I felt more for that stag than I do for many men I kill. He was a magnificent animal, trapped, with no chance at all — the dogs had been released by then and they were hard by us.
So I knelt, closed the stag’s eyes and said a prayer to Artemis, then I pulled my throwing spear clear of his shoulder and followed the sound of the dogs.
By the time I caught the pack, all six animals were dead. We were a good group, and every man followed the nearest target without much shouting and did his duty.
Then came the work. We had six dead deer, and we treed them in the apple orchard, split and gutted them, then began to clean them. We were far from water, and despite the chill of the morning, we stripped naked to save our clothes. And we were pious men, and Lykon and Philip, who both revered Artemis, led us in a hymn we didn’t know, and we burned the first fruits of the beasts — their hearts and livers — on a rock that had certainly served as an altar before. By the time the last carcass was ready to be moved, we were covered in blood and ordure, and we walked down the road like a Dionysian revel gone hideously awry. We bathed in a stream, and laughed, and threw icy water at each other.
But when we were dressed, I arranged to put the carcasses on donkeys, and I paid a pair of farm boys to bring them along by the high road and not the farm road, and then my whole party returned to the tower, apparently empty-handed.
Aleitus and his friends were drinking in the courtyard, and they laughed at our discomfiture, and made ribald comments about what we could have been doing in the woods, ten men alone, that we were wet and had no deer and were so clean.
Euphoria came down the stone steps from the tower to the courtyard with a tray of wine cups, and conversation stilled. She had that effect, with her slanting eyes and her long, straight nose.
‘If you caught no deer,’ she said to me quietly, as she handed me a cup, ‘why do you have blood under your nails?’
I smiled into her eyes. ‘You are observant,’ I said.
‘You play dangerous games,’ she answered.
And truly, when our deer arrived, the local men were silent, and their eyes were not friendly. We had killed six to their two. Now let me tell you children, lest you wonder, that in those days, a kill of two deer for a party of ten men was a fine catch — and six deer was a ridiculous bag, almost an affront to Artemis. Bordering on hubris.
I cared nothing for those men. If men will seek to compete, they must take the consequences. I do not push myself on others — but ever they will strive against me, and the result is always the same. I mean no boasting, by the gods!
Aleitus looked at the row of carcasses and he turned to me, and his face was red. ‘Do you not fear that you affront Artemis, with so many kills?’
I shook my head. ‘No, lord. I made immediate sacrifice of the first fruits of every animal, and I prayed as soon as my spear went home in the stag, who is, you must allow, a magnificent animal.’ I walked over to him. ‘Am I mistaken, lord? Or was it your intention that we should compete at hunting?’ And I laughed in his face.
He was angry. But he mastered his anger, like a man of breeding, and merely raised an eyebrow. ‘The slaves will eat well,’ he said. ‘If I’d known of your prowess, I’d have invited more guests.’
There was a laugh from the gate — a laugh I knew well. ‘Did you set Arimnestos a challenge?’ Miltiades said.
He slid off his horse, magnificent in a cloth-of-gold chlamys over a purple chiton worn double-belted for riding. His horse had a gold harness, and there were four men with him, each armed with a boar spear and riding matching black horses.
Miltiades defied convention by embracing me before embracing the host. Then he turned to Aleitus. ‘He used to drive me wild,’ Miltiades said. ‘Any task he’s set, he excels — or breaks the tools. And when challenged, he is a dangerous animal, our Plataean.’
Miltiades’ charisma filled the courtyard. I was a famous man in those days — but Miltiades was the sort of man who bestrode the earth, and other men crowded around to see him. And he had come to be part of my hunting party.
‘Let me see this girl I’ve heard so much about,’ Miltiades demanded. ‘Where is she?’
Aleitus rubbed his eyes. ‘Lord Miltiades?’ he said.
‘I’m sorry, Aleitus. I was invited to join this young scapegrace’s hunting party, and I’m late. Am I still welcome? I think our grandfathers were guest-friends. And I must say, I’ve brought you some fair gifts.’ He boomed with laughter.
Aleitus looked as if the gods from Olympus had just arrived. ‘Lord, it is an honour to have you to guest. I had no idea our grandfathers were guest-friends, but I would be delighted — that is, I’m very pleased. Come and drink this cup with me.’
Aleitus was just beginning to recover when Miltiades slapped me on the back and laughed. ‘And that prig Aristides is on his way as well,’ he said.
I thought my prospective father-in-law might faint.
Mater had invited them in my name, and her instincts, wine-sodden as they might have been, were keen. For a party of Boeotians to ride rough-shod over the local countryside, slaughtering deer and making local men feel small, would, no doubt, have ended badly for someone. But it was hard for any bad feeling to survive when Miltiades was in a hospitable mood, and Aristides was the exemplar of arete, and between the two of them they created an atmosphere that the rest of us could only strive to emulate. In fact, they made me feel young.
That week was, I think, my reward for the rescue of Miltiades. Great lords of Athens don’t usually have a week to waste hunting. On the other hand, I can imagine what Mater wrote:
If you want to cement your alliance with Plataea and my son, go hunting with him and get him his Attic bride.
Say what you will about Mater — and I do, believe me — she understood how aristocrats think and work. Marriage is not pleasure — it is alliance and bargain, and great men use their daughters the way peasants use a prize foal. As I will, thugater. Bah — I’ll find you a pretty one. This fellow from Halicarnassus. .
To be honest, when I arrived, I had the feeling that my suit would be rejected at the first decent interval, and after the young lady called me ‘low’ I wanted no more part of the game save to humiliate my host. But the arrival of my famous friends altered the balance. What had appeared manly revenge the previous night now felt petty and mean-spirited, and over wine that night, I rose and apologized to all the men — mine and my hosts — for playing such a foolish joke.
‘I suffer from pride,’ I said to my host. ‘It is a fatal error in a man who is but a bronze-smith, to seek always to compete in every game.’
Aleitus showed his mettle then. He rose, took my cup from my lips and drank from it. ‘You speak like a hero,’ he said. ‘I sought to belittle you. Men told me you were low-born, and brought only dirty hands to my table.’ He glanced at Aristides, who returned a hard smile. ‘I will be more careful who I listen to in future.’
‘Cleitus, of course,’ Aristides said later that night. ‘Anything you put your hand to in Attica, he will try to destroy. He has sworn your death, and your ruin.’
I shrugged.
The rest of the week passed very pleasantly. We ate a great deal of deer meat, and we failed to find a boar, to my host’s deep annoyance, and I invited him to come and hunt with us on the flanks of Cithaeron.
But it was the evenings that live in my memory. Hunting becomes a blur — to be honest, if it hadn’t been for the killing of six deer, I doubt I’d remember anything about that. Killing deer is seldom memorable the way killing men is memorable. Deer don’t fight back.
At any rate, it was during that week that I lay on a couch with Miltiades, and Aristides, and drank good wine, and learned that Datis had a fleet, and was raising an army, and that his target, the target ordered by his king, was Athens.