Poseidon's Spear

12

I was thousands of stades north of the Pillars, and the Phoenicians had sent a squadron to track me down.

In a way, it was flattering.

But the immediate crisis was one of navigation. The wind was blowing off the coast of Gaul, and it was going to blow us west. West was the tin island, but after that — nothing. I’d seen glimpses of that nothing: a grey, rock-bound coast stretching away into the setting sun.

There is a saying in Plataea that the frog would rather be alive in the desert than dead in the pond. It’s not a pretty saying, but it is a true one. My oarsmen grumbled and looked west with desperate anxiety, but as long as we sailed west with the world’s wind at our backs, the Phoenicians were not likely to catch us.

So I sailed west. I had a plan, one that depended on my being a little more cunning than my adversaries. I sailed west, and planned to double back around the tin island and leave them all a-stand in the channel. I didn’t expect it to work, but I wanted to try.

We sailed west a day, and made camp in an estuary — not a place I’d been, of course. Leukas told us it was safe to land.

He insisted that if we beached and drew our ships up, the Dumnoni would protect us.

‘Of course,’ he said with a shrug, ‘it would have been better if you’d sailed north into the heart of our country.’

It was late, and we had a dozen small fires burning behind the dunes that separate the cold beach from the sea. I had as many men on watch. All the Phoenicians had to do was to catch us against the beach and we would either be dead men, or we’d spend the rest of our lives on Alba. All the natives said it was an island. An island with three hundred stades of sea between it and the mainland.

I don’t think I went to sleep that night. It wasn’t just the ships. The truth was, with Vasileos — possibly my greatest weapon — I could build more ships.

No, it wasn’t ships. It was the cargo. The tin, the silver and the gold. If we abandoned or burned the ships, we lost the cargo: no two ways about it. There was no way to keep thousands of pounds of tin — or even a couple of hundred pounds of gold and silver. And I hadn’t come all this way to lose it.

Long before dawn, I stumbled around in the dark until I had located Doola, Seckla, Gaius, Neoptolymos and the rest. I had heated enough wine to fill my old mastos cup, and above us, the stars wheeled across the sky — bigger and farther away, I think, than they were back in Greece.

I had built up a fire and I handed the cup around, and they pulled their cloaks as tightly as they could. Beyond the circle of the fire, men were rising from sleep — and none of them was happy to rise so early.

Doola looked at me blurrily over the rim of my cup. ‘So?’ he asked.

‘I see two choices,’ I answered. ‘We can burn the ships and lose the cargoes. Go inland, find Leukas’s people and wait the Phoenicians out.’ I looked around. ‘We have three hundred men, and they rely on us. We’ll have to feed them, or risk having them either turn on us or to banditry.’

I looked around. Demetrios shrugged. ‘You took them,’ he said.

‘I did, so they are my responsibility,’ I agreed. ‘But we are in this together, and that cargo is our cargo.’

Doola nodded.

Neoptolymos shrugged. ‘Let’s fight,’ he said.

‘That’s a third option,’ I agreed. ‘We could put to sea and fight: five triremes against one trireme, two triakonters and a tub of a merchantman — all brilliantly handled, of course.’

Demetrios shook his head. ‘Suicide,’ he said. ‘We’d just die.’

Seckla grinned. ‘No, the gods will make a way for us.’ He looked at me. ‘Because Arimnestos has the luck of Hermes.’

Gaius was staring out to sea. ‘You have another option?’

I nodded. ‘We run west. According to the Dumnoni, it is a long promontory. Then we run north, around the north end of the island.’

Demetrios whistled. ‘How far?’ he asked.

I raised my hands to the heavens. ‘How would I know? Leukas says ten days’ sailing, but — let’s face it — he doesn’t really know any waters but these right here. Just like all the other Keltoi.’

‘Except the Venetiae,’ Demetrios said.

Doola handed me the cup. ‘If we run all the way around Alba — and stay ahead of the Phoenicians all the way — where do we get to?’

