Salamis Read online

  Suitably humbled, we managed to get moving west, across the gulf.

  An hour of rowing and everyone was calmer, and my name was being cursed, which was fine. We were rowing at a fast cruise and the wind was no help, but Seckla had the ship and he was doing his best to keep the rowers together and the wake straight. The marines were armed, and Ka and his ebony archers were all over the ship – Nemet, the smallest man, was in the bird’s nest, naked but for his bow and two quivers. All the Nubians had acquired very Athenian tawed thoraxes and helmets. Ka’s was magnificent, a capture from Artemisium, a bronze helmet made to look like a lion’s head, with ostrich plumes. It was outlandish, but a seven-foot tall black archer can look as outlandish as he pleases.

  Nemet was calling down to the deck what he saw.

  ‘Red ship, boss. Sure eno’!’ he called.

  Then, ‘That’s Ajax and astern of him is Dawn and Golden Nike.’ Remember, we’d all been together many times.

  ‘Point at them!’ I shouted up to the masthead, several frustrating times, as my words were carried away in the freshening wind. But after some antics not to be repeated, Nemet got my intention and pointed his bow staff almost due west.

  We rowed on. I didn’t want to use a sail, which would give us away to even a lubberly lookout. It seemed reasonable – I’ve seen it before – that the pursuers wouldn’t notice us.

  For a little while.

  I summoned all my officers amidships. ‘Here is what I plan,’ I said. ‘We sweep in, go to ramming speed and try to break up the ­pursuers.’

  Leukas narrowed his eyes. ‘If we come in from the flank, the second ship will have us in the flank.’

  ‘We oar-rake, nip some steering oars, and go past,’ I said. ‘Then we turn end for end, raise the mainsail and run as fast as we can – north by east.’ I nodded over the side at the water. ‘There’s a gap between the Ionians and the main fleet. We run through it.’

  Leukas shook his head. ‘You are still a madman,’ he said. ‘But it certainly sounds like fun.’

  Seckla nodded, seeing it.

  Brasidas looked disappointed. Perhaps he thought we were going to go hull to hull with the whole Persian fleet.

  ‘Just keep their marines off our decks,’ I said. ‘Ka, kill the helmsmen. Onisandros, get some fire pots on deck.’

  He made a face. Sailors hate fire, even as a weapon used against others. But we had a small firebox in the bows, lined in brick and sand, for making hot wine when we spent the night at sea, and other pirate tricks, and he put ten fire pots into it with their oiled wicks hanging free.

  Hector closed my bronze thorax after I popped my greaves on my legs. I remember that it took me two tries to get my left greave on, because my left side hurt and I lacked the fingers to get the best grip on the damned thing.

  By the time Hector pushed the pins through their keyholes in the thorax, the Persian fleet was hull up and visible in the sunlight.

  Poseidon’s Spear, there were so many of them!

  They were spread over the Gulf of Marathon like athletes in a long race. The Ionians, the best sailors, were in the lead, and then there was a gap, and then the rest of the divisions in an untidy muddle trailing away to the narrows in the north beyond the edge of sight. A thousand ships?

  I confess that for a moment, I couldn’t breathe.

  There was Cimon, though, plain as the nose on your face and ten stades away. There was his younger brother in Dawn and a few other old pirates I knew. Just for a moment, I imagined I could see Agios there, on the stern of Ajax. In fact, he’d died at Marathon, but my eyes filled with tears anyway.

  Anyway.

  We were well north of Ajax already.

  Someone on the Ionian ships saw us. Well, it’s the law of the sea – if you can see him, he can see you. My rowers were perfect and the sails were laid to the boom amidships and ready to raise, and every archer had an arrow on his bow. The marines were sitting on the deck, not forward in the boarding box but sitting where they had some cover and where movement wouldn’t throw off the rowing.

  There was a flash, and another flash, from the Ionians and three ships – beautiful ships, with long, elegant lines and Tyrian red in their sails – turned out of their race or their pursuit, and came for us.

