Long War 04 - The Great King

by Cameron, Christian

  The Tegeans and Mantineans and the rest were perhaps a little less eager, but Xerxes’ hesitation heartened everyone.

  Because I had drunk wine with the taxiarchs, I knew that the Great King’s apparent hesitation was created by the weather. Unless the enemy were planning to cross the pass and attack us one at a time – one file – they had to wait for the abnormally high waves to subside.

  And unless the Phoenicians had better access to Poseidon than we had, the Great King had to be waiting to see where his fleet was. We all prayed that it had been caught on the sea by the storm, but I suspected otherwise. It had struck us at the edge of darkness. Farther east, it would still have struck after any sane navarch had all his ships on the beach.

  All we could do was wait. The same sea that closed the pass made it impossible for us to sail. To make matters worse, we had to guard the ship day and night, because we’d beached her too far along the beach – when we’d landed, it had been Greece, but now it was the no man’s land between the hosts.

  I wore myself out, walking on the soft sand back and forth between the wall, the army and my ship.

  Three times parties of Persian horsemen came along the beach, or along the coast road above it, testing the footing for their horses. They would ride up close to the wall, and the Spartans would wave at them.

  The third day, Ka strung his bow. The rain was dying away, but I put a hand on his arm. ‘They don’t even have their bows,’ I said.

  ‘They are still spies,’ Ka spat.

  I shrugged. ‘Plenty of time for killing later,’ I said.

  Later on that third day, as the sea began to recede, I led a party of Greeks with a herald and the prisoner. We rode all the way to the edge of the Persian camp, and no one challenged us until we left the road for the open ground north of it. Then a party of horsemen appeared, as if by magic. They’d been hidden by a fold of earth and a rock outcropping. I knew they were great horsemen, but it was an excellent reminder.

  I knew the troop’s commander immediately, and I rode up to the giant, Amu, and saluted him, and he embraced me. This came as a shock to all the Greeks.

  ‘How is your son?’ I asked. ‘Araxa?’

  ‘Hah! He outranks me!’ he shouted with the delight of a father. ‘In the Guards, leaving me to outpost duty like this. And who is this lordling?’

  I waved him over. ‘We took him the first day. He seems to be recovered, and so we send him back. King Leonidas of Sparta wishes the Great King to know that we will abide by the laws of war.’

  Amu frowned. He looked around, saw horsemen coming from the camp, and shook his head. ‘The word is all of you are to be treated as rebels. No prisoners.’ He spat. ‘Because Mardonius is a fool. Those are his men coming. Best ride away.’ He smiled. ‘I’ll delay them. Listen, my friend. This will be ugly. Take your women and go somewhere else – eh?’

  This disquieted me. I had expected better of the Great King than to have Greeks – win or lose, we were not rebels – treated as criminals.

  We rode away.

  I left Leonidas that evening, because I thought I could get my ship to sea, and because the Persian outposts were pushing forward as the sea retreated. I didn’t want to lose my ship to cavalrymen.

  Leonidas did me the honour of clasping my hand.

  ‘Any message for Eurybiades?’ I asked.

  The king shrugged. ‘No – not until we taste their bronze will we know what we have to do.’

  I nodded at the sea. ‘I have a fast, dry ship and a good crew. I intend to run east and see if I can find the enemy fleet before I go south to Eurybiades.’ I smiled. ‘Just in case I don’t come back.’

  He slapped me on the back with Spartan goodwill, and I ran for my ship. Even as I clambered over the stern, there were Persian cavalry and some odd-looking psiloi prowling down the beach.

  The Persian camp stretched over forty stades.

  The Greek camp covered a little less than two.

  The patch held beautifully, and we had minimal stores, a dry hull and a favourable wind. Lydia was a trihemiolia, so I raised the yard, hung the mainsail, and we were away. The Greek army cheered.

  It is roughly three hundred stades from the coastline at Thermopylae to the headland at Artemesium – perhaps not as the raven flies or the seabird, but as my oarsmen row. We crossed to the Euboean shore before full darkness set in, to be free of the Medes, and made a hasty camp and ate mutton we didn’t pay for, and we rose before dawn, had her sternpost wet before the rosy fingers of the most beautiful young goddess danced across the world, and the west wind held and we ran before the wind once we were out in the channel.

