Salamis

by Christian Cameron

  My heart beat very fast. I shouted.

  It was sheer exuberance. They were scattered over the whole bay east of our beaches and their formation was terrible. The night, the breeze and the fog and their own ambition had not been kind. Or rather, the gods had been kind to us.

  Only treason, the treason of Lade and every other great battle against the Persians, only treason or lack of will would save them.

  Oh, Poseidon, my heart beat like a hammer, and I was under no threat. The opportunity was there, if only we could grasp it.

  Ameinias of Pallene’s ship was first to strike an enemy. I was very close, maybe a hundred paces away. His helmsman yawed and then turned suddenly back into line, as fast as the stoop of an eagle. He caught the Phoenician a third of the way down the side. The enemy ship had its oars in and the angle was too shallow for Ameinias’s beak to bite home, but he jarred the enemy ship, ripped a strip along the side, and grappled.

  The Phoenician behind him – second in the column – came forward full speed. Unlike at Artemisium, their files were well closed up, close enough to support each other, but also close enough to be enveloped. The second Phoenician drove for the bow of Ameinias’s ship Parthenos, turning slightly to the east to get a better angle.

  I trusted everything to Harpagos. There was a Phoenician bearing down on me for a bow-to-bow attack from their next column, so I ran back along the catwalk over the forward oars, and back along the half-deck. I was not going to be in time, and running has not been the best of my talents since the wound, so I merely pointed at the other Phoenician, the one running at Ameinias’s flank.

  Seckla bet with me, on Harpagos saving us, and Lydia turned a few degrees, perhaps an eighth of a circle, to point at the place where Seckla guessed that the Phoenician would be, in the time it would take a good man to run the stadion.

  I can only describe this in terms of bronzeworking. When you make greaves, with all the intricate curves of the human leg, you can only guess how to hit the metal so that it curves in two ways. You cannot know. Seckla had to aim where the Phoenician might be, while his flanker came for us, and we trusted Harpagos to take him.

  To my port side aft, I heard Harpagos roar an order.

  His crew pulled harder.

  He was at ramming speed, and he got them to row faster.

  It is hard to describe what happened without some almonds and a big table. But let me try.

  We were turning to our starboard side – not far, but enough to become the hypotenuse of a triangle. The Phoenician opposite us kept coming, but had to turn off his intended line, too.

  Harpagos, who had been so close behind us that we might have leapt from ship to ship, began to pass us.

  Onisandros, at my urging, let the men rest for three strokes. Let me add that only the finest oarsmen can do this. Most ships can only go from a crawl to cruising speed, and from cruising speed to ramming speed, with time for the stroke to change. But a really good ship with rowers and officers long together can stop and start rowing at almost any speed. Remember, friends, that any hesitation by an oarsman can mean death: if he catches a crab at ramming speed, he’s going to get his oar shaft in his teeth at least, and he may do the same to other men.

  We drifted at top speed for the time it would take a man to leave his house and call to his wife.

  Harpagos went straight at the Phoenician who came straight for us.

  ‘Now!’ I called.

  Onisandros began to pound his spear on the deck.

  We shot forward.

  ‘We have to bring in the port-side oars,’ Onisandros shouted.

  ‘No! Everything you have!’ I roared.

  Off to starboard, Ameinias’s marines were storming along the narrow catwalk above the Phoenician’s rowers.

  The Phoenician headed for his flank was so close …

  We slammed into his cathead, and before you could count to five, Harpagos’s beak went into the second about fifty paces before his beak slammed into me. Thus, the margin between victory and defeat.

  Ameinias’s oarsmen were cheering us. Our Phoenician broke in two as our oars came in – we hit him so hard that our ram scraped paint off Parthenos.

  On my port bow, Harpagos’s marines, all men I knew, were going into the third Phoenician. I had no idea how the rest of the battle was going, but within a hundred paces of me we were winning.

