armour, my best cloak. I arrayed myself as Arimnestos of Plataea, lord of men. I took a deep breath and reminded myself that Gelon of Syracusa was a parvenu from Magna Greca, and I was a son of Heracles.
I prayed, too.
We got off the beach in fine style, and I sacrificed a fine silver cup and some superb Sicilian wine to the sea god, and then we were rowing south. When we were clear of Aetna’s shadow the west wind was unleashed, and we began to make leeway to the west — virtually a stade west for a stade south. It was a strong wind, raising a phalanx of whitecaps that made the water look like the Outer Sea.
‘Any stronger, and we’ll have to run west,’ I commented to Giannis and Megakles, who were sharing the steering oars.
Megakles grunted. Giannis smiled — he was about to go to Syracusa, and he was excited.
I remember looking up from Giannis to find that Seckla was pointing at the bow, and I followed his pointing finger to see the low shape of a ship nicking the horizon to the west on the opposite course.
And another astern of it.
And another.
They were all of them triremes, or so they appeared at this distance. A word for you virgins — a warship is low and crewed by rowers, virtually invisible until you are within fifteen stades or so, and even then difficult to see. A heavy merchant is not longer, but it is rounder, higher out of the water, heavier in its masts — much easier to see, in any weather. So we could see that the ship closest to us on the horizon was a trireme or a big bireme, and the ships astern of her were not merchantmen.
Also worth noting is that there are a hundred things a sailor learns in one look at a ship — even a ship on the horizon. Listen, girls: when you are going to the fountain-house with your friends and your slaves, you know it is young Eustacia bending over the well long before you can see her face, right? You know her from her clothes, from the shape of her hips, from the indefinable way she bends her body… isn’t that true?
Just so, at sea. One glance, and you know.
So, the lead ship was Greek.
The two ships behind were Phoenician.
There are these moments in every man’s life — women, too — in fact, whole cities and nations — that define them. And are defined by them. There are moments where you act because you are what you are, and not because you have some finely realized philosophy to justify your actions.
I turned to Megakles. ‘Hard to port,’ I said. Doola was a few steps away on the half-deck. All I had to do was give the signal to raise the mainsail, and it was in motion.
We heeled a little as we turned.
The mainsail raced up the mast, and we had the wind astern, and we were tearing downwind at the two Phoenicians. It feels to me now as if we turned before the words had left my mouth, but in fact it must have taken some minutes, and many breaths must have passed my lips.
None of them questioned me.
Let me say this — with a smile, I hope. I had two ships laden with treasure, and I was a few hours’ sail from the port where we would realize our fortunes, and when I ordered us to turn, the Phoenicians were far too committed to the chase of that Greek ship to pay us any attention. We’d have been in Syracusa by late afternoon.
I turned off our plot to run downwind on a pair of well-armed enemy warships with professional crews, for no better reason than that I hated them, and that they were chasing a Greek ship, and every one of us had been a slave on a Carthaginian.
I threw it all away.
Hah!
Beat that.
We ran down at them; they were well trained and saw us almost immediately, with our heavy sails set. No reason that they shouldn’t.
But they were nearly up with the Greek galley, and they began to range up either side, archers shooting into the crew. The Greeks were resisting. Then, one of the Carthaginians dropped astern, and with a magnificent effort got his crew to row double hard, and he rammed the Greek ship in the stern — a difficult ram in any conditions, and twice as difficult in that sea. The Greek ship’s bow fell off the wind, and she was caught broadside and rolled. The Phoenicians rammed the Greek, but their attacks were oar-rakes, and they may have killed rowers but they couldn’t get their beaks in.
All this time, and we were racing down the wind. And then we saw why they were so bold.
There were two more triremes rowing up in the eye of the wind. Two more Phoenicians.
This was the heavy squadron.
I laughed.
I mean, I had committed my treasure and my ships… right down their throats.
We were under sail, so I manoeuvred my hull right alongside Gaius. I got up on the swan-neck of wood that protected the helmsman, and he climbed out to meet me. We were only a few feet apart.
‘Want to run for it?’ I called.
He laughed. ‘No,’ he said.
That was our command meeting.
Two stades out, we got our sails down. We were racing along faster than a horse gallops, a heady speed that fills the senses, and we had new-built ships with strong bows and new timber. And tons of tin. And new rams, just cast by me. I trusted Vasileos’s work, and I trusted my own.
Ah, the moment.
We were going so fast that when the rowers put their oars in the water, they slowed us, and we threatened to fall off our course as they touched the choppy water.
The two nearest Phoenicians were on either side of the Greek, boarding from both broadsides. Because they’d made shallow oar-rakes from astern, they had both grappled with their bows just about amidships to the Greek ship, so their sterns projected.
We came at them like arrows from a bow, an oar’s-length separating us, my Lydia just astern and to the starboard. We struck their sterns almost together. Lydia ’s beak struck through the enemy ship’s timbers like a man punching through a house wall when his house is afire, and timber flew through the air. It was the most decisive strike I have ever seen. Most ram attacks turn a ship over, and the wreck floats. But the target was stationary, held by the grapples, and couldn’t turn or roll. And we hit hard — hard enough to stove the bows of most ships.
But not my Lydia. We ripped the stern right off, and the Phoenician filled and sank as fast as I can tell it.
Two hundred men died in the next minute — drowned, slave and free, Phoenician nobleman and Greek victim.
I watched them die as my rowers cheered and backed water.
Gaius blew right through his — probably an older ship, or one with the Tenedos rot, because he tore the stern off and his hull slid over the wreck and he raced on, leaving his victim to sink. I admit that I watched his standing mainmast spring forward the length of a horse as he struck, and I feared it would rip through his bottom — but it didn’t.
The Greeks cut their grapples desperately, because the weight of two sinking ships was dragging them down like one of Poseidon’s monsters.
The Greek was in rough shape. He had a dozen Phoenician marines on his decks and a great many dead oarsmen, his stern was badly damaged and his ship was sinking under him.
That was too bad, because I wasn’t leaving Gaius to fight two angry Phoenicians alone, and I wasn’t about to put my marines onto a sinking ship. Doola shot one of the Phoenician marines — a beautiful arrow — and we were away, and that was all the help we offered him. Well, aside from sinking both his enemies, of course.
The two oncoming triremes were under oars, and they had had a long pull — they’d been far to windward. You could see from their rowing.
We had standing rigging, remember. We didn’t have to take our masts down, even after a collision like the one we’d just had. Now we had them aloft again, just as fast, our victorious oarsmen resting.
I laughed. I felt like a god of the sea.
I would have fought fifty Carthaginians, if they had come at me.
