Killer of Men

by Christian Cameron

  And Heraklides yelled, ‘Back! Back up! Back, you dogs!’

  I raised my shield and backed a pace. Our line was shattered. Lydians were butchering the men who ran.

  I got back in the line – I’d pushed forward into the Medes – but they weren’t fighting my partner or me. They were flowing around us, left and right, towards easier pickings, as men do when the mêlée becomes chaotic. I got my shield under the front edge of Heraklides’, and the man who had been at my back now stepped up to fit in next to me – it was all going to shit – and then he was gone, an axe in his head, and his brains showered me.

  I grabbed a spear and fought with it until it broke. We could hear Aristides and we followed his voice – back and back and back, and the enemy seldom fought us, because we kept together. There were men behind us, Agios and two others, and I never knew them, but they stayed with us, and more than once a spear from over my shoulder kept me alive, until the four of us made it to an alley entrance where the Athenian captain had another little knot of men. He had waited for us. I never forgot that, either. It probably only took us a minute to reach him, but he might have been as safe as a house for that minute, and he stood and waited.

  Well, Heraklides was his helmsman, of course.

  We got to the alley, and then we ran.

  We ran all the way to our ships, eh? Well, not quite. We ran back across the bridges and made a better stand, and Artaphernes took a light wound as his advance was stopped. I fought there, and I was in the front rank, and I probably put a man or two down, but it was desperate stuff, no ranks or files, and the Ionians were a pack of fools with no order. Mostly, I was trying to keep Heraklides on my left and my shield with his. I don’t know who hit Artaphernes, but that man saved our army. Because their attack petered out at the bridges, and we managed to withdraw to Tmolus across the Hermus River, and there was no pursuit.

  Half of the army had never been in the fight at all, and they wanted to storm the city again. Those of us who had fought were angry, and those who had run magnified the number and ferocity of the enemy, and many angry words were said.

  I was sitting, bleeding from a few wounds and breathing like the bellows for a forge, when a man came up. He was an Eretrian and he had a scorpion on his aspis, and he looked like a hard man.

  He came straight up to me.

  ‘You are the Plataean?’ he asked.

  I was sitting on my shield, so he couldn’t quite see the device. I nodded. ‘Doru,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘You saved my father – he’s telling everyone how you covered him against the arrows and drew the one from his shoulder.’ He offered me his hand. I took it. ‘I’m Parmenides.’

  I clasped his hand, and he offered more praise. I shook my head. But later, he came back with his father, and they brought a full skin of wine, which I shared with my mess. Then Stephanos came from the Aeolians – the men of Chios and the coast of Asia opposite – and sat with my mess group. He was a sixth-ranker, and proud just to wear the panoply. For him, it was an enormous promotion – as great as my step from slave to free man. The Aeolians take noble blood much more seriously than Atticans or Boeotians.

  When Stephanos went back to his own mess, I lay down, my head spinning from the wine. Heraklides lay down beside me, and we missed the part where Aristides accused the Milesians of cowardice.

  I’ve done poor Aristides an injustice if I’ve failed to make him sound like a prig. He was always right, and some men hated him for it. He never lied and seldom even shaded the truth. Indeed, among the Athenians, some men mocked him as a man who saw only black and white, not the colours of the rainbow.

  But Melanthius had taken a wound in the agora of Sardis, and Aristides was in command of the Athenians now, and he took this very seriously. We loved him, for all his priggish ways. He was better than other men. He just couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

  A failing I understand, honey.

  Anyway, the Milesians had, indeed, hung back from the city. Aristides apparently told them that their cowardice had cost us the city. Aristagoras, as their chief, resented the remark, and the army’s factional nature increased to near open enmity.

  The next day, my body ached, I was filthy, with blood under my nails and matted in my hair, and there wasn’t enough water, because we were too far from the banks of the river and the Persians would shoot any man who went down the bank for a helmet of water – filthy water, in any case. Later in the day, parched, angry and dirty, we stumbled back to the pass, and we heard that the Lydians were rising behind us – that the men of all Caria were marching to the aid of their satrap. In those days, the Carians were called the ‘Men of Bronze’ because they wore so much armour, and they were deadly. Later in the Long War, they were our allies. But not that week.

