Poseidon's Spear lw-3

by Christian Cameron

  She shrugged. ‘So you say,’ she said.

  What do you do?

  I just let it go.

  Seven days, and we sighted the mouth of the Tagus.

  I knew from my prisoner that the mines were in the mountains east of the river mouth — about a hundred stades inland, on the south side of the river. So I led my squadron out to sea, and we passed the mouth of the Tagus well to seaward, and then angled back east and landed on the soft sand south of the river mouth. Well south.

  That night, I gathered my captains. Or rather, that’s what I thought I was doing. Instead, when Tertikles and his war-captains joined me and Vasileos, Doola and Alexandros at the fire, the Keltoi refused to discuss plans.

  Tertikles was in full armour. He jerked a thumb at himself with vast self-importance. ‘I’ll do as I think best,’ he said. ‘And I intend to attack the settlement.’

  I thought about it for several heartbeats. It seemed to me that I had two choices: I could kill him, or I could submit to him. Both of those alternatives bored me. Or I could let him go his own way.

  ‘So be it,’ I said. ‘Enjoy yourself.’

  ‘You will follow my lead,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, we’re quits here, Tertikles. You make your attack, I’ll make mine.’

  He was puzzled, a gleam of gold and bronze in the firelight. ‘What do you plan?’ he asked.

  I grinned, my hand on my sword hilt. I may have been wrong — I never found out — but I suspected that I could have put him down before he could take a breath. ‘None of your business,’ I said.

  Tara frowned. ‘You must help my brother.’

  I shook my head. ‘No. Sorry, Tara. I never intended to attack the settlement. I’m not even going to scout it. It’s defended — we’ll never get as lucky as we did at the last one.’

  ‘You are a coward,’ she said.

  It is funny how much some things hurt, and other things don’t. Cowardice wasn’t something I’d ever really worried about. So I shrugged.

  Which infuriated her. ‘Our marriage ends here, on this beach,’ she shouted.

  ‘Goodbye,’ I said.

  She followed her brother across the sand.

  Dawn found us at sea. I didn’t trust Tertikles not to burn the trireme out of spite.

  But I turned south, not north. We ran two small coves down the coast and put in again before the Keltoi were even awake. We beached stern-first, and brought the ship well up the beach. Turned her turtle, in case it rained.

  Then I gathered my whole crew, armed them and we marched inland.

  Inland.

  Why attack the settlement? The silver came from a hundred stades away. And that was where, in all likelihood, my friends were, if they were alive.

  We marched across the plains south of the Tagus. It was hot here, and we raised dust as we marched, and there was no hiding the gleam of metal. By mid-morning, I was sure we could be seen for sixty stades.

  There were farms, and plantations. We took water from wells, and I stole horses from the first really prosperous farm we passed, and more horses from the next. Only about twenty of us could ride and we spread out, to prevent surprise. I’ve never really loved horses, but they can be damned useful.

  And Iberians have fine horses.

  By late afternoon, my prisoner said we were halfway to the mines. We found a stand of trees, and my entire small army went into the trees and laid down, and in minutes most of my people were asleep. Even the stolen horses slept. Alexandros took four men and found a stream, and we filled canteens. I was too nervous — too aware — to sleep. So I helped carry water, and I climbed a tree and watched in all directions.

  When the sun began to dip, I slid down my tree and ordered Doola to wake the men.

  In the distance, there was smoke, towards the estuary of the Tagus.

  I got my men together. We drank water, ate some dried pork and moved east, into the hills. There was a good road, and we found it quickly, and after that, I didn’t need my prisoner.

  We found the mines at dark. My herdsmen and shepherds crept around in the dark for a few hours, and came back and reported.

  I had hoped that when Tertikles attacked the settlements, the slave guards at the mine would react. What I should have known is that a silver mine is much more important than a bunch of slaves and their families. I can be foolish like that.

  The guards were alert and awake. They didn’t actually catch any of my people, but we had the immense disappointment of hearing the alarm sounded — a man beating a copper plate and shouting, in Phoenician.

  So much for surprise.

