‘Form up,’ I shouted. ‘Get in your ranks. Form up, form at
normal order.’
The ground down to the stream was a single hayfield, and on
the far side, another the same. Not for nothing do foreigners cal
Boeotia the Dance Floor of Ares. Flat ground, perfect for war.
Men and boys came down the road. They were strung out
over several stades, and while my little phalanx formed, the
enemy scrambled up the banks of the stream to safety on
Theban territory. In my heart, I wanted to run down and kil
them al – myself, if I had to.
There was more at stake, though. More even than my own
revenge, although the image of Euphoria’s death – rape, torment,
horror – came before me every time I paused or thought about
anything but the task at hand.
My child. She was carrying my child. If this raid came from
Simon, how he would enjoy slaying my unborn child.
The mind is a dark place, friends.
I held the line in my head, though. I gathered my men, formed
them in ranks and then, and only then, did I take them down the
hil.
The enemy now stood in neat ranks on the far side of the
stream. They weren’t even trying to make more ground.
They were good fighters. I could see by how quiet they were,
how little shifting there was in their ranks. Of course they were
tired, and they had lost men – and lost their bodies, as wel,
tired, and they had lost men – and lost their bodies, as wel,
which humiliates any soldier.
When we were half a stade away, they began to shout insults
at us.
We halted. I walked forward with Teucer. He already had his
orders.
There he was – Simon, son of Simon. He wore plain armour
and a big crest, and he came out of the ranks to meet me like a
long-lost brother.
‘Look who it is,’ he laughed. ‘The polemarch of Plataea.
Better stay on your own side of the river, little cousin, or big, bad
Thebes wil eat your pissant city the way a lion eats a foal.’
‘Nicely put,’ I shouted at him. ‘You brand yourself a
whoreson of Thebes, traitor.’ I spat. ‘You are, in fact, your
father’s son.’
‘Laugh while you can, Plataean,’ he shouted back. ‘I left your
wife dead in your dooryard and burned your fucking house, and
there is nothing you can do but cry like a boy. And next time,
I’l get you – and al the men who stand between me and what is
mine.’
In that hour, my fate dangled in the wind – along with the
battle we were about to fight, and perhaps the fate of Athens,
too. With the words ‘dead in your dooryard’, I think that most
of my sense of reason left me. Not that I hadn’t expected it, after
the sacrifices went foul and the riders appeared and the column
of smoke.
I never promised you a happy story, thugater.
Simon taunted me again – something about what he’d done
Simon taunted me again – something about what he’d done
to her body, and how ugly she was. I started forward at him.
Had I reached him, he and his two hundred friends would have
cut me down, and then what might have happened?
Teucer didn’t flinch, or ask permission. He shot my cousin
down, right there, in cold blood. His arrow flew true, and Simon
died with a look of complete disbelief on his hateful face and an
arrow coming out of the top of his chest, just above his
breastplate. And that changed everything. Suddenly, the hired
men knew that their paymaster was dead – and I was alive.
My boys charged without a word from me. We sang no
Paean, and we were not in any proper formation, but we went
over that stream, up the bank, into trained men.
I remember none of it. Oh, that’s a lie – I remember going up
the bank, almost losing my footing, the jar of a spear on my aspis
and another ringing off my beautiful new helmet. And then I was
into them, kiling.
After a while, we pushed them off the stream bank, and then
they must have known that they’d had it. I remember Teucer at
my back, shooting men in the face or foot when they troubled
me. Apolo guided his hand, and he was like death.
They were hired men, and their employer was already dead.
but there were far more alive than down when they broke. It is
always the way. Men only die when they turn their backs to run.
Our light-armed men were not tired; most of them hadn’t got
engaged, except perhaps to lob a few javelins on the unshielded
engaged, except perhaps to lob a few javelins on the unshielded
flank. My rage communicated itself to them – and they folowed
the hired men.
Anyone can kil a man who turns his back.
I folowed on wings of rage and revenge, so that when I
surfaced from my flood tide of blood, I was far down the road to
Thebes. I had no spear, just a sword – my shield was cast aside.
Beside me was Idomeneus, and at my back was Teucer, and
around us were thirty freedmen and slaves, al busy stripping the
corpses.
We were ten stades into Theban territory. My body would
scarcely obey me – I couldn’t have raised my sword arm to
defend my poor Euphoria.
I looked down the road to Thebes, and it was empty.
Idomeneus laughed aloud.
‘We fucking kiled them all!’ he said.
I’ve heard since that over two dozen survived. So we didn’t,
in fact, kil them al.
But close enough.
