Marathon: Freedom or Death

18

I slept badly. I hope you won’t think the worse of me if I admit that the night before Marathon, despite my head telling me that we had the men and the will to win, I lay awake and worried. Not about death. I never worry about death. It was failure that troubled me, and I lay on my bearskin with the sound of snoring around me, and nervous whispers, and probably the occasional fart — and wondered what I could do better.

The night raid haunted me. I’d been lost, and I hadn’t told my men what I needed, and I’d made a dozen other errors. So I lay awake, thinking through my actions in the morning.

When you’re in command, you worry about the damnedest things.

I worried about getting my armour on and needing to take a shit. I worried about what I should say — a polemarch is expected to give a speech. I worried about sleeping too late, about what my armour looked like. Gelon was free now and my helmet hadn’t been polished since I left Plataea. A hero should look the part.

I worried about how to deal with the rough ground that would be on my left all day, and I worried about the effect of four hundred untrained men at the back of my phalanx.

Hades, friends. I can’t even remember all the things I worried about the night before Marathon.

And when I thought of my wife — my glorious wife — all I could think was that if she were there, we could make love, and that would cheer me up. Except that she was well along in pregnancy by then, and they say making love when the belly is round is bad for the baby. I don’t believe that making love is ever bad for anyone, myself, but people say these things.

I think that’s when I fell asleep. Thinking of her.

No, that’s a lie. My mind was its own traitor, and I’m here to tell the truth. My last thoughts were of Briseis. If we won. .

If we won, would I be closer to her? And where was she? I said Sappho’s poem to Aphrodite in the dark, for Briseis. And then I went to sleep.

I awoke in the dark, and I could hear the snores — but as soon as my eyes opened, it all came in, the way animals come in an open gate when there’s food in the mangers and they haven’t been fed. All my worries.

I got up. The dog star was going down, and morning wasn’t far off, and besides, I was cold.

Idomeneus had snuggled close in the night, and as I rose, he rolled over. ‘Ares,’ he said. ‘Morning already?’

I tossed my heavy himation over him. ‘Sleep another hour,’ I said.

‘Aphrodite’s blessing on you,’ he smiled, and went straight back to sleep, the Cretan bastard. Odd that he mentioned Aphrodite.

I stirred our fire — my mess group had a fire, of course — and added an armload of wood that someone had left ready, like a proper soldier. The fire sprang up, and I was warm.

My kit was neatly stowed under the leather cover of my aspis. Gelon had done it — he must have — after the muster of the freedmen. My corslet had been buffed until the scales shone, and the helmet was like a woman’s mirror, and the reflected gleam of the fire danced on the curved brow and the ravens on the cheekplates.

Gelon came and knelt by my side. I hadn’t seen him get up. ‘Good enough?’ he asked, as he had on other mornings when he’d done a half-arsed job. This wasn’t half-arsed.

‘Splendid,’ I said. He’d even mounted my fancy plume — the one Euphoria had made me — and laid out the cloak, too.

‘Might as well look the part, polemarch.’ He gave my arm a squeeze. ‘I gather from Styges that you brought my armour.’

‘I did,’ I said. ‘But I haven’t polished it for you.’

He laughed soundlessly. ‘You’re all right,’ he said. ‘In the baggage?’

‘With Styges’ mule. I didn’t want you to find it.’ I waved down the hill.

In the east, the black-blue sky was moving towards grey.

A thousand of us had only a few hours to live.

I ate alone — a bowl of hot soup and a big chunk of pork from the feast the night before. I dunked bread in the soup, and drank two big cups of water and another of wine.

Then, clad only in my arming chiton, a stained thing of linen that had once been white, I crossed the camp to where the strategoi met. The day was warm already, and promised to be as hot as my forge.

I was the first strategos there. Miltiades was second, which says much about the state of his mind, and Aristides was third. Then the rest came in a clump, and this time we stood together with no regard to who voted for battle and who voted against. In fact, I helped Leontus tie his thorax while Miltiades spoke. Leontus had a beautiful white tawed-leather cuirass with a heavy black leather yoke and scales on the sides, and his armour tied with scarlet cords.

‘So,’ Miltiades said. He looked around in the half-light. ‘Today’s my day, and today we’ll fight. As soon as the boys have food in them, we’ll go down the hill. I want the Plataeans down first. They get their leftmost man’s shield up against the hills, and then we’ll all form on them, so there’s no gap. And friends,’ he said, and he looked around, ‘all we need to do to win is keep the line solid from end to end. No gaps. No spaces. Nothing. Shield to shield all the way from the hills to the sea.’

Everyone got it. We all nodded.

‘You all know the order, left to right, yes? So each contingent goes down in order, and no rushing, and no pushing. Forming the line is the key to victory. Once we’re formed, we’re halfway to it. Fuck this up and we’re all dead men.’

Aristides raised an eyebrow. ‘We get it.’

Miltiades didn’t crack a smile. ‘See that you do. Next thing. When we reach the bowshot of the enemy — the range where they shoot — we charge. Understand? Dead run, and to Hades with the man who slows or falls.’

That got them talking. ‘We’ll fall apart!’ Leontus protested.

Miltiades shook his head. ‘It works in the east. Young Arimnestos there once charged a hundred Persians all by himself-’

‘With ten other men!’ I said.

‘And the rest of the phalanx came in behind. It wrecked them — right?’ Miltiades said.

I got the last of Leontus’s ties done and faced the others. ‘It hurries their archers,’ I said. ‘They lose time and space to shoot.’ I looked around. ‘We’re the best athletes in the world, and we can cover that ground in no time, with the gods at our backs.’

‘You’re in command,’ Leontus said to Miltiades. He shrugged. Then he smiled. ‘All right. I’m fast. I’ll run.’

‘Just make sure the rest of your tribe goes forward too!’ Sophanes said.

That was it — perhaps our shortest command meeting to date. Callimachus asked Miltiades where he should stand, and Miltiades nodded gravely. ‘You are the polemarch,’ he said. ‘You take the right of the line.’

Callimachus bowed. ‘I am honoured. But the place is yours if you wish it.’

Miltiades shook his head. ‘When I’m polemarch, I’ll take the place of honour,’ he said, and that was that.

Then many of us embraced, and if my voice chokes to tell this — I embraced many men I loved for ever, and we all knew it. We all knew that win or lose, the price would be high. That is what a battle is — a culling. Except this time, instead of standing with strangers and ‘allies’, I was standing in an army with my friends in every rank, and every dead man would be the loss of someone I knew. It was all very personal.

More wine, girl. And this for the shades of the heroes who fell there!

So my friend Hermogenes, phylarch of the leftmost file of Plataea, was the first man down the hill, the first to form and the lynchpin of our line. And Callimachus was the last file-leader down the hill, and formed the farthest to the right in the front rank. Hermogenes’ shield brushed against the trees, and Callimachus’s right sandal was in the water, or so we used to tell the story.

Our Plataeans were twelve men deep and one hundred and twenty men wide. We took up a little more than a stade of the plain’s width, and our rear rank was just twenty-four paces at normal order from our front rank.

