There was a cry – something like a war cry, something like a
sigh.
‘Charge!’ I caled, and we went at them.
The Medes were ready for it. They broke as soon as they
saw us come, and only our boldest and fastest caught any of
them. I certainly didn’t – the Mede I had my eye on vanished
into the near-dark of the bushes up the beach.
Idomeneus, bless him, sounded a single blast as I hit my
forty-seventh stride, and we turned together, like a figure in the
Pyrrhiche – which it is – and ran. We were off down that beach
like frightened boys chased by an angry parent, and every man
understood that we had to break contact now, or die when the
sun rose.
But Persians have good soldiers, too. Somewhere in the
But Persians have good soldiers, too. Somewhere in the
scrub was an officer who knew his business, and within seconds
of us running, they were chasing us and arrows began to fal.
Then it was every man for himself. Some of my boys cut inland,
across country. A few ditched their shields. Most didn’t – when
archers are shooting you, the last thing you want to give up is
your shield.
I stuck to the beach, and most of the Medes folowed, worse
luck. Had they stayed a little longer, run away from our false
charge a little further, we might have made a clean exit, but we
were not so lucky.
After a few minutes of running, I looked back and they were
gaining. After al, they had light body armour, which most of
them were not wearing anyway, as they’d been awakened by
our attack. They had neither helmets nor greaves.
They were cautious, but they were getting the measure of us.
An arrow hit the middle of the back of the yoke of my
armour. Thanks to Ares’ hand, it turned on the two layers of
bronze, but the power knocked me flat. As I rose, another
arrow hit the same place, then another glanced off my shield,
heavy arrows, and another rang on my helmet, and I thought –
Fuck, this is it.
I got my feet under me and turned.
One of the Medes fel to the beach, his life leaking out
between his fingers as he grabbed at the shaft embedded in his
guts.
Teucer was right at my shoulder, shooting calmly. One, two –
and men fel.
and men fel.
‘Turn a little left,’ he said.
I did, and two arrows hit the face of my shield, and he shot
back – zip, pause, zip.
With every shot, a Mede fel.
Another arrow into my shield, but now the Medes were
scrambling for cover – Teucer dropped four right there, coughing
their lungs out in the sand.
‘Run,’ I said. I gave him three steps while I stayed – another
arrow off the top of my helmet – and then I turned and ran.
My breath was coming like a horse’s after a galop – I
sucked in air the way a drunkard sucks wine and my legs burned
as if I had run ten stades. The wound Archilogos had given me in
the fal of Miletus had a curious numbness to it against the pain of
al my other muscles, and sweat roled down my forehead and
into my eyes.
The light was growing. I was running down a beach that was
wel enough lit for target practice, and I was going more and
more slowly.
Ares, it makes me want to spit sand to remember it: fleeing
like a coward, and knowing – knowing – that in a few moments
I would be dead anyway. When it is your last – when al is lost –
it doesn’t matter whether you were a demonstration or a
deception or a last stand, friends. No one worth a shit wants to
die with his back to the foe.
So I turned.
An arrow meant for my back screamed off the face of my
An arrow meant for my back screamed off the face of my
shield.
I meant to take one with me, but I was out of everything, the
daimon had no more to give me, and I – the great fighter of the
Plataeans – slumped down behind my shield. I got smaler and
smaler as the arrows thudded in.
But I could breathe, and I did. I panted like a dog, and I
couldn’t think of anything, and arrows fel on my shield like hail
on a good crop – twice, arrowheads blew right through the face
of my aspis.
Oh, children, that hour was dark. When I had my breath
back, I knew it was just a matter of how I chose to die. I could
make it last, down under the rim of my aspis, until they got a man
into the brush to my left who could shoot me in the hip or the
arse. No laughing matter. I could try to turn again, but to Hades
with that. My legs were gone. It seemed to me that the best
course was to attack them. It would get the whole thing over
with the quickest, and if anyone watched me – if there was a
single bard left in Greece to sing after this debacle – at least men
would say that Arimnestos died with his face to the foe.
I took a dozen more breaths, rationing them, taking the air in
deep. Then I alowed myself five more – the margin of life and
death. Five breaths.
Arrows continued to slam into the face of my shield.
On the edge of the fifth, I rose to my feet. I sneaked a last
glance down the beach behind me – and my heart leaped with
joy. It was empty. My men had got away.
In some situations, nothing would be grimmer than to die
In some situations, nothing would be grimmer than to die
alone, but in this one, it filed me with power. Being alone made
me feel less a failure. More a hero.
I leaned forward, into the arrow storm, summoned up power
in my legs I didn’t think I had and charged.
Anyone asleep?
