Poseidon's Spear lw-3

by Christian Cameron

  Or die. Or both.

  I gave a great shout. Sometimes, sound can throw a man off. And I turned, trying to get an arm behind me to block his thrust.

  Warned by my shout, Neoptolymos came off his bench and went for Dagon’s ankles.

  As slave attacks went, it was a fine attempt. But Dagon foiled it by the simple expedient of stepping back. Then he whirled, ignoring us, and stabbed Skethes, his point in and out of the Thracian’s eye socket in a heartbeat. The Thracian fell forward, dead, his blood running out of his eye in a steady stream like wine from a wineskin.

  Nestor didn’t rise off his bench. Instead, he kicked. It was a remarkable kick — I was around by then, fouled by the two useless slaves behind me who were cowering instead of helping. But the kick caught Dagon in the arse and he stumbled, and I was on him.

  I was in bad shape — tired, arms weak, far from my conditioning as a smith or a warrior. And he was in armour.

  And as soon as I had one of his arms, I found out just how skilled he was. He broke my armlock and countered it: in three beats of my heart, he had my left arm in a lock and had begun to dislocate my left shoulder.

  The daimon of combat flew to my aid. I put the crown of my head into his jutting jaw — he had a helmet on, but the cheek plates didn’t break the force of my blow. Where a man’s head moves his body follows, and I moved him off his feet and Nestor sank his teeth into the hated man’s thigh.

  But he wriggled like a worm, caught me a blow to my head with his right elbow, slammed the shaft of his spear into Nestor and he was away from us — back three steps. If even one oarsman had aided us But none did.

  He grinned. ‘I knew you’d try, lover,’ he said, in Phoenician. ‘I’d have thought less of you, if you hadn’t.’

  And then — only then — did we all notice that another ship was coming alongside, up from our stern. She was a beautiful low trireme, her hull black with new pitch, with a long line of woad-blue painted down her side along the upper-deck oar-ports and eyes over her ram. Her oars were beautifully handled.

  The oars came in, all together, even as we watched. I backed up two steps, looking for anything to use as a weapon. A boarding pike, a staff for poling off another ship, a stick What I got was a bucket.

  A wooden bucket.

  And the other ship was boarding us.

  Her marines came at us — ten men in bronze, with aspides and fighting spears and greaves. They leaped onto our catwalk and our stern like experts, and I retreated to the bow, looking for a place to hide — I didn’t want to die at the hands of Greeks. I didn’t know what they intended, but I assumed they were Greek pirates — men of my own kind — who would at least take me as a slave.

  Their lord — it was obvious, from the rope of lapis and gold beads at his throat to the solid-gold hilt on his sword — shouted at Dagon.

  And Dagon nodded and grinned. ‘My slaves,’ he shouted. ‘They rose against me. Thank the gods, lord, for your rescue!’

  The Greek lord — I now knew he was Greek by the long hair emerging from under his helmet to the shape of his feet — laughed. ‘I hate you Phoenicians like I hate poverty and fear,’ he said. ‘But we are at peace.’ He grinned wolfishly, turned to his marines and pointed his spear.

  ‘Clear away the riff-raff,’ he said.

  Nestor grabbed his knees. ‘We’re Greek!’ he said. ‘Master, this man-’

  The Greek put his sword into Nestor. ‘Tell them in Carthage of the service I do for you,’ he said, and his men set about killing the Sikels.

  Two men chased me into the bows, where I turned at bay.

  I put the bucket into the helmet of the first to reach me, swinging it at the end of its rope handle, and he fell without a sound.

  The other man stepped back and yelled for help.

  Just for a moment, I felt as if I were Arimnestos. I stepped forward, and he stepped back.

  And then Dagon came up. He had an aspis on his shoulder, and his spear licked out and caught me in the meat of the thigh, quick as thought. Ares, that wound hurt, and I stumbled.

  He stepped back, laughed and spiked my other thigh.

  I fell to my knees.

  As fast as I can tell it, he put his fine spear point through both of my hands, so that I dropped the bucket and waited for death.

  He laughed.

  ‘You think I’m going to kill you?’ he asked.