  Their third ships were coming up, but so were ours, and Cimon led his ships in from the west. The gods – and good fortune, and good planning, and strong rowing, had put us just off their western flank, and now, like sharks closing for the kill, Cimon’s veterans came into the flank of the oncoming Phoenician charge and scattered them. They had to turn to meet his attacks, and then we were free. Seckla, without orders from me, turned us back west, where a dozen Phoenicians were going head-to-head with Cimon’s ships – and exposing their flanks to us.

  It was glorious.

  We sank a second ship, catching him flat-footed, trying to face in two directions at once.

  We ran down the side of a third, coming up from behind his stern – I can’t remember how we lay, or how we got there – it was too fast. The marines leapt before the ships touched, so eager they were, and I followed them, the last man aboard, which felt odd. But I leapt aboard amidships, my old trick, right in among their rowers. I got a foot on each of the beams nearest me and killed the two oarsmen closest and then stabbed up at the catwalk, putting my spear into the legs and feet of the Phoenician marines. I watched Hector go forward like a man ploughing a field, and his spear was like one of the thunderbolts of the Lord of Olympus. He was not a big man like Hipponax, but lithe and so quick that each step forward seemed to baffle his opponents, and he gathered himself so that he seemed to sway side to side like a maiden walking in the marketplace, except that each sway was a deception, and his spear always struck home – left foot forward, right foot forward, a brilliant series of strokes, each delivered with the fastidious precision of a cat and the power of Ares come to earth.

  I was so proud.

  Behind him came Hipponax, who threw his spear to give Hector room to breathe and got another handed over his shoulder from Brasidas, who was third.

  With such marines as these, what need of me?

  I contented myself with tripping the men behind the men my Hector was killing, and in a moment – a moment of pure glory – the survivors broke and fled for the false safety of the stern, where they threw down their weapons and begged mercy.

  They were lucky they were facing me and Brasidas and men we had trained. There was not much mercy for the Great King’s looters and rapists that day, but we gave it, perhaps because our hearts were high and perhaps because we’d stormed their ship without a man lost or a single wound.

  I gave the ship to Hector to get it to the Greek beaches, and gave him two sailors to help him. We disarmed the marines and put them to the row benches, and then we were cutting our grapple-ropes and poling off.

  Brasidas was the last man off the enemy vessel. He told them in good Persian that if they rose against Hector, we would capture them again and kill every man aboard, with no exceptions.

  But that had all taken time. A sea fight, as I have said too often, is an odd corruption of the way a man perceives time. Nothing seems to happen, and everything is, as it were, trapped in honey and sluggishly crawling, and then everything seems to accelerate, the way a horse goes from a walk to a trot, and a trot to a canter, and then suddenly to a gallop, faster and faster. But then it can slow again, more than a land fight.

  I wasn’t even winded, and only the very tip of my spear was red. My armour had not even begun to seem heavy. I went up my mainmast. It was left standing on a trihemiolia, as I have said before, and we had built a little platform amidships, by the mast – only two steps up, like a ladder, but it could give an officer a greater view. I went up it, and then up the p
egs we’d set into the mast.

  The sun had burned away the last of the fog while we stormed our victim, and now every part of the battle was laid bare to me.

  To the west of Lydia, who, by the fortune of the last fight, was pointed south and east, were the little islets off the coast of Attica and the slopes of Mount Aigeleos. Locals call them the Pharmacussae and no, I don’t know why. I could have struck the nearer with a spear if I’d thrown well. Our original beach was only three stades away, almost due south. We had, I believe, travelled almost six stades west and then come as far back east in our sweep and our first three fights. At least, I think that’s what happened.