Hah! You flinched, thugater. You think perhaps I died there,
eh?
Pour me a little more wine, lad.
Yes, I charged. As soon as I got my face over the rim of my
aspis, I could see that they were wel bunched up, about fifty
strides away – that’s why so few arrows missed, I can tel you.
I remembered running with Eualcidas, at the fight in the pass.
Here, like there, my feet crunched on gravel. I kept my shield up,
and the arrows fel on it like snow on a mountain.
And then they stopped.
There were screams – screams of pain and screams of terror.
I lowered my aspis a finger’s breadth and peered forward,
though the pre-dawn murk, the sweat, the slits of my helmet.
The Medes were faling – a dozen of them were down and
the rest were scattering. When I reached them – alive, of course,
you daft woman – not a man was alive, and they looked like
porcupines for the arrows in them.
I turned away from rosy-fingered dawn and the pale sea.
There were men coming out of the bush – a hundred men, with
bows.
The Athenian archers had found me.
I laughed.
I laughed.
I mean, what in Hades can you do but laugh?
When you write this, I suppose you’l leave out al the little men –
the archers and peltastai. And when I say ‘little’, I mean s
mal in
the eyes of the great. But they were good men, as you’l see. The
psiloi. The ‘stripped’ men who wear no armour. This is the story
of the little men, and you can ignore what happened next if you
wish. But it had more effect on the battle than most of the heavily
armed men and the gentry would ever want to admit.
The archers were elated – they’d saved a famous hero and
laid waste to the Medes, and I knew that as long as those men
lived in their little houses and their shacks on the flank of the
Acropolis, they’d tel and retel that story in their wine shops, at
the edge of the Agora, in the bread stals.
Several of them – the boldest – sprinted down the beach and
tore a souvenir loose from the huddle of corpses. The first man
to pass me shot me a grin.
‘You alive, boss?’ he asked as he ran by.
I had falen to one knee. I gave him a smile, got to my feet
and wandered after him.
In the distance, the Medes began to raly. Did I mention that
they were first-rate soldiers? Just lost half their numbers in an
ambush, and they were coming back. I hate any man who says
the Medes and Persians were cowards.
The Medes on the sand were wearing gold and silver –
professional soldiers wearing their pay. The Athenian archers
were poor men and my friend, the first who passed me,
were poor men and my friend, the first who passed me,
whooped when he reached the bodies. But he was a public-
spirited man, and he held something aloft that flashed in the new
sun and he shouted ‘Gold!’ and the rest of the archers came
pouring out of the scrub at the edge of the beach, some men
jumping down the bluffs and sand dunes.
They stripped those corpses like men who knew their way
around a corpse. I cast no aspersions, but by the time I caught
up with them, there was nothing left but skin, gristle and bone.
‘Better look to your bows, lads,’ I said, pointing down the
beach. I stepped forward and fielded an arrow that might have
hit a man, scooping it on the face of my shield, and the muscles in
my shield arm protested hard.
‘Lad, my arse,’ an older man said, but he grinned. He had
thick arms and heavy shoulders – an oarsman, I suspected.
‘You’re that Plataean, then, eh?’
‘I am,’ I said. Then I put some iron in my voice. ‘Bows!’ I
shouted.
Most men jump when I say jump. The archers did.
‘Who’s the master archer, then?’ I asked.
After most of them had loosed a couple of arrows – with no
effect beyond driving the Medes back up the beach – the older
man turned to me again. ‘With the other half of the boys – they
went for the centre of the camp. We couldn’t find you. And I
kept getting lost – so I made for the beach.’ He gave a lopsided
grin. ‘I’m a sailor – or was. Beaches make sense to me.’
I had to laugh. ‘We need to get out of here,’ I said.
I had to laugh. ‘We need to get out of here,’ I said.
‘That’s sense, too. We’ve had our lick at the Persians.’ He
looked around. ‘And we’ve got whatever they brought.’ He
caled to the men by the bodies, ‘Got al the bows? Al their
quivers? Arrows?’
To me, he said, ‘Al their kit is better than ours – better
bows, by far.’
‘I know,’ I said.
‘Give me a Persian bow anytime,’ he said, flourishing his
own.
‘These aren’t Persians,’ I said. I pointed at the low felt hats
and boots. ‘They’re Medes, a subject people of the Persians –
similar, but not the same. They wear less armour. Sakai are
different again – bigger beards, more leather and better bows.’
‘Ain’t you the sophist, though.’ The former sailor held out his
arm. ‘Leonestes of Piraeus.’ Arrows began to drop al around
us.
‘Let’s run,’ I said.
We did. After a few hundred strides, they had to carry me – I
was mortified, to say the least. One young sprig took my aspis
and another peeled off my helmet.
