We lay back on our couches and laughed, because that would all happen next summer. There was only six weeks left in the sailing season.
Miltiades toasted me in good Chian wine. 'One stroke,' he said, 'and I am once again master in my own house. You are dear to me, Plataean.'
I frowned. 'Next summer, Darius will come with a vast army.'
Miltiades would not be sober. 'For all your heroism,' he said, 'you have a great deal to learn about fighting the Medes.' He looked at Cimon.
Cimon laughed and spoke up. 'Other provinces will revolt this winter,' he said.
Miltiades nodded. 'You think we hit Naucratis for pure profit?' he asked me. I could see Paramanos grinning. I had thought we went there for pure profit.
'Yes,' I said.
Miltiades nodded. 'Not to be spurned, profits. But when we took their ships, we showed the Greek merchants and the Aegyptian priests that their Persian overlords couldn't defend them. And when it appears that we are winning, they will evict their garrisons as they did in my father's time, and Darius will have to bend all his will to Aegypt. And then we will have lovely times!' He laughed. The whole Greek world was speaking of our coup on the beach south of Kallipolis, and Miltiades' name was on every man's lips in Athens, and all was right in the world.
It was a good dream, but we had underestimated Darius, and we had forgotten those twenty ships that were on their way to reinforce Ba'ales.
21
That night, I asked Miltiades for permission to go home once the sailing season ended. Miltiades heard me out and nodded. He was a good overlord, and he had a reputation to protect. Besides, I had just put new laurels on his brow.
'Go with Hermes, lad. In fact, I'll see to it that Herk or Paramanos runs you home. Take a couple of men – you'll want to kill the bastard and not take any crap from neighbours.' He nodded. 'Anything you need, you ask. It's as much my fault as anyone's. I knew something was wrong – I didn't give it enough thought. When your father died, I mean.'
He shrugged. I knew what he meant – when the Plataeans helped Athens defeat the Eretrians, Miltiades was done with that part of his busy plotting, and he let his tools drop. That was the sort of man he was. But he was also enough of a gentleman to regret that he had allowed the tools to become damaged when he dropped them.
I spent the next few weeks making arrangements for my absence. I didn't tell Miltiades, but I wasn't sure that I would return.
I gave Herakleides one command and Stephanos the other.
Herakleides and his brothers were trusted men by then, and they showed no signs of running back to Aeolis. Both Nestor and Orestes were promising helmsmen, and they had the birth and military training to carry rank.
Stephanos did not. He wasn't an aristocrat, and he didn't have all the command skills that I had learned – nor the enormous, heroic and largely unearned reputation that I had acquired, which grew with every day and vastly exceeded the reality of my accomplishments, even though I was in love with it.
Reputation alone is enough to carry most men – but Stephanos was a fine seaman and a careful, considerate officer. He'd led the marines for a year and they worshipped him. I thought that he was ready.
Idomeneus informed me that he was coming with me. So was Hermogenes. 'You think I came all the way out here just to grab a pot of Persian silver?' Hermogenes asked. 'Pater sent me to find you so that you could restore order. Simonalkes is a bad farmer and a fool. But when he's dead, it will take time to rebuild.'
I found it comic that Hermogenes had spent three years looking for me so that he could get the farm in order.
Paramanos offered to take me home, all the way to Corinth if I wanted, but I had other plans. Plans I'd worked at for a long time.
Miltiades supported me as I moved captains. So Paramanos moved from Briseis to the newly rebuilt Ember, the ship we'd taken, still smoking from our attempt to burn her, during the boat raid. The smaller ship we'd taken was Raven's Wing, and Stephanos had her, and Herakleides took command of Briseis. I had Briseis stowed for a long voyage, and I gave him his own two brothers as officers – Nestor as the oar master and Orestes as the captain of marines. I spent money like water – I had plenty. And the rowers in that ship still owed me three months of service before wages were due.
