Christian Cameron: The Great King

Bah — sometimes I relive it. Is it terrible, that ripping a man’s life from his body and throwing it through the iron gates to Hades can be such a joy?

I took his spear from his fingers even as he screamed and his entrails loosed and his feet pounded the deck, and stood, but my pirates had cleared the enemy marines and the Phoenician oarsmen had had a long day, a long pull, and had no fight in them.

I stood and panted, and only then noticed that my left leg was covered in blood.

I turned, and blood sprayed. I look desperately at my mid-section, at my armour. There was blood there, too, but no glistening wound, no death blow.

I dropped my sword — my vision was tunnelling — and reached for my neck, and only then did I see it. .

My left hand was cut to the bone and two fingers were severed.

I fell to my knees. Men were running to help me. .

I wasn’t in the darkness when we ran up the beach. Hermogenes bound the hand tight while Pericles got my armour off.

The old chiton was turning red.

But I managed to stay upright, as the allied fleet cheered us. I heard later that the Medes could hear our cheers across the straits at Aphetae.

We beached under the eyes of the commander and I watched as Siberios brought the blue ship in — Hector was at the helm. He waved, and I knew from his face my son was alive.

I gave thanks to the gods.

We all went ashore in a great mass, and if the Medes had chosen that moment to attack, they could have had us all. But they had other plans, as you’ll hear, and we went up the beach to the altars and made a sacrifice, and Aristides came and embraced me, his right hand as sticky and brown as mine.

‘What happened?’ he asked.

But what I remember best was Nicolas, who had just had his first command. He rolled up to me with his fisherman’s gait and his lopsided grin, and jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

‘You’ll never guess what I found in that ship,’ he said, indicating our last capture.

‘Gold?’ I guessed.

He barked his odd laugh. The man behind him was Brasidas, the Spartan.

We had a plethora of high-ranking prisoners, but the best report was from Brasidas. For reasons that will become clear later, we covered him with a report that a diver, Scyllias, a native of Sicyone, had swum all the way from Aphetae. In fact, the famous swimmer stole a small boat and sailed to us, and his report was nowhere near as complete as Brasidas’.

What we heard was that the Persians had lost almost two hundred fighting ships in the storm, most of them north of the passage of Artemesium — despite which, their spies had reported us as having abandoned the beaches at the temple, and they had sent a heavy squadron — two hundred ships — to envelop us by rowing all the way around Euboea.

That report might have created consternation. We were about to be attacked from behind.

But we had just gone head to head with sixteen Persian ships and we’d sunk three and taken six of the enemy and lost not a single ship.

Even Adamenteis was silent.

Themistocles had a long discussion with Eurybiades. It is a picture of the two men that sticks in my mind — Themistocles gesturing like a boy, and the Spartan navarch sitting calmly, his hands on his knees.

And then Themistocles came and grabbed my hand like a forward maiden at a party and took me out into the olive trees.

‘I’m a little old to kiss strange men in the dark,’ I said.

The Athenian laughed. ‘No older than I am. Listen, Plataean. The old Spartan will ask you first what course of action we should take. You are the hero of the day, after all.’

I nodded. My son was alive and everything seemed possible. I regretted Dagon, but his flight was an admission of sorts. What can I say? I thought I’d have him in the end.

‘What will you tell him?’ Themistocles asked.

‘What would you like me to say?’ I asked. I meant to sound ironical, but Themistocles was a politician, and he took me at my word and leaned forward eagerly. ‘You must tell him to attack,’ he said.

‘Attack?’ I asked. I had in mind a set of raids, some burned hulls, perhaps a night attack on an outlying camp. .

‘If we attack, the Corinthians and Aeginians have to fight,’ he said.

I scratched my beard. ‘Aren’t we outnumbered four to one?’

‘Worse when they come behind us. And as you showed today — when one side does something unexpected, the other side can make mistakes. Poseidon, you took a risk today. If you’d lost-’

‘I didn’t lose,’ I said.

But as was often the case between me and Themistocles — I agreed. He was right. An attack with all our ships would commit us, and if Leonidas was winning on land, this was the time. And anyway. .

Morale matters. Ours soared. My little victory was insignificant. Think of the thousand Persian ships. Two hundred lost in a storm. Two hundred sailing to take us in the rear.

We took eight.

We walked back through the grove.

‘You really were quite marvellous,’ Themistocles said suddenly. And for a moment I saw past his mask. Under the orator, the politician, the democrat, was a man who wanted to be a hero.

These things always surprise me. So instead of making a good answer, I shrugged like a pretty girl given an unwanted compliment and went back to the commanders.

In the end, Eurybiades asked each of a dozen of us what we ought to do. We had two hundred and seventy-one ships plus the captures. Paramanos and Harpagos went among the captives and identified all the Aeolian and Ionians from families we knew, or men we thought we could trust, and Cimon sent a helmsman and four marines, and Demetrios sent four more marines and a cloaked man to be trierarchos, which was how Aristides came to command a ship not his own while pretending to be in exile.

At any rate, Eurybiades came to me with a crown of laurel he’d twisted with his own hands, and settled it on my brow. There it is, on the wall with the fourth aspis.

‘So, Plataean?’ he asked me, first of all the navarchs.

I looked at Themistocles. I didn’t love him, but he was the strategist.

‘First let me ask, what news from the army?’ I asked.

Eurybiades smiled with satisfaction. ‘The Persians and Medes attacked the army all day today,’ he said. ‘When the packet boat rowed, the king had been engaged twice, and every Greek had fought with honour. There is a pile of Persian corpses by the Hot Gates, and the king says they all saw the Great King in a rage.’

We all cheered.

We were doing it. Saving Greece.

Eurybiades nodded happily and turned back to me. ‘Well?’

‘I think we should attack,’ I said.

It is much harder to fight on the second day.

Every time a man wears his armour, it hurts. The shoulders chafe, and no matter how well made it is, the muscles of the chest are bruised by bronze at the edges of the arms — every cross-body cut, every Harmodius blow, every spear-parry forces your pectoral muscles against the edges of your cuirass. Greaves bite into the instep. All of this is covered by the spirit of battle, the elation of the moment, fear and fatigue.

But when you fight on a second day, the sores are still raw, the bruises fresh. If you have a wound, as I had, it is raw and red, and you worry still about an arrow from Apollo’s fickle bow.

The oarsmen had, every one of them, endured the fear of imminent death and had exerted some kind of maximum effort.

Every Plataean marine and all of Cimon’s had faced an enemy sword or spear and the horror of drowning in armour.

And some of us had sat up and drunk too much the night before.

There was cursing.

We had the longest pull to our place in the line, but I was conscious that this was for everything . I, who seldom give speeches, had my marines make a small platform for me, like a speakers’ rostrum on the Pnyx, and I mounted it, and spoke to all of them — fifteen hundred Plataeans and five hundred former slaves, prisoners and Athenian exiles.