I walked back to the council.
One of the older fishermen was humming and hawing, clearly anxious at speaking in front of so many great men. Another tall brute in a Phrygian cap pushed him gently aside.
‘Weather might be ugly the next four days, gents.’ He shrugged. ‘And it might not. Storms come off Africa – sometimes right down the channel.’ He looked at me for some reason. ‘If you are worried about the anchorage – an’ you should be – just slip back to Troezen.’
Themistocles slammed his fist in his palm. ‘We can’t anchor both flanks at Troezen. We cannot cover Leonidas from Troezen. We must be here!’
Adamenteis shoved his way forward. ‘Leonidas can’t hold the Gates against a million men! We should go back to the isthmus – now, while we have a fleet.’
Isocles of Aegina, their navarch, shook his head. ‘We should do what we should always have done – press forward and strike them when they don’t expect us, on the Thracian coast.’
‘Are you mad?’ said another – one of the Peloponnesian captains. ‘They’ll slip past us and burn our farms.’
‘Four hundred triremes don’t slip anywhere, you fool!’
‘Back to the isthmus where we can command our own fates!’
Eurybiades didn’t seem to straighten up, or fill his lungs. But his voice was like the voice of brazen-lunged Ares. ‘Ears!’ he shouted.
Men stood silent, stunned.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said into the silence, in a voice that expected their continued cooperation. ‘The allied fleet needs Poseidon’s help. If that help is going to take the form of a storm from the north and east, we do not want to be caught on a beach facing north and east.’ He nodded courteously to Adamenteis. ‘Our strategy is set, and will no longer be discussed. In the morning, we will retire to Troezen. We can be back here in six hours. No one is permitted to send dispatches home, or to leave the fleet under any circumstances. Arimnestos of Plataea will take my messages to King Leonidas and meet us at Troezen.’ He nodded.
No one offered any protest. Greece was not lost or won in that moment, but it is the moment I think of, when men say that Themistocles defeated the Medes.
His message, which Hector wrote out and I read ten times, said just this.
Xerxes left Therma fourteen day ago and makes good time.
I will retire to Troezen to allow the gods to save us, if they will.
Running down a channel at night is never easy. The wind was rising slightly and I didn’t care to use the sails, and so my oarsmen got still more practice. I left Paramanos in charge of my squadron, because he had more experience of command than any, even Demetrios, Aristides’ helmsman.
At any rate, we rowed down the dog-leg passage. From the open sea and the coast of Thessaly, it runs due west, and then turns south around the island of Euboea and then runs at an angle towards Attica.
There is a deep bay on the western shore of the dog-leg, and the narrow gates of Thermopylae – the so called ‘hot gates’ where the hot water flows from deep in the earth into shallow bowls – the gates, as I say, were formed by the mountains coming almost to the edge of the sea. Men had walled the pass many times, to stop various invasions from Thessaly and Thrace, with varying degrees of success.
At any rate, we rowed in at first light, and I won’t pretend I wasn’t very relieved to have made the voyage without touching a rock. There was a light surf running as we turned Lydia to land her stern first – the first taste of the easterly blowing down the coast of Thrace from the Hellespont. I am ashamed to admit that I was not at the helm, where I ought to have been, but amidships, shitting away my relief at a successful night navigation with Hermogenes, when we struck a rock.
We weren’t moving fast, but we started taking water immediately. The wound was bad enough that I could see where two planks had broken.
We were in no danger of sinking – we were in four feet of water, half a stade off a beautiful beach. It was a simple accident, but it angered me.
We got the ship ashore, rowing like heroes to overcome the weight of water and keep her bottom strakes off the sand, and then my rowers piled over the sides with a will and rolled her dry and carried her up the beach. It wasn’t as bad as it might have been, but we had two strakes broken and a third cracked. By the will of the gods – or blessed by Moira – I had not sold my cargo of Illyrian timber and pitch. It had seemed wiser to keep it for emergency repairs, and I had divided the cargo among the ships of my squadron, so that before I went up the beach to find the camp of the Greeks, Hermogenes and Stygies had axes in their hands and splitting wedges and two dozen willing Plataean farmers were giving them advice.
