Marathon

by Christian Cameron

  If we hadn’t had Aristides and the Athenians with us, I think

  Miltiades would have deserted the rebelion right there, but he

  couldn’t appear petty in front of his Athenian rival, and we sailed

  south for Samos. Suddenly, we were a surly crew.

  Keep that change of daimon in mind, thugater, for we were

  the best-disciplined of al the Greeks.

  We came into the fleet’s anchorage on the beaches of Samos

  a little before dusk, and my breath caught in my throat. I had

  never imagined that the Greeks would do as wel.

  I stopped counting at one hundred and eighty black-huled

  triremes. In fact, I was later told by Dionysius that at its height,

  we had more than three hundred and seventy in the fleet –

  probably the mightiest gathering of Greek ships that there ever

  was. Everyone had come – Nearchos, my former pupil from

  Crete, was there with five ships, and the Samians had a hundred.

  Miletus itself had crewed seventy, leaving the city with a skeleton

  army to guard it.

  And Miltiades was a great enough man to smile and shake

  Dionysius’s hand.

  However it had been done, the aliance was the work of

  gods, not men. Never had so many quarreling Greeks come

  gods, not men. Never had so many quarreling Greeks come

  together. They filed the beaches of Samos, and the Persians

  ought to have surrendered in terror.

  But both Datis and Artaphernes were made of sterner stuff

  than that. Datis fortified his camp to an even greater degree and

  sent out the word al along the Asian coast, demanding the

  service of every vassal that the Great King had. And

  Artaphernes gathered his guards and his court, and moved his

  personal army to Miletus. He was not the kind to lead from

  behind.

  Dionysius was a fine admiral and a great sailor, but he was a

  poor orator and worse leader of men, and his constant harping

  on the il-training of the Ionian and Aeolian oarsmen smacked of

  racial superiority, as his own men were mostly Dorians. The

  Samians hated him. They hated Miltiades just as much, and

  openly pressed for a Samian – Demetrios, in fact – to take

  command of the fleet. Let me just say, thugater, that their claims

  had a certain justice. They had a hundred ships and no one else

  had nearly that number. Miletus had but seventy, despite being

  the richest Greek city in the world, and Histiaeus declined to

  leave his citadel anyway, even though he was the one man who

  might have taken command without a voice being raised against

  him.

  At any rate, Dionysius instituted his training programme, and

  as so often happens, the ships that needed the training least

  volunteered to undertake it, while those who needed it most –

  the aristocrats from Crete and the soft-handed volunteers from

  Lesbos, Chios and Samos – were the most reluctant to work.

  Lesbos, Chios and Samos – were the most reluctant to work.

  I’l say this, too. Dionysius knew his business. I thought my

  crew to be the best-trained oarsmen in the world, but Dionysius

  quickly disabused me of my notions of arete. When he laid out a

  course with inflated skins, I told him it was impossible for a

  trireme to row through it, and he put me to shame by showing

  me how in his Sea Snake.

  I spent a week training, and the more of his tricks I learned,

  the more I disliked his manner of teaching them. He was abusive

  when he might have been instructional, and abusive when he

  might have praised. And when I attempted to explain to him how

  deeply he offended most of his navarchs, he dismissed my

  criticism as a petty attempt to get back at him for his superior

  ship-handling.

  ‘You’re a quick learner,’ he said, ‘but in your heart you are

  no seaman, just another petty lordling. Don’t linger on the sea

  when we’ve beaten the Medes, boy – it’s for better men.’

  What do you say to that?

  I said nothing. But I was searching for an excuse to sail away,

  at least for a few days.

  My excuse came up quickly enough. I was a captain in my own

  right, for al that I served Miltiades, and I attended the fleet

  council when I had time – which was al the time.

  While Dionysius focused on seamanship, Miltiades and old

  Pelagius of Chios wanted inteligence. Miltiades had spies in

  Sardis but no way to contact them, and what we al needed to

  know was the progress of the Persian fleet – where were they?

  know was the progress of the Persian fleet – where were they?

  Did the fleet even exist? Were they forming at Tyre? Sidon?

  Naucratis?

  We imagined that the Persians feared us.

  I knew someone who could answer al those questions. She

  lay on a couch, just a few hundred stades away.

  ‘Drop me on the beach by Ephesus,’ I said.

  Every head in the council turned.

  ‘I know the town as if I was born to it. And I have friends

  there – people who are no friends to the Persians. Perhaps I can

  even contact one of your spies in Sardis, Miltiades.’ I bowed to

  him. ‘Give me the word.’

  One of the great advantages of being a hero is that when you

  propose something daring, no one wil stand in your way. It’s as

  if everyone assumes that this sort of thing is your destiny.

  By early summer, I was growing a trifle cynical about my role

  as a hero. But the Greeks were sending me to Ephesus. We had

  spies in the Persian camp at Miletus, and I knew that Briseis had

  not accompanied her husband to war.