‘The coast of Gaul,’ I said. I drew them a chart, as best I could, in the sand. ‘Alba is a triangle, about three days’ sailing by ten,’ I said. I remember saying that. Laughable, but the Venetiae had said it, and Leukas said it. I believed it. I drew the long line of the Gaulish coast — another angle.

‘North around Alba, then east to Gaul, looking for the estuary where the Venetiae have their homes,’ I said. ‘We sell them our ships, and move our tin over the mountains and down to Marsala.’

Demetrios was looking out to sea. ‘And all we have to do is stay ahead of the Phoenicians all the way.’

I nodded. ‘It’s true.’

He shook his head. ‘Listen, I’m a good sailor, and not a good warrior. But that plan seems foolish to me. Fifteen days’ sailing — twenty days’, more like. Twenty days for them to catch us on a beach. Twenty days where we have to find a safe route and a site to camp, and all they have to do is follow us. It is a landlubber’s plan, that depends on our navigation being perfect. One error, one blocked channel, one day of adverse winds — and they have us.’

I rubbed my beard, chagrined. ‘Do you have a better plan?’ I spat. For all my vaunted maturity, I didn’t really like to be questioned.

He shrugged. He was watching the ocean. ‘Do we all agree we can’t run the Pillars again?’ he asked.

He looked around, and we all nodded.

‘So: we have to make the coast of Gaul. Right?’ He was very serious. He leaned forward. ‘I say we sail west — yes. But as soon as the wind shifts a few points, we sail south into the deep blue. South for Oiasso. Right across the hypotenuse of the triangle — right, Ari?’

I had been teaching him basic geometry. There’s a lot of time to kill when you are at sea, or camping on headlands every night. And teaching your best navigator some geometry can prove quite valuable.

Seckla nodded, and even the cautious Doola looked pleased. ‘This is a better plan,’ Doola said.

Neoptolymos and Gaius and I felt differently. ‘This plan is all luck and seamanship,’ I said. ‘All the Venetiae fear the deep blue. They say ships die out there. We’ve already ridden out two storms, Demetrios — I don’t really want to face a third.’

Neoptolymos nodded. ‘Ari’s way keeps us on a coast all the way,’ he said. ‘If the Phoenicians catch us, we can abandon the ships and run inland.’

Gaius agreed. ‘Demetrios, you have a ship that sails closer to the wind than mine. You have a deck for men to sleep under. And — honour requires me to say this — you are a far better sailor than I. You could weather a storm that would kill me.’ He looked around. He was a proud man — who is not? But he hung his head. ‘When I lost you, I was afraid. Afraid right up until I found you again. I want a plan that keeps us together.’ He shook his head. ‘Or I want to give my command to someone who is… better at it.’

Seckla, of all people, put an arm around him. ‘You command very well,’ he said.

Gaius shrugged. ‘Outwardly, perhaps. Inwardly-’

I looked at Demetrios. ‘But surely that is how command is for all men,’ I said. ‘You worry for them. They row for you.’

Well, at least that line won me a laugh.

Demetrios came and stood by me. ‘Your plan is the plan for the warrior-landsmen. My plan is the plan for the fishermen.’ He made a rocking motion with his hand. ‘Either might work, or be disastrous. But I agree that you have the luck of the gods, so I will do as you desire. Choose!’

‘I held this council so that I would not have to make this decision alone,’ I said.

Seckla laughed. ‘Nice try. Let’s get moving, before the Phoenicians solve the whole thing by hitting us in the dawn.’

I agreed, but first, I explained my plan for losing the enemy around Vecti. And Gaius and I wrote out a simple signal book on wax tablets and handed them around.

We got off our rocky beach in fine style, and we were out in the rollers before the morning raised the wave height and made launching impossible. And we were at sea for three hours and hadn’t seen a sail, and hopes were beginning to rise.

