Marathon: Freedom or Death

7

The next day, it rained, and the next as well, which was as well for all the Greeks, as many of us had small wounds, aches and pains that would not have served us well in the heat of battle.

The Samians began to behave badly. Many of their oarsmen refused to patrol, despite the Persian fleet being just twenty stades across the bay. Their odd behaviour enraged the Lesbians and the Chians. There were fist fights, accusations of cowardice.

We on the shore of Miletus were protected from all that, but not from the Persian army laying siege to Miletus. As if the unspoken truce of the games was over, the Persians attacked our sentries the very next dawn, shooting men on the wicker wall we’d woven to protect our ships, like the Achaeans at Troy. When it happened again the next day, I decided to do something about it.

On the third night, Idomeneus, Phrynichus, Philocrates and all our marines slept, if you care to call it that, out in the rain, on the rocks north of our camp. It was a miserable night, long and tedious, but we were rewarded when, after a lashing thunderstorm that hid the first paling of the sky, we heard the telltale clash of metal on stone that heralded the Persians moving up to their usual harassment position.

This morning’s attackers were a dozen Lydian peasants with slings, and a hand of actual Persians, all officers come for the fun, talking quietly as they moved across the rocks, their magnificent bows already strung.

They walked to the same point on the rocks they had used the day before. Our northernmost sentry was fully visible, his dark cloak nicely outlined in the growing light, and all five Persian officers drew together and let fly.

I’m sure all their arrows hit the target, but I didn’t see, as I was moving. And the ‘sentry’ was made of baskets, anyway.

I don’t remember much of the first part of that fight, because there was so little struggle. The Lydians were just shepherds, and they surrendered.

Not the Persians. The Persians were a tougher proposition, five of them and four of us on a smooth piece of rock. It might have been part of the games. They came at us as soon as they saw us.

My first opponent was an older man with a heavy beard dyed bright red with henna. He had an axe at his belt and a short sword covered in beautiful goldwork that shone in the rising sun.

I remember wanting that sword.

I had a shield, my light Boeotian, and a spear — one of the short ones we used then, a man’s spear, not one of these long things you use today.

Truth to tell, a man with an axe and a short sword has no chance against a man with a shield. But no one had told the old man, and he came for me fast and determined — like a man who knew his tools. I put my spear-point into his chest, and it glanced off — he had a coat of scales under his cloak — but I knocked him down with the force of my blow. He put a gaping cut in the face of my shield with his axe.

Two of the other Persians leaped at me, ignoring Idomeneus and Phrynichus. Both attacked me with a ferocity that belied the Persian reputation as careful fighters. They attacked like Thracians, all war cries and whirling cloaks. I took two wounds in as many heartbeats — nothing serious, but enough to drive me back.

But Phrynichus and Idomeneus were true men, and they were not going to let me die. Idomeneus speared the bigger Persian through the side. The man screamed, but he must already have been dead. The smaller man continued to rain blows on me while he baffled Phrynichus with his cloak. He was a canny fighter, and he used his cloak as a shield and a weapon, and Phrynichus stumbled back when he got a cloak weight in the head. But I had my feet under me, and I thrust hard with my spear, hitting the Persian in the head. His helmet gave under my spear-point — shoddy work, and no mistake — and he died like a sacrifice, his sinews loosing as if I’d cut them.

Philocrates was fighting the older man and another opponent, and they were both retreating across the rock face. Philocrates was everywhere — his spear was high and low, and he kept moving, facing one and then another, heedless of the bad footing. The two Persians wanted no more of the fight, I could tell, but backed steadily away, abandoning their comrades.

The fifth Persian shot Phrynichus with his bow. The shot was hurried, and the arrow struck the Athenian in the helmet. Unlike the Persian helmet, Phrynichus’s good Corinthian held the point, but he fell, unconscious from the blow. The archer now put a second arrow to his bow and turned to Philocrates.

I threw my spear. The range was short, and in those days any spear you carried could be thrown.

I hit the archer and knocked him flat with the strength of the blow, but even as I threw, Philocrates missed his footing and fell on the rocks, and the younger Persian leaped to finish him.

I sprang forward, but Idomeneus was faster, throwing his spear. He missed his target, but the tumbling shaft caught the older man in the face. Blood spurted and the man fell to his knees.

The archer rolled over and cut at me with a heavy knife. He caught my shin and his blow was so hard he dented my greave and almost broke my leg. The pain was intense, and I fell, and then we were grappling on the ground. But I was covered in armour, and he had only the scale shirt that had saved him from my spear. We both had daggers after the first moments, and there was no thought of defence — we both stabbed wildly the way desperate men do.

I stabbed him five times before he stopped moving. He stabbed me just as often, but every blow caught on my cuirass, because the gods were with me and it was not my hour to die. Even unmanned by death, he tried to stab me again.

Persians. They can fight.

I got to my knees to find that Philocrates was also on his, and the younger Persian was hurrying the older Persian across the rocks and a dozen more Persians were on their way.

I retrieved my spear and stripped the corpse of the man I had killed with my dagger. His scale shirt was a model of perfection, small scales like the scales of a fish, washed in gold, with bronze and silver scales in patterns, edged in purple leather. I stripped him while watching the wary approach of the Persian relief column. They were calling their camp for more men, and a dozen Greeks were coming over the wicker walls to help us, too, but I didn’t want to be rushed while plundering.

When I had the shirt, I laid the man out neatly, his hands crossed on his chest. I left him his rings. He had fought well, and saved his lord.

We were all cut up, and shaking — for an ambush, it had been a sharp fight. Idomeneus carried Phrynichus back to the walls. Philocrates was stripping the man I’d killed first. He, too, had a fine scale shirt, and his bow-case was covered in lapis and gold wirework.

I ran to the site of Philocrates’s combat, and one of the oncoming Persians tried a long shot at me. The arrow skidded on the rocks, missing me by a horse-length or more.

As I had thought, the old man’s sword was lying between two big rocks. As I reached for it, two arrows passed through my shield. One scratched my hand at the antilabe, and only the heavy leather of the strap kept me from taking a bad wound. The other went right through the shield face and hit my greave, but again the thin bronze held.

I got my hand on the sword hilt and stumbled back. My left leg would barely take my weight. I took an arrow to my helmet and two or three more hit the rocks around me. I paused, stepped up on to the biggest rock and waved my new sword at them, and then I ran like Achilles for our wall, dodging right and left as I passed through the rocks to make their archery a little more difficult.

Miltiades was waiting for me at the walls.

‘You are a fool,’ he said fondly.

I handed him the sword. ‘First spoils, my lord,’ I said. Then I hobbled down the wall to Paramanos, who was better than most physicians at bones and such, and showed him my leg. He had to cut the greave off my shin — the arrow had deformed it. Underneath, the shin was red and black, and it wept blood right through the skin.

Other men — Herakleides, I remember, and his brother — came and helped us out of our armour, and we were brought wine.

