchus taught.

  Above me in the dust a Saka leaned down and shot straight down. The arrow struck my aspis near the rim and went six fingers through and pricked my thigh. Another man put his bow over the back of his head as he rode by and shot down into me, and his arrow exploded on the oak and bronze of my aspis’s rim. They were so close that I could see their eyes, the sweat on their foreheads. They guided their horses with their knees and they were already concerned about the men around the bend. The man who put the arrow into my thigh had a golden torque and a red leather jacket painted magnificently in tiny patterns; the other man had bright blue eyes …

  All that between one beat of my heart and another.

  They came against the shield wall and it held. For a moment – perhaps three of my terrified heartbeats – it was othismos, the crossing of the spears. But light horsemen, no matter how powerful their archery, are no match for hoplites, even well-armed oarsmen, in a confined space.

  The line pushed them back. Men were calling my name.

  I was lying in a forest of horse legs, and I could see nothing.

  I had the sense to lie still.

  The line pushed again – there were horns on the hillside.

  Many of the Saka had spears and they were wielding them overarm, trying to reach the men behind the shields. They pressed forward, and the men and horses pressed into them from behind.

  More horns, and more; the low braying, like wolves calling, or dogs sounding from one house to another on an autumn evening when the moon is rising. A sweet sound to any hunting man.

  My son’s horn.

  They charged. I didn’t see it.

  The forest of horse legs began to shift. And then the melee exploded outward.

  In fact, only one Saka went over the cliff in the first moments, no matter how the song tells it. The poor bastard was on the far left of the fight, or perhaps he thought himself too clever and tried to put his horse among the rocks, and then he was gone over the edge, with a stade or two to fall to the plains of Boeotia far below.

  The rest of the Saka turned like a shoal of fish to run – and Hipponax and Hector struck them in the side. The road was not wide. Panicked horses turned and went over the cliff. This time, no more than four or five, but it was, I confess, spectacular and horrible and there is good reason we all remember it.

  One horse scrabbled with its back legs on the brink and screamed, and then the rider in the golden torque was gone.

  I was back on my feet by then, in the heart of my oarsmen, and my wounds were forgotten for a moment. I went forward, but I never bloodied my spear. We almost pushed our own front rank over the brink in our eagerness, and men were screaming for all of us to stop moving—

  We had six prisoners. They were brave men – and one woman – but they were terrified of the cliff.

  We hadn’t lost a man. That is important, when you take captives, especially – I’m sorry to say it – a woman. We made them dismount and we took their horses.

  By my command, we let them go. We let them see the first signs of our making camp and we pushed them away down the hill.

  But the baggage train had never stopped moving, and now the rest of the column – exhausted, but triumphant – walked away. We were not marching any more, but we moved down the pass into Attica as the sun sank to the west, out over Corinth somewhere. It gets dark early on that road, because of the loom of Cithaeron, but I kept them at it until full darkness. And then by moonlight, two more brutal hours down that road with many a stubbed toe and many a curse, until we saw the tower of Oinoe rising in the darkness, lit silver by the moon.

  I let them collapse on their arms and sleep. But at first light we were up, with no food and no fires, and we stumbled forward with some very upset pack animals and some very unhappy horses.

  I suppose that the Saka lost perhaps twenty men in those fights, maybe as many as thirty, including wounded. But that was enough. We broke contact, which of course, meant to them, as old and wily campaigners themselves, that they’d have to endure another ambush just to make contact again. They chose to let us go.

  A sailor can tell you the most surprising things about another ship in a single glance from almost over the horizon. A sloppy sail or a well-set one, the bow a little down in the water from poor loading, or a crisp entry because a ship is loaded well; the flash of distant oars can show you a ragged crew or a tight one. And in war it is the same.

  The Saka were brave and very professional, but I learned a great deal about Xerxes’ army in those hours. The Saka were not particularly motivated. They didn’t press us as hard as they would have if, for example, we’d raided their camp. I have reason to know. In fact, they were almost desultory in their pursuit, as if they had better things to do. And it is worth noting that all their cousins were looting helpless Boeotia while they were getting killed, which must have seemed unfair.

