Poseidon's Spear (Long War 3)

by Christian Cameron

  ‘When did your assembly last meet?’ I asked.

  The sound of a woman’s laughter pealed through the garden. I knew her laugh immediately – the laugh of a deep-voiced, deep-chested woman.

  She came along a gravel path with the grace of a goddess. She was tall, as I have said. Her face was . . . magnificent, but not beautiful. The angles were too sharp, her nose almost like a beak, her eyebrows fierce, her mouth a long slash. And yet—

  Dano of Croton was, and remains, as enigmatic as her father.

  ‘He argues like a sophist, changing his ground as fast as you change yours,’ she said.

  ‘I practised debate as a boy, when I was learning to be a swordsman,’ I said.

  Gelon raised an eyebrow. ‘Learning to be a swordsman,’ he said, with gentle contempt. ‘Any well-born boy is born knowing how to wield a sword. It is an innate skill. Like virtue.’

  He truly believed what he said. It is important that you understand this to understand the complexity of our lives. He was a great man: a great mind, a deep thinker, a superb general. And yet he truly, utterly believed that the well born were superior in every way – far more like the gods than, say, one of his Sikel or African slaves.

  But my growing respect for him couldn’t stop the sneer from touching my face. ‘Would you care to put one of your well-born young men against me?’ I asked.

  He shook his head. ‘You claim descent from Heracles,’ he said. ‘Naturally, you are a better warrior than other men.’ He smiled. ‘Even if you waste your talents working bronze.’

  It was like the feeling of a heavy Persian arrow hitting my aspis.

  ‘Would you care to put one of your well-born gentlemen against a slave of my choosing?’ I said.

  He shrugged. ‘There are always exceptions. But in general . . . Come, you won’t deny that the well born are handsomer, with better bodies and more aptitude for anything. It doesn’t surprise me that you are a fine bronze-smith. Any gentleman will excel at any of the lesser trades. But this is like an adult stooping to enter the boy’s events in the Olympics. Let the lesser men work bronze. A gentleman should work with men.’

  ‘If this is true,’ I said, trying once more, ‘why are so few gentlemen any use at the helm of a ship in a storm?’

  Dano of Croton laughed. ‘He doesn’t know, and you should stop trying to beat him. And Gelon, be a good host. This is the man who saved me from the Phoenicians. Even now my great height would be fetching a stunning price at some brothel in Carthage.’ She smiled at me. ‘I failed to thank you at the time, Arimnestos. I was . . . disconsolate. It is difficult to explain. I do not live in a world of ship battles and pirates. I read about such things.’ She shrugged.

  Well. It is rather difficult to harbour resentment against someone thanking you in front of the ruler of a tenth of the known world. She offered her cheek to be kissed, and I kissed it.

  The Tyrant laughed. ‘Do you know who she is, son of Heracles? She’s Dano of Croton. Pythagoras’s daughter. One of my best friends. I owe you immeasurably for her rescue – but we had no notion of what kind of man you might be. I had imagined a much blacker pirate.’

  I shrugged. ‘I have been a black pirate. I imagine that the darkness of one’s acts is often judged differently, depending on which end of the sword faces you.’

  Dano shook her head. ‘I confess that you rescued me, and I am grateful. But despite that, I believe that all violence makes men lesser – more like animals.’

  ‘War is the king and father of all; some men it makes kings, and others, slaves,’ I said. ‘Peace begets nothing but dull care. Strength comes through change. The wise adapt.’

  ‘Heraclitus!’ she said. ‘That charlatan.’

  ‘He was my master and teacher,’ I said. ‘And he honoured your father.’

  ‘My father did not honour him,’ she said. She paused. Her voice had begun to grow coloured, heated, and she took several breaths. More than any Pythagorean I ever knew, Dano controlled herself at all times.

  Now the Tyrant laughed. ‘Brilliant!’ he said. ‘I have a follower of Heraclitus to debate with my daughter of Pythagoras; we can form a three-sided triangle of discussion. Arimnestos, be free in my city. I may have a matter of . . . hmm . . . policy to discuss with you, now that I have met you. I’m sure many people here will want to meet you. Do you wish me to give you a guide?’

