I ran back to the column. Now, on the return run, I had to worry that they’d been savaged in my absence. Losing Teucer loomed again. I thought of Antigonus and Leonidas, their bodies shamed by barbarians.
Philosophers are always praising the solitary life, but I don’t recommend too much reflection for the captain. It can be dark in there.
At any rate, they were all still alive. I ran back to the column and immediately sent the twenty men in the front to join Hipponax — all Hector’s men, and Hector too. There wasn’t going to be another ambush. We were almost at the height of the pass and after that we’d be descending into Attica, the valley would widen, and the Saka would have every advantage.
I ran forward — or back, depending on your point of view — to my rearguard, and then I just walked and breathed for a while.
But there are some things you have to do yourself. I couldn’t send a message to make sure the ambush was ready.
That never works.
When I could breathe well, I took my men forward and relieved Moire.
By my reckoning, we were about three stades from the ambush. The ground was slowly opening to the left as we faced into Boeotia. The ground was beginning to drop away to the right.
We practised a feint charge that Brasidas taught and all of us knew it, so I put all twenty-two of us in one block and we backed around a corner and then charged. We went forward exactly fifty paces and then turned and ran.
They broke away from us, loosing shafts. But they were wary, and their shafts were few. They’d been on us for hours and I suspected they were tired of wasting shafts on fully armoured men with big shields.
But we’d only chased them about thirty of our fifty paces when some of them began to turn outward onto the rising ground to our left, to envelop us. Of course we broke, all together, and ran back; and then, after perhaps a ten-pace pause, we could hear hoof beats behind us.
Well — it was like running the hoplitodromos with your life on the line and I began to fall behind, because I’m no longer that fast, thanks to various wounds. And a lot of armour, I confess it.
But we passed the bend in the road, the last bend before the ambush, without losing a man. Now we had two stades to go and the road climbed away slightly. The cavalry above us on the hillside were suddenly confronted with a narrow gorge and had to come down, and they were their own roadblock for a few long strides, interfering with the rush of our pursuers.
My feet pounded the road. I was last by five strides — I, who had once been the best among an army of Greeks.
Another stride. Another.
It was like running at the Persians in the pass above Sardis, except that I was now running away.
But there are some things you cannot ask your men to do, and one of them is to be the bait in an ambush.
The last hundred strides to the next turn in the road looked very long.
But the last fifty didn’t look so bad, and my feet had wings of fear as I heard the hoof beats. The ground shook. An arrow went into my plume, and another shattered on my thorax, and made me stumble — perhaps twenty strides from the turn, and I was the only target they had. All my men had made the turn. I hoped there was a formed body waiting there, a hundred oarsmen waiting-
I tripped, and fell sprawling. My aspis didn’t break my arm, thank the gods, but I rolled over it the way Istes used to, more by Tyche’s blessing than any plan of my own. My knees were lacerated, and before I could breathe, there were hooves all around me.
A horse struck me as I tried to rise and I fell again, this time pulling my aspis over me as Calchus taught.
Above me in the dust a Saka leaned down and shot straight down. The arrow struck my aspis near the rim and went six fingers through and pricked my thigh. Another man put his bow over the back of his head as he rode by and shot down into me, and his arrow exploded on the oak and bronze of my aspis’s rim. They were so close that I could see their eyes, the sweat on their foreheads. They guided their horses with their knees and they were already concerned about the men around the bend. The man who put the arrow into my thigh had a golden torque and a red leather jacket painted magnificently in tiny patterns; the other man had bright blue eyes …
All that between one beat of my heart and another.
They came against the shield wall and it held. For a moment — perhaps three of my terrified heartbeats — it was othismos, the crossing of the spears. But light horsemen, no matter how powerful their archery, are no match for hoplites, even well-armed oarsmen, in a confined space.
The line pushed them back. Men were calling my name.
I was lying in a forest of horse legs, and I could see nothing.
I had the sense to lie still.
The line pushed again — there were horns on the hillside.
Many of the Saka had spears and they were wielding them overarm, trying to reach the men behind the shields. They pressed forward, and the men and horses pressed into them from behind.
More horns, and more; the low braying, like wolves calling, or dogs sounding from one house to another on an autumn evening when the moon is rising. A sweet sound to any hunting man.
My son’s horn.
They charged. I didn’t see it.
The forest of horse legs began to shift. And then the melee exploded outward.
In fact, only one Saka went over the cliff in the first moments, no matter how the song tells it. The poor bastard was on the far left of the fight, or perhaps he thought himself too clever and tried to put his horse among the rocks, and then he was gone over the edge, with a stade or two to fall to the plains of Boeotia far below.
The rest of the Saka turned like a shoal of fish to run — and Hipponax and Hector struck them in the side. The road was not wide. Panicked horses turned and went over the cliff. This time, no more than four or five, but it was, I confess, spectacular and horrible and there is good reason we all remember it.
One horse scrabbled with its back legs on the brink and screamed, and then the rider in the golden torque was gone.
I was back on my feet by then, in the heart of my oarsmen, and my wounds were forgotten for a moment. I went forward, but I never bloodied my spear. We almost pushed our own front rank over the brink in our eagerness, and men were screaming for all of us to stop moving-
We had six prisoners. They were brave men — and one woman — but they were terrified of the cliff.
We hadn’t lost a man. That is important, when you take captives, especially — I’m sorry to say it — a woman. We made them dismount and we took their horses.
By my command, we let them go. We let them see the first signs of our making camp and we pushed them away down the hill.
But the baggage train had never stopped moving, and now the rest of the column — exhausted, but triumphant — walked away. We were not marching any more, but we moved down the pass into Attica as the sun sank to the west, out over Corinth somewhere. It gets dark early on that road, because of the loom of Cithaeron, but I kept them at it until full darkness. And then by moonlight, two more brutal hours down that road with many a stubbed toe and many a curse, until we saw the tower of Oinoe rising in the darkness, lit silver by the moon.
I let them collapse on their arms and sleep. But at first light we were up, with no food and no fires, and we stumbled forward with some very upset pack animals and some very unhappy horses.
I suppose that the Saka lost perhaps twenty men in those fights, maybe as many as thirty, including wounded. But that was enough. We broke contact, which of course, meant to them, as old and wily campaigners themselves, that they’d have to endure another ambush just to make contact again. They chose to let us go.
A sailor can tell you the most surprising things about another ship in a single glance from almost over the horizon. A sloppy sail or a well-set one, the bow a little down in the water from poor loading, or a crisp entry because a ship is loaded well; the flash of distant oars can show you a ragged crew or a tight one. And in war it is the same.