As it turned out, I had Herk as my file-leader. Of course, as helmsman, he was an officer – I was unused to taking orders, which may seem a foolish comment from a former slave, but it was true. Still, I did well enough, and the men in my file were all veterans, at least of some raids and a siege or two, and I had plenty to learn about camping and eating and keeping clean. I was amazed at how much time the Athenians spent on their gear – polishing and cleaning with pumice and tallow and scraps of tow, every spare moment.
Agios was my file-closer in the eighth rank. He was a well-known man, and at sea he was a helmsman – far too important to serve in the front rank and get killed, or so I understood. He and Herk were peers, and good friends. Later, they were my friends, but on the march to Sardis, Agios had few good words for me. Even as I was amazed at how hard the Athenians worked on their gear, so Agios was disgusted with how careless I was with mine. It was there – marching to Sardis – that I learned how much of the business of war was in maintenance.
My mood was black – so black that I have no memory of marching upriver to Sardis. We crossed the mountains through the pass, I assume, but I don't remember it. I had to carry my own gear because I had no slave. I don't remember anything of that, either, although I must have sweated like a pig and been the laughing stock of the Athenian taxeis.
I had a hard time with Briseis in my head. I hated her, and yet, even then, I knew that I was lying to myself. I didn't hate her. I understood her. But I also knew that my life had been smashed – again – as thoroughly as my enslavement had smashed it.
I was locked inside the prison of my head for the whole march. It rained and I was wet and at the top of the pass it was cold. I know that my friends talked to me – Stephanos and Epaphroditos and Heraklides, because they all referred to it later. But I remember nothing but a waking nightmare of the loss of Hipponax and Archi – and Briseis.
Hipponax and Archi were in the same army I was in – there were only eight or nine thousand of us, all in, and I saw both of them every day, at a distance. They must have known that I was with the army, marching just a stade or two from them. I do remember wanting to go to them, every day – a yearning to face them, to receive blows or embraces. I think I believed that they would commiserate with me. Now, I shake my head.
We were fifteen days marching on Sardis, and despite our long delay at Ephesus, we caught the city unawares. Which will give you an idea of how badly prepared the Medes were for us. I think that Artaphernes never really believed that men he had counted as friends and guest-friends – men like Aristagoras and Hipponax – would actually march on him. And so great was the name of Darius, King of Kings, that no man had ever dared to strike at him. Amongst the Ionians, they talked openly of conquering Persia. Amongst the Athenians, they laughed and talked about increasing their trade with Ionia. No man so much as mentioned Persia. I remember that, too.
At any rate, the Persians were unprepared.
When we came down the pass, the scouts told us that the gates of the great city – one of the richest in Asia – were open.
We lost all order. The whole army broke into a mass of sprinting soldiers racing for the gates. At least, that's how it seemed to me, and I was close to the front. Aristides roared like a bull to make us stand our ground, and we ignored him and raced for the nearest gates.
I followed Herk. He was fast, but nothing like me, and I loped easily, keeping pace. The rest of our file fell behind – Herk wasn't the fastest, but he had stamina. Other men caught us, and a few passed us, but the upshot was that a dozen of us came to the Ephesus Gate of Sardis, just around the hour men leave the agora, and the gates were open.
Even as we ran up, the Lydian gate-guards finally decided that they were in peril and began to close the great wooden doors – or perhaps they closed them every day in late afternoon.
Herk threw himself at the nearest door and men joined him. I flashed through the narrowing gap and my spear caught a Lydian and killed him, and the other guards broke and fled and the gates were ours, and I was the first man in the city.
Then I saw men behave as animals, and men treated as animals, and it was amidst the slaughter that I awoke from my nightmares of the loss of Hipponax and family and Briseis. I found myself in the wreckage of the agora, watching a trio of Eretrians raping a girl while others looted the stalls in an orgy of destruction, like animals let loose from cages. Oh, you haven't seen what men are until you see them let loose inside a city.
I did nothing to stop it. It was happening all about me. And my sword was red, and blood dripped down my hand.
The storming of a city is the grimmest of man's acts, and the one most likely to draw the wrath of the gods. Sardis was defenceless, and the men and women of the city had never resisted us, or done us any hurt greater than taking some of our money in their trades. But we butchered them like lambs.
Some fools set fire to the Temple of Cybele, and that sacrilege was repaid a hundredfold later. But worse was to come.
