Poseidon's Spear (Long War 3)

by Christian Cameron

  Well, she was or she wasn’t a spy. I doubted she could kill Doola.

  I got my marines back as the first of the Carthaginian triremes came off the beach, six stades away.

  These things have a life of their own. You might ask why we didn’t make a plan, and I’ll say that had we hung off the coast to make a plan, we’d have found them in a defensive circle, or their triremes coming out after us. Dionysus was confident, and so were all the rest of us.

  That said, my plan depended on the others following me. Because I took my marines aboard, got them into the bow and headed due east into the oncoming enemy. I hoped that my consorts were coming with me.

  Leukas, my Alban, had the deck with the sailors. He was acting as oar-master in Doola’s absence. I gave him the nod to go to ramming speed. He gave me a thumb’s-up.

  Anchises and Darius led the marines, and I joined them. They were big men, and all my marines were now bigger men than I – I’d had a year to pick and choose the best, and arm them like heroes, too.

  I pointed to the lead enemy ship off the beach. ‘We’re going to go aboard her and take her,’ I said. ‘Anchises, kill your way aft and take command. The rowers ought to obey you. If they don’t, Darius, you kill a few. Until they obey. Understand?’

  Both men grunted.

  ‘Row clear and run north. Look for Doola. Got it?’

  Both men nodded. The other marines nodded.

  Across the narrowing strip of water that separated us, the Carthaginian trierarch had just realized that I meant business and that his friends were coming to help him. He had the best ship and the best crew, and like such men, he thought he could do everything himself. Of course he did. I was another such man. But now he was coming to ramming speed, and he realized that win or lose, he was alone.

  The next best Carthaginian was just getting his hull in the water.

  I looked aft at Megakles. He waved.

  Both ships went for an oar-rake, and both ships got their oars in. They were fine sailors with superb helmsmen, for the most part. We raced down their starboard side, and the grapnels flew in both directions. We were going so fast that some of the grapnels ripped free, and I saw a rope snap as the whole weight of two racing ships came to bear on it. The flying end of the rope struck my pais and ripped his face off the skull beneath, and the poor boy screamed and screamed. It was one of the most horrific wounds I’ve ever witnessed.

  I had to put him down. That felt bad.

  I’d planned to free him. He’d served me so well.

  Pah. It still tastes bad.

  And then we were slowing. Both ships were turning – fast – heeled over from the weight of the other ship. I got my spear free of the dead weight of my former slave, and I needed action. I was about to weep. I really felt bad about the boy.

  I was up on the rail before the ships stopped moving.

  A Carthaginian marine threw his javelin at me. It missed by a hand’s breadth, and I leaped down into the rowers – one foot on the cross-beam, and one flailing wildly for a moment until I got it down – and one of the rowers grabbed my foot. My spear went straight down into his open mouth – I still remember that kill. Poor bastard. Rowers should never try to fight marines unless they get off their benches first. Remember that they are in three tiers, and that they can’t really stand – or support each other. If they have weapons, they stow them under their benches – hard to get at, hard to use.

  I pushed up towards the catwalk. This was an undecked trireme, like an Athenian – in fact, it might have been a captured Athenian ship. Rowers in three tiers open to the sky, and a catwalk all the way down the centre line. Most of the enemy marines were on the catwalk, using pikes over the heads of the rowers.

  I took a pikehead on my aspis. My attacker was trying to push me down into the rowers. I batted the pikehead aside and made my jump. I landed badly, lost my balance and my armour saved my life as a spear cut some unintended engraving between my shoulder blades. The mark is still there – see? Look, right there. That’s death, honeybee. But not for me.

  I had to put a foot back, and by luck – nothing better than luck – my foot landed on the cross-beam and I didn’t fall. I stabbed with my spear, and my two opponents – one with a pike fifteen feet long and one with a short spear – stabbed at me, pushing me down.

