Chians as payment for their hospitality and let the Aegyptian crew take the empty ship south for home, unharmed — my thank-offering to Apollo, twenty-six sailors alive who I’d usually have killed. The Chian fishermen told us that their lord, Pelagius, and his nephews had visited, and that the whole fleet of the rebellion was gathering at Mytilene. Then we were away, up the coast of Chios, across the deep blue to Lesbos.
We made Mytilene under a tower of cloud, and the beaches were lined with ships.
At last, we’d found the rebel fleet.
Miltiades had done the work. He’d gone from island to island, rallying the rebels to make a stand. He’d assumed I was dead, until he heard of my first load of grain going into Miletus.
We were sitting in the great hall, the Boule of Mytilene, and men toasted me like a hero, and it went to my head like neat wine.
‘You saved the rebellion,’ Miltiades said, in front of a hundred captains. Epaphroditos was there, grinning from ear to ear. Paramanos shook his head and raised his cup to me, and Cimon stood at my shoulder and pounded me on the back, which made my head hurt.
There were other captains and lords I knew well enough — Pelagius of Chios, a few Cretans and a dozen Samian captains. But there were men I’d never seen before. One was a tough-looking bastard called Dionysius, who carried a kalyx krater on his shield and claimed descent from the god of wine. Miltiades took me around the hall and introduced me to all the leaders.
It was like a whole new rebellion. And Miltiades had done it, for all the praise he lavished on me, taking his ship from inlet to inlet all through the autumn, wheedling, cajoling and threatening the Ionians and the Cretans and the Samians until they put together a fleet.
‘We drove the Medes from the Chersonese in a week,’ Miltiades bragged. ‘And you kept Miletus alive at our backs. In a few days, we’ll run down the coast and flush out their squadron, and then we’ll fill Miletus with grain.’
Everyone smiled. It was a turning point in the rebellion, we all agreed.
Next day, I sold my ivory, my ostrich plumes and my fine Aegyptian glass to the same merchants who had sold me grain. I’d brought two sacks of gold darics from Miletus, and now I added a quantity of lapis, a stack of gold bars and a pile of silver to my hoard.
With Idomeneus and Philocrates and Stephanos and Galas and Mal and Teucer to help, I carried it all across to Miltiades’ great ship
‘Choose, lord,’ I said.
He shook his head. ‘You are the best of my captains,’ he said.
‘He says that to all the girls,’ Cimon added. ‘Thank the gods you earned some gold. We earned nothing but abuse, sailing about like busy mice. I took a good prize over by Cyprus, but it turned out to be the property of one of our “allies”, and we had to return it.’ Cimon glowered at his father, who shrugged.
‘May all the gods bless you, Arimnestos,’ Miltiades said.
Then, my debts cleared, I paid my oarsmen. By common consent, we included our Milesian archers in the payout. Most men received a pair of gold darics and some change. I’d seldom managed such a rich payout, and Stephanos and I watched with unconcealed glee as our boys went up the beach, roaring like fools, determined to spend it all in a haze of wine and fornication.
Then I paid the officers. Galas and Mal counted as officers now, and they were unable to believe their good fortune, and young Teucer, a mere archer, looked at his wool hat full of silver and shook his head. Stephanos the fisherman was doing the same. ‘Never had so much money in my life,’ he said.
‘Save it, brother,’ I said, putting my arms around him. ‘You’re a captain now. You’ll need to keep treasure against a rainy day — when I take an arrow, or when you go your own way.’
He might have protested, but instead he gave me a serious nod and went off. He sent almost all his money home to his sister in a fishing boat commanded by his brother.
Teucer gambled. When he was poor, it wasn’t an affliction, as he and Philocrates played for stones from the beach and shells, but once he had money, he was a terror — the more so as he won. Constantly.
I put a waxed-linen wallet full of lapis and gold and a fine, gold-worked bottle of rose scent into my leather bag, and shook my head. It is easy to be rich, if you take other men’s wealth. I had the value of my father’s farm and forge in my bag — ten times over. Those Aegyptian merchants had
That afternoon, we had a council of all the rebel captains and lords at Boule. The seams in the rebellion showed a lot faster when there wasn’t any wine to drink. The Samians felt that Miltiades had wasted them, taking them north to the Chersonese. The Cretans wanted a battle, and cared nothing for the odds. The Lesbians and the Chians seemed to me to be the only men who actually cared about the rebellion — they were the one contingent that thought in terms of the good of all. Perhaps it was because they were between the northern Chersonese and the southern Cretans — the men in the middle. Everyone argued about the loot that had been taken.
Demetrios of Samos rose in late afternoon and pointed at me. ‘This boy took two ships full of ivory, but he has not shared with the rest of us,’ he said.
I hadn’t expected it. To be honest, I’m always surprised by the foolish greed of men, and their envy. I thought I was a hero. I expected everyone to love me.
So I just looked at the fellow.
‘See something you like, boy?’ he sneered. ‘Let’s have a share of your precious ivory. Or did your lover Miltiades take it all for himself?’
I stood there, angry as Orpheus in Hades, gulping like a fish. I wanted to gut him on the spot, but I couldn’t think of a thing to say. Miltiades glared at me. He didn’t want to step in — that’s what the Samian wanted, to show that Miltiades was my master.
Finally, my head began to work. ‘I’m sorry, my lord,’ I said, my voice low, to force men to be quiet. I bowed my head in mock contrition.
‘You are?’ he said.
‘If I had understood that we were to share prizes taken
He leaped to his feet. ‘What the fuck are you saying?’ he snarled. ‘That I can’t earn my keep? Is that it?’
I shrugged. ‘I gather you’ve never actually taken an enemy ship,’ I said in my softest voice. ‘As you seem to need to pay your crews from my profits.’
Dionysius’s great belly laugh carried through the hall. ‘Sit down, Demetrios! No man needs to share what he took before he came to the fleet, as our young Plataean knows full well. Don’t be an arse. What we need to decide is a strategy.’
Voices came up from every part of the hall. ‘Miletus!’ some shouted. ‘Cyprus!’ called others. Not a few insisted that the fleet should make for Ephesus.
Miltiades’ son Cimon appeared at my elbow. ‘My pater wants to see you tonight,’ he said. ‘To plan for the future.’
I nodded.
Cimon slapped my back and went out, apparently uninterested in the fate of the rebellion.
A cynic would say that Miltiades had spent the summer and autumn rallying rebels so that he could use them to reconquer his holdings in the Chersonese. And a cynic would be correct. Miltiades needed the power base that the rebellion offered him. He needed the rebellion to continue, so that when he dealt with Athens, he could appear as a great man on the front lines of the conflict.
What Miltiades didn’t need was for the rebels to defeat Persia. If the rebellion was victorious, he would suddenly be nothing but the tyrant of the Chersonese. Athens wouldn’t need him, and neither would the rebels. Further, his greatest rival among the Ionian tyrants was Histiaeus. Aristagoras had been his greatest rival — but I’d killed him in Thrace. Aristagoras had been Histiaeus’s lieutenant, and Miltiades had no reason to want Miletus to be free of siege and powerful in the east. At one level, Miltiades wanted control for himself. At another level, he was an Athenian, and Athens wanted Miletus humbled — Miletus and Ephesus and all the Ionian cities that rivalled Athens for supremacy at sea.
