Marathon: Freedom or Death

4

The Persian fleet didn’t actually have any Persians in it, of course. There were Ionian Greeks and Phoenicians and a handful of very capable Aegyptians on those beaches, and I stood in the so-called Windy Tower of Miletus and watched them.

To the south, the Persian siege mound grew every day. No Persians there, either — just slaves culled from the countryside, hundreds and hundreds of agricultural slaves from the Milesians’ own farms carrying brush and soil, while fending off rocks and arrow shafts, and dumping it under the walls, so that the siege mound grew the width of a man’s hand every night.

The Milesian aristocrats remained confident, however. Their city had never fallen, and they still had stores — they hadn’t killed all their animals yet, and only the lower-class people were suffering. When I was taken up to the acropolis, it was as if I’d entered a city free of war — I was bathed by slaves, anointed with oil and served a meal that included thin-sliced beef tongue.

But in the lower city, the people were starving.

My grain put heart into them, and I wasn’t the only captain who got through — just the only one who’d done it twice. And this late in the season, my second cargo — three ships’ worth — saved the city. Histiaeus and his brother did not hesitate to tell me so.

My second night in the city, Istes led the warriors in an attack out of a postern gate and set fire to a brush pile the enemy had been preparing — brush piled as high as a city wall, intended to help with the last days of the siege mound. But they couldn’t burn the soil, and in the morning the slaves were back at work.

Persian archers appeared periodically and shot into the city — fire arrows, sometimes, but mostly just war shafts, carefully aimed. Every day they killed a man or two on the walls. On the other hand, they kept the city supplied with arrows.

Archilogos, or whoever was in command over there on the beaches of Lade, was not giving up either. They formed a cordon every night, and had small boats rowing across the channel, and at least two ships out in the bay north of the island. At dawn and dusk they sortied out with at least fifteen ships, and I didn’t see much hope for escape.

But on the third night, the city’s defenders sallied out again, and this time I went with them. It is ironic that, once you have the reputation as a great warrior, you must support it constantly. I could no more sit in the acropolis while the men raided than I could abstain from eating.

The city was well appointed with regard to armour, and Lord Histiaeus gave me a bell corslet and a fine Cretan helmet with a magnificent horsehair plume. It was a bit like living in the Iliad. I took my marines, and Philocrates the Blasphemer, who had settled into the life of piracy like a veteran. I got him arms as well, a full panoply.

‘You look like Ares come to life,’ I said to him, when he was dressed in bronze.

‘Ares is a myth to frighten children,’ he said.

‘I see that a storm at sea and a life of war is not enough to restore your respect for the gods,’ I said.

He shrugged. ‘You can’t respect what ain’t there.’

I stood back a little and regarded him. There was something frightening about him. He ignored portents, laughed at talismans and called the gods by foul names. At first only the Iberians would eat with him, but as he continued to blaspheme and the skies never swallowed him up, other men began to accept him. That said, I have to say that he had changed. I couldn’t put my finger on why, but he explained it himself later, as you’ll hear, if you come back for more of this story tomorrow.

At any rate, sixty of us went out of the postern gate nearest the harbour. It was pelting down with rain — we slipped on the mud, and I blessed my good Boeotian boots even as the other men cursed their open sandals. The ground in front of the walls had been churned to a froth by the passage of thousands of men, slaves and soldiers, and both sides dumped their waste and filth into that no-man’s-land. It was foul.

You’d think that after a hundred of these raids, the Persians would have set a watch, but of all their contingents, only the Aegyptians kept a regular guard. Most of their crack troops were cavalrymen who disdained such rigorous pastimes as guard duty, and who am I to comment? I never knew a Greek who was willing to stand a night watch.

We crossed the mud and the ordure in the lashing rain, and then we went over the fresh brush they’d piled in lieu of a wall around their camp. No hope of lighting a fire on this night, but we had a different goal in mind.

We weren’t after Artaphernes. If he’d been at the siege, he might have had Briseis, and my approach would have been very different. Indeed, since I’m trying to tell the whole truth here, I’ll add that I didn’t feel any particular commitment to the rebels. They weren’t Plataeans, for instance. I was loyal enough to Miltiades, but you’ll note that I wasn’t criss-crossing the seas looking for him. Nor was I sailing up and down looking for the rebel fleet to offer my services. Mind you, once I was trapped in Miletus, my options were limited. But I wasn’t an idealist. I was a Plataean, and I was Briseis’s lover — or rather, the same, but in the other order.