I intended to sail that ship into Aristagoras's town at Myrcinus, in Thrace, and take Briseis – or give her the ship and go horseback, overland. It was a foolish plan, a boy's plan, but without it, the next weeks would have been worse. It is a fine example of fate, and how the gods work. Had I left all to chance, I would have died, and many others with me. But I planned carefully. My plans all failed, of course – but among the shards of my broken plans lay the makings of an escape.
The first rain of autumn came and went, and my intentions were set. I sent Briseis a message via the Thracian king, asking her to be ready. Miltiades cautioned me again – directly – against killing Aristagoras. I don't remember what I told him. Perhaps I lied outright. I thought myself tremendously clever. So did Miltiades. The hubris flowed thick and fast, that autumn.
The grain was sheaved in the fields along the Bosporus. The peasants had their harvest festivals, and the sun shone in an autumn that seemed more like summer – when Hymaees descended on the Troad with thirty ships and a thousand marines. The first we knew of his arrival was that our southernmost town was burned and all the inhabitants sold into slavery, and the refugees poured up the one bad road with tales of war and slaughter.
The next day we heard that Hymaees himself was in Caria with twenty thousand men, and the Carians were unable to make a stand. Just like that, the northern arm of the revolt was going down.
The Carians didn't give in without a battle, but we were too busy to help them. Miltiades ordered all the ships manned. We worked night and day to refurbish the two triremes taken in the night attack and with them we had ten hulls. On the first day of the new month, Miltiades led us to sea, down the Bosporus past the still smoking ruins of our town. He had no choice – if we didn't fight, Hymaees would plug the Bosporus like a cork in a bottle and take us, one town at a time. And no one would come to our aid. That's the price of being a pirate.
We sailed down the Bosporus in early morning, and the Phoenicians got their hulls in the water. Then they did the oddest thing. They formed a defensive circle. They outnumbered us, but they pulled all their sterns together, pulled in their oars like a seabird tucking in its wings, and waited for us.
I had never seen anything like it, but Miltiades had. He spat in the sea and leaped from his ship on to my Storm Cutter. 'Bastards,' he said. 'All they have to do is not lose.' He shook his head.
I nodded. 'Say the word, lord – say the word and I'll go at them.'
Miltiades slapped my armoured shoulder. 'I'll miss you when you leave me, Arimnestos. But there's no point.'
He went back to his own ship, and we spent a fruitless day circling them. Twice, Paramanos tried to lure one of them into an attack by passing so close that his oar tips almost brushed their beaks, but they weren't coming out.
We camped close to them, just four stades up the coast, and the next morning we went for them in the dawn by ship, but they were awake and ready. We threw javelins and they shot bows and I went ashore in the surf and cleared a space on the beach, killing two men in the surf, but Miltiades ordered me back to my boat. I took a pair of prisoners – Phoenicians, of course – and I gave them to Paramanos.
I still think Miltiades was wrong. We had the moral advantage – those Syrians were afraid of us. If we'd landed-
But he was the warlord and he saw it differently.
That night Paramanos called us all together. 'There are ships missing,' he said. 'The two boys that Arimnestos captured say that eight ships went north last week.'
Miltiades was incredulous. 'Eight more ships?' he asked.
'Where bound?' I asked.
Paramanos looked at me. 'Myrcinus, in Thrace,' he said. 'They went to get Aristagoras.'
&nbs
p; I walked away, calling for my officers.
Miltiades chased me down. 'You are not going,' he said.
I ignored him.
'This is my fleet,' he said.
'I own two ships,' I said, 'perhaps three. I owe you nothing, lord. I was leaving anyway. And I am going to Myrcinus.'
He seemed to swell, and in the torchlight, his hair caught fire. He was like a titan come to life – larger than a mere man. 'I give the orders here,' he said.
'Not to me,' I said. 'I have your word.'
That took him aback, and he changed tack. 'There's nothing you can do, lad!' he said, his voice suddenly pleading. He was a good rhetorician. 'The town will already be on fire.'
'You don't know that. It rained two days last week. If the storm caught them on the coast, they would have lost days.'
'Give it up!' he said.
I walked away. My men – my trusted men, Lekthes and Idomeneus and Stephanos, Herakleides and Nestor and Orestes, and Hermogenes – got the rowers together and started loading Storm Cutter and Briseis and Raven's Wing.
