Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [37]
We went across the mountains after the feast of Demeter. We marched up the same road that passed the shrine, and every man in the ranks touched the tomb, and I thought of Calchas. We’d heard that the Spartans and all their Peloponnesian allies had marched around the south end of the mountain and entered Attica. Boys like me feared that we would be too late.
War is something a man should want to be late for. We crossed into Attica, and the Spartans were sitting across the stream from the tower at Oinoe, a fortification the tyrants of Athens had built against this very kind of war. Of course, Sparta had been an enemy of tyranny – but when the Spartans saw how strong the new Athens was going to be, they became enemies of democracy as well. Nation states are always that way, honey. They have no more morality than a whore in the Piraeus looking to score some wine. Anything to get what they want.
Ares, how we feared the Spartans. Cleomenes, their king, a famous man, had with him only a thousand Spartiates – the Spartan citizens, and there were six thousand Athenian citizens. But he made up the numbers with ‘allies’, cities of the Peloponnese that had to fight when Sparta said fight.
And how the Athenians cheered us, although we brought just a thousand hoplites. They gave us the honour of the left end of the line. The position of highest honour is the right flank. If the right gives way, an army is done – dead. Miltiades’ father, also called Miltiades, held the right of the line with the senior tribes of Athens. They looked magnificent, with cloaks of tapestry-woven wool, and the whole front rank had bronze breastplates like heroes. Every man had a horsehair plume in his helmet. They made us look like farmers.
Hah! We were farmers. Half our men had leather caps. Only the front rank had helmets, and half of them were open-faced war hats. My father was one of only a dozen fighters with bronze panoply, and not all our front rank even had leather to cover their bodies. A couple of men wore felt.
Hermogenes and I were psiloi. That meant that we were to run close to the enemy, throw rocks at them and goad them into action. Sometimes psiloi just yelled insults. It was all rather like something religious. Psiloi rarely harmed anyone.
I had six good javelins – quite a few for a boy my age, but then none of the others, slave or free, had spent two years on the mountain hunting deer. I gave three to Hermogenes.
Myron’s youngest son Callicles was our leader. He was a year older than me, and bossy. I was used to my brother, who would listen to any argument I made and judge it on its merits. Slow and careful and totally solid, my brother. Callicles had none of those qualities. My halting attempts to tell him that I knew a lot more about this game than he did led to him putting an elbow in my nose. He caught me by surprise and had me on the ground in an instant. I broke free before he could hurt me – but I chose to obey.
We camped for two days, watching the Spartans. The alignment meant that if we fought, we’d be the ones facing the Spartiates. They’d be on the right of their line, and we’d be on the left or ours. There was some talk, but none of the men had much time for us boys except my brother. He told me how scared he was.
‘I feel like I’m going to die,’ he said. ‘I’m cold all the time. I’m going to be a coward, and I hate it!’
I hugged him. ‘You’ll be brave!’ I told him. ‘Just don’t be too brave.’ I grinned and gave him Calchas’s advice, which must have sounded foolish from a beardless boy. ‘Stay in the shield wall and don’t let anyone over your shield,’ I said.
He laughed at me, despite his fear. ‘I’m in the sixth rank,’ he said. ‘Safer than we are in a storm at home!’ He laughed, but then he was serious. ‘We’re going to form deep, to slow the Spartans down,’ he said. ‘Pater says if we form a dozen deep, we’ll stand longer.’
It