Poseidon's Spear

20

The Bay of Hippo stretches a good sixty stades from promontory to promontory, forming a superb natural harbour with shelving beaches running into the fertile lands above. The ‘city’ is really three or four communities all the way around the half-moon curve: there’s a fishing village, a sailor’s village with wine shops and an entrepreneurial agora, there’s a fine town with walls and homes for the rich, and there’s a slave town that stretches along the downwind side of the beach. If I keep telling this story, I’ll eventually tell you how I came to know Hippo and Carthage so well, but for the moment, just take my word for it.

Top up my wine, lad. Ah! Lesbian wine. When it crosses my lips, I feel young again.

Where was I? Ah.

We sighted the Carthaginian tin fleet.

Dionysus was a ship’s-length ahead of me. We were under oars, the wind heading us as it had for ten days. There was a commotion aboard my ship, and Doola came aft to tell me that Dionysus was standing on his stern platform and asking for me.

I ran forward along the gangway. I ordered the marines into their armour as I went. My heart beat fast, and my old — well, let’s call it what it is, eh? — my old greed for glory was suddenly there.

So much for maturity.

I ran onto the bow platform. Dionysus hailed me from his stern and bellowed, ‘Let’s take them!’

Even as he called, he was turning his ship.

Megakles was following him, and the oars were in perfect order, with Doola sounding the time as Seckla put him in his thorax.

I stood on tiptoe on the bow rail for a long breath.

The enemy ships were not in supporting range. Why would they be? They were a day out from home in a Carthaginian port, not in the face of the enemy. And who had ten warships to come after their fleet?

We had five.

Their warships were mostly clustered at the western end of the crescent. The seven big tin freighters were three stades farther east, opposite the agora. It was early morning, well before the hour when a gentleman puts on his chlamys and wanders down to the agora. Only slaves are awake at such an hour.

And pirates.

I scratched my beard, took another breath and raised my fist.

‘Let’s take them!’ I roared back.

Behind me, on my own deck, the rowers grunted in unison and there was a rumbling — of approval, I hoped.

I’m not usually one for speaking when going into action, but I ran amidships and stood by the mainmast.

‘Listen, philoi! The whole treasure of Carthage lies under our rams, and all we have to do is take it. Some of you have your own quarrel with Carthage. Some of you would like to be rich. There’s five hundred ingots of tin over there, maybe more. Enough for every man here to buy a farm and twenty slaves to work it for him.’

My maths may have been weak. But they cheered.

‘But they aren’t weak, the men of Carthage. So listen carefully for orders, and when we board, I want every man coming with a roar. Right? Here we go.’

It was something like that. They roared, and on the ships behind, Gaius and Neoptolymos probably said something similar.

We rowed. I was not willing to use my rower’s energy yet, and Dionysus must have been of a similar mind, so we rowed at a walking pace in line ahead. Dionysus was first, and I was second; Neoptolymos third, Teukes fourth. Vasileos had our round ship, and Daud, who had seen plenty of sea time, had asked to be placed in command of Hasdrubal’s pentekonter. He had a difficult job. We put two-dozen good oarsmen into his ship and took the hardest cases out, but the pentekonter was always sagging behind — a slow, old ship. That’s how Hasdrubal had ended up, and well deserved, too.

At any rate, we pulled into the east wind, and as we closed with the westernmost part of the convoy — the tin ships — we saw men waking up, running down the beach, pointing at us, and so on.

I had all the time in the world to put on my gleaming, magnificent new panoply. I walked along my catwalk, feeling rather like Ares come to life. Men reached out to touch me. That’s praise.

The enemy warships were coming awake.

Men were pouring down the sand, working like Titans to get those ships off. The round merchantmen were anchored out, with their round stone anchors holding them near the beach.

I watched them all. As usual with a fight, everything seemed to be moving very slowly — right up until the moment when everything would suddenly go very fast. Our surprise was slipping away, and I began to wonder if we’d have been better to come in at ramming speed and try to crush the enemy triremes where they lay. But it was too late for that, now.

Doola came up next to me, bow in hand. He looked under his hand at the merchantmen.

‘I want you and Seckla and ten men of your choosing to go into that one,’ I said, choosing the third ship out from the beach. ‘Put her sails up and get into the offing. And then run for Massalia.’

He looked at the warships. ‘You might need every man,’ he said.

‘I might. But I’m not aiming for a heroic last stand,’ I grinned. ‘Just take it and run. Pick up Vasileos and Daud as you go.’

He nodded. ‘You think it is a trap?’

‘Nope,’ I said. I could feel the strength in my sword arm. ‘I think we’ve bitten off more than we could possibly chew.’

We didn’t bother to ram the merchants — we wanted them intact. My Lydia shaved alongside my chosen victim, my starboard side oars in and across in perfect order, and my archers watched their rigging while my marines went up a ladder and across from our standing mainmast to theirs. Boarding from the mast was one of Dionysus’ tricks. It had a number of advantages, and in this case, where we really had reason to fear a trap, even a handful of men well above the enemy deck allowed us some security. A merchant’s sides are much higher than a trireme’s, which makes boarding difficult and dangerous. A merchantman packed with soldiers would make a tough target and a perfect trap.

