we had started our charge, and only clumps of men. I could see
horsehair crests there, and Persian felt hats. And men looking
towards us.
It al happened in moments, heartbeats of time, too little for
me to give an order or change our front. The Persian centre was
kiling the Antiochae – and then they were running, racing over
the stubble of the hay for their camp. The sight of us behind them
– however il-formed our phalanx realy was – terrified them the
way our charge apparently had not.
The Sakai had held the flanks for Datis and his picked men to
wreck the Athenian centre, and the dead were everywhere, or
so it seemed. But by the gods, when they saw us coming behind,
threatening to cut them off from the ships, I saw men grab the
satrap – hard to miss in his scarlet and gold – and run him to a
horse. His picked kilers ran at his heels like dogs on a hunt.
They were too far away for my formed men to reach. They
ran through the hole in our lines and down towards the beach.
Some of their men ran west, away from the beach, folowing an
officer. More – I didn’t see this – ran west and north – around
behind our lines.
The right wing – our right, Miltiades’ men – had fought as
hard as we had and been just as victorious, and even as we
came up to the Persians, Miltiades’ men began to form a new
phalanx facing us – one of the strangest sights I’ve seen on a
battlefield, two victorious phalanxes from the same side facing
each other over three stades of ground, with Persians streaming
away between us.
There was no holding my men then. It started with the rear-
rankers – the freedmen. They saw their fortunes running by,
hundreds and hundreds of gold-laced Persians running for their
camp, and they left their ranks and started in pursuit. I caled for
them to halt – and more men joined them.
Al my men streamed away after them. I stopped, popped my
helmet on the back of my head, took a swig of water and spat it
out, and bandaged my knee. By my side, Idomeneus was
panting, bent double, staring fixedly at the stubble, and Teucer
was humming to himself, scouring the grass for spent shafts.
When I raised my head, I could see al the way to the ships.
There was haze in the distance, but I could see that the
barbarians had formed again, wel down the field, and there was
fighting there, and over in the olive grove west of the swamp,
fighting there, and over in the olive grove west of the swamp,
too.
Most of my oikia – my own men – stood around me. Styges
had a cut on his sword arm, Gelon looked as fit as a statue, and
a dozen of my new freedmen had chosen to loot the corpses in
the area. So I had maybe twenty men, and there were knots of
fighting al over the field. Men were leaving the field, too – dribs
and drabs of Greeks, wounded or just too tired too continue.
Not everyone lived the life of the palaestra and the gymnasium.
And there was no real discipline – man who felt he’d done
enough could just turn and walk away.
But I was the polemarch of Plataea, and there was stil
fighting. The Greeks around me were saying ‘Nike, Nike.’
Maybe. But to me, the sound from the north was an ominous
one. It suggested that the battle wasn’t over yet.
I tested my wounded leg, and it was solid enough. Pain is
pain. Fatigue is fatigue.
‘Zeus Soter,’ one of the new men said. He had a wound on
his hand with blood flowing out of it, despite the rag he’d put on
it. ‘I feel like shit!’ he said. ‘I need to sit.’
I grabbed his shoulder. ‘You feel bad?’ I asked. ‘Think how
they feel!’ I pointed to the row of dead Sakai, naked now and
their white bodies lying in a row where our rear-rankers had
stripped them.
Idomeneus barked his battle laugh.
‘More fighting,’ he said.
We al drank our canteens dry, and then Greeks came up
from the wreck of the Athenian centre – some ashamed, and
from the wreck of the Athenian centre – some ashamed, and
others proud. Many had run, and others fought on until the
Persians were forced back – and you can guess which group
‘By the gods, Plataean, I think we have won!’ he shouted as
he ran up. He had the cheekplates of his helmet cocked back to
give him a better view. There was blood flowing down his leg,
and Idomeneus and I insisted he be bandaged before we went
forward again. Aristides brought a hundred men with him – they
were weary, but they wanted to be in at the kil.
We moved down to the beach. The fighting seemed heaviest
by the ships, and we could see black huls launching al along the
bay. It seemed too good to be true, but one after another, ships
pushed their sterns off the sand and their oars came out. Some
stayed in close, rescuing men from the water.
Others simply fled.
That was when we knew we’d won.
The barbarians had formed a line by the ships – whether by
intention or merely in desperation – and Miltiades’ men were
fighting there. Most of my men and many of Miltiades’ went up
into the camp and started to loot.
The fighting by the ships was deadly. Aeschylus’s brother fel
there, and Calimachus, the polemarch of Athens. Cimon,
Miltiades’ eldest son, took a wound there, and Agios was
wounded when he leaped aboard an enemy ship and started to
clear it.
