Brasidas nodded, too. ‘I get it,’ he said.
‘Form a good phalanx,’ I said. ‘Daud — you and Ka and Sittonax stay mounted and harass them. Pick off any man on the edge of their formation — get behind them and shoot arrows. Best of all, don’t let their right flank form.’
Ka wrinkled his brow.
Daud shrugged.
‘Get in close, and crowd them, and when they come at you, ride away. Then go back. Don’t let them form their line.’ I’d watched the Saka and the Persians do it. I knew what a handful of horsemen could do to infantry.
I put a stick down on the ground. ‘This is their column, marching,’ I said. ‘At some point, when we are close enough, they pick a field and start to form. Right? And you get in on their right, and make trouble — right in their faces — while they want to be shouting orders and getting the laggards to stand in a shield wall.’
Cimon laughed. ‘Cavalry tactics from a sea-wolf.’
We ate the last of our stale bread with the last of our olive oil, and drank the last drops of our wine. To Neoptolymos, I said, ‘We’re lucky.’
He glared at me.
‘Your uncle could have cowered in his town. We’d have had to go to the ships.’ I was watching the storm to the south. It might not be today, but it was coming.
‘You think we can win?’ he asked me.
I shrugged. ‘Of course!’ I said.
When your wife asks if you think she is beautiful, what do you say?
Cimon came up to me as we prepared to march. The sun was already hot. My hands were shaking. He looked at the sky. ‘I was made for better things than dying here,’ he said.
I nodded. I remember that moment. I slapped his shoulderpiece. ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Don’t die.’
He laughed, and that laugh spread over the column, because every man could hear me.
‘Let’s go!’ I shouted, and we were off.
We came down off our hill — some of you maidens may wonder why I didn’t hold the hilltop, and the answer is water. At any rate, we raced along the road, as fast as men in armour can move. We were fit, strong men and we could go quite fast.
Two stadia past the foot of the hill, we crossed a little stream. I made everyone drink, and fill their canteens. Then I stood and shook. I swear that the minutes it took those men to fill my canteens were as long as any minutes in my life. Command has a level of fear that is absent in mere service. In command, it is just you and the gods.
Two more stadia, and Daud came back to report that the enemy were just there and moving slowly, over the next low ridge. There were sheep on the ridge, and I turned to the mercenaries and Brasidas.
‘We’re going to run up that little hill,’ I said.
Brasidas nodded and checked the laces on his sandals.
Word spread down the column. Men took a slug from their canteens. And then we ran. It wasn’t a sprint, or a hoplitodromos. And almost immediately, men fell out — greaves have to fit.
A column of men in armour makes a remarkable noise, running. It raises the heart, that noise — the feet pounding together, the slap of leather and bronze. It is the sound of Ares — one of his many sounds.
Men jogging towards the enemy may tire, but they don’t have time to feel fear. Because it all hurts.
We ran up the hill. We lost about twenty men, but we reached the crest of the low ridge on the road well ahead of our enemies.
I turned to my pais. ‘Catch me a sheep,’ I said.
He nodded. Ran off.
The top of the ridge had a definite crest, and it was open — short, cropped grass rolled away down the far side. The Illyrians were coming up the hill in no particular order, and by Ares, they were close. We weren’t a stade apart. Our field was bounded by scrubby woods, that had once been an olive grove, to the north — they ran most of the way down the hill — and a low stone wall on the south of our hill that I had to hope would anchor my line. I assumed it wouldn’t have to hold anyone long, because my cavalry would slow their right flank, where, if they were like Greeks, all their best men would be.
‘Form your front,’ I called.
Men were breathing hard, but they got it done — well. Brasidas ran effortlessly along the front of his forming line, slapping, cajoling — suddenly his mouth was full of words. I noted he never swore or defamed a man. He said things like, ‘Well run, Philios!’ and, ‘You’re looking like Ares come to earth, Draco!’
Cimon had his handful of Athenians on the far right. Our front rank was brilliantly armoured, and in the centre, Neoptolymos stood out from the line. He raised his spear, and screamed a long war cry.
In the enemy line, men stopped and stared.
Of course, until that moment, Epidavros and his men thought we were a raiding party.
Neoptolymos took off his helmet, and his blond hair shone in the sun. He shouted again. I’ve heard him tell the story, so I know he was challenging his uncle to single combat.
Illyrians do that sort of thing.
But Epidavros didn’t get a chance to play the hero, or the coward, because there was a rumble, like the thunder of the day before, and suddenly all of our mounted men burst from the end of the old olive grove and rode for the flank of the column.
Battles — especially small battles — can be very complicated animals indeed. And the notion that men can really plan what happens in them is sheer hubris. Daud was on the wrong flank. He had confused — as many amateurs do — our right flank for the enemy’s right flank.
Balanced against that, his surprise as he appeared was total. The whole enemy force flinched. And he and Sittonax and Ka, Doola, Seckla and their men didn’t look like twenty-four horsemen. They looked like a thousand. Their hooves made the earth shake.
They didn’t charge home. They rode right past the tail of the column on the road, throwing javelins and shooting bows, and they circled around in short reins and came back, riding along the flank of the column. Seckla took a wound where a brave Illyrian slave stepped out of the column and stabbed at him — they were that close. But the javelins and bows put a dozen men in the dust.
‘Forward,’ I shouted.
Our line went forward.
Sometimes, it works.
Our line was formed, and theirs was not. Our cavalry had scared them, and Neoptolymos was palpably alive. To my mind, everything that was going to go our way was going our way, and it wasn’t going to get any better if we stood there at the top of the hill.
We moved at a fast walk, and our phalanx spread out. We’d only practised together a few times, on beaches and the like, so our order wasn’t perfect — gaps showed immediately.
But we were the Pyrrhiche dance team of Plataea compared to our opponents, who hadn’t yet pulled their helmets down over their faces.
Daud’s men turned like a snake for a third pass at the enemy. Seckla and another man reined in their horses and slipped off at the top of the hill. The Illyrians started to form their line.
The back end of the enemy column was slow to get the word, or perhaps hesitant. A gap opened between the centre of the enemy line and what should have been their left.
Daud put his heels to his horse and raced for the gap with all my horsemen on his tail. The Illyrians at the back of the column, who by all rights should have panicked and run, decided instead to charge — uphill, by Ares — into my horsemen.
Except for fifty or so of them, who started killing the others from behind.
Of course, Epidavros had placed his least trustworthy men on his left. Neoptolymos’s cousins.
I slowed our advance. I needed cohesion, not impact. ‘Dress the line!’ I roared. ‘On me!’
The phalanx, such as it was, closed up. Men lapped their shields over their neighbour’s to the left, and our advance slowed as men turned half sideways, and began the crab-walk that hoplites use when they are at the synaspis — the closer order.
The best-armoured man on the other side — I assumed he was Epidavros — called something to his men,