  Remember, we’d already been fighting these men all summer. I knew the ships almost immediately. The lead ship was from Ephesus and had the half-moon of Artemis on her bow, and so did the third ship. The middle ship was bigger, higher out of the water, and bright vermilion. I suspected it was Damasithymus of Calynda, in Caria. The Carians had been against us in the early days of the Ionian War, and then our allies, and now that the Great King had conquered them again – well, there they were. The ‘Red King’ was one of their most famous fighters, by sea and by land.

  They wore a lot of armour and they had the reputation of carrying the very best marines. But I didn’t spend much time looking at the red ship, because any ship from Ephesus interested me. I’d never been close to the Ionians in the fighting at Artemisium.

  But the nearer trireme had to be Archilogos. He had the sign of the logos on his sail. His stern curve was painted in a livid and expensive blue, the colour of the house in which I grew up.

  I walked aft to Seckla. The three ships had lost way in the turn and now their oars beat the water to bring them to ramming speed.

  Archilogos – if it was he – had made the turn last and was behind the other two. The rightmost, or most northerly ship, was in front, so that the three made an echeloned line. We were running head-on for Archilogos.

  ‘I want you to stay on this track as long as you can – but I want you to oar-rake the lead vessel on her north side,’ I said.

  That would mean a dangerous yaw to starboard at ramming seed. But Lydia did such stuff as routine, or so we bragged.

  Seckla grinned. ‘Good,’ he said.

  He gave the signal to Onisandros and we went to ramming speed. Seckla made a motion with both hands and every oar stopped at the height of the pull—

  Seckla leaned into his turn, and I pulled the port oar to help him let go. His foot slapped the wood and the oars dipped together—

  Poseidon, they were good! And now Onisandros increased the stroke past ramming speed.

  We shot ahead. Seckla gave the signal, Onisandros barked, and all the oars lifted and stopped – and we turned back to our original course, almost due west. Perhaps we had turned a point further south …

  The northmost adversary – the other Ephesian – struggled to match our manoeuvre. They were at ramming speed and most ships don’t manoeuvre at all at that speed. But the helmsman saw the ­danger and flicked his oars to move his beak, and oarsmen, unwarned, lost the stroke or missed the water – it happens. On deck, a marine fell flat.

  Their oar loom began to fall apart, still rowing, as one or two failures spread. This was pure inexperience.

  Ka gave a shrill cry and arrows began to connect the two ships like invisible ropes tipped in bronze. Either the Ionians had no archers or they didn’t trust their bows.

  We were almost bow to bow. Our ship was cocked just a little off their path, like a swordsman attacking off line.

  Onisandros roared ‘In!’ and every oar came across the catwalks. I was up on the half-deck, and safe, but any sailor unlucky enough to be on the amidships walk forward was likely to get beaten to death by oar shafts.

  But we’d done all this before, hadn’t we, my lovelies?

  Their oar-master never said a word. He was dead on the deck and black blood flowed from his throat with the arrow Ka had sent him. And because he was dead, their oars lay on the water when we struck, and their whole ship seemed to scream as the long poles were broken by our bow and our port-side cathead, and the shipboard end of every oar struck its rower with all the strength of our ship.

  Above me, Nemet shot and shot, s
traight down into their exposed decks. At my side, Ka emptied a whole quiver of Saka arrows as we passed.

  The Ionian fell off in the direction of her now missing oars and as soon as she lost way the south wind took her and spun her like a top.

  It was then that I had the idea of how to make this even better. It was too late to employ it right there, but I sent Hector to find a light rope, a grappling hook and an axe.

  I was just looking over the port-side bulwark from laying the coil of rope down when I saw him.

  My first boyhood enemy. The man who gave up Briseis. Diomedes of Ephesus. He had three of our arrows in his aspis and he’d ­managed to protect his helmsman – until that moment, when Nemet, high above, feathered the man through the top of his shoulder, and the arrow went in almost to the fletching, and the helmsman – just a few oar lengths from me – died before his head touched the deck. Ka put another arrow into his aspis – one of the last in his quiver.

  He looked at us.

