I’d like to say that I stopped Neoptolymos from tormenting the man, who was already broken.
Listen, there’s limits. I try to be the man that Heraclitus taught, and not the thug I might have been. But sometimes An hour passed. Dionysus dropped onto my deck. He looked down at the wreckage of a human body on my ship.
He laughed.
‘I thought you were too soft for this life,’ he said. ‘Ares! Kill him.’ He looked at me, a little sickened, I could tell.
‘He enslaved us,’ I said. ‘He killed Neoptolymos’s sister.’
Dionysus nodded. Looked away. ‘Have you vengeful Furies even asked him about the tin fleet?’ he asked.
Neoptolymos nodded. ‘He passed it two days ago, headed east. Under full sail.’
The same wind that we’d rowed into.
Dionysus nodded. ‘Let’s chase them,’ he said gently. ‘This is a waste of time.’ He picked up Hasdrubal and threw him over the rail into the sea without asking us.
Neoptolymos growled.
I seemed to awaken.
Sometimes, when I fancy myself a better man then other men, I think of two things from the ten years between Plataea and Artemisium. I think of how I treated Lydia. I think of what I did to Hasdrubal.
He didn’t even scream when he hit the water. He sank, unable even to swim.
Choked and drowned.
Slowly, I hope.
All of his marines had been killed, and, of course, Dagon wasn’t aboard. His ship was a small merchant galley of fifty oars, with the usual collection of broken men as oarsmen — men he’d played his own role in breaking, no doubt. As soon as Neoptolymos’s marines came down the gangway, the oarsmen had ripped the rest of the crew asunder.
It is odd that there are so many bad captains, as the payback is so ruthless.
We took the ship and the oarsmen. It was ballasted in wine for the western stations. So we gave our oarsmen good African wine every night as we ate salt fish and rowed and sailed east.
We tried every trick. We wet our sails to take the breeze when it was coming over our sterns, and we sailed on a quarter-reach with both boatsail and mainsail drawing together — a rare point of sailing even in our rig, and very fast, so that for a whole day we made perhaps thirty stades an hour.
We had advantages and disadvantages. We knew where our quarry was going, and elected to cut the corner — they would have crossed directly to Africa, while we went on a long hypotenuse, slanting away east, south-east. We were neither lucky nor unlucky in our winds, and of course, our quarry had the same winds. Best of all, we knew about them and they, we hoped, knew nothing of us.
Dionysus knew the waters better than I, and he was making for Hippo, on the north shore of Africa, about six hundred stades from Carthage.
This was more blue-water sailing than most of our oarsmen had ever seen. We were lucky to have so many veterans from our adventures in the Outer Sea. Sailors like nothing better than to tell a shipmate This ain’t nothing, brother, and I stood between the oars on the third night, the taste of salt anchovies barely drowned in wine on my tongue, listening to my oarsmen.
‘You ain’t seen nothing, mate,’ said Xenos, a fisherman’s son from Massalia. ‘We were nine days at sea off Iberia — the Outer Sea coast of Iberia, mate — in a storm so bad men cut their wrists rather than face another day. As Poseidon is my witness.’
‘And when we tried to run from Gaul to Alba,’ says another voice in the darkness, ‘Poseidon blew us over the edge of the world.’
‘And then what happened?’ asked a sceptic.
‘A Titan blew us back,’ said the storyteller. ‘I’m here, ain’t I?’
Five days at sea.
Even with the prospect of boundless riches, sailors will eventually tire of bad food and back-breaking labour. Even sailors.
Five days of rowing — for the most part. We were low on water and out of food. Men spoke poems in praise of bread. No lie: bread is the thing you miss most at sea.
Well, many men were missing something else. Geaeta was not inhibited by the presence of two hundred crewmen, and Seckla’s continuing education at her hands — and more — was noisy, demonstrative and sometimes annoyingly emotive. I have said before that a woman — especially a desirable but unavailable woman — aboard a ship is a fine thing for morale, but to be sure, a desirable and sexually active woman aboard a ship with two hundred men just makes the one hundred and ninety-nine more difficult.
