Poseidon's Spear (Long War 3)

by Christian Cameron

  Neoptolymos was, as I have said, Illyrian. He had muddy-blond hair and watery blue eyes and he drank – constantly. He was easily angered and, to be honest, never a very pleasant companion. He felt that he had forfeited his honour when his sister was raped to death. He seldom smiled. He was harsh with others and himself. Yet buried under the broken unhappiness of youth was a man who had the manners of a gentleman and the easy habits of a rich man. His purse was always open to his friends. His knife was always ready to defend us. His code was barbarous – but noble. He could also play any musical instrument he was given after a few hours of mucking about.

  And finally, there was Gaius. He left us for a while, but he was one of us nonetheless. He was Etruscan; but that is like saying ‘he is Greek’, because every Etruscan city is at odds with every other, and they rarely unite. He, too, had red-blond hair and pale skin – when I first met the two of them, I thought he and Daud were brothers, when in fact they weren’t even from the same people, and both were a little annoyed at my assumption.

  We had divisions. Four of us were warriors, and three were not; three of us were at least nominally aristocratic, and three were working men. Slavery can erase arrogance, but it cannot erase habits of mind and body; so Daud, Neoptolymos, Gaius and I would work on our bodies and practise with weapons, which the other three looked on as an affectation or a foolish waste of money. We tended to spend freely. Daud especially could empty his purse for a beggar, even if the gesture meant that he was instantly a beggar himself. I would buy the best wine, and the best cloak, I could afford, and the three men born to labour would roll their eyes and pray to Hermes for deliverance from the spendthrift. I remember this happening in the Agora of Syracusa, and I laughed and told them that they reminded me of my aristocratic wife – and then I suddenly burst into tears.

  I tell this now because, truth to tell, what they looked like and how they acted was – well, to put it bluntly, it was muted, unimportant while we rowed for our lives as slaves. Slavery made the bond, but once we had survived, we had to know each other.

  My daughter is smiling. I have digressed too long. But those were good times.

  The boat returned from its first voyage, and we had just about broken even. A small boat carries a limited cargo, and even if the skipper picks his cargo well, he has to sell all of it at a good price, over and over, to cover the cost of four men eating, drinking wine, their clothes ruined at sea, their oars broken on rocks. The overheads of a sea voyage are, to be blunt, enormous for poor men. Our little tub had four oars, a big central mast that could be unshipped and room for about two tons of cargo – which is nothing, in wine or grain. Less than nothing for metal.

  On the positive side, we were not in debt to the vicious moneylenders of Sicily. They were notorious, and for good reason, and they had amazing networks of informants. So that by the second afternoon after our little boat was pulled up on the back, a pair of men came down to her. One sat on her gunwale and the other stood with his arms crossed. They were quite large men.

  ‘You need more money to make a profit off a boat this size,’ said the man sitting on our gunwale. We were all there, scrubbing black slime out of the bilge and weed and crap off the hull. Demetrios had brought in a cargo of Italian wine, and made what should have been a handsome profit, but about a third of the amphorae had either broken or slipped some seawater, so that his profits just about covered losses with a little left over.

  Before this gets monotonous, let me add that had we not been ambitious to buy bigger ships and go farther, this would have been a good life. The boat covered expenses and then some, and I was starting, even after six weeks, to make a steady wage. It was only the scope of our ambition that rendered the pace slow.

  I’m digressing again.

  ‘I don’t feel that I have your attention, gents,’ said the man on the gunwale. His partner picked up a large piece of wood and came over to the boat. He struck the hull, hard, just where the strake met the bow.

  None of the oak pins came loose, but no one likes to see a stranger hit his boat.

  ‘I see I have your attention now,’ said the man on our gunwale.

  Daud and I walked down either side of the boat, and we must have looked like trouble. The man on the bow stood up, dusting his hands.

  ‘I don’t think you know me, gents. But if you touch me, you are all dead men.’ He laughed. ‘I’m a little surprised you don’t know me. Hurt, even. But you’re all strangers – foreigners. So I will let it go this time. Especially as I’ve come to offer you money.’

