Poseidon's Spear (Long War 3)

by Christian Cameron

  Finally, the sun peeped over the horizon. We were lying on straw, above the high-water mark, and we’d seen the night through, and slaves were picking up the amphorae and the broken cups. Dano lay by Cimon on a kline of straw – lucky Cimon – flirting with Paramanos, who appeared to know more of Pythagorean philosophy than any of the rest of us – but he’d been raised at Cyrene.

  They were talking about mathematics, and Cimon laughed, and then raised himself on his elbows to speak over his companions. ‘So, Ari, why have you called us all here?’

  Some men laughed, and others hooted.

  But they all fell silent.

  ‘I was hoping we could all spend the summer raiding Carthage,’ I said, to the rising sun. ‘But the summer has slipped away like youth. I have a friend here who is a prince of Illyria. We were slaves together. I thought that if I could raise my friends, we’d have enough of a fleet to sail north of Corcyra and restore him to his hill fort, kill all his enemies and perhaps pick up a few bars of silver into the bargain.’

  Paramanos grinned. ‘There’s not a one of us who couldn’t use a few bars of silver.’

  ‘I heard there was a tin fleet,’ Cimon said.

  Dionysus was drunk. ‘Too damned late, Athenian!’ he shouted. ‘We took it all!’

  I shook my head. ‘We took a third of it. That’s a story for another night, friends. We have ten ships. With ten ships, we could probably conquer any island in the Aegean. With these men? But if you will follow my lead, we will restore Neoptolymos, and perhaps take a few Carthaginians on the way.’

  Cimon nodded. ‘I’m not likely to turn back now: there’s nothing else going on this summer, although you had best pay well, you old rascal – I’ve rowed from Athens to Massalia and back to Croton to find you.’

  I laughed. ‘I have a few coins,’ I admitted.

  ‘I don’t want to linger,’ he said. ‘The Phoenicians are everywhere in the east – there’s no getting a cargo into Aegypt. Men say that the King of Kings and his Phoenicians have made a pact with Carthage. And there is war in Aegypt.’

  I shook my head. ‘I keep hearing that,’ I said. ‘But I see no proof. The Phoenicians are no real friends of the Great King’s.’

  ‘Supposedly there are embassies going both ways, even now,’ said Paramanos. ‘In Cyrene, I heard that your – how should I say it, your friend? Hipponax’s son Archilogos? – is taking a squadron to Carthage. Or perhaps took one, last season.’

  Cimon shook his head. ‘That, at least, is not true. He was in Mytilene a month ago.’ Cimon smiled in the rising sun. ‘I spoke to him. We’re not at war. I’d just heard the message that Ari was alive. I told Archilogos. That was a pleasure.’

  I coughed. ‘But you’ll all come north against Illyria?’

  Paramanos looked around at the Greeks. ‘Why do you think we came here? For a rest?’ He laughed.

  Cimon scrambled to his feet, apologizing to Pythagoras’s daughter. My pais refilled his cup. He poured a long libation of priceless Sybarite wine to the immortal gods, and then raised his cup to the rising sun.

  ‘Phobos, Lord of the Chariot of Fire, and Poseidon, Lord of Horses and swift ships and the Sea, with a thousand beautiful daughters; Athena, matchless in guile, who loves men best when they are most daring; Aphrodite of the high-arched feet, and all the other immortals! Hear us! We thank you for this night of mirth and friendship. And we ask your blessing!’

  We all cheered.

  Great days. And after that night, I had a hangover of Homeric proportions.

  Worth it.

  We spent another day provisioning our round ships and making our plans. By then, local rulers were sending embassies to the ‘men of Marathon’. A rumour went out that Dano had hired us to avenge her father on the Sybarites.

  We sharpened our weapons, and drilled.

  We had a farewell feast with the Pythagoreans. Vegetables, it turns out, are perfectly palatable.

  I saw Lydia, at a distance. It is odd how you know a person by their shape and movement, when you couldn’t possibly see their face. I knew her, and I knew the man with his arm around her.

  There is no happiness of mortal men that cannot be marred in an instant.

