Poseidon's Spear (Long War 3) (45 page)

We set a heavy guard. I was a day short of my goal, with a fortune in tin, and there was a heavy Carthaginian squadron at sea. I was no fool. I had marines on either headland, and by all the
gods, that night I considered hiring a hundred donkeys and walking the ingots to Syracusa, I was that afraid.

I was afraid of more than that. The Tyrant of Syracusa was becoming renowned by then for his treatment of merchants. He was a bloody-handed aristocrat, a man who had risen to his place by a long
string of military victories. Gelon hated merchants and ‘little people’, as he called them; he exacted heavy taxes to pay for his wars, and despite all that, Syracusa was more
prosperous than ever. Maybe because of him. He had restored Syracusa’s military power. Carthage was not going to find Syracusa an easy nut to crack.

But I might. Former slave – tin merchant. I was more than a little afraid of his customs officers.

And as we sat on the beach at Katania, returning to talk to Lydia seemed stupider. It seemed like foolish romantic claptrap.

Cowardice is the sum of the whispers of the weaker daimons in your soul, my friends.

The sun rose, and I didn’t buy the donkeys. I got my oarsmen onto the ships, put on my finest chiton, my armour, my best cloak. I arrayed myself as Arimnestos of Plataea, lord of men. I
took a deep breath and reminded myself that Gelon of Syracusa was a parvenu from Magna Greca, and I was a son of Heracles.

I prayed, too.

We got off the beach in fine style, and I sacrificed a fine silver cup and some superb Sicilian wine to the sea god, and then we were rowing south. When we were clear of Aetna’s shadow the
west wind was unleashed, and we began to make leeway to the west – virtually a stade west for a stade south. It was a strong wind, raising a phalanx of whitecaps that made the water look like
the Outer Sea.

‘Any stronger, and we’ll have to run west,’ I commented to Giannis and Megakles, who were sharing the steering oars.

Megakles grunted. Giannis smiled – he was about to go to Syracusa, and he was excited.

I remember looking up from Giannis to find that Seckla was pointing at the bow, and I followed his pointing finger to see the low shape of a ship nicking the horizon to the west on the opposite
course.

And another astern of it.

And another.

They were all of them triremes, or so they appeared at this distance. A word for you virgins – a warship is low and crewed by rowers, virtually invisible until you are within fifteen
stades or so, and even then difficult to see. A heavy merchant is not longer, but it is rounder, higher out of the water, heavier in its masts – much easier to see, in any weather. So we
could see that the ship closest to us on the horizon was a trireme or a big bireme, and the ships astern of her were not merchantmen.

Also worth noting is that there are a hundred things a sailor learns in one look at a ship – even a ship on the horizon. Listen, girls: when you are going to the fountain-house with your
friends and your slaves, you know it is young Eustacia bending over the well long before you can see her face, right? You know her from her clothes, from the shape of her hips, from the indefinable
way she bends her body . . . isn’t that true?

Just so, at sea. One glance, and you know.

So, the lead ship was Greek.

The two ships behind were Phoenician.

There are these moments in every man’s life – women, too – in fact, whole cities and nations – that define them. And are defined by them. There are moments where you act
because you are what you are, and not because you have some finely realized philosophy to justify your actions.

I turned to Megakles. ‘Hard to port,’ I said. Doola was a few steps away on the half-deck. All I had to do was give the signal to raise the mainsail, and it was in motion.

We heeled a little as we turned.

The mainsail raced up the mast, and we had the wind astern, and we were tearing downwind at the two Phoenicians. It feels to me now as if we turned before the words had left my mouth, but in
fact it must have taken some minutes, and many breaths must have passed my lips.

None of them questioned me.

Let me say this – with a smile, I hope. I had two ships laden with treasure, and I was a few hours’ sail from the port where we would realize our fortunes, and when I ordered us to
turn, the Phoenicians were far too committed to the chase of that Greek ship to pay us any attention. We’d have been in Syracusa by late afternoon.

I turned off our plot to run downwind on a pair of well-armed enemy warships with professional crews, for no better reason than that I hated them, and that they were chasing a Greek ship, and
every one of us had been a slave on a Carthaginian.

