So I ordered the epilektoi to muster, instead of preparing for the games. They cursed at being so early into their armour, but by then they were cursing anything I ordered. Even the young feel pain, or so we old men joked. Our muscles had had years to harden, and theirs were still soft.
About the time the first files were falling in, another column of smoke leaped to the heavens.
‘That’s our beacon fire!’ Tiraeus shouted.
It was true. It was lit in the right place, and it let out smoke in a thick column and then stopped — and then started again. I watched two repeats.
It was the will of the gods that we were already assembled — and that we had armour, and that we were so high up that we could read the signal clearly and see, too, the very moment it burned into life.
But fear reached icy fingers down my throat. If it was Simon, then he had struck at my home and I was not there.
But Euphoria was. Lovely, pregnant Euphoria.
I didn’t scream. I was a good soldier, and a man who had seen a few fights, but I drank a cup of wine to steady my nerves and told myself the truth — that if she was dead, raped or stolen, I was forty stades distant and there was nothing I could do for her.
This is what it is to be a veteran, honey bee. You see too clearly. I counted her dead, or brutalized, and went on with my business. Because war is serious, and I was the commander, and my rage was not yet to be unleashed.
So I finished my wine, ate an apple and didn’t fret while the last ranks fell in. Outside, I didn’t fret. In my gut, I lost a year of my life.
We had started down the road to Eleutherai by the time the riders came up the hill. They knew where to find us — my Thracian freedmen.
‘Lord,’ the lead rider said. ‘Men came — a hundred or more. Your mater says we are to tell you that the farm is closed to them, and safe. But they came from Thebes, and they will go home the same way, on the old road.’
‘Where is my wife?’ I asked.
The older of the two shrugged. ‘Your mater ordered us,’ he said. ‘I know no more.’
While we spoke, another beacon sent its smoke to the heavens.
‘Mater is right,’ I said. ‘They’re running back down the old road to Thebes.’ I turned to my boys. ‘Ares has sent us a serious contest,’ I shouted. ‘Are you ready?’
They shouted — a roar that echoed off the rock walls of the mountain. Later, men said that they heard it out on the farms and thought that Cithaeron had come awake.
I put myself at the head of the first file. ‘Let’s run,’ I said, and we were off.
I sent out the two Thracians as scouts — they had horses and they were good riders. In my head, I did my best to estimate what might happen. The Thebans — if they were Thebans — had a thirty-stade head start. On the other hand, they must have marched all night. They must have been tired.
My boys had had a day of rest.
Most of my boys had never seen a spear thrust in earnest.
I had a long run down the mountain to think about it, and my thoughts were dark. I wanted to run home first. I wanted to know. I wanted to know why it was Mater who had sent these men, and not my wife.
But my farm was in the wrong direction now. From Eleutherai, I would lead my men north and east — the farm was due west.
We passed through Eleutherai like a summer storm. Eleutherai is, technically, in Attica. I told the basileus to send word to Athens — but that help, if it came at all, would be ten days away.
I led my boys out of Eleutherai, down the mountain, down the pass and along the rocky road to Thebes.
As we entered our own territory, we met Lysius and a dozen of his neighbours, all armed, and Teucer, coming across the fields with some light-armed men — and as soon as they met with me and my mounted scouts, they ran off ahead of us. Teucer caused me to writhe with frustration and fear — he’d seen the fire at my farm, and the beacon, but he hadn’t gone up the hill to investigate. He knew nothing.
Lysius and his men fell in with us — they’d met the Thracians on the road. And a dozen stades further on, we met another party, small farmers and Milesian settlers under Alcaeus, so that I had almost two hundred men behind me as we ran across Asopus at mid-morning. I gave them all a break. Swift as I had to be, these men had run almost forty stades, most of them in armour. If we were going to fight, we needed a rest.
The two Thracians were brilliant, covering the ground in front of us and raising the farmers, and I wished I had cavalry like the Lydians and the Medes had. But I didn’t. I rested the men an hour, and then we were off again, cutting across the fields of the eastern township to try and gain a few stades on the men we were pursuing.
It was noon when we found the first body — a man in a dog-cap with a pair of spear wounds in his body. His name was Milos, and he was a farmer from along the Asopus.
We moved his body off the road and ran on. After a stade, there were three dead men all together — all Asopus-side farmers.
‘The men of the Asopus district must have made a stand here,’ Bion said as he panted. ‘Listen, boy — I’m finished. I can’t run another step. I’ll stay and bury these men, and send on anyone who can follow.’
Bion wasn’t the only man who was finished. I told off ten men, so that there would be no shame — and told them to guard the bodies. The rest of us went on at a slow jog.
My Thracians found the next bodies — all strangers. Two of them had arrows in them — Teucer’s arrows. And at the road junction, where the old road to Thebes and the new crossed, there were a dozen more strangers, some wounded and some dead, and two of our men to tell us that our Plataeans were harrying the column as it retreated, and that there were more than a hundred enemies, and perhaps two hundred.
We were close. But I knew we were not going to catch them. We were just ten stades from Theban territory.
Every man in the column knew it, too.
But we said our prayers to Ares and ran on. My slaves had dropped out by then, and I had my shield on my arm and my helmet on top of my head, and most of me hurt as much as if I had already fought. My legs burned, and my left arm felt like a bar of iron sagging from my shoulder, and even my shield strap was an unbearable burden. If I felt like that, what were my boys feeling like?
But we were close.
At the top of the next hill, I was jogging so slowly that walking might have been faster. But when I came over the hill, I could see them — a dozen armoured stragglers in a dense shield wall, trying to avoid a steady rain of arrows.
We were close. My heels grew wings and I ran on.
Behind me, my boys began to shout. I looked back, and men were stripping their greaves off and casting them aside to run faster. Some stopped and threw up, others stripped off their breastplates — and then they ran on.
The dozen stragglers broke when they saw us coming, and the fleetest two made it, but the rest died in a shower of arrows and javelins, and then Teucer was next to me, and other men I knew — about twenty, all light-armed men that Teucer had rallied. I wanted to embrace him, but I didn’t have time.
We ran down the last hill, and I could see the dark mass of them, crossing the stream that made the border between my city and Thebes. There were quite a few of them. And most were already in Theban territory.
I knew immediately what I had to do — what Myron would say if he was here. I ordered the boys to halt.
‘Form up,’ I shouted. ‘Get in your ranks. Form up, form at normal order.’
The ground down to the stream was a single hayfield, and on the far side, another the same. Not for nothing do foreigners call Boeotia the Dance Floor of Ares. Flat ground, perfect for war.
Men and boys came down the road. They were strung out over several stades, and while my little phalanx formed, the enemy scrambled up the banks of the stream to safety on Theban territory. In my heart, I wanted to run down and kill them all — myself, if I had to.