And then, they were there. The first sail nicked the horizon at mid-morning, and by noon all five were visible, and gaining. We were sailing at the speed of the slowest — Nike, I’m sorry to say. They had long-hulled triremes that cut the water like dolphins, and they ran off three stades to our two.

The sun had passed its zenith, and I poured wine over the leeward rail and put the helm down for Vecti, now visible — at least, to anyone who had been there before — on the starboard bow. By the will of the gods, the timing was perfect. They were well up with us, and it was late enough in the day that a cautious trierarch would be scouting the coast for a place to camp.

East by north. An hour, and the island filled the horizon. And then I turned and ran due west again. The Phoenicians were now hull up, perhaps twenty stades away. Perhaps less. Honey, hull up is when you can see the hull of a ship over the rim of the world — the horizon. With a stubby merchant ship, you can see a glimmer of his hull at thirty stades or more, but a low warship is invisible until he’s close — unless his mast is up.

Seckla had gone aboard Gaius’s ship, to support him. He’d left me Leukas, who was becoming one of us — sea time bonds men quickly, or leaves them enemies. So it was Leukas who stood by me at the helm. Doola was amidships. Everything was laid by, ready for action. Every man aboard knew that the easiest solution to our problem was to weather the island of Vecti and leave the Phoenicians gasping in our wakes — and run for Gaul.

Doola came astern, about an hour before I’d have to execute the heart of my plan. He looked out to sea and made a motion, and Leukas smiled and walked amidships down the catwalk.

Doola wouldn’t meet my eye. ‘I want to sail south,’ he said. ‘I confess that your plan is better — safer. I agree that Demetrios is pretending that all of us have his knack for weather and sailing.’

I nodded.

‘But I want my wife,’ he said. ‘If it was… Lydia… left at Oiasso. If it was your Briseis, of whom you speak in your dreams-’ He met my eye. ‘I am the old, mature man. I am the solid man, the one whose shoulder you all cry on. But I want something. I want my wife.’

I had sworn to live and die with these men. They were my brothers. And what, exactly, were we? Were we merchants? Were we warriors?

What would Heraclitus say?

Well, he would most likely have said something dark and mysterious and difficult to make out. But he insisted to a group of us once that in friendship, men came closest to the gods because friendship was selfless. He gave a eulogy once for a boy who died protecting another boy from dogs — he said that this fiery soul had gone straight to Elysium, because there was no finer death than giving your life for your friends.

I didn’t stand there pondering it.

I just want you to understand that there was no way that I was telling Doola no. In three years, I don’t think he’d ever asked me for a single thing.

We were slanting down on Vecti, on a quarter-reach, with the wind a few points off the stern.

‘Everyone ready to row,’ I called. Everything would now depend on the ability and willingness of my friends to trust me and read the signal book.

Because I was throwing the plan out of the window.

There was one advantage to having the smaller ships. We were lower in the water.

What I was about to try was insanely risky. It made me smile: in fact, as soon as I’d made my decision, I began to grin uncontrollably. There is a feeling you get, as a commander — a feeling you get when you know you’ve made the right choice, even if you fail.

I had it immediately.

I grinned at Doola. ‘We’ll get your wife,’ I said. We were six stades off Vecti, racing for the westernmost point of the island. In the old plan, we should have dropped our masts and turned north to row through the channel.

‘Signal that we will turn to the SOUTH.’ I pointed at the Great Blue.

Doola had the signal tablet, and he began to flash my bronze-faced aspis. We had an alternate signal system with lanterns, and another with cloaks. The sun isn’t as common in northern waters as he is at home.

Amphitrite signalled that they understood.

Euphoria signalled that they understood.

But Nike shot in under my stern. Gaius leaned far out over his curved stern. ‘ South?’ he bellowed.

‘South!’ I called. ‘Trust me!’

Gaius shrugged, and his ship dropped astern.

‘Signal again,’ I said.

One by one, the three ships acknowledged.

‘Sails down on the signal!’ I called. Doola repeated it in three flashes. This, we had practised.

‘Do it!’ I roared.

