The Great King (46 page)

My Plataeans were one of the first contingents to arrive at Tempe, and we used the time to drill. Even my young men hated me after two weeks looking at the mountains of Macedon through the eye-slots of their helmets, and the new Athenian helmets with cheek pieces that raised were suddenly very popular, because no matter how cold the nights and mornings, by midday a man in armour was like a lobster boiled in his shell.

Xerxes, had he been quick enough, could have walked over us any time he liked. The Spartans were late, the Athenians later – in fact, although Aristides and I knew nothing of it, the Athenians were outraged at being required to send sixty ships and a phalanx too, and, as Themistocles said to me the night the Athenians arrived, there were seventy triremes beached in Piraeus for want of marines and officers.

Nor was Euanetus an inspiring commander. He was stuck with an army that had expected godlike Leonidas, and he was himself no god. He had a snappish temper; he was a large man and tended to use force when persuasion might have been better. He savaged Themistocles for being late, although we had no news of the Persian host, and that was an error, and he compounded it by ordering the Athenians punished, which was a little like punishing a man for being late for a party.

He changed his mind repeatedly about how he intended to cover the pass. First we were close up, and then we retreated six miles, and then we closed up into the pass again. The Thessalian lord Euripides had assumed temporary command when it was only his cavalry and my hoplites on the scene, and he had scouted the pass rigorously, sent two parties off into Macedon and Thrace to find the approaching army, in general had performed the duties of the strategos of an army. Euanetus wanted to be acclaimed and saluted, but he was not an active commander.

My men had been in the pass for three weeks when the Persians struck.

A pair of Persian heralds came to our camp to get safe conducts. They were the first Persians most of our men had ever seen, and we lined the roads like peasants to gawk. Euanetus was anxious to do the right thing and not commit an act of sacrilege, so he allowed the Persian heralds access to Greece and gave them a safe conduct to Delphi, to the oracle, or so they claimed.

The day after they left, a rumour began that the Persian army had marched a month before, and that we were in the wrong pass.

Two days later, while I fed Demetrios and Themistocles and Aeschylus on a deer I’d killed on the mountain, another herald came into our camp, this one from Amyntas, the King of Macedon. Macedon had been among the first kingdoms to submit earth and water to Xerxes, and yet Amyntas always attempted to act as a friend to the Greeks. In this case, he sent his herald to tell us that the Persians were marching by the other pass, near Gonnus.

In vain did the Thessalian lord Euripides complain that his scouts had not returned – that the Persians could not be so close. In a matter of four days, the allied army collapsed. No – there was no great battle. We heard a rumour that Persia was marching, and we scattered.

It was worse than Lades. Almost every contingent ran for home – the Spartans as fast as anyone. Not one contingent wanted to wait with our Thessalian allies and try conclusions with the Persians.

We stayed. I decided that if the rumour was accurate, the army – such as it was – would need a rearguard. And I liked Euripides the Thessalian and wanted his good opinion, and to be honest, I didn’t really think that the Persian army of a million men and another million slaves was going to sneak up on us at Tempe. But by the fourth day after the Persian heralds left our camp, the cause was lost. We stood with three hundred Tegeans where the whole allied army had stood two days before.

Euripides rode to me. ‘Do as you please. We can’t face the Persians with fifteen hundred infantry, no matter how dedicated we are. We’ll surrender. The craven behaviour of this army has convinced us all that we made a mistake. We will submit to Persia.’ He shrugged. He was very angry. ‘I have little interest in being Greek, just now.’

But he clasped my hand and offered me a last meal, which I accepted.

We marched back across Thessaly, fearing the peasants and the wild animals, and we found our ships waiting, to our enormous relief. I landed my men south of Thespiae, on the stony beach there, and found a messenger from Themistocles ordering me to report to the League at Corinth.

Like every other man in Greece that spring, I truly considered going to my farm. The disaster at Tempe had put it all in perspective. I’d wasted almost two months of my life so an incompetent allied commander and a pair of Persian spies could bury Greek independence. I had many friends in the Great King’s camp, and in one sentence, I could have both worldly power
and
the complete protection of my friends and my polis.

I actually imagined going to Artapherenes, giving him the kiss of peace and bowing to the Great King – by Zeus, I’d already done it! And requesting a command. ‘I tried fighting alongside the Greeks,’ I’d say. ‘But they ran for home at the very rumour of your coming, o King.’

