Poseidon's Spear (Long War 3)

by Christian Cameron

  ‘Oh,’ she said, with instant dismissal. Croton and Sybaris were two of the richest cities in the world. We still call the lifestyle of the very rich ‘sybaritic’, and such people ‘sybarites’. Croton was just as rich, and full of scholars and poets, too. Rome was, by contrast, a town full of cows and chickens.

  Gaius was abashed.

  She turned to me. ‘Are you a pirate?’ she asked.

  I nodded. ‘Yes. All my life.’

  She had just drawn breath to launch into a speech – I could read her, and her reply was predicated on my denying the title of pirate. My acceptance of it caused her to step back and throw an arm across her body.

  I smiled. ‘Nonetheless, we will land you unharmed at Syracusa tomorrow, if the gods will it so.’

  It can be hard to talk to a human with no face, a woman swathed in veils. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. She raised her cup and drank, and I saw a hint of a strong jaw and a long face.

  ‘You speak well enough, for a pirate,’ she said.

  ‘And you are brave enough, for an aristocrat and a woman.’ I smiled and held out my cup to my pais for more wine. ‘What brings you to Syracusa, Despoina?’

  She shrugged. ‘That is my business, I fear,’ she said.

  Few things kill conversation so effectively as telling someone to mind their own business. I bowed. ‘I hope we can make you comfortable, Despoina. Is there anything you need? You built and maintained your fire very well, I noted. Do you need food? A cooking pot? Some wine?’

  She nodded. ‘Wine is never amiss. And I note that your sailors have straw for bedding. The sand is cold, and women have hips. We would appreciate some straw.’

  The reference to women’s hips was clearly an attempt to warm over the conversation, but I was done. She hadn’t even bothered to thank me. I knew her kind; or thought I did.

  ‘Gaius will see you back to your fire, and ensure you have wine and straw,’ I said, in dismissal.

  ‘I will?’ Gaius asked. ‘Oh, right. Trierarch, and still functionary. Follow me, my lady.’

  ‘I have offended you,’ she said suddenly. ‘I didn’t mean to. I am not good at this. I do not . . . mix with others.’

  ‘Then you mustn’t be surprised that others do not seek to mix with you. Good night,’ I said. I walked off into the darkness; not that I had anywhere to go, but I didn’t need to talk to her any further, just then. Arrogant woman. Mix with others.

  We are seldom so offensive as when we seek to make apology.

  We put to sea with the dawn, three warships under easy rowing. It was a hundred stades to Syracusa, and the weather was turning bad – the wind from Africa was in our teeth, and the southern sky was dark, and the wind held a hint of sand.

  The rowers had to earn their bonus.

  By midday, they were pulling full strength to gain us a few dactyls at the stroke, into the teeth of an African gale. This was the one point of wind at which the new triemiola rig was inferior, and the Carthaginian capture, with her mainmast stowed between the benches, offered less resistance to the wind and kept pulling ahead, despite the relative inexperience of her crew. Our masts took the force of the blast and caused the bows to fall off course over and over, until I finally surrendered to the inevitable and began to make short boards, steering south-east and then south-west. That eased the ship’s motion and helped Gaius as well. I watched his bow to gauge the effect on my own, and saw the woman standing there, her shawls streaming behind her in the wind.

  Yes, she had a fine figure. I had decided that I disliked her, and I was anxious to be rid of her.

  To be honest, I must have been suffering from the reaction that always sets in after a fight, even such a one-sided fight as we had had the day before, because the storm seemed to me to be the last straw. I felt, just at that moment, as if we were never going to make Syracusa, and that the woman was the curse.

  Oh, I can be a fool, too.

  Sometime after noon, Doola came aft and Megakles stood in the helm oars and we shouted at each other. They wanted to turn back. I did not.

  It’s not worth repeating the argument, which was probably rendered comic by the wind. None of us could understand each other, and we all wanted to be heard.

  It was one of those times when men are reminded why only one man can be in command, at sea. Because divided councils result in compromises. In assembly, or when directing the affairs of a great merchant, such councils are essential. At sea—

  I was determined that we would continue, even in the dark, if for no other reason than that I feared what would happen if we tried to turn. The seas were high, and our sleek warships had high bows but very shallow waists, and the rollers coming from Africa would wash clear over us, amidships. I feared to lose a ship in the turn – along with a third of our precious treasure and a third of my friends. Care and work would get us into Syracusa.