Leukas’s men sprang into action, and our sails dropped to the deck, our masts came down with a rush and no one was killed. The deck crews grabbed the billowing canvas, trapped it against the deck and sides and began folding it aggressively. The triakonters had the harder job — no real deck crews, less space, no deck or even a good catwalk.

But the sails were gone in the beat of a heart. Even a nervous heart.

Before the way was off us, I had turned my trireme south by west — out to sea, and headed for the deep blue.

We were going to spend a night at sea, in the most dangerous waters in the world. On the positive side, the sun was golden orange and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

Against the coastline, our low hulls ought to have been invisible, and we were rowing west and south out into the open ocean. If the enemy saw us, or deduced our course, we’d be caught. On the other hand, we’d know almost immediately when they figured out our ruse because they would have to turn — to tack across the wind, and with their sails up, that would show at quite a distance.

I watched those sails the way a coach watches his runner at the Isthmian Games, or the Olympics. My heart was in my throat. It beat twice as hard and made my gut ache.

On and on we rowed — not at racing speed, either. I knew we were in for a long haul, and the wind was still blowing from east to west. It should have favoured us, but we wanted to go south, and our sails would give us away. Even poor Amphitrite had to row, and she was a pitiful rower.

After an hour, I cast her a tow. My two hundred rowers were her only hope. Otherwise, her twelve oarsmen were going to burst their hearts.

Passing the tow cable used some time. And we rowed some more, and I watched those ships.

And then they all took their sails down.

It was late afternoon by this time. If our plan had worked, then they had ‘followed’ us into the channel between Vecti and Alba. They’d have had to take their sails down, to row east into the channel.

But one ship kept her sails up. And as I watched, that ship tacked across the wind and came down towards us.

I cursed.

Doola came aft.

‘He’s not onto us yet, but the Phoenician trierarch smelled a rat. He’s sending one ship south, just to have a look.’ I watched him. ‘When he’s hull up to us, then he can see us. We’ll know the moment he catches us: he’ll turn back north and start signalling like mad.’

‘And then what do we do?’ Doola asked.

‘We raise our masts and pray to the immortal gods,’ I said.

It was two hours before he caught us — late enough that we began to hope darkness would creep over the rim of the world and save us. But the gods were not with us, and we saw him suddenly spin about on his oars, and we knew the game was up.

Every one of our ships had his masts laid to, with heavy hawsers already laid to the mastheads. The masts went up; the sails came out like the rapid blossoming of flowers and the oarsmen relaxed with muttered curses. Men rubbed their arms, or each other’s backs, and we ran towards the setting sun at a good clip.

But the moment the sun touched the horizon, I put my helm down and headed south. Due south. The wind had backed a few points, and we were committed, now. And there was no way the Phoenician scout could see us. We should be lost in the dazzle of the setting sun, or the gods hated us.

About midnight, the wind dropped altogether. I had stars by which to navigate, and I kept the north star over my shoulder as best I could — no mean feat when there’s a roof of wood covering your navigational aid, let me tell you. I kept giving the oars to Leukas and running forward to take another sight.

How the gods must have been laughing.

The moon was full, and we ran south over a ghost-lit ocean. I could see the other three ships well enough, and whenever we threatened to get ahead, I would order the sail brailed up.

It was my second night awake, and I must have fallen asleep between the steering oars because some time not long before dawn, when the air goes through that change — from cool to warm, I think, hard to define, but the moment when your mind, if awake, begins to hope for dawn — something was wrong, and I awoke as if a trumpet was being played in my ear.

We sailed on for twenty heartbeats, and I couldn’t place it but my heart was beating a Spartan marching song, and then I caught it.

It was an unmistakable sound, even to a lubberly sailor like me.

Surf.

‘Leukas!’ I roared. And threw my body into the oars, turning the bow to the north as hard as I could. The wind had swerved to being almost due south, and I wanted to get the head up into the wind and drop the sail — the fastest way to get a ship to stop.

