Killer of Men

by Christian Cameron

  ‘The new ships are almost ready,’ Callicrates said.

  Miltiades looked angry. ‘Why don’t I know any of this?’

  ‘There have been rumours,’ Cimon said. His brothers nodded.

  ‘Plenty of time to run for Athens,’ Miltiades said bitterly. ‘I can’t fight thirty ships.’

  I looked at Paramanos. ‘My lord – if I may. I have a way you can knock Ba’ales out of the campaign – for this year, at least. Very little risk – at least, for you.’

  Miltiades was leaning on his hands, staring out of the window. He turned. ‘Really?’ he asked. His voice said that he didn’t expect much. Like most arrogant men, Miltiades assumed he’d thought of everything.

  ‘In short, my lord, I propose that we catch Ba’ales at dawn and take or burn his ships while they are beached.’ I sat up on my couch.

  ‘No,’ Miltiades sounded like a bored schoolteacher talking to stupid children. ‘His coast-watchers will see us coming.’

  I smiled. ‘Fishing boats,’ I said.

  The story of the boat raid has been told so often that I won’t bore you with it. Every fisherman in these waters can tell you how we borrowed their boats, sailed down on the outflow from the Euxine, as the fishing fleet does every evening in summer, and caught Ba’ales on the beach at moonrise.

  It was slaughter. We had just two hundred men, all fighters – the pick of Miltiades’ men. The only hard part was the last ten stades – when we could see their hulls, black in the moonlight, and we could see their fires, and for all we knew, they were lining the beach ready for us.

  They were not. Someone gave the alarm when we were a stade out, but they never got formed. We raced the last stade, rowing our open boats as if they were triremes. My boat went a man’s length up the gravel beach when it hit, and I was over the side almost dry-shod, with Stephanos on one side of me and Hermogenes on the other.

  Paramanos had one half of the men. Their mission was to secure our retreat by taking the likeliest of the enemy triremes and getting it afloat. My men were to set fire to the rest of the ships and kill as many oarsmen as we could.

  Those ships burned like torches. We had fire pots rigged on poles, heavy crockery filled with coals, and we smashed them inside the enemy hulls as we went, two pots per hull. They were afire before the enemy recovered, and we were armoured men, formed at the edge of the firelight against the desperation of an unarmed rabble.

  The sad truth is we burned too many – we could have taken more. Our two hundred men broke the Phoenicians. Most men fight badly when surprised, and they were no different. Ba’ales died in the first attack, although we didn’t know it. I hardly fought – I was too busy giving orders.

  By Athena Nike, we drove them! Where they were brave, we killed them, and where they ran, we reaped them. Hah! That was a victory.

  When it became clear that we were masters of the field, we managed to beat out the fires in one of the smallest of the enemy ships still on the beach, and we turned it over in the water, doused the embers and got it afloat too. So we managed to capture two of their dozen hulls, while the rest burned to their keels, and we got away with ten dead and as many wounded. Only Ares knows how many of their oarsmen and marines we left face down on the sand. We rowed, tired but happy, back up the Bosporus, towing the fishing boats in long lines behind us.

  It sounds wonderful that way, doesn’t it? That’s the way a proper singer tells a battle, without mentioning that the ten dead men were dead, and their children were fatherless, their mothers widows, their lives over, perhaps for ever, because Miltiades chose to remain master of the Chersonese. Eh?

  And another thing, though it shames me to tell it. I don’t always remember men’s names. The men who fell there on the beach? Making my reputation and saving Miltiades? I can’t remember them. The sad truth, honey, is that some time that summer I stopped learning their names. They died in raids, in little ship fights and of fevers. Men died every week. They came out from Athens, lower-class men with nothing to lose, and most of them brought their deaths with them. Some were too weak. Some never learned to handle their weapons.

  We were pirates, thugater. I can coat it in a glaze of honey, set it in epic verse, but we were hard men who lived a hard life, and it wasn’t worth my time to learn the new men’s names until they’d survived for a while.

  Don’t mind me. I philosophize.

