Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [41]
Hermogenes fell to the ground without being touched, and then used his javelin to trip the lead Spartan. He went down in a clatter of armour, but he was up in less time than it takes to tell the sentence. Yet he was off balance and he was using his shield hand to push himself off the ground. Calchas had taught me better than that.
It was my worst throw of the day. I was terrified and elated at the same time, and my Deer Killer went into his left arm behind his shield, pinning the arm against the shield back. And he couldn’t get it out.
The others stopped to help him, because he was bellowing, and then Hermogenes grabbed me and helped me run.
By all the gods, my thugater – I thought those were my last moments, and when we were clear of the Spartans, I vowed that I would never, ever put my body in front of the phalanx again. I vowed it like a drunkard vowing not to drink.
Hermogenes and I got clear of the right flank. We had no idea where the other boys were. Then we lay down in the grass and heaved. Ares! We were alive. Wait until you bear a child, honey – you’ll feel the same rush of eudaimonia unless Artemis comes for you. Avert!
But when we looked up, the Spartans were charging.
They came forward to the music of pipes. And all the giants going to war with Father Zeus couldn’t have looked more dangerous or noble.
The rest of the Peloponnesians hesitated, and the Athenians came forward cautiously, but they came on, and the Plataeans weren’t cowards. They went forward into the Spartans.
The two lines hit each other like – well, like two phalanxes coming together. Imagine every cook in this town with every bronze kettle and a wooden spoon flailing away at it. Imagine every man bellowing with all his might. That is the sound of the storm of bronze, the battle line.
Hermogenes and I watched from the safety of the far right. And we saw what happened when the Spartiates hit our fathers.
They reaped them like wheat, that’s what happened.
What made the reputation of Plataea was not that our men were great fighters – at least, not that day. What forged our reputation for ever was that our men wouldn’t run. But Hermogenes and I watched men die. It was horrible – and awe-inspiring. The two blocks of spearmen crashed into each other at the same speed, and not a man flinched. Spartans tell me that they remember that day well – because so few foes withstand the impact, yet the men of Plataea slammed in, aspis to aspis. And then the killing started.
We watched as the helmet plumes in the front rank went down. It took only seconds and it seemed as if the whole front rank was gone. And then the Plataeans gave ground – grudgingly – but they lost ten steps.
I think it was Pater who stopped it from being a rout. Pater gave ground, but Bion says he killed a man – a spear thrust to the throat against a Spartiate file-leader. Then he and Bion pushed into the gap and Bion says they each took a man down. No one cares in the heat of a fight whether you kill your man as long as you put him down.
In that little eddy of the overall whirlpool of Plataean defeat, the Spartans hesitated. How often did men push through their front rank? I think it was Pater. I could see the plume on his helmet when the others, like Myron’s, were gone. And then the file-closers planted their feet and pushed at the back of the Plataean lines, and suddenly the Plataeans weren’t moving back – they were standing firm.
But some of the Spartans had broken through the front ranks, where men were capable and expected to fight. Soon they were pounding the rear ranks to ruin, killing like the machines that they were.
A few men broke from the rear of our phalanx and ran – and Simon must have been one of them. But elsewhere, our neighbours closed their files and shocked the Spartans who’d broken their ranks, crushing them like insects, stabbing them front and rear. There’s a reason why breaking ranks is punishable by law, and a reason why veterans call it foolish. The Spartans thought that we’d break – but we didn’t, and their young men died.
Who knows how long the