And there was a man on the beach, nearly beside himself with fury. He was an Italian Greek, and an athlete. I knew him — everyone did, in those days. Astylos of Croton. He had won the stade and the diaulos at Olympia. He had a statue in Croton, his home city, and I had seen him pointed out to me there by Dano, Pythagoras’s daughter.
He came to me as soon as we landed, put his hand out in supplication, and begged me to take him aboard as a passenger. The same storm that had dismasted Lydia had wrecked his ship on Melita’s rocky shores. And he was desperate because it was an Olympic year, and he was due to compete. Athletes are required by the games to come a full lunar month before the first sacrifice — to prove they are worthy to compete. He was already a week late.
And his trainer was Polymarchos. Do you remember him from last night? A freedman who had trained me in Syracusa. I won’t say he was the best swordsman I ever saw — that honour belongs to Istes, brother of Hippeis of Militus. But he taught swordsmanship better than any man I ever met, and he taught pankration as well, and running, and here he was on the beach at Melita.
He looked at me from under his heavy brows, like Herakles come to life — I’ve seldom met a man with the same weight of bone over his brow and yet such startling intelligence.
‘You ruined Lydia,’ he said. ‘Daughter of Nikedemos, who took you into his home and welcomed you — and you ruined her.’ He shook his head. ‘Come,’ he said to his athlete. ‘I would rather miss the games than travel in this ship.’
I could see that his athlete felt differently. I walked to him, planted myself in his path, thumbs hooked in my zone. ‘I have done evil deeds,’ I said. ‘But I have attempted to come right with the gods. Will you hear me?’
He turned his head away. His hands flexed at his sides, and his stance changed slightly — preparing to fight.
I knew his strength and speed. So I took a half-step back and touched my sword-hilt.
‘Speak,’ he commanded.
‘Lydia is married to Anaxsikles the smith, and they have gone to Croton to live.’ I frowned. ‘I helped Anarchos to arrange it. You must just have missed them. I provided the ship and the money. Polymarchos, I never intended that such evil befall her. But I accept that it was through my actions that she came to grief.’ I shrugged. ‘I have nothing more to say,’ I managed, sounding very young in my own ears. It is hard to talk to a man with his head turned away.
‘Nikedemos was a fool to turn her out of his house,’ Polymarchos said. ‘She was a fool to be so hurt by you, and you were a fool to play with a girl so young.’ His eyes met mine. ‘There are many fools in the world and I have been one of them. Are you sorry?’
Anger — anger born of resentment, anger at my own foolishness — bubbled up. I suppose my eyes clouded, and I’m sure my hands clenched, because I can still remember unclenching them. ‘I’m more than sorry. I. . lost something of what I thought I was.’
He rubbed his beard. ‘Well — I never had you figured for a scheming betrayer, for all you’re a subtle swordsman.’ He glanced at his athlete. The young man was all but begging him. ‘This pup will be much in your debt if you’ll run us across to the coast of Elis.’ He glanced at me from under his heavy brows.
‘I’ve promised to take one of my men to the port for Sparta.’ I pointed to Brasidas. He came over from his fire. He was candidly admiring the young athlete.
‘Brasidas, this is Polymarchos, a hoplomachos teacher, a pankrationist, a wrestler — a fine coach. Polymarchos, this is Brasidas — sometime captain of my marines. A Lacedaemonian.’
Brasidas nodded graciously. Polymarchos matched his nod almost exactly. Then he turned to me. ‘No matter how fast your ship — I’d have to ask you to run to Elis first, or even into the delta of Alpheos. The games are only a week away.’
I looked at Brasidas, and he smiled. He met my eyes and nodded.
‘We’ll take you,’ I said.
Brasidas caught my arm — an unaccustomed gesture from the Spartan. ‘I would see the Olympics,’ he said. Quite a speech, from him.
Ten minutes’ discussion on the beaches of Melita and it turned out that there wasn’t a man in my crew who didn’t want to see the Olympics.
Oh, what a pleasure it is to be rich enough and powerful enough to take a warship to sea with no better purpose than to go to the greatest games given in all the lands of the Hellenes! Mind you, I wasn’t completely a fool. I loaded seventy great Melitan amphora of the best Chian wine I could buy. I’d never been to the Olympics, but there were men in Plataea who had — old Epiktetus, for one — and they all complained about the shameful bad wine and the crowds.
I remember that trip — less than three thousand stades, with a fair wind — as one of the more pleasant of my life. We filled our bilges with wine amphorae and then tucked up the nooks and crannies with water and salt pork and some bread, and we did what only Phoenicians usually did — we sailed the blue ocean, a straight line from Sicily to Elis. It is hard to reckon distances on the pathless surface of the sea, but my estimate was (and is) that it is almost three thousand stades from Melita to Olympia. And never a rock or an islet to get fresh water or rest your crew after you depart Sicily. We built a small floor of bricks in the bow and laid sand over it for a brazier, but you cannot cook food for two hundred men on a trireme and you can’t even carry enough food for a week.
Still, our trip into the Western Ocean had taught us a dozen tricks for surviving in open ocean. One was that we knew we could go two days without food.
At any rate, Sekla and Megakles and I chose a course after some argument, and we put some scratches in the helmsman’s rail to indicate where the sun should be at dawn, at noon and at sunset. After that, all we had was the straightness of the wake and the position of the stars, because there was no beach to rest at night after the first. The first night we touched at Sicily — we landed on the so-called Carthaginian shore south of Syracusa. Polymarchos took his young man out for a run, and a dozen of us joined him — Brasidas, of course, and me, and Alexandros and young Giannis. We ran under Aetna’s crown, and smoke trailed away from the deeps within her. I have no idea how far we ran, but the young athlete effortlessly outpaced us all, even Brasidas. He was beautiful as he ran, and yet somewhat hangdog about it.
‘Why’s he so surly?’ I asked Polymarchos.
The old fighter shrugged. ‘We’re farther from the Temple of Olympian Zeus than we were fifty days ago when we started,’ he said. ‘He’s late. He may well be banned.’
It was the longest voyage I’d attempted on the Inner Sea — the longest made intentionally, with no storm to carry me where Poseidon willed. I sacrificed six sheep on the beach at Sicily — not far from where I’d once sat in the marketplace with Demetrios and Herakles, selling hides — and stuffed my oarsmen with mutton, good bread, olives and good red wine.
And with the dawn, we were off. Our course was almost due east, into the rising sun, and we had the perfect wind. By noon, Aetna was almost gone behind us, and by dark, we were out on the great deep sea without land anywhere. The newer oarsmen were plainly terrified, and we served out wine and stale bread and dates.
The old hands — the oarsmen who’d been out beyond the pillars — laughed at their timorousness.
‘You ain’t seen nothing, young squid,’ one old salt pronounced. ‘A calm night like this on the great green? It’s like being home in your bed.’
Polymarchos, that master of every weapon, looked green himself. He sat on the helmsman’s bench — where Briseis had sat just a few days before — and groaned. ‘I heard you say you were going into the open ocean,’ he admitted. ‘But I didn’t think it through. Do you. . know. . where we are?’
I laughed. ‘Yes,’ I said. I pointed overhead. ‘See the stars? Do you know they move?’