The initial assault took the city, but we had no officers and no enemy to fight, so we all became looters and rapists, roving criminal bands. The men of the town gathered, first to fight the temple fire and then to resist us, and as the flames spread, they were driven towards the central agora.
Because we had no leadership and no order, we didn't storm the citadel. I was no better than the rest – I assumed that the city had fallen. I stood in the agora, watching the city burn, refusing to rape and contemptuous of the looters, and I watched the other side of the market fill with men – panicked men, I assumed.
And then Artaphernes was there. His armour glittered in the fires, and he led the Lydians of the town and his own picked men of the citadel straight at us, and the Greeks were scattered the way sheep are scattered by wolves.
I saw Artaphernes coming. Greeks ran past me and some were already casting aside their shields. That's how bad we were. We must have outnumbered the Lydians three or four to one, and they scattered us.
When the attack came, Herk was stripping a gold-seller's stall like a professional sea wolf, which he was. 'Fuck,' he said. 'I knew this was too easy.'
He began to blow on his sea whistle, and I fell in next to him. He had his shield and I had mine, and other men who were not utterly in the grip of chaos and panic joined us, and in a few moments we were a hundred men. I noted that the man on my right was the athlete from Eretria, Eualcidas, whose friend I had thrown from the symposium. War makes strange shield-fellows. Agios was close on me, standing behind Herk.
The Lydians stopped short of us.
That was their mistake, because as soon as the other Greeks saw the Lydians halt, they turned and became men. So it is in any fight.
Aristides was there, then. He ran across the front rank and praised us for standing, a few quick words, and more men joined us, Chians, mostly. Our shield wall covered the agora, and we were four or five men deep – not a proper phalanx, but a deep line of mixed men.
Then the Lydians came at us. They weren't big men, or well armoured, except Artaphernes' bodyguard in the centre, where I was. And the fates laughed, because the man coming at me in the fire-lit afternoon light was Cyrus, with his three friends around him. They halted ten paces from us, to see if we would give way, but we had Aristides to give us some wood in our backbones, and we shuffled but held.
Artaphernes' men began to shoot at us with powerful bows at close range. Eualcidas on my right took an arrow through his shield into his shield arm – that's how strong their bows were close up. I saw that Heraklides slanted his, and I did the same, and then, under cover of my shield, I got the shaft out of Eualcidas's arm and two other Eretrians dragged him to the rear. The next man to stand beside me got Cyrus's arrow in his ankle – I saw the shot – and then Aristides exposed himself to the fire and ran along the front, ordering us to kneel behind our shields, and we did. He was magnificent. He was only a couple of years older than me, and I wanted to be him.
So I indulged in some bravado of my own. I called Cyrus's name until he saw me, and I stood up and took off my helmet. Arrows rattled on my shield, and one pinked my naked thigh above my greaves, scraping along the muscle without penetrating.
'Cyrus!' I roared.
He raised his axe over his head and waved it at me. 'You fool!' he called, and laughed. The Greeks around me wondered aloud how I knew a Persian, one of the elite, and I laughed.
And then their line stopped shooting and charged us.
Artaphernes led his men from the front. Never believe all that crap about the Medes whipping their men forward – that's the slaves they sometimes use as living shields. The real Persians and Medes – like Cyrus and Artaphernes – are like lions, eager for a fight all the time.
They only had ten paces to come at us. I had a stranger behind me and another on my right, but I had Heraklides on my left. I looked back at the man behind me. He seemed steady. When the Medes charged, I stood crouched, shield on shoulder, and as they came up I punched out with my first spear and caught Cyrus in the leg, my spear in his calf, and down he went. Pharnakes was right with him, and he had a heavy axe, which he put in the face of my shield as I threw my second spear into the second rank, where an unshielded man took it in the gut – a Persian – and went down. I pushed my shield in Pharnakes' face, axe and all, and the man behind me stabbed him while I got my sword out from under my arm.
And Heraklides yelled, 'Back! Back up! Back, you dogs!'
I raised my shield and backed a pace. Our line was shattered. Lydians were butchering the men who ran.
I got back in the line – I'd pushed forward into the Medes – but they weren't fighting my partner or me. They were flowing around us, left and right, towards easier pickings, as men do when the melee becomes chaotic. I got my shield under the front edge of Heraklides', and the man who had been at my back now stepped up to fit in next to me – it was all going to shit – and then he was gone, an axe in his head, and his brains showered me.
