Poseidon's Spear lw-3

by Christian Cameron

  Which, of course, we were.

  Slaves — African slaves — told Seckla that another ship had come in with the trireme on the beach and then sailed away. That’s the only reason we missed a huge consignment of silver.

  You can’t waste curses on these things. We’d stormed the place with a boat’s crew, and the worst injury was Giannis, the youngest of my herdsmen, who managed to lose the chape from his scabbard. In the attack, the point of his long knife rammed through the top of his thighs as he ran, opening truly horrible-looking wounds. No, I’m not making this up. We all teased him about it, and he took our teasing the way young men who want to be heroes react.

  Good fun, really.

  My crew were… blooded. There’s no other way to put it. They killed together, and they were victorious together, and we had a small stack of silver bars and some tin that they all knew they’d share — together.

  It all came back to me so easily. Kill the men. Take the women. Sell the cargo. Build morale in the crew. Train them to fight. Kill, and don’t be killed.

  Hardly worth the telling, really.

  At any rate, we burned the slave pens and cooked pigs in the embers. The slaves liked that. Tara’s admiration was candid. I liked that.

  In the morning, I looked over the trireme. Her starboard cathead was smashed to splinters, and needed professional help. I remember standing there with two of my fishermen and Alexandros and Seckla. Seckla was a craftsman — the kind of man who’s never happy unless he’s working. He pushed and pulled and shook his head.

  I agreed. I wanted that ship, but she was too damaged to use.

  So I turned to my friends, the fishermen. ‘Tell me about the weather the next four days.’

  They prevaricated. But eventually, the older one admitted that it was unusually fine, even for summer.

  Seckla glared at me. ‘You can’t be thinking we can tow this thing?’

  Many things in my life have represented gifts from the gods. Briseis, despite the many ugly turns she did me — she drove me to heroism like a farmer drives an ox to work. My father’s decision to send me to the old priest, Calchus, for training.

  Four days’ west wind.

  I asked the former slaves for volunteers, and let’s be frank — what choice did they have? Stay, and be enslaved by the Iberians? By the time the smoke of the slave pens was in the sky, there were already Iberian warriors prowling the ridges above the little warehouse town.

  Before we’d been at sea an hour, they set fire to the lighthouse.

  My Phoenician factor was a cringing coward. I might be, too, if a savage pirate and his tattooed mistress had my wife and children. But he was a fount of information as we sailed east on a perfect wind.

  ‘We have no defences,’ he admitted. He almost bragged it. ‘It is fifty years since any of the interior tribes attacked us.’ He looked at the sea. ‘How did you make it past the squadron at Gades?’ Then he looked at me. ‘You — you were the small ship that Dadalos was pursuing!’

  I smiled nastily.

  ‘But — we took that ship!’ He quailed at his own words.

  I was older, calmer, more mature. So I didn’t grab him by the throat.

  ‘What ship?’ I asked. I thought my tone was mild.

  He grew very red in the face, like a maiden blushing. I took his hand and pressed my thumb and forefinger to a certain spot.

  It was scarcely necessary. He shrieked. ‘Days ago. Helitkon of Tartessos took a small sailing ship — no more than a fishing boat. Laden with goods from the Inner Sea.’ He writhed in my hands.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Helitkon brought him in to me. I supplied him — he sailed south!’

  ‘Where’s the ship? The crew?’ I asked.

  ‘He took them! To sell!’ he was screaming.

  It is sickening, I’ll admit. His daughters looked at me with naked hate that transcended fear — they hated me more than they feared rape and death, which, all things considered, suggests they were brave. And they obviously loved him, which meant that, however much I wanted to see him as the enemy, as a piece of shit who dealt in human lives and stole and killed — he was a good father.

  Of course, I knew that I dealt in human lives, too.

  Time makes things difficult. Maturity — unless you are simply a killer, a thug — robs you of certainty.

  I let go his hand. And I felt… ashamed.

  Tara watched me. She looked at me the way a cat looks at something it doesn’t know. A cat is asking, Is this prey? Or predator?

