Poseidon's Spear (Long War 3)

by Christian Cameron

  I wondered what his conquest of Syracusa meant.

  We were lying on the beach – it was still warm enough to be outside with a bonfire – eating beef and lobster. Dionysius the Phocaean was licking his teeth. ‘There is no side I want,’ he said. ‘I don’t want the Carthaginians to enslave me, and Gelon is a horror. He enslaved half of the free population of Syracusa – you know that?’

  My blood ran cold.

  ‘Women, children – sold off or put in brothels. Men made into oarsmen, or forced labour on farms. Gelon won’t allow a lower class – a Thetis class. Claims they destabilize the state. He insists he’ll have only aristocrats and slaves, like Sparta.’ Dionysius picked his teeth and looked at me. ‘I don’t like either side.’

  I lay on my straw paliase, using a metal pick to get the meat out of the body of a lobster and drinking wine. ‘I owe Carthage something. I’m of a mind to trade my share of the tin, take a ship while I have a crew – a fighting crew—’ I paused. I hadn’t been aware that this was my intention. But suddenly it was.

  I nodded. ‘But first, I’m going to have Demetrios here go sell the tin, while I go back and find my friends,’ I said. ‘Doola, Daud, Sittonax, Alexandros – they’re probably right behind us on the road. And I owe something to young Gwan there.’

  ‘Winter will close the passes,’ Demetrios said. ‘And I won’t be selling any tin this winter, either.’

  As if to prove him right, a cold gust of wind blew down off the mountains at our backs.

  Part III

  Massalia

  Even more should we deserve the ridicule of men if, having before us the example of the Phocaeans who, to escape the tyranny of the Great King, left Asia and founded a new settlement at Massilia, we should sink into such abjectness of spirit as to submit to the dictates of those whose masters we have always been throughout our history.

  Isocrates, Archidamus 84

  14

  I didn’t go anywhere that winter. I sat in Massalia with my smithy and a supply of tin the other bronze smiths envied, and cast a pair of light rams – carefully designed and carefully cast, according to my own theories. Around the headland at Tarsilla, Vasilios laid down the keel for a trieres. She would carry one hundred seventy-two oarsmen and each oarsmen would have a dactyl over two cubits in which to breathe. I had copper, and I had tin, and I traded Dionysius a competed ram for all the timber. I told the oarsmen that I would need them in the spring, and that the payoff for the tin adventure would happen at the spring feast of Demeter.

  Gaius stayed the winter with me. He disdained working in the forge, but he would sit in a chair and chat with me while I worked, which made the time pass pleasantly enough.

  Winter passed slowly.

  It was interesting, the experience of being rich. Some men were jealous, and some were openly admitting it. Of course, I had two hundred ‘clients’ in the form of the former slave oarsmen, the marines, the shepherds and the fishermen. None of them seemed to want to go back to work.

  Piracy has many ills, and the greatest may be that when you teach a hard-working boy that he can steal and kill for gold, he may feel that hauling nets is dull.

  And there was an element of comedy to my riches. After all, the tin ingots were still stacked in the warehouse, and before midwinter, when one of the ingots showed signs of the tin illness, we brought them into the house we’d built and kept them warm, which seemed to help.

  You probably don’t know about tin blight. Tin, when it gets cold and wet, can develop an illness like wheat – it grows a white mould, and once the mould spreads, the metal can be ruined. Indeed, if you leave the tin long enough, one day you’ll walk in and find your fortune in tin is nothing but a small pile of white dust. This was one of the reasons smiths couldn’t build up stores of tin. As a smith, I knew a few tricks – I knew to run over the outside of the pigs with flax tow and pork fat; I knew to keep them warm. But I spent my winter in a constant anxiety about the tin.

  And that wasn’t my only anxiety. Again, my riches were more apparent than real. We had some gold – the ransom of the Gaul aristocrats, the gold we took all the way back in Iberia – but it was only really enough to pay for food and wine for the oarsmen who remained.

  It was the rumour of our wealth in tin that made us rich. Some men thought we had thousands of mythemnoi of tin – other men thought we’d discovered a new source. All ascribed to us an almost heroic level of wealth.