But neither the satrap nor his new wife was at the siege that autumn. Datis was Artaphernes’ lieutenant, and our aim was to kill him. His great red and purple tent showed clearly across the lines by day, and we’d worked out a couple of sea-marks — torches mounted at two different heights in the town — to guide us to his tent. He was a relative of the Great King — Artaphernes was one of the king’s many brothers, and this Datis was a cousin, or some such, and a famous warrior, and the rumours were that when he took Miletus, he’d be sent with a great fleet against Chios and Lesbos — and perhaps Athens. Or so men said.

No one expected us to succeed in killing him, but it was this sort of constant pressure that kept the besiegers on edge and encouraged them to pack it up for the winter and head home.

We crept through the dark, soaked to the skin, squelching in mud, turning frequently to get our line of approach from the torches on the walls, and we crept forward, cursed by men in the tents whose ropes we bumped — little knowing, of course, that we were mortal foes. I wondered if this was what Odysseus had felt when he left the Trojan horse to sneak into the town of Troy. The Iliad is very real at times — but no one ever seems to be wet or cold, or have the flux. I find that these three are the proper children of Ares, not Havoc and Panic and whatever else the poets ascribe. Who ever had a war without wet and cold?

We were in the middle of the column, so we had no idea what — or who — alarmed the camp, but suddenly we were discovered. It was raining so hard that no one could light a torch, and as soon as the enemy came out of their tents, they lost all sense of the situation.

Our men killed the first to come close to them, then scattered. That’s what we’d planned. The Milesians simply vanished. They had raided the camp before and knew it well enough. My marines were not so lucky, and in the dark we followed the wrong men. We thought we were following Milesians and we ended up in the horse lines, where a dozen conscientious Persian troopers had run to protect their mounts. Our men started fighting them with no cue from me. My marines were armoured and the Persians were unarmed, and they died — taking two of my men with them. Persians are brave.

‘Cut the halters and undo the hobbles,’ I ordered. My survivors spread out and caused chaos on the horse lines, ripping pickets out of the ground. I ran to the top of a low hill and looked back at the city, and only then did I realize that we had the whole width of the enemy camp between us.

More immediately, men were boiling out of the camp, backlit by the lights on the city wall. Persians love their horses. My ten men weren’t going to last a minute against a regiment of Persian cavalrymen.

I thought of stealing horses and heading inland, but that sort of thing only works in epics. In real life, your enemies have more horses and native guides, and they ride you down. Besides, my men were sailors in armour, not cavalrymen. Most of them had probably never forked a horse.

I was out of ideas, but Poseidon stood by us. Horses scattered in every direction, and I didn’t have to be Odysseus to reckon that we could escape with the herd. A few of us mounted, and others simply clung to manes, even tails — and we flowed with the horses, moving west and north, back towards the city. I got mounted, lost my bearings and my companions, and spent a watch among the rocks south of the city, where my horse left me.

The gods help those who help themselves, or so I’ve heard it said, and while I lay in the rocks watching the city and the force of Persian archers between me and the walls, cursing my fate, I realized that it was a six-stade walk along the ridge of rock to the beach opposite Tyrtarus. And not a sentry on the way.

I took the time to poke along the ridge of rock. Every piece of waste ground has trails, if you know where to look — goats make them, and shepherds, and boys and girls courting or playing at being heroes. The moon came up late and the rain ceased, and I walked to the beach opposite Lade, stripped to my skin and swam to the hulls opposite — really just a few horse-lengths, well less than a stade. I rose up, dripping, by the black hulls, close enough to the enemy camp to hear the snores of Archilogos’s oarsmen, or so I reckoned. Then I swam back and picked my way among the rocks. As I had expected, the Persians had gone back to bed. I crawled through the mud and shit to the walls of the town, and wasted another half an hour persuading the sentry to let me climb the wall without gutting me. Oh, the romance of siege warfare!

I was the last man back from the raid, and my sword had not left its scabbard. There were men in the upper city who were of a mind to laugh at me. I let them laugh. I was no longer a hot-blooded boy, and I didn’t need a blood feud in the town. I wanted to take my gold and go, although I was keen to show Istes what I was made of. He’d killed three Persians, and brought in their bows and arrows as proof.

I slept well enough. In the morning I ate honeyed almonds in the upper city and took a long bath to kill the smell of the mud. Histiaeus and Istes joined me.

‘Your men accomplished a miracle,’ he said. ‘Not a slave is working on the siege mound today. They’re all out searching for the horses.’ He smiled grimly. ‘We didn’t get Datis, but we hurt them — a deserter says we killed fifteen Persians and some others.’

