arms with my bronze razor, once. I had enough to worry about. Nor did I feel that by freeing her, I’d do her any favour. She couldn’t take care of herself.
Before the winter was over, I hauled her by the ear down to the market and sold her to a temple priest. Chastity was better than Dais.
The rains came and went, and in late spring, well after the first feasts of Demeter, I gathered my archers and marines — sixteen men — and we bought good horses and headed up the coast to Arla. I left Gaius with Demetrios, and that was a hard parting. Demetrios had left our shared house and moved in with a Sikel slave woman he’d bought, and he was making it fairly clear that we were not friends. He was openly offensive to Seckla, and cautious with Gaius.
Tilla, his slave woman, was just as difficult as he. She seemed to feel we were all in a state of near war. Perhaps this is a Sikel thing, but she wouldn’t unbar their door when I came to say goodbye. She shouted that she knew I’d come to kill her.
By Zeus, I was angry.
I went to embrace Vasileos. He and Gaius were laying down another keel — Gaius had decided to order another trireme before mine was even complete. He was going to go home a rich and powerful man — if he could find oarsmen.
Vasileos heard my tale about Tilla and shook his head. ‘She is a witch,’ he said. ‘She has turned Demetrios into a very small man, and now she seeks to poison him against the rest of us.’
I shrugged. ‘It’s the tin. I’ve seen this with soldiers and pirates — enough money makes men go mad.’
Vasileos shrugged. ‘Your ship will be ready when you return.’
Gaius hugged me. ‘I’ll watch Demetrios.’
As my little cavalcade rode out of town, I happened to see Demetrios watching from the window of his house. So the bastard had been home.
By comparison with Tarsilla, life on the trail was easy, pleasant and adventurous. The wet early spring had given way to an early summer, and the ground was dry. We had two horses for every man. I had Seckla, of course, and Giannis, and Megakles, the eldest of the fishermen who had made the voyage with us and who showed no inclination to go back to his nets. He was old to be a soldier — well over forty, and not much of a fighter — but he was one of those men who can do or fix almost anything, and he was unbelievably tough. He never complained about rations, never minded the weather and never minded work. If I don’t mention him often, it’s because he seldom spoke, but he had a smile — a wonderful smile when he was happy, and a slightly ironic smile when he felt that someone wasn’t pulling their weight. His entire ethical system seemed to revolve around how much work a man did. He seemed to think highly of me, but he wasn’t above mutely handing me a sharp knife and a lot of raw pork with a silent look that said, ‘Hey! Don’t be a pompous fuck. Do some work.’ A very expressive look, for one small smile and a slightly raised eyebrow.
The first night, we stayed on a farm west of Tarsilla. The second night we were in Massalia, drinking wine with Dionysius. He wished us luck, and despite some hard heads, we were away in the dark, picking our way across the tracks to Arla, going up the ridges past the shepherds and into the high hills. It only took us two days to make Arla and I truly hoped — I don’t know why — to find Doola there, or some rumour of him.
After Arla, we became a war band. We rode every day in formation, with three scouts well in front, a main body, a rearguard. Twenty men in armour on horseback is a lot of men, in the high country behind Arla. The Greek homesteaders feared us, and the Gauls barred their doors. We slept in the open, and when it rained, we were wet. Several of my marines had taken Gaul scale shirts — Anchises, one of Dionysius’ men from Lade, and his brother Darius (and what an unpopular name that must have been during the Ionian revolt). When we had been on the trail a week, they were in despair over their shirts, which were turning brown despite relatively good weather.
‘What you need is a dozen slaves apiece to keep you polished,’ I said.
Megakles showed them how to use ash, tow and olive oil to polish iron, but the amount of work involved staggered them.
Living outdoors is a different skill from sailing on ships. Horse care, all by itself, can become a full-time job. Every man had two horses, and they had to be curried, blanketed, picketed out and fed — every night — and curried and fed in the morning. And being horses, we had one down sick before we left Massalia and another lame at Arla. Between maintaining armour, cooking food and caring for horses, every one of us was fully employed from dawn to dark.
Horses. Really, if there was only a way to live without them. They don’t love me, and I don’t love them. I’m a passable rider, and a passable charioteer, too — I was trained to chariots in my youth, as some of you may remember. And I love the look of horses, but, may Poseidon forgive me, I’m a bad aristocrat, because mostly I think they’re the stupidest animals that a man has to deal with every day, unless he herds sheep. What other animal will run off a cliff? Eh?
At any rate, we were five days going north up the valley of the Rhodanus River to Lugdunum, and another two days there in a fine house that took travellers — a large stone house with its own stables, where thirty merchants could eat, sleep and rest. Despite excellent weather, ten days’ travel had tired us out.
We had a spot of trouble in Lugdunum. The second night there, Seckla and I went out to a wine shop to drink. We were unarmed, because the town was well governed and the Aedui lords didn’t allow men to wear arms openly. We were on our third bowl of the excellent local wine when a group of young sprigs came and sat on the trestles. It was all open-air; there were twenty men and a few women all sitting under the vines.
One of them, a curly blond in purple trousers, kept looking at me and glaring. He had gold earrings and was heavily muscled — a lord.
Almost too late, I figured out how I knew him. I’d cut him out of his saddle and sold him back to his father, that’s how I knew him. I can’t remember his name.
He and his friends began the usual way — looking at us and laughing.
Now, thugater, I was no longer eighteen. In fact, that year I was thirty years old. My blood didn’t seem any cooler, and yet a group of Gaulish boys catcalling from an adjacent table didn’t spark me to violence the way it might once have done.
Seckla, on the other hand, began to flush under his dark skin.
I put my hand on his. ‘Let’s just drink and go,’ I said. We didn’t have weapons, and this was an Aedui town.
But Purple Trousers couldn’t let go, and when we rose to leave, he got up and blocked our way to the outside.
He said something, and all his friends laughed. I assume he thought I didn’t speak any Keltoi, but of course I did. He made a statement about what I did with Seckla. I laughed. I suspect he alleged what Seckla might himself have preferred, if you take my meaning, and again, among Greeks it’s not a killing insult, but I suppose it is among Gauls, which is funny all by itself.
Then the man turned to face me, and his face was already transformed — that look men have when they switch from rational creatures to animals. And his fist went back, and there was a dagger in it.
I caught his dagger hand in my left, thumb down, and I broke his arm and took the dagger. And I punched him six or seven times until I broke his nose — all the while clutching his broken right arm in an elbow lock. He slumped, and I kicked him, hard.
I looked at his friends. In Gaulish, I said, ‘He attacked me with a dagger. Next man, I kill.’
They followed us into the street. And down the street. And to our lodgings, gathering friends as they went.
About an hour later, they got torches. Our landlord was none too happy, and sent for the lords of the town, who sent a dozen warriors. And the archon, whatever they called him, ordered me to pay a fine of twenty silver coins — about fifteen Athenian drachma.
When I explained in my not very good Keltoi that I had been attacked, he just shrugged.
So I paid.
Gwan didn’t play any part in this, because as a Senone, he was only going to make trouble here.
We rode out the next day, followed by thirty or so Aedui gentry. But we had food, two horses to a man and pack animals, and they didn’t, and if they wanted a fight, I wasn’t interested. We took the west road over the passes toward Rhodumna and the upper Senones country, and we outdistanced them easily. But I began to wonder how I was going to get back.
