Marathon: Freedom or Death

Got it, my blushing beauty? I’ll make a navarch of you yet, my dear.

Galas tapped his oars — a little to the west, and a little more, to compensate for that wind. Our rowers were pulling perfectly. My ship was half a length ahead of Miltiades when we engaged the first Phoenician. I can’t be certain, but I think we were the first to engage that day.

Galas overcompensated for the wind, and we crossed the bow of our target fifty feet out — a deadly error had we been moving at the same speed, but we weren’t. We were faster, and he leaned hard, having learned his lesson, and Mal called for extra effort from the port-side oars, and we heeled over again and slammed home into the Phoenician’s cathead, shattering his row-gallery with the reinforced beam at the top of our ram. The whole starboard side of his ship seemed to explode as our beak ripped down the benches, and his seams opened and he was gone under the waves. That’s what speed does for you in a fight.

‘West!’ I roared, elated. It was the cleanest sea kill I’d ever seen. Apollo was at my side and the liberation of Greece was at hand.

Miltiades’ men were cheering as they rammed the second Phoenician and went straight at the third, rolling him over, two kills in the time it takes to tell the story. Stephanos’s helmsman made the same error as Galas, overcompensating for the wind, and he missed his diekplous and swept past, but as luck would have it his bow caught the enemy ship’s oars at the end of a sweep and broke them, killing as many oarsmen as our more spectacular strike.

Some ships missed their attacks altogether, and after our initial success, the Phoenicians rallied and struck back, but their rowers were tired and the only ship they killed was one of Nearchos’s, rammed amidships with its beak stuck in its prey, as can happen when a ship strikes too hard.

At least ten of their ships died in that first strike. We had lost our god-sent speed now, but I had led the turn west, and other ships had fallen in with me. Miltiades was behind me, gathering up our stragglers, and the Chians were just engaging to the south — that is, on my left.

The bulk of the Phoenician squadron was ahead of me, and they were in confusion, because they couldn’t choose whether to turn south and face the Chians or east and face me.

I was back in the bow, looking for their navarch. Somewhere in that huddle of ships was the command ship, and there lay the most glory, the most fame and a chance to kill the head of the Hydra.

But I couldn’t make him out in the time I had. The ships closest to us had chosen to fight us as the most immediate threat, and we obliged, hurtling towards a well-manned ship at full speed. He had good rowers, and the collision threw me flat to the deck. We must have struck bow to bow, but his bow gave way — Tenedos worm, or dry rot — and his ship settled like a rock, even as his marines came over our bow like hungry wolves, and died, spitted on the massed spears of our marines.

I turned to Black, who stood behind my shield as if he was my hypaspist. Arrows had started to fly, and he was a target as much as me.

‘If every Greek kills two Persians, we’ll win,’ I said happily.

He shrugged. ‘The biggest fight I ever saw,’ he said. He rubbed his jaw. ‘But I’ve seen a few, sir. This luck can’t last.’

Nor could it. By then, we were like an arrow in the guts of an animal. We’d wounded the Phoenicians, but we hadn’t killed them. My ship was scarcely moving and now my rowers were tiring. The first flush was over and there was still a sea of Phoenicians to fight.

‘Boys need a rest, lord!’ Mal shouted in my ear.

I caught Idomeneus’s eye. ‘We board,’ I said. I ran back along the catwalk. ‘Well rowed,’ I called down into the thranites as I went past overhead. ‘Rest in two minutes!’ Down in the lower decks, they have little idea what is passing overhead — victory, defeat, death — hard to tell when all you see is the arse of the man above you and the length of his oar.

I got to the helmsman’s station with a shower of arrows from a long ship ahead. I caught one on my shield.

‘Lay me alongside that bastard,’ I said. ‘We’ll board him and give our boys a rest.’

In fact, I was aiming at the northernmost ship in the Phoenician squadron — a ship at the ‘back’ of their now utterly confused pack. I hoped that by coming up the north side of this vessel, I’d get a few minutes’ respite from the arrows of the rest.

He was having none of it, and he manoeuvred, and we manoeuvred, like two cats fighting in the dust — and we swept past each other at close range. There was a tall man in a Greek helm on the deck, and Idomeneus shot him in the throat — a wonderful shot, and he fell straight over the side.

Then we were past, and there was another Phoenician close behind — a heavy ship like ours.

He was apparently taken by surprise that we were so close, and our ram struck just aft of his bow, but he had his oars in and our momentum was too little and the angle too steep for a kill.

That was fine with me, and my rowers. We coasted down his side with a keening screech.

‘Marines!’ I called. ‘Deck crew!’

Black had an axe in each hand — long-handled axes of the kind that horsemen carry. Axemen die like lambs in a sea-fight — no shield, no defence. I feared for him and my investment, but I needn’t have worried.

As we slowed, I stepped up on the rail and took an arrow on my shield. I didn’t wait for our grapples to go home. I leaped.

I had done this twenty times, yet I missed my footing and fell over the top bench. An enemy oarsmen kicked me, but his kick hit a lot of armour and I was getting up when the enemy marines came for me. I should have died, but an axe — a full-weight axe — flew right through the hide face of the first marine’s shield and into his arm. Blood blew out through the shield, and I resolved on the spot never to go to war with the Libyans. Before then I had never seen a man throw an axe.

Black threw his second axe into the next man, and it hit poll first — not with the blade — but the poll hit the man in the temple and down he went.

Then I was up, and killing. I only remember Black and his axes — the rest is a blur — and then I was on their command deck with Idomeneus under my shield, shooting their officers at the distance a man could spit while I covered him and killed anyone who came for me. There were two Persian noblemen, and some Mede guards, and a noble Phoenician in scale armour from head to knee. He had a beard as long as his scale shirt, and Idomeneus shot him in his unarmoured face while the remnants of his marines tried to cover him — ineptly — with their shields.

The rowers were all Phoenicians, and they fought, as if to disprove everything I said earlier, but that was the navarch’s ship, honey, and he had the best of everything, and Apollo had given him to my spear. So my own rowers had to arm and come over the rail. It was ugly and went on far too long. If I had to guess, I’d say that the only enemy rowers who lived through the slaughter were those who leaped the rail and swam. Maybe six, out of two hundred men.

That’s the hard way to take a ship. And when the rowers fight — Poseidon, that’s ugly. I have no idea how long it took, but it didn’t get my rowers the rest I had intended against a nice effeminate enemy.

At Lade, there were no easy enemies.

There was cheering from the west. The haze over there was burning off, but not enough to give me a clue what was happening.

I went back aboard the Storm Cutter and found Galas in the bow with a handful of oarsmen. Water was coming in just forward of the first rowing bench. It wasn’t coming fast, but it was coming in all along the seams.

To the north, a smaller Phoenician was angling out of their mob, looking for a fight. Our ‘rest’ was over. He spotted us and started towards us from about a stade away.

I looked back at the leak. It was a hard moment for me, in a day that was full of them.

‘He’s finished,’ I said.

Storm Cutter’s bow must have been damaged when he crushed the lighter Phoenician. My first ship. He was sinking under my feet. On a calm day, I’d have run him up a beach and saved him, rebuilt the bow, retimbered him — anything to save him. But in the middle of the greatest naval battle we’d ever seen, I had only one choice.

‘Into the Phoenician,’ I said.

By then, we’d wiped out their rowers, and men were hanging listlessly by the benches, but Galas and Mal and