The three tribes next to us had been ‘bolstered’ with light-armed men, and they, too, had twelve ranks. Many of the Athenian archers had also been put in the phalanx on the left. So they were deep, and they stretched three more stades.

We couldn’t even see the middle as it started to form. Aristides was in the centre with his Antiochae, and they formed twice as wide as we did and only half as deep — just six deep — to cover more frontage. That’s where the richest, best-armoured men were, and Miltiades felt confident that they could take the brunt of the archery. At least, I hope that’s what he thought. Because otherwise, what he thought was that the cream of the enemy’s archers — the Sakai — would rid him of a world of political opponents.

There were three tribes in the centre, and they covered almost five stades.

And on the right there were three more tribes, double depth as we were, and they covered three more stades. So our line was twelve or more stades from end to end.

No one could keep a line that long from buckling and flowing and bending. But we formed it well, and even as we formed, the barbarians came.

They did what they had done the day before, but it all went mad, like a sudden thunderstorm.

First, the forming of the Persians was terrifying from ground level. Yesterday, I’d watched it from a hundred feet above the plain. It had been majestic and professional. At eye level, it was like a lion pouncing. They flooded out of their camp in silence, twelve thousand professional soldiers all running to their posts in about as much time as it takes to tell the story.

And then they came forward at us.

My end of the line had settled in position. Men were kneeling to tie a sandal, wiping the dew from their shields, laughing, resting their heavy shields on the ground, or on the instep of their left feet.

The onset of the barbarians blasted the laughter from us. They flowed over the plain like a sudden flood, and the horsemen on their flanks looked like gods in a blaze of sunlit gold. They came on without a sound except the ring and jingle of harness, of metal on metal, the hollow knocking of wooden shields on armoured legs.

Just as yesterday, they put their Phoenicians and Greeks on our right, so that I was opposite Persians, the front ranks armed just as we were armed, big men with heavy armour and shields — mostly oval shields, almost like our old Boeotians, with short heavy spears — but with six ranks of archers behind them. Opposite Hermogenes was a troop of Persian noble cavalry. Directly opposite me was a man in a helmet that seemed to be made of gold. As he came forward in the new sunlight, he called out a war cry and his men answered, all together, a single shout that carried to us like a challenge.

I remember my breath stopping in my throat.

To his right, from my perspective, were the Medes. The dismounted Medes were the second largest contingent after the Sakai, and they had armour, the best bows, sharp swords and axes. Beyond them, I assumed, were the Sakai, the best of the enemy’s archers, in the centre, and then the enemy Greeks and Phoenicians on our right, facing Miltiades.

They were formed exactly the way they’d formed the day before. My Plataeans faced the cream of their army.

It steadied me. Being the underdog has its advantages. And in that moment I knew what I’d say.

They came closer, moving swiftly across the plain like hunting hounds or wolves. Hungry wolves.

I had Leontus on my right. I left my shield with Teucer and ran to Leontus — a stade each way, thanks. ‘I’m going to charge them as soon as they reach bowshot,’ I said, pointing down the field.

He was taken aback. ‘Is that what Miltiades wants?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know what Miltiades wants,’ I said. ‘He’s five more stades that way, if you want to ask.’ I shrugged, no easy thing in twenty pounds of scale armour. ‘But as soon as they stop to shoot, I’m going at them.’

He was eyeing the Persians. His men would be in the arrow storm, not mine. ‘I’m with you, Plataean,’ he said.

I tapped his aspis by way of a handshake, and ran back to my place, and his tribe cheered me as I ran by. They were getting their shields off the ground, pulling their helmets down, and when I reached my own men, Idomeneus had already given the orders.

The enemy was still three or four stades away.

So I walked, forcing myself to take my time, all along my front rank. I met the eyes of every man there — some said a few words, some nodded their heads so that their plumes rippled, the horsehair catching the sea breeze. I walked all the way to Hermogenes.

‘Fight well, brother,’ I said.

‘Lead us to glory, polemarch,’ he said. I could see his grin inside the tau of his face slit.

By the gods, those words went to my heart.

Then I walked back — making myself walk, even while the Persians and Medes were slowing, closer than I’d expected — faster than I thought possible. Their mounted Persians — the best of the best — seemed close enough to touch, close enough to ride over and gut me before I could take shelter in our ranks.

I stopped in the middle of my line, turned my back to the enemy and raised my arms. Then, with the kind of gesture that Heraclitus taught us, a broad orator’s sweep of my right arm, I indicated that I would speak.

‘I could talk to you of duty,’ I shouted, and they were silent. ‘Of courage and arete, and of the defence of Hellas and all you hold dear.’ I paused, and forced myself to look at my own men and not to turn my head and look at the enemy, who came closer and closer to my back. ‘But you are Plataeans, and you know what is excellent, and who is brave. So I will say two things. First — yesterday, many of you were slaves. And for the rest — no one here expects us to beat the Persians. We are the left of the line and all Athens asks is that we take our time dying.’ I paused, and then I pointed my spear at the enemy. ‘Horse shit, brothers! We are Plataeans! Every man here is a Plataean! Over there is all the wealth of Asia! The gods have given us the Persians themselves, every one of them wearing a fortune in gold. You were a slave yesterday? Tomorrow you can be an aristocrat. Or be dead, and go to Hades with the heroes. Whatever you were, whatever you are at this moment, however much you want to piss or creep away — tomorrow is yours if you win today! All of that gold is yours if you are men enough to take it!’

My Plataeans responded with a roar — a sharp bark. Only then did I sneak a glance at our enemies. They were a stade away, or more. I returned to my place in the ranks. I put my aspis on my shoulder and grasped my spears — my fine, light deer spear in my right hand and my heavy man-killer in my left, sharing the hand with the antilabe of my shield.

I turned to Idomeneus. ‘How was that?’ I asked.

He nodded. He wore a Cretan helm that showed his face, and his smile was broad. ‘Everyone understands gold,’ he said. ‘Arete is more complicated.’

‘See the mounted bastard in the gold helmet?’ I said. ‘I’ll take him. But he’s got to go, and if I fall or I miss, you take him. Understand?’ I tapped my spearhead against his, and saw his grin.

‘Good as dead now,’ Idomeneus said.

‘Yes,’ I answered.

He smiled his mad, fighting smile. ‘Sure,’ he said.

I turned to Teucer, who was tight to my back. ‘Hear me, friend — do not take that man’s life. I want his men to see him go down to my spear. In a fight like this — everything depends on the first few seconds.’

‘Aye, lord,’ he said. He was doubtful.

Opposite me, the whole enemy line — every bit as long as ours, and at least as deep — was slowing. It didn’t stop all at once. It takes time for a line fifteen stades long to stop and straighten.

‘Ready!’ I roared. ‘Spears up!’

Idomeneus hissed ‘Close our order!’ at me.

‘I know what I’m doing,’ I said.

The Athenians obeyed me as fast as my own men, and three thousand men raised their spears over their heads, spear-point just clear of the rim of your shield, spear-butt well up in the air so that it doesn’t foul the man behind you or, worse, catch him in the teeth.

We were one stade from the enemy. The Persians were settling down, planting shafts in the ground. The cavalry were actually lagging behind their main line, with a few men trying to pick a way through the scrub to our flank and struggling. But giving me heartburn nonetheless.

