Killer of Men (41 page)

Then the rest of them dropped their weapons.

Cretans were flooding aboard from all directions. I’d taken Achilles’ heir into the heart of the chaos and his father had come with all his warriors to save him.

Nearchos was as tall as a titan in that moment.

I managed to walk forward.

Achilles glared at me but embraced his son. I passed behind him and led my men across to Archi’s trireme.

Half of Archi’s rowers were dead, and all but two of his marines. He himself was covered in blood and had an arrow right through his calf, but somehow he was still standing.

I walked up the centre plank from the bow and the spear shaft in my hand had a tendril of blood that ran all the way down from the head. The Phoenician marines tried to surrender, but there was no quarter just then, and my Cretans rolled over them like a wave rolling over a child’s castle on the beach, and they were gone, their blood flowing into the sea, and I was so close to Archi I could reach out and touch him.

‘Archi!’ I said, and pulled off my helmet.

‘Get off my ship,’ he said, and fainted.

We bandaged him. He was cut eleven times, I remember that. And the arrow through his calf. When he came to, he swore at me and demanded that I be executed. No one paid him any heed, but my dreams that our friendship would be restored when I saved him went the way of many dreams.

I had a couple of broken ribs and six bad cuts. My sword arm had taken a lot of abuse – desperate men cut at your arm instead of defending themselves, and die while doing it. Death robs them of force, but I’d always meant to buy vambraces and now I knew why.

I sat on the deck of an alien ship and let Lekthes bandage me. We’d taken four ships, or so Idomeneus told me – which was good, because our own had sunk. It sank empty, but sink it did, the bow opened like a slit belly.

Nearchos came and gave me some shade, along with Troas. ‘My father is angry,’ Nearchos said, as if it delighted him.

‘I suspect he feels that I should have protected you better,’ I said. I think I managed a smile.

‘Pick any of the ships and it is yours,’ he said. ‘We can crew it from the survivors. I’m taking this one – unless you want it.’

I raised my head. ‘Do I get Troas? What on earth am I to do with a ship? And how is Archilogos of Ephesus?’

Nearchos shook his head. ‘You’ve been out a little while, friend. We lost the battle.’

That snapped me awake, blood loss or none. ‘What?’

‘Oh, we won the sea battle,’ Nearchos said. How godlike he looked – and not a mark on him. He shrugged. ‘The Cyprians shattered like glass, and half their nobles changed sides in mid-action. Onesilus is dead. Cyprus is lost.’

‘Ares,’ I muttered.

‘Aristagoras has ordered us to stay together and run for Lesbos.’ He shrugged. ‘Pater says that we’ll crew you a ship and you’ll go for all of us. The rest of us are going home.’ He made a face.

‘Your father is a great man,’ I said. ‘Troas, you go home. May you have a hundred grandchildren.’

He laughed. ‘Never planned anything else. But I’ll choose you a good crew. If you swear me an oath that you’ll send them home.’

I got to my feet. I felt like crap, but there was something – some weight gone from my shoulder, and not just my scale shirt.

I’d kept my oath. I could feel it.

‘I have one oath already on me,’ I said. ‘I’ll do my best, but that’s all I can promise.’

17

The second day out from Cyprus, and we were in the deep blue under sail, reaching north for the coast of Asia and familiar waters, and my heart was in my throat with every rise of the bow. The cuts on my arms hurt the worse for the salt air and there was a storm rising in the east. I had one trick of command – I wasn’t going to show my fear to Lekthes or Idomeneus, so they assumed all was well and transmitted that confidence down the decks.

But darkness was coming. I knew that I’d fucked up – pardon me, ladies, and by Aphrodite, despoina, you blush like a maiden of twelve – I mean that I knew I’d left it until too late in the day, and I knew we weren’t on a course of true north, and that meant we were still at sea when we should have been cooking. And no sight of a coast.

The rowers were sitting on their benches enjoying the rest, and no doubt planning how to retake the ship.

I called my two men and gave it to them straight. ‘We’re going to spend the night at sea,’ I said. ‘And the crew will try for us once it is too dark to see.’

