Salamis

All of them turned their bows towards me. One ship threw his mast and sail over the side.

Then another.

They were going to fight.

At about six stades, when I could see Artemisia’s ship and was almost sure that I could see Archilogos’s ship hard by the Red King, I reached around my own stern and flashed my aspis in the sun three times. I wished I had a trumpet and a trumpeter, but in those days the skill was almost unknown among Greeks. We used smaller horns to signal, but the sound didn’t carry well at sea.

Ships make noise — do you know that, thugater? The oars strike the water — splash! — no matter how well trained the oarsmen. Pitylos we call it. The word is the sound. And then the surge of motion as the oarsmen pull the water with the mighty stroke that hurtles the ship forward — we call that rothios. These two sounds are like the beating heart of a warship. And then, over all, the sound the bow makes cutting the water — the curl of waves, the sound of the wind over the hull, and the voices of the oarsmen singing, chanting, or merely grunting, depending on the exhaustion of the crew and the needs of the ship.

We took in our sails. My friends — my brothers — folded theirs away even as they came alongside. Our adversaries’ hearts must have died within them as our sails came down and we formed line, because training shows.

So does heart.

They came on, but their hearts already weren’t in it. The Red King’s rowers were good, and so were Artemisia’s, and as they came on I became more sure that the third good ship was Archilogos’s. But off to the eastern end of their line were two ships with ragged oar strokes and unwilling men.

We were less than five stades apart when the two easternmost ships broke out of the line and ran. East.

Nothing is perfect. On a perfect day, Moire or Harpagos — I missed him already, and his honey-covered corpse was wrapped in linen on my lower catwalk, waiting delivery to his sister — or one of the other old pirates would have left our line and gone for them. But Giannis and Hector had different loyalties. They let the two ships flee, to make sure that we could win the fight.

Good reason, but with their eyes on the wrong prizes, so to speak.

I watched Diomedes run, and my heart filled my throat and I almost vomited.

Choices.

We were two stades from combat. To turn and run east was suicide for all my crew, and yet I considered it. He would run free while we fought. He would have hours of head start, if the fight went as I expected.

After all, the Red King and Artemisia were their best, and Archilogos was no slouch.

I spared the gods my curses.

Instead, I ran into my own bow. With an olive branch. And my line continued forward, rowing a normal stroke, as they bore down on us.

I waved the olive branch like mad, and prayed to Aphrodite, goddess of love, and Poseidon who rules the sea.

Artemisia accepted my olive branch. Diomedes wasn’t six stades to the east when I leaped onto her deck, unarmed. Her ships had backed away a stade and I had rowed up alone. It was six to four — no one was fooled, and she must have wanted my offer of peace with all her heart.

Certainly she welcomed me to her deck. She was in armour, and yet she kissed my cheek like Jocasta rising from her loom.

‘I confess, I never expected a Greek squadron this far east,’ she said. She smiled without flirtation. ‘You have the better of me. But I will fight to the death, I’m afraid.’

‘You have the Great King’s boys,’ I said.

She coloured in shock.

‘I don’t want them,’ I said. ‘I will allow you and your ships to sail away — north. If you will give me free passage east, after Diomedes.’

She leaned into the tabernacle where her swan stern overhung the steering oars. ‘It seems to me that I could just take you and use you as a hostage,’ she said. ‘After all, you must be worth a pretty ransom. And I will not be taken, Plataean.’

I nodded, and pointed over my shoulder at my own mid-deck, where Brasidas stood with a tall, thin boy. ‘Your son, I believe.’

She stared, and for a moment, I thought I’d misplayed and she was going to gut me on the spot, the very lioness deprived of her young that Sappho describes.

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I love Briseis, daughter of Hipponax, sister to your ally Archilogos. Diomedes means her harm — terrible harm. I appeal to you as a mother and a lover — I will do no harm to Ephesus. I swear it by all the gods. But if I have to fight you, by the same gods I will kill every one of you for delaying me.’

We rocked in the bosom of the ocean and all the Fates and Furies held their breath.

‘I want my son!’ she said.

‘I will release him, and Phayllos, and their ship, unharmed, when I row out of Ephesus.’ I confess it — I was making this up as I went. But her alliance would be far more powerful than her avoidance.

She watched me. Her eyes narrowed, and I think perhaps she hated me only for having over-mastered her. She was a great warrior — and none of us likes to lose.

So I decided to treat her the way I’d have treated any other noble foe — to ease her mind.

