Marathon: Freedom or Death lw-2

by Christian Cameron

  Now, I also have to add that up to this point Datis, the Persian commander, thought that his own left — the Phoenicians we’d beaten — had been enveloped by a larger force. Friends like Cyrus told me later that that’s what Datis had been told by the beaten remnants, because beaten men count every foe two or three times. So despite the defection of the Samians and the destruction of the Lesbians, Datis thought that the battle was still in the balance. He was holding back his reserve of Aegyptian triremes, waiting to see the rest of our fleet.

  That’s battle, on a giant scale. When hundreds of ships face each other, no one man can command them, or even guess what occurs. Datis won the Battle of Lade in the first hour, but the haze and the defeat of the eastern Phoenician squadrons made him cautious. Otherwise, he could have closed the gap and trapped us all in the sack. Miltiades would have died there, and Aristides, and Aeschylus. And many other good men.

  As it is, I will cry when I tell who died. Just wait.

  We rowed south, avoiding contact with the Aegyptian squadron. They had smaller ships than ours, and as I say, we could see no reason for their caution — all we could see was disaster.

  We formed a circle, with our sterns together — a favourite ploy of the Athenians, like a phalanx formed in a box against cavalry. In this case, Miltiades did it so that we might shout from stern to stern.

  Aristides spoke first. ‘We must attack into their centre,’ he said. ‘The Milesians are still fighting, and many of the Chians.’

  Paramanos shouted over him. ‘Foolish bravery, my lord. Our few ships can’t save one of them.’

  ‘We can die with them,’ Aristides retorted.

  To be honest, that was my plan, as well. A defeat this great — the destruction of the whole fleet of the Greeks — would be the end of Greek independence. For ever. You who live now, you cannot imagine a time when Athens had fifteen ships on her best day, and eight of them were ours. Sparta had none.

  Of course, I cared nothing for the East Greeks — except my friends. But the rebellion was all I had known, and the men of that rebellion were the friends of my youth, and besides — first and foremost — I knew that in that hour Briseis was lost to me.

  I think I moaned aloud. No one heard me but the gods.

  Nearchos shook his head. ‘These are not my ships to squander, but those of Lord Achilles my father,’ he said, with more maturity than I had. ‘I will accept the dishonour — but I will withdraw. On my head be it.’

  Miltiades balanced on the curving stern boards of his ship. He held up his hand for silence. ‘Nearchos has the right of it,’ he said. ‘It is our duty, for the sake of all the Hellenes, to save what we can and live to fight again.’

  Aristides cursed — something I had never heard him do. ‘Fight again?’ he said. ‘With what?’

  ‘Our wits, our ships and our swords,’ Miltiades said.

  In that hour, he rose to greatness. From that moment, he was no longer Miltiades, tyrant of the Chersonese. From that moment, he made himself the leader of the resistance, although many years would pass before men knew it.

  ‘We must save as many of the Milesians and Chians as we can,’ he said. ‘Nearchos, go with honour. We were victorious. Tell your men — tell your sons. Had all men fought like you, we would have had the victory.’ Then he turned to me. ‘Arimnestos — we need to cut a hole in the net around the Chians.’

  I had nothing left to give, but his words were like a summons and I stood straighter by the rail of my ship. ‘Yes, lord,’ I said.

  ‘I think the Persians have ordered their captains to let any fleeing ship run,’ he said. ‘So we will “flee” to the centre, turn north and attack the Aegyptians.’ He pointed at me. ‘You lead — you have the heaviest ship. When you see my signal, turn north — just as we did this morning — line ahead to line abreast. Don’t die like heroes. Gut a ship or two and make a hole. And then run. All I ask of every one of you is that you kill one more ship.’

  Nearchos was weeping. ‘I can’t leave,’ he said. ‘I’ll fight until you run.’

  Miltiades smiled, the way he always did when he got the best of a deal. ‘You must do as is best for you, son of Achilles,’ he said.

  Our rowers had rested for long enough for muscles to stiffen, but we had all swallowed cheese and garlic sausage, and we crept west under oars into the teeth of that west wind that had blown us to victory in the morning.