Lekthes winced. Idomeneus grinned maniacally. The sea-fight had changed him. For all his limp wrists and exaggerated pretty-boy habits, he was getting to be a hard man. And he knew it and loved it.

‘Let them come,’ he said. ‘There aren’t ten men among them.’

I shook my head. ‘The ten men you kill are the same ten men we need to get to Lesbos alive,’ I said.

Lekthes shook his head. ‘So, what then?’

‘Get the Cretans up and armed. Then walk up and down confidently and see if there are any of the Greeks worth having. If you find a man you like, send him aft while there’s still light.’

The two of them went forward, armed the Cretan deck crew and then began to move through the ship. I’m sure that none of you well-bred ladies has ever been on a warship, so I’ll tell you how it is at sea. A trireme has three decks of rowers – they aren’t really decks, but three levels of benches with a sort of crawl-space between them. It takes men time to come and go from the oar benches. There’s a single walkway, the width of a man’s shoulders, that runs from stem to stern the length of the ship. On an Athenian ship, there’s a command platform amidships. Some of the easterners do the same and some build a little deck aft, by the helmsman. Regardless, the helmsman sits in the stern between his two oars, which in a modern ship are strapped together with bronze or iron. He’s the real commander of the ship, and it is the helmsman’s voice that the other officers – the deck crew – obey. Under the helmsman there’s an oar master who keeps order and counts time, and a sailing master who manages the two masts and their sails – the mainmast and the boatsail mast, which is up forward in the bow. The rest of the deck crew manage the sails and bully the oarsmen and provide a reserve of labour. On a Cretan ship they also serve as extra marines. Then there are marines – usually citizen-hoplites.

Lord Achilles didn’t send me with any marines. I had two dozen of his men as deck crew, and not one of them would make an officer. A more worthless group of men I’d seldom seen, and Troas had his revenge for my ‘corrupting’ his daughter – by the gods, I swore to have vengeance on him if I ever caught him – not one man who could be trusted between the steering oars. Nearchos may have wanted me to get the very best men, but what I got was the dregs. Men no one needed. Human waste.

The prisoners were the better men in every instance. I had at least forty Phoenicians and twice that in captured Greeks. I didn’t even have a full rowing crew – I couldn’t man all the lower-deck oar shafts. In good weather, it should have been enough, but there was a storm coming and Lord Achilles didn’t give a ram’s fart whether this ship made it through the storm or not.

Well – I’d made a small fortune from him, and I didn’t mean to die at sea. And yet I remember thinking that I had, at least in part, redeemed my oath, and that meant that I was free to die, in a way. The thought relaxed me, to be honest. I was an honourable man again.

So I stayed in the steering oars, and we sailed north, or more likely north by west, and the sun sank in the sky, and the murmurs from forward grew louder.

A water-clock before sunset, Lekthes came forward with a black man. I’d seen the Nubian when the prisoners had been herded aboard by marines – you couldn’t miss him, with his skin as black as new pitch in the smithy, ready for the forging of fine bronze.

‘Lord?’ Lekthes asked, coming aft. ‘This one claims he was helmsman on a Phoenician trireme.’ He prodded the black man, and the man looked at him with ill-concealed resentment.

‘Claims, my arse, lord,’ the Nubian said in Ionian Greek – better Greek than mine. ‘Lord, you are too far west of north – I’ve been watching since the evening star rose. I know these waters.’

‘That will be all, Lekthes,’ I said, borrowing Aristides’ manner when dismissing a man. Lekthes snapped a salute and went back to the decks.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

The Nubian crossed his arms and looked forward. ‘Paramanos, lord.’

‘Your Greek is excellent,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘It ought to be – I grew up with it. My family owns ships at Naucratis, and there’s more of us in Cyrene.’ He looked forward again. ‘And my daughters will be orphans if you don’t point this ship north, lord.’

Naucratis? A Greek city in the Nile delta. They say it was founded by mercenaries serving the pharaohs at the time of the siege of Troy. And Cyrene is a colony – richer than the mother city – in Africa. What is it that your tutors teach you?