  The man with the short spear tried to parry my spear with his own, but he had his spear too near the haft and I had the leverage, and I pressed his aside and ran mine home. He had armour – leather and bronze. But my needle-sharp spearhead pricked him – not a killing blow, but by the feel in my hand I knew I’d punched the point into him and he flinched and gave a cry, and I rifled my spear forward again, at his helmet, and he stepped back.

  The pikehead slammed into my helmet, and I saw stars. But I kept my footing and pushed forward into the space of the wounded Carthaginian, and now I had both feet on the catwalk.

  I had both feet under me. But now I had enemies ahead of me and behind me on the catwalk.

  I slammed my aspis as hard as I could into the man behind me, using the bronze-clad edge as a giant axe. I caved in the face of his rawhide and wicker shield and broke his arm. Then I turned, pivoting my hips, and thrust backhanded with my spear – thumb up, spearhead down, like a dagger blow. It is the most powerful spear blow, but of course, when you deliver it, you are wide open to your opponent, as your shield is behind you. It is like the famed Harmodius blow.

  None of you cares about the technicalities of good fighting. A pox on you, then! My spear-point went in over the pikeman’s arms, right through his helmet and into his brain, and down he went, dead before he hit the deck. But his weight snapped my spearhead – the beautiful needle point must have been a little too hard, and it snapped short.

  Of course, I didn’t notice right away. I sprang forward into the next man – another shielded, armoured man with a heavy, short spear and a javelin which he threw at me as soon as he had a clear throw, but I sank beneath his throw like a dancer – oh, I was the killer of men, and Ares’ hand was on my shoulder. I passed under his throw and rammed my spear under his shield and into his shin – but the tip of my spear was gone and the spear-point wouldn’t bite.

  I hurt his shin, though. He tried to back up, but there were other men on the deck, now.

  In his confusion, I whirled, changed feet and rushed aft. I got two paces, and threw my spear into the next enemy marine. It glanced off his shield and vanished into the oarsmen, and I drew my new, long xiphos from under my arm. A lovely weapon – almost like a spear with a long, slender blade, slightly wider at the tip. I rotated my right wrist, reached over his big rawhide shield and stabbed down – my weapon caught armour, grated and went straight home through his throat, while his spear flailed over my shoulder.

  I pushed past his corpse and the next man slammed his aspis into me and pushed me back, and I cut low with my xiphos and realized that my opponent was Anchises. As my blade rang off his greave, he roared, and we were screaming at each other to stop – comic, in its way.

  We’d carried the ship. The trierarch was trying to surrender in the stern, the helmsman was on his knees and Darius killed them both with two blows. Foolish, and clean against the laws of war. On the other hand, we were badly outnumbered, and it was the very heat of the action.

  Neither of them was Dagon, either.

  I hoped, every time I faced a Carthaginian ship.

  ‘Swords up!’ I yelled. ‘Swords up! Stop!’

  Anchises joined his calls to mine. It took a long minute to stop the killing.

  The ship was ours. I turned Anchises to face me. ‘Get under way – north!’

  He nodded. I ran down a cross-beam – the same one I’d boarded on, I suspect, and leaped back aboard Lydia. Ran aft to Megakles.

  The next three or four Carthaginians were off the beach, or nearly so. To the west, Dionysus was clear of his merchant ship—

  And turning out to sea.

  ‘Bastard,’ I said. Dionysus was g
oing to cut and run.

  Doola’s ship had her sails down and some way on her.

  I was broadside on to the approaching Carthaginians because that’s how the impetus of the grappling action had ended. We wasted valuable time poling off our new capture.

  Neoptolymos cleared his merchantman and came on.

  My decks looked curiously empty, because Doola had most of the deck crew and Anchises had my marines. We inched forward. The lead pair of Carthaginians was already at ramming speed.

  ‘Have your outboard oarsmen row!’ I shouted at Anchises.

  Twice.

  Time passed slowly.

  He got it.

  The former Carthaginian rowers had no reason to love us. Men who have never been in a ship fight always imagine that when a ship is taken, the rowers – if they are slaves or have been mistreated – should rise for their new masters. It does happen that way, but only if the old captain was abusive and foolish. Otherwise, they tend to be more afraid of their new captors than they were of the old. Hard to explain, but I’ve seen Greek slaves, newly ‘freed’ all but refuse to row for Greek marines – at Artemisium.