  But I found it hopeful that the elite of Xerxes’ army, with the possible exception of the Immortals and the noble cavalry, were so unambitious. Just possibly, they’d lost interest in the contest when Masistius went down, but he must have been re-horsed soon enough.

  We did have some bodies to strip, and the Saka wore a great deal of gold. We took it and put it on the wagons and I saw to it that we took all their bows and all their arrows, too.

  At any rate, the sun rose over Attica and it was empty. My whole body hurt like dull fire, like I’d lain on my anvil and pounded myself all day with a hammer. My hip was scored by the arrow that had come through my aspis and my head had a laceration where another arrow had passed between the crest box and the helmet, damaging both without penetrating either, and my arm had several punctures, all of them red and angry, and of course I’d lost two fingers on my left hand and my hand was puffy and swollen—

  Idomeneus was still stretched overt the back of a horse, breathing like a man snoring in a bad sleep. Alcaeus’s son awoke from his stupor to scream in pain and we had to rig a different mode of travel for him. He’d been stabbed twice with spears, once to the bone in the thigh and once through the back of the shoulder under the wing of his corselet; sheer bad luck.

  I didn’t want to lose either of them.

  I confess I pushed my oarsmen across the plain of Attica like a madman. We ate garlic sausage from our bags as we walked and we kept moving. It was to my advantage that they were oarsmen, used to extreme performance, and not mere hoplites. Aristides would spit to hear me speak such blasphemy, because aristocrats are supposed to believe that the thetes class will always betray them and cannot be trusted in extremes, but my experience is the opposite – rich men will sell their city while the poor will fight on the walls to the last drop of their blood. After all, unlike the rich, they have nowhere else to go.

  And of course, they are used to working hard. My oarsmen were magnificent, in a grumbling, angry, bitter, cynical way.

  Leon, one of the oldest oarsmen, a man who had some special tie to me, for all he affected to despise me, was one of the best. He’d been aboard Storm Cutter, the first of the name, in the storm that had earned her the right to be called so. He’d been there when we killed most of the Phoenicians and later when we survived the hardest ­manoeuvre I’ve ever done in a storm. He lacked the voice or the poise to be an oar-master, but he was a big brute with a ready tongue, and he always seemed to end up with me, no matter how many times he collected his silver and went away to open a taverna.

  He’d spent most of the last five years aboard Paramanos’s ships, but now he’d taken citizenship in Plataea and here he was swaggeri
ng his way across Attica.

  ‘Careful he doesn’t get you lost,’ he said aloud to a mate, cocking an eye at me. ‘Lord Arimnestos has been known to take a few long ways to get home, eh, lord?’ He laughed his big laugh.

  Men muttered about the lack of rations and the fatigue, but Leon shouted, ‘What’s our hurry, Navarch? We’re running from the fucking Medes so that other Medes can kill us, eh?’

  I jogged over alongside him.

  ‘I notice you’re still alive,’ I said.

  ‘Not for long,’ he said. But he grinned at me.

  Where the road splits for Megara and Eleusis I halted them and let them rest in the olive grove. We fetched water from a well. The owner wasn’t there to ask. No one was there. It was wrong, somehow, to ride through villages with no people, or with one sad dog.

  The sad dog was at the crossroads. He was a fine tall brute with a brindle hide, not a farmer’s animal but a hunting dog like those my friend Philip of Thrace raised, or Lykon of Corinth, my sister’s favourite. I fed him and he took the food with considerable dignity for a dog and looked at me that way that good dogs do. As if to say, I trust you, man. Are you worthy of my trust?

  I have never been a great man for dogs or cats. But that dog – he was alone. He had known better days, and he deserved better than dignified starvation in a small town in a deserted Attica – or being killed by Persians for food.

