I rubbed my beard.
Dionysus rolled his eyes, even as Seckla tired to comfort the dancer and she kept away from him. ‘Listen, if you want this woman, lean her against the wall and take her from behind so you don’t have to listen to the shit that spews from her mouth,’ he laughed. ‘It’s a door that opens and closes a great deal.’
I shook my head. ‘She has a fair amount of courage,’ I said. ‘I want to hear her information.’
She turned and threw herself at my knees. ‘Please!’ she said. ‘I will-’
I raised a hand. ‘Listen to my terms. You want to offer us a target, yes?’
She nodded emphatically. ‘A rich target.’
‘So,’ I said. ‘You come along, as our guest. I will make you some guarantees — swear oaths with you. You will receive a share of our take — when we make the capture. Not before.’
She shrank away. ‘Never. Go to sea — on a pirate ship? You must think I’m simple.’ She laughed. It was a terrible laugh. ‘That’s not the way I want to die — raped to death by criminals.’ Her eyes flickered to Dionysus. ‘I thought you were different — the heroes of Lades and Marathon.’ She spat.
Dionysus shrugged. ‘I think Arimnestos is too kind,’ he said.
She spat on the floor. ‘My curse on all your kind,’ she said, and ran out of the taverna.
Seckla glowered at me.
I nodded. ‘Go and chase her down and make her a better offer,’ I suggested.
He stumbled after the dancer. Now, I don’t think Seckla had shown interest in five women in his entire life up until then, so you may find my choice odd, but women can be sensitive to these things, and Seckla was not a hard man. Seckla suffered every time he had to fight — every wound he inflicted sat on him. He was only with us because of his love for me — and for Neoptolymos and Doola and Daud.
He followed her into the edge of darkness.
I remember telling Dionysus that he was a right bastard. I remember him telling me I was a fool.
In the morning, Seckla was sleeping with the woman wrapped in his arms on a palliasse of straw under the upturned hull of the Lydia. She was as pretty in the morning, rising from her blankets, as she was in the night — and as naked. She ran into the water and bathed, and wrapped herself in Seckla’s chlamys and planted herself in front of me.
‘I’ll come. I lift my curse, trierarch. I offer my apologies, but your friend hurt my wrist something cruel. Seckla and I have made a deal.’
Seckla said, ‘I gave her my word. She gets the same share that I get.’
I was staggered. ‘Seckla — listen, lady. Without meaning to dicker, he can’t offer you the same share he has. Not without seven men voting to agree.’ I glared at him.
‘She can have my share, then,’ Seckla said.
‘We’ll split it,’ she said. Her eyes were interesting. She could be cold as — well, as cold as a warrior. Or quite the passionate thing. She’d settled her claws into Seckla, and I couldn’t decide if she was a porne or not. In her heart, I mean. In fact, she was.
Dionysus came up.
She slipped behind Seckla.
‘Good morning, young lady,’ he said. He looked at me. ‘Slit her throat and let’s be on our way.’
She stepped back.
He grinned. Seckla stepped up to him, fists clenched. Dionysus, however, was twenty years his senior and had a dignity not usually found in pirates — although, come to think of it ‘Let her alone,’ Seckla said.
‘It’s a trap,’ Dionysus said. ‘One of the Carthaginians you’ve robbed is setting you up. Or that fellow — what’s his name? Who enslaved the lot of you.’
‘Dagon,’ I said. While I loathed Dagon and wanted him under the edge of my sword, I didn’t really think of him all that often, and I didn’t see him as — well, as intelligent enough to plan something like this. He was sly — crafty — evil. But not capable of setting a trap with, of all unlikely allies, a woman.
I looked at the dancer. ‘What’s your name?’ I asked.
‘Men call me Despoina,’ she said. When I made a face, she shrugged. ‘I was born to Geaeta.’
‘Where?’ I asked.
‘Athens,’ she said.
I shrugged. ‘Beware,’ I said. ‘I know Athens fairly well.’
‘Really?’ she said. ‘I’d have said you were a Boeotian bumpkin who had visited once or twice.’
‘Not bad,’ I allowed. ‘Tell me where the bronze-smiths gather.’
‘The Temple of Hephaestos, on the hill below the Areopagus,’ she said.