‘There is no surrender involved,’ I said quietly. ‘I will hold your son as surety, but in the harbour of Ephesus you’ll have every hoplite at your beck and call. And you will know — none better — if I take Briseis alive. And I give my word.’

‘Greeks lie,’ she said.

‘Damn it!’ I said. My temper was flaring, Diomedes was running east to kill my love and this woman was considering fighting a hopeless sea fight against terrible odds because that’s who she was.

Brasidas was too much of a gentleman to actually threaten the boy. But I saw him move, and his helmeted head turned. And I followed his eyes and saw another ship coming up under easy oars — Archilogos, my almost-brother, was coming to talk.

‘You will take my son, raid Ephesus, and then run, leaving me a laughing stock,’ she said. ‘And then you will hold him to ransom half his life. I’d rather just fight and die. And who knows? Perhaps I’ll triumph,’ she said, and her eyes flared.

I was suddenly tired. All my injuries pained me, and all the fatigue of a four-day chase came down to this moment, and I wanted it to end. This is where men make bad choices. Aye, and women, too.

My beautiful plan was coming to pieces. The threat to kill them all had been foolish, because they could not understand the stakes.

‘Do you know what it is like to be a woman and command men?’ she asked. ‘It means you must win every time.’

‘It’s not so very different as a man,’ I said.

‘Nonsense,’ she said. ‘If you free a man, it is mercy. If I do, I’m a soft woman or a whore who pined for him. I cannot afford to be humiliated at all, Plataean.’

Through this exchange the friend of my boyhood was coming aboard, his ship coming alongside, and he stepping from ship to ship as they didn’t quite touch. He had good steady oarsmen.

Black Raven began to come forward. My trierarchs were growing restive.

‘I will not humiliate you,’ I said. ‘I swear before the gods.’

And then my friend — my enemy — came up the catwalk. His bare feet made no noise and his only greeting was to remove his helmet.

‘He swore to save my family,’ Archilogos said. His voice was deeper and more beautiful than mine. ‘Then he slept with my sister and killed my father.’

‘I’m here to save your sister, Archilogos! Even as Diomedes sails away to kill her.’ I all but spat the words. I wanted his friendship, but his ignorance was about to kill everything.

Artemisia looked at Archilogos. He was handsome — beautiful, even — and he had scars on his face and lines at the corner of his mouth. I hadn’t seen him from this close in years.

‘Does this man love your sister?’ she asked.

Archilogos shook his head. ‘Oh, I suppose he does,’ he said wearily. ‘And she him, or so she never ceases to tell me. But I no longer bear the responsibility for her.’

Artemisia was looking at me. ‘Give me a hostage,’ she said.

Archilogos looked at her, and then at me. His bronze armour was magnificent — but not as fine as mine. It was a stupid thing to think in the moment, but there it was.

I turned to him. ‘Artaphernes, son of Artaphernes, is even now riding Royal Post to Sardis and then Ephesus to order her death. Diomedes is his ally in this — that’s why he received two of the Great King’s sons to carry on his ship.’ I could see, further down the catwalk, two well-dressed Persian youths. ‘The other two, no doubt. They mean to kill her.’

‘I have disowned her,’ Archilogos said. ‘She is no sister of mine.’

‘That must have been a magnificently empty gesture,’ I shot back, ‘given whose wife she was.’

Oh, I’m a fool. Always antagonise those you hope to sway by argument. But Archilogos smiled as he had when we were boys, and he acknowledged a fair hit.

‘I mean to have her as my wife, Archilogos,’ I said. ‘By Heracles, my ancestor! The Great King is beaten! The next fleet to come here will come from the west, and it will be Greek. The world is changing, brother!’

I don’t know where that came from. We used to call each other ‘brother’ when we were boys.

He turned his head and looked away.

Artemisia suddenly nodded decisively. ‘Well, call me a fool or a fatuous woman, but I believe you. No one could make this up. Give me a hostage.’

‘I will give you my own son,’ I said.

Seckla met me coming back aboard after I’d seen Hipponax and two marines — all allowed arms — over the side. I returned Phayllos and his companion their arms.

‘I will return you to your ship when we leave Ephesus,’ I said.

Phayllos smiled. ‘She is very persuasive, is she not?’

I wasn’t paying attention. Diomedes had a parasang head start.

I had a very good ship, and now, with two signals to my friends, I ran for Ephesus.

