‘That must have been a magnificently empty gesture,’ I shot back, ‘given whose wife she was.’
Oh, I’m a fool. Always antagonise those you hope to sway by argument. But Archilogos smiled as he had when we were boys, and he acknowledged a fair hit.
‘I mean to have her as my wife, Archilogos,’ I said. ‘By Heracles, my ancestor! The Great King is beaten! The next fleet to come here will come from the west, and it will be Greek. The world is changing, brother!’
I don’t know where that came from. We used to call each other ‘brother’ when we were boys.
He turned his head and looked away.
Artemisia suddenly nodded decisively. ‘Well, call me a fool or a fatuous woman, but I believe you. No one could make this up. Give me a hostage.’
‘I will give you my own son,’ I said.
Seckla met me coming back aboard after I’d seen Hipponax and two marines — all allowed arms — over the side. I returned Phayllos and his companion their arms.
‘I will return you to your ship when we leave Ephesus,’ I said.
Phayllos smiled. ‘She is very persuasive, is she not?’
I wasn’t paying attention. Diomedes had a parasang head start.
I had a very good ship, and now, with two signals to my friends, I ran for Ephesus.
From the south end of Chios, it’s not a complex voyage into Ephesus, but it has challenges. The coast of Chios runs from the southern point at an angle, from south-west to north-east. My ship was well placed and had the right rig. We raised our sail — indeed, it was laid to the brails — and we were away.
An hour passed and none of us could tell if we were gaining. I was beyond mere spirit. My whole being was in the bow and in the sails.
More to distract myself than to help my friend, I walked back out of the bows and knelt by Leukas. I found myself telling all this — explaining my decisions.
My Briton’s eyes opened. I hadn’t really been paying enough attention, but he had been breathing fairly well and now his eyes opened. ‘Sixth day,’ he said. ‘I may yet equal Seckla.’
I hadn’t even hoped. So much of my spirit was seeking after Briseis that I had wasted no hope and too few prayers on my friend and helmsman. But now my hope soared.
Brasidas came and knelt beside me.
He took Leukas’s hand, ran another hand down his side and over his gut.
‘No fever,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘Sometimes the spear point never goes into the gut.’ He shrugged.
‘Sometimes the gods are kind,’ I said.
Brasidas looked at me, rubbed the closed wound on his shoulder, and I think what I read in his eyes was pity. ‘Sometimes,’ he said.
The sun was three fingers higher in the sky when one of the fleeing ships turned end for end. We were coming up on them rapidly enough to see with the naked eye — our sailing rig was so much better than theirs. Just having the mast permanently anchored into the hull is a powerful tool and the rake of our forward boat-sail mast, which raised the bow very slightly against the downward pressure of the mainmast, gave us a lighter entry and made us faster.
I wondered what Diomedes had promised this poor bastard. His tactics were obvious — if I lowered my mast to face him, I’d lose an hour. No question.
Of course, I didn’t have to lower my mast. But Diomedes had never been in the western ocean, and didn’t know this rig.
‘Seckla?’ I asked quietly.
Let me add that half a parasang astern the rest of my friends — aye, and the Red King — were spread over the ocean. Artemisia was close behind me, but Archilogos was closest of all. Moire was just behind him. I had a little concern about betrayal, but more about the loss of time. And ever I had the spectre of Artaphernes riding, riding, and losing no time for adverse winds or grey days or enemies. A good man could ride twenty-four parasangs a day on the Royal Road and he was a renowned horseman and a relative of the king. Athens to the Hellespont was fifty parasangs. From the Hellespont to Ephesus was much less. On the one hand, much of that distance was very rough ground, but on the other, we knew the Great King had built roads as he came.
He should have been in Ephesus the day before, ordering my beloved’s humiliation and death.
I am not one to leave things in the hands of the gods, but in this I knew I could do no more than I had done.
Kineas left it late — on purpose — and Seckla forced our last opponent but one into a wide manoeuvre to cut us off as we threatened to merely sail by. He must have thought his sudden turn was a guarantee of victory.
And he must have died in his heart when he saw how fast our mainsail came down. We left the boat-sail set. We were going very fast.
Our rowers grabbed the mid-ship’s ropes and lay out to starboard, and Seckla’s steering oars bit. One-third of the aft port-side oars went into the water, too — slowing us, and turning us very quickly. Oh, the years of practice in that moment.
And we almost missed.
And as we turned, the deck tilted at an angle I had never experienced and I thought we were going over. I felt the weight change and I feared our mast was taking us down, knocked flat, sideways into the sea. The starboard side rose and rose and every oarsman who could climbed out of his box and threw himself over the deck to the starboard and climbed over the catwalk, and lay out over the starboard rail. A hundred men weigh a great deal.
But what saved us was the impact. Our bow struck their stern. It would have been a glancing blow at a lesser speed, but at our racehorse gallop we sheered off his stern and the resistance — the moment of impact — slowed us.
Grudgingly, Lydia righted herself. She did not come up willingly, and for ten heartbeats, it was like watching the last heat at the Olympics, cheering on some beautiful runner who is stride for stride with another — will he win?
And then, with a sudden shake, we were on the level, bobbing like mad, and one of the port-side stern oarsmen lost his oar to the sudden change.
But by then, even though he was pale under his dark skin and looked grey at his own temerity, Seckla was bringing us back on course for Ephesus. Diomedes had sacrificed his consort and now he was only ten stades ahead of us. He was pulling away — of course.
But now our mariners proved their worth again. The readied sail was set back to the mainmast and twenty men raised it with a song. In the distance I could see the opening of the river mouth — the river whose first bend would lead us to magnificent Ephesus and the temple of Artemis shining on the hill of the citadel. It had been years.
I felt the Furies, their wings beating about me to the rush of the wind.
Do you know the feeling you have in the theatre, when you writhe your hips in your desperate wish that Oedipus may make another choice — even though you know that all is written and ordained? When the rhapsode sings the Iliad and you wish that, just this once, Patrocles might live, or Hector triumph?
Well then.
Here we are.
We entered the delta of the Kaystros, passing over the bar under oars, and we were perhaps five stades astern of my enemy. Nor were there warships waiting in the estuary. Indeed, the harbour was empty.
Empty.
One of my many fears in those hours was to find a port packed with enemies, instant allies for Diomedes. But remember, between two hundred hulls to support the bridge over Hellespont and the thousand ships he sent in his navy to Hellas, the Great King stripped the Ionians of their ships and their hoplites.
Diomedes ran.
My crew, Poseidon’s blessing on them, shifted us effortlessly from sail to oars. The promontory on the north of the estuary all but killed the wind, and Seckla and I had it to the last breath, with every rested oarsman on his cushion before the sailors raised their hands to lower the sail.
Four stades.
I could see beaches by the town where Aristides had beached the Athenians eighteen years before, when I was still a boy and the world had seemed a sweeter place. I could see the temple of Artemis on the hill and I thought I could see a certain red-tile roof.