Salamis (29 page)

The problem was that the Persians couldn’t see us very well. They could
hear
that something was up, but they couldn’t see.

We kept rowing west, along the beaches of Salamis. The Corinthians were off, now – I passed Lykon, just coming off the beach, and I waved. The bay was full of men I knew. But visibility was a stade or a little more, and while I could see Cimon on his helm-deck just ahead, I couldn’t be positive that the ship two behind me was Ameinias of Pallene in
Parthenos,
although I was fairly sure.

Every stade gained of westering was good.

Behind us, someone began to sing the paean. I’ve heard dozens of suggestions – some say it was the Athenians behind us, under Themistocles, some say it was Aristides and the hoplites, and some say it was the Aeginians. It didn’t fit with our deceptive plan – in fact, had the Persians only known us, they’d have known when they heard the paean that we meant to fight, and indeed, I heard years later from Artemisia that all the Ionians knew what was up as soon as they heard it.

This too had an effect on the battle, as the Ionians began to deploy out of their columns into their battle lines, facing neither east–west nor north–south, but about halfway between, and opening a large gap between their own westernmost division, led by the ships of Ephesus and Samos, and the Phoenicians who had the vanguard of their fleet and were already level with the town of Eleusis.

What we didn’t know yet was that the Great King himself had set his throne on the cliffs below Mount Aigeleos and was watching, and that every contingent in the Persian fleet knew that he was watching. The Phoenicians had been defeated by us several times – badly handled at Artemisium – and the presence of the Great King stiffened their spines and put them on their honour, if they have any. They were in the lead, the vanguard, and they were determined to be aggressive. After half an hour of listening to the muffled sounds we made with our oars and our shouting getting off our beaches, they heard the paean, and determined to attack. But – and this is important – they were determined to attack in their new manoeuvre, and they came forward in long columns, so that every captain, in turn, could find a hole in our dispositions and break through. This Phoenician tactic – I’ve spoken of it other nights – was called by us diekplous. The captain of the lead ship looked for an opening – like the break in a dam, or the hole in a bridge – and he shot for it with all his speed, passing through the gap, raking the oars of ships on either side, and then wheeling rapidly into a flank if he could, with his mates crowding in behind.

At Artemisium we’d solved this dilemma two ways. In the first fight we formed a great wheel, our hulls so close that we left them no gap through which to exploit us. And in the second fight we were so practised that by backing water we kept our lines closed, and when we attacked, it was we, not they, who exploited errors in their formation.

I was not a great navarch at Artemisium and even less so at Salamis, but I suspected – and now I am sure – that the greatness of the Phoenician fleet was past, possibly gone in the constant drain of their best captains throughout the long years of the struggle for the Ionian and Aeolian cities. While the Great King triumphed in the Ionian Revolt, Phoenicia suffered in every battle – twenty ships here, forty ships there. I am going to guess that there comes a point in the loss of your best captains when you cannot easily recover all that skill.

It was not that the Phoenicians were bad sailors or fighters. It was merely that they had fallen from being
the best
. But they clung to a set of tactics that had been developed for aggressive, trained trierarchs and superb helmsmen who had long experience of each other and their enemy, and they tried to use it in a choppy sea, against an enemy line they couldn’t make out in the fog.

Remember that there was a stiff breeze blowing, although already, an hour after sunrise, it was dying away. Remember that it brought a choppiness to the bay that none of us had really anticipated. And remember that they had been up all night.

I thought all of these things as I listened and watched to my starboard side, to the north. I heard a horn, and another. There was shouting.

Then I saw a sight that burned itself on my eyes like a view of a god. Two images I can summon in the eye of the mind at will – Briseis’s naked body the first time I saw her undress in Ephesus, and this.

The morning haze
flashed
.

And then, again.
Flash.

Flash.

Flash.

It was – unearthly.

And then, suddenly, the flashes were everywhere, like a line of fire when peasants and slaves burn the weeds out of the fields.

