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  Athens, he could appear as a great man on the front lines of the

  conflict.

  What Miltiades didn’t need was for the rebels to defeat

  Persia. If the rebelion was victorious, he would suddenly be

  nothing but the tyrant of the Chersonese. Athens wouldn’t need

  him, and neither would the rebels. Further, his greatest rival

  among the Ionian tyrants was Histiaeus. Aristagoras had been his

  greatest rival – but I’d kiled him in Thrace. Aristagoras had been

  Histiaeus’s lieutenant, and Miltiades had no reason to want

  Miletus to be free of siege and powerful in the east. At one level,

  Miltiades wanted control for himself. At another level, he was an

  Athenian, and Athens wanted Miletus humbled – Miletus and

  Ephesus and al the Ionian cities that rivaled Athens for

  supremacy at sea.

  I won’t tel you that I realy understood al this, that dark

  autumn and winter, with the rain lashing the shutters and the fires

  sputtering and smoking, and a hundred bored and angry Greeks

  sputtering and smoking, and a hundred bored and angry Greeks

  fighting like dogs for the leadership of the rebelion. But I

  understood that al was not as it seemed. And it slowly dawned

  on me that whatever men said aloud, Samos and Lesbos and

  Rhodos and Miletus al hated each other, and Athens more than

  most of them hated Persia.

  So you children can see that it’s a miracle we ever got a fleet

  together at al.

  Cimon left, but Miltiades and I both stayed, and over the course

  of hours of debate, it was decided to relieve Miletus for the

  winter, fil the city with supplies and go back to our homes. We

  were to raly in the spring on the beaches of Mytilene, find the

  Persian fleet and crush it. With the main Persian fleet finished,

  we’d have the initiative, and then we could act against the

  Persian land forces as we saw fit.

  It was a good plan. Dionysius and Miltiades hammered it out,

  even against their own interests. Miltiades had no love for

  Miletus, as I have said, and Dionysius had every reason to

  favour a long war of commerce, as he was a pirate by

  profession. But the two of them joined together in something like

  aliance, and the Lesbians and Chians backed them. It is odd – a

  thing I’ve seen many times – that men wil rise to nobility out of

  squalor and greed, especialy when there is competition and

  worthy felowship. On their own, Miltiades and Dionysius were

  greedy pirates. Together, they competed against one another to

  be the saviours of Greece.

  Their plan left a lot unsaid. There was nothing about rescuing

  Their plan left a lot unsaid. There was nothing about rescuing

  the cities of the Asian coast. Rather, it was the strategy of al

  those Greeks who had water between them and the hooves of

  the Persian cavalry. It left the mainlanders as slaves.

  It was also the first realistic plan the rebels had ever made.

  Dionysius offended everyone by insisting that most of the

  ships were il-trained and that we should spend our first months

  when we ralied together in spring training our rowers and

  marines. I agreed with him, but his manner of stating this obvious

  truth was arrogant.

  ‘You aristocrats are like children when you go to sea,’ he

  said. ‘My boys do nothing but row. They don’t go to sea with

  their heads ful of the Iliad. They go to sea to win – to take

  enemy ships and turn them into silver and gold. Have you seen

  the Phoenicians manoeuvre? Have you seen how hard they train

  their crews? Ever face a Cilician in narrow waters? Can your

  oarsmen row you into a diekplous? Turn on an obol and ram an

  enemy under the stern? No. Hardly one of you. When we come

  to the day – the moment of truth – there’s not twenty ships here

  that can be trusted in a close action. Let me train your crews. A

  little sweat now, and liberty is the prize.’

  If he’d stuck to that as a theme, he might have won them

  over, but every one of them fancied himself the greatest captain

  of the ages, fit to be trierarch on the Argo. It is a Greek failing.

  So with nothing decided on save action, we loaded grain and

  root vegetables and ships ful of pigs and goats, and we sailed for

  Miletus in midwinter, which was thought to be daring in those

  Miletus in midwinter, which was thought to be daring in those

  days. Not like now, when we make war in every season. We

  were so powerful that we went through the Samian channel,

  caring nothing whether the Persians knew we were coming.

  The enemy squadron at Lade had had word of us, and their

  sails were just notches on the horizon by the time we sailed

  down the bay, and their camp was a field of burning embers.

  They hadn’t even left a garrison. We took the island and landed

  the stores in Miletus.

  The populace of the lower town hailed us as heroes and we

  al feasted together, but I noticed that whole families wanted to

  be taken away when we sailed. Histiaeus frowned, but he didn’t

  forbid any of the lower-class families to leave.

  I drank wine with Istes – wine I’d brought myself. We sat on

  folding stools in the agora, and drank from a kylix his slave boy

  carried, Athenian work with two heroes fighting.

  ‘Ever think of leaving?’ I asked.

  He watched my ship for a long time, drank his wine and

  shook his head. ‘No. But yes.’ He laughed. ‘You’re a hero. You

  know the rules. I can’t leave. I’l die here – this year or next.’

