long – even brave, noble men in the height of training.
I stepped to the right, cutting in ahead of Idomeneus’s
second-ranker – Gelon. He knew me immediately.
I tapped Idomeneus on the shoulder.
He looked back – the merest flash of a glance, shield high to
deflect a blow – but in that heartbeat he knew who was behind
him.
He set his feet, and I put my right foot forward across my left,
and alowed my knee to touch the back of his leg. He pivoted on
the bals of his feet and stepped to the rear. I pushed forward
and launched a heavy blow into the Persian’s shield with my new
spear, rocking him back.
He was tired. I could tel he was fading from that first
exchange, and he crouched behind his shield and thrust low, at
my shins, but I was having none of it. I had caught my breath,
and I was as fresh as a man can be in a phalanx fight. I powered
forward on my spear foot, and Gelon came at my shoulder,
pounding away at the noble Persian with high blows to his shield
and his helmet.
He gave ground.
‘Plataeans!’ I roared. ‘TAKE THEM!’
I remember that moment the best, children. Because it was
like the dance, and it was glorious – it was, perhaps, a taste of
godhood. Enough men heard me – enough men in every rank
heard the cal.
I was Arimnestos the kiler of men. But in that kind of fight, I
was only one man.
But I was one Plataean, and together, we were that thing. I
planted my right foot and around me every Plataean did the
same, and though we had no pipes to cal the time, every man
crouched, screamed their war cry and pushed forward.
Apollo’s Ravens!
The Persian officer was gone – knocked flat, or exchanged
out of the front rank. I lost him in the moments when we pushed,
and my new opponent’s eyes were wide with terror. I swept my
shield forward and caught the rim of his oval shield and flicked it
aside, and Gelon’s spear robbed the man of life as easily as if he
was a dummy of straw.
Then we went forward. I had Styges at my left shoulder and
Idomeneus was pressing up on my right. Gelon was at my back,
and Teucer shot and shot from behind my left ear. We went
forward ten paces and then another ten – the enemy stumbling
away before us. They didn’t break, but suddenly there was less
pressure on our front.
Leontus and his Athenians were keeping pace, and the
Medes were backing away almost as fast as we pressed
forward, but they were not yet beaten men. In truth, it was the
hardest fighting I had ever seen. By this time, we had been spear
to spear for as long as a man gives a speech in the Agora – or
to spear for as long as a man gives a speech in the Agora – or
more – long enough that the sun was suddenly high in the sky. I
was covered in sweat. My face burned from the pressure of my
helmet and the blood and salt against the leather of my helmet
pad. My shoulder was lacerated by the damaged scales on my
thorax, and my legs ached.
The Persians flinched back again, and their front solidified.
Men were caling to each other to hold their ground, and the
Medes on our right got their spear-fighters into the front rank
and locked shields, and we came to a stop, just a pace or two
clear of their line.
I looked around – we’d pushed them back a stade or more.
And as they recoiled, they were pivoting on their centre, so that
we were facing their ships in the distance, far away by their
camp.
Al along the line, men breathed and stood straight, they
switched grips on their spears, or dropped a broken weapon.
Many exchanged, giving their place to fresher men.
‘You live!’ Styges said. He raised my shield arm – wrenching
my shoulder as he did – so that the black raven on my red shield
rose over the battlefield.
Men cheered. That is a great feeling, daughter, and worth al
the pain in the world. When men cheer you, you are with the
gods.
Opposite us, an officer caled for the Persians to cheer and
got a rumble – and no more.
‘Plataeans!’ I caled, and Heracles or Hermes gave my throat
power. ‘Sons of the Daidala, now is the time!’
power. ‘Sons of the Daidala, now is the time!’
The spear came up again, and our cheer had the force of a
crack of thunder, and we charged – not far, two paces, but the
Persians were yielding before we reached them, their shields
moving, so that every veteran in our line knew that we had
beaten them – and with a long crash like the sound two boats
make as they colide, the enemy gave way.
The first-rank man opposite me was brave, or foolish, and
stood his ground. I knocked him flat. I threw my borrowed
spear at the next man and it stuck in his shield, dragging it down.
Gelon put a spear-tip into the top of his thigh and I stepped on
his chest and pressed forward, reaching for a sword that wasn’t
there – a moment of fear – and I was into the third rank.
This part I remember as if it was yesterday, thugater. I had no
weapon, and the next man should have kiled me, but he
cowered, and my right arm shot out as if it had its own life in
combat, grabbed the rim of his scaloped shield and spun it to the
left. His shield arm snapped. He went down. He screamed, and
his scream was the surrender of the Persians to panic.
And the rest were running.