And then, Poseidon! – a line of bows began to emerge from the haze – a line of ram bows that seemed to fill the whole of my eye, and the
flash
was the sun shining on their oars, carried into the fog. All the oars moved together on each ship, and there were dozens, hundreds of ships, like a swarm of fireflies at nightfall.
And these were just the leaders of their columns.

I have never seen anything to match it, except Briseis.

And they were coming at our naked flank, out of the fog, at ramming speed.

Behind me, someone quicker witted or with a better sight line had already turned out of the line, ‘fleeing’ west.

He had the right notion, whoever he was. We had no sea room to back water, and we might have outrun the Persians to the west, but we couldn’t guarantee it.

The man who turned out of the line without orders was Ameinias of Pallene.

Well, I never said I was a Spartan, either. I followed him.

‘Hard to starboard! Ramming speed as soon as she’s round,’ I called.

Seckla nodded. I remember that he used the lean of the ship’s hull to spit over the side. The starboard-side rowers reversed benches smoothly, gave two hard strokes, and reversed again. Hah! I had never commanded such a vessel with such men. She was dry and light as air and rowed by Argonauts.

We went round faster than I can tell it. The heads of the Phoenician columns were flying at us out of the fog, but Moire was with me immediately. Harpagos followed me, and Giannis followed Moire, and
Naiad
came after, so we were a compact squadron of five, and when we went, the entire ‘western’ Athenian division turned, almost as one, column into line, and in pretty good order, with Ameinias leading a compact wedge on the leftmost flank. Cimon in
Ajax
was less than a ship’s length behind me, perhaps half a stade to the west, and four of his ships were beyond him, off to the west.

We turned from a mob fleeing west to a line abreast racing north in a few beats of a calm man’s heart, and even at ramming speed the trierarchs and the helmsmen were adjusting their places. We were not in three crisp lines, but rather in a series of compact squadrons as helmsmen closed up tight to ships they trusted.

I remember that I paused, waved to Cimon, and then clapped Seckla on the shoulder. He’d already chosen his first target.

I was merely an elderly marine. He smiled, I smiled, and then I was running forward.

From the bow, I could see the backs of my ten marines and my three archers. And I could see the Phoenicians coming down on us. They were flat out, at the full ramming speed you need to get an instant ship-kill. But they were widely spaced because of their columns, and there were curious gaps between ships – just to the east of me, there was a gap two or three stades wide before the rest of the Phoenician fleet, the Ionians, who’d formed a more traditional line, could be seen. The sun was now burning off the haze rapidly.

My heart beat very fast. I shouted.

It was sheer exuberance. They were scattered over the whole bay east of our beaches and their formation was terrible. The night, the breeze and the fog and their own ambition had not been kind. Or rather, the gods had been kind to us.

Only treason, the treason of Lade and every other great battle against the Persians, only treason or lack of will would save them.

Oh, Poseidon, my heart beat like a hammer, and I was under no threat. The opportunity was there, if only we could grasp it.

Ameinias of Pallene’s ship was first to strike an enemy. I was very close, maybe a hundred paces away. His helmsman yawed and then turned suddenly back into line, as fast as the stoop of an eagle. He caught the Phoenician a third of the way down the side. The enemy ship had its oars in and the angle was too shallow for Ameinias’s beak to bite home, but he jarred the enemy ship, ripped a strip along the side, and grappled.

The Phoenician behind him – second in the column – came forward full speed. Unlike at Artemisium, their files were well closed up, close enough to support each other, but also close enough to be enveloped. The second Phoenician drove for the bow of Ameinias’s ship
Parthenos
, turning slightly to the east to get a better angle.

I trusted everything to Harpagos. There was a Phoenician bearing down on me for a bow-to-bow attack from their next column, so I ran back along the catwalk over the forward oars, and back along the half-deck. I was not going to be in time, and running has not been the best of my talents since the wound, so I merely pointed at the other Phoenician, the one running at Ameinias’s flank.