  From my ship, which, together with Cimon’s a few oar lengths to the south, was the westernmost of the entire fleet, the straits of Salamis wound away like the point of an arrow towards the Saronic Gulf to the east, and every cup of salt water seemed to have a ship in it. In that hour a man might have walked dry-shod from Salamis to Piraeus on the decks of triremes, there were so many and they were packed so close. The thickest press was away east, near the tip of the Cynosura Peninsula where we had had our meeting just a few hours before. The most open water was around us – in truth, we’d crushed the westernmost Phoenicians and their supports had already fled. A handful of combats continued: just to the north of me, Harpagos’s marines were clearing a Phoenician ship from the stern while Moire’s marines boarded them from the bow.

  Indeed, we were victorious. The western thrust of the Persians was not just broken, but wrecked. But we all knew we had the elite of our fleet. And to the east, all was not well. Or rather, numbers had to tell. The Greek fleet, including every capture and every Ionian who changed sides – and many did in those last days – was still fewer than four hundred vessels, and even that ‘few’ was a huge number and a mighty fleet. But the Great King could muster, by the account of my friends Cyrus and Darius, both of whom had reason to know, at least six hundred and eighty vessels and now, as the sun rose and the fog burned off, any errors they had made in disposition were revealed, but so was the might of their armada and the presence of the Great King himself. At the moment I climbed my mast he was visible, perhaps three hundred paces from me, a little to the east, sitting on a great golden throne under a canopy of Tyrian purple red that itself was worth the price of a ship, I suspect.

  I would like to say that I called out to him, shook my fist, but in truth I could only see the throne, and anyway, I had more important concerns.

  To the east, as close as the Great King’s throne, was Xanthippus. He had a magnificent ship, touched up with gilt, and easily picked out among his foes. He was already grappled to a heavy Phoenician and the ships that had broken away from us were now making a counter-attack, supported by some Ionians. I took this in faster than I can tell it.

  Nearer the beaches of Attica – the north shore – floated the largest warship I’d ever seen. A trieres, yes, but both longer and heavier-built than any other, and with a full deck of wood crowded with men. The upper works were painted red, and some was touched in gold. The ship itself was almost directly under the towering imperial throne.

  Someone important was on that ship. It had a distinctly Phoenician look to it, but it was too far away to be certain. It might have been the toy of any of the great Ionian tyrants, or it might have been their grand-admiral’s ship. I couldn’t be sure.

  And to the south and slightly to the west of us, unengaged, lay our Corinthians – heavier ships than ours, with good crews, sitting on their oars. Taking no part.

  As I say, I had time only for a long glance, turning from horizon to horizon. Cimon was getting his Ajax underway behind me as I completed my scan and let myself down the mast – go ahead, climb in a breastplate and thigh guard and tell me how well you do – and I ran to my own rail by Seckla as Cimon had his rowers fold their wings and his beautiful, unscarred ship came to rest, bow-to-bow, beside mine.

  ‘Like Lade!’ he said, his voice full of excitement.

  ‘Better than Lade,’ I said. ‘The Samos bastards are on the other side!’

  We both laughed, but in truth, betrayal haunted us like a spectre at a wedding feast. And both of us had lost so many friends – a whole world – at Lade. Harpagos lost his brother, my best friend. I lost so many friends that even now I drink to them and pour this wine to their shades. And I did not trust Themistocles.

  I mention this because as we lay on the waves, side by side, Moire and Harpagos came up and formed a line with me and Cimon’s squadrons began to fall in as crisply as hoplites going to parade ­before the gods. The boarding actions had given the oarsmen time to drink down some wine and water, to spit on their hands, to stretch. And winning is a tonic.

  One of my youngest, fittest rowers, a fine youngster named Phylakes, rubbed the small of his back and shook his head. ‘How many more sprints, Grandfather?’ he asked Giorgos, one of the older rowers, who sat close by.

  Giorgos laughed and drank wine from a pottery flask. ‘You boys!’ he shouted. ‘This is just the warm-up!’

  Men laughed. And with men who can laugh after three ship fights, you can accomplish anything.

  I missed Hipponax, though. The marines were stretching and drinking water and my son was not to be seen.

  I asked Onisandros, who looked remarkably blank. ‘Don’t know, lord,’ he said, staring off into space. He knew something and wasn’t telling me.

