On the third night, Idomeneus, Phrynichus, Philocrates and all our marines slept, if you care to call it that, out in the rain, on the rocks north of our camp. It was a miserable night, long and tedious, but we were rewarded when, after a lashing thunderstorm that hid the first paling of the sky, we heard the telltale clash of metal on stone that heralded the Persians moving up to their usual harassment position.
This morning’s attackers were a dozen Lydian peasants with slings, and a hand of actual Persians, all officers come for the fun, talking quietly as they moved across the rocks, their magnificent bows already strung.
They walked to the same point on the rocks they had used the day before. Our northernmost sentry was fully visible, his dark cloak nicely outlined in the growing light, and all five Persian officers drew together and let fly.
I’m sure all their arrows hit the target, but I didn’t see, as I was moving. And the ‘sentry’ was made of baskets, anyway.
I don’t remember much of the first part of that fight, because there was so little struggle. The Lydians were just shepherds, and they surrendered.
Not the Persians. The Persians were a tougher proposition, five of them and four of us on a smooth piece of rock. It might have been part of the games. They came at us as soon as they saw us.
My first opponent was an older man with a heavy beard dyed bright red with henna. He had an axe at his belt and a short sword covered in beautiful goldwork that shone in the rising sun.
I remember wanting that sword.
I had a shield, my light Boeotian, and a spear — one of the short ones we used then, a man’s spear, not one of these long things you use today.
Truth to tell, a man with an axe and a short sword has no chance against a man with a shield. But no one had told the old man, and he came for me fast and determined — like a man who knew his tools. I put my spear- point into his chest, and it glanced off — he had a coat of scales under his cloak — but I knocked him down with the force of my blow. He put a gaping cut in the face of my shield with his axe.
Two of the other Persians leaped at me, ignoring Idomeneus and Phrynichus. Both attacked me with a ferocity that belied the Persian reputation as careful fighters. They attacked like Thracians, all war cries and whirling cloaks. I took two wounds in as many heartbeats — nothing serious, but enough to drive me back.
But Phrynichus and Idomeneus were true men, and they were not going to let me die. Idomeneus speared the bigger Persian through the side. The man screamed, but he must already have been dead. The smaller man continued to rain blows on me while he baffled Phrynichus with his cloak. He was a canny fighter, and he used his cloak as a shield and a weapon, and Phrynichus stumbled back when he got a cloak weight in the head. But I had my feet under me, and I thrust hard with my spear, hitting the Persian in the head. His helmet gave under my spear-point — shoddy work, and no mistake — and he died like a sacrifice, his sinews loosing as if I’d cut them.
Philocrates was fighting the older man and another opponent, and they were both retreating across the rock face. Philocrates was everywhere — his spear was high and low, and he kept moving, facing one and then another, heedless of the bad footing. The two Persians wanted no more of the fight, I could tell, but backed steadily away, abandoning their comrades.
The fifth Persian shot Phrynichus with his bow. The shot was hurried, and the arrow struck the Athenian in the helmet. Unlike the Persian helmet, Phrynichus’s good Corinthian held the point, but he fell, unconscious from the blow. The archer now put a second arrow to his bow and turned to Philocrates.
I threw my spear. The range was short, and in those days any spear you carried could be thrown.
I hit the archer and knocked him flat with the strength of the blow, but even as I threw, Philocrates missed his footing and fell on the rocks, and the younger Persian leaped to finish him.
I sprang forward, but Idomeneus was faster, throwing his spear. He missed his target, but the tumbling shaft caught the older man in the face. Blood spurted and the man fell to his knees.
The archer rolled over and cut at me with a heavy knife. He caught my shin and his blow was so hard he dented my greave and almost broke my leg. The pain was intense, and I fell, and then we were grappling on the ground. But I was covered in armour, and he had only the scale shirt that had saved him from my spear. We both had daggers after the first moments, and there was no thought of defence — we both stabbed wildly the way desperate men do.
I stabbed him five times before he stopped moving. He stabbed me just as often, but every blow caught on my cuirass, because the gods were with me and it was not my hour to die. Even unmanned by death, he tried to stab me again.
Persians. They can fight.
I got to my knees to find that Philocrates was also on his, and the younger Persian was hurrying the older Persian across the rocks and a dozen more Persians were on their way.
I retrieved my spear and stripped the corpse of the man I had killed with my dagger. His scale shirt was a model of perfection, small scales like the scales of a fish, washed in gold, with bronze and silver scales in patterns, edged in purple leather. I stripped him while watching the wary approach of the Persian relief column. They were calling their camp for more men, and a dozen Greeks were coming over the wicker walls to help us, too, but I didn’t want to be rushed while plundering.
When I had the shirt, I laid the man out neatly, his hands crossed on his chest. I left him his rings. He had fought well, and saved his lord.
We were all cut up, and shaking — for an ambush, it had been a sharp fight. Idomeneus carried Phrynichus back to the walls. Philocrates was stripping the man I’d killed first. He, too, had a fine scale shirt, and his bow-case was covered in lapis and gold wirework.
I ran to the site of Philocrates’s combat, and one of the oncoming Persians tried a long shot at me. The arrow skidded on the rocks, missing me by a horse-length or more.
As I had thought, the old man’s sword was lying between two big rocks. As I reached for it, two arrows passed through my shield. One scratched my hand at the
I got my hand on the sword hilt and stumbled back. My left leg would barely take my weight. I took an arrow to my helmet and two or three more hit the rocks around me. I paused, stepped up on to the biggest rock and waved my new sword at them, and then I ran like Achilles for our wall, dodging right and left as I passed through the rocks to make their archery a little more difficult.
Miltiades was waiting for me at the walls.
‘You are a fool,’ he said fondly.
I handed him the sword. ‘First spoils, my lord,’ I said. Then I hobbled down the wall to Paramanos, who was better than most physicians at bones and such, and showed him my leg. He had to cut the greave off my shin — the arrow had deformed it. Underneath, the shin was red and black, and it wept blood right through the skin.
Other men — Herakleides, I remember, and his brother — came and helped us out of our armour, and we were brought wine.
After a while I lay down under a sail and slept. I was exhausted, and my leg throbbed. I remember waking to eat a double helping of barley broth, and then sleeping again — two days’ sleep in a single day. There’s nothing like combat to drain a man.
When I awoke the next day, men had brought me a new pair of greaves. It is good to be a hero. Every man is your friend, and men you have never met will work hard to win your praise — or merely to perform some good act for you, as if you were one of the gods. Those greaves were a poor fit, but they were better than nothing, and some other Greek went bare-legged to combat that day.
Idomeneus cut sheepskin from my bedding to make the greaves fit against my legs, and he rewrapped my leg, which was clearly infected, or poisoned. I felt fine — elevated, even — and that can be a sign of fever.
What I remember best was my eagerness to try that fine scale shirt. It fitted me the way a shield cover fits a shield. It weighed nothing, and I felt like a god.
One of the smiths had pounded the dents out of my helmet and someone had repaired my poor battered Boeotian shield, which now had a small bronze plate riveted to the rawhide to cover where the arrows had punched through.
We were all armouring up, because the sun was rising in the east, across the bay. Where the Persian fleet was putting to sea.
