wal stairs, and the right files up the right wal stairs.
Understand?’
We stil had a minute. I grabbed the rightmost and leftmost
men. ‘Folow me!’ I caled, and I took them in the gate. ‘You go
men. ‘Folow me!’ I caled, and I took them in the gate. ‘You go
that way – single file, like forming or unforming the Pyrrhiche.’
He didn’t understand, but another man did, and I pushed the
first man into the third rank. ‘Sorry, lad. I need a thinker. You –
can you live long enough to get them up these stairs?’
The new phylarch shrugged.
‘Here they come!’ the men at the gate caled.
I got back there with my two appointed phylarchs. We had
time to take our places – me in the centre of the line, they at
either end. We were seven men to a rank, three ranks deep.
‘Listen up,’ I said. ‘We take their charge, and hold. On my
word, we give ground to the edge of the courtyard – and then
charge. Can you do it? No shirking – al together.’
And then they came at us. It was the bodyguard. Cyrus led
from in front, and I knew him as soon as he came up the steps,
and he knew me, as I heard it later, from my shouted commands.
These were the best of Artaphernes’ men, picked
swordsmen, nobles al, and men of discipline. They came into us
together, and our line gave a step, and then we were fighting.
Cyrus didn’t come against me – by luck or the wil of the
gods. He had a big wicker shield, and he pushed it into the man
next to me.
I didn’t await the onset of my man. I threw a spear – low –
and took my man in the ankle, and down he went, and I went
forward into the space, right past Cyrus. I had my second spear,
and my shield was better than theirs. My second spear – like my
old deer-kiler – had a wicked tapered point like a needle, and I
old deer-kiler – had a wicked tapered point like a needle, and I
used it ruthlessly in the firelit dark, ramming it through wicker
shields into their shield arms. I don’t know how many men I
wounded that way, but it was more than three, and then I
stepped back into my place in the ranks, leaving a holow behind
me.
‘Break!’ I caled, and we turned like a school of fish
threatened by a dolphin and fled, just ten steps in the tunnel, and
I turned. ‘Stand!’ I said, and the Milesians turned and stood like
heroes. ‘Charge!’ I caled, and we went at the startled Persians.
We had men down, and so did they, and the footing was
treacherous, and on balance, it was foolish of me to charge like
that, but foolish things are unexpected things, and we crashed
into them and pushed them right off the platform of the steps, so
that one of my file-leaders took an arrow in the side – we’d
over-charged, and we were in the open.
‘Back!’ I caled. We shuffled back as a storm of arrows fel
on the portico. I tripped – a man grabbed at my leg, and I was
looking into Cyrus’s helmet. My sword point stopped a finger’s
width from his eye.
‘Doru,’ he said. He managed a smile, although I was about to
slay him.
I stepped over him. ‘Can you walk?’ I asked, and he
managed to get to one knee. Another wounded guardsman rose,
holding his left arm – where I’d put a spear into it, no doubt.
‘Let them go,’ I told my men. Apollo, witless lying god,
witness my mercy.
Six Persians shuffled away. They didn’t meet our eyes. But
Six Persians shuffled away. They didn’t meet our eyes. But
they lived, and they had fought wel. As my hero Eualcidas of
Eretria told me once, everyone runs sometime.
I could hear argument in the darkness.
Istes came up beside me.
‘We’re out,’ he said. ‘Al but ten archers up on the wals with
al our remaining arrows.’
‘No time like the present,’ I said. ‘By files, to the right and
left, retire!’
Istes laughed. ‘You Dorians have orders for everything,’ he
said.
We backed up the tunnel, and then they came at us.
Greeks. In armour.
They came fast, hard and silent, and the man who led them
had a great scorpion on his shield. He put my right file-leader
the line couldn’t raly because the end men were retreating up the
stairs.
Suddenly, our orderly flight was chaos.
Istes went forward into the fight, and al I could do was go
with him. For ten heartbeats – maybe twice that – the two of us
held ten armoured men.
Istes kiled a man in that time. He was that good.
I didn’t. I was facing three men, and one of them was the
man with the scorpion on his shield. It was Archilogos.
It was bound to happen sometime.
I had sworn to save him and his family, before al the gods, at
I had sworn to save him and his family, before al the gods, at
the shrine of Artemis. And he was one of the best fighters in the
Greek world. We had the same training. We’d been in the same
battles.
The gods send us these chalenges to see what we’re made
of, I think.
The last thing I wanted Archilogos to know was that he was
immune to my blade. I rammed my shield into his and made him
stumble, and then I thrust at each of his two companions, fast as
a cat, and then I jumped back.
Istes, as I said, kiled his man.
He felt me back away, and he backed, and then we backed
together.
