many had eaten breakfast and offered sacrifice. ‘We lost, but life goes on. Lord Miltiades will not stop fighting. Neither will we, as long as there are fat Aegyptian merchants to take and gold to spend.’
All that got was a grumble.
‘The Persians won’t stir today,’ I said, pointing across the bay. ‘We hurt them badly, and they’ll lick their wounds. But tomorrow, they’ll come for us. So we’ll have to be gone — away downwind to Chios, where we’ll put Philocrates and Stephanos in the ground. And say the rites for all those who went down.’
That got a better reaction.
‘But first. .’ I said, and every head came up — every set of eyes locked on mine. ‘But first, I mean to complete our crews in Miletus, and take off every man, woman and child we can save. Before the Persians storm it. Which will happen any hour.’ I looked around, and the only sound was the wind making the empty tents flap like untended sails.
‘We came here to save those people,’ I said. ‘We can still save some. Anyone with me?’
Not bad, thugater. Not bad at all. They were all with me, as it turned out.
We kept a good watch all day, so we knew when the Persians launched their assault on Miletus, just a few stades distant. They didn’t take it by surprise, or anything like — but they knew that the town was nearly empty, and probably further lost to despair than we were on the beaches.
Most of the fleet of Miletus was lost in the fighting. The handful of ships who survived ran for Samos and Chios. Not a single ship ran for their own port — not even Histiaeus himself, who left Istes in ‘command’ of a city denuded of fighting men.
As I say — we kept watch. Twice we saw patrols set off from the beaches opposite, but neither came any closer than ten stades. My two ships were hidden by the bulk of the island. Who would have expected us to hide in plain sight?
At sunset, we launched. Most men had slept all day. Our muscles were stiff, but we ate every animal we found on the beach — cows, goats, all abandoned by the Greeks — and we’d stowed carefully the best of the loot from the rest of the campaign, our weapons and little else.
Once afloat, we lay on our oars in the channel between Lade and Miletus, our oars muffled and every man silent. The rocks hid us from the town and from the besiegers. But we could hear the fighting. The town was falling. There was no question of it.
I was in a curious race with time. I couldn’t let my ships be seen against our shore when we moved — or the Phoenicians and the Aegyptians and the Cilicians would be on us like vultures. But if I waited too long, the town would fall.
Black waited with apparent impassivity, but Harpagos walked up and down the command deck of his trireme, and his bare feet were the loudest noise in the channel. Gulls moved and cried. The wind blew through a camp devoid of Greeks. In the distance, there was a murmur like summer thunder.
I remember the darkness of that hour, and the despair I hid. If I must remind you, the disaster of Lade lost me Briseis. For ever, as it seemed. The Persians have a phrase — they tell a condemned nobleman to ‘go and hunt his death’. Well — I was on the edge of hunting my death, or perhaps past it — but I had my men in order, and I had fired them for this task, and I meant to do an honourable job before I hunted my death.
The sun was a line of crimson in the west, and our shore was dark as new pitch. ‘Let’s go,’ I whispered.
‘Give way, all,’ Black said.
Every oar dipped, and we ghosted down the channel, followed by Harpagos. We made the turn, and there was the town.
Miletus was afire. The palace on the acropolis was burning, great gouts of fire leaping into the air like live daimons, and the summer thunder sound we’d heard was now the great-throated roar of a city being destroyed by fire and sword.
Miletus, the richest city in the Greek world.
We crept up the passage to the harbour, our oars carefully handled, our hulls tight against the mainland shore to avoid being seen. I began to curse. I could see soldiers in the streets of the lower town and people running and being killed, but there was no resistance.
‘Apollo, render justice,’ I said aloud. ‘You owe me better than this.’
And just then, I heard the horn from the Windy Tower.
Of course, that citadel on the harbour was the last to fall — I should have guessed it from the first. I could see men on the walls — archers — and my heart leaped.
‘Lay me under the sea wall by the tower,’ I said to Black, pointing.
‘Aye, lord,’ he said.
We turned in the mouth of the harbour and I loved my men — every oarsman of them — as we raced for the tower.
I leaped to the jetty and Idomeneus followed me.
‘Pole off,’ I called, ‘or we’ll be swamped. Wait for my word.’
Black waved.
They were fighting hand to hand on the steps of the tower when I slipped in the postern with Idomeneus. The startled sentry took one look at us — and at the two great dark hulls behind us on the tower’s jetty — and he fell to his knees. ‘You-’
‘We came for you,’ I said. ‘Take me to Istes, if he lives.’
We ran along the walls, all my wounds and all my fatigue forgotten, where men were leaning and pointing at the ships. It was worth it — all the waiting and the strain on muscles — to see those men, who had thought that they were dead, realize that they were going to live.
Istes was in the arch of the courtyard steps with a dozen other hoplites, holding the entrance. I watched him fight for a minute. In that time, three souls went to Hades on his blade, and as many fell back, wounded or simply too frightened to face him.
To fight that well — when you have
In the Pyrrhiche, we practise replacing one another in combat. It is practised in every town, in every polis, in every gymnasium. No man can fight for ever.
‘You switch with him,’ I said to Idomeneus. ‘I’ll get this organized.’
Idomeneus flexed his shoulders and set his aspis and grinned. ‘Aye, lord,’
‘Don’t go and get killed,’ I said. ‘I’m low on friends,’ I added.
His mad grin flashed and he kissed me. ‘I’ll do my best, lord,’ he said.
He stepped up behind Istes — none of the other men in the courtyard seemed to feel any need to give their lord a rest. Then, in between kills, he tapped twice — hard — on Istes’ backplate.
Istes flashed a backwards look.
Idomeneus tapped a rhythm on his shield — and one, and two — Istes pivoted on his hips and slid diagonally to the right rear, and Idomeneus lunged forward, right foot first with a sweeping overhead cut that forced the Persian facing Istes to back a step, and then Idomeneus filled the spot and killed the Persian with a feint and a back cut, and the line was as solid as it had been a moment before.
Istes sank to a knee and breathed. Then his helmet came off, and he raised his head and saw me.
For a long moment, all he did was breathe and look at me.
‘You came to die with us?’ he asked.
‘You’re as mad as he is,’ I said, pointing at Idomeneus. ‘I came to rescue you, you soft-handed Asiatic.’
Then he embraced me. ‘Oh gods, I thought we were all dead and no man would even sing of our end. There’s no counting the fucking Persians. And there’s Greeks with them — armoured men, fighting for their slave- masters.’
‘I need you to get your men off the walls and into the ships,’ I said.
‘There are fifty women and children, as well,’ he said. ‘When the lower town fell, the smart ones ran here.’
‘I have two ships,’ I said. ‘I will leave no one behind, even if it means I have to swim.’
Then he embraced me again and ran off through the courtyard, calling for his officers.
The hard part would be holding the stairs and the gate until the boats were loaded. The men on the stairs would be unlikely to live — and it is harder to get men to die when they know there is hope.
