who went barefoot or wore only sandals. ‘Where’s your horse?’ He gave a fraction of a smile.
Kineas nodded, his eyes on the men in the waist and the sailing master talking to two veteran oarsmen in the stern. ‘They intend to throw you overboard,’ he said quietly.
The long-haired man rose to a sitting position. ‘Zeus,’ he said. ‘Why?’
‘They need a scapegoat. The sailing master needs one, too, or he’ll be the sacrifice. He murdered the owner. Do you understand?’ The younger man’s face was still green, and his mouth looked pinched and thin. Kineas wondered if he was taking any of this in. He went on, more to think aloud than make conversation. ‘If I kill the sailing master, I doubt we’ll get this pig of a ship into a port. If I kill sailors, they’ll drag me down in the end.’ He stood up, balancing against the swell, and hung the baldric of his sword over his shoulder. He walked sternward, apparently unworried by having half the crew at his back, until he knew he had the sailing master’s attention.
‘How long until we make port, sailing master?’ he said.
Silence fell all along the benches. The sailing master looked around, gauging the mood of the crew, clearly unready for the conflict, if there was to be one. ‘Passengers should mind their selves, not the working of the ship,’ he said.
Kineas nodded as if he agreed. ‘I was silent when the trierarch raised the sail,’ he said pointedly. ‘Look where that got me.’ He shrugged, raised his hands to show the bloody welts — trying to win over some of the crew. He got a few chuckles, a thin sound. ‘I have to be in Tomis in a ten-day. Calchus of Athens expects me.’ He looked around, catching the eyes of men in front of him, worried about the men behind him because he knew from experience that frightened men were usually beyond persuasion. He couldn’t say it more clearly — If I don’t reach Tomis, important people will ask this crew hard questions. He saw it hit home with the sailing master and prayed, prayed that the man had some sense. Calchus of Athens owned half the cargo on this vessel.
‘We got no water,’ said a deck crewman.
‘We need oars, and that seam is opening like a whore in Piraeus,’ said one of the veteran oarsmen.
They were all looking at the sailing master now. Kineas felt the momentum change. Before they could ask more dangerous questions, he stepped up on a bench. ‘Is there anywhere on this shore to beach and come at the seam?’ he asked the question in a light tone, but his position above them on the bench helped his authority.
‘I know a place, a day’s easy row from here,’ said the master. ‘Stow it, you lot. I don’t discuss orders. Maybe the passenger has more to say?’
Kineas forced a good smile. ‘I can row another day,’ he said, and stepped down from the bench.
In the bow, the sick Spartan had a javelin across his arm, the throwing loop on his thumb. Kineas gave him a smile and then a shake of the head, and the long-haired man relaxed the javelin.
‘We’ll need every man,’ Kineas said conversationally, to no one in particular. His bench mate from the first hours after the broaching nodded. Other men looked away, and Kineas sighed, because the die was cast, and they would live or die on the whims of the gods.
He walked into the bow, his back to the sailors, and the sailing master called, ‘You there,’ and he stiffened. But the next was like music to him. ‘You two fools by the mast! Back to the pumps, you whoresons!’
The two men by the mast obeyed. Like the first motions of the ship when the oars began to pull, the feeling on the deck moved a fraction, then a fraction more, and then, despite the muttering, the men were either back on their benches, or bailing. Kineas hoped that the master really knew where he was, and where they could beach, because the next time he didn’t think his voice or his sword would be enough to cut the tangle of animosities on the deck.
2
The two old men who kept the harbour light at Tomis saw the pentekonter well out in the offing.
‘He’s lost his mast,’ said one. ‘Ought to have ’er stepped in this wind.’
‘Rowers is done in, too. He’ll have a job of it making the mole ’fore dark,’ said the other.
They sat and shared their contempt for a sailor so foolish as to have lost his mast.
