Poseidon's Spear

17

The run to Croton was beautiful all the way. The weather was startlingly fine, as it can be on the east coast of Sicily, once in a while. The moist haze lifted, the skies were blue and the wind mostly west of north, so that the rowers had little of which to complain. We coasted to Katania and ate lobster; coasted again until we were opposite Rhegium, and then crossed the straits effortlessly, as if such a thing was easy. Next day we coasted east along the base of the boot of Italy. There are rich towns all along that coast, and we lived well, paid silver, and even the oarsmen, I’ll wager, enjoyed the trip.

I have said before that few things are as good for a crew as an attractive but unavailable woman. Dano was a fine sailor, delighted by every aspect of life at sea, and she insisted on rowing one afternoon, simply to see if she could; two of her ladies joined her. She didn’t strip to the waist, to the disappointment of the crew. At night she sang, and men came from all the fires to listen to her, or to her slaves and ladies. Pythagoreans make no distinction of rank when they eat or speak, so she discoursed on philosophy to any oarsman who approached her. The food was good, the wine was better and the company excellent. Doola was as pleased as a craftsman at the completion of a noble work, and we were all as rich as Croesus.

Great days. It was a different greatness from Marathon, or the heady days of the Ionian revolt.

I remember lying one night on a beach — I think we were a day east of Rhegium — and thinking, as I passed the wine to Doola, that this was how life was supposed to be.

‘Friends, whatever will we do next?’ I asked. ‘We’re too young to lie on our laurels.’

Doola laughed. ‘Home to Massalia, and make babies,’ he said. ‘Buy a farm, and get fat.’

Gaius joined his laughter. ‘I have two fine daughters who barely know me,’ he said. ‘And enough money that I need never leave them again. I will build a temple, and restore my family’s power and prestige.’

Neoptolymos nodded. ‘I will take back my castle and my people, and raise strong sons and raid Greeks,’ he said.

Daud shook his head. ‘I don’t really want to go home any more,’ he admitted.

‘Settle in Massalia, then,’ Doola said. ‘Lots of room.’ He looked around. ‘Doesn’t anyone but me miss Demetrios?’

I nodded. ‘I do.’

Daud said, ‘We should find him. Make peace.’ He looked around.

Not everyone agreed.

Sittonax fingered his beard. ‘I’m not ready to settle down.’ He smiled. ‘And what of you, Ari? Are you done? Will you stop being a sea-wolf?’

I remember smiling around at them. ‘I would that it could be like this for ever. Triumph after triumph; adventure after adventure. But, I am growing older, and my sword hand will slow. I think I will go back to Plataea, after Neoptolymos is safe in his mountains, and see what awaits me.’

Doola looked blank. ‘You won’t return to Massalia?’

I shrugged. ‘Who knows what the future holds,’ I said.

Dano was good company. I admit that some days I wanted to bed her, and then other days I thought of her as a companion, not a woman. Hah! Make of that what you will.

At Croton she was very nearly a queen. She feasted us in her home — seven warriors eating vegetables, because, as everyone knows, the Pythagoreans eat no meat. She spent an evening telling us what the Pythagoreans do believe, which is complex and made me vaguely uncomfortable: it seemed to me, and still does, faintly blasphemous. At the core of their beliefs lies the tenet that the human soul — the very essence of a man or woman — is indestructible, and endures from aeon to aeon, so that a man is reborn again and again in a different body, with different parents — perhaps Greek in one generation and Aethiopian in another.

That much is easily understood, but after that it grows more complex. They believe that the reward of a good life is to go on to a better life, and that the curse of an ill-lived life is to go down the ladder, as they say, so that a bad man might be reborn as a dog. Of this, I have the greatest doubts; how can one cow live a life more filled with cow-arete than another cow, and thus earn a higher step on the ladder? Perhaps I needed to sit longer at Dano’s feet and worship.

