Poseidon's Spear

19

Carthage got her tin from Iberia, as I’ve mentioned. Four times a year, when the Iberians had filled the Carthaginian warehouses, they sent a fleet to pick up the tin and sail it home — half a dozen round ships guarded closely by a squadron of galleys.

This was, well, I won’t call it common knowledge. It was uncommon knowledge. Shippers, tin miners, bronze-smiths and pirates knew it.

I’d say that the Carthaginians kept the movement of the tin fleets secret, but that wouldn’t do justice to how secret they kept it. They didn’t want the Greeks to know where the tin came from, or how much there was. Most merchants — even tin traders — thought that the tin came from Etrusca, or Illyria. Or some hazy point outside the Gates of Heracles.

Geaeta had quite a story — an adventure of her own, with knife-fights, lovemaking and clever escapades worthy of Odysseus. I even believed a few of the stories. She had courage and strong muscles, and I can witness that those two things alone can win you free of slavery.

Her story — the parts that made sense and I believed — was complex. She had started the spring sailing season in a slave pen in Carthago, and gone west in a consignment to New Carthage, a colony on the Inner Sea coast of Iberia facing the Balearic Islands. She said that she was sold off to a brothel there, and two weeks later, the first ships of the spring tin convoy had arrived, all badly storm-damaged by a freak spring storm in the strait.

‘They were all afraid, and angry,’ she said. ‘All the owners. All the rich men.’ She shrugged. ‘Your friend says navarchs don’t talk to porne. Maybe; maybe not his kind,’ she spat. ‘But most men talk. And good friends — a pair of them will hire a pair of girls — you know, together.’ She shrugged. ‘And the men will chat while-’ She shrugged again.

‘I got the captain of one of the round ships,’ she said. ‘He had had quite a scare. That’s when men talk the most. He almost lost his ship — and his life. He went to the temple four times while he was staying in my room.’ She shrugged, smiled. ‘He wanted me.’ She made a face — pride and revulsion together. ‘He wanted me every hour of the day and night — besotted, he was. So he paid a bribe to the brothel owner so that I could come with him to Carthage and back — he was being sent for replacement oarsmen and all sorts of chandlery that New Carthage didn’t have.’ She met my eyes. ‘The day we left, news came that the other survivors of the tin fleet had returned to Gades. And that we could expect them in fifteen days, at the new moon.’ She looked around. It was the evening of our second day at sea. She’d told the story enough times that it had a polished ring to it that made her sound like a liar. The problem was that she was a damned good storyteller, and that didn’t actually help her veracity.

Gaius — now a surly, somewhat domineering Roman magnate who clearly didn’t want to go to sea that summer — shook his head. ‘Dionysus is right,’ he said. ‘You can’t believe a word she says.’

Seckla spat. ‘I believe her,’ he said.

Gaius made an obscene suggestion as to exactly why he believed her, and Daud laughed and laughed. It was good to hear the Keltoi man laugh; he had been silent for so long. His second brush with slavery had all but ruined his cheerful disposition, leaving him dour.

‘How’d you come to be in Ostia?’ Daud asked, when he was done laughing.

‘I jumped ship at Rhegium,’ she said.

‘Why, exactly?’ I asked. ‘I mean, why would a Carthaginian ship bound for Carthage ever come anywhere near Rhegium?’

She shrugged. ‘How would I know?’ she said. ‘I’m not a great sailor. When we were at sea, he’d, um, make use of me when he pleased, and otherwise the boat went up and down, men ran about and the oarsmen all watched me like cats watch rats. I swore I’d never go to sea again.’

Gaius pursed his lips and scrated his red hair. ‘I’m leaving my farms at a touchy time — to be killed by the Carthaginians,’ he said. ‘Perhaps if I’m lucky, I’ll only be a slave.’

Geaeta looked pointedly at his waistline. ‘At least you know you won’t be sold to a brothel,’ she said.

Gaius wasn’t used to being talked to that way, much less by a mere woman. He stomped off.

That night, Dionysus said to me, ‘She’s either real, or she’s the most gifted actress I’ve ever seen.’

I agreed. I believed her. Most of the time.

Of course, it was possible. It was all plausible. Ships go off course. But an unarmed merchant ship headed for Carthage should have avoided the north coast of Sicily — the Greek coast — like a plague. He should have run south and coasted Africa.

On the other hand, she was just the kind of girl who got the trierarchs in a brothel — not a broken spirit in a vaguely fleshy body, but a passionate woman with good looks and a mouth. If I owned a brothel, I’d buy a dozen of her.

Hah! Sorry, ladies. A man can dream.

We coasted northern Sicily. Secretly, every night when I landed, I asked the men of the towns whether they’d ever seen Geaeta before, or a ship bearing her. None had. She said she’d never landed in any of them. Of course, a round ship is more at the mercy of the winds and Poseidon’s whims, and never has to land. It can carry food and water for weeks.

All of her story was plausible.

We landed next on the south coast of Sardinia — close enough to home to think about chucking the whole thing. But we didn’t. The prospect of riches can be as intoxicating as wine.

