stood his ground. ‘They want to provoke you,’ he hissed. ‘Do
you want the girl or not?’
Antigonus was the right man to be my brother-in-law, that’s
for certain. I took a deep breath and walked away. It was a
close thing – if one of them had laughed again, there would have
been blood.
The third day, we hunted deer in the hils north of the city. More
of the local gentlemen came along, and it turned out that we were
hunting in teams – in a competition.
I had al my traveling companions in my team. We didn’t
know the ground and we didn’t know the habits of the local
deer, and neither my prospective father-in-law nor any of his
friends showed the slightest compunction in abandoning us to our
ignorance. We were left on a mountain road. In the distance, we
could see the sea by the shrine of Heracles, over towards
Marathon. The countryside was beautiful in the weak winter sun.
I waited until my competition was out of sight.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Philip, you are the best hunter. My guess is
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Philip, you are the best hunter. My guess is
that we should go downhil to the water.’
Philip glowed with pride at being singled out among so many
warriors. ‘Water – yes,’ he said. Then he shrugged. ‘But I smel
rotting apples, and if there’s one thing deer love in winter, it’s an
old apple orchard.’
We broke up then, going six different ways to locate the
apple orchard like scouts for an army. It was down the hil,
almost ten stades away – Philip had the nose of a hound. But we
found it.
Philip came up to me. I was stil mounted.
‘There are deer lying in the orchard,’ he said. ‘At least six,
and perhaps more. You and Idomeneus are the best spears –
yes?’
I nodded. ‘And Teucer,’ I said.
Philip grinned – he valued the archer. ‘Of course. The rest of
us wil push the deer into you, if you’l make the crawl.’
He got me to a tal rock that rose like a temple column and
helped me climb it. From the top, we could see the apple trees,
hoary old things with al their leaves down, and I could see the
brown-grey smears that were deer lying in the high, dead grass.
Then passed an anxious hour, as Idomeneus and Teucer and
I crawled around the orchard to get downwind of the beasts.
Twice, we heard the local party blowing horns in triumph, and on
one occasion we could see one of the bucks raise his head to
look for the sound.
Philip and the beaters started too early – or perhaps we were
too slow pushing our spears through the wet, cold grass. Either
too slow pushing our spears through the wet, cold grass. Either
way, we were a hundred paces from where we wanted to be
when Philip blew his horn and the deer began to scramble to
their feet.
I leaped up, cursed and began to run.
Teucer didn’t. He rose to one knee and started to shoot.
He saved us from failure. We would never have reached
those deer – my best throw with my best spear fel short – but
Teucer knocked six down with eight arrows, incredible work at
that range through scattered trees and high grass.
But then teamwork came into it, because none of his arrows
kiled, and we ran at the wounded animals, me caling out orders,
the other men spreading out from two sides.
I was running hard, cursing my leg, and I saw my mis-thrown
spear sticking in the ground and managed to grab the haft
without slowing. The biggest buck was vanishing from view into
a thicket of dogwood and thorns. I plunged after it and it turned
– a big stag, as tal at the shoulder as a smal horse.
I threw my good spear and the beast shied and took a blow
meant for the head on the shoulder, but he fel, and I was on him
with my other spear. I thrust home twice, and the animal
shuddered, and his eyes filmed over, and he lay stil.
I felt more for that stag than I do for many men I kil. He was
a magnificent animal, trapped, with no chance at al – the dogs
had been released by then and they were hard by us.
So I knelt, closed the stag’s eyes and said a prayer to
Artemis, then I puled my throwing spear clear of his shoulder
and folowed the sound of the dogs.
and folowed the sound of the dogs.
By the time I caught the pack, al six animals were dead. We
were a good group, and every man folowed the nearest target
without much shouting and did his duty.
Then came the work. We had six dead deer, and we treed
them in the apple orchard, split and gutted them, then began to
clean them. We were far from water, and despite the chil of the
morning, we stripped naked to save our clothes. And we were
pious men, and Lykon and Philip, who both revered Artemis, led
us in a hymn we didn’t know, and we burned the first fruits of the
beasts – their hearts and livers – on a rock that had certainly
served as an altar before. By the time the last carcass was ready
to be moved, we were covered in blood and ordure, and we
walked down the road like a Dionysian revel gone hideously
awry. We bathed in a stream, and laughed, and threw icy water
at each other.
But when we were dressed, I arranged to put the carcasses
on donkeys, and I paid a pair of farm boys to bring them along
by the high road and not the farm road, and then my whole party
returned to the tower, apparently empty-handed.
Aleitus and his friends were drinking in the courtyard, and
they laughed at our discomfiture, and made ribald comments
about what we could have been doing in the woods, ten men
alone, that we were wet and had no deer and were so clean.
