Marathon: Freedom or Death

‘Yes, lord,’ I said.

‘I think the Persians have ordered their captains to let any fleeing ship run,’ he said. ‘So we will “flee” to the centre, turn north and attack the Aegyptians.’ He pointed at me. ‘You lead — you have the heaviest ship. When you see my signal, turn north — just as we did this morning — line ahead to line abreast. Don’t die like heroes. Gut a ship or two and make a hole. And then run. All I ask of every one of you is that you kill one more ship.’

Nearchos was weeping. ‘I can’t leave,’ he said. ‘I’ll fight until you run.’

Miltiades smiled, the way he always did when he got the best of a deal. ‘You must do as is best for you, son of Achilles,’ he said.

Our rowers had rested for long enough for muscles to stiffen, but we had all swallowed cheese and garlic sausage, and we crept west under oars into the teeth of that west wind that had blown us to victory in the morning.

The Chians were oar to oar and bow to bow with the Aegyptians across the centre, and the Milesians were just a few stades from us, but deeper in, farther north, and now the Phoenicians we’d beaten had come off the beach — not to face us, but to finish the poor Milesians.

Our rowing was poorer than dirt, and I had no heart to curse my rowers. They had given their best, and for nothing.

But Poseidon took pity on us poor Greeks, or else that day’s curses were all used up. In as much time as it takes a fast man to run the stade, the wind changed — right around. West to east. And a warm, damp wind hit us like the open hand of a beneficent god. In heartbeats we had our boatsails up on deck. Black took longer, and Miltiades passed us, and so did Aristides. They mocked us.

We were in a strange ship, and everything was stowed by strangers. As it happened, I thought it was a miracle that Black got the boatsail up at all. Then we were racing away west. Behind us, a rain squall appeared at the bottom of the bay and hit the Phoenicians. It was as if the gods were seeking to do all in their power to remedy the perfidious foolery of men.

I’ll be honest — it had none of the breakneck enthusiasm of morning. We were tired to our sinews and we were no longer fighting for greatness. But like wild dogs, we were still dangerous.

And, lest I make the Aegyptians sound like an enemy to be trifled with, many men fight badly, late in a victory. I’ve done it myself. Why risk yourself when the day is won, eh? The Aegyptians were shocked when we turned on them, and timid. And why not? They were vassals of Persia, not friends, and their side was already victorious.

Had we known the future — had we been able to see the dark days at Artemisium and Thermopyle, when the Chians and the Lesbians stood against us, vassals of Persia, in those same ships — we would have left them to die. But who could calculate such a thing? Or abandon a friend?

And of course, they repaid us in their turn — on the beaches of Mycale. But that story is for another night, eh?

Where was I? Ahh — so we turned on the Aegyptians, eighteen ships, and our ships were bigger and our crews more dangerous, even so late in a long fight. They kept formation and many backed water, and we swept on, ignoring the timid, determined to relieve the Chians.

Miltiades was first to sink a ship — a small trireme that sank under his forefoot, caught in a bad turn. Herakleides the Aeolian was, by then, a master helmsman.

Paramanos quickly got the ship that tried to rescue that one, and then we were in among them like barracuda among baitfish.

Nearchos was the first to die. He was lost when the rain squall hit us, and he didn’t see the Cilician who caught him aft with his ram. I hope he died quickly. His ship sank, and we saw it all.

Neoptolemus died driving his ship deeper and deeper into the Aegyptians, trying to save his uncle — who was already dead, mighty old Pelagius who would never again hold games on the beaches of Chios. He died with an arrow in his eye.

Another arrow killed Herakleides at the helm of Miltiades’ Ajax, too. Miltiades took the helm himself. He killed men the way a man with a scythe reaps the ripe barley, but when his marines were all wounded, he chose to live, turned out of the maelstrom and ran. I saw him go and knew that it was time for me to go, too. Idomeneus was in the bow, killing with his bow, and the Aegyptians were hanging back, pelting us with javelins and looking for easier prey while we tried to break their oars, and in the distance, perhaps a stade away, I could see the Chians and the Milesians fighting their way to us — to the hope of rescue.

