Of Merchants & Heros (25 page)

I looked at it, and all of a sudden I was seized by grief, so much so that I blinked and wiped my eyes.

‘Why so sad?’ said Menexenos, stepping up beside me and touching my shoulder.

I shook my head. ‘I was thinking,’ I said, gazing at this forgotten monument to friendship, ‘that life is short. No sooner does summer come than winter is in the air. Who remembers these two friends now? Even their tomb will soon be dust.’

He closed his hand gently on the back of my neck, kneading the muscles there. ‘They had what they had. This stone was placed here so men might remember them for a short while. You are right; even stone crumbles. Yet what they had was real, and it lives still, for it has the power to touch your soul. So why be sad, when you have seen beauty?’

I nodded and smiled, and put away my grief. I often think he had the power to see further than I. For he saw light, where I saw only darkness. He saw the good in everything.

Half a month later, in the middle of the night, I was roused from a deep sleep by the sound of shouting in the street outside.

At first I turned over, thinking it was drunken revellers. But then what I heard made me leap up, for a man in the street was crying out, ‘The Macedonians! The Macedonians are coming!’

I leapt from my bed and threw open the shutters. Already, up on the hill, lights were kindling. One moment, it seemed, there was this one man’s voice. Then, all over Athens, there was shouting, dogs barking, and lamps appearing in windows and doorways.

A night-time watchman, up in the high pass at Dekeleia, had been the first to catch sight of Philip’s troops. It was a dark night with no moon, and he would not have noticed them at all except, by chance, he heard the distant stumbling of a baggage-mule. Then, looking more carefully, he had seen them on the ridge, their torches extinguished, a faint moving shadow against the backdrop of the stars.

Immediately the captain of the fort dispatched his fastest runner, a victor in the long-race who knew the goat-tracks and secret paths.

He ran through the night. But for him, the city would have been taken with the citizens still in their beds.

The alarm sounded on the high-city, summoning the reserves to the walls. In the house, Menexenos and Kleinias strapped on their armour, and Lamos the slave-boy counted the javelins in the holsters, and readied their swords. Then they were gone, and the room was still.

I turned to Lamos and said, ‘What now?’

He shrugged. He was a stocky Thracian with a square, serious face and a mass of unruly red hair. He said, ‘We wait.’

I sat down on the couch, and immediately stood up again. ‘I cannot wait and do nothing. I’m going to fetch my sword.’

‘But Marcus, sir. You are Roman, not Athenian. Besides, you have no armour.’

‘The mercenaries have been called out; they are not Athenian either. And what difference one more?’

I hurried upstairs and fetched my sword from the chest in my room. It felt as familiar to me now as my own limbs. During my time with Antikles the muscles in my arms and sides had grown and hardened. The sword moved with my thoughts. I no longer sensed its weight.

I found Menexenos up on the high walkway above the Dipylon Gate. Seeing me he frowned, and opened his mouth to speak. But in the end only nodded.

I peered out through the crenels into the darkness. ‘What news?’

I said.

‘Nothing yet.’ He pointed northwestward. ‘They will come from that way, down from Parnes.’

I stared out. Everything was still. Stars glimmered in a clear sky.

In the distance was a deeper blackness, where the mountains rose up from the plain. It seemed a night like any other. It was hard to believe that Philip’s army was somewhere out there, bearing down on us.

Menexenos called to a youth standing near. ‘Lysandros, run down to Hippokrates’ training ground and ask for one of their spare cuirasses, and see what else they can give you.’

‘Yes, Menexenos,’ said the boy adoringly, glad to be of use, his young face full of moment. He hurried off down the ladder. Under his breath Menexenos said, ‘Curse you, Marcus; I knew you would come. But this is not your battle.’

I said, ‘Remember what you said after Piraeus. I am here beside you. There is nowhere else I belong.’

He frowned at me, and tried to look disapproving.

The night wore on. Some time before dawn, scouts reported that Philip’s army was on the plain. By now the city was lit up like a beacon. The lights must have told him his attempt at surprise had failed.

