friends and for him to retain his place in the world.
'I heard that you had the name of a hero,' he said. 'That you slew ten Medes in combat.'
I nodded.
He smiled, but only for a moment. 'Damn it, Doru! Why did you fuck my sister? We could have been brothers! My father loves you!' I reached out again, but he turned his head away.
'Pater intends to prosecute you in the courts,' he said. 'Aristagoras pretends he does not know what happened, but he has suggested that we revoke or deny your manumission and have you taken as an escaped slave. Neither Pater nor I will accept this.' He crossed his arms. 'Why?' he asked me, and suddenly he was angry. He had come to talk – but I had ruined his life, or so he reckoned it.
I knew that a shrug might start a fight. 'I don't know,' I said carefully.
'Was it because of Penelope?' he asked, his face towards the new moon.
I tried to reach him. 'The – the first time, I thought that she was Penelope.'
That made him turn. 'I didn't even know that you and Penelope were – anything,' he said.
'Yes you did. You just forgot – because you were the master and I the slave,' I said. Then I shrugged. 'Penelope liked you better. And like all of us, she wanted her freedom.'
'She's pregnant,' he admitted. 'I'll free her. And see to it she has employment. Mater will take her to weave.'
'She'll like that,' I said.
'My fucking sister will marry Aristagoras. Oh, he's a worm,' Archi spat.
'She – plans. She makes plans and then carries them out.' I decided that anything I said would make things worse. We were having a conversation, but it was a fragile thing, like a spiderweb in a flood.
'Why does she want to marry him?' Archi asked.
I paused again. Perhaps it was three days with Eualcidas, but I wanted to watch my words carefully. 'Part of her believes she deserves no better,' I said. 'Part of her wants a man she can control.'
'Which were you?' he asked. He was angry now. I had not given the right answer.
'Both,' I admitted.
He took a deep breath. 'If we win tomorrow…' he said, and my hopes rose. Because despite all my talking to your fine people about heroism, what I really wanted back was my family – that house in Ephesus, and daily lessons with Heraclitus.
'Yes?' I asked.
'Run,' he said. 'Run far. And don't let Aristagoras catch you.' He threw his chlamys over his shoulder. 'I wish I'd been there – in the pass.'
'Me, too.' That's all I could say. It was true. I knew my former master. He, too, had it in his soul. He would have run all the way into the Medes, or died trying.
He walked away.
I let him go.
I still think about it. I've changed that conversation a thousand thousand times, said better things, chased him and wrestled him to the ground.
That's not what happened, though.
Maybe, if I had, a great deal of pain might have been averted.
I never promised you a happy story, thugater. In the morning, we formed early. I was in the front rank now, and for the first time I could see the whole army. The Athenians were on a slight hill, with the remnants of an old town under our feet. I rested my shield on the edge of an old wall buried in the ground. This had been a village with a tiny acropolis a thousand years ago, I could see. Then I looked south along our lines, and I could see what a worthless army we were.
No two contingents would form together, except the hereditary enemies from Athens and Euboea. The rest of them were in little regiments, and their lines weren't even level. Aristagoras had put his Milesians slightly in front, to show us all how brave they were, and every time another contingent tried to match shields with them, he'd shuffle a few paces forward.
Aristides put us up on our little hill. He placed Eualcidas and his men on our right. They had a talk, and then Aristides came over and pointed behind us. 'If the army breaks,' he said, 'we go north. We can go all night and reach the estuary in the morning, and let the Medes catch the locals.' He shrugged.
Heraklides pointed at the Lydian cavalry who were coming up on Artaphernes' left – so they'd come at us. 'Why don't we just leave now?' he asked.
Aristides shook his head. 'Because no man will say that the Athenians ran first.'
Behind me, Cleon spat. 'I'll die knowing that I gave my life so that my city had a good reputation with the fucking Ionians,' he said. 'They already hate us. Let them do the dying.'
These sentiments were widely echoed, but Aristides ignored them, and we stood our ground while the Carians came and formed against us.
They glittered. Not for nothing did the Medes call them the men of bronze. They had more armour than any men I'd ever seen, and every man in the front rank had a bronze corslet and greaves, and most had thigh pieces and armlets and some had cuffs of bronze and even bronze foot armour that covered their sandals. Their shields were faced in bronze, and they were big men. I've always hated fighting men who were bigger than me.
Artaphernes rode up and down his line, and they cheered him, even though he was the foreign overlord. He had more Ionian Greeks in his army than we had in ours, I'd wager.
Aristagoras didn't give a speech. We stood around all morning and then, just before midday, the Milesians sang their Paean and went forward.
The rest of the rebels went forward, too, but they did it by fits and starts, and the left hung back. Aristides didn't seem in a hurry to leave our hill.
The Lydian cavalry rode forward at a brisk trot, determined to flank our phalanx and rip us apart. I watched the cavalry and I feared them. Greeks don't have much cavalry, and we aren't always good at standing against it.
But Aristides had done his job, and over on the flank of our hill there were orchards and vineyards – small, but walled – and all our slaves and skeuophoroi were inside those walls. They ripped into the flanks of the cavalry with slings and javelins, and the Lydians didn't stay to fight. They turned and rode off. I've always thought that the fatal flaw with cavalry is the ease with which they ride away.
Then the Carians came forward. From my ripe old age, I now suspect they had intended to hit us while the cavalry chewed our flanks to ruin, but as with most plans that require men to cooperate on a battlefield, they screwed it up, so that the men of Caria came forward alone.
Aristides came and said a few things. They sounded good, and we cheered him, but all I could see was that wall of bronze coming at us, and how big the Carians were. I didn't feel like a hero at all – I kept waiting for that wonderful feeling to come, and it wouldn't come.
'When they reach the foot of the slope,' Aristides said, finally, 'we will sing, and go forward into them.'
I could see that this surprised the men around me, and that meant it would surprise the Carians. We had a nice secure hilltop, and they had to climb to us in the sun.
'Fuck,' Cleon said behind me. 'Look at that.'
We all stopped watching Aristides and looked south instead. We had a superb view of the battlefield, so we were able to watch as the Milesians broke and ran.
They had never even reached the Persian lines.
Aristides stared at them with disgust.
The Carians would have done better to give us a few minutes. We'd have marched away. The battle was over. Our strategos was already running.
Instead, they did as they'd been ordered and came forward.
'We beat them, and then we get out of here,' Aristides said. Then he gave orders for something we'd practised but never actually done in combat. 'Rear-half files!' he cried. 'Close to the front! March!'
We formed a dense wall – what Spartans call the synaspismos, where we put shield on shield. But we were only half as deep – only four men instead of eight.
As soon as we formed close, we raised our voices and sang, and we moved down the hill.
In many ways, this was my first fight in a phalanx. Oh, I know – it was my fourth or fifth, but in all the others