  Yes. Well.

  I looked up at my mainsail, drawing well. I looked back at the long curve of the tow rope. I wished, for the hundredth time, that I had Vasileos.

  But I sang a prayer to Poseidon that night, after I made love to my wife on the beach with the ancient pines.

  The coast of Iberia had been Phoenicia’s cash cow for seventy years, and it was naked before me.

  Old thoughts boiled to the surface. I had enough silver from the one raid to make the trip a success. But But there could be more.

  8

  Oiasso welcomed us as victors, which we were. Tertikles was enraged, at first, that we’d stormed Centrona without him.

  Doola hugged me on the beach, and introduced me to his wife.

  One trick of leadership that I learned young was never to question a man’s taste in bed-partners. No faster way to lose his faith, his loyalty, his courage. That said, though, I’d always known that Doola and Seckla were… together. It wasn’t a spoken thing. It just — was.

  And then, one fine day, we landed at Oiasso, Doola fell for a Kelt girl and the next I knew, he was wed. Doola was my friend, practically my brother. It was not my place to even ask. I hugged him, kissed her and bade them every fortune.

  But Seckla stood on the beach with death in his eyes. He was younger: tough, strong, tall and thin, and his love went to hate, all at once. I think he’d assumed that Doola would wake up one morning and be done with the woman. Instead, he married her.

  And Seckla was also my friend. Seckla was touchier, more full of fire, perhaps less useful sometimes — but not on this last raid. Seckla looked at Doola, and I looked at Seckla.

  Command. Leadership. A never-ending labyrinth of difficult decisions.

  Tara got it all in one glance. Or maybe knew it from gossip. Either way, she was quick.

  ‘They were lovers?’ she asked. Actually, she asked something cruder. Her Greek was barbaric.

  ‘Yes.’ I was moving cautiously towards Seckla. I was afraid he’d kill his former friend right there.

  She laughed. ‘I’ll find him someone,’ she said. She laughed again.

  ‘Men!’

  Vasileos had finished both vessels. They were a little longer than Lydia, with beautiful lines, a slightly narrower entry, rather bluffer bows. The ram bow rose just a little at the tip, so that in heavy water, the cutwater would — perhaps — push the bow up, not down. Or so Vasileos theorized.

  We sat down to our welcome feast, with Tertikles looking just about as happy as Seckla.

  He was easy.

  Tara told him that I planned to raid to the south, all along the coast, and he brightened.

  A black-haired girl with a narrow face and huge eyes went to

  Seckla and hesitantly sat down with him.

  Tara winked at me.

  Seckla ignored her.

  More fool he. But I had Vasileos watch him, and then I ordered Alexandros to watch him. Alexandros, like many other young men I have met and known, had discovered that he liked to be trusted — liked to be responsible. He was rising to command.

  I felt old. I’d done all this before; none of it was new.

  ‘What do we do with the prisoners?’ Doola asked me.

  ‘I’d like to ransom them,’ I said.

  We left it there.

  Summer was slipping away by the time we got the cathead repaired on the trireme. And my nearly two hundred former oar-slaves created a certain chaos in the town —
just feeding them strained Tertikles to the maximum. So all the silver and the tin from the raid went to paying for grain from other lords.

  I gave up on trade and armed them with the helmets I’d made, and we used the rest of the hides to make plain spolas with yokes over the shoulders.

  You might think that I’d be away south after Demetrios, Gaius and the rest, but I knew I was up against at least a pair of triremes with expert crews. And my prisoner told me that most of the slaves who went to the south were used in the silver mines above Olisipo on the Tagus, a river to the south of Centrona with a broad estuary, a dangerous bar and silver and gold in the mountains behind it.

  He was very talkative.

  I promised to release him with his wife and daughters on the coast south of Olisipo — after my raid. He didn’t seem to mind.

  Men can be stupid.

