The New Achilles Read online

  Dedication

  For my father, Kenneth Cameron

  A better author than I’ll ever likely be

  Title Page

  Christian Cameron

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Map

  Book I

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Book II

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Book III

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Book IV

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Book V

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Glossary

  About the Author

  By the same author

  Copyright

  Map

  BOOK I

  FIRST BLOOD

  CHAPTER ONE

  North coast of Crete and Eastern Peloponnese

  228 BCE

  The Rhodian grain ship Arktos had endured a bad night, the last and worst of a three-day blow. She wallowed in the swell, her oars taken in, her broken mainmast still wrapped in her fallen cordage over the side, her crew struggling to cut it free in such a way that it could be saved. A relentless wind from the north drove her towards the coast of Crete, just a few stades away under a bright grey spring sky.

  She only had a crew of eight and another thirty or so rowers, most of them slaves. None of them were citizens except the captain, who had given up bellowing orders from the foredeck and was now in the water, using a knife to cut the tangled shrouds one by one while his most trusted mate watched the water below him for sharks.

  The ship’s passengers lined the starboard side rail, watching the repairs with varying degrees of interest. The Spartan aristocrat, his red cloak flapping in the freshening wind, sneered.

  ‘A touch of the whip would make them move,’ he said. ‘By the gods, what a useless lot.’

  There were two women, from Kos, prosperous enough to have a slave to attend them. They were heavily veiled, their linen and wool forced against their bodies by the wind.

  ‘You are an expert sailor, perhaps?’ asked the older woman.

  The Spartiate ignored her.

  An Athenian merchant frowned. ‘If I was younger,’ he said, to no one in particular, ‘I’d get in the water and help.’

  The Spartiate glanced at him with contempt.

  There was one more passenger. He’d kept very much to himself since Rhodes, and now he stood amidships, looking out into the flat glare of the clouded Mediterranean day under his hand. He was looking south, over the port-side rail, at the north coast of Crete.

  ‘Is that Knossos?’ asked the younger woman. She was at an age to find lonely young men attractive.

  ‘I think so,’ the young man said, his voice dull, as if only courtesy forced him to reply. Then he frowned. ‘I think …’

  He stepped up on the rail, balancing like an acrobat. He glanced back at his fellow passengers, uncertainty written on his features. Then he grabbed a shroud, looked again, jumped back down and crossed the empty benches and the central catwalk to lean over the side where the navarch was sawing away at what he hoped was the last of the movable stay that, in better times, had raised and lowered the mast.

  ‘Navarch!’ the Rhodian called. His voice was suddenly sharp and military.

  ‘Soon, citizen,’ the captain called, his voice full of the oil he needed to keep his fractious passengers at arm’s length.

  ‘There are three boats coming off the shore,’ the Rhodian called. ‘And we’re going to touch on the beach if we keep drifting at this rate.’

  Every head turned. Four sailors ran across the deck and the little galley rolled slightly in the water.

  ‘Pirates!’ yelled a sailor.

  The captain swore. ‘I need another man,’ he called. ‘Kephalos, get the boat-sail mast set. The artemon!’

  Kephalos waved, and the navarch dived below the wreck of the mast.

  The passenger who kept to himself dropped his chiton on the deck, drew a small bronze knife from a sheath at his neck and leapt into the water. His chest was criss-crossed with scars.

  The women were watching the Cretan shore now. First one boat came off the beach, and then a second, full of men. A third boat was being readied.

  ‘Lady Artemis protect us,’ said the younger woman.

  The older woman took a deep breath, but she released it without speaking. Her hands were trembling.

  The Spartiate laughed. ‘Perhaps they’ll give this tub a tow,’ he said.

  Suddenly the deck began to vibrate like a living thing, and the whole ship seemed to shudder. Then the mast and its attendant wreckage of torn sail and trailing ropes exploded out of the water like the very Spear of Poseidon.

