We hit, not ram to ram but cathead to cathead, and our forward-row gallery took the blow of theirs and both splintered, and men screamed as their bodies were ground to bloody pulp between the uncaring masses of the two ships. All the momentum came off both ships, and we coasted to a near stop, broadside to broadside, the height of a tall man apart.
Our archers began to shoot into their command deck, and their archers did the same, and then the grapnels flew. Indeed, both sides had decided to fight it out.
Men are foolish animals. No one needed to die. I don’t think there was a man on either ship who stood to gain much from victory. This wasn’t a struggle for freedom or domination, except at the lowest level. This wasn’t Lade or Marathon. This was more like two travellers wrestling at a crossroads, with no spectators.
But there was no less ferocity for all that.
Their marines came at us first. They wore full panoply and they were men who knew their business, and I thought, as a spectator, that they were better men than ours. And we were short by two men of our complement, and when each side has only a dozen armoured warriors, the loss of two is sufficient to swing a contest.
It was odd to sit and watch a deadly fight. One Etruscan went down immediately. A lucky shot from a boarding pike sent him over the side, where he sank without a trace. But our captain took his death wound in the very next fight – a moment’s inattention, a mistake by the man at his side and he was spouting blood. They dragged his bleeding body clear of the fight and dropped him near the stern, and then the melee grew desperate – the Carthaginians knew that they were losing, and the Etruscans knew they were close to winning.
The Etruscans pushed our marines relentlessly down the central gangway – a catwalk that was at the height of our heads and open to the weather. Our ship wasn’t covered with a solid deck, as some of the newest ships are today, so we could watch the whole fight.
The helmsman led a counter-attack from the stern, and his spear put down an Etruscan marine who fell across the catwalk about even with Doola’s bench, one forward from mine. His spear snapped, and he plucked an axe from behind his shield and spiked a second Etruscan in the temple. One of the Carthaginians at his side took a spear in the thigh at the same moment, and the two men fell in a tangle, right onto my bench. And the fight locked up – the catwalk could just fit two men wide, and there they were, like two teams pushing against each other at an athletic contest.
The dying Etruscan was in my lap, bleeding on me. And shitting on me, as well. His sword clattered at my feet out of his dead hand, and lay in a pool of his own blood on the boards where I rested my feet to row.
I had the strangest thoughts. And a great deal of time seemed to pass while I had them, all between one drip of blood from the corpse and another. Just for a few beats of my heart, I think that I saw the world as Heraclitus saw it. It seemed to me, and it still does, as one of the pivotal moments of my life.
The sword lay at my feet, beckoning me. Indeed, it all but called out to me.
I looked at it. But I didn’t take it, because I had a thousand conflicting thoughts in an instant.
It seemed to me that I was four feet lower than any opponent, and that after I cut the ankles of one or two men, I’d be skewered, shieldless, like a dog in a pit.
It seemed to me that I owed Carthage nothing.
I looked at the Carthaginian marines fighting – literally at my head – and I felt no kinship. No brotherhood. They paid, and I rowed, and I was not free to leave. Had Hektor been captain, had the crew been Sikels, I might have felt a bond.
And the man lying across my lap looked Greek. He smelled of coriander, his skin was brown and tanned and his eyes were like my eyes, and his armour – a handsome bronze thorax, a beautiful Corinthian helmet with plumes and a crest of red horsehair – was Greek armour. I didn’t feel the least inclination to risk my skin to help the barbarian Carthaginians fight – and win – against the barbarian Etruscans who at least looked Greek.
And yet another voice urged me to take up the sword.
Because with it in my hand, I was a different man. A free man. The master of my own destiny.
And then came a moment of superb, crystalline clarity. It was absurd.
I – a slave, or near enough – held the key to the fight. If I rose from my bench, sword in hand, the side I backed would triumph. I saw this as if it were written in carved letters on stone.
I, an unarmed slave, held the fate of twenty armoured men and four hundred rowers in my sword hand. Not because I was a great fighter. Not because I was Arimnestos of Plataea. But because I was in the right place, at the right moment of time, and a sword had fallen at my feet.
And I thought, this is how all the world is, in every minute, in every heartbeat in which every human makes any decision. This is the river into which Heraclitus said we could not twice dip our toes. This was the moment, and from this moment every other moment would flow.
