Poseidon's Spear

14

I didn’t go anywhere that winter. I sat in Massalia with my smithy and a supply of tin the other bronze smiths envied, and cast a pair of light rams — carefully designed and carefully cast, according to my own theories. Around the headland at Tarsilla, Vasilios laid down the keel for a trieres. She would carry one hundred seventy-two oarsmen and each oarsmen would have a dactyl over two cubits in which to breathe. I had copper, and I had tin, and I traded Dionysius a competed ram for all the timber. I told the oarsmen that I would need them in the spring, and that the payoff for the tin adventure would happen at the spring feast of Demeter.

Gaius stayed the winter with me. He disdained working in the forge, but he would sit in a chair and chat with me while I worked, which made the time pass pleasantly enough.

Winter passed slowly.

It was interesting, the experience of being rich. Some men were jealous, and some were openly admitting it. Of course, I had two hundred ‘clients’ in the form of the former slave oarsmen, the marines, the shepherds and the fishermen. None of them seemed to want to go back to work.

Piracy has many ills, and the greatest may be that when you teach a hard-working boy that he can steal and kill for gold, he may feel that hauling nets is dull.

And there was an element of comedy to my riches. After all, the tin ingots were still stacked in the warehouse, and before midwinter, when one of the ingots showed signs of the tin illness, we brought them into the house we’d built and kept them warm, which seemed to help.

You probably don’t know about tin blight. Tin, when it gets cold and wet, can develop an illness like wheat — it grows a white mould, and once the mould spreads, the metal can be ruined. Indeed, if you leave the tin long enough, one day you’ll walk in and find your fortune in tin is nothing but a small pile of white dust. This was one of the reasons smiths couldn’t build up stores of tin. As a smith, I knew a few tricks — I knew to run over the outside of the pigs with flax tow and pork fat; I knew to keep them warm. But I spent my winter in a constant anxiety about the tin.

And that wasn’t my only anxiety. Again, my riches were more apparent than real. We had some gold — the ransom of the Gaul aristocrats, the gold we took all the way back in Iberia — but it was only really enough to pay for food and wine for the oarsmen who remained.

It was the rumour of our wealth in tin that made us rich. Some men thought we had thousands of mythemnoi of tin — other men thought we’d discovered a new source. All ascribed to us an almost heroic level of wealth.

As the winter wore on, and I worked in my shop in Massalia, I began to fear what those rumours might sound like out on the Great Blue. Somewhere, I feared that men just like me were hearing of the fabulous wealth we’d won. And were fingering their swords.

After the midwinter festivals, I laid out the rest of my hoard to have my oarsmen build a pair of towers down by the beach. And I put the word out in Massalia that I was looking for archers.

Massalia isn’t a big town. At most, there are a thousand free men, with their families; another thousand slave men, or perhaps a little more, and then another few hundred Gauls, mostly jobbing labourers or craftsmen. While there are caravan guards working the tin trade and the wine trade, there aren’t enough professional soldiers in the town to make a company, and when I enquired around the wine houses for more archers, most men shook their heads. Archery isn’t all that popular among the Gauls.

In fact, as Dionysius said one evening on a kline in my townhouse, I already had the biggest body of soldiers in the town. He didn’t sound jealous.

His new ship, Massalia, was being built in a stone ship shed down by the beach. He was planning to go to sea to prey on the Phoenicians, and to protect the Massalian trade. Increasingly, as winter passed and we talked, I was of a mind to join him. But only after I’d found Doola, who I hoped — and prayed — was wintering with his wife, somewhere on the other side of the Alps.

Spring came late, after a great deal of rain. My new ship — which I called Lydia despite some superstitious qualms — was taking shape. But Demetrios’s new merchantman, Sikel Herakles, was almost complete.

We were standing on the beach in the rain, looking at the hulls.