  Ah. Artemisium. Your turn is coming.

  Our two ships, the grapnels gradually coming off, rowed pitifully. We must have looked like an insect on its back. But we rotated back, so that I was bow on to the enemy and Anchises was stern on. And then we got the last grapnels off and poled off, so that he rowed away headed west, and I rowed away headed east.

  It wasn’t a battle-winning manoeuvre, but it saved us.

  What happened next was from the gods.

  I had little choice but to pass between my opponents. They were side by side, at ramming speed, coming down my throat. If Megakles could manage it, we’d pass between them and rake their oars.

  But my opponents hadn’t been born yesterday. The helmsman on the northernmost of the pair flicked his steering oars to close up with his consort.

  By the whim of the gods, the southernmost ship chose to do the same thing.

  The two ships didn’t slam together. Instead, they brushed one another with a sickening tangle of oars, to the sound of screams as oarsmen died or were broken on their tools.

  It seemed to happen very slowly. The ships didn’t quite collide, but slipped together like two pieces of fabric sewn up by a matron.

  If I’d have any friend close by, or any marines, I’d have tried to sink them.

  But instead I passed inshore of the two ships and my archers shot into them, and then we were past. In the bow, Leukas had readied a dozen jars of oil. He knew what I intended.

  We were at ramming speed, and by our luck – and fast manoeuvring – we’d passed inshore of the two locked vessels and isolated the next three ships to launch all to the north and east, on the other side of the accident. All three began to turn, their oars working both sides, portside oars reversed.

  We ran down on the four triremes still fully on the beach, and as we passed, the pair of us heaved oil jars into the bows of each with a long rag aflame. Two of the four went out. The third caught, spectacularly. Our six archers poured arrows into the stricken ship and then we were turning out to sea.

  We’d run through their whole squadron. The three ships that had turned, end for end, now had to pick up speed.

  The two ships that had collided were picking themselves apart. Even three stades away, I could hear their officers screaming at each other. I watched the fourth ship on the beach get off. A brave man threw my fire jar over the side, burning himself badly in the process.

  But my immediate opponents had troubles of their own. They had all turned to follow me, and Neoptolymos was coming at them from the opposite angle. And behind him, Gaius was up to full speed, his oars chewing the sea to froth.

  Eight to three. If Dionysus had turned back, we’d have been eight to five, and with our superior marines—

  He kept rowing.

  Teukes, his second captain, turned out to sea.

  It was one of those times when it is senseless to curse. The gods had been kind enough. Without the two overeager helmsmen, we’d already have been dead men.

  ‘Leukas! Ready about ship!’ I called.

  Leukas looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. Megakles’ expression was a fair match.

  It was a snap decision. Like my earlier one, to attack the Carthaginian squadron before it formed up. And perhaps both were incorrect. If I’d taken one ship and run, Doola and I might have made it. But I swear we’d have lost the others. And at this point, the only advantage our three ships had was that we caught them between two angles, and forced them to make decisions. If I ran for the open sea, to my mind that left Gaius to die.

  Our port-side oars reversed their benches and pulled, and our ship turned end for end. Five enemy ships came at us. Neoptolymos and Gaius were coming up on them from behind and gaining at every stroke, because our oarsmen were better – and because they were free men pulling for the chance of riches.

  And I’d forgotten Anchises. I left him pulling away to the west with an unwilling crew.

  Most of the Carthaginians didn’t realize that his ship had been taken, and they swept past.

  Anchises stood amidships and offered his oarsmen a share of everything that was taken.

  And turned his bow back east, towards the enemy.

  A second Carthaginian ship caught fire on the beach. Sparks from the first? The hand of the gods?

  Who knows.

  We had turned to fight, and now the odds were seven to four, with two of the enemy ships damaged and somewhat unwilling, and one still barely off the beach.