  Now the mast floated clear of the wreck. The captain’s head appeared, and he swam powerfully along the side of his ship, ducked under the mast, and looked back.

  The passenger surfaced behind him.

  The captain reached up, caught the low rail, and hauled himself on board.

  ‘Get the fucking mast aboard, you whoresons,’ he shouted. ‘You, and Kephalos! Set the artemon. I told you already, you rabble.’ He pointed at another man. ‘Throw the weighted line. Tell me how much water we have under the keel.’

  The ship was now moving more rapidly in with the land. The dragging submerged mast had been like an anchor, and free of it, the current moved the ship all the faster.

  ‘Get that mast aboard!’ he roared.

  Then he leapt across the amidships platform, but he could already see the three low shapes pulling towards them, oars flashing as they left the water in perfect unison.

  ‘Fucking Knossos,’ the captain spat.

  ‘King Cleomenes has a treaty with Knossos,’ the Spartiate said. ‘I’ll see that we come to no harm.’

  ‘See how you feel about that when some Cretan’s pole is up your arse,’ the captain said. ‘Sailors, arm yourselves!’

  The Spartiate stepped back before the navarch’s vehemence, and the man turned as red as his cloak with anger. He put a hand on the sword he wore.

  ‘No one speaks to me that way,’ he said.

  The captain wasn’t listening. He stood amidships, naked, the seawater still coming off him as if he was Poseidon risen from the waves. He was a big man, well past fifty, with grey hair on his chest, a grey beard, and equally grey eyes.

  He was watching the foremast sail, the artemon, run up the stubby foremast. A boy not more than ten climbed the mast, reached out with a sharp bronze knife, and cut the yarns holding the sail furled. It snapped open right under him. The stiff southern breeze filled it with a crack, and the ship made way immediately, turning slightly to starboard but still making way south, dragged by the swell.

  ‘Helm!’ roared the captain.

  ‘She steers!’ called the mate at the steering oars.

  The passenger was just hauling himself up onto the deck. The Athenian merchant gave him a hand.

  ‘Poseidon’s throbbing spear, you sacks of seal shit! Arm yourselves, unless you want to try mining silver on Syracusa or blowing flutes on Crete!’ The captain turned, looking at the passengers. ‘Women to the deck cabin. Gentlemen, you’ll want to fight.’

  ‘I won’t be taken,’ said the older woman’s voice from under her veils. ‘I’ve been a slave. I won’t be taken alive.’

  The captain bowed. ‘Nor will I, d
espoina. Nor will any sensible body. But these ain’t noble Knossian warriors with armour and their pick of fighters. This is some sea-scum – out of work fisherfolk and broken men. If we kill a dozen, they’ll run.’ His voice was firm and confident.

  The younger woman burst into tears and her knees all but failed her, so she seemed to jerk in the wind. The woman who had spoken took her head, and their slave took her feet, and they carried her into the cabin.

  The naked passenger came to the command platform, drying himself with his chiton. By the time he reached the navarch, the man had a wool chiton over his torso and his slave was holding a bronze thorax open for him.

  ‘You’re Rhodian,’ said the navarch.

  ‘Yes, sir. Born on Kos. What can I do?’ But he knew what came next.

  The slave closed the body armour like a form-fitting clam shell around his master and began to push the pins home to lock it closed.

  ‘You a Citizen?’

  The navarch’s question capitalised the title. Citizens served at sea. They had extensive training.

  ‘Yes, sir. I have done my service – I was a …’ He looked away. ‘Marine.’ The young man waved vaguely at his sea bag, lashed under the port-side railing, the military way. ‘I have a sword,’ he admitted, as if it might be a crime.

  ‘Best news I’ve heard all day. Kephalos! Javelins and a pelta for our young citizen.’ He eyed the former marine. ‘You’ve fought before?’

  ‘Twice.’ The young man snapped the answer, and his eyes went elsewhere.