We were walking – I can hardly cal it a march – along the
beach, passing over the wreckage of the Persians – corpses of
beach, passing over the wreckage of the Persians – corpses of
men and horses as thick as seaweed after a storm, dead Medes
cut down by Miltiades’ men. And as clear as an actor on the
stage of the Agora, I heard Agios caling. Then I saw him, on the
stern of an enemy ship half a stade away.
I wasn’t going to let him die while I had breath in my body. I
started to run.
At my back, al my oikia folowed me.
Aristides and Miltiades heard him, too.
And like a flood, the best spears of the army converged on
the stern of that ship. We weren’t far – a hundred paces.
How long does it take to cut your way through a hundred
paces of panicked Medes and desperate Persians?
Too long.
I went through the remnants of the Medes with my trusted
men at my shoulders, but then we hit the Persians, and we
slowed. There were a dozen of them – not men I knew, thank
the gods, but the same sort of men as Cyrus and his friends, and
they fought like demons, and we slowed.
Agios probably died then, while I was face to face with an
armoured Persian. The Persian fought wel. We must have
exchanged four or five cuts before my spear ripped his forearm
and my next thrust sent his shade down to Hades. As I stepped
past him, the Persians backed away, grabbing at a man with a
hennaed beard. His helmet w
as gold and set with lapis, and I’d
seen him before.
Datis.
Datis.
I thrust at him and saw my spear drive home under the skirts
of his armour, and then his men were al around him. I was an
arm’s length from the ship where Agios lay dying, pierced fifty
times, shot with arrows and continuing to cal the battle cry of
Athens, so that the whole army heard him, and men pressed
forward, possessed with the rage of Ares. The barbarians could
have ralied – they certainly should never have lost a ship. But we
cut into them the way the sickle cuts into the weeds at the edge
of a garden.
Agios’s shouts grew weaker, and my blows fel faster, and I
got a Mede against the stern of the ship and punched my spear
at him so hard that my spearhead stuck in the tar-coated wood.
Then I dropped my shield and jumped. As I got my leg over the
thwart a Sakai archer cut at me. His short knife caught in my
chlamys and turned against my scale armour. With that axe in my
right hand I cut into him, and he fel away, and I got my feet
under me.
I could see the faces of the panicked oarsmen – and Agios,
colapsed across the helm. A spearman stood over him, having
just stabbed him, and my axe licked out and cut the back of his
knee so that his leg gave way and he fel, spraying blood – but I
hit him again, and again, and again, until the side of his helmet
caved in.
Now the blows of five men fel on my armour, and I had no
shield. I took a wound in the thigh – just a pin-prick – but
enough to snap me out of the blood rage. Suddenly Aristides
was beside me – using his spear two-handed – and then
was beside me – using his spear two-handed – and then
Miltiades came over the other gunwale, then Styges, Gelon,
Sophanes, Belerophon, Teucer, Aeschylus, and we stormed that
ship, the living wrath of Athena.
Six more ships were taken and cleared before they could get
to sea. The Athenians and the Plataeans were no longer an army
– nor were the barbarians. They were a fleeing mob, and we
were in the red rage of Nike and Ares, when men die because
they care about nothing but more blood. Our fire burned hot,
and many were consumed. Indeed, I’ve heard it said that more
Athenians died by the ships than when the centre broke – but
I’ve heard a great many things said by Athenians about the
battle, and a few of them are true, but most are pig shit. We lost
a lot of men, and so did Athens, although Cimon wil tel you
otherwise.
We burned like a bonfire in a high wind, and then their last
ship was away, and we burned to ash. We were spent.
We came to a stop, so that a hush fel over the field. I
suppose that wounded men screamed, and guls screeched, and
horses trumpeted their pain, but I remember none of that. What I
remember is the hush, as if the gods had decided that al of us
deserved a rest.
I leaned on the haft of my looted axe, and breathed. I don’t
know how long I was out of it – but ask any man who’s been in
the battle haze, and he’l tel you that when you are done, you
don’t cheer. You just stop. When I came back to myself, I was
sitting on the blood-soaked planks of the marine box. My thigh
wound was open and bleeding again, and Miltiades was beside
wound was open and bleeding again, and Miltiades was beside
me. We’d cut our way from the stern, by Agios’s corpse, to the
bow. I was covered in blood – sticky, stinking blood.
‘I think we’ve won,’ Miltiades said. He didn’t sound proud,
or arrogant, or in any way like the hero of the hour. He sounded
awestruck.
We al were, children. I don’t think that we realy believed we
could win – or perhaps the issue was so much in doubt that we
couldn’t separate what we dreaded from what we hoped for.
