Poseidon's Spear (Long War 3)

by Christian Cameron

  Those are the moments when the daimons that make a man’s spirit prove themselves or fail. When everything is gone from you but that ray of hope.

  A few failed. Most didn’t. We rowed, and the wind abated.

  The waves began to come in a regular cycle, and they grew less steep.

  Then suddenly it was noon, on a blue sea with a stiff breeze.

  And no land in sight, in any direction.

  6

  Other, better officers – Doola and Vasileos – had collected rainwater. We drank it. I served out wine from the cargo, and we consumed the last of the dates with handfuls of grain, and then the food was gone.

  Despite our hunger and thirst, we threw a heavy handful of dates and a full cup of neat wine over the side to Poseidon.

  I let us wallow on the waves until I was sure – sure – which direction was east. Despite the breeze and the sun, I knew that we were right on the edge of death, still. I didn’t think we could survive two more nights at sea. I needed to find the land, find a beach and get my hull on it.

  When the movement of the sun gave me east, my heart soared, and I prayed to Apollo Helios, Lord of the Sun, with a fervour I hadn’t shown in many years. Apollo is not really a friend of our house. But that day, the track of the Golden Chariot across the sky revealed that the wind on my cheek was a gentle westerly, and our course was north and west. Vasileos and Doola and I had held our course all night. I’m sure that we went due west at times – the wind was west.

  Since then, sailors on the Outer Sea have told me that westerlies are the gentlest storms beyond the Pillars of Heracles.

  Let me never face an easterly, then.

  Be that as it may, in the afternoon we took down the boatsail and we rowed north and east. It was back-breaking – not because of hard winds, but because we had a fully laden ship and we were exhausted.

  After the briefest consultation with Doola and Vasileos, we began to jettison cargo. Four men were bailing all the time, and two more sought out the heaviest cargo with minimum value and threw it over the side. Sodden hides – from sheep and oxen – went. All the dyes, ruined in the storm, so that men’s legs were dyed a vivid purple-black for days.

  We drank the wine and threw the amphorae over the side.

  We had a deep tier of amphorae and copper, and that we left. Virtually everything else went.

  And still we laboured against a gentle headwind and our own fatigue. In our wake, a tragic trail of sinking cargo.

  Evening came with no sign of land.

  I slept the sleep of the exhausted, and woke to find that Vasileos needed me to take the steering oars. I slept between them – I’m ashamed of that, but I did us no harm – and awoke fitfully, and finally rose to consciousness with the dawn and the rise of an east wind.

  We had rowed all night. Now the sky was darkening in the west, and the wind was coming from the west.

  We raised the boatsail and then the mainmast. And lay about the ship, sleeping and talking fitfully. Men looked at the mass of clouds to the west from time to time, and then went back to whatever they were doing. Dice appeared. As darkness fell, a party moved about the ship, checking the tie-downs and making all fast for another storm.

  In fact, I knew that if the storm caught us, we’d die. No one had any strength left. And to be fair, most of us were drunk. Not mutinously, angrily drunk; just drunk on fatigue and a little wine.

  I roused myself – I wasn’t any better than the rest – around nightfall, and went about the ship ordering men into watches so that we wouldn’t run on the land. I had to believe there was land on our right hand, the starboard side, somewhere out there.

  ‘Is it close?’ I asked Vasileos.

  He shook his head. His smiles were gone, and the lines in his face made him look forty years older. Even Doola had lines on his face.

  Vasileos looked east under his hand and shook his head. ‘No seabirds,’ he said. He shrugged and took another hit of wine. ‘In the morning we can cast the lead,’ he ventured. More quietly, he said: ‘We ran west for two days and nights. We ran as if Poseidon himself pushed our hull.’ He shrugged. ‘I would guess, in all this alien sea . . . who could know?’ He shook his head again. ‘Five more days?’ he asked.

  ‘We won’t make five days,’ I said.

  Doola rubbed his beard. ‘We might,’ he said.

