Poseidon's Spear

11

The wind came up at midday, while we were still in an orgy of drinking the water. The blow began from the east, and as the wind went around the points of the compass it rose and rose, and when it settled as an easterly, it shrieked along the beach like a racehorse.

We got rollers under our keel and moved our black ship up the beach. I was afraid of storms, but I was more afraid of being caught by the Phoenicians with my keel in the water where they could just tow her off.

And then, full of water, we were given a meal — and we went to sleep. I’d love to tell you that we posted guards and acted like good sailors or even good pirates, but we passed out, and it was twelve hours before most of us were up.

I had the energy to help a dozen other men pitch a tent — to pull Seckla into it, lie him on blankets and curl up by him with Doola on one side of him and Sittonax on the other. It was cool in mid-afternoon, and promised to be cold at night.

In the morning, Seckla was moaning on his bedroll. I knew what came next. In the dawn, I considered putting a knife in him. Gut wounds are horrible. I’d watched a few.

But Doola’s eyes were open, and I knew he’d never forgive me.

But again, Behon worked to our rescue. He found a doctor — one of the Kelt doctors, who were also priests, men of learning and often musicians — and led him by the hand to Doola’s side.

‘Good morning,’ said the white beard, in a passable imitation of Attic Greek. Then he rolled Seckla over and examined his stomach wound for some time.

‘No food,’ he said. ‘Nothing but water. I’ll be back.’ He picked up his heavy staff and left our tent.

Seckla moaned, but he didn’t scream. Yet.

Outside, we could hear rain on the tent, and I went out. We were two hundred men in four tents, stacked like cordwood; the easiest way out was to crawl under the edge. It was wet, and cold.

I found Behon standing in the rain, and Sittonax. We walked through the downpour to the water’s edge, and looked out into the mist. The wind was from the south, and moderate enough.

Sittonax led me up the beach to the warehouses. There were six of them, built of timber and thatch, and a pair of stone roundhouses, not unlike the Venetiae houses; not unlike a military tower in Boeotia, either, except that the stones were smaller and completely unmortared.

The first warehouse contained about a hundred ingots of tin, and each ingot was shaped like a capital eta, H, and weighed as much as a grown child.

I laughed.

I laughed and laughed.

‘This is where the tin comes from,’ I said, satisfied.

Behon said something quickly, and laughed.

Sittonax nodded sagely. ‘Not quite. He says the tin comes from the land opposite, and farther inland. They gather it here, to sell to traders. Phoenicians, Venetiae — anyone who comes.’

‘Pray for Amphitrite,’ I said.

But it was Lydia who appeared. Vasileos brought the triakonter in, and we watched his crew make all the mistakes we’d made. We scrambled out into the freezing surf and helped the smaller boat land, and pressed water on them.

They’d started with full water amphorae — lucky them — but spent two additional days at sea.

When Vasileos had water in him, he pointed south. ‘ Nike is somewhere out there, and we saw Amphitrite at sunset,’ he said. ‘We smelled woodsmoke and I followed it. Then we met a fishing boat who gave us all his water, and here we are.’

‘The Phoenicians?’ I asked.

Vasileos shrugged. ‘How far can they chase us?’ he asked.

‘The ends of the earth,’ I said. ‘We attacked their gold. And their prestige.’ In fact, I was coming to terms with the notion that by raiding their mine, I’d started a war.

I had no qualms. The Phoenicians got what they deserved.

Between my trireme and Lydia, I had most of the remaining gold we’d taken, and all the silver. Amphitrite and Demetrios had the rest of the gold.

Keltoi love gold. So I traded all the gold for food, bad wine and tin. I traded the amphorae in Lydia ’s hold for more tin — and for barrels.

On our fourth day ashore, I sent Lydia with Vasileos to search the coast for the missing ships. My sailors stripped my trireme to the gunwales and dried her and recaulked her, and then we stowed the tin as ballast. I could only buy about seventy of the pigs, but that was enough.

The barrels went fore and aft, into the bow and stern. I’d never had so much drinking water.

I bought dried fish in enormous quantities, and dried meat and dried berries.

After a week, Vasileos came back with Amphitrite limping in at his heels. The two ships landed just ahead of a purple-black sky that swept out of the north, and we had six days of violent rain and high winds.