I picked up the sword.
The river flowed on. Or rather, a dozen rivers flowed away from that moment. Alive, dead, slave, free – all flowed away from that moment.
The helmsman swung over an Etruscan marine’s shield and cut the fingers off the man’s sword hand.
I caught Doola’s eye. He, too, had a knife in his hand.
So did Hektor’s brother.
I had never spoken a word to him since he poured me wine in the market of some tiny town in Sicily. But now he watched me.
I decided. I swear that in that moment, I saw the future – that the stream came together in a mighty river, and time flowed. I once joked to Doola that we won the Battle of Mycale in that moment, he and I. Fifteen years before the Persians beached there, and we landed our marines, and fought it out for the supremacy of the world.
Every stream flowed from there.
I rose on my bench, dumping the dead Etruscan into the benches below me but wrestling the corpse for his aspis, the round shield on his left arm. It was a perfect fit, and that meant it would not come off cleanly. My moment was passing.
I gave up on the shield. The kopis whirled up over my head, and I cut—
—and severed the helmsman’s foot at the ankle. He screamed and fell to the deck, and I cut his throat.
Doola was off his bench and onto mine, crawling aft, with Hektor’s brother and Seckla right behind him. Seckla stripped the helmsman of his dagger and sword as he passed, and Hektor’s brother had his spear – all as smoothly as if we’d planned this a hundred times. Perhaps we had. In truth, I think that the fates were there – immanent. At our shoulders.
And then the four of us burst off the benches into the rear files of the Carthaginians. I got my hands on one man’s shoulders and pulled him down, and Seckla cut a man’s hamstrings and Hektor’s brother rammed his spear deep into the side of a third marine under his fine bronze corselet.
In three heartbeats, every top-deck rower was up. The last marines and officers died in a paroxysm of blood.
And then I had time to get the aspis on my arm.
And face the Etruscans.
The lead Etruscan stepped back and raised his helmet. Grinned.
The two ships rose and fell on the swell.
‘Speak Greek?’ I asked.
He looked at the man behind him.
He had a magnificent octopus on his shield and his helmet. He had ruddy blond hair, and didn’t look a bit like a Greek. He was as handsome as Paris. He raised his helmet and nodded.
‘A little,’ he said.
‘I don’t know about the rest of these men,’ I said slowly and carefully, ‘but I’ve had enough of being a rower and a slave. If you’ll give your word to the gods that you’ll free us ashore and give us a share of the value of this ship, why, we’ll row her to port for you. Otherwise—’ I tapped my sword against my shield rim.
The other oarsmen made a lot of noise.
Ten marines can cow two hundred oarsmen – but not under these conditions. Not when we were already up off our ben
ches, with many of us armed.
The Greek-speaker nodded to me and called to the other ship. I didn’t understand a word.
But Gaius appeared at my hip – he was a lower-deck rower. He shouted with joy and clambered past me. Then looked back at me. He embraced an Etruscan, and they spoke, quickly, and then he came back and took my hand.
Message received.
‘That’s his cousin,’ said the Greek-speaker. He gave me a grin. ‘We’ll see you right. I swear by the daimon of hospitality and the God of the Sea.’
We shook, and men cheered.
And the river flowed on.
It took me months to learn enough Etruscan to get a cup of wine. It sounds like the language petty kingdoms of northern Syria speak, and while I recognized the sounds, I didn’t understand a word. Gaius left us immediately, and many of the rowers – like men of their kind – were rowing Etruscan hulls for pay before the week was out, collecting small wages, tupping different porne and drinking better wine, but living the same life.
I collected what I thought of as ‘my people’, and Gaius got us a fair price for our share of the trireme Sea Sister.
A year had passed since I found Euphoria dead – or more. I was drinking wine with strangers, in a place so foreign they’d never heard of the fight at Marathon, where Keltoi were thicker on the ground than Hellenes. I had no urge to go home, but I was sick of being a chattel, and whatever had been broken was healing. I wanted to live, and I wanted to be a lord and not a slave. I thought often of the Keltoi woman, stepping over the side. I thought often of the moment when the sword fell at my feet. From the gods.
