Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [50]
Men beat their spears on the face of their shields.
Miltiades came running down the face of the army. When he was in front of the left-most Athenians, he raised his spear.
‘Sing!’ he called, even as an enterprising Euboean threw a spear at him.
Insults were called. We ignored them, although they were so close we could see faces, shield devices, bad teeth and good teeth. Pater started the song and every voice picked it up. We sang the first verse standing and then the whole army – Athenians and Plataeans – moved forward.
Perhaps our line wasn’t perfect, but I remember it as perfect. And when we were a spear’s length from the Euboeans, I knew we’d won. A veteran at the age of thirteen, I knew as surely as if Athena sat on one shoulder and Ares on the other that the men of Euboea would break when our shields hit theirs.
We must have had a bow in our line – because Pater and Bion hit them a heartbeat before the rest of the line, or perhaps the Euboean line had a curve in it. We hit, and the front opened like a door. Pater’s helmet flashed in the brilliant noontime sun, and his plumes shone like the wings of some god-sent bird, and we gave a great shout as the aspides clashed and their line broke up the way a pot breaks when dropped on flagstones from a height.
Even as the Euboeans broke, I saw Pater fall. I saw the way his head turned, and I saw that he fell forward as if pushed, and I know now as if I had seen it that Simon had stabbed him in the back, under his back plate. But I couldn’t see, and battle deprives a man of many of his wits. All I thought at the time was that Pater was down, though the battle was already won.
Pater was down. Somehow I got my legs on either side of his chest and stood my ground, because the Euboeans weren’t beaten. Their front ranks crumbled but then stiffened, much as ours must have done against the Spartans, and they came back at us like men. I saw Simon with a short sword in his hand, dripping blood. He was green, his lips were white with fear and his eyes met mine.
I didn’t see it – oh, I’ll tell it in its place. But that’s when the Euboeans counter-attack struck, and I wasn’t in the fourth rank any more, because I wouldn’t give over Pater’s body. I had no idea if he was alive or dead, but I stood my ground like a fool, and then, in that moment, I found out why old men and poets call it the storm of bronze. I got my dead brother’s aspis up, and the hammering knocked me down over Pater – I was too small to stand the pressure of ten or fifteen weapons beating against my shield.
But other Plataeans crowded in around me. They saw who was down and they were men, too. They pushed and killed. I could smell the copper of blood, the heavy waft of excrement that men release when they go down, the cardamom and onions they’d eaten for lunch. I got a knee under me and pushed my spear under the press and felt the soft, yielding resistance of flesh as I cut some poor bastard’s sinews.
Then I took my first wound. It’s this one, see? And it saved my life, as you’ll hear. Right through the top of the thigh, honey – some big bastard stood over me and pushed his spear right down over my aspis. It didn’t cut the muscle, praise to Ares, but I went down, blood spurting between my fingers, with Deer Killer forgotten in the Euboean grass. I fell on top of Pater.
I made the mistake of falling forward over my shield, and some Euboean bastard hit me on the head.
When I awoke, I was rolling in my own filth and vomit, wearing the shackles of a slave.
Part II
Some Made Slaves
War is the king and father of all, and some he shows as gods, others as men; some men are freed, and some are made slaves.
Heraclitus, fr. 53
6
Hard to imagine what that awakening was like for me.
I had a fever. My wound was oozing pus – not that I