Poseidon's Spear (Long War 3)

by Christian Cameron

  I got a dozen former slaves and some of the stronger herdsmen, and together we moved the two largest of the charred beams from the stump of the tower. With shovels, we cleared the ash and the collapsed roof materials, but the fire had burned a long time, and almost everything had been consumed.

  Except the gold and silver, of course.

  It took two hours, and I was beginning to doubt, but there they were – a molten puddle of gold, and another of silver, about a yard apart. A fair amount of gold, and quite a lot of silver.

  We took axes and hacked it up into manageable chunks, and loaded it on to our stolen horses. Morale soared.

  We gorged once more on the dwindling stock of animals, and then we marched for our ships.

  We all squeezed aboard, although the conditions were probably not much better than those in the slave pens. We had two hundred and fifty men in a trireme built for two hundred, and we had sixty men in a triakonter.

  Off the Tagus, I signalled to Doola to lay alongside, and he agreed to take his shallower craft over the bar and have a look at the town. It was raining, and rowing the trireme was brutal, and I already doubted whether I could get the ship home to Oiasso like this.

  Now that the derring-do was over, I began to consider what had happened to my wife and her brother, my erstwhile allies. I had to assume they’d been defeated. How badly? Badly enough, perhaps, not to make it home. Or worse, badly enough to make it back to Oiasso and close it against me.

  Doola caught the morning breeze coming off the land and came back, my beautiful Lydia wallowing with so many people on board. He gave me a thumbs-up as soon as he was close enough to wave.

  We went into the estuary at sunset. The moon was lost in the clouds, and the night was black, and we crept up the river, impeded by ignorance and by the current, which was absurdly strong for summer.

  The town was twenty stades upstream. We found it, but it had a mole and the approach looked too hard to try in the dark.

  On the other hand, there were a dozen small ships on the beach and in the channel on moorings. There was Amphitrite, and there were two more like her – tubby Greek-style merchantmen.

  We took them. And for good measure, having silently acquired what we wanted, we set the rest afire. Then, on the dawn breeze and falling tide, we slipped away. My trireme was lighter by fifty men, and Lydia was lighter by thirty. Demetrios insisted on managing Amphitrite himself.

  It took us ten days to reach Oiasso.

  9

  We were not welcome.

  Tara came down to meet us. Tertikles sulked in his great hall of timber and let his sister tell us we were not welcome. Through Daud, because Sittonax wanted nothing more to do with the whole process.

  ‘We need water and food. I’ll pay.’ I wasn’t contrite – I thought that she and her brother had got what they deserved for poor scouting and planning.

  ‘Pay with what?’ she said. ‘You little coward – running off and leaving us when there was a fight. Why would I give you food?’

  ‘I have all the slaves we saved,’ I pointed out. ‘They need food.’

  She spat. ‘Not from us,’ she said.

  I liked her. And she was making me angry. The two, sometimes, go together. ‘You want to blame me? Blame your brother. If he had followed me—’

  ‘My brother? The King? Follow you, a foreigner?’ She shook her head. ‘A man like you does well to follow a man like my brother.’

  I shook my head. ‘Your brother is a fool. No one will willingly follow such a man.’

  ‘And this should convince me to feed your slaves?’ she spat.

  I shrugged. ‘Sell me food. Or I’ll take it.’

  She drew herself up as only a woman of good birth can. ‘You think you can take us? You and your slaves?’

  I nodded. ‘Yes.’ I pointed behind me. There were six ships.

  She turned her face away.

  Daud said something very quickly in Keltoi.

  ‘We lost thirty men,’ Tara said, in Greek. ‘Half. Half our war party.’

  ‘And accomplished nothing,’ I said.

  ‘My brother called out to them, challenging their captain to single combat. Instead, they shut the gates on us and shot arrows at us, and then the garrison marched out.’ She smiled. ‘We faced them. And charged them. We killed many.’

  ‘At least a dozen,’ I said.

  ‘Hah! What did you do?’ she asked.

  I shrugged. ‘We stormed their gold mine, killed the guards, took the gold, freed the slaves and came home. Oh – we massacred the town garrison, too. In an ambush.’ I suspect I sounded smug.

