Idomeneus was at my shoulder.
‘Sound the rally!’ I panted.
I could see it — by Ares and by Aphrodite — that’s what I remember best of that whole glorious day. I could see what I needed to do, as if Athena stood at my shoulder, or perhaps Heracles, and whispered it in my ear.
I pivoted my body to face the beach, twelve stades away, and spear my arms wide. ‘Rally here!’ I called. ‘On me!’
Idomeneus went into his place, and Gelon and Teucer. In seconds, fifty more men were fitting in, and then a hundred. A long minute, and an arrow slew one of my Plataeans almost at the end of my spear, but by now the whole mass of them was forming up, fifteen hundred men.
Even the former slaves. Even when the old Plataeans had to show them where to stand.
The Sakai weren’t stupid. They were shooting at us as fast as they could.
The far end of the line had Hermogenes and Antigonus. I ran down the front rank and counted off twenty files from the left end, and pulled Antigonus out of the ranks.
‘Take them — wheel left, and pursue the beaten men. Stay close enough to keep them running and stay far enough that they don’t turn and kill you. If you reach their camp — stop!’
Antigonus nodded. ‘Pursue.’ He gave me a tired smile. ‘Have we won?’
‘That’s right!’ I slapped his shield. ‘Go!’ If you think I was a good strategos, a just man — I’m no Aristides. I sent my brother-in-law and my closest friend away to a nice safe pursuit. They’d done their part, and Pen would not become a widow this day. I didn’t think that the remnants of the enemy had any fight left in them — nor was I wrong.
Then back to my own — now formed facing the empty air that hung off the new flank of the Sakai.
‘Slow and steady. Keep together.’ I shouted these things. I wanted the Sakai to see us coming. ‘Sing the Paean!’ I yelled, and men took it up — all along the line. There had been no time to sing the Paean or give much of a war cry before our first charge. Now — now we had all the time in the world.
We sang, and our lines stiffened, bent, righted themselves — it is hard to keep the line on rough ground, and the plains of Marathon in early autumn are like farm fields the world over. We had to flow around clumps of trees, bushes, rocks — it was not like the painting in the stoa, children. There were no straight lines at Marathon.
But the Sakai saw us and gave more ground. They tried to run and re-form to face us, but the Athenians stayed on them, and they died. Those Sakai were gallant, and they tried, again and again, to make a stand and hold the line.
As we passed the edge of their formation, we saw why.
Our own centre was shattered, as if a herd of cattle had passed through. Where Aristides had stood, there were only victorious Persians, Datis’s bodyguard and dead Greeks.
I cursed under my breath, trying to see. Had we lost? I faltered, and my voice roared ‘Forward!’ without my volition — some god took my throat, I swear. I went forward.
Then, as we turned the flanks of the Sakai, they folded as fast as a man can lose a boxing match. One moment they were outmatched, but still game, their line backing away but their men fighting hard, and the next they were finished, flying for their lives. They started to run in earnest because we were behind them. I didn’t want to fight the Sakai anyway. I wanted to come to grips with Datis. The day was neither lost nor won, and with everything in the balance, my men were not going to stop and fight men in flight.
‘Paean! Again!’ I roared, and they obeyed — although as long as I have been a soldier, I have never heard the Paean sung twice in the same action.
Now I could see the Greek centre — well back, almost where we had started our charge, and only clumps of men. I could see horsehair crests there, and Persian felt hats. And men looking towards us.
It all happened in moments, heartbeats of time, too little for me to give an order or change our front. The Persian centre was killing the Antiochae — and then they were running, racing over the stubble of the hay for their camp. The sight of us behind them — however ill-formed our phalanx really was — terrified them the way our charge apparently had not.
The Sakai had held the flanks for Datis and his picked men to wreck the Athenian centre, and the dead were everywhere, or so it seemed. But by the gods, when they saw us coming behind, threatening to cut them off from the ships, I saw men grab the satrap — hard to miss in his scarlet and gold — and run him to a horse. His picked killers ran at his heels like dogs on a hunt.
They were too far away for my formed men to reach. They ran through the hole in our lines and down towards the beach. Some of their men ran west, away from the beach, following an officer. More — I didn’t see this — ran west and north — around behind our lines.
The right wing — our right, Miltiades’ men — had fought as hard as we had and been just as victorious, and even as we came up to the Persians, Miltiades’ men began to form a new phalanx facing us — one of the strangest sights I’ve seen on a battlefield, two victorious phalanxes from the same side facing each other over three stades of ground, with Persians streaming away between us.
There was no holding my men then. It started with the rear-rankers — the freedmen. They saw their fortunes running by, hundreds and hundreds of gold-laced Persians running for their camp, and they left their ranks and started in pursuit. I called for them to halt — and more men joined them.
All my men streamed away after them. I stopped, popped my helmet on the back of my head, took a swig of water and spat it out, and bandaged my knee. By my side, Idomeneus was panting, bent double, staring fixedly at the stubble, and Teucer was humming to himself, scouring the grass for spent shafts.
When I raised my head, I could see all the way to the ships. There was haze in the distance, but I could see that the barbarians had formed again, well down the field, and there was fighting there, and over in the olive grove west of the swamp, too.
Most of my oikia — my own men — stood around me. Styges had a cut on his sword arm, Gelon looked as fit as a statue, and a dozen of my new freedmen had chosen to loot the corpses in the area. So I had maybe twenty men, and there were knots of fighting all over the field. Men were leaving the field, too — dribs and drabs of Greeks, wounded or just too tired too continue. Not everyone lived the life of the palaestra and the gymnasium. And there was no real discipline — man who felt he’d done enough could just turn and walk away.
But I was the polemarch of Plataea, and there was still fighting. The Greeks around me were saying ‘Nike, Nike.’
Maybe. But to me, the sound from the north was an ominous one. It suggested that the battle wasn’t over yet.
I tested my wounded leg, and it was solid enough. Pain is pain. Fatigue is fatigue.
‘Zeus Soter,’ one of the new men said. He had a wound on his hand with blood flowing out of it, despite the rag he’d put on it. ‘I feel like shit!’ he said. ‘I need to sit.’
I grabbed his shoulder. ‘You feel bad?’ I asked. ‘Think how they feel!’ I pointed to the row of dead Sakai, naked now and their white bodies lying in a row where our rear-rankers had stripped them.
Idomeneus barked his battle laugh.
‘More fighting,’ he said.
We all drank our canteens dry, and then Greeks came up from the wreck of the Athenian centre — some ashamed, and others proud. Many had run, and others fought on until the Persians were forced back — and you can guess which group included Aristides.
‘By the gods, Plataean, I think we have won!’ he shouted as he ran up. He had the cheekplates of his helmet cocked back to give him a better view. There was blood flowing down his leg, and Idomeneus and I insisted he be bandaged before we went forward again. Aristides brought a hundred men with him — they were weary, but they wanted to be in at the kill.