‘We had more at Lades,’ I said.
Nicolas was now my oar-master, and his lover Giorgos was my helmsman, with Hector and Hipponax in training under them as officers. The boys were going to become men. I thought a great deal about Hipponax, my son — because somewhere on the coast of Thrace was an enemy fleet. It not only held Dagon, my enemy. It held Archilogos of Ephesus, and on his ship might well be Briseis’ son, who was also mine. Heraklitus would be seventeen, if my maths were good.
I love the gods, but the tragedy of men entertains them all too well — our ironies and injustices spice their feasts. I prayed to Poseidon with a whole heart for a storm, but I prayed to Zeus, father of gods, to spare my sons — and most of all, to spare them the impiety of going helmet to helmet and shield to shield. And despite all this wool-gathering, I was proud of my son, and proud of Hector, who, arrayed in his armour, and two fingers taller and wider than me, looked the part of his name.
The three of us — Hipponax, Hector and I — practised on the deck of the ship. I had had four years to form Hector as a fighting man, and two years with Hipponax, and they were fast, strong and agile. Hipponax was the strongest of the three of us — a blow from his shield rim, perfectly timed, could knock me down. Hector’s heavy spear was like a serpent, darting from behind his aspis to strike. He was deceptive in the subtlest ways, showing movement of his legs and then striking down the opposing line.
I put them in the best armour that money could buy. Why not? I wore the best myself — bronze everywhere, for a ship fight. I wasn’t going to survive a swim, anyway. I had a bronze Athenian-style helmet with hinged cheek pieces and a magnificent crest in red, black and white. And a fine thorax, a bronze breastplate that mated perfectly to the back and rested on my hips and shoulders, the weight evenly distributed. But I also had armour for each thigh, and greaves of polished bronze, and a full set of armour for my right arm — a vambrace of bronze and a rerebrace of bronze with the raven of my house set on it, as on my greaves. I had a bronze knuckle guard such as the Etruscans wear, which I made myself.
I’d never worn so much armour, but I was getting older, and age slows a man and withers his muscles. And — I had sworn an oath. I shall not dwell on this, but I had determined, as a man sometimes does, not to survive defeat. I laid a trail of supplies and beach havens for the Plataeans in the event of disaster. But I would not be there to lead them.
You see, my friends, I had had a year to learn from Jocasta and Aristides, in much the way I taught my young squires. And what I learned was that life is empty without a companion, home, hearth and children. I wanted what they had, and I would have Briseis, or die. It sounds foolish — she wasn’t within a thousand stades of our coming battle.
But I knew in my heart that this was the last gasp of Greece, and if we lost, all was lost. And if all was lost, I planned to perform a deed that would live for ever in the minds of the Persians, so that they would know what the Greeks had been.
Hence, the armour.
I practised in it every day. Some days I wore it from dawn to dusk, preparing my body for the weight of it and the constraints. I danced the Pyricche in it every night, with all of the marines of my squadron and many of the oarsmen.
The day after we passed the narrows, we danced by firelight on the firm, damp strip of the beach nearest the sea. Hermogenes led the ‘reds’ and I led the ‘whites’ and I had Idomeneaus and Stygies on one side of me and Ajax and Peneleos, son of Empedocles and Antimenides, son of Alcaeus of Miletus, on my other side — Hermogenes had Hipponax and Hector, and Teucer, son of Teucer, and Hilarion and Diocles. We all wore our best — all our armour, our plumes and horsehair tails, and we carried our best spears.
Myron stood with the Plataean oarsmen, and old Draco — more than seventy years old, and still rowing for his country — took a spear, and began to tap it on a stone.
There were a dozen musicians — Ka, my archer captain, was quite skilled at the diaulos, and so we had more than just rhythm.
As the music began, men started to come down the beach. The flames licked at our bronze, and men came running. Two hundred triremes fill almost six stades of beach.
We’d danced the Pyricche on other nights, and men had come. But that night we had a curtain of stars and the whisper of the sea, and the air was hushed, and the musicians came.
We had learned my new, Spartan-style Pyricche with new motions and new tactics, but that night, we danced the old Plataean dance. It is not so complicated. At the opening, all the dancers form a small phalanx — or a great one — eight files deep and as wide as there is space and men to fill it. That night we had two groups of sixty-four — eight files by eight ranks. That was all the marines off all eleven ships and most of the officers, so that Moire and Paramanos and Gelon were all in the ranks.
The two groups started at opposite ends of the dance ground. We marched to the beat of Draco’s spear, until the lead rank of my whites almost collided with the lead rank of Hermogenes’ red, and then we turned — all together — to face the crowd, and all our spears came up together like a flock of steel birds rising into the moonlight, and we gave a great shout.
Many men in the crowd fell back a step.
In that moment, I saw Alexandros smile under his Corinthian, and realised that the Plataean at his shoulder in the second rank was Aristides the Just. I almost lost a step in delight.
Then we turned to the right together, and to the left. We knelt behind our shields and sprang to our feet, thrust low and thrust high.
The diaulos began to play, and four more joined — a wild chant to freeze the blood or make it soar — and we faced the crowd, then turned to face each other, whites against reds, and each small taxis stepped back — once, and again.
And then the dance really began. First the reds swept forward, and collided with the whites, and spears licked out, thrust high, and were turned on white’s aspides, and we were pushed back — rotating our front rank as we went, so fresh men could face the next attack, every front-rank man pivoting on his hips to slip between two new men. Then the whites retaliated, dancing forward, their spears held high, and we in turn sent them stumbling back.
We attacked again, this time with spears held low and thrust underarm. Now the whites exchanged their ranks.
Again our blows were turned, and the whites counter-attacked.
By this time, the Greeks on the beach had begun to sing the paean of Apollo. There were forty thousand Greeks on that beach.
Then both teams stepped back — one, two — and the whites faced about as the reds danced forward, so once more we were one phalanx, sixteen men deep in files and eight men wide. Older Plataeans had acted to clear the beach to the north of us, so that we could finish in our old, old way — and the former rear rank of the whites — now the front rank of the whole, facing the empty beach — leaped forward two fast steps and threw their spears — turned outward and ran to the rear, drawing their swords. In rapid succession — as fast as I can tell it — every rank hurled their heavy spears — not javelins, but fighting spears, so that the sand grew a forest of spear shafts.
And as the last rank re-formed, the whole stepped forward eight steps.
Hermogenes roared, ‘The ravens! Of Plataea!’
And every man pushed forward one step more.
And the dance was done.
I have danced that dance since I was thirteen years old — more than twenty years — but that night in Euboeoa. . that night, we danced for men and gods.
Much later, when other men were asleep, I walked the beach. I found Eurybiades checking his sentries, and offered him wine from my canteen.
He poured a libation. ‘It is my greatest fear,’ he said, pointing at two young men on the headland, ‘to lose all Greece in a moment’s inattention — the Phoenicians coming down on us like wolves in the dawn.’