  I’m making this too long. It is a curious facet of reminiscence, my friends: I exaggerate those things that were important to me, and I skip over events that might have had far more importance to others. If Seckla were telling this tale—

  Bah. I’m an old man. That was a hard afternoon, and a hard night, and I was proceeding against the advice of my best helmsman into the teeth of a gale, sure I was right. I had become a far better captain in the Outer Sea, and now I was willing to hold my course against their advice. That’s why I remember.

  It was close on midsummer, and the sun was out there, somewhere above the cloud. It was dark by mid-afternoon, and darker still at what should have been evening, and the dust coming off Africa was in our eyes. But after the wine had been served out to the oarsmen, Seckla caught sight of a glimmer to the south-west, and shortly afterwards, it was visible on every rise.

  I relieved Megakles, and he went forward, looked for himself and reported that it was the outer lighthouse at Syracusa. Bless him.

  The rowers were filled with confidence, and in an hour, we gained fifteen stades on the wind and the harbour entrance was clear enough. I cheated the helm to the west, so that we approached the entrance at a shallow angle from the north. The great breakwater wasn’t built in those days, and the lesser breakwater only protruded a stade from shore.

  About a stade off the entrance, I noted that there was a current running inshore – from the sea west, into the harbour. Twice, I had the rowers row to hold us in place – bow into the storm – while I ran amidships to peer through the murk at the harbour lights. We had a lantern – three lanterns – over our stern, and another at the masthead, and despite all of that, Neoptolymos almost ran us aboard, his ram shaving past our port-side oars, and he was gone, heading fast into the harbour. His ship turned far too fast, the starboard rowers backing water, took a wave right over the counter and shot into the harbour.

  It was ragged, but he was in. I had intended a somewhat overcareful approach, using the current to push our bow into the harbour which my rowers held steady, but Neoptolymos’s success emboldened me, and I waved to Megakles. I was less bold: I let the wind push our bow around, our rowers gave five rapid strokes, as if we were ramming an enemy, and we were in. The change in the sea was instantaneous – we went from a howling wind and steep waves to glassy calm water and no wind in five strokes.

  A ship’s-length aft, Gaius made the turn. Later I understood that he left it late and his port-side oarsmen actually struck the rocks with their oars, but close enough is close enough – he weathered the headland and we were in the harbour.

  It was moving, to sail along the beaches of the harbour front where I had spent so much time. I wondered if Anarchos still lorded it over the waterfront. I wondered what Gelon was like. I wondered where Lydia was.

  Doola came and stood at my shoulder, as we slid down the calm water towards the waterfront. ‘We are coming back,’ he said.

  I smiled. ‘We said the same at Massalia,’ I noted.

  There was quite a crowd on the waterfront. It was nigh on full dark, but three warships passing the harbour mouth in a
storm was something worthy of comment. Perhaps a thousand people watched us land our ships. Doola leaped over the side and went up the beach to find lodging and food for six hundred sailors and oarsmen. I was busy getting the crew off, guiding the stern of a heavy ship well up the beach and setting a night watch on our fortune. My oarsmen were all aware of what they’d been rowing in the bilges beneath their feet, and in an hour they’d have told every petty criminal in every brothel on the waterfront.

  Gaius’s passenger disembarked. He provided her with four marines under Giannis, and she vanished into the darkness. I missed her going, but I wasn’t sorry. To be honest, now that we were ashore, I was foolishly eager to find out what had happened to all my friends – and foes – in the town. And at the same time, suddenly apprehensive all over again. I feared Lydia’s scorn.

  I feared her father’s scorn.

  I also feared thieves, and I slept aboard, my head pillowed on my cloak and my feet on the helmsman’s bench.

  I rose in the morning, swam in the sea and then walked up into the city to find an open bathhouse. The Temple of Poseidon maintains one for travellers, and I emerged clean, massaged and feeling alive and virtuous.

