Poseidon's Spear lw-3

by Christian Cameron

  ‘I don’t feel that I have your attention, gents,’ said the man on the gunwale. His partner picked up a large piece of wood and came over to the boat. He struck the hull, hard, just where the strake met the bow.

  None of the oak pins came loose, but no one likes to see a stranger hit his boat.

  ‘I see I have your attention now,’ said the man on our gunwale.

  Daud and I walked down either side of the boat, and we must have looked like trouble. The man on the bow stood up, dusting his hands.

  ‘I don’t think you know me, gents. But if you touch me, you are all dead men.’ He laughed. ‘I’m a little surprised you don’t know me. Hurt, even. But you’re all strangers — foreigners. So I will let it go this time. Especially as I’ve come to offer you money.’

  Demetrios shrugged. ‘We don’t need money,’ he said.

  ‘Really?’ said the man by the bow. ‘Let me introduce myself. I’m Anarchos, and if I wish to loan you money, then you need to take it. Please understand this, gents — I own you as surely as your former owner owned you. Your slavery is written in the sky. Don’t pretend you are free men — I know escaped slaves when I see them. And I can sell you into slavery, or kill you — and no one in this city will even shrug. You aren’t citizens. You aren’t even registered metics. You are poor men, and you have no friends.’ He smiled, and the hardness left his voice. ‘But I am a reasonable man, and an easy master. You split your profits with me, and I loan you money when you fail. I am your patron, and you are my workers, and all is well. I will help you in the courts, and in the assembly, if it comes to that.’ He looked around. ‘No one in Syracusa will say Anarchos is a bad patron.’

  Daud was ready to fight. I could see it in his posture.

  I was calculating.

  This was new to me, even though I prided myself in being more like Odysseus than Achilles.

  If the man spoke the truth — even a wicked, cocked-up version of the truth — attacking him would serve little purpose. Nor did we plan to stay in Syracusa. No local crime lord could possibly imagine what we had in mind.

  I put a hand on Daud’s shoulder. ‘My friend is a Gaul,’ I said. ‘And prone to violence.’ I smiled at the hired muscle — the man was big. ‘I know a little about violence myself,’ I added. ‘But we don’t want any trouble.’

  Anarchos nodded. ‘You’re the smart boy, then.’

  I resented his tone and his use of the word boy. But I was not a great lord with fifty hoplites at my back. I was an ex-slave with six friends. I think my hands trembled.

  But I smiled. ‘We had a good voyage.’ I had another knucklebone to roll, and I cast it slyly. ‘And of course, I make a fair wage as a bronze-smith.’

  He nodded, pursed his lips. I had scored a hit. Not a hit that would win the fight, but a real score, nonetheless. Bronze-smiths were a close-knit clan with their own rules and laws and status, and men like Anarchos, however powerful, didn’t cross the smiths.

  ‘I’ll check on that,’ he said. ‘The bronze-smiths wouldn’t like an ex-slave making a claim that wasn’t true.’

  I reached into the boat and took out my leather satchel — made by Seckla. From it, holding it up so that the hired muscle could see me, I took a bronze eating-knife with a pretty bone handle, the bone dyed green with verdigris; there were fine silver tacks in the handle for decoration. It was in a sheath of Seckla’s make with a long bronze pick.

  ‘My work,’ I said, handing it to the moneylender.

  He nodded.

  ‘Keep it,’ I said. ‘A token of my esteem.’

  His head shot up. ‘Fuck you, slave,’ he said. ‘No one talks to me like that.’

  I crossed my arms. ‘You’re off your mark here. I’m a craftsman. These men are my friends. I have other friends. We don’t want trouble.’

  He got up. Rubbed his chin, and then his face changed. ‘I’ll keep this,’ he said, holding my eating-knife. ‘And I’ll make some enquiries. And I’ll be back.’ He looked around. ‘I expect you’ll need my money. And I’ll expect you to be civil. Understand?’

  By civil, he meant subservient.

  Again, you might expect that I’d just kill him and be a local hero.

  But it doesn’t really work like that.

  Some time much later, Daud told me that we could have saved a year of our lives by killing him then and there. And maybe we could have.

