That night, I asked Miltiades for permission to go home once the sailing season ended. Miltiades heard me out and nodded. He was a good overlord, and he had a reputation to protect. Besides, I had just put new laurels on his brow.
'Go with Hermes, lad. In fact, I'll see to it that Herk or Paramanos runs you home. Take a couple of men – you'll want to kill the bastard and not take any crap from neighbours.' He nodded. 'Anything you need, you ask. It's as much my fault as anyone's. I knew something was wrong – I didn't give it enough thought. When your father died, I mean.'
He shrugged. I knew what he meant – when the Plataeans helped Athens defeat the Eretrians, Miltiades was done with that part of his busy plotting, and he let his tools drop. That was the sort of man he was. But he was also enough of a gentleman to regret that he had allowed the tools to become damaged when he dropped them.
I spent the next few weeks making arrangements for my absence. I didn't tell Miltiades, but I wasn't sure that I would return.
I gave Herakleides one command and Stephanos the other.
Herakleides and his brothers were trusted men by then, and they showed no signs of running back to Aeolis. Both Nestor and Orestes were promising helmsmen, and they had the birth and military training to carry rank.
Stephanos did not. He wasn't an aristocrat, and he didn't have all the command skills that I had learned – nor the enormous, heroic and largely unearned reputation that I had acquired, which grew with every day and vastly exceeded the reality of my accomplishments, even though I was in love with it.
Reputation alone is enough to carry most men – but Stephanos was a fine seaman and a careful, considerate officer. He'd led the marines for a year and they worshipped him. I thought that he was ready.
Idomeneus informed me that he was coming with me. So was Hermogenes. 'You think I came all the way out here just to grab a pot of Persian silver?' Hermogenes asked. 'Pater sent me to find you so that you could restore order. Simonalkes is a bad farmer and a fool. But when he's dead, it will take time to rebuild.'
I found it comic that Hermogenes had spent three years looking for me so that he could get the farm in order.
Paramanos offered to take me home, all the way to Corinth if I wanted, but I had other plans. Plans I'd worked at for a long time.
Miltiades supported me as I moved captains. So Paramanos moved from Briseis to the newly rebuilt Ember, the ship we'd taken, still smoking from our attempt to burn her, during the boat raid. The smaller ship we'd taken was Raven's Wing, and Stephanos had her, and Herakleides took command of Briseis. I had Briseis stowed for a long voyage, and I gave him his own two brothers as officers – Nestor as the oar master and Orestes as the captain of marines. I spent money like water – I had plenty. And the rowers in that ship still owed me three months of service before wages were due.
I intended to sail that ship into Aristagoras's town at Myrcinus, in Thrace, and take Briseis – or give her the ship and go horseback, overland. It was a foolish plan, a boy's plan, but without it, the next weeks would have been worse. It is a fine example of fate, and how the gods work. Had I left all to chance, I would have died, and many others with me. But I planned carefully. My plans all failed, of course – but among the shards of my broken plans lay the makings of an escape.
The first rain of autumn came and went, and my intentions were set. I sent Briseis a message via the Thracian king, asking her to be ready. Miltiades cautioned me again – directly – against killing Aristagoras. I don't remember what I told him. Perhaps I lied outright. I thought myself tremendously clever. So did Miltiades. The hubris flowed thick and fast, that autumn.
The grain was sheaved in the fields along the Bosporus. The peasants had their harvest festivals, and the sun shone in an autumn that seemed more like summer – when Hymaees descended on the Troad with thirty ships and a thousand marines. The first we knew of his arrival was that our southernmost town was burned and all the inhabitants sold into slavery, and the refugees poured up the one bad road with tales of war and slaughter.
The next day we heard that Hymaees himself was in Caria with twenty thousand men, and the Carians were unable to make a stand. Just like that, the northern arm of the revolt was going down.
The Carians didn't give in without a battle, but we were too busy to help them. Miltiades ordered all the ships manned. We worked night and day to refurbish the two triremes taken in the night attack and with them we had ten hulls. On the first day of the new month, Miltiades led us to sea, down the Bosporus past the still smoking ruins of our town. He had no choice – if we didn't fight, Hymaees would plug the Bosporus like a cork in a bottle and take us, one town at a time. And no one would come to our aid. That's the price of being a pirate.
We sailed down the Bosporus in early morning, and the Phoenicians got their hulls in the water. Then they did the oddest thing. They formed a defensive circle. They outnumbered us, but they pulled all their sterns together, pulled in their oars like a seabird tucking in its wings, and waited for us.
I had never seen anything like it, but Miltiades had. He spat in the sea and leaped from his ship on to my Storm Cutter. 'Bastards,' he said. 'All they have to do is not lose.' He shook his head.
I nodded. 'Say the word, lord – say the word and I'll go at them.'
Miltiades slapped my armoured shoulder. 'I'll miss you when you leave me, Arimnestos. But there's no point.'