I took both of my boys and walked up the beach, and found the ancient wall, and a very alert sentry from Corinth, in full panoply. This pleased me almost as much as the rock had annoyed me, and I shouted my name and my errand with a will.
The Corinthian sent for a superior. He leaned over the low wall. ‘I’m sorry, Plataean. But the king gave orders that we admit no man until daylight.’
I waved at the sky.
The Corinthian shrugged. ‘Are you not the notorious pirate?’ he asked.
Of course, in Corinth I was a notorious pirate.
‘I have certainly been a pirate,’ I said. ‘But that Corinthian ship? I found her high and dry, sold for scrap timber in Aegypt.’
‘Really?’ he asked, and leaned out over the wall again. ‘I hear you killed all the oarsmen and officers and took her south of Cyprus.’
I shrugged. ‘Believe as you will. But all my men will back my version, and I could get priests from Aegypt to swear to it as well.’
The Corinthian nodded. ‘Of course, all that could be lies and fakery,’ he said.
I nodded.
‘So it could. What would convince you?’ I asked.
Someone came up behind him, and he had a whispered conference. A ladder was lowered.
I climbed it. At the top, the Corinthian peered at me. ‘You don’t look like a man who would massacre a citizen crew for the sake of a hull,’ he said.
The man behind him on the wall was the King of Sparta. He didn’t look the worse for sleep, and his hair was long and curly and his beard oiled. He nodded to the Corinthian. ‘What is it that engages the two of you so hotly?’ he asked.
‘A lawsuit in Corinth,’ I muttered.
The King of Sparta laughed. ‘Truly, you are Greeks,’ he said. ‘Xerxes marches, and we argue lawsuits.’
‘Xerxes is very close,’ I said. I handed the king my tablets.
He took them and nodded. ‘So I assumed from the moment my sentries reported your ship,’ he said. ‘No one sends a trireme with good news.’
That day, while the allied fleet retreated from the possibility of a storm, we worked on Lydia. We dried her hull upside down in the sun, which was good for her, and Hermogenes led the self-appointed carpenters. We had good tools, but no adze, and the Locrians brought us one, bless them.
While my friends worked, I walked through the camps, and visited. I knew men in many contingents, and I got news of the Olympics, and sat with Antigonus for a cup of wine.
We drank, and talked of farming and lawsuits.
When we’d bored his neighbours into leaving us alone, he leaned close to me – we were lying in the dry grass behind his tent. ‘Can the fleet hold?’ he asked.
I nodded. ‘Every day, we are better. We have good officers and good oarsmen. When the Olympics end, we’ll have another fifty ships.’ I leaned on my elbow. ‘We can hold the Medes for a few days. That’s all we need.’
‘And the storm?’ Antigonus asked. ‘Everyone is praying to Poseidon for a storm.’
I remember that I shrugged. Rather impiously, my outswept arm indicated the blue sea and cloudless eastern horizon. ‘The fleet is seeking anchorage from Poseidon’s wrath,’ I said in mockery. ‘Tomorrow, no doubt, we’ll go back to our station at Artemesium.’
‘A sign from the gods would hearten us all,’ he said. He dr
ank some neat wine from a canteen and held it out to me. ‘But barring the direct involvement of the Olympians, I suppose we’ll just have to dig in our heels and fight. Are you any good at mathematics?’
I laughed. ‘Fair enough. I can work geometry.’
Antigonus nodded. ‘Well – figure this. We have six thousand hoplites and Xerxes has a million. How many do I have to kill?’
‘Two hundred, give or take a few,’ I said.
He whistled. ‘Well,’ he said. He looked at me. ‘If I fall, tell Penelope that she was . . . everything I ever desired in a wife.’
There is something embarrassing about seeing another man’s love for your sister, even when you think very highly of him. So I slapped his shoulder and shrugged. ‘Tell her yourself,’ I said. ‘I’d never get it out without mocking her.’
‘Fine, then. I’ll stay alive to spite you.’ He laughed, and I laughed.
