Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [181]
Miltiades’ look told me that he hadn’t intended the rest of us to know, but Cimon just laughed.
I never knew exactly when and where Miltiades and Aristagoras had started to be allies, and I never knew when they had a falling out, although I suspect that Briseis and I played our part. I still don’t know. But Miltiades did all the thinking that won us the Battle of Amathus – in that much, I suppose the bastard deserved a share of my spoils. And I guess that Miltiades had no stomach for peace with the Medes – not that he hated them, but because he made his fortune preying on their ships and he needed that money to make himself tyrant at Athens, or that’s how I see it now.
I should have said earlier that by the time Miltiades wanted us to leave, Aristagoras had been supplanted by his former master, Histiaeus of Miletus, who had served the Great King as a general for years and then deserted suddenly. He must have been a great fool – the Ionians were all but beaten when he joined us, and many men thought that he was a double traitor come to betray us into the hands of the Persians. In fact, I suspect he was one of those tragic men who make bad decision after bad decision – his betrayal of the Great King was foolish and dishonourable, and all his subsequent behaviour was of a piece. I only met him once, and that was on the beach at Mytilene. He was haranguing Aristagoras as if the latter was a small boy. I stayed to listen and laugh, and Aristagoras saw me, and the hatred in his eyes made me laugh louder. No one respected him by then. His failure to lead us against the Medes – anywhere – and especially to help the men of the Troad, when our fleet was just a hundred stades away, showed that he was a fool, if not a coward.
At any rate, Histiaeus’s arrival was the last straw. I think that Miltiades imagined that he would become the leader of the Ionian Revolt – and eventually the tyrant of all Ionia. And they would have been better for having him, I can tell you, honey. He may have been a bastard about money, but he was a war-leader. Men loved to follow him.
I ramble. Here, mix some of that lovely water from the spring in the bowl, and add apples – by Artemis, girl, do you blush just for the mention of apples? What a delicate flower you must be – thugater, where did you find her? Now pour that in my cup.
We sailed away ahead of the first winter storm, and just as Heraklides predicted, we were soon snug on our couches at Miltiades’ great palace at Kallipolis.
Aristagoras took his own retainers and fled to the mainland of Thrace. He had founded a colony there, at Myrcinus, and he abandoned the rebellion, or so Miltiades’ informers reported. I wondered where Briseis was. She must be bitter, I thought – from the queen of the Ionian Revolt to the wife of a failed traitor in three short years.
The winter passed quickly enough. I bought a pretty Thracian slave and learned the language from her. I taught the Pyrrhiche to all my oarsmen, and kept them at it through the whole rainy winter, and we went together to celebrate the feast of Demeter, and the return of the sailing season.
I was another year older. I dreamed all winter of ravens, and when the flowers began to bloom I saw a pair rise from a day-old kill and fly away west, and I knew that it was an omen, that I should be going home to Plataea, but there was nothing there for me – I thought. I worried more about my oath to Hipponax and Archilogos, which goes to show what fools men are about fate.
In the spring, Histiaeus declared himself commander of the Ionian Alliance, and set the rendezvous of the fleet at Mytilene again, where he had, over the winter, made himself tyrant. He did it the simple way – his picked men infiltrated the citadel, then he killed the old tyrant with his own hands and every one of his children, too. Soaked in blood, he stepped forward to the applause – the terrified applause, I assume – of the town.
Miltiades told us the tale at dinner, shaking his head