Killer of Men (43 page)

He was the first man to embrace me as I put my feet on the beach.

Miltiades was the second.

18

Of course it had been Miltiades advising that rascal Aristagoras – he was the ‘Samothracian navarch’. I heard a lot of that story later, and if I have time, I’ll answer all your questions about it. But at that point I was simply happy to see someone I knew. I was happy to have someone to be in command. And I was delighted to receive his flattery, which came thick, fast and accurately.

That short sail from south of Cyprus to Lesbos was my first command, and it had taken its toll. I was bone-weary, and the broken ribs hadn’t begun to knit, so that every weather change and every jostle caused spikes of pain. I had discovered that commanding men is the very opposite of fighting man to man – what I mean is that when I am fighting, the world falls away and everything is
right there
– the whole circle of the world revealed in a single heartbeat, as Heraclitus used to say. But when you are in command, you have to face the infinite consequences of each action – forward, on and on, until the gods strip the roots of the world away. Is there water? Is there food? Where will you beach tonight? Does that oarsman have a fever? Have you passed three headlands or four?

And it never ends. No sooner were my bare feet in the sand of Lesbos, Miltiades’ arms around me, than my men were asking whether we would need the boatsail brought ashore and a hundred more questions.

Miltiades laughed, released my arms and stood back. ‘The bronze-smith’s son is a trierarch. No surprise to me, allow me to add. You’ve come right in among my ships – why not camp with me?’

I might have done better, waited for the best offer, but I was so happy to see someone from home – to be honest, when I saw Miltiades, I assumed that the Ionians would win. He always had that effect on me. ‘Show me where we can build our fires?’ I asked. He waved and another friend joined me – Agios, now helmsman to Miltiades.

‘You have a ship of your own?’ he asked, and laughed. ‘Poseidon help your oarsmen!’

We walked down the beach and he found me space for fires, a fire for every fifteen men. Then I gathered them all in a big circle and made sure of their mess groups. Eating on the voyage had been a matter of desperation. Now I meant to get them organized.

We mustered ninety-six oarsmen and twenty-one Cretans. I put the Cretans in two mess groups – I didn’t expect them to want to stay, and I didn’t want their bad attitude to infect the rest. The Aeolians and other Greeks and random Asians who made up the rest of the crew I divided in fifteens. I paid silver out of my own hoard to buy them cook pots, right there on the beach – the local market was huge, and every merchant in Mytilene was selling his wares – or hers. The best of the potters was a middle-aged woman with her hair tied up in a scarf and clay on her hands, and her pots were so much better than her competitors that I agreed to pay her exorbitant rates. Men know when they have the best equipment. I learned that from my father. Even pots are part of morale.

I bought a net full of small tuna, gutted and fresh, and the men fell to, cutting and preparing. I had to pay for firewood and vegetables and bread, and by the time the oarsmen were settled to their first good hot meal of the week, my hoard of silver had diminished by a little under a fifth.

I could not afford to be a trierarch.

When my belly was full of wine and tuna, I caught Idomeneus’s eye and picked up my best spear. Ionians follow many of the old ways, and one is that walking with a spear lends a man dignity and formality. I walked over to Miltiades’ fires, and found him easily enough. He was seated on an iron stool, the legs digging deeply into the sand. He was telling a tale – an uproarious tale – and the laughter swept higher every few heartbeats as we walked up the beach towards him. His red hair burned in the sun, and his head was thrown back to laugh at his own story, and that’s one of my favourite ways to remember him. Because he really could tell a story.

‘The hero of Amathus!’ he called, when I was close enough. He rose and embraced me again.

It was then I discovered just how far my fame had spread. Men gathered around
me
, as if I was Miltiades. And he didn’t stint in his praise.

Yet one man’s face grew dark. Archilogos turned on his heel and walked away, his servant at his side. I watched them go and the happiness of the moment was marred, like a bad mark in an otherwise perfect helmet, a dimple that you cannot remove.

Miltiades paid no attention – if he even noticed. ‘For those of you fine gentlemen who were busy, it was young Arimnestos who defeated their centre – I saw the whole thing from the flagship.’ He laughed. ‘Oh, how we cheered you, lad. Like men watching the stadion run at the Olympian Games, with heavy wagers on the runner.’ He put his arm around my shoulders.

A big man – bigger than me, bigger than Miltiades – came and took my hand. ‘I’m Kallikles, brother of Eualcidas.’ To the men assembled, he said, ‘This man – too old to be a boy – went alone and saved my brother’s body from the Medes.’

