Poseidon's Spear lw-3

by Christian Cameron

  None of you cares about the technicalities of good fighting. A pox on you, then! My spear-point went in over the pikeman’s arms, right through his helmet and into his brain, and down he went, dead before he hit the deck. But his weight snapped my spearhead — the beautiful needle point must have been a little too hard, and it snapped short.

  Of course, I didn’t notice right away. I sprang forward into the next man — another shielded, armoured man with a heavy, short spear and a javelin which he threw at me as soon as he had a clear throw, but I sank beneath his throw like a dancer — oh, I was the killer of men, and Ares’ hand was on my shoulder. I passed under his throw and rammed my spear under his shield and into his shin — but the tip of my spear was gone and the spear-point wouldn’t bite.

  I hurt his shin, though. He tried to back up, but there were other men on the deck, now.

  In his confusion, I whirled, changed feet and rushed aft. I got two paces, and threw my spear into the next enemy marine. It glanced off his shield and vanished into the oarsmen, and I drew my new, long xiphos from under my arm. A lovely weapon — almost like a spear with a long, slender blade, slightly wider at the tip. I rotated my right wrist, reached over his big rawhide shield and stabbed down — my weapon caught armour, grated and went straight home through his throat, while his spear flailed over my shoulder.

  I pushed past his corpse and the next man slammed his aspis into me and pushed me back, and I cut low with my xiphos and realized that my opponent was Anchises. As my blade rang off his greave, he roared, and we were screaming at each other to stop — comic, in its way.

  We’d carried the ship. The trierarch was trying to surrender in the stern, the helmsman was on his knees and Darius killed them both with two blows. Foolish, and clean against the laws of war. On the other hand, we were badly outnumbered, and it was the very heat of the action.

  Neither of them was Dagon, either.

  I hoped, every time I faced a Carthaginian ship.

  ‘Swords up!’ I yelled. ‘Swords up! Stop!’

  Anchises joined his calls to mine. It took a long minute to stop the killing.

  The ship was ours. I turned Anchises to face me. ‘Get under way — north!’

  He nodded. I ran down a cross-beam — the same one I’d boarded on, I suspect, and leaped back aboard Lydia. Ran aft to Megakles.

  The next three or four Carthaginians were off the beach, or nearly so. To the west, Dionysus was clear of his merchant ship And turning out to sea.

  ‘Bastard,’ I said. Dionysus was going to cut and run.

  Doola’s ship had her sails down and some way on her.

  I was broadside on to the approaching Carthaginians because that’s how the impetus of the grappling action had ended. We wasted valuable time poling off our new capture.

  Neoptolymos cleared his merchantman and came on.

  My decks looked curiously empty, because Doola had most of the deck crew and Anchises had my marines. We inched forward. The lead pair of Carthaginians was already at ramming speed.

  ‘Have your outboard oarsmen row!’ I shouted at Anchises.

  Twice.

  Time passed slowly.

  He got it.

  The former Carthaginian rowers had no reason to love us. Men who have never been in a ship fight always imagine that when a ship is taken, the rowers — if they are slaves or have been mistreated — should rise for their new masters. It does happen that way, but only if the old captain was abusive and foolish. Otherwise, they tend to be more afraid of their new captors than they were of the old. Hard to explain, but I’ve seen Greek slaves, newly ‘freed’ all but refuse to row for Greek marines — at Artemisium.

  Ah. Artemisium. Your turn is coming.

  Our two ships, the grapnels gradually coming off, rowed pitifully. We must have looked like an insect on its back. But we rotated back, so that I was bow on to the enemy and Anchises was stern on. And then we got the last grapnels off and poled off, so that he rowed away headed west, and I rowed away headed east.

  It wasn’t a battle-winning manoeuvre, but it saved us.

  What happened next was from the gods.

  I had little choice but to pass between my opponents. They were side by side, at ramming speed, coming down my throat. If Megakles could manage it, we’d pass between them and rake their oars.

  But my opponents hadn’t been born yesterday. The helmsman on the northernmost of the pair flicked his steering oars to close up with his consort.