‘What’s the rostra?’ I asked.
She rolled her eyes. ‘Anyone knows that. The speaker’s stone in the Pnyx.’
‘How did Miltiades die?’ I asked.
‘His wound festered while Cimon tried to raise the money for his debts,’ she said.
I looked at the ground. ‘Damn,’ I said. My emotion must have showed.
Her eyes softened. ‘Don’t tell me you really are the great Plataean?’ She laughed. ‘Come on. Arimnestos of Plataea is dead. Everyone says so.’ She looked at me. ‘I wish I could ask you about Plataea.’
‘How is it with Aristides?’ I asked.
She shrugged. ‘We’re not exactly bosom friends,’ she allowed.
‘What are you doing in Magna Greca?’ I asked.
She looked around. Men were watching from a distance.
‘I was sold,’ she said. She raised her face defiantly. ‘I was a free woman, but I was sold. As a porne. I ran, and got caught. They sold me to a Carthaginian.’ She shrugged. ‘I lived. They didn’t know I could swim. I jumped over the side at Rhegium. I’m better-trained than any kid on this coast. Better-looking, too.’ She shrugged. ‘And I won’t be a slave again, and I don’t open and shut for free, either.’ She looked at Dionysus.
‘A pretty story,’ he said.
‘Fuck you, pirate,’ she said.
His fist smashed into her cheek and she fell. ‘Speak respectfully, whore,’ he said. ‘I am not your equal.’
‘Women who sell their bodies are so much lower than men who kill for money,’ she spat from the sand.
He looked at me while Seckla fumed. Don’t imagine Seckla was too much the coward to fight for his woman. It was more complex than that. Dionysus was a superior officer and also an old friend of mine. And Seckla didn’t trust his sleeping companion yet.
Anyway, Dionysus looked at me. ‘I’m inclined to try her,’ he said.
‘If it’s a trap, we’ll fight our way out,’ I said. I remember grinning.
He shrugged. ‘The best way to get out of a trap is never to enter it.’
‘We need Gaius,’ I said. I looked at the woman, who was rubbing her cheek. Dionysus liked to hit women. I’d figured that out. ‘Despoina, how much time do we have?’
She considered rebellion. I saw it on her face. She considered telling us all to fuck ourselves. She had a lot of pride and a lot of
… arrogance for a woman who’d been so ill used.
But good sense won out.
‘If you believe me, you need to catch them at the new moon,’ she said.
That gave us two weeks.
‘Where?’ I asked softly. I held her eyes.
‘Do we have a deal? I split Seckla’s share?’ she breathed.
‘If you tell the truth, and we get a prize, you will have a sizeable share,’ I said. ‘Not less in value than one half of Seckla’s share. Is that agreeable? And I guarantee your body, your person and your freedom on my oath to Zeus, the God of Kings and Free Men, and I offer you bread and wine, hospitality and guest friendship from my house to yours until my heirs and yours are all shades in Elysium.’ I held out my hand. ‘Unless you betray me or mine, in which case, by the same oath, I will hunt you like the Furies and cut your throat.’
Seckla nodded at her and gave her a small smile. ‘He means it.’
She smiled back, and took my hand. ‘Deal,’ she said.
Dionysus snorted in disgust.
&n
bsp; ‘New Carthage,’ she said. ‘The tin fleet.’
19
Carthage got her tin from Iberia, as I’ve mentioned. Four times a year, when the Iberians had filled the Carthaginian warehouses, they sent a fleet to pick up the tin and sail it home — half a dozen round ships guarded closely by a squadron of galleys.
This was, well, I won’t call it common knowledge. It was uncommon knowledge. Shippers, tin miners, bronze-smiths and pirates knew it.
I’d say that the Carthaginians kept the movement of the tin fleets secret, but that wouldn’t do justice to how secret they kept it. They didn’t want the Greeks to know where the tin came from, or how much there was. Most merchants — even tin traders — thought that the tin came from Etrusca, or Illyria. Or some hazy point outside the Gates of Heracles.
Geaeta had quite a story — an adventure of her own, with knife-fights, lovemaking and clever escapades worthy of Odysseus. I even believed a few of the stories. She had courage and strong muscles, and I can witness that those two things alone can win you free of slavery.
