of marines. I spent money like water – I had plenty. And the rowers in that ship still owed me three months of service before wages were due.
I intended to sail that ship into Aristagoras's town at Myrcinus, in Thrace, and take Briseis – or give her the ship and go horseback, overland. It was a foolish plan, a boy's plan, but without it, the next weeks would have been worse. It is a fine example of fate, and how the gods work. Had I left all to chance, I would have died, and many others with me. But I planned carefully. My plans all failed, of course – but among the shards of my broken plans lay the makings of an escape.
The first rain of autumn came and went, and my intentions were set. I sent Briseis a message via the Thracian king, asking her to be ready. Miltiades cautioned me again – directly – against killing Aristagoras. I don't remember what I told him. Perhaps I lied outright. I thought myself tremendously clever. So did Miltiades. The hubris flowed thick and fast, that autumn.
The grain was sheaved in the fields along the Bosporus. The peasants had their harvest festivals, and the sun shone in an autumn that seemed more like summer – when Hymaees descended on the Troad with thirty ships and a thousand marines. The first we knew of his arrival was that our southernmost town was burned and all the inhabitants sold into slavery, and the refugees poured up the one bad road with tales of war and slaughter.
The next day we heard that Hymaees himself was in Caria with twenty thousand men, and the Carians were unable to make a stand. Just like that, the northern arm of the revolt was going down.
The Carians didn't give in without a battle, but we were too busy to help them. Miltiades ordered all the ships manned. We worked night and day to refurbish the two triremes taken in the night attack and with them we had ten hulls. On the first day of the new month, Miltiades led us to sea, down the Bosporus past the still smoking ruins of our town. He had no choice – if we didn't fight, Hymaees would plug the Bosporus like a cork in a bottle and take us, one town at a time. And no one would come to our aid. That's the price of being a pirate.
We sailed down the Bosporus in early morning, and the Phoenicians got their hulls in the water. Then they did the oddest thing. They formed a defensive circle. They outnumbered us, but they pulled all their sterns together, pulled in their oars like a seabird tucking in its wings, and waited for us.
I had never seen anything like it, but Miltiades had. He spat in the sea and leaped from his ship on to my Storm Cutter. 'Bastards,' he said. 'All they have to do is not lose.' He shook his head.
I nodded. 'Say the word, lord – say the word and I'll go at them.'
Miltiades slapped my armoured shoulder. 'I'll miss you when you leave me, Arimnestos. But there's no point.'
He went back to his own ship, and we spent a fruitless day circling them. Twice, Paramanos tried to lure one of them into an attack by passing so close that his oar tips almost brushed their beaks, but they weren't coming out.
We camped close to them, just four stades up the coast, and the next morning we went for them in the dawn by ship, but they were awake and ready. We threw javelins and they shot bows and I went ashore in the surf and cleared a space on the beach, killing two men in the surf, but Miltiades ordered me back to my boat. I took a pair of prisoners – Phoenicians, of course – and I gave them to Paramanos.
I still think Miltiades was wrong. We had the moral advantage – those Syrians were afraid of us. If we'd landed-
But he was the warlord and he saw it differently.
That night Paramanos called us all together. 'There are ships missing,' he said. 'The two boys that Arimnestos captured say that eight ships went north last week.'
Miltiades was incredulous. 'Eight more ships?' he asked.
'Where bound?' I asked.
Paramanos looked at me. 'Myrcinus, in Thrace,' he said. 'They went to get Aristagoras.'
I walked away, calling for my officers.
Miltiades chased me down. 'You are not going,' he said.
I ignored him.
'This is my fleet,' he said.
'I own two ships,' I said, 'perhaps three. I owe you nothing, lord. I was leaving anyway. And I am going to Myrcinus.'
He seemed to swell, and in the torchlight, his hair caught fire. He was like a titan come to life – larger than a mere man. 'I give the orders here,' he said.
'Not to me,' I said. 'I have your word.'
That took him aback, and he changed tack. 'There's nothing you can do, lad!' he said, his voice suddenly pleading. He was a good rhetorician. 'The town will already be on fire.'
'You don't know that. It rained two days last week. If the storm caught them on the coast, they would have lost days.'
'Give it up!' he said.
I walked away. My men – my trusted men, Lekthes and Idomeneus and Stephanos, Herakleides and Nestor and Orestes, and Hermogenes – got the rowers together and started loading Storm Cutter and Briseis and Raven's Wing.
But Heraklides, always the voice of reason, came up to me out of the dark and wouldn't let me act in anger. 'Miltiades has been a good lord to you, and you owe him better than this,' he said. And he was right, although at the time I growled at him.
Herk fed me a cup of wine, his arm around my shoulders. My men were standing around, waiting for my word, and there was some pushing and shoving at the edges between them and Miltiades' men.
'This won't end well,' Herk insisted. 'Listen to me, boy. I knew you when you were a new free man. A pais. You're a big man now, a captain, lord of five hundred rowers and marines. Every merchant in the Aegean pisses himself when your name is said aloud – but you are nothing without a base and a lord. And if we squabble with Miltiades, who will fight the Medes?'
'I am not nothing,' I said. But I knew that he was right. I couldn't keep a crew together by myself – unless I wanted to engage in pure piracy, bloody murder for profit. And I did not. Heraclitus was too strong in me, even then. In fact, what I liked least about Miltiades was his ceaseless search for profit.
I remember sitting there, on a damp rock just above the tide line, my feet in the sea-wrack, when I heard a raven – not a gull, but a raven, cawing in the dark, like Lord Apollo's voice speaking. I held up a hand to silence Herk and I listened, and then I got to my feet and walked off down the beach to where Paramanos and Miltiades were arguing. Herk followed at my heels, clearly afraid I was about to open the breach – but I was not. The god had given me the answer, and I thrust between Paramanos and Miltiades and shouted for them to listen. Their faces were backlit by the big fires we had burning at the sentry posts – we didn't want the Syrians to surprise us, either.
'We should all go,' I said.
That silenced them.
I almost remember what I said. I felt as if Lord Apollo stood at my side, whispering fine words, good arguments, into my ear. Or perhaps Heraclitus, his servant.
'Listen, lord. You think I am blinded by love – perhaps I am. But if the Mede is foolish enough to send eight ships away, we can catch them and destroy them. And then the balance is ours. It might make him hesitate. It will increase our power over the Phoenicians.' I paused. 'If we take those ships-'
Honeyed words, Homer calls them. No sooner were they out of my mouth than Paramanos was agreeing. Sometimes, there is a right answer – an answer that suits every man. It took us less time than it takes to heat a beaker of wine to convince our lord that we had a winning strategy, and then he grinned, drank wine and clasped my hand, and we were friends again, instead of rival pirates.
We left in complete darkness. That was the campaign where I learned the value of having all my men in high training – the value of making my rowers feel as elite as the hoplites felt. We left that beach like champions. We left our fires burning to deceive the enemy and we raced north under oars, and every man felt as if he was swept along on Nike's wings. We came on Myrcinus as the sun set on the third day. The lower town was afire and the Syrian ships were drawn up on the rocky beach south of the town.
Miltiades summoned me aboard his ship, and I leaped from my helmsman's rail to Paramanos's and then on to the Ajax, the black-hulled Athenian trireme that was Miltiades' pride. Cimon and Herk were already there. We