  As the winter wore on, and I worked in my shop in Massalia, I began to fear what those rumours might sound like out on the Great Blue. Somewhere, I feared that men just like me were hearing of the fabulous wealth we’d won. And were fingering their swords.

  After the midwinter festivals, I laid out the rest of my hoard to have my oarsmen build a pair of towers down by the beach. And I put the word out in Massalia that I was looking for archers.

  Massalia isn’t a big town. At most, there are a thousand free men, with their families; another thousand slave men, or perhaps a little more, and then another few hundred Gauls, mostly jobbing labourers or craftsmen. While there are caravan guards working the tin trade and the wine trade, there aren’t enough professional soldiers in the town to make a company, and when I enquired around the wine houses for more archers, most men shook their heads. Archery isn’t all that popular among the Gauls.

  In fact, as Dionysius said one evening on a kline in my townhouse, I already had the biggest body of soldiers in the town. He didn’t sound jealous.

  His new ship, Massalia, was being built in a stone ship shed down by the beach. He was planning to go to sea to prey on the Phoenicians, and to protect the Massalian trade. Increasingly, as winter passed and we talked, I was of a mind to join him. But only after I’d found Doola, who I hoped – and prayed – was wintering with his wife, somewhere on the other side of the Alps.

  Spring came late, after a great deal of rain. My new ship – which I called Lydia despite some superstitious qualms – was taking shape. But Demetrios’s new merchantman, Sikel Herakles, was almost complete.

  We were standing on the beach in the rain, looking at the hulls.

  ‘I’ll take her to sea as soon as she’s ready,’ Demetrios said. He licked his lips as a boy does when a girl shows a bit of thigh or breast – sorry, girls. These things happen, and I’m sure they are all errors, eh?

  ‘With the tin?’ I asked.

  He nodded quietly.

  ‘Where do you plan to sell it?’ I asked.

  ‘Syracusa. Or just possibly Rome.’ He shrugged. ‘I’d like to have Doola back.’

  ‘I’d like you to wait for me,’ I said. ‘Seventy pigs of tin – a rich prize for a pirate, and everyone’s had the winter to hear of our success.’ I shook my head. ‘Please wait for me.’

  He narrowed his eyes.

  ‘I was trading these waters before I ever knew you,’ I said.

  We looked at each other. ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I’m not telling you, I’m asking. Doola will want to be here for the sale. He has contacts; he understands things—’ I paused. I could tell I was going the wrong way.

  ‘I was trading tin when you were off being a pirate in the east,’ he said.

  ‘And because I’m an excellent pirate, I want you to consider that in every little port on the Inner Sea, men like me are gathering over cheap wine and entertaining themselves with stories of how Arimnestos of Plataea and his friends went and got a thousand mythemnoi of tin.’ I shrugged. ‘Do what you like, Demetrios. It’s as much yours as mine.’

  ‘I know it’s as much mine as yours,’ Demetrios said quietly. ‘Do you?’

  I crossed my arms. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Equal shares for the seven of us. And all your oarsmen’s pay comes out of your share. They aren’t my men. They don’t work for me.’ He spat. ‘They don’t get a dactyl of my tin.’

  To say I was taken aback wouldn’t do justice to my feelings. ‘We wouldn’t have any tin without them,’ I said.

 
He shrugged. ‘Says you.’

  ‘Demetrios!’ I shouted. ‘What— We swore by Zeus and Heracles. Don’t be like this. We need everyone together to decide on the shares.’

  He turned away. ‘Doola and the others are dead.’

  ‘Why do you think so?’ I asked him, following him along the beach.

  ‘If they were alive, they would be here.’ He kept walking. ‘It is you and me and Gaius and Seckla. But Gaius and Seckla are your men, not my friends.’

  Riches. The root of all evil, if you ask me.

  So I spent the winter worrying about Doola and Daud and Alexandros and the rest, and about pirates taking my treasure, and tin blight and friendship. Not the best winter.

