My men were forming two neat lines on the sand. Lekthes and Paramanos had the men mustered and ready, and they looked good.
Herakleides was at the right end of the line, and I introduced him to Heraklides – the Aeolian and the Athenian version of a son of Heracles. And then we walked down the rank of men.
'Must have been quite a storm,' Miltiades said. 'These men look like a crew.'
Then he went and looked at the ship. 'Heavy wood,' he said. 'Nice timber.' He nodded. 'What do you think?'
Agios ran a loving hand over the sternposts where they rose in a graceful arc over the helmsman. 'Tyrian. They build well.' He looked at Miltiades. 'This is a heavy ship meant to carry a heavy compliment and twenty marines. He'll be slow, even with a full compliment at the oars, and brutally expensive to maintain.'
Miltiades nodded. To me, he said, 'You have a helmsman?'
I looked at Paramanos. 'I don't know,' I said. 'I can't speak for the man I want.'
'Fair enough. That's a heavy ship. I'll buy her from you and keep you as trierarch, or I'll pay you a wage for her. Herk will work out the details.' He grinned. 'Mostly what I want is you. You're worth fifty spears now.'
I grinned back. 'I believe it, lord. But will your treasurer believe it?' Herk bargained like a peasant. That was fine with me – I was a peasant. We argued like hen-wives, and I finally turned and left him on the beach. He didn't want me to own the ship. His contention was that I had less than half a crew of oarsmen, no deckhands, no marines and no helmsman.
So I tracked Paramanos down to a wine shop – that is, to a blanket awning over a couple of rough stools, with a huge amphora of good Chian wine that was buried in the sand. The shopkeeper charged by the ladleful. The wine was good.
'You have a wife and children,' I said, after asking permission to sit.
He drank some wine. 'I have a pair of daughters. My wife died bearing the second. They live with her sister.'
I nodded. 'What would I have to do to convince you to sail as my helmsman?' I asked.
He put a copper down for another cup of wine. 'Buy me,' he said. 'And aim high.'
I laughed. 'One eighth,' I said. 'That's my opening offer and my final offer.'
He raised both eyebrows.
'You know Miltiades of Athens?' I asked.
He nodded. 'The Pirate King,' he said.
I nodded. 'Exactly. He wants me to serve him. Someday, I imagine he'll stop milking the trade fleets for money and he'll go back to Athens and make himself tyrant there.' I saw a dramatic new vista opening before me – a vista where I was a nobleman, a shipowner, the sort of man who could marry Briseis. 'But I have a mind to spend a year or two making money. I'll give you one eighth of our take – in silver – if you'll serve a whole year.'
He drank more wine. 'Tell me who gets the other eighths,' he said.
'One for me, one for you, one for keeping the ship,' I rhymed off. 'One for the other officers, three divided among all the other men. One in reserve – for a crisis. If there's no crisis, then in a year, we share it out – by eighths.'
He sat back. 'I'm a merchant,' he said, 'not a pirate.'
'Fifty silver owls down,' I said. It was from my own hoard, but I had money coming from Miltiades. I let the sack clink on the table.
'Fifty silver owls bonus,' he countered, and he put his hand on the bag but did not seize it.
Who wants a helmsman who doesn't have a high opinion of himself? I had to smile, because three years earlier I had been a penniless slave in Ephesus. Fifty silver owls was a high price – but I'd seen him in the storm. Yet there was still something about him I did not trust. He was older, and more experienced – I think I assumed that was the problem. And he feared me without respecting me – that was another problem.
But he was Poseidon's own son. 'Done,' I said, and took my hand off the pouch.
He made it vanish. 'I should have asked for more,' he said. He leaned forward. 'So – do you know that two men are following you?' I went back to Herk with the Nubian at my shoulder, and found him in another wine tent. He was enjoying a massage while drinking. I let him interrogate Paramanos and he was satisfied.
'You found yourself a Phoenician-trained navigator just lying around?' he asked. 'The gods love you.'
'The men dividing the spoils saw him only as a black man,' I said.
'More fool them. So you have a helmsman. And you think that makes the difference – that now I should hire you.' He raised his head and the man kneading his back slapped him down.
I would have laughed, but there was a familiar face peaking at me from a corner of the stall – Kylix the slave boy.
Kylix the slave boy, a foot taller and four fingers broader. He didn't look like a boy any more – he was right on the cusp between boy and man.
He grinned. My promotion from slave to free man to hero hadn't changed much, for Kylix – I'd always been a hero to him.
'Message,' he said, and put a piece of animal skin in my hand. 'And – for your ear,' he said, and I bent down for him.
'That ship of yours is so heavy I wonder if she'll fit through the Bosporus,' Agios was saying, unaware that I was listening to Kylix.
'A friend wants to see you be a lord,' Kylix said, handing me a leather sack. It clinked. My surprise must have shown on my face – slaves love to surprise masters. 'It is a free gift, lord.'
'How are you, Kylix?' I asked.
He shrugged. 'Me? I'm a slave.' He laughed, but it was forced. 'Maybe I'll become a sea lord, too.'
'Tell Archi I'll buy you,' I said.
'I wish you could,' he said. He looked around. 'He hates you.'
I nodded. 'I know.'
I clasped Kylix's hand. He frowned, and then looked into my eyes. 'Aristagoras has paid men to kill you,' he said. 'Like Diomedes at home.' He looked at Paramanos, and somehow I thought that he was accusing the man. Then he was gone.
Herk leered. 'Friend of yours? Nice-looking boy.'
'Someone else's slave,' I said.
'Sure.' Herk laughed and made a rude gesture. 'Learned a thing or two from the Cretans, eh?'
I grimaced. And looked in the leather sack. It held gold – dozens of gold darics. Fresh gold darics.
I was holding a small fortune. And as usual, my thoughts showed on my face.
'Good luck? Death of a rich but unloved relative?' Herk asked.
Agios peered at the bag from over my shoulder. 'The slave just gave you his life savings?'
I couldn't imagine why Archi, who spurned me in public, had just sent me so much money. With Ephesus fallen to the Medes, his own fortune must have suffered, or so I thought.
I cocked an eyebrow, though. Oh, how the former slave loves to play the great man. 'I don't think I need to hire out my ship after all,' I said.
'Really?' Herk asked. 'Your friend sent you money for rowers, too?'
How soon the bubble bursts.
'But as you are in funds, I think I can trust you to get rowers. Don't play high and mighty with me, lad – I knew you when you were a slave like yon. I'm not sure I like your Phoenician-trained helmsman and I'm not sure I think you are ready to command a ship. Does that kill our friendship?'
It was a far cry from what I'd heard all afternoon, and a good deal more like straight talk. 'But?' I asked.
'But I'll hire you on for Miltiades, at the usual rate. Two hundred obols a day. That's all found.' He smirked. 'You have to fill up your own compliment of oarsmen.'
'And fifty a day for me?' I asked. 'I assume the average man gets a drachma a day?'
It was Agios, not Herk, who cut in. He frowned. 'I didn't agree to any such foolishness. You pay yourself out of the two hundred a day.'
Now it was my turn to frown. 'That's for aristocrats, friend. They can pass it all to their men and take nothing but political profit.' I shrugged. 'I'll look for another offer. Epaphroditos made a mention-'
'He is lucky to keep command of his ship. The Aeolians are full of tyrannicides.' He smiled. 'It's good to be the