He went back to his own ship, and we spent a fruitless day circling them. Twice, Paramanos tried to lure one of them into an attack by passing so close that his oar tips almost brushed their beaks, but they weren't coming out.
We camped close to them, just four stades up the coast, and the next morning we went for them in the dawn by ship, but they were awake and ready. We threw javelins and they shot bows and I went ashore in the surf and cleared a space on the beach, killing two men in the surf, but Miltiades ordered me back to my boat. I took a pair of prisoners – Phoenicians, of course – and I gave them to Paramanos.
I still think Miltiades was wrong. We had the moral advantage – those Syrians were afraid of us. If we'd landed-
But he was the warlord and he saw it differently.
That night Paramanos called us all together. 'There are ships missing,' he said. 'The two boys that Arimnestos captured say that eight ships went north last week.'
Miltiades was incredulous. 'Eight more ships?' he asked.
'Where bound?' I asked.
Paramanos looked at me. 'Myrcinus, in Thrace,' he said. 'They went to get Aristagoras.'
I walked away, calling for my officers.
Miltiades chased me down. 'You are not going,' he said.
I ignored him.
'This is my fleet,' he said.
'I own two ships,' I said, 'perhaps three. I owe you nothing, lord. I was leaving anyway. And I am going to Myrcinus.'
He seemed to swell, and in the torchlight, his hair caught fire. He was like a titan come to life – larger than a mere man. 'I give the orders here,' he said.
'Not to me,' I said. 'I have your word.'
That took him aback, and he changed tack. 'There's nothing you can do, lad!' he said, his voice suddenly pleading. He was a good rhetorician. 'The town will already be on fire.'
'You don't know that. It rained two days last week. If the storm caught them on the coast, they would have lost days.'
'Give it up!' he said.
I walked away. My men – my trusted men, Lekthes and Idomeneus and Stephanos, Herakleides and Nestor and Orestes, and Hermogenes – got the rowers together and started loading Storm Cutter and Briseis and Raven's Wing.
But Heraklides, always the voice of reason, came up to me out of the dark and wouldn't let me act in anger. 'Miltiades has been a good lord to you, and you owe him better than this,' he said. And he was right, although at the time I growled at him.
Herk fed me a cup of wine, his arm around my shoulders. My men were standing around, waiting for my word, and there was some pushing and shoving at the edges between them and Miltiades' men.
'This won't end well,' Herk insisted. 'Listen to me, boy. I knew you when you were a new free man. A pais. You're a big man now, a captain, lord of five hundred rowers and marines. Every merchant in the Aegean pisses himself when your name is said aloud – but you are nothing without a base and a lord. And if we squabble with Miltiades, who will fight the Medes?'
'I am not nothing,' I said. But I knew that he was right. I couldn't keep a crew together by myself – unless I wanted to engage in pure piracy, bloody murder for profit. And I did not. Heraclitus was too strong in me, even then. In fact, what I liked least about Miltiades was his ceaseless search for profit.
I remember sitting there, on a damp rock just above the tide line, my feet in the sea-wrack, when I heard a raven – not a gull, but a raven, cawing in the dark, like Lord Apollo's voice speaking. I held up a hand to silence Herk and I listened, and then I got to my feet and walked off down the beach to where Paramanos and Miltiades were arguing. Herk followed at my heels, clearly afraid I was about to open the breach – but I was not. The god had given me the answer, and I thrust between Paramanos and Miltiades and shouted for them to listen. Their faces were backlit by the big fires we had burning at the sentry posts – we didn't want the Syrians to surprise us, either.
'We should all go,' I said.
That silenced them.
I almost remember what I said. I felt as if Lord Apollo stood at my side, whispering fine words, good arguments, into my ear. Or perhaps Heraclitus, his servant.
'Listen, lord. You think I am blinded by love – perhaps I am. But if the Mede is foolish enough to send eight ships away, we can catch them and destroy them. And then the balance is ours. It might make him hesitate. It will increase our power over the Phoenicians.' I paused. 'If we take those ships-'
Honeyed words, Homer calls them. No sooner were they out of my mouth than Paramanos was agreeing. Sometimes, there is a right answer – an answer that suits every man. It took us less time than it takes to heat a beaker of wine to convince our lord that we had a winning strategy, and then he grinned, drank wine and clasped my hand, and we were friends again, instead of rival pirates.
We left in complete darkness. That was the campaign where I learned the value of having all my men in high training – the value of making my rowers feel as elite as the hoplites felt. We left that beach like champions. We left our fires burning to deceive the enemy and we raced north under oars, and every man felt as if he was swept along on Nike's wings. We came on Myrcinus as the sun set on the third day. The lower town was afire and the Syrian ships were drawn up on the rocky beach south of the town.
Miltiades summoned me aboard his ship, and I leaped from my helmsman's rail to Paramanos's and then on to the Ajax, the black-hulled Athenian trireme that was Miltiades' pride. Cimon and Herk were already there. We never slowed – we were under sail, the wind under our sterns, and our sails must have looked like flowers of fire in the ruddy light.
