Salamis by Christian Cameron

Author:Christian Cameron
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2015-08-12T22:00:00+00:00

Part II

The Razor’s Edge

When all Greece was balanced on the razor’s edge

we protected her with our souls, and here we lie

Cenotaph to the dead of Salamis

I woke from a dream so erotic that I might have been on the point of an indiscretion, and pondered what the gods meant by sending me a dream of making love to Jocasta, for whom I had infinite respect but towards whom I had never felt the least attraction. But my ­waking mind found the notion humorous, and I rolled out of my cloak looking more like a satyr than a man and threw myself into the sea. I dried myself with my linens in the darkness and woke Seckla, and all around me men blew life into campfires.

I sent Hipponax up the ridge to see what could be seen from our watchtowers, and I walked along the beach until I was sure that the Athenians were in motion. Xanthippus was civil enough and already in his armour, while I was still naked and my hair wet from my swim, but I felt better for it, and better still when Hector put a horn cup of mulled wine in my hand.

The first kiss of dawn touched the sky and I put on my best chiton, milk-white wool with purple stripes and red embroidery, ravens and stars. Then I put on the leather straps that went around my ankles to protect them from the slap of the greaves against my instep, and then I snapped the greaves over my shins, cursing the way they cut into every old wound and new scratch from my last outing. Hector knelt behind me and buckled them on, and then he put armour on my left thigh – the thigh most likely to be hit. Sometimes I wear armour on both, but usually I do not.

Then he hinged open my beautiful bronze thorax that Anaxicles had hammered out of new bronze back in Syracusa, what seemed like many years before. He closed it and slid the pins shut, slipped the arm guard on my right forearm and the shoulder guard on my right shoulder. No man needs a guard on his left shoulder or forearm – that’s what the aspis covers.

Many men were gathered there. It was like a ceremony and a festival, too. I was Achilles being armed, or Ares, or mighty Ajax or Diomedes, or one of the Immortals or the heroes, and the dawn gilded my bronze and made it glow red, as if I’d spilled a fiery immortal blood. Hector brought my helmet and Hipponax, back from his mission and looking furtive for some reason, reported that the Peloponnesians were already arrayed and putting rowers into their ships, and also reported, somewhat unnecessarily, that the Brauron girls were awake and singing hymns. He put my aspis on my arm, and then he and Hector armed together. Brasidas came out of his tent armed, and Idomeneus, who looked more like a god

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