Poseidon's Spear (Long War 3) (32 page)

But the Phoenician had matched our turn, and now I couldn’t see a thing.

Aft, Doola stepped up onto the stern bench and loosed. Some flicker crossed his face – a smile? – even as he jumped down and one of our Greeks stepped up on the bench and loosed.

And then,
there they were
. The trireme appeared from behind us like a sea monster broaching the waves. But this sea monster appeared because it was wounded – it had turned too
hard, or a chance arrow had slain an oarsman, causing the man’s corpse to let go his oar and foul his mates, so that his ship turned suddenly on the drag.

In a flash, we were ten ship-lengths ahead, and the enemy ship had lost all his way and was headed due west, into the stony beach. She was turning and turning, and the port-side oars were in
chaos.

She struck bow-first. I doubt that the beach did a bronze obol of damage, but oars were splintered, and when men take a heavy oar in the teeth, things break.

‘Cruising speed!’ I called. The Alban boy looked at me with wide, frightened eyes. I made myself smile.

‘Slow them down, boy.’

He tapped his stick more slowly. He had a wonderful sense of tempo.

Men on either side of me all but collapsed on their oars.

I leaped onto the unstepped mainmast and ran along it aft. I stepped up on the starboard-side helmsman’s bench, where the archers weren’t – shooting on that side would cramp
their bow arms – and looked aft.

The second Phoenician was making up the ground lost by the first. She came on with beautiful symmetry, the three banks of oars flashing in the blue and gold sunlight like a fantastic dragonfly
skimming the waves.

He was three stades back.

I leaned forward.

We were three stades from the turn in the channel. Already, the wave action was heavier on the bow.

‘Deck crew – ready with the boatsail.’ I gave my aspis to Seckla. ‘Steering oars,’ I said to Alexandros. ‘Well done.’

He nodded, a serious young man. ‘Steering oars, aye,’ he said. I got my hands on them, he ducked out and I was between them.

The second Phoenician elected to wait for the third. Their tactic showed immediately, as the lead ship yawed to the east a few horse-lengths, obviously intending to range alongside my starboard
side. The trailing Phoenician would go for my port side.

But when the leader elected to wait for the next ship in line, the initiative passed to me.

‘Cables to the masthead,’ I said, but Seckla already had them laid.

A good crew is the only advantage worth having.

Even as I watched, the cables went over the crown of the mast and were made fast. Four men began to haul them tight – tighter and tighter, and then they were belayed forward, and the job
was done.

We were less than a stade from the turn in the channel.

I was watching the Phoenician coming up our port side, wondering when his rowers would flag, and she was just passing the one that had run aground. And
Lydia
, forgotten, came up on the
Phoenician from close to the beach and rammed her.

Vasileos, bless him.

The sound of his ram going home carried over the water. The little triakonter wouldn’t ordinarily have done much to a trireme, but a trireme anchored by having its bow buried in the shale
of the beach was a very static target, and her beak opened the timbers.

Lydia
had changed the engagement in a single action. Now she was backing oars, and
Nike
swept past her, under her stern, and as they passed the stranded trireme, they threw
fire into her stern.

The trailing Phoenicians now put their bows to the troublesome small craft and went to ramming speed.

I couldn’t see
Amphitrite
anywhere. My first, heart-stopping worry was that she’d been rammed and sunk while I was looking elsewhere, but after a few glances – I was
steering as small as I could – I couldn’t find a ship in the geometry of sea combat that might have taken her.

I looked over my right shoulder, and there she was – she’d tacked, and was now hard against the coast of Gaul.

And, of course, the Phoenicians had to assume that Demetrios was just a local coaster running for sea room.

Doola was still loosing arrows at a magnificent rate, and his apprentice bowmen were hard at it. The newest of them had stopped shooting and was now simply handing arrows to the others. But as
the two Phoenicians overhauled us, we started to take hits.

Seckla took the first arrow.

He fell, face down, and screamed. Alexandros stood over him, holding his aspis to cover.

‘Prepare to turn to port!’ I roared in my best deep-blue voice. ‘At my word, port oars back water!’

I watched the horizon, glanced at the trailing Phoenician. It was going to be close. If we lost too much speed, we’d be rammed.

