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
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
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