After a while I lay down under a sail and slept. I was exhausted, and my leg throbbed. I remember waking to eat a double helping of barley broth, and then sleeping again — two days’ sleep in a single day. There’s nothing like combat to drain a man.

When I awoke the next day, men had brought me a new pair of greaves. It is good to be a hero. Every man is your friend, and men you have never met will work hard to win your praise — or merely to perform some good act for you, as if you were one of the gods. Those greaves were a poor fit, but they were better than nothing, and some other Greek went bare-legged to combat that day.

Idomeneus cut sheepskin from my bedding to make the greaves fit against my legs, and he rewrapped my leg, which was clearly infected, or poisoned. I felt fine — elevated, even — and that can be a sign of fever.

What I remember best was my eagerness to try that fine scale shirt. It fitted me the way a shield cover fits a shield. It weighed nothing, and I felt like a god.

One of the smiths had pounded the dents out of my helmet and someone had repaired my poor battered Boeotian shield, which now had a small bronze plate riveted to the rawhide to cover where the arrows had punched through.

We were all armouring up, because the sun was rising in the east, across the bay. Where the Persian fleet was putting to sea.

I’ve seldom been with men so elated before a battle. What the four of us had done the day before was to show the Athenians, at least, that we could take the Persians man to man. The success of our venture — a palpable success, I’d add, with looted armour, a bow-case and a magnificent sword — had a powerful effect on every man on our beach, Athenians, Chians, even the mercenaries. The personal wealth of the Persians was legendary — but we’d just proven it.

I’ll say this for Dionysius of Phocaea: his ship was the first off the beach, and he rowed up and down, coaxing us to greater efforts, telling every division, and even every ship, where to take their place in the line.

We formed in the bay with Lade behind us, and our line formed with the Samians on the left, with the Lesbians next. These two contingents made up more than half our line, one hundred and eighty triremes. Erythrae and Phocaea only contributed ten ships between them, but they were the best trained, and they were in the centre. Then came the Chians — a hundred ships under old Pelagius and his nephew, Neoptolemus, the finest of men and the proudest single force for size and beauty. On the right, we had the smaller contingents from Teos, Priene and Myos — about thirty ships altogether, perhaps the worst of our entire fleet. The smaller islands were hard-pressed to raise and crew a trireme. It was as if they had exhausted themselves by providing the thing, and had no energy left for training.

To the right of the mixed squadron were the Milesians, sixty-eight ships. On this day, Histiaeus came out of his city and led them in person. Some said that the men of Miletus had told him to go and not come back — his madness had worsened, and men feared him. But he left Istes in command of the Windy Tower.

And finally, to the right of the Milesians, there was Miltiades’ contingent and the Cretans under Nearchos. They called us the Athenians, but unlike the force that Aristides had led at Sardis five years before, we were really pirates. None of my rowers was an Athenian citizen, although many of them had been born under Athena’s gaze. More were Thracians, or Byzantines, or broken men from Boeotia and the Peloponnese. Even our marines were a polyglot bunch.

Nearchos’s contingent was another fine one, with five well-built ships and highly trained crews. I had drummed it into the boy to take war seriously, and he did. He had spent a fortune on his oarsmen, and his ships were painted red, his helmet was painted red and he had a red shield with gold fittings.

A group of us — my friends and old comrades, and Miltiades’ officers — met on the beach as if by common consent, to pour libations and pray and drink wine in the new dawn. It is nice to be the last squadron to form. There’s plenty of time to make sure that all the rowers have their cushions, that all the thole pins are sound and secure, the hulls are smooth, every buckle is buckled and every lace fresh, new and strong. The vanguard must hurry out in the dark, leaving their canteens behind, or some other thing that irritates you all day in a big fight.

Paramanos got us together, going from group to group as we armed and inviting us to Miltiades’ awning. When I arrived, I accepted the congratulations of every man on my feat of arms the day before.

‘Nice thorax,’ Aristides said. He took my hand. ‘And a noble fight,’ he added with a smile.

As Istes said, what would it be like to awaken one morning and find that you had forfeited all that adulation? And from such a man as Aristides?

That is what it is to be a hero. Unless you never deserved it, once you go up that ladder, you cannot come down.

At any rate, we were all there — all the best men of our contingent. Aristides made the sacrifices, and Cimon stood on one side of me, while Paramanos stood on the other, and Agios, Miltiades’ personal helmsman and my former mentor, winked at me across the sacrificial fire.

They were all there, the friends of my first life, and some from my second — my pirates. Miltiades, and Phrynichus, and Nearchos whom I had trained, and his brother, and Idomeneus stood behind me with Phrynichus, and Philocrates took his share of the prayer without a ribald comment, and Herakleides the Aeolian, one of my first men, now commander of a trireme, and Stephanos. I smiled, because my men had done well.

We sang the paean of Apollo, and we made sacrifice, and then Miltiades handed round a great kylix of unwatered wine.

‘Today, we are not pirates,’ he said. ‘Today, we fight for the freedom of the Greeks, although we are far from home and hearth.’

Let me tell you, Miltiades was always my model of a man — of greatness. He stood taller, acted taller, than other men. I still ape his manners — the way I swirl a cloak and the way I put my hand on the hilt of my sword are his. And when the sense of occasion was on him, he was not like a god. He was a god. Even Aristides was like a pale, priggish shadow next to the blazing sun of his glory.

We all drank, and when the kylix came back to Miltiades, he raised it on high. ‘May we all be heroes,’ he said, and poured the rest into the sand.

My ship was the last one in the water — the rightmost ship in the rightmost division. It meant that we had to row far to the east, well down the bay.

I must explain the way of it, or you young people will never understand what happened in the battle. First I’ll draw the bay — a great shape like an empty sack, open on the west and with the bottom at the east. Up near the mouth of the sack — the lower side of the mouth, see? — is the island of Lade, and Miletus sticks into the mouth of the sack by the island, like a man pushing his thumb in. And the Persian camp, the siege, was south and west of the city, so that, as we formed our line, west to east, from the top of the sack to the bottom as it were, the city and the Persian camp were both behind us. We were, in effect trying to keep the Persian fleet from getting to the city and the camp.

Our line extended from the island all the way along the bay to well east of the Persian camp. Our line stretched for almost thirty stades.

There’s an irony, too. We fought there again — at Mycale. But I’ll tell that story when I get to it.

The Persians started forming earlier than we did and were still forming when my men rowed us the last few ship-lengths to form to the right of Stephanos in Myrmidon. So we rested on our oars and watched as the Aegyptian contingent formed opposite us, and then more Phoenicians beyond them.

Facing nothing.

Their line was, in fact, almost twice as long as ours. Part of that was because they left gaps between their divisions, and part was because aside from the Phoenicians, who were great sailors, and well trained, the rest of their ships had as little notion of keeping formation as the worst of ours. I could see the Cilicians, away at the Samian end of the line, and they were more like a cloud of gnats than a squadron.