Leukas had his deck crew on the sail instantly. The sail came down, even as Doola roused the oarsmen to their duty and the oars started paying out of their ports. We were losing way — the steering oars wouldn’t bite — and I could hear the ocean pounding on rocks to starboard. I left the steering oars and leaped onto the rail, looking south.

I couldn’t see a thing — and then I saw water shooting into the air, perhaps as high as the top of a tall temple — due south. It was hard to make out: that’s what it looked like.

Just astern, Nike was following my lead, head up into the wind. Oars were coming out.

Euphoria had made the turn.

Amphitrite had been last in line, and now she had turned all the way to the east and was still under sail, but she could make way with the wind almost amidships, and we could not. She began to come up on us, hand over fist.

When my rowers got their oars in the water, I was all a-dither about what to do — had we discovered an island? What rocks were these? What lay beyond them?

I couldn’t see enough to tell, and as minutes led into hours, I realized that our beautiful weather was gone and now we were running east, slowly under oars, and the sound of surf crashing on rocks came from astern.

It was dawning a grey, grey day with fog, and I couldn’t see a thing.

We ran east for three hours before the fog burned off, and then we couldn’t believe our eyes.

Due south, across our path, was land.

I summoned Leukas. ‘What the hell?’ I shouted. I was angry — the anger of fear.

He shook his head. ‘I think… that is, I-’ he looked around, as if perhaps Poseidon would come and save him from my wrath. He shrugged. ‘It has to be Gaul,’ he said.

We had taken eight days, or so I assumed, to sail from the coast of Gaul to Alba, and we’d done the return trip in the same number of hours. Or so it appeared.

Thugater, the truth — inasmuch as I’ll ever know the truth — is that the Venetiae had lied to us about the shape of Alba and the shape of Gaul. Why should they tell us their navigational secrets? So we spent days running along the coast of Alba when we might have been safe in a harbour in Gaul.

We landed at noon, and bought some bread and some good wine, and got sailing directions for the mouth of the Venetiae river — the Sequana. That night, we made camp on a good beach — one of six or seven in a row, almost as fine as the Inner Sea. It was easy to land, despite the rising swell. We purchased fish from local men, and we ate well. Oarsmen need food.

I posted guards on the headlands and ordered a day of rest. We’d been at sea five days straight, and the oarsmen had worked every day. There’s a limit to endurance, especially with men who have been kept under cruel conditions. Although I was also happy to see how Neoptolymos and Megakles were both filling out, their emaciated bodies starting to remember their form. I had been through the same process when I was recovering from Dagon’s tender mercies.

That bastard. Sometimes I wondered if he was aboard one of the ships that were trailing us, but of course it was unlikely. Nor did I think he was a good enough sailor to survive in the Outer Sea.

We slept a lot that day, and the locals flocked to see us and sell us food. I had silver, and by midday, the local war chief came in his chariot, and looked us over with lordly disdain. That was fine with me. Neoptolymos wanted to challenge him to single combat. He was young.

Mornings were starting to be cold. I didn’t feel young.

After the local aristocrat was driven away by his charioteer, I found Doola. He was stretched out under a sail, staring at the canvas over his head. I handed him a cup of wine.

‘We’re in Gaul,’ I said.

He nodded.

‘I meant to sail south to Oiasso,’ I said. ‘But either my navigation is very bad, or the bastard Venetiae lied to us about the shape of Gaul.’ I shrugged. ‘The local chief says that your wife is about nine hundred stades south of here.’

He actually laughed. He got up on an elbow and patted my arm. ‘Now that’s an error in navigation,’ he said.

I shrugged. ‘We’re all alive,’ I said. ‘And we have our cargo on the right side of the channel. Even if the Phoenicians catch us now-’

He put two fingers to my lips. ‘Naming calls,’ he said.

‘I plan to sail north another two days, to the mouth of the Susquana. There’s a Venetiae town there.’ I fingered my beard. ‘If you want to take the warriors and go south, I’ll buy horses for you — and I’ll wait for you.’ I shrugged. ‘It’s the best offer I can make.’