  ‘I know the city well,’ I said.

  Gelon gave me an odd look, and said, ‘Very well. I will have rooms assigned to you in the palace.’

  ‘I would be too afraid of being murdered by fanatic Pythagoreans,’ I said.

  She started to bite back, and realized she was being mocked. Instead of glaring at each other, we found ourselves smiling. It was an odd interaction. I was quite sure that I didn’t find her attractive, so I wondered at the readiness of my unintended smile.

  The pretty young Dionysus, son of Anchises, reappeared to lead me out of the palace. We didn’t leave the way we’d come, but went up into the main apartments so that he could show me, I suppose, the sheer magnificence of the palace, and then we headed down a grand outside marble stair that wrapped around a small temple platform to Nike. A priestess was just emerging from the temple; her sheer gracefulness caught my eye. She wasn’t tall, but willowy and her neck rose from her sheer white chiton—

  It was Lydia.

  I stopped on the steps and almost fell.

  She looked at me, put a hand to her chest and then turned and went back into the temple of Nike. Without intending it – indeed, without any conscious thought – I ran back up the steps to the temple, but Dionysus caught my hand.

  ‘You cannot go in there,’ he said. ‘Gelon would have you killed.’

  I saw that the temple doors – well-worked bronze, the height of a man, with deeply inset panels that showed scenes from the triumph of the goddess – were slightly ajar. She was watching me. Or watching for me to go.

  ‘I know her,’ I said. It was, all things considered, a foolish thing to say.

  Dionysus looked at me. ‘I must suggest that you are mistaken,’ he said primly.

  The next few days passed in a pleasant, but confusing, whirl. Doola was busy selling our tin, and through him, our inn became a hive of mercantile activity. Gelon might disdain merchants, but his factor made it clear that Syracusa needed tin.

  I received invitations to the palace, which I accepted. I dined with Gelon and the nobility of Syracusa. Lydia – if it was Lydia I had seen – was nowhere in evidence. I shared a couch with Gaius, and we were bored. I didn’t see Dano. Of course, I was back in civilization and women didn’t, in general, dine with men, especially in conservative, aristocratic Syracusa.

  Dull.

  After two days of it, I couldn’t stand the inaction. At first I wandered the waterfront. I met men from Athens and Croton, from Rome, from all the cities of the Etrusca, from as far away as Tyre. The Tyrian, a senior officer of a merchant on the beach, looked me over carefully from the deck of his ship and then beckoned to me.

  ‘You are the great Greek pirate,’ he said. He grinned. It wasn’t a real expression – more like a dog showing its teeth. He sent a boy for spiced wine, and we sat on bales of his linens from Aegypt and he told me without preamble that Darius, the Great King for all of my life, was rumoured to have died at Persepolis, which was about as far from Syracusa as I could imagine in distance. His successor was Xerxes, or so my Phoenician helmsman informed me.

  He talked about Persia’s determination to conquer Athens, and after a while we moved up the beach to a taverna. Men came and went, asking his leave to buy one thing or sell another. After some small talk about his family, he got to the point. He leaned back, stuck two fingers in the top of his linen kilt and smiled.

  ‘Now I have told you something, yes? So you tell me. You make war – sea war – on Carthago, yes?’ He smiled, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes.

  ‘Carthago enslaved me,’ I said mildly.

  He nodded. ‘You have
killed many of my people. Many. Yet I sit here and make the talk with you, and you do not seem like a monster. Why so much war, eh?’

  I spread my hands. ‘It seems to follow me,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘So tell me this. Is it true you went to the Tin Islands? All the way into the Outer Sea?’

  I was watching him carefully. I didn’t think it impossible that the Phoenicians would murder me in cold blood, for all sorts of reasons – but first and foremost because I knew the route to the tin. ‘Yes. All the way to Alba. And back.’

  He smiled, leaned forward and extended his hand. ‘I’m Thato Abn Ba’al. I, too, have crossed the northern seas.’ He grinned. ‘I tell them, at home, that we could publish the route in every city in the world and do ourselves no harm, because only a great sailor can make the trip. That the squadron at Gades is wasted.’ He nodded. ‘You have prisoners, I believe.’