I thought of Dagon.
Neoptolymos wanted to go to Illyria and kill his uncle, but his plans were adolescent.
We didn’t have enough money to buy a ship. But the Etruscan cities in the north were fighting a war with the Keltoi, and I thought that my little oikia might earn money there.
One evening, as the money was running short, it came to a head in a taverna.
I threw a few obols on the table for wine. ‘I say we go north and see what we can pick up,’ I said. I looked at Doola, who shrugged.
‘Wrong way for me,’ he said. He grinned his huge grin. ‘Home is that way.’ He pointed a thumb over his shoulder.
‘So’s Carthage,’ Demetrios said. He was Hektor’s brother. By then, I knew his name. But he shrugged. ‘And Sicily.’
Seckla looked interested in going north to fight. Not Daud. He shrugged. ‘My home,’ he said, pointing north. Even though he and Gaius looked like brothers, he was a Kelt.
‘Come to Sicily,’ Demetrios said suddenly. ‘We can work the passage and save our money. Keep our arms.’ We had all kept the weapons of the Carthaginians – what we were allowed to keep. I had the dead Etruscan’s sword. ‘Listen, my people are always fighting the Greeks – no offence, brother – or the Carthaginians.’ He spat. ‘We’ll earn some money, buy a ship, be partners.’
Daud hugged us all. ‘I’ll go home,’ he said.
‘Where is home?’ Demetrios asked him. ‘My brother always wanted to ask you.’
Daud nodded. ‘North and north and north. Over the mountains and up the great river; over a range of hills by the big forts, and then down the River of Fish to the Northern Sea.’ He smiled. ‘I was a great fool to leave home, but I’m grown-up now.’
‘Where the tin comes from?’ Demetrios asked suddenly – eagerly. Greedily, perhaps.
Daud shook his head. ‘Yes and no. It comes through our town, but it’s from across the Sea-River, on Alba. Or so the traders say.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m not of the Veneti. They know all about the tin. And they don’t tell.’
‘Hektor dreamed of taking a ship to Alba,’ Demetrios said. ‘We were going to take on a cargo of tin, and die rich men.’
Why does insane adventure appeal to me? That’s the way I‘m made. I remember leaning forward, like that young man who has just become interested in my tale – eh? Slavery is dull, but Alba is exotic, eh?
Just so.
‘How far is Alba?’ I asked.
Demetrios shrugged. ‘No one knows. The Phoenicians have an absolute monopoly outside the Pillars of Heracles. Greek merchants used to go overland from Massalia – but those were gentler times.’
Doola shook his head. ‘A dream,’ he said, ‘is an important thing, but a cup of wine is better. The tin of Alba is legendary. But with a little luck we could buy a small ship, and have a good life.’
‘Don’t you want to go home?’ I asked.
Doola and Seckla exchanged a look.
‘No,’ Doola said. Sometimes he sounded like a Spartan.
I waved at the wine slave for more wine. ‘I, for one, would like to go to Alba.’
Daud leaned over. ‘If you are going to Alba, I’ll stay,’ he said.
Doola grinned. ‘Insane,’ he said.
‘We don’t even have a ship,’ Seckla complained.
Doola looked at me. ‘You can navigate?’
I nodded.
Demetrios looked offended. ‘I can navigate.’
Doola grinned his big grin. ‘This one has been a trierarch. I can see it. On a big ship – yes?’
I nodded.
Doola and Seckla exchanged a long look.
‘Let’s swear,’ Doola said suddenly.
So we swore out a pact. It took some time to argue the details, but we swore to be brothers, to split shares evenly: to save and buy a ship, sail her to Alba, take on a cargo of tin and bring it home. We were as drunk as lords by the time we put our right fists together and swore by Zeus and four other gods.
With other men, it would have been a drunkard’s oath. Something we talked about while we traded for bits of amber and salt fish.
But I was not the only man there under the hand of the fates. And when the seven of us were together, it seemed that there was nothing we could not do.
So we swore, and in the morning, we took ship for Sicily.
Now, I had been to Sicily several times by then, but never as a free man with a few obols and a sword, and it tasted better. This time, we landed on the beach by Syracusa, the greatest Greek city on the richest island in the ocean, and we gaped like country hicks. Syracusa is a magnificent city, the rival of Athens.
