of their companion, and again like sharks, now that one had his
teeth in us, the rest of them got bolder and came forward, and
before we’d repeled the first rush, there were more ships
coming in.
There was nothing we could do but fight. At sea and on land,
there comes a moment in a fight when there are no longer either
tactics or strategies. Al you can do is fight. They grappled to our
bow and to our stern and al down one side, and they came at us
– maybe sixty marines against our eight or ten – I can’t
remember who was stil standing – a vicious chaos of blood and
swords.
Philocrates stood in the bow with Idomeneus, and they
stopped a ship’s worth of marines by themselves. I only caught
glimpses – I didn’t have the luxury of commanding any longer,
and had to fight – but I saw Philocrates kil, and kil again, until
and had to fight – but I saw Philocrates kil, and kil again, until
the ship on the bow cut its grapples. But a chance-thrown javelin
caught him in the head – stunned him – and he died there, under
the great sword of an Aegyptian marine.
Phrynichus took an arrow in the arm, leading a dozen armed
oarsmen against the second ship, but he got up on the rail, his
blood flowing like water in a rainstorm, and he raised his poet’s
voice as if he was competing against Simonides or Aeschylus in
the games:
‘Sing me, Muses, the rage of Achilles!’
He sang, even as his blood flowed, and my sailors rose from
their benches with glory in their hearts.
Galas and Mal – unarmoured – folowed me with the
remnants of the sailors from the deck crew, and we didn’t wait
for the onslaught of the third Aegyptian. As soon as his grapples
came home, we were over the rails and into his benches, kiling.
We caught that ship by surprise – they must have thought us easy
pickings, and fifteen men with axes made short work of the
disorganized crew.
I cut their trierarch down with a single spear stroke where he
stood at the foot of his mainmast amidships – the mast was stil
stepped, and Poseidon alone knows why – and I stood there
breathing like a belows gone mad. For those of you who have
never fought in armour, children, you can only go a few hundred
heartbeats – the best man in the world, Achiles himself, could do
no more – before you have to rest. I loosened my chin strap,
drank in sweet breaths of sea air and looked about me.
drank in sweet breaths of sea air and looked about me.
Idomeneus stood alone for as long as a woman takes to birth
a child and held the bow, Philocrates’s corpse between his
wide-spread legs. Phrynichus was down, and his singing stiled,
but his sailors had swamped the second Aegyptian. We’d swept
the third like a desert wind.
But while we’d been fighting, three more had come for
Stephanos. And rather than abandon us and leave us to die to
save himself, he stood fast on our leeward side, and they
boarded him. As I watched, his spearmen cleared the fighting
deck on the boldest of the three, but the other two had extra
marines and they poured men into the centre of Trident.
Stephanos went into them with half a dozen of his marines, his
spear flashing as if he was Ares incarnate, the red horsehair of
his crest nodding high above the fight.
Six of them were trying to stop thirty or forty professional
fighters. I roared my ralying cry, and Mal stood up from where
he’d been looting a corpse, Galas tapped my breastplate to tel
me he was at my shoulder and together with a few more sailors
and a hand of oarsmen, we leaped back to our own ship,
sprinted the length of the deck and leaped again to rescue
Stephanos.
As my bare feet pounded along my own deck, I could see
nothing, not even with my helmet cocked back on my head. I
must have slowed to take fresh spears, because when I came on
to Stephanos’s deck, I had a pair in my hand.
I was first on to Stephanos’s deck, coming in behind the
enemy while they butchered Stephanos’s unarmoured oarsmen.
enemy while they butchered Stephanos’s unarmoured oarsmen.
my back came Black and Galas and the deck crew. We met the
new Aegyptians sword to sword and shield to shield. Mal died
there, along with most of my sailors, unarmoured men facing the
swords of Aegyptian marines. Further down the deck, it was
even worse. I saw Stephanos fal, run through the thigh, and I
saw his cousin, Harpagos, stand over him with a sailor’s axe,
and blood flew like ocean spray when he hit a man.
I was tired, and my cause was lost, and it was tempting to die
– but Stephanos’s loss filed me with an awful rage. And over
that rage, or under it, I knew that godlike effort was required, or
al my friends, al my men, would die. Those are the moments
that define you, friends. Oh, thugater, you would have been
proud of me that day. For it is not the sands of the palaestra that
show heroism, nor the fields of the games. Nor the moment of a
great victory. Any man worthy of his father’s name should be
able to stand his ground on a dry day with food in his bely and
armour on his back, fresh and strong. But at the tail end of
defeat, when the enemy close in like hyenas on the kil, when al
is lost but honour, when you are covered in bruises and smal
wounds whose pain tears at you with every blow, when al your
muscles ache and your breath comes in gasps like a pair of
broken belows in a forge – when your friends have falen and no
one wil sing your praises – who are you then? Those are the
moments in which you show the gods what your father made.