But not that day.

Our men stormed aboard as cleanly as they might have in a drill — better, because their blood was up. The ship’s keeper — the only man aboard — jumped over the side and swam for shore.

Doola crossed over with his chosen volunteers. Too late, I realized that Seckla was taking Geaeta. I saw her run up the boarding plank, long shins flashing in the early summer sun.

Well, she was or she wasn’t a spy. I doubted she could kill Doola.

I got my marines back as the first of the Carthaginian triremes came off the beach, six stades away.

These things have a life of their own. You might ask why we didn’t make a plan, and I’ll say that had we hung off the coast to make a plan, we’d have found them in a defensive circle, or their triremes coming out after us. Dionysus was confident, and so were all the rest of us.

That said, my plan depended on the others following me. Because I took my marines aboard, got them into the bow and headed due east into the oncoming enemy. I hoped that my consorts were coming with me.

Leukas, my Alban, had the deck with the sailors. He was acting as oar-master in Doola’s absence. I gave him the nod to go to ramming speed. He gave me a thumb’s-up.

Anchises and Darius led the marines, and I joined them. They were big men, and all my marines were now bigger men than I–I’d had a year to pick and choose the best, and arm them like heroes, too.

I pointed to the lead enemy ship off the beach. ‘We’re going to go aboard her and take her,’ I said. ‘Anchises, kill your way aft and take command. The rowers ought to obey you. If they don’t, Darius, you kill a few. Until they obey. Understand?’

Both men grunted.

‘Row clear and run north. Look for Doola. Got it?’

Both men nodded. The other marines nodded.

Across the narrowing strip of water that separated us, the Carthaginian trierarch had just realized that I meant business and that his friends were coming to help him. He had the best ship and the best crew, and like such men, he thought he could do everything himself. Of course he did. I was another such man. But now he was coming to ramming speed, and he realized that win or lose, he was alone.

The next best Carthaginian was just getting his hull in the water.

I looked aft at Megakles. He waved.

Both ships went for an oar-rake, and both ships got their oars in. They were fine sailors with superb helmsmen, for the most part. We raced down their starboard side, and the grapnels flew in both directions. We were going so fast that some of the grapnels ripped free, and I saw a rope snap as the whole weight of two racing ships came to bear on it. The flying end of the rope struck my pais and ripped his face off the skull beneath, and the poor boy screamed and screamed. It was one of the most horrific wounds I’ve ever witnessed.

I had to put him down. That felt bad.

I’d planned to free him. He’d served me so well.

Pah. It still tastes bad.

And then we were slowing. Both ships were turning — fast — heeled over from the weight of the other ship. I got my spear free of the dead weight of my former slave, and I needed action. I was about to weep. I really felt bad about the boy.

I was up on the rail before the ships stopped moving.

A Carthaginian marine threw his javelin at me. It missed by a hand’s breadth, and I leaped down into the rowers — one foot on the cross-beam, and one flailing wildly for a moment until I got it down — and one of the rowers grabbed my foot. My spear went straight down into his open mouth — I still remember that kill. Poor bastard. Rowers should never try to fight marines unless they get off their benches first. Remember that they are in three tiers, and that they can’t really stand — or support each other. If they have weapons, they stow them under their benches — hard to get at, hard to use.

I pushed up towards the catwalk. This was an undecked trireme, like an Athenian — in fact, it might have been a captured Athenian ship. Rowers in three tiers open to the sky, and a catwalk all the way down the centre line. Most of the enemy marines were on the catwalk, using pikes over the heads of the rowers.

I took a pikehead on my aspis. My attacker was trying to push me down into the rowers. I batted the pikehead aside and made my jump. I landed badly, lost my balance and my armour saved my life as a spear cut some unintended engraving between my shoulder blades. The mark is still there — see? Look, right there. That’s death, honeybee. But not for me.

I had to put a foot back, and by luck — nothing better than luck — my foot landed on the cross-beam and I didn’t fall. I stabbed with my spear, and my two opponents — one with a pike fifteen feet long and one with a short spear — stabbed at me, pushing me down.

The man with the short spear tried to parry my spear with his own, but he had his spear too near the haft and I had the leverage, and I pressed his aside and ran mine home. He had armour — leather and bronze. But my needle-sharp spearhead pricked him — not a killing blow, but by the feel in my hand I knew I’d punched the point into him and he flinched and gave a cry, and I rifled my spear forward again, at his helmet, and he stepped back.

The pikehead slammed into my helmet, and I saw stars. But I kept my footing and pushed forward into the space of the wounded Carthaginian, and now I had both feet on the catwalk.

I had both feet under me. But now I had enemies ahead of me and behind me on the catwalk.

I slammed my aspis as hard as I could into the man behind me, using the bronze-clad edge as a giant axe. I caved in the face of his rawhide and wicker shield and broke his arm. Then I turned, pivoting my hips, and thrust backhanded with my spear — thumb up, spearhead down, like a dagger blow. It is the most powerful spear blow, but of course, when you deliver it, you are wide open to your opponent, as your shield is behind you. It is like the famed Harmodius blow.