  I pulled the rope out of the lining of my good aspis and made a quick collar to hold him, but from the moment I fed him, he showed little inclination to run. He just wanted more sausage. I fed him most of what I had, noting that I seemed very hot for a man who had only walked a few stades, and that my left hand was bright red, which worried me.

  But the grumbling was quite loud, so I wandered in among the oarsmen. ‘We must have taken four or five mina of gold,’ I said. ‘Tonight on the beach of Salamis, we’ll divide it in shares. I’d be surprised if every man didn’t get a daric.’

  I suppose I could have given them a speech about saving Greece, but usually a little loot is better.

  Or perhaps I’m just an old pirate.

  We had to climb the low ridge that towers above the beach at Eleusis, and we were too strung out. I was conscious that we could meet Persian cavalry going in any direction at that point; they could be behind us, ahead of us, all around us. So I sent mounted men racing to the highest point, closer to Athens, and I ordered men to pick up their spears and shields when I saw two of the prodromoi galloping back to me.

  But I smelled it before they reported on it.

  ‘Attica is on fire!’ they said.

  And it was true. The Persians and the Medes must have struck the southern slopes of Mount Parnes that very morning, because we hadn’t seen anything from the top of the pass. From the ridge, though, we could see smoke to the north and east, as far as the eye could see. And we could smell it, too.

  My new dog sat and howled.

  I patted his head and gave him some sausage, which quieted him. Much like the oarsmen with Saka gold, come to think of it.

  Before darkness fell, a pair of tubby tuna boats came and took forty of my people across to the Salamis side, where Harpagos and Seckla were waiting. As soon as they knew we were there, they got the hulls in the water with only the top decks manned, and skimmed across.

  We saw them coming – five ships under a third of their oarsmen, and we knew they were for us. We’d only been gone from them a week, but it was like a homecoming. For most of the oarsmen it was more of a homecoming than going to an empty Plataea. We put the oarsmen into the ships, packed the top decks with terrified donkeys – not a story I’ll tell, but also not an experience I’d willingly repeat – got the horses aboard one of the tuna boats, and made it to Salamis before the Great Sickle rose into the heavens. Brasidas had made a tight camp, with sentries, and we landed like champions, stern first, and waded ashore with our menagerie of stock to find a hot dinner and fresh bread waiting.

  Eugenios moved into my tent without a backward glance and for the rest of the war my food was hot and my dishes were clean. Styges served out the former slaves to Giannis, commanding Black Raven, who was the shortest-handed.

  I’d missed a week of meetings, councils and officers’ calls. Fighting the Persians seemed like a worthwhile way to spend my time.

  I was just lying on a pile of straw that Eugenios had produced and had my favourite silver cup in my hand, full of good wine, when Themistocles appeared out of the starlit darkness like a god in some play. Probably a comedy about men’s folly. At his shoulder was his slave – we all assumed he was a slave – Siccinius. We’d all met him, and he was rumoured to be the Athenian’s lover, although Themistocles was not a man to be kept to just one lover, or even just one kind of lover. At any rate, Siccinius was a handsome man, a Phrygian who had been enslaved in war, an educated man. Siccinius went wherever his master went.

  ‘Where the fuck have you been?’ he asked. Then, before I could sputter, he said, ‘Thank Hermes you’ve made a safe return. The Corinthians insisted you were gone for ever – gone to Hermione.’ He nodded to Brasidas. ‘But this worthy man swore you would return, and none of us has ever met an apostate Spartan.’

  ‘I am a Plataean,’ Brasidas said.

  Home, sweet home.

  I followed Themistocles and his pais up the beach and over the next shoulder of land, a high outcropping. There, on the spur of rock that divides the beaches, is a small temple, and half a dozen tents. As it turned out, it was where Eurybiades had set his tent, and with him, a dozen Spartan messes, Themistocles, and some other wealthy Athenians. Sometime I’ll tell you about Themistocles’ tent, which was beautiful.