Miltiades' face was lit as if from within. He was a foot taller than a mortal man, his hair glowed in the sunset as if he was an immortal and his words flowed thick and fast.
'Beach your ships as you find room,' he said. 'Get ashore, get their ships and sweep the beach clean. Paramanos, you and Arimnestos land your full compliment, every man on the beach. Form tight and get between us and the town.' He grinned. 'Once we own those hulls, this campaign is over. Their commander is a fool.'
'Or it is a trap,' his younger son said. He shrugged.
Cimon, the older son, shook his head. 'Don't be a stubborn ass, little brother. There's no trap because they shouldn't know we could even be here!'
Miltiades nodded his approval of his older son's thinking. 'Even if it is a trap,' he said, 'there's not much they can do to us if we keep our ships manned and only land our marines. You two can cover us on the beach – if we have to run, your crews are fast.' He laughed. 'Oh, I can feel the power of the gods, companions! We are about to burn the Great King's beard!'
We were five stades off the beach when I leaped back to Paramanos's ship. The Medes and the Syrians could see us coming, and men were running down from the burning town to form on the beach. Most of them were Greeks – I could see from their arms. In the centre was a knot of Persians, but their line wasn't long enough to cover the whole length of the beach, even two deep.
But there were other men – Thracians. Some of them came down from the town in clumps, like thick honey dripping from the comb. Others hung back.
The enemy commander had hired Thracians. It probably wasn't hard, because from all we heard, the locals detested Aristagoras as much as we did. I had never faced them, but I heard that they were titans, big, tough men with no fear of death. I always doubted such tales, but the men I could see in the red light of sunset had tattoos like black slashes on their faces and around their arms, and they held heavy swords and long spears.
'I'm going for the town as soon as we break their line,' I said to Paramanos. 'I know that you don't have to follow me.' I looked at him.
He shrugged. 'No,' he said. 'I don't.' He pointed at the Thracians – there were more of them every heartbeat. 'You think we can break that?'
We were three stades out from the beach. I got up on the rail where it rose to protect the helmsman and balanced there, waiting for the rise of the wave. 'Watch me,' I boasted, and jumped.
I landed on my own deck. 'Bow first!' I said. 'Marines aft! Empty the first ten benches forward and send all those men aft!' I waved at my deck master. 'Sails down! Then masts!'
The other ships were starting to turn, because they intended to beach stern first – a necessary precaution to prevent their ram-bows from digging so deep into the sand and gravel that the ship was damaged – or worse, could never be brought off.
I caught a stay and swung up on the rail. 'Stephanos!' I called. He was behind me in line, in the smaller Raven's Wing. I had to wait while he came forward – precious time, while my bow rowers ran back, dragging their cushions, unsure what they were supposed to do – while the deck crew swarmed over the masts, caught in the midst of arming, and the marines clustered by the helmsman's bench. Hermogenes was in full armour, and Idomeneus looked like a hero in a solid bronze thorax with silver work and a fine helmet with a towering crest shaped like a heron.
'My lord?' Stephanos called back.
'Into the port!' I said. 'Land your full crew and take the Thracians from behind! See?'
Indeed, the little port itself was covered by a mole. There were two ships moored to the mole, and no defenders – because the lower town had been lost, so there was no longer any point in holding the harbour. Before the lower walls fell, there had no doubt been a garrison on the mole. I had seen this and Miltiades had not. If Raven's Wing could get into the harbour, her marines would be behind the enemy line.
Stephanos turned away, already calling orders, and his ship turned, went to ramming speed and sprinted for the mole.
'On me!' I shouted, and ran forward as far as the amidships command station at the foot of the mast. 'Get that mast down!' I called to the deck crew – who looked like hoplites. Pirates are always better-armed than other men, with the pick of many dead men's gear to plunder, and I dare say that my sailors had better armour than the front rank of many a city.
The deck crew let the mast down on to the central gangplank, with all the marines and thirty rowers to speed things along.
We passed the other ships, who were all still turning or backing ashore. The smaller Ember was already halfway around.
I had just time to line up the marines and sailors and rowers behind me. They filled the central catwalk all the way aft to the helmsman, and filled the small deck around him, pushing the stern down in the water and raising the bronze-tipped bow. The weight of the mast and the sail helped, too. I pushed the men farther back, and again, pushing against them with my shield to pack them tight in the stern.
'When we beach,' I roared, 'every man follow me! We will form under the bow and cut our way up the beach! Our war cry is "Heracles!"' I looked aft and raised my spear, and my voice filled my chest like the sound of a god. 'Are you ready?' I shouted, and the oar master shouted 'Oars in! Brace!' and we struck.
Our bow went right up the beach. I was too far aft to see it, but I'm told that our ram actually broke their line, scattering men to the right and left.
'Follow me!' I called and raced forward between the oar benches, along the catwalk, over the bow, and I jumped without breaking stride into a clump of Ionian Greeks still shocked by the arrival of the ship.