I grabbed a spear and fought with it until it broke. We could hear Aristides and we followed his voice – back and back and back, and the enemy seldom fought us, because we kept together. There were men behind us, Agios and two others, and I never knew them, but they stayed with us, and more than once a spear from over my shoulder kept me alive, until the four of us made it to an alley entrance where the Athenian captain had another little knot of men. He had waited for us. I never forgot that, either. It probably only took us a minute to reach him, but he might have been as safe as a house for that minute, and he stood and waited.
Well, Heraklides was his helmsman, of course.
We got to the alley, and then we ran. We ran all the way to our ships, eh? Well, not quite. We ran back across the bridges and made a better stand, and Artaphernes took a light wound as his advance was stopped. I fought there, and I was in the front rank, and I probably put a man or two down, but it was desperate stuff, no ranks or files, and the Ionians were a pack of fools with no order. Mostly, I was trying to keep Heraklides on my left and my shield with his. I don't know who hit Artaphernes, but that man saved our army. Because their attack petered out at the bridges, and we managed to withdraw to Tmolus across the Hermus River, and there was no pursuit.
Half of the army had never been in the fight at all, and they wanted to storm the city again. Those of us who had fought were angry, and those who had run magnified the number and ferocity of the enemy, and many angry words were said.
I was sitting, bleeding from a few wounds and breathing like the bellows for a forge, when a man came up. He was an Eretrian and he had a scorpion on his aspis, and he looked like a hard man.
He came straight up to me.
'You are the Plataean?' he asked.
I was sitting on my shield, so he couldn't quite see the device. I nodded. 'Doru,' I said.
He nodded. 'You saved my father – he's telling everyone how you covered him against the arrows and drew the one from his shoulder.' He offered me his hand. I took it. 'I'm Parmenides.'
I clasped his hand, and he offered more praise. I shook my head. But later, he came back with his father, and they brought a full skin of wine, which I shared with my mess. Then Stephanos came from the Aeolians – the men of Chios and the coast of Asia opposite – and sat with my mess group. He was a sixth-ranker, and proud just to wear the panoply. For him, it was an enormous promotion – as great as my step from slave to free man. The Aeolians take noble blood much more seriously than Atticans or Boeotians.
When Stephanos went back to his own mess, I lay down, my head spinning from the wine. Heraklides lay down beside me, and we missed the part where Aristides accused the Milesians of cowardice.
I've done poor Aristides an injustice if I've failed to make him sound like a prig. He was always right, and some men hated him for it. He never lied and seldom even shaded the truth. Indeed, among the Athenians, some men mocked him as a man who saw only black and white, not the colours of the rainbow.
But Melanthius had taken a wound in the agora of Sardis, and Aristides was in command of the Athenians now, and he took this very seriously. We loved him, for all his priggish ways. He was better than other men. He just couldn't keep his mouth shut.
A failing I understand, honey.
Anyway, the Milesians had, indeed, hung back from the city. Aristides apparently told them that their cowardice had cost us the city. Aristagoras, as their chief, resented the remark, and the army's factional nature increased to near open enmity.
The next day, my body ached, I was filthy, with blood under my nails and matted in my hair, and there wasn't enough water, because we were too far from the banks of the river and the Persians would shoot any man who went down the bank for a helmet of water – filthy water, in any case. Later in the day, parched, angry and dirty, we stumbled back to the pass, and we heard that the Lydians were rising behind us – that the men of all Caria were marching to the aid of their satrap. In those days, the Carians were called the 'Men of Bronze' because they wore so much armour, and they were deadly. Later in the Long War, they were our allies. But not that week.
We washed at the springs of the Hermus, and we filled our canteens and drank our fill and were braver. But we were no longer an army, we were an angry mob. The Athenians did nothing to hide their contempt for all the Ionians as soldiers. The Ionians returned their contempt with angry rejection, and it was muttered that the Athenians were sacrificing the Ionians for their own ends.
Which was true, of course.
Aristides grew angrier and angrier, his pale skin constantly flushed, and he walked along in silence, his slave trotting to keep up.