For all that, I didn’t like being outflanked by the Phoenicians. They’d split their best contingent, putting a hundred Phoenician ships at either end of their great crescent. They put their worst ships in the middle. Their plan was clear — to close rapidly on our flanks and crush us before we broke their centre.

We were still lying on our oars when Miltiades came out of the line under his boatsail. He was the leftmost ship in our squadron, hard by Nearchos. Together, we and the Cretans had sixteen ships — the best manned, and probably the best trained except for the Phocaeans.

Miltiades passed down the line and hailed each captain as he came up. When he got to me, he turned his ship under oars so that it came to rest on my right, usurping my place of honour.

‘When we go forward, follow me,’ Militades called. ‘We’re going to form a column, race downwind to the east, and try to sting the Phoenicians.’ He laughed.

Fifteen of us against a hundred Phoenicians. ‘Long odds,’ I called back.

Whatever he replied was carried away by the rising wind, but I heard the word ‘hero’, and I waved.

Idomeneus had a mad grin on his face. ‘This’s what I came for,’ he said.

I looked at the mass of Phoenician ships and smiled.

Like most pirates, most of my rowers were pretty well armed. Every man had a javelin at least, and many had a pelte or a buckler. A good number had better gear — a helmet, a leather hat, an aspis. On board the mighty Ajax, every man had a helmet and a spear, and some had swords. The older and more successful a pirate was, the better kit his rowers had, and that gave us a huge advantage in a boarding fight. On the Phoenicians, their rowers were slaves or captives or paid freedmen, but none of them had arms. Not that that ever seemed to cause them to row any worse, but if a boarding fight lasted more than a few minutes, our ships would always overwhelm theirs. In fact, one of our ships could put two hundred trained fighters against ten of theirs. That’s why they preferred a fight of manoeuvre.

We’d also killed most of the best Phoenician crews at Amathus. They were shy now, and cautious of engagement.

But fifteen to a hundred was long odds at the best of times.

I pondered this, gathered my marines and my officers amidships on the fighting platform and told them what I knew. I pitched my voice to carry so that my oarsmen could hear everything I said.

‘We’re going to sail downwind on our boatsails, so lay everything on deck and stand ready,’ I said to my sailing master. He was a black Libyan with a barbaric name like a noseful of snot, but we all called him ‘Black’ and he answered to it. I’d bought him on the beach at Lade and freed him on the spot — he’d been a helmsman way out west at Sicily, and I knew quality when I saw it, for all that he was new to my ship. Paramanos was black, and look how good he was.

‘Then we’re going to drop sails, turn back west and attack the tip of their pincer,’ I said. ‘I’m going to guess that Lord Miltiades will try to lure them into a luffing match upwind — their rowers against ours — until we hit the shore. If we do that, nothing matters except how far east and north of the battle we can lure the bloody Phoenicians. Don’t get locked in a boarding fight if you can con your enemy into trying to outsail you. And friends — we in Storm Cutter can outsail anything they offer, can we not?’

They shouted back at me, and then I went forward to watch as Black had his sailors lay out the boatsail and Mal coached his rowers while Galas took the helm. I had promoted him to helmsman when I purchased Black. He watched Black with a critical eye.

I kept my eye on the Persians — though there probably wasn’t a Persian among them, except for a dozen noble archers on twenty or so of their command ships. Somewhere was Datis himself. He’d have a deck full of them. But the rest of their fleet’s people were vassals and slaves — and Cilician pirates, of course. Men just like us.

As I watched, there was a flash and a ripple all along the front of the Persians as their oars came out. It wasn’t neat, or well drilled, but the mass of their great half moon began to move. It was a terrifying sight, truth to tell — they outnumbered us so badly, and their line filled your eye, almost horizon to horizon. They must have taken up fifty stades of ocean — more than five hundred ships. Until then, no one had ever seen such a fleet.

I refused to be terrified. Today was the day Apollo would smile on the Greeks, the day I would win Briseis, fulfil my destiny and go to glory. I had half a notion that I might die in the victory — it would suit all I had heard of fates that I die achieving my ambition, and my curse to Briseis.

Death held little fear for me.

I was still young then.

Heads up, sailors!’ I called from the bow. ‘Attention to orders!’

Miltiades was turning out of the line, and he had a square torn from his big red awning flapping at his stern.

‘Hoist the boatsail,’ I called, and Black echoed it in his curious singsong accent.

We turned with the steering oars, the rowing oars held clear of the water but ready to engage — all to save the rowers’ strength. I looked back along our line, and I saw them come from line abreast pointed north to line ahead pointed east in fine style — one of the very manoeuvres that Dionysius had made us practise, in fact. Nearchos followed us, and eight of the Chians came out of their line and followed us — Neoptolemus and his contingent, I later learned. That made me grin — twenty-five ships were shorter odds, and now the Phoenicians couldn’t just ignore us or we’d wreck them. I wondered what the Samians were doing to avoid envelopment at their end of the line, but fifty stades is a long way to see on a hazy morning.

We sailed due east with a strengthening breeze at our backs, and the water tore down our hulls, and we sang hymns and drinking songs. Miltiades sent an oarsman over the side, and he called out to each ship as it passed, ordering us to prepare to turn to port and form line ahead facing north when the red square flew again. I understood well enough, and I expect that all the other captains did, too — again, Dionysius’s training paid off.

Opposite us, the Phoenicians and the Aegyptians didn’t react to our manoeuvre, but carried straight forward under oars. The Aegyptians were in a mix of heavy ships and pentekonters, light ships that we Greeks would no longer put in the line of battle.

We got three stades to the east before they reacted, and by that time Miltiades’ Ajax was even with the eastmost ships in the Phoenician division, so that we were actually threatening to outflank their fleet. For those of you who have never fought ship to ship, and I think that’s every one of you, a rowing ship is most vulnerable to a ram in the flank, or the long side of the ship, where the bronze beak can roll you over or split the planks of your side and leave you to swim in the deep dark sea. Or sink in your armour and feed the fish.

We watched them with the avidity of men watching a sporting event. Late — very late — the tip of their crescent began to turn east to face us, but they were rowing and we were sailing, and although they were able to keep pace, their squadron began to string out over the sea, losing all hope of formation. We were strung out too, but the wind moves at the same speed for all, I suppose, and we still held our line. And they were rowing flat out to race against us.

Miltiades was the best fighting sailor I served under. Later, every man would praise Themistocles. He was a rabble-rouser and a politician, and he made Athens the greatest sea power in history, but Miltiades — like Dionysius of Phocaea — was a pirate and a seaman.

We raced two more stades to windward, and the breeze continued to grow behind us — the hand of the gods, we said to each other. Miltiades began to wave, and I sent a runner to signal Stephanos, astern of me. We were about to turn.

