Gaius was the most changed. He was deeply, passionately angry. It struck me that he’d have been the first to die if we hadn’t come back.
‘They treated us like animals,’ he said one night on the coast of Iberia. I didn’t bother to point out that we all treated slaves like that. But by the time we reached the Venetiae, he was better — his smile a little more bitter, but otherwise more like himself.
Detorix and a dozen other traders came to drink wine with us after I handed in our lading lists. They were like traders all over the world, carefully controlling their reactions, looking for advantage. Doola, who always handled these transactions, was not yet recovered from the loss of his wife. He wasn’t interested in trade, or anything else.
Demetrios stood in for him, dickering, arguing, or being silent. I stood back, watching. We had decided that I would pose as the ‘patron’. It was useful for Demetrios to say, ‘Ah. Well, I must ask the patron.’ And sometimes he would give a hurt smile, as if he wanted nothing better than to sell his ostrich feathers for a song, and he would say, ‘Ah, but the patron-’
The food was good, and we paid in gold. We sat in actual wine shops and drank half-decent wine — too thick, unwatered, I felt, but there you go. Each to his own taste.
It was good to drink wine at all. And I bought great barrels of the stuff for the recovering men, because wine is the very best thing for a man recovering from ill health. Wine, and apple juice, both of which were available.
And meat.
And bread.
They were getting rich off our need to feed hungry men. But they were traders, and they had the foodstuffs to sell, and we had nowhere else to buy.
I had about enough gold to keep all of them for a month. They weren’t, strictly speaking, my people. But The Gauls left almost immediately, after coming to me with their thanks. A dozen of them stayed: they weren’t Gauls at all, but Albans, from another one of the islands. They also came to me, in the first days among the Venetiae, and asked if I would sail them home.
I said I’d consider it.
Our third evening on Olario was beautiful, and we sat in our wine shop on the waterfront, watching small boys fish in the harbour. Watching three young women posture for Seckla, who was diving naked from a rock. With the exception of the African, all my friends were there, and other men, like Alexandros and Vasileos, who had earned their right to be included. It was like a mix of democracy and oligarchy. Command always is.
Demetrios shrugged. ‘It’s a good news, bad news kind of thing,’ he said. ‘The tin doesn’t come from here.’
Sittonax shook his head. ‘Thieving bastards. I worked for them! They said the tin comes from the islands.’
I laughed. ‘Ever seen a tin mine?’ I asked. ‘I haven’t, but I know what the ore looks like. Any bronze-smith does. And it won’t come out of sea-rocks.’
‘So they don’t have tin?’ asked Gaius.
‘They do. It’s their principal export.’ Demetrios sat back and played with a loop of beads. ‘It comes from somewhere near here. I get that much.’
‘Is it worth finding the source?’ I asked.
Demetrios shrugged again. ‘I don’t know. But they drive a hard bargain. They want all our amphorae — and they offer a wonderful return. All the wine, all the oil. I think they only want the jars, but why should we care? In each case, we make five or ten times what we paid.’
My turn to shrug. ‘A profit we might match at Marsala, and save ourselves danger and labour and travel.’
Demetrios nodded. ‘I thought the same. It is worse for our copper — they offer no better than the Inner Sea price. They say there is copper all along this coast, and in Iberia.’
‘That’s what the Iberians said, too,’ I admitted. Heracles and Poseidon, the weariness of it, transporting copper halfway round the aspis of the world, only to find that it is worth less there than at home.
Vasileos spoke for the first time. ‘Makes good ballast,’ he said wryly.
‘We have the gold,’ Gaius said eagerly. ‘We could just go home.’
I looked around. Seckla was drying himself with his chlamys, to the complete approval of three young Keltoi, who had never seen anyone quite so like an ebony Apollo.
‘How exactly are we getting home?’ I asked.
That set the lion among the sheep.
Demetrios nodded. ‘I wanted to talk about that, before we start trading,’ he said. He looked at me.
‘We don’t want to go back through the Pillars,’ I said. ‘And for certain sure, we don’t want to go home that way with heavily laden trade ships.’
Vasileos nodded and leaned forward. ‘That squadron at Gades is fully alert, now,’ he said. ‘Even if they were asleep, when we come to the Pillars, the current runs outward. Without a perfect wind?’ he made a motion with his hand. ‘We just wallow around waiting for their triremes to snap us up.’
‘It is worse than that,’ Demetrios said. The Sikel was smiling, but it wasn’t amusement. More like courage. ‘There’s a rumour that came in with the fishing boats this morning that there is a Phoenician squadron on the coast south of here. Burning its way north.’
I hadn’t heard that. ‘Poseidon’s spear,’ I said.
Vasileos nodded. ‘You had to know they’d strike back,’ he said. ‘All we did was singe their beards. And they must have taken some of the Keltoi.’
I felt foolish. ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘They’ll strike for Oiasso,’ I said, standing up.
Vasileos took my hand. ‘If they did, they hit it days ago. And our one trireme won’t save it.’
‘And we don’t exactly owe King Tertikles anything,’ Sittonax said.
I sighed and sat. Doola raised his head. ‘My wife!’ he said, and put his head down again.
‘Jupiter’s dick,’ Gaius said. ‘I’d love to put a spear into some Phoenicians.’
Seckla, coming in from the water, grinned. He sat by Doola — Alexandros watched him like a hawk — and put and hand on the older man’s shoulder. ‘Did I hear someone suggest we could kill Phoenicians?’ he asked.
‘We’re trying to reckon how we can make it home,’ Vasileos said.
‘I, too, wouldn’t mind a chance to kill some of the slavers,’ Daud, usually quiet, smiled.
‘That won’t get us home,’ Vasileos said.
‘Yes it will!’ Gaius said. ‘We strike their squadron and then slip past it, and they keep going north.’
I thought about that.
‘The good sailing is over in a few weeks,’ I said. I looked at Vasileos, of course — I never made a statement about weather or sailing without his consent. He nodded.
‘If we… sail south,’ I shrugged, ‘it can be done. But not with Amphitrite. Only rowed ships will make it into the Pillars in one go, unless we have the luck of the gods, and I don’t think we can count on that.’
‘Detorix wants the trireme,’ Demetrios said. ‘He wants to buy it.’
‘Then I’d have no ship!’ I said.
Demetrios shrugged. ‘I’m just saying,’ he protested. Then he looked around, as if afraid of being overheard. ‘The Venetiae are in fear of the Phoenicians coming here,’ he said. ‘If you plan to go to sea and fight, you don’t want to tell them that.’
I gave him the look men give each other when they mean they weren’t born yesterday, nor the day before, either.
I looked around. ‘What do you think?’ I asked Vasileos.
He shrugged. ‘Are we traders? Warriors?’ He met my eye. ‘I want to go home alive. With a little silver. I do not need to be a hero.’
Daud shrugged. ‘I am home,’ he said. ‘I can walk to my father’s farm in ten days.’ He grinned at his stick leg. ‘Two weeks.’ He looked around too. ‘But if you were going south to fight the Phoenicians, I’d come.’
Seckla smiled at me. ‘I’ll go wherever you go.’
Gaius was sharpening an already sharp knife. ‘I want to kill Phoenicians.’
Neoptolymos said, ‘I am very strongly of Gaius’s view.’
Doola raised his head for the first time. ‘I want to try and rescue my wife,’ he said.