  The Chians were oar to oar and bow to bow with the Aegyptians across the centre, and the Milesians were just a few stades from us, but deeper in, farther north, and now the Phoenicians we’d beaten had come off the beach — not to face us, but to finish the poor Milesians.

  Our rowing was poorer than dirt, and I had no heart to curse my rowers. They had given their best, and for nothing.

  But Poseidon took pity on us poor Greeks, or else that day’s curses were all used up. In as much time as it takes a fast man to run the stade, the wind changed — right around. West to east. And a warm, damp wind hit us like the open hand of a beneficent god. In heartbeats we had our boatsails up on deck. Black took longer, and Miltiades passed us, and so did Aristides. They mocked us.

  We were in a strange ship, and everything was stowed by strangers. As it happened, I thought it was a miracle that Black got the boatsail up at all. Then we were racing away west. Behind us, a rain squall appeared at the bottom of the bay and hit the Phoenicians. It was as if the gods were seeking to do all in their power to remedy the perfidious foolery of men.

  I’ll be honest — it had none of the breakneck enthusiasm of morning. We were tired to our sinews and we were no longer fighting for greatness. But like wild dogs, we were still dangerous.

  And, lest I make the Aegyptians sound like an enemy to be trifled with, many men fight badly, late in a victory. I’ve done it myself. Why risk yourself when the day is won, eh? The Aegyptians were shocked when we turned on them, and timid. And why not? They were vassals of Persia, not friends, and their side was already victorious.

  Had we known the future — had we been able to see the dark days at Artemisium and Thermopyle, when the Chians and the Lesbians stood against us, vassals of Persia, in those same ships — we would have left them to die. But who could calculate such a thing? Or abandon a friend?

  And of course, they repaid us in their turn — on the beaches of Mycale. But that story is for another night, eh?

  Where was I? Ahh — so we turned on the Aegyptians, eighteen ships, and our ships were bigger and our crews more dangerous, even so late in a long fight. They kept formation and many backed water, and we swept on, ignoring the timid, determined to relieve the Chians.

  Miltiades was first to sink a ship — a small trireme that sank under his forefoot, caught in a bad turn. Herakleides the Aeolian was, by then, a master helmsman.

  Paramanos quickly got the ship that tried to rescue that one, and then we were in among them like barracuda among baitfish.

  Nearchos was the first to die. He was lost when the rain squall hit us, and he didn’t see the Cilician who caught him aft with his ram. I hope he died quickly. His ship sank, and we saw it all.

  Neoptolemus died driving his ship deeper and deeper into the Aegyptians, trying to save his uncle — who was already dead, mighty old Pelagius who would never again hold games on the beaches of Chios. He died with an arrow in his eye.

  Another arrow killed Herakleides at the helm of Miltiades’ Ajax, too. Miltiades took the helm himself. He killed men the way a man with a scythe reaps the ripe barley, but when his marines were all wounded, he chose to live, turned out of the maelstrom and ran. I saw him go and knew that it was time for me to go, too. Idomeneus was in the bow, killing with his bow, and the Aegyptians were hanging back, pelting us with javelins and looking for easier prey while we tried to break their oars, and in the distance, perhaps a stade away, I could see the Chians and the Milesians fighting their way to us — to the hope of rescue.

  Two Aegyptians, bolder than the rest, came at me, and they knew
their business. I was too cocky, and I thrust between them, looking for the double oar-rake, but they folded their wings like diving birds and they grappled us as we passed between after a shower of javelins that all but cleared my deck of sailors. They had marines — Aegyptian marines are first-rate troops, as good as our Greeks, man for man, with heavy linen armour, twenty or thirty layers of it quilted up, because linen is cheap in Aegypt. They wear bronze helmets, not like ours at all, and carry a heavy shield made of the hide of some river beast. Every man has a pair of wicked, barbed javelins and a huge iron sword, and they can use them. I’ve heard men say that the Aegyptians are all cowards, but I’ve never heard a man who’s fought them make such a foolish claim.

  Just before they boarded, I saw Stephanos bring his ship into action. He was always one of the best helmsmen, and he was at his own oars. He caught the leeward Aegyptian at a stand, all her oars in, and he punched into the enemy’s side like a shark closing its teeth on a corpse, and the Aegyptian’s keel snapped. Stephanos gave me a wave and I returned it — the athlete’s salute. Aye, I remember that moment, because Stephanos was like a god then.