  It was inspiring just to stand there, between the two main beaches. Oh, Salamis has many beaches – dozens if not hundreds. But it has three huge beaches that face Attica, and another at the base of a long finger that points right at Athens. The Aeginians had that beach, as it was closest to their home island, to our south, but the Athenians’ ships filled the other three, with the Spartans. The Corinthians were farther west, on the same beach as my daughter’s school in exile. From Eurybiades’ camp, you could see the campfires stretching away east and west.

  We were a mighty fleet.

  Eurybiades embraced me, which was an honour in itself. I told a ­little of our journey and produced some of the gold, lest some naysayer like Adeimantus of Corinth say I’d invented the whole thing, but he was gracious, which suggested to me that he was up to something.

  On the other hand, they were all still there, which I took as a very favourable sign indeed. It had seemed possible in my darker hours that we would come to find no one but Athenians on the beaches.

  ‘So Boeotia has fallen,’ Eurybiades said. He frowned.

  ‘In Plataea, they say that Thebes gave more than earth and water,’ I said. ‘In Plataea, men are saying they opened their gates and fed the Persian cavalry.’

  Eurybiades stood straight. ‘May the Gods curse them,’ he said, the strongest thing I think I ever heard a Spartan say.

  Themistocles looked out over the bay. ‘And now they are burning Attica,’ he said.

  I nodded. ‘Thebes will do what she can to protect her towns,’ I said. ‘So if they want loot, they won’t lose much time on Plataea.’ I smiled, still, in my heart, a cocky boy. ‘Perhaps we taught them to be careful crossing Cithaeron, though.’

  ‘And what word from the isthmus?’ Adeimantus asked, as eagerly as any. These men were starved for news, and I noticed that Cimon was not among them.

  I hoped he was still at sea, keeping watch on the enemy fleet.

  ‘My lord, no word, beyond that the wall is being built and we were invited – that is, the Plataeans – to send our goods there.’ I nodded pleasantly. ‘My town’s phalanx went to join the allied army.’

  Adeimantus nodded. ‘So … the League is waiting at Corinth.
No reason for us to linger here, then. Let’s move the fleet to where the army is.’

  This had the ring of an old argument and I knew I’d been used.

  Themistocles said, ‘We were told that the League army would march, if not to save Boeotia, then to help defend Attica,’ he said.

  ‘A foolish dream,’ Adeimantus said. ‘Which I told you days ago. Attica is indefensible. You are lost. Let us take the fleet and save the rest of Greece.’

  Themistocles was clearly tired of all this, and yet in those days of his greatness he did not give way to anger. ‘If you go to the beaches of Corinth,’ he said, ‘you will go without the fleet of Athens.’

  A man I knew very little, although he commanded thirty ships and had fought brilliantly the last day at Artemisium, stood forth. He had beautiful white hair that flowed like a horse’s mane down his back, and muscles like Heracles. His name was Polycritus of Aegina, son of Crius. He was one of many heroes in our fleet, and men listened when he spoke.

  He smiled at Themistocles – a smile of the purest dislike, almost hate. And he laughed, as men will when they laugh at themselves. His lips curled, anyway. ‘It pains me like bad milk in my stomach to agree with Themistocles, or indeed with any man of Athens,’ he said. ‘But Adeimantus, if you take the so-called “Allied Fleet” to Corinth, you take no Aeginian ships, no Megaran ships, no ships of Naxos or any of the islands. While we stand here, we cover our homes. If we follow you to Corinth, our homes are open to rape and sack.’

  Adeimantus shrugged. ‘While we wait on these beaches, our homes are undefended.’

  Themistocles shook his head vehemently, but his tone was measured. ‘That is not true. While we stand here, the Persians cannot pass us. The beaches of Salamis face in every direction and we can, if we must, be the hub of a wheel – we can move from beach to beach around the island as the Persians try to pass us.’

  Adeimantus smiled in triumph. ‘So – you would fight in open water to keep the Persian fleet from moving west? So your argument about fighting at Corinth is a lie – you can fight there as easily as here. Better, with one secure flank.’