The screaming man with the broken arm had a perfectly good
spear, and the gods gifted it to me as he let go and it seemed to
leap into my hand.
I looked left – Hermogenes was coming into the flank of the
Medes. No idea where the beaten Persian cavalry had got to,
but the Persians were wrecked – men in front and the flank –
and they ran, and the Medes started to run with them.
Al in as long as it takes to tel the tale. After an hour of
Al in as long as it takes to tel the tale. After an hour of
endless pushing, we were winning.
To my right, the Medes were backing fast, but they were not
beaten, and their rear ranks continued trying to lob arrows high
to drop them on our phalanx, and it was working. My men were
stil dying. But the Sakai had no shields, and our spears were
hurting them.
I was no longer in command. We were no longer a phalanx.
Plataeans and Athenians were intermixed along two stades, and
men were plunging into the front of the Sakai, in groups or alone.
I remember that I stooped and picked up a Sakai axe and
put it in my shield hand. Better than no weapon, I thought, if my
short Persian spear broke.
I could hear a Mede demanding that his men raly – and they
did. The Persians tried to form on them – they had lost many
men. And the Persian cavalry came forward with a shout and a
hail of arrows.
Hermogenes’ men were stil miling around, in no sort of
order – but remember, he had twelve ranks of
men behind him.
The cavalry hit his front ranks, and they locked up – spear and
aspis against horse and sword and bow. Our line moved back a
pace, and then the men on my left ran at the flanks of the horses
and started puling the Persians from their saddles.
The Medes – like lions – came forward to take advantage of
our confusion – or simply to save the Persians – I have no idea.
‘On me!’ I roared. ‘Charge!’
The Medes were shocked as we ran at them again. Some
The Medes were shocked as we ran at them again. Some
stopped dead, and others kept coming, and they had no more
order than we did.
That’s when the fighting was the worst – the fiercest. They
were shamed from their brief rout and meant to have our heads,
while we already thought that we were the better men and meant
to have theirs. Both sides lost their cohesion, and men died fast.
Blows came out of everywhere and nowhere, and the only hope
was to be fuly armoured, as I was. I must have taken ten blows
that should have been wounds, on my arm and shoulder plates,
on my scale shirt, on my helmet. Some must have been from my
own men, in the confusion.
Then, somehow, I was in among the Persian cavalry, not the
Medes, though I have no memory of running at them, and that
made my fighting easier – anyone on a horse was a target.
Mounted men seldom have shields. I was like Nemesis.
Idomeneus must have decided to stay at my shoulder, and I
had Gelon at my back – and we kiled them. Ahh, I remember
Marathon, children. That day, I was a god of war. My armour
flashed and shone, and men fel under every blow of my spear. I
ripped men from their horses. Mounted men have to fight to the
front – they cannot face to the flanks or rear. Not against two
rapid blows, anyway.
Idomeneus and Gelon were not much worse than me, though,
and as the fight became looser, and ranks dissolved, we were
more dangerous, not less. I had a simple goal – my usual goal in
a melee – to burst out of the back of the enemy formation. So I
kiled and wounded, I knocked men off their mounts and
kiled and wounded, I knocked men off their mounts and
stepped on them, and I kept going forward, and my little group
stuck to me.
It is possible to get lost in a big fight, the way a man may get
lost in the woods. Confined in the eye slits of your helmet, it is
possible to take a wound or die simply because some bastard
turned you around. It is essential to have men at your back
whom you trust – men who wil turn you back round, or kil the
opponent who is circling outside the realm of your helmet. But
with such men, anything is possible, and it is incredible how a
man can move inside a melee if he has purpose and companions.
I went at a rider in a rich purple cloak and he turned and
jammed his heels in – and when I folowed him we burst free and
then we were running in a hayfield, and the fight was behind us.
The fleeing man took an arrow and fel back over the rump of his
horse, and he rode away like that – a surprising distance, as I
remember. Then Teucer, at my elbow, grunted and released
another arrow, high, and it fel on him and he crashed to earth.
He tried to rise, and a third arrow finished him.
Teucer came out from the cover of Idomeneus’s shield,
nocking an arrow, and the Persian cavalry folded up and ran –
again – and this time they left half their men or more dead on the
ground because we’d burst through them. Then the Medes
broke and ran, shooting as they went. There were horses down
in the brush, and men screaming, and horses belowing. Ares, it
was grim – blood on the ground, enough of it to splash over your
sandals when the man next to you made a kil or died. So much
blood that the copper-bronze smel fils your nostrils, more even
blood that the copper-bronze smel fils your nostrils, more even
than the stink of sweat, the smel that men have when they are
afraid, the smel of men’s guts like new-butchered deer. Only
when you stop do you notice it – the stench of Ares – and then it
makes you gag, especialy if some unarmoured boy has been cut
to death at your feet, his lips already blue-white and bled out, his
eyes bulging from the horror and pain.