  We washed at the springs of the Hermus, and we filled our canteens and drank our fill and were braver. But we were no longer an army, we were an angry mob. The Athenians did nothing to hide their contempt for all the Ionians as soldiers. The Ionians returned their contempt with angry rejection, and it was muttered that the Athenians were sacrificing the Ionians for their own ends.

  Which was true, of course.

  Aristides grew angrier and angrier, his pale skin constantly flushed, and he walked along in silence, his slave trotting to keep up.

  I stood around, watching Aristides, watching the army disintegrate, and I understood why soldiers were deserting. We were doomed, and the rush of bad omens that surrounded us, including a live hare dropped on a sacrificing priest by an eagle, only confirmed what every man knew. In addition, men who had murdered and raped in the city knew that they had brought their own doom upon them, and they were sullen, guilty or merely dejected.

  The Athenians did not suffer from these problems. Heraklides gave me a heavy necklace of gold and lapis that he had snatched from the stall in the agora. ‘You only saved my life ten times,’ he said. ‘And I saved my loot. I got the whole bag behind my shield.’ He laughed, showing his snaggle teeth. He was only six years older than me, but he seemed like the old man of the sea himself. I put the necklace on, drank wine from my canteen and marched with the Athenians, who were still a disciplined band. We had come over the pass as the advance guard, and we were going home as the rearguard, with the Eretrians just ahead.

  ‘At home, they’re our worst enemies,’ Heraklides grunted at me. ‘But you know that, eh? You were in the fight at the bridge?’

  ‘I was,’ I said.

  ‘They held us a long time there,’ Heraklides said. ‘Good fighters. Glad to have them, out here.’

  Aristides came up to us. ‘You can go into the front rank in place of Melodites,’ he said without preamble. He didn’t smile, but I did. He had his helmet on the back of his head – all the Athenians did, because they marched ready to fight at all times, as did the Eretrians.

  I grinned like a fool. ‘Thanks, lord,’ I said.

  He looked grim. ‘Don’t thank me. When we face the Medes again, you’ll be the first to face them.’

  I shrugged. ‘I was in the front rank in the marketplace,’ I said. ‘Let’s not stand around and let them shoot us, next time.’

  He walked off, and I thought that he hadn’t heard me, or, more likely, had chosen to ignore me. I was young – very young to be in the front rank.

  I took the dead man’s place and was a file-leader, and the other men of my file thought well enough of me to help me make a plume-holder and a plume to mark my new rank.

  I no longer thought of Briseis. I was in the grip of Ares.

  When Aristides saw me with my horsehair plume, he came up and slapped my shoulder. He didn’t say anything, but it was one of the proudest moments of my life.

  From the top of the pass we could see the river in the distance, and the Ephesians cheered as if we’d been gone a month and marched a thousand stades. We were the last ones down the pass, and we knew from the scouts that there were Lydians and Carians right behind us.

  Aristides wanted to hold the p
ass, and we halted at the narrowest part of the down slope. He picked his ground brilliantly – a gentle curve in the pass, so that the longest bowshot was about one hundred paces, and the sides of the pass as steep as walls on either side. We made camp, a cold, cheerless camp with no water. Aristides sent me as a runner to Aristagoras. I was to ask him to send relays of slaves with water for us.

  ‘Tell him we’ll hold the pass a day,’ he said, ‘to give the Milesians time to recover.’

  But Aristagoras had no nobility and he was more interested in scoring points than in beating Persia. The pompous fuck! He laughed at the message. ‘Tell your chief,’ he said, ‘that we will do nothing for the convenience of Athens.’ He said the words loudly, so that all his Milesians heard him and joined his laugh.

  I ran the message back. No man had so much as offered me a canteen.

  I ran straight to Aristides. He was sitting on a rock, and I crouched at his feet and pulled my chlamys around me against the chill air and tried to spit. My mouth was so dry that my tongue wouldn’t move. So I just shook my head.

