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Lee Ness
Category:
Historical Fiction
Publisher: Createspace
ISBN-10: 1517700019
Type: Fiction
Pages: 378
Copyright: Nov 2015
ISBN-13: 9781517700010
Price: $0.99 (eBook)
All Alexander wants to be is an Olympian, but in Ancient Greece, he has war to contend with as well as looking like his Thracian mother instead of a pure-blood Greek. Can he survive the Siege of Samos?
Athens 440BC
Alexander decided that there was no-one around and started to move from under the ramp but, before he could make his escape, he felt the ship rock as a loud tramping came from the gangplank. He froze in position while he tried to work out what this new sound meant.
After listening for a short time, he realised that the troops were boarding the ship. He needed to get away, so he dragged himself fully out from his hiding place and made his way to the ramp. Maybe he could just run past them all before they realised he was there. Then, to his horror, the ramp down into the hold started shaking and the tramping came closer as the soldiers started coming down it into the hold to shelter from the sun.
He was trapped!
All Alexander wants to be is an Olympian. But, when his hoplite father is recalled to war, Alexander tries to follow and becomes trapped aboard a troop ship.
His life spins out of control when they make port. The seemingly benign state of Samos overthrows the mighty Athenian army and tragedy strikes.
He soon realises that the foes in his own camp are more dangerous than the Samian rebels.
When one of his only friends and allies on the island goes missing, Alexander has to further endanger his own life to try and find him but by doing so he puts his friend's life, and his mother back in Athens, in danger.
Excerpt
Alexander sprinted up the ridge, heedless of the shouted commands coming from the hoplite behind him. He might be young, but he was fit and covered the ground quickly and the chasing hoplite gave up after a few steps as Alexander knew he would. He heard snippets of curses as he ran, the usual punctuation about Thrace and his light complexion in some oft-heard abusive combination or other. He smiled and ran on, his dirty red mop of hair flopping in front of his blue eyes. The very hair and eye combination that prompted the hoplite’s taunts, the thing that set him apart from every other Athenian he’d ever met, and apart from every other Greek for that matter. The noise of the army ahead of him singing their war song as they marched pulled him onwards to where he could catch a glimpse of his father before the battle started. It wasn’t far from the ridge to the siege wall and he didn’t want to miss anything.
Alexander arrived at the top of the ridge where, from his elevated position he could see his father in the front row of the formation and the thousand men with him, marching down the other side. His young eyes were drinking in the view, nothing in his short life compared to the amazing sight of the army below him. He sat on a rock nearby where he and his father watched the Samian activity earlier. Alexander stared in fascination at the scene unfolding below him.
The heat of the mid-morning sun left the air breathless, and the plateau below shimmered with the heat haze. Alexander’s tunic stuck to him, slick sweat plastering the fine hair on his arms to his skin. He wondered how it must be for his father and the other men marching below him in full armour, carrying the weight of the shields and spears.
“Rather them than me,” he muttered under his breath.
Alexander thought the sight of the army in full battle formation was wonderful, and this was only a part of it. The hoplites all carried large oval shields called hoplons, which was where the hoplites got their name. This amused Alexander, he would have rather been named after a xiphos, the sword they carried, or maybe a doru after the spears they fought with, twice as long as a man. The hoplon was impressive though. Every man below him carried one on his left arm, huge shields that covered them from shoulder to knee when they were fighting, made of wood and reinforced with bronze. Some were bronze rimmed and were painted in bright colours, with family or city emblems on them. Others, like his fathers, were covered with bronze which were highly polished so they reflected the sunlight, the emblems hammered into them. Behind the shields the men wore armour of linen or leather called linothorax, some covered in bronze but most with bronze scales sewn into them. These were also polished before battle. By contrast the helmets of most of the hoplites were left tarnished and scarred. He could see the back of them now, but he thrilled at the thought of the image facing the Samians ahead of them, fierce eyes and snarling mouths below flaring nostrils, the only parts of the face visible between the cheek guards. The scars and stains on the helmets adding to the transformation of each man, from rough but amiable soldier into a fearsome, ferocious warrior.
He scanned the formation as he watched the march, trying to pick out the individuals he knew but the helmets prevented him from doing so. Most of the helmets were bare, but the officer’s helmets were decorated with horsehair crests on theirs and and painted in bright colours. Alexander looked down at the formation again, watching them march in time toward the siege wall and the enemy before it and his heart raced. He stood again, unable to keep still as he watched the thousand hoplites, spears aloft, iron tips polished and shining in the hot air above the formation.
The Athenians were singing loudly now, the sound of their war song reverberating through the valley, in time to the sound of the cadence of their marching, the noise making Alexander’s head spin. He sat down again, waiting for the moment that Nicanos would order the change in the phase of the attack. Singing was a feature of the first phase of the march towards the enemy and he revelled in the noise. A thousand male voices sang in harmony, and the song rising and falling, the singing deep, as he expected it to be from a thousand soldiers. When the song rose, he could feel it vibrate in his chest so that Alexander thought it might lift him off his feet. He wondered how the Samians must feel hearing all these Athenian men singing as one, the veterans of many battles, the leaders of the Delian League of Cities. Alexander hero-worshipped his father, he was invincible and by extension, he hero-worshipped the rest of this army.
