Salamis (10 page)

‘Ari! Cavalry!’

‘Arm!’ I shouted. We were resting in our ranks – a very basic precaution I’d learned at Marathon – and we got to our feet and got our aspides on our arms before the sound of hoof beats was clear.

‘Drink water!’ I shouted. It is amazing how fast fatigue and black depression falls away when you can hear your foe advancing.

Obediently, men drank from their canteens and leather water bottles, handing them round to the awkward sods who had none, and then, at my wave, Onisandros got the baggage animals moving.

I was between Alexandros, one of my marines, and Sitalkes, another. I had Styges at my back and all ten of the men who blocked the road were in full panoply. In fact, I’d put on my arm and thigh guards since the last halt. I wasn’t going to eat any more splinters. They hurt.

The Saka were cautious. They came on slowly, stopped as soon as they saw us across the road, and they loosed arrows. My best aspis began to take hits.

The next hour was like a long, brutal fencing match. Between shafts, we’d back step – when we went around a curve in the road, we’d run, our ears cocked for the rush of hooves, but the Saka were too cautious, and we’d gain a hundred paces and halt, breathe. sometimes only to run again. Sometimes they’d come on.

After an hour of this, which included one all-out charge – of course we caught no one, but we surprised them and made them run – as I say, after an hour, my legs were made of rubber and I couldn’t have hurt a Saka if he’d laid down under the edge of my xiphos.

Then we switched with Moire and his ten. He was as wily as I and his ten were faster than we had been. I had to admit, watching them from the massed safety of the column, that his ten-fleet oarsmen in light armour were better at the whole game – until a Saka arrow took a man in his shin, where he had no greave. He went down, and the Saka were on him in a moment, shooting down into his body. A few began loosing light shafts at our column, but the gods had allowed our baggage animals around the next turn and the shafts only rattled around off of shields.

The road was steep. We were only making ten stades an hour and I knew we were running out of daylight and we couldn’t deal with a night on the mountain with the Saka.

I told Styges what I had in mind and I ran off along the column. I wasn’t running very well and I had to stop – often. Not my best day.

But I got to the head of the column and then I ran, still in full panoply with my aspis on my arm. I ran along the road for what seemed like an eternity, worried about what was behind me and afraid that I’d lost contact with my ambushing force …

‘Pater!’

Hipponax was on the grassy slope above me. He came out.

‘Perfect,’ I said. It was. To the left, the road fell away in a cliff that gave a magnificent view of Boeotia – the first one a traveller coming from Attica saw. Above us there were some volcanic rocks and some stubby olive trees, but the slope was gentle enough to a man to run down, and steep enough for a few rocks to be rolled.

‘I need you to stay hidden until the enemy is well past you,’ I said. ‘We can’t just frighten them. We need to kill a few and break contact.’

My son pointed proudly at his hillside. It was true – I couldn’t see a man.

‘What if they try to ride up the hill?’ I asked. But that was rhetorical.

I ran back to the column. Now, on the return run, I had to worry that they’d been savaged in my absence. Losing Teucer loomed again. I thought of Antigonus and Leonidas, their bodies shamed by barbarians.

Philosophers are always praising the solitary life, but I don’t recommend too much reflection for the captain. It can be dark in there.

At any rate, they were all still alive. I ran back to the column and immediately sent the twenty men in the front to join Hipponax – all Hector’s men, and Hector too. There wasn’t going to be another ambush. We were almost at the height of the pass and after that we’d be descending into Attica, the valley would widen, and the Saka would have every advantage.

I ran forward – or back, depending on your point of view – to my rearguard, and then I just walked and breathed for a while.

But there are some things you have to do yourself. I couldn’t send a message to make sure the ambush was ready.

That never works.

When I could breathe well, I took my men forward and relieved Moire.

By my reckoning, we were about three stades from the ambush. The ground was slowly opening to the left as we faced into Boeotia. The ground was beginning to drop away to the right.

We practised a feint charge that Brasidas taught and all of us knew it, so I put all twenty-two of us in one block and we backed around a corner and then charged. We went forward
exactly
fifty paces and then turned and ran.

