Poseidon's Spear (Long War 3) (18 page)

He didn’t ask any hard questions, but he was happy to show us to the shipyards, and when none of them wanted our work, he offered to pressure them. We shook our heads.
Who wants a boat built unwillingly?

After another day or two, we rode north around the coast a full day to Tarsilla, a smaller port, not a city, but a prosperous town. Carthage burned it later, but it was a fine place, with a
terraced town and a beautiful two-beach port. Even in winter, the trees were fresh and green. There were three shipyards, all two- and three-man operations, and Demetrios knew all the shipwrights.
His own trading trireme had come from Tarsilla.

Vasileos was the lead shipwright of the town, and his yard had the best wood. He took our job immediately. He liked the size of the project for the time of year, because a larger ship needed
more men to work on it and was usually built in spring or summer, right by the sea. But a smaller ship like a triakonter could be built well up the beach by just three men. He wasn’t a tall
man, and he had something of the Phoenician look about him – hawk-nosed, big-handed, with a thin frame and broad shoulders, and when he swung his adze, it cut with the accuracy that a trained
spearman treasures.

After some negotiation, we bought a small house in Tarsilla and moved our sparse goods there. Doola, Seckla and Demetrios brought our little
Amphitrite
around the coast to the town,
laden with bronze fittings for the ship.

Gaius, Neoptolymos and I went upcountry with Doola, looking for a crew.

That may sound foolish, but I had a notion – shared by Demetrios – that we’d have to fight, and that we wanted a free crew if we could get one – fighters rather than
slaves, like the ancient men in Homer. And Daud thought that young men searching for adventure sounded like the cheapest labour.

There are mountains behind the coast; in places cliffs come right to the sea edge, and nowhere are the mountains far from the beach. We went up into the mountains, where the local folk live
– more like Sikels than like Keltoi, for all that they speak Gallic and wear armbands and tattoos. They were hospitable, and we got a dozen potential oarsmen out of the little hill
villages.

We got another dozen from among the fishermen themselves, though their parents resented us. But Doola, with his exotic looks, and Neoptolymos, with his lyre, made us sound like the Argonauts,
and there was a tacit understanding – never quite spoken – that if we fought, we’d be going to fight Phoenicians. I’m not saying that they are bad men. I’m just saying
that they seem to have a lot of enemies.

Demetrios of Phocaea provided the rest of my spear-carrying oarsmen from his own tail.

I visited every time the business of building the boat took me to Marsala. We had to count every obol that winter and spring. The easiest way for the metalwork to get done was for me to rent
shop space in Marsala, where charcoal and copper were available, and to smelt and forge the metal gear myself. So I did: I traded bronze-work for a pair of iron anchors – better than anything
I’d used at home – but men said that beyond the Pillars of Heracles, the anchor stones didn’t work so well. I forged bronze thole pins and I cast lead counterweights for the oars;
I forged sixty bronze rings for the sail, while the women of Marsala wove and sewed the hemp for a full set of sails for each boat. I made some chain – chain’s heavy and expensive, but
it is better than rope – and I made war gear, caps for every oarsman and simple circular plates for their chest and back. I’d seen these in Etrusca and again in Rome, and they made
sense to me: a disc of heavy bronze that covers a man’s heart gives him confidence, and will protect him from many blows.

I bought or traded for knives – all Spanish blades that I hilted in bronze – and the last of our damaged hides went into making scabbards and belts.

It was a little like arming Plataea. It made me happy enough.

Vasileos finished our ship before the spring feast of Demeter. We made a rich sacrifice to her and to Poseidon; I put a decent helmet on the altar of Heracles and a good bronze lamp on the altar
of Hephaestos and another on the altar of Apollo. I confess that I felt my skills had diminished. I had betrayed Nikephorus and his daughter, and the smith-god withheld his hand from my shoulder. I
marred my work often with stray blows; my helmets were not as neat as I expected them to be, and every one of them seemed to have its flaw. When I made Gaius a pair of greaves, I marred the work
with a foolish error in the planishing that I could see every time he wore them.

I thought of Lydia a great deal. I wished, very hard, that she had suitors and another husband. And I wished other, conflicting things.

My friends stood by me. Doola would sit in the rented shop and pump the bellows silently for me. Seckla ran errands and bent metal. Demetrios sat with me when I was in the depths. Neoptolymos
made me play the lyre, and I grew almost proficient. Gaius and I boxed.

Despite which, I lay every night and counted the people I’d betrayed, the way I’d done it, the reasons.

Listen; it may seem a small thing to you, trifling with a girl. I have mounted quite a few of them, and without regret.

When I was a pirate, I killed men, took their chattels and was accounted a hero. That is the life I led, then.

But when you are a pirate, you think like a pirate and you are judged – by other pirates. When you are a bronze-smith in a polis, you are judged by a different standard, and I’m
enough of a pupil of Heraclitus to know that all of us are, to some extent, a reflection of the lives we lead and the men we trust and listen to. Lydia wouldn’t even have been a bump on my
road, the summer of Lades.

But I had become a different man. Or rather, I was striving to become a different man.

And failing.

I thought of standing at the door of the taverna in Marsala, longing for the clash. Knowing that I could probably take the whole pack of petty thieves. Eager for the spark.

And I’d sigh, and the whole thing would play again in the theatre of my mind. My last dinner with Lydia. Her foot on mine . . . my hand on her hip. Her breasts.

Her father, and the look of bewildered anger.

And all the other men and women. Dead, abandoned. My son, somewhere on Crete.

Euphoria, dead in my arms.

Briseis.

It was a long winter, and a longer spring.

And then the ship was finished.

