Half of Archi's rowers were dead, and all but two of his marines. He himself was covered in blood and had an arrow right through his calf, but somehow he was still standing.
I walked up the centre plank from the bow and the spear shaft in my hand had a tendril of blood that ran all the way down from the head. The Phoenician marines tried to surrender, but there was no quarter just then, and my Cretans rolled over them like a wave rolling over a child's castle on the beach, and they were gone, their blood flowing into the sea, and I was so close to Archi I could reach out and touch him.
'Archi!' I said, and pulled off my helmet.
'Get off my ship,' he said, and fainted. We bandaged him. He was cut eleven times, I remember that. And the arrow through his calf. When he came to, he swore at me and demanded that I be executed. No one paid him any heed, but my dreams that our friendship would be restored when I saved him went the way of many dreams.
I had a couple of broken ribs and six bad cuts. My sword arm had taken a lot of abuse – desperate men cut at your arm instead of defending themselves, and die while doing it. Death robs them of force, but I'd always meant to buy vambraces and now I knew why.
I sat on the deck of an alien ship and let Lekthes bandage me. We'd taken four ships, or so Idomeneus told me – which was good, because our own had sunk. It sank empty, but sink it did, the bow opened like a slit belly.
Nearchos came and gave me some shade, along with Troas. 'My father is angry,' Nearchos said, as if it delighted him.
'I suspect he feels that I should have protected you better,' I said. I think I managed a smile.
'Pick any of the ships and it is yours,' he said. 'We can crew it from the survivors. I'm taking this one – unless you want it.'
I raised my head. 'Do I get Troas? What on earth am I to do with a ship? And how is Archilogos of Ephesus?'
Nearchos shook his head. 'You've been out a little while, friend. We lost the battle.'
That snapped me awake, blood loss or none. 'What?'
'Oh, we won the sea battle,' Nearchos said. How godlike he looked – and not a mark on him. He shrugged. 'The Cyprians shattered like glass, and half their nobles changed sides in mid-action. Onesilus is dead. Cyprus is lost.'
'Ares,' I muttered.
'Aristagoras has ordered us to stay together and run for Lesbos.' He shrugged. 'Pater says that we'll crew you a ship and you'll go for all of us. The rest of us are going home.' He made a face.
'Your father is a great man,' I said. 'Troas, you go home. May you have a hundred grandchildren.'
He laughed. 'Never planned anything else. But I'll choose you a good crew. If you swear me an oath that you'll send them home.'
I got to my feet. I felt like crap, but there was something – some weight gone from my shoulder, and not just my scale shirt.
I'd kept my oath. I could feel it.
'I have one oath already on me,' I said. 'I'll do my best, but that's all I can promise.'
17
The second day out from Cyprus, and we were in the deep blue under sail, reaching north for the coast of Asia and familiar waters, and my heart was in my throat with every rise of the bow. The cuts on my arms hurt the worse for the salt air and there was a storm rising in the east. I had one trick of command – I wasn't going to show my fear to Lekthes or Idomeneus, so they assumed all was well and transmitted that confidence down the decks.
But darkness was coming. I knew that I'd fucked up – pardon me, ladies, and by Aphrodite, despoina, you blush like a maiden of twelve – I mean that I knew I'd left it until too late in the day, and I knew we weren't on a course of true north, and that meant we were still at sea when we should have been cooking. And no sight of a coast.
The rowers were sitting on their benches enjoying the rest, and no doubt planning how to retake the ship.
I called my two men and gave it to them straight. 'We're going to spend the night at sea,' I said. 'And the crew will try for us once it is too dark to see.'
Lekthes winced. Idomeneus grinned maniacally. The sea-fight had changed him. For all his limp wrists and exaggerated pretty-boy habits, he was getting to be a hard man. And he knew it and loved it.
'Let them come,' he said. 'There aren't ten men among them.'
I shook my head. 'The ten men you kill are the same ten men we need to get to Lesbos alive,' I said.
Lekthes shook his head. 'So, what then?'
'Get the Cretans up and armed. Then walk up and down confidently and see if there are any of the Greeks worth having. If you find a man you like, send him aft while there's still light.'
The two of them went forward, armed the Cretan deck crew and then began to move through the ship. I'm sure that none of you well-bred ladies has ever been on a warship, so I'll tell you how it is at sea. A trireme has three decks of rowers – they aren't really decks, but three levels of benches with a sort of crawl-space between them. It takes men time to come and go from the oar benches. There's a single walkway, the width of a man's shoulders, that runs from stem to stern the length of the ship. On an Athenian ship, there's a command platform amidships. Some of the easterners do the same and some build a little deck aft, by the helmsman. Regardless, the helmsman sits in the stern between his two oars, which in a modern ship are strapped together with bronze or iron. He's the real commander of the ship, and it is the helmsman's voice that the other officers – the deck crew – obey. Under the helmsman there's an oar master who keeps order and counts time, and a sailing master who manages the two masts and their sails – the mainmast and the boatsail mast, which is up forward in the bow. The rest of the deck crew manage the sails and bully the oarsmen and provide a reserve of labour. On a Cretan ship they also serve as extra marines. Then there are marines – usually citizen-hoplites.
Lord Achilles didn't send me with any marines. I had two dozen of his men as deck crew, and not one of them would make an officer. A more worthless group of men I'd seldom seen, and Troas had his revenge for my 'corrupting' his daughter – by the gods, I swore to have vengeance on him if I ever caught him – not one man who could be trusted between the steering oars. Nearchos may have wanted me to get the very best men, but what I got was the dregs. Men no one needed. Human waste.
The prisoners were the better men in every instance. I had at least forty Phoenicians and twice that in captured Greeks. I didn't even have a full rowing crew – I couldn't man all the lower-deck oar shafts. In good weather, it should have been enough, but there was a storm coming and Lord Achilles didn't give a ram's fart whether this ship made it through the storm or not.
Well – I'd made a small fortune from him, and I didn't mean to die at sea. And yet I remember thinking that I had, at least in part, redeemed my oath, and that meant that I was free to die, in a way. The thought relaxed me, to be honest. I was an honourable man again.
So I stayed in the steering oars, and we sailed north, or more likely north by west, and the sun sank in the sky, and the murmurs from forward grew louder.
A water-clock before sunset, Lekthes came forward with a black man. I'd seen the Nubian when the prisoners had been herded aboard by marines – you couldn't miss him, with his skin as black as new pitch in the smithy, ready for the forging of fine bronze.
'Lord?' Lekthes asked, coming aft. 'This one claims he was helmsman on a Phoenician trireme.' He prodded the black man, and the man looked at him with ill-concealed resentment.
'Claims, my arse, lord,' the Nubian said in Ionian Greek – better Greek than mine. 'Lord, you are too far west of north – I've been watching since the evening star rose. I know these waters.'
'That will be all, Lekthes,' I said, borrowing Aristides' manner when dismissing a man. Lekthes snapped a salute and went back to the decks.
'What's your name?' I asked.
