Poseidon's Spear lw-3

by Christian Cameron

  We were sailing off the edge of the world.

  ‘What’s north of here?’ I asked. ‘How far to your Sequana River? The River of Fish?’

  He shook his head. ‘A long way.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ve never been there. But it must be four days — maybe six.’

  Detorix had mentioned the Sequana like it was near at hand.

  ‘And the main islands of the Venetiae?’ I asked. They were three days’ sail, or so Detorix had said.

  Sittonax shrugged, palms up. ‘I’m not a sailor,’ he said. ‘I’m a guard. I was hired inland. On the Sequana, where the big ships unload.’

  ‘Poseidon’s rigid member,’ I swore. I remember, because Doola looked shocked. It made me laugh, which in turn lightened the tension.

  Behon was working on the deck crew, and he came aft eagerly. He spoke rapidly to Sittonax, and pointed north and west. With the wind.

  ‘He says we can make Alba in a day on this wind. To Dumnonia, among his own people.’ Sittonax looked deeply sceptical.

  I tugged at my beard. ‘Ask Behon what he did before he was enslaved,’ I said.

  He looked at me. ‘Fisherman,’ he said in Greek.

  Aha.

  ‘Very well. Doola, how’s Seckla?’ I asked.

  Doola leaned forward. ‘Gut shot,’ he said softly. ‘It went about three fingers in. Oozing blood. He’s fine for the moment.’

  We both knew what a gut shot meant. Sepsis and a nasty death.

  ‘Go and stay by him,’ I said. I turned to Alexandros. ‘Take the helm.’

  To Sittonax: ‘Ask him whether this wind will hold.’

  ‘Two days.’ The Alban made an odd motion with his lips, as if tasting the wind.

  ‘Ask him what the coast is like in his Dumnovia.’ I was weighing my non-existent options.

  ‘Rock, and more rock.’

  I swore. ‘We’re going to run on that coast in the dark.’

  He shrugged, as if to say that all of us were in the hands of the gods.

  In late afternoon, the wind changed two points — to the north.

  As the sun dropped towards the endless Western Ocean, the wind rose and we had to brail the mainsail. Seckla was up and moving — I’d have gathered hope, but I had seen this before. Men with gut wounds got better for a little while, and then Apollo came with his deadly arrows, and took them.

  As the red ball of the sun fell into the Western Ocean — by the gods, daughters, to look west at the setting sun, and see nothing but open ocean is perhaps the most terrifying sight I’ve ever had within the orbit of my eyes. Somewhere out there were the Hesperides. It was like Like living in a myth.

  While being chased by slavers.

  We weathered the great promontory of Gaul at sunset; the sky was already full of stars, and the swells lifted our bow and it fell, and the sail was too full for my comfort. Far astern, Lydia and Nike followed me, and Amphitrite, who could sail better on any wind but dead astern, had ranged up and lay five stades away, as close to beautiful as she would ever be in the red, red sunset.

  We buried the Phoenicians over the horizon, but when we were at the top of a wave, our lookout on the mainmast could see their mainsails flashing red to white in the setting sun. And far, far to the east, a column of smoke caught the last light where the lead Phoenician galley burned.

  I don’t want to say that I thought I could take all six of them.

  I’ll only say that, had I had drinking water aboard, I might have tried.

  But my men were already desperate, and if we had had to row, even for ten stades, I think that they might have started to die. Remember, I had men who were a few days out of desperate bondage. A third of my rowers were strong enough, but as thin as young trees.

  But the knucklebones were cast, the sail was brailed, the helm set and we ran north, and the sun set in the Outer Ocean like an evil eye into an alien sea of blood, and we could all but hear the hiss as it plunged red-hot into the sea. It had an evil look, and by the gods, we were all afraid.

  Dawn, and I was still at the steering oars. I sucked on a piece of old bread to get saliva into my mouth. Men drank more questionable things: water from the bilge, urine mixed with seawater. Next to loss of breath, thirst is the fastest way to bring a man to desperation. Try it sometime. See how long you can go without water. You can go a day, but after a few hours, it becomes the sole focus of your thoughts.