  Mutely, Aristides took his canteen over his head and handed it to me. I drank a mouthful and bowed. ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  He looked away. ‘They said no?’ he asked.

  ‘They said no. Aristagoras said that he would do nothing for the convenience of Athens.’ I shrugged.

  While I spoke, Eualcidas came up. He pulled off his helmet – he wore a great, winged Cretan helmet – and he was grey with fatigue. His arm hurt him, but famous men can’t show pain.

  ‘You planning to hold the pass?’ he asked. He was ten years older than Aristides and, although he commanded many fewer men, he was a much more famous warrior. He looked up the pass, where we could see a handful of Lydian slingers prowling around. ‘You bastards stood by us in the city,’ he said, and spat, by way of explanation.

  Aristides shrugged. ‘I asked them to send us water. Aristagoras refused.’

  ‘And you’re surprised? You called them cowardly fools, lad.’ Eualcidas laughed. ‘Which they are! But they’ll never forgive you.’ He looked around. ‘Fucking Ionians, eh?’ He smiled at me. ‘You’re a handsome man. And thanks for my life. Not many men can say they saved Eualcidas!’

  I blushed, and he laughed. He winked at Aristides. ‘You do have some handsome men. Listen – we’ll stand here with you. Better than trying to face the Medes down on the plains. Any day now they’ll get their cavalry together – then we’ll be doomed. Better fight them up here.’

  Aristides shook his head. ‘We can’t camp here without water.’

  Eualcidas shrugged. He had a boyish grin. He was a hard man to dislike. ‘That’s why we have slaves,’ he said. ‘Send them down the pass. Tell them to bring wine, too. If I’m going to die tomorrow, I think I want a feast.’ He turned away with a salute and put his hand on my hip. ‘A feast,’ he said into my eyes.

  Hah! I’ve made you blush again. Listen, honey. He was a famous athlete and a man who had grown up at a trading station on Crete. All Cretans are boy-lovers – it’s their way. It is in their laws. Superb soldiers and athletes. Not much for the crafts. Not always the smartest. Oh, he was beautiful – the most famous warrior in our army. What he wanted was obvious.

  So we sent all our slaves down the hill for water, and the Medes pushed some skirmishers around the pass. A handful of our men with a few dozen slaves chased them off with rocks and spears, and we settled to our cold rocks.

  I remember that night because my body hurt. It’s something that the bards never talk about, eh? The bruises you take in a fight – gods, the bruises you take in the gymnasium! Split knuckles, broken fingers, a rib bruised here, the black burn on your shoulder where your shield rim rides your shoulder bone, the cuts on your legs – Ares knows the toll. It is worst for the men in the front rank, and I had stood my ground in the agora of Sardis and now, three days later, I still hurt. My wound was slight, but it ached when I rolled on it, and I was lying on the ground – on sand and gravel. And we had few fires, because we were high in the pass and there were no trees.

  The word was, we were going to die. I was too inexperienced to do anything about such talk.

  Eualcidas came out of the dark with Aristides and Heraklides and a Euboean I did not know. My file was not asleep – we were huddled together in the dark, whispering, afraid of the morrow and trying not to show it, as soldiers always do.

  Aristides had a little bronze lantern and he put it on the ground, and I swear that bit of light did more for our morale than all his talk.

  Aristides was a serious man, and he spoke seriously. He explained that we were going to do a deed of arms, that men would never forget our actions to save the rest of the Greeks, and then he explained that as long as we held our ground, we were safe.

  He was a good man, and my file was better just seeing his face and hearing his voice.

  Eualcidas waited until he was finished and then he smiled his infectious smile. ‘We’ll kill us a load of Medes tomorrow,’ he said. ‘And then we’ll slip away tomorrow night while they get ready for a big assault.’ He looked around in the dim lamplight. ‘I’ve faced the Medes before, boys. Thing to remember is that they all wear gold, so when we push forward over their dead, our back-rankers need to get their rings and brooches. And then everyone shares together.’