  Demetrios shrugged. ‘We don’t need money,’ he said.

  ‘Really?’ said the man by the bow. ‘Let me introduce myself. I’m Anarchos, and if I wish to loan you money, then you need to take it. Please understand this, gents – I own you as surely as your former owner owned you. Your slavery is written in the sky. Don’t pretend you are free men – I know escaped slaves when I see them. And I can sell you into slavery, or kill you – and no one in this city will even shrug. You aren’t citizens. You aren’t even registered metics. You are poor men, and you have no friends.’ He smiled, and the hardness left his voice. ‘But I am a reasonable man, and an easy master. You split your profits with me, and I loan you money when you fail. I am your patron, and you are my workers, and all is well. I will help you in the courts, and in the assembly, if it comes to that.’ He looked around. ‘No one in Syracusa will say Anarchos is a bad patron.’

  Daud was ready to fight. I could see it in his posture.

  I was calculating.

  This was new to me, even though I prided myself in being more like Odysseus than Achilles.

  If the man spoke the truth – even a wicked, cocked-up version of the truth – attacking him would serve little purpose. Nor did we plan to stay in Syracusa. No local crime lord could possibly imagine what we had in mind.

  I put a hand on Daud’s shoulder. ‘My friend is a Gaul,’ I said. ‘And prone to violence.’ I smiled at the hired muscle – the man was big. ‘I know a little about violence myself,’ I added. ‘But we don’t want any trouble.’

  Anarchos nodded. ‘You’re the smart boy, then.’

  I resented his tone and his use of the word boy. But I was not a great lord with fifty hoplites at my back. I was an ex-slave with six friends. I think my hands trembled.

  But I smiled. ‘We had a good voyage.’ I had another knucklebone to roll, and I cast it slyly. ‘And of course, I make a fair wage as a bronze-smith.’

  He nodded, pursed his lips. I had scored a hit. Not a hit that would win the fight, but a real score, nonetheless. Bronze-smiths were a close-knit clan with their own rules and laws and status, and men like Anarchos, however powerful, didn’t cross the smiths.

  ‘I’ll check on that,’ he said. ‘The bronze-smiths wouldn’t like an ex-slave making a claim that wasn’t true.’

  I reached into the boat and took out my leather satchel – made by Seckla. From it, holding it up so that the hired muscle could see me, I took a bronze eating-knife with a pretty bone handle, the bone dyed green with verdigris; there were fine silver tacks in the handle for decoration. It was in a sheath of Seckla’s make with a long bronze pick.

  ‘My work,’ I said, handing it to the moneylender.

  He nodded.

  ‘Keep it,’ I said. ‘A token of my esteem.’

  His head shot up. ‘Fuck you, slave,’ he said. ‘No one talks to me like that.’

  I crossed my arms. ‘You’re off your mark here. I’m a craftsman. These men are my friends. I have other friends. We don’t want trouble.’

  He got up. Rubbed his chin, and then his face changed. ‘I’ll keep this,’ he said, holding my eating-knife. ‘And I’ll make some enquiries. And I’ll be back.’ He looked around. ‘I expect you’ll need my money. And I’ll expect you to be civil. Understand?’

  By civil, he meant subservient.

  Again, you might expect that I’d just kill him and be a local hero.

  But it doesn’t reall
y work like that.

  Some time much later, Daud told me that we could have saved a year of our lives by killing him then and there. And maybe we could have.

  But Heraclitus was reaching me across the years. I had to learn other ways of solving my problems.

  So I bowed my head. ‘Of course, Patron.’

  He nodded seriously. And strode off, full of self-importance, his sell-sword by his side.

  Daud turned on me. ‘Are you a coward?’ he asked, and stomped off. I didn’t see him for a day.

  I must have turned red, because Doola came and put his arm around my shoulders. ‘Well done,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t feel that it was well done,’ I admitted. Now that the man had walked away, I felt craven.

  ‘We didn’t fight, and we didn’t take his money,’ Demetrios said. ‘Nice job. My brother was good with these vultures, but I – I fear them.’