Myself, I took to pulling my cloak around my head, despite the heat.
I won’t say the crew was near mutiny — merely that I thought it possible that Seckla would be murdered. I confined him to the sailor’s deck amidships, and read Geaeta my best speech on being a shipmate. She laughed, but obeyed. She knew that she was still on sufferance. Most men believed her story, now — I did. But she understood.
Another day. We finished the water.
We sighted land. We’d sighted it for days, but that evening, Dionysus laid alongside and told me that we were hundreds of stades short of our landfall and that we had to land anyway.
I knew that.
In the last light of a summer evening, we rowed into a river mouth. We rowed until the water was fresh and drank it straight from the stream, reaching through the oar-ports to drink out of wooden cups. The water was brackish — not even fresh. But men were badly dehydrated, and most of them drank and pissed it away immediately — pardon my frankness — but we were close to the edge.
We landed in the darkness, put a guard over the wine and slept. In the morning, the marines caught a shepherd boy who said we were west of Kissia.
Dionysus shook his head. ‘Poseidon hates us. We’re hopelessly behind.’
Morale plummeted. Things might have gone ill, but we made a landfall, got water and sent the shepherd for his father and paid silver for the whole flock and ate it, too.
Next morning, full of mutton, we rowed east. We stood well out as we passed Kissia, which had a pair of triremes on her open beach. I proposed we burn them on the beach, but Gaius wanted to go home and Dionysus wanted to try for the tin fleet for two more days — right up to the walls of Carthage.
We landed that night with the twinkling lights of Hippo in the distance and the smell of their fires in our nostrils.
In the morning, when the sun rose, we saw that her harbour was full of ships.
Full of ships.
Dionysus turned and hugged his helmsman. Most of the men on our ship hugged Geaeta.
Sixteen ships, though. We’d chased a gazelle, and caught a lion.
20
The Bay of Hippo stretches a good sixty stades from promontory to promontory, forming a superb natural harbour with shelving beaches running into the fertile lands above. The ‘city’ is really three or four communities all the way around the half-moon curve: there’s a fishing village, a sailor’s village with wine shops and an entrepreneurial agora, there’s a fine town with walls and homes for the rich, and there’s a slave town that stretches along the downwind side of the beach. If I keep telling this story, I’ll eventually tell you how I came to know Hippo and Carthage so well, but for the moment, just take my word for it.
Top up my wine, lad. Ah! Lesbian wine. When it crosses my lips, I feel young again.
Where was I? Ah.
We sighted the Carthaginian tin fleet.
Dionysus was a ship’s-length ahead of me. We were under oars, the wind heading us as it had for ten days. There was a commotion aboard my ship, and Doola came aft to tell me that Dionysus was standing on his stern platform and asking for me.
I ran forward along the gangway. I ordered the marines into their armour as I went. My heart beat fast, and my old — well, let’s call it what it is, eh? — my old greed for glory was suddenly there.
So much for maturity.
I ran onto the bow platform. Dionysus hailed me from his stern and bellowed, ‘Let’s take them!’
Even as he called, he was turning his ship.
M
egakles was following him, and the oars were in perfect order, with Doola sounding the time as Seckla put him in his thorax.
I stood on tiptoe on the bow rail for a long breath.
The enemy ships were not in supporting range. Why would they be? They were a day out from home in a Carthaginian port, not in the face of the enemy. And who had ten warships to come after their fleet?
We had five.
Their warships were mostly clustered at the western end of the crescent. The seven big tin freighters were three stades farther east, opposite the agora. It was early morning, well before the hour when a gentleman puts on his chlamys and wanders down to the agora. Only slaves are awake at such an hour.
And pirates.
I scratched my beard, took another breath and raised my fist.
‘Let’s take them!’ I roared back.
Behind me, on my own deck, the rowers grunted in unison and there was a rumbling — of approval, I hoped.
I’m not usually one for speaking when going into action, but I ran amidships and stood by the mainmast.