‘You are a helmsman?’ I asked.

‘I’ve been navarch of a blue-water merchant,’ he said.

‘If you are lying, I’ll kill you,’ I said. ‘Take the steering oars.’

I could see his fear, and smell it, but I didn’t know whether he was afraid of me or simply afraid of death – the coming storm – hard to tell. I stepped off the helmsman’s bench and he took the oars. ‘I have the ship,’ he said.

‘Yes, you do,’ I said.

He shook his head. ‘I’m changing course. See the evening star there by the moon? That’s well west of north from here.’ He swung the oars, his arms taut with muscle, and the ship changed course smoothly, the wind passing from under our quarter to dead astern.

‘Before the north star rises we’ll be in with the coast, or you can feed me to the fishes,’ he said. But his voice shook.

I didn’t trust him.

At sunset, Idomeneus came aft with a trio of lanky Asian Greeks. ‘All three brothers?’ I guessed.

‘They were taken in arms as rebels on the mainland and pressed as rowers,’ Idomeneus said. ‘All citizens of Phocaea in Aeolis.’ He looked aft. ‘We’ve a dozen more Aeolians. They shouldn’t be prisoners to start with.’

The eldest brother fell to his knees. ‘Lord, we are Ionians! We fought at Sardis! I was in the agora when you fought, lord!’

It was an easy claim to make – I had no idea who had been in the agora at Sardis, but I
had
been a slave. I knew that tone. Besides, let’s be honest – I liked being called lord.

I held up my hand. ‘Will you swear – to me? Now?’

All three knelt on the deck and swore. Ionians swear the way Cretans do, hands between the hands of their lords. They aren’t much for democracy, like mainland Greeks. I took their oaths by Poseidon and Zeus Soter, and then I armed them and set them to choosing any other Aeolians that they knew. Herakleides was their leader, and his brothers were Nestor and Orestes, and they were good men.

I have a soft spot for men who carry the name of my ancestor.

I was just congratulating myself on having some good men when the Phoenicians decided to take the ship. They must have been desperate – as they saw the Aeolians separated out, they must have known that their chances of taking the ship were dropping by the moment.

They almost killed Lekthes in the first rush. They clubbed him with oars broken short – what a labour that must have been! They’d worked in secret below decks, of course, muffling the sound in their cloaks and rowing cushions, I suppose. I had no idea. They were brave men, desperate men, and they came in one gallant charge, up the benches, oar shafts falling like axe blows. Lekthes took one on his helmet and fell to his knees, but Idomeneus stood by him, put a spear point in one big Syrian and slammed his shield into another, shoving him over the side. They went to get around him, but I got my sword out of my scabbard, cursing myself for a fool – I had ordered my men to arm, but I was standing nearly naked, my helmet and scale shirt stowed uselessly under the helmsman’s bench.

Short sword against oar shaft is not a good match. I took a blow on my shield arm and killed the man – my arm was numb.

The three Aeolians weren’t armed, but they threw themselves into the fight, fists and gymnasium-trained muscles. The oldest took the oar shaft from the nerveless fingers of the man I’d hacked down. I climbed on the next bench, the rage of combat on me and all thought of leadership lost, while Idomeneus, the only fully armed man, was laying waste to the Syrians. There were two dead at his feet and a third was trying to hold in his guts while grappling Idomeneus’s feet. I stepped on his throat and blocked a blow meant for Lekthes, then one of the Aeolians doubled up my opponent with a vicious blow to the man’s stomach and they broke.

We hunted them through the boat, and killed them all. It isn’t pretty to say it but, with a wind rising and the peril of mutiny and the blood hot, we didn’t take any prisoners. Syrian Phoenicians can’t hide among Greeks, and we weren’t too fussy about who had carried a broken oar shaft and who hadn’t.

When I came back aft, my arm still numb and my feet as red with the blood as if I’d been treading grapes in Boeotia, I found four more Phoenicians clustered around the helmsman’s bench.

Their pointed beards gave them away. I raised my arm to kill them and the nearest put up his arm to protect himself.