I stood around, watching Aristides, watching the army disintegrate, and I understood why soldiers were deserting. We were doomed, and the rush of bad omens that surrounded us, including a live hare dropped on a sacrificing priest by an eagle, only confirmed what every man knew. In addition, men who had murdered and raped in the city knew that they had brought their own doom upon them, and they were sullen, guilty or merely dejected.
The Athenians did not suffer from these problems. Heraklides gave me a heavy necklace of gold and lapis that he had snatched from the stall in the agora. 'You only saved my life ten times,' he said. 'And I saved my loot. I got the whole bag behind my shield.' He laughed, showing his snaggle teeth. He was only six years older than me, but he seemed like the old man of the sea himself. I put the necklace on, drank wine from my canteen and marched with the Athenians, who were still a disciplined band. We had come over the pass as the advance guard, and we were going home as the rearguard, with the Eretrians just ahead.
'At home, they're our worst enemies,' Heraklides grunted at me. 'But you know that, eh? You were in the fight at the bridge?'
'I was,' I said.
'They held us a long time there,' Heraklides said. 'Good fighters. Glad to have them, out here.'
Aristides came up to us. 'You can go into the front rank in place of Melodites,' he said without preamble. He didn't smile, but I did. He had his helmet on the back of his head – all the Athenians did, because they marched ready to fight at all times, as did the Eretrians.
I grinned like a fool. 'Thanks, lord,' I said.
He looked grim. 'Don't thank me. When we face the Medes again, you'll be the first to face them.'
I shrugged. 'I was in the front rank in the marketplace,' I said. 'Let's not stand around and let them shoot us, next time.'
He walked off, and I thought that he hadn't heard me, or, more likely, had chosen to ignore me. I was young – very young to be in the front rank.
I took the dead man's place and was a file-leader, and the other men of my file thought well enough of me to help me make a plume-holder and a plume to mark my new rank.
I no longer thought of Briseis. I was in the grip of Ares.
When Aristides saw me with my horsehair plume, he came up and slapped my shoulder. He didn't say anything, but it was one of the proudest moments of my life. From the top of the pass we could see the river in the distance, and the Ephesians cheered as if we'd been gone a month and marched a thousand stades. We were the last ones down the pass, and we knew from the scouts that there were Lydians and Carians right behind us.
Aristides wanted to hold the pass, and we halted at the narrowest part of the down slope. He picked his ground brilliantly – a gentle curve in the pass, so that the longest bowshot was about one hundred paces, and the sides of the pass as steep as walls on either side. We made camp, a cold, cheerless camp with no water. Aristides sent me as a runner to Aristagoras. I was to ask him to send relays of slaves with water for us.
'Tell him we'll hold the pass a day,' he said, 'to give the Milesians time to recover.'
But Aristagoras had no nobility and he was more interested in scoring points than in beating Persia. The pompous fuck! He laughed at the message. 'Tell your chief,' he said, 'that we will do nothing for the convenience of Athens.' He said the words loudly, so that all his Milesians heard him and joined his laugh.
I ran the message back. No man had so much as offered me a canteen.
I ran straight to Aristides. He was sitting on a rock, and I crouched at his feet and pulled my chlamys around me against the chill air and tried to spit. My mouth was so dry that my tongue wouldn't move. So I just shook my head.
Mutely, Aristides took his canteen over his head and handed it to me. I drank a mouthful and bowed. 'Thanks,' I said.
He looked away. 'They said no?' he asked.
'They said no. Aristagoras said that he would do nothing for the convenience of Athens.' I shrugged.
While I spoke, Eualcidas came up. He pulled off his helmet – he wore a great, winged Cretan helmet – and he was grey with fatigue. His arm hurt him, but famous men can't show pain.
'You planning to hold the pass?' he asked. He was ten years older than Aristides and, although he commanded many fewer men, he was a much more famous warrior. He looked up the pass, where we could see a handful of Lydian slingers prowling around. 'You bastards stood by us in the city,' he said, and spat, by way of explanation.
Aristides shrugged. 'I asked them to send us water. Aristagoras refused.'
'And you're surprised? You called them cowardly fools, lad.' Eualcidas laughed. 'Which they are! But they'll never forgive you.' He looked around. 'Fucking Ionians, eh?' He smiled at me. 'You're a handsome man. And thanks for my life. Not many men can say they saved Eualcidas!'