  Lydia was almost to ramming speed. I ran aft and joined Megakles in the steering oars, and we aimed to go beak to beak with the lead enemy ship – they were an echelonned line, not of intent, I think, but because the better, faster ship pulled away from its allies.

  ‘As soon as we touch, reverse your benches and back water!’ I roared. We couldn’t fight a boarding action. Not a chance. I might hold their rush for a hundred heartbeats, but I couldn’t stop twenty men from boarding me – not on my big sailing decks. Nonetheless, when my orders were given, I sprinted forward, taking a spear off the stand by the mainmast.

  I got to the marine box over the bow and stood there, in all my armour, and savoured the moment. The finest sailors in the world, and we were holding them.

  I raised my sword and roared, ‘Heracles!’ at the onrushing enemy ship.

  I was still shaking my sword when her bow moved a few degrees.

  He declined the engagement and turned north, out to sea.

  He could do that. We weren’t in a thick fight, like Lades. We were in an open bay, with stades between ships. He turned north, and we passed under his stern.

  The other two raced past to the south. Even as they passed, I saw them raising their mainmasts.

  The fourth ship passed close enough that their archers lobbed some shafts at us. My archers returned fire. They had their boatsail mast up and the sail on and drawing. The mainmast was slow going up. One of my archers – a skinny kid I’d purchased in Ostia who swore he could shoot, and damn, he could – put a shaft into a sailor pulling a rope, and the whole mainmast swayed and fell over the side.

  The ship yawed. It didn’t quite capsize, but it shipped water, rocked and Neoptolymos slammed into it, his ram catching the stricken ship broadside on at ramming speed as we shot past.

  That was perhaps the most devastating single arrow I’ve ever seen shot.

  I thumped the boy on the shoulder and gave him his freedom on the spot.

  The two damaged ships were creeping away to the south, along the coast. Four of the merchantmen had gone ashore in a mass. They were beached, and lost to us. Two were under full sail, headed out to sea.

  For a moment, I thought we might snatch the two damaged triremes. But instead of running out to sea, they beached, side by side, under the walls of the town. The city militia were pouring out of the gates, now, a hundred cavalrymen and then a thic
k column of Numidian archers.

  A really great trierarch might have had the lot. Had we had time to plan—

  But it was a great day, and the gods were kind. Equally, we might all have been dead, or taken. It was close.

  Gaius’s marines swept the enemy’s deck and Neoptolymos backed his ram out and the wreck sank.

  And we turned north.

  Dionysus rejoined us in late afternoon, and while I was tempted to berate him, I had seen enough sea fights to know that all I had was a gut feeling. He leaped aboard, alone.

  ‘Well fought,’ he said. He embraced me. It’s hard to be really angry with a man who is calling you a hero and a demigod. ‘You fought like Heracles.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps I should have lingered. But—’ He met my eye. ‘I assumed we were going to grab what we could and run.’

  I nodded.

  ‘I was afraid that if I didn’t attack them, they’d close around us,’ I said.

  He shrugged. ‘You might be right,’ he said. And grinned. ‘Still friends?’

  I’d been cursing his perfidy all afternoon, so naturally I shrugged and said, ‘Of course.’

  He laughed. ‘We did it,’ he said. ‘I propose we head for Syracusa. You wanted to raid Illyria this summer: if we head north to Massalia, that’s the summer over.’ He smiled. ‘And besides, we can’t sell all that tin in Massalia.’

  We landed on Malta’s little island – Gozo, where the witch enticed Odysseus. It has nice harbours and good food and sweet water and no Carthaginians, despite the proximity. We drank deep, slapped each other on the back and inspected our captures.

  We had tin. But only one ship was laden with tin – about sixty ingots, each as heavy as a man could carry, deeply stamped with the Carthaginian inspection mark. It was also full of hides – big, heavy bull’s hides, some of the finest I’d seen.

  But the ship Doola had taken didn’t have a single ingot of tin on board. The central hold was full of Iberian grain, and the bilges, which we missed at first, were full of small ingots of silver. Almost a thousand small ingots of silver.