Diomedes took no chances, the coward. He ran his warship onto the beach below the town, bow first. He and all his marines were over the side, abandoning hull and rowers to their fates. And I could see his purple-red cloak fluttering as he ran, wallowing in the deep sand at the top of the beach.
Ka loosed an arrow — and then another and another. His archers joined him as soon as they had the range and the running hoplites began to grow arrows in their shields. It was marvellous shooting for the distance.
I could not watch.
I ran to Seckla. ‘The piers,’ I said. Remember, Seckla had been in and out of Ephesus two years before. He knew the harbour well, although not as well as I. I could not leave my ship and my crew to fall into Persian hands. This had to be touch-and-go: leave me and get into open water to wait conclusions.
That meant the stone pier beyond the breakwater where we could leap ashore and run through the town without crossing a beach. In fact, it was the choice that Diomedes should have made, but he didn’t trust his tired rowers and another two stades of channel.
Well. I did.
Seckla governed our turns. I was my own oar-master, and we made the two turns into the inner harbour at the speed of a cantering horse. Risk upon risk upon risk.
But at my feet, Leukas sat up against the mainmast.
‘Get forward,’ he said in his odd accent. ‘Get your … enemy. I will lead the rowers.’
‘Poseidon bless you, brother,’ I said. The word brother came to my lips often that day, because indeed, they were all my brothers in this moment of reckless, tragic insanity.
Leukas used the mast to rise to his feet. But his spear was thumping the deck and all around me oarsmen began to smile.
And I thought — we’re going to do this.
Leukas’s voice should never have carried. But it did — a little higher and weaker than usual, but the port-side oars came in and the starboard checked, and we slipped down the long stone quays, and long before Kineas threw a loop of rope over a stone bollard, I leapt over the side to the rushing stone quay, stumbled and blessed the bronze greave on my knee as it struck the sand on the surface of the stone, and began to run. Brasidas came across behind me and Polymarchos and Achilles and Sitalkes and all the rest. And although I had never run well since my first bad wound, yet it was hard for them to pass me, because Aphrodite and Ares held my arms and I skimmed the earth. And behind me, ten heroes bent on glory.
But after Lydia came Archilogos in his magnificent, gilded Heracles. He was going to get ashore just behind me.
I have reason to know that it is three hundred and some steps from the top of the beach to the base of the steps to the Great Temple of Artemis. Ephesus is a steep town and I had run up and down the steps of that city all the days of my youth. Three hundred and twenty-six steps, I believe. And the dooryard of Hipponax is at the top, where the city’s great aristocrats live just below the temple precinct.
When everything you have ever wanted in the world awaits extinction at the end of your run, you do not stop. You do not rest, or gasp for air. You do not make a humorous aside, or banter, and practise the kind of bravado boys use when they want to fight.
You merely run, the greaves on your legs weighing like oxen tied to your feet. And despite the best armourer in the world, as you climb, the base of the bronze begins to drive into the top of your instep and the sides of your brave bronze thorax begin to restrict the full expansion of your lungs, and your helmet weighs like a young heifer on your neck; your plume seems to have a life of its own, and the sweat pours down your face from the wool and straw that lines your helmet, stinging your eyes and making you blind.
I had not slept one moment the night before. I had new wounds and old, and I was no longer even a little young.
That I ran to the top of the town is not the miracle. I was in the hands of a god and a goddess.
That every one of my marines ran to the top of the town is a miracle. Not for them, the wonder of Briseis. They only knew that this was my desire — and that Brasidas and I led them. It was for this that they had trained. Beside it, the day at Salamis was a pleasure outing.
Wear full armour. Wear it all day, and then, as the sun sets, leap from a moving ship to a stone pier, land, rise, and run four stades up three hundred steps.
And then fight for your life.
I can tell you about that run in detail. But it would be lies. I remember nothing.
No thought entered my sweat-soaked head, and no sight entered my eyes until I was at the top, on the well-remembered path — too narrow for a street — that led to Hipponax’s arched front gate, and the mural of Heracles my ancestor that decorated his entryway.
By Heracles — it had all started here, in this house. The Furies were close — all their wings beating like oarsmen pulling together.
I saw the entryway. Standing in the narrow alley was a pair of hoplites and they filled it, just the two of them.
Thoughts came into my head. And for the first time I wondered if she was here at all, or in her house in Sardis.
But Diomedes thought so.
The two men facing us were big and brave.
Brasidas threw his heavy ten-foot spear from three paces out, at a dead run. He was just behind me, and yet he threw over my shoulder. His spear struck the aspis of the left-hand hoplite. The man had his shield on his shoulder as men sometimes do when tired, and thus it had no ‘angle’ to the spear tip — which struck full force, as if Achilles himself had thrown it. It went in the width of a hand, weight and strength blowing through layers of hide and wood and linen and pitch, and the man screamed as it went into his bicep, perfectly aimed and thrown, and his instinctive movement ripped it back out of the entry wound, the spear bobbed up and down, lashing through muscles in his left arm, and his own spear fouled his mate as I slammed my aspis into his. Achilles my cousin put a spear in the downed man’s throat somewhere behind me, or so I’ve heard since, and I was entering the gate, where two more stood.
Now they both threw their spears together. I had my own spear up high, my thumb back around the shaft and a little cord between my fingers, as is my habit in a ship fight. From this position it is child’s play to cover yourself against a thrown spear and both casts went wide — one skimmed off my angled shield and would not bite, and the other clattered against my own spear haft as I rolled it, a turn of the wrist, right to left, a little snap that meant life and not death.
Then I slipped between the right-hand man and the gatepost, placed my aspis against his as I slipped, moving his weight the way the end of his spear-cast led him, overextended, right foot forward and thus without the structure to support his aspis. And high above my head, Heracles in his lion skin looked down on me as my spear point rose a fraction of a finger’s width over his aspis and struck almost straight down. He wore a corselet of bronze scale, but my spear went into the muscles of his neck where it met the shoulder, unprotected, under the cheeks of his helmet, and my spear point went far into his body and he was dead before his knees buckled — and my spear leapt back out again, untrammelled by his death.
And I passed my left foot past my right and carried on, leaving the second man, alone, to face Brasidas and Sitalkes.
In the great doorway were two more hoplites, and behind them, two more — a tiny phalanx.
But their spears shook.
No one, my daughter, can watch four of their friends die in twenty heartbeats without a moment of deep doubt and real fear.