Marathon: Freedom or Death lw-2

by Christian Cameron

  Sometimes the men inside the walls triumph, boring their opponents into backing off. And sometimes a single load of grain can be a mighty weapon. First, because the men inside the walls can eat, and their hearts rise; second, because the men outside the walls know they must struggle for so much longer each time a cargo reaches their enemies.

  But in my experience, sieges are rarely settled by the hand of man. Usually, the Lord Apollo hurls his fearsome arrows of disease into one side or the other — or sometimes into both — and the dead pile up as if Ares had reaped them with a sword, but faster. Sieges eat men.

  I didn’t know that then, as the sun set over my stern. I was twenty-five years old, and I had never seen a siege.

  South of Samos, and no guard ship came to look at us. We stood straight on, and as we entered the Bay of Miletus, we bore up and sailed along the south coast of the bay, as if bound for the island of Lade. We were sailing in light airs, but every bench was manned and we were ready to run.

  In the last light of the day, two of their ships headed out to meet us. They took a long time coming off the beach, and we didn’t hurry towards them.

  ‘Oar-rake and past,’ I called softly to Stephanos, and he nodded and repeated my orders to Harpagos, whose hooked nose could just be seen above the stem of the ship. We could see Miletus in the distance now, rising on the next headland, due east down the channel.

  There’s a world of difference between being ready for action and expecting nothing to happen, and that world of difference separated our ships and theirs. They came out thinking we were Phoenicians. We knew exactly what we intended to do, and when we were at hailing distance and the lead ship called to us in their Phoenician tongue, I clapped my hands once — I remember that the sound carried over the water and made a little echo against the nearer enemy hull — then every back bent on my ship, and the oars twinkled in the setting sun. If they had been ready, they’d have leaped into action right there, but many heartbeats passed while their navarch and his officers tried to work out why we were rowing so hard.

  The lead Phoenician was so ill-prepared that his crew caught a crab and he fell away from his course, which was almost the end of my plan. I wanted to oar-rake the pair, Stephanos taking the port-side enemy and I the starboard, and my plan was that we’d crush their oars and race through before any other ships could launch off the beach.

  But the lead Phoenician turned broadside on to us, and we had no choice but to ram him or abandon our attempt. The channel was too narrow to avoid him, so I caught him just aft of amidships and Stephanos caught him a few heartbeats later, well forward, and together we rolled him over, dumping his rowers in the water.

  We’d turtled one ship, but the impacts tested our bows and cost us all our speed and hard-earned momentum, and we were all a-stand for the second ship.

  He knew his business, and now that he’d had a moment to think, he was ready. He loosed a flight of arrows, and some of my rowers were hit, but Galas had them in hand and we were moving forward.

  ‘Oars in!’ I called.

  It was sloppy, but we had all our oar shafts in as our bow slammed into the second ship. We weren’t moving fast — neither was he — and the two ships didn’t have the power to get past each other. As we came to a dead stop, broadside to broadside, Idomeneus got grapples over the side, but at the cost of three marines. The Phoenicians were poling us off while their archers flayed us. Galas went down with an arrow in him, and my deck crew was melting — men were taking cover behind the masts, behind screens, anything. And this from four or five archers.

  I had the helm, but we had stopped. On the beach, men were pushing ships into the water — a dozen slim hulls launching all together.

  ‘Fuck,’ I said aloud. I remember, because there was a lull, and my imprecation carried clearly across the water.

  I drew my sword and caught up my big hide shield, a simple Boeotian I’d bought on the beach at Chios. I didn’t have my armour or my good war gear or my new helmet, and I was carrying a shield just two goat hides thick. Even as I raised it, an arrow punched through, tore my hair and carried on to sink into the sternposts.

  I ran down our central platform. A running man is a hard target for archers, but that didn’t stop them — they knew I was the helmsman. Every archer fixed on me, and two arrows hit my shield, but neither pinked me.