‘I’ll take her to sea as soon as she’s ready,’ Demetrios said. He licked his lips as a boy does when a girl shows a bit of thigh or breast — sorry, girls. These things happen, and I’m sure they are all errors, eh?

‘With the tin?’ I asked.

He nodded quietly.

‘Where do you plan to sell it?’ I asked.

‘Syracusa. Or just possibly Rome.’ He shrugged. ‘I’d like to have Doola back.’

‘I’d like you to wait for me,’ I said. ‘Seventy pigs of tin — a rich prize for a pirate, and everyone’s had the winter to hear of our success.’ I shook my head. ‘Please wait for me.’

He narrowed his eyes.

‘I was trading these waters before I ever knew you,’ I said.

We looked at each other. ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I’m not telling you, I’m asking. Doola will want to be here for the sale. He has contacts; he understands things-’ I paused. I could tell I was going the wrong way.

‘I was trading tin when you were off being a pirate in the east,’ he said.

‘And because I’m an excellent pirate, I want you to consider that in every little port on the Inner Sea, men like me are gathering over cheap wine and entertaining themselves with stories of how Arimnestos of Plataea and his friends went and got a thousand mythemnoi of tin.’ I shrugged. ‘Do what you like, Demetrios. It’s as much yours as mine.’

‘I know it’s as much mine as yours,’ Demetrios said quietly. ‘Do you?’

I crossed my arms. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Equal shares for the seven of us. And all your oarsmen’s pay comes out of your share. They aren’t my men. They don’t work for me.’ He spat. ‘They don’t get a dactyl of my tin.’

To say I was taken aback wouldn’t do justice to my feelings. ‘We wouldn’t have any tin without them,’ I said.

He shrugged. ‘Says you.’

‘Demetrios!’ I shouted. ‘What- We swore by Zeus and Heracles. Don’t be like this. We need everyone together to decide on the shares.’

He turned away. ‘Doola and the others are dead.’

‘Why do you think so?’ I asked him, following him along the beach.

‘If they were alive, they would be here.’ He kept walking. ‘It is you and me and Gaius and Seckla. But Gaius and Seckla are your men, not my friends.’

Riches. The root of all evil, if you ask me.

So I spent the winter worrying about Doola and Daud and Alexandros and the rest, and about pirates taking my treasure, and tin blight and friendship. Not the best winter.

I also looked for love, and found nothing. I bought a slave girl I fancied, and she was temperamental, anxious, ill used and mostly not very interested in what I purchased her for. Her name was Dais and she was Iberian, and she hated my pais and he hated her, and she was jealous of everyone in my life and at the same time demanding and lazy. She had a beautiful body. She had been badly treated. I felt for her; I caught her slashing her arms with my bronze razor, once. I had enough to worry about. Nor did I feel that by freeing her, I’d do her any favour. She couldn’t take care of herself.

Before the winter was over, I hauled her by the ear down to the market and sold her to a temple priest. Chastity was better than Dais.

The rains came and went, and in late spring, well after the first feasts of Demeter, I gathered my archers and marines — sixteen men — and we bought good horses and headed up the coast to Arla. I left Gaius with Demetrios, and that was a hard parting. Demetrios had left our shared house and moved in with a Sikel slave woman he’d bought, and he was making it fairly clear that we were not friends. He was openly offensive to Seckla, and cautious with Gaius.

Tilla, his slave woman, was just as difficult as he. She seemed to feel we were all in a state of near war. Perhaps this is a Sikel thing, but she wouldn’t unbar their door when I came to say goodbye. She shouted that she knew I’d come to kill her.

By Zeus, I was angry.

I went to embrace Vasileos. He and Gaius were laying down another keel — Gaius had decided to order another trireme before mine was even complete. He was going to go home a rich and powerful man — if he could find oarsmen.

Vasileos heard my tale about Tilla and shook his head. ‘She is a witch,’ he said. ‘She has turned Demetrios into a very small man, and now she seeks to poison him against the rest of us.’