  Part IV

  Illyria

  Having passed by the Island of Thrinacia, where are the kine of the Sun, they came to Corcyra, the island of the Phaeacians, of which Alcinous was king. But when the Colchians could not find the ship, some of them settled at the Ceraunian mountains, and some journeyed to Illyria and colonized the Apsyrtides Islands. But some came to the Phaeacians, and finding the Argo there, they demanded of Alcinous that he should give up Medea. He answered, that if she already knew Jason, he would give her to him, but that if she were still a maid he would send her away to her father. However, Arete, wife of Alcinous, anticipated matters by marrying Medea to Jason; hence the Colchians settled down among the Phaeacians and the Argonauts put to sea with Medea.

  Apollodorus, Library I.9

  21

  And then we sailed for Illyria.

  I won’t say that nothing happened as we cruised up the west coast of Magna Greca. I’ll just say that, bar one incident, I don’t remember anything. There was a lot of fog – I remember that! And I remember that on our second morning, as we rowed north through the fog, Dionysus’ ship fell afoul of Cimon’s, with much cursing and shouting. Since they were reckoned two of the finest trierarchs on the seas, the rest of us revelled in their distress. Like men do.

  The only incident I remember well arose out of the fog. I’m going to guess it was the third or fourth day, and again, we launched off a small and rocky cove, just big enough for our ships, with bellies full of lobster and our ships laden only with fresh water. But the fog was everywhere – some trick of the gods – and every morning, to a depth I hadn’t ever seen before. It took all morning to burn off, and for long hours the sun was a golden orb in the haze.

  At any rate, that morning, as we rowed north – again, rowing because there was no wind at all – we were trying to practise signalling. Dionysus was making himself increasingly unpopular with the other captains by insisting on drill and signalling when we knew we were after no prey loftier then some Illyrian pirates in pentekonters. No one likes to work that hard. Had we been rowing north to fight the Persians at Lade, we might have felt differently – although, come to think of it, when we rowed to Lade, we all hated Dionysus then, too.

  The sun climbed above us in the haze, just visible – one of the few times in your life you can look directly at him in all his glory. And as with the other days, just past midday the fog suddenly burned off, as fast as a bird crossing the sky, so that in one moment it was all we could do to see the ships ahead and behind us in line, and then we could see three ships ahead, and then I could see Dionysus up at the head of the line, and then—

  And then we could see the merchant trireme, six stades away, and just as surprised to see us as we were to see him.

  Every ship, even Dionysus, turned out of the line as fast as their oarsmen could respond to volleys of orders, and went from a slow cruise to ramming speed. The triemiolas raised sail, as the fresh wind was suddenly coming off the land.

  We could all see it was a Phoenician. Or perhaps a Carthaginian.

  And he could see us, too.

  His oarsmen beat the water into a froth, like a good Athenian matron making soup the evening before a feast day, and he struggled to get his mainsail up.

  It was a race, of sorts. But a horribly unequal one, between ten ships in high training with full crews and marines and sailors and clean hulls, against a lone merchant with fifty oarsmen and old sails.

  He could sail much closer to the wind then we could, of course. So as soon as he had his mainmast rigged, he lay over and ran north, and we all lost the wind and had to row.

  Lydia was fast, but Paramanos’s new Black Raven was like a racing shell with a ram, and Cimon’s Ajax was as fast as Paramanos. Dionysus’ Agamemnon was as fast as either.


  Oh, how we exhausted ourselves! We raced along, our oars all but touching the nearest ship. A missed stroke might have been disaster.

  But we were heroes, of course. We didn’t miss any strokes.

  We caught the merchant at mid-afternoon, about the hour a gentleman rises from his nap and goes to the agora – not in Plataea, ladies. Men work all day in Plataea. But in Athens.

  We caught him, and he surrendered without a fight. Who would even try to fight, with ten sharks all around him?

  Cimon’s hull was the first to come aboard his, and Dionysus was second. We carried the captured ship to the next beach and pulled her up the sand and gravel. The oarsmen were cleared off and the deck crew, the miserable owner and the trierarch all cowered together.

  She had a cargo of cheap Carthaginian pottery, some Greek wine with Ionian labels that must, itself, have come off a capture and copper with the Cypriote mark. The copper was valuable. The wine we broached on the spot for our oarsmen.

  Cimon and Dionysus began to argue over the spoils. Paramanos wandered over to where I stood, seeing to it that Lydia was carried well up the beach and rolled over to dry her hull. He nodded to me.