‘Listen, philoi! The whole treasure of Carthage lies under our rams, and all we have to do is take it. Some of you have your own quarrel with Carthage. Some of you would like to be rich. There’s five hundred ingots of tin over there, maybe more. Enough for every man here to buy a farm and twenty slaves to work it for him.’
My maths may have been weak. But they cheered.
‘But they aren’t weak, the men of Carthage. So listen carefully for orders, and when we board, I want every man coming with a roar. Right? Here we go.’
It was something like that. They roared, and on the ships behind, Gaius and Neoptolymos probably said something similar.
We rowed. I was not willing to use my rower’s energy yet, and Dionysus must have been of a similar mind, so we rowed at a walking pace in line ahead. Dionysus was first, and I was second; Neoptolymos third, Teukes fourth. Vasileos had our round ship, and Daud, who had seen plenty of sea time, had asked to be placed in command of Hasdrubal’s pentekonter. He had a difficult job. We put two-dozen good oarsmen into his ship and took the hardest cases out, but the pentekonter was always sagging behind — a slow, old ship. That’s how Hasdrubal had ended up, and well deserved, too.
At any rate, we pulled into the east wind, and as we closed with the westernmost part of the convoy — the tin ships — we saw men waking up, running down the beach, pointing at us, and so on.
I had all the time in the world to put on my gleaming, magnificent new panoply. I walked along my catwalk, feeling rather like Ares come to life. Men reached out to touch me. That’s praise.
The enemy warships were coming awake.
Men were pouring down the sand, working like Titans to get those ships off. The round merchantmen were anchored out, with their round stone anchors holding them near the beach.
I watched them all. As usual with a fight, everything seemed to be moving very slowly — right up until the moment when everything would suddenly go very fast. Our surprise was slipping away, and I began to wonder if we’d have been better to come in at ramming speed and try to crush the enemy triremes where they lay. But it was too late for that, now.
Doola came up next to me, bow in hand. He looked under his hand at the merchantmen.
‘I want you and Seckla and ten men of your choosing to go into that one,’ I said, choosing the third ship out from the beach. ‘Put her sails up and get into the offing. And then run for Massalia.’
He looked at the warships. ‘You might need every man,’ he said.
‘I might. But I’m not aiming for a heroic last stand,’ I grinned. ‘Just take it and run. Pick up Vasileos and Daud as you go.’
He nodded. ‘You think it is a trap?’
‘Nope,’ I said. I could feel the strength in my sword arm. ‘I think we’ve bitten off more than we could possibly chew.’
We didn’t bother to ram the merchants — we wanted them intact. My Lydia shaved alongside my chosen victim, my starboard side oars in and across in perfect order, and my archers watched their rigging while my marines went up a ladder and across from our standing mainmast to theirs. Boarding from the mast was one of Dionysus’ tricks. It had a number of advantages, and in this case, where we really had reason to fear a trap, even a handful of men well above the enemy deck allowed us some security. A merchant’s sides are much higher than a trireme’s, which makes boarding difficult and dangerous. A merchantman packed with soldiers would make a tough target and a perfect trap.
But not that day.
Our men stormed aboard as cleanly as they might have in a drill — better, because their blood was up. The ship’s keeper — the only man aboard — jumped over the side and swam for shore.
Doola crossed over with his chosen volunteers. Too late, I realized that Seckla was taking Geaeta. I saw her run up the boarding plank, long shins flashing in the early summer sun.
Well, she was or she wasn’t a spy. I doubted she could kill Doola.
I got my marines back as the first of the Carthaginian triremes came off the beach, six stades away.
These things have a life of their own. You might ask why we didn’t make a plan, and I’ll say that had we hung off the coast to make a plan, we’d have found them in a defensive circle, or their triremes coming out after us. Dionysus was confident, and so were all the rest of us.
That said, my plan depended on the others following me. Because I took my marines aboard, got them into the bow and headed due east into the oncoming enemy. I hoped that my consorts were coming with me.
Leukas, my Alban, had the deck with the sailors. He was acting as oar-master in Doola’s absence. I gave him the nod to go to ramming speed. He gave me a thumb’s-up.
