Marathon

by Christian Cameron

  older man in the face. Blood spurted and the man fel to his

  knees.

  The archer roled over and cut at me with a heavy knife. He

  caught my shin and his blow was so hard he dented my greave

  and almost broke my leg. The pain was intense, and I fel, and

  then we were grappling on the ground. But I was covered in

  armour, and he had only the scale shirt that had saved him from

  my spear. We both had daggers after the first moments, and

  my spear. We both had daggers after the first moments, and

  there was no thought of defence – we both stabbed wildly the

  way desperate men do.

  I stabbed him five times before he stopped moving. He

  stabbed me just as often, but every blow caught on my cuirass,

  because the gods were with me and it was not my hour to die.

  Even unmanned by death, he tried to stab me again.

  Persians. They can fight.

  I got to my knees to find that Philocrates was also on his, and

  the younger Persian was hurrying the older Persian across the

  rocks and a dozen more Persians were on their way.

  I retrieved my spear and stripped the corpse of the man I had

  kiled with my dagger. His scale shirt was a model of perfection,

  smal scales like the scales of a fish, washed in gold, with bronze

  and silver scales in patterns, edged in purple leather. I stripped

  him while watching the wary approach of the Persian relief

  column. They were caling their camp for more men, and a dozen

  Greeks were coming over the wicker wals to help us, too, but I

  didn’t want to be rushed while plundering.

  When I had the shirt, I laid the man out neatly, his hands

  crossed on his chest. I left him his rings. He had fought wel, and

  saved his lord.

  We were al cut up, and shaking – for an ambush, it had been

  a sharp fight. Idomeneus carried Phrynichus back to the wals.

  Philocrates was stripping the man I’d kiled first. He, too, had a

  fine scale shirt, and his bow-case was covered in lapis and gold

  wirework.

  I ran to the site of Philocrates’s combat, and one of the

  oncoming Persians tried a long shot at me. The arrow skidded

  on the rocks, missing me by a horse-length or more.

  As I had thought, the old man’s sword was lying between

  two big rocks. As I reached for it, two arrows passed through

  my shield. One scratched my hand at the antilabe, and only the

  heavy leather of the strap kept me from taking a bad wound. The

  other went right through the shield face and hit my greave, but

  again the thin bronze held.

  I got my hand on the sword hilt and stumbled back. My left

  leg would barely take my weight. I took an arrow to my helmet

  and two or three more hit the rocks around me. I paused,

  stepped up on to the biggest rock and waved my new sword at

  them, and then I ran like Achiles for our wal, dodging right and

  left as I passed through the rocks to make their archery a little

  more difficult.

  Miltiades was waiting for me at the wals.

  ‘You are a fool,’ he said fondly.

  I handed him the sword. ‘First spoils, my lord,’ I said. Then I

  hobbled down the wal to Paramanos, who was better than most

  physicians at bones and such, and showed him my leg. He had to

  cut the greave off my shin – the arrow had deformed it.

  Underneath, the shin was red and black, and it wept blood right

  through the skin.

  Other men – Herakleides, I remember, and his brother –

  came and helped us out of our armour, and we were brought

  wine.

  wine.

  After a while I lay down under a sail and slept. I was

  exhausted, and my leg throbbed. I remember waking to eat a

  double helping of barley broth, and then sleeping again – two

  days’ sleep in a single day. There’s nothing like combat to drain

  a man.

  When I awoke the next day, men had brought me a new pair

  of greaves. It is good to be a hero. Every man is your friend, and

  men you have never met wil work hard to win your praise – or

  merely to perform some good act for you, as if you were one of

  the gods. Those greaves were a poor fit, but they were better

  than nothing, and some other Greek went bare-legged to combat

  that day.

  Idomeneus cut sheepskin from my bedding to make the

  greaves fit against my legs, and he rewrapped my leg, which was

  clearly infected, or poisoned. I felt fine – elevated, even – and

  that can be a sign of fever.

  What I remember best was my eagerness to try that fine scale

  shirt. It fitted me the way a shield cover fits a shield. It weighed

  nothing, and I felt like a god.

  One of the smiths had pounded the dents out of my helmet

  and someone had repaired my poor battered Boeotian shield,

  which now had a smal bronze plate riveted to the rawhide to

  cover where the arrows had punched through.

  We were al armouring up, because the sun was rising in the

  east, across the bay. Where the Persian fleet was putting to sea.

  I’ve seldom been with men so elated before a battle. What the

  I’ve seldom been with men so elated before a battle. What the

  four of us had done the day before was to show the Athenians,

  at least, that we could take the Persians man to man. The

  success of our venture – a palpable success, I’d add, with looted

  armour, a bow-case and a magnificent sword – had a powerful

  effect on every man on our beach, Athenians, Chians, even the

  mercenaries. The personal wealth of the Persians was legendary

  – but we’d just proven it.

