down he went.
I was out of spears, but I felt the right-hand stairs to the wall under my right heel.
Archilogos came for me again, and I backed up a step and then another, and then he cut at my feet — remember, I had boots on, not greaves, because of my wounds. I got my shield in late — too late — and he got a piece of my leg, his blade slicing through my boot, through my bandages, to lay a line of icy fire across my calf.
But my shield rim caught his helmet as he leaned into the blow, and staggered him, and he fell.
Another man leaped into his place, and I backed another step and my heart fell to see the amount of blood I’d already lost. The step I abandoned glittered in the light of the doomed city.
I backed again, and the new man cut at my legs. I had no qualms about killing this Ephesian, and I parried his blow with my sword and turned my
Put yourself in my place. I had lost everything — friends, lover, ship. The rescue of the Milesians would make my name for ever, I thought. And if I died here — what more could I want? A sad end, but a great song. I could trust Phrynichus, if he survived his wound, to write of it.
When I took that wound, I thought I was done. It was too damned far to the ships, and I was losing blood like a dying man.
But nor am I a quitter. I killed the man with my xiphos and I got up another step.
Idomeneus leaned past me with a spear and put it through the next comer’s faceplate, and I was up another step.
Teucer shot the next man, and he fell back, an arrow in his upper thigh, and he swept the steps clean for a hundred heartbeats. Then Idomeneus got a hand under my arm and I was up on the wall.
It is good to have companions.
‘I’m finished, friends,’ I said.
Idomeneus picked me up bodily.
‘Like fuck you are,’ he said.
Our wall was empty. Teucer was the last man behind us. He shot, ran to us, turned and shot again. No man of the Ephesians — even wearing full armour — wanted to be the first to put his head above the parapet.
‘Can you stand?’ Idomeneus asked. He could see something I couldn’t.
‘No,’ I responded. The world was going dark on me.
He stood me up anyway. I sank to one knee.
Teucer cried, ‘No!’ and shot, right over my head.
The wall had a crenellated parapet on the city side, but on the courtyard side, just a low wall to keep foolish or drunken sentries from falling to their deaths on the flagstones benath. The stairs were recessed into the wall. We couldn’t see the enemy on our steps, but I could see — even as the curtain came down over my eyes — the line of armoured men racing up the far steps, and Istes, alone on the wall, taking them. I have never seen anyone fight as well, unless perhaps it was Sophanes, but that was later, and Sophanes wasn’t fighting in the last moments of a losing battle, doomed, against overwhelming odds. Istes threw them from the wall, he stabbed them, he baffled with his shield, his cloak, his sword, and they died.
But he was flagging. I could see it. And he’d sent his men away — they all said as much later.
In fact, Istes never intended to reach the ships. I saw him there, burning with godlike power on the wall, fighting so well that he seemed to glow with his own light. He had full bronze — cuirass, helmet, greaves, thigh guards, arm guards, shoulder cups, shield face — and his armour caught the fire of his city as it died, and rendered it a golden sun atop its last defended wall.
Teucer had three arrows left and he used them all for his lord — three more Ephesians sent to Hades.
Then Idomeneus was there, having put me down to run all the way around the wall to Istes. Idomeneus threw his spear over Istes’ shoulder, and then tapped his shoulder — but Istes shook his head and went shield to shield with a big man. Behind that man was the Scorpion. Archilogos had shaken off my blow.
I dragged myself, one step at a time, paralleling Istes’ retreat. Helmeted heads began to peek above our stairs. On the far wall, the man behind Archilogos fell with an arrow in his side.
Teucer cursed. ‘That was my last arrow, lord.’
I managed a laugh. ‘Might have been better if you hadn’t told them,’ I said.
There was a great black puddle under me. I got to my feet anyway.
On the opposite wall, Archilogos, my boyhood friend, faced Istes, the best sword in the world. Istes glowed gold.
‘Miletus!’ he roared.
Archilogos took his sword cut on his aspis and pushed forward with it, and Istes stumbled back and Archi cut up under the shield with his sword — once, twice, as fast as a hawk stooping — and Istes stumbled back, and I could see his shield arm was wounded.
Now Istes had fought all day. And he knew he would die.
But Archilogos showed himself to be a master. He gave the golden man no respite, and cut again — a heavy blow to the helmet.
He got Istes’ shield in the face, though, and he went back, and Istes backed a step. Idomeneus tapped him again, and he said something. Later he told me that he begged Istes to live. Istes didn’t reply, except to charge Archilogos. He had his arms out, and he ran like a man finishing a race, and he swept my childhood friend and slave-master off the wall in his arms, and they fell together to the courtyard, and as he fell he roared ‘Miletus’ one more time, and then he was gone, and his armour rang as he hit the flagstones.
Teucer had got me to the ropes over the wall by then. I must have been lighter by the weight of all my blood, but I remember stepping on a spear that one of the men had dropped to slide more easily to the ships.
‘Go,’ I said to Teucer.
He shook his head.
‘Go, you fool,’ I said.
He let go of my shoulder, grabbed the rope and slid off towards the deck of
I was the last man on the walls of Miletus — the last free Greek. I had no intention of leaving. The spear came to me as a sign, or so I thought. And Istes was dead. And Archilogos was dead.
So I had no reason not to be dead, too.
I had the strength to raise the spear over my head, and I set my shield, and waited for the rush. I could hear their feet on the walls, and I couldn’t see very well, but I knew they were coming.
One Ephesian came out of the dark and his aspis hit my Boeotian, shield to shield, and mine broke like a child’s toy. The blows from the Aegyptian must have weakened it.
But even blind with blood loss, I got my spear into his face, and he went down, cursing.
I stepped back and caught a breath. I was still alive.
I can only tell this as I saw it, honey. What I will say is what I saw.
Helen came to me on the wall — or Aphrodite, or perhaps Briseis. I like to think it was Briseis. Her hair was unbound, and her skin glowed like a goddess.
‘This is not your fate, love,’ she said. And she was gone.
That’s what I saw.
So I threw the spear as hard as I could, right along the parapet. I stumbled backwards, my fingers reaching for the rope, almost blind. I found it even as a blow rang off the scale shirt on my back — a spear-thrust on the heavy yoke over the shoulders. I fell, my hands holding the rope, and my feet dropped free of the wall, and I slid down the rope. My palms burned, but I wouldn’t let go.
I’m told I hit the mast quite hard. I was already pretty far gone, and I fell to the deck as if dead, all my sinews cut. But my armour did its job, and the wool stuffed in my helmet.
I remember the men crowding around me. I remember hands on my leg, and fire.
I have never run the stade since.
The women wept and keened, and men as well, as the oarsmen pulled us away into the dark. I lay cushioned in blood loss, far away and yet able to think clearly enough, and