Her story — the parts that made sense and I believed — was complex. She had started the spring sailing season in a slave pen in Carthago, and gone west in a consignment to New Carthage, a colony on the Inner Sea coast of Iberia facing the Balearic Islands. She said that she was sold off to a brothel there, and two weeks later, the first ships of the spring tin convoy had arrived, all badly storm-damaged by a freak spring storm in the strait.
‘They were all afraid, and angry,’ she said. ‘All the owners. All the rich men.’ She shrugged. ‘Your friend says navarchs don’t talk to porne. Maybe; maybe not his kind,’ she spat. ‘But most men talk. And good friends — a pair of them will hire a pair of girls — you know, together.’ She shrugged. ‘And the men will chat while-’ She shrugged again.
‘I got the captain of one of the round ships,’ she said. ‘He had had quite a scare. That’s when men talk the most. He almost lost his ship — and his life. He went to the temple four times while he was staying in my room.’ She shrugged, smiled. ‘He wanted me.’ She made a face — pride and revulsion together. ‘He wanted me every hour of the day and night — besotted, he was. So he paid a bribe to the brothel owner so that I could come with him to Carthage and back — he was being sent for replacement oarsmen and all sorts of chandlery that New Carthage didn’t have.’ She met my eyes. ‘The day we left, news came that the other survivors of the tin fleet had returned to Gades. And that we could expect them in fifteen days, at the new moon.’ She looked around. It was the evening of our second day at sea. She’d told the story enough times that it had a polished ring to it that made her sound like a liar. The problem was that she was a damned good storyteller, and that didn’t actually help her veracity.
Gaius — now a surly, somewhat domineering Roman magnate who clearly didn’t want to go to sea that summer — shook his head. ‘Dionysus is right,’ he said. ‘You can’t believe a word she says.’
Seckla spat. ‘I believe her,’ he said.
Gaius made an obscene suggestion as to exactly why he believed her, and Daud laughed and laughed. It was good to hear the Keltoi man laugh; he had been silent for so long. His second brush with slavery had all but ruined his cheerful disposition, leaving him dour.
‘How’d you come to be in Ostia?’ Daud asked, when he was done laughing.
‘I jumped ship at Rhegium,’ she said.
‘Why, exactly?’ I asked. ‘I mean, why would a Carthaginian ship bound for Carthage ever come anywhere near Rhegium?’
She shrugged. ‘How would I know?’ she said. ‘I’m not a great sailor. When we were at sea, he’d, um, make use of me when he pleased, and otherwise the boat went up and down, men ran about and the oarsmen all watched me like cats watch rats. I swore I’d never go to sea again.’
Gaius pursed his lips and scrated his red hair. ‘I’m leaving my farms at a touchy time — to be killed by the Carthaginians,’ he said. ‘Perhaps if I’m lucky, I’ll only be a slave.’
Geaeta looked pointedly at his waistline. ‘At least you know you won’t be sold to a brothel,’ she said.
Gaius wasn’t used to being talked to that way, much less by a mere woman. He stomped off.
That night, Dionysus said to me, ‘She’s either real, or she’s the most gifted actress I’ve ever seen.’
I agreed. I believed her. Most of the time.
Of course, it was possible. It was all plausible. Ships go off course. But an unarmed merchant ship headed for Carthage should have avoided the north coast of Sicily — the Greek coast — like a plague. He should have run south and coasted Africa.
On the other hand, she was just the kind of girl who got the trierarchs in a brothel — not a broken spirit in a vaguely fleshy body, but a passionate woman with good looks and a mouth. If I owned a brothel, I’d buy a dozen of her.
Hah! Sorry, ladies. A man can dream.
We coasted northern Sicily. Secretly, every night when I landed, I asked the men of the towns whether they’d ever seen Geaeta before, or a ship bearing her. None had. She said she’d never landed in any of them. Of course, a round ship is more at the mercy of the winds and Poseidon’s whims, and never has to land. It can carry food and water for weeks.
All of her story was plausible.
We landed next on the south coast of Sardinia — close enough to home to think about chucking the whole thing. But we didn’t. The prospect of riches can be as intoxicating as wine.