From the south end of Chios, it’s not a complex voyage into Ephesus, but it has challenges. The coast of Chios runs from the southern point at an angle, from south-west to north-east. My ship was well placed and had the right rig. We raised our sail — indeed, it was laid to the brails — and we were away.

An hour passed and none of us could tell if we were gaining. I was beyond mere spirit. My whole being was in the bow and in the sails.

More to distract myself than to help my friend, I walked back out of the bows and knelt by Leukas. I found myself telling all this — explaining my decisions.

My Briton’s eyes opened. I hadn’t really been paying enough attention, but he had been breathing fairly well and now his eyes opened. ‘Sixth day,’ he said. ‘I may yet equal Seckla.’

I hadn’t even hoped. So much of my spirit was seeking after Briseis that I had wasted no hope and too few prayers on my friend and helmsman. But now my hope soared.

Brasidas came and knelt beside me.

He took Leukas’s hand, ran another hand down his side and over his gut.

‘No fever,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘Sometimes the spear point never goes into the gut.’ He shrugged.

‘Sometimes the gods are kind,’ I said.

Brasidas looked at me, rubbed the closed wound on his shoulder, and I think what I read in his eyes was pity. ‘Sometimes,’ he said.

The sun was three fingers higher in the sky when one of the fleeing ships turned end for end. We were coming up on them rapidly enough to see with the naked eye — our sailing rig was so much better than theirs. Just having the mast permanently anchored into the hull is a powerful tool and the rake of our forward boat-sail mast, which raised the bow very slightly against the downward pressure of the mainmast, gave us a lighter entry and made us faster.

I wondered what Diomedes had promised this poor bastard. His tactics were obvious — if I lowered my mast to face him, I’d lose an hour. No question.

Of course, I didn’t have to lower my mast. But Diomedes had never been in the western ocean, and didn’t know this rig.

‘Seckla?’ I asked quietly.

Let me add that half a parasang astern the rest of my friends — aye, and the Red King — were spread over the ocean. Artemisia was close behind me, but Archilogos was closest of all. Moire was just behind him. I had a little concern about betrayal, but more about the loss of time. And ever I had the spectre of Artaphernes riding, riding, and losing no time for adverse winds or grey days or enemies. A good man could ride twenty-four parasangs a day on the Royal Road and he was a renowned horseman and a relative of the king. Athens to the Hellespont was fifty parasangs. From the Hellespont to Ephesus was much less. On the one hand, much of that distance was very rough ground, but on the other, we knew the Great King had built roads as he came.

He should have been in Ephesus the day before, ordering my beloved’s humiliation and death.

I am not one to leave things in the hands of the gods, but in this I knew I could do no more than I had done.

Kineas left it late — on purpose — and Seckla forced our last opponent but one into a wide manoeuvre to cut us off as we threatened to merely sail by. He must have thought his sudden turn was a guarantee of victory.

And he must have died in his heart when he saw how fast our mainsail came down. We left the boat-sail set. We were going very fast.

Our rowers grabbed the mid-ship’s ropes and lay out to starboard, and Seckla’s steering oars bit. One-third of the aft port-side oars went into the water, too — slowing us, and turning us very quickly. Oh, the years of practice in that moment.

And we almost missed.

And as we turned, the deck tilted at an angle I had never experienced and I thought we were going over. I felt the weight change and I feared our mast was taking us down, knocked flat, sideways into the sea. The starboard side rose and rose and every oarsman who could climbed out of his box and threw himself over the deck to the starboard and climbed over the catwalk, and lay out over the starboard rail. A hundred men weigh a great deal.

But what saved us was the impact. Our bow struck their stern. It would have been a glancing blow at a lesser speed, but at our racehorse gallop we sheered off his stern and the resistance — the moment of impact — slowed us.

Grudgingly, Lydia righted herself. She did not come up willingly, and for ten heartbeats, it was like watching the last heat at the Olympics, cheering on some beautiful runner who is stride for stride with another — will he win?

And then, with a sudden shake, we were on the level, bobbing like mad, and one of the port-side stern oarsmen lost his oar to the sudden change.

But by then, even though he was pale under his dark skin and looked grey at his own temerity, Seckla was bringing us back on course for Ephesus. Diomedes had sacrificed his consort and now he was only ten stades ahead of us. He was pulling away — of course.

But now our mariners proved their worth again. The readied sail was set back to the mainmast and twenty men raised it with a song. In the distance I could see the opening of the river mouth — the river whose first bend would lead us to magnificent Ephesus and the temple of Artemis shining on the hill of the citadel. It had been years.

