The sea to the north was empty. We found another trireme, turned turtle, all her oars still aboard, some smashed. I hove to, fingered my beard, and then salvaged her.
Imagine our shock to find two Phoenicians alive under the capsized hull. They’d been in the water three days. They were as weak as kittens and out of their wits, but to Greeks, the men Poseidon preserves are sacred. We hauled them aboard and they drank water until I thought they might explode — in fact, Hermogenes took the water from them, afraid they’d die of it. It was hours before they could talk.
In the meantime, with a dozen men to help me, we got ropes on the gunwales of the Phoenician and rolled her upright, and then, with half the oarsmen in her, we baled her dry enough to tow, with two dozen oarsmen aboard just to keep her head up and land her. We only had thirty stades to make, but it took us until nightfall, and we had to row all the way, as our mast was down. The setting sun showed us the allied fleet coming up the channel. Eurybiades had them practising a reverse crescent. They could fill fifteen stades of water and still have a small reserve, and they looked magnificent, and my throat tightened.
I turned to Hermogenes. ‘We may yet do this, brother,’ I said.
He grinned. ‘There are the Plataeans!’ he called, and sure enough, on the left of the line, there were ten ships all as neat as a farmer’s furrow.
We wallowed our way to the beach and landed before the first ships to the right of the line — Athenians under Cimon — got ashore. I had claimed the spots right by the olive groves — better shade, and a deeper beach. Cimon cursed, but he leaped ashore and we embraced.
‘You have a capture!’ he said, envious but happy for me.
I shook my head. ‘She’s Poseidon’s capture,’ I said. ‘The storm got her. I have two men who were alive in the wreck.’
I was gathering a crowd. Cimon took my shoulder and we went along the beach to where I’d had my tent set in the olive grove, and Hector gave Cimon wine. We sent Hipponax for Eurybiades and Sittonax condescended to walk off and find Themistocles — moving slowly, to show that he was above such vulgar considerations as crisis or work.
Themistocles came first. He hugged me close.
‘You two!’ he said, including Cimon. ‘I thought we’d never get the fleet back here. Adamenteis is still threatening to sail for the isthmus. And then Cimon shows up off the beach and says that the Persians are wrecked and Greece is saved, and all our cowardly allies. . that is to say. .’ He nodded to Eurybiades.
The Spartan nodded and looked at me. ‘Prisoners?’ he asked.
I saluted. ‘Navarch, while they are prisoners, they were rescued after three days’ shipwreck. To us, that makes them sacred.’
Cimon nodded. Even pirates have rules.
Themistocles frowned. ‘None of that foolishness, now. We need their information.’
Everyone looked at me. This is the price of the great reputation — sometimes men expect you to speak, to make decisions, to be the great man.
I bowed to Themistocles. ‘At some point, we define ourselves by what we do. We begged Poseidon for his favour. He answered us with a storm. Is this our thanks?’
Themistocles shot me a glance of scorn mixed with pity — that I was one of those men, so easily led, so easily fooled. I hope I shrugged.
Cimon nodded. ‘But surely we can ask them questions?’
That seemed suitable to everyone, even Eurybiades, who clearly approved of my answer. When they were brought, they were seated comfortably, and given wine. They sat listlessly.
‘Can you tell me what happened to your fleet?’ Cimon asked in passable Phoenician.
‘It is all wrecked,’ the younger said. ‘No one could survive such a storm.’
The older man glared at him.
The younger shrugged. ‘What is it to me? Listen, then. The beaches were too narrow for the whole fleet, and our admiral ordered the store ships to have the most protected landings. The army had priority over the navy in all things. The ships of Halicarnassus and Ephesus took the inner moorings, which left us to anchor out in rows of forty ships, eight deep in the bay we chose. Eight deep.’ He shook his head.
The older man stared off over my shoulder. ‘We anchored bow and stern. We are not fools. I had six stones under the bow, and four under the stern — every anchor on my ship. We started to move with the first wind.’
All around my tent, men had begun to babble with relief — with delight.
Poseidon had destroyed the Persian fleet. Or so it appeared.
‘How many ships did the Great King muster, when he sailed this summer?’ I asked.
The older man rocked his head — as Phoenicians do. ‘A thousand? Fifteen hundred?’ He shrugged. ‘I never counted.’
That made me swallow.
A thousand ships?
But the other captains were delighted with their news. When it was clear that the two captives would say no more — at least, not willingly — Eurybiades summoned his messenger and sent him to Leonidas with what we knew. He was careful, and only stated that Poseidon had inflicted a defeat on Xerxes’ fleet.
But the Greek fleet rejoiced.
It was a long night. I heard men — men for whom I had little love and little respect — brag of what they would have done to the Persians had their fleet only endured. I’m an old warrior — I know that no man loves the moment when death is there to look you in the eye, and no man really loves war more than once or twice — that older men have to play the game or be thought cowards, when really they’d like to be at home with their wives. I know this, but the posturing and bragging in the Greek fleet that night was sickening.
Worst of all, I was the hero of the hour. Somehow my salvage of a stricken trireme had become a capture, a conquest, and men would stumble drunkenly to my side to take my hand.
Gah! The fools.
At any rate, Hermogenes was not a fool, nor was Sekla nor any of our captains. Demetrios — the leftmost captain in the line — had commanded the last ship to come in to the beach, and he was insisting he’d seen sails on the eastern horizon.
I had only seen enough wreckage for about forty ships. If they had a thousand ships. .
I went to sleep to the sound of men working by torchlight on the salvaged ship’s hull. The hammers rang hollow, driving pegs into the side.
I awoke to shrieks and desperate cries, as if the Medes were upon us in the dawn.
And they were.
The sun was barely on the horizon, a red ball that threatened further bad weather, and the sea was like a floating forest to the north and east. It filled the channel as far as the eye could see to the right, all the way out into the open ocean.
I clambered up the headland with Hermogenes, to find Sekla and Sittonax already there, Giannis and Alexandros climbing from the other side, and Themistocles standing apart with Eurybiades.
Aristides emerged from behind Alexandros.
My other friends were climbing up — there was Aeschylus, and there, Phrynicus’s friend Lycomedes, and Cimon and Gelon and Hilarion, of all men.
It was as if all the friends of my life — every man I’d met since Lades — was gathered on one low headland. Lades killed a generation — worse, it killed a culture, a kind, gentle culture.
All the men around me stared in horror at the Great King’s fleet.
However many Poseidon had culled, what was left was three or four times the size of the allied fleet. Perhaps more. It covered the ocean. I had been at Lades. I have been told — by Phoenicians — that the Persian fleet at Lades was the greatest fleet of triremes ever assembled.
Perhaps. Certainly, the Great King’s fleet had smaller vessels in hordes — pentekonters, triaconters, even Aegyptian lembi. But it also had triremes in numbers that staggered the eye, so that you had to keep looking away and looking back.
Eurybiades couldn’t tear his eyes away. It was the doom of Greece.