Marathon: Freedom or Death

Six of them were trying to stop thirty or forty professional fighters. I roared my rallying cry, and Mal stood up from where he’d been looting a corpse, Galas tapped my breastplate to tell me he was at my shoulder and together with a few more sailors and a hand of oarsmen, we leaped back to our own ship, sprinted the length of the deck and leaped again to rescue Stephanos.

As my bare feet pounded along my own deck, I could see nothing, not even with my helmet cocked back on my head. I must have slowed to take fresh spears, because when I came on to Stephanos’s deck, I had a pair in my hand.

I was first on to Stephanos’s deck, coming in behind the enemy while they butchered Stephanos’s unarmoured oarsmen. But as we arrived, another Aegyptian grappled Stephanos. At my back came Black and Galas and the deck crew. We met the new Aegyptians sword to sword and shield to shield. Mal died there, along with most of my sailors, unarmoured men facing the swords of Aegyptian marines. Further down the deck, it was even worse. I saw Stephanos fall, run through the thigh, and I saw his cousin, Harpagos, stand over him with a sailor’s axe, and blood flew like ocean spray when he hit a man.

I was tired, and my cause was lost, and it was tempting to die — but Stephanos’s loss filled me with an awful rage. And over that rage, or under it, I knew that godlike effort was required, or all my friends, all my men, would die. Those are the moments that define you, friends. Oh, thugater, you would have been proud of me that day. For it is not the sands of the palaestra that show heroism, nor the fields of the games. Nor the moment of a great victory. Any man worthy of his father’s name should be able to stand his ground on a dry day with food in his belly and armour on his back, fresh and strong. But at the tail end of defeat, when the enemy close in like hyenas on the kill, when all is lost but honour, when you are covered in bruises and small wounds whose pain tears at you with every blow, when all your muscles ache and your breath comes in gasps like a pair of broken bellows in a forge — when your friends have fallen and no one will sing your praises — who are you then? Those are the moments in which you show the gods what your father made.

Galas went down when the marines of a fifth ship hit us. To be honest, friends, I have no idea how many ships were around us by then. Eight? Ten? My ship’s deck was almost clear, but Stephanos’s ship must have looked easier, and he had fifty enemy fighters crowding the deck — I remember that his hull was low in the water from the sheer weight of men on the decks, and the ship has wallowing, unbalanced, which made the fighting even harder. At the moment when I gave myself over to Ares, an Aegyptian officer had just stooped to take the gold amulet Mal always wore.

Who was I then?

This is who I was.

I went at them down the gangway amidships, crowded with men, and I remember with the clarity of youth. I had two spears and my Boeotian shield, and I ran at them — about three steps.

I remember because the first Aegyptian had a raven on his oval shield, leaning down to get the necklace, his eyes appalled that one lone madman was charging him. And Mal — dying — grabbed the man’s shield with both hands and pulled it down.

That’s a hero.

I put my spear into the Aegyptian’s neck, just the tip, as delicately as a cat, and withdrew it, leaped high in the air above the pitching deck and threw over the falling corpse into the second man. Their shields are heavy hide, but my throw had Zeus behind it, and it penetrated his shield and his arm and I took my second spear and killed him, landing on his armoured chest as he tried to seize a breath and feeling his ribs give under my toes even as I rammed my spear underhand into the next man, stepped off the dying man, set my legs on the wood of the deck and pushed my shield.

The next man tried to step back but his mates wouldn’t let him. I thrust my spear at his head and he ducked, stumbled, and I caught the rim of his heavy hide shield with my spearhead and pulled — then thrust into his undefended chest, and a flower of bright blood grew over his white linen cuirass and his soul flew out of his mouth. His corpse folded at my feet and I crouched down, almost kneeling on the deck, and punched my spear into the inside of the next man’s thigh, the best stroke there is for a fighter, because there’s an artery there and a simple cut will kill a man. His eyes widened at the fountain of blood, and he fell, fingers reaching for the wound, and I rose to my full height, braced against a sudden shift in the deck, and threw my remaining spear over his reaching arms at the next man, right over his shield, into the skull over his nose. I reached under my arm and plucked out my sword, and a flying axe took the sixth man where he was frozen, grey with fear as grim death reaped his comrades like ripe barley on an autumn day.

I could still see the crest on Harpagos’s helmet and I roared like a beast — no war cry, but the bellow of Ares — and my foes were sick with terror, because I brought them death and they could not touch me. The next Aegyptian thrust at me with his spear, but his blow was hesitant, the fearful attack of the desperate man. What did Calchas say? Just this — when you face the killer of men, you lock shields and stand cautious. To run and to attack are both sides of the same coin — fear.

Black reached under my shield, caught the Aegyptian’s shaft and pulled him off balance and my sword cut him down, a simple chop to the neck where his linen armour did not meet the cheekpieces of his helmet.

The thranites began to gather their spears and their courage and come up like the warriors grown from dragon’s teeth in myth, so that the rowing benches sprouted fighters, and in ten heartbeats, it was the Aegyptians who were beset. We took heart, all of us, and we plucked their lives like grapes at harvest time, and the deck under my feet flowed with their blood. Thranites grabbed their ankles and knees and pulled them down, or thrust javelins up into their groins, and topside, my sword was waiting for any undefended flesh, and every time an Aegyptian set his feet, I would put my shield into his and push, and I never met a man of Aegypt with the power in his legs to stop my rush.

And they died.

The last man to face me was brave, and he died like a hero, covering the flight of his companions. He went shield to shield with me, and held me, and twice his big sword bit into my shield, the second blow cutting through the thick oak rim — but while his sword was stuck in my shield, I put my sword into his throat. He was a man. Thanks to Ares, his companions were not of his measure, or I’d have died there.

We had cleared the deck. And as I came to the rail, I cut a man’s fingers off where he grasped it. I was a horse-length from the terrified men on one of the vessels grappled to Trident, and I leaped on to the rail.

‘If you come to me, every one of you will die,’ I roared.

The Aegyptians cut their grapples and poled off.

That, my thugater, is who I was in the hour of defeat.

Wine, here.

By the will of the gods, or the temerity of men, the Aegyptians let us go. My decks were red with blood, and empty — my deck crew was dead, almost to a man — I had no officers but Black, and my marines — both of them — sat in the scuppers, white with fatigue — and watched their hands shake.

All my best men were dead.

All of my friends were dead, too. Nearchos, Epaphroditos, Herakleides, Pelagius, Neoptolemus, Mal, Philocrates and two dozen others I had known for years. Phrynichus and Galas lay in their own blood on my deck.

We crawled away, like a wounded lion or a boar with the spear in him.

But for whatever reason, the Aegyptians just let us go.

And it was not for nothing. As we crept — oh, for the rowing of the morning — past the edge of the Aegyptian line, Chian ships began to come up behind us. First a few, and then more — a dozen. Two dozen. One of them was towing a prize, and I laughed, and then I saw a Lesbian ship I knew, and I hailed him. It was he who told me Epaphroditos was dead.

But we’d burst the bubble, and now the trapped rebels boiled out of the trap as fast as they could. I have no idea who survived, only that there were enough of them that the Aegyptians simply drew off and let us all go together. We might have had eighty ships, with a handful of Milesians mixed in. And Dionysius of Phocaea. Men tell me he had cut deepest into the enemy centre, all the way through, and put fire in an enemy ship on their beach before the battle collapsed around him.

He waved and rowed past, and his men were raising their boatsail. That wave was all the thanks we got, but