  He didn’t kill me, obviously. What he did do was to help the Greeks kill all of the Sikels on board. Then he bartered half his cargo of iron ore for twenty of the Greeks’ rowers — men of a race I didn’t know at all.

  I wasn’t paying very close attention by then, because he had me crucified on the foremast and spar, my arms and legs lashed far apart. The pain of my wounds was enough to make me puke.

  Unfortunately, it was still early morning and the sun rose, higher and higher, as the slaves rowed us towards the shore. From my new vantage point I could see the land — a low smudge to the north. Sicily.

  We rowed. Or rather, I bled and burned, naked in the sun, and the men beneath me rowed, and the corpses of the Sikels stank. Dagon wouldn’t let the slaves throw them over the side. He insisted on leaving the dead men at their benches. He trod the catwalk, muttering and laughing, and from time to time he would come up behind me — remember, I was crucified and couldn’t see him — and he’d strike me with his staff. Or place the butt of it against my back or my stomach and just rub it up and down.

  ‘We will have such fun,’ he said. He used a pleasant tone, as a man might talk to his wife, and it made my skin crawl. Even in exhausted despair — his tone made me afraid.

  But the sun was worse than the mad oar-master. The sun scorched me. I had never been exposed without water to the sun all day, and it stripped me of everything except the desire for water.

  And that was only the first day.

  Night fell, and I awoke. I hadn’t been aware that I had passed out — who is? But I came to hanging from my wrists, and the pressure on my abdomen and lungs was uncomfortable, and the sunburn on my stomach and groin was painful, and the wounds in my thighs and hands. Ares, it all hurt.

  We were riding at anchor in a great bay under a vast mountain — Aetna, I know now. Even in the state I was in, I looked long at Aetna in the full moon and it was beautiful. And I prayed to the gods that someone would avenge me. I managed to pray for Nestor and Skethes, good companions who had died trying to be free. I had no idea what had happened to Neoptolymos.

  The Greek ship was ten horse-lengths astern of ours. I didn’t see it for a long time, until the tide moved us at our anchor and I caught a glimpse of her.

  I began to pass in and out of life. I cannot describe it any other way. My life unrolled before me as if I were facing a jury of gods, except that there were no voices, no figures, but merely the strongest feeling, every time I surfaced to pain and the real world, that I had been judged.

  And then it was morning.

  Dagon came and stood in the bows, and another voice called orders as the rowers awoke to the stink of the corpses. Seabirds came and tried the corpses — a great gull ripping at a dead man’s face can interfere with anyone’s rowing.

  The bully-boys used their canes freely.

  The ship moved, and we went inshore.

  There was a breakwater, well to the west along the great bay, and we pointed our bow at it. The sun crested the horizon, and my torment began in earnest. Now the weight of my body was on my abdomen. My feet couldn’t really support my weight any longer. And breathing started to become difficult. Not really difficult, but painful. There was another body pressing against mine, at my back — it took me hours to realize that Neoptolymos was crucified against me.

  ‘They say that if you survive three days,’ Dagon said, ‘your chest and back are so ruined you can never be a man again.’ Dagon raised his face and looked at me. ‘And then I can sell you to a brothel. You won’t even be able to fight a brutal client. Isn’t that what you deserve, eh?’

/>   I could feel it happening, that was the worst of it. I could feel my muscles dying. The strain was gradual, but the result was brutal.

  And the sun By noon, we were up with the breakwater, and our charnel-house ship entered the harbour and very, very slowly docked at the pier — a well-built stone pier.

  The Greek ship came and anchored close in, almost across our stern.

  I could no longer speak. I may well have done some screaming, in there somewhere, but by this point I couldn’t even thrash in my bonds, and from time to time I’d make an effort and raise myself on my ankle ropes, just to get the pressure off my wrists and my lungs, and for a few brief moments I would have some clarity and then, gradually, I would collapse again.

  I assumed Neoptolymos was dead.

  One time, Brassos, one of the bullies, watched me raise myself and then slammed his spear shaft into my groin. I collapsed onto my bonds and choked.

  Dagon struck the man. ‘He could die of your carelessness,’ Dagon said.

