‘The scout says there are at least ten thousand horse and twice as many men again.’

Xanthippus waved that away, though the men around him stumbled over their own feet as they tried to lean close enough to hear. Large numbers were notoriously difficult to judge – it was hardly a skill that could be taught or practised. Yet Xanthippus had seen single garrisons on the Ionian coast as large as the ranks of hoplites he marched alongside – and those on the very edges of the Persian lands. Men they had captured boasted of heartlands with a million men under arms, of massed regiments each ten thousand strong, numbers so great he could only pray it was a lie, designed to strike fear into the hearts of enemies.

‘Anything else?’ he said, eyeing the lines ahead. Like Themistocles, Xanthippus was taller than most of his countrymen. The gods awarded height to the sons of fishermen and the wealthy, so that it set them apart. Xanthippus could see over their heads to where the scout was making his way back. Another was already with Miltiades, he saw, the lad deep in earnest conversation as he cut shapes in the air with his hands, describing what he had seen.

‘They say the ships came round the coast from Eretria. The scout said some of his mates went up into the hills and saw smoke from the port there.’

Xanthippus nodded, though his heart sank. Lies and wild rumours flew when war was in the offing. Yet it seemed Epikleos had been right. Eretria was around the coast from Marathon, on a vast spit of land across a stretch of open sea. That long branch of ancient hills was part of the natural protections that sheltered Athens from Poseidon and his rages. Eretria was a wealthy port and some thirty thousand had lived there. If the Persians had hit that spot, there would have been horrors beyond imagining, perhaps still going on. Xanthippus clenched his jaw. He hated them, in their arrogance and appalling cruelty. The Persians made him a darker man than he would have been without the visions they brought to torment him. He sometimes thought he had seen too many things to ever sleep well.

‘Take water to those further back, lad,’ he said.

His tone had been harder than he had intended, so that the boy looked confused and hurt. Xanthippus tried to reach out and ruffle his hair, but he ducked away and ran down the line, the waterskin gurgling on his shoulder.

The actual scout had remounted to carry back what he had learned. Full of his own importance, he did not seem to notice Xanthippus until the strategos raised his right hand, calling him over. Even then the man hesitated. When Xanthippus looked over his shoulder, he could see Themistocles was also gesturing briskly for him to approach. The strategos had no patience! They were barely two hours on the march. They hadn’t covered half the distance to the enemy and, at that moment, they were heading closer to the sea to skirt a range of hills that loomed above them all and cast a shadow on their path ahead. Xanthippus cursed when he saw that. Was it another omen? After the missing eye on his shield, he did not want to walk through cold shade just before a battle. It was too much like a premonition of death.