  At any rate, the next morning the Carians ambushed Daurises’ columns as he tried to push into the mountains west of the Temple of Zeus of the Army at Labraunda in Caria, and destroyed them, killing Daurises and quite a number of Persians – the first real victory of the whole war. The news went through the Ionians like a bolt from Zeus, and sacrifices appeared on Ares’ altars from Miletus to Crete.

  I didn’t know it at the time, but Pharnakes, who had been my friend, and with whom I had twice crossed swords, died at Labraunda in the ambush.

  In the aftermath of these two small victories, we heard that Darius had lost all patience with the revolt, and with Greeks in general. He ordered his satraps to prepare a major armament for the reduction of the Chersonese, and he bragged that he would see Athens destroyed.

  That didn’t please the democrats in Athens, who were aware that Miltiades was responsible for Darius’s anger. But that’s not part of my story – just a comment.

  As summer gave way to autumn, Miltiades received word from various sources about Darius’s preparations. He had ordered fifty ships to be levied from the Syrian towns, and the satrap of Phrygia was to aid Artaphernes in raising an army to destroy Caria and retake Aeolis.

  We lay back on our couches and laughed, because that would all happen next summer. There was only six weeks left in the sailing season.

  Miltiades toasted me in good Chian wine. ‘One stroke,’ he said, ‘and I am once again master in my own house. You are dear to me, Plataean.’

  I frowned. ‘Next summer, Darius will come with a vast army.’

  Miltiades would not be sober. ‘For all your heroism,’ he said, ‘you have a great deal to learn about fighting the Medes.’ He looked at Cimon.

  Cimon laughed and spoke up. ‘Other provinces will revolt this winter,’ he said.

  Miltiades nodded. ‘You think we hit Naucratis for pure profit?’ he asked me. I could see Paramanos grinning. I had thought we went there for pure profit.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  Miltiades nodded. ‘Not to be spurned, profits. But when we took their ships, we showed the Greek merchants and the Aegyptian priests that their Persian overlords couldn’t defend them. And when it appears that we are winning, they will evict their garrisons as they did in my father’s time, and Darius will have to bend all his will to Aegypt. And then we will have lovely times!’ He laughed. The whole Greek world was speaking of our coup on the beach south of Kallipolis, and Miltiades’ name was on every man’s lips in Athens, and all was right in the world.

  It was a good dream, but we had underestimated Darius, and we had forgotten those twenty ships that were on their way to reinforce Ba’ales.

  21

  That night, I asked Miltiades for permission to go home once the sailing season ended. Miltiades heard me out and nodded. He was a good overlord, and he had a reputation to protect. Besides, I had just put new laurels on his brow.

  ‘Go with Hermes, lad. In fact, I’ll see to it that Herk or Paramanos runs you home. Take a couple of men – you’ll want to kill the bastard and not take any crap from neighbours.’ He nodded. ‘Anything you need, you ask. It’s as much my fault as anyone’s. I knew something was wrong – I didn’t give it enough thought. When your father died, I mean.’

  He shrugged. I knew what he meant – when the Plataeans helped Athens defeat the Eretrians, Miltiades was done with that part of his busy plotting, and he let his tools drop. That was the sort of man he was. But he was also enough of a gentleman to regret that he had allowed the tools to become damaged when he dropped them.

  I spent the next few weeks making arr
angements for my absence. I didn’t tell Miltiades, but I wasn’t sure that I would return.

  I gave Herakleides one command and Stephanos the other.

  Herakleides and his brothers were trusted men by then, and they showed no signs of running back to Aeolis. Both Nestor and Orestes were promising helmsmen, and they had the birth and military training to carry rank.

  Stephanos did not. He wasn’t an aristocrat, and he didn’t have all the command skills that I had learned – nor the enormous, heroic and largely unearned reputation that I had acquired, which grew with every day and vastly exceeded the reality of my accomplishments, even though I was in love with it.

  Reputation alone is enough to carry most men – but Stephanos was a fine seaman and a careful, considerate officer. He’d led the marines for a year and they worshipped him. I thought that he was ready.

  Idomeneus informed me that he was coming with me. So was Hermogenes. ‘You think I came all the way out here just to grab a pot of Persian silver?’ Hermogenes asked. ‘Pater sent me to find you so that you could restore order. Simonalkes is a bad farmer and a fool. But when he’s dead, it will take time to rebuild.’