South of Sardinia, we picked up a pair of Carthaginian traders, half a day apart. I caught one, and Dionysus caught the other. Neither skipper knew anything about a tin convoy, but both admitted there had been a ferocious storm in the Straits of Heracles a month before.
Their cargoes were valuable — grain in one, and olive oil and hides in the other. We concentrated the cargoes into one of them and put a dozen men aboard under Giannis and sent her north to Massalia. And went west with the second capture filled to the gunwales with water and dried fish, a crew of fishermen under Vasileos sailing her. With our consort to provide food for a thousand rowers, we managed to make the five-day crossing to the Balearics in three days — with seven hundred and fifty mythemnoi of food and as much water. No fleet could have done it, but a handful of pirates Listen, I’ve made Dionysus sound like a monster in the matter of the girl. He wasn’t a nice man. He had fine ethics but didn’t apply them to women — at all. But he was an excellent sailor, a fine navigator and he planned. I learned on that trip how to calculate food expenditure. Off Alba, we had a round ship in consort, but we hadn’t used her for food. Dionysus’ method allowed a squadron of triremes to keep on the sea virtually for ever — as long as the owners were rich enough to buy stores. A thousand men eat a lot.
Nine days out of Ostia, and we were on a beach on the south coast of the Balearics. I’d landed there before, and I liked the beach. And then we were away south. We cruised warily off Ebusus and landed on a tiny islet, and then we slipped off the beach in the first light of a new-minted summer day and crossed to the Iberian coast, and worked our way along with a favourable wind for two more days.
The second evening, a pair of local boats saw us from seaward as we were landing. Dionysus was off the beach in a flash, and he took them both — no fishing boat can outrun a warship, as I had reason to remember. We ate their fish as the crews sat, disconsolate.
Dionysus and I questioned the two fishing captains. They knew New Carthage, and feared it, it was clear. Nether knew anything about the tin fleet. Both expected to die.
Neither knew anything about a big squadron of Carthaginian triremes setting a trap for pirates, either, to be frank.
Dionysus was planning to kill them all, but I insisted we leave them there on the beach, alive. Well, not all of them. Four men ‘volunteered’ to row with my ship. I took them.
We were off into an overcast morning of light rain. We crept down the coast: the wind was wrong, so we rowed into a light headwind, our five-ship squadron spread acr
oss thirty stades of sea so that we would sweep up any ship we might want to catch.
It was mid-afternoon when Neoptolymos — he had a Carthaginian ship so he was the most landward of the sweep — signalled that he could see New Carthage. An hour later, the town was visible in the haze, her red tile roofs glinting against the rising red-brown of the hills behind the town.
The harbour was empty. So were the seas.
After fifteen days of frenetic rowing and planning and training and sailing, our disappointment was palpable.
I had to admit that we hadn’t planned for the situation that confronted us. We planned either to fight our way out of an ambush, or swoop down on our prey. In fact, we found a fortified town with a heavily walled inner harbour — empty. Nor was there a powerful naval squadron waiting for us.
In the fading, ruddy light, I rowed up alongside Dionysus and hailed him.
‘Have you cut her throat yet?’ he asked.
I laughed. ‘No. She says we’re late.’
‘Or early,’ he said. ‘I don’t like it; the whole town’s empty.’
‘Now what?’ I asked.
‘Now we take the next ship in,’ he said.
That didn’t take as long as I feared. We stayed at sea all night, ate cold rations from our merchantman and the dawn showed us a Phoenician ship under oars coming up from the darkness to the south and east, from the coast of Africa. Neoptolymos dropped down and took her with only a cursory fight.
I winced to watch Neoptolymos, a decent man, slam his fist repeatedly into the captured Phoenician trierarch. Torturing prisoners is cowardly, to me. I didn’t like what I was seeing.
Heh.
Then he was brought aboard my ship.
It was Hasdrubal.
He had a bad cut under one eye and another on a corner of his mouth, which was ripped open by repeated blows. Even as he landed on my deck, Neoptolymos, who followed him over the side, hit him again.
The Illyrian laughed mirthlessly. ‘I can’t stop hitting him,’ he said.
‘Make him stop!’ pleaded the Carthaginian.
He didn’t recognize me.
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