About the time the Sikels began to give way to despair, I decided that my life wasn’t worth an obol. I thought of the Keltoi woman. There just comes a point where either you submit and become an object, not a person, or you break and go mad. Or you fight.
Or die. Or both.
I gave a great shout. Sometimes, sound can throw a man off. And I turned, trying to get an arm behind me to block his thrust.
Warned by my shout, Neoptolymos came off his bench and went for Dagon’s ankles.
As slave attacks went, it was a fine attempt. But Dagon foiled it by the simple expedient of stepping back. Then he whirled, ignoring us, and stabbed Skethes, his point in and out of the Thracian’s eye socket in a heartbeat. The Thracian fell forward, dead, his blood running out of his eye in a steady stream like wine from a wineskin.
Nestor didn’t rise off his bench. Instead, he kicked. It was a remarkable kick — I was around by then, fouled by the two useless slaves behind me who were cowering instead of helping. But the kick caught Dagon in the arse and he stumbled, and I was on him.
I was in bad shape — tired, arms weak, far from my conditioning as a smith or a warrior. And he was in armour.
And as soon as I had one of his arms, I found out just how skilled he was. He broke my armlock and countered it: in three beats of my heart, he had my left arm in a lock and had begun to dislocate my left shoulder.
The daimon of combat flew to my aid. I put the crown of my head into his jutting jaw — he had a helmet on, but the cheek plates didn’t break the force of my blow. Where a man’s head moves his body follows, and I moved him off his feet and Nestor sank his teeth into the hated man’s thigh.
But he wriggled like a worm, caught me a blow to my head with his right elbow, slammed the shaft of his spear into Nestor and he was away from us — back three steps. If even one oarsman had aided us But none did.
He grinned. ‘I knew you’d try, lover,’ he said, in Phoenician. ‘I’d have thought less of you, if you hadn’t.’
And then — only then — did we all notice that another ship was coming alongside, up from our stern. She was a beautiful low trireme, her hull black with new pitch, with a long line of woad-blue painted down her side along the upper-deck oar-ports and eyes over her ram. Her oars were beautifully handled.
The oars came in, all together, even as we watched. I backed up two steps, looking for anything to use as a weapon. A boarding pike, a staff for poling off another ship, a stick What I got was a bucket.
A wooden bucket.
And the other ship was boarding us.
Her marines came at us — ten men in bronze, with aspides and fighting spears and greaves. They leaped onto our catwalk and our stern like experts, and I retreated to the bow, looking for a place to hide — I didn’t want to die at the hands of Greeks. I didn’t know what they intended, but I assumed they were Greek pirates — men of my own kind — who would at least take me as a slave.
Their lord — it was obvious, from the rope of lapis and gold beads at his throat to the solid-gold hilt on his sword — shouted at Dagon.
And Dagon nodded and grinned. ‘My slaves,’ he shouted. ‘They rose against me. Thank the gods, lord, for your rescue!’
The Greek lord — I now knew he was Greek by the long hair emerging from under his helmet to the shape of his feet — laughed. ‘I hate you Phoenicians like I hate poverty and fear,’ he said. ‘But we are at peace.’ He grinned wolfishly, turned to his marines and pointed his spear.
‘Clear away the riff-raff,’ he said.
Nestor grabbed his knees. ‘We’re Greek!’ he said. ‘Master, this man-’
The Greek put his sword into Nestor. ‘Tell them in Carthage of the service I do for you,’ he said, and his men set about killing the Sikels.
Two men chased me into the bows, where I turned at bay.
I put the bucket into the helmet of the first to reach me, swinging it at the end of its rope handle, and he fell without a sound.
The other man stepped back and yelled for help.
Just for a moment, I felt as if I were Arimnestos. I stepped forward, and he stepped back.
And then Dagon came up. He had an aspis on his shoulder, and his spear licked out and caught me in the meat of the thigh, quick as thought. Ares, that wound hurt, and I stumbled.
He stepped back, laughed and spiked my other thigh.
I fell to my knees.
As fast as I can tell it, he put his fine spear point through both of my hands, so that I dropped the bucket and waited for death.
He laughed.
‘You think I’m going to kill you?’ he asked.
He didn’t kill me, obviously. What he did do was to help the Greeks kill all of the Sikels on board. Then he bartered half his cargo of iron ore for twenty of the Greeks’ rowers — men of a race I didn’t know at all.
I wasn’t paying very close attention by then, because he had me crucified on the foremast and spar, my arms and legs lashed far apart. The pain of my wounds was enough to make me puke.
Unfortunately, it was still early morning and the sun rose, higher and higher, as the slaves rowed us towards the shore. From my new vantage point I could see the land — a low smudge to the north. Sicily.
We rowed. Or rather, I bled and burned, naked in the sun, and the men beneath me rowed, and the corpses of the Sikels stank. Dagon wouldn’t let the slaves throw them over the side. He insisted on leaving the dead men at their benches. He trod the catwalk, muttering and laughing, and from time to time he would come up behind me — remember, I was crucified and couldn’t see him — and he’d strike me with his staff. Or place the butt of it against my back or my stomach and just rub it up and down.
‘We will have such fun,’ he said. He used a pleasant tone, as a man might talk to his wife, and it made my skin crawl. Even in exhausted despair — his tone made me afraid.
But the sun was worse than the mad oar-master. The sun scorched me. I had never been exposed without water to the sun all day, and it stripped me of everything except the desire for water.
And that was only the first day.
Night fell, and I awoke. I hadn’t been aware that I had passed out — who is? But I came to hanging from my wrists, and the pressure on my abdomen and lungs was uncomfortable, and the sunburn on my stomach and groin was painful, and the wounds in my thighs and hands. Ares, it all hurt.
We were riding at anchor in a great bay under a vast mountain — Aetna, I know now. Even in the state I was in, I looked long at Aetna in the full moon and it was beautiful. And I prayed to the gods that someone would avenge me. I managed to pray for Nestor and Skethes, good companions who had died trying to be free. I had no idea what had happened to Neoptolymos.
The Greek ship was ten horse-lengths astern of ours. I didn’t see it for a long time, until the tide moved us at our anchor and I caught a glimpse of her.
I began to pass in and out of life. I cannot describe it any other way. My life unrolled before me as if I were facing a jury of gods, except that there were no voices, no figures, but merely the strongest feeling, every time I surfaced to pain and the real world, that I had been judged.
And then it was morning.
Dagon came and stood in the bows, and another voice called orders as the rowers awoke to the stink of the corpses. Seabirds came and tried the corpses — a great gull ripping at a dead man’s face can interfere with anyone’s rowing.
The bully-boys used their canes freely.
The ship moved, and we went inshore.
There was a breakwater, well to the west along the great bay, and we pointed our bow at it. The sun crested the horizon, and my torment began in earnest. Now the weight of my body was on my abdomen. My feet couldn’t really support my weight any longer. And breathing started to become difficult. Not really difficult, but painful. There was another body pressing against mine, at my back — it took me hours to realize that Neoptolymos was crucified against me.
