Poseidon's Spear

2

My Illyrian’s name was Neoptolymos. He considered himself a direct descendant of Achilles, and he was willing to kill every man who had even seen him enslaved. His humiliation had almost broken him. But after two days in Carthage, he joined me for my morning prayer to Apollo — in awful Greek — and we began to talk.

We were allowed to talk, in Carthage. Talk, and eat. They fattened us up for about a week. We got cheap pork sausage with bread in it and green stuff — I still hate cheap pork sausage. They gave it to us three times a day, and took us out in a tiny yard for exercise, where we had to leap and jump and do foolish antics — stupid stuff that any gymnasium would have frowned on.

I knew how to condition myself, so I did proper exercises whenever I could, and taught them to my companions. The guards didn’t care.

A little at a time, I put some of the moves of pankration into my callisthenics. They gave me weights. I boxed with my shadow. The guards took an interest, but not much of one, and it was a small rebellion — the kind that means a great deal to the morale of a slave.

And that was a good thing, because eight days after we landed, Dagon came into our exercise yard and ordered us to be marched to a ship.

It still seems incredible to me that we could have gotten him again. Perhaps his deep — well, I’ll call it a sickness for lack of a better word, though I think he was cursed by the gods for something — at any rate, his sickness drove him to want to torment us. Again. It’s the only rational explanation why he, an officer, wanted the same broken men he’d just brought in.

We were marched through the streets, surrounded by guards. Dagon took all eighty of the survivors, and we were added to a hundred fresh slaves — Sikels, recently taken in war, who spoke little Greek and had never pulled an oar.

As we walked through the darkened streets of Carthage, Dagon walked by me. He didn’t say anything at all. He just smiled at me, and rubbed the butt of his thonged whip against my thighs and arse like a caress. Still makes me shudder.

And then he hit me with the whip — the butt, not the thongs — across the temple.

And when I kept pace and didn’t scream, he laughed.

I think the Sikels saved my life. Because they were so bloody awful that Dagon never had a chance at me those first two weeks at sea. He beat them raw, and they still couldn’t — and wouldn’t — row. He killed a pair who he said were fomenting mutiny, and they killed one of his bully-boys in the dark.

We were ten days out, somewhere on the deep blue north of Africa and south of Sicily, and the sun was a relentless foe, an aspis of fire slamming into our heads and backs. The ship stank of excrement and sweat and fear. The masts were stowed, there wasn’t a breath of wind and sweat ran straight down my chest and into my groin to drip onto the man below — I say below, because after eight days at sea, I was a top-deck oar.

We all knew that Kritias was dead and over the side, slain in the dark, and the Sikels were waiting to see what Dagon would do.

As luck would have it, I was across the bench from Neoptolymos, who was on the port side while I was on the starboard. Skethes and Nestor — both, by the standards of our new ship, the Baal Shamra, expert oarsmen — sat several benches behind us, but together. I’d managed to exchange a long look with Skethes. Slaves can communicate a great deal in a look. And we’d learned to tap on the wood of our benches. We had a few rhythms — nothing like communication, but it could convey simple messages. My look said: ‘I’m alert and ready’. His said: ‘Me too’. My taps said: ‘Be ready’.

Watch your slaves sometime, honey. They have many ways to communicate.

We pulled. The rowers were tired, but not exhausted, and we hadn’t been fed. I had a feeling that the bullies were arming in the stern behind me, although I couldn’t see them.

And then Dagon was standing beside me. He was in bronze — a good breastplate, a heavy helmet. He put the point of a spear at my back. It was very sharp.

‘I don’t want you to die easily, lover,’ he said with his usual smile. ‘But if you move, I kill you.’

Suddenly, there were screams.

The Sikels rose off their benches.

And died.

Seven men in armour were more than a match for seventy naked, tired men without even the shafts of their oars. I know. I’ve done it myself.

The Sikels fought hard for a few minutes, while we, on the upper tier, sat silently. Dagon was behind me and above me on the catwalk — there was no combination of moves that would allow me to rise off my bench and trip him. I considered it, anyway.

If the Sikels failed, I knew my life would become much, much worse, because Dagon would have no distraction from me. And because eighty of us — his ‘survivors’ — would have to row the pig of the ship, laden with African iron ore.

About the time the Sikels began to give way to despair, I decided that my life wasn’t worth an obol. I thought of the Keltoi woman. There just comes a point where either you submit and become an object, not a person, or you break and go mad. Or you fight.

Or die. Or both.

I gave a great shout. Sometimes, sound can throw a man off. And I turned, trying to get an arm behind me to block his thrust.

Warned by my shout, Neoptolymos came off his bench and went for Dagon’s ankles.

