‘Yes,’ Satyrus answered, almost inaudibly.
‘Don’t think about any of that when you’re at the helm. Mind you, you’ve been at it without relief for a watch and a half. I’ll take the helm.’
‘I’m fine,’ Satyrus said.
‘No, you ain’t. I’ll take the helm, navarch. If you please.’ Peleus was suddenly very formal.
Satyrus stood straight and managed to get the oar into the helmsman’s hand, despite the shame of his burning face. ‘You have the helm.’
‘I have the helm. Go and lie down and dream of your girl, boy. You earned a rest – don’t fret.’
Despite this last admonition, Satyrus knew that he’d made an error – a bad error, one that in a normal young man would have been punished by a blow or worse. He walked to the awning in silence, and the deck crew made way for him as if he was injured. Sailors were very perceptive to social ills – they had to be, living so close – and he’d seen before how a man who had been punished was treated with consideration that verged on tenderness.
Now that same blanket surrounded him, and he hated that he had failed them. He collapsed on a cushion of straw next to his sister. ‘Don’t say anything,’ he said.
She raised an eyebrow but said nothing, and after a long bout of recrimination, he managed to fall asleep.
Evening came – a beautiful evening. Satyrus woke to find his head pillowed in his sister’s lap, with the first star – Aphrodite – just rising above the ship’s side. ‘You were tired,’ his sister said.
‘Hermes! I’ve slept for hours!’ Satyrus bounced up and found that his whole body was sore, and that his mouth was dry and he was cold.
Kyros came aft and passed him a water skin. ‘Drink,’ he said. ‘You got too much sun today. Old bastard left you too long at the oar. He’s got no skin left to burn – just hide.’
The water skin no sooner touched his lips than he drained it right down to the evil-tasting swill in the bottom, where the resin and the goat hair and the water made a disgusting brew. He spat over the side and Kyros laughed.
‘Get some more, navarch. You’re sun-sick and no mistake. Cold yet?’ he asked.
Satyrus nodded guiltily.
‘Wrap up. You’ll be colder tonight. Glad you slept. Good pillow, I expect,’ he said with a sidelong glance at Melitta.
Satyrus climbed down past the oarsmen in the bilge, which stank of piss and worse, where amphorae of clean water stood point down in the sand of the ballast. He lifted the open one clear of the bilge and filled the leather bucket and then refilled the oar master’s skin, punishing himself with the task. With the bucket he refilled the butt on deck so other men could drink, and then he passed the skin back to the oar master. Only when the whole smelly job was done did he present himself to the helmsman.
‘Sun-sick, I hear,’ Peleus said.
‘Yes, sir,’ Satyrus answered.
‘You don’t call me sir, lad. You’re the navarch. I left you too long at the oar, and that’s no mistake. I’m a fool. Mind you, you stood there like a fool without asking to be relieved.’ He shrugged. ‘You’ll live. I can smell the land – can ye smell it?’
Satyrus took a deep breath. ‘No, but I see the gulls.’
‘Right you are, and land birds before the sun sets. Now comes the hard part – where on Poseidon’s liquid plain are we, eh? Because we’ll want a beach as soon as we can get one – fresh water, and a place to cook in the morning. The boys can only slurp kykeon so many times before they rise up and murder me.’ He nodded, as if talking with a third party.
‘You want me to take the helm?’ Satyrus asked.
‘No. Into the bow and watch the horizon. Landfall any time, now. Bring me word.’
‘I could climb the mainmast,’ Satyrus asked. He was gushing in his eagerness to be forgiven.
‘Only in an emergency,’ Peleus said. ‘Makes the whole ship lean. A nice trick on a merchantman – not on a trireme, eh? Into the bow.’
‘Aye!’ Satyrus headed forward, scooping his heavier Thracian cloak as he went past his sister. Most of the men on deck were naked, but Satyrus was chilled to the bone, and yet the last rays of the sun seemed to flay him when he emerged under the mainsail into the bow.
Behind him, he heard Peleus order Kyros to begin clearing away the oar decks, as the wind that had carried them all day was now dying away to a breeze. In the bow, the low clouds of mid-afternoon were now well up in the sky and catching the sun in a wall of pink and red.
Satyrus had to look at them and away twice before he was sure. Then he ran back along the central deck between the top-deck rowers, dropping his cloak in his rush aft. ‘Land! Right on the bow, no points off.’
Peleus took the news as if he had never known a moment’s doubt. He nodded. ‘Ready to take the helm, Navarch?’ he asked.
Satyrus put a hand on the oar. ‘I have the helm.’
‘You have the helm,’ Peleus said, and slipped from the stern to move forward. He vanished under the sail. Kyros came up with Kalos in tow. Satyrus nodded. ‘Land,’ he said.
Both men looked relieved. Kalos stopped when Kyros turned away. ‘Sorry to be so scared,’ he said. ‘Your first time at the steering oar across the blue water – we could end in Hades, understand?’ Then he slapped Satyrus’s bare back, making him cringe and notching the wake. ‘But you didn’t!’ he said, and went back to organizing the lowering of the mainmast.
Melitta brought him his cloak while Peleus watched forward. He pulled it on gratefully, feeling more like an old man on a winter night than was fair. ‘Everyone says I have sun-sickness,’ he said.
‘You’re as red as Tyrean wool,’ she answered. ‘You mind your oar and Dorcus will rub some oil into your skin.’
Together, she and her maid rubbed a mixture of olive oil and wool oil into his skin and he felt better – warmer, and less as if his skin would be flayed off by morning. ‘Thanks, sister,’ he said.
‘Now who’s all grown up?’ she asked. ‘I have the sense to stay out of the sun. He was testing you.’
‘I failed,’ Satyrus said bitterly.
‘You’re an idiot,’ Melitta answered fondly. She stood with him in companionable silence until Peleus joined them, and then she slipped away.
‘The Rock of Akkamas is just under our ram,’ Peleus said, appearing from under the mainsail. ‘Your course may be as erratic as a newborn lamb, but you are Poseidon’s son, lad. We’re bang on course – so fine that we’ll weather the headland to the north and have the north coast and the west wind tomorrow.’ Louder, he turned and addressed the sailors and oarsmen in the waist of the ship. ‘Perfect landfall. Thirty stades of light rowing and the white sands of Likkia will be under our stern.’
With a quiet cheer, the oarsmen settled into their benches with a will. Before the moon was full on the swell, they were turning the ship just off the beach, the long hull broadside-on to the whispering surf, and then the rowers reversed their directions and the Lotus backed up the beach until the curving stern kissed the shining sand and they were safe.
Satyrus slept late the next morning, and hid his face from the sun as they set out, and Dorcus rubbed him down twice that day as the west wind carried them down the north coast of Cyprus, with Peleus pointing out the promontories and the best beaches, where a helmsman could slip ashore for an unlicensed cargo of copper, where the food was cheap. They landed for the night at Ourannia with a rested crew and Peleus paid for meat. The oarsmen had a feast.
‘Tomorrow we cross over to the coast of Lebanon,’ Peleus said. ‘Pirates everywhere, Privateers, rovers, so- called merchants, and maybe, just maybe, advance squadrons of One-Eye’s fleet. I want our lads in peak shape. You want them in peak shape.’
‘I didn’t see a ship today,’ Satyrus said.
‘You were asleep all afternoon, lad. And I was glad to see it. Sun-sick is a hard way to go. But you missed the three big Phoenicians – deep laden – heading west. With an escort.’
Satyrus thought it over for a moment. ‘So anyone chasing us-’
‘Will get a nice little report. That’s right. And the Rhodian cruiser wasn’t on his station off Makaria. That’s not