‘Stop!’ the Nubian demanded. ‘Stop it!’ He tried to catch my arm, and I socked him in the face with my sword fist. He fell back into the steering rig and the ship yawed. His nose pumped blood but he was back on his feet.

‘Stop it! Or Poseidon will take us!’ he said. That got through my blood-drunk head. ‘They’re trying to surrender!’ he said again. ‘Zeus Soter, lord! These are noblemen, worth ransom. This one was my navarch. Stop it!’ He was screaming at me while leaning all his weight on the oars, and I saw that while I’d been slaughtering Syrians, the wind had come up.

‘Get forward,’ I said to the four Phoenicians. ‘Throw the bodies over the side.’ I knew it was heartless, but the bastards had tried to take my ship and I suspected that these four fine noblemen were just as guilty – or
more
guilty.

After the slaughter of forty Syrians, we were down to half a compliment of rowers. The coast was nowhere in sight and the wind was shifting around. My new helmsman looked at me as if he thought I was mad.

I looked at him as if he was a traitor. ‘You seem awfully friendly with the Phoenicians,’ I said.

I’d broken his nose. He shook his head to clear it. ‘I don’t know who the fuck you are,’ he said, ‘with your barbaric Greek and your murderous temper, but we
all
used to be friends with the merchants of Tyre. I’ve traded with them all my life.’

There was something funny about a black man in an Asian chiton telling me that I was a barbarian. I laughed. ‘You are a brave man,’ I said.

‘Fuck your mother,’ he growled. ‘We’re all going to die anyway.’ He spat over the side. ‘You just killed the whole lower oar deck. We don’t have the manpower to beach the ship.’

I laughed again. ‘We’ll stay at sea, then. Nothing to fear from a night at sea.’ I laughed, and pointed at the blood running out of the oar ports. ‘Poseidon has had his share of sacrifices,’ I said.

His eyes said that he didn’t agree.

‘And the ship is rid of vermin,’ I added. If I was going to play the mad captain, I’d play it to the hilt.

Even the Cretans were different in the morning. They might still be useless, but now they were terrified of me, and that made them better sailors. Paramanos got us in with the coast of Asia – the long east – west reach south of Aeolis and west of Lydia, full of pirates and dangerous rocks. But he knew that coast, and we ran west with the new storm at our backs all night, and morning showed the teeth of the mountains dead ahead.

‘Unless we row south,’ Paramanos said, ‘we’re dead men.’

I agreed, so I had all three decks rowing – well, at least the two I could man – in the grey rain, and we had the sea broadside on, pouring through the oar ports and pushing us steadily west for all the southing that we made, which was precious little.

Some time in that endless grey day, I sent the deck crew to row, and even gave orders for the handful of armed Aeolians who still stood by to serve wine to every man, strip their armour and take up an oar.

My left arm was still numb, and even in the rain I could see a bruise as black as the darkest night where the oar had hit me, but I knew that I had to row. Leadership is an odd thing – sometimes you want your men to fear you as they fear the gods, at others you need them to love you like a long-lost brother. So I settled to an upper-deck bench, and for the first time I could see how much water was swirling down in the hold below me.

My stomach clenched. We were a third full of water, and if the Phoenicians had still been manning the lower benches, they’d have been drowning.

I called to the Nubian and told him that we were full of water. I could see him smile at my ignorance. He was conning the ship – of course he would know just how sluggish we were. Truly, I was a piss-poor commander. I had too much to learn.

It was a Phoenician ship, and it had tackle I didn’t understand. It had pumps – sliding wooden pumps that rigged to the top strakes and allowed a strong man to shoot water up and over the side, straight up from the bilges. The Nubian got them rigged and shooting water while I rowed on in a haze of pain, because now that I was active, my left arm hurt like fire with every stroke, and the whole thing seemed pointless.

Every rower harbours a secret fear in a storm – that by rowing for the safety of all, he is losing his own strength to swim, if the ship founders. I was a strong swimmer – I’d learned in Ephesus and swum every day on Crete, and now I knew that if we wrecked, I would drown, dragged under by a weak left arm and a hundred cuts and bruises.