  I slept for a little, and when I awoke I decided to have a look for myself. I climbed above the mine — actually a huge open pit — with Giannis and Alexios, another shepherd. Lights twinkled below us like orange stars.

  Giannis had grown up during the summer. He lay on his stomach and pointed. ‘I think these are the slave quarters,’ he said. ‘See? The largest building. Next to it — the tower. Yes? You see? And then — I don’t know what this other building does.’

  I did. I could smell it. They smelted in that shed. In the moonlight, I could make out pits and slag heaps among the shadows. I’d had a glimpse in the last light. It was the only time I can remember where my skills as a smith had tactical value.

  I had a dozen archers, a dozen trained marines and a lot of oarsmen. I couldn’t afford a complicated plan; we lacked the skill or the trust. Neither did I have the time. On the other hand, the garrison couldn’t be more than fifteen or twenty men.

  And when push came to shove, I didn’t really need to storm the tower. I wanted to — that’s where the silver would be. But what I really needed were the slaves. If Demetrios and Gaius and Daud were here, they’d be in that slave pen.

  Sometimes, you make complex decisions on the slenderest of evidence. It can lead to foolishness. Or brilliance.

  I put a hand on Giannis’s shoulder. ‘I’m going for the slave pens,’ I said. ‘If I’m not back in an hour, tell Doola to come and get me.’

  Giannis argued, but not for long, and then I was ghosting along through the darkness.

  I am an old campaigner. I knew how to move well in the dark, even in a foreign place on foreign soil. I fell once, with a clatter. In fact, I fell, rolled and came up one twitch short of falling over a forty-foot cliff that would either have killed me or left me a broken man. But I got up and moved on, no worse for near death — there’s a moral there — I stubbed my sandalled toes several times on the rock. But I moved slowly, took my time and in an hour I had gone down the slope and moved from slag heap to slag heap across the flat ground at the edge of the great black pit.

  The slag was fascinating. I lay against one heap and smelled it, ran my hand over it. I even tasted a sample.

  That slag heap told me more than my prisoner had told me. More than the slaves had told. It explained everything.

  They didn’t mine silver here.

  They mined gold.

  I crept carefully across the last of the open ground towards the slave house. It was quite big — a sort of hall of hides, with palisade walls — bigger than the largest barn in Boeotia, and it smelled. It smelled of men.

  The timbers in the palisade were huge — big, resinated pines from the hillsides.

  The hide roof was well up over my head.

  I went to the door, first. It was at the top of a low ramp, up a set of steps, and it took me precious time to find.

  It was latched outside, with a heavy iron spike driven through a shackle attached to a huge sliding bar.

  I crouched, listening to the men in the tower. There were at least two on duty. They knew that someone was moving.

  ‘It’s a fox,’ said one, with a deep voice.

  ‘It’s not a fox, you fool,’ said a high-pitched voice. ‘That was a man on the slag heap.’

  ‘Wake the captain, then,’ said the deep voice.

  ‘You wake him, idiot,’ said the higher voice.


  And so on.

  I sat on my heels in the shadow of the slave quarters and waited.

  This had happened to me many times. I feel… it is impossible to explain… that I am waiting for a sign, a signal. There is no point in hurrying. I had no idea what I was waiting for, but I waited, and I prayed to Heracles, my ancestor, and to Poseidon, Lord of Horses, and the stars wheeled above me, mocking my pretensions to greatness. I thought of Briseis, and Euphoria, and Lydia. Of Phrynichus, and Aristides. For the first time in months, I thought of Miltiades.

  It is an odd thing. I suspect that, when I am on the edge of life and death, perhaps I am closer to the gods. My mind is clear; I think well.

  There, in the shadow of the doorway, I took stock, and found that I was wasting time. That my mourning for Euphoria was over. I missed Penelope; I missed Plataea. I didn’t want to start again.

  I didn’t want to make a life of killing men, either.

  It was a moment of great clarity for me. I remember it much better than I remember the landing on the beach, or the march overland. I believe that the gods reached out and touched me. I think that Athena stood by my shoulder, and helped open my mind.

  I reached up and opened the iron shackle. It wasn’t loud, but it made a distinctive noise.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked the deep voice.