Demetrios drank the bad wine and smiled a great deal. ‘We are the greatest sailors in the circle of the Ocean,’ he said. ‘I saw Nike a week ago. She lost her mainsail in the blow, and we passed them fresh line and they were rowing north. They’ll be well off to the east. There’s a current. We lost our reckoning.’

‘East?’ I asked. ‘The wind was from the east?’

‘I’ve been up and down this coast,’ Demetrios said. ‘Fishermen said there was a big island full of foreigners, but I couldn’t find it.’

Whereas we’d sailed right into it. Since Demetrios was the best seaman I’ve ever known, I have to assume we had the will of the gods with us.

We sat out the blow and rested our crews, and fed them regularly. The locals were friendly, even when we’d spent our money and our trade goods. A surprising number of local ladies began to sport ostrich plumes. African beads were wildly popular.

I think we added to the population.

After two days of fine weather, Vasileos and Demetrios pronounced Amphitrite ready for sea.

We finished lading our ships, had a dinner of roast pig and leeks to celebrate, spent the last of our trade goods, saving aside only a few pots and some weapons, and rose to a red sun and the promise of three days’ good weather.

We left Vecti with the ever-present wind in our teeth, but it was gentle, and we rowed due east, with Amphitrite tacking far to the south.

I wouldn’t let the men touch my hard-bought supplies. We landed that night and killed sheep, and didn’t pay for them, like sea rovers. The next day we met three fishing boats, and the men aboard hugged Behon. He came aft to me, knelt and took my hand, and I pulled him to his feet and embraced him.

‘Thanks!’ I said. It was obvious he was home, and these were his folk. They had a look to them that was similar. Dumnoni.

He climbed over the side, and the fishing boats followed us into the beach, a fine harbour with miles of beach, and we feasted on their catch.

They told us that Nike was farther up the estuary, patching a sprung bow.

The wind was rising, and I wasn’t unhappy to go up the estuary. We found Nike towards nightfall, and Gaius was as happy as you can imagine. But he’d brought his people through in fine order.

He threw his arms around me. ‘You’ll never guess what I’ve found!’ he said.

‘Tin?’ I asked.

‘Spoilsport!’ But he laughed.

The next day, we said our farewells to Behon. Leukas, his brother, elected to stay aboard. Perhaps it seems an odd decision, but we promised to take him over the mountains to the Inner Sea, and to send him home the same way. And Leukas was — and is — a fine sailor — handy in a way Behon was not, and Seckla liked him and began to teach him to tend the sails.

Seckla… who appeared to have recovered. I don’t know whether this was the science of the local priests, or his own healthy flesh, or the will of the gods. I can’t remember exactly how deep the arrow went. But Seckla made a full recovery, and had a little bump on his chest he used to scratch.

We had water. We had two days’ food, our holds full of tin and we had exact sailing directions for the northern Venetiae islands and the mouth of the Sequana River, which we were told was two days away.

We were five weeks from home.

It was glorious.

We set sail with the dawn, and we had to row out of the estuary as the wind had shifted all night and then settled back into an easterly, but the oarsmen — every one of whom was going to get a share of all that tin — rowed steadily, slowly, but with a will. And our ships were clean and dry, and we moved well enough.

We found Amphitrite hurrying towards us in the early morning, her mainsail and boatsail set, slanting up from the south and east.

We watched them and chuckled, because they weren’t going to reach us on that tack, and they’d be all day following us if they lost ground. There was a certain rivalry between the men who had to row all day and the ‘mere’ sailors.

At our closest point of approach, perhaps ten stades, they dropped all their sails.

That meant something.

‘I think they’re waving,’ Doola said.

I nodded. Already my eyes weren’t what they had been at seventeen.

‘Let’s go and speak to them,’ I said wearily. They were downwind — easy to get there, harder to row back.

The boatsail mast was rigged, so I gave the rowers a rest and we ran downwind, and Lydia and Nike lay on their oars.

When we were a stade away, they started to yell — Demetrios and a dozen other men all yelling in unison.

I got it immediately.

‘PHOENICIANS!’

As soon as Demetrios knew that I understood, he put his helm over, raised his sails and ran back west.

Even as Seckla’s men raised the mainmast and the two triakonters followed suit — you don’t always need signals — the first shark’s fin nicked the southern horizon in the sunlight.

By the time we had our sails set and we were all running west, there were five of them.