I nodded to Idomeneus, and he blew the horn — two long, hard blasts, and the pause between them was thin enough for a sword blade to fit and not much more.

And then we were off.

Ever run a foot race? Ever run the hoplitodromos? Ever run the hoplitodromos with fifty men? Imagine fifty men. Imagine a hundred — five hundred — three thousand men, all starting together at the sound of a horn.

We were off, and by the will of the gods, no one stumbled in all our line. One poor fool sprawling on his face might have been the difference between victory and defeat. But no man fell at the start.

On my right, the Athenians moved as soon as I did, and the Persians and the Medes raised their bows and shot — too fast, and too far. Men in the rear ranks died, but not a shaft went into the front.

It’s a tactic, honey bee. They halt at a given distance, a distance at which they practise, and pound the crap out of you — if you stand and take it. But if you move forward. .

Every step was a step towards victory. We were on the edge of a wheat field, tramped flat by psiloi over the last few days, and the hobnails on my Spartan shoes bit into the ground as I ran — full strides, just like the hoplitodromos.

That’s why I didn’t close our order, of course. Because men need room to run.

I was neither first nor last — Idomeneus was ahead of me by a horse-length, just heartbeats after he blew the horn. My old wound kept me from being first. But I was not last. I looked over the rim of my shield. We were facing Persians, Medes and a handful of Sakai, and every man had a bow.

Ten more paces and the Persians were loosing again — a rippling volley — and an arrow skipped off the gravel in front of me and ripped across my greave at my ankle and vanished into the ranks behind me. They’d shot low. This time, men fell — a few Plataeans, and more Athenians. And other men fell over the wounded. A man can break his jaw, falling with an aspis at a dead run, or break his collarbone or shield arm.

Just opposite me, and a little to my left, Golden Helm was bringing his Persian nobles forward. I saw him raise his hand, saw him order them forward — saw his hesitation.

We were charging them.

The Persian polemarch had spear-fighters — dismounted nobles — for his front two ranks. But he had sent them to the rear for the archery phase — his archers would shoot better and flatter if they didn’t have to lift their shots clear of the front rank. The problem was, we weren’t waiting to be pounded with arrows. And now his best fighters — killers, every one, like Cyrus and Pharnakes — were in the eleventh and twelfth rank.

If he rotated them again now, his men would have to stop shooting.

I read this at a glance, because there were no shields facing me, only round Persian hats and bright scale armour like mine.

A third volley flew at us. It is a fearful thing when the arrows come straight at you — when the flicker of their motion seems to end in your eye, when the shafts darken the sky, when the sound is like the first whisper of rain, growing swiftly into a storm.

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 set, chins down to cover the vulnerable throat — and then Styges pushed forward with his right leg and Bellerophon roared his war cry and they were past me.

I got a breath in me. Teucer stepped over me, close at their shoulders, and shot — and there were hands under my armpits, and I was dragged back. I breathed again, and again, and the pain was less, and then I was on my back and my shield was off my arm.

‘Let me up!’ I spat.

They were all new men — the rear-rankers — and they scarcely knew me. On the other hand, they’d been bold enough to push into the scrum and get my body. I finally got my feet under me and I rose, covered in blood and straw from being dragged.

‘You live!’ one of the new men said.

‘I live,’ I said. I pulled my helmet back and one of them handed me a canteen. I looked at the front of the fighting — just a couple of horse-lengths away. I could see Styges’ red plume and Bellerophon’s white, side by side, and Idomeneus’s red and black just an arm’s length to the right of Styges. They were fighting well. The line wasn’t moving, either way.

I looked to the right. The Athenians under Leontus were into the Medes — but the fighting was heavy, and the Sakai in the rear ranks were lofting arrows high to drop on the phalanx, where they fell on unarmoured men, many of whom had no shields.

To my left, the Persian cavalry were pressed hard against the front of our shields, stabbing down with their spears and screaming strange cries.

A new man — little more than a boy — handed me a gourd. ‘More water, lord?’

I drank greedily, pressed the gourd back into his hands and pulled my helmet down. ‘Shield,’ I said, and two of them put it on my arm. My left arm muscles protested — something bad had happened in my shoulder. ‘Spear,’ I growled, and one of them gave up his spear — his only weapon.

Behind me, the sound of battle changed tone.

I had to turn around to look — once I had my helmet on, my field of vision was that limited.

Beyond the Athenians fighting the Medes, something was already wrong. I could see the backs of Athenians — I could see men running. But they were two or three stades away — slightly downhill. It looked to me as if our centre was bulging back.

Remember that we had been fighting for only two minutes — maybe less.

I remember sucking in a deep breath and then plunging forward into the phalanx the way a man dives into deep water. I pushed past the rear-rankers easily — they were anxious to let me past. When I came to armoured men — our fifth or sixth rank, I suppose — I had to tap the men on the backplate.

‘Exchange!’ I called.

Rank by rank, I exchanged forward. This is something we practise in the Pyrrhiche over and over again. Men need to be able to move forward and back. I went forward — sixth to fifth, fifth to fourth, fourth to third. Finally, after what seemed like an hour, I was behind Teucer, and I could see Idomeneus, locked in his fight with a Persian captain.

They were well matched. And both of them were failing — their blows slowing. I’ve said it before: men can only fight so long — even brave, noble men in the height of training.

I stepped to the right, cutting in ahead of Idomeneus’s second-ranker — Gelon. He knew me immediately.

I tapped Idomeneus on the shoulder.

He looked back — the merest flash of a glance, shield high to deflect a blow — but in that heartbeat he knew who was behind him.

He set his feet, and I put my right foot forward across my left, and allowed my knee to touch the back of his leg. He pivoted on the balls of his feet and stepped to the rear. I pushed forward and launched a heavy blow into the Persian’s shield with my new spear, rocking him back.

He was tired. I could tell he was fading from that first exchange, and he crouched behind his shield and thrust low, at my shins, but I was having none of it. I had caught my breath, and I was as fresh as a man can be in a phalanx fight. I powered forward on my spear foot, and Gelon came at my shoulder, pounding away at the noble Persian with high blows to his shield and his helmet.

He gave ground.

‘Plataeans!’ I roared. ‘TAKE THEM!’

I remember that moment the best, children. Because it was like the dance, and it was glorious — it was, perhaps, a taste of godhood. Enough men heard me — enough men in every rank heard the call.

I was Arimnestos the killer of men. But in that kind of fight, I was only one man.

But I was one Plataean, and together, we were that thing. I planted my right foot and around me every Plataean did the same, and though we had no pipes to call the time, every man crouched, screamed their war cry and pushed forward.

Apollo’s Ravens!

The Persian officer was gone — knocked flat, or exchanged out of the front rank. I lost him in the moments when we pushed, and my new opponent’s eyes were wide with terror. I swept my shield forward and caught the rim of his oval shield and flicked it aside, and Gelon’s spear robbed the man of life as easily as if he was a dummy of straw.

Then we went forward. I had Styges at my left shoulder and Idomeneus was pressing up on my right. Gelon was at my back, and Teucer shot and shot from behind my left ear. We went forward ten paces and then another ten — the enemy stumbling away before us. They didn’t break, but suddenly there was less pressure on our front.