  A stick-figure girl came by with a heavy pot on her head –

  carrying water. She glanced admiringly at the two of us – fine,

  wel-muscled men, and kilers too.

  ‘What’s her glance worth?’ Istes said. ‘What would it be like

  for you to awaken one day to find that she spits on your

  shadow?’

  I understood al too wel. ‘But if we take too many of your

  people away . . .’ I began.

  people away . . .’ I began.

  Istes shook his head. ‘Don’t say it, my friend,’ he whispered.

  ‘My brother . . . does not feel as I do.’

  ‘How do you feel?’ I asked.

  ‘I think we should go to Sicily and start again, far from the

  Persians, the Medes, the Lydians and the fucking Athenians.’ He

  shrugged. ‘I am filed with joy at every citizen family that gets

  away, to remember what Miletus was.’

  I must have looked startled at the force of his expression,

  because he leaned back and drank more wine. ‘You asked. I

  answered. But my brother – he is determined that we wil meet

  our ends here. Al of us. Sail before he makes a law against

  emigration.’ His deep brown eyes locked with mine. ‘Take al

  the families of those archers.’

  I looked around. ‘Why?’

  Istes shrugged. ‘He is mad,’ he said, and then would say no

  more.

  We sailed that afternoon, as the first of the great winter

  storms brewed to the east. We were the last to be alowed to

  take citizen refugees out of Miletus. The city had new heart, and
r />   food for the winter.

  But the siege mound was not any smaler, and Datis did not

  decamp, as the Persian army had in other winters. He stayed,

  and his men built a proper wal around their camp, so that the

  raids had to stop. And the mound grew higher.

  I took sixteen citizen families to Lesbos. Most of them had

  money, and they offered us – me and Stephanos – a good rate

  to take them al the way across the deep blue to Sicily.

  to take them al the way across the deep blue to Sicily.

  Miltiades convinced them to come and settle in the

  Chersonese instead, and before the second Heracleion, we

  landed them at Kalipolis and settled in for the winter. My red-

  haired Thracian had found another man, but there were more fish

  like her in the sea, and I caught one quickly enough with a

  necklace of gold beads – a delicate blonde with a heart-shaped

  face and no other heart at al. She spoke Lydian and Greek and

  another language, too, close enough to what the Iberians spoke

  to make each other laugh.

  It might have been a good winter for me, except that there

  was a long letter from Penelope about the farm, and it wasn’t

  good – Epictetus the elder was dead, some of our stock had

  died in a pest and she needed me to come home so that she

  could be wed – but not a word of whom she might marry.

  And enclosed in her letter was another slip of white velum,

  written in the same hand.

  Some say a phalanx of infantry is the most beautiful thing, but I still

  insist it is you who is the most beautiful. Come and be rich.

  I held the parchment close to an oil lamp, and more words came

  through on the surface – written in acid, and now burned into the

  hide.

  Come soon.

  6

  I was able to help Penelope. I sent my gold home to her, with

  Idomeneus as my courier. He went with a good grace – he

  wasn’t missing any kiling, and he knew it.

  Briseis was another matter. It is harder, when the first flush of

  love is past, to understand what value to place on that love. I had

  gone to her rescue before – more than once – and never been

  better for saving her. In fact, I was never sure I had saved her.

  Should I cast life aside, crew up my ship and race for Ephesus?

  I’d thought about it al autumn. Ephesus is less than six

  hundred stades from Miletus, and on that night when I’d found

  myself on a stolen horse, avoiding Persian archers, my first

  thought had been to ride for Ephesus and find her.

  But I was no longer eighteen. I was fulfiling my duty to

  Apolo, or so I thought. In fact, in my head, it was clear to me

  that I was one of Apolo’s tools in the success of the Ionian

  that I was one of Apolo’s tools in the success of the Ionian

  Revolt. Apolo was leading the Greeks to victory. The constant

  luck of the autumn – the escapes from Miletus, the seizure of the

  two rich Aegyptians – al pointed to the Lord of the Silver Bow’s

  favour. And in my head, the needs of the Ionian Revolt

  outweighed the needs of a single, selfish woman.

  Which tels you two things. First, that I stil held her refusal of

  me against her. Second, that I was as much a fool at twenty-five

  as I was at eighteen. But I could rationalize my irrationality

  better.

  So I spent the winter caling my blonde Briseis and forging

  excuses as to why I could not possibly go to her rescue.

  Spring, when it came, was the longest, wettest, stormiest

  spring anyone could remember. I took Storm Cutter to sea

  before the cakes were fuly burnt on Persephone’s altar, and I

  brought him right back in when a combination of wind and wave

  snapped my boatsail mast like a twig.

  We spent four weeks locked in the Bosporus when we

  should have been at sea, and a rumour started to spread that

  Miletus had falen. But no real news came to us at Kalipolis, and

  we fretted and quarreled with each other, and my decision not

  to go to Briseis in the autumn began to look shockingly like

  faithlessness.