But Heraklides, always the voice of reason, came up to me out of the dark and wouldn't let me act in anger. 'Miltiades has been a good lord to you, and you owe him better than this,' he said. And he was right, although at the time I growled at him.
Herk fed me a cup of wine, his arm around my shoulders. My men were standing around, waiting for my word, and there was some pushing and shoving at the edges between them and Miltiades' men.
'This won't end well,' Herk insisted. 'Listen to me, boy. I knew you when you were a new free man. A pais. You're a big man now, a captain, lord of five hundred rowers and marines. Every merchant in the Aegean pisses himself when your name is said aloud – but you are nothing without a base and a lord. And if we squabble with Miltiades, who will fight the Medes?'
'I am not nothing,' I said. But I knew that he was right. I couldn't keep a crew together by myself – unless I wanted to engage in pure piracy, bloody murder for profit. And I did not. Heraclitus was too strong in me, even then. In fact, what I liked least about Miltiades was his ceaseless search for profit.
I remember sitting there, on a damp rock just above the tide line, my feet in the sea-wrack, when I heard a raven – not a gull, but a raven, cawing in the dark, like Lord Apollo's voice speaking. I held up a hand to silence Herk and I listened, and then I got to my feet and walked off down the beach to where Paramanos and Miltiades were arguing. Herk followed at my heels, clearly afraid I was about to open the breach – but I was not. The god had given me the answer, and I thrust between Paramanos and Miltiades and shouted for them to listen. Their faces were backlit by the big fires we had burning at the sentry posts – we didn't want the Syrians to surprise us, either.
'We should all go,' I said.
That silenced them.
I almost remember what I said. I felt as if Lord Apollo stood at my side, whispering fine words, good arguments, into my ear. Or perhaps Heraclitus, his servant.
'Listen, lord. You think I am blinded by love – perhaps I am. But if the Mede is foolish enough to send eight ships away, we can catch them and destroy them. And then the balance is ours. It might make him hesitate. It will increase our power over the Phoenicians.' I paused. 'If we take those ships-'
Honeyed words, Homer calls them. No sooner were they out of my mouth than Paramanos was agreeing. Sometimes, there is a right answer – an answer that suits every man. It took us less time than it takes to heat a beaker of wine to convince our lord that we had a winning strategy, and then he grinned, drank wine and clasped my hand, and we were friends again, instead of rival pirates.
We left in complete darkness. That was the campaign where I learned the value of having all my men in high training – the value of making my rowers feel as elite as the hoplites felt. We left that beach like champions. We left our fires burning to deceive the enemy and we raced north under oars, and every man felt as if he was swept along on Nike's wings. We came on Myrcinus as the sun set on the third day. The lower town was afire and the Syrian ships were drawn up on the rocky beach south of the town.
Miltiades summoned me aboard his ship, and I leaped from my helmsman's rail to Paramanos's and then on to the Ajax, the black-hulled Athenian trireme that was Miltiades' pride. Cimon and Herk were already there. We never slowed – we were under sail, the wind under our sterns, and our sails must have looked like flowers of fire in the ruddy light.
Miltiades' face was lit as if from within. He was a foot taller than a mortal man, his hair glowed in the sunset as if he was an immortal and his words flowed thick and fast.
'Beach your ships as you find room,' he said. 'Get ashore, get their ships and sweep the beach clean. Paramanos, you and Arimnestos land your full compliment, every man on the beach. Form tight and get between us and the town.' He grinned. 'Once we own those hulls, this campaign is over. Their commander is a fool.'
'Or it is a trap,' his younger son said. He shrugged.
Cimon, the older son, shook his head. 'Don't be a stubborn ass, little brother. There's no trap because they shouldn't know we could even be here!'
Miltiades nodded his approval of his older son's thinking. 'Even if it is a trap,' he said, 'there's not much they can do to us if we keep our ships manned and only land our marines. You two can cover us on the beach – if we have to run, your crews are fast.' He laughed. 'Oh, I can feel the power of the gods, companions! We are about to burn the Great King's beard!'