I was angry, and young.

Aristides was angry too, and much older. And in no mood to submit to the Great King, and I think he held me steady. I was prepared to grumble my way across Thessaly, and he forbade me to speak my mind in front of the troops. He was right. Had I grumbled what I thought, those men would not have been there for us later.

At any rate, we arrived at Thespiae and I stood on the beach for half an hour – angry, confused and feeling ill done by. Just down the beach, an Illyrian slaver was unloading – his own relatives, it appeared, since the slaves were all blond.

The gods work in the oddest ways.

Aristides came and clasped my arm. ‘Will you go to Corinth?’ he asked.

Just in that moment I hated him and his calm assurance and his dignified maturity, his stubbornness. I was going to
lose Briseis again
. I could feel it, and the pent-up anger of a decade of frustration – the trauma of Lade, the fear of betrayal – it all boiled up inside me. My refusal was on the tip of my tongue. I drew breath, to give him what I thought of Greeks, the alliance and the gods.

Just off to my left, the Illyrian slavemaster struck a slave woman so hard that he broke her jaw. I heard the crack. Then he kicked her – savagely. Brutally.

She just lay and accepted pain.

The gods flooded me with power – like the onset of love – but suddenly I forgot Aristides and Xerxes and Corinth. I ran, bad leg and all, like Achilles.

The Illyrian saw me coming and reached for his sword.

I killed him with a cut from my scabbard – up into the underside of his arms, rotating my wrist, driving home through his nose in a final thrust. I stepped on his sword-hand to make sure there was no death-thrust, and wrenched my good new sword out of his head.

I had never seen the woman before – she was just another blond slave, and I had four. But I knew what Poseidon was telling me – on a beach, where all kingdoms meet. The Illyrian slaver looked nothing like Dagon, but in that moment, his casual savagery made him the Carthaginian’s brother.

I am pious. I worship the gods. I have seen them act among men.

Among the Illyrian slaves was a blond man who did not stoop or cringe. He was beautifully muscled, perhaps twenty or even younger. He caught my eye.

He seemed to glow like solid gold. His mouth moved.

I looked away, because it was hard to look at him – that sounds foolish, but go and look at the most beautiful woman you know – meet her eye. Hold it.

When I looked back, he was gone.

I knew I had seen my lord Apollo in the flesh, on the beach. And although he did not speak, I knew what he said. He said, ‘Omen.’

I went and embraced Aristides. ‘I’m for Corinth,’ I said, or something equally banal. Then I blurted, ‘I saw Apollo! Right here on the beach!’

Aristides looked deeply impressed, which was not a look you saw often on the Just Man. ‘Ah!’ he said. He didn’t ruin it by saying more, but embraced me and sent me on my way.

I took one of my own triakonters – thirty-oared ships, good for trade or raiding, too small to lie in the line of battle. I didn’t fill her with my best men, either. All my best marines were in Piraeus. There’s no room for marines in a triakonter, but usually every man rowing is a fighter, or at least that’s how it was in the old days. I had a polyglot collection of professional oarsmen, a former Massalian shepherd, a pair of Africans – but I knew them all well enough, and we passed the isthmus of Corinth like a blade through oil, and I was on the northern beach of Corinth a day later.

Themistocles sent for me as soon as I arrived. He was not in my good graces – despite the various arguments he had been offered, the Athenians were one of the first contingents to march away from the Vale of Tempe and they had caused the break-up of the army.

And Themistocles had made the decision to retreat.

Now he sat on a canvas and iron stool in a tent – a large tent like those the Etruscans use in war. While his slaves served me wine, a herald announced the King of Sparta.

‘Do you have my nemesis Aristides with you?’ Themistocles asked.

I shook my head. I tried never to discuss the one with the other.

‘When you see him, please tell him that I will be sending out an amnesty asking all the exiles to return,’ he said.

‘He was at Tempe, with the Plataeans,’ I said.

Themistocles had the good grace to look away. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Let me tell you the worst of it, Arimnestos. The Persians have not yet marched. Only their first division is even in Europe. The Great King is still in Asia.’ He looked at the ground. ‘Amyntas of Macedon thought he was sending good information.’

