Nor was Euanetus an inspiring commander. He was stuck with an army that had expected godlike Leonidas, and he was himself no god. He had a snappish temper; he was a large man and tended to use force when persuasion might have been better. He savaged Themistocles for being late, although we had no news of the Persian host, and that was an error, and he compounded it by ordering the Athenians punished, which was a little like punishing a man for being late for a party.
He changed his mind repeatedly about how he intended to cover the pass. First we were close up, and then we retreated six miles, and then we closed up into the pass again. The Thessalian lord Euripides had assumed temporary command when it was only his cavalry and my hoplites on the scene, and he had scouted the pass rigorously, sent two parties off into Macedon and Thrace to find the approaching army, in general had performed the duties of the strategos of an army. Euanetus wanted to be acclaimed and saluted, but he was not an active commander.
My men had been in the pass for three weeks when the Persians struck.
A pair of Persian heralds came to our camp to get safe conducts. They were the first Persians most of our men had ever seen, and we lined the roads like peasants to gawk. Euanetus was anxious to do the right thing and not commit an act of sacrilege, so he allowed the Persian heralds access to Greece and gave them a safe conduct to Delphi, to the oracle, or so they claimed.
The day after they left, a rumour began that the Persian army had marched a month before, and that we were in the wrong pass.
Two days later, while I fed Demetrios and Themistocles and Aeschylus on a deer I’d killed on the mountain, another herald came into our camp, this one from Amyntas, the King of Macedon. Macedon had been among the first kingdoms to submit earth and water to Xerxes, and yet Amyntas always attempted to act as a friend to the Greeks. In this case, he sent his herald to tell us that the Persians were marching by the other pass, near Gonnus.
In vain did the Thessalian lord Euripides complain that his scouts had not returned — that the Persians could not be so close. In a matter of four days, the allied army collapsed. No — there was no great battle. We heard a rumour that Persia was marching, and we scattered.
It was worse than Lades. Almost every contingent ran for home — the Spartans as fast as anyone. Not one contingent wanted to wait with our Thessalian allies and try conclusions with the Persians.
We stayed. I decided that if the rumour was accurate, the army — such as it was — would need a rearguard. And I liked Euripides the Thessalian and wanted his good opinion, and to be honest, I didn’t really think that the Persian army of a million men and another million slaves was going to sneak up on us at Tempe. But by the fourth day after the Persian heralds left our camp, the cause was lost. We stood with three hundred Tegeans where the whole allied army had stood two days before.
Euripides rode to me. ‘Do as you please. We can’t face the Persians with fifteen hundred infantry, no matter how dedicated we are. We’ll surrender. The craven behaviour of this army has convinced us all that we made a mistake. We will submit to Persia.’ He shrugged. He was very angry. ‘I have little interest in being Greek, just now.’
But he clasped my hand and offered me a last meal, which I accepted.
We marched back across Thessaly, fearing the peasants and the wild animals, and we found our ships waiting, to our enormous relief. I landed my men south of Thespiae, on the stony beach there, and found a messenger from Themistocles ordering me to report to the League at Corinth.
Like every other man in Greece that spring, I truly considered going to my farm. The disaster at Tempe had put it all in perspective. I’d wasted almost two months of my life so an incompetent allied commander and a pair of Persian spies could bury Greek independence. I had many friends in the Great King’s camp, and in one sentence, I could have both worldly power and the complete protection of my friends and my polis.
I actually imagined going to Artapherenes, giving him the kiss of peace and bowing to the Great King — by Zeus, I’d already done it! And requesting a command. ‘I tried fighting alongside the Greeks,’ I’d say. ‘But they ran for home at the very rumour of your coming, o King.’
I was angry, and young.
Aristides was angry too, and much older. And in no mood to submit to the Great King, and I think he held me steady. I was prepared to grumble my way across Thessaly, and he forbade me to speak my mind in front of the troops. He was right. Had I grumbled what I thought, those men would not have been there for us later.
At any rate, we arrived at Thespiae and I stood on the beach for half an hour — angry, confused and feeling ill done by. Just down the beach, an Illyrian slaver was unloading — his own relatives, it appeared, since the slaves were all blond.
The gods work in the oddest ways.
Aristides came and clasped my arm. ‘Will you go to Corinth?’ he asked.
Just in that moment I hated him and his calm assurance and his dignified maturity, his stubbornness. I was going to lose Briseis again. I could feel it, and the pent-up anger of a decade of frustration — the trauma of Lade, the fear of betrayal — it all boiled up inside me. My refusal was on the tip of my tongue. I drew breath, to give him what I thought of Greeks, the alliance and the gods.
Just off to my left, the Illyrian slavemaster struck a slave woman so hard that he broke her jaw. I heard the crack. Then he kicked her — savagely. Brutally.
She just lay and accepted pain.
The gods flooded me with power — like the onset of love — but suddenly I forgot Aristides and Xerxes and Corinth. I ran, bad leg and all, like Achilles.
The Illyrian saw me coming and reached for his sword.
I killed him with a cut from my scabbard — up into the underside of his arms, rotating my wrist, driving home through his nose in a final thrust. I stepped on his sword-hand to make sure there was no death-thrust, and wrenched my good new sword out of his head.
I had never seen the woman before — she was just another blond slave, and I had four. But I knew what Poseidon was telling me — on a beach, where all kingdoms meet. The Illyrian slaver looked nothing like Dagon, but in that moment, his casual savagery made him the Carthaginian’s brother.
I am pious. I worship the gods. I have seen them act among men.
Among the Illyrian slaves was a blond man who did not stoop or cringe. He was beautifully muscled, perhaps twenty or even younger. He caught my eye.
He seemed to glow like solid gold. His mouth moved.
I looked away, because it was hard to look at him — that sounds foolish, but go and look at the most beautiful woman you know — meet her eye. Hold it.
When I looked back, he was gone.
I knew I had seen my lord Apollo in the flesh, on the beach. And although he did not speak, I knew what he said. He said, ‘Omen.’
I went and embraced Aristides. ‘I’m for Corinth,’ I said, or something equally banal. Then I blurted, ‘I saw Apollo! Right here on the beach!’
Aristides looked deeply impressed, which was not a look you saw often on the Just Man. ‘Ah!’ he said. He didn’t ruin it by saying more, but embraced me and sent me on my way.
I took one of my own triakonters — thirty-oared ships, good for trade or raiding, too small to lie in the line of battle. I didn’t fill her with my best men, either. All my best marines were in Piraeus. There’s no room for marines in a triakonter, but usually every man rowing is a fighter, or at least that’s how it was in the old days. I had a polyglot collection of professional oarsmen, a former Massalian shepherd, a pair of Africans — but I knew them all well enough, and we passed the isthmus of Corinth like a blade through oil, and I was on the northern beach of Corinth a day later.