stop, broadside to broadside, Idomeneus got grapples over the side, but at the cost of three marines. The Phoenicians were poling us off while their archers flayed us. Galas went down with an arrow in him, and my deck crew was melting — men were taking cover behind the masts, behind screens, anything. And this from four or five archers.
I had the helm, but we had stopped. On the beach, men were pushing ships into the water — a dozen slim hulls launching all together.
‘Fuck,’ I said aloud. I remember, because there was a lull, and my imprecation carried clearly across the water.
I drew my sword and caught up my big hide shield, a simple Boeotian I’d bought on the beach at Chios. I didn’t have my armour or my good war gear or my new helmet, and I was carrying a shield just two goat hides thick. Even as I raised it, an arrow punched through, tore my hair and carried on to sink into the sternposts.
I ran down our central platform. A running man is a hard target for archers, but that didn’t stop them — they knew I was the helmsman. Every archer fixed on me, and two arrows hit my shield, but neither pinked me.
Amidships, Idomeneus had two grapples fixed and guarded by his marines, their big shields covering him and his ropes. Opposite, a pair of Phoenicians sawed with swords at the hawsers that held us fast. I saw all of this in a glance and pivoted on one heel. I leaped from the command platform to the gunwale by Idomeneus, covered for a valuable moment by the two aspides of his marines, and without pause — hesitation would have been death — I was across the gap, my left foot on their gunwale and then both feet firm on a rower’s bench, and I started killing.
I took the men who were sawing at our grapples in two blows, and then I cleared the rowing bench by beheading the oarsman. His blood sprayed back on the men behind him, and I punched with the rim of my light shield, caught one of the Phoenician marines who was surprised at the length of my arms and knocked him flat, and I was on their command platform.
‘Hellas!’ I shouted.
I was fuelled by desperation and the elation of a starving man offered food. I hadn’t fought like this in more than a year — and I was better than a mere man, thugater. My shield and my sword were everywhere, as if they had eyes and thoughts of their own. I remember rotating my hips and punching
And then Idomeneus was shouting my name, and I raised my hand, and the enemy deck was clear. I had my blade in the air and there was a half-naked sailor under the edge — but I stayed my hand, as Dion had asked.
‘Apollo!’ I called, and let the man live.
Idomeneus and the marines had followed me aboard. There were a dozen warships in the water, and Stephanos was already past us, rowing hard for Miletus. That’s what he was supposed to do.
‘Mal!’ I called. He turned his head, and I waved at him. At the same time, I cut the grapples that held the two ships together. ‘Go!’
It took three shouts, but he got it. He started striking men with his stick, and the oarsmen on the starboard side began to push against our hull with poles and spears and even their oars.
Idomeneus was on the stern of the ship I’d just taken. I saw him grasp the oars, and I picked up a javelin that one of the enemy marines had dropped — or thrown.
‘Reverse your benches,’ I ordered in Greek. A few men obeyed, and others looked blank, or mutinous.
I threw my javelin into one of those who was refusing his duty, and he fell across his oar. Then I pulled the spear free of his corpse. ‘Reverse your benches!’ I roared.
They obeyed.
I pounded the oar-beat against the mast with the spear-butt, and they rowed. It wasn’t good rowing, but the men coming off the beaches weren’t eager to fight in the dark and they weren’t any too sure what had just happened, either. We backed down the channel — first a stade, and then another stade — and then the arrows from Miletus began to fall on the enemy ships following us.
One bold ship made a last try. Before the final bend in the channel, a beautiful long trireme with a red stripe went to full speed in half a dozen ship-lengths — a superb crew — and tried to ram us, bow to bow.
Idomeneus had the ship, and he steered well, so that the two rams rang together like a hammer and an anvil, and our ship bounced away, apparently undamaged.
Arrows fell from the near bank, so many that they were visible against the faint light of the sky, and there were screams from the red ship, and it fell away. I could hear a familiar voice cursing and ordering men to reverse their cushions — a Greek voice.
Archilogos’s voice. A man I’d sworn to protect — now leading the ships of my enemies.
The men of Miletus greeted us like brothers — better than brothers. We’d killed an enemy ship and seized another right under the eyes of their blockade, in full view of the walls, and we would have been drunk as lords in a few hours if there had been any wine in the lower city.
As it was, my first hours in the siege of Miletus showed me all the things I’d never wanted to know about sieges. The people were as thin as cranes — the children looked like old people, and the women looked like children. A handful of the town’s best fighters still looked like men — they got extra food, and they needed it. The rest looked like starved dogs, and Histiaeus, the tyrant of the town, had to set his fighters as guards to get our grain ashore.
I took our pay in gold darics. ‘I’ll be back,’ I promised.
Histiaeus was a tall, beautiful man with a mane of black hair and golden skin and a heavy scar across his face. His brother Istes was another of the same — they had been raised at the Great King’s court and spoke Persian as well as Greek, and they looked like gods. I liked Istes better — he was less addicted to power and a better man — but he laughed at me. ‘No one comes back a second time,’ he called as my men got the stern off the beach. ‘But thanks!’
That stung. ‘I’ll be back in ten days, by the fires of Hephaestus and the bones of the Corvaxae!’ I shouted to Istes. I craved his good opinion. In those days, men said Istes was the best sword in Ionia. He was a few years older than me, and we had never been matched against each other. But we were instant friends, that night in Miletus.
So, having sworn my oath before men and the gods, I ordered my men to row. We were heavily laden — I’d filled the ship with all the women and children that dared to come with us. We headed straight back to sea.
It was dark as pitch. I reckoned that Archilogos wouldn’t expect me to try again immediately, and I was right. We rowed out of the harbour at ramming speed, made the turn at the harbour-mouth in fine style and tore up the estuary, and the Medes and traitorous Greeks on the beaches at Tyrtarus must have watched us go by and felt like fools, but none opposed us. I stood on my stern and laughed at them, and the sound of my mockery carried over the water and bounced back from the bluffs above the town.
Probably a stupid taunt, but it felt good, and it still makes me smile to think of how Archilogos must have writhed at the sound of my laughter.
And then we were out to sea and running before a freshening wind.
All our rowers were exhausted by the time we made Chios. We disgorged our cargo of refugees, and the people of the fishing villages fed them. But they wouldn’t keep them, and we still had them aboard when we headed back north to Mytilene.
I had to give command of the new ship to Harpagos. I was out of officers, and Idomeneus, for all that he was a skilled killer, had no interest in the sea and could no more inspire men than I could play a flute. Harpagos was a good seaman, and his quiet solidity was the sort of thing men trust in a storm or a fight. I gave him a try, and I never regretted it.
I took all three ships back into the great harbour at Mytilene, and still there was no sign of the rebel fleet. Nor had anyone heard a word of Miltiades. It was as if the Persians had already won.
I paid my grain merchants from the gold I’d received in Miletus.
‘And I’ll buy the rest of your grain,’ I said. I offered them a handsome profit, for men who never had to move from the comfort of their own homes, and I filled three ships with grain in sacks and jars. I’ll say this for them — for all the Lesbians — they took the shiploads of refugees from Miletus and treated them like citizens.
This time, we sailed in broad daylight. My crew trusted me now. And weeks of action had made them better