Miltiades stood on the helmsman’s bench of Ajax, the red square bundled under one arm, his other arm hooked in the bent wood of the trireme’s stern, watching the ships behind me. On mine, Black had the bow full of sailors standing about the boatsail mast, and Mal had the oars out and peaked, ready to stroke. Galas had a grin from ear to ear, the oars steady under his arms, ready to turn.

‘Prepare for a hard turn to port,’ I roared. ‘On my command!’

By the gods, I thought, this is going to be glorious, win or lose. I had seldom gone so fast in a trireme — the wind directly astern had such power. I wondered if we could carry any of it through the turn.

I also noted that Miltiades was stiffening his ship by sending his marines and extra deck crew to the windward side, and I followed suit. Anything to get that railing down as we turned — or rather, anything to keep the leeward rail out of the water. I’d never heard of a trireme rolling over in a turn, but I didn’t want to be the first one to do it, either.

Heartbeats — my heart thudding against my chest, as if it would pulse right through the new Persian armour I wore. The hushed expectancy — the sound of the wind, and a gull screaming.

Miltiades let fly the red cloth, and I raised my fist.

‘Hard to port,’ I called.

Galas called his orders, and long training and good discipline told. Every port oar dipped together, and touched water — held. The starboard oars gave way. The ship heeled like a chariot on a turn — over, over farther — until my heart was in my throat and every man on deck had to hold the rail, and the port-side rowers had their oars so deep in the water they couldn’t withdraw them. Somewhere amidships there was a scream as an oar broke and a man took the shaft in his guts.

And then we were around, and the sun was shining, and our ram was pointed at the Phoenicians, and we were racing like a spear thrown by Poseidon for the flank of the enemy line. Miltiades was around in style, and Stephanos was at my side like an eager dog — our line filled out even as I watched. The Cretans were no slower, and the Chians trailed away in some confusion, but that only served to make our line look longer.

As soon as the Phoenicians saw us turn, they began to turn to meet us, but they were fifty or so individual ships, not a squadron. And their rowers were tired.

The wind was so strong that it was pushing us even with our turn, even with our sails down. I began to eye the beach and the rocks at the foot of the bay — the east end — with a professional eye.

Then I ran amidships to the command platform.

‘Diekplous,’ I called to the helmsman. ‘Oar-rake and right through. Then turn upwind — west.’ Miltiades and I were facing four or five of the fastest Phoenician vessels, but they were the very eastmost. And if we oar-raked them, there was no point in lingering — they’d never come back to the battle. Right? Understand, lad? Because if we broke their oars, they couldn’t row, and Poseidon would take them to the bottom of the bay and wreck them. Got it, my blushing beauty? I’ll make a navarch of you yet, my dear.

Galas tapped his oars — a little to the west, and a little more, to compensate for that wind. Our rowers were pulling perfectly. My ship was half a length ahead of Miltiades when we engaged the first Phoenician. I can’t be certain, but I think we were the first to engage that day.

Galas overcompensated for the wind, and we crossed the bow of our target fifty feet out — a deadly error had we been moving at the same speed, but we weren’t. We were faster, and he leaned hard, having learned his lesson, and Mal called for extra effort from the port-side oars, and we heeled over again and slammed home into the Phoenician’s cathead, shattering his row-gallery with the reinforced beam at the top of our ram. The whole starboard side of his ship seemed to explode as our beak ripped down the benches, and his seams opened and he was gone under the waves. That’s what speed does for you in a fight.

‘West!’ I roared, elated. It was the cleanest sea kill I’d ever seen. Apollo was at my side and the liberation of Greece was at hand.

Miltiades’ men were cheering as they rammed the second Phoenician and went straight at the third, rolling him over, two kills in the time it takes to tell the story. Stephanos’s helmsman made the same error as Galas, overcompensating for the wind, and he missed his diekplous and swept past, but as luck would have it his bow caught the enemy ship’s oars at the end of a sweep and broke them, killing as many oarsmen as our more spectacular strike.

Some ships missed their attacks altogether, and after our initial success, the Phoenicians rallied and struck back, but their rowers were tired and the only ship they killed was one of Nearchos’s, rammed amidships with its beak stuck in its prey, as can happen when a ship strikes too hard.

At least ten of their ships died in that first strike. We had lost our god-sent speed now, but I had led the turn west, and other ships had fallen in with me. Miltiades was behind me, gathering up our stragglers, and the Chians were just engaging to the south — that is, on my left.

The bulk of the Phoenician squadron was ahead of me, and they were in confusion, because they couldn’t choose whether to turn south and face the Chians or east and face me.

I was back in the bow, looking for their navarch. Somewhere in that huddle of ships was the command ship, and there lay the most glory, the most fame and a chance to kill the head of the Hydra.

But I couldn’t make him out in the time I had. The ships closest to us had chosen to fight us as the most immediate threat, and we obliged, hurtling towards a well-manned ship at full speed. He had good rowers, and the collision threw me flat to the deck. We must have struck bow to bow, but his bow gave way — Tenedos worm, or dry rot — and his ship settled like a rock, even as his marines came over our bow like hungry wolves, and died, spitted on the massed spears of our marines.

I turned to Black, who stood behind my shield as if he was my hypaspist. Arrows had started to fly, and he was a target as much as me.

‘If every Greek kills two Persians, we’ll win,’ I said happily.

He shrugged. ‘The biggest fight I ever saw,’ he said. He rubbed his jaw. ‘But I’ve seen a few, sir. This luck can’t last.’

Nor could it. By then, we were like an arrow in the guts of an animal. We’d wounded the Phoenicians, but we hadn’t killed them. My ship was scarcely moving and now my rowers were tiring. The first flush was over and there was still a sea of Phoenicians to fight.

‘Boys need a rest, lord!’ Mal shouted in my ear.

I caught Idomeneus’s eye. ‘We board,’ I said. I ran back along the catwalk. ‘Well rowed,’ I called down into the thranites as I went past overhead. ‘Rest in two minutes!’ Down in the lower decks, they have little idea what is passing overhead — victory, defeat, death — hard to tell when all you see is the arse of the man above you and the length of his oar.

I got to the helmsman’s station with a shower of arrows from a long ship ahead. I caught one on my shield.

‘Lay me alongside that bastard,’ I said. ‘We’ll board him and give our boys a rest.’

In fact, I was aiming at the northernmost ship in the Phoenician squadron — a ship at the ‘back’ of their now utterly confused pack. I hoped that by coming up the north side of this vessel, I’d get a few minutes’ respite from the arrows of the rest.

He was having none of it, and he manoeuvred, and we manoeuvred, like two cats fighting in the dust — and we swept past each other at close range. There was a tall man in a Greek helm on the deck, and Idomeneus shot him in the throat — a wonderful shot, and he fell straight over the side.

Then we were past, and there was another Phoenician close behind — a heavy ship like ours.

He was apparently taken by surprise that we were so close, and our ram struck just aft of his bow, but he had his oars in and our momentum was too little and the angle too steep for a kill.