I blushed, and he laughed. He winked at Aristides. 'You do have some handsome men. Listen – we'll stand here with you. Better than trying to face the Medes down on the plains. Any day now they'll get their cavalry together – then we'll be doomed. Better fight them up here.'
Aristides shook his head. 'We can't camp here without water.'
Eualcidas shrugged. He had a boyish grin. He was a hard man to dislike. 'That's why we have slaves,' he said. 'Send them down the pass. Tell them to bring wine, too. If I'm going to die tomorrow, I think I want a feast.' He turned away with a salute and put his hand on my hip. 'A feast,' he said into my eyes.
Hah! I've made you blush again. Listen, honey. He was a famous athlete and a man who had grown up at a trading station on Crete. All Cretans are boy-lovers – it's their way. It is in their laws. Superb soldiers and athletes. Not much for the crafts. Not always the smartest. Oh, he was beautiful – the most famous warrior in our army. What he wanted was obvious.
So we sent all our slaves down the hill for water, and the Medes pushed some skirmishers around the pass. A handful of our men with a few dozen slaves chased them off with rocks and spears, and we settled to our cold rocks.
I remember that night because my body hurt. It's something that the bards never talk about, eh? The bruises you take in a fight – gods, the bruises you take in the gymnasium! Split knuckles, broken fingers, a rib bruised here, the black burn on your shoulder where your shield rim rides your shoulder bone, the cuts on your legs – Ares knows the toll. It is worst for the men in the front rank, and I had stood my ground in the agora of Sardis and now, three days later, I still hurt. My wound was slight, but it ached when I rolled on it, and I was lying on the ground – on sand and gravel. And we had few fires, because we were high in the pass and there were no trees.
The word was, we were going to die. I was too inexperienced to do anything about such talk.
Eualcidas came out of the dark with Aristides and Heraklides and a Euboean I did not know. My file was not asleep – we were huddled together in the dark, whispering, afraid of the morrow and trying not to show it, as soldiers always do.
Aristides had a little bronze lantern and he put it on the ground, and I swear that bit of light did more for our morale than all his talk.
Aristides was a serious man, and he spoke seriously. He explained that we were going to do a deed of arms, that men would never forget our actions to save the rest of the Greeks, and then he explained that as long as we held our ground, we were safe.
He was a good man, and my file was better just seeing his face and hearing his voice.
Eualcidas waited until he was finished and then he smiled his infectious smile. 'We'll kill us a load of Medes tomorrow,' he said. 'And then we'll slip away tomorrow night while they get ready for a big assault.' He looked around in the dim lamplight. 'I've faced the Medes before, boys. Thing to remember is that they all wear gold, so when we push forward over their dead, our back-rankers need to get their rings and brooches. And then everyone shares together.'
That's how you inspire troops. Dying for all of Greece may appeal to a handful of noble young men, but everyone likes the sound of a gold ring.
We were the junior file, just left of the centre of the Athenians, and we must have been the last group they needed to visit. Aristides slapped a back or two, gave my hand a squeeze and walked off into the darkness. He left his lamp – at the time, I thought that it was a tribute to how rich the man was, that a bronze lantern with a fancy bronze oil lamp inside could just be abandoned on a rock. I remember picking it up and looking at it carefully. Pater never made anything like it. It wasn't good work – I could do better – but the construction was crisp.
Eualcidas hadn't left. He was watching me look at the lamp.
I was young. I felt that his gaze held some censure, and I put the lamp down and shrugged. 'My father was a bronze-smith,' I said.
He nodded and lay back, stretching his legs. 'You're not Athenian. I can tell.'
I shook my head. I have to put in here that I was the only non-citizen among the Athenians, and they never held it against me, because while I had been a slave, the friendship between Plataea and Athens had hardened into something like love – or maybe it was forged in those three battles and somehow they'd managed not to fuck it up. But some of the older men would actually touch me for luck, because Plataea had brought Athens luck, or so they said.
So I shrugged. 'I'm from Plataea,' I said. 'But I've been a slave for a few years.'
He laughed easily, and the muscles in his throat were strong and golden like bronze. It was, for me, like talking to Achilles – he was that famous. 'How did a man like you end up a slave?' he asked.
'I didn't end up a slave,' I retorted. 'I ended up in the front rank yesterday.'
He nodded, smiled and said nothing, a talent few men possess.
'Your people enslaved me,' I said.