  She glared, and spat some words in Kelt.

  Daud, despite his appearance, was recovering. He laughed. His laugh stung her.

  ‘Give me food and water, and I’ll pay in gold and leave. Or refuse.’ I crossed my arms. ‘And I swear to the gods I’ll storm your town and burn your brother’s hall and leave you for the ravens. You and your brother are amateurs. War is not a pursuit for amateurs.’

  She shook her head. ‘No. Fuck you. Come and try.’

  She turned and walked away, and her spearmen backed off carefully.

  I walked back to the ship.

  ‘That didn’t go well.’ Seckla was laughing.

  Doola wasn’t. ‘I want my wife.’

  ‘We need food,’ said Alexandros.

  I scratched my beard. For all my big talk, I didn’t fancy storming a former ally town. That smacked of impiety. We were guest friends. Oaths to the gods must have some meaning.

  ‘I don’t think your wife will want you,’ I said to Doola. ‘But take a file of marines and go and try.’ I sent Alexandros to help. And to keep Doola from being stupid.

  We had a hasty conference on the beach, Seckla and Daud, Gaius and me, Neoptolymos and Demetrios and Sittonax.

  We knew enough about the coast by then to know that there were thicker, larger settlements farther north.

  ‘We can make it one more day,’ Sittonax said.

  Demetrios shook his head. ‘Some men have no fat on their bodies.’ He shrugged. ‘I am hungry, all the time. I am hungry while I eat. And hungry again as soon as I’ve eaten. And again, after that.’

  Daud backed him up. ‘Some of us cannot go a day without food,’ he said.

  I scratched my beard.

  Doola came back, without his wife. He sat down like an old man and put his head in his arms.

  Alexandros turned to me. ‘She struck him. Said their marriage is dissolved.’

  Sittonax shook his head. ‘What do you expect?’ he asked. ‘You made them look like fools, and then you came back and rubbed it in.’ He shrugged. ‘Tertikles is a weak king. A bad king. But his sister is smart, and strong, and rules through him. And you have made him appear even more worthless, and made her look the same.’ He glanced at the heavens. ‘If we stay here tonight on this beach, Tertikles will attack you.’

  ‘Heracles!’ I swore.

  ‘Sail away,’ Sittonax said. ‘In two days of fair winds, we can land on the isles of the Venetiae.’

  ‘Our starvelings don’t have two days,’ I said.

  I should have foreseen it. I had three hundred men to feed; I needed civilization. Good farms, on good soil, and men with an abundance to sell. Even for Oiasso, my three hundred would be a heavy burden.

  On the ten-day trip north and east, my people had eaten fish in the villages every night. We’d emptied every village of meat and left silver in our wake.

  I felt that it was all my fault. In the Inner Sea, it would have been easy. Or easier. Out here, it was as if we were at the edge of the world. Men were too few to support a trireme.

  I thought of how smug I’d been, treating with Tara, and cursed my arrogance.

  So I went back to her. With a dozen of my shepherds – now tall warriors in flashing bronze – I went to the gate of Tertikles’ palisade and shouted for admission.

  Tara came and opened the gate. She was in armour.

  ‘So: the gre
at hero. Planning to take our pigs with a dozen spearmen? Do they do your fighting for you?’ She laughed.

  I had decided how to play this out. I owed my men; I owed my friends.

  But it left a bad taste.

  ‘I offer gold for food and water,’ I said.

  She spat. ‘You can have our flesh when you carve it from our cold bodies. And the only water you get is the water of my mouth,’ she said. That is, I assume she said that. I only got one word in ten.

  I walked forward. ‘It doesn’t need to be like this,’ I said. ‘I won. I took much plunder. You can say I’m dividing it with you. That your attack on the town was a feint.’

  She waited while Sittonax translated. Then she came forward. ‘You used us as a feint, didn’t you?’

  I shrugged. ‘Does it matter? Your brother was going that way, no matter what I said.’

  She turned her back. ‘This is over. Go.’

  I took a deep breath. ‘I know you plan to attack my ships tonight,’ I said.

  She whirled.

