Over my shoulder, the enemy trireme looked as big as a citadel. And fast as a porpoise.
And I had no one to help me. When exactly do you order your oars in? How long exactly does it take ninety men to drag their oars inboard?
I stood on the balls of my feet. I flicked a glance at the enemy – and saw that there was a second ship just abaft him.
Troas had seen it too – and it was too damned late to change our minds.
‘Ready to ram!’ I screamed.
Forward, the marines and Nearchos would be bracing against the bow.
The rowers would be praying.
Troas was grinning like a madman.
I wanted to shit myself.
I glanced at the enemy. So close it felt as if we should already have hit – I could see the face of their marine captain, and an arrow clanked against my helmet and flicked away. Good shooting.
‘Starboard side!’ I yelled. Wait for another stroke. Don’t give the game away.
‘Oars in!’ I roared, blowing my voice for a day in one great shout, trying to use the strength of my lungs to get the oars in through the ports.
Whamm. We hit so hard that I fell and lost my helmet. It fell between the benches and vanished below.
The starboard-side rowers had their oars in, but it didn’t matter.
Both ships had settled on the same tactics and jibed the same way, so we’d hit beak to beak – the hand of the gods. Our beak – a month out of the shop – held. Theirs broke off. Their ship was filling with water and my mouth was full of blood, Ares only knew why.
‘Starboard oars – out!’ I screeched. My voice was gone, but the petty-officers got the message.
‘Back-water! Nearchos!’ He was still stunned from the impact, but he came to me. His great helmet with bronze wings was a little flattened, and he had it buckled.
‘Get that thing off and take command,’ I said. ‘My voice is gone!’
A sailor clambered up from inside the hull and handed me my helmet. I got it on my head.
Troas was on the ball, and he got the bulk of the sinking Phoenician between us and the next enemy by backing to starboard. The second Phoenician overshot and went past us. I looked back, and most of the right flank’s second line was behind us, coming up fast.
By Poseidon, thugater, that was a fine moment. We’d sunk a Phoenician in one pass. Call it luck if you like. It was luck. Nike was with us and her handsomer sister Tyche, too!
And Troas, just by thinking fast and steering, got us around the wreck, our timbers creaking but our ship intact. There was water coming in – I can’t imagine how hard those two ships must have hit – but the sailors were bailing and we weren’t finished yet.
Archi’s ship was gone into the maelstrom in the centre. There were a dozen Phoenicians coming our way.
I looked at Nearchos. ‘Pick one and let’s get it,’ I said. My oath would have to wait. We were, in effect, alone against the Phoenician centre.
The trick to staying alive in a sea-fight is never to show the long side of your ship – the oar banks – to the enemy. If you keep your bow to their bows, there should be a limit to how much damage you can take. Despite what had just happened to the ship we’d killed.
Troas played safe and Nearchos didn’t interfere. We bumped hulls with the second Phoenician ship in line, cathead to cathead, and we damaged his oars a little, but he got most of them inboard. We lost two men – one oar fouled in the port and the loose end killed the rower who should have had it in and knocked the man above him in the oar loft unconscious, and just that small error left us vulnerable, because when the rowers were ordered to put their oars back in the water on the next stroke the whole port bank faltered and we turned to port, losing way and turning across the path of another enemy.
But the gods were with us and he passed us just a spear’s length astern, and then we had our stroke back and we were alive.
But our rowers were tired. I could feel it. Tension is its own fatigue, thugater – the more you are afraid, the more tired you feel. And the more tired you are, the easier it is to feel fear.
I looked around, because suddenly we were between the fights. To the north, Archilogos and Epaphroditos and their allies were engaged with the second line of the Phoenician centre. Behind us, the Cretans were overwhelming the first line by weight of numbers, and the Samians had already polished off the enemy Greeks.
Even Aristagoras could scent victory. He released the centre and left, and the Milesians and the Chians went forward.