I shrugged. ‘It’s the tin. I’ve seen this with soldiers and pirates — enough money makes men go mad.’

Vasileos shrugged. ‘Your ship will be ready when you return.’

Gaius hugged me. ‘I’ll watch Demetrios.’

As my little cavalcade rode out of town, I happened to see Demetrios watching from the window of his house. So the bastard had been home.

By comparison with Tarsilla, life on the trail was easy, pleasant and adventurous. The wet early spring had given way to an early summer, and the ground was dry. We had two horses for every man. I had Seckla, of course, and Giannis, and Megakles, the eldest of the fishermen who had made the voyage with us and who showed no inclination to go back to his nets. He was old to be a soldier — well over forty, and not much of a fighter — but he was one of those men who can do or fix almost anything, and he was unbelievably tough. He never complained about rations, never minded the weather and never minded work. If I don’t mention him often, it’s because he seldom spoke, but he had a smile — a wonderful smile when he was happy, and a slightly ironic smile when he felt that someone wasn’t pulling their weight. His entire ethical system seemed to revolve around how much work a man did. He seemed to think highly of me, but he wasn’t above mutely handing me a sharp knife and a lot of raw pork with a silent look that said, ‘Hey! Don’t be a pompous fuck. Do some work.’ A very expressive look, for one small smile and a slightly raised eyebrow.

The first night, we stayed on a farm west of Tarsilla. The second night we were in Massalia, drinking wine with Dionysius. He wished us luck, and despite some hard heads, we were away in the dark, picking our way across the tracks to Arla, going up the ridges past the shepherds and into the high hills. It only took us two days to make Arla and I truly hoped — I don’t know why — to find Doola there, or some rumour of him.

After Arla, we became a war band. We rode every day in formation, with three scouts well in front, a main body, a rearguard. Twenty men in armour on horseback is a lot of men, in the high country behind Arla. The Greek homesteaders feared us, and the Gauls barred their doors. We slept in the open, and when it rained, we were wet. Several of my marines had taken Gaul scale shirts — Anchises, one of Dionysius’ men from Lade, and his brother Darius (and what an unpopular name that must have been during the Ionian revolt). When we had been on the trail a week, they were in despair over their shirts, which were turning brown despite relatively good weather.

‘What you need is a dozen slaves apiece to keep you polished,’ I said.

Megakles showed them how to use ash, tow and olive oil to polish iron, but the amount of work involved staggered them.

Living outdoors is a different skill from sailing on ships. Horse care, all by itself, can become a full-time job. Every man had two horses, and they had to be curried, blanketed, picketed out and fed — every night — and curried and fed in the morning. And being horses, we had one down sick before we left Massalia and another lame at Arla. Between maintaining armour, cooking food and caring for horses, every one of us was fully employed from dawn to dark.

Horses. Really, if there was only a way to live without them. They don’t love me, and I don’t love them. I’m a passable rider, and a passable charioteer, too — I was trained to chariots in my youth, as some of you may remember. And I love the look of horses, but, may Poseidon forgive me, I’m a bad aristocrat, because mostly I think they’re the stupidest animals that a man has to deal with every day, unless he herds sheep. What other animal will run off a cliff? Eh?

At any rate, we were five days going north up the valley of the Rhodanus River to Lugdunum, and another two days there in a fine house that took travellers — a large stone house with its own stables, where thirty merchants could eat, sleep and rest. Despite excellent weather, ten days’ travel had tired us out.

We had a spot of trouble in Lugdunum. The second night there, Seckla and I went out to a wine shop to drink. We were unarmed, because the town was well governed and the Aedui lords didn’t allow men to wear arms openly. We were on our third bowl of the excellent local wine when a group of young sprigs came and sat on the trestles. It was all open-air; there were twenty men and a few women all sitting under the vines.

One of them, a curly blond in purple trousers, kept looking at me and glaring. He had gold earrings and was heavily muscled — a lord.