  But Heraclitus was reaching me across the years. I had to learn other ways of solving my problems.

  So I bowed my head. ‘Of course, Patron. ’

  He nodded seriously. And strode off, full of self-importance, his sell-sword by his side.

  Daud turned on me. ‘Are you a coward?’ he asked, and stomped off. I didn’t see him for a day.

  I must have turned red, because Doola came and put his arm around my shoulders. ‘Well done,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t feel that it was well done,’ I admitted. Now that the man had walked away, I felt craven.

  ‘We didn’t fight, and we didn’t take his money,’ Demetrios said. ‘Nice job. My brother was good with these vultures, but I–I fear them.’

  So we went back to scraping the boat clean, and afterwards we returned to our two rooms under the thatch, where we counted our money. The taverna on our corner had taken all the wine that wasn’t tinged with seawater at a good price, and all the tinged wine at one half that price. After Demetrios paid off our debts — mostly food, rope and wood — we had about sixty drachma. I had made another twenty-four drachma profit, after my own food, wine and clothes.

  Eighty-four drachma, for six men.

  Daud shook his head. ‘We’ll never get a twenty-oared ship at this rate.’

  We had decided that if we were going to try the tin run to Alba, we needed at least a twenty-oared galley with a good mast. It was a common enough type of boat in the trade. And we needed a dozen slaves. We couldn’t afford to pay rowers and sailors and build the boat.

  We estimated that building the boat would cost us three hundred drachmas.

  But Demetrios was altogether more sanguine. He put the money in a sack, and put the sack into the thatch. ‘Not bad,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘Not bad. Ari is pulling more than his fair share. And without him, we’ll never get it done.’

  I didn’t really want to hear that, because while I liked working in the shop, I wanted to be at sea. And my status — if you could call it that — as leader was suffering. All of them looked to Demetrios, not to me. He had become the skipper. I wasn’t there, at sea. They told me stories of the storm that hit them in the straits off Sybarus, and how Demetrios stayed at the helm all day and all night You get the idea.

  I might have been bitter. But I wasn’t. Sometimes a dream was bigger than any reality. Sailing to Alba was a big dream — an heroic deed, a worthy thing. I was willing to sacrifice. We all were.

  We were brothers.

  ‘What about Illyria?’ I asked. Neoptolymos raised his head and smiled. And then frowned and drank more wine.

  ‘I will never go back until my sister is avenged,’ he said.

  I looked at them. ‘There’s still tin coming through Illyria,’ I pointed out. ‘And Neoptolymos knows where to get it.’

  He shook his head. ‘My cousins will have the keep now, and the river. I would be killed. I will return with a hundred warriors — with my friends.’ He smiled at me, and for a moment we were brothers. He knew I would back him. I knew that, if we lived, someday we would go there. After we put Dagon down. We never talked about it, but Neoptolymos and I knew.

  Many debts.

  The money went into the thatch, and the boat went back to sea. They tried fishing for a few weeks, and made about six drachma over expenses. They accepted a cargo of artworks for the Etruscan coast and sailed off, leaving me to worry about the consequences of failure.

  But I didn’t worry much. I’m not much of a worrier, in that way. I went to work each morning as the sun rose. At the height of the sun in the sky, I would walk out of my
master, Nikephorus’s shop, and go two streets to a waterfront wine shop where I’d buy a skewer of somewhat questionable meat. After that meal, I’d walk back to Nikephorus’s shop and work until late afternoon, when I’d go to the gymnasium, pay my foreigner’s fee and exercise with much richer men. I’d lift weights, throw the discus and run on the track.

  After some weeks, other men spoke to me. I was clearly a foreigner: despite its size, Syracusa had only about six thousand citizen males, and they all knew each other. They were like any Greek gentlemen — well spoken, talkative, friendly — but only with each other.

  But hospitality overcame diffidence after some time, and eventually one of the richer men — I knew who he was, even if he had no idea who I was — came and asked me if I liked to box. His name was Theodorus, and his family owned stone quarries.

  We exchanged blows for some time. He wasn’t very good, and it wasn’t my best sport, but a few minutes of contest taught each of us that the other was a solid opponent.

  He laughed. ‘So, you are a gentleman. The gatekeeper has… hmm

  … questioned your right to exercise here.’

