Sometimes the men inside the walls triumph, boring their opponents into backing off. And sometimes a single load of grain can be a mighty weapon. First, because the men inside the walls can eat, and their hearts rise; second, because the men outside the walls know they must struggle for so much longer each time a cargo reaches their enemies.
But in my experience, sieges are rarely settled by the hand of man. Usually, the Lord Apollo hurls his fearsome arrows of disease into one side or the other — or sometimes into both — and the dead pile up as if Ares had reaped them with a sword, but faster. Sieges eat men.
I didn’t know that then, as the sun set over my stern. I was twenty-five years old, and I had never seen a siege.
South of Samos, and no guard ship came to look at us. We stood straight on, and as we entered the Bay of Miletus, we bore up and sailed along the south coast of the bay, as if bound for the island of Lade. We were sailing in light airs, but every bench was manned and we were ready to run.
In the last light of the day, two of their ships headed out to meet us. They took a long time coming off the beach, and we didn’t hurry towards them.
‘Oar-rake and past,’ I called softly to Stephanos, and he nodded and repeated my orders to Harpagos, whose hooked nose could just be seen above the stem of the ship. We could see Miletus in the distance now, rising on the next headland, due east down the channel.
There’s a world of difference between being ready for action and expecting nothing to happen, and that world of difference separated our ships and theirs. They came out thinking we were Phoenicians. We knew exactly what we intended to do, and when we were at hailing distance and the lead ship called to us in their Phoenician tongue, I clapped my hands once — I remember that the sound carried over the water and made a little echo against the nearer enemy hull — then every back bent on my ship, and the oars twinkled in the setting sun. If they had been ready, they’d have leaped into action right there, but many heartbeats passed while their navarch and his officers tried to work out why we were rowing so hard.
The lead Phoenician was so ill-prepared that his crew caught a crab and he fell away from his course, which was almost the end of my plan. I wanted to oar-rake the pair, Stephanos taking the port-side enemy and I the starboard, and my plan was that we’d crush their oars and race through before any other ships could launch off the beach.
But the lead Phoenician turned broadside on to us, and we had no choice but to ram him or abandon our attempt. The channel was too narrow to avoid him, so I caught him just aft of amidships and Stephanos caught him a few heartbeats later, well forward, and together we rolled him over, dumping his rowers in the water.
We’d turtled one ship, but the impacts tested our bows and cost us all our speed and hard-earned momentum, and we were all a-stand for the second ship.
He knew his business, and now that he’d had a moment to think, he was ready. He loosed a flight of arrows, and some of my rowers were hit, but Galas had them in hand and we were moving forward.
‘Oars in!’ I called.
It was sloppy, but we had all our oar shafts in as our bow slammed into the second ship. We weren’t moving fast — neither was he — and the two ships didn’t have the power to get past each other. As we came to a dead stop, broadside to broadside, Idomeneus got grapples over the side, but at the cost of three marines. The Phoenicians were poling us off while their archers flayed us. Galas went down with an arrow in him, and my deck crew was melting — men were taking cover behind the masts, behind screens, anything. And this from four or five archers.
I had the helm, but we had stopped. On the beach, men were pushing ships into the water — a dozen slim hulls launching all together.
‘Fuck,’ I said aloud. I remember, because there was a lull, and my imprecation carried clearly across the water.
I drew my sword and caught up my big hide shield, a simple Boeotian I’d bought on the beach at Chios. I didn’t have my armour or my good war gear or my new helmet, and I was carrying a shield just two goat hides thick. Even as I raised it, an arrow punched through, tore my hair and carried on to sink into the sternposts.
I ran down our central platform. A running man is a hard target for archers, but that didn’t stop them — they knew I was the helmsman. Every archer fixed on me, and two arrows hit my shield, but neither pinked me.
Amidships, Idomeneus had two grapples fixed and guarded by his marines, their big shields covering him and his ropes. Opposite, a pair of Phoenicians sawed with swords at the hawsers that held us fast. I saw all of this in a glance and pivoted on one heel. I leaped from the command platform to the gunwale by Idomeneus, covered for a valuable moment by the two aspides of his marines, and without pause — hesitation would have been death — I was across the gap, my left foot on their gunwale and then both feet firm on a rower’s bench, and I started killing.
I took the men who were sawing at our grapples in two blows, and then I cleared the rowing bench by beheading the oarsman. His blood sprayed back on the men behind him, and I punched with the rim of my light shield, caught one of the Phoenician marines who was surprised at the length of my arms and knocked him flat, and I was on their command platform.
‘Hellas!’ I shouted.
I was fuelled by desperation and the elation of a starving man offered food. I hadn’t fought like this in more than a year — and I was better than a mere man, thugater. My shield and my sword were everywhere, as if they had eyes and thoughts of their own. I remember rotating my hips and punching back with my shield rim, catching a sailor in the groin, and glowing with the joy of fighting so well. A winter of training the Plataeans had not been wasted. Each blow, each parry, blended seamlessly into another. It was like dance. It might have gone on for ever.
And then Idomeneus was shouting my name, and I raised my hand, and the enemy deck was clear. I had my blade in the air and there was a half-naked sailor under the edge — but I stayed my hand, as Dion had asked.
‘Apollo!’ I called, and let the man live.
Idomeneus and the marines had followed me aboard. There were a dozen warships in the water, and Stephanos was already past us, rowing hard for Miletus. That’s what he was supposed to do.
‘Mal!’ I called. He turned his head, and I waved at him. At the same time, I cut the grapples that held the two ships together. ‘Go!’
It took three shouts, but he got it. He started striking men with his stick, and the oarsmen on the starboard side began to push against our hull with poles and spears and even their oars.
Idomeneus was on the stern of the ship I’d just taken. I saw him grasp the oars, and I picked up a javelin that one of the enemy marines had dropped — or thrown.
‘Reverse your benches,’ I ordered in Greek. A few men obeyed, and others looked blank, or mutinous.
I threw my javelin into one of those who was refusing his duty, and he fell across his oar. Then I pulled the spear free of his corpse. ‘Reverse your benches!’ I roared.
They obeyed.
I pounded the oar-beat against the mast with the spear-butt, and they rowed. It wasn’t good rowing, but the men coming off the beaches weren’t eager to fight in the dark and they weren’t any too sure what had just happened, either. We backed down the channel — first a stade, and then another stade — and then the arrows from Miletus began to fall on the enemy ships following us.