I threw it all away.

Hah!

Beat that.

We ran down at them; they were well trained and saw us almost immediately, with our heavy sails set. No reason that they shouldn’t.

But they were nearly up with the Greek galley, and they began to range up either side, archers shooting into the crew. The Greeks were resisting. Then, one of the Carthaginians dropped astern,
and with a magnificent effort got his crew to row double hard, and he rammed the Greek ship in the stern – a difficult ram in any conditions, and twice as difficult in that sea. The Greek
ship’s bow fell off the wind, and she was caught broadside and rolled. The Phoenicians rammed the Greek, but their attacks were oar-rakes, and they may have killed rowers but they
couldn’t get their beaks in.

All this time, and we were racing down the wind. And then we saw why they were so bold.

There were two more triremes rowing up in the eye of the wind. Two more Phoenicians.

This
was
the heavy squadron.

I laughed.

I mean, I had committed my treasure and my ships . . . right down their throats.

We were under sail, so I manoeuvred my hull right alongside Gaius. I got up on the swan-neck of wood that protected the helmsman, and he climbed out to meet me. We were only a few feet
apart.

‘Want to run for it?’ I called.

He laughed. ‘No,’ he said.

That was our command meeting.

Two stades out, we got our sails down. We were racing along faster than a horse gallops, a heady speed that fills the senses, and we had new-built ships with strong bows and new timber. And tons
of tin. And new rams, just cast by me. I trusted Vasileos’s work, and I trusted my own.

Ah, the moment.

We were going so fast that when the rowers put their oars in the water, they slowed us, and we threatened to fall off our course as they touched the choppy water.

The two nearest Phoenicians were on either side of the Greek, boarding from both broadsides. Because they’d made shallow oar-rakes from astern, they had both grappled with their bows just
about amidships to the Greek ship, so their sterns projected.

We came at them like arrows from a bow, an oar’s-length separating us, my
Lydia
just astern and to the starboard. We struck their sterns almost together.
Lydia
’s
beak struck through the enemy ship’s timbers like a man punching through a house wall when his house is afire, and timber flew through the air. It was the most decisive strike I have ever
seen. Most ram attacks turn a ship over, and the wreck floats. But the target was stationary, held by the grapples, and couldn’t turn or roll. And we hit hard – hard enough to stove the
bows of most ships.

But not my
Lydia
. We ripped the stern right off, and the Phoenician filled and sank as fast as I can tell it.

Two hundred men died in the next minute – drowned, slave and free, Phoenician nobleman and Greek victim.

I watched them die as my rowers cheered and backed water.

Gaius blew right through his – probably an older ship, or one with the Tenedos rot, because he tore the stern off and his hull slid
over
the wreck and he raced on, leaving his
victim to sink. I admit that I watched his standing mainmast spring forward the length of a horse as he struck, and I feared it would rip through his bottom – but it didn’t.

The Greeks cut their grapples desperately, because the weight of two sinking ships was dragging them down like one of Poseidon’s monsters.

The Greek was in rough shape. He had a dozen Phoenician marines on his decks and a great many dead oarsmen, his stern was badly damaged and his ship was sinking under him.

That was too bad, because I wasn’t leaving Gaius to fight two angry Phoenicians alone, and I wasn’t about to put my marines onto a sinking ship. Doola shot one of the Phoenician
marines – a beautiful arrow – and we were away, and that was all the help we offered him. Well, aside from sinking both his enemies, of course.

The two oncoming triremes were under oars, and they had had a long pull – they’d been far to windward. You could see from their rowing.

We had standing rigging, remember. We didn’t have to take our masts down, even after a collision like the one we’d just had. Now we had them aloft again, just as fast, our victorious
oarsmen resting.

I laughed. I felt like a god of the sea.

I would have fought fifty Carthaginians, if they had come at me.

The ones to the west of us turned on their oars and raised their mainsails and ran.

It was the right decision. We’d evened the odds in one headlong rush, and now we had the fresh crews and the edge that victory brings, and they knew it.