Leontus and his Athenians were keeping pace, and the Medes were backing away almost as fast as we pressed forward, but they were not yet beaten men. In truth, it was the hardest fighting I had ever seen. By this time, we had been spear to spear for as long as a man gives a speech in the Agora — or more — long enough that the sun was suddenly high in the sky. I was covered in sweat. My face burned from the pressure of my helmet and the blood and salt against the leather of my helmet pad. My shoulder was lacerated by the damaged scales on my thorax, and my legs ached.

The Persians flinched back again, and their front solidified. Men were calling to each other to hold their ground, and the Medes on our right got their spear-fighters into the front rank and locked shields, and we came to a stop, just a pace or two clear of their line.

I looked around — we’d pushed them back a stade or more. And as they recoiled, they were pivoting on their centre, so that we were facing their ships in the distance, far away by their camp.

All along the line, men breathed and stood straight, they switched grips on their spears, or dropped a broken weapon. Many exchanged, giving their place to fresher men.

‘You live!’ Styges said. He raised my shield arm — wrenching my shoulder as he did — so that the black raven on my red shield rose over the battlefield.

Men cheered. That is a great feeling, daughter, and worth all the pain in the world. When men cheer you, you are with the gods.

Opposite us, an officer called for the Persians to cheer and got a rumble — and no more.

‘Plataeans!’ I called, and Heracles or Hermes gave my throat power. ‘Sons of the Daidala, now is the time!’

The spear came up again, and our cheer had the force of a crack of thunder, and we charged — not far, two paces, but the Persians were yielding before we reached them, their shields moving, so that every veteran in our line knew that we had beaten them — and with a long crash like the sound two boats make as they collide, the enemy gave way.

The first-rank man opposite me was brave, or foolish, and stood his ground. I knocked him flat. I threw my borrowed spear at the next man and it stuck in his shield, dragging it down. Gelon put a spear-tip into the top of his thigh and I stepped on his chest and pressed forward, reaching for a sword that wasn’t there — a moment of fear — and I was into the third rank.

This part I remember as if it was yesterday, thugater. I had no weapon, and the next man should have killed me, but he cowered, and my right arm shot out as if it had its own life in combat, grabbed the rim of his scalloped shield and spun it to the left. His shield arm snapped. He went down. He screamed, and his scream was the surrender of the Persians to panic.

And the rest were running.

The screaming man with the broken arm had a perfectly good spear, and the gods gifted it to me as he let go and it seemed to leap into my hand.

I looked left — Hermogenes was coming into the flank of the Medes. No idea where the beaten Persian cavalry had got to, but the Persians were wrecked — men in front and the flank — and they ran, and the Medes started to run with them.

All in as long as it takes to tell the tale. After an hour of endless pushing, we were winning.

To my right, the Medes were backing fast, but they were not beaten, and their rear ranks continued trying to lob arrows high to drop them on our phalanx, and it was working. My men were still dying. But the Sakai had no shields, and our spears were hurting them.

I was no longer in command. We were no longer a phalanx. Plataeans and Athenians were intermixed along two stades, and men were plunging into the front of the Sakai, in groups or alone.

I remember that I stooped and picked up a Sakai axe and put it in my shield hand. Better than no weapon, I thought, if my short Persian spear broke.

I could hear a Mede demanding that his men rally — and they did. The Persians tried to form on them — they had lost many men. And the Persian cavalry came forward with a shout and a hail of arrows.

Hermogenes’ men were still milling around, in no sort of order — but remember, he had twelve ranks of men behind him. The cavalry hit his front ranks, and they locked up — spear and aspis against horse and sword and bow. Our line moved back a pace, and then the men on my left ran at the flanks of the horses and started pulling the Persians from their saddles.

The Medes — like lions — came forward to take advantage of our confusion — or simply to save the Persians — I have no idea.

‘On me!’ I roared. ‘Charge!’

The Medes were shocked as we ran at them again. Some stopped dead, and others kept coming, and they had no more order than we did.

That’s when the fighting was the worst — the fiercest. They were shamed from their brief rout and meant to have our heads, while we already thought that we were the better men and meant to have theirs. Both sides lost their cohesion, and men died fast. Blows came out of everywhere and nowhere, and the only hope was to be fully armoured, as I was. I must have taken ten blows that should have been wounds, on my arm and shoulder plates, on my scale shirt, on my helmet. Some must have been from my own men, in the confusion.

Then, somehow, I was in among the Persian cavalry, not the Medes, though I have no memory of running at them, and that made my fighting easier — anyone on a horse was a target. Mounted men seldom have shields. I was like Nemesis.

Idomeneus must have decided to stay at my shoulder, and I had Gelon at my back — and we killed them. Ahh, I remember Marathon, children. That day, I was a god of war. My armour flashed and shone, and men fell under every blow of my spear. I ripped men from their horses. Mounted men have to fight to the front — they cannot face to the flanks or rear. Not against two rapid blows, anyway.

Idomeneus and Gelon were not much worse than me, though, and as the fight became looser, and ranks dissolved, we were more dangerous, not less. I had a simple goal — my usual goal in a melee — to burst out of the back of the enemy formation. So I killed and wounded, I knocked men off their mounts and stepped on them, and I kept going forward, and my little group stuck to me.

It is possible to get lost in a big fight, the way a man may get lost in the woods. Confined in the eye slits of your helmet, it is possible to take a wound or die simply because some bastard turned you around. It is essential to have men at your back whom you trust — men who will turn you back round, or kill the opponent who is circling outside the realm of your helmet. But with such men, anything is possible, and it is incredible how a man can move inside a melee if he has purpose and companions.

I went at a rider in a rich purple cloak and he turned and jammed his heels in — and when I followed him we burst free and then we were running in a hayfield, and the fight was behind us. The fleeing man took an arrow and fell back over the rump of his horse, and he rode away like that — a surprising distance, as I remember. Then Teucer, at my elbow, grunted and released another arrow, high, and it fell on him and he crashed to earth. He tried to rise, and a third arrow finished him.

Teucer came out from the cover of Idomeneus’s shield, nocking an arrow, and the Persian cavalry folded up and ran — again — and this time they left half their men or more dead on the ground because we’d burst through them. Then the Medes broke and ran, shooting as they went. There were horses down in the brush, and men screaming, and horses bellowing. Ares, it was grim — blood on the ground, enough of it to splash over your sandals when the man next to you made a kill or died. So much blood that the copper-bronze smell fills your nostrils, more even than the stink of sweat, the smell that men have when they are afraid, the smell of men’s guts like new-butchered deer. Only when you stop do you notice it — the stench of Ares — and then it makes you gag, especially if some unarmoured boy has been cut to death at your feet, his lips already blue-white and bled out, his eyes bulging from the horror and pain.

War.

But, as I say, the Medes ran, the Persian cavalry ran or died, and the Sakai, despite their leader’s calls, had not been keen for the second engagement, and the whole mass went back. This time, they went back to the east, down towards the beach, trying to hide themselves among the Sakai of the centre, I think.