Presently someone said he had slowed his advance. There was no more need for hurry. Now he would wait for daylight.

At the time when the black of night begins to grey we saw them, a long line of men like a moving shadow, with the baggage-train coming up behind.

They halted a mile from the walls, and spread out along the bank of the Kephissos, and around the Akademy gardens. A band of red showed over the distant ridge of Hymettos; the birds began to chatter, and along the wall the order went out to douse the torches.

Down below in the street, on the city side of the towered gateway, came the rustle and whisper of assembling men.

‘What are they doing?’ asked the youth called Lysandros, peering down.

Just then Kleinias appeared. He acknowledged me without much surprise, and cast a quick frown at the old cuirass and greaves I had strapped on. Menexenos said, ‘Father, what’s happening down there? ’

‘The Strategos,’ answered Kleinias, in a flat weary voice, ‘has given the order to attack. He proposes to rush out at first light and surprise the Macedonians.’

Menexenos glanced over his shoulder to see who was listening.

Apart from me, no one else was in close earshot.

‘What?’ he said. ‘Has he lost his mind?’

‘He thinks it a clever ruse. He is gathering all the men he can find.’

‘But it will be a slaughter!’

Kleinias paused. ‘Pray God it is not; for we are ordered down there.’ He looked at me. ‘Not you, Marcus. There is no need.’

‘Forgive me, sir,’ I said straight away. ‘But I am coming too.’

He sighed and shook his head. ‘In that case, somebody had better find you a shield.’

We gathered in the wide-open space behind the gateway. As I took my position, some of the men around me patted my back and mumbled thanks. But mostly they just stared ahead, tense and silent, their hands clenching and unclenching on their sword-hilts as they dwelt upon their private thoughts. I saw old grandfathers there, white-haired gentlemen dressed in antique armour that could not have seen service for a generation. Further up the line, under the gatepost, the youth Lysandros was standing with some older men, doing his best to look brave. Menexenos saw him too, and with a squeeze of my arm went off to speak to him. I could not hear what he said, but the boy’s face lit up and he nodded, and he came back with Menexenos to stand between us.

Above the gate towers the sky showed in long ragged strands of pink. From somewhere behind, the Strategos barked out an order.

The bolts grated in their courses, and the gates swung slowly open.

Then a man’s voice sounded the long note of the paean, and all around the others took it up, until it was an echoing roar that fired the blood. Then we surged forward, out into the dawn.

Even in those first moments I sensed a faltering, just as a running man, seeing some unseen obstacle in his path, will try to alter his course, though he knows it is too late. It was little wonder.

Most of the men had not been up on the walls: they had not seen the extent of Philip’s army.

Ahead, all along the Macedonian line, orders rang out and trumpets sounded. The Strategos had been right in one thing: they had not expected us. But if they were surprised, it was the surprise of the lion that wakes to find the antelope has wandered into his den.

But it was too late for questioning. We fought among the orchards and paddocks and farmsteads, backing against walls, racing through barns, stumbling through pens among outraged geese and chickens. The Macedonians were slow to meet us, but when they did they converged from all sides, using their long pikes when they could, fighting hand to hand when there was no space.

Our line, such as it was, quickly broke and scattered. I found myself fighting around a wooden barn on the edge of an olive grove.

The boy Lysandros had kept at my side, and there were some others with us I did not know. I looked round for Menexenos but could not see him. I guessed he had stayed with Kleinias, but there was no time to consider this, for just then, ahead and to the side of us, a troop of Macedonians came through the trees at the double.

We engaged them on the edge of the olive plantation, where a shallow ditch ran. For a while we held them back, and I was just starting to think they might withdraw when another troop came advancing from the other side, along the path beside the barn.

As he passed, one of the Macedonians cast a torch into the dust- dry hay inside. It caught immediately with a roar, and the flames leapt up. I turned my back on the fire and faced the advancing men.

Then, behind me, from within the barn, I heard a scream – a woman’s voice. She must have hidden there when the city gates were closed.

Someone rushed past me, in among the hay bales. It was Lysandros.

‘Wait!’ I cried, but he ran on.