  We hadn’t travelled a parasang before we found the first wreck – a Phoenician turned turtle. Her oars were still in the oar leathers. She’d been rolled while at sea, and there were dead men – bloated, horrible dead men – trapped in her lines and under her deck.

  An hour later and we’d seen enough floating wreckage for it to be the whole Persian fleet.

  My rowers sang a hymn to Poseidon.

  We passed six more floating wrecks, and the last two had no oars in them – they’d been anchored.

  That told me a story.

  We ran along the south coast of Thessaly, and just north of Artemesium we met up with Cimon, on the same errand but on the opposite tack and headed for the fleet.

  ‘You beach at Artemesium and keep watch!’ he called. ‘I’m for Malia.’

  The end of his shout was lost as his ship swept by at the speed of a galloping horse, but his intent was clear enough.

  We beached at Artemesium and put up a tower on the headland. We were alone, where a few days before there had been two hundred triremes. The northernmost beach was full of driftwood and dead men.

  Hermogenes drafted a watch schedule and Hector wrote it all down on the wax, and we pulled Lydia clear of the water to keep her dry.

  Hermogenes pointed at the tower – an old trick from my time with Miltiades.

  ‘Like old times,’ he said.

  The next morning, I took Lydia to sea as soon as there was enough light to get her off the beach. We ran north and east under the boat sail, keeping well out into the fairway and with two men slung in a small boat from the mainmast, a trick I’d learned on Sicily.

  The sea to the north was empty. We found another trireme, turned turtle, all her oars still aboard, some smashed. I hove to, fingered my beard, and then salvaged her.

  Imagine our shock to find two Phoenicians alive under the capsized hull. They’d been in the water three days. They were as weak as kittens and out of their wits, but to Greeks, the men Poseidon preserves are sacred. We hauled them aboard and they drank water until I thought they might explode – in fact, Hermogenes took the water from them, afraid they’d die of it. It was hours before they could talk.

  In the meantime, with a dozen men to help me, we got ropes on the gunwales of the Phoenician and rolled her upright, and then, with half the oarsmen in her, we baled her dry enough to tow, with two dozen oarsmen aboard just to keep her head up and land her. We only had thirty stades to make, but it took us until nightfall, and we had to row all the way, as our mast was down. The setting sun showed us the allied fleet coming up the channel. Eurybiades had them practising a reverse crescent. They could fill fifteen stades of water and still have a small reserve, and they looked magnificent, and my throat tightened.

  I turned to Hermogenes. ‘We may yet do this, brother,’ I said.

  He grinned. ‘There are the Plataeans!’ he called, and sure enough, on the left of the line, there were ten ships all as neat as a farmer’s furrow.

  We wallowed our way to the beach and landed before the first ships to the right of the line – Athenians under Cimon – got ashore. I had claimed the spots right by the olive groves – better shade, and a deeper beach. Cimon cursed, but he leaped ashore and we embraced.

  ‘You have a capture!’ he said, envious but happy for me.

  I shook my head. ‘She’s Poseidon’s c
apture,’ I said. ‘The storm got her. I have two men who were alive in the wreck.’

  I was gathering a crowd. Cimon took my shoulder and we went along the beach to where I’d had my tent set in the olive grove, and Hector gave Cimon wine. We sent Hipponax for Eurybiades and Sittonax condescended to walk off and find Themistocles – moving slowly, to show that he was above such vulgar considerations as crisis or work.

  Themistocles came first. He hugged me close.

  ‘You two!’ he said, including Cimon. ‘I thought we’d never get the fleet back here. Adamenteis is still threatening to sail for the isthmus. And then Cimon shows up off the beach and says that the Persians are wrecked and Greece is saved, and all our cowardly allies . . . that is to say . . .’ He nodded to Eurybiades.

  The Spartan nodded and looked at me. ‘Prisoners?’ he asked.