Doola nodded. ‘I’ll take it,’ he said. He picked himself a half-dozen fighters — Alexandros, of course — and Neoptolymos, which was no surprise. I traded a full ingot of tin for a dozen good horses, with tack, and some dried fish, dried meat and wine.

In the dawn, there were still no Phoenicians in the offing, and we prepared for sea. One of my fishermen from Marsala — an older man, Gian — took Doola’s place as oar-master. My marines rode away south, with a local guide. Sittonax went with them, leaving Leukas as my sole interpreter.

We got off the beach beautifully — Gian seemed to know his job immediately — and despite heavier waves, we made good time. The coast was low, with some beautiful small islands — one was a magnificent rock rising out of the water, and as we sailed by, we could see that it was dry at low tide. Tides here ran very high, insanely high by the standards of the Inner Sea.

We camped on another fine beach of beautiful white sand. In the night, someone attacked my guards, and we all stood to arms, waiting for the Phoenicians to descend. But in the morning, it was obvious that we’d been raided by a half-dozen young men, because their tracks were clear in the sand.

I sighed for my lost sleep, watched the cliffs carefully and ordered my ships to load. I was suffering from a nagging fear by then, that we were simply too far from home. The men were hungry, and our feast day of a few days earlier was already just a memory.

But early afternoon showed me an opening in the coast — it had to be the estuary of the Sequana. But I couldn’t run into the estuary in the dark, so I stood off.

We spent a brutal night at sea. The wind rose, and I began to wonder if I was going to be wrecked just when all seemed safe. Dawn found me too close to land, with a rising westerly that threatened to drive me hard to shore. I had no choice but to run into the estuary, and once I did that, I was at the mercy of the Venetiae.

On the other hand, I had three warships, one of which ought to be the biggest in local waters — well, of course, there were the Phoenicians. But I hoped that they were well to the west.

I ran into the estuary with a gale rising behind me. The estuary of the great river runs east to west, and we ran east for hours in the odd light, with the sky to the west growing blacker. But the water of the estuary was calm and shallow — almost too shallow.

Amphitrite had trouble tacking back and forth, and she parted company to travel long boards to the north and south.

We had to row, and my unfed rowers were increasingly unhappy. I had no more wine to give them. I walked up and down the catwalk, promising them a life of ease once we reached the town. I had only other men’s word there was a town. The estuary seemed to go on for ever, and by the end of the day, despite the rising storm behind us, we had slowed to a crawl because Amphitrite had no more room to tack and had to row. Everyone was exhausted. No one was making their best decisions.

Late in the afternoon, Gian spotted what seemed to him to be a line of masts to the north. We turned towards the north bank of the estuary and rowed slowly, and as we rowed, it became clear that the fisherman was right. The masts developed hulls — big, high, round hulls like Athenian grain merchants’. And to our delight — well, to mine — there wasn’t a single trireme among them. In the darkness of my thoughts, I’d expected to find the whole Phoenician squadron here ahead of us, trapping us against the storm at our backs.

There was a town, later we knew it was called Loluma, and the first lights were starting to twinkle on the storm-laden air as the sun set. I could see a line of three stone piers, and another pair of wooden ones built, it seemed, of enormous trees. Tied up along the piers were lines of large open boats of a type unfamiliar to me — dozens of open boats, ten yards long and only one yard wide. Closer up, each boat seemed to be carved of a single giant tree.

Beyond the piers and docks was a broad beach — more of a mud-flat, or so it appeared. The tide was high — let me just add that by now, I was beginning to learn to judge their fickle and titanic tides.

We stirred a great deal of interest. A pair of small boats launched from the piers while the light was still good. I wanted to beach all my ships; Demetrios came up under my stern to tell me the same.

‘It’s going to be bad,’ he said.