South of Sardinia, we picked up a pair of Carthaginian traders, half a day apart. I caught one, and Dionysus caught the other. Neither skipper knew anything about a tin convoy, but both admitted there had been a ferocious storm in the Straits of Heracles a month before.

Their cargoes were valuable — grain in one, and olive oil and hides in the other. We concentrated the cargoes into one of them and put a dozen men aboard under Giannis and sent her north to Massalia. And went west with the second capture filled to the gunwales with water and dried fish, a crew of fishermen under Vasileos sailing her. With our consort to provide food for a thousand rowers, we managed to make the five-day crossing to the Balearics in three days — with seven hundred and fifty mythemnoi of food and as much water. No fleet could have done it, but a handful of pirates Listen, I’ve made Dionysus sound like a monster in the matter of the girl. He wasn’t a nice man. He had fine ethics but didn’t apply them to women — at all. But he was an excellent sailor, a fine navigator and he planned. I learned on that trip how to calculate food expenditure. Off Alba, we had a round ship in consort, but we hadn’t used her for food. Dionysus’ method allowed a squadron of triremes to keep on the sea virtually for ever — as long as the owners were rich enough to buy stores. A thousand men eat a lot.

Nine days out of Ostia, and we were on a beach on the south coast of the Balearics. I’d landed there before, and I liked the beach. And then we were away south. We cruised warily off Ebusus and landed on a tiny islet, and then we slipped off the beach in the first light of a new-minted summer day and crossed to the Iberian coast, and worked our way along with a favourable wind for two more days.

The second evening, a pair of local boats saw us from seaward as we were landing. Dionysus was off the beach in a flash, and he took them both — no fishing boat can outrun a warship, as I had reason to remember. We ate their fish as the crews sat, disconsolate.

Dionysus and I questioned the two fishing captains. They knew New Carthage, and feared it, it was clear. Nether knew anything about the tin fleet. Both expected to die.

Neither knew anything about a big squadron of Carthaginian triremes setting a trap for pirates, either, to be frank.

Dionysus was planning to kill them all, but I insisted we leave them there on the beach, alive. Well, not all of them. Four men ‘volunteered’ to row with my ship. I took them.

We were off into an overcast morning of light rain. We crept down the coast: the wind was wrong, so we rowed into a light headwind, our five-ship squadron spread across thirty stades of sea so that we would sweep up any ship we might want to catch.

It was mid-afternoon when Neoptolymos — he had a Carthaginian ship so he was the most landward of the sweep — signalled that he could see New Carthage. An hour later, the town was visible in the haze, her red tile roofs glinting against the rising red-brown of the hills behind the town.

The harbour was empty. So were the seas.

After fifteen days of frenetic rowing and planning and training and sailing, our disappointment was palpable.

I had to admit that we hadn’t planned for the situation that confronted us. We planned either to fight our way out of an ambush, or swoop down on our prey. In fact, we found a fortified town with a heavily walled inner harbour — empty. Nor was there a powerful naval squadron waiting for us.

In the fading, ruddy light, I rowed up alongside Dionysus and hailed him.

‘Have you cut her throat yet?’ he asked.

I laughed. ‘No. She says we’re late.’

‘Or early,’ he said. ‘I don’t like it; the whole town’s empty.’

‘Now what?’ I asked.

‘Now we take the next ship in,’ he said.

That didn’t take as long as I feared. We stayed at sea all night, ate cold rations from our merchantman and the dawn showed us a Phoenician ship under oars coming up from the darkness to the south and east, from the coast of Africa. Neoptolymos dropped down and took her with only a cursory fight.

I winced to watch Neoptolymos, a decent man, slam his fist repeatedly into the captured Phoenician trierarch. Torturing prisoners is cowardly, to me. I didn’t like what I was seeing.

Heh.

Then he was brought aboard my ship.

It was Hasdrubal.

He had a bad cut under one eye and another on a corner of his mouth, which was ripped open by repeated blows. Even as he landed on my deck, Neoptolymos, who followed him over the side, hit him again.

The Illyrian laughed mirthlessly. ‘I can’t stop hitting him,’ he said.

‘Make him stop!’ pleaded the Carthaginian.

He didn’t recognize me.

I’d like to say that I stopped Neoptolymos from tormenting the man, who was already broken.

Listen, there’s limits. I try to be the man that Heraclitus taught, and not the thug I might have been. But sometimes An hour passed. Dionysus dropped onto my deck. He looked down at the wreckage of a human body on my ship.

He laughed.

‘I thought you were too soft for this life,’ he said. ‘Ares! Kill him.’ He looked at me, a little sickened, I could tell.

‘He enslaved us,’ I said. ‘He killed Neoptolymos’s sister.’

Dionysus nodded. Looked away. ‘Have you vengeful Furies even asked him about the tin fleet?’ he asked.

Neoptolymos nodded. ‘He passed it two days ago, headed east. Under full sail.’

The same wind that we’d rowed into.