Euphoria came down the stone steps from the tower to the
courtyard with a tray of wine cups, and conversation stiled. She
had that effect, with her slanting eyes and her long, straight nose.
had that effect, with her slanting eyes and her long, straight nose.
‘If you caught no deer,’ she said to me quietly, as she handed
me a cup, ‘why do you have blood under your nails?’
I smiled into her eyes. ‘You are observant,’ I said.
‘You play dangerous games,’ she answered.
And truly, when our deer arrived, the local men were silent,
and their eyes were not friendly. We had kiled six to their two.
Now let me tel you children, lest you wonder, that in those days,
a kil of two deer for a party of ten men was a fine catch – and
six deer was a ridiculous bag, almost an affront to Artemis.
Bordering on hubris.
I cared nothing for those men. If men wil seek to compete,
they must take the consequences. I do not push myself on others
– but ever they wil strive against me, and the result is always the
same. I mean no boasting, by the gods!
Aleitus looked at the row of carcasses and he turned to me,
and his face was red. ‘Do you not fear that you affront Artemis,
with so many kils?’
I shook my head. ‘No, lord. I made immediate sacr
ifice of
the first fruits of every animal, and I prayed as soon as my spear
went home in the stag, who is, you must alow, a magnificent
animal.’ I walked over to him. ‘Am I mistaken, lord? Or was it
your intention that we should compete at hunting?’ And I
laughed in his face.
He was angry. But he mastered his anger, like a man of
breeding, and merely raised an eyebrow. ‘The slaves wil eat
wel,’ he said. ‘If I’d known of your prowess, I’d have invited
more guests.’
more guests.’
There was a laugh from the gate – a laugh I knew wel. ‘Did
you set Arimnestos a chalenge?’ Miltiades said.
He slid off his horse, magnificent in a cloth-of-gold chlamys
over a purple chiton worn double-belted for riding. His horse
had a gold harness, and there were four men with him, each
armed with a boar spear and riding matching black horses.
Miltiades defied convention by embracing me before
embracing the host. Then he turned to Aleitus. ‘He used to drive
me wild,’ Miltiades said. ‘Any task he’s set, he excels – or
breaks the tools. And when chalenged, he is a dangerous
animal, our Plataean.’
Miltiades’ charisma filed the courtyard. I was a famous man
in those days – but Miltiades was the sort of man who bestrode
the earth, and other men crowded around to see him. And he
had come to be part of my hunting party.
‘Let me see this girl I’ve heard so much about,’ Miltiades
demanded. ‘Where is she?’
Aleitus rubbed his eyes. ‘Lord Miltiades?’ he said.
‘I’m sorry, Aleitus. I was invited to join this young
scapegrace’s hunting party, and I’m late. Am I stil welcome? I
think our grandfathers were guest-friends. And I must say, I’ve
brought you some fair gifts.’ He boomed with laughter.
Aleitus looked as if the gods from Olympus had just arrived.
‘Lord, it is an honour to have you to guest. I had no idea our
grandfathers were guest–friends, but I would be delighted – that
is, I’m very pleased. Come and drink this cup with me.’
Aleitus was just beginning to recover when Miltiades slapped
Aleitus was just beginning to recover when Miltiades slapped
me on the back and laughed. ‘And that prig Aristides is on his
way as wel,’ he said.
I thought my prospective father-in-law might faint.
Mater had invited them in my name, and her instincts, wine-
sodden as they might have been, were keen. For a party of
Boeotians to ride rough-shod over the local countryside,
slaughtering deer and making local men feel smal, would, no
doubt, have ended badly for someone. But it was hard for any
bad feeling to survive when Miltiades was in a hospitable mood,
and Aristides was the exemplar of arete, and between the two of
them they created an atmosphere that the rest of us could only
strive to emulate. In fact, they made me feel young.
That week was, I think, my reward for the rescue of
Miltiades. Great lords of Athens don’t usualy have a week to
waste hunting. On the other hand, I can imagine what Mater
wrote:
If you want to cement your alliance with Plataea and my son, go
hunting with him and get him his Attic bride.
Say what you wil about Mater – and I do, believe me – she
understood how aristocrats think and work. Marriage is not
pleasure – it is aliance and bargain, and great men use their
daughters the way peasants use a prize foal. As I wil, thugater.
Bah – I’l find you a pretty one. This felow from Halicarnassus .
. .
To be honest, when I arrived, I had the feeling that my suit
To be honest, when I arrived, I had the feeling that my suit
would be rejected at the first decent interval, and after the young
lady caled me ‘low’ I wanted no more part of the game save to
humiliate my host. But the arrival of my famous friends altered
the balance. What had appeared manly revenge the previous
night now felt petty and mean–spirited, and over wine that night,
I rose and apologized to al the men – mine and my hosts – for
playing such a foolish joke.
