One bold ship made a last try. Before the final bend in the channel, a beautiful long trireme with a red stripe went to full speed in half a dozen ship-lengths — a superb crew — and tried to ram us, bow to bow.
Idomeneus had the ship, and he steered well, so that the two rams rang together like a hammer and an anvil, and our ship bounced away, apparently undamaged.
Arrows fell from the near bank, so many that they were visible against the faint light of the sky, and there were screams from the red ship, and it fell away. I could hear a familiar voice cursing and ordering men to reverse their cushions — a Greek voice.
Archilogos’s voice. A man I’d sworn to protect — now leading the ships of my enemies.
The men of Miletus greeted us like brothers — better than brothers. We’d killed an enemy ship and seized another right under the eyes of their blockade, in full view of the walls, and we would have been drunk as lords in a few hours if there had been any wine in the lower city.
As it was, my first hours in the siege of Miletus showed me all the things I’d never wanted to know about sieges. The people were as thin as cranes — the children looked like old people, and the women looked like children. A handful of the town’s best fighters still looked like men — they got extra food, and they needed it. The rest looked like starved dogs, and Histiaeus, the tyrant of the town, had to set his fighters as guards to get our grain ashore.
I took our pay in gold darics. ‘I’ll be back,’ I promised.
Histiaeus was a tall, beautiful man with a mane of black hair and golden skin and a heavy scar across his face. His brother Istes was another of the same — they had been raised at the Great King’s court and spoke Persian as well as Greek, and they looked like gods. I liked Istes better — he was less addicted to power and a better man — but he laughed at me. ‘No one comes back a second time,’ he called as my men got the stern off the beach. ‘But thanks!’
That stung. ‘I’ll be back in ten days, by the fires of Hephaestus and the bones of the Corvaxae!’ I shouted to Istes. I craved his good opinion. In those days, men said Istes was the best sword in Ionia. He was a few years older than me, and we had never been matched against each other. But we were instant friends, that night in Miletus.
So, having sworn my oath before men and the gods, I ordered my men to row. We were heavily laden — I’d filled the ship with all the women and children that dared to come with us. We headed straight back to sea.
It was dark as pitch. I reckoned that Archilogos wouldn’t expect me to try again immediately, and I was right. We rowed out of the harbour at ramming speed, made the turn at the harbour-mouth in fine style and tore up the estuary, and the Medes and traitorous Greeks on the beaches at Tyrtarus must have watched us go by and felt like fools, but none opposed us. I stood on my stern and laughed at them, and the sound of my mockery carried over the water and bounced back from the bluffs above the town.
Probably a stupid taunt, but it felt good, and it still makes me smile to think of how Archilogos must have writhed at the sound of my laughter.
And then we were out to sea and running before a freshening wind.
All our rowers were exhausted by the time we made Chios. We disgorged our cargo of refugees, and the people of the fishing villages fed them. But they wouldn’t keep them, and we still had them aboard when we headed back north to Mytilene.
I had to give command of the new ship to Harpagos. I was out of officers, and Idomeneus, for all that he was a skilled killer, had no interest in the sea and could no more inspire men than I could play a flute. Harpagos was a good seaman, and his quiet solidity was the sort of thing men trust in a storm or a fight. I gave him a try, and I never regretted it.
I took all three ships back into the great harbour at Mytilene, and still there was no sign of the rebel fleet. Nor had anyone heard a word of Miltiades. It was as if the Persians had already won.
I paid my grain merchants from the gold I’d received in Miletus.
‘And I’ll buy the rest of your grain,’ I said. I offered them a handsome profit, for men who never had to move from the comfort of their own homes, and I filled three ships with grain in sacks and jars. I’ll say this for them — for all the Lesbians — they took the shiploads of refugees from Miletus and treated them like citizens.
This time, we sailed in broad daylight. My crew trusted me now. And weeks of action had made them better men. I knew the process and I used it for my own ends. We rowed when we might have sailed, and I hardened their muscles as if they were athletes, and I promised them a gold daric a man if they got us in and out of Miletus again.
I waited for the dark of the moon, and the gods sent me a dark night and heavy seas. We had lights on our sterns, and we rowed across in the dark, with the rowers cursing their ill-luck and praying with every stroke — but after a month of constant adventure, my crew could row in the dark.
We went down the bay with the wind at our backs, under boatsails alone, north around Lade. The wind defeated the currents and allowed us to move quickly, and the Phoenicians were snug in their blankets when we went past, because it was raining and winter had come. But some fool laughed aloud and alerted them, and when we had unloaded and turned our bows to the open sea, they were formed across the bay, fifteen ships waiting for our three. And they were good sailors. I watched them for a while from the safety of the Milesian archers, and then I took my little squadron back into the harbour.
All the gold darics in the world weren’t going to save me. I was blockaded in Miletus, and it looked as if our luck had run its course.
4
The Persian fleet didn’t actually have any Persians in it, of course. There were Ionian Greeks and Phoenicians and a handful of very capable Aegyptians on those beaches, and I stood in the so-called Windy Tower of Miletus and watched them.
To the south, the Persian siege mound grew every day. No Persians there, either — just slaves culled from the countryside, hundreds and hundreds of agricultural slaves from the Milesians’ own farms carrying brush and soil, while fending off rocks and arrow shafts, and dumping it under the walls, so that the siege mound grew the width of a man’s hand every night.
The Milesian aristocrats remained confident, however. Their city had never fallen, and they still had stores — they hadn’t killed all their animals yet, and only the lower-class people were suffering. When I was taken up to the acropolis, it was as if I’d entered a city free of war — I was bathed by slaves, anointed with oil and served a meal that included thin-sliced beef tongue.
But in the lower city, the people were starving.
My grain put heart into them, and I wasn’t the only captain who got through — just the only one who’d done it twice. And this late in the season, my second cargo — three ships’ worth — saved the city. Histiaeus and his brother did not hesitate to tell me so.
My second night in the city, Istes led the warriors in an attack out of a postern gate and set fire to a brush pile the enemy had been preparing — brush piled as high as a city wall, intended to help with the last days of the siege mound. But they couldn’t burn the soil, and in the morning the slaves were back at work.
Persian archers appeared periodically and shot into the city — fire arrows, sometimes, but mostly just war shafts, carefully aimed. Every day they killed a man or two on the walls. On the other hand, they kept the city supplied with arrows.
Archilogos, or whoever was in command over there on the beaches of Lade, was not giving up either. They formed a cordon every night, and had small boats rowing across the channel, and at least two ships out in the bay north of the island. At dawn and dusk they sortied out with at least fifteen ships, and I didn’t see much hope for escape.