The words of the song carried across to him and told the story of the forthcoming battle, how the Athenians would be victorious, their valour, and that they were all going to be heroes. Alexander felt the hairs stand up on his arms as they reached the bottom of the valley and thought again of the Samians facing the Athenian army. They weren’t warriors, these men from this small island. He expected the Samians to surrender, his opinions of them formed around the the fires and meals on the evenings in the camp, but he hoped they wouldn’t before he got to see the phalanx in full battle. He felt a moment of guilt at his wish for battle and then brushed it away. The danger for his father or the others didn’t occur to him, as these were farmers and scholars they were facing, he thought, indoctrinated by the bravado of the men below him from his time with them.
When all the Athenian hoplites had reached level ground, the phalanx tightened. The singing stopped abruptly and Alexander’s ears rang with the echo of the song. He wondered how they could have heard the command over the noise they were making, but now the silence deafened him. The formation stood motionless and he felt the intimidation level increase. Alexander could hear the blood pounding in his ears. A thousand spears bristled upwards as the army waited for the next order. He let out a breath, unaware that he had been holding it. He knew this would be the ephodos, where the phalanx, now in their tight formation start the march towards the opposing force. Each of the hundred hoplites in the front row moved as one and interlocked the shield on his left arm with the other men in the line. The second row of hoplites raised their shields over the heads of the front row and all the front three rows levelled their spears. The rows behind held their spears vertically, ready. He gasped, seeing hundreds of soldiers now aligned into their ten rows presenting an incredible shield wall bristling with spears was a wonder that he couldn’t have imagined. He could see his father’s enomotia in the centre of the phalanx now, with his father in the front row and Methiodos a few men farther to his left and his chest swelled with pride. These were his friends he thought.
A command from Nicanos bellowed out, repeated by the dimœrites and decadarchos along the lines, unnecessary in Alexander’s opinion as he could hear the syntagmatarchis commands from the ridge. The phalanx rippled forward like a huge hedgehog, bristling with lethal spikes. The Athenians started bellowing their war cry. “Elelelelef! Elelelelef!” Over and over, the sounds becoming a continuous cacophony of terrifying animalistic noise. Alexander tensed with excitement and joined the war cry, shouting at the top of his voice, the sound coming from deep within him. The phalanx marched forward in unison presenting an unassailable wall to the Samians, the rows behind the front three pushing forward with their shields to give the structure strength and momentum. The noise of the march could be heard from his position on the ridge above them and his heart pounded in his chest. He didn’t feel any danger, just the excitement, like watching the Panathenaic Games with his father, but tenfold more exciting. This was a much bigger scale and he was the only spectator. He fidgeted as he waited for the formation to change into a full-blown krousis, the final acceleration into a run over the last few step, as he knew it would. The Samians were waiting in front of the wall as the phalanx approached and a smile split Alexander’s face as he noted with glee that the Samians did not have a strong formation to meet the Athenians. They were formed in a long line a few men deep. It would not take long to put the Samians back behind the wall thought Alexander as the gap between the two armies narrowed. He could feel the ground vibrating with each synchronised step of the Athenian army and hear the cadence of the march forward. The dust clouds coming from the phalanx now mixing with the heat haze making the whole scene seem illusory.
The Samians continued to wait as the phalanx approached, and were in no hurry to come out to meet the Athenians. Alexander held his breath in anticipation of the crash of shields. He knew he shouldn’t look forward to it but he couldn’t help himself. People were going to die and he felt ashamed of himself when he realised with disappointment that this was not going to be the case here. The Samians wore light armour and the spears were short, not long like the ones protruding from the phalanx approaching them. Some did not even have spears.
Alexander waited for the Samians to break and run, but they continued to wait, not particularly still, but neither were they making any effort to protect themselves. As the Athenians continued to close on them he became confused. He tried to spot how they were going to fight against the approaching phalanx or whether they were about to surrender. The Athenian phalanx accelerated forward covering the short distance remaining until the two armies met and he couldn’t understand why the Samians still made no move to advance or retreat. He couldn’t see their faces from this distance, but they were not moving and didn’t look like they were doing anything.
When the Athenians came into range, a huge black cloud rose up from behind the siege wall, to the confusion of the watching Alexander. He struggled to process the scene unfolding before him. The Samians were moving now, the waiting over and commands from the Samian lines reached the ridge where he waited, the sound delayed by the distance. As he watched the Samians start to move, his mind caught up with the action unfolding before him. He returned his attention to the black cloud, which had now changed from an indistinct mass into thousands of arrows that climbed high into the blue sky, a faint hiss following them. They reached their zenith and then hovered suspended for a moment, caught above the phalanx. Alexander held his breath as he watched them riveted by the sight, the movements below forgotten. As if remembering their path, the arrows started on their new journey downward in a lethal rain. Alexander’s eyes widened and he sucked in a sharp breath. He clapped his hands to his face, riveted by the path of the arrows.
In a moment of sudden and terrible clarity, he realised the magnitude of what he had done by coming here. His mother was alone back in Agryl and, because she was a Thracian, her status as a citizen came from his father and him, and they were both here. If his father perished and he wasn’t there either, she would lose everything, her husband, her home and her means of support. He didn’t know where she would go, if he would ever find her again. He had to do something, his panicked thoughts tumbled through his mind. He couldn’t get home now until the next transport returned. He had to try and protect his father somehow instead. The twelve year old boy protecting the seasoned veteran. It sounded ridiculous to his own mind, but he reasoned that there must be something he could do to help, with the rain of death descending on the phalanx below. He would work it out as he went along. With the decision made, he set off down the ridge at a run towards the imminent battle below.
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