There was something funny about a black man in an Asian chiton telling me that I was a barbarian. I laughed. 'You are a brave man,' I said.
'Fuck your mother,' he growled. 'We're all going to die anyway.' He spat over the side. 'You just killed the whole lower oar deck. We don't have the manpower to beach the ship.'
I laughed again. 'We'll stay at sea, then. Nothing to fear from a night at sea.' I laughed, and pointed at the blood running out of the oar ports. 'Poseidon has had his share of sacrifices,' I said.
His eyes said that he didn't agree.
'And the ship is rid of vermin,' I added. If I was going to play the mad captain, I'd play it to the hilt. Even the Cretans were different in the morning. They might still be useless, but now they were terrified of me, and that made them better sailors. Paramanos got us in with the coast of Asia – the long east – west reach south of Aeolis and west of Lydia, full of pirates and dangerous rocks. But he knew that coast, and we ran west with the new storm at our backs all night, and morning showed the teeth of the mountains dead ahead.
'Unless we row south,' Paramanos said, 'we're dead men.'
I agreed, so I had all three decks rowing – well, at least the two I could man – in the grey rain, and we had the sea broadside on, pouring through the oar ports and pushing us steadily west for all the southing that we made, which was precious little.
Some time in that endless grey day, I sent the deck crew to row, and even gave orders for the handful of armed Aeolians who still stood by to serve wine to every man, strip their armour and take up an oar.
My left arm was still numb, and even in the rain I could see a bruise as black as the darkest night where the oar had hit me, but I knew that I had to row. Leadership is an odd thing – sometimes you want your men to fear you as they fear the gods, at others you need them to love you like a long-lost brother. So I settled to an upper-deck bench, and for the first time I could see how much water was swirling down in the hold below me.
My stomach clenched. We were a third full of water, and if the Phoenicians had still been manning the lower benches, they'd have been drowning.
I called to the Nubian and told him that we were full of water. I could see him smile at my ignorance. He was conning the ship – of course he would know just how sluggish we were. Truly, I was a piss-poor commander. I had too much to learn.
It was a Phoenician ship, and it had tackle I didn't understand. It had pumps – sliding wooden pumps that rigged to the top strakes and allowed a strong man to shoot water up and over the side, straight up from the bilges. The Nubian got them rigged and shooting water while I rowed on in a haze of pain, because now that I was active, my left arm hurt like fire with every stroke, and the whole thing seemed pointless.
Every rower harbours a secret fear in a storm – that by rowing for the safety of all, he is losing his own strength to swim, if the ship founders. I was a strong swimmer – I'd learned in Ephesus and swum every day on Crete, and now I knew that if we wrecked, I would drown, dragged under by a weak left arm and a hundred cuts and bruises.
'What'd you do?' the man below me asked out of nowhere. 'Weren't you deck crew?'
'Everyone rows,' I said, gritting my teeth.
'Trierarch's a madman, ain't he?' the man asked. 'A killer, that's what I hear.'
I laughed. 'I am the trierarch,' I said.
He twitched and almost lost the stroke, and I felt better. 'Listen, boy,' I said, using the Ionian phrase for a slave, or a man of no value. 'If we live, you owe me an apology. And if we all die, you'll have the satisfaction that I'll be as dead as you.'
That was the end of conversation with my rowers. I don't think they loved me. They thought I was insane. Another nightfall found us still at sea. We were resting fifteen men at a time, and I was relieved eventually by another shift of reserve rowers, and I could see that if there was no less water in the bilges, at least there was no more. But I also knew that our rowers were almost finished. I knew because I was as strong as an ox, injury or no injury, and my arms were like wet rawhide.
I went aft, cold now that I wasn't rowing, and pulled my dry cloak from under the bench and put it around me.
Paramanos was still in the steering rig.
'Can you take the helm?' he asked.
'Give me cup of wine and a hundred heartbeats and I'll do my best.' I shrugged. Lekthes and Idomeneus were both rowing, and there wasn't another man on deck. 'It's a miracle we've made it this far, isn't it?' I said.
He nodded. 'I'm good,' he said. He pointed aft. 'When the rowers fade, I put the sea behind us for a few minutes.' His grey-black face had a ghost of a grin. 'Not my first storm.'
I knocked back a cup of neat wine. It flowed like warm honey through my veins, and I was alive. 'Give me the oars,' I said.
He handed them over, and the moment I took them I felt the strain. I looked to starboard, and I could see the coast passing in the fading light. The combination of wind and oar was moving us at a speed that seemed superhuman.
I thought that the Nubian would collapse – he'd been between the steering oars for twelve straight hours, dawn to dusk – but instead, he ran forward.
The oars rose and fell to the beat, but the men were barely moving them. The wind was doing the work, and it would soon bring about our ruin. I reckoned that at roughly the time the sun finally set, we'd touch the rocks. No beach at all, there at the foot of the Olympus of Asia.
I poured another cup of wine and drank it. I would die with my oath redeemed, doing my best. What more can the gods ask?
Paramanos came back aft and the grey fatigue was gone from his face. I handed him the wine cup and he drank off the rest.
'If you served out wine,' he said, 'we might get another water-clock of strong rowing. And I think we might – might – save the ship.'
We traded places again while he explained. I didn't think his wine would work. I thought that words would, and I ran forward to the command platform and raised my voice over the rain.
'Listen, you bastards!' I shouted into the wind. 'We'll be on a beach cooking hot food and drinking wine before the sun sets if you'll put your backs into it. What a bunch of shits we'll look in Hades if we drown a horse-length from a safe beach!'
It was my first battle speech. It worked.
They all thought that they were dead men, and the merest glimpse of hope was enough to fire them. I walked up and down the central plank, and I told them exactly what Paramanos planned. Over and over again.
'We're going to thread the needle between the Chelidon and Korydela,' I said. 'And then we'll be in the lee of the greatest mountain in Asia – calm water and rest. Our Nubian says we can beach at Melanippian, even in the dark, with this wind, and I believe him.'
It's easy to believe, when the only other choices are extinction and black death, and they rowed with their guts and their hope of life. Sunset – not that we'd ever seen the sun – gave way to a horrible grey light and then to full night, and still we lived, and I knew that our bow was due west now. The storm was full at the stern and the motion of the ship was easier; the only rowing we needed was to keep her stern on to the wind.
But I knew that we were still in a race with time, and I got my three Aeolians and Lekthe and Idomeneus and two men they seemed to know, and we raised the boatsail. I'd seen it done by Hipponax's trained mariners – you lash the furled boatsail to the mast, then raise the mast, secure it ten times, and then you cut the lashings on the sail and it spreads itself. The Ephesians did it to show off, but Hipponax had said once that it was a life-saver in a storm.
It is one thing to lash a boatsail to its mast on an autumn day in a brisk breeze, with the warm sun burning your shoulders, surrounded by men who love you, and another to do it in driving rain with your hands so cold that you can't tell whether you have rope between your fingers or not.