Marathon (Long War 2) by Cameron Christian

Author:Cameron, Christian [Cameron, Christian]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2013-02-24T04:50:07+00:00

This time, I was much more careful in my approach to mighty Athens, and I rode clear around the city and arrived at Aristides’

gate as the autumn sun set and men puled their chlamyses closer against the wind and dark cold.

His wife came to the gate, summoned by servants. She surprised me by granting me the flash of her smile and a quick kiss on the cheek.

‘Arimnestos of Plataea, you are ever a friend of this house,’

she said. ‘My husband is late coming in from the Agora. Please come in!’

I have always valued that woman. ‘Despoina, this is Styges, acting as my hypaspist. He is no slave.’

She nodded to him. ‘I’l see to his bed, then,’ she said.

‘You’l want to bathe.’

Not a question.

I was just clear of my bath, toweling down and wishing I had not put quite so much warm water on her floor, when Aristides came in through the curtain and embraced me, his wool cloak stil carrying the cold of the outside. ‘Arimnestos!’ he said.

I had last seen him as his ship swept past mine, out of the pocket of death, at Lade. ‘You lived,’ I said with satisfaction.

‘And you as wel, my Plataean hero. By the gods, you fought like Heracles himself.’ He embraced me again.

Other men had said as much, but other men were not the soft-spoken prig of justice, Aristides, and I valued those words –

wel, up to this very hour.

I folowed him to a table set beside his wife’s loom, and the I folowed him to a table set beside his wife’s loom, and the three of us ate together. Later, it became the fashion to exclude women from many things, but not then. There was meat from a sacrifice, fresh tuna – a magnificent fish – good barley porridge, and rich wheat bread. In Plataea, it would have been a feast. In Athens, it was merely dinner with a rich man.

‘How stands the case with Miltiades?’ I asked after I had eaten my fil. Among Greeks, it is bad manners to ask hard questions during a meal. Truth to tel, it is bad manners in Persia, in Aegypt, in Sicily and in Rome, too.

Aristides wiped his fingers on a cloth – my sister would have kicked him, but customs differ from town to town – and pursed his lips. ‘On the evidence, the jury can do nothing but convict him,’ he said.

I could hear something in his voice. I raised an eyebrow.

‘But?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘Men are seldom convicted on evidence,’ he said. ‘Miltiades’ case has become a test of the reach of the Great King into our city. The case was brought with malice, by the Alcmaeonids, and I have reason to believe that the Great King paid for it to be done.’

I laughed. ‘And the sad truth is that every one of us knows that Miltiades had every intention of seizing the city.’

Aristides frowned. ‘I wish you would phrase things more accurately, Plataean. We know nothing of the kind. We know what he might have done had he defeated the Persians and Medes at Lade.

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