Teucer started shooting into them, and then he was out of shafts. It seems odd to tell it, but the only arrows I remember at that point were his, although I’m told that the Sakai kept shooting until the very end.

I had other concerns. The Athenians were pushing the Sakai, and the Sakai, whether by intention or by chance, where backing only at our end of the line — so that they swung like a gate, still linked to their centre two stades away.

At our end, we’d won. The Persians, cavalry and infantry were dead or broken, fleeing, throwing away their shields. Once a man discards his shield, he’s done. The Medes ran, and the Sakai nearest us were — well, mostly they were dead.

Idomeneus was at my shoulder.

‘Sound the rally!’ I panted.

I could see it — by Ares and by Aphrodite — that’s what I remember best of that whole glorious day. I could see what I needed to do, as if Athena stood at my shoulder, or perhaps Heracles, and whispered it in my ear.

I pivoted my body to face the beach, twelve stades away, and spear my arms wide. ‘Rally here!’ I called. ‘On me!’

Idomeneus went into his place, and Gelon and Teucer. In seconds, fifty more men were fitting in, and then a hundred. A long minute, and an arrow slew one of my Plataeans almost at the end of my spear, but by now the whole mass of them was forming up, fifteen hundred men.

Even the former slaves. Even when the old Plataeans had to show them where to stand.

The Sakai weren’t stupid. They were shooting at us as fast as they could.

The far end of the line had Hermogenes and Antigonus. I ran down the front rank and counted off twenty files from the left end, and pulled Antigonus out of the ranks.

‘Take them — wheel left, and pursue the beaten men. Stay close enough to keep them running and stay far enough that they don’t turn and kill you. If you reach their camp — stop!’

Antigonus nodded. ‘Pursue.’ He gave me a tired smile. ‘Have we won?’

‘That’s right!’ I slapped his shield. ‘Go!’ If you think I was a good strategos, a just man — I’m no Aristides. I sent my brother-in-law and my closest friend away to a nice safe pursuit. They’d done their part, and Pen would not become a widow this day. I didn’t think that the remnants of the enemy had any fight left in them — nor was I wrong.

Then back to my own — now formed facing the empty air that hung off the new flank of the Sakai.

‘Slow and steady. Keep together.’ I shouted these things. I wanted the Sakai to see us coming. ‘Sing the Paean!’ I yelled, and men took it up — all along the line. There had been no time to sing the Paean or give much of a war cry before our first charge. Now — now we had all the time in the world.

We sang, and our lines stiffened, bent, righted themselves — it is hard to keep the line on rough ground, and the plains of Marathon in early autumn are like farm fields the world over. We had to flow around clumps of trees, bushes, rocks — it was not like the painting in the stoa, children. There were no straight lines at Marathon.

But the Sakai saw us and gave more ground. They tried to run and re-form to face us, but the Athenians stayed on them, and they died. Those Sakai were gallant, and they tried, again and again, to make a stand and hold the line.

As we passed the edge of their formation, we saw why.

Our own centre was shattered, as if a herd of cattle had passed through. Where Aristides had stood, there were only victorious Persians, Datis’s bodyguard and dead Greeks.

I cursed under my breath, trying to see. Had we lost? I faltered, and my voice roared ‘Forward!’ without my volition — some god took my throat, I swear. I went forward.

Then, as we turned the flanks of the Sakai, they folded as fast as a man can lose a boxing match. One moment they were outmatched, but still game, their line backing away but their men fighting hard, and the next they were finished, flying for their lives. They started to run in earnest because we were behind them. I didn’t want to fight the Sakai anyway. I wanted to come to grips with Datis. The day was neither lost nor won, and with everything in the balance, my men were not going to stop and fight men in flight.

‘Paean! Again!’ I roared, and they obeyed — although as long as I have been a soldier, I have never heard the Paean sung twice in the same action.

Now I could see the Greek centre — well back, almost where we had started our charge, and only clumps of men. I could see horsehair crests there, and Persian felt hats. And men looking towards us.

It all happened in moments, heartbeats of time, too little for me to give an order or change our front. The Persian centre was killing the Antiochae — and then they were running, racing over the stubble of the hay for their camp. The sight of us behind them — however ill-formed our phalanx really was — terrified them the way our charge apparently had not.

The Sakai had held the flanks for Datis and his picked men to wreck the Athenian centre, and the dead were everywhere, or so it seemed. But by the gods, when they saw us coming behind, threatening to cut them off from the ships, I saw men grab the satrap — hard to miss in his scarlet and gold — and run him to a horse. His picked killers ran at his heels like dogs on a hunt.

They were too far away for my formed men to reach. They ran through the hole in our lines and down towards the beach. Some of their men ran west, away from the beach, following an officer. More — I didn’t see this — ran west and north — around behind our lines.

The right wing — our right, Miltiades’ men — had fought as hard as we had and been just as victorious, and even as we came up to the Persians, Miltiades’ men began to form a new phalanx facing us — one of the strangest sights I’ve seen on a battlefield, two victorious phalanxes from the same side facing each other over three stades of ground, with Persians streaming away between us.

There was no holding my men then. It started with the rear-rankers — the freedmen. They saw their fortunes running by, hundreds and hundreds of gold-laced Persians running for their camp, and they left their ranks and started in pursuit. I called for them to halt — and more men joined them.

All my men streamed away after them. I stopped, popped my helmet on the back of my head, took a swig of water and spat it out, and bandaged my knee. By my side, Idomeneus was panting, bent double, staring fixedly at the stubble, and Teucer was humming to himself, scouring the grass for spent shafts.

When I raised my head, I could see all the way to the ships. There was haze in the distance, but I could see that the barbarians had formed again, well down the field, and there was fighting there, and over in the olive grove west of the swamp, too.

Most of my oikia — my own men — stood around me. Styges had a cut on his sword arm, Gelon looked as fit as a statue, and a dozen of my new freedmen had chosen to loot the corpses in the area. So I had maybe twenty men, and there were knots of fighting all over the field. Men were leaving the field, too — dribs and drabs of Greeks, wounded or just too tired too continue. Not everyone lived the life of the palaestra and the gymnasium. And there was no real discipline — man who felt he’d done enough could just turn and walk away.

But I was the polemarch of Plataea, and there was still fighting. The Greeks around me were saying ‘Nike, Nike.’

Maybe. But to me, the sound from the north was an ominous one. It suggested that the battle wasn’t over yet.

I tested my wounded leg, and it was solid enough. Pain is pain. Fatigue is fatigue.

‘Zeus Soter,’ one of the new men said. He had a wound on his hand with blood flowing out of it, despite the rag he’d put on it. ‘I feel like shit!’ he said. ‘I need to sit.’

I grabbed his shoulder. ‘You feel bad?’ I asked. ‘Think how they feel!’ I pointed to the row of dead Sakai, naked now and their white bodies lying in a row where our rear-rankers had stripped them.

Idomeneus barked his battle laugh.

‘More fighting,’ he said.

We all drank our canteens dry, and then Greeks came up from the wreck of the Athenian centre — some ashamed, and others proud. Many had run, and others fought on until the Persians were forced back — and you can guess which group included Aristides.