  That’s how you inspire troops. Dying for all of Greece may appeal to a handful of noble young men, but everyone likes the sound of a gold ring.

  We were the junior file, just left of the centre of the Athenians, and we must have been the last group they needed to visit. Aristides slapped a back or two, gave my hand a squeeze and walked off into the darkness. He left his lamp – at the time, I thought that it was a tribute to how rich the man was, that a bronze lantern with a fancy bronze oil lamp inside could just be abandoned on a rock. I remember picking it up and looking at it carefully. Pater never made anything like it. It wasn’t good work – I could do better – but the construction was crisp.

  Eualcidas hadn’t left. He was watching me look at the lamp.

  I was young. I felt that his gaze held some censure, and I put the lamp down and shrugged. ‘My father was a bronze-smith,’ I said.

  He nodded and lay back, stretching his legs. ‘You’re not Athenian. I can tell.’

  I shook my head. I have to put in here that I was the only non-citizen among the Athenians, and they never held it against me, because while I had been a slave, the friendship between Plataea and Athens had hardened into something like love – or maybe it was forged in those three battles and somehow they’d managed not to fuck it up. But some of the older men would actually touch me for luck, because Plataea had brought Athens luck, or so they said.

  So I shrugged. ‘I’m from Plataea,’ I said. ‘But I’ve been a slave for a few years.’

  He laughed easily, and the muscles in his throat were strong and golden like bronze. It was, for me, like talking to Achilles – he was that famous. ‘How did a man like you end up a slave?’ he asked.

  ‘I didn’t end up a slave,’ I retorted. ‘I ended up in the front rank yesterday.’

  He nodded, smiled and said nothing, a talent few men possess.

  ‘Your people enslaved me,’ I said.

  He frowned. ‘I’ve been a war-leader for five years,’ he said. ‘I’ve never marched on Plataea. You came to us, once, with the Athenians. You beat us like a drum!’ He laughed.

  That got me. I had heard it elsewhere, of course, but always from men who might have had the story wrong.

  ‘I was there,’ he continued. ‘Right opposite your Plataeans. I have a scorpion on my shield. Were you in the phalanx? You must have been young.’

  I nodded, and there were suddenly tears in my eyes. ‘My brother died fighting the Spartans,’ I said, ‘and I took his place in his armour.’

  ‘He was brave?’ Eualcidas asked.

  ‘He was. And he died facing a Spartan, man to man.’ I was weeping and the Euboean rolled over and put an arm a
round me. He didn’t say anything. After a while he rolled back to where he’d been.

  I was better. I hadn’t really let myself think about it – my brother’s death, and my father’s, and now, in the dark with a battle looming, I was filled with a bitter, angry grief for both. They were in the ground and I was still here. It’s an odd thing, honey – one I’ve seen often – that soldiers rarely mourn a comrade when he falls. Sometimes it takes years.

  ‘My father fell fighting your phalanx,’ I said quietly. ‘I was behind him, and I stood over his body for a little.’ I stopped, because it was a bitter memory – how I had been too weak to stand my ground, and how the rain of bronze and iron had beaten me to my knees and knocked me down.

  I told it just like that. ‘When I awoke, I was a slave,’ I finished.

  Eualcidas shook his head, and his teeth gleamed in the dark. ‘You need to go to Delphi,’ he said. ‘You are god-touched, and you have been betrayed. No man of Euboea sold you as a slave. We ran. I ran,’ he said, and he smiled that boy’s smile. ‘If you live long enough, you’ll run, too. The day comes, and the moment, and life is sweet.’

  I found that I was holding his hand. He had hard calluses on his palm.

  I felt better. ‘I don’t think there’s shame in running when everyone runs,’ I said. I’m not sure that’s really what I thought, but he was a great man, and suddenly he was looking for my comfort.

  He smiled, and it wasn’t his boy’s smile. It was a very old smile indeed. ‘Wait until you run,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘You’re a good young man. I like you, but I have a feeling you won’t come and share my blanket.’