Alexandros looked at Doola. And at me. I didn’t give him anything — my thoughts were running like an athlete in a race, and I wasn’t sure what I wanted.
He didn’t say anything, but sat back.
Demetrios took Doola’s hand. ‘I will come with you to get your wife. You came and got me,’ he said. ‘But I am with Vasileos. I am no hero. I want to trade and go home rich. I have been away from home too long. I am scared all the time, even with all of you, my brothers, around me. This sea is not my sea.’
Sittonax looked at me, and then around at all of them. He kicked his long sword out along his leg and leaned back. ‘You’re a pack of fools,’ he said.
We all looked at him.
‘It’s autumn, or near enough. If Doola’s wife isn’t a slave tonight, she will be tomorrow night. Or not. And she’s not your wife. You foreigners never get our ways. She broke the pact. She’s gone.’ He shrugged. ‘But that’s not what makes you fools. I think we only made it into the Outer Sea by a miracle. I want you all to think of that storm.’ He shook his head.
‘Four days north of here is the delta of the River of Fish — the Sequana. One of the largest of the Venetiae communities is there. They hire guards there, and ship tin across the mountains.’ He looked at us. ‘To Marsala, you fools. Up the Sequana to my people’s country, and down the Roan to Marsala. You can be home in five weeks. It is what the Venetiae do. They run the tin trade to Marsala.’
Sittonax had told us all about the tin route, back in Marsala. And now we were on the other side of it.
It was almost funny.
Vasileos pulled at his beard. ‘We aren’t going to get our ships over the mountains,’ he said.
‘Sell them,’ Sittonax said.
Now I leaned back and scratched my beard. I was looking at Sittonax. He was cleaning his nails.
‘We can do both,’ I said.
Often, the smallest and least consequential things become the greatest complications. It is the hand of the gods in human affairs.
I chose to represent our going to sea as my willingness to give the escaped Alban slaves a run across the waves to their homes.
Detorix spoke to them rapidly in Greek, and then in one of the Keltoi tongues — too rapidly for me to follow. And then he smiled. ‘They should stay here,’ he said.
It was a surprisingly false smile. I liked Detorix. He loved gold, but he was as friendly and as plain-spoken as a trader ever can be. ‘Why?’ I asked.
Detorix frowned. ‘We will not allow you to take them home,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘Please do not press the point.’
He withdrew from the meeting like a man who had overplayed his stones in a game of polis.
Something was wrong, and I didn’t have time to figure it out.
What made no sense is that he couldn’t actually give orders. As far as I could tell, I had three hundred armed men and he had… a dozen other traders, and none of them struck me as deadly blades. I understood — from Sittonax — that all the coastal tribes feared the Venetiae; they had many large ships and the money to hire warriors. The Keltoi had mercenaries, like everyone else.
Sittonax sought me out. ‘The Albans have something to say,’ he said.
‘Best say it quickly,’ I said. Detorix was approaching with a long tail of fellow Gauls: six of them had spears.
Behon, the healthiest of the Albans, came and took my hand. He said a few words.
Sittonax waved his hand. ‘He pledges his undying loyalty, and so on,’ he said. He sounded bored.
‘He says the Gauls don’t want you to cross the little sea because that’s where the tin is.’ As he said the words, Sittonax’s intonation changed, and he became more excited. ‘But of course!’ he said. ‘Now it is I who am a fool. Of course the tin comes from Alba.’
Behon’s grey eyes bored into mine. ‘You be my chief, and I will be your man,’ he said. At least, that’s what Sittonax said for him.
His brother, who had a name something like our Leukas, took my other hand.
Detorix came to a halt. ‘Foreigners,’ he said formally.
I gave both Albans’ hands a squeeze and let them go. ‘Yes?’ I asked.
Detorix pointed at our ships. There were men aboard them. And they were being poled off the beach and into deeper water.
‘I have seized your ships. Temporarily.’ He smiled a troubled smile. ‘I am sorry to be so high-handed. But without meaning to break the law, you have threatened our trade. I had no idea you had these Albans aboard; nor that you had any intention of making the crossing. I cannot allow it.’
I looked out over the water. ‘You are taking my ships,’ I said.
Detorix shrugged. ‘Only until you swear the oaths and offer some surety that you will not sail for Alba.’
I want you to savour the irony, thugater. I had never intended actually to sail for Alba. I had intended to go down the coast, rescue Doola’s wife, if it could be done, and kill a few Carthaginians.
It amused me that there were barbarian bureaucrats, too.
I laughed.
The Albans got behind me.
Detorix resented my laugh. How could he not?
But it was funny.
He looked at me, and I laughed. And finally I pointed at the men behind him — about thirty men, fewer than half of them armed.
‘Detorix,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to make threats. But you have taken my ships. Why shouldn’t I kill the lot of you and storm the town?’
He swallowed sharply.
I shook my head. ‘Detorix, there is no reason for us to be foes.’
Detorix nodded. ‘I cannot allow you to sail for Alba.’
‘I’ll give you my word not to sail for Alba.’ That was easy. And I wasn’t some Persian truth-teller. I’m Greek. I can lie when I please.
He started to nod, and a man behind him said something sharply, in one of the many Keltoi dialects.
‘I will have to send for instructions,’ he said. He licked his lips.
I was glaring. ‘How long?’ I asked.
He didn’t know. He was sending to the capital.
I turned to my friends. ‘If we kill any of them, I have to assume there will be no further trading,’ I said. ‘And that screws us, if we want to take Sittonax’s route to the Inner Sea.’
Doola spat.
Gaius crossed his arms. ‘You have to assume that his instructions will include several boatloads of soldiers.’
‘If we’re going to fight, the time is now. We have every advantage,’ Neoptolymos said.
Sittonax shook his head. ‘You can’t fight. These are the Venetiae. Their reach is long — longer than… anyone’s. No one will sell you grain. Every man’s hand will be against you.’
‘Not if we kill them and sail south,’ I said.
But the moment had passed.
It is odd. Five years before, I’d have wiped the town off the face of the world, sold the women as slaves and killed the men. Or died trying, which, as events proved, was the more likely.
10
I slept badly. My dead troubled me, but my living troubled me more. I was uncertain as to whether I had treated Tara well, I was deeply aware that I had treated Lydia badly, and the combination ran through my dreams and into my waking life.
