He threw his arms around me. ‘You’ll never guess what I’ve found!’ he said.
‘Tin?’ I asked.
‘Spoilsport!’ But he laughed.
The next day, we said our farewells to Behon. Leukas, his brother, elected to stay aboard. Perhaps it seems an odd decision, but we promised to take him over the mountains to the Inner Sea, and to send him home the same way. And Leukas was — and is — a fine sailor — handy in a way Behon was not, and Seckla liked him and began to teach him to tend the sails.
Seckla… who appeared to have recovered. I don’t know whether this was the science of the local priests, or his own healthy flesh, or the will of the gods. I can’t remember exactly how deep the arrow went. But Seckla made a full recovery, and had a little bump on his chest he used to scratch.
We had water. We had two days’ food, our holds full of tin and we had exact sailing directions for the northern Venetiae islands and the mouth of the Sequana River, which we were told was two days away.
We were five weeks from home.
It was glorious.
We set sail with the dawn, and we had to row out of the estuary as the wind had shifted all night and then settled back into an easterly, but the oarsmen — every one of whom was going to get a share of all that tin — rowed steadily, slowly, but with a will. And our ships were clean and dry, and we moved well enough.
We found Amphitrite hurrying towards us in the early morning, her mainsail and boatsail set, slanting up from the south and east.
We watched them and chuckled, because they weren’t going to reach us on that tack, and they’d be all day following us if they lost ground. There was a certain rivalry between the men who had to row all day and the ‘mere’ sailors.
At our closest point of approach, perhaps ten stades, they dropped all their sails.
That meant something.
‘I think they’re waving,’ Doola said.
I nodded. Already my eyes weren’t what they had been at seventeen.
‘Let’s go and speak to them,’ I said wearily. They were downwind — easy to get there, harder to row back.
The boatsail mast was rigged, so I gave the rowers a rest and we ran downwind, and Lydia and Nike lay on their oars.
When we were a stade away, they started to yell — Demetrios and a dozen other men all yelling in unison.
I got it immediately.
‘PHOENICIANS!’
As soon as Demetrios knew that I understood, he put his helm over, raised his sails and ran back west.
Even as Seckla’s men raised the mainmast and the two triakonters followed suit — you don’t always need signals — the first shark’s fin nicked the southern horizon in the sunlight.
By the time we had our sails set and we were all running west, there were five of them.
12
I was thousands of stades north of the Pillars, and the Phoenicians had sent a squadron to track me down.
In a way, it was flattering.
But the immediate crisis was one of navigation. The wind was blowing off the coast of Gaul, and it was going to blow us west. West was the tin island, but after that — nothing. I’d seen glimpses of that nothing: a grey, rock-bound coast stretching away into the setting sun.
There is a saying in Plataea that the frog would rather be alive in the desert than dead in the pond. It’s not a pretty saying, but it is a true one. My oarsmen grumbled and looked west with desperate anxiety, but as long as we sailed west with the world’s wind at our backs, the Phoenicians were not likely to catch us.
So I sailed west. I had a plan, one that depended on my being a little more cunning than my adversaries. I sailed west, and planned to double back around the tin island and leave them all a-stand in the channel. I didn’t expect it to work, but I wanted to try.
We sailed west a day, and made camp in an estuary — not a place I’d been, of course. Leukas told us it was safe to land.
He insisted that if we beached and drew our ships up, the Dumnoni would protect us.
‘Of course,’ he said with a shrug, ‘it would have been better if you’d sailed north into the heart of our country.’
It was late, and we had a dozen small fires burning behind the dunes that separate the cold beach from the sea. I had as many men on watch. All the Phoenicians had to do was to catch us against the beach and we would either be dead men, or we’d spend the rest of our lives on Alba. All the natives said it was an island. An island with three hundred stades of sea between it and the mainland.
I don’t think I went to sleep that night. It wasn’t just the ships. The truth was, with Vasileos — possibly my greatest weapon — I could build more ships.