‘By the gods, Plataean, I think we have won!’ he shouted as he ran up. He had the cheekplates of his helmet cocked back to give him a better view. There was blood flowing down his leg, and Idomeneus and I insisted he be bandaged before we went forward again. Aristides brought a hundred men with him — they were weary, but they wanted to be in at the kill.

We moved down to the beach. The fighting seemed heaviest by the ships, and we could see black hulls launching all along the bay. It seemed too good to be true, but one after another, ships pushed their sterns off the sand and their oars came out. Some stayed in close, rescuing men from the water.

Others simply fled.

That was when we knew we’d won.

The barbarians had formed a line by the ships — whether by intention or merely in desperation — and Miltiades’ men were fighting there. Most of my men and many of Miltiades’ went up into the camp and started to loot.

The fighting by the ships was deadly. Aeschylus’s brother fell there, and Callimachus, the polemarch of Athens. Cimon, Miltiades’ eldest son, took a wound there, and Agios was wounded when he leaped aboard an enemy ship and started to clear it.

We were walking — I can hardly call it a march — along the beach, passing over the wreckage of the Persians — corpses of men and horses as thick as seaweed after a storm, dead Medes cut down by Miltiades’ men. And as clear as an actor on the stage of the Agora, I heard Agios calling. Then I saw him, on the stern of an enemy ship half a stade away.

I wasn’t going to let him die while I had breath in my body. I started to run.

At my back, all my oikia followed me.

Aristides and Miltiades heard him, too.

And like a flood, the best spears of the army converged on the stern of that ship. We weren’t far — a hundred paces.

How long does it take to cut your way through a hundred paces of panicked Medes and desperate Persians?

Too long.

I went through the remnants of the Medes with my trusted men at my shoulders, but then we hit the Persians, and we slowed. There were a dozen of them — not men I knew, thank the gods, but the same sort of men as Cyrus and his friends, and they fought like demons, and we slowed.

Agios probably died then, while I was face to face with an armoured Persian. The Persian fought well. We must have exchanged four or five cuts before my spear ripped his forearm and my next thrust sent his shade down to Hades. As I stepped past him, the Persians backed away, grabbing at a man with a hennaed beard. His helmet was gold and set with lapis, and I’d seen him before.

Datis.

I thrust at him and saw my spear drive home under the skirts of his armour, and then his men were all around him. I was an arm’s length from the ship where Agios lay dying, pierced fifty times, shot with arrows and continuing to call the battle cry of Athens, so that the whole army heard him, and men pressed forward, possessed with the rage of Ares. The barbarians could have rallied — they certainly should never have lost a ship. But we cut into them the way the sickle cuts into the weeds at the edge of a garden.

Agios’s shouts grew weaker, and my blows fell faster, and I got a Mede against the stern of the ship and punched my spear at him so hard that my spearhead stuck in the tar-coated wood. Then I dropped my shield and jumped. As I got my leg over the thwart a Sakai archer cut at me. His short knife caught in my chlamys and turned against my scale armour. With that axe in my right hand I cut into him, and he fell away, and I got my feet under me.

I could see the faces of the panicked oarsmen — and Agios, collapsed across the helm. A spearman stood over him, having just stabbed him, and my axe licked out and cut the back of his knee so that his leg gave way and he fell, spraying blood — but I hit him again, and again, and again, until the side of his helmet caved in.

Now the blows of five men fell on my armour, and I had no shield. I took a wound in the thigh — just a pin-prick — but enough to snap me out of the blood rage. Suddenly Aristides was beside me — using his spear two-handed — and then Miltiades came over the other gunwale, then Styges, Gelon, Sophanes, Bellerophon, Teucer, Aeschylus, and we stormed that ship, the living wrath of Athena.

Six more ships were taken and cleared before they could get to sea. The Athenians and the Plataeans were no longer an army — nor were the barbarians. They were a fleeing mob, and we were in the red rage of Nike and Ares, when men die because they care about nothing but more blood. Our fire burned hot, and many were consumed. Indeed, I’ve heard it said that more Athenians died by the ships than when the centre broke — but I’ve heard a great many things said by Athenians about the battle, and a few of them are true, but most are pig shit. We lost a lot of men, and so did Athens, although Cimon will tell you otherwise.

We burned like a bonfire in a high wind, and then their last ship was away, and we burned to ash. We were spent.

We came to a stop, so that a hush fell over the field. I suppose that wounded men screamed, and gulls screeched, and horses trumpeted their pain, but I remember none of that. What I remember is the hush, as if the gods had decided that all of us deserved a rest.

I leaned on the haft of my looted axe, and breathed. I don’t know how long I was out of it — but ask any man who’s been in the battle haze, and he’ll tell you that when you are done, you don’t cheer. You just stop. When I came back to myself, I was sitting on the blood-soaked planks of the marine box. My thigh wound was open and bleeding again, and Miltiades was beside me. We’d cut our way from the stern, by Agios’s corpse, to the bow. I was covered in blood — sticky, stinking blood.

‘I think we’ve won,’ Miltiades said. He didn’t sound proud, or arrogant, or in any way like the hero of the hour. He sounded awestruck.

We all were, children. I don’t think that we really believed we could win — or perhaps the issue was so much in doubt that we couldn’t separate what we dreaded from what we hoped for.

But as we watched the last shreds of the Persian cavalry swimming their horses out, and the ships closing round them to save them, we knew that these Persians were not coming back. Especially when they abandoned their horses in the water.

I remember then, watching the ships creep past us from the north. Many had lost oarsmen as well as hoplites, and they didn’t move fast. Behind me, the victorious Athenians had started to sing — some hymn to Athena I didn’t know.

Out across the water, a ship’s length away or less, I saw the scorpion shield standing on the stern of a light trireme. The enemy ship was going past us, picking men out of the water, bold as brass.

Teucer had an arrow, and he drew it to his chin, but I put my axe head in front of his arrowhead just when he went to loose, and he cursed.

Archilogos saw it all. His mouth formed an O and his head tracked me as my eyes must have followed him. He raised his shield.

‘Tell Briseis I send my greetings!’ I called across the water.

His men rowed him away and he didn’t reply.

It was harder to leap down from that hull than it had been to climb aboard — my muscles were seizing, and I remember Aeschylus catching me as I stumbled. We were much of an age, he and I. He was a good man, despite his jealousy of Phrynichus’s success.

Idomeneus had my shield. ‘You alive, boss?’ he asked. ‘You’ve got a cut.’

So we bandaged my thigh again and then we looked after the dozen cuts he had — one in his bicep so deep I couldn’t see how he could use his sword arm. Aeschylus helped. I didn’t realize then that he was standing a few paces from the corpse of his brother.

Miltiades came up to me.

‘I need the best men,’ he said quietly. ‘We’re not done.’

Just north of the plain was an extensive stand of olive trees surrounded by a stone boundary wall. The Persians who had run north and west when their line gave way ran all the way around our army, but were cut off from the beach by the ruin of their camp. Being true Persians, they refused to surrender. They went into the walled olive grove and determined to die like men.

Half of our army must already have started back across the fields to our camp by the time Miltiades became aware of what was happening, and good men had died — some of them Plataeans — trying to storm the olive grove. The rumour spread that Datis was there, and the Persian command staff.

