I had had ten minutes to watch. There were huge holes in the allied fleet.
But again, the Great King’s fleet had had the worst of it, and was retreating, and Eurybiades and Themistocles were on them — the Peloponnesians and the Athenians and the Aeginians found their second wind, and I limped down the length of my ship to where Hermogenes stood with an arrow in his bicep.
‘You have to take the oars,’ he said.
Brasidas got him free of the leather harness.
I was back to being a helmsman. My helmet burned my brow, my plume hurt my head every time the wind caught it, my armour weighed like the world on the shoulders of Atlas, my hips had developed a strange new pain and I had a wound somehow under my right greave, which was cutting a bloody groove in the top of my foot.
I was better off than many.
‘Friends!’ I roared. Perhaps I squeaked it, but it was loud in my ears. ‘The day is ours. Now — we can rest on our oars, or we can go and help the Athenians finish the Great King’s fleet.’
One of the old salts laughed. ‘Easy, mate — I’ll rest here.’
Other men laughed, too.
‘By Poseidon!’ I roared, with a little of my old battle lust. ‘Then help me get my revenge!’
The old man cackled and flexed his muscles, and in that moment he was like Poseidon himself — old and solid.
‘Revenge, is it?’ he said. He cracked his hands, spat on his palms, and took his oar.
Men around him shook themselves as if they were coming awake.
Men understand revenge. It is easier than patriotism or love or strategy or tactics or even the rough world of consequence.
And revenge is a universal language.
I left the oars to walk the deck. ‘Most of you know I was a slave,’ I said. ‘The man who made me a slave and tried to break my body lies yonder, and there is nothing between me and him but five stades of water.’
Maybe I should make more speeches.
I got between the steering oars and aimed us astern of Dagon’s ship.
And now I had the bit in my teeth.
We passed another Phoenician, wallowing with a bank of dead oarsmen. Easy pickings, and we passed her by. And a Carian full of men who had probably once been my allies — they could scarcely row, and we passed them hand over fist, because of revenge. My oarsmen were heroes, the very Argonauts themselves, and we swept east, the sun under our quarter. I had time to drink some water, to pour more over the wound under my greave, time to take my son’s greave strap — his wound had opened. Greave straps are padded rolls of leather you wear on your ankles — fashionable Athenian boys wear them to parties now.
I walked forward, feeling better. Like a man who had fought hand to hand every day for four days. I spared a thought for the allied army, who would be fighting the Persians again in rotation.
Well, we hadn’t lost. Again. Even as I turned my head, the Ionians in the centre gave in and bolted, and suddenly the Great King’s fleet was running for their beaches.
Only as we closed on Dagon did it strike me that we had won.
But I was not done.
Dagon’s ship ran.
We ate her lead. Three stades, then two, then one. Ka and his men were shooting into the wind, but Dagon had no archers at all.
A hundred paces from Dagon’s stern, I made them stop shooting. I turned to Brasidas.
‘This thing is mine,’ I said. ‘Do not touch him.’
He shrugged and looked pained. In truth, he was too great a man to understand why I needed to kill one opponent, much less one already beaten. But he nodded.
‘And if you fall?’ he asked.
‘See to my son,’ I said. ‘Oh, and kill the bastard. He has it coming.’
‘Why not let me kill him now, then?’ asked Ka.
Hector stood at my shoulder. He smiled.
Hipponax said, ‘I want to come,’ and we all said ‘no’ together, and then — then our marine box started to come alongside his helm station.
Ka leaned out and killed the helmsman. Just like that.
Dagon’s ship yawed, and we slammed into its side. I fell flat — not ready for the collision — and so did Brasidas.
‘Don’t kill any more oarsmen,’ I said. I got to my feet, put my right foot on our gunwale, and had a moment of sheer fear.
Of Dagon.
Of the leap.
Of old age, and being diminished.
And then I jumped.
Once, I had faced Dagon naked, and another time, with a bucket.
Now, I finally faced him on a steady deck, with a spear and an aspis.
Brasidas landed on the deck behind me, and Hector, and Siberios.
‘Ready, Dagon?’ I asked.
He was a big man, and his thighs were like a bull’s, and his arms were as big as my thighs. His spear was red, and he didn’t grunt when he threw it.
He was right behind it, his sword emerging from his scabbard. .
I threw. He hadn’t expected it, and my throw caught him where the crest meets the helmet, and snapped his head back.
I drew, the underhand cut the Spartans had taught me — and I cut to the right, inside his shield, and scored on his naked arm inside his aspis — and I stepped to the left, pivoted, and slammed my aspis at him.
No matter how strong you are, you cannot block an aspis with a sword.
He put his head down, so my following cut — pivoting and stepping again, as Polymarchos taught — didn’t kill him, but went into his crest, and half of it fell to the deck, and he shouted and got a cut on my left thigh.
I pushed my right hand home. Herakles, he was strong. But my feet were planted and my footing was good, and my sword was against his helmet, pushing.
He rolled and cut at my feet from behind.
I slammed my aspis into his sword. He rolled from under the blow and got to his feet.
I dropped my aspis. He was bleeding then.
‘You!’ he said. ‘Come and take what I have for you.’
His mad eyes showed no defeat.
His right hand dropped the shards of his broken sword and I could see white where he tried to flex his left.
He attacked me, arms reaching for me despite what must have been blinding pain, and I did what I had wanted from the first. I stepped through his arms, locked his right with my left, the high lock of pankration, and he screamed as I broke his arm — I didn’t pause or hesitate, I had done this a hundred times in my sleep, and I pushed my left leg deep behind him and threw him over it — over my leg, over the rail, and into the three decks of slave oarsmen below.
He was alive when he left my hands.
They tore him apart. I would have, if I’d ever had a chance like that.
Then I fell to my knees.
Behind me, Brasidas snapped, ‘Boy! Take the helm!’
For a moment, like Miltiades after Marathon, I was out of my body, but Brasidas brought me back.
Many of my old shipmates have asked me whether I killed Dagon, and I am proud to say — no. I merely took him where he could die the way he deserved.
We lost eighty ships on the fourth day of Artemesium. We lost Gelon. We lost Paramanos — swarmed by Aegyptians when I was far away. Cimon lost a son and two cousins and every Plataean lost someone.
Athens lost forty ships.
Aegina lost twenty ships.
We stood on the beach with our captures and our wounded — Hermogenes, white from blood loss, and Sekla, who had an arrow though his foot and a cut across his head, and Giannis, who lost his left hand to a Phrygian axe that went through his aspis.
It was not a victory to celebrate.
Eurybiades gathered the fit trierarchs, and there were about a hundred, and that included a lot of men with bloody rags, like me.
Themistocles looked like a man going to a funeral.
I put a hand on his shoulder. ‘We did not lose,’ I said.
He turned, and the orator was crying.
Eurybiades stood alone. He was not crying, but his face was closed. He was elsewhere.