  I also looked for love, and found nothing. I bought a slave girl I fancied, and she was temperamental, anxious, ill used and mostly not very interested in what I purchased her for. Her name was Dais and she was Iberian, and she hated my pais and he hated her, and she was jealous of everyone in my life and at the same time demanding and lazy. She had a beautiful body. She had been badly treated. I felt for her; I caught her slashing her arms with my bronze razor, once. I had enough to worry about. Nor did I feel that by freeing her, I’d do her any favour. She couldn’t take care of herself.

  Before the winter was over, I hauled her by the ear down to the market and sold her to a temple priest. Chastity was better than Dais.

  The rains came and went, and in late spring, well after the first feasts of Demeter, I gathered my archers and marines – sixteen men – and we bought good horses and headed up the coast to Arla. I left Gaius with Demetrios, and that was a hard parting. Demetrios had left our shared house and moved in with a Sikel slave woman he’d bought, and he was making it fairly clear that we were not friends. He was openly offensive to Seckla, and cautious with Gaius.

  Tilla, his slave woman, was just as difficult as he. She seemed to feel we were all in a state of near war. Perhaps this is a Sikel thing, but she wouldn’t unbar their door when I came to say goodbye. She shouted that she knew I’d come to kill her.

  By Zeus, I was angry.

  I went to embrace Vasileos. He and Gaius were laying down another keel – Gaius had decided to order another trireme before mine was even complete. He was going to go home a rich and powerful man – if he could find oarsmen.

  Vasileos heard my tale about Tilla and shook his head. ‘She is a witch,’ he said. ‘She has turned Demetrios into a very small man, and now she seeks to poison him against the rest of us.’

  I shrugged. ‘It’s the tin. I’ve seen this with soldiers and pirates – enough money makes men go mad.’

  Vasileos shrugged. ‘Your ship will be ready when you return.’

  Gaius hugged me. ‘I’ll watch Demetrios.’

  As my little cavalcade rode out of town, I happened to see Demetrios watching from the window of his house. So the bastard had been home.

  By comparison with Tarsilla, life on the trail was easy, pleasant and adventurous. The wet early spring had given way to an early summer, and the ground was dry. We had two horses for every man. I had Seckla, of course, and Giannis, and Megakles, the eldest of the fishermen who had made the voyage with us and who showed no inclination to go back to his nets. He was old to be a soldier – well over forty, and not much of a fighter – but he was one of those men who can do or fix almost anything, and he was unbelievably tough. He never complained about rations, never minded the weather and never minded work. If I don’t mention him often, it’s because he seldom spoke, but he had a smile – a wonderful smile when he was happy, and a slightly ironic smile when he felt that someone wasn’t pulling their weight. His entire ethical system seemed to revolve around how much work a man did. He seemed to think highly of me, but he wasn’t above mutely handing me a sharp knife and a lot of raw pork with a silent look that said, ‘Hey! Don’t be a pompous fuck. Do some work.’ A very expressive look, for one small smile and a slightly raised eyebrow.

  The first night, we stayed on a farm west of Tarsilla. The second night we were in Massalia, drinking wine with Dionysius. He wished us luck, and despite some hard heads, we were away in the dark, picking our way across the tracks to Arla, going up the ridges past the shepherds and into the high hills. It only took us two days to make Arla and I truly hoped – I don’t know why – to find Doola there, or some rumour of him.

  After Arla, we became a war band. We rode every day in formation, with three scouts well in front, a main body, a rearguard. Twenty men in armour on horseback is a lot of men, in the high country behind Arla. The Greek homesteaders feared us, and the Gauls barred their doors. We slept in the open, and when it rained, we were wet. Several of my marines had taken Gaul scale shirts – Anchises, one of Dionysius’ men from Lade, and his brother Darius (and what an unpopular name that must have been during the Ionian revolt). When we had been on the trail a week, they were in despair over their shirts, which were turning brown despite relatively good weather.

  ‘What you need is a dozen slaves apiece to keep you polished,’ I said.

  Megakles showed them how to use ash, tow and olive oil to polish iron, but the amount of work involved staggered them.