I don’t remember much after that, except that I made my way
back to the stream, and men tried to talk to me, and I ignored
them. I stripped my armour and left it on the ground with my
helmet and my weapons, and I ran – naked – back up the road.
I was exhausted, but I ran anyway.
I remember nothing, except that I made the run al the way.
Perhaps I walked. Perhaps I lay down and slept. But I doubt it.
The column of smoke from the burning barn rose over al of
The column of smoke from the burning barn rose over al of
Plataea, mingling high up with the smoke of three signal fires. I
ran across fields, ripping my legs on briar and my feet on the
smal, hard, spiky nuts that litter our fields at high summer. Not
that I noticed.
I ran until I could not see, until my breath came like fire into a
belows, and sweat flew from me. I had run thirty stades in
armour, fought a battle, and now I was running another thirty
stades. My right arm was al blood to the elbow, sticky and
brown, and there were wounds on my thighs and ankles and a
deep cut on my left bicep – no idea how it came there – and stil
I ran.
Did I think that I could save her if I ran far enough?
Perhaps I wanted to burst my heart.
I remember seeing that I had run al the way to the fork at the
foot of the hil, and what I remember best was the strange
temptation I had to keep going – over the stream and up to the
hero’s tomb. And
perhaps away over the mountain to Attica,
and over the sea to Aegypt. To keep going and never go home,
and never know.
Perhaps I lost my wits.
But I turned my feet, lengthened my stride and ran up the
dusty lane, sharp gravel under my hard feet.
Halfway up the hil, the road turns just a little, and you can
see straight to the gate in the wal that surrounds my house.
The house itself was burning. Although it was stone and
mortar, and solidly built, they’d fired the floorboards and the
roof beams, and the stone was cracking and faling, and the
roof beams, and the stone was cracking and faling, and the
whole thing had become a chimney, carrying my riches to the
skies in an intended sacrifice.
I didn’t give it more than a glance.
My great wooden gate, for which my father had forged the
straps and hinges and cut the oak, was broken and twisted. On
the ground was a heavy beam from one of the sheds – Tiraeus’s
shed, as it later proved. They’d used it to break the gate.
Around the gateway, women lamented. They keened, high
wails like the cries of bloody-handed furies tearing to the
heavens, demanding revenge. Wel – they had their revenge, but
as usual, it brought no child born of woman back to life.
I pushed through them. The gateway was packed with
corpses, some of them black with fire.
My farm had not falen lightly, and my people had not died
alone.
Bion lay across the threshold, his spear broken in his hand,
his body ripped asunder.
Cleon lay by him, throat ripped and with ten great wounds in
his body and a broken axe clutched in his hands.
They lay across the woman they had died defending, and
even she had a sword in her hand, and the edge of the blade was
bloody. She had not gone down easily. She had not been raped.
She was dead before such thoughts could occur to any man,
however evil.
She was not pregnant, and as I stood there, I realized that her
hair was not blonde.
It was not Euphoria. It was Mater. Mater had died in the
It was not Euphoria. It was Mater. Mater had died in the
gateway, sword in hand.
My mind couldn’t accept it – couldn’t take in the loss of the
three of them in one blow. In truth, al my being had been aimed
at Euphoria, and I had forgotten how many people I loved were
in this farm.
Mater.
I lifted Bion off her legs and laid him down with dignity,
although his intestines trailed behind him as I dragged him across
the yard.
I lifted Cleon too, and now I was weeping, because he had
died like a great man, and there were dead enemies at his feet.
And Mater – how I had hated her for so many years. Yet
here she was, sword in hand, like any hero you might name.
Ares, she died wel. And sober.
I roled her corpse over, and she had that smile on her face –
that smile she wore when she saw that I could say the verses of
Theognis, or when I brought Euphoria under the roof, or when
she met Miltiades.
That she wore that look with a spear in her guts made her
seem very great to me.
But when I went to lift her, two other hands reached beneath
her shoulders – bloody hands, but smaler.
Euphoria’s hair was wild, her chiton was unpinned at one
shoulder, so that one breast showed on the right, and there was
blood on her feet. She took Mater’s shoulders and lifted, and we
laid her down with the other heroes who fel defending the
laid her down with the other heroes who fel defending the
dooryard.
‘She locked me in the basement,’ Euphoria said. She wasn’t
crying. ‘She said it was my duty to live.’
Tiraeus and Styges had held the door to the forge. The hired
warriors had given up after they lost two men, then went and
fired the house and ran off. So Styges had let my wife out of the
basement before the house colapsed into it.
And more, Mater had saved so much – wal hangings, gold
and silver – al thrown into the forge building. Bion and Cleon
held the gate while she did it, and then she joined them, and they
al died together. Or that’s how Styges told it, who had stood in
the door of the forge and held it.