  I saluted. ‘Navarch, while they are prisoners, they were rescued after three days’ shipwreck. To us, that makes them sacred.’

  Cimon nodded. Even pirates have rules.

  Themistocles frowned. ‘None of that foolishness, now. We need their information.’

  Everyone looked at me. This is the price of the great reputation – sometimes men expect you to speak, to make decisions, to be the great man.

  I bowed to Themistocles. ‘At some point, we define ourselves by what we do. We begged Poseidon for his favour. He answered us with a storm. Is this our thanks?’

  Themistocles shot me a glance of scorn mixed with pity – that I was one of those men, so easily led, so easily fooled. I hope I shrugged.

  Cimon nodded. ‘But surely we can ask them questions?’

  That seemed suitable to everyone, even Eurybiades, who clearly approved of my answer. When they were brought, they were seated comfortably, and given wine. They sat listlessly.

  ‘Can you tell me what happened to your fleet?’ Cimon asked in passable Phoenician.

  ‘It is all wrecked,’ the younger said. ‘No one could survive such a storm.’

  The older man glared at him.

  The younger shrugged. ‘What is it to me? Listen, then. The beaches were too narrow for the whole fleet, and our admiral ordered the store ships to have the most protected landings. The army had priority over the navy in all things. The ships of Halicarnassus and Ephesus took the inner moorings, which left us to anchor out in rows of forty ships, eight deep in the bay we chose. Eight deep.’ He shook his head.

  The older man stared off over my shoulder. ‘We anchored bow and stern. We are not fools. I had six stones under the bow, and four under the stern – every anchor on my ship. We started to move with the first wind.’

  All around my tent, men had begun to babble with relief – with delight.

  Poseidon had destroyed the Persian fleet. Or so it appeared.

  ‘How many ships did the Great King muster, when he sailed this summer?’ I asked.

  The older man rocked his head – as Phoenicians do. ‘A thousand? Fifteen hundred?’ He shrugged. ‘I never counted.’

  That made me swallow.

  A thousand ships?

  But the other captains were delighted with their news. When it was clear that the two captives would say no more – at least, not willingly – Eurybiades summoned his messenger and sent him to Leonidas with what we knew. He was careful, and only stated that Poseidon had inflicted a defeat on Xerxes’ fleet.

  But the Greek fleet rejoiced.

  It was a long night. I heard men – men for whom I had little love and little respect – brag of what they would have done to the Persians had their fleet only endured. I’m an old warrior – I know that no man loves the moment when death is there to look you in the eye, and no man really loves war more than once or twice – that older men have to play the game or be thought cowards, when really they’d like to be at home with their wives. I know this, but the posturing and bragging in the Greek fleet that night was sickening.

  Worst of all, I was the hero of the hour. Somehow my salvage of a stricken trireme had become a capture, a conquest, and men would stumble drunkenly to my side to take my hand.

  Gah! The fools.

  At any rate, Hermogenes was not a fool, nor was Sekla nor any of our captains. Demetrios – the leftmost captain in the line – had commanded the last ship to come in to the beach, and he was insisting he’d seen sails on the eastern horizon.

  I had only seen enough wreckage for about forty ships. If they had a thousand ships . . .

  I went to sleep to the sound of men working by torchlight on the salvaged ship’s hull. The hammers rang hollow, driving pegs into the side.

  I awoke to shrieks and desperate cries, as if the Medes were upon us in the dawn.

  And they were.

  The sun was barely on the horizon, a red ball that threatened further bad weather, and the sea was like a floating forest to the north and east. It filled the channel as far as the eye could see to the right, all the way out into the open ocean.

  I clambered up the headland with Hermogenes, to find Sekla and Sittonax already there, Giannis and Alexandros climbing from the other side, and Themistocles standing apart with Eurybiades.

  Aristides emerged from behind Alexandros.

  My other friends were climbing up – there was Aeschylus, and there, Phrynicus’s friend Lycomedes, and Cimon and Gelon and Hilarion, of all men.

  It was as if all the friends of my life – every man I’d met since Lades – was gathered on one low headland. Lades killed a generation – worse, it killed a culture, a kind, gentle culture.

