“Sit down, Prokles, and finish your wine.” Leonidas turned to an alarmed Mantiklos and assured the Messenian, “Prokles is an old friend. Give him the best wine we have.”
“Unwatered!” Prokles ordered. “I don’t abide by Spartan laws anymore.”
Leonidas nodded to Mantiklos, adding, “Half and half for me.”
Prokles reseated himself on the chest, and Leonidas sat on the cot that Mantiklos had set up for him. “Tell me what has happened to you since we parted.”
“I didn’t come here to talk about myself! I just wanted to—to hear about my family. Do my parents still live?”
“Your mother grieves for you every day. She thinks you have died in some foreign place. Why didn’t you write?”
“I thought of writing now and then—especially at the beginning. I even composed letters in my head sometimes. But it was always the same: what I had to report would have brought joy only to my enemies.”
“Enemies?” Leonidas asked. “Do you really think you had enemies?”
“The whole city was my enemy!” Prokles flung back.
“Alkander and I were never your enemies—much less your family,” Leonidas reminded him softly, but Prokles only shrugged. Leonidas continued reasonably, “At least if you had written, it would have countered the rumors.”
“What rumors?”
“That you took barbarian pay,” Leonidas told him.
“Since when does Prince Leonidas of Sparta listen to rumor?” Prokles sneered.
“Since he has had no other source of information,” Leonidas answered steadily.
Prokles turned his back on Leonidas and crossed the tent, to stand looking out into the darkness. After a moment he replied without turning around, speaking into the night: “No, I never took barbarian pay. But maybe I should have. There are things worse than getting rich on Persian gold!”
“Are there?” Leonidas asked, intending to provoke.
The trick worked; Prokles spun around and addressed him in a voice hard with fossilized anger. “You don’t have any idea what I’ve been through, do you? You can’t even imagine what it was like! I was born and raised on the estate I was told I would inherit. I was taught, from the time I could walk, only those skills and duties required of a Spartan citizen. I was drilled and tested and beaten to fit the form that Sparta demands of her citizens. But never—not for one day, one hour—was I taught how to earn a living if I didn’t have a kleros, helots, a syssitia, barracks. Not for one minute was I asked even to think about how one earns money.”
Prokles started pacing about the tiny confines of the tent like a caged lion. Mantiklos cast Leonidas an alarmed look, but Leonidas shook his head. They remained still and silent while Prokles raged. “And then, from one day to the next, I was cast out. Suddenly I had no mess to eat at, no estate to support me, and no skills to earn a living. I was taken across the border and dumped in a strange country, left among utter strangers living by different laws and customs. I had to find some way to fill my stomach and keep clothes on my back without a trade.”
Prokles stopped again at the entrance of the tent and stood with one hand resting on the open flap, looking out into the night. After what seemed like a long time, he appeared to have curbed his anger, and he looked back over his shoulder. “Do you know? When other cities exile their citizens, the exiles sail away in ships laden with their valuables, and they settle in a colony or a friendly city where they can carry on their business as before. An Athenian potter or tinker or shoemaker can set up his shop anywhere in the world. But what in the name of Zeus is a Spartiate outside his unit?”
“A highly skilled hoplite,” Leonidas pointed out softly; “one who can command the highest prices from all the kings and tyrants and cities of the world who depend on mercenaries for their survival.”
“Not when they’re a twenty-year-old youth who’s never seen one day of combat!” Prokles shot back, spinning around on his former friend. “I might have known the use of every weapon and every formation drill ever dreamed up by bored instructors, but I had no experience. Besides, there was no war in Tegea and no tyrant in need of protection. No one wanted the skills I had to offer—and I was tricked and cheated and exploited by every kind of charlatan you can imagine, and probably some you can’t. Was I supposed to write my mother and sister how I floundered about helplessly? How I made every stupid mistake a naive country bumpkin can make in a strange city?” Even after more than ten years, the humiliations he had suffered clearly still stung Prokles to rage.