In fact, we had won the battle. I knew it and, more important, the Phoenician navarch knew it. His right flank declined the engagement and began to row backwards again. I never saw their signal, but all at once, enemy ships began to flee.
Not the ships around Archi, though. They were locked together with grapples and marines, spear to spear.
I pointed to the fight in the centre.
Nearchos’s fears were gone. He grinned.
‘Now we make you a name,’ I said. Not the words Achilles paid me to say.
But we were young.
Troas put us in well. We actually rowed a little past the mêlée and turned south, taking our first Phoenician in the flank. I was in the bow, my helmet down over my eyes, arms braced against the bulkhead, when we hit, and I could see the upper-deck oarsmen and their round mouths and terrified eyes as our damaged ram broke open their long side. We’d had a full stade to turn and race at our target; the men had the heart for one more burst and we were a heavy ship.
The enemy keel snapped under our ram and the ship broke in half. It was a spectacular kill and every ship in the centre of our line saw us do it. That’s how you make a reputation, honey.
We probably also killed our own ship with that impact. The bow seams probably gave way right there.
We were too wild with the daimon of combat to care. Our beak went home into another enemy lashed alongside the one we’d broken like an old toy, and we spent our remaining momentum scraping down his side and coming to a rest broadside to broadside, oar bank to oar bank.
I leaped up on our ship’s side and Nearchos was beside me, Idomeneus and Lekthes at my back, and the oar benches were emptying.
I balanced on the rail and waved down on to the Phoenician’s deck. ‘After you, my lord!’ I said.
He grinned and we all leaped.
That was a great day, and a great hour. The enemy already knew they were doomed and doomed men seldom fight well. We cleared that first ship faster than it takes to tell it, killing their sailors – all their marines were elsewhere, boarding the Lesbian ships. I cut the captain down by his helmsman and Nearchos gutted the helmsman, and then we went over the side and down into the next ship – another trireme, and now we were coming up behind the Phoenician marines as they fought shield to shield against Lesbians and Chians and Ephesian exiles.
Behind me, the Cretans were clearing the Phoenician decks, tripping from bench to bench. A Cretan ship is a fearsome thing because every bench has another warrior. We were worth five ships’ worth of marines.
My spears were gone and my good sword was in my hand. I was standing on the rail of a Lesbian ship – there were twenty ships all locked together in a single mass of death – and I balanced there for three heartbeats while I looked for Archilogos.
Then I saw him, a flash of blue and gold, still on his feet, his right arm covered in blood and his aspis a flapping mass of splintered wood and collapsed bronze. Some men fight better when they are doomed.
And I blessed the gods that they had given me the moment to redeem my oath.
Hah! I killed like the scythe of Hades. I won’t bore you with the tale – oh, you want me to bore you?
It was one of my finest days.
All the doubt left me. I cared nothing for their wives and their children and their petty lives. As fast as my arm moved, they died. If they turned, I cut them down, and if they didn’t turn, I put my sword into their throats and thighs. I could have cleared a ship by
myself, but I had Nearchos by my side, and his blade was as fast as mine, and Lekthe’s spear flashed over my head from time to time when I was pressed, and they died. The four of us were the cutting edge of a living axe of Cretans, and we flowed over their decks as fast as men can clamber from bench to bench. My right arm was red to the shoulder with the blood of lesser men, dripping down my chest inside my armour, and there was the smell of copper in my nose like an offering to the god of smiths, and still I killed them.
After we cleared our second ship, I got my voice back and called ‘Archilogos!’, and he turned. Because if he died without me, I would never forgive myself. He had to know I was coming.
Another ship, the last before Archi’s, and I was suddenly blade to blade with a giant. To make it worse, he was standing on the command platform and I was in the benches. He was an officer of some sort, because he’d gathered a dozen marines and turned them to face our rush.
I paused. He was huge, and I felt the blood and the fire in my muscles.
‘Spear,’ I said, reaching back, and Lekthes put his in my hand.