I gathered my oikia, and Miltiades gathered his, and Aristides his best men from the wreck of the centre, and we walked north along the beach and then through the Persian camp. We passed beautiful carpets and bronze urns and I saw silk and finely woven wool — but we had no time to loot. I did pause to pick up a silver-studded sword — that one, honey bee. Look at that steel. Too light for me, but so well crafted — Hephaestus’s blessing on the hand that made the blade — that I would use it in preference to a better-hefted blade.

I found Hermogenes at the edge of the camp, with Antigonus, who had a wound in the foot. Peneleos and Diocles were there, although other men who should have been with them — like Epictetus — were missing.

‘Those are some tough bastards,’ Hermogenes said. He had four arrows in his shield. He looked sheepish. ‘The Athenians tried to storm them and got in trouble — we just went in to help them out.’ He looked as if he would cry. ‘I lost a lot of the boys,’ he said quietly.

‘They beat us,’ Antigonus said.

Miltiades took a deep breath. ‘They’re desperate men,’ he said.

‘Surround the grove and get them tomorrow,’ Themistocles suggested. He had a dozen hoplites with him, and they looked as tired as the rest of us. ‘Or burn it.’

‘They’ll break out in the dark,’ Aeschylus said. His voice was thick. He knew by then that his brother was dead, and he wanted revenge. ‘They’ll break out, and every cottage they burn, every petty farmer they kill will be on our heads.’

It was true. Tired men have no discipline, and the Athenians were tired. Indeed, every man looked twenty years older. Miltiades looked sixty. Aristides looked — well, like an old man, and Hermogenes looked like a corpse. Ever been exhausted, children? No — you are soft. We were hard like old oaks, but there was little flame left in us. I remember how I walked, forcing each step, because I hurt and because my knees were shaking slightly. My sword wrist burned.

Miltiades looked around. The sun was setting — where had the day gone? — and we had perhaps two hundred men of all the army standing there at the north edge of the enemy camp. Others were looting. But most were sitting on the ground, or on their aspides — some singing, some tending wounds, but most simply staring at the ground. That’s how it was — how it always is. When you are done, you are done.

Miltiades watched the ships behind us. ‘Where are they going?’ he asked suddenly.

The barbarian fleet was forming up out in the bay. And starting not east, towards Naxos or Lemnos or an island safely owned by the Great King, but south — towards Athens.

‘They’re making a stab for the city,’ Cleitus said softly. I hadn’t seen him since the fighting started, and there he was, covered in dirt as if he’d rolled in the fields. Perhaps he had. I had. His right arm was caked in crusted blood to the elbow, his spearhead dripped blood, and flies buzzed thickly around his head.

Miltiades took a deep breath. He was the eldest of us, over forty, in fact, and his face beneath the cheekplates of his Attic helmet was grey with fatigue, and below his eyes he had black lines and pouches like a rich man’s wallet. But as I say, none of us looked much better apart from Sophanes, who looked as fresh as an athlete in a morning race, and Bellerophon, who was grinning.

‘We have to clear the olive grove as quickly as we can,’ Miltiades said. ‘We can’t leave them behind us — we’ll have to march for Athens.’

There was a groan. I think we all groaned at the thought of walking a hundred stades to Athens.

Miltiades stood straighter. ‘We are not done,’ he said. ‘If the old men and boys we left behind surrender the city to their fleet — and there are people in the town who might do it — then all this would be for nothing.’ He sighed.

Phidippides, the Athenian herald, pushed forward. ‘Give me leave, lord,’ he said, ‘and I’ll run to Athens and tell them of the battle.’

Miltiades nodded, his face full of respect. ‘Go! And the gods run with you.’

Phidippides was not a rich man, and had only his leather cuirass, a helmet and his aspis. He dropped the aspis and helmet on the ground and eager hands helped him out of his cuirass. He stripped his chiton off and put his sword belt on his naked shoulder.

Someone handed him a chlamys, and he gave us a grin. ‘Better than mine in camp!’ he said. ‘I’ll be there before the sun sets, friends.’

He’d fought the whole day, but he ran off the field, heading south, his legs pumping hard — not a sprint, but a steady pace that would eat the stades.

Miltiades turned to me — or perhaps to Aristides. ‘I have to get the army ready to march,’ he said. ‘I need one of you to lead the assault on the grove.’

I’ll give Miltiades this much — he sounded genuinely regretful.

‘I’ll do it,’ I said.

‘Then we do it together,’ Aristides said. He looked at his men — the front-rankers of his tribe. ‘We need to do this,’ he said quietly. ‘We broke. We must find our honour in the grove.’

Miltiades nodded curtly. ‘Go with the gods. Get it done and follow me.’ He took his hyperetes and began to walk across the fields. The boy at his side blew his trumpet, and all across the field, Athenians and Plataeans looked up from their fatigue, summoned back to the phalanx.

Many of my Plataeans were right there — perhaps a hundred men. They were a mix of front- and rear-rankers, the best and the worst, and the Athenians were in the same state, although there were more of them, and they had more armour and better weapons.

Mind you, the Plataeans were working hard to remedy that, stripping the Persians at our feet.

‘They can’t have many arrows left,’ I said.

‘Why not?’ Cleitus asked.

‘They’d be shooting us,’ Teucer answered.

Aristides smiled a little sheepishly. Then he frowned. ‘You have a plan, Plataean?’

I shrugged, and the weight of my scale corslet seemed like the weight of the world. Even Cleitus — bloody Cleitus, who I hated — looked at me, waiting.

The truth is, I didn’t have enough energy to hate Cleitus. He was one more spear — and a strong spear, too. So I raised my eyes and looked at the grove. The precinct wall was about half a man tall, of loose stones, but well built, and beyond the wall the grove climbed a low hill — completely inside the wall, of course. It was a virtually impregnable position.

‘Seems to me they’re as tired as we are — and their side lost. Nothing for them now but death or slavery.’ I was buying time, waiting for Athena or Heracles to put something in my head besides the black despair that comes after a long fight.

I remember I walked a little apart, not really to think, but because the weight of their expectations was greater than the weight of my scale thorax and my aspis combined, and I wanted to be free of it for a moment.

And it was as if a goddess came and whispered in my ear, except that I still fancy it was Aphrodite, whose hymn had been on my lips when I fell asleep. Because I turned my head, and there it was.

I put my helmet back on my head and my shield on my arm. I was only a few steps from the others. ‘I see a way to distract them and save some fighting. I think you Athenians should go for them — right over the wall, at the low point by the gate. The rest of us — you see the little dip in the ground there?’ I nodded my head. ‘Don’t point. If fifty of us go there, up that little gully, I doubt they’ll see us coming. The rest of you form up twenty shields wide and ten deep. When we hit the grove, well, you come at the gate, and it’s every man for himself.’

Aristides nodded. ‘If they see you coming, you’ll be shot to pieces,’ he said.

‘Then we’d best hope they’re low on arrows,’ I said. ‘No time for anything fancy.’

Someone shouted, ‘Can we fire the grove?’

‘No time,’ I said. In truth, it was the best solution.