None of you cares about the technicalities of good fighting. A pox on you, then! My spear-point went in over the pikeman’s arms, right through his helmet and into his brain, and down he went, dead before he hit the deck. But his weight snapped my spearhead — the beautiful needle point must have been a little too hard, and it snapped short.

Of course, I didn’t notice right away. I sprang forward into the next man — another shielded, armoured man with a heavy, short spear and a javelin which he threw at me as soon as he had a clear throw, but I sank beneath his throw like a dancer — oh, I was the killer of men, and Ares’ hand was on my shoulder. I passed under his throw and rammed my spear under his shield and into his shin — but the tip of my spear was gone and the spear-point wouldn’t bite.

I hurt his shin, though. He tried to back up, but there were other men on the deck, now.

In his confusion, I whirled, changed feet and rushed aft. I got two paces, and threw my spear into the next enemy marine. It glanced off his shield and vanished into the oarsmen, and I drew my new, long xiphos from under my arm. A lovely weapon — almost like a spear with a long, slender blade, slightly wider at the tip. I rotated my right wrist, reached over his big rawhide shield and stabbed down — my weapon caught armour, grated and went straight home through his throat, while his spear flailed over my shoulder.

I pushed past his corpse and the next man slammed his aspis into me and pushed me back, and I cut low with my xiphos and realized that my opponent was Anchises. As my blade rang off his greave, he roared, and we were screaming at each other to stop — comic, in its way.

We’d carried the ship. The trierarch was trying to surrender in the stern, the helmsman was on his knees and Darius killed them both with two blows. Foolish, and clean against the laws of war. On the other hand, we were badly outnumbered, and it was the very heat of the action.

Neither of them was Dagon, either.

I hoped, every time I faced a Carthaginian ship.

‘Swords up!’ I yelled. ‘Swords up! Stop!’

Anchises joined his calls to mine. It took a long minute to stop the killing.

The ship was ours. I turned Anchises to face me. ‘Get under way — north!’

He nodded. I ran down a cross-beam — the same one I’d boarded on, I suspect, and leaped back aboard Lydia. Ran aft to Megakles.

The next three or four Carthaginians were off the beach, or nearly so. To the west, Dionysus was clear of his merchant ship And turning out to sea.

‘Bastard,’ I said. Dionysus was going to cut and run.

Doola’s ship had her sails down and some way on her.

I was broadside on to the approaching Carthaginians because that’s how the impetus of the grappling action had ended. We wasted valuable time poling off our new capture.

Neoptolymos cleared his merchantman and came on.

My decks looked curiously empty, because Doola had most of the deck crew and Anchises had my marines. We inched forward. The lead pair of Carthaginians was already at ramming speed.

‘Have your outboard oarsmen row!’ I shouted at Anchises.

Twice.

Time passed slowly.

He got it.

The former Carthaginian rowers had no reason to love us. Men who have never been in a ship fight always imagine that when a ship is taken, the rowers — if they are slaves or have been mistreated — should rise for their new masters. It does happen that way, but only if the old captain was abusive and foolish. Otherwise, they tend to be more afraid of their new captors than they were of the old. Hard to explain, but I’ve seen Greek slaves, newly ‘freed’ all but refuse to row for Greek marines — at Artemisium.

Ah. Artemisium. Your turn is coming.

Our two ships, the grapnels gradually coming off, rowed pitifully. We must have looked like an insect on its back. But we rotated back, so that I was bow on to the enemy and Anchises was stern on. And then we got the last grapnels off and poled off, so that he rowed away headed west, and I rowed away headed east.

It wasn’t a battle-winning manoeuvre, but it saved us.

What happened next was from the gods.

I had little choice but to pass between my opponents. They were side by side, at ramming speed, coming down my throat. If Megakles could manage it, we’d pass between them and rake their oars.

But my opponents hadn’t been born yesterday. The helmsman on the northernmost of the pair flicked his steering oars to close up with his consort.

By the whim of the gods, the southernmost ship chose to do the same thing.

The two ships didn’t slam together. Instead, they brushed one another with a sickening tangle of oars, to the sound of screams as oarsmen died or were broken on their tools.

It seemed to happen very slowly. The ships didn’t quite collide, but slipped together like two pieces of fabric sewn up by a matron.

If I’d have any friend close by, or any marines, I’d have tried to sink them.

But instead I passed inshore of the two ships and my archers shot into them, and then we were past. In the bow, Leukas had readied a dozen jars of oil. He knew what I intended.

We were at ramming speed, and by our luck — and fast manoeuvring — we’d passed inshore of the two locked vessels and isolated the next three ships to launch all to the north and east, on the other side of the accident. All three began to turn, their oars working both sides, portside oars reversed.

We ran down on the four triremes still fully on the beach, and as we passed, the pair of us heaved oil jars into the bows of each with a long rag aflame. Two of the four went out. The third caught, spectacularly. Our six archers poured arrows into the stricken ship and then we were turning out to sea.

We’d run through their whole squadron. The three ships that had turned, end for end, now had to pick up speed.

The two ships that had collided were picking themselves apart. Even three stades away, I could hear their officers screaming at each other. I watched the fourth ship on the beach get off. A brave man threw my fire jar over the side, burning himself badly in the process.

