I ordered Leukas to belay bailing long enough to rig the second boatsail.
In no time, we were moving smartly, and all the oarsmen were bailing, and men began to complain about the lack of water to drink. That’s when I knew we were going to live.
I knew we were well south of the Peloponnese, in the great blue deep between Carthage, Sicily, Athens and Cyrene. I watched the water for a while, and let the wind take us south and west. The rowers were exhausted. I needed land, water and food.
Men slept fitfully, and I told them all we would be another night at sea. I served out half the water we had, and all the grain and stale bread. And a dozen flasks of wine.
It was, thanks to Poseidon, an easy night.
As the sun touched the eastern rim of the aspis of the world with her rosy fingers, we saw a trireme lying under our lee — low in the water, and unmoving, without even a boatsail rigged.
We didn’t even have to run down on her — our ship was pointed at her. I thought for a little bit she might be Cimon’s, or Paramanos’s, but as we got closer I thought she was Harpagos’s Storm Cutter until I remembered that the old Phoenician ship was gone, replaced by a sleek Athenian hull. This was no Athenian. This was a heavy Phoenician warship, the kind that fills the centre of their line in battle.
As we manned the oars and Brasidas armed the marines, we saw them doing the same. The damaged ship began to crawl away from us and her archers lofted a dozen shafts, and one of Ka’s men was killed outright.
They were rowing directly away from us, which was insane. We had the wind. They couldn’t outrun the wind. It was shockingly poor seamanship — not that they were going to escape. Fewer than half their oars were being worked.
I motioned to Leukas, and he took in our boatsail when we were two stadia apart and we rowed — not that my lads were rowing better than theirs, but I had a great many more exhausted, desperate men. I’d like to think my first intention had been rescue, before the arrow killed Ka’s man.
Now, as we closed, the arrows came thick and fast. Ka’s Nubians returned them, shaft for shaft. I went forward with Brasidas. We were going to ram the Phoenician’s stern, and board.
I made it to the foredeck with only two arrows in my aspis. On Lydia we had a screen built in front of the marine’s boarding station — long experience had shown me how dangerous this post was, in a ship fight. My screen was riddled with arrows.
We were ten horse-lengths apart. I could now see why my opponent was running straight downwind.
He had no steering oars.
Damned fool! He started the fight by lofting arrows at us. A fight he couldn’t win.
From the Phoenician ship, there was a roar of rage and a sound of many women screaming.
Another arrow struck my aspis. It struck hard enough to rock my body back, and the head of the arrow drove through three layers of good willow and one of bronze, and the light bronze head protruded a good three fingers above my naked arm in the porpax.
Ka’s lieutenant, Artax, took an arrow that went through the wooden screen and hit his bow, shattering the wood and horn. Artax stood there, with the lower arm of the bow in his hand, staring at it.
I reached out, threw a hand around his neck and pulled him to the deck. Before he got killed.
The truth was, my Nubians were losing the fight. They’d put a great many arrows in the air, and they had the wind behind them.
But they were exchanging arrows with Persians — Persian noblemen, I was guessing by the length of the shafts and their thickness. Warriors trained from youth to draw the bow and shoot well. Bows that I had to struggle to draw — arrows as thick as a lady’s finger and as long as my arm.
My aspis fielded another one. Look, thugater — it is the third aspis there, with the raven in bronze. See the holes? All from that day. Count them! Eleven holes. Each time an arrow shot by a Persian nobleman hits you, your body staggers as if you’ve taken a blow, and when two hit together, you rock back a step.
Ka had an arrow through his bicep. The blood was red, and his skin didn’t appear so dark. He slumped to the deck, his back against the lower part of the screen.
‘Sorry, lord,’ he said.
I shook my head. He and his Nubians had done pretty well, considering.
Brasidas was crouched behind me. The Spartan was brilliantly trained, but he wasn’t stupid. And my marines were crouched in rows, ready to go over the bow.
I wished for Doola and his heavy bow.
‘Keep your aspis up. When you jump from our ship to theirs, go fast, and keep your aspis towards the archers. Understand me?’ I shouted the words.
Men nodded. The man behind Brasidas — Darius — licked his lips.
‘I never thought I’d be fighting Persians again,’ he said.
‘Ah,’ said Brasidas. He brightened. ‘These are Persians?’
I nodded. ‘At least half a dozen of their noble archers,’ I said. ‘Someone on that ship is important.’
We were very close. I wasn’t going to raise my head to find out just how close, but the archery had stopped and I could hear the sound of swords, screams from men who were wounded and the shrill keening of women. Quite a few women.
I raised my head above the screen.
We were passing down the enemy side. You can’t board over a well-built trireme’s stern, of course — the stern timbers rise like a swan’s neck over the helmsman’s station, and there is no purchase for any but the most desperate boarder.
Megakles was running up the enemy’s side. He — or Leukas — had coaxed a burst from our oarsmen, and now we shot along, our oars came in and we crushed the few oars the Phoenician had over the side. Our bow struck their side just forward of the rower’s station and we spun the enemy ship a little in the water, and had we been at full speed, we’d have rolled her over and sunk her right there — it was a brilliant piece of helmsmanship. As it was, we tipped the heavier ship, our ram biting on his keel or some projection below the waterline and our bow catching his gunwale, so that he took on water.
‘ At them! ’ I shouted.
I don’t remember much of the boarding action because of what came next, but this is what I do remember.
I pulled the rope that held the screen and it fell forward, and I jumped up onto it, ran a few steps and leaped for the enemy ship. I got one foot on the gunwale, and had one heartbeat to see the whole ghastly drama.
Right in the stern, around the helmsman’s station, stood four Persians — helmets, scale shirts, long linen robes and fine boots. One was still shooting, and the other three were armed with short spears and swords. Behind them, packed into the swan’s neck, were a dozen women — some screaming, and some clutching daggers. In and among the women were two corpses — one of a Persian with gold bracelets and gold on his sword, his head in the lap of a woman in a long Persian coat with sleeves and a shawl. Even as I watched, she laid his head to the side and took his sword from his hand.
Forward of them was a horde of desperate men with various weapons: boarding pikes, spears, broken oars, swords and fists. The pile of dead in front of the Persians told its own story.
I leaped down onto the afterdeck. Phoenicians are often decked directly above the rowing compartment. This one was decked over the after-rowing area, like Lydia.
Brasidas landed on the deck behind me.
‘Clear the riff-raff away from the Persians,’ I ordered.
The desperate, dehydrated, unfed oarsmen should have been easy meat. But they were not. There were an awful lot of them, and their desperation was total.
Let me tell you how fighting is. While I was killing them, I never thought of how I had been in the very same position, once. Of how understandable was their desperation. I called them riff-raff — hah! I have been riff- raff.
But they were beyond fear. It was like fighting Thracians — they came at me, first in ones and twos as their rear ranks discovered us, and then the mass of them, trying to crush us or throw us over the sides before we got all of our marines on their deck and formed up.
I was hit repeatedly in the first moments. And never have I had such cause to bless an armourer as I did Anaxsikles. I took a heavy blow on top of my outstretched right foot — and the bronze turned it. A boarding pike