I felt the Furies, their wings beating about me to the rush of the wind.

Do you know the feeling you have in the theatre, when you writhe your hips in your desperate wish that Oedipus may make another choice — even though you know that all is written and ordained? When the rhapsode sings the Iliad and you wish that, just this once, Patrocles might live, or Hector triumph?

Well then.

Here we are.

We entered the delta of the Kaystros, passing over the bar under oars, and we were perhaps five stades astern of my enemy. Nor were there warships waiting in the estuary. Indeed, the harbour was empty.

Empty.

One of my many fears in those hours was to find a port packed with enemies, instant allies for Diomedes. But remember, between two hundred hulls to support the bridge over Hellespont and the thousand ships he sent in his navy to Hellas, the Great King stripped the Ionians of their ships and their hoplites.

Diomedes ran.

My crew, Poseidon’s blessing on them, shifted us effortlessly from sail to oars. The promontory on the north of the estuary all but killed the wind, and Seckla and I had it to the last breath, with every rested oarsman on his cushion before the sailors raised their hands to lower the sail.

Four stades.

I could see beaches by the town where Aristides had beached the Athenians eighteen years before, when I was still a boy and the world had seemed a sweeter place. I could see the temple of Artemis on the hill and I thought I could see a certain red-tile roof.

Diomedes took no chances, the coward. He ran his warship onto the beach below the town, bow first. He and all his marines were over the side, abandoning hull and rowers to their fates. And I could see his purple-red cloak fluttering as he ran, wallowing in the deep sand at the top of the beach.

Ka loosed an arrow — and then another and another. His archers joined him as soon as they had the range and the running hoplites began to grow arrows in their shields. It was marvellous shooting for the distance.

I could not watch.

I ran to Seckla. ‘The piers,’ I said. Remember, Seckla had been in and out of Ephesus two years before. He knew the harbour well, although not as well as I. I could not leave my ship and my crew to fall into Persian hands. This had to be touch-and-go: leave me and get into open water to wait conclusions.

That meant the stone pier beyond the breakwater where we could leap ashore and run through the town without crossing a beach. In fact, it was the choice that Diomedes should have made, but he didn’t trust his tired rowers and another two stades of channel.

Well. I did.

Seckla governed our turns. I was my own oar-master, and we made the two turns into the inner harbour at the speed of a cantering horse. Risk upon risk upon risk.

But at my feet, Leukas sat up against the mainmast.

‘Get forward,’ he said in his odd accent. ‘Get your … enemy. I will lead the rowers.’

‘Poseidon bless you, brother,’ I said. The word brother came to my lips often that day, because indeed, they were all my brothers in this moment of reckless, tragic insanity.

Leukas used the mast to rise to his feet. But his spear was thumping the deck and all around me oarsmen began to smile.

And I thought — we’re going to do this.

Leukas’s voice should never have carried. But it did — a little higher and weaker than usual, but the port-side oars came in and the starboard checked, and we slipped down the long stone quays, and long before Kineas threw a loop of rope over a stone bollard, I leapt over the side to the rushing stone quay, stumbled and blessed the bronze greave on my knee as it struck the sand on the surface of the stone, and began to run. Brasidas came across behind me and Polymarchos and Achilles and Sitalkes and all the rest. And although I had never run well since my first bad wound, yet it was hard for them to pass me, because Aphrodite and Ares held my arms and I skimmed the earth. And behind me, ten heroes bent on glory.

But after Lydia came Archilogos in his magnificent, gilded Heracles. He was going to get ashore just behind me.

I have reason to know that it is three hundred and some steps from the top of the beach to the base of the steps to the Great Temple of Artemis. Ephesus is a steep town and I had run up and down the steps of that city all the days of my youth. Three hundred and twenty-six steps, I believe. And the dooryard of Hipponax is at the top, where the city’s great aristocrats live just below the temple precinct.

When everything you have ever wanted in the world awaits extinction at the end of your run, you do not stop. You do not rest, or gasp for air. You do not make a humorous aside, or banter, and practise the kind of bravado boys use when they want to fight.

You merely run, the greaves on your legs weighing like oxen tied to your feet. And despite the best armourer in the world, as you climb, the base of the bronze begins to drive into the top of your instep and the sides of your brave bronze thorax begin to restrict the full expansion of your lungs, and your helmet weighs like a young heifer on your neck; your plume seems to have a life of its own, and the sweat pours down your face from the wool and straw that lines your helmet, stinging your eyes and making you blind.

