She waited while Sittonax translated. Then she came forward. ‘You used us as a feint, didn’t you?’
I shrugged. ‘Does it matter? Your brother was going that way, no matter what I said.’
She turned her back. ‘This is over. Go.’
I took a deep breath. ‘I know you plan to attack my ships tonight,’ I said.
She whirled.
‘Give me food, or I will challenge your brother. And he will fight me in the morning, and die.’ I spoke quietly, and Sittonax paused, looked at me and shook his head. And then translated.
‘That will make me king. But by my customs, that will also make me an oath-breaker, because we are guest friends. Listen, Tara. These starving slaves — they are my friends. I told you I came here with other men. I will not let them die. I will kill to save them. They are my brothers. But we do not have to do it like this. Sell me food and water, and I will slink away tomorrow, leaving a tribute of gold on the beach, and you can tell any story you like.’
Her eyes bored into mine.
‘I liked you,’ she said slowly. ‘But you are not my idea of a man.’ She shook her head ‘Too… greasy.’
I shrugged.
‘Very well. Don’t ever come back here. Don’t ever cross that beach.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I will see to it that you have fifty pigs and grain and water.’
We ate, within a ring of guards.
I left her two pounds of gold, making those the most valuable pigs I’ve ever eaten.
And we sailed away north.
The coast of Gaul was kind to us. The sun kissed the water, and the breeze carried us most of the day. Demetrios tacked while we rowed towards evening, and we landed three hundred stades north of Oiasso by my reckoning. We ate sausage cooked on driftwood, and drank water from a spring, and in the morning we rowed away, leaving a handful of terrified shepherds. We killed twenty sheep and left them payment in silver. Pork doesn’t keep in summer, but mutton does, even if not well prepared.
I was losing my taste for piracy.
By midday we could see the islands, tall against the low, swampy coast. We knew the first one was Olario, and we found the town on the landward coast — a fine town of slate-roofed stone houses, rising from the sea, with a good harbour, a stony beach and a natural mole of granite.
I sent Daud and Sittonax and my other Keltoi ashore with silver.
What followed was more like Sicily or Rome than what I expected from barbarians. Once again, my whole idea of barbarians was about to be stood on its head.
The Town of Olario was a Venetiae town. The warehouses were Venetiae, as were the piers and the stone roundhouses. And the enormous round ships — like a Greek merchantman built by giants. The town wasn’t the size of Athens, or even Piraeus — but it would have been a good town in Attica or Italy.
It had sewers.
And customs officials.
They came out to our ships, and looked at my crews, at my emaciated stick figures, at my cargoes, and asked for bills of lading. This from a man in a frieze cloak with a bright saffron shirt, gold earrings and a magnificent gold neckpiece.
‘Your slaves are in horrible condition,’ he said. ‘They might bring disease. You may not sell them here, nor may you land them.’
‘They are free men,’ I said. ‘I have rescued them from the Phoenicians.’
The man had a fine red beard, with which he fiddled often, and watery blue eyes. He wore a magnificent sword and a pair of knives mounted in gold. I assumed, incorrectly, that he was the local warlord or king. ‘Which Phoenicians?’ he asked.
I waved at Iberia, eight hundred stades to the south by my reckoning. Really, by Vasileos’s reckoning. He’d recovered from ten days of puking, and now had one of Lydia ’s sisters, which he had named Adelphi.
My chieftain stroked his beard. ‘By violence?’ he asked.
You always know when questioning begins to go wrong. ‘I have come from the Inner Sea to trade,’ I said. ‘The Phoenicians tried to take my ship on the sea. They seized my friends. I have spent months rescuing them.’
Red Beard nodded. ‘We have no quarrel with the Phoenicians,’ he said. ‘We don’t love them either. But we trade with them.’ He looked around. ‘You are Greeks, eh?’
I smiled. ‘Yes. I am from Greece.’
The man smiled for the first time. ‘Wonderful pots, you Greeks make. And stonework — there was a Greek man on Ratis, five years ago.’ He nodded. ‘An architect.’
It was stunning, to hear this barbarian use the Greek word for a man who built stone buildings. In fact, I was being mocked.
But then he offered me his hand. ‘Detorix,’ he said. ‘I am the inspector for Olario. I will clear your cargo for sale. You will have to write me out a list of everything you have. Yes? Like any other port. And there will be taxes. There is a harbour fee.’ He smiled. ‘You expected painted savages, perhaps?’
I had to laugh.
It took me, Demetrios, Doola, Sittonax and Vasileos three days of sitting on the waterfront to count, number and list every item we had.
It was not entirely unpleasant.
For example, the Amphitrite had been inexpertly looted and left to sit on the beach. Her hull had a large patch of rot that was exposed when we careened her — where she’d sat on the beach, fully laden on the sand. We were lucky she hadn’t sunk. On the other hand, most of her cargo was still intact, most of the bales not even broken. The bale of ostrich plumes was the most important. But our Greek fish oil and our Greek wines were still in the bilges of Lydia. We had nine packets of dyes, lovingly wrapped in pigs’ bladders and then sewn in canvas. In fact, all they’d taken off the Amphitrite was the copper. The Lydia still had hers — twenty three ‘hides’ of copper.
We also had about a hundred water amphorae, which we would have kept for fresh water except that the Gauls offered such wonderful prices for them. And the Gauls had a cheap, high-quality substitute. The Gauls built water and wine containers of wood wrapped with cord, roots, or metal bands, called barrels. They made them in eight sizes — standard sizes, and every barrel-maker had a set of patterns to follow.
I tried to imagine imposing a set of standard sizes on Greeks. Or even standard measures.
You do know that the mythemnoi varies from town to town, don’t you? And so does the dactyl and the stade. Oh, yes.
Where was I? Barrels. Wonderful. I loved to watch the Gauls build them. They were light and strong and when they were empty, you could pull the hoops off and they became a bundle of slightly curved boards that took up no space.
The locals were especially interested in my trireme. They crowded around, looking at her construction, her rowing benches, her ram bow and all the bronze there.
After two days of intense work, my crews had beached, emptied and careened our ships. Our goods had been sorted, dried, counted and in some cases, reluctantly burned or buried.
So, to my sorrow, were six men. Fifteen days at sea, even in high summer, are not the ideal anodyne to months or years of brutal slavery. They weren’t my friends; they weren’t men I even knew. But they had, however briefly, been my men.
We had a funeral feast for them, and we burned them. The Gaulish priests helped — they were surprisingly well-educated men, who knew the stars, and two of whom knew Greek, although the version they spoke was comically Spartan. They must have learned from some Laconian, some wandering mercenary or trader.
Herodikles, my Aeolian, said the words. He was recovering well. He had been an aristocrat, a priest from a good family. But by his own admission he had been a slave fifteen years, and some of that had been horrible. He flinched when Doola raised a hand in greeting. He ducked his head when Seckla let out a whoop of delight.
Demetrios was more cautious. Otherwise, he was very much himself. He smiled a great deal and didn’t talk as much as other men. He was very sure of himself at sea, and less sure on land.
Daud had been a slave a long time. He survived the Phoenicians well enough.