No, it wasn’t ships. It was the cargo. The tin, the silver and the gold. If we abandoned or burned the ships, we lost the cargo: no two ways about it. There was no way to keep thousands of pounds of tin — or even a couple of hundred pounds of gold and silver. And I hadn’t come all this way to lose it.
Long before dawn, I stumbled around in the dark until I had located Doola, Seckla, Gaius, Neoptolymos and the rest. I had heated enough wine to fill my old mastos cup, and above us, the stars wheeled across the sky — bigger and farther away, I think, than they were back in Greece.
I had built up a fire and I handed the cup around, and they pulled their cloaks as tightly as they could. Beyond the circle of the fire, men were rising from sleep — and none of them was happy to rise so early.
Doola looked at me blurrily over the rim of my cup. ‘So?’ he asked.
‘I see two choices,’ I answered. ‘We can burn the ships and lose the cargoes. Go inland, find Leukas’s people and wait the Phoenicians out.’ I looked around. ‘We have three hundred men, and they rely on us. We’ll have to feed them, or risk having them either turn on us or to banditry.’
I looked around. Demetrios shrugged. ‘You took them,’ he said.
‘I did, so they are my responsibility,’ I agreed. ‘But we are in this together, and that cargo is our cargo.’
Doola nodded.
Neoptolymos shrugged. ‘Let’s fight,’ he said.
‘That’s a third option,’ I agreed. ‘We could put to sea and fight: five triremes against one trireme, two triakonters and a tub of a merchantman — all brilliantly handled, of course.’
Demetrios shook his head. ‘Suicide,’ he said. ‘We’d just die.’
Seckla grinned. ‘No, the gods will make a way for us.’ He looked at me. ‘Because Arimnestos has the luck of Hermes.’
Gaius was staring out to sea. ‘You have another option?’
I nodded. ‘We run west. According to the Dumnoni, it is a long promontory. Then we run north, around the north end of the island.’
Demetrios whistled. ‘How far?’ he asked.
I raised my hands to the heavens. ‘How would I know? Leukas says ten days’ sailing, but — let’s face it — he doesn’t really know any waters but these right here. Just like all the other Keltoi.’
‘Except the Venetiae,’ Demetrios said.
Doola handed me the cup. ‘If we run all the way around Alba — and stay ahead of the Phoenicians all the way — where do we get to?’
‘The coast of Gaul,’ I said. I drew them a chart, as best I could, in the sand. ‘Alba is a triangle, about three days’ sailing by ten,’ I said. I remember saying that. Laughable, but the Venetiae had said it, and Leukas said it. I believed it. I drew the long line of the Gaulish coast — another angle.
‘North around Alba, then east to Gaul, looking for the estuary where the Venetiae have their homes,’ I said. ‘We sell them our ships, and move our tin over the mountains and down to Marsala.’
Demetrios was looking out to sea. ‘And all we have to do is stay ahead of the Phoenicians all the way.’
I nodded. ‘It’s true.’
He shook his head. ‘Listen, I’m a good sailor, and not a good warrior. But that plan seems foolish to me. Fifteen days’ sailing — twenty days’, more like. Twenty days for the
m to catch us on a beach. Twenty days where we have to find a safe route and a site to camp, and all they have to do is follow us. It is a landlubber’s plan, that depends on our navigation being perfect. One error, one blocked channel, one day of adverse winds — and they have us.’
I rubbed my beard, chagrined. ‘Do you have a better plan?’ I spat. For all my vaunted maturity, I didn’t really like to be questioned.
He shrugged. He was watching the ocean. ‘Do we all agree we can’t run the Pillars again?’ he asked.
He looked around, and we all nodded.
‘So: we have to make the coast of Gaul. Right?’ He was very serious. He leaned forward. ‘I say we sail west — yes. But as soon as the wind shifts a few points, we sail south into the deep blue. South for Oiasso. Right across the hypotenuse of the triangle — right, Ari?’
I had been teaching him basic geometry. There’s a lot of time to kill when you are at sea, or camping on headlands every night. And teaching your best navigator some geometry can prove quite valuable.