  She was alone, in Ephesus.

  I set off the next day, free of bloody Dionysius and his sea-

  wrack tyranny, and free too of the ugly competitions between

  Miltiades and Aristides and the Samian leaders.

  I daydreamed about taking Storm Cutter up the river to the

  city of Artemis, bold as new-forged bronze, but I didn’t. Instead,

  I bought a sailing smack from some Samians, and Idomeneus

  and Harpagos and I sailed him ourselves, with Philocrates our

  unpaid passenger. The blasphemer had grown on me, and he’d

  shown no interest whatsoever in returning to Halicarnassus to

  trade grain for hides and lie when he swore oaths.

  ‘I was born for this,’ he said, not less than twice a day. And

  he smiled his curious smile of self-mockery. ‘I miss Teucer, the

  bastard. He needs to come back aboard so that I can win back

  my money.’

  Teucer’s family were snug in the Chersonese, but the archer

  himself was back on the wals of Miletus, and we al missed him.

  We sailed the fishing boat through easy seas, right around

  Mycale. We spent the night there, frying fresh sardines on an iron

  pan and drinking new wine from a leather bag. In the morning we

  were away again, up the coast and past the ruins of the old town

  that guard the promontory beyond Ephesus, and in the last light

  of the second day I could see the Temple of Artemis glow in the

  sunset, the old granite lit red like sandstone in the setting sun.

  They left me on the coast road, twenty stades from the c
ity. I

  told them to return for me in three days, and I put on my leather

  bag, checked the hang of my sword and puled my chlamys

  about me. I had two spears and a broad straw hat, like a

  gentleman hunter.

  I walked, and no one paid me a second glance.

  As I made my way up the road to the city, I thought of my

  last journey up that road – delirious with fever, a slave bound to

  the temple, destined to die hauling stone. Ten years or less

  separated me from that boy. Indeed, the river of time flows in

  only one direction, as my master loved to say.

  only one direction, as my master loved to say.

  In a few hours, I would see him. He, at least, would never

  betray me, or any other Greek who served the rebelion.

  I had determined to go to Heraclitus first, because I loved

  him, and because I had no idea what to expect with Briseis, nor

  had I any notion of where her loyalties would lie. She must have

  heard by now of my encounters with her brother the previous

  autumn and winter.

  In truth, I was afraid of meeting her. But as always, fear

  forced me to act. I can never abide to see myself as afraid, and

  even as a child I would drive myself to do things that I feared,

  only to prove myself – to myself.

  Briseis had always seen through this aspect of my character –

  and used it against me.

  I heard her voice as I walked, and I tasted her tongue on my

  lips, and other parts of her, too, in my imagination. I thought of

  the first time she had come to me, fresh from humiliating her

  enemy for her, just as she had expected me to. And of the

  reward, although at the time I thought her another woman

  entirely. See? You are blushing, my dear. Boys only think of one

  thing, and how to get at it.

  Boys are predictable, girls.

  When I looked up, I had walked to our gate. To the house of

  Archilogos, which had been the house of Hipponax. To the

  house of Briseis. I was standing in ful view of the gate, like a

  fool.

  I’d like to say that I did something witty, or wily, like

  Odysseus. But I didn’t. I stood there in the sun and waited for

  Odysseus. But I didn’t. I stood there in the sun and waited for

  her. I suppose I thought that the Cyprian one would send her

  into my arms.

  No such thing happened.

  Only when the tops of my shoulders started to burn from the

  sun did I come to my senses and turn away. I walked up an

  aley, cut north to the base of the temple acropolis and then went

  to the old fountain building.

  It was gone.

  That was a shock. In its place was an elegant construction of

  Parian marble and local granite, with fine statues of women

  carrying water, cut so that that hydriai on their heads supported

  the roof.

  I didn’t belong there. There were a few free women and a

  great many slaves, and I was the only free man – the only man

  armed, and as such, a figure of fear.

  Heraclitus’s river had flowed right by, and I could not dip my

  toe again.

  I fled.

  I went up to the temple, where hunters were never

  uncommon, although I was a stranger and I was a man in a city

  where most of the men were at war. I left my spears with the

  door warden and I climbed to the palaestra, made a smal

  sacrifice to the goddess and looked around the porticoes for my

  master.

  Thank the gods, he was there. Had he been absent, I think

  my panic might have kiled me.

  He knew me immediately. His performance was admirable –

  He knew me immediately. His performance was admirable –

  he finished his lesson, a point about the way Pythagoras formed

  a right triangle, then he teased a new student, and finaly, as

  naturaly as if we’d planned it, he came to me, took my arm and

  led me away.

  ‘You cannot walk abroad here, my boy,’ he said.

  ‘And yet I have done so al day,’ I said.

  ‘That others are fools does not make you less a fool,’ he

  said.

  Oh, I had missed you, my master.