  I nodded. ‘I’m a bronze-smith,’ I said. ‘From Plataea, in Boeotia.’ His face hardened. ‘I fought in the front rank at Marathon,’ I added. I didn’t like the way it sounded — a plain brag.

  ‘Ahh!’ he said, and took my hand. ‘Things are a little different here. I doubt there’s another bronze-smith in our gymnasium.’ He led me over to a group of men just emerging from the dressing rooms. They were in their thirties and forties, and they all wore the chlamys the way much younger men would wear them, in Athens. But their bodies were hard, and they all seemed to smile at the same time.

  ‘Ari fought at Marathon,’ he said, by way of introduction.

  ‘By Nike!’ said one man, with greying black hair and a thick beard. ‘That’s something!’

  They all gathered around me, and one slapped my back.

  ‘Tell us what it was like,’ said Theodorus.

  I started to tell the story — just as I have told you — and the tall bearded man grinned and plucked my arm. ‘Let the poor man get dressed, and we’ll buy him some wine. Talking is thirsty work.’

  They were clearly surprised to see my plain chlamys and short linen chitoniskos. I looked like a servant with them, and I resolved to buy a better chlamys to wear to the gymnasium.

  We sat in a wine shop, where a cup of wine cost an afternoon’s wage for a skilled bronze-smith, and where women, not men, waited at the tables. Lovely women. Slaves, I assumed.

  I told my story, and the men with me responded well.

  Theodorus nodded at the end. ‘I’ve been in a ship fight, and some cattle raids,’ he admitted, ‘but nothing like that.’

  ‘If Carthage keeps preying on our shipping, we’ll see it here,’ another added. ‘What do you think, Ari?’

  I shrugged. ‘I know nothing of the politics here, gentlemen. I have no love for the Carthaginians, however.’

  They all looked at me.

  ‘They enslaved me,’ I said.

  From their looks, I might as well have said ‘and sold me in a brothel’. Every face closed.

  ‘You are a slave?’ Theodorus asked.

  I shook my head, but I already knew we were done. I had seen this attitude in Athens.

  ‘I am not a slave, was not born a slave and was only made a slave by force,’ I said.

  Theodorus got up. His hip had been against mine, sitting for wine, and he moved away as one would from a leper. ‘No slave can take exercise in our gymnasium,’ he said.

  They all looked at me with marked distaste.

  I got up. ‘I’m sorry to have intruded, gentlemen,’ I said. I drained my cup — the wine was excellent. ‘I appreciate your hospitality, even if you do not desire my company. May the gods be kind to you.’ I collected my chlamys, and made what exit I could.

  I could feel their stares until I got to the door of the wine shop, where one of the serving girls suddenly went up on tiptoe and brushed a kiss on my beard. ‘I hate them,’ she said.

  Aphrodite, that little brush of a kiss went to the very roots of my being. And took much of the sting out of my humiliation.

  The next morning I told my master, Nikephorus, the entire story.

  We were polishing — a nasty job, and one usually done by slaves, but Nikephorus liked to see things gleam. Every day. So we often started the days polishing. I’d polished all day for my first week, until he had time to test me. And of course, I knew the grips and handshakes of a master. They were different for Syracusa, but not so different.

  At any rate, we polished for a while and then he sat back on the bench and admired our work. ‘I don’t exercise as much as I should,’ he said. ‘But the crafts have a gymnasium with a bath. You should have asked.’ He smiled his slow smile, and his eyes twinkled. He was grey without seeming old — bent, and strong, like Hephaestos himself. His wife, let me add, was much younger, and they fought often, and made up in the traditional way, and were equally loud in both pastimes. I liked his wife, too, Julia. She was, and she had a neat, orderly mind that catalogued everything that came her way — the heroes of the Iliad, the ships in the harbour, the wares in the shop — which was odd, as her house was the messiest I’ve ever seen. She never put anything away, and her slaves were just like her. But she was kind to apprentices and journeymen: she gave us food from her larder and juice from her store, wine was always free and she had a great store of scrolls to read — like a rich woman, which I think she was. I first read a good copy of Pythagoras on Mathematics at her house.