We lay on our oars, watching that pretty town — big wooden houses with thatched roofs, muddy streets, open fields, cows and the smell of woodsmoke, which to a sailor is the smell of home and hearth. I don’t know what the oarsmen thought, but I know what I thought. I thought about what the Venetiae would say. Now that I was here, I wasn’t sure that the Phoenicians hadn’t burned the other Venetiae settlements behind us. That they hadn’t decided to arrest us.

In fact, we’d gone and bought tin from their source.

The first man up the side of my warship was Detorix.

In a way, seeing Detorix was a relief. He was a known quantity. He’d done right by his own lights, and at least I wouldn’t have to explain from first principles. I saluted him gravely, and then offered him my hand.

He took it and clasped it like an old friend.

‘We thought you dead,’ he said. He smiled. ‘And some of us thought that was the better way.’

‘Still alive,’ I said. ‘How is Olario?’

He nodded. ‘Untouched. The Phoenicians were so busy trying to kill you, they passed us by. How many of their ships did you destroy?’

I shrugged. ‘One,’ I said. ‘At least, that’s all I know of. I lost the rest of them on the coast of Alba.’ I thought I might as well get that in right away.

‘I took my round ship to sea behind you and ran north to Ratis,’ he said. ‘But the Phoenicians stayed on you out to sea.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘So: you found Alba.’

‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘No thanks to you.’

He shrugged.

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I have a cargo of tin. I want to take it all the way south to Marsala. I’ll pay the freightage — in ships. I’ll sell you these four ships for the freight on our tin and other metals. You don’t need to worry about my coming back for your tin — I won’t have a ship on the Western Ocean.’

He smiled. ‘I do want your ship.’ He ran his hand down the steering oar. ‘A warship.’ His lust was evident.

Who was I to stand in his way? And I’d thought it through. This way seemed to me to cause the least chance of resentment. The last thing I needed was for the Venetiae to have me killed to protect their tin monopoly. I wasn’t ever coming back. I was prepared to swear oaths on any god they named.

‘Well?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘I can’t say,’ he prevaricated. ‘But I imagine something can be arranged along those lines. I don’t have the prestige to negotiate such a big trade in one go. I’ll need partners. No one will want these smaller boats-’ He pointed to the triakonters. ‘It’s a miracle they’ve survived as long on our coast as they have. And I imagine you want to land tonight, and not fight that storm.’

This was the part I had been dreading.

‘Yes,’ I admitted.

He nodded.

Leukas translated what we were saying for the other man — another aristocrat, taller, older and wearing a torq of solid gold. I bowed to him. He was introduced as Tellonix. He had the only cloak I had seen among the Keltoi that was dyed with Tyrian dye, bright purple — like a tyrant or a king or an Aegyptian priest.

He looked at my ship. ‘How many ingots of tin do you have?’ he asked in Greek.

In the Inner Sea, we like to chat a little before we do business — but there, with the lights of the town behind us and the gale beginning to blow down the estuary, I was happy to negotiate in a hurry.

‘Seventy,’ I said.

He twirled his moustaches, which were heavy.

‘Land your ships as our guests,’ he said. ‘You have my word you will not be seized here.’ He gave Detorix a significant look.

The younger man was unabashed. ‘What was I to do?’ he asked. ‘He had three hundred fighting men.’

‘And he still does. And yet he has come back to us in peace,’ Tellonix said in Keltoi, which Leukas translated.

Well, I knew I had nowhere else to go, but there was no reason I had to say so aloud.

We got our keels up the beach — as I say, it was more mud than sand. Men’s feet stank when they got ashore, and we were so far up the estuary that the water was scarcely salt. We pulled the ships even higher up the beach — at high tide, my trireme was ten horse-lengths onto the grass. We had help from a hundred willing Keltoi — men and women.

We got the ships ashore, and we got our cargoes off and under our tarpaulins, and then the rain started and we ran for shelter. I think that in all Gaul, only the Venetiae had the facilities to sleep three hundred sailors, and even so, we had to raise our tents — in a blustering, squall-laden wind. It was hard work, but our feet were on dry land and we were filled with spirit, like Heracles.

