Pah. It still tastes bad.
And then we were slowing. Both ships were turning — fast — heeled over from the weight of the other ship. I got my spear free of the dead weight of my former slave, and I needed action. I was about to weep. I really felt bad about the boy.
I was up on the rail before the ships stopped moving.
A Carthaginian marine threw his javelin at me. It missed by a hand’s breadth, and I leaped down into the rowers — one foot on the cross-beam, and one flailing wildly for a moment until I got it down — and one of the rowers grabbed my foot. My spear went straight down into his open mouth — I still remember that kill. Poor bastard. Rowers should never try to fight marines unless they get off their benches first. Remember that they are in three tiers, and that they can’t really stand — or support each other. If they have weapons, they stow them under their benches — hard to get at, hard to use.
I pushed up towards the catwalk. This was an undecked trireme, like an Athenian — in fact, it might have been a captured Athenian ship. Rowers in three tiers open to the sky, and a catwalk all the way down the centre line. Most of the enemy marines were on the catwalk, using pikes over the heads of the rowers.
I took a pikehead on my aspis. My attacker was trying to push me down into the rowers. I batted the pikehead aside and made my jump. I landed badly, lost my balance and my armour saved my life as a spear cut some unintended engraving between my shoulder blades. The mark is still there — see? Look, right there. That’s death, honeybee. But not for me.
I had to put a foot back, and by luck — nothing better than luck — my foot landed on the cross-beam and I didn’t fall. I stabbed with my spear, and my two opponents — one with a pike fifteen feet long and one with a short spear — stabbed at me, pushing me down.
The man with the short spear tried to parry my spear with his own, but he had his spear too near the haft and I had the leverage, and I pressed his aside and ran mine home. He had armour — leather and bronze. But my needle-sharp spearhead pricked him — not a killing blow, but by the feel in my hand I knew I’d punched the point into him and he flinched and gave a cry, and I rifled my spear forward again, at his helmet, and he stepped back.
The pikehead slammed into my helmet, and I saw stars. But I kept my footing and pushed forward into the space of the wounded Carthaginian, and now I had both feet on the catwalk.
I had both feet under me. But now I had enemies ahead of me and behind me on the catwalk.
I slammed my aspis as hard as I could into the man behind me, using the bronze-clad edge as a giant axe. I caved in the face of his rawhide and wicker shield and broke his arm. Then I turned, pivoting my hips, and thrust backhanded with my spear — thumb up, spearhead down, like a dagger blow. It is the most powerful spear blow, but of course, when you deliver it, you are wide open to your opponent, as your shield is behind you. It is like the famed Harmodius blow.
None of you cares about the technicalities of good fighting. A pox on you, then! My spear-point went in over the pikeman’s arms, right through his helmet and into his brain, and down he went, dead before he hit the deck. But his weight snapped my spearhead — the beautiful needle point must have been a little too hard, and it snapped short.
Of course, I didn’t notice right away. I sprang forward into the next man — another shielded, armoured man with a heavy, short spear and a javelin which he threw at me as soon as he had a clear throw, but I sank beneath his throw like a dancer — oh, I was the killer of men, and Ares’ hand was on my shoulder. I passed under his throw and rammed my spear under his shield and into his shin — but the tip of my spear was gone and the spear-point wouldn’t bite.
I hurt his shin, though. He tried to back up, but there were other men on the deck, now.
In his confusion, I whirled, changed feet and rushed aft. I got two paces, and threw my spear into the next enemy marine. It glanced off his shield and vanished into the oarsmen, and I drew my new, long xiphos from under my arm. A lovely weapon — almost like a spear with a long, slender blade, slightly wider at the tip. I rotated my right wrist, reached over his big rawhide shield and stabbed down — my weapon caught armour, grated and went straight home through his throat, while his spear flailed over my shoulder.
I pushed past his corpse and the next man slammed his aspis into me and pushed me back, and I cut low with my xiphos and realized that my opponent was Anchises. As my blade rang off his greave, he roared, and we were screaming at each other to stop — comic, in its way.
We’d carried the ship. The trierarch was trying to surrender in the stern, the helmsman was on his knees and Darius killed them both with two blows. Foolish, and clean against the laws of war. On the other hand, we were badly outnumbered, and it was the very heat of the action.
Neither of them was Dagon, either.
I hoped, every time I faced a Carthaginian ship.
‘Swords up!’ I yelled. ‘Swords up! Stop!’
Anchises joined his calls to mine. It took a long minute to stop the killing.
The ship was ours. I turned Anchises to face me. ‘Get under way — north!’
He nodded. I ran down a cross-beam — the same one I’d boarded on, I suspect, and leaped back aboard Lydia. Ran aft to Megakles.
The next three or four Carthaginians were off the beach, or nearly so. To the west, Dionysus was clear of his merchant ship And turning out to sea.
‘Bastard,’ I said. Dionysus was going to cut and run.
Doola’s ship had her sails down and some way on her.
I was broadside on to the approaching Carthaginians because that’s how the impetus of the grappling action had ended. We wasted valuable time poling off our new capture.
Neoptolymos cleared his merchantman and came on.
My decks looked curiously empty, because Doola had most of the deck crew and Anchises had my marines. We inched forward. The lead pair of Carthaginians was already at ramming speed.
‘Have your outboard oarsmen row!’ I shouted at Anchises.
Twice.
Time passed slowly.
He got it.
The former Carthaginian rowers had no reason to love us. Men who have never been in a ship fight always imagine that when a ship is taken, the rowers — if they are slaves or have been mistreated — should rise for their new masters. It does happen that way, but only if the old captain was abusive and foolish. Otherwise, they tend to be more afraid of their new captors than they were of the old. Hard to explain, but I’ve seen Greek slaves, newly ‘freed’ all but refuse to row for Greek marines — at Artemisium.
Ah. Artemisium. Your turn is coming.
Our two ships, the grapnels gradually coming off, rowed pitifully. We must have looked like an insect on its back. But we rotated back, so that I was bow on to the enemy and Anchises was stern on. And then we got the last grapnels off and poled off, so that he rowed away headed west, and I rowed away headed east.
It wasn’t a battle-winning manoeuvre, but it saved us.
What happened next was from the gods.
I had little choice but to pass between my opponents. They were side by side, at ramming speed, coming down my throat. If Megakles could manage it, we’d pass between them and rake their oars.
But my opponents hadn’t been born yesterday. The helmsman on the northernmost of the pair flicked his steering oars to close up with his consort.
By the whim of the gods, the southernmost ship chose to do the same thing.
The two ships didn’t slam together. Instead, they brushed one another with a sickening tangle of oars, to the sound of screams as oarsmen died or were broken on their tools.
It seemed to happen very slowly. The ships didn’t quite collide, but slipped together like two pieces of fabric sewn up by a matron.
If I’d have any friend close by, or any marines, I’d have tried to sink them.
But instead I passed inshore of the two ships and my archers shot into them, and then we were past. In the bow, Leukas had readied a dozen jars of oil. He knew what I intended.
We were at ramming speed, and by our luck — and fast manoeuvring — we’d passed inshore of the two