On the third night, we stayed late, and I sat at her feet quite literally. Some of her followers and friends had come to meet me and the others, and they were brilliant people, well educated, handsome — and very un-Greek. Men and women lay together on couches for dinner, and after; men lay with men and women with women, and all of them seemed like family to all the others. Yet at the same time they didn’t seem to me to treat their slaves any better than any other group of people; they were all rich, at least by the standards of Plataea, and had many of the vices and attitudes of the rich. If their women were freer than Greek women, let me add that Greek aristocratic women are also very free.

It was pleasant, but far more alien than a similar visit to a Keltoi hall or a Cretan lord. Many of them owned all their belongings in common, which sounds remarkable, but in truth, they had so much, and so much surplus, that I doubt the sharing was ever very onerous.

I ramble. I was delighted with Dano, but not with her world. I didn’t enjoy eating vegetables without meat — indeed, I slipped away every day and ate pork in a taverna by my ship.

But that last evening, as I lay beside Dano, and she was facing her friend Thanis and had her back to me — her hips pressed against mine — she took my hand, as she never had before. And pressed it against her stomach while chatting.

The invitation was clear.

Later, while most of the guests were leaving, she took me aside.

‘You could stay here and be one of us,’ she said. ‘You are a natural aristocrat — a man of worth. Leave the world, and join us.’

‘I am not sure I could stop eating meat,’ I said.

‘Pah!’ she said, and wrinkled her nose. ‘I can smell it on you, even now. But despite that, I think you might find compensations. You have, all by yourself, changed my view of your Heraclitus. You have a good mind, and good discernment. You could be one of us. With me.’

I kissed her. It was Not enough. It didn’t move me, particularly. I am hard put to explain what was wrong; my body found her attractive enough. My mind found her mind attractive enough.

Perhaps I had grown too old for love. That is certainly what I thought. I kissed her, my tongue roving automatically, my performance barren of meaning.

Oh, the horrors of age. I cursed inside at my lack of passion.

She broke away. She seemed as… unmoved as I. ‘It is your decision,’ she said with a smile that was a little more brittle than before. ‘You would be welcome here.’

The next day we sailed for Syracusa, and she didn’t see me off.

Anarchos had nothing for me. I confess that I threatened him. Something about my failure — my failure even to make love to an attractive woman — made Lydia’s happiness more important. Perhaps I was cursed by Aphrodite — that was Seckla’s opinion.

He was unimpressed by my threats. He laughed in my face.

Well, there you are. Two bad men, locked in a pointless contest.

I went back the next day and apologized. ‘I can save her,’ I said weakly.

‘So can I,’ Anarchos said bitterly. ‘But I don’t. Because she won’t save herself.’

‘Does she love the Tyrant?’ I asked. He shrugged.

I sighed. ‘I’ll return in the spring,’ I said.

He nodded. And extended a hand. ‘I hear you are very rich, now,’ he said.

I laughed. ‘Now. Or, perhaps again.’ I reached under my cloak. ‘Here’s your initial investment. With a sizeable return.’

He eyes the leather bag. I’d given him gold for his silver, and a magnificent Alban pearl I’d picked up. He rolled it in his hand. ‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘I admire your fights with the Carthaginians.’

‘You could come along sometime,’ I said. ‘I’ll be fighting in the spring.’

He patted his waist. ‘Not likely. But I might build a privateer to go with you. Would you stomach that?’

‘If his captain obeyed,’ I said.

We shook on it.

I collected my armour from Anaxsikles in the same hour that Neoptolymos tried his. Men said we were like Achilles and Hector standing side by side. We glittered with all the new bronze.

Now, if you consider, in all my life I have been armed in the arms of dead men, or in my own work. This was the first panoply I’d ever had that was all the work of one man, purpose-made for me.

Glorious, like the sword and the spears that went with it.

I had thigh guards, and arm guards, upper and lower, and ankle guards, rendering me proof against any chance blow in a ship fight. A solid-bronze thorax and a helmet with folding cheekpieces, and greaves that fitted up over the knee like a bronze skin.