I accepted his embrace, but then I turned to Idomeneus. ‘My hypaspist, Idomeneus. He stood by me that long night, and helped carry the body.’

Kallikles was not too proud to shake a servant’s hand. ‘May the gods bless you,’ he said. ‘You were my brother’s skeuophoros!’

Idomeneus nodded and shied a step.

‘I freed him for his aid,’ I said. I hoped that this was within my rights. ‘He served like a hero, not a slave.’

‘That’s my brother all over.’ Kallikles smiled, and shook his head. ‘Even his bed-warmer is a hero.’

Eualcidas apparently had quite a few admirers even among the Athenians, because Miltiades poured wine from a skin into a broad-bottomed cup and raised a libation to the dead hero’s shade, and many men came forward to drink from that cup.

Miltiades stood at my elbow, and one by one the other warriors wandered off, until finally it was just half a dozen. Heraklides was there, and Idomeneus, of course, red with wine and the praise of his betters, Epaphroditos, now a lord of Mytilene, and Lord Pelagius of Chios. If he held my killing of his grandson against me, he hid it well.

‘I drink to you, Arimnestos of Plataea,’ Miltiades said. And he did. He was looking at me steadily. ‘I heard that you were in the front rank –
our
front rank – at the rout at Ephesus. Aristides spoke well of you, and for that sourpuss, it was high praise. And you came off with Eualcidas’s corpse – men will sing that for some years, I can tell you.’ He looked at me, with more appraisal than praise. ‘But any man has one day’s heroism in him. All of us, with the favour of the gods, can rise to it – once.’

Pelagius nodded. ‘Too true.’

Miltiades stroked his beard. ‘But Amathus sealed the bargain. I watched you clear those triremes, lad. You’re the real animal, aren’t you?’

‘He had one
fucking
good helmsman, too,’ Agios added. ‘Who was it who cut the Phoenician in half?’

I had to grin. ‘Not me,’ I admitted.

Heraklides nodded. ‘We knew that, lad. With a sword you are a titan come to life. With a ship – you may be good in ten more years.’

‘I have an Aegyptian now – took him as a prisoner at Amathus. I’m hoping he’ll take service with me. And teach me.’ I pointed down the beach, but of course my Nubian was nowhere to be seen. ‘But the artist at Amathus was a Cretan fisherman in his first fight, name of Troas.’

Agios laughed aloud. He was a small man, but he had the laugh of a satyr – threw his head back and roared until his chest heaved. ‘That for my arrogance!’ he laughed. ‘I thought you had some veteran, some ship-killer from Aegina or Miletus.’

I kept screwing up my courage to talk to Miltiades, but I didn’t want all the praise to end. Who does? I was twenty, and men of thirty-five were singing my praises. Petty matters like money should be beneath a hero. But the Boeotian farmer won out over the heroic.

‘I can’t afford to run a ship,’ I blurted out.

Pelagius turned away, hiding a smile. Agios and Heraklides looked at the sand.

Obviously, I could have done that better.

Epaphroditos shrugged. ‘I can,’ he said.

Miltiades shook his head. ‘No, he’s mine.’ He looked at me, his head slightly tilted. I think he’d known what I was coming for from the moment he saw me walking with a spear – and he’d pushed me forward as a hero to raise my value.

I blushed. I didn’t have a lot of blushing left in me at the age of twenty, but I blushed then. Miltiades laughed.

‘Is your city going to make him a citizen?’ he asked Epaphroditos, and my friend had the sense to shake his head. ‘You going to protect him against fucking Aristagoras, who wants him dead?’

Epaphroditos looked incredulous.

‘Oh, yes. Our dear lord and commander wants to see this young pup’s head on a spike. There’s a rumour . . .’ He chuckled, and looked at me. ‘Hey, I can keep my mouth shut. Eh, lad?’

Epaphroditos made a noise as if he were strangling. ‘He what?’

‘Exactly. Whereas I’m a tyrant – I can make him a citizen of the Chersonese this instant. And only I decide who captains my ships. And frankly, Aristagoras can’t survive the summer without me.’ He turned to me again. ‘Come – let’s have a look at your ship. He looks like a heavy bastard. One of the Phoenicians you took?’

I nodded. ‘Deeper and broader than a Cretan trireme,’ I said. All six of us walked back to my ship.

‘What’s his name?’ Lord Pelagius asked.

I shrugged. ‘
Storm Cutter
,’ I said, meaning it as a joke.