  Amidships, Idomeneus had two grapples fixed and guarded by his marines, their big shields covering him and his ropes. Opposite, a pair of Phoenicians sawed with swords at the hawsers that held us fast. I saw all of this in a glance and pivoted on one heel. I leaped from the command platform to the gunwale by Idomeneus, covered for a valuable moment by the two aspides of his marines, and without pause — hesitation would have been death — I was across the gap, my left foot on their gunwale and then both feet firm on a rower’s bench, and I started killing.

  I took the men who were sawing at our grapples in two blows, and then I cleared the rowing bench by beheading the oarsman. His blood sprayed back on the men behind him, and I punched with the rim of my light shield, caught one of the Phoenician marines who was surprised at the length of my arms and knocked him flat, and I was on their command platform.

  ‘Hellas!’ I shouted.

  I was fuelled by desperation and the elation of a starving man offered food. I hadn’t fought like this in more than a year — and I was better than a mere man, thugater. My shield and my sword were everywhere, as if they had eyes and thoughts of their own. I remember rotating my hips and punching back with my shield rim, catching a sailor in the groin, and glowing with the joy of fighting so well. A winter of training the Plataeans had not been wasted. Each blow, each parry, blended seamlessly into another. It was like dance. It might have gone on for ever.

  And then Idomeneus was shouting my name, and I raised my hand, and the enemy deck was clear. I had my blade in the air and there was a half-naked sailor under the edge — but I stayed my hand, as Dion had asked.

  ‘Apollo!’ I called, and let the man live.

  Idomeneus and the marines had followed me aboard. There were a dozen warships in the water, and Stephanos was already past us, rowing hard for Miletus. That’s what he was supposed to do.

  ‘Mal!’ I called. He turned his head, and I waved at him. At the same time, I cut the grapples that held the two ships together. ‘Go!’

  It took three shouts, but he got it. He started striking men with his stick, and the oarsmen on the starboard side began to push against our hull with poles and spears and even their oars.

  Idomeneus was on the stern of the ship I’d just taken. I saw him grasp the oars, and I picked up a javelin that one of the enemy marines had dropped — or thrown.

  ‘Reverse your benches,’ I ordered in Greek. A few men obeyed, and others looked blank, or mutinous.

  I threw my javelin into one of those who was refusing his duty, and he fell across his oar. Then I pulled the spear free of his corpse. ‘Reverse your benches!’ I roared.

  They obeyed.

  I pounded the oar-beat against the mast with the spear-butt, and they rowed. It wasn’t good rowing, but the men coming off the beaches weren’t eager to fight in the dark and they weren’t any too sure what had just happened, either. We backed down the channel — first a stade, and then another stade — and then the arrows from Miletus began to fall on the enemy ships following us.

  One bold ship made a last try. Before the final bend in the channel, a beautiful long trireme with a red stripe went to full speed in half a dozen ship-lengths — a superb crew — and tried to ram us, bow to bow.

  Idomeneus had the ship, and he steered well, so that the two rams rang together like a hammer and an anvil, and our ship bounced away, apparently undamaged.

  Arrows fell from the near bank, so many that they were visible against the faint light of the sky, and there were screams from the red ship, and it fell away. I could hear a familiar voice cursing and ordering men to reverse their cushions — a Greek voice.


  Archilogos’s voice. A man I’d sworn to protect — now leading the ships of my enemies.

  The men of Miletus greeted us like brothers — better than brothers. We’d killed an enemy ship and seized another right under the eyes of their blockade, in full view of the walls, and we would have been drunk as lords in a few hours if there had been any wine in the lower city.

  As it was, my first hours in the siege of Miletus showed me all the things I’d never wanted to know about sieges. The people were as thin as cranes — the children looked like old people, and the women looked like children. A handful of the town’s best fighters still looked like men — they got extra food, and they needed it. The rest looked like starved dogs, and Histiaeus, the tyrant of the town, had to set his fighters as guards to get our grain ashore.

  I took our pay in gold darics. ‘I’ll be back,’ I promised.