Anchises and Darius led the marines, and I joined them. They were big men, and all my marines were now bigger men than I–I’d had a year to pick and choose the best, and arm them like heroes, too.
I pointed to the lead enemy ship off the beach. ‘We’re going to go aboard her and take her,’ I said. ‘Anchises, kill your way aft and take command. The rowers ought to obey you. If they don’t, Darius, you kill a few. Until they obey. Understand?’
Both men grunted.
‘Row clear and run north. Look for Doola. Got it?’
Both men nodded. The other marines nodded.
Across the narrowing strip of water that separated us, the Carthaginian trierarch had just realized that I meant business and that his friends were coming to help him. He had the best ship and the best crew, and like such men, he thought he could do everything himself. Of course he did. I was another such man. But now he was coming to ramming speed, and he realized that win or lose, he was alone.
The next best Carthaginian was just getting his hull in the water.
I looked aft at Megakles. He waved.
Both ships went for an oar-rake, and both ships got their oars in. They were fine sailors with superb helmsmen, for the most part. We raced down their starboard side, and the grapnels flew in both directions. We were going so fast that some of the grapnels ripped free, and I saw a rope snap as the whole weight of two racing ships came to bear on it. The flying end of the rope struck my pais and ripped his face off the skull beneath, and the poor boy screamed and screamed. It was one of the most horrific wounds I’ve ever witnessed.
I had to put him down. That felt bad.
I’d planned to free him. He’d served me so well.
Pah. It still tastes bad.
And then we were slowing. Both ships were turning — fast — heeled over from the weight of the other ship. I got my spear free of the dead weight of my former slave, and I needed action. I was about to weep. I really felt bad about the boy.
I was up on the rail before the ships stopped moving.
A Carthaginian marine threw his javelin at me. It missed by a hand’s breadth, and I leaped down into the rowers — one foot on the cross-beam, and one flailing wildly for a moment until I got it down — and one of the rowers grabb
ed my foot. My spear went straight down into his open mouth — I still remember that kill. Poor bastard. Rowers should never try to fight marines unless they get off their benches first. Remember that they are in three tiers, and that they can’t really stand — or support each other. If they have weapons, they stow them under their benches — hard to get at, hard to use.
I pushed up towards the catwalk. This was an undecked trireme, like an Athenian — in fact, it might have been a captured Athenian ship. Rowers in three tiers open to the sky, and a catwalk all the way down the centre line. Most of the enemy marines were on the catwalk, using pikes over the heads of the rowers.
I took a pikehead on my aspis. My attacker was trying to push me down into the rowers. I batted the pikehead aside and made my jump. I landed badly, lost my balance and my armour saved my life as a spear cut some unintended engraving between my shoulder blades. The mark is still there — see? Look, right there. That’s death, honeybee. But not for me.
I had to put a foot back, and by luck — nothing better than luck — my foot landed on the cross-beam and I didn’t fall. I stabbed with my spear, and my two opponents — one with a pike fifteen feet long and one with a short spear — stabbed at me, pushing me down.
The man with the short spear tried to parry my spear with his own, but he had his spear too near the haft and I had the leverage, and I pressed his aside and ran mine home. He had armour — leather and bronze. But my needle-sharp spearhead pricked him — not a killing blow, but by the feel in my hand I knew I’d punched the point into him and he flinched and gave a cry, and I rifled my spear forward again, at his helmet, and he stepped back.
The pikehead slammed into my helmet, and I saw stars. But I kept my footing and pushed forward into the space of the wounded Carthaginian, and now I had both feet on the catwalk.
I had both feet under me. But now I had enemies ahead of me and behind me on the catwalk.
I slammed my aspis as hard as I could into the man behind me, using the bronze-clad edge as a giant axe. I caved in the face of his rawhide and wicker shield and broke his arm. Then I turned, pivoting my hips, and thrust backhanded with my spear — thumb up, spearhead down, like a dagger blow. It is the most powerful spear blow, but of course, when you deliver it, you are wide open to your opponent, as your shield is behind you. It is like the famed Harmodius blow.
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