That’s right, honey. And he eventually died a lord, and his daughters play with you. I thought you’d recognize the name – I’ve mentioned it a dozen times.
The giant raised his shield, ready for me to throw the spear.
Instead, I charged him. Raising the shield cost him a second, and I got a foot on the platform and my shield went against his, and before I got the other foot up, I slammed my spear point into the side of his helmet, a broad bowl with cheek pieces, riveted in the middle. Phoenicians are masters of many things, but bronze-work is not one of them.
He stumbled back. I’d rung his bell. Then he cut low at my legs, but I dipped the Boeotian and put the bronze-bound base into his sword. Then I slammed my spear into his helmet – again.
In the same place.
He stumbled back, and I roared. I remember that moment best of all, because this giant of a man was afraid and that fear was like the scent of blood to a shark.
He cut at my legs again, but I blocked it, stepped in and put my spear point into his helmet a third time, where the brow-ridge met the bowl, and the third time, the rivet popped and the point went under the bad weld, right through the top of his skull.
I stepped over him and a spear punched into my side. By Ares, that was pain – the scales held, but the rib broke, and I was knocked to my knees.
Never saw the blow that got me. There’s a lesson there.
Nearchos got him.
I knelt there, almost dead, unable to raise my head – Ares, the pain; I hurt even thinking about it! And Lekthes and Idomeneus stepped past me, dancing the dance, and men fell back before them. They cleared the platform and I could breathe, although it wasn’t good, and I got a leg under me and then another.
Then the rest of them dropped their weapons.
Cretans were flooding aboard from all directions. I’d taken Achilles’ heir into the heart of the chaos and his father had come with all his warriors to save him.
Nearchos was as tall as a titan in that moment.
I managed to walk forward.
Achilles glared at me but embraced his son. I passed behind him and led my men across to Archi’s trireme.
Half of Archi’s rowers were dead, and all but two of his marines. He himself was covered in blood and had an arrow right through his calf, but somehow he was still standing.
I walked up the centre plank from the bow and the spear shaft in my hand had a tendril of blood that ran all the way down from the head. The Phoenician marines tried to surrender, but there was no quarter just then, and my Cretans rolled over them like a wave rolling over a child’s castle on the beach, and they were gone, their blood flowing into the sea, and I was so close to Archi I could reach out and touch him.
‘Archi!’ I said, and pulled off my helmet.
‘Get off my ship,’ he said, and fainted.
We bandaged him. He was cut eleven times, I remember that. And the arrow through his calf. When he came to, he swore at me and demanded that I be executed. No one paid him any heed, but my dreams that our friendship would be restored when I saved him went the way of many dreams.
I had a couple of broken ribs and six bad cuts. My sword arm had taken a lot of abuse – desperate men cut at your arm instead of defending themselves, and die while doing it. Death robs them of force, but I’d always meant to buy vambraces and now I knew why.
I sat on the deck of an alien ship and let Lekthes bandage me. We’d taken four ships, or so Idomeneus told me – which was good, because our own had sunk. It sank empty, but sink it did, the bow opened like a slit belly.
Nearchos came and gave me some shade, along with Troas. ‘My father is angry,’ Nearchos said, as if it delighted him.
‘I suspect he feels that I should have protected you better,’ I said. I think I managed a smile.
‘Pick any of the ships and it is yours,’ he said. ‘We can crew it from the survivors. I’m taking this one – unless you want it.’
I raised my head. ‘Do I get Troas? What on earth am I to do with a ship? And how is Archilogos of Ephesus?’
Nearchos shook his head. ‘You’ve been out a little while, friend. We lost the battle.’
That snapped me awake, blood loss or none. ‘What?’
‘Oh, we won the sea battle,’ Nearchos said. How godlike he looked – and not a mark on him. He shrugged. ‘The Cyprians shattered like glass, and half their nobles changed sides in mid-action. Onesilus is dead. Cyprus is lost.’
‘Ares,’ I muttered.
