There is something embarrassing about seeing another man’s love for your sister, even when you think very highly of him. So I slapped his shoulder and shrugged. ‘Tell her yourself,’ I said. ‘I’d never get it out without mocking her.’
‘Fine, then. I’ll stay alive to spite you.’ He laughed, and I laughed.
We were sharing a third cup of unwatered wine — war is hell — when there was a stir by the forward posts across the wall. There was a party of Tegeans cutting palisades, and they all stopped. There were Spartan helots cutting grass for their master’s bedding, out in the wide part of the pass, where there was a low hill and two good broad fields. The helots’ heads came up like those of horses scenting danger.
Antigonus and I started walking towards the wall.
There was dust, over to the east.
I remember putting a hand to my eyes to shade them from the sun — Hekatombaion is a cruel month for the eyes. On the beach at my feet, Hermogenes was doing the same.
All the Greeks stopped what they were doing and looked east.
The dust cloud was like a thunderhead. It swam in my vision — shimmered in the heat. My first thought was that Poseidon had sent us a storm after all.
There was a sudden gust of wind from the east with a breath of coolness and all the tents and awnings snapped, like the shields of two armies in the first moments of a battle.
My eyes began to appreciate the scale of the dust cloud I was seeing to the east.
The Tegeans were standing to arms, out on the plain, and suddenly the helots broke and ran — carrying, I might add, the forage fodder they’d been sent to fetch.
The wind stirred again, and for a moment the front of the dust cloud vanished, and I saw the flash of bright sun on steel and bronze.
I was not looking at a storm of Poseidon. I was looking at the armed might of the Great King, and it filled the horizon like a thundercloud.
Below me, on the plain, a hundred Persian cavalrymen swept past the Tegeans contemptuously, and began to shoot the fleeing helots with bows. I couldn’t tell whether they were Persians, Medes or Saka, but they rode like centaurs and shot like Apollo, and a pair of helots went down — fell face forward, and heartbeats later were speared through the back like new-caught fish.
The Tegeans formed an orb — a tiny island of defence.
The Persian cavalry came all the way down the plain at a gallop, but the helots had vanished into the dust and the brush.
Below me, I saw Ka and six Numidians draw their bows.
They loosed.
It is very difficult to shoot a man over a long range. Arrows — especially the lightest flight arrows that master-archers carry — can fly over two hundred paces, and some over three hundred paces, but such light darts are moved by every breath of wind. Further, it takes long enough for an arrow to fly two hundred paces that a galloping horse has moved ten paces in the interval.
So the lead riders came at us unscathed.
But about midway down the squadron of Persians, two riders fell backwards into the dust, and another horse screamed its trumpet cry of rage and pain and threw its rider on the ground, and the compact Persian troop burst apart like a nest of hornets stoned by boys.
The helots leapt to their feet and dashed for the wall, and the guard — all Mantineans — turned out like heroes, formed under the wall, and covered the helots as they ran.
My sailors and marines were formed and ready to move, with Hermogenes, adze in hand, in his moment of glory.
Ka’s archers loosed.
All the armed Greeks on the plain before the walls charged the Persian cavalry at a run, the way we’d done at Marathon. Another Persian fell, and someone waved a sword — and they ran.
Horse archers run all the time. It means nothing. They run so that they can find a better position from which to fill you full of arrows. But that day, when they ran, it was Greece that had carried the day. Two helots lay dead, and three Persians had gone to Hades with them.
If there was irony in that little victory, it might be that all the killing had been done by a handful of Numidian archers, but let us not parse this too carefully. The Tegeans and the Mantineans and the Plataean oarsmen met far out on the plain, slapped each other’s backs, and marched into the gates like the heroes of the Iliad. The Persian cavalry ran all the way back to Xerxes.
Xerxes made camp across the plains, at Trachis, where there was room to camp his army.
Antigonus and I had shouted ourselves hoarse like spectators at the Olympics, cheering on our hoplites, too far from the action to even trouble for our armour. But when the Persians ran, we cheered with everyone else.
When the Mantineans returned, we discovered that they had a prisoner. He was the man whose horse had taken so many arrows — he’d been knocked unconscious by a direct hit on his helmet.
I went down to translate. King Leonidas was far too much the gentleman to interrogate a prisoner, but all the Greeks crowded around — the Spartans as much or more than anyone — seeking to touch the Persian. He was quite muddle-headed from the blow, and when we showed him his peaked bronze helmet with a dent three fingers deep, he shuddered.
‘Are you Persian?’ I asked.
His head turned in shock. ‘I am Hyperanthes, son of Hydarnes, friend of the king!’ he said bravely. ‘You speak Persian brilliantly.’
I nodded. ‘I am Arimnestos of Plataea.’
‘The ambassador! Mardonius said you were dead!’ The young man shook his head and then sank it in his hands.
I gave him water. ‘You needn’t fear. When you feel better, the king has decreed you will be returned to your host. King Leonidas wishes the Great King to see that Greeks behave according to the laws of the gods.’
The young man brightened up considerably. Perhaps he thought we’d torture him, or kill him and eat him — who knows what lies the Persians told about us? Certainly we told a few about them.
We were standing on the low hill behind the wall, which gave the best view of the enemy. He got to his feet to see.
‘Sit!’ I said. ‘When you feel better — when your army has stopped marching. .’ I pointed at the dust cloud.
He laughed. ‘You think that is the army?’ he exclaimed. ‘That is my father’s regiment — the Immortals. They have marched forward to cover the camp while the slaves build it. The army is behind them.’
Leonidas exclaimed in delight, like a man seeing a beautiful treasure. ‘Those are the Immortals?’ he asked.
The Spartans all crowded to the wall to look. You’d have thought a beautiful woman was walking down the beach to bathe.
The Tegeans and Mantineans and Thespians and Plataeans all looked at each other. And then they looked at the dust cloud that seemed to float all the way back to Asia.
There is a particular arrogance to the humility of some men, and most especially those who claim for themselves the will of the gods. But I will claim that Poseidon favoured me that day — wth the rock under his water, and the damage to my ship.
Because, thanks to the rock, my ship was pulled all the way up the beach of Thermopylae, fifty feet above the waterline, when the storm struck.
Had we been at sea — perhaps we might have weathered the storm. But it blew straight from the east down the first leg of the channel and struck the beach at Thermopylae with gale-force winds and waves as tall as a man. The pass — never very wide — was closed to the width of a wagon in some places by the fierce run of water.
The first night that the storm blew, I walked down to the bow of my ship and watched the waves roll in. The storm hit us with no harbinger but those odd, cool gusts of wind, and I stood in the darkness and blessed the fishermen of Artemesium, and Cimon, who knew these waters better than any of the rest of us.
Hermogenes came and stood with me in the dark.
The wind began first to tug at my chlamys, and then — with the force of a blow — tore my cloak right out of its pin. Hermogenes caught it before it vanished.