‘I meant to sail south to Oiasso,’ I said. ‘But either my navigation is very bad, or the bastard Venetiae lied to us about the shape of Gaul.’ I shrugged. ‘The local chief says that your wife is about nine hundred stades south of here.’
He actually laughed. He got up on an elbow and patted my arm. ‘Now that’s an error in navigation,’ he said.
I shrugged. ‘We’re all alive,’ I said. ‘And we have our cargo on the right side of the channel. Even if the Phoenicians catch us now-’
He put two fingers to my lips. ‘Naming calls,’ he said.
‘I plan to sail north another two days, to the mouth of the Susquana. There’s a Venetiae town there.’ I fingered my beard. ‘If you want to take the warriors and go south, I’ll buy horses for you — and I’ll wait for you.’ I shrugged. ‘It’s the best offer I can make.’
Doola nodded. ‘I’ll take it,’ he said. He picked himself a half-dozen fighters — Alexandros, of course — and Neoptolymos, which was no surprise. I traded a full ingot of tin for a dozen good horses, with tack, and some dried fish, dried meat and wine.
In the dawn, there were still no Phoenicians in the offing, and we prepared for sea. One of my fishermen from Marsala — an older man, Gian — took Doola’s place as oar-master. My marines rode away south, with a local guide. Sittonax went with them, leaving Leukas as my sole interpreter.
We got off the beach beautifully — Gian seemed to know his job immediately — and despite heavier waves, we made good time. The coast was low, with some beautiful small islands — one was a magnificent rock rising out of the water, and as we sailed by, we could see that it was dry at low tide. Tides here ran very high, insanely high by the standards of the Inner Sea.
We camped on another fine beach of beautiful white sand. In the night, someone attacked my guards, and we all stood to arms, waiting for the Phoenicians to descend. But in the morning, it was obvious that we’d been raided by a half-dozen young men, because their tracks were clear in the sand.
I sighed for my lost sleep, watched the cliffs carefully and ordered my ships to load. I was suffering from a nagging fear by then, that we were simply too far from home. The men were hungry, and our feast day of a few days earlier was already just a memory.
But early afternoon showed me an opening in the coast — it had to be the estuary of the Sequana. But I couldn’t run into the estuary in the dark, so I stood off.
We spent a brutal night at sea. The wind rose, and I began to wonder if I was going to be wrecked just when all seemed safe. Dawn found me too close to land, with a rising westerly that threatened to drive me hard to shore. I had no choice but to run into the estuary, and once I did that, I was at the mercy of the Venetiae.
On the other hand, I had three warships, one of which ought to be the biggest in local waters — well, of course, there were the Phoenicians. But I hoped that they were well to the west.
I ran into the estuary with a gale rising behind me. The estuary of the great river runs east to west, and we ran east for hours in the odd light, with the sky to the west growing blacker. But the water of the estuary was calm and shallow — almost too shallow.
Amphitrite had trouble tacking back and forth, and she parted company to travel long boards to the north and south.
We had to row, and my unfed rowers were increasingly unhappy. I had no more wine to give them. I walked up and down the catwalk, promising them a life of ease once we reached the town. I had only other men’s word there was a town. The estuary seemed to go on for ever, and by the end of the day, despite the rising storm behind us, we had slowed to a crawl because Amphitrite had no more room to tack and had to row. Everyone was exhausted. No one was making their best decisions.
Late in the afternoon, Gian spotted what seemed to him to be a line of masts to the north. We turned towards the north bank of the estuary and rowed slowly, and as we rowed, it became clear that the fisherman was right. The masts developed hulls — big, high, round hulls like Athenian grain merchants’. And to our delight — well, to mine — there wasn’t a single trireme among them. In the darkness of my thoughts, I’d expected to find the whole Phoenician squadron here ahead of us, trapping us against the storm at our backs.
There was a town, later we knew it was called Loluma, and the first lights were starting to twinkle on the storm-laden air as the sun set. I could see a line of three stone piers, and another pair of wooden ones built, it seemed, of enormous trees. Tied up along the piers were lines of large open boats of a type unfamiliar to me — dozens of open boats, ten yards long and only one yard wide. Closer up, each boat seemed to be carved of a single giant tree.
Beyond the piers and docks was a broad beach — more of a mud-flat, or so it appeared. The tide was high — let me just add that by now, I was beginning to learn to judge their fickle and titanic tides.
We stirred a great deal of interest. A pair of small boats launched from the piers while the light was still good. I wanted to beach all my ships; Demetrios came up under my stern to tell me the same.
‘It’s going to be bad,’ he said.
We lay on our oars, watching that pretty town — big wooden houses with thatched roofs, muddy streets, open fields, cows and the smell of woodsmoke, which to a sailor is the smell of home and hearth. I don’t know what the oarsmen thought, but I know what I thought. I thought about what the Venetiae would say. Now that I was here, I wasn’t sure that the Phoenicians hadn’t burned the other Venetiae settlements behind us. That they hadn’t decided to arrest us.
In fact, we’d gone and bought tin from their source.
The first man up the side of my warship was Detorix.
In a way, seeing Detorix was a relief. He was a known quantity. He’d done right by his own lights, and at least I wouldn’t have to explain from first principles. I saluted him gravely, and then offered him my hand.
He took it and clasped it like an old friend.
‘We thought you dead,’ he said. He smiled. ‘And some of us thought that was the better way.’
‘Still alive,’ I said. ‘How is Olario?’
He nodded. ‘Untouched. The Phoenicians were so busy trying to kill you, they passed us by. How many of their ships did you destroy?’
I shrugged. ‘One,’ I said. ‘At least, that’s all I know of. I lost the rest of them on the coast of Alba.’ I thought I might as well get that in right away.
‘I took my round ship to sea behind you and ran north to Ratis,’ he said. ‘But the Phoenicians stayed on you out to sea.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘So: you found Alba.’
‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘No thanks to you.’
He shrugged.
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I have a cargo of tin. I want to take it all the way south to Marsala. I’ll pay the freightage — in ships. I’ll sell you these four ships for the freight on our tin and other metals. You don’t need to worry about my coming back for your tin — I won’t have a ship on the Western Ocean.’
He smiled. ‘I do want your ship.’ He ran his hand down the steering oar. ‘A warship.’ His lust was evident.
Who was I to stand in his way? And I’d thought it through. This way seemed to me to cause the least chance of resentment. The last thing I needed was for the Venetiae to have me killed to protect their tin monopoly. I wasn’t ever coming back. I was prepared to swear oaths on any god they named.
‘Well?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘I can’t say,’ he prevaricated. ‘But I imagine something can be arranged along those lines. I don’t have the prestige to negotiate such a big trade in one go. I’ll need partners. No one will want these smaller boats-’ He pointed to the triakonters. ‘It’s a miracle they’ve survived as long on our coast as they have. And I imagine you want to land tonight, and not fight that storm.’
This was the part I had been dreading.
‘Yes,’ I admitted.
He nodded.
Leukas translated what we were saying for the other man — another aristocrat, taller, older and wearing a torq of solid gold. I bowed to him. He was introduced as Tellonix. He had the only cloak I had seen among the Keltoi that was dyed with Tyrian dye, bright purple — like a tyrant or a king or an Aegyptian priest.
He looked at my ship. ‘How many ingots of tin do you have?’ he asked in Greek.