  When I had the ability to use my head, I prayed to Apollo, to Herakles my ancestor and to Poseidon for release.

  Just after the sun reached his awful height, men came and began to unload the iron ore from the ship. Then the slaves were taken out of their benches, with twenty guards watching them, and they were put ashore, three at a time, and tied with heavy ropes inside a palisade.

  After some time — I cannot remember any of it — I was cut down.

  The relief was indescribable. The first moments off the great X of the mast and its yard were like water for a parched man. Like the release of sex.

  They tied me to a log and left me in the shade of a linen sail and, after some time, Dagon came. He had Nestor.

  Nestor was still alive.

  Dagon had the wounded man’s litter left under my awning. And he had slaves fill a bronze cauldron with water. They left it next to Nestor, who was in such pain from a mortal wound in the guts that all he did was writhe and scream.

  ‘Enjoy your time together,’ Dagon said, and giggled. He put a hand on my shoulder while Nestor gurgled.

  ‘I would love to spend the evening with you,’ he said, ‘but I have some foolish Greeks to fleece. And then, when I have made a fortune from their idiocy, I will have time for you.’ He giggled again, and his touch burned me.

  And then he went away.

  I would have slept, but Nestor was in pain, and dying. Horribly.

  I’d like to say we talked, or resolved to die together, but he was already gone with pain, and he simply lay and moaned and screamed, and I watched him die. I even slept a little.

  In the night, he breathed in hard, his throat closed, he coughed and he was dead.

  Just before the sun rose, there were screams. The sound of them scarcely registered with me. Had I understood them, I would have despaired. Hah! As if I had not already despaired.

  Dagon had invited the Greeks to dinner.

  And murdered them.

  That was the way he thanked them for saving him.

  Dawn rose, and the bully-boys were carrying corpses down the beach, throwing them into the waves.

  I recognized the Greek lord from his long blond hair. His throat was slit, his genitals cut away.

  A while later, a pair of men came and dragged me down the wharf to the ship and tied me to the foremast again.

  The sun began to rise as overseers drove the slaves back onto the ship — a hundred men to row a trireme. The Greek ship’s oarsmen had spent the night aboard, and my first hint of what had happened was that Dagon and seven of his men were rowing a small boat out to the Greek ship — which was Greek no more.

  Screams. Curses. Blows and spear-thrusts. The music of Dagon. How they must have cursed to find him their master. Many of the Greek rowers would have been free men — up until then.

  We had Brassos as both trierarch and oar-master. He had most of the old deck crew as ‘marines’ in the looted armour of the dead Greeks, and he had a whip. In an hour, we were out of the harbour and our bow was pointed towards Carthage. The swift trireme ran ahead of us, out to the horizon, and stayed there, a notch on the edge of my world. My eyes grew sun-dazzled, and I lost the ability to see, or to make sense of the world around me.

  The slaves who had tied me to the mast were lazy. They had left me a great deal more slack for my body, so that I could writhe and change positions in subtle ways. Had it been the first day of crucifixion, it might have saved me. As it was, it prolonged the agony. And they tied Neoptolymos behind me, but his bands were slack too.

  By noon, I cannot pretend I was any longer an observer. I was there, but I was unaware of anything that happened.

  And then, out of a clear, hot day, a storm struck us. It caught our ship utterly unprepared, so I’ll assume it was what sailors call a white squall — a small, vicious burst of wind and rain, usually confined to a few stades, and often so pale in colour that on a hot day it’s virtually invisible until it hits you.

  I awoke to the rain, and I was moving — back and forth — through wild swings, because I was well up the foremast, and every pitch of the ship beneath me moved my body through fifty degrees of an arc. At the ends of the pitch, my bonds took enormous strain, but in the middle I got a rest, the odd pitching motion taking all the weight off my hands and feet.

  It was a miracle. I swear that Poseidon sent it to me. Rain lashed me, as hard as I have ever known, and it flowed into my mouth so fast I might have drowned, and I drank it all. And the pitching ship delivered me from pain, here and there.

  And then — hope.