Two Aegyptians, bolder than the rest, came at me, and they knew their business. I was too cocky, and I thrust between them, looking for the double oar-rake, but they folded their wings like diving birds and they grappled us as we passed between after a shower of javelins that all but cleared my deck of sailors. They had marines — Aegyptian marines are first-rate troops, as good as our Greeks, man for man, with heavy linen armour, twenty or thirty layers of it quilted up, because linen is cheap in Aegypt. They wear bronze helmets, not like ours at all, and carry a heavy shield made of the hide of some river beast. Every man has a pair of wicked, barbed javelins and a huge iron sword, and they can use them. I’ve heard men say that the Aegyptians are all cowards, but I’ve never heard a man who’s fought them make such a foolish claim.

Just before they boarded, I saw Stephanos bring his ship into action. He was always one of the best helmsmen, and he was at his own oars. He caught the leeward Aegyptian at a stand, all her oars in, and he punched into the enemy’s side like a shark closing its teeth on a corpse, and the Aegyptian’s keel snapped. Stephanos gave me a wave and I returned it — the athlete’s salute. Aye, I remember that moment, because Stephanos was like a god then.

But the other Aegyptian boarded us, undaunted by the death of their companion, and again like sharks, now that one had his teeth in us, the rest of them got bolder and came forward, and before we’d repelled the first rush, there were more ships coming in.

There was nothing we could do but fight. At sea and on land, there comes a moment in a fight when there are no longer either tactics or strategies. All you can do is fight. They grappled to our bow and to our stern and all down one side, and they came at us — maybe sixty marines against our eight or ten — I can’t remember who was still standing — a vicious chaos of blood and swords.

Philocrates stood in the bow with Idomeneus, and they stopped a ship’s worth of marines by themselves. I only caught glimpses — I didn’t have the luxury of commanding any longer, and had to fight — but I saw Philocrates kill, and kill again, until the ship on the bow cut its grapples. But a chance-thrown javelin caught him in the head — stunned him — and he died there, under the great sword of an Aegyptian marine.

Phrynichus took an arrow in the arm, leading a dozen armed oarsmen against the second ship, but he got up on the rail, his blood flowing like water in a rainstorm, and he raised his poet’s voice as if he was competing against Simonides or Aeschylus in the games:

‘Sing me, Muses, the rage of Achilles!’

He sang, even as his blood flowed, and my sailors rose from their benches with glory in their hearts.

Galas and Mal — unarmoured — followed me with the remnants of the sailors from the deck crew, and we didn’t wait for the onslaught of the third Aegyptian. As soon as his grapples came home, we were over the rails and into his benches, killing. We caught that ship by surprise — they must have thought us easy pickings, and fifteen men with axes made short work of the disorganized crew.

I cut their trierarch down with a single spear stroke where he stood at the foot of his mainmast amidships — the mast was still stepped, and Poseidon alone knows why — and I stood there breathing like a bellows gone mad. For those of you who have never fought in armour, children, you can only go a few hundred heartbeats — the best man in the world, Achilles himself, could do no more — before you have to rest. I loosened my chin strap, drank in sweet breaths of sea air and looked about me.

Idomeneus stood alone for as long as a woman takes to birth a child and held the bow, Philocrates’s corpse between his wide-spread legs. Phrynichus was down, and his singing stilled, but his sailors had swamped the second Aegyptian. We’d swept the third like a desert wind.

But while we’d been fighting, three more had come for Stephanos. And rather than abandon us and leave us to die to save himself, he stood fast on our leeward side, and they boarded him. As I watched, his spearmen cleared the fighting deck on the boldest of the three, but the other two had extra marines and they poured men into the centre of Trident. Stephanos went into them with half a dozen of his marines, his spear flashing as if he was Ares incarnate, the red horsehair of his crest nodding high above the fight.