They had no order, and I got my feet under me and my spear licked out and ripped the back of a man's knee behind his greave. Blood spurted, red as red in the dying sunlight, and then I looked at a second man, my eyes locking with his under the bronze brows of our helmets, and my spear shot out and caught another man – oldest trick in the world – caught him between his thorax and his helmet, ripping up his chest and plunging deep into his neck, stealing his life. He fell off the spear point and I reversed my spear, thrusting underarm with the butt-spike. I thrust deliberately into the aspis of a fourth man. He was trying to retreat – under my feet, the sand thumped as other men came off the Storm Cutter's bow. I knew that in a fight like that, I had to attack – attack and keep attacking until my arm failed me, because as soon as they recovered from the shock, they'd turn back into warriors and kill me.
My butt-spike stuck in the bronze face of his shield. I ripped it out and thrust again, knocking him back and off balance by attacking his shield. I could feel Idomeneus behind me, so I pushed forward, thrust into my opponent's shield and when the tip stuck I used it as a lever and prised his aspis to the right. Idomeneus killed him with a quick thrust over my shoulder.
All my marines were on the beach, and my deck crew was pouring in behind them, the shield wall forming, hardening the way bronze hardens when you pour the molten stuff on a slate floor to make a sheet, and even as the wall solidified we pressed forward up the beach.
The Ionian Greeks I had been fighting were in flight, and I risked a look – pushed my helmet back on my brow and looked left and right. To the left, the town burned, throwing an evil light on the beach. On the road from the town were two hundred or more Thracians. Their leader was inciting them to deeds of valour, or simply promising them loot – I didn't understand a word of his language, but I knew what that body language and those gestures meant.
The other ships were landing. Briseis was stern to stern with my Storm Cutter and Herakleides was sending his marines right down Storm Cutter, over the bow and onto the beach, leading his men himself. Oh, I loved him like a brother that hour.
To my right, the big knot of Persians and Phoenician marines was wheeling towards me, intent on pushing me off the beach before the other ships were ashore.
My men were like the runners in the fight at the pass. We were drawing all the enemy to us, while the other ships got their marines ashore. I knew the game. I roared defiance at them. I was Ares. I raised my spear over my head and told them they were all dead men, in Persian.
I had no intention of awaiting the onset of the enemy. If I waited, the Persians and the Thracians would hit me together – and each of them outnumbered me. On the other hand, my rowers were coming over the sides now, and every breath put three more men in the rear ranks.
'The Persians!' I shouted, and I ran forward a few paces and held my spear parallel to the enemy line. 'On me!'
We'd been together all summer. My crew knew what I wanted, and they were beside me in three long breaths, more than a hundred men. A ship's length to my right, I saw Herakleides' black horsetail and I knew his big aspis was locked into the line.
'Heracles!' I roared.
'HERACLES!' came the response like the thousand-fold voice of the god, and we were off up the beach. The Phoenicians had no bows, and the handful of Persian officers got off one volley – I know that I got an arrow in my shield – and then we were into them.
That was hard fighting, no quarter given, and the sun was set low enough that skill was replaced by luck. Twice I caught heavy blows on my sword arm – one bent my vambrace without cutting through into my arm and a second blow was the flat of an axe and not the blade, thank the gods, or my life would have spurted out of my arm. Even so, I dropped my spear and Idomeneus stepped past me while I fell on my knees. A blow that hard unmans you – I thought I was finished for a long heartbeat, then my eyes told me that my sword hand was intact, my arm ached but was not broken, and again the vambrace had held and saved my life.
But while I was on my knees, a Mede in a gold helmet and bronze aventail cut at my head with his short akinakes. His blow landed, and my ears rang. But Hermogenes stood by me, and he made clumsy parries with his spear over my shoulder.
When you are in a real fight, your world is a tunnel formed by the walls of your helmet and the width of the eye slits. I had no idea whether we were winning or losing, but even with my ears ringing and my arm afire, I knew that having their heroic captain on his knees in the sand was not going to help my men win their way up the beach.
I exploded to my feet, pushing with my Boeotian shield just as Hermogenes blocked another cut. I got the bronze spine in the Persian's face, trapped his sword arm high, dug my feet in the sand and pushed. He landed another blow, but it sheered my horsehair crest without connecting with my head, and I shook it off and pushed again. He tripped and fell. I punched him with the rim of my shield, the rim an extension of my fist. A Boeotian shield lacks the weight and authority of an aspis, but the rim is a weapon in a way that an aspis's rim can never be. I broke his nose with my first left-handed blow, broke his sword arm with the second and crushed his throat with the third as he tried to cover himself with his arms.
I had time to flex my numb hand once, and then I drew my sword from under my arm, fumbled it and dropped it. I remember looking at it lying in the sand and thinking – now I'm a dead man.
But the Phoenician marines gave ground, backed away from us ten paces and rallied. They were magnificent fighters, those men – they didn't lose heart, just backed off to give the Thracians time to take us in the flank. But their retreat showed them that all their officers were down, and that rattled them. I could see it in the movement of their shields in the fiery light.
