Marathon: Freedom or Death

And then they hit, and my shield took the impacts, like a hail of stones thrown by strong boys or young men. Two hit my helmet, and there was pain.

Then I was free of them and still running. More men were down. And the rest were right with me.

Golden Helm had made his decision.

He ordered his cavalry to charge us, slanting across our front — horses take up three or four times the frontage of a man with a shield, unless they move very slowly. So suddenly the whole of the Plataean front was filled with Persian cavalry.

I altered my stride and ran for Golden Helm. My Plataeans didn’t know any better, so they followed me.

The received wisdom of the ages is that infantry should not charge cavalry. In fact, it’s about the best thing the infantry can do. Charging keeps men from flinching. Cavalry is only dangerous to infantry who break. I wanted their unarmoured horses in among our rear ranks, where they’d be swarmed and killed. I didn’t want to fight them later — in our flanks, or our rear.

But to be honest, it was too late to change plan.

I ran at Golden Helm, and he became my world. He saw me, too, and he rode at me. He had a long axe in his hand, and his beard was saffron and henna-streaked, brilliant and barbarous. He was someone important. And the way he whirled the axe was. . beautiful. Magnificent.

I could say the battlefield hushed, but that would be pig shit. But it did for me. These moments come once or twice in a lifetime, even when you are a hero. As far as I know, we were the first to clash on the field that day. I saw no one else in those last moments. I saw the fine ripples in the muscles of his horse, the way the sun glinted like a new-lit fire from the peak of his helmet. The way his axe curved up from his strap — reaching for my throat.

I was perhaps five paces from him — one lunge of his horse, three strides of my legs — when I cast my spear.

The point went into the breast of his mount and sank the length of my forearm, and the horse’s front legs went out from under it as if it had tripped.

He cut at me anyway. But the gods put him on the ground at my feet, and my second spear rang on his helmet, snapping his head back. He tried to rise, and quick as a cat I stabbed twice more — eye slit and throat. The first rang on his helmet and the second sank slickly and came out red. And then I was past him, and the world seemed to burst into motion as the rest of his cavalry slammed into us or slackened their reins — confusion everywhere, but the Plataeans ran in among them.

The Persians had balked, or most of them had. It happens to horses and to cavalry. Especially men who are riding strange horses. Many of them were just Greek farm horses, and they balked at the line of shields and the eleu-eleu-eleu shrieks from every throat.

And then they broke. They wanted a shooting contest, not a toe-to- toe brawl with men in better armour. The noble Persians broke away from us, leaving their dead, having accomplished nothing.

But we had. We were like gods now. We went after them, at their infantry, at the archers who had stopped shooting for fear of hitting their own.

The gods were with us.

I ran with a host of dead men — Eualcidas was there, I know, and Neoptolemus, and all the men who had died for nothing at Lade. I could feel their shades at my back, giving wings to my feet.

But Persians are men, too. Those archers were not slaves, nor hirelings, nor raw levies. They were Darius’s veterans, and when we were ten short paces from their lines, they did not flinch. They raised their bows and aimed the barbed shafts straight at our faces, too close to miss.

And then they loosed. I remember hearing the shout of the master archer, and the grunts of men as they let the heavy bows release — I was that close.

I was in front. Men say that our front rank fell like wheat to a scythe. I know that the next day I saw men I loved with eight or nine arrows in them, men shot right through the faces of their aspides, through leather caps, or even bronze.

But not a shaft touched me. Perhaps the shades kept them from me. Or Heracles, my ancestor.

Nine paces from their line, I knew I would outrun their next volley.

Eight paces out, and men in the front rank were as plain as day — tanned faces. Handsome men, with long, black beards. Drawing swords.

Six paces out, and they were flinching.

This was not the fight at the pass. I didn’t need to risk hitting them at full speed. I slowed, shortening stride, bringing my second spear up, gripping it short — just a little forward of halfway.

Three paces out, and my prayers went to my ancestors. There is no Paean at the dead run, but to our right, the Athenians were singing, and I could hear it.

I remember thinking — This is how I want to die.

One pace out, the man in front of me wouldn’t meet my eye, and my spear took him while he cringed, but the man to his left was made of better stuff and he slammed his short sword into me. I blocked it on my aspis and then I put my shield into him. He had no shield, and I probably broke his jaw.

My strong right leg pushed me through their front rank. Left foot planted, shield into the second-ranker and I knocked him back — Ares’ hand on my shoulder.

The second-ranker was a veteran and he knew his business. He and the man to his right got their swords up, into my face, points levelled, and they pushed back at me together. Then a rain of blows fell on my aspis as they tried to force me out of their ranks. I took a blow to my helmet and I went back a step, and then Teucer — already at my shoulder by then — shot one, a clean kill. I pushed forward against the other man, chest to chest, and he stood his ground, and our spears were too long to reach each other, close enough to embrace, to kiss, to smell the cardamom and onion on his breath. I thrust over his shoulder at the man behind him. He pushed me back — he was strong, and I remember my shock as he moved me back another full pace, but he was so dedicated to pushing me by main strength that I had time to throw my light spear into another second-ranker. My sword floated into my hand and I cut — once, twice, three times — at his shield rim, no art, no science, just strength and terror and the last shreds of force from my desperate run, and he raised his cloak-wrapped arm and ducked his head, as men will, and pushed. My fourth blow came as fast as the first three, stooped like a hawk on a rabbit, bit through his cloak and into the naked meat of his arm, so hard that it cut to the bone and my sword snapped as I wrenched it loose — falling, because even as I cut him, his push overcame my balance. I fell, and the melee closed over me.

Imagine — I had killed him, or wounded him so badly he couldn’t fight, yet still he knocked me down. At my shoulder was Teucer, who had no shield. At my victim’s shoulder was a smaller man who hadn’t quite kept up — in a fight like that, a rear-ranker needs to be pressed tight to his front-ranker to help him at all, or his spear-thrusts are too far back. Teucer shot the next man, but the arrow skittered off his shield.

Suddenly we were fighting their killers, their front-rank men, who were pushing as hard as they could to get to their correct places. By all the gods, the Persians were brave. Even disordered, they fought, and their best men weren’t finished.

I saw it all from where I’d fallen backwards, my back against Teucer’s knees and my shield still covering me.

I had never gone down in a phalanx fight before, and I was terrified. Once you are down, you are meat for any man’s spear. In falling, my chin had caught on my shield rim and I’d bitten my tongue — it may sound like a silly wound to you, thugater, but my head was full of the pain and I didn’t know if I’d taken a worse wound.

‘Arimnestos is down!’ Teucer called. He meant to rally aid, but his words sucked the heart out of our phalanx. The whole line gave a step to the Persians and Medes.

I couldn’t get an arm under me. My left arm, beneath my shield, was wrapped in my chlamys, and I couldn’t get the rim of the shield under me — my right arm slipped on the blood-soaked wheat stubble and one of the enemy thrust at me. I caught a flash of his spearhead and turned my head, and his blow landed hard. His point must have caught in the repousse of my olive wreath, and I fell back again, this time on my elbows. My aspis bore two heavy blows, and my shoulder felt the impact as my left arm was rotated against my will — I screamed at the pain.

Then Bellerophon and Styges saved my life. They passed over Teucer, their shields flowing around him in the movements we had taught in the Pyrrhiche. They stood over me, their spears flashing, the tall crests on their helmets nodding in time to their thrusts, and for a moment I could see straight up under their helmets — mouths