Isocles of Aegina, their navarch, shook his head. ‘We should do what we should always have done — press forward and strike them when they don’t expect us, on the Thracian coast.’
‘Are you mad?’ said another — one of the Peloponnesian captains. ‘They’ll slip past us and burn our farms.’
‘Four hundred triremes don’t slip anywhere, you fool!’
‘Back to the isthmus where we can command our own fates!’
Eurybiades didn’t seem to straighten up, or fill his lungs. But his voice was like the voice of brazen-lunged Ares. ‘Ears!’ he shouted.
Men stood silent, stunned.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said into the silence, in a voice that expected their continued cooperation. ‘The allied fleet needs Poseidon’s help. If that help is going to take the form of a storm from the north and east, we do not want to be caught on a beach facing north and east.’ He nodded courteously to Adamenteis. ‘Our strategy is set, and will no longer be discussed. In the morning, we will retire to Troezen. We can be back here in six hours. No one is permitted to send dispatches home, or to leave the fleet under any circumstances. Arimnestos of Plataea will take my messages to King Leonidas and meet us at Troezen.’ He nodded.
No one offered any protest. Greece was not lost or won in that moment, but it is the moment I think of, when men say that Themistocles defeated the Medes.
His message, which Hector wrote out and I read ten times, said just this.
Xerxes left Therma fourteen day ago and makes good time.
I will retire to Troezen to allow the gods to save us, if they will.
Running down a channel at night is never easy. The wind was rising slightly and I didn’t care to use the sails, and so my oarsmen got still more practice. I left Paramanos in charge of my squadron, because he had more experience of command than any, even Demetrios, Aristides’ helmsman.
At any rate, we rowed down the dog-leg passage. From the open sea and the coast of Thessaly, it runs due west, and then turns south around the island of Euboea and then runs at an angle towards Attica.
There is a deep bay on the western shore of the dog-leg, and the narrow gates of Thermopylae — the so called ‘hot gates’ where the hot water flows from deep in the earth into shallow bowls — the gates, as I say, were formed by the mountains coming almost to the edge of the sea. Men had walled the pass many times, to stop various invasions from Thessaly and Thrace, with varying degrees of success.
At any rate, we rowed in at first light, and I won’t pretend I wasn’t very relieved to have made the voyage without touching a rock. There was a light surf running as we turned Lydia to land her stern first — the first taste of the easterly blowing down the coast of Thrace from the Hellespont. I am ashamed to admit that I was not at the helm, where I ought to have been, but amidships, shitting away my relief at a successful night navigation with Hermogenes, when we struck a rock.
We weren’t moving fast, but we started taking water immediately. The wound was bad enough that I could see where two planks had broken.
We were in no danger of sinking — we were in four feet of water, half a stade off a beautiful beach. It was a simple accident, but it angered me.
We got the ship ashore, rowing like heroes to overcome the weight of water and keep her bottom strakes off the sand, and then my rowers piled over the sides with a will and rolled her dry and carried her up the beach. It wasn’t as bad as it might have been, but we had two strakes broken and a third cracked. By the will of the gods — or blessed by Moira — I had not sold my cargo of Illyrian timber and pitch. It had seemed wiser to keep it for emergency repairs, and I had divided the cargo among the ships of my squadron, so that before I went up the beach to find the camp of the Greeks, Hermogenes and Stygies had axes in their hands and splitting wedges and two dozen willing Plataean farmers were giving them advice.
I took both of my boys and walked up the beach, and found the ancient wall, and a very alert sentry from Corinth, in full panoply. This pleased me almost as much as the rock had annoyed me, and I shouted my name and my errand with a will.
The Corinthian sent for a superior. He leaned over the low wall. ‘I’m sorry, Plataean. But the king gave orders that we admit no man until daylight.’
I waved at the sky.
The Corinthian shrugged. ‘Are you not the notorious pirate?’ he asked.
Of course, in Corinth I was a notorious pirate.
‘I have certainly been a pirate,’ I said. ‘But that Corinthian ship? I found her high and dry, sold for scrap timber in Aegypt.’
‘Really?’ he asked, and leaned out over the wall again. ‘I hear you killed all the oarsmen and officers and took her south of Cyprus.’
I shrugged. ‘Believe as you will. But all my men will back my version, and I could get priests from Aegypt to swear to it as well.’
The Corinthian nodded. ‘Of course, all that could be lies and fakery,’ he said.
I nodded.
‘So it could. What would convince you?’ I asked.
Someone came up behind him, and he had a whispered conference. A ladder was lowered.
I climbed it. At the top, the Corinthian peered at me. ‘You don’t look like a man who would massacre a citizen crew for the sake of a hull,’ he said.
The man behind him on the wall was the King of Sparta. He didn’t look the worse for sleep, and his hair was long and curly and his beard oiled. He nodded to the Corinthian. ‘What is it that engages the two of you so hotly?’ he asked.
‘A lawsuit in Corinth,’ I muttered.
The King of Sparta laughed. ‘Truly, you are Greeks,’ he said. ‘Xerxes marches, and we argue lawsuits.’
‘Xerxes is very close,’ I said. I handed the king my tablets.
He took them and nodded. ‘So I assumed from the moment my sentries reported your ship,’ he said. ‘No one sends a trireme with good news.’
That day, while the allied fleet retreated from the possibility of a storm, we worked on Lydia. We dried her hull upside down in the sun, which was good for her, and Hermogenes led the self-appointed carpenters. We had good tools, but no adze, and the Locrians brought us one, bless them.
While my friends worked, I walked through the camps, and visited. I knew men in many contingents, and I got news of the Olympics, and sat with Antigonus for a cup of wine.
We drank, and talked of farming and lawsuits.
When we’d bored his neighbours into leaving us alone, he leaned close to me — we were lying in the dry grass behind his tent. ‘Can the fleet hold?’ he asked.
I nodded. ‘Every day, we are better. We have good officers and good oarsmen. When the Olympics end, we’ll have another fifty ships.’ I leaned on my elbow. ‘We can hold the Medes for a few days. That’s all we need.’
‘And the storm?’ Antigonus asked. ‘Everyone is praying to Poseidon for a storm.’
I remember that I shrugged. Rather impiously, my outswept arm indicated the blue sea and cloudless eastern horizon. ‘The fleet is seeking anchorage from Poseidon’s wrath,’ I said in mockery. ‘Tomorrow, no doubt, we’ll go back to our station at Artemesium.’
‘A sign from the gods would hearten us all,’ he said. He drank some neat wine from a canteen and held it out to me. ‘But barring the direct involvement of the Olympians, I suppose we’ll just have to dig in our heels and fight. Are you any good at mathematics?’
I laughed. ‘Fair enough. I can work geometry.’
Antigonus nodded. ‘Well — figure this. We have six thousand hoplites and Xerxes has a million. How many do I have to kill?’
‘Two hundred, give or take a few,’ I said.
He whistled. ‘Well,’ he said. He looked at me. ‘If I fall, tell Penelope that she was. . everything I ever desired in a wife.’