  I found it comic that Hermogenes had spent three years looking for me so that he could get the farm in order.

  Paramanos offered to take me home, all the way to Corinth if I wanted, but I had other plans. Plans I’d worked at for a long time.

  Miltiades supported me as I moved captains. So Paramanos moved from Briseis to the newly rebuilt Ember, the ship we’d taken, still smoking from our attempt to burn her, during the boat raid. The smaller ship we’d taken was Raven’s Wing, and Stephanos had her, and Herakleides took command of Briseis. I had Briseis stowed for a long voyage, and I gave him his own two brothers as officers – Nestor as the oar master and Orestes as the captain of marines. I spent money like water – I had plenty. And the rowers in that ship still owed me three months of service before wages were due.

  I intended to sail that ship into Aristagoras’s town at Myrcinus, in Thrace, and take Briseis – or give her the ship and go horseback, overland. It was a foolish plan, a boy’s plan, but without it, the next weeks would have been worse. It is a fine example of fate, and how the gods work. Had I left all to chance, I would have died, and many others with me. But I planned carefully. My plans all failed, of course – but among the shards of my broken plans lay the makings of an escape.

  The first rain of autumn came and went, and my intentions were set. I sent Briseis a message via the Thracian king, asking her to be ready. Miltiades cautioned me again – directly – against killing Aristagoras. I don’t remember what I told him. Perhaps I lied outright. I thought myself tremendously clever. So did Miltiades. The hubris flowed thick and fast, that autumn.

  The grain was sheaved in the fields along the Bosporus. The peasants had their harvest festivals, and the sun shone in an autumn that seemed more like summer – when Hymaees descended on the Troad with thirty ships and a thousand marines. The first we knew of his arrival was that our southernmost town was burned and all the inhabitants sold into slavery, and the refugees poured up the one bad road with tales of war and slaughter.

  The next day we heard that Hymaees himself was in Caria with twenty thousand men, and the Carians were unable to make a stand. Just like that, the northern arm of the revolt was going down.

  The Carians didn’t give in without a battle, but we were too busy to help them. Miltiades ordered all the ships manned. We worked night and day to refurbish the two triremes taken in the night attack and with them we had ten hulls. On the first day of the new month, Miltiades led us to sea, down the Bosporus past the still smoking ruins of our town. He had no choice – if we didn’t fight, Hymaees would plug the Bosporus like a cork in a bottle and take us, one town at a time. And no one would come to our aid. That’s the price of being a pirate.

  We sailed down the Bosporus in early morning, and the Phoenicians got their hulls in the water. Then they did the oddest thing. They formed a defensive circle. They outnumbered us, but they pulled all their sterns together, pulled in their oars like a seabird tucking in its wings, and waited for us.

  I had never seen anything like it, but Miltiades had. He spat in the sea and leaped from his ship on to my Storm Cutter. ‘Bastards,’ he said. ‘All they have to do is not lose.’ He shook his head.

  I nodded. ‘Say the word, lord – say the word and I’ll go at them.’

  Miltiades slapped my armoured shoulder. ‘I’ll miss you when you leave me, Arimnestos. But there’s no point.’

  He went back to his own ship, and we spent a fruitless day circling them. Twice, Paramanos tried to lure one of them into an attack by passing so close that his oar tips almost brushed their beaks, but they weren’t coming out.

  We camped close to them, just four stades up the coast, and the next morning we went for them in the dawn by ship, but they were awake and ready. We threw javelins and they shot bows and I went ashore in the surf and cleared a space on the beach, killing two men in the surf, but Miltiades ordered me back to my boat. I took a pair of prisoners – Phoenicians, of course – and I gave them to Paramanos.

  I still think Miltiades was wrong. We had the moral advantage – those Syrians were afraid of us. If we’d landed—

  But he was the warlord and he saw it differently.

  That night Paramanos called us all together. ‘There are ships missing,’ he said. ‘The two boys that Arimnestos captured say that eight ships went north last week.’

