intended to send a strong naval expedition against us. On the opposite shore of the Bosporus, Artaphernes and his generals, Hymaees and Otanes and Darius's son-in-law, Daurises, campaigned against the Carians. The first battle was a bloody loss for the men of bronze, and they sent to Lesbos for help from their supposed confederates, the men of Aeolis, but the new tyrant ignored them. They fought a second battle to a bloody draw, and though they lost many of their best men, they drove the Medes from Caria – for a time.
We felt like spectators – worse, we felt like truants or deserters. The fighting was so close that we could sometimes see troops moving on the opposite shore. I would train my marines with actual sparabara, the elite Persian infantry, visible across the straits.
By midsummer, Miltiades could take no more. He added another pair of triremes to his fleet, purchasing them from Athens, got another draft of new men to crew them, then took us to sea to attack the Phoenician squadron that supported Darius's army.
We had better rowers. Our ships, except mine, were lower and faster under oars, and we could turn faster. Miltiades insisted that we were fighting for profit, not glory, so we were cautious, attacking only when we had overwhelming odds, seizing a store ship here and a Lebanese merchant there.
By the great feast of Heracles, I couldn't stand it any more. My ship was not suited to these tactics and all my crewmen were grumbling because we were snatching at snacks while the other crews feasted.
I wonder now if Miltiades intended that I should revolt.
A great many things happened in the space of a few days, and the course of events is lost to me now. I can only tell this as I remember it. I remember sitting in a wine shop on the quay, drinking good Chian wine with Paramanos and Stephanos. Paramanos had his own ship, the Briseis, and he wanted Lekthes as his marine captain.
I shrugged. 'Can't you find your own?' I asked.
He laughed. 'Why not give me all your marines? You don't use them any more.' He chuckled, and I frowned. It was true. My ship was too heavy for the new tactics.
Stephanos shook his head. 'Why don't we go after them where no one can run?' he asked.
Now, it's worth saying that the Phoenician commander, Ba'ales, had a dozen warships at Lampasdis, down the Bosporus towards the Troad. Miltiades had eight ships, all smaller. We always ran when the warships came out. They always ran from us when they were outnumbered.
It was a hard summer for oarsmen on both sides.
I fingered my beard and admired my ship. I loved to sit and look at him while I had a cup of wine. 'Miltiades can't risk it,' I said. 'We only have to lose once and Artaphernes has us. He can lose two or three squadrons and he can always force Tyre to send more.'
Stephanos drank some wine, admired the woman serving it and began to dabble in the spilled wine on the table. 'I just keep thinking of the Aegyptian raid,' he said. 'No risk, no blood and a crippling blow.'
My eyes met Paramanos's over the rims of our wine cups.
'We could catch them on the beach,' he said. I had the same thought in my head.
'They must have lookouts and coast-watchers,' I said. 'All down the strait. Every three or four stades.'
'We certainly do,' Stephanos said, morosely. Indeed, every farmer on our side of the Bosporus reported on ship movements.
We broke up without any decision. But we talked about it every time we were together – catching Ba'ales on the beach, his men asleep.
And some time just after that, while I was arguing with Paramanos on the beach, Cimon brought a man up beside me.
'I can make Lekthes' career,' Paramanos was insisting.
I knew he was right. But Lekthes was closer to me than any of my other men except Stephanos and Idomeneus, and I was loath to give him up. Thugater, there is no argument as harsh as one where you know that you are wrong.
'By Zeus of the waves, you are a thankless bastard. I found you a prisoner and I've made you a captain-' I was spitting mad.
'You? Made me a captain?' Paramanos grew in size. 'Without me, you'd be at the bottom of the ocean three times over. I taught you everything you know. There's no debt between us-'
'My lords?' Cimon asked. He was my own age, of impeccable ancestry and had beautiful manners. He was already a prominent man, not least because he disdained his father's politics. Cimon always wanted to fight. What he wanted was glory – glory for himself and glory for Athens. On that day, he leaned forward, holding his staff, and the only sign that anything was amiss was the trace of a smile on his lips that suggested we were making a spectacle of ourselves.
'Your heart is as black as your skin, you fucking ingrate!' I did say that.
'And which of us is a former slave? I can smell the pig shit on you from here, turd-flinger!' Paramanos pointed a finger at me. 'You are like all dirt-grubbers – you can't stand to see another man succeed. You think it makes you fail! Lekthes deserves-'
Cimon stepped between us. 'My lords?' he said again.
'Keep out of it, Cimon. I'm tired of his poaching my best crewmen. ' I was equally tired of how, now that he was an independent captain, Paramanos was the highest earner. It suggested that he was right – he had made me. And that enraged me.
Some friend. Youth is wasted on the young. I knew he was right about Lekthes, and I suspected that he was right about how much I owed him.
'Arimnestos?' asked a voice I knew.
The man standing at Cimon's side was dressed like a peasant, in a dirty hide apron over a stained chiton, with a dog's-head cap on blond curls. The name was said so softly that I wasn't sure I had heard right, and I turned, my tirade draining out of me.
'Arimnestos?' he asked again, and his voice was stronger, happier.
'Hermogenes?' It took me a moment. I hadn't seen him for eight years. He was a man, not a boy. He had a bad scar on his face, a cut that went from the top of his scalp to the top of his nose.
He grinned as if he'd just won the Olympian Games. 'Arimnestos! '
We fell into each other's arms.
Such was my happiness – the instant, life-affirming happiness of rediscovering a friend from home – that I burbled the story of my life in a hundred heartbeats, leaving out everything that mattered, and then turned to Paramanos.
'I'm a fucking idiot,' I said. 'Lekthes needs to go and be an officer. And I do owe you my life.'
That shut him up. Ha! What a tactic. Capitulate utterly. Leaves your opponent with nothing to say. He sputtered, and then he embraced me. We sat in my favourite wine shop, Hermogenes and me, Lord Cimon, Miltiades' son, and Herk.
'You never came back,' Hermogenes said. He was happy and angry at the same time. 'We waited and waited, and you didn't come back to camp. And then Simonalkes came back and said that you were dead.' He shrugged. 'I searched the battlefield for your corpse and I couldn't find you. I asked everyone – even Miltiades. He knew who you were, and he knew where your father had fallen.' He looked at me. 'You've changed,' he said accusingly. 'You haven't talked to Miltiades about any of this?'
I shrugged. 'No,' I said. 'He doesn't concern himself with petty things.'
'Petty?' Hermogenes asked. 'Petty? Arimnestos, your cousin Simonalkes has married your mother and taken your farm. Is that nothing to you?' He drank down his wine. 'My father sent me – I don't know, three years back? Sent me to Athens to find Miltiades – and you, if your shade was still in your body. Simonalkes always said that you were dead – killed in the last rush of the Eretrians. But there was no body.' He looked at me. 'What happened?'
I felt a rush of memory. It wasn't that I had hidden the memories, it was only that I hadn't thought about them – I hope that makes sense, honey. Young people live in the moment. I had lived in the moment for eight years. Hidden, if you like. Men in stories rush home to avenge their fathers. I had been a slave. I didn't want to go home.
Sometimes, in the silence of my slave cubicle at Hipponax's house, or on my bed in Lord Achilles' palace, I would think of home. Sometimes I would dream of ravens flying west, or I would see a raven and I would think of