  ‘Excellent. Pirates are all gamon. You’ll see.’ The captain looked down at his mate.

  Kephalos, a huge man with a fine head of red hair, grinned.

  ‘Aye, boss,’ he called.

  He reached down between the benches and threw a bundle of javelins onto the main deck. Then he began to throw shields up, and the sailors grabbed them. The oarsmen looked uneasy.

  The captain stood up on the command bench. Now he wore bronze greaves and the well-made bronze breastplate, and he looked even more like an image of the sea god.

  ‘Listen up, oarsmen,’ he said. ‘I don’t plan to fucking die, and you shouldn’t either. Now take a spear, and a shield, and fight. If we’re taken, slavery is the least thing that will happen to you. If we fight free, I promise every man of you ten silver drachmae, hard silver, and a word to your owners.’

  The rowers were not all slaves, but they were all professionals, and they knew that pirates tended to slaughter their kind, or work them to death. One of the freemen leant over and picked up a pair of javelins and a pelta.

  ‘That’s the spirit, lads,’ said the navarch.

  ‘Knossos is an ally,’ the Spartiate insisted.

  The navarch didn’t bother turning his head.

  ‘Not to Rhodes,’ he said. ‘Not this year.’

  The Rhodian put the strap of his sword belt over his shoulder and half-drew the weapon.

  ‘Not bad,’ the captain called out.

  The original work party had managed to get a purchase on the butt of the mainmast, put a rope around it, and hauled it inboard without staving in the side or turning turtle.

  ‘Two points to starboard,’ he called to the helmsman, then turned to the Rhodian passenger. ‘Pray for a wind change.’

  But the grain galley was too big to be driven solely by her boat-sail, and they were still making way south while the rising wind drove them west. The three smaller boats were on converging courses.

  ‘Who did you serve under?’ the navarch asked the Rhodian passenger.

  ‘Orestes, son of Alexander, sir. Asklepios.’

  The young man saluted, one arm held stiffly out parallel to the deck.

  ‘By Artemis! Were you in the fight last autumn? With the Aegyptian?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The navarch looked at him and said nothing. Perhaps he bowed his head slightly.

  ‘And your name?’

  ‘Alexanor, son of Philokles.’

  Even with a hundred pirates clawing after them in a long chase, the navarch managed a smile.

  ‘Philokles the Victor? The Olympian? Well, Alexanor, son of Philokles,’ he said. ‘I hope you can fight as well as your father. Is that his sword?’

  The sword in question was hanging over Alexanor’s shoulder. It had an ivory hilt, banded with gold, and the image of Poseidon was set into the pommel. Alexanor’s father was a merchant, but also a well-known hero of the older generation, an Olympic champion in boys’ pankration and triumphant in a dozen sea-fights as well.

  Alexanor nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  The navarch looked back over the goose head at the stern.

  ‘They’ll be up with us in an hour. But every stade we make will give them less light to take us, and I don’t intend to slow or turn. The pity of it is that with our mainsail up, we’d leave them in our wake.’

  ‘Any chance we could get the mainmast up?’ Alexanor asked.

  The navarch looked around the deck. With the wind almost directly astern, there was nothing more the rowers could do, and the storm had cost them half a dozen sweeps, anyway. Two rowers were badly injured, their ribs broken by their own oars, from a rogue wave that had struck them in the dark.

  ‘Better if the wind would change to blow from the south,’ he said. ‘But let’s have a go, anyway.’

  Alexanor looked north, towards Mount Olympus, and began praying that the King of the Gods would order the winds to blow from the south.

  The navarch was more direct. ‘On me, you ruffians. Listen, then! Fighting is the last resort. Let’s try and get the mainmast up.’

  There was a murmur of agreement.