  ‘I thought this was your little expedition,’ he said.

  I shrugged.

  ‘Cimon and Dionysus are going to gut each other over a handful of copper,’ he said. ‘Not because it’s valuable, but because they are important men and each has to be first.’

  I sighed. The party was over.

  Sharing spoils: always the moment when arête goes by the board and life among pirates becomes difficult.

  I walked across the sand, cursing how it burned the sides of my feet. It was deep and soft. Try walking with determined gravity and manly elegance across deep sand.

  They weren’t quite spitting like Lesbian fishwives. Not quite. But close.

  ‘Friends,’ I said. ‘This is unseemly.’

  That may not seem like a very telling remark to a pair of bloody-handed pirates, but the two of them immediately pivoted on their heels to face me. ‘Unseemly?’ Dionysus said. ‘I don’t remember asking your opinion.’

  ‘As long as you are in my squadron, you can listen to any opinion I choose to deliver,’ I said.

  Dionysus’ mouth opened and closed.

  Cimon laughed, slapped my shoulder and nodded. ‘You’re right, Ari! My apologies. You divide the spoils.’

  I snapped my fingers and there was my pais with a stool.

  As I sat, Dionysus stood, arms akimbo. He glared at me for a long fifty heartbeats or so.

  ‘I’m not in your squadron, pup,’ he growled. ‘You are in mine.’

  I shrugged and sat. ‘No, my friend. I invited you to sail with me. You joined me.’

  ‘I have drilled and drilled this squadron—’

  ‘I appreciate that. But that’s not command. Please; you understand command. You commanded at Lade. I asked all my friends on this expedition. It is – pardon me – mine. If anyone could dispute this, it would be Neoptolymos.’

  The Illyrian had come up, with all the other captains and a number of other leaders: the commander of the mercenaries from Syracusa, a Spartan called Brasidas; Doola and Sittonax, Vasileos and his nephew; Aeschylus. They gathered around my stool like any Greek assembly – all talking, all with an opinion to offer.

  Neoptolymos shook his head.

  Paramanos, who had never thought very highly of Dionysus, nodded. ‘You are in command, Arimnestos. Not this wine bag.’

  I shook my head. ‘No insults. Dionysus, I will divide the spoils between the ships that performed the capture.’

  I think, just for a moment, that he was so angry he considered leaving us. This is a thing I have seen men do. Two hours before, if asked, I think he would quite happily have allowed that I was the trierarch, in as much as anyone was. But having once got his back up—

  Or perhaps it had been an error to allow him to drill the squadron. But he was, quite possibly, the greatest trierarch of our time – the finest innovator, the best tactician. It was from him that I learned how to perform the diekplous and the wheel, perhaps two of our most important tactics.

  At any rate, he took a breath – I think to denounce me. And Geaeta did a handstand – something you have to see to believe, done in a chiton – and came to rest by me. She smiled at Dionysus. ‘You are eldest,’ she said. ‘And men talk of you as one of the noblest men of your generation.’ She smiled at him, as if the two of them were the only two on the beach.

  Sometimes a woman can say something that would be a matter for swords between men.

  His face was almost purple, but she went on. ‘Please, let us not mar this day and this week.’ She put a hand on his arm – she, who he had called a whore a dozen times.

  He bent slightly at the waist, looked at the sand for a moment, cocked his head at me and smiled ruefully.

  ‘It is hard to take orders from a younger man,’ he said.

  I nodded.

  ‘When you are my age, see how you like it.’ He looked as if he was going to say more, but he swallowed it. ‘Never mind. Cimon, my apologies.’

  ‘And mine to you, sir. I spoke in heat.’ The two clasped arms like men in the gymnasium.

  I looked at the stack of copper ingots. It was worth a small fortune – to one man. It was, to be frank, worthless to two hundred oarsmen and marines.

  I looked at the two of them. ‘Gentlemen,’ I said, ‘this is a small amount of booty. I propose that, rather than dividing it, we have a foot race, and the fastest man takes all the copper. And we dedicate the game to Olympian Zeus, pour the wine down our throats and offer some of the sheep I see on that hill as sacrifices.’

  Cimon laughed.

  Dionysus laughed.