Archilogos shouted for his men to get around me. ‘They’re
abandoning the gate!’ he roared.
As the leftmost man sprang forward, I threw my second
spear and caught him in the outstretched leg, and down he went.
I was out of spears, but I felt the right-hand stairs to the wal
under my right heel.
Archilogos came for me again, and I backed up a step and
then another, and then he cut at my feet – remember, I had boots
on, not greaves, because of my wounds. I got my shield in late –
too late – and he got a piece of my leg, his blade slicing through
my boot, through my bandages, to lay a line of icy fire across my
calf.
But my shield rim caught his helmet as he leaned into the
blow, and staggered him, and he fel.
blow, and staggered him, and he fel.
Another man leaped into his place, and I backed another step
and my heart fel to see the amount of blood I’d already lost. The
step I abandoned glittered in the light of the doomed city.
I backed again, and the new man cut at my legs. I had no
qualms about kiling this Ephesian, and I parried his blow with
my sword and turned my xiphos over his blade and cut his
throat – a nasty move learned in close-quarter fighting. Not very
sporting. But I thought I was dying.
Put yourself in my place. I had lost everything – friends, lover,
ship. The rescue of the Milesians would make my name for ever,
I thought. And if I died here – what more could I
want? A sad
end, but a great song. I could trust Phrynichus, if he survived his
wound, to write of it.
When I took that wound, I thought I was done. It was too
damned far to the ships, and I was losing blood like a dying man.
But nor am I a quitter. I kiled the man with my xiphos and I
got up another step.
Idomeneus leaned past me with a spear and put it through the
next comer’s faceplate, and I was up another step.
Teucer shot the next man, and he fel back, an arrow in his
upper thigh, and he swept the steps clean for a hundred
heartbeats. Then Idomeneus got a hand under my arm and I was
up on the wal.
It is good to have companions.
‘I’m finished, friends,’ I said.
Idomeneus picked me up bodily.
‘Like fuck you are,’ he said.
Our wal was empty. Teucer was the last man behind us. He
shot, ran to us, turned and shot again. No man of the Ephesians
– even wearing ful armour – wanted to be the first to put his
head above the parapet.
‘Can you stand?’ Idomeneus asked. He could see something
I couldn’t.
‘No,’ I responded. The world was going dark on me.
He stood me up anyway. I sank to one knee.
Teucer cried, ‘No!’ and shot, right over my head.
The wal had a crenelated parapet on the city side, but on the
courtyard side, just a low wal to keep foolish or drunken
sentries from faling to their deaths on the flagstones benath. The
stairs were recessed into the wal. We couldn’t see the enemy on
our steps, but I could see – even as the curtain came down over
my eyes – the line of armoured men racing up the far steps, and
Istes, alone on the wal, taking them. I have never seen anyone
fight as wel, unless perhaps it was Sophanes, but that was later,
and Sophanes wasn’t fighting in the last moments of a losing
battle, doomed, against overwhelming odds. Istes threw them
from the wal, he stabbed them, he baffled with his shield, his
cloak, his sword, and they died.
But he was flagging. I could see it. And he’d sent his men
away – they al said as much later.
In fact, Istes never intended to reach the ships. I saw him
there, burning with godlike power on the wal, fighting so wel
that he seemed to glow with his own light. He had ful bronze –
that he seemed to glow with his own light. He had ful bronze –
cuirass, helmet, greaves, thigh guards, arm guards, shoulder
cups, shield face – and his armour caught the fire of his city as it
died, and rendered it a golden sun atop its last defended wal.
Teucer had three arrows left and he used them al for his lord
– three more Ephesians sent to Hades.
Then Idomeneus was there, having put me down to run al the
way around the wal to Istes. Idomeneus threw his spear over
Istes’ shoulder, and then tapped his shoulder – but Istes shook
his head and went shield to shield with a big man. Behind that
man was the Scorpion. Archilogos had shaken off my blow.
I dragged myself, one step at a time, paraleling Istes’ retreat.
Helmeted heads began to peek above our stairs. On the far wal,
the man behind Archilogos fel with an arrow in his side.
Teucer cursed. ‘That was my last arrow, lord.’
I managed a laugh. ‘Might have been better if you hadn’t told
them,’ I said.
There was a great black puddle under me. I got to my feet
anyway.
On the opposite wal, Archilogos, my boyhood friend, faced
Istes, the best sword in the world. Istes glowed gold.
‘Miletus!’ he roared.
Archilogos took his sword cut on his aspis and pushed
forward with it, and Istes stumbled back and Archi cut up under
the shield with his sword – once, twice, as fast as a hawk
stooping – and Istes stumbled back, and I could see his shield
arm was wounded.
Now Istes had fought al day. And he knew he would die.
Now Istes had fought al day. And he knew he would die.