  On return to my ship, I found Doola surrounded by merchants, none of whom was familiar to me. I looked in vain for Anarchos. Instead, I saw a cloaked herald approaching, and I ran aft and changed hurriedly into my best clothes and jewels. As I expected, I was summoned by the Tyrant of Syracusa. He sent me a dozen gentleman hoplites and a polite messenger named Dionysus, son of Anchises. The messenger was a beautiful young man with hair so blond he might have been a Gaul.

  The message was a polite command to attend the tyrant at my earliest convenience. ‘I am ready,’ I said. I sent a messenger for Gaius and asked him to accompany me. He was obviously a gentleman. Remember that I had heard that the tyrant was against commoners.

  We walked up the twisting streets to the citadel through a city that was far quieter than the Syracusa I had known three years earlier. There were few men and no women in the streets, and those men I saw did not meet my eyes, but merely hurried by.

  I had mistaken the hoplites for local aristocrats, but after climbing a few streets, I realized that they were beautifully kitted-out mercenaries.

  ‘Anyone here from Plataea?’ I asked cheerfully.

  None of them was, but there were men of Thebes and Megara and even little Thebai.

  ‘Are you from Plataea, then?’ asked the escort officer, a phylarch from Hermione in the Peloponnese.

  ‘I’m Arimnestos of Plataea,’ I said. He stopped dead. ‘You’re not.’

  ‘I am,’ I said.

  He shook his head, and then gave his spear to another man, took my hand and shook it. ‘A pleasure to meet you. Why didn’t you say? The Tyrant would have sent a better escort.’

  I laughed. It is good to be famous.

  The other mercenaries pressed around me and shook my hand over and over.

  One of them, a short man with short hair and an Attic drawl, laughed. ‘I was there too,’ he said. ‘At Marathon. With Miltiades.’ He shook his head. ‘Great days.’

  ‘I understand Miltiades is dead,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘Where have you been?’ he asked. ‘He’s been dead nearly five years.’

  I shrugged. ‘It’s a long story.’

  Gaius stood by and rolled his eyes. Well – no one is very famous to his friends, which is probably just as well.

  The Palace of Syracusa is, to me, an exercise in hubris. It is built like a temple to the gods, and yet its only purpose is to house men. It towers over the town, on top of the acropolis, where there ought to be a temple and instead there is a citadel. As far as I’m concerned, that citadel is the reason that Syracusa succumbs so easily to tyrants – always has and always will. The man who holds the acropolis holds the city. By placing the gods on the acropolis, Athens makes it much harder for a mere man to take their houses – and any man who does such a thing is an obvious blasphemer. The Peisistratids had houses on the Acropolis, but no one but priests dwell there now.

  I digress, again.

  High above the town, we emerged on a path with a marble railing, lined by statues of women who were holding the railing. The view was breathtaking, and the storm off towards Africa was a pronounced darkness, like a bruise in the sky. My escort halted at the end of the path, where the statues gave way to a garden, open on one side to the city, and closed on the other three by deep colonnades.

  All this for the pleasure of one man.

  Gelon was standing among his roses; he had a small, sharp sickle in one hand and he was pruning, cutting dead flowers, slicing away buds past their promise.

  Hah! It all appeared a trifle contrived, to me. Gelon, the great aristocrat, tamer of the commons, pruner of the high and the low. Something like that.

  Nonetheless, I bowed.

  My escort commander said, ‘Lord Arimnestos of Plataea,’ and saluted with his spear. To me, he said, ‘Lord Gelon of Syracusa.’ He caught my eye as he turned, and his escort marched away smartly.

  Gelon, the Tyrant of Syracusa, was a tall, deep-chested man with deep, dark blue eyes, the kind of eyes usually painted on by amateur statue-painters who have access to too much lapis. His eyes were arresting.

  His gold hair, almost metallic in its vitality, was arresting, too. He had a touch of silver-grey at the temples, well muscled arms and legs – he looked, in fact, like a big, handsome man in the very prime of life and condition. And I have always thought that his looks were part of his success. He looked like a statue of a god, like the best statues of Heracles or Zeus. He dressed simply, as had become the fashion since the teachings of Pythagoras began to sweep over the Greek world, and he wore no jewellery unless he wore a cloak.