That was fine with me, and my rowers. We coasted down his side with a keening screech.

‘Marines!’ I called. ‘Deck crew!’

Black had an axe in each hand — long-handled axes of the kind that horsemen carry. Axemen die like lambs in a sea-fight — no shield, no defence. I feared for him and my investment, but I needn’t have worried.

As we slowed, I stepped up on the rail and took an arrow on my shield. I didn’t wait for our grapples to go home. I leaped.

I had done this twenty times, yet I missed my footing and fell over the top bench. An enemy oarsmen kicked me, but his kick hit a lot of armour and I was getting up when the enemy marines came for me. I should have died, but an axe — a full-weight axe — flew right through the hide face of the first marine’s shield and into his arm. Blood blew out through the shield, and I resolved on the spot never to go to war with the Libyans. Before then I had never seen a man throw an axe.

Black threw his second axe into the next man, and it hit poll first — not with the blade — but the poll hit the man in the temple and down he went.

Then I was up, and killing. I only remember Black and his axes — the rest is a blur — and then I was on their command deck with Idomeneus under my shield, shooting their officers at the distance a man could spit while I covered him and killed anyone who came for me. There were two Persian noblemen, and some Mede guards, and a noble Phoenician in scale armour from head to knee. He had a beard as long as his scale shirt, and Idomeneus shot him in his unarmoured face while the remnants of his marines tried to cover him — ineptly — with their shields.

The rowers were all Phoenicians, and they fought, as if to disprove everything I said earlier, but that was the navarch’s ship, honey, and he had the best of everything, and Apollo had given him to my spear. So my own rowers had to arm and come over the rail. It was ugly and went on far too long. If I had to guess, I’d say that the only enemy rowers who lived through the slaughter were those who leaped the rail and swam. Maybe six, out of two hundred men.

That’s the hard way to take a ship. And when the rowers fight — Poseidon, that’s ugly. I have no idea how long it took, but it didn’t get my rowers the rest I had intended against a nice effeminate enemy.

At Lade, there were no easy enemies.

There was cheering from the west. The haze over there was burning off, but not enough to give me a clue what was happening.

I went back aboard the Storm Cutter and found Galas in the bow with a handful of oarsmen. Water was coming in just forward of the first rowing bench. It wasn’t coming fast, but it was coming in all along the seams.

To the north, a smaller Phoenician was angling out of their mob, looking for a fight. Our ‘rest’ was over. He spotted us and started towards us from about a stade away.

I looked back at the leak. It was a hard moment for me, in a day that was full of them.

‘He’s finished,’ I said.

Storm Cutter’s bow must have been damaged when he crushed the lighter Phoenician. My first ship. He was sinking under my feet. On a calm day, I’d have run him up a beach and saved him, rebuilt the bow, retimbered him — anything to save him. But in the middle of the greatest naval battle we’d ever seen, I had only one choice.

‘Into the Phoenician,’ I said.

By then, we’d wiped out their rowers, and men were hanging listlessly by the benches, but Galas and Mal and Black got the sailors and the oarsmen to their places — bodies flung over the side, oars coming out through the ports.

We were too slow. The lighter Phoenician was coming at us from the north, already up to ramming speed and turning to get the best possible angle. But he was lining up on an abandoned, sinking ship. He had no way of knowing that we were all in his own command ship, or that it was already taken and the bodies gone.

It stank of blood and shit, but we had some life in us yet. We poled off with anything we could get our hands on — broken oars, spears, boat-pikes. Our first five strokes were so ragged that I was ready to despair, and Mal cracked his voice screaming, but the new ship was a spear-length longer, and half our oarsmen were in unfamiliar benches, a few on the wrong side altogether.

We had just enough way on us to row clear of the abandoned Storm Cutter. He served us one more time, taking one more victim with him into the deep. Wounded as he was, the Phoenician was over-eager and rammed home amidships at full speed. His ram cracked timbers and the water poured in, and Storm Cutter quickly filled and sank — still stuck to the Phoenician’s ram. His rowers backed water like heroes, seeking to withdraw their ram, but their bow went down and down, as if Poseidon’s mighty hand had them by the bronze.

They might yet have made it, but Nearchos of Crete shot from under our stern and hulled them neatly amidships while they were utterly defenceless, and they were dead men.

The cheering from the west was louder now.

We could feel it. The Phoenicians — their best — were shying off. Their navarch was dead, and no one was giving them orders, and the northernmost ships turned for the beach and ran.

We lay on our oars and panted, and some men laughed, and others wept. We had been close to death. I could feel the scythe on my cheek.

Behind us, while we did nothing, the handful of Chians under Neoptolemus harried the last Phoenicians to withdraw, and we had eighteen ships when Miltiades came past us and ordered us to form on his right. Ajax had a scar on her port-side timbers where a Phoenician ram had only just failed to get a kill, but otherwise he still looked like the mightiest ship on the Bay of Lade.

Just south of me, a pair of Chians carried the last Phoenician ship in our part of the battle, by boarding.

None of us, to be honest, could believe it. I suppose we expected that we’d get stuck in and the Lesbians would have to come and rescue us after they broke the Aegyptians, but we’d done it ourselves.

Miltiades harried us into line. The Phoenicians were re-forming on the Mycale shore in front of their camp. Forty ships or more — against eighteen — and we’d routed them.

I drank off a canteen of water and passed around another of wine.

As it came back to me, Black made a noise of disgust. He was looking over the sea to the west. He spat in the sea, drank from the wine and handed the canteen to Idomeneus.

‘We’re fucked,’ he said.

I turned around. I can remember that moment as if it was today, this morning’s breakfast beer. Until I turned, I was a hero in a victorious fleet, and we had just broken Persia’s sea power, and I was going to be a prince in Boeotia with Briseis at my side.

The rising sun had finally burned of the haze.

We were alone.

Strictly speaking, we weren’t alone, and I’ll leap ahead and tell what happened, because from my deck it was hideously confusing. Just accept my word, children — we spent the rest of the day in an exhausted rage of fear and betrayal and confusion.

The Samians had changed sides.

Not all of them, of course. Some remained loyal to the rebellion, and more fled the treachery, although some men would say they were the worst cowards of all, taking no side. Of a hundred ships, eleven stayed with us and fought to the end. Those eleven tried to fight a hundred Phoenicians and every man aboard died trying, and the men of Samos still have a stele to them and their captains in the agora of their city.

But Aeaces, the former tyrant of Samos, had bought the aristocrats among them, and Dionysius of Samos (not to be confused with our mad navarch, Dionysius of Phocaea) changed sides, the bastard.

The treachery of the Samians left the Lesbians to the fates. Epaphroditos chose to die, and he led his own men — the men of Methymna and Eresus — into the enemy, and they took many of the Cilicians down with them. But the Mytilenians chose another path, hoisted their sails and ran for it — twenty ships that we needed desperately.

