Marathon: Freedom or Death

it said enough.

Black crouched by my feet. I had the steering oars in my trembling hands, and he was the only officer left, except Idomeneus, who had rallied my rowers behind me as I fought aboard Trident. He, too, was a hero. He was covered in wounds, as was I, now that I stopped to assess. I had a bloody gash inside my right thigh that should have killed me — I’d never felt it. It must have missed the vital artery by the thickness of a thread, and I was able to see deep into my flesh.

‘What now, boss?’ Black asked.

I looked across the bay — ships turned turtle and ships afire, the smell of smoke, the ocean littered with dead men, swimming men and sharks.

‘We should run for Chios,’ I said. But Miltiades had lit a fire in me to save something.

Harpagos brought Stephanos’s ship Trident alongside. He told me that Stephanos was dead. I groaned aloud — I had hoped he was merely wounded. It was the hardest blow of the day.

I got up on the rail — how my thighs hurt! — and called out to him. ‘Miltiades is standing straight on for Samos,’ I said, pointing to where Cimon, Aristides and Miltiades were raising their boatsails.

‘I’m your man, not his,’ Harpagos said. ‘Stephanos never left you, lord. Nor will we!’

I was still grappling with the notion that solid, big, reliable Stephanos was dead. My best man — my first friend as a free man.

‘I’m making for the camp,’ I said. The decision came to me as if from Athena, grey-eyed at my side. ‘I want my mainsail, and my rowers are done in.’

Black nodded, and Idomeneus shrugged, and Harpagos fell away and took station under my stern.

My rowers were done in, but I’ll note that they landed like champions. We got our ship ashore despite the wind, and Harpagos landed Trident next to us in a camp almost devoid of life.

Black shook his head over a cup of wine. ‘Boss, we’ll just die here.’

I shrugged. ‘Let’s save something,’ I said.

I don’t remember saying anything else. I fell on my sleeping rug, and I didn’t move until Idomeneus awoke me.

Fill my cup, thugater. And leave me.

8

The day after a battle is always horrible. A sea battle hides the worst — the stink and the visible horrors of the dead, and the screams of the wounded. Not many wounded in a sea-fight.

By wounded, I mean those with a spear in the guts or a cut so deep that only a physician can save them, or not save them, as the gods would have it. Because after a fight like Lade, every man has cuts, skinned knuckles, pulled muscles. Every man who has fought hand to hand on ships has small wounds — a deep cut on the arm, a burn, an arrow through the bicep. Some men have two. The fighters — the hoplites, the marines, the heroes — have all the little injuries that come with fighting in armour — the abrasions, the bruises where your armour turned a blow, the punctures where a scale was driven in through the leather. Add to that the sheer fatigue, no matter how high your conditioning, and you can see why a camp is silent after a battle. Tempers flare. Men curse each other.

I had never experienced so total a defeat as Lade. After the battle at Ephesus, I was busy rescuing a corpse and such heroic stuff. I missed the despair. Or perhaps I was too young.

Despair is a killer, children. I’ve seen it in women whose childbirth goes on too long, and I’ve seen it in sick men, but it is worst in a beaten army. Men kill themselves. The poets don’t sing of it, but it happens too often. Men cut themselves or walk into the sea. Men die from wounds that ought to have healed.

Priests are busy, saving what they can. Good doctors make a difference. But on the day after a defeat, the men who matter are the leaders. Anyone can lead men after a victory. Only the best can lead after a defeat.

I awoke the day after Lade to the realization that Stephanos was dead. And Philocrates. And Nearchos. One by one, the weight of them came to my mind, so that it was as if their shades were gathering around me.

Philocrates was on my ship, wrapped in his chlamys, and Stephanos was wrapped in his himation on Trident. To a Greek, that’s some consolation. We would honour them in death.

But not today.

I got up, poured myself a cup of wine and felt the pain of all my muscles and all my wounds, new and old. My head hurt. I said a prayer to my ancestor Heracles for strength — and I began to clean my armour, promising that if ever I came through this to my farm in Boeotia, I would build a shrine to Heracles and put his lion on the inside of my shield. Do you sheltered children know what armour looks like after a fight? Sprayed with blood, with all the fluids inside a man, with ordure — shit — and the leather full of sweat and fear. But I had no hypaspist to do it, and I needed to look like a hero.

When my armour was clean and bright, I began on my shield. The rim was broken where the brave Aegyptian had almost killed me, and the raven of Apollo seemed to me a mockery. Apollo had promised me victory. Apollo had allowed the Samians to betray us. Apollo had allowed treachery to triumph over virtue. Fuck him.

Let me say now, before I go on with the story, that we would have won Lade if the Samians hadn’t cut and run. I know that’s not the popular view. I know that today, Athenians suggest that the Ionians were an effeminate bunch incapable of defeating Persia without the spine of Sparta and Athens to hold them to the task — but that’s all crap. The Phoenicians came to that battle wary of us, and the Aegyptians wanted no part of it and, in effect, only fought to defend themselves. If the Samians had held their place in the line, Epaphroditos would have routed the Aegyptians, and we would have won.

Why do I tell you this? Because my rage and bitterness were boundless. The cupidity, the foolishness, the greed of a few men had killed my friends and robbed me of my love.

The day after Lade, I wanted revenge.

Let me be clear, honey bee. I still do.

I washed in the sea — that hurt, believe me. Nothing like salt water on new wounds. Then I put on a clean wool chiton and boots, and my newly cleaned shirt of Persian scales. I put my sword belt on my shoulder.

Black came into my tent as I finished arming myself. ‘So?’ he asked.

‘Gather the men.’ I said no more, and he went.

Idomeneus took his cue from me, and he had a Tyrian cloak on his shoulder and my good bronze breastplate on his back when he came to me. Harpagos looked like a fisherman in a wool cap. I beckoned him to me, walked him into my tent and bade him dress like a trierarch.

‘Part of leading is play-acting,’ I said. ‘You must dress the part. Today, we have to pull them up a hill the way an ox pulls a cart. Everything matters.’

He shrugged. ‘Yes, lord,’ he said.

I dressed him in a red wool himation and a plain linen chitoniskos with a leather stola. Idomeneus brought him a fine Cretan helmet from a dead Phoenician officer.

The helmet was covered in repousse, a work of art.

‘I’ve never owned anything so fine,’ Harpagos said.

I shrugged. ‘Enjoy it,’ I said.

Idomeneus grinned. I frowned at him. ‘You are the only man in this camp smiling,’ I said.

‘Good fighting yesterday,’ he said. ‘We lived. No reason to cry.’

That was Idomeneus — a man who lived at the edge of madness, I suspect.

Black wore a magnificent chiton when we emerged — purple with red and blue edge-stripes like waves, as nice a piece of cloth as I’d ever seen. And he had the sword I’d taken from the old Persian — not that I begrudged him it.

So we made a good show. The men were surly and quiet, but when they saw us, they understood immediately, and I saw men wipe their faces and look at the dirt on their hands. Good.

‘We lost,’ I said. There were about three hundred men on the beach, where the day before fifteen times that