  But the other Aegyptian boarded us, undaunted by the death of their companion, and again like sharks, now that one had his teeth in us, the rest of them got bolder and came forward, and before we’d repelled the first rush, there were more ships coming in.

  There was nothing we could do but fight. At sea and on land, there comes a moment in a fight when there are no longer either tactics or strategies. All you can do is fight. They grappled to our bow and to our stern and all down one side, and they came at us — maybe sixty marines against our eight or ten — I can’t remember who was still standing — a vicious chaos of blood and swords.

  Philocrates stood in the bow with Idomeneus, and they stopped a ship’s worth of marines by themselves. I only caught glimpses — I didn’t have the luxury of commanding any longer, and had to fight — but I saw Philocrates kill, and kill again, until the ship on the bow cut its grapples. But a chance-thrown javelin caught him in the head — stunned him — and he died there, under the great sword of an Aegyptian marine.

  Phrynichus took an arrow in the arm, leading a dozen armed oarsmen against the second ship, but he got up on the rail, his blood flowing like water in a rainstorm, and he raised his poet’s voice as if he was competing against Simonides or Aeschylus in the games:

  ‘Sing me, Muses, the rage of Achilles!’

  He sang, even as his blood flowed, and my sailors rose from their benches with glory in their hearts.

  Galas and Mal — unarmoured — followed me with the remnants of the sailors from the deck crew, and we didn’t wait for the onslaught of the third Aegyptian. As soon as his grapples came home, we were over the rails and into his benches, killing. We caught that ship by surprise — they must have thought us easy pickings, and fifteen men with axes made short work of the disorganized crew.

  I cut their trierarch down with a single spear stroke where he stood at the foot of his mainmast amidships — the mast was still stepped, and Poseidon alone knows why — and I stood there breathing like a bellows gone mad. For those of you who have never fought in armour, children, you can only go a few hundred heartbeats — the best man in the world, Achilles himself, could do no more — before you have to rest. I loosened my chin strap, drank in sweet breaths of sea air and looked about me.

  Idomeneus stood alone for as long as a woman takes to birth a child and held the bow, Philocrates’s corpse between his wide-spread legs. Phrynichus was down, and his singing stilled, but his sailors had swamped the second Aegyptian. We’d swept the third like a desert wind.

  But while we’d been fighting, three more had come for Stephanos. And rather than abandon us and leave us to die to save himself, he stood fast on our leeward side, and they boarded him. As I watched, his spearmen cleared the fighting deck on the boldest of the three, but the other two had extra marines and they poured men into the centre of Trident. Stephanos went into them with half a dozen of his marines, his spear flashing as if he was Ares incarnate, the red horsehair of his crest nodding high above the fight.

  Six of them were trying to stop thirty or forty professional fighters. I roared my rallying cry, and Mal stood up from where he’d been looting a corpse, Galas tapped my breastplate to tell me he was at my shoulder and together with a few more sailors and a hand of oarsmen, we leaped back to our own ship, sprinted the length of the deck and leaped again to rescue Stephanos.

  As my bare feet pounded along my own deck, I could see nothing, not even with my helmet cocked back on my head. I must have slowed to take fresh spears, because when I came on to Stephanos’s deck, I had a pair in my hand.

  I was first on to Stephanos’s deck, coming in behind the enemy while they butchered Stephanos’s unarmoured oarsmen. But as we arrived, another Aegyptian grappled Stephanos. At my back came Black and Galas and the deck crew. We met the new Aegyptians sword to sword and shield to shield. Mal died there, along with most of my sailors, unarmoured men facing the swords of Aegyptian marines. Further down the deck, it was even worse. I saw Stephanos fall, run through the thigh, and I saw his cousin, Harpagos, stand over him with a sailor’s axe, and blood flew like ocean spray when he hit a man.