  ‘Diomedes, you cur!’ I roared. ‘How is Aphrodite!’ I had once roped him to the pillars of the temple of Aphrodite. Well, he tried to have me killed. You all know the story!

  I could see the blood rush to his face as he recognised me, and then we were gone, Onisandros was calling and the oars were ­coming out.

  Diomedes’ ship kept turning because no one had told his starboard side rowers to stop rowing.

  So his bow fell afoul of the red trireme’s bow and the Red King, as we’d called him at Artemisium, had to pull in his oars and turn sharply to port himself. Archilogos, also trying to line up on us, now almost fell afoul of the Carian ship and had to pull in his own oars and turn away to port, losing us out of the melee altogether.

  I laughed. For a moment, I was the king of the sea.

  But we hadn’t yet accomplished a thing, except a sort of sea-jest.

  But the collisions gave me a new option. I turned to Seckla.

  ‘Turn to port,’ I said.

  He nodded, and before Onisandros even had our oars back in the water, we were turning – a shallow, easy turn, because there was no enemy that could touch us. We passed Archilogos’s ship, flank to flank, half a stade out, and I waved as I passed and forbade my archers to shoot.

  I could see him – my boyhood friend – standing on his command deck. Even as I passed, he tilted the helmet back off his head.

  So he knew I wouldn’t shoot.

  But then he lifted his helmet – a beautiful Corinthian with hinged cheek plates – and waved. I waved back.

  Then he shouted something and a heavy arrow punched into the face of my aspis.

  And then his ship was falling away astern as my rowers pushed us forward. We were now heading south and west.

  Now I was behind the leading Ionian ships that were pursuing Cimon and presenting them a dreadful tactical problem.

  But that southerly wind was, if anything, rising, and turning our bow into it was a labour. The oarsmen had stopped curing to save their breath, but they were tired. Not dead tired – that was a long way off. But tired.

  However, the Ionians – and Cimon – had been pulling into the teeth of that wind all day.

  We rowed a stade, and then another.

  And another.

  All the Ionians edged away from me.

  You have to picture this – here, I’ll do it in almonds – no, too sticky. Like this, then. Cimon’s ten ships are fleeing from a thousand. Thirty of them are far out in the lead, but of those only a dozen are swift enough to be right on him and three of those turned out of line to stop me. So there are nine ships left, all rowing as hard as they can to catch Cimon. But now I’m between the nine and their fellows, and I’m faster than they, and my rowers are far fresher.

  Of course they edged away.

  I let Nemet have all the arrows. He was higher, and despite the sway of the mast I knew he could drop arrows into the oar benches of the Ionians. Onisandros and Seckla and Leukas, who took the helm somewhere in this part, raised the stroke to being firmly faster than the Ionian stroke. And our hull was drier and better built to start.

  We began to pull in on the last of the nine Ionians like fisherman landing a big tuna. Nemet began to loose arrows. Shooting into the wind – at an angle, no less – was tricky.

  But when he got one clear of the enemy stern, the result was immediate. Oars went every which way on the port side and the ship fell off to port and we passed them, my other archers all shooting three or four shafts as we did so. We left them five oar lengths to our starboard side and swept on.

  We began to catch the second ship of nine. But he simply turned away towards the coast of Attica. We passed him in a flash of oars and Ka dropped a well-shot arrow into the command station but we didn’t linger to see its effect.

  This was intoxicating, like fine wine after a great day.

  Seckla shook his head. ‘How long can we continue?’ he asked. ‘Surely they’ll all turn on us?’

  I laughed. ‘More fool they, if they do!’ I said.

  And then … they turned.

  But it wasn’t the Ionians that turned.

  It was Cimon. His ships seemed to come around by magic. It was close, but because all the Ionians had cheated their helms to starboard, they’d lost the angle that would give them immediate raking rams, and so Cimon’s ships slowed and spun end for end.

  The Ionians were not our equals, but they were good sailors. They scattered like whitefish when the tuna attack them. And they went in almost every direction.