“The hardest part for your parents and Hilaira was the uncertainty,” Leonidas ventured in a low voice. “Your mother was haunted by images of you in need, and she wanted to help—but she didn’t know where you were. They contacted all the people they had recommended you to, but you had been in touch with none of them.”
Prokles snorted. “Did they really think I would go crawling to their rich horse-breeding friends? Did they think I’d offer my services as jockey or driver?”
“Your grandfather did,” Leonidas pointed out.
“He was a slave!”
“He was an Olympic victor.”
“I wasn’t going to play poodle to their rich foreign friends!”
Leonidas had no answer to that. Prokles had always had an irrational, rebellious streak that Leonidas could not understand. Leonidas knew that if he had been exiled and put across the border with two horses and a long list of his father’s aristocratic, foreign friends, he would have gone to these wealthy, influential men immediately. But Prokles was different. “So what did you do?”
“I gambled away everything my family had given me; and when I had nothing left to lose, I took work with a slave trader.”
Leonidas stiffened involuntarily.
“Yes. That bad,” Prokles admitted, meeting his friend’s shocked eyes with a hard, almost hateful look. “I was paid to herd men around as if they were beasts. To chain and beat them for the slightest rebelliousness. I was younger and more slender than many of my charges, and they always outnumbered me. I had to make up for my weakness with brutality. And the whole time, my innards were cramped and gnawed by the terror that I would soon become one of them. I knew that if I didn’t earn enough money to pay my debts, I would be forced to sell myself so someone else would have the problem of feeding me!”
“By all the Gods,” Leonidas whispered, “why didn’t you write? I would have found a way—”
“Never! You always lectured me on how I ought to behave! You always warned me I would get in trouble. Don’t pretend you didn’t think I deserved what I got when it happened! I didn’t respect the laws. I was irresponsible. It was time I faced the consequences of my actions—wasn’t it? And there were voices—do you think I didn’t hear them?—that whispered I deserved nothing less than death.”
“That was a minority,” Leonidas insisted.
“Maybe, but at times I agreed with them. Or rather, I agreed that I deserved death if I couldn’t make something of my life. The ephors decided that I had the right to a second chance, but that meant a second chance for me to make something of my life. I had to prove I had changed—not come crawling to you for help.”
Leonidas was silenced, and Prokles continued in a calmer tone, “Slave traders pay badly. After all, they can always turn one of their purchases into an overseer. I think I was hired in anticipation of my going into debt to my employer so he could sell me. Instead, I refused to eat his meals or board in his lodgings, and went without wine or meat for more than a year until I had hoarded enough coins to risk leaving Tegea. I came to Corinth and found work as a marine with a pottery merchant.”
“And you’ve been with him ever since?”
Prokles laughed his bitter, superior laugh. “You don’t know a damned thing about life as a mercenary, do you? No mercenary ever stays with one employer for very long. There are always rumors of better pay, better berths, riches and women and adventure somewhere else. I’ve sailed as far as the Gates of Herakles and bac
k again to the cities of the Levant. A mercenary is as fickle as an easterly wind, blown here and there, disappearing before the men he’s cheated or the brothers of the girls he’s seduced can catch up with him.”
“Did you marry? Have children?”
“Bastards, you mean?” Prokles shot back, and then asked instead, “What about you? Have a full nursery? I’ll bet you’ve got a boy or two in the agoge already.” He said it with a sneer.
“My wife and two children were killed in the fires last year,” Leonidas answered emotionlessly.
For the first time Prokles was taken aback. He caught his breath and looked hard at Leonidas. For a moment he seemed to notice that Leonidas, too, had aged and that not only laughter had lined his face; but then he shook himself and asked, “And Hilaira? How is she?”
“She married Alkander.”
“Good. Have they children?”
“Two sons; the oldest, Thersander, entered the agoge this year, and Simonidas is three. She will be pleased to hear I’ve seen you—”
“No details!”
Leonidas made a noncommittal gesture. “She will not understand why you don’t want to come home.”