  So we went back to scraping the boat clean, and afterwards we returned to our two rooms under the thatch, where we counted our money. The taverna on our corner had taken all the wine that wasn’t tinged with seawater at a good price, and all the tinged wine at one half that price. After Demetrios paid off our debts – mostly food, rope and wood – we had about sixty drachma. I had made another twenty-four drachma profit, after my own food, wine and clothes.

  Eighty-four drachma, for six men.

  Daud shook his head. ‘We’ll never get a twenty-oared ship at this rate.’

  We had decided that if we were going to try the tin run to Alba, we needed at least a twenty-oared galley with a good mast. It was a common enough type of boat in the trade. And we needed a dozen slaves. We couldn’t afford to pay rowers and sailors and build the boat.

  We estimated that building the boat would cost us three hundred drachmas.

  But Demetrios was altogether more sanguine. He put the money in a sack, and put the sack into the thatch. ‘Not bad,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘Not bad. Ari is pulling more than his fair share. And without him, we’ll never get it done.’

  I didn’t really want to hear that, because while I liked working in the shop, I wanted to be at sea. And my status – if you could call it that – as leader was suffering. All of them looked to Demetrios, not to me. He had become the skipper. I wasn’t there, at sea. They told me stories of the storm that hit them in the straits off Sybarus, and how Demetrios stayed at the helm all day and all night—

  You get the idea.

  I might have been bitter. But I wasn’t. Sometimes a dream was bigger than any reality. Sailing to Alba was a big dream – an heroic deed, a worthy thing. I was willing to sacrifice. We all were.

  We were brothers.

  ‘What about Illyria?’ I asked. Neoptolymos raised his head and smiled. And then frowned and drank more wine.

  ‘I will never go back until my sister is avenged,’ he said.

  I looked at them. ‘There’s still tin coming through Illyria,’ I pointed out. ‘And Neoptolymos knows where to get it.’

  He shook his head. ‘My cousins will have the keep now, and the river. I would be killed. I will return with a hundred warriors – with my friends.’ He smiled at me, and for a moment we were brothers. He knew I would back him. I knew that, if we lived, someday we would go there. After we put Dagon down. We never talked about it, but Neoptolymos and I knew.

  Many debts.

  The money went into the thatch, and the boat went back to sea. They tried fishing for a few weeks, and made about six drachma over expenses. They accepted a cargo of artworks for the Etruscan coast and sailed off, leaving me to worry about the consequences of failure.

  But I didn’t worry much. I’m not much of a worrier, in that way. I went to work each morning as the sun rose. At the height of the sun in the sky, I would walk out of my master, Nikephorus’s shop, and go two streets to a waterfront wine shop where I’d buy a skewer of somewhat questionable meat. After that meal, I’d walk back to Nikephorus’s shop and work until late afternoon, when I’d go to the gymnasium, pay my foreigner’s fee and exercise with much richer men. I’d lift weights, throw the discus and run on the track.

  After some weeks, other men spoke to me. I was clearly a foreigner: despite its size, Syracusa had only about six thousand citizen males, and they all knew each other. They were like any Greek gentlemen – well spoken, talkative, friendly – but only with each other.

  But hospitality overcame diffidence after some time, and eventually one of the richer men – I knew who he was, even if he had no idea who I was – came and asked me if I liked to box. His name was Theodorus, and his family owned stone quarries.

  We exchanged blows for some time. He wasn’t very good, and it wasn’t my best sport, but a few minutes of contest taught each of us that the other was a solid opponent.

  He laughed. ‘So, you are a gentleman. The gatekeeper has . . . hmm . . . questioned your right to exercise here.’

  I nodded. ‘I’m a bronze-smith,’ I said. ‘From Plataea, in Boeotia.’ His face hardened. ‘I fought in the front rank at Marathon,’ I added. I didn’t like the way it sounded – a plain brag.

