And then we were lighting the fires, and men were preparing for fighting in armour. I was tired, and I suspected that I had won the games. I was surprised at my own hesitation.
Is this how cowardice begins, I wondered, or how youth ends?
But I tied my corslet back on my torso, picked up my shield and went down the beach to the fires, with Idomeneus carrying my shield and my sword.
Aristides grinned sheepishly at me and shook his head. He was wearing a clean chitoniskos, and no armour.
‘That brute almost killed me,’ he said ruefully. He grinned at the ‘brute’ to take the sting out of his remark. ‘I want to live to fight the Medes.’
I nodded. I felt the same way myself, but I also felt that as one of the best fighters, I would be seen to shirk if I balked at the armoured combat. Paramanos helped me into my armour and gave me a drink of wine.
‘I think the gods have stolen your wits,’ he said. ‘Fighting your friends in the dark with sharp weapons. Grow up!’ But he cuffed me on the back and wished me good fortune. ‘Not much of a field, eh?’
There were only a couple of dozen men brave enough, or foolish enough, to fight with sharp weapons, in armour, at the edge of dark. Many of them were Athenians and Milesians. ‘The fewer the men, the greater the honour,’ I said, but I remember giving him a sarcastic grin to go with the line from Pindar.
I faced Aeschylus’s brother in the first round, and he hit hard, cutting pieces from the oak rim of my shield, but I ticked him in the pectoral under his sword arm on our third engagement, drawing blood from a place that showed when he overexposed his side in a long sweeping cut. The cut itself was under his armour, and I had to make him take the breastplate off to show it, and he was as surprised as Dionysius. I was awarded the victory, and the young man apologized for doubting my word.
I had a long rest, and my muscles started to stiffen before my second bout — which was against another Athenian.
Sophanes. Of course.
He was good — fast, light on his feet, careful. He wanted to dance.
I faced him with the opposite strategy. I stood my ground, barely reacting, offering nothing, allowing him to dance while I waited with bovine patience.
There isn’t much to hit on a man wearing Greek armour and greaves and fighting behind an aspis or a Boeotian. I stood my ground, backing from his wilder rushes, and waited him out. After a number of engagements — some men were booing me, because I was so dull — my blade licked out and cut him on the bicep, and it was over.
‘You fight like an old man,’ Miltiades said to me.
‘I plan to be one,’ I said, which got a good response.
Most men felt I had won the games by that time, and my friends began to gather, dumping wine on my head, kissing me or throwing their arms around me. Epaphroditos and two of his men picked me up, carried me to the edge of the water and threw me in. Then a small crowd came and fished me out, and I cursed them for the effect on my armour.
The third round was just two of us. Too many bouts resulted in double hits, or real wounds, and knocked both men out of the competition. In our rules then, a double hit disqualified both men.
So it was me — and Istes.
He was reputed to be the greatest swordsman in Greece.
So was I.
It was still bright enough to fight, and we had fires lit on either side of us, and I think almost every man in the fleet was on that beach for our fight. If I had thought I had word-fame before that fight, I realized that every oikia in Greece would know me after this.
When we faced each other, we reached out our blades and touched them together. Istes grinned under his helmet, and I grinned back.
‘Let’s show them what excellence is,’ he said.
What can I say? He was a great man.
Both of us must have decided the same thing — to dispense with the slow testing that most swordsmen employ in a bout. When Dionysius lowered his spear, we closed — instantly — and the crowd roared.
I threw three blows in as many heartbeats, and he fought back, a blur of motion, and our swords left sparks in the air. Then we circled apart, and neither of us was touched, and the crowd roared.
As if by consent, we closed again immediately, and this time I launched a combination — an overhead cut to draw his shield and then a punch with my shield rim and a back-cut to score on his thigh. I have no idea what he planned, but our shields struck — rim to rim, a jar like an earthquake up your arm — and my back-cut fouled with his overhead cut as I turned my body. I kicked out with my right foot as we both rotated on our hips and I caught him behind the knee — luck, I suspect — and he went down, rolling away. He rolled right over his aspis, something that, up until then, I had never seen a man do, and came to his feet a horse-length away.
If I had thought the crowd loud before, they were a force of nature now.
We saluted each other, and charged — shield to shield. Both of us cut high, and our blades rang together — back-cut, fore-cut. For the third time we fell back, and still neither of us bore a wound.
I had never faced anyone like him. He was as graceful as a dancer and as fast as me, with arms as long as mine.
Our next engagement was as cautious as the first three had been heroic, and we both tried counter-cuts at each other’s wrists.
He was a bit faster. And he could do a wrist movement I had never seen — a roll of the blade that caused a direction change so fast I couldn’t believe Calchas hadn’t known it.
I gave ground at his next rush and tried a complex feint to get a cut at his shoulder — the same combination I’d used so successfully against Sophanes.
Instead, we had a chaotic muddle, as he was feinting into my feint. Both of us closed, our shield rims slipped inside each other and suddenly we were chest to chest.
I rotated on my hips to get away and saw my opening as I stepped back. I kicked with my left foot, straight to his hip, and he leaned out, went flat on his back — and the tip of his sword caught me on the sandal.
He was down, and I stepped over him — he’d gone down on his shield. He was mine — but he was grinning.
‘Well fought, brother,’ he said.
Then I felt the cold/hot of a cut — on my ankle, but my head resisted it for a heartbeat.
I’m proud to say that no man would ever have seen that wound. I wore Spartan shoes, as I always did to fight, and his blade, by some ill fate, had slid between the leather and the ankle bone to cut me. The wound was invisible, and darkness was falling. I’m proud, because although I felt the sly temptation to act the coward’s part, I stepped back from Istes, the best swordsman I ever faced in a contest, and saluted him as he got to his feet. Then I put my sword and shield on the ground, unlaced my sandal and showed him the cut.
Perhaps some sighed for disappointment, but most approved. And Istes wrapped his arms around my shoulder and headbutted me, helmet to helmet — not in anger, but in elation.
He got the crown of olives. I got a cut on the foot. But we both felt like heroes.
The sun was a red ball on the horizon when all the winners sacrificed — even Philocrates — and I was declared winner of the games. I suspect Istes would have won if he had competed in two or three more contests, and I think Aristides would have won if he had had better fortune. Fortune is so much a part of a contest. But I won — my second games.
When I had sacrificed again, and put my crown on my head, I offered to take the archer’s crown to the Persian camp.
People seemed to think that fitting.