Marathon: Freedom or Death

death if the god intended it for me, and I was afraid.

The cleft itself was odd. A big shelf of rock overhung another, and the cleft was between them, so that a man had to climb up first, as if into a hearth. I could just get my head and shoulders through the gap, and I banged my knees badly, and the smell of almonds grew stronger all around me. The priests had told me not to flinch and not to stop climbing, so I felt in front of me with my hand — all black, and me lying on my back — and I found the next handhold and pushed myself up with my legs, crouching and pressing myself flat against an invisible rock surface. My head bumped rock, and I felt a breeze on my face. I got a knee up, and scraped it again, but the pain was far, far away, and then I was up on the second shelf, breathing like bellows. .

‘Eh-eh-eh. .’ said the dying man at my elbow.

I looked at him, and he was younger than me — and kalos, even at the point of death, with big, beautiful eyes that wanted to know how his world had turned to shit. His skin, where it was not smeared with sweat and puke, was smooth and lovely. He was somebody’s son.

I drew my short dagger, really my eating knife, from under my scale shirt where I keep it, and I put my lips by his ear.

‘Say goodnight,’ I said. I tried to sound like Pater when he put me to bed. ‘Say goodnight, laddy.’

‘G’night,’ he managed. Like a child, the poor bastard. Go to Elysium with the thought of home, I prayed, and put the point of my eating knife into his brain. .

I tried to stand, and my head hit the rock.

I whirled, and I couldn’t find the cleft any more.

I knelt and my knees were bleeding.

How strong are you, Killer of Men? a voice said.

To be honest, I suspect I may have whimpered.

I have no memory past that, until I was kneeling on the sand of the beach, puking my guts out like a babe.

Dion held my hand. ‘You are clean, and the god has spoken through you,’ he said gently. ‘I will send word to Aristides.’

‘You know Aristides?’ I asked.

Dion smiled. ‘The world is not so big,’ he said.

‘Did the god have words for me?’ I asked.

Dion nodded. ‘Simple words, simply obeyed. You are lucky.’ He patted me on the head. I was that weak. ‘When you leave the temple, obey the first man you meet. Through obeying him, you will do a service for the god — it will come straight to you, like an arrow.’ He held out his hand and I got to my feet. A slave brought me water and I drank it. ‘Are you ready?’

My head was spinning, but the world was growing calmer by the moment. ‘Yes,’ I said.

‘I add on my own account,’ the priest said, as he led me up to the altar, ‘that if you were to hold your hand when you could kill, each time you acted so would count as a sacrifice to Lord Apollo.’

‘Hmm,’ I said. But I knew that this was the most important message, and the lesson I had come to Delos to learn. The stuff about the first man outside the temple — I had seen Miltiades’ ship on the beach. I knew who would be waiting for me outside the temple, and I was cynical enough to wonder how much my former lord had paid for me.

I sacrificed at the low altar and the high altar, and then I changed my temple garments for my own Boeotian wool, with my own sturdy boots and my own felt hat. And the hilt of my own sword under my arm. I looked for my knife, and then I remembered that I’d given it to the slave — or it was lost in the bilges of a Phoenician slaver, rusting away.

I kissed Dion on both cheeks. I couldn’t help but notice that Thrasybulus was standing by the portico, eyeing me the way a butcher eyes a bull.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘You doubt,’ Dion said. ‘I, too, doubt. Doubt is to piety what exercise is to athletics. But the god spoke to you, and in a day or less, you will see.’

Then I walked down the steps of the portico. I contemplated briefly a dramatic assault on my fate. I wondered what would happen if I ran to the left, accosted the slave sweeping the steps and demanded that he order me to do something, so that I might obey.

But some things are ordained. Whether the hand of man or the hand of the gods is in it matters little, as the petty hands of men may well be the tools of the gods as well. Dion’s lesson. So I walked down the steps to where Miltiades stood, his arms crossed over his magnificent breastplate of silvered bronze. His helmet was between his feet, and his shield was being held by his hypaspist. His son Cimon stood behind him, also arrayed for war.

In truth, my heart soared to meet them.

‘Command me, lord,’ I said.

‘Follow me,’ he said, as his arms embraced me, and he crushed me against his chest. Just those two words, and my fate was sealed.

Again.

Miltiades had had a bad season, and he’d lost two ships in the fighting. He had three ships on that beach: his own, with Paramanos of Cyrene as his helmsman, whom I embraced like a brother; Cimon, with a long, low trireme he’d taken himself; and Stephanos of Chios, a man my own age, who had served under me every step of the ladder and now had my own Storm Cutter.

‘Take command,’ Miltiades said, as I embraced Stephanos.

I looked at Stephanos.

He shook his head. ‘I can’t afford to run a warship yet,’ he said. It was true — it took treasure to keep a ship at sea, scraped clean and full of willing rowers.

I turned to Miltiades. ‘All my money gone?’ I asked. I’d left him my treasure when I went back to the farm.

The Athenian shrugged. ‘I’ll repay you,’ he said. ‘It’s been a bad season. We’ve been fighting Medes and not taking ships. More losses than gold darics.’ He shrugged. ‘I lost two ships in the Euxine. I need captains.’

‘Who told you I was on Delos?’ I asked, curious. Not even angry. Fate is fate.

‘I did,’ Idomeneus said. He stepped out from the crowd of rowers as if produced by the machine in a play. ‘I came to Athens with a wagon of goods and a corpse. Aristides took it all off my hands and told me to follow you.’ He grinned. ‘I thought you were going back to the real world.’

‘Who’s tending to the shrine?’ I asked.

‘Ajax, who served against us in Asia, and Styges,’ he said. My hypaspist had an answer for everything.

I nodded. ‘Will you be helmsman?’ I asked Stephanos.

He grinned.

‘Captain my marines?’ I asked Idomeneus.

He grinned too.

I didn’t grin. I sighed, wondering why it was so easy to fall back into a life I thought I’d put behind me. Wondering why the god who asked that I avoid killing men would send me back to the life of a pirate.

But before the sun slipped any farther down the horizon, our stern was off the beach and we were at sea. We weren’t particularly elegant — my lovely Storm Cutter was unpainted, unkempt and down thirty rowers from her top form. Neither of Miltiades’ other ships was doing any better.

Stephanos followed my eyes and nodded. ‘It’s been bad,’ he said. ‘Artaphernes is no fool.’

That I knew. And hearing his name brought to mind the messenger I’d left waiting in the courtyard of my house in Plataea. I turned to Idomeneus.

‘Did you stop by my home before rushing after me?’ I asked.

‘Of course, lord,’ he said. ‘Where do you think I got the wagon or all the bronze?’

‘Any messages?’ I asked.

He laughed. ‘Despoina Penelope says that if you make money, you had better send some home. Hermogenes says that he’ll sit this one out. And here’s a message from the satrap of Phrygia.’ He held out an ivory tube slyly, knowing that he was causing me a certain consternation.