  By the whim of the gods, the southernmost ship chose to do the same thing.

  The two ships didn’t slam together. Instead, they brushed one another with a sickening tangle of oars, to the sound of screams as oarsmen died or were broken on their tools.

  It seemed to happen very slowly. The ships didn’t quite collide, but slipped together like two pieces of fabric sewn up by a matron.

  If I’d have any friend close by, or any marines, I’d have tried to sink them.

  But instead I passed inshore of the two ships and my archers shot into them, and then we were past. In the bow, Leukas had readied a dozen jars of oil. He knew what I intended.

  We were at ramming speed, and by our luck — and fast manoeuvring — we’d passed inshore of the two locked vessels and isolated the next three ships to launch all to the north and east, on the other side of the accident. All three began to turn, their oars working both sides, portside oars reversed.

  We ran down on the four triremes still fully on the beach, and as we passed, the pair of us heaved oil jars into the bows of each with a long rag aflame. Two of the four went out. The third caught, spectacularly. Our six archers poured arrows into the stricken ship and then we were turning out to sea.

  We’d run through their whole squadron. The three ships that had turned, end for end, now had to pick up speed.

  The two ships that had collided were picking themselves apart. Even three stades away, I could hear their officers screaming at each other. I watched the fourth ship on the beach get off. A brave man threw my fire jar over the side, burning himself badly in the process.

  But my immediate opponents had troubles of their own. They had all turned to follow me, and Neoptolymos was coming at them from the opposite angle. And behind him, Gaius was up to full speed, his oars chewing the sea to froth.

  Eight to three. If Dionysus had turned back, we’d have been eight to five, and with our superior marines He kept rowing.

  Teukes, his second captain, turned out to sea.

  It was one of those times when it is senseless to curse. The gods had been kind enough. Without the two overeager helmsmen, we’d already have been dead men.

  ‘Leukas! Ready about ship!’ I called.

  Leukas looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. Megakles’ expression was a fair match.

  It was a snap decision. Like my earlier one, to attack the Carthaginian squadron before it formed up. And perhaps both were incorrect. If I’d taken one ship and run, Doola and I might have made it. But I swear we’d have lost the others. And at this point, the only advantage our three ships had was that we caught them between two angles, and forced them to make decisions. If I ran for the open sea, to my mind that left Gaius to die.

  Our port-side oars reversed their benches and pulled, and our ship turned end for end. Five enemy ships came at us. Neoptolymos and Gaius were coming up on them from behind and gaining at every stroke, because our oarsmen were better — and because they were free men pulling for the chance of riches.

  And I’d forgotten Anchises. I left him pulling away to the west with an unwilling crew.

  Most of the Carthaginians didn’t realize that his ship had been taken, and they swept past.

  Anchises stood amidships and offered his oarsmen a share of everything that was taken.

  And turned his bow back east, towards the enemy.

  A second Carthaginian ship caught fire on the beach. Sparks from the first? The hand of the gods?

  Who knows.

  We had turned
to fight, and now the odds were seven to four, with two of the enemy ships damaged and somewhat unwilling, and one still barely off the beach.

  Lydia was almost to ramming speed. I ran aft and joined Megakles in the steering oars, and we aimed to go beak to beak with the lead enemy ship — they were an echelonned line, not of intent, I think, but because the better, faster ship pulled away from its allies.

  ‘As soon as we touch, reverse your benches and back water!’ I roared. We couldn’t fight a boarding action. Not a chance. I might hold their rush for a hundred heartbeats, but I couldn’t stop twenty men from boarding me — not on my big sailing decks. Nonetheless, when my orders were given, I sprinted forward, taking a spear off the stand by the mainmast.

  I got to the marine box over the bow and stood there, in all my armour, and savoured the moment. The finest sailors in the world, and we were holding them.

  I raised my sword and roared, ‘Heracles!’ at the onrushing enemy ship.

  I was still shaking my sword when her bow moved a few degrees.

  He declined the engagement and turned north, out to sea.

