The archers loosed — all together.
If they hit anything, I didn’t see it. You can’t always have a miracle on demand.
Our turn, on the other hand, took the Phoenicians by surprise, and our boatsail gave us a tiny advantage in speed but a wonderful, instant advantage in stability.
We were now running north-west, with the wind on our starboard quarter.
The port-side Phoenician came closer.
Doola’s archers got off another volley. Then they cheered. Then they shot again.
And then the port-side Phoenician stopped gaining. Her beak was so close: Poseidon, I can still see it, the waves pushing against it, the eyes on either side wicked with battle lust, the beak itself so close I could have leaped to it.
For three heartbeats, we were a spear-length apart.
And then we passed them, shaving her beak. I’d love to tell you there was a tiny thump as the beak touched our stern — but I don’t think it happened like that.
And we were away. Now we were running easily, and they had to slow to make the turn.
By the time they made it, we were ten ship-lengths ahead.
Seckla was propped up in the bow. He was pointing at the mast and giving orders, and before I felt I had to go forward and sort things out, the mainmast began to rise. It, too, had cables run to the crown. It went up and up, and seemed to take an hour, and astern of us, the Phoenicians started to gain. Again.
Far astern, over by the island, Lydia made the turn in the channel and Nike appeared in her wake. Amphitrite was somewhere to the north, and I’d lost her again against the low-lying coast.
‘We cleared their archers,’ Doola said. ‘There’s not an archer left alive on that ship.’
I wasn’t sure that made much difference.
Again, if I’d had a signalling system — a way of telling Lydia what I intended — I might have made a fight of it. I was confident that I could take any one of the Phoenicians; I was pretty sure that, given the favour of the gods, I could take both, with the Lydia and the Nike ranging up on their sides.
But the risk would have been immense, and the gain very small. Because as the mainmast went home in its box and the chocks were pounded in with mallets, I knew that, barring a weather change, my trireme was safe. None of the Phoenician ships was faster. That was vital. We were all about the same: the second Phoenician had a small edge in speed, which she had squandered waiting for her consort.
Now both ships were five ship-lengths back, and too far to the north. Neither had started to raise their mainmasts, and their rowers were flagging.
Five stades behind me, Lydia ’s mainsail spread like a pale flower turning its face to the sun. Nike followed suit.
The three rear Phoenicians still hadn’t made the turn in the channel.
‘Mainsail!’ I called. I put the helm down, used the steering oars to bring the wind right aft, and then the mainsail was sheeted home and Doola was ordering the oarsmen to get their oars in.
I raised my arms and prayed to Poseidon, right then and there. I sent the Alban boy, whom I christened Tempo, for wine. And I poured it into my favourite bronze cup and threw it over the side, and oarsmen cheered.
It took the Phoenicians a quarter of an hour to get their sails up, and they lost ground with every heartbeat, so that by the time their big striped sheets were hung, they were halfway back to the horizon, and we were running free. Behind them, a nick on the north-eastern edge of the bowl of the world, was Amphitrite, I assumed.
But the bastards didn’t give up.
We’d run off the beach with no food and almost no water — remember, we’d sold our amphorae.
Now, with parched rowers drinking the little water we had aboard, fresh water was an immediate crisis. And as if they knew our ill planning, the Phoenicians dogged us, well to windward but always close enough to snatch us up.
I summoned Doola and Sittonax. I thought longingly of the wine I’d just thrown over the side. Did Poseidon even know this sea, with its horrifying ten-foot-high rollers and whitecaps in every weather?
Sittonax pointed at the long line of low-lying land to the north and east. I could already see the promontory that marked the extreme westward end.
I hadn’t marked what it meant, but before Sittonax spoke, I realized that this must be the westernmost point of Europe.
We were sailing off the edge of the world.
‘What’s north of here?’ I asked. ‘How far to your Sequana River? The River of Fish?’
He shook his head. ‘A long way.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ve never been there. But it must be four days — maybe six.’
Detorix had mentioned the Sequana like it was near at hand.
‘And the main islands of the Venetiae?’ I asked. They were three days’ sail, or so Detorix had said.
Sittonax shrugged, palms up. ‘I’m not a sailor,’ he said. ‘I’m a guard. I was hired inland. On the Sequana, where the big ships unload.’
‘Poseidon’s rigid member,’ I swore. I remember, because Doola looked shocked. It made me laugh, which in turn lightened the tension.
Behon was working on the deck crew, and he came aft eagerly. He spoke rapidly to Sittonax, and pointed north and west. With the wind.
‘He says we can make Alba in a day on this wind. To Dumnonia, among his own people.’ Sittonax looked deeply sceptical.
I tugged at my beard. ‘Ask Behon what he did before he was enslaved,’ I said.
He looked at me. ‘Fisherman,’ he said in Greek.
Aha.
‘Very well. Doola, how’s Seckla?’ I asked.
Doola leaned forward. ‘Gut shot,’ he said softly. ‘It went about three fingers in. Oozing blood. He’s fine for the moment.’
We both knew what a gut shot meant. Sepsis and a nasty death.
‘Go and stay by him,’ I said. I turned to Alexandros. ‘Take the helm.’
To Sittonax: ‘Ask him whether this wind will hold.’
‘Two days.’ The Alban made an odd motion with his lips, as if tasting the wind.
‘Ask him what the coast is like in his Dumnovia.’ I was weighing my non-existent options.
‘Rock, and more rock.’
I swore. ‘We’re going to run on that coast in the dark.’
He shrugged, as if to say that all of us were in the hands of the gods.
In late afternoon, the wind changed two points — to the north.
As the sun dropped towards the endless Western Ocean, the wind rose and we had to brail the mainsail. Seckla was up and moving — I’d have gathered hope, but I had seen this before. Men with gut wounds got better for a little while, and then Apollo came with his deadly arrows, and took them.
As the red ball of the sun fell into the Western Ocean — by the gods, daughters, to look west at the setting sun, and see nothing but open ocean is perhaps the most terrifying sight I’ve ever had within the orbit of my eyes. Somewhere out there were the Hesperides. It was like Like living in a myth.
While being chased by slavers.
We weathered the great promontory of Gaul at sunset; the sky was already full of stars, and the swells lifted our bow and it fell, and the sail was too full for my comfort. Far astern, Lydia and Nike followed me, and Amphitrite, who could sail better on any wind but dead astern, had ranged up and lay five stades away, as close to beautiful as she would ever be in the red, red sunset.
We buried the Phoenicians over the horizon, but when we were at the top of a wave, our lookout on the mainmast could see their mainsails flashing red to white in the setting sun. And far, far to the east, a column of smoke caught the last light where the lead Phoenician galley burned.
I don’t want to say that I thought I could take all six of them.
I’ll only say that, had I had drinking water aboard, I might have tried.
But my men were already desperate, and if we had had to row, even for ten stades, I think that they might