“Tell her I’ve gotten used to neat wine,” Prokles retorted, thrusting his long-since empty kothon in the direction of Mantiklos. Leonidas nodded to the Messenian to refill it.
While Prokles drank deeply, Leonidas asked, “Which ship will you be on?” Leonidas nodded toward the door of the tent to indicate the ships lined up outside.
“I charge a drachma a fortnight; are you paying?”
“Certainly.”
Prokles laughed. “You’re still a fool, Leo. That’s twice the going rate for the dregs like me.”
“I’m not hiring the dregs; I’m hiring an experienced marine to train and coach an absolute novice.”
“Aha; at least you know there’s a difference between fighting on land and at sea.”
“I know—and so do the ephors and Gerousia and Kyranios. But Corinth asked for Spartiates, and that’s what she got—at least for the bulk of our force. We’re two hundred Spartiates and a hundred perioikoi.”
“Corinth had to come begging to you because the mercenaries are all taking Persian gold. The Medes can outpay any Greek. Half the Persian fleet is manned by Greek rowers and marines!” Prokles spat.
“You don’t like Persians, it would seem,” Leonidas observed, noting that Prokles was greatly exaggerating the situation. The Persians had little need to buy either oarsmen or troops, since they could conscript both and commanded the finest navy in the world.
“Do you know what they do with half the boys they capture? They cut off their genitals and make them serve as eunuchs in the harems. And the other half they sell into prostitution.”
“I believe a substantial portion of Athens’ wealth is derived from the slave trade,” Leonidas countered.
“Athens? Athenians are all slave traders! They would sell their own mothers if they thought it would bring them profit! They crave wealth like Spartans crave honor. If Sparta had any sense, it would crush Athens before it gets any stronger. There is nothing greedier than the Athenian mob.”
“For now, I would be satisfied with seeing this convoy safely to Byzantion and back,” Leonidas told him. “I’ll sail on the Liberty. Will you join me?”
“For double wages? Certainly.” Prokles stood, flung back the rest of his wine, and stalked out without another word.
“You’re sure you want that man near you, sir?” Mantiklos asked skeptically.
Leonidas thought about it, but then he nodded. “Yes.”
Mantiklos didn’t look convinced, but he let the subject lie.
They had perfect sailing all the way up the Aegean to the Hellespont, with steady southwesterly winds and following seas that enabled both merchantmen and triremes to proceed under sail. Since they were not rowing even the warships, there was no need to stop at midday for a break and meal, and they sailed straight through the day. Of course, many of the Spartiates took a while to get their sea legs; but Leonidas was one of those least affected by seasickness, and with dolphins escorting them and the sun sparkling on the water, he began to understand Lychos’ love of the sea.
At night they found a friendly shore, and the triremes beached while the merchantmen rode their anchors. The trireme crews built fires and bivouacked for the night, while the merchant crews sent boats ashore for fresh water and men to cook over an open fire. The well-protected convoy discouraged pirates; these rarely operated in groups of more than two or three ships. Ionian ships saluted and stayed away. Of the Phoenicians they saw nothing at all.
In Byzantion they were welcomed enthusiastically, because the embargo was cutting hard into the city’s revenues. Here they learned that the Persians were busy in the eastern Mediterranean, where Cyprus was said to have joined the Ionian revolt. This was extremely good news for the rebels, since Cyprus not only was large and rich, but had provided many of Persia’s ships and crews in the past. If the Cypriot ships came over to the rebel side, it would be a severe blow to Persian naval capacity.
Anxious to take advantage of the situation, the Corinthians loaded their ships as rapidly as possible and put back to sea, despite warnings from the older mariners that bad weather was afoot. Certainly the weather had changed. The sea seemed leaden. The clear, sunny days were gone, and they had to row through the Hellespont in pouring rain. On deck there was nowhere to keep dry, and below deck the air was clammy and suffocating. When the wind picked up, however, things went from bad to worse.
