I left him to study his new hero, and I went out on the walls and found Teucer. He was at the top of a tower — a rickety thing of hides and wood and stone fill, just completed behind a section of wall that had been mined from beneath. The stonework of Miletus was so old and so good that the wall simply subsided without breaking. That’s why we didn’t use mortar in those days — mortar adds strength, but when a mortared wall is undermined, it collapses. Not so heavy stones fitted by master masons. Often, the old way is the better way — something for you children to remember.
They’d built a tower behind the subsided wall, and I had to climb a dreadful ladder to reach him, far above the battle. He had a big Persian bow, and he shot carefully at the slaves who were working to clear the rubble in the not-quite breach. He seldom missed, and very little work was happening. He had another man spotting for him, too, and they passed comments on individuals as they shot them.
‘See red-scarf? He’s got a death wish — oops! Wish come true.’
‘White-belt? He’s getting ready to step out to get that fascine — here he comes. You missed left. Now he’s going to come around the other side of the wicker shield — ooh, nice. Dropped like a sack of barley.’
‘Teucer?’ I asked.
‘Oh!’ He put his bow down and embraced me. ‘A pleasure to see you, my lord.’
I sat on my haunches after an enemy arrow ruffled my chlamys. ‘Hot work here.’
Teucer laughed. ‘This is my life, these days.’
‘Care to ship out for the battle?’ I asked as casually as I could manage.
He glanced at me, shot another arrow and exchanged a long look with his spotter. ‘We can’t,’ he said, after a delay so long I thought I’d offended him.
The spotter was Kreusis, a younger archer who’d also served aboard my ship. His face was marked with soot and I hadn’t recognized him at first. ‘Sorry, lord. Histiaeus would cut our ears off. We’re to hold the Windy Tower while you sailors fight their fleet. Our lord is afraid of an escalade during the sea-fight.’
I couldn’t argue with that. It was the sort of thing I’d have tried myself.
I handed Teucer a bag of things from his friends on the Storm Cutter — a skin of wine, a sack of dried Athenian sausage and other delicacies — for a city under siege. He and Kreusis ate bread and sausage as I watched.
I also had a letter from his wife, who had wintered in Kallipolis and who I’d sent to Plataea when the weather broke with a pouch of money and a long letter.
He wept a little as he read it, then folded it away.
Finally, I gave him the fine Persian bow I’d bought for him at Sardis. He took it without acknowledgement. It was just a tool to him — a sign of how far gone he was in his head.
‘We’re going to die here,’ he said. ‘But I know now — thanks to you — that my wife and son will live. Means a lot to me. Wish I could sail with you — sail away.’
I told him to stop talking nonsense — that the Persians were as good as beaten. But I could tell he was beyond such things. I’ve been there: when the horizon is no longer the next week, or the next day even — it is merely the next instant. When you are there, you cannot see out.
We embraced again and I climbed down the tower, thinking dark thoughts.
Phrynichus was still talking to Istes. I hugged the swordsman. ‘We’ll win,’ I said.
‘You’d better,’ he answered.
As Phrynichus and I walked back from the harbour, a couple of Persian archers had a go at us, racing along the rocks above us. That’s terror — being shot at from long range with no chance of reply. We had to wade to get around the end of their lines and we couldn’t move fast, and I cursed my arrogance in going by day. And not bringing a shield.
One of the Persians gave a great scream and plummeted from his rock into the sea. I walked over and retrieved his bow and arrows — soaked, but not ruined.
I saw Teucer waving from the wall. He’d shot the man at some incredible distance — Phrynichus has that shot in the play, of course.
Phrynichus shrugged — he was a cool man in the rage of Ares. ‘It’s a little like living in the Iliad,’ he said.
‘Imagine what a jumpy bunch they were, after ten years at Troy,’ I said, and the poet nodded.
‘I was thinking of Istes,’ he said.
‘Exactly,’ I said.
Idomeneus claimed my new bow as soon as I reached the ship — dried it, restrung it and shot at everything that he could. He was an excellent bowman, as I’ve said before, and he’d decided that he needed a bow in the coming sea-fight, which was fine with me. After all, Archilogos’s archers had unsettled me in the fight by the harbour.
He told us that the Persians were coming. ‘They’re camped just down the coast,’ he said. ‘Epaphroditos has seen them.’
Later that afternoon, Leagus, Dionysius’s helmsman, came across in a skiff and went to Miltiades for permission to hold the games on our beach. We were delighted, and Miltiades and Aristides competed to build fires, lay out courses and prepare an altar and sacrifices.
The next day dawned grey, with weather threatening from the west. But the athletes came across in boats, and more than a few swam the half-stade in their exuberance, arrogance or poverty.
Miltiades acted as host, and he and Dionysius sat together in apparent camaraderie, made sacrifices with the priests and watched the competitions as if they were brothers. All of us were delighted by this display of propriety. We were further delighted when the men of Miletus sent a contingent to compete, led by Histiaeus and his brother Istes. They, too, sat under the great red awning that Miltiades had set up, and watched.
The competitions were, in order, the one-stade run, the two-stade run, the javelin throw for distance, the throw for accuracy, the discus, archery for accuracy, the run in armour — the hoplitodromos, the pankration, the fight in armour. I had intended to enter only the fight in armour, but as I lay on my bearskin by the awning where the judges watched, young Sophanes of Athens came up, naked and glistening with oil, and squatted next to me.
‘You are the most famous man — as a fighter — in this host,’ he said. He gave me a shy smile. We had not been friends since I killed the thug in Athens. ‘I want to compete against you. These Ionians — most of them are hardly fit.’
‘Wait until you run against my friend Epaphroditos,’ I said. But his desire was genuine.
‘I. .’ He paused and looked around. ‘I think that I blamed you — that I had killed a man. It made me feel. .’ He stopped, blushed and looked at the ground between his feet.
I nodded. ‘It made you feel greater and less than a man yourself, eh?’
‘You slaughtered that thief like a lamb. And made me look like a boy.’ He shrugged. ‘I am a boy. But I want to win today, and I want to win against the best. The noblest. And I came to say that I wronged you over the killing. I didn’t like what I had done — I made that part of you.’
‘Nicely put,’ I said. Goodness, he was earnest and polite and handsome and probably brave and morally good, to boot. He made me feel old at twenty-three. ‘But I have spent a year coming to terms with killing. What I did that day was ill done. I don’t regret the man I killed in the fight. But the man in the cellar — what Aristides says is true. That was murder. I have spent a year atoning to Lord Apollo, and all the gods, for my hubris.’
Sophanes grinned. ‘Then you should run, lord. Competition is a sacrifice to the gods.’
What could I do? He was right. Besides, he made me feel like a slacker. So I pulled my chlamys over my head, and Idomeneus came up with my aryballos, oiled me and smacked me on the back.
‘About time you got off your arse,’ he growled. He was very tender of my reputation, which in a way was his, as well.
A word about exercise — though I normally try not to drone on about how much time I spent on my body every day — still do. When we were at sea, I rowed at least an hour a day with the oarsmen. The Pyrrhiche of Plataea included a set of exercises with an aspis, and I did that portion of the dance every day, lifting the shield over my head, and moving it back and forth across my body. On a full exercise day I would run eighteen to twenty stades and lift heavy stones in the way that Calchas taught me at the tomb of Leitos. In addition, I would practise against one of my marines with a wooden sword — some days, against all of them. My favourite sparring partner had become Philocrates. He was by no means the best of them, but he fought hard, and had long arms and was a dangerous opponent — with surprising inventiveness.