Almost too late, I figured out how I knew him. I’d cut him out of his saddle and sold him back to his father, that’s how I knew him. I can’t remember his name.

He and his friends began the usual way — looking at us and laughing.

Now, thugater, I was no longer eighteen. In fact, that year I was thirty years old. My blood didn’t seem any cooler, and yet a group of Gaulish boys catcalling from an adjacent table didn’t spark me to violence the way it might once have done.

Seckla, on the other hand, began to flush under his dark skin.

I put my hand on his. ‘Let’s just drink and go,’ I said. We didn’t have weapons, and this was an Aedui town.

But Purple Trousers couldn’t let go, and when we rose to leave, he got up and blocked our way to the outside.

He said something, and all his friends laughed. I assume he thought I didn’t speak any Keltoi, but of course I did. He made a statement about what I did with Seckla. I laughed. I suspect he alleged what Seckla might himself have preferred, if you take my meaning, and again, among Greeks it’s not a killing insult, but I suppose it is among Gauls, which is funny all by itself.

Then the man turned to face me, and his face was already transformed — that look men have when they switch from rational creatures to animals. And his fist went back, and there was a dagger in it.

I caught his dagger hand in my left, thumb down, and I broke his arm and took the dagger. And I punched him six or seven times until I broke his nose — all the while clutching his broken right arm in an elbow lock. He slumped, and I kicked him, hard.

I looked at his friends. In Gaulish, I said, ‘He attacked me with a dagger. Next man, I kill.’

They followed us into the street. And down the street. And to our lodgings, gathering friends as they went.

About an hour later, they got torches. Our landlord was none too happy, and sent for the lords of the town, who sent a dozen warriors. And the archon, whatever they called him, ordered me to pay a fine of twenty silver coins — about fifteen Athenian drachma.

When I explained in my not very good Keltoi that I had been attacked, he just shrugged.

So I paid.

Gwan didn’t play any part in this, because as a Senone, he was only going to make trouble here.

We rode out the next day, followed by thirty or so Aedui gentry. But we had food, two horses to a man and pack animals, and they didn’t, and if they wanted a fight, I wasn’t interested. We took the west road over the passes toward Rhodumna and the upper Senones country, and we outdistanced them easily. But I began to wonder how I was going to get back.

Now I hoped to find Doola in every town and village. When we reached the limits of the Senones country, I sent Gwan and his two retainers out ahead, to arrange food and to scout and ask around. But by the time we’d been twenty days on the trail and we rode our tired horses across the divide and down into Agedinca, we hadn’t seen or heard any rumour of them, and a black man should have been easy to find in Gaul.

Two days later, we guested with Collam, and I brought him some Persian saffron and some pepper from the beach market in Massalia. He offered to let my little war band stay for some time, and he sent riders out to the south and east.

I passed a very pleasant week. We hunted deer and wild boar, and I showed him how the Greeks hunt rabbit and he laughed himself silly. Even when I came back with a pair of coneys, he was still laughing. No Gaul aristocrat will do anything on foot if it can be done on horseback, and the sight of me running the trails of his forest naked was apparently the very height of Gaulish humour.

Summer was coming, and the grain was ripening in the fields, and all I could think about was the tin, and Demetrios. There was a girl in Collam’s hall — well, I was quite taken with her. She had beautiful big eyes and a wonderful laugh. She was by no means a great beauty, except in a lithe, flat-chested sort of way… Ah, I beg your pardon, girls. But she made the time pass quickly, and the enthusiasm with which she opened the pins on her dress and let it fall Ah, blushes all round. I really shouldn’t tell these stories. I merely want you to see that I was coming back to life in every way. I’m ashamed to say I don’t remember her name, but she was no slave. One of the very finest things about the Keltoi is the freedom of their women — in that respect, there’s a great deal the Hellenes could learn from them.