  My daughter is making that face that means I’m rattling on.

  So Nikephorus said, ‘I’d have loved to see those rich fucks when they found out you had been a slave. Like you’d poured shit on them.’ He laughed aloud. ‘Well, well. After work today, we’ll go and exercise.’ He groaned. ‘But it may kill me.’

  We went through the streets at twilight, through parts of the city I hadn’t yet seen. I discovered that the textiles I’d bought down by the harbour were a pale shadow of what was available in the weavers’ street, where women hung recently completed items in the doors of their shops. Weaving is a woman’s craft, and the women of Syracusa were at least as dexterous as those of Athens or Plataea.

  I saw wine shops better than the ones I frequented, and a street of iron-smiths where we stopped to drop off a whole leather-wrapped bundle of bronze fittings. I saw good swords and bad, fine spears and cheap spears, good eating-knives and dull eating-knives.

  The craftsmen’s gymnasium was small, but quite pleasant. It didn’t have its own track, but it did host three professional trainers, paid by the guilds, and it had good equipment — a matched set of lifting stones with handles, for instance. I was introduced around, and men watched me lift, and other men watched me box.

  And there was a curious device I hadn’t seen elsewhere — a room with a bright lamp with a lens focused on a whitewashed wall. On the bench was a single, heavy wooden sword.

  ‘Shadow-fighting, friend,’ said one of the trainers. He lit the lamp and shone it on the wall, and then fought his shadow for a few blows. It was good training and self-explanatory, and I set to.

  The trainer, a freedman names Polimarchos, grinned at me. ‘Had a sword in your hand before, I take it.’

  I smiled.

  ‘Care to have a try with padded swords?’ he asked.

  This was different from Boeotia, where we used wooden swords and hurt each other. The swords were padded with wool and leather, and he had small shields with central grips. I’d never used such a shield, and I pursed my lips.

  ‘Not much like an aspis, is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Teaches the same lessons, though,’ Polimarchos said. ‘The small shield teaches the larger. Punch with your hand — deflect your opponent’s blade before his blow is fully developed. Right? You’re a fighter. We call it the shield bash, here, but I’ve heard it called a dozen names. And try keeping your
sword inside the shield. Let the shield cover your sword hand.’

  I had been fighting most of my life — I’d had a good teacher as a boy. But I hadn’t ever given much thought to the theory of swordplay until that moment.

  We picked up the padded weapons. The padded sword was badly balanced, and felt like a dead thing in my hand. The shield was odd.

  But I set myself in my fighting position, with my sword high behind me and my left leg forward, and Polimarchos looked at me for a moment and shook his head.

  He stepped forward, and we began to circle.

  He managed our distance expertly, keeping me a little farther away than I would have liked. So I pushed him, and he struck, his right leg shooting forward across his left, and his padded blade slamming down towards my shield. I raised the shield slightly, and he rolled the blade off my little shield and cut into my thigh.

  ‘Don’t rely on the shield,’ he said. ‘Act with it.’

  The third time he cut down at my thigh, I cut at his wrist and scored. He winced. ‘Too hard, Ari,’ he said. ‘I have hit you twice, and not left a mark — eh?’

  His point was a fair one.

  But pain didn’t make him flinch, and we went back at it. He could not hit me at will, but he could hit me often. I could hit him occasionally. He was twenty years older than I, and a freedman.

  After an hour, I could scarcely breathe, and darkness was falling. ‘Train me?’ I asked him.

  He nodded. ‘You are a good fighter — a trained man, I can tell. But the Etruscans and the Latins and the Syracusans train in these things. Techniques that you don’t know, I can tell. The way you stand — your legs are too far apart. You crouch forward slightly — surely your first trainer told you to keep your back straight? And there’s other moves — cuts — worth knowing. I get a drachma for an hour of my time.’

  I nodded. ‘And spear-fighting?’ I asked.

  Polimarchos had a pleasant face. He was shorter, a little heavy at the waist like many trainers, and his arms and legs had the defined muscles of the professional athlete. He was bald on top, and his surviving hair was no colour at all, and neither were his eyes. He smiled a lot, especially when he hit me. He grinned. ‘I know some things about spear-fighting,’ he said.