As slave attacks went, it was a fine attempt. But Dagon foiled it by the simple expedient of stepping back. Then he whirled, ignoring us, and stabbed Skethes, his point in and out of the Thracian’s eye socket in a heartbeat. The Thracian fell forward, dead, his blood running out of his eye in a steady stream like wine from a wineskin.

Nestor didn’t rise off his bench. Instead, he kicked. It was a remarkable kick — I was around by then, fouled by the two useless slaves behind me who were cowering instead of helping. But the kick caught Dagon in the arse and he stumbled, and I was on him.

I was in bad shape — tired, arms weak, far from my conditioning as a smith or a warrior. And he was in armour.

And as soon as I had one of his arms, I found out just how skilled he was. He broke my armlock and countered it: in three beats of my heart, he had my left arm in a lock and had begun to dislocate my left shoulder.

The daimon of combat flew to my aid. I put the crown of my head into his jutting jaw — he had a helmet on, but the cheek plates didn’t break the force of my blow. Where a man’s head moves his body follows, and I moved him off his feet and Nestor sank his teeth into the hated man’s thigh.

But he wriggled like a worm, caught me a blow to my head with his right elbow, slammed the shaft of his spear into Nestor and he was away from us — back three steps. If even one oarsman had aided us But none did.

He grinned. ‘I knew you’d try, lover,’ he said, in Phoenician. ‘I’d have thought less of you, if you hadn’t.’

And then — only then — did we all notice that another ship was coming alongside, up from our stern. She was a beautiful low trireme, her hull black with new pitch, with a long line of woad-blue painted down her side along the upper-deck oar-ports and eyes over her ram. Her oars were beautifully handled.

The oars came in, all together, even as we watched. I backed up two steps, looking for anything to use as a weapon. A boarding pike, a staff for poling off another ship, a stick What I got was a bucket.

A wooden bucket.

And the other ship was boarding us.

Her marines came at us — ten men in bronze, with aspides and fighting spears and greaves. They leaped onto our catwalk and our stern like experts, and I retreated to the bow, looking for a place to hide — I didn’t want to die at the hands of Greeks. I didn’t know what they intended, but I assumed they were Greek pirates — men of my own kind — who would at least take me as a slave.

Their lord — it was obvious, from the rope of lapis and gold beads at his throat to the solid-gold hilt on his sword — shouted at Dagon.

And Dagon nodded and grinned. ‘My slaves,’ he shouted. ‘They rose against me. Thank the gods, lord, for your rescue!’

The Greek lord — I now knew he was Greek by the long hair emerging from under his helmet to the shape of his feet — laughed. ‘I hate you Phoenicians like I hate poverty and fear,’ he said. ‘But we are at peace.’ He grinned wolfishly, turned to his marines and pointed his spear.

‘Clear away the riff-raff,’ he said.

Nestor grabbed his knees. ‘We’re Greek!’ he said. ‘Master, this man-’

The Greek put his sword into Nestor. ‘Tell them in Carthage of the service I do for you,’ he said, and his men set about killing the Sikels.

Two men chased me into the bows, where I turned at bay.

I put the bucket into the helmet of the first to reach me, swinging it at the end of its rope handle, and he fell without a sound.

The other man stepped back and yelled for help.

Just for a moment, I felt as if I were Arimnestos. I stepped forward, and he stepped back.

And then Dagon came up. He had an aspis on his shoulder, and his spear licked out and caught me in the meat of the thigh, quick as thought. Ares, that wound hurt, and I stumbled.

He stepped back, laughed and spiked my other thigh.

I fell to my knees.

As fast as I can tell it, he put his fine spear point through both of my hands, so that I dropped the bucket and waited for death.

He laughed.

‘You think I’m going to kill you?’ he asked.

He didn’t kill me, obviously. What he did do was to help the Greeks kill all of the Sikels on board. Then he bartered half his cargo of iron ore for twenty of the Greeks’ rowers — men of a race I didn’t know at all.

I wasn’t paying very close attention by then, because he had me crucified on the foremast and spar, my arms and legs lashed far apart. The pain of my wounds was enough to make me puke.

Unfortunately, it was still early morning and the sun rose, higher and higher, as the slaves rowed us towards the shore. From my new vantage point I could see the land — a low smudge to the north. Sicily.

We rowed. Or rather, I bled and burned, naked in the sun, and the men beneath me rowed, and the corpses of the Sikels stank. Dagon wouldn’t let the slaves throw them over the side. He insisted on leaving the dead men at their benches. He trod the catwalk, muttering and laughing, and from time to time he would come up behind me — remember, I was crucified and couldn’t see him — and he’d strike me with his staff. Or place the butt of it against my back or my stomach and just rub it up and down.