We were sharing a third cup of unwatered wine – war is hell – when there was a stir by the forward posts across the wall. There was a party of Tegeans cutting palisades, and they all stopped. There were Spartan helots cutting grass for their master’s bedding, out in the wide part of the pass, where there was a low hill and two good broad fields. The helots’ heads came up like those of horses scenting danger.
Antigonus and I started walking towards the wall.
There was dust, over to the east.
I remember putting a hand to my eyes to shade them from the sun – Hekatombaion is a cruel month for the eyes. On the beach at my feet, Hermogenes was doing the same.
All the Greeks stopped what they were doing and looked east.
The dust cloud was like a thunderhead. It swam in my vision – shimmered in the heat. My first thought was that Poseidon had sent us a storm after all.
There was a sudden gust of wind from the east with a breath of coolness and all the tents and awnings snapped, like the shields of two armies in the first moments of a battle.
My eyes began to appreciate the scale of the dust cloud I was seeing to the east.
The Tegeans were standing to arms, out on the plain, and suddenly the helots broke and ran – carrying, I might add, the forage fodder they’d been sent to fetch.
The wind stirred again, and for a moment the front of the dust cloud vanished, and I saw the flash of bright sun on steel and bronze.
I was not looking at a storm of Poseidon. I was looking at the armed might of the Great King, and it filled the horizon like a thundercloud.
Below me, on the plain, a hundred Persian cavalrymen swept past the Tegeans contemptuously, and began to shoot the fleeing helots with bows. I couldn’t tell whether they were Persians, Medes or Saka, but they rode like centaurs and shot like Apollo, and a pair of helots went down – fell face forward, and heartbeats later were speared through the back like new-caught fish.
The Tegeans formed an orb – a tiny island of defence.
The Persian cavalry came all the way down the plain at a gallop, but the helots had vanished into the dust and the brush.
Below me, I saw Ka and six Numidians draw their bows.
They loosed.
It is very difficult to shoot a man over a long range. Arrows – especially the lightest flight arrows that master-archers carry – can fly over two hundred paces, and some over three hundred paces, but such light darts are moved by every breath of wind. Further, it takes long enough for an arrow to fly two hundred paces that a galloping horse has moved ten paces in the interval.
So the lead riders came at us unscathed.
But about midway down the squadron of Persians, two riders fell backwards into the dust, and another horse screamed its trumpet cry of rage and pain and threw its rider on the ground, and the compact Persian troop burst apart like a nest of hornets stoned by boys.
The helots leapt to their feet and dashed for the wall, and the guard – all Mantineans – turned out like heroes, formed under the wall, and covered the helots as they ran.
My sailors and marines were formed and ready to move, with Hermogenes, adze in hand, in his moment of glory.
Ka’s archers loosed.
All the armed Greeks on the plain before the walls charged the Persian cavalry at a run, the way we’d done at Marathon. Another Persian fell, and someone waved a sword – and they ran.
Horse archers run all the time. It means nothing. They run so that they can find a better position from which to fill you full of arrows. But that day, when they ran, it was Greece that had carried the day. Two helots lay dead, and three Persians had gone to Hades with them.
If there was irony in that little victory, it might be that all the killing had been done by a handful of Numidian archers, but let us not parse this too carefully. The Tegeans and the Mantineans and the Plataean oarsmen met far out on the plain, slapped each other’s backs, and marched into the gates like the heroes of the Iliad. The Persian cavalry ran all the way back to Xerxes.
Xerxes made camp across the plains, at Trachis, where there was room to camp his army.
Antigonus and I had shouted ourselves hoarse like spectators at the Olympics, cheering on our hoplites, too far from the action to even trouble for our armour. But when the Persians ran, we cheered with everyone else.
When the Mantineans returned, we discovered that they had a prisoner. He was the man whose horse had taken so many arrows – he’d been knocked unconscious by a direct hit on his helmet.
I went down to translate. King Leonidas was far too much the gentleman to interrogate a prisoner, but all the Greeks crowded around – the Spartans as much or more than anyone – seeking to touch the Persian. He was quite muddle-headed from the blow, and when we showed him his peaked bronze helmet with a dent three fingers deep, he shuddered.