  I began tapping on the door. We had tapped on Dagon’s ship. If Neoptolymos was in there, he’d hear the tapping.

  ‘I say we wake the captain,’ said Deep Voice.

  ‘And then he orders us to go out in the dark,’ said High Voice. Tap-tap-tap. Tap. Tap.

  Thunk.

  Well, that could be any slave. On the other hand, it scarcely mattered. I realized I was trying too hard.

  I reached up and pulled the bar. It moved silently, the wood smooth.

  The door opened inwards, of course.

  There were fifty men by the door. Stinking, filthy and thin, eyes shining in the dark.

  ‘Neoptolymos?’ I whispered. ‘Daud? Demetrios?’

  Men were grabbing my arms.

  Damn, I thought.

  ‘He’s in the slave quarters!’ High Voice shouted.

  Damn.

  The men in the tower reacted far faster than I expected. They must have had a sortie ready and armed. The men on top of the tower shouted, and banged on a piece of copper. There was some more shouting.

  The slaves around me seemed to hang back.

  ‘Anyone speak Greek?’ I asked. No need for silence now.

  ‘I do, friend,’ said a familiar voice.

  And then the Phoenicians attacked.

  There were a dozen. They sprinted across the yard — obvious in the moonlight. They had armour and spears.

  Of course they did. In one glance, I knew they were Poieni, citizen infantry. Phoenician hoplites. It was, after all, a gold mine.

  ‘Daud?’ I asked.

  ‘Arimnestos?’ he asked. ‘By the gods!’

  And then the Poieni were coming at me.

  They had to come up the short ramp and then the steps. And perhaps they didn’t really believe that the intruder would be armed.

  I got one for nothing. You usually do. My spear had not lost its purpose, and my hand had not lost its skill. My spearhead went in one eye, and he fell on top of his mates.

  I wasn’t going into the slave quarters. If I did, they could simply lock the door on me and hunt me down in daylight.

  But I had the glimmer of a plan. So I took a step backwards onto the low platform just inside the log lintel.

  They took a long minute to decide to come after me, though. And when they did, they came silently, their bare feet padding on the steps, fast and purposeful.

  The first man came though the door with his aspis thrust well up ahead of him. I launched myself at him, and we went shield to shield in the near darkness. My spear was leaning against the wall, ready to hand. I had a short sword in my fist, and I cut over his shield. Then under it.

  This man was good. He rolled with my shield slam and got free — got his shield down, and then up, while he shortened his grip on his spear.

  I got my sword against his helmet — but not hard enough. Still, where a man’s head goes, his weight goes, so I kept pushing, and he had to bend back.

  But his spear started searching for me, wild pecks like a snake striking at a bird.

  All in near-perfect darkness.

  Something changed.

  A man behind him thrust with his spear at my head, and some noise betrayed him. I wrenched my head to my right. My adversary’s head cracked against the doorpost. Helmet and all, he fell away from me. The spear hit my helmet, but not a killing blow.

  I got my weight under me, powered forward, got my right knee into my adversary’s groin and then swung my aspis into his head — and by sheer luck blocked the next thrust from his partner.

  There is no going back, in such combat.

  I was too close to do anything but grapple.

  I let the aspis drop off my right arm as my left arm swept past my new opponent’s head, and I seized his aspis with my left hand, spun it and broke his arm, turned him as he screamed and pulled. I threw him in, through the door and in among the slaves.

  ‘ DOOLA! ’ I roared.

  The third man came up the steps. I had his spearhead. Heracles gave it to me: suddenly it was in my right hand, which ran down the shaft even as he ran up the steps, and I turned it, slammed the spear across his aspis and then slipped it over his head and locked him by the neck. The fourth man thrust at me. The third man’s face went rigid, and I backed up the steps, using him as a shield. I was strong.

  Oh, I was strong. I laughed. I laughed at Dagon.

  Break my body, will you?

  My victim screamed, and I got the spear shaft under his jaw at last and broke his neck. Eager hands reached from behind me and grabbed him by the helmet and towed him into the slave quarters.