In the centre, the Chians saw they were being deserted and did the noblest thing of all. They stayed together and resolved to cut their way out. They had no idea we had won on the right — who would have expected it of us? — so they hurled themselves against the mass of levies and mercenaries in the centre. That was the chaos that greeted us when the haze finally burned off, so that we couldn’t see any of our ships at first because we didn’t think to look for them behind the line of Aegyptians facing us.

Now, I also have to add that up to this point Datis, the Persian commander, thought that his own left — the Phoenicians we’d beaten — had been enveloped by a larger force. Friends like Cyrus told me later that that’s what Datis had been told by the beaten remnants, because beaten men count every foe two or three times. So despite the defection of the Samians and the destruction of the Lesbians, Datis thought that the battle was still in the balance. He was holding back his reserve of Aegyptian triremes, waiting to see the rest of our fleet.

That’s battle, on a giant scale. When hundreds of ships face each other, no one man can command them, or even guess what occurs. Datis won the Battle of Lade in the first hour, but the haze and the defeat of the eastern Phoenician squadrons made him cautious. Otherwise, he could have closed the gap and trapped us all in the sack. Miltiades would have died there, and Aristides, and Aeschylus. And many other good men.

As it is, I will cry when I tell who died. Just wait.

We rowed south, avoiding contact with the Aegyptian squadron. They had smaller ships than ours, and as I say, we could see no reason for their caution — all we could see was disaster.

We formed a circle, with our sterns together — a favourite ploy of the Athenians, like a phalanx formed in a box against cavalry. In this case, Miltiades did it so that we might shout from stern to stern.

Aristides spoke first. ‘We must attack into their centre,’ he said. ‘The Milesians are still fighting, and many of the Chians.’

Paramanos shouted over him. ‘Foolish bravery, my lord. Our few ships can’t save one of them.’

‘We can die with them,’ Aristides retorted.

To be honest, that was my plan, as well. A defeat this great — the destruction of the whole fleet of the Greeks — would be the end of Greek independence. For ever. You who live now, you cannot imagine a time when Athens had fifteen ships on her best day, and eight of them were ours. Sparta had none.

Of course, I cared nothing for the East Greeks — except my friends. But the rebellion was all I had known, and the men of that rebellion were the friends of my youth, and besides — first and foremost — I knew that in that hour Briseis was lost to me.

I think I moaned aloud. No one heard me but the gods.

Nearchos shook his head. ‘These are not my ships to squander, but those of Lord Achilles my father,’ he said, with more maturity than I had. ‘I will accept the dishonour — but I will withdraw. On my head be it.’

Miltiades balanced on the curving stern boards of his ship. He held up his hand for silence. ‘Nearchos has the right of it,’ he said. ‘It is our duty, for the sake of all the Hellenes, to save what we can and live to fight again.’

Aristides cursed — something I had never heard him do. ‘Fight again?’ he said. ‘With what?’

‘Our wits, our ships and our swords,’ Miltiades said.

In that hour, he rose to greatness. From that moment, he was no longer Miltiades, tyrant of the Chersonese. From that moment, he made himself the leader of the resistance, although many years would pass before men knew it.

‘We must save as many of the Milesians and Chians as we can,’ he said. ‘Nearchos, go with honour. We were victorious. Tell your men — tell your sons. Had all men fought like you, we would have had the victory.’ Then he turned to me. ‘Arimnestos — we need to cut a hole in the net around the Chians.’

I had nothing left to give, but his words were like a summons and I stood straighter by the rail of my ship. ‘Yes, lord,’ I said.

‘I think the Persians have ordered their captains to let any fleeing ship run,’ he said. ‘So we will “flee” to the centre, turn north and attack the Aegyptians.’ He pointed at me. ‘You lead — you have the heaviest ship. When you see my signal, turn north — just as we did this morning — line ahead to line abreast. Don’t die like heroes. Gut a ship or two and make a hole. And then run. All I ask of every one of you is that you kill one more ship.’

Nearchos was weeping. ‘I can’t leave,’ he said. ‘I’ll fight until you run.’

Miltiades smiled, the way he always did when he got the best of a deal. ‘You must do as is best for you, son of Achilles,’ he said.

Our rowers had rested for long enough for muscles to stiffen, but we had all swallowed cheese and garlic sausage, and we crept west under oars into the teeth of that west wind that had blown us to victory in the morning.

The Chians were oar to oar and bow to bow with the Aegyptians across the centre, and the Milesians were just a few stades from us, but deeper in, farther north, and now the Phoenicians we’d beaten had come off the beach — not to face us, but to finish the poor Milesians.

Our rowing was poorer than dirt, and I had no heart to curse my rowers. They had given their best, and for nothing.

But Poseidon took pity on us poor Greeks, or else that day’s curses were all used up. In as much time as it takes a fast man to run the stade, the wind changed — right around. West to east. And a warm, damp wind hit us like the open hand of a beneficent god. In heartbeats we had our boatsails up on deck. Black took longer, and Miltiades passed us, and so did Aristides. They mocked us.

We were in a strange ship, and everything was stowed by strangers. As it happened, I thought it was a miracle that Black got the boatsail up at all. Then we were racing away west. Behind us, a rain squall appeared at the bottom of the bay and hit the Phoenicians. It was as if the gods were seeking to do all in their power to remedy the perfidious foolery of men.

I’ll be honest — it had none of the breakneck enthusiasm of morning. We were tired to our sinews and we were no longer fighting for greatness. But like wild dogs, we were still dangerous.

And, lest I make the Aegyptians sound like an enemy to be trifled with, many men fight badly, late in a victory. I’ve done it myself. Why risk yourself when the day is won, eh? The Aegyptians were shocked when we turned on them, and timid. And why not? They were vassals of Persia, not friends, and their side was already victorious.

Had we known the future — had we been able to see the dark days at Artemisium and Thermopyle, when the Chians and the Lesbians stood against us, vassals of Persia, in those same ships — we would have left them to die. But who could calculate such a thing? Or abandon a friend?

And of course, they repaid us in their turn — on the beaches of Mycale. But that story is for another night, eh?

Where was I? Ahh — so we turned on the Aegyptians, eighteen ships, and our ships were bigger and our crews more dangerous, even so late in a long fight. They kept formation and many backed water, and we swept on, ignoring the timid, determined to relieve the Chians.

Miltiades was first to sink a ship — a small trireme that sank under his forefoot, caught in a bad turn. Herakleides the Aeolian was, by then, a master helmsman.

Paramanos quickly got the ship that tried to rescue that one, and then we were in among them like barracuda among baitfish.

Nearchos was the first to die. He was lost when the rain squall hit us, and he didn’t see the Cilician who caught him aft with his ram. I hope he died quickly. His ship sank, and we saw it all.

Neoptolemus died driving his ship deeper and deeper into the Aegyptians, trying to save his uncle — who was already dead, mighty old Pelagius who would never again hold games on the beaches of Chios. He died with an arrow in his eye.