  I’l say this for Dionysius of Phocaea: his ship was the first off

  the beach, and he rowed up and down, coaxing us to greater

  efforts, teling every division, and even every ship, where to take

  their place in the line.

  We formed in the bay with Lade behind us, and our line

  formed with the Samians on the left, with the Lesbians next.

  These two contingents made up more than half our line, one

  hundred and eighty triremes. Erythrae and Phocaea only

  contributed ten ships between them, but they were the best

  trained, and they were in the centre. Then came the Chians – a

  hundred ships under old Pelagius and his nephew, Neoptolemus,

  the finest of men and the proudest single force for size and

  beauty. On the right, we had the smaler contingents from Teos,

  Priene and Myos – about thirty ships altogether, perhaps the

  worst of our entire fleet. The smaler islands were hard-pressed

  to raise and crew a trireme. It was as if they had exhausted

  themselves by providing the thing, and had no energy left for

  training.

  To the right of the mixed squadron were the Milesians, sixty-

  eight ships. On this day, Histiaeus came out of his city and led

  eight ships. On this day, Histiaeus came out of his city and led

  them in person. Some said that the men of Miletus had told him

  to go and not come back – his madness had worsened, and men

  feared him. But he left Istes in command of the Windy Tower.

  And finaly, to the right of the Milesians, th
ere was Miltiades’

  contingent and the Cretans under Nearchos. They caled us the

  Athenians, but unlike the force that Aristides had led at Sardis

  five years before, we were realy pirates. None of my rowers

  was an Athenian citizen, although many of them had been born

  under Athena’s gaze. More were Thracians, or Byzantines, or

  broken men from Boeotia and the Peloponnese. Even our

  marines were a polyglot bunch.

  Nearchos’s contingent was another fine one, with five wel-

  built ships and highly trained crews. I had drummed it into the

  boy to take war seriously, and he did. He had spent a fortune on

  his oarsmen, and his ships were painted red, his helmet was

  painted red and he had a red shield with gold fittings.

  A group of us – my friends and old comrades, and Miltiades’

  officers – met on the beach as if by common consent, to pour

  libations and pray and drink wine in the new dawn. It is nice to

  be the last squadron to form. There’s plenty of time to make sure

  that al the rowers have their cushions, that al the thole pins are

  sound and secure, the huls are smooth, every buckle is buckled

  and every lace fresh, new and strong. The vanguard must hurry

  out in the dark, leaving their canteens behind, or some other thing

  that irritates you al day in a big fight.

  Paramanos got us together, going from group to group as we

  armed and inviting us to Miltiades’ awning. When I arrived, I

  accepted the congratulations of every man on my feat of arms

  the day before.

  ‘Nice thorax,’ Aristides said. He took my hand. ‘And a

  noble fight,’ he added with a smile.

  As Istes said, what would it be like to awaken one morning

  and find that you had forfeited al that adulation? And from such

  a man as Aristides?

  That is what it is to be a hero. Unless you never deserved it,

  once you go up that ladder, you cannot come down.

  At any rate, we were al there – al the best men of our

  contingent. Aristides made the sacrifices, and Cimon stood on

  one side of me, while Paramanos stood on the other, and Agios,

  Miltiades’ personal helmsman and my former mentor, winked at

  me across the sacrificial fire.

  They were al there, the friends of my first life, and some from

  my second – my pirates. Miltiades, and Phrynichus, and

  Nearchos whom I had trained, and his brother, and Idomeneus

  stood behind me with Phrynichus, and Philocrates took his share

  of the prayer without a ribald comment, and Herakleides the

  Aeolian, one of my first men, now commander of a trireme, and

  Stephanos. I smiled, because my men had done wel.

  We sang the paean of Apolo, and we made sacrifice, and

  then Miltiades handed round a great kylix of unwatered wine.

  ‘Today, we are not pirates,’ he said. ‘Today, we fight for the

  freedom of the Greeks, although we are far from home and

  hearth.’

  hearth.’

  Let me tel you, Miltiades was always my model of a man –

  of greatness. He stood taler, acted taler, than other men. I stil

  ape his manners – the way I swirl a cloak and the way I put my

  hand on the hilt of my sword are his. And when the sense of

  occasion was on him, he was not like a god. He was a god.

  Even Aristides was like a pale, priggish shadow next to the

  blazing sun of his glory.

  We al drank, and when the kylix came back to Miltiades, he

  raised it on high. ‘May we al be heroes,’ he said, and poured

  the rest into the sand.

  My ship was the last one in the water – the rightmost ship in the

  rightmost division. It meant that we had to row far to the east,

  wel down the bay.