‘We will have such fun,’ he said. He used a pleasant tone, as a man might talk to his wife, and it made my skin crawl. Even in exhausted despair — his tone made me afraid.

But the sun was worse than the mad oar-master. The sun scorched me. I had never been exposed without water to the sun all day, and it stripped me of everything except the desire for water.

And that was only the first day.

Night fell, and I awoke. I hadn’t been aware that I had passed out — who is? But I came to hanging from my wrists, and the pressure on my abdomen and lungs was uncomfortable, and the sunburn on my stomach and groin was painful, and the wounds in my thighs and hands. Ares, it all hurt.

We were riding at anchor in a great bay under a vast mountain — Aetna, I know now. Even in the state I was in, I looked long at Aetna in the full moon and it was beautiful. And I prayed to the gods that someone would avenge me. I managed to pray for Nestor and Skethes, good companions who had died trying to be free. I had no idea what had happened to Neoptolymos.

The Greek ship was ten horse-lengths astern of ours. I didn’t see it for a long time, until the tide moved us at our anchor and I caught a glimpse of her.

I began to pass in and out of life. I cannot describe it any other way. My life unrolled before me as if I were facing a jury of gods, except that there were no voices, no figures, but merely the strongest feeling, every time I surfaced to pain and the real world, that I had been judged.

And then it was morning.

Dagon came and stood in the bows, and another voice called orders as the rowers awoke to the stink of the corpses. Seabirds came and tried the corpses — a great gull ripping at a dead man’s face can interfere with anyone’s rowing.

The bully-boys used their canes freely.

The ship moved, and we went inshore.

There was a breakwater, well to the west along the great bay, and we pointed our bow at it. The sun crested the horizon, and my torment began in earnest. Now the weight of my body was on my abdomen. My feet couldn’t really support my weight any longer. And breathing started to become difficult. Not really difficult, but painful. There was another body pressing against mine, at my back — it took me hours to realize that Neoptolymos was crucified against me.

‘They say that if you survive three days,’ Dagon said, ‘your chest and back are so ruined you can never be a man again.’ Dagon raised his face and looked at me. ‘And then I can sell you to a brothel. You won’t even be able to fight a brutal client. Isn’t that what you deserve, eh?’

I could feel it happening, that was the worst of it. I could feel my muscles dying. The strain was gradual, but the result was brutal.

And the sun By noon, we were up with the breakwater, and our charnel-house ship entered the harbour and very, very slowly docked at the pier — a well-built stone pier.

The Greek ship came and anchored close in, almost across our stern.

I could no longer speak. I may well have done some screaming, in there somewhere, but by this point I couldn’t even thrash in my bonds, and from time to time I’d make an effort and raise myself on my ankle ropes, just to get the pressure off my wrists and my lungs, and for a few brief moments I would have some clarity and then, gradually, I would collapse again.

I assumed Neoptolymos was dead.

One time, Brassos, one of the bullies, watched me raise myself and then slammed his spear shaft into my groin. I collapsed onto my bonds and choked.

Dagon struck the man. ‘He could die of your carelessness,’ Dagon said.

When I had the ability to use my head, I prayed to Apollo, to Herakles my ancestor and to Poseidon for release.

Just after the sun reached his awful height, men came and began to unload the iron ore from the ship. Then the slaves were taken out of their benches, with twenty guards watching them, and they were put ashore, three at a time, and tied with heavy ropes inside a palisade.

After some time — I cannot remember any of it — I was cut down.

The relief was indescribable. The first moments off the great X of the mast and its yard were like water for a parched man. Like the release of sex.

They tied me to a log and left me in the shade of a linen sail and, after some time, Dagon came. He had Nestor.

Nestor was still alive.

Dagon had the wounded man’s litter left under my awning. And he had slaves fill a bronze cauldron with water. They left it next to Nestor, who was in such pain from a mortal wound in the guts that all he did was writhe and scream.

‘Enjoy your time together,’ Dagon said, and giggled. He put a hand on my shoulder while Nestor gurgled.

‘I would love to spend the evening with you,’ he said, ‘but I have some foolish Greeks to fleece. And then, when I have made a fortune from their idiocy, I will have time for you.’ He giggled again, and his touch burned me.

And then he went away.

I would have slept, but Nestor was in pain, and dying. Horribly.

I’d like to say we talked, or resolved to die together, but he was already gone with pain, and he simply lay and moaned and screamed, and I watched him die. I even slept a little.

In the night, he breathed in hard, his throat closed, he coughed and he was dead.