  All the men around me stared in horror at the Great King’s fleet.

  However many Poseidon had culled, what was left was three or four times the size of the allied fleet. Perhaps more. It covered the ocean. I had been at Lades. I have been told – by Phoenicians – that the Persian fleet at Lades was the greatest fleet of triremes ever assembled.

  Perhaps. Certainly, the Great King’s fleet had smaller vessels in hordes – pentekonters, triaconters, even Aegyptian lembi. But it also had triremes in numbers that staggered the eye, so that you had to keep looking away and looking back.

  Eurybiades couldn’t tear his eyes away. It was the doom of Greece.

  A thousand ships.

  Aristides said, ‘Now is Troy avenged.’

  At my side, Moire chuckled. ‘He has every ship in the Levant here.’ He glanced at me. ‘Good time to run a cargo to Aegypt.’

  I laughed.

  As had happened the night before, everyone turned to look at me. Adamenteis of Corinth had just come up the rise from the temple, and he was staggered – as, to be fair, we all were – and he turned as if I’d struck him.

  And again I felt the presence of the gods. I had the attention of the commanders.

  I’m no orator.

  But perhaps Athena whispered into my head, or my ancestor Herakles.

  So I finished my laugh by turning to all of them. ‘By Poseidon,’ I said. ‘Did you think it would be easy to defeat the Great King? Did you think that by sailing – unwillingly – a few stades from home, the greatest power under the gods would be defeated?’

  I pointed my spear out over the Persian fleet. ‘There they are, my friends. Poseidon struck them a mighty blow. Will we do less?’

  I’d like to say that they gave me three mighty cheers and we all ran for our ships, but it wasn’t like that at all.

  Adamenteis of Corinth was visibly resistant to my rhetoric. He stood tall and raised his hand. ‘We must abandon this post immediately, before we are all destroyed,’ he said. He looked at me with contempt. ‘If that is what is left after the storm, then Poseidon has done them no damage at all. Perhaps it is the will of the gods. But there is no combination of luck, guile, bravery and tactics that will allow us to defeat that fleet.’

  ‘I remember men saying the same, at the last war council before Marathon,’ I said. ‘They were neither fools nor cowards, Adamenteis. They were merely . . . wrong. We can defeat that fleet.’

  ‘Silence, puppet o
f the Athenians. You are a pirate – a rogue and a criminal – and have no right to speak here.’ Adamenteis turned. ‘He has more friends among the Medes than any man here – he’ll fall soft no matter what eventuates. Listen to me! We have lost. The Great King will stamp us under his foot like insects.’

  I was considering putting my fist in his face when Eurybiades snapped, ‘Silence.’

  Every eye went to him.

  ‘Neither Arimnestos nor Adamenteis has been appointed by the League of Allies to command this fleet,’ he said simply. ‘I have.’

  He could not stop glancing at the Persian fleet. Even after ten minutes of looking at it, it was still a shock.

  ‘I will hold a council in my tent after sacrifices have been made,’ he said. He turned to Adamenteis. ‘Courtesy and dignity are essential tools of good debate,’ he said.

  Spartans know how to put the knife in, and how to twist it, too.

  Our camp was right there. We had been making our sacrifices on the outdoor altar for the temple of Artemis – no man of Plataea has any quarrel with the virgin goddess, and Hermogenes, quite wisely, dedicated our new ship to her, with the name Huntress.

  So we lingered on the headland. Ever seen the results of a street riot? Or an earthquake? Where men and women lie dead, or mangled, and you can’t tear your eyes away?

  A thousand ships.

  I made a good sacrifice, as did Aristides. I thought of my daughter, who was no doubt dancing for the huntress at that moment far to the south at Brauron. I watched Sekla – who was very much a devotee of the virgin goddess – perform his sacrifice.

  Each sacrifice was as nearly perfect as men could make them. The lambs we had purchased from the locals went willingly, heads up, without a bleat.

  By the time Ajax, the man who’d served in Persia as a mercenary, made his cut, Aristides was shaking his head.

  ‘I have never seen such a favourable omen,’ he said.