I laughed. ‘Come along, boy, and see how we do.’ I saluted the navarch, who stood in his scarlet chiton at the edge of the beach and watched us.
All my ships were afloat. It was the turn of the tide in a light wind, and my oarsmen held Lydia just at the edge of the surf so that I was only wet to my crotch getting aboard. Young Pericles soaked his chiton.
I ran for the bow. The enemy squadron were still coming on, four stades away, with bow waves. It struck me as possible that they had not made a navigation error — that rather, they had brave men who held the allied fleet in contempt and had come to show it.
I looked at my own ships. Waved, and Hector raised my bronze-covered shield and gave a signal, and my squadron’s oars dipped — all together, or close enough, so that there was a mighty flash, the setting sun on all the blades together.
Nothing for it now.
We were the seventh ship from the right — the centre of the line coming off the beach, with Paramanos three horse-lengths away, but we began to angle east and west immediately.
The enemy squadron was in two columns of eight ships, and just as we came off the beach they began to spread out from their rowing columns into a single line. There was no way of knowing whether they had detected our enmity or whether they were merely preparing to land on the beach.
Sekla was heading north and east aggressively, and the rest of my half of the squadron held station on him, using the light westerly to push our hulls east, which caused us to move faster and farther to the flank than Paramanos, who also had to fight the current.
Three stades. In a sea fight, everything seems to take for ever, and then, suddenly, everything happens at once.
Ka and his archers pushed past me into the bow. Every one of them had two quivers, now, and they hung on pegs that hadn’t been there before.
Hipponax and the marines waited on the catwalk. Hector’s face was as white as chalk. But he and Hipponax were grinning, all their teeth showing, refusing to let each other see their fears, like young men since the siege of Troy. Behind them stood Siberios, who watched them with an intent, half-amused look.
I ignored the boys. ‘When we strike, we’re going to take. Get aboard and keep her. Take command and make the rowers go for the beach.’
He was watching the enemy over my shoulder. ‘You won’t have any marines,’ he said.
‘Let me worry about that. You’ll be on your own.’ I slapped him on the shoulder, and he laughed.
‘Oh, as to that, I’ll have Hector and Achilles,’ he mocked.
I got to the midships platform, where the main deck begins and all the sailors stand. They were armed. We were a rich ship — every deck man had a cuirass and greaves and a sword and spear and helmet.
One stade out, the enemy had formed something like a line, and they had recognised that we were not friends. I could see three ships that looked Phoenician, and the rest looked Ionian or Aeolian — Greeks. The blue ship had Asian decoration under her beak and looked Carian.
The last ship in the leftmost squadron had red sides over dirty white.
Dagon.
I almost changed course, but it is a pitiful navarch who can’t follow his own plan, even for revenge, even for Apollo. But I watched that ship for many beats of my heart, and I didn’t think about my son, my daughter, Archilogos, mortality, or even Briseis. I watched the evil Carthaginian.
The squadron facing me began to break up.
You must understand, to understand all that follows — you have only the tactics and signals you have practised in advance. You cannot change a plan at sea. You can’t tell all your trierarchs if you suddenly have a better idea. If something unexpected happens, every trierarch has to think for himself. In a line fight, no one has to think.
As they woke up to the fact that we were enemies, we were also forcing them to make decisions. We weren’t going to go ram to ram in line.
In another place and time, they might simply have run through our centre — but five stades behind us was a beach full of Greeks, with ships arming and coming off. None of them was actually ready yet except Cimon’s pirates, and they, of course, were twenty stades to the south along the beach.
Most of the ships facing me turned outward to fight. Two of the eight turned end for end and ran for it.
Instead of going seven of ours against eight of theirs, now we were seven to six, and not a blow had been struck.
I was going ram to ram against the blue ship with the gold decoration. It was a very heavy ship — pretty, with heavy cat-heads intended to break my oars and kill my rowers.
I ran back to Hermogenes like a mother hen.
‘You see those beams?’ I asked.
He withered me like Medusa — which I deserved.
Because we had a superb crew, we’d left our ramming speed to very late. And our opponent wasn’t superb — he’d practised about as much as the Ionians practised before Lades. You make an opponet ten feet tall in your mind — and then, in reality. .
Ka and his men began to pour arrows over the bow at such a quick pace that it looked as if our ships had a thick black rope connecting the bows.
The enemy helmsman flicked his bow to his right. Helmsmen generally do, just before going bow to bow.
I said, ‘Now!’ and Nicolas, now the oar-master, slammed his staff on the deck and our ship leaped.
It was a high-risk manoeuvre. Ships generally try to go slightly off line just before contact, but Hermogenes used speed, instead.
The enemy helmsman had to assume he’d turn slightly off line and then turn back at the last moment, but he misjudged our speed, and our ram struck the shoulder of his ship just aft of the cedar beams of his cat-head — a steep angle, and not a quick kill, but our sharp bow swept down his oar-bank even as we got our oars inboard and men were screaming and Ka was standing in the bow shooting down into the enemy oar-deck and then Hipponax and Hector leaped together. .
Ka ran along the catwalk, shooting. .
My armoured deck crew poured grapples into their midships bulwarks and Siberios led the marines over the bow. .
My son and his friend stood back to back on the enemy catwalk and killed men. A tall man in armour covered in gold — who was he, the Great King himself? — flung a javelin and it went through my son’s thigh and he fell, and Hector stood over him. .
Hermogenes’ hand closed on my arm. ‘You aren’t in your armour. You are the navarch.’
Both were true.
But my son was lying in a pool of his own blood on an enemy deck.
All of my marines were away. To the north and east, Sekla was running free, past the easternmost Phoenician, and all my other ships were engaged. A glance to the west — Paramanos had broken an Aeolian ship in half. He was, after all, the best helmsman in the world. None of the other ships was engaged yet.
‘Cut the grapples!’ I roared, leaving my son to whatever fate awaited him.
Deck crewmen cut the ropes of the very grapples they’d thrown. Others used pikes to push us off.
Siberios killed the man in gold armour, hammering his teeth into his throat with the pommel of his sword.
Hipponax hamstrung a Carian marine in full panoply from his postion lying on the deck, and Hector stabbed the man in his open-faced helmet with his spear — Hector fought fastidiously, like a cat, his spear flicking out.
I wanted to bandage my son’s wound. I wanted to fight.
‘Oars out!’ roared Hermogenes. Hermogenes, who could not command his way out of a linen sack. He glared at me.
Well he might.
‘Arm me,’ I snapped at young Pericles.
He didn’t bother to protest. He opened my bronze thorakes and got it on me.