  ‘Ahh!’ he said, and took my hand. ‘Things are a little different here. I doubt there’s another bronze-smith in our gymnasium.’ He led me over to a group of men just emerging from the dressing rooms. They were in their thirties and forties, and they all wore the chlamys the way much younger men would wear them, in Athens. But their bodies were hard, and they all seemed to smile at the same time.

  ‘Ari fought at Marathon,’ he said, by way of introduction.

  ‘By Nike!’ said one man, with greying black hair and a thick beard. ‘That’s something!’

  They all gathered around me, and one slapped my back.

  ‘Tell us what it was like,’ said Theodorus.

  I started to tell the story – just as I have told you – and the tall bearded man grinned and plucked my arm. ‘Let the poor man get dressed, and we’ll buy him some wine. Talking is thirsty work.’

  They were clearly surprised to see my plain chlamys and short linen chitoniskos. I looked like a servant with them, and I resolved to buy a better chlamys to wear to the gymnasium.

  We sat in a wine shop, where a cup of wine cost an afternoon’s wage for a skilled bronze-smith, and where women, not men, waited at the tables. Lovely women. Slaves, I assumed.

  I told my story, and the men with me responded well.

  Theodorus nodded at the end. ‘I’ve been in a ship fight, and some cattle raids,’ he admitted, ‘but nothing like that.’

  ‘If Carthage keeps preying on our shipping, we’ll see it here,’ another added. ‘What do you think, Ari?’

  I shrugged. ‘I know nothing of the politics here, gentlemen. I have no love for the Carthaginians, however.’

  They all looked at me.

  ‘They enslaved me,’ I said.

  From their looks, I might as well have said ‘and sold me in a brothel’. Every face closed.

  ‘You are a slave?’ Theodorus asked.

  I shook my head, but I already knew we were done. I had seen this attitude in Athens.

  ‘I am not a slave, was not born a slave and was only made a slave by force,’ I said.

  Theodorus got up. His hip had been against mine, sitting for wine, and he moved away as one would from a leper. ‘No slave can take exercise in our gymnasium,’ he said.

  They all looked at me with marked distaste.

  I got up. ‘I’m sorry to have intruded, gentlemen,’ I said. I drained my cup – the wine was excellent. ‘I appreciate your hospitality, even if you do not desire my company. May the gods be kind to you.’ I collected my chlamys, and made what exit I could.

  I could feel their stares until I got to the door of the wine shop, where one of the serving girls suddenly went up on tiptoe and brushed a kiss on my beard. ‘I hate them,’ she said.

  Aphrodite, that little brush of a kiss went to the very roots of my being. And took much of the sting out of my humiliation.

  Th
e next morning I told my master, Nikephorus, the entire story.

  We were polishing – a nasty job, and one usually done by slaves, but Nikephorus liked to see things gleam. Every day. So we often started the days polishing. I’d polished all day for my first week, until he had time to test me. And of course, I knew the grips and handshakes of a master. They were different for Syracusa, but not so different.

  At any rate, we polished for a while and then he sat back on the bench and admired our work. ‘I don’t exercise as much as I should,’ he said. ‘But the crafts have a gymnasium with a bath. You should have asked.’ He smiled his slow smile, and his eyes twinkled. He was grey without seeming old – bent, and strong, like Hephaestos himself. His wife, let me add, was much younger, and they fought often, and made up in the traditional way, and were equally loud in both pastimes. I liked his wife, too, Julia. She was, and she had a neat, orderly mind that catalogued everything that came her way – the heroes of the Iliad, the ships in the harbour, the wares in the shop – which was odd, as her house was the messiest I’ve ever seen. She never put anything away, and her slaves were just like her. But she was kind to apprentices and journeymen: she gave us food from her larder and juice from her store, wine was always free and she had a great store of scrolls to read – like a rich woman, which I think she was. I first read a good copy of Pythagoras on Mathematics at her house.

  My daughter is making that face that means I’m rattling on.

  So Nikephorus said, ‘I’d have loved to see those rich fucks when they found out you had been a slave. Like you’d poured shit on them.’ He laughed aloud. ‘Well, well. After work today, we’ll go and exercise.’ He groaned. ‘But it may kill me.’