breakers – Satyrus ordered Golden Lotus parallel to the beach, waiting for the lull. Praying for it. The squall line was ten stades away and coming like a cavalry charge.
A flaw in the wind – the sail cracked and swayed.
‘Drop the boatsail!’ he called. Then he watched as Diokles leaned his whole weight on the steering oar, and Satyrus stood amidships, willing the bow to turn out to sea, to get head-on to the swell.
Poseidon, let us live! Drop the wind!
The rowers’ response was as crisp as could be. They turned the quarter circle in the time it took for two breakers to roll under their stern, so much pressure on the backing oars that Satyrus could see the shafts bend under the strain; and then they were backing water, oars dragging on the gravel of the beach, and the stern was carried high and came down with a heavy thump.
The whole manoeuvre was near perfect – but now the trials of the day showed. The Lotus had almost no deck crew to leap ashore and steady the stern, and the sea pounded the bow relentlessly. Kleitos called a stroke on his own initiative, so that the bow oars that could still bite steadied the ship. Sternwards oarsmen started to leap over the sides, which lightened the ship so that he drove higher up the beach and the bow caught a wave and almost swept in – but there were just enough oars in the water and just enough strong backs in the surf to drag the hull a few feet higher, and then a few more. The ship was diagonal across the grain of the beach – but now the hull was empty, and before the next breaker could seize the ram and push it in to break his back, two hundred men and two women were pulling and the whole black-tarred hull shot up the beach half his length. It wasn’t pretty – in fact, the whole manoeuvre swirled at the edge of confusion, chaos and failure – but then the Lotus was on the sand and upright, and there was a strong cheer.
The Athenian wasn’t so lucky. He made his turn with style, and his oarsmen knew their lives depended on their rowing, and Kalos had redistributed rowers and oars to get men on both sides, but their backing-water was clumsy and the Athenian ship came in on the crest of a heavy breaker just as the storm hit. A wave broke over the bow, pushing it up the beach, out of control. Exhaustion and broken spirit cost them precious seconds as the rowers lost their stroke and the ship flooded amidships.
But Kalos had friends ashore. He had the deck crew. They had ropes over the side before the trireme could broach, and the two hundred men ashore were not willing to lose their prize to Poseidon when they were so close, and they pulled, and pulled again, hauling the damaged ship ashore and out of the clutches of the storm. The ship fell over on its side, spilling the water it had taken and dumping rowers in the surf, but the howling wind gave the stern a push and the next wave lifted the bow as Kalos roared ‘heave’ like Poseidon come to life, and the balance changed. The Athenian hull groaned, but he went up the beach the length of a horse – and again on the next wave, as the last of the oarsmen scrambled out. And once more, lifting the ram clear of the waves, three hundred men pulling together, drenched by the lashing rain.
And then they sank to their haunches on the wet sand. They were ashore, and alive.
Satyrus lay panting on the rain-slick sand, a rope end still clutched in his hands. He was ready to go to sleep, but a crisp voice in his head said, Not through yet, boy. He forced himself to his feet and walked to where Peleus lay. The helmsman had died during the last manoeuvre. Satyrus closed his eyes and whispered a prayer.
Then he stood up and pulled his cloak around him in the rain. ‘Master Xenophon?’ he called. ‘Secure the prisoners. Let’s get a sail up in the lee of-’ He looked around. There was no lee. They were on a beach that swept from horizon to horizon, and only the towering cliffs a few stades inland promised any cover at all.
Melitta took his arm. ‘There are caves,’ she said, pointing.
‘Sail up to cover the cave entrance. Melitta will take you there. Injured men under cover first.’ The orders flowed out of him like water from a spring. As if Peleus was giving them.
Kalos was calling his men to action.
Kleitos was kneeling in the sand, shaking his head. Diokles gave Satyrus a look, punctuated by lightning, and Satyrus nodded.
‘All right, you lot!’ Diokles shouted.
Satyrus stayed upright until the last men were in the caves. The sand underfoot was dry, and the fires of driftwood were roaring, and it was all he could do to speak. His cloak was heavy with water and the wind howled, and if the surf came up any higher, they would lose the trireme – and he couldn’t do anything about it. He wanted to keep on moving, keep on commanding, because now that he had time to think, all he wanted to do was weep.
He stood there alone in the storm, water streaming off his face and his sodden chlamys. Lightning pulsed and flashed, and thunder roared louder than a hundred rams hitting a hundred hulls.
Kalos came up to him. ‘Inside, sir!’ he shouted over the wind and the thunder. He pulled Satyrus by the arm, and they went through the flapping boatsail that covered the cave’s entrance and suddenly it was warm. Satyrus stumbled and almost fell. The whole cave was full of men – lying so close that they looked like the amphorae that a merchant ship carried as cargo. The fire – not the first this cave had known – and the heat of more than three hundred bodies made Satyrus shed his cloak.
‘Try this, lad,’ Kalos said.
Diokles came up and pushed a heavy black-ware mug into his hands. It was too dark to see what was in it, so Satyrus took a sip – kykeon, full of cheese and wine. The wine went through him like an electric shock. The taste of honey and the tartness of the wine were the finest things he’d ever had.
‘Finish it,’ Diokles said in his raspy voice. He smiled briefly, and then, as if that smile took too much effort, his face went blank again.
Satyrus slumped into an open space near the cave mouth. He fell asleep with the mug still warm in his hand.
Farther down the cave, Melitta was entwined with Xenophon, wrapped around him for warmth and for the emotional protection of his familiar body. She wanted to sleep, but her thoughts ran around and around her head the way an exhausted child will run around and around. Screaming.
She saw her brother come into the cave, and she knew in the flicker of firelight what he would look like when he was thirty – or perhaps fifty.
‘You saved my life,’ Xenophon said out of the darkness. His voice sounded different, and he didn’t make it like a flat statement, but as if he was trying to make out a puzzle.
‘You saved mine, too,’ she said. She shrugged.
‘But – it was single combat,’ Xeno said. ‘He was better than I.’
Melitta wriggled, seeking to get a stone out from under her hip.
He misinterpreted her wriggle, and wriggled back.
‘No, it wasn’t,’ Melitta said. ‘You had to face the helmsman – he was in armour – and the mercenary and perhaps half a dozen sailors. So it was a general action. I shot because it was my duty to shoot.’
‘It was a wonderful shot,’ Xeno said. This time it was he who shrugged, and she who thought that it was a wriggle, and she wriggled back. ‘I was lying on my back, waiting for death – so like Homer! And I saw the arrow go into his thigh just above my head, and I thought – Melitta shot that!’
This was the praise that Melitta wanted. It had been the best shot of her life. ‘I killed a few men today,’ she said, somewhere between bragging and sobbing. Unsure what to make of those deaths. Feeling mortal herself.
‘Me too,’ Xenophon said. He rolled over to face her.
In a moment, she rolled over too.
And at some point when most of the oarsmen were snoring, their wriggles of discomfort and embraces of support changed rhythm, and became something else. It wasn’t the romantic idyll that Melitta had imagined, with her buttocks trapped against a stone and three hundred possible witnesses – and yet, it was.
‘We shouldn’t do this,’ Xenophon said, when it was far too late to change their minds.
PART V
POLISHING
19
