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.’