We ran down the hill. The slope made our feet light, our purpose gave us wings. It was like the last lap of the race, when the Eros of victory lifts one. I know I killed and killed, yet I felt no anger, more than the priest who sheds the blood of the victim. Lysis and I fought side by side, pressing onward, feeling the line of the enemy bend before us, and give, and shatter to shards. They were many; but their crust was thin, their centre was soft; they were men not at peace with the gods, or with their own souls. In a little while, if a man of them still stood firm, he was one with nothing to lose. It was while the battle hung so that I heard a voice, trying to rally the line; the voice of a speech-maker, not used to the talk of the field where a man speaks to man. I knew it; and leaping forth from Lysis’ side (for till now we had gone forward step by step together) I made for it through the press.
I came on him by the stall of a potter, which stood empty at the side of the square. In silence I had tracked him down, not calling his name, or any challenge, for I knew that many desired his company as much as I. Like a lover I sought him, keeping my rivals in the dark, feeling my way. Then he was before me, and through his helmet-slits I saw his eyes.
As we leaned shield to shield, I said, “You courted me once, Kritias. Now am I close enough?” But he only gritted his teeth and panted; for I had been living hard, he softly, and his breath was short. I turned his shield with mine, and thrust at him, and wounded him in the leg. “Do you know me?” I said to him. “I am Myron’s son.” I waited for his face to alter; but except when it jerked at the spear-thrust, it did not change; and I understood that this one name meant nothing to him, among the many he had sent to death. Upon this I felt a rage at him, so that my strength flared up like a torch; and leaning hard on him till I bore him backward, I hooked his knee with mine, as I had seen Lysis do it in the pankration; and he went back with a clatter of armour against the racks of the potter’s stall.
He clutched a shelf, and it came away; he rolled, and fell on his back, and I leaped upon him and pulled his helmet off. Then I saw his hair was streaked with grey; his face being drawn with fear looked shrivelled as with age, and my stomach turned at killing him; till I remembered he had forgotten my father’s name, and thought, “A beast is under my knees, and not a man.” So I drew my sword, and thrust it through his throat, saying, “Take this for Myron.” He gasped, and died. Whether he heard me I do not know.
When he was certainly dead, I leaped up, and saw the battle swaying all about me. I lifted my voice and shouted, “Lysis!” For I thought it long till I could tell him what I had done. I heard his voice rising above the din call, “Alexias! I am coming!” Then it seemed that a great rock fell on me; I was crushed and flung into darkness; the sounds of the battle reached me without meaning, as a child near sleep hears voices in another room.
I came to myself in a courtyard, full of wounded men. In the centre was a fountain, playing into a basin lined with blue tiles, such as the Medes make. My head ached, and I felt very sick. I must have been struck down with a blow on the helmet, and stunned, but my head was not bleeding; the wound was in my hip, just below the corselet-rim. It was deep, and my blood lay all about me. I must have been speared when I fell. The stain was black and dry at the edges, where it had flowed over the marble tiles; so I knew I had been there some time.
I was thirsty, and the sound of the water made my thirst more. Then when I wished to drink, I thought for the first time, “Am I a captive, or free?” And turning my head towards a man lying near me, I said, “Have we won?” He gave a great sigh, and rolled his head towards me. I saw he was near death. “We lost,” he said, and closed his eyes. Then I knew him, altered as he was; it was Charmides. I had seen him before the battle, down in the market-place among the knights. I called him by name, but he spoke no more.
I began to crawl towards the fountain, the knowledge of victory giving me heart; but a man who could walk, and use one arm, brought me some water in a helmet. I drank, and thanked him, and asked if the battle was long over. “An hour gone,” he said, “and they have declared a truce to gather up the dead. I was there myself till lately. The Thirty have fled; and before I left, the people taking up the bodies were talking together, men of both sides.”
He told me more, but I was too weak to heed it. I looked at my blood on the floor, and trailed my hand in it, and thought, “Well spent.” For a while I rested; an old woman came out and tied a cloth over my wound; then I opened my eyes and felt better, and began to look about me, and to feel impatient for someone to come and carry me to my friends.
I heard the feet of men bearing a burden, and turned to call to them. But they were carrying a dead body on a shield. The head hung back, and the legs dangled from the knees, and a horseman’s cloak was thrown over all, so that the face was hidden. I did not know the cloak, and was turning away, when I saw the two men look at me, and then at one another. Then I felt my heart turn to water, and my wounds grow cold. The feet were showing beneath the cloak, and one of the sandals was mended.
I found a voice, and called to the men, who at first pretended not to hear me. But they stopped when I called again. I said, “Who is it?” Each of them waited for the other to speak; but presently one said, “I am sorry, Alexias.” And the other said, “He died very well. Twice after he was struck he got upon his feet, and again after that he tried. We must go on, Alexias, for he is heavy.”
I said, “Do not carry him any further. Leave him here with me.”
They looked about the courtyard, which was crowded by this time, and then at each other again; and I saw what was in their minds, that wounded men do not like to be with the dead. So I said, “I will go with you, then,” and got up from where I lay, and followed after them. In the porch I found a spear with a broken head, and took it to lean on. We went a little way, and came to a small pavement before an altar. There was a broken wall beside it, and dust upon the stones; but I could not walk any longer, so I said, “This place will do.”
They put him down, and, excusing themselves to me, took away the cloak and the shield, for they had other bodies to fetch. He had been wounded between neck and shoulder; it was the bleeding that had killed him. He was so drained of blood that his flesh was not discoloured as one sees it in the dead, but like a clear yellow marble. There was blood on his armour, and in his hair. His helmet was off; his open eyes looked, as he lay, straight upward at the sky, as if they asked a question. I had to press my hand over them a long time, before they would close.
His body had not stiffened yet, but his skin was growing cold. He lay already as one of the unnumbered dead. Always, from my first remembrance, whether he rode, or walked, or ran, or stood talking in the street, as far as I could see him I knew him apart from all other men; nor was it possible, in the darkest night, to mistake another’s hand for his. Now the flies were beginning to come, and I had to drive them away.
I was weak as a young child, in mind and body, and yet I could not weep. That is well, you may say; for when a Hellene dies commendably, even a woman ought to restrain her tears. I too from my first youth had been taught what is proper to be felt on such occasions; nor had I been ignorant that what I loved was mortal. Yet now I was as a stranger to the earth, and to my own soul. For it said to me that if there be any god who concerns himself with the lives of men, the god himself must suffer with me. And when I thought that the Immortals live far off in joy, holding eternal festival, then it seemed to me that the gods were not.
After I do not know how long, the men who had carried him came back, to see how I was. I said I was well enough, and asked if they had seen him fall. They said no, but they had heard him praised by those who had; and one said he had been there later, when he died. I asked him if he had spoken to anyone.