In the morning, the weather was, if anything, worse, but I woke in a fine wooden house — a little smoky, I confess, and cold, but outside a gale blew over the town, and even the water of the estuary looked deadly.

Breakfast was an oddly shaped squash full of good butter and honey, and we ate with gusto and drank the thin local beer. Demetrios raised his small beer and said, ‘May the gods protect all sailors on a day like this. Even the poor Phoenicians.’

I don’t think Neoptolymos would have drunk to that, but he was away south.

We slept and ate for three days while the storm blew itself out, and then the serious trading began.

We had been unlucky in some things, and lucky in others. In our favour, the winds that had seemed adverse to us had allowed us to bring a cargo of tin before the last convoy left the mouth of the Sequana for the interior. Winter closed down the tin trade, as it closed everything else, and we had arrived in good time to make the trip.

Our ships were not as valuable as I had hoped. Freighting three hundred men and seventy mule-loads of tin overland to Marsala cost me all four ships and all my silver. ‘My’ silver. That’s a laugh.

And my gold was spent keeping us all in Marsala while the convoy prepared.

It was only in the mouth of the Sequana, at Loluma, which is what the Venetiae called their trade town there, that we really saw the power of the Venetiae. It wasn’t just that they had ships — and they did, ships as large as our Inner Sea grain ships, capable of carrying thousands of mythemnoi of grain in a single cargo. The Keltoi built barrels — as I’ve described — to standard sizes. And they built the open boats — the ones I’d seen at the piers — also to standard sizes, so that the barrels rolled easily aboard, right down the gunwales to the stern. It was a superb design: a Gaulish riverboat could load on any bank, and unload right back up the bank with a few strong men. They could row or pole, and they drew so little water that they could run up quite a small stream, or pass a dam or a fish weir.

They had a particular flat barge for carrying tin. Each boat took three ingots, and had a crew of two. Tin was so valuable, even here, that each boat had a curiously carved log on a rope, and the log was threaded into the ingots. I asked Tellonix what it was for.

He smiled. ‘If the boat capsizes and sinks, the little piece of wood floats to the surface and shows where we can retrieve the tin,’ he said.

They usually hired out guards — men like Sittonax. Detorix wanted my oarsmen, but I wasn’t willing to sell them. I did convince him to treat them as free men, and offer them wages. Few of them were willing, at first, but after an idle week and some descriptions of the trip we were going to make, more and more of them signed to row for him — almost a third of the former slaves. None of the men from Marsala, of course. We were almost home, or so it seemed to us, and most of the fishermen assumed we had about ten days’ travel before we got there.

I spent many fine evenings in the tavernas of Loluma, talking to Venetiae captains about their routes. They were careful, circumspect, but sailors have a natural tendency to brag to each other, and Demetrios was the very prince of navigators — he had brought us through the Pillars of Heracles and all the way to Alba, and his exploits loosened their tongues. They told us fabulous tales — tales of islands west of Alba, and north, too — of islands of ice that glittered in the sun, and shoals of cod so thick a man could walk on them.

One captain had made a dozen trips to the north of Alba, for slaves and gold. He laughed at our notion that we could sail around Alba in ten days.

‘Thirty days,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘And even then you would need the gods at your helm.’

Demetrios gave me a long look.

What could I say?

We Greeks gathered in a circle of standing stones, and Herodikles said the prayers for the autumn feast of Demeter. We gave a horse race, with prizes, for Poseidon, who had favoured us and let us live. It pleased the Keltoi, too, because they loved horses, even though theirs were, to me, the ugliest horses I’d ever seen: heavy, ungainly and short-legged. But they raced them, praised them, called them names like Wind and Spirit, just like our horses at home.

We introduced them to the idea of a night-time torch race on horseback, which they liked a good deal. We paid for a feast.

Our convoy was completed. I was taking a little over two hundred men home. All I needed was Doola.