‘Gods on Olympus, look at her side!’ said the first as the sun crossed the horizon. The pentekonter was well in with the land, her bow only a dozen lengths from the mole. Her side was fothered with a length of linen and roughly painted in tar, a pitiful sight. ‘Them’s lucky to be alive.’
His companion had a pull at the nearly empty wineskin they shared, gave his cousin a black look, and wiped his mouth. ‘Pity the poor sailors, mate.’
‘Truer words never spoke,’ said his cousin.
The pentekonter pushed her bow in past the mole before full dark, her deck silent as a warship’s except for the call of the oar beat. The strokes were short and weak, and discerning eyes all over the port could see he’d pulled long past the ability of his oarsmen to look sharp or keep up speed. The pentekonter passed the long wharf where the traders usually berthed and ran her bow well up the pebble beach that fringed the river’s mouth. Only then did the crew give a cheer, a sound that told the town all they needed to know about the last four days.
Tomis was a large town by the standards of the Euxine, but the number of her citizens was small and news travelled fast. By the time Kineas had his baggage over the side, the only man he knew in the town was standing with a torchbearer on the pebbles under the bow and calling his name.
‘Calchus, by the gods,’ he shouted, and dropped on to the shingle to give the man an embrace.
Calchus gripped him back, first hugging him, then grasping for a wrestling hold so that both men were grappling, down on the gravel in the beat of a seagull’s wing, Calchus reaching around Kineas’s knees to bring him down, Kineas grappling the bigger man’s neck like a farmer wrestles a calf. And then they were both standing, laughing, Calchus adjusting his tunic over his muscled chest and Kineas rubbing the sand off his hands.
‘Ten years,’ said Calchus.
‘Exile seems to suit you,’ responded Kineas.
‘It does, too. I wouldn’t go back.’ Calchus’s tone implied that he would go back if he could, but that he was too proud to say it.
‘You got my letter.’ Kineas hated demanding hospitality, the lot of every exile.
‘Don’t be an idiot. Of course I had your letter. I have your letter, a string of your horses, and your hyperetes and his little gang of louts. I’ve fed them for a month. Something tells me you don’t have a pot to piss in.’
Kineas bridled. ‘I will repay you…’ he began.
‘Of course you will. Kineas — I’ve been where you are.’ He indicated Kineas’s baggage with a negligent hand to his torchbearer, who lifted the bag with a heavy grunt and a long sigh. ‘Don’t get proud, Kineas. Your father kept mine alive. We were sorry to hear that he died — and you exiled, of course. Athens is a city ruled by ingrates. But we haven’t forgotten you. Besides, the helmsman says you helped save the ship — that’s my cargo. I probably owe you.’ He looked past Kineas in the dim torchlight as another man leaped over the side to the beach.
The Spartan bent, his locks swinging to hide his face and loudly kissed the rocks of the beach. Then he came up behind Kineas and stood hesitantly at his shoulder.
Kineas gestured to him. ‘Philokles, a gentleman of — Mytilene.’ His pause was deliberate; he could see the confusion — even the anger — on Calchus’s face.
‘He’s a Spartan.’
Kineas shrugged.
‘I’m an exile,’ said Philokles. ‘I find that exile has this virtue; that no exile can be held responsible for the actions of his city.’
‘He’s with you?’ Calchus asked. His sense of hospitality and etiquette had eroded in the Euxine, Kineas could see. Calchus was used to being in charge.
‘The Athenian gentleman saved my life, pulling me from the sea when my last strength was nigh spent.’ The Spartan was plump. Kineas had never seen a plump Spartan before, hadn’t remarked it when they were at sea, but here in the torchlight it was obvious.
Calchus turned on his heel — a rude gesture at the best of times, a calculated insult now — and waved up the beach. ‘Fine. He can stay with me, too. It’s late to be out, Kineas. I’ll save all my “whatever happened to so- and-so” questions for the new day.’
If the Spartan was offended, he didn’t show it. ‘Very kind, sir.’