  He sent al his slaves away before he let me take the cloak from

  over my head, then we sat for hours, drinking good wine and

  eating olives. He was thin as a stick, as if he lived in a city under

  siege, and I forced him to eat olives, and his skin seemed to

  grow better even as I watched.

  ‘Why are you starving yourself, master?’ I asked.

  ‘I fast until Greece is free,’ he said.

  ‘Then eat!’ I hugged him. ‘We have nigh on four hundred

  ships at Samos. Al the cities of Ionia have united, and the

  Persians wil never find a fleet to stand against us. No later than

  next spring, you’l see us sail up the river, and Ephesus wil be

  free.’

  He smiled then. ‘Four hundred?’ he asked. And ate olives at

  a furious rate.

  I found olive paste and anchovies and fish sauce in the pantry,

  and made us a smal dinner with bread and lots of opson, and I

  told him everything from the day that we helped Hipponax die

  until the start of this mission.

  He shook his head. ‘Your life is so ful, and mine is so

  empty.’

  ‘You teach the young,’ I said.

  ‘Not one of them is worth a tenth of you or Archilogos. I

  would trade ten years of my life for one bright spark to shine

  against the heavens.’ He nodded. ‘But I have had my great

  pupils, and plenty of them – and the last not the least. You are

  caled Doru – the Spear of the Helenes. I have heard this name.’

  He narrowed his eyes. ‘And you think you have learned

  something about kiling men?’

  I shrugged. ‘Nothing different from what you endeavoured to

  tel me ten years ago.’

  ‘Sometimes the logos works one way to truth, and sometimes

  another,’ he said. ‘If we understood everything, we would be

  gods, not men.’

  Too soon, I realized I had nothing left to say. He was not

  very interested in my forge and my farm, although in his

  presence, they suddenly gathered a kind of worthiness that they

  didn’t have when I stood on the command deck of Storm

  Cutter.

  We gazed at each other for a little while.

  ‘You wish to see Briseis,’ he said suddenly.

  My heart beat faster. I expected him to say that she was

  away from town, resting from childbirth, dead.

  ‘I often read to her,’ he said. ‘Nor should I have excepted

  ‘I often read to her,’ he said. ‘Nor should I have excepted

  her when I spoke of the bright sparks of inteligence I have

  brought to the logos – for of the three of you, the logos burns the

  brightest in her.’

  I smiled to hear the most beautiful woman in the Greek world

  praised for her brain – but what he said was true.

  ‘Come,’ he said. ‘We wil go to her gate.’

  In the near dark, Ephesus was inhabited mostly by slaves and

  men looking for prostitutes. No one paid us any attention as we

  walked together.

  I folowed him up to the gate of the h
ouse of my youth. This

  time, my heart slammed against my chest and I was unable to

  think, much less speak.

  My master took me by the hand and led me to the gate as if I

  was a young student. I didn’t know the slave on duty there, but

  he bowed deeply to my master and led him into the courtyard,

  where she lay on a long couch. A younger woman fanned her,

  and the smel of mint and jasmine filed the garden, and my head.

  Suddenly, it was as if no time had passed. My eyes met hers,

  and I remember giving a twitch, as did she, I think – such was

  the power of our attraction in those days.

  She never spared the greatest philosopher of the age a

  glance.

  ‘You came,’ she said, after time had passed.

  I trembled. ‘You caled to me,’ I said. I was surprised at how

  calm my voice was.

  ‘You didn’t hurry,’ she said.

  ‘We are no longer young lovers, playing at the Iliad,’ I said.

  ‘We are no longer young lovers, playing at the Iliad,’ I said.

  ‘We never were,’ she returned, and her smile widened by

  some smal fraction of one of Pythagoras’s figures. ‘We never

  played.’

  I nodded. ‘Why have you summoned me, Helen?’ I asked.

  She shrugged, and her voice changed, and she tossed her

  hair, like any other woman. ‘Boredom, I suppose,’ she said

  lightly. ‘My husband needs captains. It is time you became a

  great man.’

  I was not eighteen. She filed me, just lying on a couch. I

  could barely breathe. And yet, I was not eighteen. I took a deep

  breath, bit back my sharp response, turned on my heel and

  walked away.

  You were never promised a happy story, my young friends.

  I’m afraid that we are coming to the part where you might prefer

  to stay home.

  I headed out of the gate and back to my master’s house. I

  shivered as if from cold, I was so angry – and so afraid. As I

  stood in my master’s tiny courtyard, I raised my face to the stars.

  ‘What have I done?’ I asked.

  They didn’t respond.

  My head was ful of thoughts, like a bag of wool stuffed to

  the very brim – that I should go back and beg forgiveness, that I

  should send a note, throw rocks at her window . . . kil her.

  Yes, that thought came to me, too. That I should kil her. And

  be free.

  Instead, without much conscious thought, I packed up my

  Instead, without much conscious thought, I packed up my