‘Not bad,’ I said, and shrugged. ‘Hektor’s brother gave me wine.’
‘He’s not bad,’ Doola agreed.
We sat in companionable silence until Hektor himself joined us. He lay down. He was a very big man — a head taller than me — and handsome. He had a small amphora and a mastos cup, and he poured a libation. Doola and I both raised our hands in the universal sign of prayer to the gods, and he grinned. He said some words. Then he drank from the cup and passed it. After a while a small boy, I think Hektor’s son, came and brought small fish fried in olive oil. Neoptolymos joined us and ate the fish with the closest thing to a smile I’d seen from him. We ate them, got greasy, drank the wine. One by one the other rowers came, and then the rest of Hektor’s deck crew — all relatives, I guess.
I still think they had made a profit. It was a good little party.
So the next morning, when the boat rowed away, I was at my bench. I was happy enough.
That’s the best evening I remember. I can’t say exactly how long I rowed for the Sikels. At least a month, and perhaps longer. But sometime after that, on a clear day, we saw a trireme hull up to the north, and the Sikels spoke in agitated tones, and we turned south and ran downwind. The two brothers argued, and I will assume that the younger was in favour of maintaining our course to the west and appearing unfazed, while the older was in favor of running immediately and gaining sea room.
We ran south across a darkening sea, and as the wind grew less and less, we went to the oars and pulled. Hektor began to cheat the helm more and more west of south.
But the black trireme was on us.
I rowed looking over my shoulder. I’d been the hunter a hundred times. I’d snapped up coasters just like this one — sometimes three and four at a time. I knew in an hour that the trireme had us.
So did Hektor.
He gathered his family in the stern. I couldn’t hear them, or understand them. But they didn’t shout, and they took weapons. They had a look about them that I know too well. They weren’t planning to resist because they believed they could win. They were resisting so they would die with honour.
The youngest boy smiled and kissed his father and uncles and brothers and then jumped into the sea just before the trireme came alongside, and drowned. Just like that.
Hektor was a giant, a fine figure of a man, but he was no fighter, and the marines from the black hull knew their business. He inflicted no wounds. They spitted him on a spear. He screamed a few times, until one of the marines hit him with the hilt of his kopis the way a fisherman whacks a fish to kill it. Hektor died.
The other Sikels fought, but they didn’t fight well. Two were wounded. But Hektor’s brother and the rest were taken.
They looted the boat, and then they took us aboard. In less time than it takes to tell it, I was a slave rower. Again. On a Carthaginian military trireme.
I know you think I should have risen from my bench with Doola and perhaps Seckla and killed all the marines. But my body was far from healed — healed for fighting, I mean — and I had neither weapon nor armour, and they had everything. I considered fighting. I wondered, almost idly, if I had learned cowardice at last. Doola and I certainly exchanged a look, in the last few moments before the marines came aboard. Neoptolymos grunted once, in real agitation. He wanted to fight, but he looked for my lead.
Well, I’d led once before, and failed.
If Hektor had armed us I’d be dead. So there. Poseidon frowned, and smiled too. I went to a bench, and I had Doola and Seckla at arm’s length, and Hektor’s brother below me, Neoptolymos a dozen benches ahead of us.
The trireme was called the Sea Sister in Phoenician. I didn’t know a man aboard, but in an hour I knew that the trierarch was a capable man with an expert set of officers. Nor were the rowers slaves. This was a military ship, run for a profit by means of piracy. We preyed on the Sikels and the Etruscans, too, as well as the Greeks of Magna Greca. In my first week aboard we took six ships — none much larger than the coaster on which I’d served. Ours was the only one that resisted, and for several weeks they treated us with care, keeping us at arm’s length when we were fed. Wine was rare, and meant we were in for a fight. But at the end of the fifth week, we pulled into Laroussa, a Carthaginian port on Sicily, and the rowers were marched down the wharf from the ship to a barracks — and paid.
I almost expired from shock. I had assumed I was a slave. The Sea Sister was run in Phoenician, of course, and I spoke a little and understood more; and most of the officers spoke enough Greek to be understood. None had bothered to suggest to me that I was not a slave. But in the barracks, I was shown a bed and handed a little less than sixty drachmas.
Doola and I had managed to expand our shared vocabulary, although, to be honest, we spoke neither Greek nor Numidian, but our own language. Now that we were in barracks, though, I found that there were a dozen more Greeks in our crew and they knew the town and the drill.
‘We’re not slaves,’ said an Athenian guttersnipe named Aristocles. ‘But we have very limited rights. You can go to the whorehouses or the agora or the wine shops. You cannot leave town. You cannot refuse to row.’ He shrugged. ‘It is like being a slave with some privileges.’ He grinned, showing me all ten of his teeth. ‘You look like a gent,’ he said. ‘Want to share a ride?’
He meant share a porne at the brothel, and I didn’t really fancy that, but I bought a pitcher of wine and fruit juice on ice — extravagant aristocrat that I was — and a dozen of us drank it in a taverna that smelled like old octopus. Then we ate a huge meal.
The whores came around when the serious drinking started. They didn’t want sex — the ideal customer paid and passed out. But I hadn’t even talked to a woman in months, and my body felt better — the soreness in my side and my shoulders was a little less every morning, and the wounds from Dagon’s spear were healed. I wanted one of them. So I talked, chatted, flirted.
For my pains, I ended up riding one of the older women — she seemed quite old to me — a near-hag of thirty. She had beautiful hair and some teeth and a deep tan and a ready laugh, and she was the only one of the porne who had much of a smile. We drank wine afterwards, and she sat with me, a hand on my arm, for the rest of the evening, and we had another ride after dark. Of course I paid. Porne don’t ride for free, and men who say so lie. But she liked me well enough, and I her. Her name was Lin, or enough. She was a Sikel.
I went from mourning Euphoria to riding an old prostitute. Yes. I was alive.
We were on shore a little less than a week. The Sea Sister was provisioned for sea again, and an officer came and fetched us. We each got a few coins for signing on — not that we had any choice — and in an hour the shore was a dream and Lin’s body was a mirage, and I was rowing.
This time, we went north along the coast of Sardinia, and the sea was empty. The officers were cautious about our landing beaches. Then we turned east into the setting sun and sailed on the ocean’s wind. On the second day, we picked up a small coaster. The crew fought. Two of our marines were killed and the crew of the coaster all suicided, the survivors diving in armour into the sea.
Carthage had a terrible reputation, in those days. A lot of what happened came from the way they treated slaves. The Sea Sister was an exception, but our victims had no way of knowing that. Most Carthaginians, sea officers or lubbers, treated slaves as an expendable resource. Always more where this one came from, whether this one was a skilled rower or a fine mosaicist or an ignorant yokel.
But I digress.
Later that afternoon, we found out why the coaster had fought so hard. Out of the afternoon haze came her consort, a heavy Etruscan trireme. She was ready to fight, and so were we, and our trierarch turned into the wind, dropped his boatsail and we took the oars in our hands.
The trierarchs gave us a short speech. My Phoenician was up to it, so I could tell that he promised all the rowers a share if we won. I passed that on to Seckla and Doola and Neoptolymos and Hektor’s brother.
I was on the top deck, and I knew the business. We went for a straight head-to-head ram, the helmsman watching the enemy ship like a cat watches a mouse’s hole.
‘Oars in!’ he shouted, when we were half a stadion from our enemy, the two ships hurtling together with the speed of two galloping horses.
All our oars came in. On the top deck it was easy, but the lower decks needed time to get the oars across — at the bow and stern, the rowers had to cooperate, putting the blades out through the opposite oar-port. But we were a good crew.
So were the Etruscans.