  I am a man of the world, and I like most people. I have come to an age where I can say that in truth, there is no one truth – that no man is much better than any other, and that Greeks are not handsomer or smarter than Persians. No race has an edge in courage, or discipline, or ship-handling.

  But I cannot abide Phoenicians. Maybe it is bred to the bone after years of war, or perhaps they really are rotten to the core of their child-killing society. Eh?

  So all this, this whole pleasant morning of conversation, was a preamble to asking me if he could ransom my prisoners.

  ‘I have a few,’ I said. My annoyance was already rising.

  ‘Give them to me, and I’ll see what I can do to get you trading privileges in Sidon and Carthago,’ he said with a smile.

  ‘Why would I want to trade there?’ I asked. I was already getting to my feet.

  ‘The richest trade in the world? The finest entrepôt, the best warehouses, the most imposing array of products, the best craftsmanship?’

  ‘Athens, you mean?’ I said.

  He laughed, but his laugh was more false than an old whore’s smile.

  ‘Athens is a nice little town,’ he said. ‘Sidon, Tyre, Carthago – these are the finest cities in the world, and you should beg to trade in them.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked. I leaned forward. ‘I can take whatever they have to offer whenever it suits me.’ I nodded. ‘Like that ship right there.’

  ‘It would mean war between Carthago and Syracusa. A war that Syracusa would lose. Carthago can put a hundred thousand men in the field.’ He stood up. ‘Slavery has eroded your manners as well as your sense of right and wrong. I sought to do you no harm, Greek. I want to buy your prisoners.’

  I nodded. ‘I’ll send you my factor,’ I said haughtily. In fact, I wanted rid of them, and money is always nice. The problem with anger is that it can get in the way of common sense. I didn’t need him or his ship, or the international complications that would arise. Even as it was, my possession of the hull of a captured Carthaginian warship and the freed Greek slaves roaming the streets spending their pay was making trouble for my host, who in turn was increasingly distant to me.

  Piracy. Always a complicated matter.

  I turned to leave Thato Abn Ba’al, and had another thought.

  ‘Do you know a Greek in Carthago’s service called Dagon?’ I asked.

  The Phoenician rolled his eyes. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Insane?’ I asked.

  The Phoenician shipmaster shrugged. ‘A bad man. And not one of us, whatever you say.’ He spat.

  ‘Will you see him? In Carthago?’ I asked.

  Thato narrowed his eyes.

  I shrugged. ‘I am not after your ship. I spoke in heat.’

  He splashed some wine on the floor. ‘Make me your guest friend, and I’ll talk to you about it.’

  A guest friend is a sort of sacred trust, like brotherhood. If you make a man your guest friend, you accept responsibility for him in your house and your city – but you also, in effect, swear to support him and not to harm him, ever. Sometimes guest friendships are passed down from generation to generation.

  ‘If you wanted my prisoners, why not just say so?’ I asked.

  ‘It is rude to start a conversation with a demand,’ he said. ‘I am a gentleman. I heard that you are, too, despite your violence.’

  I sat again. Poured a little more wine. ‘Guest friendship is a door that swings both ways,’ I said.

  He spat thoughtfully. ‘I am not a barbarian,’ he said. ‘Make me your guest friend, and we will share the rewards in the eyes of our gods. And men.’

  Despite all, I liked him. So I got up and swore the oath to Zeus, and he swore by Ba’al and Apollo, and we clasped hands. Some bystanders in the taverna witnessed – a big Athenian helmsman I didn’t know came and slapped me on the back.

  ‘Then take the prisoners,’ I said to my new brother. ‘No ransom.’

  He was genuinely surprised. Unaffectedly surprised. ‘You mean that?’ he asked.

  I led him to where Neoptolymos sat under an awning, drinking wine. He had six Carthaginian officers, and a pair of our marines watching them – and making sure our former slaves didn’t gut them for old times’ sake.

  ‘Neoptolymos?’ I said. ‘Let them go. This man will take them home.’

  Neoptolymos nodded. He was an aristocrat, too; he rose to his feet and bowed to our Phoenician guest.