‘Are you Persian?’ I asked.
His head turned in shock. ‘I am Hyperanthes, son of Hydarnes, friend of the king!’ he said bravely. ‘You speak Persian brilliantly.’
I nodded. ‘I am Arimnestos of Plataea.’
‘The ambassador! Mardonius said you were dead!’ The young man shook his head and then sank it in his hands.
I gave him water. ‘You needn’t fear. When you feel better, the king has decreed you will be returned to your host. King Leonidas wishes the Great King to see that Greeks behave according to the laws of the gods.’
The young man brightened up considerably. Perhaps he thought we’d torture him, or kill him and eat him – who knows what lies the Persians told about us? Certainly we told a few about them.
We were standing on the low hill behind the wall, which gave the best view of the enemy. He got to his feet to see.
‘Sit!’ I said. ‘When you feel better – when your army has stopped marching . . .’ I pointed at the dust cloud.
He laughed. ‘You think that is the army?’ he exclaimed. ‘That is my father’s regiment – the Immortals. They have marched forward to cover the camp while the slaves build it. The army is behind them.’
Leonidas exclaimed in delight, like a man seeing a beautiful treasure. ‘Those are the Immortals?’ he asked.
The Spartans all crowded to the wall to look. You’d have thought a beautiful woman was walking down the beach to bathe.
The Tegeans and Mantineans and Thespians and Plataeans all looked at each other. And then they looked at the dust cloud that seemed to float all the way back to Asia.
There is a particular arrogance to the humility of some men, and most especially those who claim for themselves the will of the gods. But I will claim that Poseidon favoured me that day – wth the rock under his water, and the damage to my ship.
Because, thanks to the rock, my ship was pulled all the way up the beach of Thermopylae, fifty feet above the waterline, when the storm struck.
Had we been at sea – perhaps we might have weathered the storm. But it blew straight from the east down the first leg of the channel and struck the beach at Thermopylae with gale-force winds and waves as tall as a man. The pass – never very wide – was closed to the w
idth of a wagon in some places by the fierce run of water.
The first night that the storm blew, I walked down to the bow of my ship and watched the waves roll in. The storm hit us with no harbinger but those odd, cool gusts of wind, and I stood in the darkness and blessed the fishermen of Artemesium, and Cimon, who knew these waters better than any of the rest of us.
Hermogenes came and stood with me in the dark.
The wind began first to tug at my chlamys, and then – with the force of a blow – tore my cloak right out of its pin. Hermogenes caught it before it vanished.
A wave broke at our feet, and the water came to within six feet of the ram.
Hermogenes turned and ran. I wondered what madness had seized him, but he came back with a skin of Plataean wine and my fine Persian cup of beaten gold, which I’d had from the Queen Mother. And behind him were my oarsmen, leaning into the wind, with resined torches and the ship’s four great oil lanterns, all lit.
We stood on the beach and sang the hymn to Poseidon. We were farmers, not sailors – or most of us were – so we praised him as the creator and breaker of horses, and the shaker of the earth. The rushing monster of the storm drowned most of our song, but I stood there – my chiton soaked by waves and the first lashing of rain, as the lightning forked on the horizon, over and over – and I filled my brave gold cup with the agates and lapis and the largest emerald in Greece to the brim with the wine grown in my own fields in Green Plataea, and then I hurled it as far as I could into the sea.
Let me tell you a thing.
The waters off Thermopylae are as shallow and clear as the waters off any great beach in all of Hellas.
But no man has ever found my cup of gold, or the rock that tore a hole in Lydia.
Only fools doubt that the gods walk with men.
For three days, the Hellesponter storm blew like Poseidon’s will – and for three days, the Persian army sat opposite us and did nothing. The Spartans champed at the bit like racehorses waiting for the Olympic races, eager and ready, fully exercised. They sat on the wall and combed out their hair, danced their dances, ran races, and waited for their battle.
Long War 04 - The Great King Page 41