By all rights, we ought to have squandered our hard-earned drachma in brothels and gone back to sea as oarsmen, or at best, marines. But that’s not how it fell out because, as I say, the gods were close. On landing, we went together up to the big Temple of Poseidon on the headland and spent good money on a ram. I sacrificed him myself, and his blood poured across the altar, and even as a junior priest collected his blood, a senior priest was dividing the meat. It was everyday work for both of them, but a few routine questions – they were courteous men, those priests – established that we were sailors looking for a boat, and that the junior priest’s brother had a small boat to sell.
Twenty days of day-labour, and that boat was ours. It was scarcely forty feet long and just about wide enough to walk the length when the mast was down, but it could carry cargo. I guarded temples and carried sacks on the waterfront for a week, and then I found skilled work at a forge – and suddenly we had the silver to buy the boat. It was odd, and perhaps sad, that I made more in a day as an underpaid journeyman bronze-smith than all five of us earned doing the sort of day-jobs slaves usually did. But access to the shop allowed me to repair our war gear and to make us all some small things: cloak pins, clothes’ pins, buckles. My new master liked my work a great deal – he was mostly a caster, not a forger – and he paid me well enough.
So the other four went to sea with a cargo of salt fish for the cities of Magna Greca, and I stayed in Syracusa making cheap cloak clasps in bulk because, truth to tell, I was making more cash than the boat.
It may seem funny, after a life as a pirate and a lord, that I took pride in keeping a tiny tenement apartment in Syracusa clean and neat, in earning a good wage smithing bronze. Nor did I ever think they’d sail away and leave me.
In some way that I still cannot define, we were bonded, as deeply as I was bonded with Aristides and—Well, now that I think of it, most of the friends of my boyhood died at Lades, and I had never really replaced them. Hermogenes, Idomeneus – both were fine men, but more followers than friends. Too many men saw me as a hero, as distinct, as above.
Those six – Doola, Seckla, Daud, Gaius, Demetrios and Neoptolymos – it was a different thing. And I find I’ve been a bad poet; I haven’t sung you what they were like.
Doola was big without being tall, and always at the edge of fat without being fat. He had no hair on top of his head, and once we were free he grew a thick beard. He had heavy slabs of muscle, but a sensitive, intelligent face. He was quick to anger and quick to forgive.
Seckla was tall and thin, almost feminine in his face and hands, anything but feminine in his temperament – eager to resent a slight, eager for revenge. He never forgave. His dark skin was stretched tight over fine features, and his hands were long and thin. Despite his combative nature, he was really a craftsman, and his hands were never still, making nets, wrapping rope ends, making thole pins fit their holes better – he never stopped moving about the boat, and on land, he never stopped fussing with food.
Daud was all Keltoi – tall, heavily built, a fearsome sight in armour. He drank too much, and was quick to anger and as quick to weep. He tried so hard to hide his emotions, and failed so badly – here’s to him, thugater. He had red-blond hair that was just starting to darken, eyes the colour of a new morning and skin so pale that it never tanned properly, and he often wore a chiton when the rest of us were naked, just to save himself from burning. I’m pale, and my paleness was nothing next to his. We used to mock him about it, and he would join in, agreeing that there was no sun where he came from. He could ride anything, and he was a trained warrior, where Seckla and Doola were really not very good when I met them.
Demetrios was a Sikel – small, swarthy, dour. He laughed easily but seldom showed his thoughts – unlike Daud, who sought to hide his thoughts but inevitably failed, at least back then. His skin was dark, his nose was prominent and he hated to fight, not from cowardice but from genuine aversion. He was slow to trust and quick to worry. He was, in many ways, a countryman among cosmopolitans. But he was a sure hand at sea and on land; he knew how to fish in any waters, and his boat-handling and seamanship were infinitely better than my own. Indeed, working with him quickly showed me how little a pirate chief actually knows about handling a boat. His navigation was weak; he preferred to coast everywhere, even in dangerous waters. He worried constantly, and he often reminded me of a pet rat I had as a boy – snout quivering, hands rubbing together. Yet he would have died for any one of us, if he’d had to.
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