‘Aristagoras has ordered us to stay together and run for Lesbos.’ He shrugged. ‘Pater says that we’ll crew you a ship and you’ll go for all of us. The rest of us are going home.’ He made a face.
‘Your father is a great man,’ I said. ‘Troas, you go home. May you have a hundred grandchildren.’
He laughed. ‘Never planned anything else. But I’ll choose you a good crew. If you swear me an oath that you’ll send them home.’
I got to my feet. I felt like crap, but there was something – some weight gone from my shoulder, and not just my scale shirt.
I’d kept my oath. I could feel it.
‘I have one oath already on me,’ I said. ‘I’ll do my best, but that’s all I can promise.’
17
The second day out from Cyprus, and we were in the deep blue under sail, reaching north for the coast of Asia and familiar waters, and my heart was in my throat with every rise of the bow. The cuts on my arms hurt the worse for the salt air and there was a storm rising in the east. I had one trick of command – I wasn’t going to show my fear to Lekthes or Idomeneus, so they assumed all was well and transmitted that confidence down the decks.
But darkness was coming. I knew that I’d fucked up – pardon me, ladies, and by Aphrodite, despoina, you blush like a maiden of twelve – I mean that I knew I’d left it until too late in the day, and I knew we weren’t on a course of true north, and that meant we were still at sea when we should have been cooking. And no sight of a coast.
The rowers were sitting on their benches enjoying the rest, and no doubt planning how to retake the ship.
I called my two men and gave it to them straight. ‘We’re going to spend the night at sea,’ I said. ‘And the crew will try for us once it is too dark to see.’
Lekthes winced. Idomeneus grinned maniacally. The sea-fight had changed him. For all his limp wrists and exaggerated pretty-boy habits, he was getting to be a hard man. And he knew it and loved it.
‘Let them come,’ he said. ‘There aren’t ten men among them.’
I shook my head. ‘The ten men you kill are the same ten men we need to get to Lesbos alive,’ I said.
Lekthes shook his head. ‘So, what then?’
‘Get the Cretans up and armed. Then walk up and down confidently and see if there are any of the Greeks worth having. If you find a man you like, send him aft while there’s still light.’
The tw
o of them went forward, armed the Cretan deck crew and then began to move through the ship. I’m sure that none of you well-bred ladies has ever been on a warship, so I’ll tell you how it is at sea. A trireme has three decks of rowers – they aren’t really decks, but three levels of benches with a sort of crawl-space between them. It takes men time to come and go from the oar benches. There’s a single walkway, the width of a man’s shoulders, that runs from stem to stern the length of the ship. On an Athenian ship, there’s a command platform amidships. Some of the easterners do the same and some build a little deck aft, by the helmsman. Regardless, the helmsman sits in the stern between his two oars, which in a modern ship are strapped together with bronze or iron. He’s the real commander of the ship, and it is the helmsman’s voice that the other officers – the deck crew – obey. Under the helmsman there’s an oar master who keeps order and counts time, and a sailing master who manages the two masts and their sails – the mainmast and the boatsail mast, which is up forward in the bow. The rest of the deck crew manage the sails and bully the oarsmen and provide a reserve of labour. On a Cretan ship they also serve as extra marines. Then there are marines – usually citizen-hoplites.
Lord Achilles didn’t send me with any marines. I had two dozen of his men as deck crew, and not one of them would make an officer. A more worthless group of men I’d seldom seen, and Troas had his revenge for my ‘corrupting’ his daughter – by the gods, I swore to have vengeance on him if I ever caught him – not one man who could be trusted between the steering oars. Nearchos may have wanted me to get the very best men, but what I got was the dregs. Men no one needed. Human waste.
The prisoners were the better men in every instance. I had at least forty Phoenicians and twice that in captured Greeks. I didn’t even have a full rowing crew – I couldn’t man all the lower-deck oar shafts. In good weather, it should have been enough, but there was a storm coming and Lord Achilles didn’t give a ram’s fart whether this ship made it through the storm or not.
Killer of Men Page 37