Collam’s son came back from the south with a rumour that there was an early cart train coming up from Korbilon, which, after some talk, proved to be a town on the mainland opposite the Venetiae islands. I was worried that the Venetiae might hold a grudge, although, if you’ve been listening, you’ll know that we did them no harm. But as I have said elsewhere, merchants guard their trade routes the way farmers guard their fields. Dicca, as I called the lad, told that over the hills, men said the cart train was guarded by a black man with magical powers.

That seemed hopeful.

Sophia! That was her name. Or perhaps that was her name in Greek. At any rate, I was enjoying her, and in no hurry to leave, once I knew that Doola was coming. My host had tribal problems — a fractious neighbour, and Gwan’s father still owed the Venetiae, and was still a hostage with them.

Collam sat down with me — we’d been there a full week, and perhaps more. We’d eaten a feast of pork, and the wine bowls were passing. I was sitting with Sophia, my arm around her waist — the Keltoi encouraged such behaviour in public, whereas in Greece it would have excited comment, to say the least.

Collam looked at Sophia and nodded. ‘Be sure you get a boy off him,’ he said.

She threw back her head and laughed. ‘I’m past all that,’ she said. But she smiled at me.

Collam leaned back against the table and twirled his moustaches. ‘Let me make you a proposition,’ he said.

‘Don’t listen to him,’ Sophia said. ‘He wants you to fight.’

She grinned and Collam frowned.

‘I want you to fight,’ Collam admitted, and tossed the woman a false glare. They weren’t brother and sister — I never fully understood their relationship, but it was deep. He looked back at me. ‘Listen — I can help you, and you can help me. The Venetiae, they want to move their goods without paying a toll. And my brother-in-law,’ he paused, ‘is willing to make concessions to them. Concessions he shouldn’t be making. But they are buying him against the rest of us, instead of paying their tolls.’

‘Ahh,’ I said, or something equally intelligent.

‘He’s assembled a strong force: he has Venetiae cavalry and his own charioteers and several hundred infantry.’

‘And you want to take him on,’ I said.

Collam nodded. ‘He’s a rich man — far richer than any of us. But if the smaller lords band together, we can take him. And you are a famous warrior. And you have twenty warriors at your tail — a fine company. If you fight beside me, I’ll give Gwan any Venetiae prisoners to trade for his father.’

I shook my head. ‘I didn’t really plan to come here and make war,’ I said. ‘I need to find Doola. I won’t do anything to annoy the Venetiae while Doola is still on the river or the road.’

It was a good thing to say, but the Lord of the Biturges had other ideas. I suppose he heard that my host was making alliances and causing trouble, because Genattax of the Biturges marched against us with twelve hundred men, and he came almost without warning.

I might have wondered why Collam was so glad to see me that spring, or why he was so eager to send scouts out to the south. In fact, his son and his other horsemen were watching every road and path for Genattax all spring, and my search for Doola was merely fortuitous.

But I wasn’t going to ride off and leave Collam in the lurch. And the rumour was that the black man and his convoy were ten days away. Maybe less.

Why did things have to be so complicated?

Collam used me as a recruiting tool, showing his Greek warrior off to his neighbours. He had me demonstrate pankration with Seckla, and sometimes with some unlucky Gaulish lad. I felt as if I had become some sort of slave prizefighter, but by the time Genattax came at us over the hills, we had a thousand men, almost a third of them cavalry.

Seckla was hesitant, but the rest of the men were game to fight. Fighting for strangers can be a testy business — you don’t really know who can be trusted, and there’s always the possibility of out-and-out betrayal, but I trusted Collam.

We dismounted and fought with his tribal infantry. I’m not very good at fighting on horseback, and I thought that I could do something to stiffen the javelin-throwing peasantry.

