Bonfires lit the beach, with great bushes of fennel thrown onto them to sweeten the air. Xanthippus spent time checking the men of Acamantis were safe and not bleeding from wounds. There were bandages with the baggage train that came up. Gashes were sewn by the light of the fires, washed out with wine. The dead would have to be tallied in the morning, when there was light. Most of the survivors just sat or knelt where they stood, exhausted and stunned by all they had seen, all they had done.

8

Xanthippus stood with his eyes closed in the darkness. Orange gleamed through the lids as the bonfires crackled and snapped. Sleep had been impossible, though he ached in every joint and his knee was almost useless. It had swollen to twice its usual size and he had to concentrate not to make sharp sounds of pain whenever he moved. It was easier to stand and let Epikleos throw him a skin of watered wine that was probably half and half, at least. Xanthippus hadn’t asked how his friend had found such a thing, with every man and officer wanting the same. The wine had slowed his thoughts, like a net thrown across a river to catch fish. Even in his exhaustion he could not drift away, not with every scene of the day to play out, over and over.

He had wandered down the shore for a while, hoping to find peace in the wash and hiss of the surf. Too many things still tumbled there, making him shudder. He thought he’d heard something thrashing further out and he had visions of beasts rising from the deep to snatch the dead. There had been no peace in that place and he’d returned to where his tribe had camped and Epikleos had collected his greaves, shield, spear and sword. The lion on his shield had taken a battering. Even in the firelight, Xanthippus could see it had been raked right across in stripes that gleamed bright. Yet he had not taken a wound. He would remember to tell Agariste the lion had taken his cuts for him. She would be pleased.

The ground was more sand than earth where Acamantis tribe rested. Xanthippus could hear the snores of weary men lying on their backs with their mouths open. Others were still talking in quiet groups, discussing the day. He knew them all. He had bought grain from some and invested with others. He had listened to speeches and arguments in the Assembly from many more, nodding his approval and proposing votes. Some of the eighteen-year-olds had already recovered enough to walk the battlefield in the darkness, perhaps to find a few coins or rings, or those intriguing gold headbands the Immortals had worn. There were fortunes to be found wherever the Persians made war, so it was said.

Xanthippus knew the men of his own generation better, of course, but on that day, they were all Athenian. They gathered in the same part of the Agora in time of war – and they knew one another. Sometimes, that was all it was. When Xanthippus had been a beardless youth, he recalled men in their forties and fifties. The oldest lay like the dead after a battle, with backs and knees and elbows swollen, or wounds that drained them of life like a leaky old skin. Yet they had marched and fought even so, grizzled and patch-bearded old bastards to a man. They had come because they were needed, sometimes to oversee the ones they had trained, like Xanthippus himself. He had done the same for a few young lads who’d hardly known one end of a spear from the other. That was the compact between them, the honourable labour.