  Miltiades was incredulous. ‘Eight more ships?’ he asked.

  ‘Where bound?’ I asked.

  Paramanos looked at me. ‘Myrcinus, in Thrace,’ he said. ‘They went to get Aristagoras.’

  I walked away, calling for my officers.

  Miltiades chased me down. ‘You are not going,’ he said.

  I ignored him.

  ‘This is my fleet,’ he said.

  ‘I own two ships,’ I said, ‘perhaps three. I owe you nothing, lord. I was leaving anyway. And I am going to Myrcinus.’

  He seemed to swell, and in the torchlight, his hair caught fire. He was like a titan come to life – larger than a mere man. ‘I give the orders here,’ he said.

  ‘Not to me,’ I said. ‘I have your word.’

  That took him aback, and he changed tack. ‘There’s nothing you can do, lad!’ he said, his voice suddenly pleading. He was a good rhetorician. ‘The town will already be on fire.’

  ‘You don’t know that. It rained two days last week. If the storm caught them on the coast, they would have lost days.’

  ‘Give it up!’ he said.

  I walked away. My men – my trusted men, Lekthes and Idomeneus and Stephanos, Herakleides and Nestor and Orestes, and Hermogenes – got the rowers together and started loading Storm Cutter and Briseis and Raven’s Wing.

  But Heraklides, always the voice of reason, came up to me out of the dark and wouldn’t let me act in anger. ‘Miltiades has been a good lord to you, and you owe him better than this,’ he said. And he was right, although at the time I growled at him.

  Herk fed me a cup of wine, his arm around my shoulders. My men were standing around, waiting for my word, and there was some pushing and shoving at the edges between them and Miltiades’ men.

  ‘This won’t end well,’ Herk insisted. ‘Listen to me, boy. I knew you when you were a new free man. A pais. You’re a big man now, a captain, lord of five hundred rowers and marines. Every merchant in the Aegean pisses himself when your name is said aloud – but you are nothing without a base and a lord. And if we squabble with Miltiades, who will fight the Medes?’

  ‘I am not nothing,’ I said. But I knew that he was right. I couldn’t keep a crew together by myself – unless I wanted to engage in pure piracy, bloody murder for profit. And I did not. Heraclitus was too strong in me, even then. In fact, what I liked least about Miltiades was his ceaseless search for profit.

  I remember sitting there, on a damp rock just above the tide line, m
y feet in the sea-wrack, when I heard a raven – not a gull, but a raven, cawing in the dark, like Lord Apollo’s voice speaking. I held up a hand to silence Herk and I listened, and then I got to my feet and walked off down the beach to where Paramanos and Miltiades were arguing. Herk followed at my heels, clearly afraid I was about to open the breach – but I was not. The god had given me the answer, and I thrust between Paramanos and Miltiades and shouted for them to listen. Their faces were backlit by the big fires we had burning at the sentry posts – we didn’t want the Syrians to surprise us, either.

  ‘We should all go,’ I said.

  That silenced them.

  I almost remember what I said. I felt as if Lord Apollo stood at my side, whispering fine words, good arguments, into my ear. Or perhaps Heraclitus, his servant.

  ‘Listen, lord. You think I am blinded by love – perhaps I am. But if the Mede is foolish enough to send eight ships away, we can catch them and destroy them. And then the balance is ours. It might make him hesitate. It will increase our power over the Phoenicians.’ I paused. ‘If we take those ships—’

  Honeyed words, Homer calls them. No sooner were they out of my mouth than Paramanos was agreeing. Sometimes, there is a right answer – an answer that suits every man. It took us less time than it takes to heat a beaker of wine to convince our lord that we had a winning strategy, and then he grinned, drank wine and clasped my hand, and we were friends again, instead of rival pirates.

  We left in complete darkness. That was the campaign where I learned the value of having all my men in high training – the value of making my rowers feel as elite as the hoplites felt. We left that beach like champions. We left our fires burning to deceive the enemy and we raced north under oars, and every man felt as if he was swept along on Nike’s wings.

  We came on Myrcinus as the sun set on the third day. The lower town was afire and the Syrian ships were drawn up on the rocky beach south of the town.