But my immediate opponents had troubles of their own. They had all turned to follow me, and Neoptolymos was coming at them from the opposite angle. And behind him, Gaius was up to full speed, his oars chewing the sea to froth.

Eight to three. If Dionysus had turned back, we’d have been eight to five, and with our superior marines He kept rowing.

Teukes, his second captain, turned out to sea.

It was one of those times when it is senseless to curse. The gods had been kind enough. Without the two overeager helmsmen, we’d already have been dead men.

‘Leukas! Ready about ship!’ I called.

Leukas looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. Megakles’ expression was a fair match.

It was a snap decision. Like my earlier one, to attack the Carthaginian squadron before it formed up. And perhaps both were incorrect. If I’d taken one ship and run, Doola and I might have made it. But I swear we’d have lost the others. And at this point, the only advantage our three ships had was that we caught them between two angles, and forced them to make decisions. If I ran for the open sea, to my mind that left Gaius to die.

Our port-side oars reversed their benches and pulled, and our ship turned end for end. Five enemy ships came at us. Neoptolymos and Gaius were coming up on them from behind and gaining at every stroke, because our oarsmen were better — and because they were free men pulling for the chance of riches.

And I’d forgotten Anchises. I left him pulling away to the west with an unwilling crew.

Most of the Carthaginians didn’t realize that his ship had been taken, and they swept past.

Anchises stood amidships and offered his oarsmen a share of everything that was taken.

And turned his bow back east, towards the enemy.

A second Carthaginian ship caught fire on the beach. Sparks from the first? The hand of the gods?

Who knows.

We had turned to fight, and now the odds were seven to four, with two of the enemy ships damaged and somewhat unwilling, and one still barely off the beach.

Lydia was almost to ramming speed. I ran aft and joined Megakles in the steering oars, and we aimed to go beak to beak with the lead enemy ship — they were an echelonned line, not of intent, I think, but because the better, faster ship pulled away from its allies.

‘As soon as we touch, reverse your benches and back water!’ I roared. We couldn’t fight a boarding action. Not a chance. I might hold their rush for a hundred heartbeats, but I couldn’t stop twenty men from boarding me — not on my big sailing decks. Nonetheless, when my orders were given, I sprinted forward, taking a spear off the stand by the mainmast.

I got to the marine box over the bow and stood there, in all my armour, and savoured the moment. The finest sailors in the world, and we were holding them.

I raised my sword and roared, ‘Heracles!’ at the onrushing enemy ship.

I was still shaking my sword when her bow moved a few degrees.

He declined the engagement and turned north, out to sea.

He could do that. We weren’t in a thick fight, like Lades. We were in an open bay, with stades between ships. He turned north, and we passed under his stern.

The other two raced past to the south. Even as they passed, I saw them raising their mainmasts.

The fourth ship passed close enough that their archers lobbed some shafts at us. My archers returned fire. They had their boatsail mast up and the sail on and drawing. The mainmast was slow going up. One of my archers — a skinny kid I’d purchased in Ostia who swore he could shoot, and damn, he could — put a shaft into a sailor pulling a rope, and the whole mainmast swayed and fell over the side.

The ship yawed. It didn’t quite capsize, but it shipped water, rocked and Neoptolymos slammed into it, his ram catching the stricken ship broadside on at ramming speed as we shot past.

That was perhaps the most devastating single arrow I’ve ever seen shot.

I thumped the boy on the shoulder and gave him his freedom on the spot.

The two damaged ships were creeping away to the south, along the coast. Four of the merchantmen had gone ashore in a mass. They were beached, and lost to us. Two were under full sail, headed out to sea.

For a moment, I thought we might snatch the two damaged triremes. But instead of running out to sea, they beached, side by side, under the walls of the town. The city militia were pouring out of the gates, now, a hundred cavalrymen and then a thick column of Numidian archers.

A really great trierarch might have had the lot. Had we had time to plan But it was a great day, and the gods were kind. Equally, we might all have been dead, or taken. It was close.

Gaius’s marines swept the enemy’s deck and Neoptolymos backed his ram out and the wreck sank.

And we turned north.

Dionysus rejoined us in late afternoon, and while I was tempted to berate him, I had seen enough sea fights to know that all I had was a gut feeling. He leaped aboard, alone.

‘Well fought,’ he said. He embraced me. It’s hard to be really angry with a man who is calling you a hero and a demigod. ‘You fought like Heracles.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps I should have lingered. But-’ He met my eye. ‘I assumed we were going to grab what we could and run.’

I nodded.

‘I was afraid that if I didn’t attack them, they’d close around us,’ I said.

He shrugged. ‘You might be right,’ he said. And grinned. ‘Still friends?’

I’d been cursing his perfidy all afternoon, so naturally I shrugged and said, ‘Of course.’

He laughed. ‘We did it,’ he said. ‘I propose we head for Syracusa. You wanted to raid Illyria this summer: if we head north to Massalia, that’s the summer over.’ He smiled. ‘And besides, we can’t sell all that tin in Massalia.’