But Archilogos showed himself to be a master. He gave the
golden man no respite, and cut again – a heavy blow to the
helmet.
He got Istes’ shield in the face, though, and he went back,
and Istes backed a step. Idomeneus tapped him again, and he
said something. Later he told me that he begged Istes to live.
Istes didn’t reply, except to charge Archilogos. He had his arms
out, and he ran like a man finishing a race, and he swept my
childhood friend and slave-master off the wal in his arms, and
they fel together to the courtyard, and as he fel he roared
‘Miletus’ one more time, and then he was gone, and his armour
rang as he hit the flagstones.
Teucer had got me to the ropes over the wal by then. I must
have been lighter by the weight of al my blood, but I remember
stepping on a spear that one of the men had dropped to slide
more easily to the ships.
‘Go,’ I said to Teucer.
He shook his head.
‘Go, you fool,’ I said.
He let go of my shoulder, grabbed the rope and slid off
towards the deck of Black Raven.
I was the last man on the wals of Miletus – the last free
Greek. I had no intention of leaving. The spear came to me as a
sign, or so I thought. And Istes was dead. And Archilogos was
dead.
So I had no reason not to be dead, too.
I had the strength to raise the spear over my head, and I set
I had the strength to raise the spear over my head, and I set
my shield, and waited for the rush. I could hear their feet on the
wals, and I couldn’t see very wel, but I knew they were
coming.
One Ephesian came out of the dark and his aspis hit my
Boeotian, shield to shield, and mine broke like a child’s toy. The
blows from the Aegyptian must have weakened it.
But even blind with blood loss, I got my spear into his face,
and he went down, cursing.
I stepped back and caught a breath. I was stil alive.
I can only tel this as I saw it, honey. What I wil say is what I
saw.
Helen came to me on the wal – or Aphrodite, or perhaps
Briseis. I like to think it was Briseis. Her hair was unbound, and
her skin glowed like a goddess.
‘This is not your fate, love,’ she said. And she was gone.
That’s what I saw.
So I threw the spear as hard as I could, right along the
parapet. I stumbled backwards, my fingers reaching for the rope,
almost blind. I found it even as a blow rang off the scale shirt on
my back – a spear-thrust on the heavy yoke over the shoulders.
I fel, my hands holding the rope, and my feet dropped free of
the wal, and I slid down the rope. My palms burned, but I
wouldn’t let go.
I’m told I hit the mast quite hard. I was already pretty far
gone, and I fel to the deck as if dead, al my sinews cut. But my
armour did its job, and the wool stuffed in my helmet.
armour did its job, and the wool stuffed in my helmet.
I remember the men crowding around me
. I remember hands
on my leg, and fire.
I have never run the stade since.
The women wept and keened, and men as wel, as the oarsmen
puled us away into the dark. I lay cushioned in blood loss, far
away and yet able to think clearly enough, and Black Raven
unfolded his wings and swept us out to sea. The Phoenicians and
the Cilicians and the Aegyptians never saw us, or thought we
weren’t worth their trouble, or simply let us go. We saved
Teucer and a hundred other soldiers, five gentlemen of property,
and another hundred women and children. Four thousand died
and forty thousand were sold into slavery.
And that was just the start.
We made Chios in three days – three desperate days, when
Harpagos, Idomeneus and Black did the work of keeping us
alive while my body made the hard choices between life and
death. I missed the moment when Idomeneus made a speech –
he ordered the treasure thrown over the side, and he told them
that the babes of the Milesians would be their treasure, and
asked them to count the weight of the silver and tel him which
was the most valuable, and they cheered as they threw it over. I
missed that, although it is al part of the story.
The Milesians pitched in and rowed, and we shared what
food we had, and everyone who had lived to flee the wals of
Miletus lived to see the beaches of Chios.
Miletus lived to see the beaches of Chios.
The next thing I remember was Melaina weeping. There was
a pyre for Stephanos, and another for Philocrates, and
Phrynichus wept as he said their elegies. Alcaeus of Miletus –
one of the gentlemen we’d rescued – organized funeral games.
Melaina cared for me, cleaning my wounds, bathing me,
cleaning away the wastes of my body. My fever broke in the
second week, and by the third week I could walk. Summer was
almost over.
‘The Persians wil come,’ I said. ‘Come with me. I owe you
– and your brother’s shade – that much.’
She shrugged. ‘I’l stay anyway,’ she said. ‘I’m a fisherman’s
daughter. I don’t like the change. And my father is here, and my
sisters, and al the children. Can you move the whole of Chios?’
Another week, while my body healed. Black was restless, eager
to get to sea. Suddenly, there were Cilician pirates everywhere,
and down the coast, a vilage burned.
Finaly, I set a sailing date. The evenings were brisk, and the