We formed on a hillside, with the enemy in full view, also forming — chaos, really. Men wandered up to the battle, and when they formed their phalanx, each man chose his own place. It was alien, and yet somehow familiar — after all, even in Plataea, men generally stand beside their brothers and cousins. I wanted us to form quickly and attack across the valley while the enemy was still forming, but Collam laughed at my notions of tactics and said that such a fight would decide nothing. So instead, both hosts formed, and moved carefully down the ridges towards the streambed at the bottom. It wasn’t very full. There was marshy ground to our left, and all of our cavalry formed on our right. All the enemy cavalry was there, too. They had more cavalry than we did, and more chariots, and we had more infantry.

May I say that war looks a good deal less necessary when you are fighting for strangers? As far as I could tell, the differences between Collam and his brother-in-law could have been resolved in an hour over a cup of wine. Perhaps a Gaul would have felt the same about Datis and Miltiades. At any rate, I didn’t feel fired with enthusiasm for the conflict, and as morning wore into afternoon, I was increasingly aware that the enemy’s mounted flank outnumbered ours and also overshadowed it, as their line went well beyond ours to the right.

But they wouldn’t cross the stream, and neither would we. I understood why we wouldn’t — we were outnumbered. But they had the numbers, and that trickle of water wouldn’t have slowed their cavalry.

After some discussion, I found that it was only my ignorance. The chariots couldn’t cross the river, and that meant neither side was anxious to engage.

Well, they aren’t professional warriors. They have their own ways, and they are, after all, only barbarians.

We stood across the stream from them for hours. They would chant, and our side would chant. Sometimes a lone man would emerge and bellow a challenge.

I stood with Seckla and watched.

As the sun began to go down, a big man with a red beard emerged from the enemy infantry and whirled his great sword over his head and smacked his shield boss with it. I remember thinking — why not?

In fact, I dared myself. I had never been so close to conflict and felt so little.

I was afraid — afraid I was losing my taste for war. I was going to become one of those old men who love babies.

Who knows what I feared. I am now an old man, and I love babies. Hah! The things young men fear.

At any rate, I kicked off my sandals and walked to the edge of the stream. He came down — I don’t think he was delighted to have his challenge taken up, after an afternoon when no challenges had been answered.

Since he hesitated, I jumped the stream. Immediately, a great shout went up from our lines, and men clattered their spears on their shields and roared.

He was obviously surprised. Nor did he have a spear, and I did. He backed and backed, and we began to circle.

I tried some old tricks to draw and attack, but I began to fear that I was dealing with a very experienced warrior. He would not be drawn. He wanted me to commit to my attack so that he could counter it, come inside and hit me with his sword.

I wasn’t sure his strategy was sound — I wasn’t sure that his long sword could even hurt me through my armour. He wore no armour — just a silver torque and trousers.

We circled again, and men shouted insults. They wanted us to get on with it. Easy to say, when you aren’t the one facing three feet of Keltoi steel.

And then, he crossed his feet — a foolish thing to do at any time — and dropped his shield just a bit. We were ten feet apart, and he thought I couldn’t hit him.

I stepped forward and threw my spear; he raised his shield and I was already drawing my sword, and my spear went in under his shield and into his thigh, and he grunted. I use heavy spears, and the blow went well in, and he couldn’t get it out.

He screamed and fell to his knees, and of course that hurt him more.

I carefully pinned his sword hand with my shield — dying men are dangerous — and cut his head off with my kopis.

It was a good stroke, and he was positioned for it, and Ares himself held my hand. I have cut men’s hands off before, but I don’t think, until that moment, that I had ever beheaded anything but rams in sacrifice. Blood fountained out of his neck, and his body twitched and fell forward, and his eyes blinked from the severed head — I swear it. It shook me.

Our whole phalanx set up a wild bellow of approval, like so many oxen.

I went and retrieved my spear. And then, well. Apparently my interest in war had not waned. I started walking towards the enemy.

‘Send me another hero,’ I shouted.

The enemy phalanx was not very tightly formed. As I have said, every man stands where he will, and their spacings are not ideal, and men who dislike each other leave gaps, as do strangers. All in all, they form at something more like our fusin or normal order, not the sunaspismos or close order that a phalanx more typically fights in. I walked forward slowly, and the men opposite me shuffled back.