The wind churned the seas to a vicious chop, while visibility closed down to almost nothing. The poor visibility made any landfall excessively hazardous, and with so much of the day ahead of them, the decision was made to try to outrun the storm rather than put ashore.
But then the wind backed around to the northwest, and some of the merchantmen found it hard to sail close enough to the wind to hold course. On the triremes, the rough weather was making rowing difficult. One minute the oars bit only air, and the next water was pouring into the oar-ports, soaking the crew and accumulating in the bilges. The order was given to ship the oars of the lowest, thalamian, rowers, and the ports were closed. But the wind and seas continued to rise, and soon the heavily laden freighters started to founder.
The flagship signaled for the convoy to fall off before the wind and run downwind on storm sails. By the anxious lookouts posted in the rigging, however, Leonidas surmised there were hazards to leeward. Then night closed in around them.
In this roaring, heaving nightmare any encounter with land would be fatal, so no one thought of beaching. Instead, they plunged on through the night. The timbers of the Liberty groaned, anything not tied down rolled about underfoot, and the rigging slapped against the mast. The waves chased them, lifting up the stern until it seemed the bows were about to plunge forever into the deep. More than once, the ram of the trireme was completely submerged and they shipped water on the foredeck. Once a wave broke over the stern and washed the full length of the deck in a snarling, frothing mass. Leonidas saw a sailor lifted clear off the deck and swept overboard before his eyes. Men shouted and the man flailed wildly with his arms and legs. Just when they thought he was lost, he managed to catch hold of a streaming sheet that had come unraveled from the pin rail. His mates hauled the sheet inboard with the sailor clinging to it.
Leonidas looked around at his gray-faced men and ordered them to make themselves fast to the side of the ship. Prokles went around showing each man how to tie a lifeline around his waist with a knot that could be released by a single tug. “If she starts to go down, you just pull the release, see?” he told them. But they all knew that if the ship went down, they were lost with her. Paddling about in the Eurotas had not prepared them to survive in seas like these.
Below deck, conditions were even worse. The oarsmen on the lowest level, the thalamians, could not row, since the oar-ports were closed, but there was nowhere for them to go; so they sat on their
benches, their feet in sloshing water, while above them the thranite and zygian rowers struggled to control their oars. This was easier said than done, with heaving seas that brought water crashing in on them at regular intervals and shoved the ship this way and that. Not a man was dry anymore.
Sometime during the night—they were all too drenched, cold, and bone-weary to know when—the Vengeance sent a signal by torch. With much cursing and foul language, the crew of the Liberty put the helm over, apparently to clear some island or promontory that stood in their way. This was more uncomfortable than running before the wind. Half the time they wallowed in the troughs between the waves with the wave crests looming over their heads. Leonidas was convinced that if one of the breakers ever caught the trireme in its teeth, the ship would capsize. On this course it was also much harder to keep an eye on the rest of the fleet. Once or twice, as they crested a wave, they had a glimpse of the ships nearest at hand, all struggling as they were. Once they thought they heard shouting and crashing noises, but it was hard to be sure over the roar of wind and wave.
When dawn finally broke, they found themselves completely alone on the ocean. Cursing, the captain sent a man up the mast to try to get a better view. Leonidas did not envy the sailor who had to scale the mast as it whipped around. He would not have had the courage to do it. The sailor tied himself aloft and scanned the horizon. After a few moments, he sighted something to windward and pointed.
They tried briefly to beat harder to windward, but the water breaking over the bows was too much, and the captain fell off the wind again. By now the thalamian oarsmen were doing nothing but bailing, passing buckets of shipped sea water to the zygians, who tossed it overboard past the thranites. The latter were the only oarsmen still actually rowing. The captain concluded it was too dangerous going any closer to the wind, and they resumed their previous course—the last convoy course—and held it as best they could. Sailors and marines were dozing fitfully in the gunnels, still tied to the side of the ship, while half the oarsmen slept upright on their benches and the others bailed.
A Peerless Peer Page 42