They broke away from us, loosing shafts. But they were wary, and their shafts were few. They’d been on us for hours and I suspected they were tired of wasting shafts on fully armoured men with big shields.

But we’d only chased them about thirty of our fifty paces when some of them began to turn outward onto the rising ground to our left, to envelop us. Of course we broke, all together, and ran back; and then, after perhaps a ten-pace pause, we could hear hoof beats behind us.

Well – it was like running the hoplitodromos with your life on the line and I began to fall behind, because I’m no longer that fast, thanks to various wounds. And a lot of armour, I confess it.

But we passed the bend in the road, the last bend before the ambush, without losing a man. Now we had two stades to go and the road climbed away slightly. The cavalry above us on the hillside were suddenly confronted with a narrow gorge and had to come down, and they were their own roadblock for a few long strides, interfering with the rush of our pursuers.

My feet pounded the road. I was last by five strides – I, who had once been the best among an army of Greeks.

Another stride. Another.

It was like running at the Persians in the pass above Sardis, except that I was now running away.

But there are some things you cannot ask your men to do, and one of them is to be the bait in an ambush.

The last hundred strides to the next turn in the road looked very long.

But the last fifty didn’t look so bad, and my feet had wings of fear as I heard the hoof beats. The ground shook. An arrow went into my plume, and another shattered on my thorax, and made me stumble – perhaps twenty strides from the turn, and I was the only target they had. All my men had made the turn. I hoped there was a formed body waiting there, a hundred oarsmen waiting—

I tripped, and fell sprawling. My aspis didn’t break my arm, thank the gods, but I rolled over it the way Istes used to, more by Tyche’s blessing than any plan of my own. My knees were lacerated, and before I could breathe, there were hooves all around me.

A horse struck me as I tried to rise and I fell again, this time pulling my aspis over me as Calchus taught.

Above me in the dust a Saka leaned down and shot straight down. The arrow struck my aspis near the rim and went six fingers through and pricked my thigh. Another man put his bow over the back of his head as he rode by and shot down into me, and his arrow exploded on the oak and bronze of my aspis’s rim. They were so close that I could see their eyes, the sweat on their foreheads. They guided their horses with their knees and they were already concerned about the men around the bend. The man who put the arrow into my thigh had a golden torque and a red leather jacket painted magnificently in tiny patterns; the other man had bright blue eyes …

All that between one beat of my heart and another.

They came against the shield wall and it held. For a moment – perhaps three of my terrified heartbeats – it was othismos, the crossing of the spears. But light horsemen, no matter how powerful their archery, are no match for hoplites, even well-armed oarsmen, in a confined space.

The line pushed them back. Men were calling my name.

I was lying in a forest of horse legs, and I could see nothing.

I had the sense to lie still.

The line pushed again – there were horns on the hillside.

Many of the Saka had spears and they were wielding them overarm, trying to reach the men behind the shields. They pressed forward, and the men and horses pressed into them from behind.

More horns, and more; the low braying, like wolves calling, or dogs sounding from one house to another on an autumn evening when the moon is rising. A sweet sound to any hunting man.

My son’s horn.

They charged. I didn’t see it.

The forest of horse legs began to shift. And then the melee exploded outward.

In fact, only one Saka went over the cliff in the first moments, no matter how the song tells it. The poor bastard was on the far left of the fight, or perhaps he thought himself too clever and tried to put his horse among the rocks, and then he was gone over the edge, with a stade or two to fall to the plains of Boeotia far below.

The rest of the Saka turned like a shoal of fish to run – and Hipponax and Hector struck them in the side. The road was not wide. Panicked horses turned and went over the cliff. This time, no more than four or five, but it was, I confess, spectacular and horrible and there is good reason we all remember it.

One horse scrabbled with its back legs on the brink and screamed, and then the rider in the golden torque was gone.

I was back on my feet by then, in the heart of my oarsmen, and my wounds were forgotten for a moment. I went forward, but I never bloodied my spear. We almost pushed our own front rank over the brink in our eagerness, and men were screaming for all of us to stop moving—

We had six prisoners. They were brave men – and one woman – but they were terrified of the cliff.

