The Great King

I’d really like to leave this tale here.

But the gods love tragedy, and we’ll play this one to the end.

I saw the three flashes.

So, of course, did the enemy.

It was our last ruse. It didn’t wreck any ships, but it bought us another hour, as we backed water again, and the Great King’s fleet suddenly closed up on the centre to repel our attack. We backed water. They collided and lost spacing — six hundred hulls scattered over forty stades of water. Ships lost oars and fell away behind.

We fed our oarsmen water and some honeyed sesame seeds and garlic sausage.

Again, Eurybiades’ ship flashed once.

‘Signal!’ Brasidas called.

This time, I pulled down my cheek pieces.

This time, men loosed their swords in scabbards and checked their spearheads one more time. Oarsmen spat on their hands.

Aft of me, an old salt looked at the man on the cushion on the other side and winked.

They both grinned.

Men shook hands.

‘Ready!’ I called. I looked at Hermogenes.

‘Red and white,’ he said. ‘I have him.’

Eurybiades flashed his bronze aspis three times.

We attacked. Let the world remember that when we were outnumbered two to one, we attacked. We waited until the sun was in the west — in their eyes. We tired their rowers all day.

And then we turned like the desperate dogs we were, and went for their throats.

Who knows whether Dagon knew me. He should have known Lydia, but it is possible that my fixation on him was not returned.

Bah — I doubt it.

Lydia had the best, fittest rowers, and we leaped ahead of our line and went for the enemy line like an arrow from a string. Nor was the red and white trireme directly opposite us, but a little closer to the enemy centre, so that we ran a little south of east as we started our ramming attack.

You wouldn’t think we could have surprised them again. But we’d been retreating for three hours, and we hadn’t offered any fight, and then, suddenly. .

The Phoenicians were up to it. Their ships went to ramming speed so fast that their oars beat a froth as if the sea were boiling. And their big ships were fast.

‘Show ram,’ I said quietly to Hermogenes. ‘But go for the oar rake, not the ram. We won’t board. We’ll sheer off and go through.’

Dagon must have expected me to go for him. To go for the epic fight, the head-to-head ram, the boarding action.

He never had good oarsmen, though, because he ruined his slaves. And I wanted that to tell against him. This was not my revenge. This was the revenge of the gods.

A hundred paces out, I saw him and my body moved like a lute string. I knew him and, at some level, my body feared him. No man had ever hurt me so. No man had ever made me feel so weak.

But I had planned this moment for a month, and I would not be tempted.

Fifty paces from his ship, Hermogenes suddenly veered hard to the right, and our oarsmen pivoted us brilliantly — right, left, out of the other ship’s line completely like a good swordsman. We lost a great deal of speed, but we weren’t ramming his ship.

We rammed her oars, and of course his poor slaves and down-trodden thugs couldn’t get their sticks in the ports in time. We went by in an orgy of arrow shafts.

I stood by Ka, pointing to Dagon. ‘Don’t kill him,’ I said.

His marines threw grapples, and my men cut them, and we were by, leaving a shambles and blood running over the red and the white, and then our speed picked up as my rowers put their backs into it. Nicolas was shouting, praising them, begging for more speed.

There was a Phrygian pentekonter under Dagon’s stern, and he tried to turn, and we went right over him — pressed his whole ship right under the waves. That’s why small ships cannot stand in the line of battle.

And just clear of the drowned Phrygian was a Lydian from the reserve squadron in a heavy trireme. He was too close to the first line to do anything to help.

I was with Ka. Hermogenes made the call, and we went ram to ram with the Lydian. He was moving at the pace a man might walk, and we, by then, were a little faster than a cantering horse, and our ram struck somewhere on his bronze.

The bow of the Lydian caved in like a broken nose in a fight, and suddenly we were deep in the enemy fleet and our ram was stuck.

‘Reverse your cushions!’ Nicolas screamed.

Already, our stern was starting to rise. The timbers groaned as the strain of a sinking galley fell on the backbone — the keel.

I thought of Vasileos, thousands of stades away, and all the love and work he’d lavished on this ship.

The first oars bit the water.

Dagon’s ship was turning, now. I could see him on the stern, pointing at us.

I could see my ship beginning to torque. I could see deck planks springing out as the immense force of the sinking ship came to bear on the bow and the stern rose another hand’s width from the water. The Lydian was sinking with all hands.

I spread my hands to the gods and roared, ‘Poseidon!’

The ram seemed to explode straight up out of the enemy galley. All the timbers in her cat-head gave at once, and the marine box on the Lydian flew into the air, and my beautiful Lydia righted herself, slapped the water and rocked like a child’s toy in a tub of water.

In a big battle, the trierarch has to make ten decisions every heartbeat. I looked aft, where Dagon was turning — my prey, but too far. To my right, towards the centre, a dozen triremes were turning towards me. To my immediate left, Sekla’s Machaira and the capture Huntress burst out of the Phrygian squadron’s rear. Even as I watched, a Lydian struck Huntress amidships and splintered oars, and Sekla put Machaira into the Lydian’s side — this in ten heartbeats.

I pointed with my spear at the enemy centre. ‘Starboard,’ I said.

Nicolas had the port side reverse benches so that we turned in ten paces, and as the turn started, the starboard-side rowers picked up their cushions and turned, so that, as we faced south into the enemy centre, all our rowers were again facing aft, and rowing forward — and the stroke never faltered.

I could tell you stories of the next hour, but they would be lies.

Twice, I was able to rest my rowers. Once, after we were boarded from three ships — Aegyptians, with their fine marines, and I was only saved when Harpagos slew the biggest ship and put his marines into the rear of the men on my deck.

We just lay on our oars or knelt on the deck in the blood of our enemies and breathed.

And the second time was later, when we saw Eurybiades oar bank to oar bank with a ship that appeared to be made of gold — one of the Ionian tyrants. The Spartan thought the man must be the navarch of navarchs and went for him. I led my son on to the enemy deck, boarding on their undefended side, and ran for the back of the enemy marine line.

Two strides from the enemy, my chosen prey turned.

I slipped in the entrails of a dead man, and before I could recover my balance, a dying Spartan, taking me for the enemy, grabbed at my ankle, and down I went.

Hipponax stood over me. He thrust, he cut, he jumped on his wounded leg and danced like a flute girl — and men died.

I got a spear in my crest that wrenched my neck, but I stumbled to my feet, and watched my son kill.

And then, when he made a mistake, I reached over his shoulder and put my spear in a man’s eyeholes, and put a hand on his shoulder, and Eurybiades came and smiled at us.

We were almost in the centre of the line.

That time, we rested, watching the battle and helping no one, for almost as long as the oration of a dull man.

In that time, I saw Dagon’s ship.

He’d moved rowers about, put oars in empty oarlocks, and he was creeping away. He was not alone — wounded ships on both sides were leaving the fight.