I had not slept one moment the night before. I had new wounds and old, and I was no longer even a little young.

That I ran to the top of the town is not the miracle. I was in the hands of a god and a goddess.

That every one of my marines ran to the top of the town is a miracle. Not for them, the wonder of Briseis. They only knew that this was my desire — and that Brasidas and I led them. It was for this that they had trained. Beside it, the day at Salamis was a pleasure outing.

Wear full armour. Wear it all day, and then, as the sun sets, leap from a moving ship to a stone pier, land, rise, and run four stades up three hundred steps.

And then fight for your life.

I can tell you about that run in detail. But it would be lies. I remember nothing.

No thought entered my sweat-soaked head, and no sight entered my eyes until I was at the top, on the well-remembered path — too narrow for a street — that led to Hipponax’s arched front gate, and the mural of Heracles my ancestor that decorated his entryway.

By Heracles — it had all started here, in this house. The Furies were close — all their wings beating like oarsmen pulling together.

I saw the entryway. Standing in the narrow alley was a pair of hoplites and they filled it, just the two of them.

Thoughts came into my head. And for the first time I wondered if she was here at all, or in her house in Sardis.

But Diomedes thought so.

The two men facing us were big and brave.

Brasidas threw his heavy ten-foot spear from three paces out, at a dead run. He was just behind me, and yet he threw over my shoulder. His spear struck the aspis of the left-hand hoplite. The man had his shield on his shoulder as men sometimes do when tired, and thus it had no ‘angle’ to the spear tip — which struck full force, as if Achilles himself had thrown it. It went in the width of a hand, weight and strength blowing through layers of hide and wood and linen and pitch, and the man screamed as it went into his bicep, perfectly aimed and thrown, and his instinctive movement ripped it back out of the entry wound, the spear bobbed up and down, lashing through muscles in his left arm, and his own spear fouled his mate as I slammed my aspis into his. Achilles my cousin put a spear in the downed man’s throat somewhere behind me, or so I’ve heard since, and I was entering the gate, where two more stood.

Now they both threw their spears together. I had my own spear up high, my thumb back around the shaft and a little cord between my fingers, as is my habit in a ship fight. From this position it is child’s play to cover yourself against a thrown spear and both casts went wide — one skimmed off my angled shield and would not bite, and the other clattered against my own spear haft as I rolled it, a turn of the wrist, right to left, a little snap that meant life and not death.

Then I slipped between the right-hand man and the gatepost, placed my aspis against his as I slipped, moving his weight the way the end of his spear-cast led him, overextended, right foot forward and thus without the structure to support his aspis. And high above my head, Heracles in his lion skin looked down on me as my spear point rose a fraction of a finger’s width over his aspis and struck almost straight down. He wore a corselet of bronze scale, but my spear went into the muscles of his neck where it met the shoulder, unprotected, under the cheeks of his helmet, and my spear point went far into his body and he was dead before his knees buckled — and my spear leapt back out again, untrammelled by his death.

And I passed my left foot past my right and carried on, leaving the second man, alone, to face Brasidas and Sitalkes.

In the great doorway were two more hoplites, and behind them, two more — a tiny phalanx.

But their spears shook.

No one, my daughter, can watch four of their friends die in twenty heartbeats without a moment of deep doubt and real fear.

I threw my dory when I was half a pace from the faces of their aspides. My spear flew perhaps a single pace and slid between the edges of the man’s helmet, deep between his teeth into his throat. I tugged the cord, but it was gone, lodged too far.

The other front ranker lost an entire action being afraid.

I got my hand on my xiphos.

Finally, he struck — a simple, straight blow to the face of my aspis. A wasted blow. If he had been trained by Calchus he would have known what to do when a Killer of Men came and faced him. He and his friends would have set their shields together and put their spear points to my face, and driven me away or let me expend the rage of Ares on their impenetrable shields.

But I was Hector and Heracles, and they had no hero to steady them.

My long xiphos came out of my scabbard as if called by Ares. My draw lengthened into a high cover that took my terrified adversary’s spear high and then I sprayed his fingers over his companions with a flick of my wrist, and my aspis and my shoulder cast him into his own second rank, a step higher on the marble, and his blood sprayed over his friends.

They reached for me with their spear, but they also stumbled back.

And Brasidas was there.