I nodded. None of this interested me much. This war of tiny increments was not something I could really appreciate. To me, the city looked doomed, and I wanted out before I was sold into slavery again.

‘Will you raid again tonight?’ I asked.

He shook his head. Even he — the best-fed warrior in the city — had circles under his eyes like shield bags, and the lines on his face were as deep as new-ploughed furrows. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We’ve been out two nights in a row. We can’t keep it up. The fighters are exhausted. The real fighters — the men of worth.’ His eyes flicked to Istes, who also looked like a man at the edge of exhaustion.

‘I’m leaving tonight,’ I said.

He shook his head. ‘I don’t recommend that,’ he said. ‘Mind you, if you stay much longer, I’ll be selling you your grain.’

‘I’d appreciate a dozen of your archers to help me get clear,’ I said. ‘I’d bring them back on my next trip.’

‘You plan to shoot your way out?’ Istes asked. ‘Archers are our most valuable troops.’ He shrugged. ‘You are the best friend this city has made in many months — but the loss of ten archers would be a blow.’

‘I understand. But I need the archers for my diversion, and I’ll leave you a trireme as surety — the Phoenician I took on my way in.’ I pointed to the hull. ‘On a dark night — you might use her to get some people out.’

He shook his head in puzzlement. ‘Why leave a ship?’ he asked.

I grunted. I didn’t want to tell him. As in any siege, the town was riddled with deserters, traitors and double agents, I had no doubt. ‘We’ll be away in the dark of the moon,’ I said.

‘Poseidon bless you, then,’ the tyrant said. But his eyes flicked to his brother, and something passed between them that I didn’t like.

Oh, I was eager to be gone.

I slept most of the day and mustered all my men — marines, oarsmen, deck crews — at dusk. I put my plan to them as the sun vanished into clouds, and enough men volunteered to give me hope. I wish I could say that they all volunteered, but a week on half rations in a doomed city is enough to sap anyone’s morale.

I took my party out of the harbour sally port when the rain started. We made the rocks south of town in the end, although I had an anxious time finding them in the dark. It is always easier to go to a town than away from it.

We were soaked through and shivering by the time we made the rocks, and then we crept along, spear-butts sounding like avalanches as they scraped the stone. Philocrates cursed steadily. When we were on the beach opposite Lade, we stripped and swam, clinging to our spears as best we could.

We missed our way — the darkness was deep and there was no moon. Let me just say that swimming in the dark — no sight of anything, cold through, so that you shiver, clinging to your weapons — is perhaps the ultimate test of the warrior. Men turned back. And who am I to blame them?

We ended up on the rocks east of the ships, and there was nothing for it but to crawl. I’d explained this part, but the execution was much harder than I’d anticipated. Try crawling on a rainy night, naked but for a wet chlamys, and keeping a spear with you, across broken ground thick with brush.

Hah! We sounded like a herd of cattle. But fools that we were, and inept, the enemy were as bad or worse.

I made the most noise as I was wearing Histiaeus’s gift, the bronze cuirass. I wore it swimming, and it wasn’t bad, but when I crawled across rocks it was loud and the flare around the hips caught on everything.

That was one of the longest, darkest hours of my life. I had not reckoned on losing my way again — we only had a stade of open ground to cross — but I did. In the end, I had to rise to my feet, stumbling like a drunkard, and turn slowly — in full view of the enemy sentries, if there had been any — to realize that I had crawled right past the enemy encampment.

Too late to correct my course. I was well south of my target, but I could see the black hulls of their triremes just to the left, shiny in the darkness. I had at least a dozen men with me — men who had chosen to follow me even when their sense said they’d gone wrong — and now we crept across the dunes, then clattered across the tongue of rock that separated the mudflat from the sea until we were crouched by the ships.

Most of the men had packets of oiled cloth and pitch, or even bitumen — there was plenty of it in Miletus — and we built a pile of the stuff under one hull.

Although there was no moon, the rain abated while we crouched there. The camp had fires — mostly coals — and several Iberians crept between the boatsails erected as tents and lit their torches at the fires. By now there were thirty or forty of my men among the hulls of their ships, and we all called ‘Alarm! Alarm!’ in Greek for all we were worth. Our Iberians ran through the camp with lit torches before thrusting them into our prebuilt pyre.

And then chaos came.