Well.

A young man without a torque came out. He was probably someone’s bondsman, and although he was well muscled, he didn’t know much about using a spear.

I killed him.

A tall man with heavy moustaches came out. He had a magnificent torque and a shirt of scales, and a helmet with a pig on top. His shield was long and narrow, like two boards together, with a long central boss. He had a good spear, and he crouched like a boxer as he approached me.

He tried to shield-bash my aspis. He hadn’t fought a Greek before. The round face of my shield ate most of his energy, and the willow splits resisted the rest, and he backed away. I stabbed for his feet and got one. My spear came away bloody, and he roared in pain and leaped.

I wasn’t prepared. No one had ever leaped into the air in front of me before, and instead of gutting him in the air, I ended up slamming my spearhead into his helmet — better than nothing, but he came down on my shield and we went down in a tangle. I went over backwards, my legs trapped under me, and something snapped — very painfully — in my right foot as I went down. I was under him, but he was just barely moving, and I had time to get the knife out from under my arm and put it under his chin.

By Heracles, my foot hurt. When I looked down, my toes were swollen. I’d broken it.

What an inglorious wound.

The next man was already dismounting from his chariot. By Greek standards, the Keltoi have very little sense of honour. I’d put three of theirs down, and they just kept sending champions. This new one was somebody — his men cheered, and he had a long shirt of polished scales and a beautiful helmet with eagle’s wings — real ones — on either side of his head.

I got my aspis back on my arm and I sheathed my dagger, and my kopis, and got my spear back.

He stood by his chariot and shouted his lineage — descended, apparently, from the War God.

I was breathing like a horse after a race, and he was fresh.

He picked up his shield, hopped once and hurled his spear like Zeus’s thunderbolt.

The hop gave him away, however, and I deflected it with my aspis.

He reached up and his charioteer handed him another spear, and he threw it.

I began to get angry. And his second throw wasn’t any more decisive than the first.

And he reached for a third spear. The bucket in the chariot had six.

You can run on a broken foot. Really, you can.

I didn’t run at him. I ran at his horses. They wanted to shy, but the charioteer held them.

I killed one.

Heh.

Then I killed the other one.

Then I killed the charioteer. He was yelling at me as if I’d committed some sort of foul.

Kelts don’t kill charioteers, apparently.

Then I turned and started hunting the lordling.

His daimon had already left him. He tried to keep away from me. And he was yelling — demanding that I stop, that I had broken the laws of a duel.

At least, that’s what I think he said.

Eventually, when he was pressed almost back to his own foot soldiers, he stopped. We went shield to shield. I used mine with a push of the shoulder to roll his down, and I pricked him with my spear — I got him, but his scales saved him from the worst of it.

He stabbed at me, but I had turned him with my stronger shield and he stumbled away.

My spear licked out and struck his helmet.

He stumbled.

I struck his right foot with my spear.

He gasped, but his shield was still steady as I leaped forward, and our shields went crack as we struck at each other. My spear went into his throat, and his spear rang off my helmet.

I stumbled back. If I had not killed him, he would have had me then.

Now their line was backing away from me.

Seckla came across the stream at my back. He rightly assessed that I was hurt.

But he didn’t come alone. The rest of my men crossed with him — and Collam’s infantry. Although they owed me no loyalty, they apparently thought that this was a signal and then began to cross, and suddenly, our whole line was crossing the stream.

But the enemy were falling back.

Our cavalry didn’t move. They sat on their side of the stream and watched our infantry push the Biturges up their ridge.

They began to run.

The Senones leaped forward like hungry wolves, gave a bellow and it was over.

Well, except for the actual battle.

The infantry didn’t decide Keltoi battles. Cavalry decided Keltoi battles. The Biturges cavalry watched their infantry run, and they turned on us.