We left the beach when it began to angle away from our
camp and we ran inland. It was easier in daylight – I could see
the line of hils and mountains at the far edge of the plain and the
rising ground that marked the shrine and sanctuary of Heracles.
As soon as we left the beach, we lost the Medes. I think
they’d finaly reached the end of their enthusiasm. My Plataeans
must have put down twenty of them – perhaps as many as fifty.
must have put down twenty of them – perhaps as many as fifty.
It’s never good when armoured men face unarmoured. And then
the ambush by the archers probably dropped at least another
thirty. Fifty dead is more like a bad day’s battle than a couple of
skirmishes before breakfast.
The Medes retired to lick their wounds. We carried on
across the hayfields and wheat fields and falow barley fields,
jumping stone wals and avoiding hedgerows. We were about
halfway to the sanctuary of Heracles when I felt the ground
moving. I needed to stop – my lungs were white-hot with pain.
Other men must have felt the same – as soon as my group
stopped, al of them did.
The feeling that the earth was trembling increased. I looked
around – and saw the dust.
‘Cavalry!’ I panted. ‘Into the brush!’
To our right was a falow field with low stone wals and
patches of jasmine and other low bushes. It was also ful of
rocks.
We piled in, in no particular order.
‘Get to the wal. This one! You – stand there! Bows up!’
That was me – the orders flowed out of me as if I was
channeling the power of Ares.
Leonestes joined me. ‘Form a line – get your arse to that
wal, boy! Bows up – you heard the man! Get a shaft on the
string, you whoreson.’
The cavalry was almost on us. But as is so often the case on
a real battlefield, they hadn’t seen us. They had other prey.
‘The first voley wil win or lose this,’ I said. My voice was
‘The first voley wil win or lose this,’ I said. My voice was
calm. I remember how al the fear of the night raid had been
replaced by my usual steady confidence. Why? Because in the
dark I had no idea what I was doing, did I? Out here, it was just
a ship-fight on land.
Men on the flank of the galoping cavalry saw us, of course –
but far too late to make any change of direction for the mass. But
if Miltiades had raided the horses, he hadn’t had much effect, I
remember thinking to myself.
I glanced at Leonestes, because he was taking so long to give
the order that I wondered if he was waiting for me to give it.
He winked. Turned his head to the enemy – raised his bow.
‘Loose!’ he roared. ‘Fast as you can, boys!’
The next shafts rose while the first flight were in the air. Rose
and fel, and a third voley came up, far more ragged than the first
two. Some of the Athenian archers were little more than
guttersnipes with bows, while others had fine weapons and
plenty of training – probably archers from ships.
So among a hundred archers, there were maybe twenty real
kilers, another fifty halfway decent archers and thirty kids and
makeweights.
Same in the phalanx, realy.
The arrows fel on the cavalry and they evaporated. I
remember that when I was a child snow fel on the farm – and
then the weather changed and the sun came out, hot as hot, and
the snow went straight to the heavens without melting. The
cavalry went like that: a brief interval of thrashing horse terror, al
cavalry went like that: a brief interval of thrashing horse terror, al
hooves and blood, and some arrows coming back at me – a man
took one and died just an arm’s length from me – and then they
were gone, out of our range, and ralying.
That fast.
They slipped from their horses, adjusted their quivers – and
came at us. A couple of dozen began riding for our right flank –
the flank closest to the sea. They did this so fast that I think they
must have practised it. For the first time, I understood the fear
the men of Euboea had for the Persians. These were real
Persians – high caps, scale shirts, beautiful enameled bows.
I ran across the ground to the men we’d just kiled – the
horses were stil screaming. Six. Our briliant little improvised
ambush had put down only six men.
I picked up two bows, scooped the big Persian quivers off
their horses while arrows decorated the ground around me and
ran back towards the thin line of Athenians.
I got a fine bow – wood so brown that it seemed purple, or
perhaps that was dye, and horn on the inside face of the bow,
with sinew in between. There was goldwork on the man’s
quiver, and a line of gold at the nocks on the bow.
‘Anyone who doesn’t have a Persian bow, get back,’
Leonestes shouted. ‘Way the fuck back, boys. A hundred
paces.’
The dismounted Persians in front of us – about fifty of them –
walked confidently forward. Even as I watched, they stopped.
Most of them planted arrows in the ground for easy shooting.
The cavalry reaching around our right flank was making
The cavalry reaching around our right flank was making
heavy going of it – they’d found the tangle of wals and
hedgerows. Some of the younger Athenians began to drop shafts
on them, as if it was sport. It’s always easier to be a hero when
Marathon Page 49