  I must explain the way of it, or you young people wil never

  understand what happened in the battle. First I’l draw the bay –

  a great shape like an empty sack, open on the west and with the

  bottom at the east. Up near the mouth of the sack – the lower

  side of the mouth, see? – is the island of Lade, and Miletus sticks

  into the mouth of the sack by the island, like a man pushing his

  thumb in. And the Persian camp, the siege, was south and west

  of the city, so that, as we formed our line, west to east, from the

  top of the sack to the bottom as it were, the city and the Persian

  camp were both behind us. We were, in effect trying to keep the

  Persian fleet from getting to the city and the camp.

  Our line extended from the island al the way along the bay to

  wel east of the Persian camp. Our line stretched for almost thirty

  wel east of the Persian camp. Our line stretched for almost thirty

  stades.

  There’s an irony, too. We fought there again – at Mycale.

  But I’l tel that story when I get to it.

  The Persians started forming earlier than we did and were stil

  forming when my men rowed us the last few ship-lengths to form

  to the right of Stephanos in Myrmidon. So we rested on our

  oars and watched as the Aegyptian contingent formed opposite

  us, and then more Phoenicians beyond them.

  Facing nothing.

  Their line was, in fact, almost twice as long as ours. Part of

  that was because they left gaps between their divisions, and part

  was because aside from the Phoenicians, who were great sailors,

  and wel trained, the rest of their ships had as little notion of

  keeping formation as the worst of ours. I could see the Cilicians,

  away at the Samian end of the line, and they were more like a

  cloud of gnats than a squadron.

  For al that, I didn’t like being outflanked by the Phoenicians.

  They’d split their best contingent, putting a hundred Phoenician

  ships at either end of their great crescent. They put their worst

  ships in the middle. Their plan was clear – to close rapidly on our

  flanks and crush us before we broke their centre.

  We were stil lying on our oars when Miltiades came out of

  the line under his boatsail. He was the leftmost ship in our

  squadron, hard by Nearchos. Together, we and the Cretans had

  sixteen ships – the best manned, and probably the best trained

  except for the Phocaeans.

  Miltiades passed down the line and hailed each captain as he

  Miltiades passed down the line and hailed each captain as he

  came up. When he got to me, he turned his ship under oars so

  that it came to rest on my right, usurping my place of honour.

  ‘When we go forward, folow me,’ Militades caled. ‘We’re

  going to form a column, race downwind to the east, and try to

  sting the Phoenicians.’ He laughed.

  Fifteen of us against a hundred Phoenicians. ‘Long odds,’ I

  caled back.

  Whatever he replied was carried away by the rising wind, but

  I heard the word ‘hero’, and I waved.

  Idomeneus had a mad grin on his face. ‘This’s what I came

  for,’ he said.

  I looked at the mass of Phoenician ships and smiled.

  Like most pirates, most of my rowers were pretty wel

  armed. Every man had a javelin at least, and many had a pelte or

  a buckler. A good number had better gear – a helmet, a lea
ther

  hat, an aspis. On board the mighty Ajax, every man had a

  helmet and a spear, and some had swords. The older and more

  successful a pirate was, the better kit his rowers had, and that

  gave us a huge advantage in a boarding fight. On the

  Phoenicians, their rowers were slaves or captives or paid

  freedmen, but none of them had arms. Not that that ever seemed

  to cause them to row any worse, but if a boarding fight lasted

  more than a few minutes, our ships would always overwhelm

  theirs. In fact, one of our ships could put two hundred trained

  fighters against ten of theirs. That’s why they preferred a fight of

  manoeuvre.

  We’d also kiled most of the best Phoenician crews at

  Amathus. They were shy now, and cautious of engagement.

  But fifteen to a hundred was long odds at the best of times.

  I pondered this, gathered my marines and my officers

  amidships on the fighting platform and told them what I knew. I

  pitched my voice to carry so that my oarsmen could hear

  everything I said.

  ‘We’re going to sail downwind on our boatsails, so lay

  everything on deck and stand ready,’ I said to my sailing master.

  He was a black Libyan with a barbaric name like a noseful of

  snot, but we al caled him ‘Black’ and he answered to it. I’d

  bought him on the beach at Lade and freed him on the spot –

  he’d been a helmsman way out west at Sicily, and I knew quality

  when I saw it, for al that he was new to my ship. Paramanos

  was black, and look how good he was.

  ‘Then we’re going to drop sails, turn back west and attack

  the tip of their pincer,’ I said. ‘I’m going to guess that Lord

  Miltiades wil try to lure them into a luffing match upwind – their

  rowers against ours – until we hit the shore. If we do that,

  nothing matters except how far east and north of the battle we

  can lure the bloody Phoenicians. Don’t get locked in a boarding

  fight if you can con your enemy into trying to outsail you. And

  friends – we in Storm Cutter can outsail anything they offer, can

  we not?’

  They shouted back at me, and then I went forward to watch

  as Black had his sailors lay out the boatsail and Mal coached his

  rowers while Galas took the helm. I had promoted him to

  rowers while Galas took the helm. I had promoted him to

  helmsman when I purchased Black. He watched Black with a

  critical eye.