We landed on Malta’s little island — Gozo, where the witch enticed Odysseus. It has nice harbours and good food and sweet water and no Carthaginians, despite the proximity. We drank deep, slapped each other on the back and inspected our captures.

We had tin. But only one ship was laden with tin — about sixty ingots, each as heavy as a man could carry, deeply stamped with the Carthaginian inspection mark. It was also full of hides — big, heavy bull’s hides, some of the finest I’d seen.

But the ship Doola had taken didn’t have a single ingot of tin on board. The central hold was full of Iberian grain, and the bilges, which we missed at first, were full of small ingots of silver. Almost a thousand small ingots of silver.

Of course, tin-mining yields silver. Any smith knows as much.

But I suppose we’d never really thought about it.

It was past the summer feast when we landed in Syracusa. We entered the port in a squadron: three warships in the lead, three merchantmen in the centre and three more warships astern. Syracusa had seen much larger fleets, of course, but not many with Carthaginian captures so blatantly displayed.

Within an hour of landing, both Anarchos and Gelon had sent me messages requesting that I attend them.

While Doola sat in his warehouse and sold our new fortune in tin, I walked up the steep streets in my best cloak and entered Anarchos’s house. His slaves were as well mannered as ever.

I sat opposite him on a couch, and drank excellent wine. He had just been for exercise and was covered in oil, which made him look younger.

‘Still the hero, I see,’ he said, after a pause.

I remember grinning. The fight at Hippo had restored something to me. Something I’m not sure I ever knew was missing. But the word ‘hero’ was not, I think, misplaced. I had tried to be a man. I hankered for the warmth of human contact — for a wife and a shop to work bronze.

But what paltry things they were — love, friendship — next to the feeling in the moment when the lead enemy warship turned away from me. Any of you understand?

‘Lydia is ready to leave,’ he said. ‘Gelon is about to discard her.’ He shrugged. ‘She is not a natural courtesan. Do you ever know regret, hero?’

I writhed at his tone. ‘Yes,’ I said.

He nodded heavily. ‘Me too.’ He sat up on his couch. ‘Let us try and give her another life, eh?’

‘The crime lord and the pirate?’ I asked.

He laughed bitterly.

‘You love her,’ I said.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said.

Men are complex, are they not? But this is my tale, not his.

I walked up the town, a little drunk and very maudlin. I walked into the street of armourers, and stopped at Anaxsikles’ shop.

He was standing in the back, staring at a helmet, shaking his head.

He showed it to me.

‘Beautiful, as usual,’ I said.

He shook his head. ‘Look more closely,’ he said.

It was true. Under careful inspection, the left eyehole was slightly lower than the right.

‘Apprentice?’ I asked.

He shook his head. And sat. ‘I think my eyes are going,’ he confessed. And burst into tears.

It was that kind of day.

‘Would you marry Lydia, if she was available?’ I said.

He looked up. ‘What?’ he asked.

‘Lydia. If she was available — if I could carry the two of you to another city, where you could be a citizen — a full citizen, with voting rights. Would you go, and marry her?’

He looked at me. ‘Why?’ he asked.

I shrugged. ‘I helped ruin her. So did… another man. We are willing to make good our error.’

He looked around. ‘Leaving home… my mother, my father.’ He looked at me. ‘But, yes. I’d walk across my lit forge to have her.’

Just for a moment, I had a flare of pure, brutal jealousy.

‘Let me try to make this happen,’ I said. ‘If it will work, I will send you word. We will leave very suddenly — I don’t think that Gelon will be happy to lose you. Or me, for that matter.’ I smiled. ‘Or even Lydia. It might be tomorrow. It might be the end of summer.’

He nodded. ‘You’ve made my day.’

That made me happier.

‘How was the armour?’ he asked.

‘Like Hephaestos himself made it,’ I said.

He made a gesture of aversion. ‘Don’t say that!’ he groaned. ‘That’s the kind of talk that makes the gods angry.’

Gelon wanted to hear about our fight. And demanded a tenth of the profits. In many ways, Gelon and Anarchos resembled one another. In the end, I got him to settle for a lump sum in silver — forty silver talents. A fortune.

I went back to Anarchos and informed him. Of everything — the payment to Gelon, the bronze-smith’s wedding plans.

Anarchos sat sullenly and drank. ‘I am old,’ he said bitterly. ‘ I would marry her and take her to another city. But she would never have me — who would?’

What could I say?

I left him to his bitterness.

The next day, we paid off our debts in the city and filled our merchant ships with food and mercenaries — almost a hundred men hired off the docks. I picked up a dozen Nubian archers being sold as labourers — fool of a slave-master. I got them at labour prices. I bought back their weapons from another dealer and put them in armour. Their leader was Ka, and he was taller than some houses, as thin as a sword blade and he could draw a Scythian bow to his mouth as if it were a child’s bow. Ka’s lads were very pleased to be bought, in that I promised them their freedom and wages in the immediate future.

Doola had turned our tin into gold. But if we paid off our oarsmen, they’d never be seen again. So we made a single payment that night, about one-twentieth what every man had coming. Doola gave them a fine speech — more than a thousand men standing by torchlight on the beach between the quays on the Syracusan waterfront — and he told them how much money they had coming at the end of the Illyrian expedition, and exactly why we weren’t paying in full until that trip was over.