  The worst was that the sun found us alone. When you run at night without lights, it is easy to lose your consorts. There were no landmarks — no rocks, no coast. In fact, the very worst of it was that once we lost sight of the coast of Gaul, we didn’t even know which way north was.

  That’s right. Think about it, friends. What magical device would give us direction? All I knew was that the helm was the same way I’d left it, and that the sun rose in the east, give or take a few degrees. But a few degrees at sea can be a great distance.

  Alone, on the Outer Ocean. No sails, no land, a few gulls.

  On and on we rode at a breakneck pace on a freshening wind.

  ‘How far?’ I asked Behon.

  He rubbed sleep from his eyes. ‘How would I know?’ he said through Sittonax, who naturally was very happy to be awakened to translate.

  ‘You used to sail here, remember?’ I asked.

  Behon shook his head. ‘No one but a fool comes out on the Great Blue,’ he said. ‘I never leave the coast.’

  He drew lines on the deck with a charred stick, showing me how the coast of Alba ran east to west, with the coast of Gaul like the hypotenuse of a shallow triangle, so that he would sail east into the rising sun across the south coast of Alba and then touch on Gaul — far, far from where we were. If we were anywhere. If his chart was accurate — the drawing of an ignorant man who measured distance in vague notions of time — then we were south of Alba, west of Gaul. And more than a hundred stades from any land.

  It would have been more terrifying, if I hadn’t been so thirsty.

  We ran north, and north. One of our Africans sprang off his bench at about noon, took his oar in hand, ran to the side and jumped.

  He was gone in a few moments.

  The sun was relentless, for autumn in the north.

  I tried to sleep. Tried to daydream. Tried to imagine sex — Briseis, Lydia — or combat. Anything that would lift me and take me from water. But a dream of Lydia’s lips became my tongue questing her mouth for water, and a daydream of fighting Persians became a picture of drinking their blood.

  About noon, Doola and a pair of our fishermen rigged the charcoal fire amidships and began to boil seawater. They took the biggest cauldron they had and got it boiling, and the vapour that rose off the boiling water they collected in a tent made of Doola’s bronze breastplate. They collected it as rapidly as they could, and in an hour’s work they got about two cups of drinkable water.

  They accomplished very little, except that they made everyone feel better. And the water was passed around. One man — one of the Greeks — tried to drink the whole cup, and when one of the Albans pulled it away, he spilled it.

  Alexandros drew his sword and refused to let the oarsmen gut the Greek. The young man was becoming an officer.

  Doola went back to boiling water.

  The coast of Alba resolutely refused to appear.

  On and on we ran north, and I lost my ability to tell time. Time passed. Eventually, the sun set again. Towards last light, I thought I saw sails in the south, but I had sparkles in my eyes and I had already spoken twice to Heracles by that time. I don’t think these were true visions, but merely phantasms of my waterless brain.

  And then came the night.

  Had I been in my right mind, I would have been afraid of running on a rock-bound coast, but perhaps I no longer believed in the coast of Alba. Yet I could think of nothing but water, and if I slept, it was fitful, and if I woke, I was not fully in the world. I think that at some point in the night a sea monster, or just a whale, broached near us and vented, and I was not even
scared, but merely curious with the lethargy of the dying.

  I could go on, but I shan’t. Eventually, the sun rose.

  And revealed the coast of Alba. Rock girt and grey, even on a bright day, Alba rose from the sea like my monster, and my heart with it.

  I don’t remember saying anything to anyone, but in moments, the deck was astir and everyone was awake. Behon staggered aft and stood with me, and muttered — whispered — things. Sittonax came aft after him.

  ‘He says you’ll make a fine landfall,’ Sittonax whispered.

  Behon pointed a little east of north. ‘The island of Vecti, he says. Foreign ships come there.’

  I put the bow at Vecti and we ran on.

  By the time the sun was clear of the eastern horizon, the island was obvious, set away from the coast, and I could make out the eastern headland.

  ‘I assume the beach is on the landward side?’ I asked.

  Behon shrugged. ‘Never been there,’ he said, through Sittonax.