  The grain was ripe in the fields and the apples were nearly ripe on the trees, and all four of my ships were ready for sea. I’d rowed my new warship up and down, and I’d roared myself hoarse in three languages trying to make the Keltoi obey, something at which, to be honest, they weren’t very good. Keltoi don’t obey, they discuss. Keltoi debate. Every man is the equal of every other man.

  On the other hand, I ate well, exercised, trained men to use the sword and shield and made love every night to a woman who — well, who knew what she was about. It is very different for a man to make love to a woman who is the same size as he is. Very different. Very Athletic.

  Ah, the blushes.

  We celebrated the summer feast of Demeter — at least, that’s what it was to me — and Tertikles sacrificed a slave, which was barbaric as far as I was concerned. He came aboard my trireme, because it was more comfortable. We had three triakonters, packed to the gunwales with Keltoi warriors in good armour, and a trireme with former Phoenician slaves, armed and ready to fight.

  We were ready.

  The gods had other ideas. We put to sea and sailed for little more than two hours before the wind turned round and headed us, and we were lucky to slip easily back into the estuary and land on our beach at Oiasso. Two days later, we rowed out past the headland and were back before dark — the wind was too fierce for the trireme.

  Tempers flared.

  Keltoi picked up their gear and went home. Oddly, this was balanced by late arrivals, who wandered down from the mountains as if arriving a week late was perfectly normal. Of course, they’d never rowed, and they resented being taught.

  Tertikles became surly, and only his sister being there prevented violence.

  We were windbound for ten days. I rowed in the estuary, and Vasileos kept them hard at it in the Lydia, but the other two ships did nothing but eat, drink and sleep. The season was getting on; we had our first cool night.

  Seckla tried to kill Doola. It was quick, and carefully premeditated. But while Vasileos was busy, commanding his ship, Alexandros was right there, and he tackled the Numidian boy, tore the knife from his grasp and then knocked him unconscious.

  The next day, I sat with Seckla in my tent, watching the whitecaps in the estuary and cursing the gods.

  When his eyes opened, he looked at me for a moment and then rolled over so that he faced the wall of the tent.

  ‘You are an idiot,’ I said.

  His silence was his only reply.

  ‘If you had killed him, I would have killed you,’ I said.

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Kill me now.’

  ‘In a year, this will be a bitter memory. In five years, it will scarcely trouble you. In ten years, you’ll make jokes about it.’ I put a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know. I know, lad. I have been abandoned, and I have abandoned others. It comes and goes.’

  ‘When we were slaves,’ he spat, ‘you would moan in your sleep, and say a name. Always the same name. Briseis, Briseis. Always the same.’ He rolled over suddenly, and glared at me. ‘Tell me you have forgotten her, yes, old man?’

  I shrugged. ‘I have not forgotten her. But I don’t burn. And neither will you.’

  ‘My life is over.’ He tried to turn back over.

  I pinned him with an elbow. ‘No, it isn’t. And now you can be your own man, and stop being in his shadow.’

  Silence.

  The young burn so hot, and they have so much energy for hate, and anger. So I put a watch on him.

  The next day, the wind pinned us to the beach, and Doola came to my tent. I hugged him, and he went into Seckla, as if Seckla was sick and needed visitation, which was true in a way.

  Seckla had a knife. He slashed Doola’s face, and then turned it on himself.

  There are advantages to being a hardened killer. When a good friend tries to kill himself, you can disarm him without taking a scratch. I had the knife before he’d done much more than scratch his dark skin. He glared at me like an angry tomcat. I went to Doola and found that, while he was cut to the bone, it was really just a flesh wound. Face wounds bleed like — well, like face wounds. There seems to be enough blood to be fatal.

  Hard to staunch, too. The blood went on and on.

  Seckla watched — Alexandros was pinning him to his bed. ‘Did I kill him?’ he asked.

  Doola got up with a linen towel against his face, soaked with blood.

  Let me just say, the following conversation happened in a language I don’t understand — well, mostly. Most of it was in their tongue. Despite that, I understood it fine, and besides, I’ve heard the story told a dozen times.

