Marathon: Freedom or Death

All along the beach, men heard it. Some understood and some were lost in the fog of combat.

I put my spear in the gut of a man with no shield — I had to assume in the dark that anyone without a shield was one of theirs — and ran back a few paces.

‘Plataea! On me!’ I roared, again and again.

Men came to me in dribs and drabs, some bringing their little swirl of combat with them, some alone.

It took for ever. Everything takes for ever in the dark. Idomeneus sounded the horn again, and again later, and still I had fewer than half of my men — my picked, best armoured men. I could not afford to leave them on the beach.

The trouble — my fault — was that I had not set a rally point or explained to them what I wanted after we hit the enemy. I had to trust that they would know the signal from the hunting expeditions.

In the end, most did, but men died because I didn’t know enough to plan the recall as part of the attack. Another lesson learned at bloody Marathon.

Every time we blew the rally, we ran back down the beach, a little farther from the ships. By the time I had eighty men — perhaps a few more — we were a stade from the enemy. We should have been clear.

We weren’t. We had taken too long — far too long. And the sun was coming up in the east — still only a line of grey-pink out over the ocean towards Euboea, but it was going to rise like the hand of doom. We were just eighty men, caught a long way from our camp.

I cursed and killed a man. By then we were fighting Medes — real soldiers. They weren’t swarming us, but their braver souls started to come in close while others shot at us from a distance. The light was still bad, their bowstrings were damp and Teucer and his lads were shooting back, so we were relatively unscathed, but I could see better with every passing minute, and that meant that they could, too.

I was in the centre of my own line. Nothing for it — we needed a miracle.

‘Ready to charge!’ I called out.

There was that reassuring sound as every man closed a little to the centre and the shields tapped together. Perhaps you’ve heard it in drill — it is a sound that always gives you heart, that rattle. It means your friends are still together — still in good order, still with enough heart to fight.

I took a deep breath. We were fighting Medes — they couldn’t understand me.

‘When I say charge,’ I bellowed, as loud as my throat and lungs could manage, ‘you go fifty paces forward, turn and run as if the hound Cerberus was at your heels. Hear me, Plataeans!’

There was a cry — something like a war cry, something like a sigh.

‘Charge!’ I called, and we went at them.

The Medes were ready for it. They broke as soon as they saw us come, and only our boldest and fastest caught any of them. I certainly didn’t — the Mede I had my eye on vanished into the near-dark of the bushes up the beach.

Idomeneus, bless him, sounded a single blast as I hit my forty-seventh stride, and we turned together, like a figure in the Pyrrhiche — which it is — and ran. We were off down that beach like frightened boys chased by an angry parent, and every man understood that we had to break contact now, or die when the sun rose.

But Persians have good soldiers, too. Somewhere in the scrub was an officer who knew his business, and within seconds of us running, they were chasing us and arrows began to fall. Then it was every man for himself. Some of my boys cut inland, across country. A few ditched their shields. Most didn’t — when archers are shooting you, the last thing you want to give up is your shield.

I stuck to the beach, and most of the Medes followed, worse luck. Had they stayed a little longer, run away from our false charge a little further, we might have made a clean exit, but we were not so lucky.

After a few minutes of running, I looked back and they were gaining. After all, they had light body armour, which most of them were not wearing anyway, as they’d been awakened by our attack. They had neither helmets nor greaves.

They were cautious, but they were getting the measure of us.

An arrow hit the middle of the back of the yoke of my armour. Thanks to Ares’ hand, it turned on the two layers of bronze, but the power knocked me flat. As I rose, another arrow hit the same place, then another glanced off my shield, heavy arrows, and another rang on my helmet, and I thought — Fuck, this is it.

I got my feet under me and turned.

One of the Medes fell to the beach, his life leaking out between his fingers as he grabbed at the shaft embedded in his guts.

Teucer was right at my shoulder, shooting calmly. One, two — and men fell.

‘Turn a little left,’ he said.

I did, and two arrows hit the face of my shield, and he shot back — zip, pause, zip.

With every shot, a Mede fell.

Another arrow into my shield, but now the Medes were scrambling for cover — Teucer dropped four right there, coughing their lungs out in the sand.

‘Run,’ I said. I gave him three steps while I stayed — another arrow off the top of my helmet — and then I turned and ran.

My breath was coming like a horse’s after a gallop — I sucked in air the way a drunkard sucks wine and my legs burned as if I had run ten stades. The wound Archilogos had given me in the fall of Miletus had a curious numbness to it against the pain of all my other muscles, and sweat rolled down my forehead and into my eyes.

The light was growing. I was running down a beach that was well enough lit for target practice, and I was going more and more slowly.

Ares, it makes me want to spit sand to remember it: fleeing like a coward, and knowing — knowing — that in a few moments I would be dead anyway. When it is your last — when all is lost — it doesn’t matter whether you were a demonstration or a deception or a last stand, friends. No one worth a shit wants to die with his back to the foe.

So I turned.

An arrow meant for my back screamed off the face of my shield.

I meant to take one with me, but I was out of everything, the daimon had no more to give me, and I — the great fighter of the Plataeans — slumped down behind my shield. I got smaller and smaller as the arrows thudded in.

But I could breathe, and I did. I panted like a dog, and I couldn’t think of anything, and arrows fell on my shield like hail on a good crop — twice, arrowheads blew right through the face of my aspis.

Oh, children, that hour was dark. When I had my breath back, I knew it was just a matter of how I chose to die. I could make it last, down under the rim of my aspis, until they got a man into the brush to my left who could shoot me in the hip or the arse. No laughing matter. I could try to turn again, but to Hades with that. My legs were gone. It seemed to me that the best course was to attack them. It would get the whole thing over with the quickest, and if anyone watched me — if there was a single bard left in Greece to sing after this debacle — at least men would say that Arimnestos died with his face to the foe.

I took a dozen more breaths, rationing them, taking the air in deep. Then I allowed myself five more — the margin of life and death. Five breaths.

Arrows continued to slam into the face of my shield.

On the edge of the fifth, I rose to my feet. I sneaked a last glance down the beach behind me — and my heart leaped with joy. It was empty. My men had got away.

In some situations, nothing would be grimmer than to die alone, but in this one, it filled me with power. Being alone made me feel less a failure. More a hero.

I leaned forward, into the arrow storm, summoned up power in my legs I didn’t think I had and charged.

Anyone asleep?

Hah! You flinched, thugater. You think perhaps I died there, eh?

Pour me a little more wine, lad.

Yes, I charged. As soon as I got my face over the rim of my aspis, I could see that they were well bunched up, about fifty strides away — that’s why so few arrows missed, I can tell you.

I remembered running with Eualcidas, at the fight in the pass. Here, like there, my feet crunched on gravel. I