Part 19 (1/2)

We took on a cargo of men men of Methymna. We took the hoplites who hadn't made the grade to go on the town's three s.h.i.+ps. Archi counted as a lord of the town he was a property owner there, and his mother's people were citizens, so they treated us as relatives.

A trireme can take about ten marines more if you don't plan to do a lot of rowing, fewer if you plan to stay at sea for days and days. When you fit a fleet, you pick and choose your marines, at least in Ionia it's different in Athens, as I may have cause to explain later, if I live to tell that part. Even little Methymna had three hundred hoplites. Her s.h.i.+ps rowed away with thirty of them. We took another ten and left good men on the beach. Then we cruised south, weathered the long point by the hot springs and beached at Mytilene. We picked up s.h.i.+ps there and drank wine. It was more like a party than a war.

The next night we were on Chios. I had rowed all day and felt like a G.o.d. The rowers were all paid men, but one was sick with a flux and I wasn't proud. I was free.

Heraklides approved and offered me a place on his s.h.i.+p.

'Hard to be a free man with your former master,' he said. He made a motion that suggested that he a.s.sumed we were lovers. No, I won't show you!

I laughed. 'I swore an oath,' I said. One thing all Greeks respect, from Sparta to Thebes and all the way to Miletus, is an oath.

'Will Miltiades join us?' I asked.

He rubbed his beard. 'Heh,' he said. 'Good question. Miltiades is fighting his own war in the Chersonese. You might say he's been fighting the Persians for five years.'

'In Ephesus, Heraklides, we called him a bandit,' I said.

Heraklides grinned. 'Aye. Well, one man's pirate is another man's freedom-fighter, right enough.' He laughed. 'And you can drop the formality and call me Herk. Everyone does.'

That gave me something to think about. Miltiades was a soldier a real soldier. And he wasn't coming. And Herk's friends.h.i.+p was worth something.

The next night, we were on another Chian beach. The Chians had a lot of s.h.i.+ps, and a lot of men, and they were powerful and had never been conquered. They were going to have seventy or eighty hulls to put in the water. The Athenians were delighted, and decided to wait. The local lord, Pelagius, declared a day of games on the beach, and offered prizes. Really good prizes, so that even Archi wanted them. There was a full panoply for the winner. Spectacular stuff a scale s.h.i.+rt, the smith's nightmare, six months to make. The aspis was fair, nothing spectacular, but with a worked bronze face to it, and the helmet was fine, although not as good as the s.h.i.+rt and nothing on my father's work.

There was a race in armour just becoming the fas.h.i.+on, then as well as a fight with swords, wrestling and javelin-throwing.

I was a free man, and Archi encouraged me, so we walked down the beach to where Lord Pelagius had his s.h.i.+p pulled in by the stern. We wrote our names on potsherds while his steward watched us, and the lord himself came up an old man, as old as I am now, but sound.

'Now, there's a pair of handsome boys, that the G.o.ds love to watch compete. You'll race?' he asked Archi. Archi had the best body of anyone our age. He had surpa.s.sed me in size by a finger's breadth, and his muscles had a sharp edge that mine never had.

We both blushed at such praise. 'We'll enter all the contests,' Archi said.

The old n.o.bleman smiled but he shook his head. 'Not the swordplay, lads. That's for men.'

Archi nodded, but that was my best event, I thought in my youthful arrogance. I spluttered.

'Fancy yourself a swordsman, do you?' the old man asked. He peered at me. 'Well, you look old enough to take a cut. If there's a place left, I'll put you in. But we don't fight past the first cut, and if you die, or kill a man, it's your fault. We expect careful men, not wild boys.'

I blushed again, and nodded. 'I've trained since I was ten, lord,' I said.

He looked at me again. 'Really?' he said, and smiled. 'That might be worth seeing.'

Archi put an elbow in my ribs as we turned away. 'Trained since you were ten? The G.o.ds will curse you for a liar, my friend. Even though you are the best sword I know.'

Archi was a typical master. He'd never asked where I came from or what I'd done. Never. I loved him like a second older brother but he never knew me well.

We walked back along the beach, and I was pleased to see men looking at us and, I think, taking our measure. Games are good. Compet.i.tion is good. That's how men measure themselves and others.

The games were still a few days away, though. So I walked around the promontory to exercise alone. I had a sword of my own, although nothing like what I wanted. It was short and heavy, a meat cleaver. I wanted a longer thrusting blade, because that's what I'd learned with, but Ares had not seen fit to help me.