Euphoria held me, crooning. She was strong, and I was
suddenly unmanned. It was everything – Bion’s death, Cleon’s,
Mater’s – and Euphoria being alive. And fatigue, I suppose.
Styges asked me if we had fought. I must have told them
something, because the women stopped screaming for
vengeance. And then Euphoria brought me wine – neat – and I
drank a cup, and passed out like a drunkard.
When I came to, it was night and I could scarcely move. My
thighs hurt so much that I had trouble roling over. I was lying on
gravel in my forge yard, and I had a blanket of my wife’s
weaving over me, and she was snuggled to my side, her head
against my shoulder.
‘I thought you were dead,’ I said.
She shook her head and her arm embraced me, a good, long
She shook her head and her arm embraced me, a good, long
squeeze.
In the morning, my legs stil ached as if I was an old man. My
shoulders and arms weren’t much better, and one of the cuts on
my thigh was deeper than I had thought and wept pus.
The bastards had raped any female slave they caught and
kiled three of my male slaves. So my yard had the mourning of
defeat, along with the dreadful fear of my slave girls that they
were pregnant. I went to the stream and washed myself, with a
prayer to the stream itself for the filth I was putting in her, and
then I went back up the hil carrying water, and Euphoria began
to wash the women clean, which is the only kindness you can do
for a raped woman.
I got Styges and Tiraeus, who both had smal wounds, to
bind mine, and then I helped with theirs, and then we began to
take stock.
We hadn’t lost an animal – the byres were up the hil, and the
bastards never made it past the yard. They’d burned the one
barn they reached, which was ful of barley and hay. It was a
loss, but it only held the ready stores for the house and the
animals. The house was gone, though. A house that my great-
grandfather built of stone and mortar – the best house in al of
south Plataea. The home of the Corvaxae, great and smal.
Simon burned it, destroying the work of his own family, and
he kiled his own step-mother in the courtyard. May the furies rip
his liver for ever. May every shade in Hades treat him with the
contempt of a matricide and a traitor.
contempt of a matricide and a traitor.
I was standing in the yard, looking at the wreck of the house
– rubble and not much more – when men came through the gate.
Teucer and Hermogenes, Idomeneus and Alcaeus and al the
men of the epilektoi.
I walked over to Hermogenes and put my arms around him.
‘Bion died in the yard,’ I
said.
I took him by the hand to where his father was laid out. The
women had already bathed his body with the water I brought
them, and anointed him with oil, and put coins on his eyes.
Hermogenes fel to his knees, wept and poured sand over his
head.
Other, smaler steadings had also been hit. On the way back
to Thebes, the hired men had lost their discipline – if they ever
had any – and they’d kiled and raped whatever they could
catch. So I was not alone in my mourning.
But Teucer took me aside. ‘Are you blind with rage?’ he
asked.
I shook my head. ‘Euphoria is alive, and the unborn baby,’ I
said. ‘I have my wits about me today.’
Teucer led me outside the old house wal. ‘This man was with
them,’ he said. ‘I took him alive. He is my slave now.’
Fair enough. A hired man was nobody’s – not a citizen
anywhere. Capture meant enslavement. I had played by those
rules – I knew the game.
‘I won’t kil him,’ I said.
The man met my eye for a moment as I approached him.
Then he looked at the ground.
Then he looked at the ground.
‘You fought for my cousin Simon?’ I asked.
‘Simon?’ The man spat. ‘Cleitus paid us. Simon came along
for the ride, the incompetent fuck.’
You think he should have held his tongue, friends? But why?
He was our slave, and he knew what he had to do if he wanted
to live. We needed no threats. Nor would I have done any
differently, had I stood in his shoes.
I nodded. I looked at Teucer.
‘Ask him why they came,’ Teucer prompted.
‘Okay, I’m game. Why did you come?’ I asked.
‘We were fucking paid to kil you, mate.’ The man shrugged.
‘Nothing personal.’
Teucer kicked him so hard he fel to the ground. ‘Lord –
Arimnestos is caled “lord”.’
The man got himself upright. ‘We were paid to kil you, lord,’
he managed. ‘Could have just told me.’
‘Can I buy him from you?’ I asked Teucer.
‘You wil kil him?’ Teucer said.
I shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’
‘Buy me a good working man, then. This one wil be a lazy
fuck.’ Teucer put the man’s rope in my hand. ‘Al yours. Now
ask him what signaled them to start.’
I looked at the captive. He was squatting in the dust, but his
eyes stil had the glint of – pride, or resentment, or just
stubbornness. I liked him a little for that. He was beaten, but not