Marathon: Freedom or Death

But Istes’ men loved him. He told off ten to take the places of those fighting at that moment, who were the first to go to the boats — still dazed from combat and from their turn of fortune.

The next trick was to get the archers off the citadel walls without letting the Persians and Lydians know they were leaving.

I saw Teucer and waved. He came down off the walls. ‘I heard you were here,’ he said, a grin covering his face. ‘It’s true — you’ll take us all off?’

I laughed. Despair had left me. Save a hundred lives and you’ll find it hard to despair. Every Milesian going on board my ships gave heart to my rowers. Every woman with a babe in her arms was like new life for a wounded marine.

I tapped Idomeneus when I saw him flag. The Persians were relentless. They came in waves, determined to finish us. And they still didn’t know we were leaving.

He hamstrung an archer with a thrust under his shield, pivoted as the man screamed and I was in his place before the man had fallen to the ground.

The Persian behind the falling man had a long spear with a heavy ball of silver on the end. I stabbed at him — three fast strokes, the same attack every time. The third time went past his defences and my spearhead went through his wrist, into his neck.

The man to my left fell — I have no idea what happened — and suddenly our line was gone.

I powered forward into the press, and my spear played on them like a stork taking frogs. I felt faster and stronger than other men, and I felt no fear. I was the saviour of Miletus that night, and the flames of the dying city framed my victims.

I cleared the stairs. What more can I say? I put down eight or ten men, and the rest fled. I took blows on my armour, and my opponents were not fully armed men, but it was still one of my best moments, and yet I remember little, save that I stood alone at the head of the stairs and breathed like a horse after a race, and behind me the line restored itself and the men began to call my name.

‘Ar-im-nes-tos! Ar-im-nes-tos!’ they called.

Down at the base of the steps, I heard officers calling, and men were forming. I picked up a heavy spear that lay discarded, hefted it and then I stepped out into the arrows of the Persians.

Two thudded into my shield, but I knew that the gods had made me immune. I stepped up and threw that spear into one of the Persian officers. He took it under his arm, and I stepped back and laughed. I took advantage of the lull to look at the citadel doors, but they were smashed, and nothing could close the gate but a line of men.

‘Come to me,’ I yelled at the Milesians, and they shuffled forward warily — I might be their saviour, but I was a stranger. ‘Stand here.’ I beckoned to the men in the courtyard. ‘Close up — like a phalanx. No spaces. Listen to me. Their arrows can’t reach you here. When we retreat, the left files retreat up the left wall stairs, and the right files up the right wall stairs. Understand?’

We still had a minute. I grabbed the rightmost and leftmost men. ‘Follow me!’ I called, and I took them in the gate. ‘You go that way — single file, like forming or unforming the Pyrrhiche.’

He didn’t understand, but another man did, and I pushed the first man into the third rank. ‘Sorry, lad. I need a thinker. You — can you live long enough to get them up these stairs?’

The new phylarch shrugged.

‘Here they come!’ the men at the gate called.

I got back there with my two appointed phylarchs. We had time to take our places — me in the centre of the line, they at either end. We were seven men to a rank, three ranks deep.

‘Listen up,’ I said. ‘We take their charge, and hold. On my word, we give ground to the edge of the courtyard — and then charge. Can you do it? No shirking — all together.’

And then they came at us. It was the bodyguard. Cyrus led from in front, and I knew him as soon as he came up the steps, and he knew me, as I heard it later, from my shouted commands.

These were the best of Artaphernes’ men, picked swordsmen, nobles all, and men of discipline. They came into us together, and our line gave a step, and then we were fighting.

Cyrus didn’t come against me — by luck or the will of the gods. He had a big wicker shield, and he pushed it into the man next to me.

I didn’t await the onset of my man. I threw a spear — low — and took my man in the ankle, and down he went, and I went forward into the space, right past Cyrus. I had my second spear, and my shield was better than theirs. My second spear — like my old deer-killer — had a wicked tapered point like a needle, and I used it ruthlessly in the firelit dark, ramming it through wicker shields into their shield arms. I don’t know how many men I wounded that way, but it was more than three, and then I stepped back into my place in the ranks, leaving a hollow behind me.

‘Break!’ I called, and we turned like a school of fish threatened by a dolphin and fled, just ten steps in the tunnel, and I turned. ‘Stand!’ I said, and the Milesians turned and stood like heroes. ‘Charge!’ I called, and we went at the startled Persians.

We had men down, and so did they, and the footing was treacherous, and on balance, it was foolish of me to charge like that, but foolish things are unexpected things, and we crashed into them and pushed them right off the platform of the steps, so that one of my file-leaders took an arrow in the side — we’d over-charged, and we were in the open.

‘Back!’ I called. We shuffled back as a storm of arrows fell on the portico. I tripped — a man grabbed at my leg, and I was looking into Cyrus’s helmet. My sword point stopped a finger’s width from his eye.

‘Doru,’ he said. He managed a smile, although I was about to slay him.

I stepped over him. ‘Can you walk?’ I asked, and he managed to get to one knee. Another wounded guardsman rose, holding his left arm — where I’d put a spear into it, no doubt.

‘Let them go,’ I told my men. Apollo, witless lying god, witness my mercy.

Six Persians shuffled away. They didn’t meet our eyes. But they lived, and they had fought well. As my hero Eualcidas of Eretria told me once, everyone runs sometime.

I could hear argument in the darkness.

Istes came up beside me.

‘We’re out,’ he said. ‘All but ten archers up on the walls with all our remaining arrows.’

‘No time like the present,’ I said. ‘By files, to the right and left, retire!’

Istes laughed. ‘You Dorians have orders for everything,’ he said.

We backed up the tunnel, and then they came at us.

Greeks. In armour.

They came fast, hard and silent, and the man who led them had a great scorpion on his shield. He put my right file-leader down and sent his shade away screaming at the first contact, and the line couldn’t rally because the end men were retreating up the stairs.

Suddenly, our orderly flight was chaos.

Istes went forward into the fight, and all I could do was go with him. For ten heartbeats — maybe twice that — the two of us held ten armoured men.

Istes killed a man in that time. He was that good.

I didn’t. I was facing three men, and one of them was the man with the scorpion on his shield. It was Archilogos.

It was bound to happen sometime.

I had sworn to save him and his family, before all the gods, at the shrine of Artemis. And he was one of the best fighters in the Greek world. We had the same training. We’d been in the same battles.

The gods send us these challenges to see what we’re made of, I think.

The last thing I wanted Archilogos to know was that he was immune to my blade. I rammed my shield into his and made him stumble, and then I thrust at each of his two companions, fast as a cat, and then I jumped back.

Istes, as I said, killed his man.

He felt me back away, and he backed, and then we backed together.

Archilogos shouted for his men to get around me. ‘They’re abandoning the gate!’ he roared.

As the leftmost man sprang forward, I threw my second spear and caught him in the outstretched leg, and