Idomeneus was ahead of me, lithe limbs flashing. He harried their retreat and the best of my marines followed him, so that our taxis lost cohesion. The better men were willing to keep fighting; the others hung back, pleased to have beaten the Phoenicians and the Medes, and wanting a rest from terror. That's how it always is.
'Thracians!' one of my rowers shouted, just before he leaped from the ship's rail into the surf and ran to join us.
The Thracians were still hesitating, and their hesitation had already cost them the battle. But they might still wreck my men with their charge.
I could hear Miltiades calling his battle cry – 'AJAX!' – to my right, and I knew that the rest of our men would be coming ashore now, and in the time it took to beach a ship, the fight would be over. But there was plenty of time for things to go wrong.
I had to go forward.
'Stephanos is behind the Thracians!' I shouted. 'Follow me!' I stooped and picked up my sword – just about. I remember well how little grip I had. But a Greek cannot lead from the second rank. No one would follow such a warrior. So I pushed forward and bellowed 'Heracles!' like an angry bull, trying to get the daimon of combat to fill me and carry me up the beach.
Idomeneus was on his knees when I came up, using his big shield to cover his body against two Phoenician marines with axes. I ran full tilt over one man and his axe bit through my shield. The bronze plate over my left arm turned the blade and I hacked at him with my nerveless sword hand like any green ephebe who doesn't know how to hold a sword.
Sometimes, as Heraclitus says, when skill fails, passion must suffice.
Hermogenes took the second man. The man with the axe swung and for a long heartbeat I thought he was gone, but the shaft, not the blade, bit into his shield. Hermogenes had an aspis, and the tough face turned the shaft with a hollow boom and Hermogenes was on the man, stabbing wildly with his spear. What he lacked in accuracy he made up in ferocity.
Now that we had cleared the ground around Idomeneus struggled to his feet. We shamed the rest of our line forward. The Phoenicians might have rallied then – but they didn't. They hesitated for a moment – they were brave men, and they knew what the loss of their ships would mean. But they decided that retreat was the wiser option, and they went up the beach, still cohesive enough to drag their wounded and one of their leaders with them.
The sun had set and the only light was the red autumn sky and the fires of the town. The Thracians still outnumbered us, but they were retreating, flowing up the hillside like a herd of deer, and Stephanos was harrying them from the left, his best runners trying to outrun the Thracians to the crest of the long hill above the town.
I flexed my hand. Some feeling was returning.
At that point, Aristagoras elected to bring his men out of the citadel in a sortie. It was typical of the bastard – too late to help win the victory, too soon to come out in safety. His sortie caught the Thracians in the flank, though, and suddenly they had to turn or be eaten by the new threat and by Stephanos's crew nipping at their heels like a hunting pack.
I could see it all happening in the red light on the hillside above me. It was unreal – I have never seen such light again, red as blood – and I knew that Ares himself was watching us, that we were on his dance floor, and he would judge us.
I could see the swan on Aristagoras's helmet and I knew who he was. And thanks to the folds in the hill, I could see what neither he nor Stephanos could see – there was another contingent of Thracians behind a parallel crest.
And I was already tired.
Too bad. I wanted Aristagoras dead, and I would never have a better chance than now.
I've made all this seem to last a long time, but in truth, Miltiades' marines were still coming off his stern and some of our ships were just coming ashore – it had all happened that fast. But if you want to know what fatigue is, fight for your life for three or four hundred heartbeats, then run up a rocky hillside at dusk with a hundred men baying at your heels. My scale shirt felt as if it weighed as much as my body, and my helmet sat on my head like the weight of the world on Atlas's shoulders. Who am I to complain? Many of my rear-rankers had rowed all day.
Up we went, and the Thracians stood against us. I think they were shocked – appalled, even – that they were being charged. They weren't men who stood in a line to fight, they were wild tribesmen who killed with the ferocity of their charge. I think they stood only because they knew that their allies were in position to take us in the flank. But my men overlapped their flank, so that my own flank files were bound to push right up into their ambush. I didn't have to plan it that way – there was no other way it could happen. The hillside wasn't that wide, and its seaside edge was a cliff that rose above the beach.
Paramanos's men were pouring ashore from his ship, which was beached beside mine. Turning his ship hadn't taken long – yet in that time my crew had broken the Phoenicians, killed the Ionians and run up the hill, and now his men were eager to come up and get their share of the loot.
Thracians were famous for having gold.
My men slowed as we came up to the Thracians. I couldn't blame them – there is no such thing as a ferocious charge uphill, at least not on a hill that steep.
'Form tight!' I called, and the men pressed in.
Sorry, honey – I should explain. There's no phalanx in a fight like that. No order. We didn't form by rank and file on the beach, nor yet going up the hill. In a fight like that, you are a mob. But my mob had been together in fifty fights, and we didn't need a lot of orders. So when I roared 'Get tight', all the boys in the front rank crowded in on me, and all the rest pushed, and we made a shield wall in less time than it takes to tell it.
