Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [119]
I saw Artaphernes coming. Greeks ran past me and some were already casting aside their shields. That’s how bad we were. We must have outnumbered the Lydians three or four to one, and they scattered us.
When the attack came, Herk was stripping a gold-seller’s stall like a professional sea wolf, which he was. ‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘I knew this was too easy.’
He began to blow on his sea whistle, and I fell in next to him. He had his shield and I had mine, and other men who were not utterly in the grip of chaos and panic joined us, and in a few moments we were a hundred men. I noted that the man on my right was the athlete from Eretria, Eualcidas, whose friend I had thrown from the symposium. War makes strange shield-fellows. Agios was close on me, standing behind Herk.
The Lydians stopped short of us.
That was their mistake, because as soon as the other Greeks saw the Lydians halt, they turned and became men. So it is in any fight.
Aristides was there, then. He ran across the front rank and praised us for standing, a few quick words, and more men joined us, Chians, mostly. Our shield wall covered the agora, and we were four or five men deep – not a proper phalanx, but a deep line of mixed men.
Then the Lydians came at us. They weren’t big men, or well armoured, except Artaphernes’ bodyguard in the centre, where I was. And the fates laughed, because the man coming at me in the fire-lit afternoon light was Cyrus, with his three friends around him. They halted ten paces from us, to see if we would give way, but we had Aristides to give us some wood in our backbones, and we shuffled but held.
Artaphernes’ men began to shoot at us with powerful bows at close range. Eualcidas on my right took an arrow through his shield into his shield arm – that’s how strong their bows were close up. I saw that Heraklides slanted his, and I did the same, and then, under cover of my shield, I got the shaft out of Eualcidas’s arm and two other Eretrians dragged him to the rear. The next man to stand beside me got Cyrus’s arrow in his ankle – I saw the shot – and then Aristides exposed himself to the fire and ran along the front, ordering us to kneel behind our shields, and we did. He was magnificent. He was only a couple of years older than me, and I wanted to be him.
So I indulged in some bravado of my own. I called Cyrus’s name until he saw me, and I stood up and took off my helmet. Arrows rattled on my shield, and one pinked my naked thigh above my greaves, scraping along the muscle without penetrating.
‘Cyrus!’ I roared.
He raised his axe over his head and waved it at me. ‘You fool!’ he called, and laughed. The Greeks around me wondered aloud how I knew a Persian, one of the elite, and I laughed.
And then their line stopped shooting and charged us.
Artaphernes led his men from the front. Never believe all that crap about the Medes whipping their men forward – that’s the slaves they sometimes use as living shields. The real Persians and Medes – like Cyrus and Artaphernes – are like lions, eager for a fight all the time.
They only had ten paces to come at us. I had a stranger behind me and another on my right, but I had Heraklides on my left. I looked back at the man behind me. He seemed steady. When the Medes charged, I stood crouched, shield on shoulder, and as they came up I punched out with my first spear and caught Cyrus in the leg, my spear in his calf, and down he went. Pharnakes was right with him, and he had a heavy axe, which he put in the face of my shield as I threw my second spear into the second rank, where an unshielded man took it in the gut – a Persian – and went down. I pushed my shield in Pharnakes’ face, axe and all, and the man behind me stabbed him while I got my sword out from under my arm.
And Heraklides yelled, ‘Back! Back up! Back, you dogs!’
I raised my shield and backed a pace. Our line was shattered. Lydians were butchering the men who ran.
I got back in the line – I’d pushed forward into the Medes – but they weren’t fighting my partner or me. They were flowing around us, left and