But as we watched the last shreds of the Persian cavalry
swimming their horses out, and the ships closing round them to
save them, we knew that these Persians were not coming back.
Especialy when they abandoned their horses in the water.
I remember then, watching the ships creep past us from the
north. Many had lost oarsmen as wel as hoplites, and they didn’t
move fast. Behind me, the victorious Athenians had started to
sing – some hymn to Athena I didn’t know.
Out across the water, a ship’s length away or less, I saw the
scorpion shield standing on the stern of a light trireme. The
enemy ship was going past us, picking men out of the water,
bold as brass.
Teucer had an arrow, and he drew it to his chin, but I put my
axe head in front of his arrowhead just when he went to loose,
and he cursed.
Archilogos saw it al. His mouth formed an O and his head
tracked me as my eyes must have folowed him. He raised his
shield.
shield.
‘Tel Briseis I send my greetings!’ I caled across the water.
His men rowed him away and he didn’t reply.
It was harder to leap down from that hul than it had been to
climb aboard – my muscles were seizing, and I remember
Aeschylus catching me as I stumbled. We were much of an age,
he and I. He was a good man, despite his jealousy of
Phrynichus’s success.
Idomeneus had my shield. ‘You alive, boss?’ he asked.
‘You’ve got a cut.’
So we bandaged my thigh again and then we looked after the
dozen cuts he had – one in his bicep so deep I couldn’t see how
he could use his sword arm. Aeschylus helped. I didn’t realize
then that he was standing a few paces from the corpse of his
brother.
Miltiades came up to me.
‘I need the best men,’ he said quietly. ‘We’re not done.’
Just north of the plain was an extensive stand of olive trees
surrounded by a stone boundary wal. The Persians who had run
north and west when their line gave way ran al the way around
our army, but were cut off from the beach by the ruin of their
camp. Being true Persians, they refused to surrender. They went
into the waled olive grove and determined to die like men.
Half of our army must already have started back across the
fields to our camp by the time Miltiades became aware of what
was happening, and good men had died – some of them
Plataeans – trying to storm the olive grove. The rumour spread
Plataeans – trying to storm the olive grove. The rumour spread
that Datis was there, and the Persian command staff.
I gathered my oikia, and Miltiades gathered his, and Aristides
his best men from the wreck of the centre, and we walked north
along the beach and then through the Persian camp. We passed
beautiful carpets and bronze urns and I saw silk and finely woven
wool – but we had no time to loot. I did pause to pick up a
silver-studded sword – that one, honey bee. Look at that steel.
Too light for me, but so wel crafted – Hephaestus’s blessing on
the hand that made the blade – that I
would use it in preference
to a better-hefted blade.
I found Hermogenes at the edge of the camp, with Antigonus,
who had a wound in the foot. Peneleos and Diocles were there,
although other men who should have been with them – like
Epictetus – were missing.
‘Those are some tough bastards,’ Hermogenes said. He had
four arrows in his shield. He looked sheepish. ‘The Athenians
tried to storm them and got in trouble – we just went in to help
them out.’ He looked as if he would cry. ‘I lost a lot of the
boys,’ he said quietly.
‘They beat us,’ Antigonus said.
Miltiades took a deep breath. ‘They’re desperate men,’ he
said.
‘Surround the grove and get them tomorrow,’ Themistocles
suggested. He had a dozen hoplites with him, and they looked as
tired as the rest of us. ‘Or burn it.’
‘They’l break out in the dark,’ Aeschylus said. His voice was
thick. He knew by then that his brother was dead, and he
thick. He knew by then that his brother was dead, and he
wanted revenge. ‘They’l break out, and every cottage they burn,
every petty farmer they kil wil be on our heads.’
It was true. Tired men have no discipline, and the Athenians
were tired. Indeed, every man looked twenty years older.
Miltiades looked sixty. Aristides looked – wel, like an old man,
and Hermogenes looked like a corpse. Ever been exhausted,
children? No – you are soft. We were hard like old oaks, but
there was little flame left in us. I remember how I walked, forcing
each step, because I hurt and because my knees were shaking
slightly. My sword wrist burned.
Miltiades looked around. The sun was setting – where had
the day gone? – and we had perhaps two hundred men of al the
army standing there at the north edge of the enemy camp. Others
were looting. But most were sitting on the ground, or on their
aspides – some singing, some tending wounds, but most simply
staring at the ground. That’s how it was – how it always is.
When you are done, you are done.
Miltiades watched the ships behind us. ‘Where are they
going?’ he asked suddenly.
The barbarian fleet was forming up out in the bay. And
starting not east, towards Naxos or Lemnos or an island safely
owned by the Great King, but south – towards Athens.
‘They’re making a stab for the city,’ Cleitus said softly. I