He frowned. 'I've been a war-leader for five years,' he said. 'I've never marched on Plataea. You came to us, once, with the Athenians. You beat us like a drum!' He laughed.
That got me. I had heard it elsewhere, of course, but always from men who might have had the story wrong.
'I was there,' he continued. 'Right opposite your Plataeans. I have a scorpion on my shield. Were you in the phalanx? You must have been young.'
I nodded, and there were suddenly tears in my eyes. 'My brother died fighting the Spartans,' I said, 'and I took his place in his armour.'
'He was brave?' Eualcidas asked.
'He was. And he died facing a Spartan, man to man.' I was weeping and the Euboean rolled over and put an arm around me. He didn't say anything. After a while he rolled back to where he'd been.
I was better. I hadn't really let myself think about it – my brother's death, and my father's, and now, in the dark with a battle looming, I was filled with a bitter, angry grief for both. They were in the ground and I was still here. It's an odd thing, honey – one I've seen often – that soldiers rarely mourn a comrade when he falls. Sometimes it takes years.
'My father fell fighting your phalanx,' I said quietly. 'I was behind him, and I stood over his body for a little.' I stopped, because it was a bitter memory – how I had been too weak to stand my ground, and how the rain of bronze and iron had beaten me to my knees and knocked me down.
I told it just like that. 'When I awoke, I was a slave,' I finished.
Eualcidas shook his head, and his teeth gleamed in the dark. 'You need to go to Delphi,' he said. 'You are god-touched, and you have been betrayed. No man of Euboea sold you as a slave. We ran. I ran,' he said, and he smiled that boy's smile. 'If you live long enough, you'll run, too. The day comes, and the moment, and life is sweet.'
I found that I was holding his hand. He had hard calluses on his palm.
I felt better. 'I don't think there's shame in running when everyone runs,' I said. I'm not sure that's really what I thought, but he was a great man, and suddenly he was looking for my comfort.
He smiled, and it wasn't his boy's smile. It was a very old smile indeed. 'Wait until you run,' he said. He shrugged. 'You're a good young man. I like you, but I have a feeling you won't come and share my blanket.'
I shook my head. 'Sorry, lord,' I said. I was, to be honest, tempted. He was kind. He was a killer of men, but something in him was basically good. And just sitting with him taught me – I don't know what, but maybe that what I was becoming could be greater than the sum of the corpses I left.
In many ways, Aristides and Miltiades were better men. They built to last, and they did things for their city that will live for ever. Aristides was a noble man in every way, and his mind went deep. And Miltiades was the best soldier I've ever known, except maybe his son.
But Eualcidas was a hero, a man from the age of gold. Almost like a god.
He kissed me. 'Let's be heroes tomorrow,' he said. And went off among the rocks, back to his own men. They tried us in the dawn, but we were cold, surly and awake, and the shower of thrown spears bounced off our shields and we chased them down the pass without trouble. My part of the line wasn't even engaged.
The slaves brought us some dried meat and some cheese, and I ate what I could get down and drank my share of water. My canteen was still full, and I kept it and my leather bag on under my shield, while most of the Athenians sent all their gear away with their slaves.
Late in the morning, I saw men on horseback round the bend and come forward, and I saw that it was Artaphernes, his right arm in a sling. We were standing in our ranks, and he rode quite close, but had the sense to stay a spear's cast away from us. Then he shook his head, made a quip to one of his aides and rode away.
It was perhaps an hour before they made their effort. We were bored, and nervous, and Aristides and Eualcidas kept walking along our front and talking – which made the boys nervous. You – the writer with the wax tablet – if you ever lead men to war, let me tell you something not to do. Don't have long conferences with your subordinates. Got that?
What an old bastard I am. My pardon, sir – you are a guest in my house. Have some more wine. And send some to me – talking of battle is thirsty work.
Do you know that most of what men say about war is a tissue of lies? All the girls know it – women get a distrust of male bragging in their mother's milk, eh? Hah, you aren't blushing now, my pretty. No – what I say is true. When the spears go down and the shields smack together, who in Tartarus remembers what happens? It all goes by in a blur of panic and desperation, and you are always one sword thrust from the dark, until you stand there breathing like the accordion bellows in my father's shop and someone tells you it is over.
