I might have muttered an apology for the death of his uncle — even if I did, his was the nobler gesture, but then, his was the greater crime.
This is so often the way with men. The gesture is the thing that we remember — the grand apology, the noble death. Did my mother’s noble death wipe clean a lifetime of woe? Did Cleon’s? Is a great apology the equal of a great crime?
I don’t know, and Heraclitus was no longer alive to tell me.
We stood on either side of the low-saddled altar of Heracles, clasped arms like comrades and swore to stand together against the Persians, to support each other and be brothers and comrades. We followed Aristides, word for word, until he finished.
‘Until the Persians are defeated,’ Cleitus added.
‘Until the Persians are defeated,’ I repeated, meeting his eyes.
‘You are both idiots,’ Aristides said.
I’d like to say that a spirit of cooperation swept the army after I swore not to kill Cleitus, but I’m not sure anyone noticed. This is the problem with acts of moral courage and ethical purity. Had I struck him down with my hunting spear, I’m sure there might have been consequences, but having stayed my hand, there was no observable change. Heraclitus and Aristides both told me that the only reward for a correct action is the knowledge of having acted well — fair enough, but I suspect that you have to be Aristides or Heraclitus to feel that such knowledge is enough reward for the sacrifice of something so deeply satisfying as revenge.
At any rate, we made camp in the precinct of Heracles. From the summit, we could see the Persians unloading their ships.
I brought the Plataeans to the north of the Athenians — the left end of our line of camp, and the spot closest to the enemy. We took the rocky end of the temple precinct, almost like a small acropolis.
It wasn’t much ground, but it would be easy to defend, and it had a big stand of cypress trees in the centre — good shade. As I considered it, I saw a man turn aside to relieve himself in the woods, and I caught him. ‘No man relieves himself inside the camp,’ I said.
Even with the hunting, they’d never been on campaign. Most of my men had no idea how fast disease can stalk a camp. So as soon as we’d stopped, I gathered the warriors in a great circle and stood on a pile of shields so that they could all hear me.
‘All men will sleep here, on the rock,’ I said. ‘The cypress trees will give us shade and some shelter, but no man is to cut one, or build a fire under them, for fear of offence to the god. Nor is any man to relieve himself inside the precinct. I will mark a boundary for such things below. Nor will any man use the stream to wash himself, his animal or his clothes, except where I mark it — so that the stream herself will not feel defiled. And so no man’s shit will float down into our cook pots,’ I said, and they laughed, and my point was made.
The Plataean strategoi chose their ground, and then we went down the ancient ramp behind the high ground and chose a low bog for men to use, and had slaves dig trenches across it and lay logs. And we chose a place for the slaves to draw water and wash clothes.
‘Water is going to be a problem,’ Antigonus said.
‘I don’t understand why we have to have all these rules,’ Epistocles said. He shook his head. ‘If I have to go in the night, do you really think I’m going to walk all this way?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Well, you can guess again,’ he said, with a foolish little laugh.
‘Epistocles, you are an officer, and men will take their lead from you. If men start pissing in our camp, it will soon become unliveable. This is the most defensible terrain for ten stades. Don’t piss on it.’ I grinned at him, but only in the way I grin when I’m prepared to use my fists to make a man see sense, and he backed away.
‘You seem to think you can give orders like a king,’ he said.
‘This is war,’ I said. ‘Some men it makes kings, and others it makes slaves.’
‘What’s that?’ he said.
‘Never mind,’ I said, and we went off to find space for two thousand men to sleep.
We spent two days making camp and watching the Persians make theirs. They had to land all those men, and some of us wondered why we didn’t just rush them when they had about a third of their men ashore — it was discussed, but we did nothing.
In fact, there was something awe-inspiring about the size of the Persian force and their fleet. They also had almost a thousand cavalry — deadly horse-archers, Persians and Sakai — who had been further north, filtering down from Eretria in pursuit of the last force in the field there, an army of Athenian settlers and Euboeans who had retreated in good order from the initial defeats but gradually died under the arrows of the Sakai. We had had no idea that they still existed until a runner came in on the third morning — a man with an arrow in his bicep who collapsed as soon as he entered the army’s agora.
When Athens had defeated Euboea in my father’s time, they had determined to hold the place thereafter, and they sent four thousand settlers, lower-class Athenians, to become colonists and to hold the best farms. There was no love lost between the settlers and the locals, but when the Persians came, they made a good force. They fought three small actions with the Persians, trying to break out, and finally they got fishing boats and shuttled across the straits, right under the noses of the enemy — but then the cavalry fell on them. Those men had been fighting — and running — for two weeks.
It was Miltiades’ day to command, and he summoned us all as soon as he heard what the messenger had to say.
‘One day’s march north, there are two thousand men — good men, and they’re dying under the arrows of the Sakai.’ He looked around. ‘I propose we take our archers and our picked men, and go and relieve them.’
Callimachus shook his head. ‘You cannot split the army,’ he said. ‘And you cannot defeat their cavalry. That’s why we camped here — remember, fire-breather? So that their arrows could not easily reach us.’
Miltiades shook his head. ‘With picked men, if we move fast and take archers of our own — we can beat them. Or at least scatter them, the way dogs can drive lions off their prey.’
Aristides nodded. ‘We have to try. To leave those men to their deaths — no one would ever speak well of us again.’
Miltiades looked around. ‘Well?’
‘I have a hundred Plataeans who can run the whole distance,’ I said. ‘And twenty archers to run with them.’
Miltiades smiled. But before he could speak, the polemarch shook his head.
‘If we must do this, then every man should go — in the dark. We can feel our way with guides, and be across the ridge before the Medes know we’ve gone. We’ll catch their cavalry napping.’ He looked around, the weight of the responsibility heavy on him. I think he would rather that the Euboeans had died at home.
But he was right. Miltiades wanted a heroic raid, but if we were all together, and we moved fast, we’d accomplish the mission with much less risk.
Everyone chose Callimachus’s method over Miltiades’.
We rose in the dark, hours before the morning star would rise, and we slipped away behind our temple precinct hill, leaving three thousand chosen men to hold the camp behind us. By the time the sun was up, our leading men — my Plataeans — were less than ten stades from the hilltop where our Euboean-Athenians were making their stand.
I wanted to run down the road with my epilektoi, but I knew that the only way to do this was with massed bodies of impenetrable spears. I hadn’t fought cavalry since the fight on the plains by Ephesus, but what I had learned there seemed pertinent — stay together and wait for the horsemen to flinch.
By mid-morning, we were spotting Sakai scouts, and Teucer brought one down with a well-aimed arrow. The next time we saw a party of them form, Teucer had a dozen of his light-armed men together, and they lofted arrows with a little breeze behind them. The Sakai rode out from under their little arrow shower, but their counter-shots fell well short, and after that, it was like a deadly game of rovers. Our archers could out-range theirs, and that meant that they couldn’t come in on us, and twice Teucer’s little band took one of the Sakai off his horse, or left the horse dead, and they gave us room.