  But the execution of the idea was much harder than Alexanor had imagined. He’d only raised a mainmast from the deck in open water before, with all the raising tackle laid along by professionals. It was a different matter with all the side ropes torn away, and the mainmast an inert mass along the ship’s centreline. If its weight shifted even a foot or two off the centreline it was enough to make the ship fall off course if shifted abruptly. He didn’t even want to think of what the mast would do to the deck if the ropes let it go.

  Alexanor, who had taken very little interest in anything since leaving Rhodes, took a deep breath and prayed to Poseidon. And then, with two Persian slaves and an Athenian rower, he took hold of a rope and pulled when he was told to.

  The pirates, if they were pirates, drew closer.

  Overhead, the boy and two Aegyptians rigged a cradle of ropes to the artemon’s mast at the navarch’s orders, and then everyone hauled away. The mast rose, a handspan and then another.

  A gust of wind made the artemon crack and flap, and the mainmast swayed, and the men on the ropes were dragged two steps along the deck.

  ‘Steady there!’ the navarch called. ‘Two points more to starboard.’

  The boat-sail flapped and then was still as the ship turned to run north by west.

  ‘Someone has a line to the gods.’ The navarch smiled at Alexanor. ‘By Poseidon, one breath of the wrong wind …’

  The Rhodian looked back over the stern. The three pirates were hull up and halfway from the horizon; their low boats had colour now, the hulls black with pitch, and he could just make out faces. They were perhaps five hundred paces away.

  ‘Heave!’ called Kephalos, and the mast rose again.

  ‘Heave!’ he called again.

  At each heave, the waterlogged mast crept higher. The navarch stood at the butt with four heavy wedges at his feet and a maul in his hand.

  ‘Heave!’ called the mate.

  An arrow clattered against the goose head that decorated the stern and fell harmlessly to the deck.

  ‘Heave!’ roared the mate.

  Alexanor was covered in sweat. When he looked across the deck, he could see the older woman from Kos and her slave had clapped on the port-side rope. Her veils were wrapped around her head like a turban and she had strong arms. She looked at him, and then back at her work.

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bsp; ‘Heave!’ begged the mate.

  The mast went up, and then up again. And again. It was now at such a steep angle that it almost looked erect. There were parties of men on either side holding belaying ropes that kept the mast from swaying … much. But as the ship rolled, the mast swayed with it, and it was all six grown men could do to hold it.

  The navarch’s face gave away the looming disaster.

  Alexanor looked back and saw the prow of the nearest pirate boat just a hundred paces aft, and gaining, the pirate’s oarsmen pulling like men racing for a prize. An arrow zapped in like a vicious insect and struck one of the Rhodian oarsmen with a sound like a butcher cutting meat. The man fell and emitted a thin scream.

  ‘Fuck,’ spat the navarch. ‘So close.’

  ‘Hang on!’ called Alexanor.

  He could see it in his head. The mast; the roll of the waves. It was almost impossible, but if it worked …

  The navarch looked at him.

  ‘Drop the mainmast on the lead pirate,’ he said.

  ‘Stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,’ spat the navarch.

  Alexanor considered just roaring out the orders. He could see how it could be done, how tight the time was …

  But he was a veteran, and he knew that no man could cross a captain on his command deck. No one would obey him.

  ‘It could work,’ he said softly.

  The navarch made a face. And then a minute shrug that barely moved his armoured shoulders.

  ‘Let’s try it.’

  He clapped his hands together and raised his voice.

  ‘Listen to me, you lot. When I say “Let fall!” all the belayers let go. The mast will swing to starboard as we turn. When I call “now”, every fucking one of you on the stays lets go. Got it? Don’t fuck this up. You there, on the gangway. You have a stay in your hand. Got that? “Let fall” is for those of you holding belaying lines. “NOW” is for those amidships. Got it?’ He looked forward. ‘Oarsmen, to your benches. Ready to row on command.’

  He looked around. He didn’t wait for an answer.

  ‘Hard to port,’ he called.

  The man in the steering oars didn’t believe him.

  ‘Hard to port!’ the navarch screamed.