Galas went down when the marines of a fifth ship hit us. To
be honest, friends, I have no idea how many ships were around
be honest, friends, I have no idea how many ships were around
us by then. Eight? Ten? My ship’s deck was almost clear, but
Stephanos’s ship must have looked easier, and he had fifty
enemy fighters crowding the deck – I remember that his hul was
low in the water from the sheer weight of men on the decks, and
the ship has walowing, unbalanced, which made the fighting even
harder. At the moment when I gave myself over to Ares, an
Aegyptian officer had just stooped to take the gold amulet Mal
always wore.
Who was I then?
This is who I was.
I went at them down the gangway amidships, crowded with
men, and I remember with the clarity of youth. I had two spears
and my Boeotian shield, and I ran at them – about three steps.
I remember because the first Aegyptian had a raven on his
oval shield, leaning down to get the necklace, his eyes appaled
that one lone madman was charging him. And Mal – dying –
grabbed the man’s shield with both hands and puled it down.
That’s a hero.
I put my spear into the Aegyptian’s neck, just the tip, as
delicately as a cat, and withdrew it, leaped high in the air above
the pitching deck and threw over the faling corpse into the
second man. Their shields are heavy hide, but my throw had
Zeus behind it, and it penetrated his shield and his arm and I
took my second spear and kiled him, landing on his armoured
chest as he tried to seize a breath and feeling his ribs give under
my toes even as I rammed my spear underhand into the next
man, stepped off the dying man, set my legs on the wood of the
deck and pushed my shield.
The next man tried to step back but his mates wouldn’t let
him. I thrust my spear at his head and he ducked, stumbled, and
I caught the rim of his heavy hide shield with my spearhead and
pulled – then thrust into his undefended chest, and a flower of
bright blood grew over his white linen cuirass and his soul flew
out of his mouth. His corpse folded at my feet and I crouched
down, almost kneeling on the deck, and punched my spear into
the inside of the next man’s thigh, the best stroke there is for a
fighter, because there’s an artery there and a simple cut wil kil a
man. His eyes widened at the fountain of blood, and he fel,
fingers reaching for the wound, and I rose to my ful height,
braced against a sudden shift in the deck, and threw my
remaining spear over his reaching arms at the next man, right
over his shield, into the skul over his nose. I reached under my
arm and plucked out my sword, and a flying axe took the sixth
man where he was frozen, grey with fear as grim death reaped
his comrades like ripe barley on an autumn day.
I could stil see the crest on Harpagos’s helmet and I roared
like a beast – no war cry, but the below of Ares – and my foes
were sick with terror, because I brought them death and they
could not touch me. The next Aegyptian thrust at me with his
spear, but his blow was hesitant, the fearful attack of the
desperate man. What did Calchas say? Just this – when you face
the kiler of men, you lock shields and stand cautious. To run and
to attack are both sides of the same coin – fear.
to attack are both sides of the same coin – fear.
Black reached under my shield, caught the Aegyptian’s shaft
and puled him off balance and my sword cut him down, a simple
chop to the neck where his linen armour did not meet the
cheekpieces of his helmet.
The thranites began to gather their spears and their courage
and come up like the warriors grown from dragon’s teeth in
myth, so that the rowing benches sprouted fighters, and in ten
heartbeats, it was the Aegyptians who were beset. We took
heart, al of us, and we plucked their lives like grapes at harvest
time, and the deck under my feet flowed with their blood.
Thranites grabbed their ankles and knees and puled them down,
or thrust javelins up into their groins, and topside, my sword was
waiting for any undefended flesh, and every time an Aegyptian
set his feet, I would put my shield into his and push, and I never
met a man of Aegypt with the power in his legs to stop my rush.
And they died.
The last man to face me was brave, and he died like a hero,
covering the flight of his companions. He went shield to shield
with me, and held me, and twice his big sword bit into my shield,
the second blow cutting through the thick oak rim – but while his
sword was stuck in my shield, I put my sword into his throat. He
was a man. Thanks to Ares, his companions were not of his
measure, or I’d have died there.
We had cleared the deck. And as I came to the rail, I cut a
man’s fingers off where he grasped it. I was a horse-length from
the terrified men on one of the vessels grappled to Trident, and I
leaped on to the rail.
leaped on to the rail.
‘If you come to me, every one of you wil die,’ I roared.
The Aegyptians cut their grapples and poled off.
That, my thugater, is who I was in the hour of defeat.
Wine, here.
