Ionians don't really like to fight in the duels. The Cretans did, though – so I found myself exchanging cuts with the very men I had trained, and Nearchos and I fought in the last bout, for the prize.
He thought that he knew me.
I gave him a nice scratch on his forearm as a reminder that he didn't.
We laughed about it afterwards, and Lord Achilles came and took my hand. 'You are too good a man to hold in Crete,' he said. 'You could have your own ship with any lord here.'
Indeed, several men had offered me ships – Epaphroditos first among them.
'Yes, lord,' I said.
'I would keep you in my service until we face the Medes,' he said.
'I will stay, lord,' I said. 'After the battle, I will go.'
'Thank you. You are a fine young man, whatever your tastes. And may I add another thing? As long as you serve with my son, you will keep him safe. Eh? All young men seek to be Achilles. My son will be a king. Do not let him off the leash. Am I clear?'
I nodded.
He looked around, then looked back at me. 'What have you done to Aristagoras?' he asked.
I shrugged. There are some things best left unspoken. 'Why?'
'He asked me if you were my man. I said yes, and he said that he would not have you killed until you left my service. So – watch your back. He hates you. It's in his eyes when he speaks of you.'
I frowned. What had someone told him?
I thought of how Briseis could be when angered. Oh, yes.
My thoughts must have been on my face, because he chuckled. 'Our fearless leader is hardly a man to fear,' Achilles said. 'But he strikes me as the womanish sort who would cut your throat in the dark or put poison in a cup. When you leave me, watch yourself.'
We left a great deal unsaid. He knew things, and I knew things. He was not altogether comfortable with the loyalty his warriors showed to me, and he was not always happy with the man I had made of his son, either. But I'm a father now and I understand him better – and he never used me ill. Here's to him.
I had a man in the host repaint my shield, which was battered from a year of weapons drill. He made the raven all but leap from the bull's hide. 'An old Boeotian,' he said. 'You don't see many of those!'
The three of us – that's me, Idomeneus and Lekthes – we probably had half the Boeotians in the whole army. But I wanted reputation and I wanted men to know me. The Persians landed across the island, as we expected, and they marched towards us by slow, careful stages.
Their fleet, the cream of the Phoenician cities, accompanied them, and both travelled every day in battle order, daring us to fight. They approached us slowly, and any day we might have met them, if we chose.
A Persian army and a Phoenician fleet. I could hear the gods laughing.
The Cyprians were gentlemen, and they offered the Ionian allies a choice – man our ships and face the Phoenicians, or form our phalanx and face the Persians. The Persian commander was not a man I knew. Artybius, he was called, and he had a strong force of cavalry. So did the Cyprians, and they had chariots as well, which made me feel as if I was serving in the Trojan War – no one but Cyprians and Libyans use chariots any more. And yet – I had trained as a charioteer, and they made me smile. I had never seen a chariot used for anything but a parade or a wedding or local travel, or for races, and the Cyprians were good. They had over a hundred of them. Everyone seemed to be excited by the prospect of using chariots in combat – even I thought it sounded marvellous, which goes to show how little I knew of war.
Aristagoras chose to take on the fleet. I suspected that he made the choice so that it would be easier to cut and run, but I was in the minority. Most of the rest still worshipped him, and he wore his purple cloak at every meeting, as if he was the King of Kings.
After making the decision, we had three days of rough weather, and we put out every day, struggled to form our lines and suffered from the wind and waves. The Phoenicians stayed on their beaches by their camp and jeered at us. The Great King's commander was cautious – he fortified his camp and would not risk battle until his fleet was there to cover his flank.
The fourth day dawned like a proper summer day on Cyprus, the sort of golden pink dawn when you can imagine the Cyprian goddess coming across the foam to your beach. We rose, cooked our breakfasts and sang a hymn to that goddess and to Zeus, and then to all the gods, and finally we boarded our ships.
The sea was as calm as a sheet of hammered bronze, and I knew that this time we would fight. My hands shook, my stomach did flips inside my scale thorax and I drank a little too much wine.
We formed up well, though, and that counts for a great deal in a sea-fight. North and west of us, on the beaches north of the city where the Persians had their camp, we could see them forming, and their allies with them, and the Cyprians forming against them, two great phalanxes and a taxis of cavalry on either flank, with the chariots farthest from the sea.
We Cretans were untried, and our heavy Phoenician-style ships were slower than the other Ionians, so they put us in the second line. It was an insult, if you like, but the fleet was well ordered and there was a rumour that Aristagoras was receiving advice from a Samothracian navarch. Whoever he was, I thought that he knew his business. We Cretans were on the landward flank, the left of our line, so far out from the centre that my ship was second from the beach, and by the whim of the gods, Archi's ship was in the first line, just seaward and ahead of us.
I swore to myself that if I had a chance to make good my oath to his family, I would do it.
Nearchos was shaking with nerves. I hugged him, our breastplates rubbing together oddly. 'Relax, O phile pai. The fear falls from you with the first arrow.'
He gave me a shaky smile, and we began to row forward with our line, as did the enemy, until we could see the eyes painted on their bows as clearly as we could see our own rowers. But then, before we could come to grips, I had cause to bless all the training Achilles had done with us, because the Phoenicians tried the oldest trick in naval warfare – they backed water. They were professionals, and we were amateurs, and they assumed that if they backed far enough, we'd lose our order and they'd kill us in small groups.
And indeed, our line did begin to break up after half a dozen stades – keeping a line at sea is hard enough, and every wave and current is against you. We split our first line into three, because there was a current off the rivermouth by the city and the rowers couldn't stay in the midst of it.
But the strong current from the river split the enemy, too. And they didn't break into three even groups, as we did – again, the whim of the gods and no cleverness of man. But their beachward division was the smallest, and it seemed to be out of order – caught in some indraught near the beach by their camp, or so it appeared to me.
'Troas!' I called, and he came to my side. We were rowing lower bank only, creeping across the great bay and saving our men for ramming. I pointed at the chaos among the landward Phoenicians. And now that they were closer, I could see that they weren't Phoenicians, either – they were Greeks.
There were plenty of cities who served Artaphernes, of course.
'Tide rip,' Troas said before he even reached the command deck. 'Not much, but enough to pull them apart. They should row faster – they'd be fine.'
'Stand by me,' I said. I nodded at Lekthes. 'Take his bench.'
Lekthes was used to this, but the look he shot me was full of reproach. He'd had a year of feasting as a warrior in the great hall – he had no desire to go back to rowing. But he went.
Ahead of me, the Samian ships to the seaward of Archi suddenly dashed from the line. They were twenty strong, and they acted in concert. They went from the slow cruise all the way to the fastest attack stroke so quickly that we were watching them pull away before we were sure what they were doing.
But the other ships in our part of the first line followed them.
Nearchos looked at me blankly.
'The Samians are going for the enemy Greeks!!' I stood on the rail and bellowed to Lord Achilles. He could see it as well as I could, but in my youthful arrogance, I assumed he wouldn't know any more than his son.
He nodded.
Ahead of us, the exiled Ephesians and Lemnians followed the Samians.
Lord Achilles had his squire raise a banner of red cloth and wave it.
'Up tempo to fast cruise,' I said. I ran to the midships fighting platform, leaving my 'navarch' with the