  A seventeen-year-old oarsman from Etrusca won the foot race. We crowned him in olive and his mates helped him carry his copper onto Gaius’s ship. Gaius put his olive wreath on his mast for luck.

  That’s the incident that I remember.

  Oh, I ran. Of course I ran. I lost in the first heat – Aristides the Younger flew past me from the start. I was placed fifth among eight men.

  I felt old. But men said I had made a fine decision, as wise as Odysseus.

  As the sun set on our sacrifices, and their smoke climbed to heaven – Cimon was a priest of Zeus, of course, like all the men of his clan – Dionysus put his arm around me. ‘Let’s sacrifice the prisoners,’ he said.

  Men began to call for it. Men who surprised me. Young Aristides, for example, and many of the other unblooded young. Paramanos smiled and looked away. Doola shook his head vehemently. Sittonax sidled closer to me.

  ‘I had no idea,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen a Greek sacrifice a man.’

  ‘And you won’t here,’ I said. ‘By Zeus, are we as bad as barbarians?’ I seldom swear by Zeus. But some things—

  I walked across the sand, as drunk as a sailor, and stumbled to the prisoners with a hundred oarsmen and officers behind me. Most of them knelt in the sand. The Carthaginian helmsman grabbed Paramanos’s knees and began to beg for his life in Phoenician.

  The trierarch eyed me steadily. He didn’t kneel.

  ‘You are a free man,’ I said. ‘Go – walk away.’

  He didn’t say a word. He caught the eyes of his mates and picked up a bundle at his feet. Paramanos, somewhat surreptitiously, handed the helmsman a sword.

  The Carthaginians were off up the beach before most of my audience knew I’d let them go.

  ‘You really are too soft for this,’ Dionysus said, wine-soaked breath in my face.

  I shrugged. ‘Perhaps,’ I said.

  Like I said, that’s the only incident that sticks in my head.

  Word must have been out that there was a squadron at sea: the Adriatic was as empty as a mud puddle after rain. The morning after we released the Carthaginians, the wind came up – a favourable wind – and we sailed across the Adriatic. Our swords were sharp, and we were as ready as men can be.

  We landed so
uth of Dyrachos an hour before nightfall on a late summer evening: the sun took his time going down to the west, over the mountains, and we were ashore and camped before the night was dark. Insects chirped and it sounded like Greece. It smelled like Greece.

  We built no fires, but rolled in our cloaks and slept on the sand, and in the morning we were up long before the sun.

  ‘Now I need a horse,’ Neoptolymos said. He and the Spartan, Brasidas, stood together, both in full armour.

  ‘Because you don’t want to walk?’ I asked.

  ‘I intend to ride around and raise my friends and relatives,’ he said. ‘Dyrachos is sixty stades – that way.’

  I had slightly different notions of how to proceed, based on years of experience with Miltiades. I sent all my archers inland under Ka, and before I was done with my stale bread and sour wine, Ka was back, all but bouncing on the balls of his feet like an eager hound with a fine bay led by the halter.

  He had four prisoners and a dozen horses. Ka was from the far south of Aegypt – Nubia, and not Numidia, South even of the Kingdom of Adula, of which, if you stay with me long enough, you’ll hear more. To be honest it was years before I truly understood the difference. But both peoples love horses, ride superbly and view horse-thieving as a natural part of life.

  We started our march for Dyrachos before the sun cleared the distant coast of Italy, and Ka and his men were all mounted, with Seckla laughing along with them. Seen together, Numidians and Nubians are as different as Keltoi and Hellenes, and yet they rode like Scythians, knees high, hips moving with the gait of the animal, and with their dark skin they looked like centaurs on their stolen bays.

  I kept Neoptolymos from riding inland. I feared that he would be taken or killed, and that he would give himself away. He accepted my ‘guidance’ with an ill grace, and the command party was a surly group as we trudged inland over the first low ridge. The khora was incredibly prosperous – fields of oats and barley stretching away in a beautiful patchwork. Harvest wasn’t far off.

  Once we were clear of the coastal scrub, we had excellent sight lines – which, of course, meant we could be easily observed. I sent Ka and his scouts well ahead, blessing the gods I had made such a provident purchase. The Nubians knew their business: they rode south and east to the horizon, collecting every horse on that flat plain and terrifying the inhabitants.