  We tired of exercising our crews, of painting our ships, of

  games and contests. We tired of girls and boys, and we even

  tired of wine. But the wind howled outside the Bosporus, and

  every attempt I made to round the point at Troy and head for

  every attempt I made to round the point at Troy and head for

  Lesbos was foiled by a cold, dark wind.

  Demeter showed man how to plant grain, and the new grain

  peeped above the earth, and finaly the sun leaped into the

  heavens like a four-horse chariot, and the ground dried, and the

  sea was blue.

  Miltiades had a good squadron. He had two volunteers from

  Athens who came in with the first good weather – Aristides,

  sailing a fine light trireme, and his friend Phrynichus, the

  playwright, with Cleisthenes, the Spartan proxenos and a

  powerful man in the aristocratic faction who was, nonetheless, a

  solid supporter of the Ionian Revolt. Aristides had Glaucon and

  Sophanes with him, but they didn’t meet my eyes. I laughed.

  They were in my world now.

  The Athenians brought disturbing news.

  ‘It’s al but open war in the city,’ Aristides said quietly.

  ‘Are you exiled?’ Miltiades asked.

  Aristides shook his head. ‘No. I thought I’d come and do my

  duty before I was sent away without having the ability to

  influence the decision. The Alcmaeonids have almost seized

  control of the assembly. Themistocles is the last man of the

  popular party to stand against them.’

  Miltiades sneered. ‘Our blood is as blue as theirs,’ he said

  dismissively. ‘Bluer. Why do they get caled aristocrats?’

  Aristides shook his head. ‘You don’t need me to tel you that

  the colour of our blood is not the issue. Let’s defeat the Persians

  first and worry about the political life of our city second.’ He

  frowned at Miltiades. ‘Don’t pretend you are a byword for

  frowned at Miltiades. ‘Don’t pretend you are a byword for

  democracy, sir.’

  Miltiades threw back his head and laughed. I thought the

  laugh was a trifle theatrical, but he puled it off wel enough. ‘Not

  much democracy here,’ he admitted. ‘Pirates, Asians and

  Thracians al living together? By the gods, we should have an

  assembly, except that the first debate would be on what language

  to debate in!’ He drank some more wine. ‘And you are a fine

  one to talk, Aristides the Just! For al you prate of this

  democracy, you distrust the masses, and when you need

  company, you run away from the aristocrats – to me!’

  Aristides bit his lips.

  I stood up. ‘No one has run from anyone,’ I said, raising the

  wine cup. ‘Tomorrow, we sail against the Great King.’

  Aristides looked at me in surprise – a surprise that wasn’t

  altogether complimentary. ‘Wel said,’ he replied. ‘You’ve made

  your peace with Apolo, or so I hear.’

  ‘Not yet,’ I answered. ‘But I am working on it.’

  ‘No man can say fairer when he sp
eaks of the gods,’

  Miltiades answered. Miltiades believed in the gods to exactly the

  same extent at Philocrates – which is to say, not at al – but he

  spoke piously and offended no one.

  Cimon hid a guffaw and Paramanos winked at me. Don’t

  imagine that because I don’t mention Paramanos I didn’t see him

  every day, drink with him every night. He’d gone his own way

  and left my oikia to be a lord in his own right – a lord of pirates –

  but he was a fine man and stil the most gifted son of Poseidon

  on the wine-dark.

  on the wine-dark.

  ‘Let us drink to the defeat of the Medes,’ Miltiades

  proposed, as the host.

  We al rose from our couches and we drank, each in turn –

  Aristides; Cimon; Cleisthenes; Paramanos; Stephanos;

  Metiochos, who was Miltiades’ younger son; Herk, who had

  been my first teacher on the sea; the Aeolian Herakleides, who

  now had a trireme of his own; Harpagos and me. Eleven ships –

  as big a contingent as many islands sent, al in the name of

  Athens – not that Athens paid an obol. I remember that

  Sophanes was there, and Phrynichus the poet, his eyes flitting

  from one man to the next – so that we knew we were living in

  history, that this cup of wine might be made immortal.

  We drank.

  In the morning we rose with the dawn and put to sea. We

  were a magnificent sight, sails ful of a good folowing wind as we

  passed the cape by Troy and sacrificed to the heroes of the first

  war between Greeks and barbarians. Miltiades was like a new

  man – ful of his mission, and his place as its leader.

  Every night we camped on the headlands and beaches of

  Ionia – Samothrace, Methymna, Mytilene – and celebrated the

  unification of the Ionians and the victory we were going to win.

  Our rowers were at the height of training – a month trapped in

  the Bosporus had alowed us to work them up as few crews

  have ever been hardened, and the rich pay of last autumn kept

  them loyal to their oars. I noted that al the Athenians kept their

  distance from me.

  When we came to Mytilene, the beaches were empty, and in

  the Boule, the old councilors told us that the storms that had

  trapped us in the Chersonese hadn’t blown on Lesbos. The

  alied fleet had gathered three weeks before and sailed for

  Samos. And they had appointed Dionysius of Phocaea as

  navarch.