  He could do that. We weren’t in a thick fight, like Lades. We were in an open bay, with stades between ships. He turned north, and we passed under his stern.

  The other two raced past to the south. Even as they passed, I saw them raising their mainmasts.

  The fourth ship passed close enough that their archers lobbed some shafts at us. My archers returned fire. They had their boatsail mast up and the sail on and drawing. The mainmast was slow going up. One of my archers — a skinny kid I’d purchased in Ostia who swore he could shoot, and damn, he could — put a shaft into a sailor pulling a rope, and the whole mainmast swayed and fell over the side.

  The ship yawed. It didn’t quite capsize, but it shipped water, rocked and Neoptolymos slammed into it, his ram catching the stricken ship broadside on at ramming speed as we shot past.

  That was perhaps the most devastating single arrow I’ve ever seen shot.

  I thumped the boy on the shoulder and gave him his freedom on the spot.

  The two damaged ships were creeping away to the south, along the coast. Four of the merchantmen had gone ashore in a mass. They were beached, and lost to us. Two were under full sail, headed out to sea.

  For a moment, I thought we might snatch the two damaged triremes. But instead of running out to sea, they beached, side by side, under the walls of the town. The city militia were pouring out of the gates, now, a hundred cavalrymen and then a thick column of Numidian archers.

  A really great trierarch might have had the lot. Had we had time to plan But it was a great day, and the gods were kind. Equally, we might all have been dead, or taken. It was close.

  Gaius’s marines swept the enemy’s deck and Neoptolymos backed his ram out and the wreck sank.

  And we turned north.

  Dionysus rejoined us in late afternoon, and while I was tempted to berate him, I had seen enough sea fights to know that all I had was a gut feeling. He leaped aboard, alone.

  ‘Well fought,’ he said. He embraced me. It’s hard to be really angry with a man who is calling you a hero and a demigod. ‘You fought like Heracles.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps I should have lingered. But-’ He met my eye. ‘I assumed we were going to grab what we could and run.’

  I nodded.

  ‘I was afraid that if I didn’t attack them, they’d close around us,’ I said.

  He shrugged. ‘You might be right,’ he said. And grinned. ‘Still friends?’

  I’d been cursing his perfidy all afternoon, so naturally I shrugged and said, ‘Of course.’

  He laughed. ‘We did it,’ he said. ‘I propose we head for Syracusa. You wanted to raid Illyria this summer: if we head north to Massalia, that’s the summer over.’ He smiled. ‘And besides, we can’t sell all that tin in Massalia.’

  We landed on Malta’s little island — Gozo, where the witch enticed Odysseus. It has nice harbours and good food and sweet water and no Carthaginians, despite the proximity. We drank deep, slapped each other on the back and inspected our captures.

  We had tin. But only one ship was laden with tin — about sixty ingots, each as heavy as a man could carry, deeply stamped with the Carthaginian inspection mark. It was also full of hides — big, heavy bull’s hides, some of the finest I’d seen.

  But the ship Doola had taken didn’t have a single ingot of tin on board. The central hold was full of Iberian grain, and the bilges, which we missed at first, were full of small ingots of silver. Almost a thousand small ingots of silver.

  Of course, tin-mining yields silver. Any smith knows as much.

  But I suppose we’d never really thought about it.

  It was past the summer feast when we landed in Syracusa. We entered the port in a squadron: three warships in the lead, three merchantmen in the centre and three more warships astern. Syracusa had seen much larger fleets, of course, but not many with Carthaginian captures so blatantly displayed.

  Within an hour of landing, both Anarchos and Gelon had sent me messages requesting that I attend them.

  While Doola sat in his warehouse and sold our new fortune in tin, I walked up the steep streets in my best cloak and entered Anarchos’s house. His slaves were as well mannered as ever.

  I sat opposite him on a couch, and drank excellent wine. He had just been for exercise and was covered in oil, which made him look younger.

  ‘Still the hero, I see,’ he said, after a pause.