Seckla nodded, and even the cautious Doola looked pleased. ‘This is a better plan,’ Doola said.
Neoptolymos and Gaius and I felt differently. ‘This plan is all luck and seamanship,’ I said. ‘All the Venetiae fear the deep blue. They say ships die out there. We’ve already ridden out two storms, Demetrios — I don’t really want to face a third.’
Neoptolymos nodded. ‘Ari’s way keeps us on a coast all the way,’ he said. ‘If the Phoenicians catch us, we can abandon the ships and run inland.’
Gaius agreed. ‘Demetrios, you have a ship that sails closer to the wind than mine. You have a deck for men to sleep under. And — honour requires me to say this — you are a far better sailor than I. You could weather a storm that would kill me.’ He looked around. He was a proud man — who is not? But he hung his head. ‘When I lost you, I was afraid. Afraid right up until I found you again. I want a plan that keeps us together.’ He shook his head. ‘Or I want to give my command to someone who is… better at it.’
Seckla, of all people, put an arm around him. ‘You command very well,’ he said.
Gaius shrugged. ‘Outwardly, perhaps. Inwardly-’
I looked at Demetrios. ‘But surely that is how command is for all men,’ I said. ‘You worry for them. They row for you.’
Well, at least that line won me a laugh.
Demetrios came and stood by me. ‘Your plan is the plan for the warrior-landsmen. My plan is the plan for the fishermen.’ He made a rocking motion with his hand. ‘Either might work, or be disastrous. But I agree that you have the luck of the gods, so I will do as you desire. Choose!’
‘I held this council so that I would not have to make this decision alone,’ I said.
Seckla laughed. ‘Nice try. Let’s get moving, before the Phoenicians solve the whole thing by hitting us in the dawn.’
I agreed, but first, I explained my plan for losing the enemy around Vecti. And Gaius and I wrote out a simple signal book on wax tablets and handed them around.
We got off our rocky beach in fine style, and we were out in the rollers before the morning raised the wave height and made launching impossible. And we were at sea for three hours and hadn’t seen a sail, and hopes were beginning to rise.
And then, they were there. The first sail nicked the horizon at mid-morning, and by noon all five were visible, and gaining. We were sailing at the speed of the slowest — Nike, I’m sorry to say. They had long-hulled triremes that cut the water like dolphins, and they ran off three stades to our two.
The sun had passed its zenith, and I poured wine over the leeward rail and put the helm down for Vecti, now visible — at least, to anyone who had been there before — on the starboard bow. By the will of the gods, the timing was perfect. They were well up with us, and it was late enough in the day that a cautious trierarch would be scouting the coast for a place to camp.
East by north. An hour, and the island filled the horizon. And then I turned and ran due west again. The Phoenicians were now hull up, perhaps twenty stades away. Perhaps less. Honey, hull up is when you can see the hull of a ship over the rim of the world — the horizon. With a stubby merchant ship, you can see a glimmer of his hull at thirty stades or more, but a low warship is invisible until he’s close — unless his mast is up.
Seckla had gone aboard Gaius’s ship, to support him. He’d left me Leukas, who was becoming one of us — sea time bonds men quickly, or leaves them enemies. So it was Leukas who stood by me at the helm. Doola was amidships. Everything was laid by, ready for action. Every man aboard knew that the easiest solution to our problem was to weather the island of Vecti and leave the Phoenicians gasping in our wakes — and run for Gaul.
Doola came astern, about an hour before I’d have to execute the heart of my plan. He looked out to sea and made a motion, and Leukas smiled and walked amidships down the catwalk.
Doola wouldn’t meet my eye. ‘I want to sail south,’ he said. ‘I confess that your plan is better — safer. I agree that Demetrios is pretending that all of us have his knack for weather and sailing.’
I nodded.