  The next morning was clear and bright, and the wind blew strong from the west, and we ran north and west. I served out the lowest tier of amphorae – the best wine. Men drank it. We served out the rest of the grain, and men chewed on leather.

  ‘Should have saved the dead man,’ joked Kalimachos, one of the herdsmen.

  Men paused, as if a collective shudder went through them all.

  I thumped the side of the boat with my sighting staff. ‘Not on my ship,’ I said.

  Everyone breathed.

  And we ran on.

  And on.

  After noon, when I took a sight on the height of the sun as the Phoenicians do, and learned little from it except that I could calculate when noon passed – exactly – I worked my way to the stern and stood with Doola.

  ‘Shall we turn the ship due east?’ I asked, looking past my friend at the shipwright.

  Vasileos was between the oars. He shrugged. ‘Who knows?’

  Doola looked forward. I followed his look. The whole crew was watching us.

  ‘Stay on course,’ I said, a little louder.

  Vasileos met my eye, and his eye said, It doesn’t matter either way.

  We ran on.

  Along towards evening, a pair of gulls attached themselves to our sternpost. They took fish out of our wake for a while, and then just sat there, defecating.

  I took in the mainsail at full dark and we ran on, far more sedately. And when I took my trick at the helm, I turned the ship until the wind was stern on. Due east.

  In the morning, everyone was sober and sullen, thirsty, and very hungry indeed.

  There was no more wine to serve. That is to say, I knew there were twenty-four more big amphorae stowed forward, and I’d broach them rather than die, but we had a steady stream of seabirds now, and I was sure we were up with the land. In fact, it looked oddly as if the land was to our south, as well as our east.

  An hour after dawn, when two men in the bow were demanding that we have a ‘ship’s meeting’, porpoises appeared off the bow. They leaped and leaped, and the ship fell silent. Men fell to their knees, praying for Poseidon’s favour.

  We ran on, another hour. I got the mainsail up, aided only by three hands while Doola and Vasileos steered. The rest either wouldn’t help or couldn’t.

  While I was taking the sight for noon, a group of the herdsmen gathered in the bow. I heard them, saw them, knew their intent. Their frightened ignorance was driving them. They thought—

  To be honest, they weren’t thinking.

  They came forwards over the benches with swords and spears and clubs.

  ‘Turn the ship around!’ called the leader. He was the oldest of the herdsmen, and should have known better – Theophrastos. A good enough man.

  ‘Turn the fucking ship around,’ he said again, and some of his fear leaked through his voice.

  I came to the edge of the small aft deck and stood over them.

  ‘Back to your benches,’ I said. ‘You’re all idiots. Do you think you know anything about sailing? There aren’t any sheep here to herd. We survived the triremes and we survived the storm, and in a few hours we’ll be on a beach.’

  ‘We are going the wrong way!’ shouted one of the boys. ‘I can feel it!’

  I looked at him, and almost died. Theophrastos stabbed at me with his spear. I had not reckoned on their deadly intent, and I almost missed the blow.

  Almost.

  Even as it was, his spear point caught me behind the ear and cut my scalp.

  Without thinking, I got my right hand on his spear haft and jumped onto him from my higher vantage point. I stripped the spear from his hands
and knocked him to the bilges.

  The others stepped back.

  One of the fishermen tripped the youngest herdsman and put his arms around him in a bear hug.

  I looked around. The others were indecisive – not cowed, but unsure if they were willing to step up to violence.

  I thought, too. We were hours from land – or so I thought. But I didn’t have the strength to fight a mutiny, and—

  And, as horrible as it sounds, these were herdsmen. Not my finest rowers.

  Theophrastos, bellowing with rage, rose from the bilge.

  I drew my xiphos and killed him. I deceived his reaching hands with a flick of my point and then cut back, hard, the full force of my right arm into his neck just above the collarbone. I didn’t quite behead him. But close. And his blood fountained over his comrades.

  They flinched.

  I pointed my sword at them. ‘He was a fool, and he died for it. Get back to your stations, or die with him. We’ll be eating mutton tonight – or you can eat black air in Hades.’