I couldn’t keep up with the runners. My foot hurt too much. So I was standing, breathing, leaning on my spear when the Biturges cavalry charged into the Senones infantry. It was an insanely stupid thing to do — they abandoned the streamside and charged our victorious infantry out of loyalty to their own infantry, I assume.

The way Collam tells it, he couldn’t believe his eyes for several long breaths of a man. It seemed to good to be true.

But as the last of the horsemen cantered uphill away from the stream, he decided it must be true. And he led his cavalry across the stream, and that, my friends, was the end of the battle. Collam captured half a hundred noble cavalrymen and twenty chariots.

Of course, the Biturges cavalry had had ten minutes to chew on us, and I missed the end because I was lying face down in the grass.

I missed everything. Doola came upriver with ten more pigs of tin, his wife and twenty barrels of wine, as well as three hundred Gaulish refugees looking for a new life on the Inner Sea.

Collam made a treaty with the Venetiae on his own terms, and traded them six of their merchant aristocrats for Gwan’s father and his debt.

I was two weeks returning to consciousness, and I had headaches and black depression — the result, a Greek doctor told me later, of a bad blow to the head. I never saw the man who put me down — I was alone, and a great many of them came for me because, of course, I’d downed their champions.

My recovery was slow. I caught something — one of Apollo’s arrows — that made me drip at both ends, and my foot swelled and got purple so that I thought it would have to come off. And then I lost more time — off my head, I think, with a fever.

Doola nursed me. Bless him, and his wife. I was a hero to the Gauls, but with so many prisoners, so much loot and the trade negotiations, I was largely forgotten.

It was a month before we left. Even then, I’d lost weight, and I could just barely ride, and it was Doola, not me, who led us back across the passes to Lugdunum. We had many parting embraces and declarations of friendship, and I had enough golden torques given me to start a collection.

And in fact, gold is always good.

When Doola rode south to find his wife, he found Oiasso destroyed — the villages burned, the hall flattened. But the people were scarcely touched; they simply retreated into the hills.

The Carthaginians encouraged the local Iberians to attack again. And winter set in with no crops harvested. The whole community of Oiasso had to depend on relatives in neighbouring communities for food.

As soon as the hill thawed, Neoptolymos and Alexandros led a hundred men on a counter-raid into the mountains, and they took flocks and grain. And tin.

Doola convinced them that they should pack their belongings and leave. It was a fine tale, and one that I heard told several times and never fully understood. I did learn that Tara and her brother died defending their hall; that the Phoenicians had come back twice, and had four ships the second time and five ships the first time.

‘They were hunting us,’ Doola said.

We said goodbye to Gwan at Lugdunum and rode south, moving in easy stages. I was still recovering, and our Gaulish horde needed food and rest. But it was a fine summer, and we had Doola’s tin to trade — ill-gotten gains from the Iberians.

Midsummer saw us at Arelata, and men said that Phoenician ships had been on the coast all summer. And there had been raids.

Massalia had been attacked, and had repelled the attack.

My stomach clenched, and then rolled. No one at Arelata knew where Tarsilla was, but they all agreed that the Phoenicians had attacked every town on the coast that was Greek.

At Arelata, we prepared for the last dash to home. We elected to do it by land, because everyone at Arelata said the coast was too dangerous. There were no tin shipments moving into — or out of — Massalia.

And Sittonax and Daud were leaving us. They had helped get the convoys out to Arelata, where all of Tara’s people were planning to settle. There was good farmland all the way up the hillsides, and these were people used to terracing.

But the last night, Sittonax and Daud both changed their minds. Daud and I embraced, and we both wept a little.

And then he said, ‘Fuck it. I’m coming.’

Sittonax looked at him as if he’d grown an extra head. And then shrugged.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll come too.’

So we all drank more wine. The next day, we offered sacrifices for our own safety and for that of our friends at Tarsilla, and we headed for home.