Now, in sea terms, we were supposed to let them go. It is not for nothing that we say ‘A stern chase is a long chase’. When you are astern of an enemy, you have no advantage of wind
direction. You have only the speed of your ships. For the most part, Greek ships are faster than Phoenicians, but we were heavily laden.

And when they turned away, we had won. It became our duty, by the laws of hospitality, to rescue the Greek ship.

But the closer Phoenician had lingered in his turn – bad ship-handling. The westernmost one had issues, too, and got around before his sails were well set, leading to some yawing.

Megakles looked at me. He had his grin on his face. ‘That guy is a fool,’ he said, pointing with his chin at the nearer Phoenician. ‘Bad crew.’

Seckla was all teeth. ‘Let’s take him.’

Doola had just unstrung his bow. Without demur, he restrung it.

It was like that.

The oarsmen grumbled.

But, as I pointed out, we were under sail.

We ran about six stades, and the sail began to shiver. The wind was changing, the sun was clouding over and the air had that taste it gets when there’s a storm over Africa. We got our
sails down long before our prey, and they wallowed in the gusts as the wind changed and we were coming up on them hand over fist.

Gaius was well astern of us, and five stades to the north. This was a natural consequence of the weather change, and if the pattern of wind gusts had been different, he’d have come up with
the third Phoenician and we’d have been left to the south – but there came a point when he was no longer in the fight.

That decided me on my tactics. We crept up the last three ship-lengths, using the boatsail to give us an edge, and then we went to ramming speed, our ship shot forward and we caught their
steering oars. The enemy ship yawed, and all my archers shot into the command platform.

We ran farther west because we could only turn so fast, and it was then, as the second enemy ship ran like a rabbit, leaving the one we’d just struck to its fate, that I saw Dagon. He was
a stade away, and I knew him in a moment.

And every shade of fear and hate struck me, all together.

Ever see a woman you have loved? A boy you wanted and lost to another girl?

You know what I mean. All that, in one moment. I swear, I had all but forgotten his existence, until I saw him.

My ship was already turning under me. The orders were given, the sails were down, the rowers fully engaged. I was not going to catch that galley that day. But I watched him from my command deck
until we turned back to our prey.

I don’t think he saw me.

Damn him.

The wounded Phoenician surrendered. He hadn’t a chance: I had a consort on the horizon, and he had lost his steering and most of his officers in one pass. And as soon as
we came alongside, some Greek dragged a Carthaginian down into the benches and strangled him.

I put Doola and Megakles and all my marines into him, and we rowed his bow around while Megakles rigged a jury steering oar, and then we were rowing across the new, choppy African wind. Darkness
was falling when we came alongside Gaius. Gaius had run west ahead of us. He was the one who came alongside the sinking wreck of the Greek ship and rescued her crew and her oarsmen, filling his
ship to a dangerous degree, knowing that I was right behind him. And I was. I came up beside him, and at the edge of darkness, lashed together, we transferred a hundred desperate men. A trireme can
only hold so much, and then it won’t float. Or it folds in the middle. But bless Vasileos, he built good ships, and we ran for the coast, rowing as well as we could with so many extra bodies
on board.

But they helped, sometimes three men sitting on the same bench. I put forty Greek rowers into my capture, and at about midnight we were off the beach at Katania. Seckla swam ashore, roused
fishermen and got beacons lit, and one by one we got our ships landed, stern-first. It wasn’t that the seas were high, or the current treacherous. It was merely that we were exhausted. It was
dark. Mistakes were made.

Men were injured.

But we didn’t lose a ship, or an ingot of tin, and in the end we got fires lit, and men fell asleep naked on the summer sands.

I dreamed of Dagon. They weren’t pleasant dreams, but on waking they reminded me of how much I hated him, and how deep he was in my soul. He had made me feel weak. He had
hurt me.

I wasn’t going to forget. And all my vaunted philosophy wasn’t going to change that he needed to die. I’d like to pretend to you that I felt some greater urge – that I
wanted him dead so he couldn’t kill any more preganant women. Something noble.