I'd been at the back, and the fighting had broken up quickly, or I'd been alone, as in the fight at the pass.
This time, both sides fought like lions.
When you are in the front rank, there's an instant just before the lines close when a skilful man can hurt his opponent with a spear thrust. Once the lines come together, there's no fine spear-fighting – you just thrust as fast and hard as you can until the shaft breaks, and then you draw your sword.
I had two spears – most of us had a pair, balanced for throwing, with long leather thongs. When we were five paces apart, I stepped forward with my left foot in time to the Paean and threw my first spear. Most of us did, and two hundred heavy spears crashed into the Carians as their spears came right back at us. If the pounding of the Medes' arrows had been like the fall of hail on my shield, the jar of a Carian spear was like being hit with a log.
I had my second spear in my hand in the last three paces. I remember being pleased at how well I threw and changed hands, and I stepped forward, planted my foot and thrust overhand, diagonally right.
We crashed into their front and they stopped us dead. And we stopped them.
My spear went in under the Carian's helmet and he went down.
I let the spear go. I was locked up against a big man and his spear was over my right shoulder, trying to kill Cleon. Ares, that press was close! We were doubled up, and we had the hill behind us. They had armour and size.
No one gave a foot.
I got my sword from under my arm and I thrust under my shield, because the crush was too close for a cut. The point glanced off his thigh armour and I thrust again and again, and finally – gods, it seemed to take for ever – I got the blade around his out-thrust leg and cut his sinews and he went down.
I raised my sword up over my head in the single breath before his file-mate slammed his shield into mine. I cut at his helmet and scored, shearing off part of his crest and slamming the helmet against his cheek. He stumbled and I pushed into his shield – and he fell, tripping over his mate, and quicker than thought my sword went left and right at waist level or a little below. I cut at their buttocks and the backs of their legs – back-cut, fore-cut – and then the third-ranker got past the tangle into me, and I hammered my sword into his helmet. He had no crest and his helmet rang and I hit him again. He dropped his spear to get at his sword and Cleon put his spear right into the tau of his faceplate – a magnificent thrust.
I knew my job – and now I felt the power. I roared and pushed past the dying man, slammed the fourth- ranker with my shield and back-cut at the third-ranker without even looking at him, so that my sword broke on his helmet, but he went down, probably unconscious.
Cleon thrust over my shoulder and I took his spear. He let go and I started fighting with it, and he must have got another from the men behind him, because when that spear broke he gave me another.
They were pushing away from me now, the fourth- and fifth-rankers in the Carian host. None of them wanted to face me and I began to hurt them, sniping against their thighs and necks with accurate spear thrusts. A killer like me is most dangerous when no one will face him. Never give a man time to plan his hits, or he'll reap a whole rank.
I didn't kill them. I just made them bleed and they fell. No one is brave with the red flowing from an open vein.
Beside me, Aristides and Heraklides and all the files on either side of mine pushed forward into the hole I was cutting, and they pushed.
And then, as suddenly as the storm of bronze had begun, it was over. The pressure on my chest faded and then it was gone. The dust rose and I punched my borrowed spear at a man as he turned away, knocking him sprawling without killing him. As I stepped over him, he tried to roll and get his shield up, but I put my spear point into the unguarded spot at the top of his back and it grated on his spine and he thrashed like a gaffed fish, dead already and alive enough to know it.
Cleon grabbed one of the wings on my scale shirt that covered my shoulders and tugged.
'Let's go!' he said.
The whole Athenian phalanx was turning away into the dust. The Carians were running, and we were running, too – unbroken, but we knew what was coming.
I wanted to run every fucking Carian down and kill them. They were just men, under all that bronze, and now that the power was on me I wanted to punish them for making me afraid.
That's how men feel when the enemy breaks – for a little while, they all become killers, and many husbands and fathers die before they regain their wits and realize that the enemy is running and they can sit down and revel in victory.
Men are fools.
Cleon was not a fool, and he'd held my back like a champion in story and probably saved my life. So when he turned uphill, I followed him and we moved fast, up through the dust and over the hilltop, and then down the other side, heading north.
I stopped at the top and looked south. Even through the rising swirls of battle haze, I could see that the whole Greek army was in flight. In the centre, where Artaphernes stood with his bodyguard against the Ephesians, the great Eagle of Persia shone like the sun and the Ephesians ran like frightened children.
I looked back over my shoulder and saw the Lydian cavalry moving forward.
I called a warning to Aristides and got back in my place. We trotted along together, down the old acropolis and out on to the plain, then around a farm pond.
Aristides shouted and we turned. There was a moment of confusion and then our shields locked – and the cavalry turned away, throwing spears.
Six times we turned and stood our ground. The last time, I'd had enough, and as they turned to run, I broke from the front of the phalanx and ran after them. They were contemptuous of us and the dust was high, and I caught my man before he'd even begun to ride away. My spear killed his horse, and then I put my point in his eyes as he lay under the animal. Other horsemen began to turn to come back, and that was their error. Aristides charged them, the whole Athenian phalanx changing directions like a school of fish, from prey to predator in a heartbeat. The Lydians wrestled to control their horses and we must have killed fifteen or twenty of them before they broke away.
The first Lydian I killed had gold on his sword strap, and Cleon helped me pull it over his head. Then I saw the sword, and it was a fine weapon – a long leaf-blade, thin near the hand and wide and sharp near the point. See – there it is on the wall. Take her down – that's my raven's talon. Her blade snapped on me later and I got her a new one. Same scabbard – long story there, she took some time to come back to me once, like an angry wife.
Touch that blade, honey. Fifty men's lives fell across that edge. Aye, maybe more. That Lydian had a good sword and a good horse and later I heard that he was a good man – a friend of Heraclitus, more's the pity, but Ares put him under my hand and I took him. He thought we were beaten and he and his mates died on our spears.
And then we got back in our ranks and scampered off.
We went ten stades at something like a run, and then we stopped. It was mid-afternoon, and the sun was still high. We drank water – we'd run clear and we were safe enough.
The Euboeans were weeping.
Eualcidas had fallen, and they had left his body. I never heard how it happened. He must have gone down in the first moments of the fight against the Carians, because that's when mistakes happen. And when we turned to run, no one was quite sure he'd been hit. The Euboeans took more casualties than we did, and perhaps all the men around him died, too.
But the shame of leaving his body to be spoiled was more than could be borne.
Aristides, for all his nobility, couldn't understand what they were talking about. We'd lost two dozen men in the fight, and we were leaving them so that we could run for our ships. To Aristides, base as that was, abandoning the corpses was the price of saving his command, and he was never a man to put his own honour above the saving of his men – which is why we loved him.
But the Euboeans began to shout, and they were weeping, as I said.
'Will the Medes accept a truce to bury the dead?' Heraklides asked.
Aristides shook his head. 'We're rebels against the Great King,' he said. 'Artaphernes won't accept a herald from us.'
Men started to look at me. I don't know who started it – but soon a dozen heads were turned my way, and I knew what was expected. It's the most unfair part of high reputation – once you choose to be a hero, you have no