  One slim trireme chose badly and turned towards us. He misjudged his turn. I looked over my shoulder at the big red trireme and Archilogos.

  Archi was too far away to get his ram in my hull.

  ‘Take him,’ I said to Leukas. ‘Marines!’

  He got his oars in and managed to retrieve his turn, but he’d lost too much way and our beak hit his cathead and splintered it, pushing his bow deep in the water. It bounced back out of the water like a leaping fish and then our bow scraped down his side and our grapples flew and Brasidas was over the side. I ran along my own half-deck until I liked the distance and then leapt.

  It was over before my feet were on his catwalk. They were Aeolians of Lesvos, from Eressos, and they wanted no part of the Great King. When Brasidas killed their trierarch, the rest of the men surrendered and some cheered.

  ‘Greece!’ called a rower.

  I leaned down into the oar decks. ‘Will you row for Greece?’ I roared.They were pressed men – always an error in a sea fight – and among the top-deck rowers were men who knew me and one or two I remembered from happier days.

  I kept my marines aboard. I was too old to take chances on trust.

  I waved to Leukas and summoned Seckla to take the helm. The Lesbian helmsman protested, but I ordered him to sit down on the deck and put Seckla into the steering rig, and then Cimon – a Cimon with a bad sunburn and dark circles under his eyes – was calling from under my lee.

  We bellowed back and forth like fishwives. But when he understood, we all turned broadside on to the rising waves, something we didn’t think the Ionians would attempt, and we ran east.

  Ran is probably the wrong word. We crept east for a few stades and then we raised sail and ran north and east, and then, when we felt safe, at the edge of darkness, we lowered our sails and rowed along the coast of Euboea. We landed on the first good beach we could find and lit no fires. It was a long, bad night.

  But as Cimon said, while drinking my wine, it was not a night he’d expected to live to see.

  As soon as there was enough light to navigate, we got off the beach, unfed, and rowed south. That was a hard morning, and fifteen stades rowing into that damned south wind without food used up my poor Ionians.

  But by noon, in lowering skies and rising seas, I got them all onto the beaches below Megalos and we landed with two thou
sand ­hungry men.

  There are many ways people supported the cause of Greek freedom. That village on Megalos didn’t supply a single row boat for the fleet, but by Heracles and Demeter, they fed every man that day, and again the next morning – a whole winter’s worth of salt fish and sheep and goats, consumed in a day. Bless them. When we piled back into our ships, every man had enough food in him to row home to Salamis and enough wine to have made the night before passable.

  The Persian fleet stayed the night on the beaches at Makri and Marathon – there must have been officers who remembered their last adventure there. Certainly Archilogos had been at Marathon. And they waited there – it’s a fine anchorage – until their supply ships caught them up.

  I wish I could say that Cimon and I caught all their supplies emerging from the narrows and carried them off, but our crews were tired and Cimon was disheartened by ten days of raids and ambushes that had lost him a ship and gained him very little. He had made captures and lost them again; he had sunk a pair of merchantmen, but suspected they’d been empty, already unloaded.

  Sometimes it does seem that Tyche and Ares are the same god.

  The seventh day out from Salamis came up in a red dawn of wrath and we stayed on our beaches, ate our barley soup and mutton, and drank the last of the wine. My Lesbian crew were unsure of their status, somewhere between volunteers and prisoners, and they murmured. I spent the day sitting with them and I wished I had Harpagos or Herk or any of my other Aeolian friends – living or dead. It was, besides them, a very Athenian beach.

  What I mean by that, my honeys, is that the Athenians, despite everything, or perhaps because of it, were growing rather more than less cocky and self-assured. I had just had a cup of wine with Theognis, the helmsman of the Naiad, our capture. He seemed a little too eager – there was something about him I didn’t quite like, but then, I’ve never been a captive on a potentially hostile beach, trying to plead my loyalty to my new masters.

  As usual, I digress. Cimon came, wrapped in a himation that was never going to grace a party in Athens or any other city that prized cleanliness. His timing was perfect – I was just rising from my folding seat and Eugenios had just picked up the stool and slapped it closed.