and every breath put three more men in the rear ranks.
'The Persians!' I shouted, and I ran forward a few paces and held my spear parallel to the enemy line. 'On me!'
We'd been together all summer. My crew knew what I wanted, and they were beside me in three long breaths, more than a hundred men. A ship's length to my right, I saw Herakleides' black horsetail and I knew his big aspis was locked into the line.
'Heracles!' I roared.
'HERACLES!' came the response like the thousand-fold voice of the god, and we were off up the beach. The Phoenicians had no bows, and the handful of Persian officers got off one volley – I know that I got an arrow in my shield – and then we were into them.
That was hard fighting, no quarter given, and the sun was set low enough that skill was replaced by luck. Twice I caught heavy blows on my sword arm – one bent my vambrace without cutting through into my arm and a second blow was the flat of an axe and not the blade, thank the gods, or my life would have spurted out of my arm. Even so, I dropped my spear and Idomeneus stepped past me while I fell on my knees. A blow that hard unmans you – I thought I was finished for a long heartbeat, then my eyes told me that my sword hand was intact, my arm ached but was not broken, and again the vambrace had held and saved my life.
But while I was on my knees, a Mede in a gold helmet and bronze aventail cut at my head with his short akinakes. His blow landed, and my ears rang. But Hermogenes stood by me, and he made clumsy parries with his spear over my shoulder.
When you are in a real fight, your world is a tunnel formed by the walls of your helmet and the width of the eye slits. I had no idea whether we were winning or losing, but even with my ears ringing and my arm afire, I knew that having their heroic captain on his knees in the sand was not going to help my men win their way up the beach.
I exploded to my feet, pushing with my Boeotian shield just as Hermogenes blocked another cut. I got the bronze spine in the Persian's face, trapped his sword arm high, dug my feet in the sand and pushed. He landed another blow, but it sheered my horsehair crest without connecting with my head, and I shook it off and pushed again. He tripped and fell. I punched him with the rim of my shield, the rim an extension of my fist. A Boeotian shield lacks the weight and authority of an aspis, but the rim is a weapon in a way that an aspis's rim can never be. I broke his nose with my first left-handed blow, broke his sword arm with the second and crushed his throat with the third as he tried to cover himself with his arms.
I had time to flex my numb hand once, and then I drew my sword from under my arm, fumbled it and dropped it. I remember looking at it lying in the sand and thinking – now I'm a dead man.
But the Phoenician marines gave ground, backed away from us ten paces and rallied. They were magnificent fighters, those men – they didn't lose heart, just backed off to give the Thracians time to take us in the flank. But their retreat showed them that all their officers were down, and that rattled them. I could see it in the movement of their shields in the fiery light.
Idomeneus was ahead of me, lithe limbs flashing. He harried their retreat and the best of my marines followed him, so that our taxis lost cohesion. The better men were willing to keep fighting; the others hung back, pleased to have beaten the Phoenicians and the Medes, and wanting a rest from terror. That's how it always is.
'Thracians!' one of my rowers shouted, just before he leaped from the ship's rail into the surf and ran to join us.
The Thracians were still hesitating, and their hesitation had already cost them the battle. But they might still wreck my men with their charge.
I could hear Miltiades calling his battle cry – 'AJAX!' – to my right, and I knew that the rest of our men would be coming ashore now, and in the time it took to beach a ship, the fight would be over. But there was plenty of time for things to go wrong.
I had to go forward.
'Stephanos is behind the Thracians!' I shouted. 'Follow me!' I stooped and picked up my sword – just about. I remember well how little grip I had. But a Greek cannot lead from the second rank. No one would follow such a warrior. So I pushed forward and bellowed 'Heracles!' like an angry bull, trying to get the daimon of combat to fill me and carry me up the beach.
Idomeneus was on his knees when I came up, using his big shield to cover his body against two Phoenician marines with axes. I ran full tilt over one man and his axe bit through my shield. The bronze plate over my left arm turned the blade and I hacked at him with my nerveless sword hand like any green ephebe who doesn't know how to hold a sword.
Sometimes, as Heraclitus says, when skill fails, passion must suffice.
Hermogenes took the second man. The man with the axe swung and for a long heartbeat I thought he was gone, but the shaft, not the blade, bit into his shield. Hermogenes had an aspis, and the tough face turned the shaft with a hollow boom and Hermogenes was on the man, stabbing wildly with his spear. What he lacked in accuracy he made up in ferocity.
Now that we had cleared the ground around Idomeneus struggled to his feet. We shamed the rest of our line forward. The Phoenicians might have rallied then – but they didn't. They hesitated for a moment – they were brave men, and they knew what the loss of their ships would mean. But they decided that retreat was the wiser option, and they went up the beach, still cohesive enough to drag their wounded and one of their leaders with them.
The sun had set and the only light was the red autumn sky and the fires of the town. The Thracians still outnumbered us, but they were retreating, flowing up the hillside like a herd of deer, and Stephanos was harrying them from the left, his best runners trying to outrun the Thracians to the crest of the long hill above the town.
I flexed my hand. Some feeling was returning.
At that point, Aristagoras elected to bring his men out of the citadel in a sortie. It was typical of the bastard – too late to help win the victory, too soon to come out in safety. His sortie caught the Thracians in the flank, though, and suddenly they had to turn or be eaten by the new threat and by Stephanos's crew nipping at their heels like a hunting pack.
I could see it all happening in the red light on the hillside above me. It was unreal – I have never seen such light again, red as blood – and I knew that Ares himself was watching us, that we were on his dance floor, and he would judge us.
I could see the swan on Aristagoras's helmet and I knew who he was. And thanks to the folds in the hill, I could see what neither he nor Stephanos could see – there was another contingent of Thracians behind a parallel crest.
And I was already tired.
Too bad. I wanted Aristagoras dead, and I would never have a better chance than now.
I've made all this seem to last a long time, but in truth, Miltiades' marines were still coming off his stern and some of our ships were just coming ashore – it had all happened that fast. But if you want to know what fatigue is, fight for your life for three or four hundred heartbeats, then run up a rocky hillside at dusk with a hundred men baying at your heels. My scale shirt felt as if it weighed as much as my body, and my helmet sat on my head like the weight of the world on Atlas's shoulders. Who am I to complain? Many of my rear-rankers had rowed all day.
Up we went, and the Thracians stood against us. I think they were shocked – appalled, even – that they were being charged. They weren't men who stood in a line to fight, they were wild tribesmen who killed with the ferocity of their charge. I think they stood only because they knew that their allies were in position to take us in the flank. But my men overlapped their flank, so that my own flank files were bound to push right up into their ambush. I didn't have to plan it that way – there was no other way it could happen. The hillside wasn't that wide, and its seaside edge was a cliff that rose above the beach.
Paramanos's men were pouring ashore from his ship, which was beached beside mine. Turning his ship hadn't taken long – yet in that time my crew had broken the Phoenicians, killed the Ionians and run up the hill, and now his men were eager to come up and get their share of the loot.
Thracians were famous for having gold.
My men slowed as we came up to the Thracians. I couldn't blame them – there is no such thing as a ferocious charge uphill, at least not on a hill that steep.
'Form tight!' I called, and the men pressed in.