The Thracians threw spears and javelins with the whole weight of the hill behind them, and men fell. A spear came right through my torn Boeotian and the scale shirt turned the wicked point. Ares' hand had turned death aside – again.
The right end of my line was lapping over their shield wall and then extending further as Paramanos's men came up. I could hear his voice and his Cyrenian Greek as he ordered them into line.
'All together!' I sang. My voice held, steady and high. If you want an order to carry in a storm or on a battlefield, you sing.
My Boeotian shield was flapping in pieces. I used it to bat another javelin out of the air and the spine snapped.
'Shield!' I roared.
An oarsman behind me passed his forward and Hermogenes held it for me. I dropped the useless corpse of a shield off my arm and thrust my left hand into the leather porpax of the cheap aspis, and then I was ready.
'All together!' I called again.
'Heracles!' they called back. It wasn't the god's own roar of the first shout, but it was sufficient to get us forward, and we went up the rocky ground. Someone started the Paean, and our voices rose like sacred incense to Ares, and he must have smiled on us.
Thracians fight with ferocity, but they are not competitors in an athletic event, the way Greek warriors are, and they don't practise together, dancing the war dances and measuring the swing of their weapons. They stand too far apart to have a solid line, and their crescent-shaped shields are too small to use in a close fight, where men to the left and right – and men in the rear ranks – can all take a thrust at you when your tunnel-vision is turned on a single opponent.
They hit us hard with javelins as we started forward, though, and men fell. Gaps were opened in our wall and we weren't deep enough for those holes to close naturally. So the fight that resulted was sheer deadly chaos, and the carnage was grotesque. Skill in arms counted for little – it was too dark. But we had the burning town behind us, and they were above us, and we could see them much better than they could see us, and in that fight, a minute advantage of vision was sufficient.
And we sang. That's what I remember – the red light of the dying sun, and the Paean of Apollo.
It was no pushover. In the first contact, men fell like weeds cut by a housewife in the garden. I got three men so fast that when my borrowed spear fouled in the third, the first still hadn't given up his life and fallen on his face. I dropped my spear shaft and pulled my sword again. The marines who should have been either side of me were gone, and Idomeneus was in the front rank, and Herk, of all men, his scarlet plume nodding, pushed in beside me.
'Aren't you supposed to be on the beach?' I asked.
He laughed. 'Fuck that!' he shouted.
We all felt the impact as the Thracian charge struck Paramanos's end of the line. The Thracian sub-chief hadn't waited for Paramanos to come over the crest at him. He must have been wise enough to figure that we knew he was there.
I didn't see it, but I've heard the tale often enough. Paramanos went down – knocked from his feet by a barbarian – and Lekthes stood over his body until he rose. Lekthes died there, like a hero. He took three thrusts, but he didn't fall until Paramanos was back on his feet.
I didn't know it, but Lekthes' moment of heroism steadied the whole line.
Paramanos's men turned, unwilling to abandon their commander, and they stood where they might have broken. Even then, we felt the shock and our line bent back.
But Stephanos was on their other flank with Aristagoras and his sally, and the fortunes of the Thracians began to ebb like the tide from a salt flat when fishermen go into the surf to collect the catch. Their line disintegrated the way an old linen sail rips when the rope-edge is lashed to the mast and the wind begins to tear at a weakened corner, so that each gust rips a little more of the sail, and then the sail goes, faster and faster, the rip wider and the rate of the tear faster with every gust, and then with the noise of a thunderclap, the whole sail rips out of its harness of rope and flutters away into the storm. Just like that, the Thracian line tore asunder.
Towards the end, their centre gave way – or died. I began to kill men with every cut of my arm. My hand was growing better as I cut, and my opponents' eyes were elsewhere – looking up the hill and behind them, where Stephanos's men had climbed the ridge and now came back down on their left flank from above. Every cut and every thrust took another man down, and then none of them would stand against me. I killed twenty men, I think.
Yet even as they ran, they fought. Thracians are never more dangerous than when they run – men will turn and throw spears, and they can form again as soon as they think you have lost your order. And my rowers had no stomach to follow them – nor could I blame them.
So we pushed left, trapping their left wing in a pocket formed of the three forces – the sally from the town, Stephanos's marines and my own left wing. My right separated from me, going up the hill with Paramanos, so that Herk and Idomeneus were the end men of our part of the line.
I couldn't see whether the Thracians were rallying in the trees beyond the crest or not.
One of their chieftains commanded their left, and he must have known that the end was on him. A handful of his men threw themselves at us – there were three of them, and there was still a gap between Herk and Stephanos as he came down the hill to close the circle. But I put my cheap shield into the face of one and knocked him flat, and his falling fouled the other two, then we put them down in less time than it takes to tell it, Herk thrusting hard past my shield with his spear and Hermogenes giving me a rap on the helmet in his haste to kill the third one over my shoulder.
It was clear to all that the Thracians were going to die. The chieftain had a scale shirt, a double-bitted hunting axe and a tall helmet of scales crowned with a boar's head in gold. He was bellowing challenges, but neither Stephanos nor Aristagoras intended that we would fight him man to man, and the circle tightened.
