Killer of Men

Pelagius nodded. 'Too true.'

Miltiades stroked his beard. 'But Amathus sealed the bargain. I watched you clear those triremes, lad. You're the real animal, aren't you?'

'He had one fucking good helmsman, too,' Agios added. 'Who was it who cut the Phoenician in half?'

I had to grin. 'Not me,' I admitted.

Heraklides nodded. 'We knew that, lad. With a sword you are a titan come to life. With a ship – you may be good in ten more years.'

'I have an Aegyptian now – took him as a prisoner at Amathus. I'm hoping he'll take service with me. And teach me.' I pointed down the beach, but of course my Nubian was nowhere to be seen. 'But the artist at Amathus was a Cretan fisherman in his first fight, name of Troas.'

Agios laughed aloud. He was a small man, but he had the laugh of a satyr – threw his head back and roared until his chest heaved. 'That for my arrogance!' he laughed. 'I thought you had some veteran, some ship-killer from Aegina or Miletus.'

I kept screwing up my courage to talk to Miltiades, but I didn't want all the praise to end. Who does? I was twenty, and men of thirty-five were singing my praises. Petty matters like money should be beneath a hero. But the Boeotian farmer won out over the heroic.

'I can't afford to run a ship,' I blurted out.

Pelagius turned away, hiding a smile. Agios and Heraklides looked at the sand.

Obviously, I could have done that better.

Epaphroditos shrugged. 'I can,' he said.

Miltiades shook his head. 'No, he's mine.' He looked at me, his head slightly tilted. I think he'd known what I was coming for from the moment he saw me walking with a spear – and he'd pushed me forward as a hero to raise my value.

I blushed. I didn't have a lot of blushing left in me at the age of twenty, but I blushed then. Miltiades laughed.

'Is your city going to make him a citizen?' he asked Epaphroditos, and my friend had the sense to shake his head. 'You going to protect him against fucking Aristagoras, who wants him dead?'

Epaphroditos looked incredulous.

'Oh, yes. Our dear lord and commander wants to see this young pup's head on a spike. There's a rumour…' He chuckled, and looked at me. 'Hey, I can keep my mouth shut. Eh, lad?'

Epaphroditos made a noise as if he were strangling. 'He what?'

'Exactly. Whereas I'm a tyrant – I can make him a citizen of the Chersonese this instant. And only I decide who captains my ships. And frankly, Aristagoras can't survive the summer without me.' He turned to me again. 'Come – let's have a look at your ship. He looks like a heavy bastard. One of the Phoenicians you took?'

I nodded. 'Deeper and broader than a Cretan trireme,' I said. All six of us walked back to my ship.

'What's his name?' Lord Pelagius asked.

I shrugged. 'Storm Cutter,' I said, meaning it as a joke.

'Good name,' Herk said. 'Men give ships the daftest names – gods and tritons. Storm Cutter is a real name.'

'I only have half a crew,' I said. I turned to Epaphroditos. 'And most of them are Aeolians. Will they stay with me?'

Miltiades cut him off. 'Doesn't really matter. I'm never short of rowers. Thracians line up outside my palisade to serve for wages.'

My men were forming two neat lines on the sand. Lekthes and Paramanos had the men mustered and ready, and they looked good.

Herakleides was at the right end of the line, and I introduced him to Heraklides – the Aeolian and the Athenian version of a son of Heracles. And then we walked down the rank of men.

'Must have been quite a storm,' Miltiades said. 'These men look like a crew.'

Then he went and looked at the ship. 'Heavy wood,' he said. 'Nice timber.' He nodded. 'What do you think?'

Agios ran a loving hand over the sternposts where they rose in a graceful arc over the helmsman. 'Tyrian. They build well.' He looked at Miltiades. 'This is a heavy ship meant to carry a heavy compliment and twenty marines. He'll be slow, even with a full compliment at the oars, and brutally expensive to maintain.'

Miltiades nodded. To me, he said, 'You have a helmsman?'

I looked at Paramanos. 'I don't know,' I said. 'I can't speak for the man I want.'

'Fair enough. That's a heavy ship. I'll buy her from you and keep you as trierarch, or I'll pay you a wage for her. Herk will work out the details.' He grinned. 'Mostly what I want is you. You're worth fifty spears now.'

I grinned back. 'I believe it, lord. But will your treasurer believe it?' Herk bargained like a peasant. That was fine with me – I was a peasant. We argued like hen-wives, and I finally turned and left him on the beach. He didn't want me to own the ship. His contention was that I had less than half a crew of oarsmen, no deckhands, no marines and no helmsman.

So I tracked Paramanos down to a wine shop – that is, to a blanket awning over a couple of rough stools, with a huge amphora of good Chian wine that was buried in the sand. The shopkeeper charged by the ladleful. The wine was good.

'You have a wife and children,' I said, after asking permission to sit.

He drank some wine. 'I have a pair of daughters. My wife died bearing the second. They live with her sister.'

I nodded. 'What would I have to do to convince you to sail as my helmsman?' I asked.

He put a copper down for another cup of wine. 'Buy me,' he said. 'And aim high.'

I laughed. 'One eighth,' I said. 'That's my opening offer and my final offer.'

He raised both eyebrows.

'You know Miltiades of Athens?' I asked.

He nodded. 'The Pirate King,' he said.

I nodded. 'Exactly. He wants me to serve him. Someday, I imagine he'll stop milking the trade fleets for money and he'll go back to Athens and make himself tyrant there.' I saw a dramatic new vista opening before me – a vista where I was a nobleman, a shipowner, the sort of man who could marry Briseis. 'But I have a mind to spend a year or two making money. I'll give you one eighth of our take – in silver – if you'll serve a whole year.'

He drank more wine. 'Tell me who gets the other eighths,' he said.

'One for me, one for you, one for keeping the ship,' I rhymed off. 'One for the other officers, three divided among all the other men. One in reserve – for a crisis. If there's no crisis, then in a year, we share it out – by eighths.'

He sat back. 'I'm a merchant,' he said, 'not a pirate.'

'Fifty silver owls down,' I said. It was from my own hoard, but I had money coming from Miltiades. I let the sack clink on the table.

'Fifty silver owls bonus,' he countered, and he put his hand on the bag but did not seize it.

Who wants a helmsman who doesn't have a high opinion of himself? I had to smile, because three years earlier I had been a penniless slave in Ephesus. Fifty silver owls was a high price – but I'd seen him in the storm. Yet there was still something about him I did not trust. He was older, and more experienced – I think I assumed that was the problem. And he feared me without respecting me – that was another problem.

But he was Poseidon's own son. 'Done,' I said, and took my hand off the pouch.

He made it vanish. 'I should have asked for more,' he said. He leaned forward. 'So – do you know that two men are following you?' I went back to Herk with the Nubian at my shoulder, and found him in another wine tent. He was enjoying a massage while drinking. I let him interrogate Paramanos and he was satisfied.

'You found yourself a Phoenician-trained navigator just lying around?' he asked. 'The gods love you.'

'The men dividing the spoils saw him only as a black man,' I said.

'More fool them. So you have a helmsman. And you think that makes the difference – that now I should hire you.' He raised his head and the man kneading his back slapped him down.

I would have laughed, but there was a familiar face peaking at me from a corner of the stall – Kylix the slave boy.