  The strain on my bonds was loosening the hastily tied ropes. They began to grow looser with every pitch and roll of the ship beneath me.

  I was going to fall into the sea.

  And drown.

  I realize that what I am about to say will strain your credulity, my friends, but I didn’t fear drowning. Poseidon had so palpably sent the storm to save me, that I had to assume that falling into the sea was the very best thing for me.

  And I confess that I thought of the Keltoi woman jumping into the storm, and I thought that it might not be the worst way to die. My body would, at any rate, be safe from insult.

  The storm reached a pitch of frenzy like the dance of the Bacchae, and the wind screamed through the ship’s standing rigging and the boatsail mast whipped through its arc. I could feel the ties on my ankles going, and to my horror, they went first, and suddenly I was hanging from my wrists. Pain flooded me.

  Then the ropes gave way.

  Not on my ankles.

  But the cross of ropes that kept the yard on the mast.

  The yard fell to the deck, but the deck was heeled well over, and while one end of the spar struck the bow, the other fell across the ram, and suddenly Neoptolymos and I were catapulted into the raging sea.

  We went deep.

  My arms were still tied to the spar, and I writhed in agony as the salt water hit my wounds, and that burst ripped one arm — my right — free of my bonds.

  Then the yard shot to the surface, the light wood all but leaping clear of the water.

  The water was deep and cold. The pain of my salt-washed wounds was almost pleasant. I fought the storm for dear life, using my wounded left arm to push myself above the spar and drink air out of the spume at the wave’s top.

  Even that fight became routine. It went on and on, and my left shoulder began to fail, and I assumed I would die.

  But Neoptolymos had more left in him than I, and he pinned my shoulder to the spar in a clamp of iron. He saved me.

  And then the storm abated, sailing by as quickly as it had overtaken us. The tone of the roar went down, the rhythm of the waves changed and the sky lightened. The thunder strokes came slower and slower.

  I had time to think that it was like the end of a fight, or a battle, when men come apart, out of the rage of Ares, and the sound of spear on shield comes less and less frequently. I know it well.

  Before I could think another thought, or pray to
Poseidon, we were alone on the Great Blue, our hands linked to a wooden spar. The sun pounded us, and the sea calmed, and we were alone.

  3

  We were only a few stades from the coast — indeed, as soon as the clouds blew past, I could see Aetna, the beach and trees to the south. I think I might have swum to shore.

  But it was not to be. A coaster — a small ship with one mast and a few oarsmen — came out of the storm, throwing a fine bow wave. She was well handled, cutting slantwise across the wind, tacking back and forth in the straits.

  A lookout must have spotted us. I was facing the other way and missed all this. Neoptolymos grunted once or twice, but I don’t think he was fully alive at that point, and both of us were parched.

  Perhaps I baked for fifteen minutes in the sun, and then I was shocked to hear a hail, and the coaster was a stade away. It was as if a sea monster had surfaced by my side.

  The boat dropped its scrap of sail — the breeze was still stiff — and four oarsmen pulled towards me, almost into the eye of the wind, moving the little ship. I paddled weakly towards them.

  They pulled me aboard. They spoke Greek, in a way, more like trade lingo. I assumed they were Sikels, and I was right. The leader — trierarch seems too grand a term for a forty-five-foot trading boat — ran his hands over my injuries, gave me a hard smile and nodded to another, younger man who had to be his younger brother. Then he turned to Neoptolymos.

  After the sort of examination a man gives to a ram he’s buying in the agora, the two Sikels spoke to each other. The older man’s name was Hektor. Even here, among barbarians, the poet’s work lived. That gave me a ray of hope.

  The ray of hope lasted until we found ourselves assigned to oars. The shackles were more figurative than real, but it was clear that I was rowing for my food, at least. Since I could barely speak with any of the men on board, I assumed I was a slave. Again. I was with two men with heavy, hooked noses and deep-set eyes, and two men who were as black as any men I’d ever seen, and Neoptolymos.

  On a positive note, we were not forbidden to talk, and as soon as we’d rowed the ship around the headland, the work of an hour, the nearer African smiled at me. ‘Doola,’ he said. I took it for his name.