A shop boy held a mirror, and I looked at myself — a man of bronze.

I ran up and down the street in it, to the delight of a hundred small boys. Despite the old wound, I ran well, although Neoptolymos ran better. And we threw our spears and even fenced a bit with our swords, and the crowd roared with pleasure. Remember — this was a society at the edge of war with mighty Carthage. They were afraid. Afraid they would lose. And seeing us — friendly foreigners who would help — gave them heart.

Ah, it was glorious.

Last of all, I went to see Gelon. He seemed scarcely to remember me, which was odd. I explained that I was returning to Massalia, and he was uninterested until I said I would be back in the spring with five ships.

‘It is my intention to strike the Carthaginian trade in the Adriatic,’ I said. ‘If you prefer, I can touch at Rhegium rather than here. I know your relations with Carthage are delicate.’

He nodded. ‘Oh, come here,’ he said. ‘Will your five ships support me when we are at war?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘Then let us not mince words. We are at war with Carthage now — and with Persia. There is a rumour that Xerxes is now Great King — and has sent an ambassador to Carthage to demand they make war against us. To destroy the Greek world.’

I nodded. ‘I have heard this rumour before,’ I said. ‘It is something men say. I doubt the Great King even knows where Syracusa is.’

He frowned. ‘Yet Athens intends to send an embassy here to ask for our support against Persia,’ he said.

My eyebrows shot up.

‘Oh, yes, Plataean. It has come to that.’ He drank wine. ‘Athens has more than a hundred ships to put in the water, all triremes. Yet I have half as many again, when all the cities of Magna Greca support me.’ He nodded. ‘I will be Hegemon of the League against Persia. Wait and see.’

I couldn’t see this idealist being invited by Athens to command a rowing boat in a race, but he believed himself a great man. And indeed, despite my dislike of him — yes, I had decided I disliked him — he had greatness in him.

As for promising my ships to support him, I assumed that we would. How could I have seen how it would all fall out? The truth is that, like many Greeks, I never imagined what was coming. To men of my generation, Lade and Marathon settled everything — Lade gave Persia the upper hand in Asia, and Marathon denied them Greece. That business was finished.

In retrospect, I should have known, of all men, where we were headed, and at what speed.

We sailed for Massalia near the end of the season, rich, fat and sleek. Gaius went back to Rome, and we feasted with him and his delighted wife for three days before dropping down the Tiber and racing north. We worried every day and every night about a Carthaginian squadron, and we met none.

Massalia seemed very small after the summer in Syracusa. Dionysus was delighted to see us; he had taken three merchantmen over the summer, and was eager to take part in our Adriatic adventure in the spring. He was, as ever, a hard drillmaster, and our rowers cursed him all winter as they sat on benches on a freezing beach, lifting weighted oars and doing other exercises meant to keep their bodies hard. We trained, too. I tried to remember all that Polimarchos had taught me, and I had men lifting heavy stones, fencing with sticks, practising taking and defending ships large and small. We had two months of heavy, icy rain and Dionysus kept us at it. I think some of the oarsmen would have killed him, if they thought they could have got away with it.

But it was not all work. We celebrated feasts like rich men; we built the first stone temple in our small settlement, and many of our men rebuilt their homes in stone. Vasileos rebuilt our Carthaginian capture, making her a lighter ship and slightly longer. We hired more marines from all over the Tyrrhenian Sea — most of them Etruscans. We had some Latins, too — big, tough men.

I threw myself into exercise. It appeared to me that this was my last adventure. I felt old that winter, with aches in my hands and knees that wouldn’t go away. I had no interest in women, and little in wine or song. It seemed to me that the compass of the world was drawing in, smaller and smaller, and that after one more raid, I would go back to Plataea and be an average smith, and die there.

And that seemed to me just.

How the gods must have laughed.