Gelon shrugged. ‘They know my answer, and it is a sign of their desperation that they sent you. Who was it — Gorgo?’ He made a moue. ‘Gorgo thinks I can be persuaded. But it is now too late, and you might as well remain here. Be one of my captains. Athens and Sparta are done — indeed, Athens may already be afire.’
That blow struck home. ‘What?’
He nodded, pleased as a cat. ‘An Aegyptian ship came in here yesterday. The captain says that Xerxes marched a month ago, and that the ports of Asia are empty. The Persian fleet is at sea.’
I didn’t bow. He wasn’t Xerxes. ‘I must go,’ I said.
He smiled at his guard captain. ‘And if I order you held — for your own good?’
My breath came tight, and I felt that power from the gods on my shoulders. I looked back at the mercenary.
Gelon was serious. Or rather, he was prepared to hold me, merely to spite me. Because I’d stolen Lydia. He was not a god, but a petty man with the powers and will of a god.
But I knew there were real gods, and I knew that I was needed. Elsewhere.
Very quietly, and I hope without bluster, I said, ‘If you order me held, everyone in this garden will die, starting, my lord, with you.’
I give the tyrant his due — he didn’t stiffen, or flush. He met my eye — man to man.
‘Perhaps and perhaps not,’ he said easily. ‘Very well. You may go.’
6
Artemesium — 480 BCE
The Greeks appointed to serve in the fleet were these: the Athenians furnished a hundred and twenty-seven ships; the Plataeans manned these ships with the Athenians, not that they had any knowledge of seamanship, but because of mere valor and zeal. The Corinthians furnished forty ships and the Megarians twenty; the Chalcidians manned twenty, the Athenians furnishing the ships; the Aeginetans eighteen, the Sicyonians twelve, the Lacedaemonians ten, the Epidaurians eight, the Eretrians seven, the Troezenians five, the Styrians two, and the Ceans two, and two fifty-oared barks; the Opuntian Locrians brought seven fifty-oared barks to their aid. These are the forces which came to Artemisium for battle, and I have now shown how they individually furnished the whole sum. The number of ships mustered at Artemisium was two hundred and seventy-one, besides the fifty-oared barks. The Spartans, however, provided the admiral who had the chief command, Eurybiades, son of Euryclides, for the allies said that if the Laconian were not their leader, they would rather make an end of the fleet that was assembling than be led by the Athenians.
The Syracusan authorities held us for two horrible days with their pettifogging bureaucracy and foolish made-up taxes, and I thought we’d never leave. But on the morning of the third day we were allowed to go, and we were out of the harbour mouth with dawn — a lucky choice on my part, as it proved. We went south around the heel of Italy and touched at Bari and left the cliffs of the heel behind us. Four days out of Syracusa, as we rowed across the Adriatic from Bari — me all but raging at the helm at every delay, imagining Plataea and Athens afire and Leonidas dead — Hipponax slid down the stubby boat sail mast and picked his way through the benches aft.
‘There’re a pair of ships on the horizon to the south,’ he said. It was a calm day, the sea was like a flat field and the water was warm to the touch. The sky was blue-white with haze and sun, and the rowers were all stripped naked.
I pulled myself up the boat sail mast and had a look.
I had to rest my arms on the narrow trees that we used only when we crossed the yard, and there was no foothold and only the mainstays that braced her. A small ship doesn’t need a heavy mast and thus can’t support a crow’s nest like a hemiola or even a trireme. But a life as a pirate teaches a few tricks.
I watched the spot he indicated. I never saw a ship.
But I did see a rhythmic pulse of light, and I knew it was the sun reflecting on oar backs as they rowed.
‘They’re in the eye of the sun,’ I said. ‘On purpose, I think. Two pirates, hunting us.’
I went back and relieved Hector, who was learning to be the helmsman, and after all the admonishments that sailors make to lubbers, I took the oars and cheated us a little farther north.
And so we ran all day, or rather walked, because without a breath of wind, it was a long, long pull, the kind of back-breaking day that makes your oarsmen curse.
All day I wondered who they were and why they were so slow. My gut feeling was that they were both heavy triremes, and thus should have run me down in four hours. I wavered, changing opinion at every rapid beat of my heart — they were after other prey, they were a Syracusan escort, they didn’t even know we were here, they were rowing just one bank of oars.
Nothing made sense. A small triakonter with thirty oars is utterly at the mercy of a bigger ship unless there’s shallow water in which to hide.
Towards evening, they sprinted at us. At least, that’s my guess — they came on, and they had to have known that the movement of the sun across the sky had cost them their hiding. They were ten stades or more south of us and clear as day.
I didn’t hasten the stroke. I had to save my rowers, for the moment when. .
when. .
. . when Poseidon saved us. It’s hard to explain, except that as the lead trireme gained on us, I could see as plain as the nose on my face that it was Dagon’s Spirit of Baal. The bad rowing was explained.
Gelon had sold me to Dagon. Hence the delay.
I fear death as much as the next man, or perhaps more — I’ve met the gentleman more often than most. But that day, under the cruel sun, I was sure — sure that Poseidon would not let me die at Dagon’s hand.
I watched the sea.
Poseidon provided me with a dead tree.
It may seem odd, given the mighty wars I’m describing, but this encounter was all the work of one huge tree trunk, a product of spring storms in the high Alps north of the lagoons at the top of the Adriatic. It was a huge tree, all its branches intact, and mostly submerged. It was almost the size of my ship.
Hector spotted it first, and Hipponax was the first to guess what it was.
We kept our hull between the Carthaginians and the floating tree for as long as we could. Then we went to full speed, so that the waves seemed to part from our bow. .
. . and the Carthaginians, of course, had no more to give. Their ships were badly crewed — Dagon always killed his crews.
At full racing speed — still, in fact, slightly slower than my pursuers — I turned north as sharply as I dared, losing a ship’s length of my lead and wetting my port-side rowers, but they’d been warned and no one lost the stroke.
How I longed for Ka. How I longed for even one of my archers.
The lead Carthaginian made the turn behind me, closing by another half-ship-length.
‘Ready to turn to starboard!’ I bellowed. By Poseidon, they were close.
And yet, by Poseidon, I felt the power. I felt that I was the master, and not the slave.
Hector motioned from the bow.
I put the steering oars over, the starboard-side rowers bit deep, the port side raised their oars, and we were around — about an eighth of a circle.
Dagon’s ship never saw the log. They started the turn, almost on our stern rail, and they struck at full ramming speed.
The tree had most of its branches intact, and instead of a spectacular collision that broke his bow, instead the first collision checked his way, and then the tree fell off on my enemy’s port side, and rowers caught it — oars snapped, and men screamed, and the whole ship turned to starboard. If I had had anything like a real ram, I might have turned and had him. If he’d had anything like a real crew, he could have carried on. If his companion had a captain worth his salt, he’d have manoeuvred, but instead, the following ship fell afoul of Dagon — wood splintered, and oars broke, and we were running free.