By the wil of the gods, or the temerity of men, the Aegyptians let
us go. My decks were red with blood, and empty – my deck
crew was dead, almost to a man – I had no officers but Black,
and my marines – both of them – sat in the scuppers, white with
fatigue – and watched their hands shake.
Al my best men were dead.
Al of my friends were dead, too. Nearchos, Epaphroditos,
Herakleides, Pelagius, Neoptolemus, Mal, Philocrates and two
dozen others I had known for years. Phrynichus and Galas lay in
their own blood on my deck.
We crawled away, like a wounded lion or a boar with the
spear in him.
But for whatever reason, the Aegyptians just let us go.
And it was not for nothing. As we crept – oh, for the rowing
of the morning – past the edge of the Aegyptian line, Chian ships
began to come up behind us. First a few, and then more – a
dozen. Two dozen. One of them was towing a prize, and I
laughed, and then I saw a Lesbian ship I knew, and I hailed him.
It was he who told me Epaphroditos was dead.
But we’d burst the bubble, and now the trapped rebels
boiled out of the trap as fast as they could. I have no idea who
survived, only that there were enough of them that the
survived, only that there were enough of them that the
Aegyptians simply drew off and let us al go together. We might
have had eighty ships, with a handful of Milesians mixed in. And
Dionysius of Phocaea. Men tel me he had cut deepest into the
enemy centre, al the way through, and put fire in an enemy ship
on their beach before the battle colapsed around him.
He waved and rowed past, and his men were raising their
boatsail. That wave was al the thanks we got, but it said enough.
Black crouched by my feet. I had the steering oars in my
trembling hands, and he was the only officer left, except
Idomeneus, who had ralied my rowers behind me as I fought
aboard Trident. He, too, was a hero. He was covered in
wounds, as was I, now that I stopped to assess. I had a bloody
gash inside my right thigh that should have kiled me – I’d never
felt it. It must have missed the vital artery by the thickness of a
thread, and I was able to see deep into my flesh.
‘What now, boss?’ Black asked.
I looked across the bay – ships turned turtle and ships afire,
the smel of smoke, the ocean littered with dead men, swimming
men and sharks.
‘We should run for Chios,’ I said. But Miltiades had lit a fire
in me to save something.
Harpagos brought Stephanos’s ship Trident alongside. He
told me that Stephanos was dead. I groaned aloud – I had
hoped he was merely wounded. It was the hardest blow of the
day.
I got up on the rail – how my thighs hurt! – and caled out to
him. ‘Miltiades is standing straight on for Samos,’ I said, pointing
to where Cimon, Aristides and Miltiades were raising their
boatsails.
‘I’m your man, not his,’ Harp
agos said. ‘Stephanos never left
you, lord. Nor wil we!’
I was stil grappling with the notion that solid, big, reliable
Stephanos was dead. My best man – my first friend as a free
man.
‘I’m making for the camp,’ I said. The decision came to me
as if from Athena, grey-eyed at my side. ‘I want my mainsail,
and my rowers are done in.’
Black nodded, and Idomeneus shrugged, and Harpagos fel
away and took station under my stern.
My rowers were done in, but I’l note that they landed like
champions. We got our ship ashore despite the wind, and
Harpagos landed Trident next to us in a camp almost devoid of
life.
Black shook his head over a cup of wine. ‘Boss, we’l just
die here.’
I shrugged. ‘Let’s save something,’ I said.
I don’t remember saying anything else. I fel on my sleeping
rug, and I didn’t move until Idomeneus awoke me.
Fil my cup, thugater. And leave me.
8
The day after a battle is always horrible. A sea battle hides the
worst – the stink and the visible horrors of the dead, and the
screams of the wounded. Not many wounded in a sea-fight.
By wounded, I mean those with a spear in the guts or a cut
so deep that only a physician can save them, or not save them,
as the gods would have it. Because after a fight like Lade, every
man has cuts, skinned knuckles, puled muscles. Every man who
has fought hand to hand on ships has smal wounds – a deep cut
on the arm, a burn, an arrow through the bicep. Some men have
two. The fighters – the hoplites, the marines, the heroes – have
al the little injuries that come with fighting in armour – the
abrasions, the bruises where your armour turned a blow, the
punctures where a scale was driven in through the leather. Add
to that the sheer fatigue, no matter how high your conditioning,
and you can see why a camp is silent after a battle. Tempers
and you can see why a camp is silent after a battle. Tempers
flare. Men curse each other.
I had never experienced so total a defeat as Lade. After the
battle at Ephesus, I was busy rescuing a corpse and such heroic
stuff. I missed the despair. Or perhaps I was too young.
Despair is a kiler, children. I’ve seen it in women whose
childbirth goes on too long, and I’ve seen it in sick men, but it is
worst in a beaten army. Men kil themselves. The poets don’t