What soldiers remember is the time before, and sometimes the time after. At the fight in the pass, I remember Cleon – my second-ranker – had to piss four times, even though he hadn't had enough water for two days. And Herk's best spear's head was loose, and he kept making it rattle in irritation – not that we could hear it, but the vibration annoyed him, and he kept at it the way a man will pick at a sore.
Heraklides – in the front rank on the right – had the finest horsehair plume of any men among the Athenians. He removed it, combed it out and remounted it, which was a nice way of showing his contempt for the Medes, and did a lot for the rest of us.
Then Eualcidas threw one of his spears. He didn't run or hop – he just stepped forward and threw with all his might, and, Ares, he was a hero. I had time to say something while it was in the air – I said, will you look at that?, or something equally inane while it cleft the heavens.
It struck point first, and then he ran along the front. 'Unless you bastards think you can out-throw me,' he said, 'no one throws a spear until the Medes are closer than that. No waste!'
We cheered him.
And then the Medes came. They knew their business. They poured around the corner of the pass – the bodyguard itself and then more Persians, their high hats and scale armour obvious, less than half a stade away. They halted and formed their front in a matter of instants, much faster than any of us had anticipated.
The first flight of arrows hit while we were still watching them in admiration. We were mostly veterans, and all our shields were off our insteps, up on our arms and held high. I doubt a man died in that first flight, but a few men took an arrow in the instep. Cleon had one ring his helmet and it dazed him, and all of us had shields moved by the weight of the arrows. Two arrows punched through the thin bronze on the face of my aspis, and the heavier one went right through the rim.
And that was just one volley.
The second volley came in and the third was in the air, and already men were losing their nerve. After the second volley there were screams, and I can't remember the next five or six, except that it was as if a big man was throwing stones at my shield. I took a graze along the outside of my left thigh and another arrow hit my left greave so hard that I almost fell – but the bronze held despite the mediocre work.
I turned and looked because Cleon's shield wasn't pressed against my back. He wasn't far away – an arm's length – but he was also looking back.
'Close up and get your fucking shields up!' I yelled, and then the next pair of volleys hit. More screams. Now we had men down, and other men pressing back.
Heedless of the arrows, Eualcidas ran across the front of the phalanx. 'Ten men to run with me!' he shouted.
I had no idea what they had planned, but if Eualcidas was leading it, I was going.
'Front rank!' I shouted at Cleon. I stepped out as the next arrow storm hit.
Aristides was no coward. He stepped right out from his place as the strategos. 'As soon as you rush them, we'll march!' he shouted.
Oddly, ten paces in front of the phalanx, only one arrow hit my shield. The Persians were lofting their arrows.
Now I understood what we were doing. And how suicidal it was.
Most of the men who stepped up were Euboeans. I think there were eight of them, and Eualcidas wasn't waiting for more.
'First man into the Medes will live for ever!' he said.
And we ran.
We ran as if we were running in the hoplitodromos, the race in armour. We ran right at their line – three hundred Persians, a front rank of spearmen with big shields, scalloped like Boeotian shields, and then eight more ranks of men with heavy bows and short swords. Cyrus would be there, and Pharnakes, if I hadn't put him down, and all the others I knew.
I thought all that in one step, as my sandal crunched the gravel.
I had about two hundred more strides to run, or die. We must have surprised them, and we surprised them again by being so fast. We were fast. When I think of that run, I remember what it was to be young – to be so stupid that I would dare to cross a field of Persian arrows alone, and to be so strong that it seemed a reasonable risk.
We set the Medes a quandary – shoot the runners, or shoot the phalanx? The phalanx came in behind us, and they were not slow. They began to sing the Paean, and it wasn't the best I've ever heard, but it was loud in the narrow confines of the pass.
Then you have to understand the Persian way. The front rank, as I say, is spearmen – sometimes the second rank as well. So all the archers have to shoot over the first two ranks, and that means that they lose the ability to pick off individual men. Master archers – the officers – decide how they will shoot. It is hard for them to detail a few men to shoot one target while the rest shoot another.
Not that I knew any of this. I just ran, and the only sound I could hear was my feet on the gravel. It was like running for a prize.
I ran fifty paces – perhaps more – before they began to shoot at me. It wasn't the storm from before, either – it was a steady impact of single shafts against my shield. Something stung my foot, and then I felt a blow like the kick of a mule against my shin, but again the greave held and still I ran forward.