‘But I want my wife,’ he said. ‘If it was… Lydia… left at Oiasso. If it was your Briseis, of whom you speak in your dreams-’ He met my eye. ‘I am the old, mature man. I am the solid man, the one whose shoulder you all cry on. But I want something. I want my wife.’
I had sworn to live and die with these men. They were my brothers. And what, exactly, were we? Were we merchants? Were we warriors?
What would Heraclitus say?
Well, he would most likely have said something dark and mysterious and difficult to make out. But he insisted to a group of us once that in friendship, men came closest to the gods because friendship was selfless. He gave a eulogy once for a boy who died protecting another boy from dogs — he said that this fiery soul had gone straight to Elysium, because there was no finer death than giving your life for your friends.
I didn’t stand there pondering it.
I just want you to understand that there was no way that I was telling Doola no. In three years, I don’t think he’d ever asked me for a single thing.
We were slanting down on Vecti, on a quarter-reach, with the wind a few points off the stern.
‘Everyone ready to row,’ I called. Everything would now depend on the ability and willingness of my friends to trust me and read the signal book.
Because I was throwing the plan out of the window.
There was one advantage to having the smaller ships. We were lower in the water.
What I was about to try was insanely risky. It made me smile: in fact, as soon as I’d made my decision, I began to grin uncontrollably. There is a feeling you get, as a commander — a feeling you get when you know you’ve made the right choice, even if you fail.
I had it immediately.
I grinned at Doola. ‘We’ll get your wife,’ I said. We were six stades off Vecti, racing for the westernmost point of the island. In the old plan, we should have dropped our masts and turned north to row through the channel.
‘Signal that we will turn to the SOUTH.’ I pointed at the Great Blue.
Doola had the signal tablet, and he began to flash my bronze-faced aspis. We had an alternate signal system with lanterns, and another with cloaks. The sun isn’t as common in northern waters as he is at home.
Amphitrite signalled that they understood.
Euphoria signalled that they understood.
But Nike shot in under my stern. Gaius leaned far out over his curved stern. ‘ South?’ he bellowed.
‘South!’ I called. ‘Trust me!’
Gaius shrugged, and his ship dropped astern.
‘Signal again,’ I said.
One by one, the three ships acknowledged.
‘Sails down on the signal!’ I called. Doola repeated it in three flashes. This, we had practised.
‘Do it!’ I roared.
Leukas’s men sprang into action, and our sails dropped to the d
eck, our masts came down with a rush and no one was killed. The deck crews grabbed the billowing canvas, trapped it against the deck and sides and began folding it aggressively. The triakonters had the harder job — no real deck crews, less space, no deck or even a good catwalk.
But the sails were gone in the beat of a heart. Even a nervous heart.
Before the way was off us, I had turned my trireme south by west — out to sea, and headed for the deep blue.
We were going to spend a night at sea, in the most dangerous waters in the world. On the positive side, the sun was golden orange and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
Against the coastline, our low hulls ought to have been invisible, and we were rowing west and south out into the open ocean. If the enemy saw us, or deduced our course, we’d be caught. On the other hand, we’d know almost immediately when they figured out our ruse because they would have to turn — to tack across the wind, and with their sails up, that would show at quite a distance.
I watched those sails the way a coach watches his runner at the Isthmian Games, or the Olympics. My heart was in my throat. It beat twice as hard and made my gut ache.
On and on we rowed — not at racing speed, either. I knew we were in for a long haul, and the wind was still blowing from east to west. It should have favoured us, but we wanted to go south, and our sails would give us away. Even poor Amphitrite had to row, and she was a pitiful rower.
After an hour, I cast her a tow. My two hundred rowers were her only hope. Otherwise, her twelve oarsmen were going to burst their hearts.
Passing the tow cable used some time. And we rowed some more, and I watched those ships.
And then they all took their sails down.
It was late afternoon by this time. If our plan had worked, then they had ‘followed’ us into the channel between Vecti and Alba. They’d have had to take their sails down, to row east into the channel.
But one ship kept her sails up. And as I watched, that ship tacked across the wind and came down towards us.
I cursed.
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