  Histiaeus was a tall, beautiful man with a mane of black hair and golden skin and a heavy scar across his face. His brother Istes was another of the same — they had been raised at the Great King’s court and spoke Persian as well as Greek, and they looked like gods. I liked Istes better — he was less addicted to power and a better man — but he laughed at me. ‘No one comes back a second time,’ he called as my men got the stern off the beach. ‘But thanks!’

  That stung. ‘I’ll be back in ten days, by the fires of Hephaestus and the bones of the Corvaxae!’ I shouted to Istes. I craved his good opinion. In those days, men said Istes was the best sword in Ionia. He was a few years older than me, and we had never been matched against each other. But we were instant friends, that night in Miletus.

  So, having sworn my oath before men and the gods, I ordered my men to row. We were heavily laden — I’d filled the ship with all the women and children that dared to come with us. We headed straight back to sea.

  It was dark as pitch. I reckoned that Archilogos wouldn’t expect me to try again immediately, and I was right. We rowed out of the harbour at ramming speed, made the turn at the harbour-mouth in fine style and tore up the estuary, and the Medes and traitorous Greeks on the beaches at Tyrtarus must have watched us go by and felt like fools, but none opposed us. I stood on my stern and laughed at them, and the sound of my mockery carried over the water and bounced back from the bluffs above the town.

  Probably a stupid taunt, but it felt good, and it still makes me smile to think of how Archilogos must have writhed at the sound of my laughter.

  And then we were out to sea and running before a freshening wind.

  All our rowers were exhausted by the time we made Chios. We disgorged our cargo of refugees, and the people of the fishing villages fed them. But they wouldn’t keep them, and we still had them aboard when we headed back north to Mytilene.

  I had to give command of the new ship to Harpagos. I was out of officers, and Idomeneus, for all that he was a skilled killer, had no interest in the sea and could no more inspire men than I could play a flute. Harpagos was a good seaman, and his quiet solidity was the sort of thing men trust in a storm or a fight. I gave him a try, and I never regretted it.

  I took all three ships back into the great harbour at Mytilene, and still there was no sign of the rebel fleet. Nor had anyone heard a word of Miltiades. It was as if the Persians had already won.

  I paid my grain merchants from the gold I’d received in Miletus.

  ‘And I’ll buy the rest of your grain,’ I said. I offered them a handsome profit, for men who never had to move from the comfort of their own homes, and I filled three ships with grain in sacks and jars. I’ll say this for them — for all the Lesbians — they took the shiploads of refugees from Miletus and treated them like citizens.

  This time, we sailed in broad daylight. My crew trusted me now. And weeks of action had made them better men. I knew the process and I used it for my own ends. We rowed when we might have sailed, and I hardened their muscles as if they were athletes, and I promised them a gold daric a man if they got us in and out of Miletus again.

  I waited for the dark of the moon, and the gods sent me a dark night and heavy seas. We had lights on our sterns, and we rowed across in the dark, with the rowers cursing their ill-luck and praying with every stroke — but after a month of constant adventure, my crew could row in the dark.

  We went down the bay with the wind at our backs, under boatsails alone, north around Lade. The wind defeated the currents and allowed us to move quickly, and the Phoenicians were snug in their blankets when we went past, because it was raining and winter had come. But some fool laughed aloud and alerted them, and when we had unloaded and turned our bows to the open sea, they were formed across the bay, fifteen ships waiting for our three. And they were good sailors. I watched them for a while from the safety of the Milesian archers, and then I took my little squadron back into the harbour.

  All the gold darics in the world weren’t going to save me. I was blockaded in Miletus, and it looked as if our luck had run its course.

  4

  The Persian fleet didn’t actually have any Persians in it, of course. There were Ionian Greeks and Phoenicians and a handful of very capable Aegyptians on those beaches, and I stood in the so-called Windy Tower of Miletus and watched them.

  To the south, the Persian siege mound grew every day. No Persians there, either — just slaves culled from the countryside, hundreds and hundreds of agricultural slaves from the Milesians’ own farms carrying brush and soil, while fending off rocks and arrow shafts, and dumping it under the walls, so that the siege mound grew the width of a man’s hand every night.