Leonidas entered and we rose to our feet, but he made a motion that sent us back to our stools. ‘Xerxes and Amyntas have done us a favour,’ Leonidas said. ‘We sent an army to Tempe for a contest of equals. Xerxes has no interest in such a contest. He would have marched around our army – and thus trapped it. To us – this is dishonourable. It solves nothing. We all know that war is about one group of strong men convincing another group of which is in the right. Xerxes does not. As he is a tyrant, so he believes that by manoeuvre and outright murder, he can cow us. And he may be correct.’ Leonidas ran his fingers though his beard. ‘I will not forget this lesson.’

Silence fell. ‘And Euanetus was not the man to command an army.’

‘He is an excellent commander for an army of Spartans,’ Leonidas said mildly. ‘He complained of you, sir. He said you refused to know your place.’

I considered a variety of answers, and elected to smile. ‘I’m sure he is correct,’ I said.

Not quite the dignity of Aristides, but I
was
learning.

Leonidas either didn’t understand my answer or chose to ignore it. ‘I will lead the next effort in person.’ He glanced at me. ‘Gorgo has another mission for you, if you will accept it.’

‘Another peace offer for Persia?’ I asked.

Themistocles leaned forward. ‘We want to try Gelon again,’ he said. ‘Gelon offered us two hundred ships if we would give him the command, and we spurned him. Gorgo has proof that Xerxes has almost twice the number of ships we have.’

He looked around.

I did a quick count in my head. ‘Xerxes has seven hundred ships?’ I asked.

Leonidas looked up, and Gorgo entered the tent. She smiled at me, and I rose and bowed, and she raised her odd eyebrow.

‘Men bow more deeply to my wife than to me,’ Leonidas said, with real humour. In another man, it might have been a bitter statement. Not from the king.

I had a nice piece of flattery ready to deploy, but Gorgo beat me to it and shook her head. ‘Men bow to you,’ she said. ‘They only bow to my beauty.’

He looked at her lovingly. ‘Nay, woman,’ he said. ‘Men bow to the King of Sparta, but they turn and bow to Gorgo.’

She showed her dimples, then.

And turned to me, a little too brusquely. ‘Carthage is sending a hundred ships to Tyre,’ she said. ‘Even as she sends three hundred against Syracusa.’

That was bad news. Mind you, until that moment I hadn’t imagined that Carthage had four hundred ships.

‘Syracusa is a mighty city,’ Gorgo said. ‘Go and beg Gelon in my husband’s name to bring his fleet here, and we’ll give him the command – and when we stop Persia, we will send a Spartan army to Sicily to defeat Carthage.’

Leonidas winced. ‘I detest asking a favour of any man,’ he admitted. ‘But you know this man.’

Themistocles winked. ‘He knows everyone,’ he said.

‘All my ships are at Piraeus,’ I said. But I knew I would do it. I knew that this was what Apollo had sent me to do.

I was two weeks sailing from Corinth to Syracusa, laden in wine and Corinthian pottery. The Spartans couldn’t believe I was sailing fully laden, but no one was paying me to play Hermes to the tyrant of Sicily, and as far as we could tell when I left, we had a year. We knew a fair amount about the Great King’s preparations in Asia, and his ships gathering – indeed, although I didn’t know it, Sekla made a similar decision at Piraeus and took a ship all the way to Aegypt and back on the first good winds, because it was obvious that despite the Greek failure at Tempe, Xerxes was not going to march that year. The season was advancing, but Xerxes’ army was still near Sardis.

I had a fine voyage, and we ran up the great harbour of Syracusa with the wind at our backs, having scarcely touched an oar all the way. We’d sighted a Carthaginian blockading squadron to the south, but the wind was in their faces and they never had a chance to snap us up. I landed my wares and had Hector and Hipponax – who had now rowed for two solid weeks and looked like Achilles and Patrokles – sell them on the dock. I pinned on a salt-stained cloak, identified myself to the tyrant’s bodyguard, and was escorted to the citadel.

It had occurred to me twenty times during my trip that, having extracted Lydia from the tyrant’s clutches, I was probably not the right man to flatter him and beg his indulgence. But I stood before him in his magnificent rose garden, high above the city. He looked as hard as rock – he clearly expected to spend the summer in harness, and he had trained hard.