Dionysus nodded. ‘Let’s chase them,’ he said gently. ‘This is a waste of time.’ He picked up Hasdrubal and threw him over the rail into the sea without asking us.

Neoptolymos growled.

I seemed to awaken.

Sometimes, when I fancy myself a better man then other men, I think of two things from the ten years between Plataea and Artemisium. I think of how I treated Lydia. I think of what I did to Hasdrubal.

He didn’t even scream when he hit the water. He sank, unable even to swim.

Choked and drowned.

Slowly, I hope.

All of his marines had been killed, and, of course, Dagon wasn’t aboard. His ship was a small merchant galley of fifty oars, with the usual collection of broken men as oarsmen — men he’d played his own role in breaking, no doubt. As soon as Neoptolymos’s marines came down the gangway, the oarsmen had ripped the rest of the crew asunder.

It is odd that there are so many bad captains, as the payback is so ruthless.

We took the ship and the oarsmen. It was ballasted in wine for the western stations. So we gave our oarsmen good African wine every night as we ate salt fish and rowed and sailed east.

We tried every trick. We wet our sails to take the breeze when it was coming over our sterns, and we sailed on a quarter-reach with both boatsail and mainsail drawing together — a rare point of sailing even in our rig, and very fast, so that for a whole day we made perhaps thirty stades an hour.

We had advantages and disadvantages. We knew where our quarry was going, and elected to cut the corner — they would have crossed directly to Africa, while we went on a long hypotenuse, slanting away east, south-east. We were neither lucky nor unlucky in our winds, and of course, our quarry had the same winds. Best of all, we knew about them and they, we hoped, knew nothing of us.

Dionysus knew the waters better than I, and he was making for Hippo, on the north shore of Africa, about six hundred stades from Carthage.

This was more blue-water sailing than most of our oarsmen had ever seen. We were lucky to have so many veterans from our adventures in the Outer Sea. Sailors like nothing better than to tell a shipmate This ain’t nothing, brother, and I stood between the oars on the third night, the taste of salt anchovies barely drowned in wine on my tongue, listening to my oarsmen.

‘You ain’t seen nothing, mate,’ said Xenos, a fisherman’s son from Massalia. ‘We were nine days at sea off Iberia — the Outer Sea coast of Iberia, mate — in a storm so bad men cut their wrists rather than face another day. As Poseidon is my witness.’

‘And when we tried to run from Gaul to Alba,’ says another voice in the darkness, ‘Poseidon blew us over the edge of the world.’

‘And then what happened?’ asked a sceptic.

‘A Titan blew us back,’ said the storyteller. ‘I’m here, ain’t I?’

Five days at sea.

Even with the prospect of boundless riches, sailors will eventually tire of bad food and back-breaking labour. Even sailors.

Five days of rowing — for the most part. We were low on water and out of food. Men spoke poems in praise of bread. No lie: bread is the thing you miss most at sea.

Well, many men were missing something else. Geaeta was not inhibited by the presence of two hundred crewmen, and Seckla’s continuing education at her hands — and more — was noisy, demonstrative and sometimes annoyingly emotive. I have said before that a woman — especially a desirable but unavailable woman — aboard a ship is a fine thing for morale, but to be sure, a desirable and sexually active woman aboard a ship with two hundred men just makes the one hundred and ninety-nine more difficult.

Myself, I took to pulling my cloak around my head, despite the heat.

I won’t say the crew was near mutiny — merely that I thought it possible that Seckla would be murdered. I confined him to the sailor’s deck amidships, and read Geaeta my best speech on being a shipmate. She laughed, but obeyed. She knew that she was still on sufferance. Most men believed her story, now — I did. But she understood.

Another day. We finished the water.

We sighted land. We’d sighted it for days, but that evening, Dionysus laid alongside and told me that we were hundreds of stades short of our landfall and that we had to land anyway.

I knew that.

In the last light of a summer evening, we rowed into a river mouth. We rowed until the water was fresh and drank it straight from the stream, reaching through the oar-ports to drink out of wooden cups. The water was brackish — not even fresh. But men were badly dehydrated, and most of them drank and pissed it away immediately — pardon my frankness — but we were close to the edge.

We landed in the darkness, put a guard over the wine and slept. In the morning, the marines caught a shepherd boy who said we were west of Kissia.

Dionysus shook his head. ‘Poseidon hates us. We’re hopelessly behind.’

Morale plummeted. Things might have gone ill, but we made a landfall, got water and sent the shepherd for his father and paid silver for the whole flock and ate it, too.

Next morning, full of mutton, we rowed east. We stood well out as we passed Kissia, which had a pair of triremes on her open beach. I proposed we burn them on the beach, but Gaius wanted to go home and Dionysus wanted to try for the tin fleet for two more days — right up to the walls of Carthage.

We landed that night with the twinkling lights of Hippo in the distance and the smell of their fires in our nostrils.

In the morning, when the sun rose, we saw that her harbour was full of ships.

Full of ships.

Dionysus turned and hugged his helmsman. Most of the men on our ship hugged Geaeta.

Sixteen ships, though. We’d chased a gazelle, and caught a lion.