Of course it had been Miltiades advising that rascal Aristagoras – he was the 'Samothracian navarch'. I heard a lot of that story later, and if I have time, I'll answer all your questions about it. But at that point I was simply happy to see someone I knew. I was happy to have someone to be in command. And I was delighted to receive his flattery, which came thick, fast and accurately.
That short sail from south of Cyprus to Lesbos was my first command, and it had taken its toll. I was bone-weary, and the broken ribs hadn't begun to knit, so that every weather change and every jostle caused spikes of pain. I had discovered that commanding men is the very opposite of fighting man to man – what I mean is that when I am fighting, the world falls away and everything is right there – the whole circle of the world revealed in a single heartbeat, as Heraclitus used to say. But when you are in command, you have to face the infinite consequences of each action – forward, on and on, until the gods strip the roots of the world away. Is there water? Is there food? Where will you beach tonight? Does that oarsman have a fever? Have you passed three headlands or four?
And it never ends. No sooner were my bare feet in the sand of Lesbos, Miltiades' arms around me, than my men were asking whether we would need the boatsail brought ashore and a hundred more questions.
Miltiades laughed, released my arms and stood back. 'The bronze-smith's son is a trierarch. No surprise to me, allow me to add. You've come right in among my ships – why not camp with me?'
I might have done better, waited for the best offer, but I was so happy to see someone from home – to be honest, when I saw Miltiades, I assumed that the Ionians would win. He always had that effect on me. 'Show me where we can build our fires?' I asked. He waved and another friend joined me – Agios, now helmsman to Miltiades.
'You have a ship of your own?' he asked, and laughed. 'Poseidon help your oarsmen!'
We walked down the beach and he found me space for fires, a fire for every fifteen men. Then I gathered them all in a big circle and made sure of their mess groups. Eating on the voyage had been a matter of desperation. Now I meant to get them organized.
We mustered ninety-six oarsmen and twenty-one Cretans. I put the Cretans in two mess groups – I didn't expect them to want to stay, and I didn't want their bad attitude to infect the rest. The Aeolians and other Greeks and random Asians who made up the rest of the crew I divided in fifteens. I paid silver out of my own hoard to buy them cook pots, right there on the beach – the local market was huge, and every merchant in Mytilene was selling his wares – or hers. The best of the potters was a middle-aged woman with her hair tied up in a scarf and clay on her hands, and her pots were so much better than her competitors that I agreed to pay her exorbitant rates. Men know when they have the best equipment. I learned that from my father. Even pots are part of morale.
I bought a net full of small tuna, gutted and fresh, and the men fell to, cutting and preparing. I had to pay for firewood and vegetables and bread, and by the time the oarsmen were settled to their first good hot meal of the week, my hoard of silver had diminished by a little under a fifth.
I could not afford to be a trierarch.
When my belly was full of wine and tuna, I caught Idomeneus's eye and picked up my best spear. Ionians follow many of the old ways, and one is that walking with a spear lends a man dignity and formality. I walked over to Miltiades' fires, and found him easily enough. He was seated on an iron stool, the legs digging deeply into the sand. He was telling a tale – an uproarious tale – and the laughter swept higher every few heartbeats as we walked up the beach towards him. His red hair burned in the sun, and his head was thrown back to laugh at his own story, and that's one of my favourite ways to remember him. Because he really could tell a story.
'The hero of Amathus!' he called, when I was close enough. He rose and embraced me again.
It was then I discovered just how far my fame had spread. Men gathered around me, as if I was Miltiades. And he didn't stint in his praise.
Yet one man's face grew dark. Archilogos turned on his heel and walked away, his servant at his side. I watched them go and the happiness of the moment was marred, like a bad mark in an otherwise perfect helmet, a dimple that you cannot remove.
Miltiades paid no attention – if he even noticed. 'For those of you fine gentlemen who were busy, it was young Arimnestos who defeated their centre – I saw the whole thing from the flagship.' He laughed. 'Oh, how we cheered you, lad. Like men watching the stadion run at the Olympian Games, with heavy wagers on the runner.' He put his arm around my shoulders.
A big man – bigger than me, bigger than Miltiades – came and took my hand. 'I'm Kallikles, brother of Eualcidas.' To the men assembled, he said, 'This man – too old to be a boy – went alone and saved my brother's body from the Medes.'
I accepted his embrace, but then I turned to Idomeneus. 'My hypaspist, Idomeneus. He stood by me that long night, and helped carry the body.'
Kallikles was not too proud to shake a servant's hand. 'May the gods bless you,' he said. 'You were my brother's skeuophoros!'
Idomeneus nodded and shied a step.
'I freed him for his aid,' I said. I hoped that this was within my rights. 'He served like a hero, not a slave.'
'That's my brother all over.' Kallikles smiled, and shook his head. 'Even his bed-warmer is a hero.'
Eualcidas apparently had quite a few admirers even among the Athenians, because Miltiades poured wine from a skin into a broad-bottomed cup and raised a libation to the dead hero's shade, and many men came forward to drink from that cup.
Miltiades stood at my elbow, and one by one the other warriors wandered off, until finally it was just half a dozen. Heraklides was there, and Idomeneus, of course, red with wine and the praise of his betters, Epaphroditos, now a lord of Mytilene, and Lord Pelagius of Chios. If he held my killing of his grandson against me, he hid it well.