Doola and his archers all put a shaft on their bows and waited. Just for a moment, we would lie across the bows of the trailing ship – at less than a stade.

‘
Now
!’ I cried.

The port-side oarsmen backed water, laying on their oars for two strokes.

The ship pivoted on the stern.

The port-side Phoenician seemed to shoot at us like an arrow from a bow.

‘Ramming speed!’ I shouted. I think I screamed it.

Seckla rolled over and said something to Alexandros, who called out – and the deck crew dropped the boatsail off its yard. The breeze filled it instantly, and the ship leaped ahead.

The archers loosed – all together.

If they hit anything, I didn’t see it. You can’t always have a miracle on demand.

Our turn, on the other hand, took the Phoenicians by surprise, and our boatsail gave us a tiny advantage in speed but a wonderful, instant advantage in stability.

We were now running north-west, with the wind on our starboard quarter.

The port-side Phoenician came closer.

Doola’s archers got off another volley. Then they cheered. Then they shot again.

And then the port-side Phoenician stopped gaining. Her beak was so close: Poseidon, I can still see it, the waves pushing against it, the eyes on either side wicked with battle lust, the beak
itself so close I could have leaped to it.

For three heartbeats, we were a spear-length apart.

And then we passed them, shaving her beak. I’d love to tell you there was a tiny thump as the beak touched our stern – but I don’t think it happened like that.

And we were away. Now we were running easily, and they had to slow to make the turn.

By the time they made it, we were ten ship-lengths ahead.

Seckla was propped up in the bow. He was pointing at the mast and giving orders, and before I felt I had to go forward and sort things out, the mainmast began to rise. It, too, had cables run to
the crown. It went up and up, and seemed to take an hour, and astern of us, the Phoenicians started to gain. Again.

Far astern, over by the island,
Lydia
made the turn in the channel and
Nike
appeared in her wake.
Amphitrite
was somewhere to the north, and I’d lost her again
against the low-lying coast.

‘We cleared their archers,’ Doola said. ‘There’s not an archer left alive on that ship.’

I wasn’t sure that made much difference.

Again, if I’d had a signalling system – a way of telling
Lydia
what I intended – I might have made a fight of it. I was confident that I could take any one of the
Phoenicians; I was pretty sure that, given the favour of the gods, I could take both, with the
Lydia
and the
Nike
ranging up on their sides.

But the risk would have been immense, and the gain very small. Because as the mainmast went home in its box and the chocks were pounded in with mallets, I knew that, barring a weather change, my
trireme was safe. None of the Phoenician ships was faster. That was vital. We were all about the same: the second Phoenician had a small edge in speed, which she had squandered waiting for her
consort.

Now both ships were five ship-lengths back, and too far to the north. Neither had started to raise their mainmasts, and their rowers were flagging.

Five stades behind me,
Lydia
’s mainsail spread like a pale flower turning its face to the sun.
Nike
followed suit.

The three rear Phoenicians still hadn’t made the turn in the channel.

‘Mainsail!’ I called. I put the helm down, used the steering oars to bring the wind right aft, and then the mainsail was sheeted home and Doola was ordering the oarsmen to get their
oars in.

I raised my arms and prayed to Poseidon, right then and there. I sent the Alban boy, whom I christened Tempo, for wine. And I poured it into my favourite bronze cup and threw it over the side,
and oarsmen cheered.

It took the Phoenicians a quarter of an hour to get their sails up, and they lost ground with every heartbeat, so that by the time their big striped sheets were hung, they were halfway back to
the horizon, and we were running free. Behind them, a nick on the north-eastern edge of the bowl of the world, was
Amphitrite
, I assumed.

But the bastards didn’t give up.

We’d run off the beach with no food and almost no water – remember, we’d sold our amphorae.

Now, with parched rowers drinking the little water we had aboard, fresh water was an immediate crisis. And as if they knew our ill planning, the Phoenicians dogged us, well to windward but
always close enough to snatch us up.

I summoned Doola and Sittonax. I thought longingly of the wine I’d just thrown over the side. Did Poseidon even know this sea, with its horrifying ten-foot-high rollers and whitecaps in
every weather?