  And then the last hour. Two men were dead — slumped at their benches, gone in their sleep. We put them over the side, and the deck crew went to their stations as if they, too, were dead.

  I was going to have to turn west into the channel between Vecti and the mainland of Alba, and then land stern-first on what I hoped was a beach. I would need the rowers to row.

  We made the turn, and the mainsail came down in a rush and tangled the rowers, and for minutes we rose and fell on the swell, unmoving, crippled by our own fatigue and our timing. And then, as slowly as a snail on a log, we got the sail clear and the rowers began to row, like small boys trying to row for the first time in a fishing boat.

  Pitiful.

  An hour passed.

  Another.

  Now I could see the beach, and there seemed to be people gathered there.

  Slowly, like raw beginners, we turned the ship, got the bow to the channel and backed her onto the beach, catching crabs with every stroke.

  If the people on the beach hadn’t rushed to our aid, we might have lost the trireme at the every last. The port-side oars failed — men simply stopped rowing. Perhaps they thought we were home and safe. And the tide and waves caught us and threatened to throw the hull up the beach and break us.

  But Albans waded out, grabbed our ropes and got our stern aground. Behon called out to them, and Tempo, and they waved.

  And water came aboard, in skin, in light wooden buckets and big bronze beakers and shallow bowls — every man, woman and child on the beach suddenly had water, and I had the discipline to watch as men drank, and then I couldn’t stop myself. A light-eyed man gave me a tin pail, and I drank and drank. And paused, and drank again.

  And drank and drank.

  Perhaps the most amazing thing about thirst is how very quickly you recover. All that is required is water. In moments, your head is clear; the lassitude falls away.

  If you have been without water too long, there may be cramps.

  I had cramps.

  I slumped to the deck and looked at the tin bucket, and what I realized after a few breaths was that I was looking at a bucket, a household bucket, perhaps for feeding cows, and that it was made entirely of tin.

  11

  The wind came up at midday, while we were still in an orgy of drinking the water. The blow began from the east, and as the wind went around the points of the compass it rose and rose, and when it settled as an easterly, it shrieked along the beach like a racehorse.

  We got rollers under our keel and moved our black ship up the beach. I was afraid of storms, but I was more afraid of being caught by the Phoenicians with my keel in the water where they could just tow her off.

  And then, full of water, we were given a meal — and we went to sleep. I’d love to tell you that we posted guards and acted like good sailors or even good pirates, but we passed out, and it was twelve hours before most of us were up.

  I had the energy to help a dozen other men pitch a tent — to pull Seckla into it, lie him on blankets and curl up by him with Doola on one side of him and Sittonax on the other. It was cool in mid-afternoon, and promised to be cold at night.

  In the morning, Seckla was moaning on his bedroll. I knew what came next. In the dawn, I considered putting a knife in him. Gut wounds are horrible. I’d watched a few.

  But Doola’s eyes were open, and I knew he’d never forgive me.

  But again, Behon worked to our rescue. He found a doctor — one of the Kelt doctors, who were also priests, men of learning and often musicians — and led him by the hand to Doola’s side.

  ‘Good morning,’ said the white beard, in a passable imitation of Attic Greek. Then he rolled Seckla over and examined his stomach wound for some time.

  ‘No food,’ he said. ‘Nothing but water. I’ll be back.’ He picked up his heavy staff and left our tent.

  Seckla moaned, but he didn’t scream. Yet.

  Outside, we could hear rain on the tent, and I went out. We were two hundred men in four tents, stacked like cordwood; the easiest way out was to crawl under the edge. It was wet, and cold.

  I found Behon standing in the rain, and Sittonax. We walked through the downpour to the water’s edge, and looked out into the mist. The wind was from the south, and moderate enough.

  Sittonax led me up the beach to the warehouses. There were six of them, built of timber and thatch, and a pair of stone roundhouses, not unlike the Venetiae houses; not unlike a military tower in Boeotia, either, except that the stones were smaller and completely unmortared.

  The first warehouse contained about a hundred ingots of tin, and each ingot was shaped like a capital eta, H, and weighed as much as a grown child.

  I laughed.

  I laughed and laughed.

  ‘This is where the tin comes from,’ I said, satisfied.

