Читать книгу A Pretty Sight - David O'Meara - Страница 9

What do I know? At least these

last two mornings since the Boeotian

ranks massed. The whole lot of us

had been camped inside their border, sea

at our backs. We thought we’d soon

be home in Athens. A set of cooking fires

still smoked behind the earthworks, evidence

of a hurried defence at the temple we’d occupied,

an obvious insult. The old seer took

the ram and made a lattice of its throat,

our counter-prayer

for the terror we hoped to inspire.

Across the dawn fields, the enemy trod

through the stripped orchards and wheat,

farmers like us, setting out cold in linen

and cloaks, the well-to-do armoured

for glory out front. After weeks of marching,

the suddenness of it: the general’s shouts,

his interrupted speech passed down the lines,

our pipe marking the pace, and far off,

their war cry rending the November air

like a thousand sickles. The black doors

of each empty farmhouse watched our lines

clatter through stubbled stalks,

my arm already heavy from the shield.

‘Stay tight, stay tight,’ we called across

the bronze rims, cursing and half out of breath.

Then a new shout went out

and we spilled up the ridge at a run

into the Thebans’ spear thrusts.

In the push, there’s little room for a view;

dust scuffed up by thousands of men

gagged the air. Best to trust in detail,

watch for sharp jabs at your throat,

stay flush with the column, and above all else

don’t fall. Not so easy with the friendly shields

pressing behind, and reaped furrows

snatching your balance. Our phalanx

held, shoving, and forced the Thebans

back over ground they’d claimed at midday.

But there was a too-easy feel to it,

as if we expected they’d break, and we’d slide

through their lines like lava from Hades.

Word spread of horsemen on the hill.

A trick? Who knew? We were servants

to rumour. A few turned and ran,

then the rest. Then I did too.

‘Don’t show them your backs,’ I cried

to a group, shopkeepers from the look

of them. ‘Do you want wounds there

when your corpse is exchanged?’

That turned them around.

We still had our swords. Scavenging cracked

spear-lengths to keep the cavalry off,

we backpedalled over corpses, boulders

and olive roots into dusk. That was two days ago.

More rumours follow us to Attica: Hippocrates

dead, how we were outnumbered,

whispers of the slaughter chittering in our ears

like broken cart wheels. Though we know the direction

home, we stall, not from plague that still strays

in its streets, but the shame of retreat.

Night, the cooking fires again.

We who are left, battered stragglers, scoop gruel

and wait for orders to seek out our dead.

Now, on the edge of the firelight, a rhapsode

recites an ancient passage, his voice recalling Troy,

the dark-beaked ships and grief for Patroclus.

We were brave enough, but couldn’t hold.

What use is a story or a song?