  That was the end of the mutiny, if it was a mutiny. It was really the rush of some panicked men, and I think now that killing Theophrastos was too much. I could just as easily have kicked him in the head. But I was tired, and afraid myself.

  That’s how it is, at sea.

  My guilt for killing him increased all day, as little signs – a floating log, a wren – told us that we were coming up with the land. After midday, we saw land – a mountain range to the south. And then we saw the land to the east.

  People cheered.

  I felt empty, and foolish. I had earned their thanks, and then I had killed one of them. They all moved shy of me.

  Even Doola.

  The sun was just starting to sink when we came up with the land, and we coasted north, looking for a beach. We had to row, and that was difficult, as the men were weak and scared – scared of me, now.

  But the closer we got to the land, and the more we could smell it, the more our hearts rose.

  By sunset, we were within bowshot of land – a low and difficult coast. But just before full dark robbed our eyes, Doola saw a break in the coast, and we turned west under sail and passed over the bar of a river, and we saw huts – beautiful huts, with stone foundations and big roofs of thatch on the south bank, and two heavily built open boats riding a few ship’s lengths out from a muddy beach.

  I took down the sail in the last of the light, and we got the oars out with a slovenly motion that would have disgraced an all-slave crew on a Carthaginian. And we pulled badly – I say we, because I was on a bench. We caught crabs, and some men seemed incapable of effort.

  We crawled the last hundred paces across the calm water of the estuary. Backing water to land stern-first seemed impossible.

  But we managed, in a laborious and inefficient manner. We floundered the ship around, and backed water like boys rowing for the first time, and the stern grounded with a soft thump.

  We’d lived.

  I know I wept. Many others did, too. I lay over my oar, and I cried.

  Landing stern-first means that the rowers are facing away from the land. So I was one of the last to notice that armed men were forming on the greensward by the river. It was Doola who alerted me.

  Fifty men with spears.

  Ares. I remember thinking that if they came to enslave me, I’d just lie down and take it.

  But I rose, and moved perhaps by my killing of the morning, I seized not my spear but my staff, and I leaped off the stern to the riverbank and walked slowly, the land moving under me, towards the spearmen. It was just the last edge of a summer evening: the sky was still pink, but night was close.

  I fell to my knees and clutched the earth, and kissed the grass.

  Then I hobbled like a drunkard towards the spearmen. They watched me.

  They looked utterly foreign. Many – most – were heavily tattooed. They had big, ugly bodies with fat bellies and hollow backs – men who didn’t exercise properly. But they had big muscles, heavy thighs – trousers in checks and violent stripes.

  Their hair was all the colours of the rainbow, even in the fading light.

  Sittonax came up next to me, and he had a spear. He grinned at me.

  He shouted at them, and two men shouted back. Both wore fine gear.

  It was as if he cast a spell, or broke one. As soon as Sittonax called to them, their disciplined silence broke and most of them simply walked away. A few stayed to look at the ship, and one man, in a magnificent helmet with bronze wings and a gold torque around his neck, stood warily to the side. After a pause, he came and spoke to Sittonax, and when the two were done, they embraced like old friends and the man grinned at me and stood by.

  ‘Your people?’ I asked Sittonax. He gave me a look of pure annoyance in return.

  ‘If we landed in a part of Sicily where they spoke Greek, would you be home?’ he asked, which for him was a long speech.

  ‘You speak to them well enough,’ I commented.

  He shrugged. ‘These are Tarbelli. Their aristocrats speak a good form of my language – I can understand them.’ He nodded at two spearmen who were looking at our ship. ‘I can’t understand a word from those two.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, or something equally intelligent. ‘You seemed to be talking ten to the dozen.’

  ‘They thought we were coming to attack,’ Sittonax said. He shrugged. ‘Now they think we’re here to trade. I had to explain that we aren’t Phoenicians.’