  ‘Give me food, or I will challenge your brother. And he will fight me in the morning, and die.’ I spoke quietly, and Sittonax paused, looked at me and shook his head. And then translated.

  ‘That will make me king. But by my customs, that will also make me an oath-breaker, because we are guest friends. Listen, Tara. These starving slaves – they are my friends. I told you I came here with other men. I will not let them die. I will kill to save them. They are my brothers. But we do not have to do it like this. Sell me food and water, and I will slink away tomorrow, leaving a tribute of gold on the beach, and you can tell any story you like.’

  Her eyes bored into mine.

  ‘I liked you,’ she said slowly. ‘But you are not my idea of a man.’ She shook her head ‘Too . . . greasy.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Very well. Don’t ever come back here. Don’t ever cross that beach.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I will see to it that you have fifty pigs and grain and water.’

  We ate, within a ring of guards.

  I left her two pounds of gold, making those the most valuable pigs I’ve ever eaten.

  And we sailed away north.

  The coast of Gaul was kind to us. The sun kissed the water, and the breeze carried us most of the day. Demetrios tacked while we rowed towards evening, and we landed three hundred stades north of Oiasso by my reckoning. We ate sausage cooked on driftwood, and drank water from a spring, and in the morning we rowed away, leaving a handful of terrified shepherds. We killed twenty sheep and left them payment in silver. Pork doesn’t keep in summer, but mutton does, even if not well prepared.

  I was losing my taste for piracy.

  By midday we could see the islands, tall against the low, swampy coast. We knew the first one was Olario, and we found the town on the landward coast – a fine town of slate-roofed stone houses, rising from the sea, with a good harbour, a stony beach and a natural mole of granite.

  I sent Daud and Sittonax and my other Keltoi ashore with silver.

  What followed was more like Sicily or Rome than what I expected from barbarians. Once again, my whole idea of barbarians was about to be stood on its head.

  The Town of Olario was a Venetiae town. The warehouses were Venetiae, as were the piers and the stone roundhouses. And the enormous round ships – like a Greek merchantman built by giants. The town wasn’t the size of Athens, or even Piraeus – but it would have been a good town in Attica or Italy.

  It had sewers.

  And customs officials.

  They came out to our ships, and looked at my crews, at my emaciated stick figures, at my cargoes, and asked for bills of lading. This from a man in a frieze cloak with a bright saffron shirt, gold earrings and a magnificent gold neckpiece.

  ‘Your slaves are in horrible condition,’ he said. ‘They might bring disease. You may not sell them here, nor may you land them.’

  ‘They are free men,’ I said. ‘I have rescued them from the Phoenicians.’

  The man had a fine red beard, with which he fiddled often, and watery blue eyes. He wore a magnificent sword and a pair of knives mounted in gold. I assumed, incorrectly, that he was the local warlord or king. ‘Which Phoenicians?’ he asked.

  I waved at Iberia, eight hundred stades to the south by my reckoning. Really, by Vasileos’s reckoning. He’d recovered from ten days of puking, and now had one of Lydia’s sisters, which he had named Adelphi.

  My chieftain stroked his beard. ‘By violence?’ he asked.

  You always know when questioning begins to go wrong. ‘I have come from the Inner Sea to trade,’ I said. ‘The Phoenicians tried to take my ship on the sea. They seized my friends. I have spent months rescuing them.’

  Red Beard nodded. ‘We have no quarrel with the Phoenicians,’ he said. ‘We don’t love them either. But we trade with them.’ He looked around. ‘You are Greeks, eh?’

  I smiled. ‘Yes. I am from Greece.’

  The man smiled for the first time. ‘Wonderful pots, you Greeks make. And stonework – there was a Greek man on Ratis, five years ago.’ He nodded. ‘An architect.’

  It was stunning, to hear this barbarian use the Greek word for a man who built stone buildings. In fact, I was being mocked.

  But then he offered me his hand. ‘Detorix,’ he said. ‘I am the inspector for Olario. I will clear your cargo for sale. You will have to write me out a list of everything you have. Yes? Like any other port. And there will be taxes. There is a harbour fee.’ He smiled. ‘You expected painted savages, perhaps?’