  At any rate, at the mention of my name, his eyes widened ever so slightly.

  ‘Are you really Arimnestos of Plataea?’ he asked.

  I bowed. What do you say to such a foolish question?

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Welcome to Syracusa. I gather that your ships bring a cargo. And I gather that you have quite a story to tell.’

  ‘You have the better of me, then, my lord,’ I said. ‘I have a cargo of tin, which my factor is even now selling.’

  ‘Of course I have the better of you,’ Gelon said, a trifle petulantly. ‘It is my business to know such things. I gather that you had an encounter with ships of Carthage.’

  ‘We encountered them,’ I admitted.

  ‘Such encounters are my business. Tell me, please.’ He snapped his fingers and a pair of slaves appeared. One reached for my cloak. The other handed me wine.

  I removed my cloak in a fine swirl of Tyrian red, and both slaves fell back a pace. Gelon paled – or rather, as I was to learn with him, his lips grew redder.

  ‘You are armed,’ he said.

  ‘At all times,’ I said cheerfully, and tossed my cloak to the nearer slave. ‘See to it the pin’s still there when I get it back,’ I said.

  ‘My slaves do not steal,’ he said.

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘I found three ships of Carthage pursuing a Greek ship north of here – practically off your harbour mouth. I sank two and took the third.’

  ‘Under whose protection?’ the Tyrant asked. ‘Do you act for Athens? Is that why you feel you can take ships on the high seas with impunity?’

  I laughed. ‘I doubt that anyone in Athens even knows that I am alive,’ I said. ‘I need no man’s permission to take ships on the seas but my own.’

  ‘Dano says that you told her you are a pirate,’ he said.

  ‘Dano?’ I asked.

  ‘The woman you might recall rescuing,’ he said with a slight smile.

  I shrugged. ‘I served Miltiades too many years to call myself anything else,’ I said. ‘And I was bold enough to assume that I would be welcome here, for making war on Carthage.’

  The Tyrant pulled his beard and nodded. ‘You are correct. And yet, it might have been better had you asked me, first. Ca
rthage has a mighty armament off my coast, and I am not yet ready to contend with them.’ He shrugged. ‘Where did you acquire so much tin? Preying on Carthage?’

  I shook my head. ‘No. And then, perhaps they would tell this story differently. We sailed into the Outer Sea and they hounded us unfairly. After a while, I attacked their shipping and their trade, yes.’

  Gelon nodded. ‘There have been rumours of a Greek pirate in the Outer Sea,’ he said. ‘Well done. Now that I know you are the famous Arimnestos, it makes more sense to me, as the earliest rumours said you were some bronze-smith with a taste for war.’

  I was feeling perverse. ‘I am a bronze-smith with a taste for war,’ I said. ‘I cast the rams on my ship’s prows, I can make a better helmet than any smith in this city and I have fought in a dozen pitched battles on land and sea, and in fifty skirmishes. Heracles is my ancestor. I led the Plataeans at Marathon.’ I smiled. ‘My ships carry more than forty full ingots of Alban tin, which Sicily needs.’

  He nodded. His godlike face split in a smile. ‘You need to put me in my place because you have heard that I hate the tekne,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘Men – lesser men who cannot understand me – say such things. Indeed, I love fine things, and I honour the artisans who make them. Yet I know that they lack the skills and education to serve as citizens and voters. Their dedication is their craft, as women’s dedication is their children. They are too busy to direct the affairs of the city.’

  ‘You should meet my friend Aristides,’ I said. ‘You two would have much to discuss.’

  Gelon shook his head again. ‘Debate with me, if you disagree.’

  ‘If cities were directed by craftsmen, perhaps there would be less war and more art. The exercise of craft – the excellence of making things well – is, I maintain, as sure a guide to arête as excellence in rhetoric or athletics. What excellence does a man have merely by birth?’ I nodded out to the south, towards Carthage. ‘I have seen more courage from Keltoi slaves, sometimes.’

  Gelon was not angered, nor was he stung. He was no straw tyrant. ‘Well said, if full of possible holes. What if a man makes things all day and has no idea of what has gone on in the assembly?’