I had other plans. I ran at him – two paces, all the space that the dying melee allowed. His axe went up and I gave him the edge of my aspis and he split it, gashing my shoulder so that I saw white. But I had his axe trapped in my shield, and my good sword thrust into his face as if of its own accord. I stabbed him twice, but I think he was dead after the first.
And then I was helmet to helmet with Aristagoras. He was trying to claim my kill, and he cut at me, probably because his vision was blurred and it was dark – or because he knew me and hated me.
Now, I keep promising that I will be honest. I want to tell you that we duelled at the edge of the dark, me the hero and he the villain. But, in fact, I had lost the crest of my helm and had a rower's shield, and unless he knew me by my scale shirt, he had no idea who I was. But by the gods, I knew him. The last of the Thracians were dying noisily, and I had him all to myself.
I was a little above him on the hill and I had my shield fouled by the dead chieftain's axe. It was split and my shoulder was gushing blood, and I couldn't spin fully to face Aristagoras. So I rotated on my rear foot, pulling my left arm clear of the porpax as I spun and taking a second blow from Aristagoras on the reinforced shoulder of my scale thorax as I turned, so that I just managed to keep my footing.
Aristagoras thrust at me a third time, and his blade slid off my scales and down my thighs, cutting me. But I paid no heed. Instead, I completed my rotation, clear at last of the wreck of my shield – the gods must have decreed that shields would be my bane that day – and I cut at him, a long overhand blow that caught him behind the shield because I had spun so fast. I sheared through his swan and my blade rang on his helmet. I powered my right foot forward and lifted my blade with my right arm, catching it under the rim of the cheekpiece of his helmet and cutting into his throat – an ugly blow, no skill to it, but I had my blade inside his shield and I wasn't going to let him go.
I saw his eyes then, and he knew he was a dead man. He would have run, but I'd cut the artery in the neck. He wasn't dead, but he let his limbs go loose – a final cowardice. He might have cut me one more time, but he gave up.
I like to think he knew it was me. But I don't know that for certain.
My sword glanced off his neck guard, where the yoke of his corslet rose to cover his back, and I lifted it high in the 'Harmodius Blow', an overhand back cut with the legs reversed and the whole weight of a man's body and hips behind it, and I cut his head right off his body – no easy feat with a short sword. Try it the next time you sacrifice a calf.
The stump of his neck jetted blood like a newborn volcano, and he fell.
I won't lie. It was a sweet moment.
Herk caught my wounded left shoulder, and the pain brought me to my senses. 'Well done, lad!' he said. 'Now get out of here, before one of his men fingers you for it.'
The fighting was fading away. It was the ugly part of a fight – when the brave men find how bad their wounds are, and the cowards push forward and bloody their weapons on dead and wounded men, as if anyone can be fooled by such stuff. I had a dozen cuts, and my arms were both hurt.
Hermogenes had to prise the vambrace off my arm. It was twisted, the cut that had numbed my arm had deformed the surface, and he had to deform the metal to get it off me, putting the flat of his eating knife against my skin and using it like a crowbar. But my right hand and arm felt better immediately.
My left arm wasn't so easily fixed. I had four different cuts, and Hermogenes pulled his old chiton out of his pack, ripped it in four pieces and used one of them to wrap my arm. 'This is no life for a man,' he said, out of nowhere. 'Your friend Lekthes is dead.'
That was the first I'd heard, although I've already told you the manner of his passing.
Idomeneus had as many cuts as I had, and a deep gash on the outside of his thigh that wrapped around his hip and on to his buttock. You could see white at the bottom of the wound, where the deep fat was.
'That's not good,' Idomeneus said, looking at his hip, and fainted.
Hermogenes shook his head. 'This is no life for a man,' he repeated. 'Look at yourselves. And this for gold? Who needs fucking gold?' He laid out his leather bag, lit a lamp – he was a monster of efficiency, our Hermogenes, even then – and wrapped Idomeneus, even stitching his arse, which woke the poor bastard. He woke with a scream, but by then Herakleides and Nestor had his arms and he fainted again.
Herk came back with Agios and a wineskin, attracted by the lamp. There was no breeze, and the wounded were calling for water, and the night things were coming.
He handed me a cup of wine, but Hermogenes intercepted it and drank it. Fair enough – he was the one doing all the work.
'Still Thracians in the town,' Herk said. 'Miltiades is anxious to get off.'
Paramanos came up with Stephanos. Paramanos had a bandage around his head, and he sighed and pushed the wineskin away. 'One drink and I'll be out,' he said. 'I owe Lekthes' widow,' he said. 'He traded his life for mine.'
'He was a good man,' I said. The wine cup had come to me, and I poured a libation to his shade. 'Apollo light him to Elysium.'
'Aye, he went down like Achilles,' Herk said.