  The Milesian aristocrats remained confident, however. Their city had never fallen, and they still had stores — they hadn’t killed all their animals yet, and only the lower-class people were suffering. When I was taken up to the acropolis, it was as if I’d entered a city free of war — I was bathed by slaves, anointed with oil and served a meal that included thin-sliced beef tongue.

  But in the lower city, the people were starving.

  My grain put heart into them, and I wasn’t the only captain who got through — just the only one who’d done it twice. And this late in the season, my second cargo — three ships’ worth — saved the city. Histiaeus and his brother did not hesitate to tell me so.

  My second night in the city, Istes led the warriors in an attack out of a postern gate and set fire to a brush pile the enemy had been preparing — brush piled as high as a city wall, intended to help with the last days of the siege mound. But they couldn’t burn the soil, and in the morning the slaves were back at work.

  Persian archers appeared periodically and shot into the city — fire arrows, sometimes, but mostly just war shafts, carefully aimed. Every day they killed a man or two on the walls. On the other hand, they kept the city supplied with arrows.

  Archilogos, or whoever was in command over there on the beaches of Lade, was not giving up either. They formed a cordon every night, and had small boats rowing across the channel, and at least two ships out in the bay north of the island. At dawn and dusk they sortied out with at least fifteen ships, and I didn’t see much hope for escape.

  But on the third night, the city’s defenders sallied out again, and this time I went with them. It is ironic that, once you have the reputation as a great warrior, you must support it constantly. I could no more sit in the acropolis while the men raided than I could abstain from eating.

  The city was well appointed with regard to armour, and Lord Histiaeus gave me a bell corslet and a fine Cretan helmet with a magnificent horsehair plume. It was a bit like living in the Iliad. I took my marines, and Philocrates the Blasphemer, who had settled into the life of piracy like a veteran. I got him arms as well, a full panoply.

  ‘You look like Ares come to life,’ I said to him, when he was dressed in bronze.

  ‘Ares is a myth to frighten children,’ he said.

  ‘I see that a storm at sea and a life of war is not enough to restore your respect for the gods,’ I said.

  He shrugged. ‘You
can’t respect what ain’t there.’

  I stood back a little and regarded him. There was something frightening about him. He ignored portents, laughed at talismans and called the gods by foul names. At first only the Iberians would eat with him, but as he continued to blaspheme and the skies never swallowed him up, other men began to accept him. That said, I have to say that he had changed. I couldn’t put my finger on why, but he explained it himself later, as you’ll hear, if you come back for more of this story tomorrow.

  At any rate, sixty of us went out of the postern gate nearest the harbour. It was pelting down with rain — we slipped on the mud, and I blessed my good Boeotian boots even as the other men cursed their open sandals. The ground in front of the walls had been churned to a froth by the passage of thousands of men, slaves and soldiers, and both sides dumped their waste and filth into that no-man’s-land. It was foul.

  You’d think that after a hundred of these raids, the Persians would have set a watch, but of all their contingents, only the Aegyptians kept a regular guard. Most of their crack troops were cavalrymen who disdained such rigorous pastimes as guard duty, and who am I to comment? I never knew a Greek who was willing to stand a night watch.

  We crossed the mud and the ordure in the lashing rain, and then we went over the fresh brush they’d piled in lieu of a wall around their camp. No hope of lighting a fire on this night, but we had a different goal in mind.

  We weren’t after Artaphernes. If he’d been at the siege, he might have had Briseis, and my approach would have been very different. Indeed, since I’m trying to tell the whole truth here, I’ll add that I didn’t feel any particular commitment to the rebels. They weren’t Plataeans, for instance. I was loyal enough to Miltiades, but you’ll note that I wasn’t criss-crossing the seas looking for him. Nor was I sailing up and down looking for the rebel fleet to offer my services. Mind you, once I was trapped in Miletus, my options were limited. But I wasn’t an idealist. I was a Plataean, and I was Briseis’s lover — or rather, the same, but in the other order.