‘Good name,’ Herk said. ‘Men give ships the daftest names – gods and tritons.
Storm Cutter
is a real name.’

‘I only have half a crew,’ I said. I turned to Epaphroditos. ‘And most of them are Aeolians. Will they stay with me?’

Miltiades cut him off. ‘Doesn’t really matter. I’m never short of rowers. Thracians line up outside my palisade to serve for wages.’

My men were forming two neat lines on the sand. Lekthes and Paramanos had the men mustered and ready, and they looked good.

Herakleides was at the right end of the line, and I introduced him to Heraklides – the Aeolian and the Athenian version of a son of Heracles. And then we walked down the rank of men.

‘Must have been quite a storm,’ Miltiades said. ‘These men look like a crew.’

Then he went and looked at the ship. ‘Heavy wood,’ he said. ‘Nice timber.’ He nodded. ‘What do you think?’

Agios ran a loving hand over the sternposts where they rose in a graceful arc over the helmsman. ‘Tyrian. They build well.’ He looked at Miltiades. ‘This is a heavy ship meant to carry a heavy compliment and twenty marines. He’ll be slow, even with a full compliment at the oars, and brutally expensive to maintain.’

Miltiades nodded. To me, he said, ‘You have a helmsman?’

I looked at Paramanos. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I can’t speak for the man I want.’

‘Fair enough. That’s a heavy ship. I’ll buy her from you and keep you as trierarch, or I’ll pay you a wage for her. Herk will work out the details.’ He grinned. ‘Mostly what I want is you. You’re worth fifty spears now.’

I grinned back. ‘I believe it, lord. But will your treasurer believe it?’

Herk bargained like a peasant. That was fine with me – I
was
a peasant. We argued like hen-wives, and I finally turned and left him on the beach. He didn’t want me to own the ship. His contention was that I had less than half a crew of oarsmen, no deckhands, no marines and no helmsman.

So I tracked Paramanos down to a wine shop – that is, to a blanket awning over a couple of rough stools, with a huge amphora of good Chian wine that was buried in the sand. The shopkeeper charged by the ladleful. The wine was good.

‘You have a wife and children,’ I said, after asking permission to sit.

He drank some wine. ‘I have a pair of daughters. My wife died bearing the second. They live with her sister.’

I nodded. ‘What would I have to do to convince you to sail as my helmsman?’ I asked.

He put a copper down for another cup of wine. ‘Buy me,’ he said. ‘And aim high.’

I laughed. ‘One eighth,’ I said. ‘That’s my opening offer and my final offer.’

He raised both eyebrows.

‘You know Miltiades of Athens?’ I asked.

He nodded. ‘The Pirate King,’ he said.

I nodded. ‘Exactly. He wants me to serve him. Someday, I imagine he’ll stop milking the trade fleets for money and he’ll go back to Athens and make himself tyrant there.’ I saw a dramatic new vista opening before me – a vista where I was a nobleman, a shipowner, the sort of man who could marry Briseis. ‘But I have a mind to spend a year or two making money. I’ll give you one eighth of our take – in silver – if you’ll serve a whole year.’

He drank more wine. ‘Tell me who gets the other eighths,’ he said.

‘One for me, one for you, one for keeping the ship,’ I rhymed off. ‘One for the other officers, three divided among all the other men. One in reserve – for a crisis. If there’s no crisis, then in a year, we share it out – by eighths.’

He sat back. ‘I’m a merchant,’ he said, ‘not a pirate.’

‘Fifty silver owls down,’ I said. It was from my own hoard, but I had money coming from Miltiades. I let the sack clink on the table.

‘Fifty silver owls bonus,’ he countered, and he put his hand on the bag but did not seize it.

Who wants a helmsman who doesn’t have a high opinion of himself? I had to smile, because three years earlier I had been a penniless slave in Ephesus. Fifty silver owls was a high price – but I’d seen him in the storm. Yet there was still something about him I did not trust. He was older, and more experienced – I think I assumed that was the problem. And he feared me without respecting me – that was another problem.

But he was Poseidon’s own son. ‘Done,’ I said, and took my hand off the pouch.

He made it vanish. ‘I should have asked for more,’ he said. He leaned forward. ‘So – do you know that two men are following you?’

I went back to Herk with the Nubian at my shoulder, and found him in another wine tent. He was enjoying a massage while drinking. I let him interrogate Paramanos and he was satisfied.

‘You found yourself a Phoenician-trained navigator just lying around?’ he asked. ‘The gods love you.’