  I had to laugh.

  It took me, Demetrios, Doola, Sittonax and Vasileos three days of sitting on the waterfront to count, number and list every item we had.

  It was not entirely unpleasant.

  For example, the Amphitrite had been inexpertly looted and left to sit on the beach. Her hull had a large patch of rot that was exposed when we careened her – where she’d sat on the beach, fully laden on the sand. We were lucky she hadn’t sunk. On the other hand, most of her cargo was still intact, most of the bales not even broken. The bale of ostrich plumes was the most important. But our Greek fish oil and our Greek wines were still in the bilges of Lydia. We had nine packets of dyes, lovingly wrapped in pigs’ bladders and then sewn in canvas. In fact, all they’d taken off the Amphitrite was the copper. The Lydia still had hers – twenty three ‘hides’ of copper.

  We also had about a hundred water amphorae, which we would have kept for fresh water except that the Gauls offered such wonderful prices for them. And the Gauls had a cheap, high-quality substitute. The Gauls built water and wine containers of wood wrapped with cord, roots, or metal bands, called barrels. They made them in eight sizes – standard sizes, and every barrel-maker had a set of patterns to follow.

  I tried to imagine imposing a set of standard sizes on Greeks. Or even standard measures.

  You do know that the mythemnoi varies from town to town, don’t you? And so does the dactyl and the stade. Oh, yes.

  Where was I? Barrels. Wonderful. I loved to watch the Gauls build them. They were light and strong and when they were empty, you could pull the hoops off and they became a bundle of slightly curved boards that took up no space.

  The locals were especially interested in my trireme. They crowded around, looking at her construction, her rowing benches, her ram bow and all the bronze there.

  After two days of intense work, my crews had beached, emptied and careened our ships. Our goods had been sorted, dried, counted and in some cases, reluctantly burned or buried.

  So, to my sorrow, were six men. Fifteen days at sea, even in high summer, are not the ideal anodyne to months or years of brutal slavery. They weren’t my friends; they weren’t men I even knew. But they had, however briefly, been my men.

  We had a funeral feast for them, and we burned them. The Gaulish priests helped – they were surprisingly well-educated men, who knew the stars, and two of whom knew Greek, although the version they spoke was comically Spartan.
They must have learned from some Laconian, some wandering mercenary or trader.

  Herodikles, my Aeolian, said the words. He was recovering well. He had been an aristocrat, a priest from a good family. But by his own admission he had been a slave fifteen years, and some of that had been horrible. He flinched when Doola raised a hand in greeting. He ducked his head when Seckla let out a whoop of delight.

  Demetrios was more cautious. Otherwise, he was very much himself. He smiled a great deal and didn’t talk as much as other men. He was very sure of himself at sea, and less sure on land.

  Daud had been a slave a long time. He survived the Phoenicians well enough.

  Gaius was the most changed. He was deeply, passionately angry. It struck me that he’d have been the first to die if we hadn’t come back.

  ‘They treated us like animals,’ he said one night on the coast of Iberia. I didn’t bother to point out that we all treated slaves like that. But by the time we reached the Venetiae, he was better – his smile a little more bitter, but otherwise more like himself.

  Detorix and a dozen other traders came to drink wine with us after I handed in our lading lists. They were like traders all over the world, carefully controlling their reactions, looking for advantage. Doola, who always handled these transactions, was not yet recovered from the loss of his wife. He wasn’t interested in trade, or anything else.

  Demetrios stood in for him, dickering, arguing, or being silent. I stood back, watching. We had decided that I would pose as the ‘patron’. It was useful for Demetrios to say, ‘Ah. Well, I must ask the patron.’ And sometimes he would give a hurt smile, as if he wanted nothing better than to sell his ostrich feathers for a song, and he would say, ‘Ah, but the patron—’

  The food was good, and we paid in gold. We sat in actual wine shops and drank half-decent wine – too thick, unwatered, I felt, but there you go. Each to his own taste.

  It was good to drink wine at all. And I bought great barrels of the stuff for the recovering men, because wine is the very best thing for a man recovering from ill health. Wine, and apple juice, both of which were available.

  And meat.

  And bread.