I suppose they might have rioted. But money — lots of money — has a magical quality. It is often better in the offing than in reality, and no one knows that as well as a sailor.

Gaius and Neoptolymos, Daud and Sittonax, Vasileos and Megakles and Doola and Seckla and I all lay on couches that night, with twenty more men — Anchises, red-faced and too loud, and Ka, shining black and deeply versed, it appeared, in Aegyptian lore, debating with Doola.

Gaius rolled over to me, probably to avoid having to watch Geaeta and Seckla on the next couch. But he met my eye and we laughed like boys. He held out a silver wine cup and tapped it against mine.

‘I guess this is the last time,’ he said. ‘It is time I grew up and became a rich fuck on a farm.’

I shrugged. ‘You were doing well enough this spring when we found you,’ I said.

Gaius rolled his eyes. ‘That is what worries me. Rome is such a backwater. When we put Neoptolymos on his throne, you’ll go back to Athens.’

‘Plataea,’ I corrected, automatically.

‘And we’ll never see you again,’ he said.

‘Oh, the sea’s not that wide,’ I joked.

He nodded. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘here’s to the last of youth.’

I drank to that, because I shared the sentiment. I was thirty-one years old. Not bad, you think. But that’s quite old for a warrior.

Hah! Little did I know what the gods had in store.

We were pretty drunk when the pais came. He was ten or eleven — pretty enough, if that sort of thing is to your taste. He bowed deeply and held out a scroll tube to me.

Lydia is at my house. She awaits her transport. It should not be you. She expressed the deepest gratitude to me that I had found her a husband.

I regret that I will not be here to attend you. I will not see you again, I fear, so I offer you this boy as a token of my regard — you mentioned yours had died.

Through the fumes of wine, I had to read the note three times.

Then I sent the boy to fetch Anaxsikles. I was half sober by the time he came, and sent him to fetch his bride from Anarchos.

I begged Doola to carry them to Croton for me. He accepted gravely, and embraced me.

I confess that I stood in a doorway near the ship, and watched Anaxsikles bring her down to the shore. The only skiff was loading the archers. He picked her up, and she snuggled her head into his shoulder. He carried her out into the water and handed her up to the sailors on the deck, and then leaped up into the round ship’s waist, and she put her arms around his neck.

Bah. Why do I tell this?

More wine.

Doola sailed long before dawn. I suspected that Gelon would be none too happy when he found out that his smith and his mistress were gone, so I ordered my drunken, orgiastic crews rounded up. We were a surly, vicious pack of scoundrels in the first light of dawn. My new boy wanted me to come with him to Anarchos’s house to fetch his belongings. He also insisted that he was free, not a slave, and that I should ask Anarchos.

The crime lord lived close enough to the water that it was the matter of a few minutes to go there. And I wanted to tell him that she was away.

I suppose I hadn’t read his letter closely enough.

The pais found him. He wasn’t in his andron — that’s where Lydia had waited for Anaxsikles. The andron smelled of her. I slammed my fist into a wall. If you don’t understand why, well, good for you.

But in the back, near the courtyard, he lay on top of his sword, which he’d wedged between two paving stones. He was quite dead.

Men are complex. To my lights, he died well, and was a man I could, if not admire, at least — call a friend. Here’s to his shade.

We got to sea before the sun was high. My new pais cried and cried. I am fairly certain he believed that Anarchos was his father.

And perhaps he was.

His name was Hector.

Ah, you smile! Yes, Hector. Finally, he comes into our story.

Doola was gone over the horizon, and I confess I had a million fears that day, that the Carthaginians would snatch up his ship. Only in the cold, clear light of day did I realize that his ship held Lydia, Anaxsikles and all our treasure, and I had sent it off unguarded.

Men are fools.

But the gods watch over drunkards and fools.

We lay that night on a beach north of Katania, and the next night we evaded the whirlpool and crossed over to Rhegium. Doola was a day ahead of us, which suited me. We made the beautiful beaches of Rhegium in mid-afternoon, and when the setting sun gilded Mount Aetna over on the Sicilian side that night, we were already in the waterfront tavernas. I sat with Gaius. I was poor company.

A single trireme came in, with a small merchant ship trailing astern, making tacks to get in under wind power. The ship was well handled, and the longer I watched it, the more convinced I was that it was Giannis.

The trireme was Athenian. I could see that by its light construction, the way it moved — how low it was to the water. A warship. A shark.

The warship landed first. A crew really shows itself in landing: a well-conducted ship spins end for end a stade offshore and backs into the beach. It’s not a tricky manoeuvre, for a veteran crew, but it always shows a crew’s skills.

This ship was beautifully handled. Not just the helmsman, but the oarsmen. Mine were good. These were better.

A pleasure to watch them.

‘I’m going to go and praise that man,’ I said, pointing at the new arrival.

Gaius nodded. ‘Beautiful,’ he admitted. ‘Does this mean we have to do more drill?’

‘You’ll miss Dionysus, when you are watching your slaves plough your fields,’ I laughed. It was my first laugh in eight hours.