Sittonax pointed at the long line of low-lying land to the north and east. I could already see the promontory that marked the extreme westward end.

I hadn’t marked what it meant, but before Sittonax spoke, I realized that this must be the westernmost point of Europe.

We were sailing off the edge of the world.

‘What’s north of here?’ I asked. ‘How far to your Sequana River? The
River of Fish
?’

He shook his head. ‘A long way.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ve never been there. But it must be four days – maybe six.’

Detorix had mentioned the Sequana like it was near at hand.

‘And the main islands of the Venetiae?’ I asked. They were three days’ sail, or so Detorix had said.

Sittonax shrugged, palms up. ‘I’m not a sailor,’ he said. ‘I’m a guard. I was hired inland. On the Sequana, where the big ships unload.’

‘Poseidon’s rigid member,’ I swore. I remember, because Doola looked shocked. It made me laugh, which in turn lightened the tension.

Behon was working on the deck crew, and he came aft eagerly. He spoke rapidly to Sittonax, and pointed north and west. With the wind.

‘He says we can make Alba in a day on this wind. To Dumnonia, among his own people.’ Sittonax looked deeply sceptical.

I tugged at my beard. ‘Ask Behon what he did before he was enslaved,’ I said.

He looked at me. ‘Fisherman,’ he said in Greek.

Aha.

‘Very well. Doola, how’s Seckla?’ I asked.

Doola leaned forward. ‘Gut shot,’ he said softly. ‘It went about three fingers in. Oozing blood. He’s fine for the moment.’

We both knew what a gut shot meant. Sepsis and a nasty death.

‘Go and stay by him,’ I said. I turned to Alexandros. ‘Take the helm.’

To Sittonax: ‘Ask him whether this wind will hold.’

‘Two days.’ The Alban made an odd motion with his lips, as if tasting the wind.

‘Ask him what the coast is like in his Dumnovia.’ I was weighing my non-existent options.

‘Rock, and more rock.’

I swore. ‘We’re going to run on that coast in the dark.’

He shrugged, as if to say that all of us were in the hands of the gods.

In late afternoon, the wind changed two points – to the north.

As the sun dropped towards the endless Western Ocean, the wind rose and we had to brail the mainsail. Seckla was up and moving – I’d have gathered hope, but I had seen this before.
Men with gut wounds got better for a little while, and then—

Apollo came with his deadly arrows, and took them.

As the red ball of the sun fell into the Western Ocean – by the gods, daughters, to look west at the setting sun, and see
nothing
but open ocean is perhaps the most terrifying
sight I’ve ever had within the orbit of my eyes. Somewhere out there were the Hesperides. It was like—

Like living in a myth.

While being chased by slavers.

We weathered the great promontory of Gaul at sunset; the sky was already full of stars, and the swells lifted our bow and it fell, and the sail was too full for my comfort. Far astern,
Lydia
and
Nike
followed me, and
Amphitrite
, who could sail better on any wind but dead astern, had ranged up and lay five stades away, as close to beautiful as she would
ever be in the red, red sunset.

We buried the Phoenicians over the horizon, but when we were at the top of a wave, our lookout on the mainmast could see their mainsails flashing red to white in the setting sun. And far, far to
the east, a column of smoke caught the last light where the lead Phoenician galley burned.

I don’t want to say that I thought I could take all six of them.

I’ll only say that, had I had drinking water aboard, I might have tried.

But my men were already desperate, and if we had had to row, even for ten stades, I think that they might have started to die. Remember, I had men who were a few days out of desperate bondage. A
third of my rowers were strong enough, but as thin as young trees.

But the knucklebones were cast, the sail was brailed, the helm set and we ran north, and the sun set in the Outer Ocean like an evil eye into an alien sea of blood, and we could all but hear the
hiss as it plunged red-hot into the sea. It had an evil look, and by the gods, we were all afraid.

Dawn, and I was still at the steering oars. I sucked on a piece of old bread to get saliva into my mouth. Men drank more questionable things: water from the bilge, urine mixed
with seawater. Next to loss of breath, thirst is the fastest way to bring a man to desperation. Try it sometime. See how long you can go without water. You can go a day, but after a few hours, it
becomes the sole focus of your thoughts.