I rubbed my beard, chagrined. ‘Do you have a better plan?’ I spat. For all my vaunted maturity, I didn’t really like to be questioned.
He shrugged. He was watching the ocean. ‘Do we all agree we can’t run the Pillars again?’ he asked.
He looked around, and we all nodded.
‘So: we have to make the coast of Gaul. Right?’ He was very serious. He leaned forward. ‘I say we sail west — yes. But as soon as the wind shifts a few points, we sail south into the deep blue. South for Oiasso. Right across the hypotenuse of the triangle — right, Ari?’
I had been teaching him basic geometry. There’s a lot of time to kill when you are at sea, or camping on headlands every night. And teaching your best navigator some geometry can prove quite valuable.
Seckla nodded, and even the cautious Doola looked pleased. ‘This is a better plan,’ Doola said.
Neoptolymos and Gaius and I felt differently. ‘This plan is all luck and seamanship,’ I said. ‘All the Venetiae fear the deep blue. They say ships die out there. We’ve already ridden out two storms, Demetrios — I don’t really want to face a third.’
Neoptolymos nodded. ‘Ari’s way keeps us on a coast all the way,’ he said. ‘If the Phoenicians catch us, we can abandon the ships and run inland.’
Gaius agreed. ‘Demetrios, you have a ship that sails closer to the wind than mine. You have a deck for men to sleep under. And — honour requires me to say this — you are a far better sailor than I. You could weather a storm that would kill me.’ He looked around. He was a proud man — who is not? But he hung his head. ‘When I lost you, I was afraid. Afraid right up until I found you again. I want a plan that keeps us together.’ He shook his head. ‘Or I want to give my command to someone who is… better at it.’
Seckla, of all people, put an arm around him. ‘You command very well,’ he said.
Gaius shrugged. ‘Outwardly, perhaps. Inwardly-’
I looked at Demetrios. ‘But surely that is how command is for all men,’ I said. ‘You worry for them. They row for you.’
Well, at least that line won me a laugh.
Demetrios came and stood by me. ‘Your plan is the plan for the warrior-landsmen. My plan is the plan for the fishermen.’ He made a rocking motion with his hand. ‘Either might work, or be disastrous. But I agree that you have the luck of the gods, so I will do as you desire. Choose!’
‘I held this council so that I would not have to make this decision alone,’ I said.
Seckla laughed. ‘Nice try. Let’s get moving, before the Phoenicians solve the whole thing by hitting us in the dawn.’
I agreed, but first, I explained my plan for losing the enemy around Vecti. And Gaius and I wrote out a simple signal book on wax tablets and handed them around.
We got off our rocky beach in fine style, and we were out in the rollers before the morning raised the wave height and made launching impossible. And we were at sea for three hours and hadn’t seen a sail, and hopes were beginning to rise.
And then, they were there. The first sail nicked the horizon at mid-morning, and by noon all five were visible, and gaining. We were sailing at the speed of the slowest — Nike, I’m sorry to say. They had long-hulled triremes that cut the water like dolphins, and they ran off three stades to our two.
The sun had passed its zenith, and I poured wine over the leeward rail and put the helm down for Vecti, now visible — at least, to anyone who had been there before — on the starboard bow. By the will of the gods, the timing was perfect. They were well up with us, and it was late enough in the day that a cautious trierarch would be scouting the coast for a place to camp.
East by north. An hour, and the island filled the horizon. And then I turned and ran due west again. The Phoenicians were now hull up, perhaps twenty stades away. Perhaps less. Honey, hull up is when you can see the hull of a ship over the rim of the world — the horizon. With a stubby merchant ship, you can see a glimmer of his hull at thirty stades or more, but a low warship is invisible until he’s close — unless his mast is up.
Seckla had gone aboard Gaius’s ship, to support him. He’d left me Leukas, who was becoming one of us — sea time bonds men quickly, or leaves them enemies. So it was Leukas who stood by me at the helm. Doola was amidships. Everything was laid by, ready for action. Every man aboard knew that the easiest solution to our problem was to weather the island of Vecti and leave the Phoenicians gasping in our wakes — and run for Gaul.
Doola came astern, about an hour before I’d have to execute the heart of my plan. He looked out to sea and made a motion, and Leukas smiled and walked amidships down the catwalk.
Doola wouldn’t meet my eye. ‘I want to sail south,’ he said. ‘I confess that your plan is better — safer. I agree that Demetrios is pretending that all of us have his knack for weather and sailing.’
I nodded.
‘But I want my wife,’ he said. ‘If it was… Lydia… left at Oiasso. If it was your Briseis, of whom you speak in your dreams-’ He met my eye. ‘I am the old, mature man. I am the solid man, the one whose shoulder you all cry on. But I want something. I want my wife.’
I had sworn to live and die with these men. They were my brothers. And what, exactly, were we? Were we merchants? Were we warriors?
What would Heraclitus say?
Well, he would most likely have said something dark and mysterious and difficult to make out. But he insisted to a group of us once that in friendship, men came closest to the gods because friendship was selfless. He gave a eulogy once for a boy who died protecting another boy from dogs — he said that this fiery soul had gone straight to Elysium, because there was no finer death than giving your life for your friends.
I didn’t stand there pondering it.
I just want you to understand that there was no way that I was telling Doola no. In three years, I don’t think he’d ever asked me for a single thing.
We were slanting down on Vecti, on a quarter-reach, with the wind a few points off the stern.
‘Everyone ready to row,’ I called. Everything would now depend on the ability and willingness of my friends to trust me and read the signal book.
Because I was throwing the plan out of the window.
There was one advantage to having the smaller ships. We were lower in the water.
What I was about to try was insanely risky. It made me smile: in fact, as soon as I’d made my decision, I began to grin uncontrollably. There is a feeling you get, as a commander — a feeling you get when you know you’ve made the right choice, even if you fail.
I had it immediately.
I grinned at Doola. ‘We’ll get your wife,’ I said. We were six stades off Vecti, racing for the westernmost point of the island. In the old plan, we should have dropped our masts and turned north to row through the channel.
‘Signal that we will turn to the SOUTH.’ I pointed at the Great Blue.
Doola had the signal tablet, and he began to flash my bronze-faced aspis. We had an alternate signal system with lanterns, and another with cloaks. The sun isn’t as common in northern waters as he is at home.
Amphitrite signalled that they understood.
Euphoria signalled that they understood.
But Nike shot in under my stern. Gaius leaned far out over his curved stern. ‘ South?’ he bellowed.
‘South!’ I called. ‘Trust me!’
Gaius shrugged, and his ship dropped astern.
‘Signal again,’ I said.
One by one, the three ships acknowledged.
‘Sails down on the signal!’ I called. Doola repeated it in three flashes. This, we had practised.
‘Do it!’ I roared.
Leukas’s men sprang into action, and our sails dropped to the deck, our masts came down with a rush and no one was killed. The deck crews grabbed the billowing canvas, trapped it against the deck and sides and began folding it aggressively. The triakonters had the harder job — no real deck crews, less space, no deck or even a good catwalk.
But the sails were gone in the beat of a heart. Even a nervous heart.
