The messenger took them past the lines of sleeping men, past the few who were still awake. That fragile excitement was fading too, so that more and more of them lay down.

Xanthippus felt a prickle of alarm as he realised he had come through the outer lines. The sentries challenged him there and he gave his name and praised them for their alertness. The ground began to rise then and he struggled, leaning on the spear and feeling his knee had something sharp wedged between the bones.

He recalled the Persian king had raised a pavilion to watch the battle. The ground had risen there and Xanthippus found he was relieved when it levelled out once more. A single brazier sat atop the ridge, with Miltiades standing alongside. He had removed the studded coat and wore a loose white tunic with bare arms that emphasised his strength. Xanthippus was surprised to see the man had developed a stomach. It pressed against the soft material like the womb of a pregnant woman. In that moment, Xanthippus was glad Epikleos was not there to comment on it.

‘Strategos!’ Miltiades said. ‘Thank you for coming. You are limping? Are you injured? I am sorry, I was not told.’

‘It is nothing – and I am no longer strategos, Miltiades. The long day is over. All the appointments of the Assembly are at an end.’ Perhaps it was the pain in his knee and the fact that he’d been called to walk on it that made him add, ‘Nor are you archon any longer.’

Miltiades’ expression grew stiff and he nodded to himself, as if he had confirmed something.

‘It is strange, Xanthippus. I have spoken to a few of the strategoi from today. Poor Callimachus did not survive the fighting. He was not made for war, not as some are. Yet Themistocles came to me, as did Aristides. Arimnestos of the Plataean thousand bent a knee to me and asked if their debt was discharged.’

‘They fought well,’ Xanthippus said. ‘I hope you told him it was.’

Miltiades made an exasperated sound.

‘There it is again – that concern for proprieties, the rules of the Assembly, the titles. I released the Plataeans from their debt, Xanthippus, because that was the path of honour, after today. My point, though, was that all those others congratulated me on our victory. Each one of them took my hand in greeting and offered wine. Yet from you, who stood in my own wing, I am lectured on the rights and wrongs of titles? You are a strange man.’

Xanthippus thought he sensed movement in the shadows to his left. He could not run, not with a bad leg. With that chance removed, he let all tension slide from him and stood easily. If Miltiades wanted his life, he would take it.

‘Your silence is … strange, strategos,’ Miltiades said.

‘I am a free man of Athens, Miltiades. That is all I am.’

‘And no longer strategos, yes, you have said. Yet you are a Marathonomachos – a man of Marathon, just as I am. You fought amidst the fennel and the sand and salt. More, you are one of the Eupatridae, the landowners. As I am. And an Athenian, as I am.’