By now Macedonians were coming at us from all sides. We were hopelessly outnumbered. Quickly I glanced round.

Dense smoke was curling from the high doorway of the barn.

Already flames were licking at the straw beneath the tiles. I could not see Lysandros. I called his name. Then the woman screamed again, her voice full of terror. I beat back the man I was fighting, then ducked under the fiery lintel and ran inside.

Immediately I saw what had delayed Lysandros. A wall of flame divided one side of the barn from the other. On the far side of it a woman was crouching in an empty stall. Lysandros, his forearm over his face, was doing his best to beat down the fire with the flat of his sword; but as soon as he scattered the burning hay it settled and caught elsewhere.

I paused, stepped back three paces, then took a run and leapt through the flames. I ran to the woman, seized her by the arm, and pulled her up. At first she followed; then, seeing I was pulling her into the fire, she began to fight me, beating at my cuirass with her free hand.

‘Stop!’ I yelled. Then she just went limp and trembled, like a caught bird.

I half-heaved, half-threw her back the way I had come. The air seared my lungs. I could smell the hairs on my legs and forearms as they singed in the heat. And then we were through to the other side.

I threw the whimpering girl into Lysandros’s arms. ‘Get her back to the city!’ I cried. Then we both turned as four Macedonians darkened the only exit.

They were grinning, and I saw my death in their faces. The flames were closing on us. They could see we had nowhere to run.

They began to advance, side by side.

I stilled my mind, as Antikles had taught me. Silently I said a prayer to Mars, God of War, and to Wolf-Apollo. And then I sprang.

One of the Macedonians, thinking I was as good as dead, was already casting hungry eyes at the woman. I knew the look. I had seen it in the Libyan, years before.

It was he I killed first. The other I took on my backward swing, while he was still staring in surprise at his dying comrade. Then Lysandros came at the third, driving him back, and I took the fourth.

‘Now go!’ I shouted, pushing him and the woman out through the burning doorway.

There is victory to be found even in the midst of defeat, and this was mine. As soon as I was outside once more I could hear the cries of the scattered Athenians, calling on each other to retreat. I covered Lysandros’s path long enough for him to get away, then drew back towards the road.

It was there I saw Menexenos.

He was surrounded by three Macedonians, and a line of others was approaching from the orchard behind. I let out a yell and ran at them, killing one and wounding another. This gave the others pause.

They hesitated and drew back, suspecting, I think, that I was the vanguard of some new force that was coming at them. It gave us enough time to withdraw.

From everywhere the Macedonians were surging forward to the walls.

As we fell back I noticed, at the head of their line, a man with a cropped black beard and gold-embossed armour, decorated with the sunburst emblem of Macedon. No one needed to tell me who he was.

Even in the midst of battle, where he could easily be struck down, King Philip was wearing the royal diadem. He advanced with his men, leading from the front, and in that moment it came to me that not once had I set eyes on the Athenian Strategos. All I had heard was his disembodied voice, from somewhere behind, giving the order to attack.

The last defensive lines collapsed. The air was full of smoke, and the cries of the wounded. As I retreated I tripped on a corpse. It was one of many, and I took no notice. But then I saw something that made me pause and look again.

It was the simple wrought pommel that lay in the man’s outstretched hand. I knew the sword. I had seen it many times, held over me, poised for the deathblow. It belonged to Antikles.

He was lying on his side, in a pool of his own blood, and I saw he had been run through from behind. His mouth and eyes were open still, but his spirit had left him.

By now the others were calling urgently to me. The gates were closing. But still I waited.

I knelt down and closed his eyes, and straightened his spattered tunic, and thanked him for all he had taught me, in case, perhaps, from some place where the dead go, he might hear me.

As I stood to leave my eyes fell on the sword again. I took it up. I knew he would have wished it.

Thereafter, the Athenians did not venture from behind their walls.

The Macedonians, who could not storm them, fell back and made camp.

That day the city streets echoed with the wailing of women. Later, the Strategos, the Archon, and the leading magistrates met in council, and put out after that it was a great victory that Philip had been repulsed from the walls.