We wandered down to watch the new arrival. His oarsmen were already buying food from the farmers who hastened down to the beach — sacks of charcoal were being bargained for, and the braziers were already coming out of the bilges.

The man with his back to me, dickering with the local farmers, looked familiar.

He turned just as I came up, and we saw each other.

Cimon.

We threw our arms around each other and hugged, slapped each other’s backs and hugged again. This went on for a long, long time.

In fact, I cried.

Look, thugater. I’m crying now.

‘You bastard! You said to meet you in Massalia!’ Paramanos hugged me, too, there on the beach at Croton. I tried not to look at the town. We were on the beach for the night, and Dano sent her greetings and a gift of wine. There were two more black ships on that beach — Paramanos’s, Black Raven, and Harpagos’s Storm Cutter.

Friends… friends are men who, when they think that you are dead, will come halfway around the world because you ask them, and because they want so much to believe that you are alive. I hadn’t seen these men since — well, since the beach of Marathon, almost eight years before. There were a dozen Athenians I knew — there, for example, was Aeschylus, who fought in the front rank at Marathon and at Lades; there was Phrynicus’ young nephew, Aristides. Harpagos, my former right hand, was still a lisping islander, as strong as an ox, with the beginnings of grey in his beard. Mauros, my helmsman. Come to think of it, Paramanos got his start as a helmsman, too. Start with us, that is. He was Cyrenian, and had fought for the Phoenicians before I took him in the sea fight off Cyprus back in the Ionian War.

‘That’s a new ship,’ I said, pointing at Storm Cutter. My old Storm Cutter was a heavy Phoenician capture. Heh! I took her and Paramanos in the same sweep of my spear.

‘The original is firewood,’ he said. ‘Athens has a fleet, now — not a dozen vessels from rich men, either. We have more than a hundred hulls. Aegina-’ He laughed aloud. ‘Aegina isn’t a naval power any more.’

Young Aristides nodded vehemently. ‘Athens is a better place for the common man,’ he said, with all the arrogant pomposity of the young.

Had I ever been that young?

‘Anyone been to Plataea?’ I asked.

There was some shuffling of feet.

I introduced my friends of the last six years to my friends from Athens. Seckla was abashed, for a while — Gaius, on the other hand, kept looking at Cimon, chuckling, and saying, ‘So you really are Miltiades’ son?’

I suppose they might not have got on — Cimon was the son of a hundred generations of Eupatridae, and Seckla was a Numidian former slave; Daud was worse, an out-and-out barbarian, and Sittonax didn’t even like to speak Greek.

However, piracy is its own brotherhood. I listened with half an ear as Harpagos poured out the tale of Athens’ war with Aegina, and Themistocles’ daring political manoeuvre, by which he took the profits of the new silver mine and bought Athens a public fleet. Next to the reforms of Cleisthenes, it was the greatest political revolution in Athenian history. If Cleisthenes gave all the middle-men — the hundred-mythemnoi men — a noble ancestor and the right to think themselves aristocrats and fight in the phalanx, so Themistocles bought Athens a fleet, and gave all the little men — free citizens, but without franchise — a weapon as mighty as the spear. He gave them the oar.

Nowadays, we take it for granted that every Athenian thetis is a rower. Athens rules the waves, from here to the delta of Alexandria and across the seas to Syracusa, too. But in those years between Marathon and the next stage in the Long War, Athens was just feeling her way as a power.

I watched as Gaius began to talk to Cimon about raising horses, and Doola found common cause with Harpagos on the subject of trade. Seckla stood nervously with his attractive courtesan — a woman who couldn’t resist male attention and suddenly had a beach full of it. But in time, Mauros — my former oar-master, and fellow hero of Lade — started to talk, first to Doola, and then to Seckla, and then they were all talking to Paramanos — four Africans on a beach full of Greeks.

Aristides the Younger was amazed to meet an actual Keltoi barbarian, and managed not to sound as condescending as he might have. The fires roared, the wine was excellent and as darkness fell, and I was apologizing to Cimon for the fiftieth time that I wasn’t with his father at the end, Dano herself came down the beach with a dozen of her friends.

‘It is like having the battle of Marathon brought to my town,’ she said. ‘So many famous men. Ari — in truth, my friend, when first you told me you were Arimnestos of Plataea, I thought you one of those men who lie habitually.’

Cimon was deeply pleased to meet the daughter of the great Pythagoras. He bowed — Greeks seldom bow — and was allowed to kiss her cheek, very Italian and not very Greek, and he actually blushed. So did Giannis, who had come with Cimon from Massalia.

Aeschylus just stood there, drinking it all in.

‘How is Aristides?’ I asked, when chance threw us together.

‘You mean, the real one?’ he asked, raising an annoyed eyebrow at Phrynicus’ graceless nephew.

I smiled.

‘He’s a great man, now. He and Themistocles are rivals — enemies, really. I’m not sure if they don’t hate each other worse than either one hates the Persians. Aristides has inherited the Eupatridae — he leads the oligarchs.’ Aeschylus shrugged.

‘What? Aristides the Just?’ I shook my head.