Just before the sun rose, there were screams. The sound of them scarcely registered with me. Had I understood them, I would have despaired. Hah! As if I had not already despaired.

Dagon had invited the Greeks to dinner.

And murdered them.

That was the way he thanked them for saving him.

Dawn rose, and the bully-boys were carrying corpses down the beach, throwing them into the waves.

I recognized the Greek lord from his long blond hair. His throat was slit, his genitals cut away.

A while later, a pair of men came and dragged me down the wharf to the ship and tied me to the foremast again.

The sun began to rise as overseers drove the slaves back onto the ship — a hundred men to row a trireme. The Greek ship’s oarsmen had spent the night aboard, and my first hint of what had happened was that Dagon and seven of his men were rowing a small boat out to the Greek ship — which was Greek no more.

Screams. Curses. Blows and spear-thrusts. The music of Dagon. How they must have cursed to find him their master. Many of the Greek rowers would have been free men — up until then.

We had Brassos as both trierarch and oar-master. He had most of the old deck crew as ‘marines’ in the looted armour of the dead Greeks, and he had a whip. In an hour, we were out of the harbour and our bow was pointed towards Carthage. The swift trireme ran ahead of us, out to the horizon, and stayed there, a notch on the edge of my world. My eyes grew sun-dazzled, and I lost the ability to see, or to make sense of the world around me.

The slaves who had tied me to the mast were lazy. They had left me a great deal more slack for my body, so that I could writhe and change positions in subtle ways. Had it been the first day of crucifixion, it might have saved me. As it was, it prolonged the agony. And they tied Neoptolymos behind me, but his bands were slack too.

By noon, I cannot pretend I was any longer an observer. I was there, but I was unaware of anything that happened.

And then, out of a clear, hot day, a storm struck us. It caught our ship utterly unprepared, so I’ll assume it was what sailors call a white squall — a small, vicious burst of wind and rain, usually confined to a few stades, and often so pale in colour that on a hot day it’s virtually invisible until it hits you.

I awoke to the rain, and I was moving — back and forth — through wild swings, because I was well up the foremast, and every pitch of the ship beneath me moved my body through fifty degrees of an arc. At the ends of the pitch, my bonds took enormous strain, but in the middle I got a rest, the odd pitching motion taking all the weight off my hands and feet.

It was a miracle. I swear that Poseidon sent it to me. Rain lashed me, as hard as I have ever known, and it flowed into my mouth so fast I might have drowned, and I drank it all. And the pitching ship delivered me from pain, here and there.

And then — hope.

The strain on my bonds was loosening the hastily tied ropes. They began to grow looser with every pitch and roll of the ship beneath me.

I was going to fall into the sea.

And drown.

I realize that what I am about to say will strain your credulity, my friends, but I didn’t fear drowning. Poseidon had so palpably sent the storm to save me, that I had to assume that falling into the sea was the very best thing for me.

And I confess that I thought of the Keltoi woman jumping into the storm, and I thought that it might not be the worst way to die. My body would, at any rate, be safe from insult.

The storm reached a pitch of frenzy like the dance of the Bacchae, and the wind screamed through the ship’s standing rigging and the boatsail mast whipped through its arc. I could feel the ties on my ankles going, and to my horror, they went first, and suddenly I was hanging from my wrists. Pain flooded me.

Then the ropes gave way.

Not on my ankles.

But the cross of ropes that kept the yard on the mast.

The yard fell to the deck, but the deck was heeled well over, and while one end of the spar struck the bow, the other fell across the ram, and suddenly Neoptolymos and I were catapulted into the raging sea.

We went deep.

My arms were still tied to the spar, and I writhed in agony as the salt water hit my wounds, and that burst ripped one arm — my right — free of my bonds.

Then the yard shot to the surface, the light wood all but leaping clear of the water.

The water was deep and cold. The pain of my salt-washed wounds was almost pleasant. I fought the storm for dear life, using my wounded left arm to push myself above the spar and drink air out of the spume at the wave’s top.

Even that fight became routine. It went on and on, and my left shoulder began to fail, and I assumed I would die.

But Neoptolymos had more left in him than I, and he pinned my shoulder to the spar in a clamp of iron. He saved me.

And then the storm abated, sailing by as quickly as it had overtaken us. The tone of the roar went down, the rhythm of the waves changed and the sky lightened. The thunder strokes came slower and slower.

I had time to think that it was like the end of a fight, or a battle, when men come apart, out of the rage of Ares, and the sound of spear on shield comes less and less frequently. I know it well.

Before I could think another thought, or pray to Poseidon, we were alone on the Great Blue, our hands linked to a wooden spar. The sun pounded us, and the sea calmed, and we were alone.