‘I wish you Spartans would learn to say what you mean in a few words!’ I laughed. He was very likeable.
He smiled, and raised his cup to me.
He was built like a wrestler, with long limbs and lots of muscle. He was a handsome man, but most Spartans are. His equipment was very plain.
Cimon was sitting with me. He said, ‘Why’d you leave the land where Helen bore sons to Menelaus, Brasidas?’
Brasidas shrugged. ‘Bored,’ he said, and smiled. He made a face, and held out his cup to my pais. ‘Poor,’ he admitted.
Cimon nodded. ‘My father had many Spartan guest friends. Their mess fees are high — a man needs two or three estates to pay.’
Brasidas nodded.
‘If anything goes wrong — if crops fail, or helots revolt — a man can find himself without his mess fee.’ Cimon watched the Spartan carefully. It was an odd form of social interrogation. Cimon would make guesses, and we’d watch his body language for confirmation.
Brasidas was a patient man. He had the kind of strength that is beyond mere temper, or the need to prove itself. But he got up, swallowed the last of his wine, nodded and walked off.
Meaning, ‘None of your business.’
Cimon rose to follow him, but I held him back. ‘It’s his business,’ I said. ‘Let him go.’
Cimon nodded.
Neoptolymos joined us, his face thunderous in the firelight. ‘Why won’t you let me burn these farms!’ he demanded. It was odd — a sign of how I was growing, between Heraclitus and Dano, but I couldn’t help but be amused at the complete contrast between the taciturn Spartan and the emotional Illyrian.
I put a hand on his shoulder. ‘By the end of the week, they’ll be your farms,’ I said. ‘Why burn them?’
‘He’ll raise his cousins and his war band and we’ll — accomplish nothing.’ He all but pouted. He didn’t seem like a man in his mid-twenties, but like a very young, very angry man.
I put my arm around him. He fought me for a moment, and then he grunted, and I saw he was crying.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘We’ll get him.’
That’s what leaders do. We sound positive.
The Nubians were away in the wolf’s tail of dawn. We moved along the road between the fields — a dry, sun-baked track. There was a storm brewing away to the south, and thunder sounded in the distance like the grumbling of the gods.
Around mid-morning, Ka brought back another dozen horses, and Daud and Sittonax took two of them and rode off with another dozen men who could ride, doubling our scout force.
A ridge rises from the plain, about forty stades inland, and we had marched around to the east of it, and now we passed along it, keeping the ridge between us and the sea. We joined the ‘main road’ — I use the term very loosely — south of a fortified settlement called Pista.
If all was going well, our ships should be off Dyrachos by now, snapping up any fishing boats in the offing and making trouble. And being very visible. In late afternoon, after marching maybe seventy stadia, we crossed the Ardaxanos River — in late summer, it was scarcely deserving of the name. We moved right up until dark, and we camped at the top of a low hill twenty-five stadia from the town of Dyrachos. We hadn’t seen any opposition, and with twenty horsemen covering a broad arc before us, I didn’t really expect ambush. At nightfall, Daud took all the mounted men on a sweep to make sure we weren’t going to be surprised in the morning.
My intention was that we storm the town at daybreak, but the truth on the ground was very different from Neoptolymos’s description. He remembered the ridge as running right down to the town, but it wasn’t that simple, and there was open ground all the way to the coast from where we were camped. I stood on the hilltop in the last light, looking at the sea in the distance and worrying. We’d eaten our rations, and even plundering the farms we passed wasn’t feeding us. Really efficient plundering takes time, and slows a march to a crawl, and we had moved fast. Moving a force fast requires discipline and supplies.
In the morning, we would be out of food. Further, our rendezvous with our ships was for noon the next day, and if we missed it… Well, things were about to grow very complicated indeed.
I didn’t sleep well. I dreamed of the Keltoi girl throwing herself over the side. And Miltiades, the night after Marathon, saying he was with the gods. And Lydia… not speaking, but just looking at me with a face full of hate.
I rose in the dark and prayed. I’m not much of a prayer, but that morning, I felt close to death. When I rose, my joints hurt, my hands ached and the old wound in my leg burned. And away to the south was a line of dark clouds that boded ill for a sailor.
There was a sheep that had strayed onto our hill, and I walked down, trapped it against a cliff and grabbed it. I built a small fire and sacrificed the sheep to Zeus and burned its thigh bones.
And took the meat up the hill for my mess, of course.
We got a late start. Our sentries weren’t as alert as they ought to have been: we’d awakened slowly and the sun was rising by the time we cooked my sheep. Nor could I feed mutton to two hundred men from one animal. Sittonax took a dozen horsemen out, and they were back before they left, riding hard.
Brasidas spotted them returning and ordered his men to arm.
I was still greasy from mutton as I saw the dust cloud. My pais helped me into my thorax. I put on the whole panoply: it was obvious we were going to fight.
So much for my careful strategy.
Sittonax rode in about the time that I had my arm-harness on. He rode up, controlling his horse effortlessly, and dropped off.
‘Six hundred men. No kind of order, not much armour, a dozen horsemen. Headed this way.’ He shrugged. ‘I think they’ve marched all night.’
Six hundred?
I scratched my jaw. ‘Officers!’ I bellowed.
Neoptolymos looked at me. He was in his magnificent armour, and he made a brilliant show. He looked like Achilles’ son. ‘He has raised all his people,’ he said simply. ‘He has his retainers, the local lords, and his best slaves. If you had let me raise my relatives, we’d match him spear for spear.’ He shrugged.
Well, hubris is always with us. All I’d done by marching around the mountain was to give him time to raise his troops. Of course, I had given my own troops time to shake off their sea legs and eat a few hot meals.
‘Right,’ I said, looking around. ‘We have half the heroes of Marathon. We have armour, discipline and a good night’s sleep.’
Cimon raised an eyebrow. His father used to say that all that mattered in a land fight was how many men you had.
But Cimon was good enough not to say so.
‘We’ll move right at them,’ I said. ‘Right down the road. When we’re close — really close — we form up and go right in. No mucking about and no shouting insults. They’ll try and get formed and go around our flanks. All we need to do is get Epidavros and kill him — right?’
Neoptolymos nodded.
Brasidas nodded, too. ‘I get it,’ he said.
‘Form a good phalanx,’ I said. ‘Daud — you and Ka and Sittonax stay mounted and harass them. Pick off any man on the edge of their formation — get behind them and shoot arrows. Best of all, don’t let their right flank form.’
Ka wrinkled his brow.
Daud shrugged.
‘Get in close, and crowd them, and when they come at you, ride away. Then go back. Don’t let them form their line.’ I’d watched the Saka and the Persians do it. I knew what a handful of horsemen could do to infantry.
I put a stick down on the ground. ‘This is their column, marching,’ I said. ‘At some point, when we are close enough, they pick a field and start to form. Right? And you get in on their right, and make trouble — right in their faces — while they want to be shouting orders and getting the laggards to stand in a shield wall.’
Cimon laughed. ‘Cavalry tactics from a sea-wolf.’
We ate the last of our stale bread with the last of our olive oil, and drank the last drops of our wine. To Neoptolymos, I said, ‘We’re lucky.’