‘I suffer from pride,’ I said to my host. ‘It is a fatal error in a
man who is but a bronze-smith, to seek always to compete in
every game.’
Aleitus showed his mettle then. He rose, took my cup from
my lips and drank from it. ‘You speak like a hero,’ he said. ‘I
sought to belittle you. Men told me you were low-born, and
brought only dirty hands to my table.’ He glanced at Aristides,
who returned a hard smile. ‘I wil be more careful who I listen to
in future.’
‘Cleitus, of course,’ Aristides said later that night. ‘Anything
you put your hand to in Attica, he wil try to destroy. He has
sworn your death, and your ruin.’
I shrugged.
The rest of the week passed very pleasantly. We ate a great
deal of deer meat, and we failed to find a boar, to my host’s
deep annoyance, and I invited him to come and hunt with us on
the flanks of Cithaeron.
But it was the evenings that live in my memory. Hunting
becomes a blur – to be honest, if it hadn’t been for the kiling of
becomes a blur – to be honest, if it hadn’t been for the kiling of
six deer, I doubt I’d remember anything about that. Kiling deer
is seldom memorable the way kiling men is memorable. Deer
don’t fight back.
At any rate, it was during that week that I lay on a couch with
Miltiades, and Aristides, and drank good wine, and learned that
Datis had a fleet, and was raising an army, and that his target, the
target ordered by his king, was Athens.
13
It was bound to happen. I may have been foolish enough to
imagine that Darius would forget Athens, or that his reach wasn’t
long enough to punish the one Greek state powerful enough to
contest with him – but I was wrong. Darius never forgot Athens,
and as the dead of Lade rotted on the sea floor and the timbers
of broken ships washed ashore to become firewood, as a year
passed, and another, and Artaphernes sought to heal the wounds
Datis had caused and return his satrapy to peace and prosperity,
so Datis, ever eager for power and the praise of his uncle, raised
ships and soldiers for a new expedition. His intention was to do
to Athens what he perceived Athens had done to Sardis – to
sack the Acropolis and burn her temples.
For whatever reason, Datis bragged of his intentions. So
when ships docked at Ephesus and Tyre, and on the blackened
quay where men were rebuilding Miletus, they saw the evidence
quay where men were rebuilding Miletus, they saw the evidence
of the gathering of a mighty fleet, and they heard tel of a
regiment of Sakai, the bronze-clad heavy archers from the
steppes of Colchis, and two regiments of Medes, marching al
the way from Persepolis to bolster the Lydians and Carians in
Datis’s army.
I wil digress here to say that I have alway
s thought that Datis
planned to take Sardis for himself, and then to knock Darius
from his throne and make himself King of Kings. Such has
always been the Persian way – the war among the strong makes
the winner stronger stil. Not unlike the Greek way, come to
think of it. Very like the competition to be first man in Athens, if
you ask me.
Miltiades told me of the Sakai and the Medes while lying at
my side, eating figs. ‘Paramanos brought me that titbit,’ he said,
‘from a messenger who came over the passes from our friend the
Jew of Sardis.’
I admit that even there, in the safety of Attica, far from
Sardis, I felt a frisson of fear. ‘So Datis is realy coming,’ I
asked. And I thought of Artaphernes – and Briseis.
As if my thought could be translated into concrete reality,
Miltiades put a smal ivory tube in my hand. ‘Another friend sent
me this,’ he said. ‘Datis realy is coming.’
I opened the tube and took out a scrol, and my heart
hammered in my chest. For the first time in days I forgot
Euphoria, her father, my farm and my forge. In my hand was a
slip of paper in Briseis’s handwriting.
slip of paper in Briseis’s handwriting.
Datis sails after the great feast of Artemis. 660 ships, 12,000 men.
Tell Doru that I live and so does my brother.
Tell him that our Heraclitus took his life after Lade.
I couldn’t breathe. ‘I thought her brother was dead too,’
Miltiades said. ‘Now he commands ships in the Great King’s
fleet. He is becoming a great man, among the Greeks who serve
Persia.’
I barely paid him a thought. ‘Heraclitus is dead,’ I said. I
wept.
But in my head, I rejoiced, because Briseis was not dead,
and she had written to me.
‘He is.’ Miltiades roled on his back, drank wine from the
kylix that was circulating and flipped the lees across the room,
where they rang on the rim of one of my bronze water urns. He
cared little for Heraclitus, or any philosophy. ‘If they come,’ he
asked carefuly, ‘can Athens count on Plataea?’
Suddenly, his addition to my hunting party was put in
perspective. But he had, at least, waited two days to ask his
question.
A hush fel over our part of the party, and I could see
Aristides, who lay with Sophanes, lean towards me, the better to
hear me.
I laughed grimly. ‘Unlike Athens,’ I said, ‘Plataea is a
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