Another arrow killed Herakleides at the helm of Miltiades’ Ajax, too. Miltiades took the helm himself. He killed men the way a man with a scythe reaps the ripe barley, but when his marines were all wounded, he chose to live, turned out of the maelstrom and ran. I saw him go and knew that it was time for me to go, too. Idomeneus was in the bow, killing with his bow, and the Aegyptians were hanging back, pelting us with javelins and looking for easier prey while we tried to break their oars, and in the distance, perhaps a stade away, I could see the Chians and the Milesians fighting their way to us — to the hope of rescue.

Two Aegyptians, bolder than the rest, came at me, and they knew their business. I was too cocky, and I thrust between them, looking for the double oar-rake, but they folded their wings like diving birds and they grappled us as we passed between after a shower of javelins that all but cleared my deck of sailors. They had marines — Aegyptian marines are first-rate troops, as good as our Greeks, man for man, with heavy linen armour, twenty or thirty layers of it quilted up, because linen is cheap in Aegypt. They wear bronze helmets, not like ours at all, and carry a heavy shield made of the hide of some river beast. Every man has a pair of wicked, barbed javelins and a huge iron sword, and they can use them. I’ve heard men say that the Aegyptians are all cowards, but I’ve never heard a man who’s fought them make such a foolish claim.

Just before they boarded, I saw Stephanos bring his ship into action. He was always one of the best helmsmen, and he was at his own oars. He caught the leeward Aegyptian at a stand, all her oars in, and he punched into the enemy’s side like a shark closing its teeth on a corpse, and the Aegyptian’s keel snapped. Stephanos gave me a wave and I returned it — the athlete’s salute. Aye, I remember that moment, because Stephanos was like a god then.

But the other Aegyptian boarded us, undaunted by the death of their companion, and again like sharks, now that one had his teeth in us, the rest of them got bolder and came forward, and before we’d repelled the first rush, there were more ships coming in.

There was nothing we could do but fight. At sea and on land, there comes a moment in a fight when there are no longer either tactics or strategies. All you can do is fight. They grappled to our bow and to our stern and all down one side, and they came at us — maybe sixty marines against our eight or ten — I can’t remember who was still standing — a vicious chaos of blood and swords.

Philocrates stood in the bow with Idomeneus, and they stopped a ship’s worth of marines by themselves. I only caught glimpses — I didn’t have the luxury of commanding any longer, and had to fight — but I saw Philocrates kill, and kill again, until the ship on the bow cut its grapples. But a chance-thrown javelin caught him in the head — stunned him — and he died there, under the great sword of an Aegyptian marine.

Phrynichus took an arrow in the arm, leading a dozen armed oarsmen against the second ship, but he got up on the rail, his blood flowing like water in a rainstorm, and he raised his poet’s voice as if he was competing against Simonides or Aeschylus in the games:

‘Sing me, Muses, the rage of Achilles!’

He sang, even as his blood flowed, and my sailors rose from their benches with glory in their hearts.

Galas and Mal — unarmoured — followed me with the remnants of the sailors from the deck crew, and we didn’t wait for the onslaught of the third Aegyptian. As soon as his grapples came home, we were over the rails and into his benches, killing. We caught that ship by surprise — they must have thought us easy pickings, and fifteen men with axes made short work of the disorganized crew.

I cut their trierarch down with a single spear stroke where he stood at the foot of his mainmast amidships — the mast was still stepped, and Poseidon alone knows why — and I stood there breathing like a bellows gone mad. For those of you who have never fought in armour, children, you can only go a few hundred heartbeats — the best man in the world, Achilles himself, could do no more — before you have to rest. I loosened my chin strap, drank in sweet breaths of sea air and looked about me.

Idomeneus stood alone for as long as a woman takes to birth a child and held the bow, Philocrates’s corpse between his wide-spread legs. Phrynichus was down, and his singing stilled, but his sailors had swamped the second Aegyptian. We’d swept the third like a desert wind.

But while we’d been fighting, three more had come for Stephanos. And rather than abandon us and leave us to die to save himself, he stood fast on our leeward side, and they boarded him. As I watched, his spearmen cleared the fighting deck on the boldest of the three, but the other two had extra marines and they poured men into the centre of Trident. Stephanos went into them with half a dozen of his marines, his spear flashing as if he was Ares incarnate, the red horsehair of his crest nodding high above the fight.

Six of them were trying to stop thirty or forty professional fighters. I roared my rallying cry, and Mal stood up from where he’d been looting a corpse, Galas tapped my breastplate to tell me he was at my shoulder and together with a few more sailors and a hand of oarsmen, we leaped back to our own ship, sprinted the length of the deck and leaped again to rescue Stephanos.

As my bare feet pounded along my own deck, I could see nothing, not even with my helmet cocked back on my head. I must have slowed to take fresh spears, because when I came on to Stephanos’s deck, I had a pair in my hand.

I was first on to Stephanos’s deck, coming in behind the enemy while they butchered Stephanos’s unarmoured oarsmen. But as we arrived, another Aegyptian grappled Stephanos. At my back came Black and Galas and the deck crew. We met the new Aegyptians sword to sword and shield to shield. Mal died there, along with most of my sailors, unarmoured men facing the swords of Aegyptian marines. Further down the deck, it was even worse. I saw Stephanos fall, run through the thigh, and I saw his cousin, Harpagos, stand over him with a sailor’s axe, and blood flew like ocean spray when he hit a man.

I was tired, and my cause was lost, and it was tempting to die — but Stephanos’s loss filled me with an awful rage. And over that rage, or under it, I knew that godlike effort was required, or all my friends, all my men, would die. Those are the moments that define you, friends. Oh, thugater, you would have been proud of me that day. For it is not the sands of the palaestra that show heroism, nor the fields of the games. Nor the moment of a great victory. Any man worthy of his father’s name should be able to stand his ground on a dry day with food in his belly and armour on his back, fresh and strong. But at the tail end of defeat, when the enemy close in like hyenas on the kill, when all is lost but honour, when you are covered in bruises and small wounds whose pain tears at you with every blow, when all your muscles ache and your breath comes in gasps like a pair of broken bellows in a forge — when your friends have fallen and no one will sing your praises — who are you then? Those are the moments in which you show the gods what your father made.

Galas went down when the marines of a fifth ship hit us. To be honest, friends, I have no idea how many ships were around us by then. Eight? Ten? My ship’s deck was almost clear, but Stephanos’s ship must have looked easier, and he had fifty enemy fighters crowding the deck — I remember that his hull was low in the water from the sheer weight of men on the decks, and the ship has wallowing, unbalanced, which made the fighting even harder. At the moment when I gave myself over to Ares, an Aegyptian officer had just stooped to take the gold amulet Mal always wore.

Who was I then?

This is who I was.