‘Politics in Athens is different, my friend. Themistocles has raised up the thetis, and he’ll end up giving them the right to serve on juries — mark my words — and that will be the end of us.’ Aeschylus was an old-fashioned man, despite his relative youth.

Of course, looking at them, I realized that my friends were ageing as fast as I was myself.

That was a shock.

Aeschylus had grey in his beard. Harpagos had a white mark — the scar of a Persian arrow from Lade — in his beard, but his hair was getting grey, too. And to see Dionysus talk to Cimon — Dionysus had been our trierarch at Lade; Cimon and I had been mere ship’s commanders. Now we commanded squadrons, and Dionysus, I could see, was quite old. Perhaps fifty. A decade younger than I am right now.

I’d watched him put a Carthaginian marine down, just recently. He wasn’t that old.

But we weren’t any younger, and I couldn’t help but notice that the annoying Aristides the Younger was the age I’d been at Sardis.

Seventeen.

Zeus. I’m lucky I was allowed to live. So cocky. So sure.

For the first time that night, I watched older men — proven men, men of unquestioned worth. I wondered, when the young men competed on the beach — on Chios, or again at Lade — I wondered how many older men watched me, and thought I was an arrogant pup and too young to know any better?

Age. Your turn will come, my young friends.

But enough. It was a great night — so many friends. Such laughter, such wine; and we were not so very old, either.

Finally, the sun peeped over the horizon. We were lying on straw, above the high-water mark, and we’d seen the night through, and slaves were picking up the amphorae and the broken cups. Dano lay by Cimon on a kline of straw — lucky Cimon — flirting with Paramanos, who appeared to know more of Pythagorean philosophy than any of the rest of us — but he’d been raised at Cyrene.

They were talking about mathematics, and Cimon laughed, and then raised himself on his elbows to speak over his companions. ‘So, Ari, why have you called us all here?’

Some men laughed, and others hooted.

But they all fell silent.

‘I was hoping we could all spend the summer raiding Carthage,’ I said, to the rising sun. ‘But the summer has slipped away like youth. I have a friend here who is a prince of Illyria. We were slaves together. I thought that if I could raise my friends, we’d have enough of a fleet to sail north of Corcyra and restore him to his hill fort, kill all his enemies and perhaps pick up a few bars of silver into the bargain.’

Paramanos grinned. ‘There’s not a one of us who couldn’t use a few bars of silver.’

‘I heard there was a tin fleet,’ Cimon said.

Dionysus was drunk. ‘Too damned late, Athenian!’ he shouted. ‘We took it all!’

I shook my head. ‘We took a third of it. That’s a story for another night, friends. We have ten ships. With ten ships, we could probably conquer any island in the Aegean. With these men? But if you will follow my lead, we will restore Neoptolymos, and perhaps take a few Carthaginians on the way.’

Cimon nodded. ‘I’m not likely to turn back now: there’s nothing else going on this summer, although you had best pay well, you old rascal — I’ve rowed from Athens to Massalia and back to Croton to find you.’

I laughed. ‘I have a few coins,’ I admitted.

‘I don’t want to linger,’ he said. ‘The Phoenicians are everywhere in the east — there’s no getting a cargo into Aegypt. Men say that the King of Kings and his Phoenicians have made a pact with Carthage. And there is war in Aegypt.’

I shook my head. ‘I keep hearing that,’ I said. ‘But I see no proof. The Phoenicians are no real friends of the Great King’s.’

‘Supposedly there are embassies going both ways, even now,’ said Paramanos. ‘In Cyrene, I heard that your — how should I say it, your friend? Hipponax’s son Archilogos? — is taking a squadron to Carthage. Or perhaps took one, last season.’

Cimon shook his head. ‘That, at least, is not true. He was in Mytilene a month ago.’ Cimon smiled in the rising sun. ‘I spoke to him. We’re not at war. I’d just heard the message that Ari was alive. I told Archilogos. That was a pleasure.’

I coughed. ‘But you’ll all come north against Illyria?’

Paramanos looked around at the Greeks. ‘Why do you think we came here? For a rest?’ He laughed.

Cimon scrambled to his feet, apologizing to Pythagoras’s daughter. My pais refilled his cup. He poured a long libation of priceless Sybarite wine to the immortal gods, and then raised his cup to the rising sun.

‘Phobos, Lord of the Chariot of Fire, and Poseidon, Lord of Horses and swift ships and the Sea, with a thousand beautiful daughters; Athena, matchless in guile, who loves men best when they are most daring; Aphrodite of the high-arched feet, and all the other immortals! Hear us! We thank you for this night of mirth and friendship. And we ask your blessing!’

We all cheered.

Great days. And after that night, I had a hangover of Homeric proportions.

Worth it.

We spent another day provisioning our round ships and making our plans. By then, local rulers were sending embassies to the ‘men of Marathon’. A rumour went out that Dano had hired us to avenge her father on the Sybarites.

We sharpened our weapons, and drilled.

We had a farewell feast with the Pythagoreans. Vegetables, it turns out, are perfectly palatable.

I saw Lydia, at a distance. It is odd how you know a person by their shape and movement, when you couldn’t possibly see their face. I knew her, and I knew the man with his arm around her.

There is no happiness of mortal men that cannot be marred in an instant.