When I'd worked up a healthy sweat and swum it off in the ocean, I walked back. Slaves cooked for us, and that made me think, every time I took bread from a boy, that I was lucky and free. Honey, once you're a slave, you never forget it.

Anyway, Heraklides came and sat with me.

'How many s.h.i.+ps does Athens have?' I asked my new friend.

'Mmm,' he said. 'A hundred?' he answered, before spotting a pretty Chian girl up the beach. I let him go.

Athens had a hundred s.h.i.+ps, and Miltiades alone, or with his father, had another twenty. Then there were other Athenian n.o.ble families with ten or fifteen s.h.i.+ps of their own.

Athens was half-committed to the Ionians. Not even half. They sent a t.i.the of their strength. I had spent enough evenings listening to Artaphernes to believe him when he said that the weight of Persia would crush the Greeks like so many lice between his fingers. He always said this in sadness, never in boastfulness.

I looked at our fleet, and it seemed very great to me. We filled the beach at Chios, and by the time the levy came in and all the Chian n.o.bles and traders brought their wars.h.i.+ps, we had a hundred hulls I counted them myself.

That night, while men sang Ionian songs around the fires and chased Chian girls up the sand, I sat on my new aspis with Archi.

'I think Athens is using us,' I said.

Archi laughed. 'Stop being a slave!' he said, which made me angry. 'These men have great souls. I have talked to a dozen of the Athenian captains, and they are gentlemen. Why, one or two of them are rich enough to be Ephesians!'

I shook my head, stung by his slave comment and sure that he was wrong. 'Athenians are the most grasping b.a.s.t.a.r.ds in the world,' I said. I had watched the slow seduction of Plataea I had been there as Miltiades brought the men of Plataea to his way of thinking. I could imagine him doing the same from island to island across the Aegean.

Archi sat back, took a long drink of wine from a skin and laughed. 'We're going to go home heroes,' he said.

'Has it occurred to you that we're going home just weeks after we left? Diomedes won't be over his injuries yet. His father will be panting for revenge. Niobe's children will be nothing on us, Archi!' I was growing louder and angrier because his good humour and cheerfulness were like the feathers on a heron's back, and my words rolled off him.

Archi laughed. 'I understand that you are a good companion, warning me of dangers ahead. But I'm the hero I won't be worried. You can whisper good advice in my ear and I'll use my spear to cut my way to glory.'

He looked very much the hero on that beach, by firelight. He'd been homesick for the first few days, but he loved the sea life, camping on beaches and drinking wine by the fire every night.

'Soon we'll be home,' he said, watching a pair of Chian girls run by, their oiled hair swinging and their linen chitons plastered to their bodies. One looked back over her shoulder. She knew just how to play the game. Archi shot me a look. Then he rose to his feet and chased her.

Her companion flicked me a glance and then came nearer. She was younger and seemed too shy for her business.

'Not interested,' I said gruffly.

She stood there. I drank wine and saw in my mind's eye the Persian fleet crus.h.i.+ng us against the coast. I must have been the only seventeen-year-old on that beach who wasn't chasing a girl.

I'm a killer, and I lie sometimes, and my stories go on and on but I have never been called inhospitable. So, when a hundred heartbeats had pa.s.sed and she squatted by our fire and began to play with the embers, I poured my bronze cup full of wine and handed it to her. She was sitting on her haunches, a very unladylike posture. I'd never even seen a slave do it.

'Careful,' I said. 'No water.' I sat back on my s.h.i.+eld, curious about the Chian girls. 'Are you a p.o.r.ne p.o.r.ne?'

She spat my wine in the sand, put down my cup and jumped up. 'No,' she said. 'And f.u.c.k you.'

'Sorry,' I said. I stood up. 'Stay and drink the wine. I thought that you and your sister were prost.i.tutes.'

'That's an apology?' she asked. 'Some alien stranger calling me a prost.i.tute?' But she squatted down again and picked up the cup. 'I'd slap you, but your wine's too good.'

I sat back down. 'There's bread, olive oil and fish.' I waved around the fire. We were messy, and our baskets were spread over three or four oxhides of beach. Men only learn from long campaigns to be tidy when they camp, and we were as raw as an ingot of copper.

She wandered from basket to basket, picking a dinner. It was getting dark, but I could see that her chiton showed the signs of hundreds of was.h.i.+ngs, with that patina of old dirt and hard work that a garment gets when it is worn and worn. I remembered my own chiton at home, in Plataea.