We were five stades off the beach when I leaped back to Paramanos's ship. The Medes and the Syrians could see us coming, and men were running down from the burning town to form on the beach. Most of them were Greeks – I could see from their arms. In the centre was a knot of Persians, but their line wasn't long enough to cover the whole length of the beach, even two deep.
But there were other men – Thracians. Some of them came down from the town in clumps, like thick honey dripping from the comb. Others hung back.
The enemy commander had hired Thracians. It probably wasn't hard, because from all we heard, the locals detested Aristagoras as much as we did. I had never faced them, but I heard that they were titans, big, tough men with no fear of death. I always doubted such tales, but the men I could see in the red light of sunset had tattoos like black slashes on their faces and around their arms, and they held heavy swords and long spears.
'I'm going for the town as soon as we break their line,' I said to Paramanos. 'I know that you don't have to follow me.' I looked at him.
He shrugged. 'No,' he said. 'I don't.' He pointed at the Thracians – there were more of them every heartbeat. 'You think we can break that?'
We were three stades out from the beach. I got up on the rail where it rose to protect the helmsman and balanced there, waiting for the rise of the wave. 'Watch me,' I boasted, and jumped.
I landed on my own deck. 'Bow first!' I said. 'Marines aft! Empty the first ten benches forward and send all those men aft!' I waved at my deck master. 'Sails down! Then masts!'
The other ships were starting to turn, because they intended to beach stern first – a necessary precaution to prevent their ram-bows from digging so deep into the sand and gravel that the ship was damaged – or worse, could never be brought off.
I caught a stay and swung up on the rail. 'Stephanos!' I called. He was behind me in line, in the smaller Raven's Wing. I had to wait while he came forward – precious time, while my bow rowers ran back, dragging their cushions, unsure what they were supposed to do – while the deck crew swarmed over the masts, caught in the midst of arming, and the marines clustered by the helmsman's bench. Hermogenes was in full armour, and Idomeneus looked like a hero in a solid bronze thorax with silver work and a fine helmet with a towering crest shaped like a heron.
'My lord?' Stephanos called back.
'Into the port!' I said. 'Land your full crew and take the Thracians from behind! See?'
Indeed, the little port itself was covered by a mole. There were two ships moored
to the mole, and no defenders – because the lower town had been lost, so there was no longer any point in holding the harbour. Before the lower walls fell, there had no doubt been a garrison on the mole. I had seen this and Miltiades had not. If Raven's Wing could get into the harbour, her marines would be behind the enemy line.
Stephanos turned away, already calling orders, and his ship turned, went to ramming speed and sprinted for the mole.
'On me!' I shouted, and ran forward as far as the amidships command station at the foot of the mast. 'Get that mast down!' I called to the deck crew – who looked like hoplites. Pirates are always better-armed than other men, with the pick of many dead men's gear to plunder, and I dare say that my sailors had better armour than the front rank of many a city.
The deck crew let the mast down on to the central gangplank, with all the marines and thirty rowers to speed things along.
We passed the other ships, who were all still turning or backing ashore. The smaller Ember was already halfway around.
I had just time to line up the marines and sailors and rowers behind me. They filled the central catwalk all the way aft to the helmsman, and filled the small deck around him, pushing the stern down in the water and raising the bronze-tipped bow. The weight of the mast and the sail helped, too. I pushed the men farther back, and again, pushing against them with my shield to pack them tight in the stern.
'When we beach,' I roared, 'every man follow me! We will form under the bow and cut our way up the beach! Our war cry is "Heracles!"' I looked aft and raised my spear, and my voice filled my chest like the sound of a god. 'Are you ready?' I shouted, and the oar master shouted 'Oars in! Brace!' and we struck.
Our bow went right up the beach. I was too far aft to see it, but I'm told that our ram actually broke their line, scattering men to the right and left.
'Follow me!' I called and raced forward between the oar benches, along the catwalk, over the bow, and I jumped without breaking stride into a clump of Ionian Greeks still shocked by the arrival of the ship.
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