Let me tell you something, young man. I believe in the gods. One of them had just shown me the gully. And that olive grove was sacred to Artemis. And the gods had stood by me all day. To me, this was the test. It is always the test of battle. How good are you when you are wounded and tired? That’s when you find out who is truly a hero, my children. Anyone can stand their ground with a full belly and clean muscles. But at the end of day, when the rim of the sun touches the hills and you haven’t had water for hours and flies are laying eggs in your wounds?

Think on it. Because hundreds of us were measured, and by Heracles, we were worthy of our fathers.

‘You man enough for this, Plataean?’ Cleitus asked, but his voice was merely chiding — almost friendly.

‘Fuck off,’ I said, equally friendly.

‘Let’s get to it,’ Aeschylus said. He put the edge of his aspis between Cleitus and me. ‘This isn’t about you, Cleitus.’

I remember that I smiled. ‘Cleitus,’ I said softly, and he met my eye. ‘Today is for the Medes,’ I said. I offered my hand.

He took it and clasped it hard.

Aeschylus nodded. ‘I ask to be the first into the grove,’ he said. ‘For my brother.’

Athenians and aristocrats. Not a scrap of sense.

So the Athenians formed a deep block the width of the low wall. Behind the screen they provided, I took my Plataeans — household first — in a pair of long files and ran off to the south, around the edge of the low hill. I pushed my legs to do their duty. I think ‘run’ may be a poor description of the shambling jog we managed — but we did it.

We ran around the edge of the hill and there was the entry to the gully, as I’d expected. That gully wasn’t as deep as a man is tall — but it was shaped oddly, with a small bend just before the west wall of the grove, and I trusted my guess and led my men forward — still in a file.

The Persians had formed a line — not, to be honest, a very thick line — facing Aristides’ small phalanx. We could see them, and by a miracle, they still hadn’t seen us. It was, well, miraculous. But on the battlefield, men die because they see what they expect to see.

Then Aristides and Aeschylus led their men forward. They were so tired that they didn’t cheer or sing the Paean, but simply trotted forward, and all the Persians shot into them.

The clatter of the arrows on their shields and the solid impacts drowned the sound of our movement.

‘Form your front!’ I called softly, but my men needed no order.

The men behind me started to sprint forward. I didn’t slow. The neatness of our line was immaterial. And by the gods, Aphrodite was there, or some other goddess, lifting us to one more fight, raising us above ourselves. Two or three times in my life I’ve felt this, and it is. . beyond the human. And at Marathon, every one of us at the grove felt it.

I was at the edge of the gully, and it sloped steeply up, head height, to the base of the stone wall. The Persians had assumed this part was too tricky for us to storm.

I was first. I ran up the gully lip — and at the top a Persian shot me.

His arrow smacked into my aspis at point-blank range, and then I was past him, over the wall in a single leap, and a flood of Plataeans poured in behind me. I have no idea who killed that man, or, to be honest, how I got over the wall — but we were in, past the wall, among the trees.

I crashed into the end of the Persian line — most of them never saw us coming, so focused were they on Aristides and his men to their front.

They died hard.

When they stood, we slew them, and when they ran — some in panic, more just to find a better place to die — we chased them, tree to tree. Those with arrows shot us, and those without protected the archers. Some had spears and a few had aspides they’d picked up from our dead, and many had axes, and they fought like heroes.

No man who survived the fight in the olive grove ever forgot it.

Desperate, cornered men are no longer human. They are animals, and they will grasp the sword in their guts and hold on to it if it will help a mate kill you.

The fight eventually filled the whole grove, and some of them must have climbed the trees — certainly the arrow that killed Teucer came from above, straight down into the top of his shoulder by his neck. And Alcaeus of Miletus, who had come all this way to die for Athens, went down fighting, his aspis against two axemen, and I was just too far away to save him.

A Persian broke my spear, dying on it, and another clambered over his body and his short sword rang off my scales, but didn’t go through or I’d have died there myself. I put my arms around him and threw him to the ground, rolled on top of him to crush him, got my hands on his throat and choked the life out of him. That’s the last moment in the battle I remember — I must have got back on my feet but I don’t remember how, and then I was back to back with Idomeneus, but the fighting was over.

The fighting was over.

All the Persians were dead.

Idomeneus sank to the ground. ‘I’m done,’ he said. I had never heard those words from him, and never did again.

That was Marathon.

Equally, to be honest, I remember nothing of the march over the mountains to Athens, in the dark, save that there was a storm brewing out over the ocean and the breeze of that storm blew over us like the touch of a woman’s cool hand when you are sick.

I must have given some orders, because there were nigh-on eight hundred Plataeans when we came down the hills above Athens to the sanctuary of Heracles. And as each contingent came up, Miltiades met them in person. That part I remember. He was still in full armour, and he glowed — perhaps, that night, he was divine. Certainly, it was his will that got us safely over the mountains and back to the plains of Attica. The Plataeans were the last to leave Marathon apart from Aristides’ tribe, who stayed to guard the loot, and the last to arrive at the shrine of Heracles, and as we came in — not marching, but shuffling along in a state of exhaustion — the sun began to rise over the sea, and the first glow caught the temples on the Acropolis in the distance.

‘We’ve made it, friends,’ Miltiades said to each contingent.

Men littered the ground — shields were dropped like olives in an autumn wind, as if our army had been beaten rather than victorious.

My men were no different. Without a word, men fell to the ground. Later, Hermogenes told me that he fell asleep before he got his aspis off his arm.

I didn’t. Like Miltiades, I was too tired to sleep, and I stood with him as the sun rose, revealing the Persian fleet still well off to the east.

‘Even if they came now,’ he said, ‘Phidippides made it. See the beacon on the Acropolis?’

I could see a smudge of smoke in the dawn light. I nodded heavily.

‘By Athena,’ Miltiades said. He stood as straight as a spear-shaft, despite his fatigue. He laughed, and looked out into the morning. ‘We won.’

‘You should rest,’ I said.

Miltiades laughed again. He slapped my back, grinned ear to ear, and for a moment, he was not ancient and used up — he was the Pirate King I had known as a boy. ‘I won’t waste this moment in the arms of sleep, Arimnestos,’ he said. He embraced me.

I remember grinning, because few things were ever as precious to me as the love of Miltiades, despite the bastard’s way with money, power and fame. ‘Sleep would not be a waste,’ I said.

He shook his head. ‘Arimnestos — right now, this moment, I am with the gods.’ He said it plain — no rhetoric. And he wasn’t talking to a thousand men, feeding on their adulation. I honestly think every man in our army was asleep but us.

No — he was telling the plain truth to one man, and that man was me.

I remember that I didn’t understand. I do now. But I was too young, and for all my scars and the blood on my sword arm, too inexperienced.

He laughed again, and it was a fell sound. ‘I have beaten the Persians at the gates of my city. I have won a victory — such a victory.’ He shrugged. ‘Since Troy. .’ he said, and burst into tears.

We stood together. I cried too, thugater. I cried, and the sun rose on the Persian fleet, turning away in defeat. Many men were dead, and many more would die. But we had beaten the Great King’s army, and the world would never be the same again. Truly, in that hour, we were with the gods.