  The fourth man was still in shock. He’d just seen three comrades die — one, judging from the man’s skill, his captain. And then he’d stabbed his mate.

  I got a deep breath into my body, seized my spear from behind the door and threw it into him so that he fell, the spear deep in his body. He thrashed, and the other men flinched away from him instinctively.

  Men behind me passed me my aspis.

  I had all the time in the world to get it on my arm.

  I started down the steps.

  The Poieni shuffled.

  And broke.

  I must have laughed. I’m laughing now.

  Oh, the power.

  I’d missed this.

  They might as well have stood their ground. None of them made the door of the tower, because Doola was there, and his archers shot them down in the moonlit open ground. A few ran off into the slag heaps.

  Some ruthless bastard in the tower slammed the door shut.

  The slaves started to come out of their quarters. The door was open.

  In the darkness, they looked like creatures from the underworld. They were too thin to be men.

  I didn’t know Neoptolymos when he stepped up to me. In Sicily, he had filled out into a solid rock, with muscles that stood out like a statue of Heracles. Now, the skin was stretched tightly across a skull-like head and his tow-blond hair was Medusa’s in the moonlight.

  ‘Brother?’ he asked, his voice a sibilant whisper.

  I thought he was some Iberian who spoke Greek. He didn’t look like an Illyrian.

  But I got it. Some interplay of light and shadow, something in the set of the mouth.

  I crushed him to me.

  ‘We knew you’d come.’ He managed a laugh.

  ‘Where are the others?’ I asked.

  He pointed towards the gaping pit, a black hole in the dark. ‘They tried to escape and were caught, so they aren’t allowed out of the pit. Gaius especially.’ He grinned. ‘He’s a bad slave.’

  ‘But alive,’ I said. I feared the worst. This was insane. I’d heard rumours
that the Athenians used slaves like this in their silver mines, but it made no sense, and now I knew that I should have come as soon as I knew where they were.

  But that kind of thinking leads to mistakes. I shrugged it off. ‘Let’s go and get them,’ I said.

  ‘You have to wait for daylight,’ Neoptolymos said. ‘You can’t even get down the ladders in the dark.’ He shrugged. ‘I tried, once.’

  I reckoned it was two hours until dawn.

  Doola came out of the moonlit darkness and hugged Neoptolymos. So did Seckla.

  Neoptolymos laughed aloud. ‘By the gods,’ he said. ‘You came. You came!’

  There were a hundred or more slaves milling about in the darkness. Many of them ran off — I have no idea what happened to them. Many, of course, must have been Iberians, and found their way home. Or died.

  But there were a hundred men who stayed: Greeks, Etruscans, Iberians, Africans from Libya and farther off, and Keltoi, too. Neoptolymos knew them — most of them by name — and he moved among them, giving orders — well, he had been a prince, once.

  Meanwhile, Doola and I looked at the tower. Men at the top of it shot arrows at us, but I, who had endured Persian archery, didn’t think much of their weak bows and their piss-poor shooting — in the dark, no less.

  We walked all around the tower.

  ‘If we burn it, every Phoenician in Iberia will know we are here,’ Doola said.

  I thought about it. There wasn’t a hurry — yet — and I took some time to think.

  ‘If they find our ships, we’re fucked,’ I said. ‘But, other than that, do you really think they have two hundred soldiers? In this whole colony?’

  Doola’s eyes flashed in the dark. He laughed a cruel laugh. Doola was a gentle man; not a man who fancied killing, not a man who loved the feel of a spear in his hand. But slavery enraged him.

  ‘You want them to come here?’ he asked.

  ‘We have the high ground, and their gold. They’d be fools to come for us. But if they do, we can teach them a lesson.’ I grinned. He grinned.

  We set fire to the tower.

  It took time. It is one thing to say, ‘The tower is made of wood’, and another thing entirely to get it to burn.

  Here’s what we did. We stripped all the shingles off the livestock sheds, and then we broke down the sheds themselves and the big wooden structure where the smelting went on. We had a hundred pairs of willing hands, and it is literally unbelievable how much damage a hundred angry former slaves can do to their master’s property.