The ones to the west of us turned on their oars and raised their mainsails and ran.
It was the right decision. We’d evened the odds in one headlong rush, and now we had the fresh crews and the edge that victory brings, and they knew it.
Now, in sea terms, we were supposed to let them go. It is not for nothing that we say ‘A stern chase is a long chase’. When you are astern of an enemy, you have no advantage of wind direction. You have only the speed of your ships. For the most part, Greek ships are faster than Phoenicians, but we were heavily laden.
And when they turned away, we had won. It became our duty, by the laws of hospitality, to rescue the Greek ship.
But the closer Phoenician had lingered in his turn — bad ship-handling. The westernmost one had issues, too, and got around before his sails were well set, leading to some yawing.
Megakles looked at me. He had his grin on his face. ‘That guy is a fool,’ he said, pointing with his chin at the nearer Phoenician. ‘Bad crew.’
Seckla was all teeth. ‘Let’s take him.’
Doola had just unstrung his bow. Without demur, he restrung it.
It was like that.
The oarsmen grumbled.
But, as I pointed out, we were under sail.
We ran about six stades, and the sail began to shiver. The wind was changing, the sun was clouding over and the air had that taste it gets when there’s a storm over Africa. We got our sails down long before our prey, and they wallowed in the gusts as the wind changed and we were coming up on them hand over fist.
Gaius was well astern of us, and five stades to the north. This was a natural consequence of the weather change, and if the pattern of wind gusts had been different, he’d have come up with the third Phoenician and we’d have been left to the south — but there came a point when he was no longer in the fight.
That decided me on my tactics. We crept up the last three ship-lengths, using the boatsail to give us an edge, and then we went to ramming speed, our ship shot forward and we caught their steering oars. The enemy ship yawed, and all my archers shot into the command platform.
We ran farther west because we could only turn so fast, and it was then, as the second enemy ship ran like a rabbit, leaving the one we’d just struck to its fate, that I saw Dagon. He was a stade away, and I knew him in a moment.
And every shade of fear and hate struck me, all together.
Ever see a woman you have loved? A boy you wanted and lost to another girl?
You know what I mean. All that, in one moment. I swear, I had all but forgotten his existence, until I saw him.
My ship was already turning under me. The orders were given, the sails were down, the rowers fully engaged. I was not going to catch that galley that day. But I watched him from my command deck until we turned back to our prey.
I don’t think he saw me.
Damn him.
The wounded Phoenician surrendered. He hadn’t a chance: I had a consort on the horizon, and he had lost his steering and most of his officers in one pass. And as soon as we came alongside, some Greek dragged a Carthaginian down into the benches and strangled him.
I put Doola and Megakles and all my marines into him, and we rowed his bow around while Megakles rigged a jury steering oar, and then we were rowing across the new, choppy African wind. Darkness was falling when we came alongside Gaius. Gaius had run west ahead of us. He was the one who came alongside the sinking wreck of the Greek ship and rescued her crew and her oarsmen, filling his ship to a dangerous degree, knowing that I was right behind him. And I was. I came up beside him, and at the edge of darkness, lashed together, we transferred a hundred desperate men. A trireme can only hold so much, and then it won’t float. Or it folds in the middle. But bless Vasileos, he built good ships, and we ran for the coast, rowing as well as we could with so many extra bodies on board.
But they helped, sometimes three men sitting on the same bench. I put forty Greek rowers into my capture, and at about midnight we were off the beach at Katania. Seckla swam ashore, roused fishermen and got beacons lit, and one by one we got our ships landed, stern-first. It wasn’t that the seas were high, or the current treacherous. It was merely that we were exhausted. It was dark. Mistakes were made.
Men were injured.
But we didn’t lose a ship, or an ingot of tin, and in the end we got fires lit, and men fell asleep naked on the summer sands.
16
I dreamed of Dagon. They weren’t pleasant dreams, but on waking they reminded me of how much I hated him, and how deep he was in my soul. He had made me feel weak. He had hurt me.
I wasn’t going to forget. And all my vaunted philosophy wasn’t going to change that he needed to die. I’d like to pretend to you that I felt some greater urge — that I wanted him dead so he couldn’t kill any more preganant women. Something noble.
No. He hurt me. He hurt my image of what I am. I have spoken to women who have been raped. We share this. He hurt my soul. I wasn’t going to let him go.
He’d passed within two stades of me. But Tyche had decreed that his ship got away.
I rose, shivering, and got some warmed wine. I heard the sound of a woman shouting.
I knew there were women aboard the Greek ship; I’d seen them as we swept by. As the sun rose, I found out who they were. There were five of them: a free woman and four slave attendants. They were swathed in cloaks and shawls — like any woman who travels at sea with two hundred men — and in the lukewarm and rosy brilliance of a Sicilian morning, they looked like drab flowers.
Scared, angry flowers.
They had their own firepit in the sand, but no wood. The free woman barked orders, slapped a slave and carried firewood herself, boldly walking to the fire my archers had going and taking from theirs.
I watched all of this, a horn cup of wine in my hand, while Doola sold an ingot of tin to the local bronze- smith’s guild. There were, apparently, six smiths in Katania, and they banded together to raise the money for a full ingot.
Their spokesman was a big man with a heavy beard. He might have been a Plataean. He nodded to me, and we gripped hands and his eyes widened.
‘You work metal?’ he asked.
I nodded, and pointed at Lydia. ‘I cast the rams,’ I said.
He walked down the beach, and we examined the rams. He was interested in my design. I served him a cup of his own local wine — Sicilian wines are superb — and we walked back up the beach to Doola.
‘You are clearly sent by the smith god,’ he said. ‘We haven’t seen this much tin in two years.’
It is deeply pleasing to make another man happy, is it not? And this was a worthy man, the sort of tekne whose craft pleases the gods. It was a fine start to the day, as was the silver that Doola took.
All the while, I watched the women. I was curious, I suppose. The free woman sent a slave girl to borrow a copper mess kettle from the archers, which she did with a flirtatious twist visible from half a stade away, and smoke rose from their fire. They were a competent bunch.
Gaius came, and Doola, Seckla, Daud and Sittonax, sitting on stools or on their cloaks in the sand, and we ate sardines and olives and new bread. Despite, or because of, yesterday’s exertions, we were all in fine spirits, and we broke our bread with the gusto of the victorious.
Gaius saw me watching the women. ‘She was taking passage to Croton,’ he said. ‘No great beauty,’ he added dismissively. ‘Tall as an Amazon, though.’
Doola raised an eyebrow, and chewed on his bread in a way that rebuked Gaius quietly.
Gaius snorted. ‘Marriage didn’t make me an expert on women. Why did it make you one?’
