Stephanos shook his head. 'Why don't we go after them where no one can run?' he asked.
Now, it's worth saying that the Phoenician commander, Ba'ales, had a dozen warships at Lampasdis, down the Bosporus towards the Troad. Miltiades had eight ships, all smaller. We always ran when the warships came out. They always ran from us when they were outnumbered.
It was a hard summer for oarsmen on both sides.
I fingered my beard and admired my ship. I loved to sit and look at him while I had a cup of wine. 'Miltiades can't risk it,' I said. 'We only have to lose once and Artaphernes has us. He can lose two or three squadrons and he can always force Tyre to send more.'
Stephanos drank some wine, admired the woman serving it and began to dabble in the spilled wine on the table. 'I just keep thinking of the Aegyptian raid,' he said. 'No risk, no blood and a crippling blow.'
My eyes met Paramanos's over the rims of our wine cups.
'We could catch them on the beach,' he said. I had the same thought in my head.
'They must have lookouts and coast-watchers,' I said. 'All down the strait. Every three or four stades.'
'We certainly do,' Stephanos said, morosely. Indeed, every farmer on our side of the Bosporus reported on ship movements.
We broke up without any decision. But we talked about it every time we were together – catching Ba'ales on the beach, his men asleep.
And some time just after that, while I was arguing with Paramanos on the beach, Cimon brought a man up beside me.
'I can make Lekthes' career,' Paramanos was insisting.
I knew he was right. But Lekthes was closer to me than any of my other men except Stephanos and Idomeneus, and I was loath to give him up. Thugater, there is no argument as harsh as one where you know that you are wrong.
'By Zeus of the waves, you are a thankless bastard. I found you a prisoner and I've made you a captain-' I was spitting mad.
'You? Made me a captain?' Paramanos grew in size. 'Without me, you'd be at the bottom of the ocean three times over. I taught you everything you know. There's no debt between us-'
'My lords?' Cimon asked. He was my own age, of impeccable ancestry and had beautiful manners. He was already a prominent man, not least because he disdained his father's politics. Cimon always wanted to fight. What he wanted was glory – glory for himself and glory for Athens. On that day, he leaned forward, holding his staff, and the only sign that anything was amiss was the trace of a smile on his lips that suggested we were making a spectacle of ourselves.
'Your heart is as black as your skin, you fucking ingrate!' I did say that.
'And which of us is a former slave? I can smell the pig shit on you from here, turd-flinger!' Paramanos pointed a finger at me. 'You are like all dirt-grubbers – you can't stand to see another man succeed. You think it makes you fail! Lekthes deserves-'
Cimon stepped between us. 'My lords?' he said again.
'Keep out of it, Cimon. I'm tired of his poaching my best crewmen. ' I was equally tired of how, now that he was an independent captain, Paramanos was the highest earner. It suggested that he was right – he had made me. And that enraged me.
Some friend. Youth is wasted on the young. I knew he was right about Lekthes, and I suspected that he was right about how much I owed him.
'Arimnestos?' asked a voice I knew.
The man standing at Cimon's side was dressed like a peasant, in a dirty hide apron over a stained chiton, with a dog's-head cap on blond curls. The name was said so softly that I wasn't sure I had heard right, and I turned, my tirade draining out of me.
'Arimnestos?' he asked again, and his voice was stronger, happier.
'Hermogenes?' It took me a moment. I hadn't seen him for eight years. He was a man, not a boy. He had a bad scar on his face, a cut that went from the top of his scalp to the top of his nose.
He grinned as if he'd just won the Olympian Games. 'Arimnestos! '
We fell into each other's arms.
Such was my happiness – the instant, life-affirming happiness of rediscovering a friend from home – that I burbled the story of my life in a hundred heartbeats, leaving out everything that mattered, and then turned to Paramanos.
'I'm a fucking idiot,' I said. 'Lekthes needs to go and be an officer. And I do owe you my life.'
That shut him up. Ha! What a tactic. Capitulate utterly. Leaves your opponent with nothing to say. He sputtered, and then he embraced me. We sat in my favourite wine shop, Hermogenes and me, Lord Cimon, Miltiades' son, and Herk.
'You never came back,' Hermogenes said. He was happy and angry at the same time. 'We waited and waited, and you didn't come back to camp. And then Simonalkes came back and said that you were dead.' He shrugged. 'I searched the battlefield for your corpse and I couldn't find you. I asked everyone – even Miltiades. He knew who you were, and he knew where your father had fallen.' He looked at me. 'You've changed,' he said accusingly. 'You haven't talked to Miltiades about any of this?'
I shrugged. 'No,' I said. 'He doesn't concern himself with petty things.'
'Petty?' Hermogenes asked. 'Petty? Arimnestos, your cousin Simonalkes has married your mother and taken your farm. Is that nothing to you?' He drank down his wine. 'My father sent me – I don't know, three years back? Sent me to Athens to find Miltiades – and you, if your shade was still in your body. Simonalkes always said that you were dead – killed in the last rush of the Eretrians. But there was no body.' He looked at me. 'What happened?'
I felt a rush of memory. It wasn't that I had hidden the memories, it was only that I hadn't thought about them – I hope that makes sense, honey. Young people live in the moment. I had lived in the moment for eight years. Hidden, if you like. Men in stories rush home to avenge their fathers. I had been a slave. I didn't want to go home.
Sometimes, in the silence of my slave cubicle at Hipponax's house, or on my bed in Lord Achilles' palace, I would think of home. Sometimes I would dream of ravens flying west, or I would see a raven and I would think of home – always a home with Pater and my brother. As if they were alive.
But they weren't alive. They were dead. And I knew, as soon as I let myself think about it, that Simonalkes had killed my father. I could see him, turning away from the fighting line, the fucking coward, his sword red at the tip, and Pater falling. Stabbed from behind.
It is like the difference between hearing that your woman is sleeping with your friend and finding them together in your bed. Hermogenes was there. It was time to face the facts.
'I was sold into slavery,' I said, slowly. 'I was at Ephesus, as a slave. For years.'
Hermogenes pursed his lips and fingered the scar on his forehead. 'That would have been hard for you, I think,' he said. There spoke a man who had been a slave.
'It was hardest at first,' I said, and I told him about the slave pens. More than I've told you, actually. He was born a slave, and in our family. He was never sold, nor bought.
'That was – terrible,' he said. 'Zeus Soter – I never had to do any of that. Pater did, though. He's told me the story, a dozen times – how he was taken, how he struggled and failed to escape, and how your father bought him.' Hermogenes shrugged. 'Simonalkes tried to re-enslave us, but old Epictetus stuck up for us. Thanks to him, Pater is a citizen now.' 'And you've been looking for me for three years?' I asked.
He shrugged. 'On and off, friend. I had to eat.'
'What did you do?' I asked.
He looked at the wine shop table. 'Things,' he said. 'A little carpentry. Some gardening.' He took a sip of wine. 'Some theft.'
'By the father of the gods,' I said, 'how did you come here?'
He flexed his shoulders and rubbed his scar again. 'An Athenian magistrate gave me the choice: come here or have an ear cut off.' He smiled. 'Not a hard choice. And then, when I was waiting in a warehouse with a bunch of other lowlifes, I heard a man mention your name – he said we'd be fighting under Miltiades of Athens, and Cimon, and Arimnestos Doru. When I got here, Cimon took me for his crew. He said that you were a Plataean. It seemed too much to hope. But here we are.'