  I was tired, and my cause was lost, and it was tempting to die — but Stephanos’s loss filled me with an awful rage. And over that rage, or under it, I knew that godlike effort was required, or all my friends, all my men, would die. Those are the moments that define you, friends. Oh, thugater, you would have been proud of me that day. For it is not the sands of the palaestra that show heroism, nor the fields of the games. Nor the moment of a great victory. Any man worthy of his father’s name should be able to stand his ground on a dry day with food in his belly and armour on his back, fresh and strong. But at the tail end of defeat, when the enemy close in like hyenas on the kill, when all is lost but honour, when you are covered in bruises and small wounds whose pain tears at you with every blow, when all your muscles ache and your breath comes in gasps like a pair of broken bellows in a forge — when your friends have fallen and no one will sing your praises — who are you then? Those are the moments in which you show the gods what your father made.

  Galas went down when the marines of a fifth ship hit us. To be honest, friends, I have no idea how many ships were around us by then. Eight? Ten? My ship’s deck was almost clear, but Stephanos’s ship must have looked easier, and he had fifty enemy fighters crowding the deck — I remember that his hull was low in the water from the sheer weight of men on the decks, and the ship has wallowing, unbalanced, which made the fighting even harder. At the moment when I gave myself over to Ares, an Aegyptian officer had just stooped to take the gold amulet Mal always wore.

  Who was I then?

  This is who I was.

  I went at them down the gangway amidships, crowded with men, and I remember with the clarity of youth. I had two spears and my Boeotian shield, and I ran at them — about three steps.

  I remember because the first Aegyptian had a raven on his oval shield, leaning down to get the necklace, his eyes appalled that one lone madman was charging him. And Mal — dying — grabbed the man’s shield with both hands and pulled it down.

  That’s a hero.

  I put my spear into the Aegyptian’s neck, just the tip, as delicately as a cat, and withdrew it, leaped high in the air above the pitching deck and threw over the falling corpse into the second man. Their shields are heavy hide, but my throw had Zeus behind it, and it penetrated his shield and his arm and I took my second spear and killed him, landing on his armoured chest as he tried to seize a breath and feeling his ribs give under my toes even as I rammed my spear underhand into the next man, stepped off the dying man, set my legs on the wood of the deck and pushed my shield.

  The next man tried to step back but his mates wouldn’t let him. I thrust my spear at his head and he ducked, stumbled, and I caught the rim of his heavy hide shield with my spearhead and pulled — then
thrust into his undefended chest, and a flower of bright blood grew over his white linen cuirass and his soul flew out of his mouth. His corpse folded at my feet and I crouched down, almost kneeling on the deck, and punched my spear into the inside of the next man’s thigh, the best stroke there is for a fighter, because there’s an artery there and a simple cut will kill a man. His eyes widened at the fountain of blood, and he fell, fingers reaching for the wound, and I rose to my full height, braced against a sudden shift in the deck, and threw my remaining spear over his reaching arms at the next man, right over his shield, into the skull over his nose. I reached under my arm and plucked out my sword, and a flying axe took the sixth man where he was frozen, grey with fear as grim death reaped his comrades like ripe barley on an autumn day.

  I could still see the crest on Harpagos’s helmet and I roared like a beast — no war cry, but the bellow of Ares — and my foes were sick with terror, because I brought them death and they could not touch me. The next Aegyptian thrust at me with his spear, but his blow was hesitant, the fearful attack of the desperate man. What did Calchas say? Just this — when you face the killer of men, you lock shields and stand cautious. To run and to attack are both sides of the same coin — fear.

  Black reached under my shield, caught the Aegyptian’s shaft and pulled him off balance and my sword cut him down, a simple chop to the neck where his linen armour did not meet the cheekpieces of his helmet.

  The thranites began to gather their spears and their courage and come up like the warriors grown from dragon’s teeth in myth, so that the rowing benches sprouted fighters, and in ten heartbeats, it was the Aegyptians who were beset. We took heart, all of us, and we plucked their lives like grapes at harvest time, and the deck under my feet flowed with their blood. Thranites grabbed their ankles and knees and pulled them down, or thrust javelins up into their groins, and topside, my sword was waiting for any undefended flesh, and every time an Aegyptian set his feet, I would put my shield into his and push, and I never met a man of Aegypt with the power in his legs to stop my rush.