Seckla bet with me, on Harpagos saving us, and
Lydia
turned a few degrees, perhaps an eighth of a circle, to point at the place where Seckla guessed that the Phoenician would be, in the time it would take a good man to run the stadion.

I can only describe this in terms of bronzeworking. When you make greaves, with all the intricate curves of the human leg, you can only guess how to hit the metal so that it curves in two ways. You cannot
know.
Seckla had to aim where the Phoenician
might
be, while his flanker came for us, and we trusted Harpagos to take him.

To my port side aft, I heard Harpagos roar an order.

His crew pulled
harder.

He was at ramming speed, and he got them to
row faster
.

It is hard to describe what happened without some almonds and a big table. But let me try.

We were turning to our starboard side – not far, but enough to become the hypotenuse of a triangle. The Phoenician opposite us kept coming, but had to turn off his intended line, too.

Harpagos, who had been so close behind us that we might have leapt from ship to ship, began to pass us.

Onisandros, at my urging, let the men rest for three strokes. Let me add that only the finest oarsmen can do this. Most ships can only go from a crawl to cruising speed, and from cruising speed to ramming speed, with time for the stroke to change. But a really good ship with rowers and officers long together can stop and start rowing at almost any speed. Remember, friends, that any hesitation by an oarsman can mean death: if he catches a crab at ramming speed, he’s going to get his oar shaft in his teeth at least, and he may do the same to other men.

We drifted at top speed for the time it would take a man to leave his house and call to his wife.

Harpagos went straight at the Phoenician who came straight for us.

‘Now!’ I called.

Onisandros began to pound his spear on the deck.

We shot forward.

‘We have to bring in the port-side oars,’ Onisandros shouted.

‘No! Everything you have!’ I roared.

Off to starboard, Ameinias’s marines were storming along the narrow catwalk above the Phoenician’s rowers.

The Phoenician headed for his flank was so close …

We slammed into his cathead, and before you could count to five, Harpagos’s beak went into the second about fifty paces before his beak slammed into me. Thus, the margin between victory and defeat.

Ameinias’s oarsmen were cheering us. Our Phoenician broke in two as our oars came in – we hit him so hard that our ram scraped paint off
Parthenos
.

On my port bow, Harpagos’s marines, all men I knew, were going into the third Phoenician. I had no idea how the rest of the battle was going, but within a hundred paces of me we were winning.

Their third ships were coming up, but so were ours, and Cimon led his ships in from the west. The gods – and good fortune, and good planning, and strong rowing, had put us just off their western flank, and now, like sharks closing for the kill, Cimon’s veterans came into the flank of the oncoming Phoenician charge and scattered them. They had to turn to meet his attacks, and then we were free. Seckla, without orders from me, turned us back west, where a dozen Phoenicians were going head-to-head with Cimon’s ships – and exposing their flanks to us.

It was glorious.

We sank a second ship, catching him flat-footed, trying to face in two directions at once.

We ran down the side of a third, coming up from behind his stern – I can’t remember how we lay, or how we got there – it was too fast. The marines leapt before the ships touched, so eager they were, and I followed them, the last man aboard, which felt odd. But I leapt aboard amidships, my old trick, right in among their rowers. I got a foot on each of the beams nearest me and killed the two oarsmen closest and then stabbed up at the catwalk, putting my spear into the legs and feet of the Phoenician marines. I watched Hector go forward like a man ploughing a field, and his spear was like one of the thunderbolts of the Lord of Olympus. He was not a big man like Hipponax, but lithe and so quick that each step forward seemed to baffle his opponents, and he gathered himself so that he seemed to sway side to side like a maiden walking in the marketplace, except that each sway was a deception, and his spear always struck home – left foot forward, right foot forward, a brilliant series of strokes, each delivered with the fastidious precision of a cat and the power of Ares come to earth.

I was so proud.

Behind him came Hipponax, who threw his spear to give Hector room to breathe and got another handed over his shoulder from Brasidas, who was third.

With such marines as these, what need of me?