  I remember grinning. The fight at Hippo had restored something to me. Something I’m not sure I ever knew was missing. But the word ‘hero’ was not, I think, misplaced. I had tried to be a man. I hankered for the warmth of human contact — for a wife and a shop to work bronze.

  But what paltry things they were — love, friendship — next to the feeling in the moment when the lead enemy warship turned away from me. Any of you understand?

  ‘Lydia is ready to leave,’ he said. ‘Gelon is about to discard her.’ He shrugged. ‘She is not a natural courtesan. Do you ever know regret, hero?’

  I writhed at his tone. ‘Yes,’ I said.

  He nodded heavily. ‘Me too.’ He sat up on his couch. ‘Let us try and give her another life, eh?’

  ‘The crime lord and the pirate?’ I asked.

  He laughed bitterly.

  ‘You love her,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said.

  Men are complex, are they not? But this is my tale, not his.

  I walked up the town, a little drunk and very maudlin. I walked into the street of armourers, and stopped at Anaxsikles’ shop.

  He was standing in the back, staring at a helmet, shaking his head.

  He showed it to me.

  ‘Beautiful, as usual,’ I said.

  He shook his head. ‘Look more closely,’ he said.

  It was true. Under careful inspection, the left eyehole was slightly lower than the right.

  ‘Apprentice?’ I asked.

  He shook his head. And sat. ‘I think my eyes are going,’ he confessed. And burst into tears.

  It was that kind of day.

  ‘Would you marry Lydia, if she was available?’ I said.

  He looked up. ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘Lydia. If she was available — if I could carry the two of you to another city, where you could be a citizen — a full citizen, with voting rights. Would you go, and marry her?’

  He looked at me. ‘Why?’ he asked.

  I shrugged. ‘I helped ruin her. So did… another man. We are willing to make good our error.’

  He looked around. ‘Leaving home… my mother, my father.’ He looked at me. ‘But, yes. I’d walk across my lit forge to have her.’

  Just for a moment, I had a flare of pure, brutal jealousy.

  ‘Let me try to make this happen,’ I said. ‘If it will work, I will send you word. We will leave very suddenly — I don’t think that Gelon will be happy to lose you. Or me, for that matter.’ I smiled. ‘Or even Ly
dia. It might be tomorrow. It might be the end of summer.’

  He nodded. ‘You’ve made my day.’

  That made me happier.

  ‘How was the armour?’ he asked.

  ‘Like Hephaestos himself made it,’ I said.

  He made a gesture of aversion. ‘Don’t say that!’ he groaned. ‘That’s the kind of talk that makes the gods angry.’

  Gelon wanted to hear about our fight. And demanded a tenth of the profits. In many ways, Gelon and Anarchos resembled one another. In the end, I got him to settle for a lump sum in silver — forty silver talents. A fortune.

  I went back to Anarchos and informed him. Of everything — the payment to Gelon, the bronze-smith’s wedding plans.

  Anarchos sat sullenly and drank. ‘I am old,’ he said bitterly. ‘ I would marry her and take her to another city. But she would never have me — who would?’

  What could I say?

  I left him to his bitterness.

  The next day, we paid off our debts in the city and filled our merchant ships with food and mercenaries — almost a hundred men hired off the docks. I picked up a dozen Nubian archers being sold as labourers — fool of a slave-master. I got them at labour prices. I bought back their weapons from another dealer and put them in armour. Their leader was Ka, and he was taller than some houses, as thin as a sword blade and he could draw a Scythian bow to his mouth as if it were a child’s bow. Ka’s lads were very pleased to be bought, in that I promised them their freedom and wages in the immediate future.

  Doola had turned our tin into gold. But if we paid off our oarsmen, they’d never be seen again. So we made a single payment that night, about one-twentieth what every man had coming. Doola gave them a fine speech — more than a thousand men standing by torchlight on the beach between the quays on the Syracusan waterfront — and he told them how much money they had coming at the end of the Illyrian expedition, and exactly why we weren’t paying in full until that trip was over.

  I suppose they might have rioted. But money — lots of money — has a magical quality. It is often better in the offing than in reality, and no one knows that as well as a sailor.