  Thato started to lead them towards his ship, they clutching his knees and patting his hands and weeping. As well they might. But he pushed the youngest one away and turned to me.

  ‘I may see Dagon in Carthago,’ he said. ‘I can’t stand him, but I see him all too often.’

  ‘Tell him you met Arimnestos of Plataea.’ I smiled. ‘Tell him that when I find him, I will break him on an oar and crucify him on my mainmast.’

  Thato nodded and pursed his lips. ‘I will,’ he said seriously.

  I was busy in other ways, as well. The Athenian helmsman – a former slave named Simon, like my hateful cousin – was almost fully loaded with Sicilian wine and copper ore and three ingots of my tin, and he was headed east to Athens. Since I had already begun to form my plans to return to my own life, so to speak, I asked him to see if he could find Mauros, or any of my other friends in Athens or Piraeus. I wrote a letter to Aristides, sometimes known as The Just who had led one of the Athenian taxeis at Marathon, and another to Themistocles, the leader of the Athenian demos, asking them to see to it that if my ship still sailed the seas, it came to me at Massalia.

  I wrote another letter to my sister Penelope.

  I had decided that it was time to return to my home.

  But first, I had a military operation to plan.

  And I had to know about Lydia.

  I completed my letter-writing, visited Doola’s mercantile exchange and sat down to listen to him dicker with a pair of Sybarite merchants.

  It took me a moment to realize that he was buying their tin.

  This made no sense to me, but I smiled at Doola, who was clearly having a fine time, and walked outside, where, to my confusion, Seckla was leading a pair of donkeys loaded with tin out of the inn’s yard.

  He smiled at me and walked on, attended by a pair of slaves.

  Perhaps we delivered.

  I fortified myself with one more cup of wine and walked up the town, to the shop where I had worked for a year. I sent a slave in for Nikephorus. But I already knew that the forge was silent, and when the mistress of the house emerged, she looked at me, face carefully blank.

  ‘Where is Master Nikephorus?’ I asked.

  She looked away. ‘He died.’

  ‘And his wife?’ I asked.

  The woman looked at the ground. ‘She died first.’ She finally met my eye, and hers held rage. ‘You have nerve, coming here. After what you did. You don’t think I know you? I know you.’

  This was what I had imagined, when I imagined the worst possible outcome of my visit. And I didn’t know her.

  ‘You ruined her. Turned her head – made her a whore.’ The woman spat at my feet. ‘My curse
on you. I pray for your destruction, every day. May the sea god suck you down. May the Carthaginians take you.’

  I confess that I stepped back before her rage.

  ‘I wanted to marry her,’ I said weakly, knowing that this was not precisely true.

  ‘Did you?’ she asked. ‘I’m sure you still can. She might make a good wife, between pleasuring gentlemen at parties.’ She stepped forward. ‘My sister died, of a broken heart. Her husband died when the fucking Tyrant took his citizen rights. They took you in, you fuck. Gave you work. You ruined them.’ She was screaming now. I was backing away as if she were three swordsmen. Or perhaps five.

  Five swordsmen would not have made me feel like this one middle-aged woman.

  What do you say? To the screaming harridan in the street? I meant no harm? We were just playing? I play with girls all the time? I’m a warrior, and it is my right to take women as chattel?

  One of the effects of age is to realize that most of society’s rules – even the most foolish – exist for reasons, and are broken only at someone’s peril. From the comfort of this kline and across the distance of years, I doubt that I wrecked Lydia alone, or that her mother died entirely of my actions. Nikephorus could have been less intransigent. As I discovered, he threw her from the house. She was a prostitute by the next morning. That’s the way of it. And she came to the attention of the man who became Tyrant, and he took her for his own. As you will hear.

  Well.

  How much of that is my responsibility? Eh?

  When the night is dark, and the wine is sour, it looks to me as if it is all my responsibility. All of it. I played with her life, and I broke it. That’s hubris, my daughter. Treating a free person as if they are a slave.

  I never promised you a happy story.

  I left the street and walked down the hill, and sat on the beach over the headland from the citadel, and I wept. And then I went back to town along the waterfront, looking for a fight, and didn’t find one. You never do, when you really want one. So I drank, and I walked, and I wandered.