  Living outdoors is a different skill from sailing on ships. Horse care, all by itself, can become a full-time job. Every man had two horses, and they had to be curried, blanketed, picketed out and fed – every night – and curried and fed in the morning. And being horses, we had one down sick before we left Massalia and another lame at Arla. Between maintaining armour, cooking food and caring for horses, every one of us was fully employed from dawn to dark.

  Horses. Really, if there was only a way to live without them. They don’t love me, and I don’t love them. I’m a passable rider, and a passable charioteer, too – I was trained to chariots in my youth, as some of you may remember. And I love the look of horses, but, may Poseidon forgive me, I’m a bad aristocrat, because mostly I think they’re the stupidest animals that a man has to deal with every day, unless he herds sheep. What other animal will run off a cliff? Eh?

  At any rate, we were five days going north up the valley of the Rhodanus River to Lugdunum, and another two days there in a fine house that took travellers – a large stone house with its own stables, where thirty merchants could eat, sleep and rest. Despite excellent weather, ten days’ travel had tired us out.

  We had a spot of trouble in Lugdunum. The second night there, Seckla and I went out to a wine shop to drink. We were unarmed, because the town was well governed and the Aedui lords didn’t allow men to wear arms openly. We were on our third bowl of the excellent local wine when a group of young sprigs came and sat on the trestles. It was all open-air; there were twenty men and a few women all sitting under the vines.

  One of them, a curly blond in purple trousers, kept looking at me and glaring. He had gold earrings and was heavily muscled – a lord.

  Almost too late, I figured out how I knew him. I’d cut him out of his saddle and sold him back to his father, that’s how I knew him. I can’t remember his name.

  He and his friends began the usual way – looking at us and laughing.

  Now, thugater, I was no longer eighteen. In fact, that year I was thirty years old. My blood didn’t seem any cooler, and yet a group of Gaulish boys catcalling from an adjacent table didn’t spark me to violence the way it might once have done.

  Seckla, on the other hand, began to flush under his dark skin.

  I put my hand on his. ‘Let’s just drink and go,’ I said. We didn’t have weapons, and this was an Aedui town.

  But Purple Trousers couldn’t let go, and when we rose to leave, he got up and blocked our way to the outside.

  He said something, and all his friends laughed. I assume he thought I didn’t speak any Keltoi, but of course I did. He made a statement about what I did with Seckla. I laughed. I suspect he alleged what Seckla might himself have preferred, if you take my meaning, and again, among Greeks it’s not a killing insult, but I suppose it is among Gauls, which is funn
y all by itself.

  Then the man turned to face me, and his face was already transformed – that look men have when they switch from rational creatures to animals. And his fist went back, and there was a dagger in it.

  I caught his dagger hand in my left, thumb down, and I broke his arm and took the dagger. And I punched him six or seven times until I broke his nose – all the while clutching his broken right arm in an elbow lock. He slumped, and I kicked him, hard.

  I looked at his friends. In Gaulish, I said, ‘He attacked me with a dagger. Next man, I kill.’

  They followed us into the street. And down the street. And to our lodgings, gathering friends as they went.

  About an hour later, they got torches. Our landlord was none too happy, and sent for the lords of the town, who sent a dozen warriors. And the archon, whatever they called him, ordered me to pay a fine of twenty silver coins – about fifteen Athenian drachma.

  When I explained in my not very good Keltoi that I had been attacked, he just shrugged.

  So I paid.

  Gwan didn’t play any part in this, because as a Senone, he was only going to make trouble here.

  We rode out the next day, followed by thirty or so Aedui gentry. But we had food, two horses to a man and pack animals, and they didn’t, and if they wanted a fight, I wasn’t interested. We took the west road over the passes toward Rhodumna and the upper Senones country, and we outdistanced them easily. But I began to wonder how I was going to get back.

  Now I hoped to find Doola in every town and village. When we reached the limits of the Senones country, I sent Gwan and his two retainers out ahead, to arrange food and to scout and ask around. But by the time we’d been twenty days on the trail and we rode our tired horses across the divide and down into Agedinca, we hadn’t seen or heard any rumour of them, and a black man should have been easy to find in Gaul.