  ‘Stop being a fuckhead,’ he said.

  ‘You betrayed me!’ Seckla screamed.

  Doola shrugged. ‘Grow up. Be a man. It’s time to leave childish things. I want a wife and children. We are free now. We can have anything.’

  ‘I want you!’ Seckla said.

  ‘No, you don’t. You want someone to take care of you. I want to be a free man. I’m still your friend.’

  You get the picture. It went on for as long as it took a man to run five stades. Blood flowed down Doola’s face, and he shouted at Seckla, and Seckla shouted back. Keltoi came and stood around, watching the entertainment.

  Finally, they both stopped.

  An odd silence fell, a sort of crowded hush as many, many people who had been listening all listened harder.

  In the hush, I heard something. I had Seckla by the shoulders at the time. Vasileos, who had run to the sound of the shouting, stood in the doorway. He heard what I heard.

  He ran out of the door.

  I’m ashamed to say I dropped Seckla like a hot piece of meat and ran after him.

  The sun was bright and the wind had dropped and now, a whisper of east wind blew across the hills like a lover’s caress.

  ‘Man the ships,’ I barked. I knew that once we got to sea, all this foolishness would be gone. Nothing, nothing had gone well since we reached past the Pillars. I wanted to collect my friends, steal some silver and go home.

  I was no less an idiot than Seckla.

  Four days sailing and rowing brought us to the Iberian settlement across the bay from Centrona. They didn’t give us a hero’s welcome — we had too many ships — but they sold us pigs and barley and we ate well enough.

  ‘Ships come,’ said the headman. With Sittonax to support me, we finally established that a few weeks before, a pair of triremes had come to Centrona, landed for a day and rowed away south.

  That wasn’t all good.

  I bought all the grain I could, which wasn’t as much as I wanted, and we rowed south.

  We had to beach every evening. In a smaller boat, a triakonter, you can stay the night at sea. Right up to a fifty-oared ship, you can stay two or three days at sea and still have enough food to feed your crew, stowed in the bilges and under the benches. But triremes only carried food and water for one day. A trireme needs to make port — or beach — every night.

  But I knew I needed a heavy ship. So we beached, and bought fish — fish for three hundred men. Grain. Rotgut
wine, terrible small beer. At extravagant prices, and the haggling meant that the crew ate after dark, each night.

  What was worse, I had to turn back every day to find the laggards. The two Keltoi ships always left the beach late and rowed slowly, if at all. The Keltoi were far too proud to row. If they didn’t have a wind, they’d idle along.

  I was starting to hate them. And Tara inevitably took their side.

  Useless lubbers. No wonder they hadn’t built their own ships.

  Sittonax laughed. ‘Wait until you meet the Venetiae,’ he said. Then he made a face. ‘Of course they never row, either.’

  Six days we spent on the coast of Iberia. For an expedition that depended on surprise, we were the most incompetent squadron since Poseidon ruled the seas. We were loud, we spread over stades, we were visible from every headland. We never sailed before the sun — we were always caught on the sea by high noon. We ate late, and the Keltoi drank too much, any night that there was anything to drink.

  Little by little, I lost control of the expedition. From here, I can see just how it happened. I wasn’t interested in taking Tertikles on, day after day, night after night. He, on the other hand, was relentless in his lazy, shiftless, arrogant way. Every day, he would push his own authority.

  After six days, he left my ship and moved into one of the two triakonters that were all Keltoi.

  His sister went after me the next morning. ‘You treat my brother like a slave,’ she said.

  ‘No, Tara. I treat him like a fool who knows nothing of war or the sea.’ I wasn’t taking this, even from her.

  ‘My brother is a master of war. He has killed twenty men in single combat.’ She was spitting mad. ‘You cannot take the tone with him that you take. You speak as if to a child.’

  ‘He wanted me to put the sail up,’ I said.

  ‘It was a simple request.’ She stood with her hands on her hips.

  ‘The wind was against us.’ I shook my head. I hope you are seeing what I had to deal with.