  I nodded. ‘Tell him we’re here to trade,’ I agreed. ‘And that we need food and water, or men will die. Tell them we’ve been at sea eight days in a galley.’

  He nodded. He spoke to the man in the excellent war gear, who made noises in return.

  He blew a horn, and the Keltoi moved quickly. My oarsmen stumbled ashore – it’s amazing how unstable a man can be on dry land – and a local man showed Doola where we could set up tents. We had two big tents, built to rig on the hull of the ship. We had one up before the roast pig was brought down to us, and then no man could raise a finger for anything. They might have enslaved the lot of us in a matter of minutes, just for some pig.

  I don’t really remember much more of that evening. I ate and ate. I went to the ship, and Vasileos and I managed to get one of our heavy amphorae out of the bilge, and we broached it and served it to our hosts. And then I went to sleep – real sleep, for the first time in ten days.

  I awoke to a rainy day and heavy swell out in the estuary. And to the thought that I had sailed out of the Pillars of Heracles, onto the Great Sea, and lived. You’d think I’d have been worried for Amphitrite and all my friends aboard. Let me tell you something about the life I led, honey. You had to trust your comrades and the gods. If they were dead, well, they were dead.

  The first thing I did after rising was to pour a long libation and say a prayer aloud, to Poseidon, for their deliverance.

  Then I went to find the tin.

  7

  There wasn’t any tin at Oiasso. We sat with the lord of the town the next day, exchanging pleasantries, while his steward looked over our selection of wine and copper. Neither seemed to hold the least interest for the locals, and after some discussion I found that they had excellent copper down the coast in Iberia and that, while they enjoyed our wine, they had excellent wines of their own.

  The Amphitrite had all of our other trade goods. I didn’t have pepper; I didn’t have silphium or anything else except for my own bronze wares – some helmets, a bronze aspis, some cooking pots and a bundle of swords. I won’t say that they turned up their noses at my work.

  I’ll just say that they smiled and moved on to look at other items.

  I had time to examine the chieftain’s war gear. His bronze helmet with the wings was unlike anything I’d ever seen – almost like a Chaldicean helmet, with hinged cheekpieces and a low bronze bowl, but very different in appearance and marvellously well fashioned. It was decorated over almost the entire surface with beautiful repoussé – the work w
as very fine, even though the figures were, to me, amateurish. It took time for me to develop an eye for Keltoi work. To be honest, I still think they need some help with their figures.

  Every man likes the art of his home, doesn’t he?

  That’s not really the point. The point is that by the time the sun was high in the sky, I knew that I’d made an arrogant assumption about the north. They weren’t ignorant savages ready to be impressed with the marvellous goods of our civilization. They were, in fact, impressed only by our pottery. They didn’t really want our wines, but they wanted all the amphorae, and the empty one from the night before became our first guest gift.

  The second thing we discovered was that the customs of the Inner Sea didn’t hold here. Or rather, it was like stepping back in time, to the century before my father’s time, or even farther – to the world of the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Tarbelli aristocrat didn’t trade. He hosted us and gave us gifts. Then he waited patiently for us to give him gifts, and the steward prompted us through Sittonax, who rolled his eyes.

  ‘This is old-fashioned,’ he admitted. ‘But Southerners are old-fashioned.’

  It made me smile, because for once, I was in my element. It was just like Crete, and I’d lived there. So I put myself in the role of the aristocratic captain and I disdained matters of trade, and Doola became my steward, and by dinner on the second evening, Tertikles – that’s the best I can do with the local lord’s name – and I were guest friends. We’d hit each other with swords, we’d raced horses on the dunes and I’d given him my second best helmet, which was, if no better than his own, no worse. He liked it.

  Tertikles and Sittonax spoke together a great deal, and I left them to it when I wasn’t required, seeing to the emptying of the ship. She’d stood nine days at sea, and she needed . . . everything. We stripped her to the wood, scrubbed the bilge, recaulked the seams, and Vasileos wandered around her hull on the beach with a heavy mallet, driving pegs back into the hull and examining every inch with a professional eye.