War.
But, as I say, the Medes ran, the Persian cavalry ran or died,
and the Sakai, despite their leader’s cals, had not been keen for
the second engagement, and the whole mass went back. This
time, they went back to the east, down towards the beach, trying
to hide themselves among the Sakai of the centre, I think.
Teucer started shooting into them, and then he was out of
shafts. It seems odd to tel it, but the only arrows I remember at
that point were his, although I’m told that the Sakai kept
shooting until the very end.
I had other concerns. The Athenians were pushing the Sakai,
and the Sakai, whether by intention or by chance, where backing
only at our end of the line – so that they swung like a gate, stil
linked to their centre two stades away.
At our end, we’d won. The Persians, cavalry and infantry
were dead or broken, fleeing, throwing away their shields. Once
a man discards his shield, he’s done. The Medes ran, and the
Sakai nearest us were – wel, mostly they were dead.
Idomeneus was at my shoulder.
‘Sound the raly!’ I panted.
I could see it – by Ares and by Aphrodite – that’s what I
remember best of that whole glorious day. I could see what I
needed to do, as if Athena stood at my shoulder, or perhaps
Heracles, and whispered it in my ear.
I pivoted my body to face the beach, twelve stades away,
and spear my arms wide. ‘Raly here!’ I caled. ‘On me!’
Idomeneus went into his place, and Gelon and Teucer. In
seconds, fifty more men were fitting in, and then a hundred. A
long minute, and an arrow slew one of my Plataeans almost at
the end of my spear, but by now the whole mass of them was
forming up, fifteen hundred men.
Even the former slaves. Even when the old Plataeans had to
show them where to stand.
The Sakai weren’t stupid. They were shooting at us as fast as
they could.
The far end of the line had Hermogenes and Antigonus. I ran
down the front rank and counted off twenty files from the left
end, and puled Antigonus out of the ranks.
‘Take them – wheel left, and pursue the beaten men. Stay
close enough to keep them running and stay far enough that they
don’t turn and kil you. If you reach their camp – stop!’
Antigonus nodded. ‘Pursue.’ He gave me a tired smile. ‘Have
we won?’
‘That’s right!’ I slapped his shield. ‘Go!’ If you think I was a
good strategos, a just man – I’m no Aristides. I sent my brother-
in-law and my closest friend away to a nice safe pursuit. They’d
done their part, and Pen would not b
ecome a widow this day. I
done their part, and Pen would not become a widow this day. I
didn’t think that the remnants of the enemy had any fight left in
them – nor was I wrong.
Then back to my own – now formed facing the empty air that
hung off the new flank of the Sakai.
‘Slow and steady. Keep together.’ I shouted these things. I
wanted the Sakai to see us coming. ‘Sing the Paean!’ I yeled,
and men took it up – al along the line. There had been no time to
sing the Paean or give much of a war cry before our first charge.
Now – now we had al the time in the world.
We sang, and our lines stiffened, bent, righted themselves – it
is hard to keep the line on rough ground, and the plains of
Marathon in early autumn are like farm fields the world over. We
had to flow around clumps of trees, bushes, rocks – it was not
like the painting in the stoa, children. There were no straight lines
at Marathon.
But the Sakai saw us and gave more ground. They tried to
run and re-form to face us, but the Athenians stayed on them,
and they died. Those Sakai were galant, and they tried, again
and again, to make a stand and hold the line.
As we passed the edge of their formation, we saw why.
Our own centre was shattered, as if a herd of cattle had
passed through. Where Aristides had stood, there were only
victorious Persians, Datis’s bodyguard and dead Greeks.
I cursed under my breath, trying to see. Had we lost? I
faltered, and my voice roared ‘Forward!’ without my volition –
some god took my throat, I swear. I went forward.
Then, as we turned the flanks of the Sakai, they folded as fast
Then, as we turned the flanks of the Sakai, they folded as fast
as a man can lose a boxing match. One moment they were
outmatched, but stil game, their line backing away but their men
fighting hard, and the next they were finished, flying for their lives.
They started to run in earnest because we were behind them. I
didn’t want to fight the Sakai anyway. I wanted to come to grips
with Datis. The day was neither lost nor won, and with
everything in the balance, my men were not going to stop and
fight men in flight.
‘Paean! Again!’ I roared, and they obeyed – although as long
as I have been a soldier, I have never heard the Paean sung
twice in the same action.
Now I could see the Greek centre – wel back, almost where