And then the world cleared for me. It is hard to describe, really. I was running and then, as if my eyes had been closed, I was running like a god. I felt as if I was a god. I had been running with my aspis held in front, and high, which made me blind to everything but the ground under my feet. Now I let my shield go down a fraction, and I ran looking at the Medes.
And they were close.
I have so much to say about this that I will only bore you, thugater. Except that something changed, and it was as if I could see, having been blind. I could see that I was going to live. I could see that I was about to be a hero. Athena granted me this, I think, or my ancestor Heracles.
Twenty paces from their shield wall, I decided not to slow down.
It is worth saying that when men run at a shield wall, they slow as they close in the last three or four paces. They have to, or they risk being spitted in the knee or thigh by a cool hand. And most men correctly dread the moment when they crash into the enemy's shield. You are vulnerable, then. You could fall.
I didn't even slow. I lengthened my stride like a runner finishing a race, as if a garland or a crown of laurel waited for me.
An arrow rang off the front of my helmet so hard that I almost lost my balance. And then I smashed into their wall, and all the sight and sound and smell of it hit me at once.
I killed men.
No man killed me. I didn't know it at the time, but I was one of just two men to reach their wall. But we did reach it, and I was told afterwards that we knocked holes in their shield wall like a big iron awl punching bronze.
The phalanx was close behind us, and no arrows were falling on them. They roared, although I didn't hear it. I was in a world no bigger than the blood-soaked ground beneath my sandals and the limits of my helmet. I remember that blows fell on that helmet like Pater's hammer on his anvil, and more blows glanced off the scales on my back and slashed my outer thighs and my right arm, but I refused to stop. I remember that. I remember deciding that I would go all the way through them and see what happened then. I pushed and stomped and killed, and I have no memory of fighting the spearmen, but only of killing archers, hacking their faces and their bows and pushing forward, always forward, and the pain of the blows on my back and my helmet, and then, faster than I tell it, I was through. I was against the rock face of the pass, and I turned. Both my spears were gone – the gods know where – and I drew my sword, put my back to the rock and cut at every Persian who came forward.
They were brave. A dozen of them, rear-rankers, inexperienced men, pressed at me. They had neither shields nor spears, and they were not much, hand to hand, and they pressed me clumsily, and despite the ringing in my head, I killed them. Not all of them. Just enough to make the rest pause and doubt themselves.
Then there was pressure, the kind of pressure you get in a nightmare, and I was crushed against big rock, and the aspis pushed into my neck and thighs, and I cried out from the pain of it.
And then men were screaming my name, and it was over.
Eualcidas was the first to embrace me. He pushed his helmet back on his brow and he was shaking from head to foot and had an arrow clean through his helmet.
'By Ares,' he said. 'I knew you were beautiful!'
And in those five minutes, in the time that the water-clocks give a man to speak his mind in the assembly, I was no longer a man.
I became a hero.
Most of the other eight men who ran with us were dead or badly wounded. Only Eualcidas and I had made the enemy line. And we had hurt the Medes badly, killing fifteen and downing another twenty. We had captives.
I was so dazed that I was sick. I threw up on the rocks, and Heraklides held my hair. Then we went back down the pass to where we had started. The slaves buried our dead and we waited in the sun. I drank the water men gave me, and then I drained the water and wine in my canteen.
Eualcidas came by. 'If they come back, will you do it again?' he asked.
I grinned. 'Of course,' I said.
It was like madness, or the smell of fine wine, or that moment when a woman lets her peplos fall but before you can touch her.
You want to know what makes Achilles different from the other men among the noble Achaeans? Homer must have known some killers of men. He knew us. Because any man – any good man, and the world is full of them – can stand his ground one fine day. He sets his mind – or he is angry, or simply young. And he will stand his ground and kill, fighting his fears and his enemies together. We honour those men.
But the killers come alive when there is nothing left but that fear and the rush of spirit, when all of your life falls away and you are the edge of your sword and the point of your spear. The killers will fight every day, not one fine day. Eualcidas was serious. He knew we might have to run into the arrow storm again – and now that he had my measure, he wanted me to run with him.
And of course, I wanted to go.
No, that doesn't mean I wasn't afraid. I was terrified. But I had to feel that terror again – and again.
But they didn't come back, and an hour after dark, we marched away into the torch-lit darkness, down the rest of the pass and on to the plain.