with the rage of Ares. The barbarians could have rallied — 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 fell 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 fell away, and I got my feet under me.
I could see the faces of the panicked oarsmen — and Agios, collapsed 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 fell, 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 fell 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 Miltiades came over the other gunwale, then Styges, Gelon, Sophanes, Bellerophon, 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 will tell 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 fell over the field. I suppose that wounded men screamed, and gulls 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 all 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’ll tell you that when you are
‘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 all were, children. I don’t think that we really 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. Especially 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 well 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 all. His mouth formed an O and his head tracked me as my eyes must have followed him. He raised his shield.
‘Tell Briseis I send my greetings!’ I called across the water.
His men rowed him away and he didn’t reply.
It was harder to leap down from that hull 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 wall. The Persians who had run north and west when their line gave way ran all 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 walled 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 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 well 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’ll break out in the dark,’ Aeschylus said. His voice was thick. He knew by then that his brother was dead, and he wanted revenge. ‘They’ll break out, and every cottage they burn, every petty farmer they kill will 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 — well, 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 all 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 hadn’t seen him since the fighting started, and there he was, covered in dirt as if he’d rolled in the fields. Perhaps he had. I had. His right arm was caked in crusted blood to the elbow, his spearhead dripped blood, and flies buzzed thickly around his head.
Miltiades took a deep breath. He was the eldest of us, over forty, in fact, and his face beneath the cheekplates of his Attic helmet was grey with fatigue, and below his eyes he had black lines and pouches like a rich man’s wallet. But as I say, none of us looked much better apart from Sophanes, who looked as fresh as an athlete