  I had no time for more questions, because Cimon was beckoning.

  ‘You ever see the signal to start the battle?’ he asked.

  I shook my head. We both knew this was bad. Eurybiades had in mind a more complicated battle than Themistocles and had wanted to control the pace – the lack of signalling might mean the Spartan was already dead or taken.

  ‘I think we should commit the Corinthians,’ Cimon shouted.

  ‘Better you than me,’ I shouted back, meaning that Cimon was the man to give orders, and that Adeimantus was more likely to follow the aristocratic Cimon than to follow me, who he’d made a public career of disparaging.

  Cimon was silent a moment.

  He was looking past me, and I turned. We could see Xanthippus’s Horse Tamer take a great blow, her oars splintered. The press was growing so close that no trierarch could see every threat.

  ‘Give me the ships we have and you go fetch the Corinthians,’ I yelled.

  Cimon nodded. ‘Go!’ he roared. He leaned over his starboard side, opposite me, and shouted something to Eumenes of Anagyrus, who was a powerful aristocrat of Cimon’s party, although not a sea wolf. But I saw the man wave his spear at me, and point, and I took that for his acceptance of my lead.

  Remember, too, that my ships and Cimon’s, alone of all the ships in either fleet, had a signal book, evolved in almost twenty years of piracy and sea war. It did not have many signals, but it had more signals than any other.

  I motioned to Seckla, but he was coming out of the steering oars, handing over to Leukas. The Alban nodded. Onisandros needed no orders; so well trained was Lydia that the first thud of his spear against the deck brought out the oars without another word. My deck crew was poling off from Ajax, careful not to foul oars. It speaks a great deal that Cimon turned on the spot, half his rowers forward and half reversed, and shot away west and south for the Corinthians, even as the rest of us moved cautiously eastward and began to form two lines for battle on my signals – and no two ships collided or even had to deviate to avoid one another.

  I had a round dozen warships – even in a battle of a thousand ships, a dozen is a fair force, and an important moment was at hand. The Phoenician counter-attack, straight into the heart of the Athenians, directly under the Great King’s eye, was an attempt to restore their ‘east-west’ line and force the Greeks back on their beaches. The fog was gone, the breeze was gone, and the small advantages we’d derived from the wind and fog and the chop of waves in the bay – that was over. Now the Great
King and his admirals could see all we did, and the whole sweep of our line, and our plan, if any part of it survived, was laid bare. Fools say the Great King sat on his throne to enjoy the battle the way a god would watch the actions of mere mortals, but the Great King and Mardonius his cousin were far cannier than that, and a constant stream of imperial messengers came down the hill bearing news of exactly how our fleet moved.

  It was a brilliant counterstroke. Twenty Athenian ships were taken or sunk in the blink of an eye, and then the Phoenicians were in among the lesser ships of the Athenian second and third lines, ­making the breakthrough that we’d robbed them of in the early going, forcing the open-water fight our lesser captains dreaded. You could see the Athenian line stretch and sag as trierarchs and helmsmen in the back lines tried to manoeuvre, and friends collided with friends. Ships moved backwards – crews backed water for their lives – and other ships, struck hard by rams, recoiled. The noise was like nothing I’d ever heard, because water allows sound to travel more easily than ground – hundreds of thousands of men roaring for the approval of the gods, or screaming for mercy, or both, and the snap of oars, the heavy, crushing thud of the bronze ram at impact, the zip of arrows, the clash of bronze and iron.

  I made myself take my time to bring my little squadron into action where it would matter most, and in the best possible order. I considered all my signals, while at the same time I considered what had to be done. It is true that for a fleeting moment the flank of the Phoenicians was vulnerable, but it was very close to the beach, on purpose, and a regiment of Immortals stood there, with arrows to bows. To fight a boarding action in the shallows was to take a heavy risk and to abandon Xanthippus and the Athenians’ centre to their dooms.