I went at them down the gangway amidships, crowded with men, and I remember with the clarity of youth. I had two spears and my Boeotian shield, and I ran at them — about three steps.

I remember because the first Aegyptian had a raven on his oval shield, leaning down to get the necklace, his eyes appalled that one lone madman was charging him. And Mal — dying — grabbed the man’s shield with both hands and pulled it down.

That’s a hero.

I put my spear into the Aegyptian’s neck, just the tip, as delicately as a cat, and withdrew it, leaped high in the air above the pitching deck and threw over the falling corpse into the second man. Their shields are heavy hide, but my throw had Zeus behind it, and it penetrated his shield and his arm and I took my second spear and killed him, landing on his armoured chest as he tried to seize a breath and feeling his ribs give under my toes even as I rammed my spear underhand into the next man, stepped off the dying man, set my legs on the wood of the deck and pushed my shield.

The next man tried to step back but his mates wouldn’t let him. I thrust my spear at his head and he ducked, stumbled, and I caught the rim of his heavy hide shield with my spearhead and pulled — then thrust into his undefended chest, and a flower of bright blood grew over his white linen cuirass and his soul flew out of his mouth. His corpse folded at my feet and I crouched down, almost kneeling on the deck, and punched my spear into the inside of the next man’s thigh, the best stroke there is for a fighter, because there’s an artery there and a simple cut will kill a man. His eyes widened at the fountain of blood, and he fell, fingers reaching for the wound, and I rose to my full height, braced against a sudden shift in the deck, and threw my remaining spear over his reaching arms at the next man, right over his shield, into the skull over his nose. I reached under my arm and plucked out my sword, and a flying axe took the sixth man where he was frozen, grey with fear as grim death reaped his comrades like ripe barley on an autumn day.

I could still see the crest on Harpagos’s helmet and I roared like a beast — no war cry, but the bellow of Ares — and my foes were sick with terror, because I brought them death and they could not touch me. The next Aegyptian thrust at me with his spear, but his blow was hesitant, the fearful attack of the desperate man. What did Calchas say? Just this — when you face the killer of men, you lock shields and stand cautious. To run and to attack are both sides of the same coin — fear.

Black reached under my shield, caught the Aegyptian’s shaft and pulled him off balance and my sword cut him down, a simple chop to the neck where his linen armour did not meet the cheekpieces of his helmet.

The thranites began to gather their spears and their courage and come up like the warriors grown from dragon’s teeth in myth, so that the rowing benches sprouted fighters, and in ten heartbeats, it was the Aegyptians who were beset. We took heart, all of us, and we plucked their lives like grapes at harvest time, and the deck under my feet flowed with their blood. Thranites grabbed their ankles and knees and pulled them down, or thrust javelins up into their groins, and topside, my sword was waiting for any undefended flesh, and every time an Aegyptian set his feet, I would put my shield into his and push, and I never met a man of Aegypt with the power in his legs to stop my rush.

And they died.

The last man to face me was brave, and he died like a hero, covering the flight of his companions. He went shield to shield with me, and held me, and twice his big sword bit into my shield, the second blow cutting through the thick oak rim — but while his sword was stuck in my shield, I put my sword into his throat. He was a man. Thanks to Ares, his companions were not of his measure, or I’d have died there.

We had cleared the deck. And as I came to the rail, I cut a man’s fingers off where he grasped it. I was a horse-length from the terrified men on one of the vessels grappled to Trident, and I leaped on to the rail.

‘If you come to me, every one of you will die,’ I roared.

The Aegyptians cut their grapples and poled off.

That, my thugater, is who I was in the hour of defeat.

Wine, here.

By the will of the gods, or the temerity of men, the Aegyptians let us go. My decks were red with blood, and empty — my deck crew was dead, almost to a man — I had no officers but Black, and my marines — both of them — sat in the scuppers, white with fatigue — and watched their hands shake.

All my best men were dead.

All of my friends were dead, too. Nearchos, Epaphroditos, Herakleides, Pelagius, Neoptolemus, Mal, Philocrates and two dozen others I had known for years. Phrynichus and Galas lay in their own blood on my deck.

We crawled away, like a wounded lion or a boar with the spear in him.

But for whatever reason, the Aegyptians just let us go.

And it was not for nothing. As we crept — oh, for the rowing of the morning — past the edge of the Aegyptian line, Chian ships began to come up behind us. First a few, and then more — a dozen. Two dozen. One of them was towing a prize, and I laughed, and then I saw a Lesbian ship I knew, and I hailed him. It was he who told me Epaphroditos was dead.

But we’d burst the bubble, and now the trapped rebels boiled out of the trap as fast as they could. I have no idea who survived, only that there were enough of them that the Aegyptians simply drew off and let us all go together. We might have had eighty ships, with a handful of Milesians mixed in. And Dionysius of Phocaea. Men tell me he had cut deepest into the enemy centre, all the way through, and put fire in an enemy ship on their beach before the battle collapsed around him.

He waved and rowed past, and his men were raising their boatsail. That wave was all the thanks we got, but it said enough.

Black crouched by my feet. I had the steering oars in my trembling hands, and he was the only officer left, except Idomeneus, who had rallied my rowers behind me as I fought aboard Trident. He, too, was a hero. He was covered in wounds, as was I, now that I stopped to assess. I had a bloody gash inside my right thigh that should have killed me — I’d never felt it. It must have missed the vital artery by the thickness of a thread, and I was able to see deep into my flesh.

‘What now, boss?’ Black asked.

I looked across the bay — ships turned turtle and ships afire, the smell of smoke, the ocean littered with dead men, swimming men and sharks.

‘We should run for Chios,’ I said. But Miltiades had lit a fire in me to save something.

Harpagos brought Stephanos’s ship Trident alongside. He told me that Stephanos was dead. I groaned aloud — I had hoped he was merely wounded. It was the hardest blow of the day.

I got up on the rail — how my thighs hurt! — and called out to him. ‘Miltiades is standing straight on for Samos,’ I said, pointing to where Cimon, Aristides and Miltiades were raising their boatsails.

‘I’m your man, not his,’ Harpagos said. ‘Stephanos never left you, lord. Nor will we!’

I was still grappling with the notion that solid, big, reliable Stephanos was dead. My best man — my first friend as a free man.

‘I’m making for the camp,’ I said. The decision came to me as if from Athena, grey-eyed at my side. ‘I want my mainsail, and my rowers are done in.’

Black nodded, and Idomeneus shrugged, and Harpagos fell away and took station under my stern.

My rowers were done in, but I’ll note that they landed like champions. We got our ship ashore despite the wind, and Harpagos landed Trident next to us in a camp almost devoid of life.

Black shook his head over a cup of wine. ‘Boss, we’ll just die here.’

I shrugged. ‘Let’s save something,’ I said.

I don’t remember saying anything else. I fell on my sleeping rug, and I didn’t move until Idomeneus awoke me.

Fill my cup, thugater. And leave me.