  Behon said something quickly, and laughed.

  Sittonax nodded sagely. ‘Not quite. He says the tin comes from the land opposite, and farther inland. They gather it here, to sell to traders. Phoenicians, Venetiae — anyone who comes.’

  ‘Pray for Amphitrite,’ I said.

  But it was Lydia who appeared. Vasileos brought the triakonter in, and we watched his crew make all the mistakes we’d made. We scrambled out into the freezing surf and helped the smaller boat land, and pressed water on them.

  They’d started with full water amphorae — lucky them — but spent two additional days at sea.

  When Vasileos had water in him, he pointed south. ‘ Nike is somewhere out there, and we saw Amphitrite at sunset,’ he said. ‘We smelled woodsmoke and I followed it. Then we met a fishing boat who gave us all his water, and here we are.’

  ‘The Phoenicians?’ I asked.

  Vasileos shrugged. ‘How far can they chase us?’ he asked.

  ‘The ends of the earth,’ I said. ‘We attacked their gold. And their prestige.’ In fact, I was coming to terms with the notion that by raiding their mine, I’d started a war.

  I had no qualms. The Phoenicians got what they deserved.

  Between my trireme and Lydia, I had most of the remaining gold we’d taken, and all the silver. Amphitrite and Demetrios had the rest of the gold.

  Keltoi love gold. So I traded all the gold for food, bad wine and tin. I traded the amphorae in Lydia ’s hold for more tin — and for barrels.

  On our fourth day ashore, I sent Lydia with Vasileos to search the coast for the missing ships. My sailors stripped my trireme to the gunwales and dried her and recaulked her, and then we stowed the tin as ballast. I could only buy about seventy of the pigs, but that was enough.

  The barrels went fore and aft, into the bow and stern. I’d never had so much drinking water.

  I bought dried fish in enormous quantities, and dried meat and dried berries.

  After a week, Vasileos came back with Amphitrite limping in at his heels. The two ships landed just ahead of a purple-black sky that swept out of the north, and we had six days of violent rain and high winds.

  Demetrios drank th
e bad wine and smiled a great deal. ‘We are the greatest sailors in the circle of the Ocean,’ he said. ‘I saw Nike a week ago. She lost her mainsail in the blow, and we passed them fresh line and they were rowing north. They’ll be well off to the east. There’s a current. We lost our reckoning.’

  ‘East?’ I asked. ‘The wind was from the east?’

  ‘I’ve been up and down this coast,’ Demetrios said. ‘Fishermen said there was a big island full of foreigners, but I couldn’t find it.’

  Whereas we’d sailed right into it. Since Demetrios was the best seaman I’ve ever known, I have to assume we had the will of the gods with us.

  We sat out the blow and rested our crews, and fed them regularly. The locals were friendly, even when we’d spent our money and our trade goods. A surprising number of local ladies began to sport ostrich plumes. African beads were wildly popular.

  I think we added to the population.

  After two days of fine weather, Vasileos and Demetrios pronounced Amphitrite ready for sea.

  We finished lading our ships, had a dinner of roast pig and leeks to celebrate, spent the last of our trade goods, saving aside only a few pots and some weapons, and rose to a red sun and the promise of three days’ good weather.

  We left Vecti with the ever-present wind in our teeth, but it was gentle, and we rowed due east, with Amphitrite tacking far to the south.

  I wouldn’t let the men touch my hard-bought supplies. We landed that night and killed sheep, and didn’t pay for them, like sea rovers. The next day we met three fishing boats, and the men aboard hugged Behon. He came aft to me, knelt and took my hand, and I pulled him to his feet and embraced him.

  ‘Thanks!’ I said. It was obvious he was home, and these were his folk. They had a look to them that was similar. Dumnoni.

  He climbed over the side, and the fishing boats followed us into the beach, a fine harbour with miles of beach, and we feasted on their catch.

  They told us that Nike was farther up the estuary, patching a sprung bow.

  The wind was rising, and I wasn’t unhappy to go up the estuary. We found Nike towards nightfall, and Gaius was as happy as you can imagine. But he’d brought his people through in fine order.