I handed the cup back to Hermogenes. 'I'm going for the town,' I said. Stephanos stepped forward and I shook my head. 'You gather up the wounded,' I said to him. 'Make sure men go aboard the right ships. Herakleides – I'll bring Briseis to her namesake. Be ready.'
I embraced them all, one by one. 'I don't know if I'll be back,' I said.
They all embraced me again, and then I headed downhill, to the sally port from which Aristagoras had come. Paramanos came with me. When I turned to look at him in the moonlight, his eyes sparkled. 'You need a keeper,' he said.
A party of Aristagoras's men was carrying his body through the gate. A young man had his shield over his shoulder. We followed them.
If there were Thracians, we didn't see them, although we could hear screams and occasional sounds of fighting from lower in the town. We followed the body up two narrow alleys and a long staircase set into an outer wall, and then we were at a torch-lit gate. It was a small place, compared with Kallipolis. There were two sentries, and they were too young and raw to have gone with the sortie.
I don't know what I expected, honey. I think that I thought that she would throw herself into my arms and weep. It wasn't that way at all, of course.
The hall was small, and she was waiting to receive the body. Her handmaidens were around her, and they took his body – the man I'd beheaded an hour before – and they washed it. She caught my eye and started. She raised an eyebrow – that was all the greeting I got – and then went back to her task. Her role. Like a priestess, she had her part to play, and she played it well.
An old woman sewed the head back on. While that happened, I stepped up next to Briseis. She bowed.
'Lord Arimnestos,' she said. 'We are honoured.'
She bowed to me – imagine, Briseis the untouchable bowing to Doru the slave. It was all like a dream.
'I am a poor hostess,' she said, and led the way out of the hall, on to a balcony over the sea.
I still expected an embrace.
'I killed him,' I said quietly, and I think I smiled.
She nodded. 'I know that,' she said. 'And I thank you. Now – go. You should not be here.'
'But-' I couldn't believe it. She was pregnant again, I could tell – about three months. But her beauty was unchanged, and her power over me. 'But I came – to rescue you.'
Such things, once said, sound very weak indeed.
'Why do you think I need rescuing?' she asked. Then she laughed. She stood on tiptoe and kissed me. He tongue darted in and out of my mouth, and then she stepped back and licked her lips. 'Blood in your mouth and all over you,' she said and she smiled. 'Achilles. Now be gone, before people talk. I'm a widow and my reputation will matter.'
'I don't care,' I said. 'I'm your next husband.'
Then she looked – hurt. Not proud, and not angry, and not sad, but as if some deep pain had touched her. She reached out and touched my bloody right hand. 'No, my love,' she said. 'I will not marry you.' She shook her head. 'I have children to protect – beautiful children. And where would we go?'
I felt as if the Persian's axe had got me. 'I want to take you home,' I said.
'To Ephesus?' she asked.
'To Plataea,' I said. 'To my farm.'
She smiled then, and I knew that my dreams were foolish. The gods must have laughed at me all autumn.
'Listen, my love,' she said gently. 'I am not called Helen by other men for nothing. It is not my fate to be a farm-wife in Boeotia, wherever that may be.' Her smile became bitter – the bitterness of self-knowledge. 'That is not my fate. Nor would I want it. I will be the lady of a great lord.' Her hand remained on mine. 'I love you, but you are a killer. A pirate. A thief of lives.'
'You seem to need me from time to time,' I said, and my bitterness was too close to the surface.
She looked past me, into the room where her husband's body was being washed. She had things that she needed to be doing, she said with her eyes. 'Be glorious, so that I may hear of you often, Achilles,' she said softly.
'Come with me,' I pleaded.
She shook her head.
Well, I had my pride, too – and that was my foolishness. When Archi walked away from me, I should have wrestled him to the ground, and when Briseis chose another life, I should have put her over my shoulder and taken her. We'd both have been happier.
But I was proud.
'In the harbour, there will be a ship in ten days,' I said. 'Unless Poseidon takes him. His name is your name, and he is your ship. I took him from Diomedes of Ephesus. The rowers are yours until the end of autumn.'
Then she threw her arms around my neck. 'Oh, thank you!' she said. 'Now I am truly free.'
I turned to leave – but then it struck me. 'You will marry Miltiades!' I said, and there was death in my tone.
Her lip curled in disgust. 'You are worth ten of him,' she said. 'And if it were my fate to be a pirate queen, I would be yours.'
'Who then?' I asked. 'I could protect your children.'
'And make them tyrants of Miletus?' she asked. 'Lords of Ephesus?' She came and put her arms around my neck, and I had no hatred for her in my body. 'Go! Let me hear of you in songs of praise, and perhaps we will meet again.'
We kissed. It cannot have helped her reputation much, since every woman in that hall could see us, but it did me a world of good. That kiss had to hold me for many years. Part VI Justice Citizens must fight to defend the law as if fighting to hold the city wall. Heraclitus, fr. 44
For gods on the one hand, all things are beautiful, good, and just; but men, on the other, suppose some things to be just and others to be unjust. Heraclitus, fr. 102