What evil fate set those men to face me, and to face Brasidas, on the same day and in the same hour?

His sword flew like one of the ravens of Apollo, stooping and rising.

And then — I tell it because it will be difficult to believe — we drove them back from the threshold into the portico, and I have never seen it, before or since, but Brasidas’s opponent thrust, pushing forward on his right foot with his spear reversed, and while he went shield to shield with the Spartan, he was wide open to me. I had just covered a heavy, sweeping blow on my shield and I turned and killed Brasidas’s opponent with a thrust to the throat — and in that beat of the heart, Brasidas drove over my arm into my man, killing him.

My sword caught in Brasidas’s adversary, though. The swell in the ‘leaf’ of the blade had gone too deep and he took my sword in death. But Ares guided my hand and I took his spear from him as if he had handed it to me.

I ran down the hallway to the women’s quarters.

I knew it well.

And as I had imagined it a thousand times that day, there he stood.

Diomedes.

Two women dead at his feet, their young corpses piled one atop another like lovers in a tragedy.

I might have wept, but neither dead girl was mine.

He had Briseis by the hair, and he had one of her arms pinned, because it had a long curved knife. His hand held a sword — a kopis such as I had used in my youth. It was red to the hilt and for a long moment I could not tell if her throat was cut or not.

‘Stop!’ he commended me. ‘Or I kill your whore.’

I was still moving forward.

‘Kill him, Achilles!’ Briseis said.

‘Shut up, you bitch!’ he said. His grip must have hurt her terribly, but she still had the knife and he could not make her drop it — she was a dancer, fit, and flexible, and the grip that would have broken a man’s arm was hurting her terribly, but she still had the knife. And her struggles made him unable to just cut her throat.

His two men were opening the doors to the women’s yard beyond. He tried to drag her feet from under her, so that he’d have her arm and the knife, but she moved with fluid grace, despite his grip.

I saw it all, the last act of a tragedy older than me. Before I threw my spear I knew that wherever it lodged, Briseis would be the victor — alive, my bride, or dead, avenged and unbroken. Like it or not …

All her will passed to me in one glance of those eyes. When she told me to kill him, she told me all.

I turned my head slightly, as if tracking his henchman, who raised his spear to threaten me.

And then, without looking, I threw. My throw had everything behind it, and my right foot went forward, making me as vulnerable as the man I’d killed a moment before in the portico. And Diomedes’ man threw at me.

And all the gods laughed and oaths were fulfilled.

Archilogos’s shield snapped forward — and the brother and owner of my youth deflected my death.

And Diomedes stood.

Briseis was on the floor.

Diomedes stood

because

my

spear

pinned

him

to

the

door

Blood fountained over his chest from his throat, and his face distorted against my shaft. His mouth moved like a gaffed tuna, and no sound emerged.

Briseis had fallen to her hands and knees. In truth, my spear ripped along her scalp and blood flowed — but she was alive.

As fast as I could reach her side, my people butchered Diomedes’ remaining men, and Briseis was raised from the floor — I had one of her hands, and her brother had the other.

‘I came as best I could,’ I said.

Archilogos looked at me across his sister.

‘My hate for you burned hot,’ he said. ‘But now I find only ashes. Heraclitus, ere he died, told me that you tried to save my father.’

Briseis’s eye caught mine. Fear, despair, elation — they left almost no mark on her, and one eyebrow went up despite the blood. Indeed, Archilogos must have been told many times that I had tried to save his father — that I had only killed him in mercy, never in anger. But … time passes its own messages.

Brasidas said, ‘Arimnestos! We must go.’

I looked over my shoulder at him, and then at Briseis and Archilogos. ‘Briseis,’ I said. ‘Come and be my wife.’

Then she smiled, the same smile she always had when she put the knife in.

‘I want nothing else, my love,’ she said. ‘But I must have a moment, or I’ll come to you with no dowry.’

‘I would take you in your chiton,’ I said, or something equally foolish.

Archilogos shook his head. ‘She’s right, and don’t be a romantic fool. All our fortune is in this town. If Artaphernes is coming for us — we need to do some selective removals.’ He grinned.

‘Archilogos,’ I said. ‘Artaphernes will kill you. And Xerxes will do nothing to stop him. Come with me and be free.’

Archilogos paused. ‘My oarsmen will kill me,’ he said.

And he smiled.

‘You saved my life,’ I said.

He shrugged. ‘So help me carry my fortune down to the ships.’