The fire roared up in the time it would take a man to run the stade — from a few flickers of flame to a conflagration twice the height of a man’s head and as loud as a horse race. The ship caught immediately — hulls coated in pitch are an invitation to flame, even in the rain. My sailors ran back and forth, feeding sails and oars into the inferno, and then throwing the lit wreckage into other hulls.

Men came out of the tents, and we killed them. As we were the ones calling the alarm, they kept on coming to us for many minutes, unarmed or with buckets to put out the fire, and we put them down.

By then we had three ships alight, and my two were out in the channel, already running free while the archers on their decks shot fire arrows into the black hulls. A fire arrow is a feeble thing, and none of them caught, but it provided further distraction. The enemy was misled — again — into believing that the fire arrows were the cause of the fires. It took them a long time to realize that we were in amongst them.

I had no idea how many men I had under command, or how much damage we’d done, but I knew that it was time to go. I had a horn — the gift of Istes — and I ran clear of the flame, the men closest to me following, and I stopped in the dark to sound the horn, but the only sound I made was the bleat of an old ewe looking for her last lamb.

‘Give me that,’ Philocrates said, and he took it and blew a mighty blast. There was the sound of running feet, and we braced ourselves — we had no shields, and we were going to be reaped like ripe grain if the enemy had a phalanx to set against us.

But it was Idomeneus, laughing like a hyena, with fifty of our sailors and marines on his heels. Towards the back of his rout, there was fighting, but so far our enemies were disorganized.

‘Get them into the ship!’ I called — because the Storm Cutter was coming ashore for us.

Some men took some hide boats they found there — Tyche favours the brave, or so they say, and thirty men made it away in the small boats. But the fighting was intensifying, and I could hear the enemy getting into a line, their shields tapping against each other in the dark, and the fires behind them showed me how fast they were building the shield wall.

The enemy hoplites were backlit by burning ships, and mine were hidden by darkness. ‘One quick charge!’ I told the men I could find. ‘On me, on me!’ I called, and I picked up a heavy rock. ‘Get close and throw,’ I said. ‘Put one man down, and run for the ship. Don’t stay and fight!’

Maybe a dozen men listened to me and obeyed. We ran down the dune out of the darkness, and just a pace or two from their shield wall I threw my rock — a big rock, I can tell you. My rock caught my foe in the shin and he went down, and I jumped through the gap in their line and plunged my spear into the unshielded side of the man next to me.

Then the night was full of shouts. Fighting at night is nothing like fighting by day. Men fall down when no foe assails them — they lose their way in the melee. I turned to run and somehow found myself deeper in their line.

I came upon Archilogos as another ship burst into pitch-soaked flame behind my former friend. I think he recognized me as soon as I recognized him. Neither of us had a helmet on — no one wears a helmet at night.

I knew that if I stopped moving, I was dead or taken, so I shoved him — he had a shield and I had none. I had sworn to protect him, so I couldn’t try to harm him — such a thing would haunt me for ever.

He roared and cut at me with a long kopis — the sword flared like flame over my head. I tangled his blow with my spear and jumped back, slamming into a man who had no idea whether I was friend or foe. I fell, lost my spear and rolled, and another man fell on top of me.

That should have been the end.

Archilogos called ‘Doru! Stand and face me!’ and he cut at the man I’d tripped over. That’s fighting in the dark. I saw the flash of his blow and heard it thunk home in another man’s shield.

I gave up trying to find my spear, or even getting to my feet. I crawled and then I rolled, and at one point a man stepped on my breastplate in the dark. The hinges gave, but held, and he stepped away, thinking me a corpse.

There was shouting behind me, where I’d been. I reckoned that the Ionian Greeks were fighting each other. Later I heard that the Greeks and Phoenicians started fighting. Many men were forced allies of the Persians, and not sorry to kill a Tyrian in the dark, I can tell you, and it may be that we only lived because the Ionians helped us.

At any rate, I got to my feet after what seemed an eternity of being helpless, tore my chlamys from my neck, cast it at my feet and ran to the beach.

Storm Cutter was already backing water.

I was out of my breastplate even as I ran — I cut the straps with my eating knife, running parallel to the ship’s course, easily outpacing it as it backed water. I dropped the thing on the sand — a fortune in well-tooled bronze, but a small price to give the gods for freedom — and I ran to the edge of the sea and dived in without pausing on the shingle, my knife still in my hand.

Four strokes out, I got my arms around an oar and called for the rowers to pull me in. Something hit me in the head and I started to go down — I took another blow between the shoulder blades, and my last thought was that their archers had got me.