When you are faced with a killer in the bronze storm, there are two things that tempt you. One is to run. That way lies instant death. The time to run has long passed when the man in bronze is at the end of your spear. The other temptation is to attack. This is a twin child born of the same parent – fear. You attack to prove to yourself that you are not afraid, and because you have no real hope. Or to get it over with. I have seen lesser men kill greater, but it doesn't happen often, so the second is as hopeless as the first, although it makes a better story for your mother. Because you'll be dead.
Calchas's way is the way that takes care, and time, and discipline. But as Dionysius fell, his aspis fouled the killer's spear and I got a breath to think.
I backed one step and shoved my aspis high and hard against the man next to me. He was Eutykos, a young man from a good family. Later on we were friends, and I loved his sister. I'd met her, of course, at festivals, and she was pretty – but at thirteen you don't look at girls as much as you should. Hah!
So I locked my shield with Eutykos and the killer's doru crashed into my aspis – high. He was going for my helmet, but I had tucked my head so that only the top of the helmet came above the rim of my aspis. He swung again and his doru glanced off my helmet, but I had no crest to catch the point and he lost his balance and crashed against me, breast to breast.
Old Zotikos stood his ground. He threw his shoulder against my back and held me against the killer's shove, bless him. And he went one better. While the killer rained blows of his spear on my head and aspis, Zotikos rammed his spear into the killer's shield, full force.
I got to breathe.
Eutykos poked at him, too.
On my left, Straton, Myron's older son, locked his aspis against mine.
Only then did I realize that the voice shrieking 'Lock up!' was mine.
Now the killer was facing three men – six, really, because none of our followers flinched – and the spear points were coming for him.
Locked up and secure, we began to kill him. I have no idea who got him. Later, my spear point was bloody and the blood dripped down the shaft and over my hand. But Zotikos also had blood on his and so did Straton. Perhaps we all took him. It doesn't matter. No man – no man born of women – can face six steady hoplites, even if they are so scared that shit runs down their legs.
That one fight was the battle, for me. I'm sure that other men did great deeds, and I am sure that the prize of honour went to Miltiades the Younger, who cut a red swath through the Thebans and broke their centre. His sword was like a thunderbolt, so men said.
I never saw him. By Ares, I didn't even see Pater, and I could have touched him with my spear point.
But I saw the killer, and I held my ground.
Still makes me smile, honey.
And then the Thebans broke and we ran them down.
I killed some poor exhausted sod who begged me to spare him. But he didn't drop his sword and I was too tired to take a chance. Hard to tell what was in my head. I asked his shade for pardon the next day. I think that if he'd let the sword go, or stopped waving it, I'd have let him live. When the pursuit starts, the shield wall collapses, winner or loser, and every man fights on his own. Eutykos stuck by me, but none of the rest of my file-mates were anywhere to be seen, and we picked up prisoners and fought our last fight in the middle of a thousand screaming Attic farmers. Some brightly armoured aristocrat knocked me flat and another yelled 'Can't you see the yokel is a Plataean?' and they ran off elsewhere. We had no dead. Dionysius was deeply unconscious, and he slurred his words for ten days and missed the third fight, but he lived to thank me for covering his body. That's what his father thought I did, and it saved my life later.
We picked up our wounded and treated them as best we could. The Athenians had taken it much worse. They had hundreds of dead.
The Thebans had more. The north end of the valley was carpeted with Theban dead. We stripped them with gusto. Their herald came and they made their submission, and Myron hobbled off – Pater couldn't even walk, he was so tired – and on that very spot on the south bank of the Asopus, the boundaries of free Plataea were settled between archons and heralds, a deputation of Corinthians – neutrals, and honest men – settling the matter and guaranteeing it.
Myron was no fool – by settling the borders and not making high demands, he ensured that the treaty would last, and he ensured that he would be elected archon. And by enlisting the arbitration of Corinth, he won us another ally.
As I said, we stripped their dead. Our boys and slaves brought the camp up, and we loaded carts with Theban camp furniture and Theban armour. Pater got quite a bit – he was strategos.
A tribunal met and discussed Simon. He was not the only man to miss the fight, but he was no man's friend and his cowardice was a public disgrace. Even other men who had missed the fight – too tired to keep up, they claimed – complained about him.
Simon spoke well enough in his own defence. And he knew, as we all knew, that we still had to fight the Euboeans. So he asked that he be allowed to fight in the front rank.
The phylarchs discussed it and refused, but they put him in the second rank, behind Bion. Two men in front of me. To earn back the respect of other men.
After the tribunal, Pater told me that he'd asked that I have that spot. And so the gods speak to us, thugater. If I had stood there – well, I would be a bronze-smith in Boeotia and you would never have been born.
I was tired after the fight and I slept before the light failed, but the next day I was full of energy. That's how it is for the young, honey. You recover fast. Pater and Epictetus and Myron took much longer.
We sent the spoils home over Cithaeron and marched east, into the rising sun, to fight the Euboeans. It was insane – three battles, in a week. Ah, you brighten – you've heard of the 'Week of Three Battles', eh?
I was there, honey. And after the first two, the Plataeans thought that they were gods. And the Athenians the same. I said that every army has a heart, a soul, eyes and ears. After the Thebans, that army was as one. We were still Atticans and Boeotians, Athenians and Plataeans, but we shared water and wine and jokes.
Not one of us doubted that we would rout the Euboeans.
They were soft. Their days of greatness were in the past and they had hoped to ride on a chariot of war driven by Thebes and Sparta. Now their mighty allies were gone, and their army marched back out of Boeotia, over the bridge at Chalcis, and stood waiting for us.
It was just seven days since the Spartans had sent their herald to Pater when we marched over the bridge around midday. We did it well – we'd been together for two weeks and by Greek standards we'd become veterans. I was in my second fight as a hoplite and my shin still hurt from the rock a week before. And I could see Simon, two places in front of me, as we closed our files to the right.
The Euboeans formed very close and stood with their shields overlapping, awaiting our charge. They didn't come forward, and to me, at thirteen, they didn't look soft at all.
We marched in easy, open order until we were a stone's throw away. If they had any psiloi, they didn't come out. Neither did ours.
Then we closed. We closed by doubling our files from the rear, so that seventh-rank men became front-rank men – the 'half-file' leaders. This was the closest order. I remained in the fourth rank, and Zotikos was now in the front. He swore and complained and grumbled as we closed, and Bion told him to keep it clean for the gods, and Zotikos said something under his breath and older men laughed.
Now we were a spear's throw from them. We were locked up in the same close order. We were on the left, and again we were facing the cream of their warriors – the men with the best armour, the right of their line.
Pater stood clear of our line. It was the only time I ever heard him speak before a fight, at least for so long. 'We're going to walk forward in time to the Paean, just as we did at Parnes. And when we hit their shield wall, we push straight on. Use your shoulders. Their line is thin, and they are already afraid. We have faced Sparta. We have nothing to fear here.'
Men beat their spears on the face of their shields.
Miltiades came running down the face of the army. When he was in front of the left-most Athenians, he raised his spear.
'Sing!' he called, even as an enterprising Euboean threw a spear at him.
Insults were called. We ignored them, although they were so close we could see faces, shield devices, bad