At thirty oars, she was probably the smallest ship I ever commanded. But no one ever questioned that I would command her. Demetrios was going to take
Amphitrite
, and he would have
Doola, Seckla and Gaius, plus two of our fishermen, Giorgos (the oddest name for a fisherman) and Kosta. I had Neoptolymos and Daud; an older fisherman eager to make a fortune named Megakles, and
the shipwright himself. Vasileos couldn’t resist. He was a fine helmsman and a superb resource, the kind of man who could repair anything that nature or error destroyed.

He added a great deal to our crew. He was older, steady and had a knack – I have a bit of it, and Doola, too – of saying something and being obeyed without ever sounding as if an
order had been given. With me, it is reputation – I’m the hero. With him, it was age and also reputation: he was perhaps the most renowned sailor on that coast, and the young men obeyed
even the shift of his eyebrows.

I decided to emulate his extremely laconic manner.

As for my crew, I had, as I say, a dozen local lads, a dozen shepherds from the hills and six trained Greek oarsmen. They had been at Lades – they worshipped me, and every one of them felt
he owed me his life, which is a secure foundation for leadership.

We spent a week building a set of oar benches on the beach, and then we practised every day while the farm boys and the shepherds ate us out of our wallets. The hill boys acted as if
they’d never seen food before.

Or wine.

I expected fights, and there were fights, but the boys – all the locals – didn’t quarrel with the men, Demetrios’s oarsmen. I didn’t break up the first fights, but
after two evenings of it, I handed them all shields in the dawn of our third day together and made them run five stades. Most of them were puking by the third stade.

And so it went. I’ve trained crews before, and I’ve told you all about it. These were, in the main, better men than I usually had – eager, young and intelligent. The local
fathers locked away their daughters, and we worked them hard, and in a week, we had something like a crew.

Our
Amphitrite
didn’t waste the time. She ran up to Marsala and back twice, gathering cargo, and then down the Etruscan coast for hides, wine and all the Etruscan tin that Gaius
could arrange, albeit in small quantities. I continued to train my oarsmen, now at sea. We pulled up and down the beach for two weeks, and my store of silver dwindled and the locals began to jack
up their prices as my demands increased.

That’s the way of the world.

Amphitrite
came back from Veii and the Etruscan coast. She sold her cargo, loaded some Alban tin that had come over the passes from High Gaul, and sailed for Sardinia. The margin on tin
was very small – the Phoenicians got most of the profit by sailing to Iberia, and their price made the price of the tin brought over the mountains on donkeys precious little. But Doola was
finding buyers in Sardinia, Sicily and Etrusca from both ends of the trade, and he knew his business.

And besides, our dealings in Marsala netted us Sittonax. He was Daud’s age, and spoke another dialect of Keltoi – they couldn’t really understand each other, and mostly they
spoke Greek, even though both of them could understand each other’s poetry. He came over the mountains with the tin, as a guard. Someone gave him the ‘mistaken’ impression that we
could sail him back to Alba.

He was the first Kelt I’d met who refused to adopt Greek dress, and wore trousers and all his barbaric finery all the time. Daud had been broken to our ways by years of slavery, but
Sittonax made him wear trousers – and how we mocked him.

They got along like lovers, which is to say, they fought often, and made up swiftly – and they were brothers in all but name. And Sittonax knew a great deal about tin and where it came
from.

He was my thirty-first oarsman. I don’t think he ever pulled an oar in the whole voyage. He was the laziest man I’ve ever seen, and yet he seemed to get things done. He could tell
lies without turning a hair, yet we all accepted him as an honourable man. My forge time went to trade goods, about which Sittonax and Daud advised me with conflicting and sometimes boastful
advice, and my ram. I had decided to put a bronze sheath on the projection that, on small ships like a triakonter, was usually left bare. I wanted it light, but with enough punch to crack a hull. I
had seen a number of rams, and I’d seen the flaws. Sharp rams cut the water nicely but got stuck in the prey; round rams made for uncertain steering.

I designed a different shape – a series of heavy plates held apart by spacers, like an empty packing crate with partitions for amphorae, but no amphorae. I asked around for weights and got
a great many answers. Even alloying the metal myself, the tin and copper came to a great amount – almost fifty mina – and I wondered if I was up to the work, and if I was wasting money
and bronze.

I had help from six other smiths when I cast the ram in sand in my rented shop yard. The neighbours complained I was going to burn the neighbourhood down.

My mould cracked and the molten metal ran all over the yard, and it was only by the will of Hephaestos that no one was injured.

I tried again. Fewer men came to help me, the second time. I had real trouble moving the gate, the piece of iron that kept the molten bronze out of the mould, and when it moved, it cracked, and
the white bronze flowed awry.

I went to the shrine of Hephaestos and prayed. I spent a night on the mud floor in front of the terra cotta statue. I dedicated two rams and a good helmet.

Doola and Seckla and Neoptolymos came to help, the third time. They were already making coasting trips in
Amphitrite
by this time. But they were in, and they were friends. The local
bronze-smiths were distant men.

I heated the bronze for longer. I’d made a huge wax model of the thing and built the mould carefully, with wood and iron strapping and sand.

Either the third time was the charm, or the god had forgiven me. I like to think it was the latter. But either way, the ram came shining from the mould. Vasileos shook his head and said the
shape was all wrong. He wanted it to be sharp – and he said it would bite the water badly.

But a week later, we mounted it on the hull and it went on like a
porpax
on a man’s arm. Perfectly.

Of course, in and out of all this, we were training our oarsmen. After four weeks of training, most of my shepherds were passable, and my fishermen were bored and threatening to go back to their
fathers’ boats, and it was time to take my ship to sea. So I paid for a priest to come from Marsala with my last funds, and we sacrificed a sheep and feasted. And in the morning, before their
hangovers were clear, I had them all aboard, and we were running down the coast, headed east, to Italy.