We hadn’t lost a man. That is important, when you take captives, especially – I’m sorry to say it – a woman. We made them dismount and we took their horses.

By my command, we let them go. We let them see the first signs of our making camp and we pushed them away down the hill.

But the baggage train had never stopped moving, and now the rest of the column – exhausted, but triumphant – walked away. We were not marching any more, but we moved down the pass into Attica as the sun sank to the west, out over Corinth somewhere. It gets dark early on that road, because of the loom of Cithaeron, but I kept them at it until full darkness. And then by moonlight, two more brutal hours down that road with many a stubbed toe and many a curse, until we saw the tower of Oinoe rising in the darkness, lit silver by the moon.

I let them collapse on their arms and sleep. But at first light we were up, with no food and no fires, and we stumbled forward with some very upset pack animals and some very unhappy horses.

I suppose that the Saka lost perhaps twenty men in those fights, maybe as many as thirty, including wounded. But that was enough. We broke contact, which of course, meant to them, as old and wily campaigners themselves, that they’d have to endure another ambush just to make contact again. They chose to let us go.

A sailor can tell you the most surprising things about another ship in a single glance from almost over the horizon. A sloppy sail or a well-set one, the bow a little down in the water from poor loading, or a crisp entry because a ship is loaded well; the flash of distant oars can show you a ragged crew or a tight one. And in war it is the same.

The Saka were brave and very professional, but I learned a great deal about Xerxes’ army in those hours. The Saka were not particularly motivated. They didn’t press us as hard as they would have if, for example, we’d raided their camp. I have reason to know. In fact, they were almost desultory in their pursuit, as if they had better things to do. And it is worth noting that all their cousins were looting helpless Boeotia while they were getting killed, which must have seemed unfair.

But I found it hopeful that the elite of Xerxes’ army, with the possible exception of the Immortals and the noble cavalry, were so unambitious. Just possibly, they’d lost interest in the contest when Masistius went down, but he must have been re-horsed soon enough.

We did have some bodies to strip, and the Saka wore a great deal of gold. We took it and put it on the wagons and I saw to it that we took all their bows and all their arrows, too.

At any rate, the sun rose over Attica and it was empty. My whole body hurt like dull fire, like I’d lain on my anvil and pounded myself all day with a hammer. My hip was scored by the arrow that had come through my aspis and my head had a laceration where another arrow had passed between the crest box and the helmet, damaging both without penetrating either, and my arm had several punctures, all of them red and angry, and of course I’d lost two fingers on my left hand and my hand was puffy and swollen—

Idomeneus was still stretched overt the back of a horse, breathing like a man snoring in a bad sleep. Alcaeus’s son awoke from his stupor to scream in pain and we had to rig a different mode of travel for him. He’d been stabbed twice with spears, once to the bone in the thigh and once through the back of the shoulder under the wing of his corselet; sheer bad luck.

I didn’t want to lose either of them.

I confess I pushed my oarsmen across the plain of Attica like a madman. We ate garlic sausage from our bags as we walked and we kept moving. It was to my advantage that they were oarsmen, used to extreme performance, and not mere hoplites. Aristides would spit to hear me speak such blasphemy, because aristocrats are supposed to believe that the thetes class will always betray them and cannot be trusted in extremes, but my experience is the opposite – rich men will sell their city while the poor will fight on the walls to the last drop of their blood. After all, unlike the rich, they have nowhere else to go.

And of course, they are used to working hard. My oarsmen were magnificent, in a grumbling, angry, bitter, cynical way.

Leon, one of the oldest oarsmen, a man who had some special tie to me, for all he affected to despise me, was one of the best. He’d been aboard
Storm Cutter
, the first of the name, in the storm that had earned her the right to be called so. He’d been there when we killed most of the Phoenicians and later when we survived the hardest manoeuvre I’ve ever done in a storm. He lacked the voice or the poise to be an oar-master, but he was a big brute with a ready tongue, and he always seemed to end up with me, no matter how many times he collected his silver and went away to open a taverna.