‘They say that if you survive three days,’ Dagon said, ‘your chest and back are so ruined you can never be a man again.’ Dagon raised his face and looked at me. ‘And then I can sell you to a brothel. You won’t even be able to fight a brutal client. Isn’t that what you deserve, eh?’
I could feel it happening, that was the worst of it. I could feel my muscles dying. The strain was gradual, but the result was brutal.
And the sun By noon, we were up with the breakwater, and our charnel-house ship entered the harbour and very, very slowly docked at the pier — a well-built stone pier.
The Greek ship came and anchored close in, almost across our stern.
I could no longer speak. I may well have done some screaming, in there somewhere, but by this point I couldn’t even thrash in my bonds, and from time to time I’d make an effort and raise myself on my ankle ropes, just to get the pressure off my wrists and my lungs, and for a few brief moments I would have some clarity and then, gradually, I would collapse again.
I assumed Neoptolymos was dead.
One time, Brassos, one of the bullies, watched me raise myself and then slammed his spear shaft into my groin. I collapsed onto my bonds and choked.
Dagon struck the man. ‘He could die of your carelessness,’ Dagon said.
When I had the ability to use my head, I prayed to Apollo, to Herakles my ancestor and to Poseidon for release.
Just after the sun reached his awful height, men came and began to unload the iron ore from the ship. Then the slaves were taken out of their benches, with twenty guards watching them, and they were put ashore, three at a time, and tied with heavy ropes inside a palisade.
After some time — I cannot remember any of it — I was cut down.
The relief was indescribable. The first moments off the great X of the mast and its yard were like water for a parched man. Like the release of sex.
They tied me to a log and left me in the shade of a linen sail and, after some time, Dagon came. He had Nestor.
Nestor was still alive.
Dagon had the wounded man’s litter left under my awning. And he had slaves fill a bronze cauldron with water. They left it next to Nestor, who was in such pain from a mortal wound in the guts that all he did was writhe and scream.
‘Enjoy your time together,’ Dagon said, and giggled. He put a hand on my shoulder while Nestor gurgled.
‘I would love to spend the evening with you,’ he said, ‘but I have some foolish Greeks to fleece. And then, when I have made a fortune from their idiocy, I will have time for you.’ He giggled again, and his touch burned me.
And then he went away.
I would have slept, but Nestor was in pain, and dying. Horribly.
I’d like to say we talked, or resolved to die together, but he was already gone with pain, and he simply lay and moaned and screamed, and I watched him die. I even slept a little.
In the night, he breathed in hard, his throat closed, he coughed and he was dead.
Just before the sun rose, there were screams. The sound of them scarcely registered with me. Had I understood them, I would have despaired. Hah! As if I had not already despaired.
Dagon had invited the Greeks to dinner.
And murdered them.
That was the way he thanked them for saving him.
Dawn rose, and the bully-boys were carrying corpses down the beach, throwing them into the waves.
I recognized the Greek lord from his long blond hair. His throat was slit, his genitals cut away.
A while later, a pair of men came and dragged me down the wharf to the ship and tied me to the foremast again.
The sun began to rise as overseers drove the slaves back onto the ship — a hundred men to row a trireme. The Greek ship’s oarsmen had spent the night aboard, and my first hint of what had happened was that Dagon and seven of his men were rowing a small boat out to the Greek ship — which was Greek no more.
Screams. Curses. Blows and spear-thrusts. The music of Dagon. How they must have cursed to find him their master. Many of the Greek rowers would have been free men — up until then.
We had Brassos as both trierarch and oar-master. He had most of the old deck crew as ‘marines’ in the looted armour of the dead Greeks, and he had a whip. In an hour, we were out of the harbour and our bow was pointed towards Carthage. The swift trireme ran ahead of us, out to the horizon, and stayed there, a notch on the edge of my world. My eyes grew sun-dazzled, and I lost the ability to see, or to make sense of the world around me.
The slaves who had tied me to the mast were lazy. They had left me a great deal more slack for my body, so that I could writhe and change positions in subtle ways. Had it been the first day of crucifixion, it might have saved me. As it was, it prolonged the agony. And they tied Neoptolymos behind me, but his bands were slack too.
By noon, I cannot pretend I was any longer an observer. I was there, but I was unaware of anything that happened.
And then, out of a clear, hot day, a storm struck us. It caught our ship utterly unprepared, so I’ll assume it was what sailors call a white squall — a small, vicious burst of wind and rain, usually confined to a few stades, and often so pale in colour that on a hot day it’s virtually invisible until it hits you.
I awoke to the rain, and I was moving — back and forth — through wild swings, because I was well up the foremast, and every pitch of the ship beneath me moved my body through fifty degrees of an arc. At the ends of the pitch, my bonds took enormous strain, but in the middle I got a rest, the odd pitching motion taking all the weight off my hands and feet.
It was a miracle. I swear that Poseidon sent it to me. Rain lashed me, as hard as I have ever known, and it flowed into my mouth so fast I might have drowned, and I drank it all. And the pitching ship delivered me from pain, here and there.
And then — hope.
The strain on my bonds was loosening the hastily tied ropes. They began to grow looser with every pitch and roll of the ship beneath me.
I was going to fall into the sea.
And drown.
I realize that what I am about to say will strain your credulity, my friends, but I didn’t fear drowning. Poseidon had so palpably sent the storm to save me, that I had to assume that falling into the sea was the very best thing for me.
And I confess that I thought of the Keltoi woman jumping into the storm, and I thought that it might not be the worst way to die. My body would, at any rate, be safe from insult.
The storm reached a pitch of frenzy like the dance of the Bacchae, and the wind screamed through the ship’s standing rigging and the boatsail mast whipped through its arc. I could feel the ties on my ankles going, and to my horror, they went first, and suddenly I was hanging from my wrists. Pain flooded me.
Then the ropes gave way.
Not on my ankles.
But the cross of ropes that kept the yard on the mast.
The yard fell to the deck, but the deck was heeled well over, and while one end of the spar struck the bow, the other fell across the ram, and suddenly Neoptolymos and I were catapulted into the raging sea.
We went deep.
My arms were still tied to the spar, and I writhed in agony as the salt water hit my wounds, and that burst ripped one arm — my right — free of my bonds.
Then the yard shot to the surface, the light wood all but leaping clear of the water.
The water was deep and cold. The pain of my salt-washed wounds was almost pleasant. I fought the storm for dear life, using my wounded left arm to push myself above the spar and drink air out of the spume at the wave’s top.