'I drink to you, Arimnestos of Plataea,' Miltiades said. And he did. He was looking at me steadily. 'I heard that you were in the front rank – our front rank – at the rout at Ephesus. Aristides spoke well of you, and for that sourpuss, it was high praise. And you came off with Eualcidas's corpse – men will sing that for some years, I can tell you.' He looked at me, with more appraisal than praise. 'But any man has one day's heroism in him. All of us, with the favour of the gods, can rise to it – once.'
Pelagius nodded. 'Too true.'
Miltiades stroked his beard. 'But Amathus sealed the bargain. I watched you clear those triremes, lad. You're the real animal, aren't you?'
'He had one fucking good helmsman, too,' Agios added. 'Who was it who cut the Phoenician in half?'
I had to grin. 'Not me,' I admitted.
Heraklides nodded. 'We knew that, lad. With a sword you are a titan come to life. With a ship – you may be good in ten more years.'
'I have an Aegyptian now – took him as a prisoner at Amathus. I'm hoping he'll take service with me. And teach me.' I pointed down the beach, but of course my Nubian was nowhere to be seen. 'But the artist at Amathus was a Cretan fisherman in his first fight, name of Troas.'
Agios laughed aloud. He was a small man, but he had the laugh of a satyr – threw his head back and roared until his chest heaved. 'That for my arrogance!' he laughed. 'I thought you had some veteran, some ship-killer from Aegina or Miletus.'
I kept screwing up my courage to talk to Miltiades, but I didn't want all the praise to end. Who does? I was twenty, and men of thirty-five were singing my praises. Petty matters like money should be beneath a hero. But the Boeotian farmer won out over the heroic.
'I can't afford to run a ship,' I blurted out.
Pelagius turned away, hiding a smile. Agios and Heraklides looked at the sand.
Obviously, I could have done that better.
Epaphroditos shrugged. 'I can,' he said.
Miltiades shook his head. 'No, he's mine.' He looked at me, his head slightly tilted. I think he'd known what I was coming for from the moment he saw me walking with a spear – and he'd pushed me forward as a hero to raise my value.
I blushed. I didn't have a lot of blushing left in me at the age of twenty, but I blushed then. Miltiades laughed.
'Is your city going to make him a citizen?' he asked Epaphroditos, and my friend had the sense to shake his head. 'You going to protect him against fucking Aristagoras, who wants him dead?'
Epaphroditos looked incredulous.
'Oh, yes. Our dear lord and commander wants to see this young pup's head on a spike. There's a rumour…' He chuckled, and looked at me. 'Hey, I can keep my mouth shut. Eh, lad?'
Epaphroditos made a noise as if he were strangling. 'He what?'
'Exactly. Whereas I'm a tyrant – I can make him a citizen of the Chersonese this instant. And only I decide who captains my ships. And frankly, Aristagoras can't survive the summer without me.' He turned to me again. 'Come – let's have a look at your ship. He looks like a heavy bastard. One of the Phoenicians you took?'
I nodded. 'Deeper and broader than a Cretan trireme,' I said. All six of us walked back to my ship.
'What's his name?' Lord Pelagius asked.
I shrugged. 'Storm Cutter,' I said, meaning it as a joke.
'Good name,' Herk said. 'Men give ships the daftest names – gods and tritons. Storm Cutter is a real name.'
'I only have half a crew,' I said. I turned to Epaphroditos. 'And most of them are Aeolians. Will they stay with me?'
Miltiades cut him off. 'Doesn't really matter. I'm never short of rowers. Thracians line up outside my palisade to serve for wages.'
My men were forming two neat lines on the sand. Lekthes and Paramanos had the men mustered and ready, and they looked good.
Herakleides was at the right end of the line, and I introduced him to Heraklides – the Aeolian and the Athenian version of a son of Heracles. And then we walked down the rank of men.
'Must have been quite a storm,' Miltiades said. 'These men look like a crew.'
Then he went and looked at the ship. 'Heavy wood,' he said. 'Nice timber.' He nodded. 'What do you think?'
Agios ran a loving hand over the sternposts where they rose in a graceful arc over the helmsman. 'Tyrian. They build well.' He looked at Miltiades. 'This is a heavy ship meant to carry a heavy compliment and twenty marines. He'll be slow, even with a full compliment at the oars, and brutally expensive to maintain.'
Miltiades nodded. To me, he said, 'You have a helmsman?'
I looked at Paramanos. 'I don't know,' I said. 'I can't speak for the man I want.'
'Fair enough. That's a heavy ship. I'll buy her from you and keep you as trierarch, or I'll pay you a wage for her. Herk will work out the details.' He grinned. 'Mostly what I want is you. You're worth fifty spears now.'
I grinned back. 'I believe it, lord. But will your treasurer believe it?' Herk bargained like a peasant. That was fine with me – I was a peasant. We argued like hen-wives, and I finally turned and left him on the beach. He didn't want me to own the ship. His contention was that I had less than half a crew of oarsmen, no deckhands, no marines and no helmsman.
So I tracked Paramanos down to a wine shop – that is, to a blanket awning over a couple of rough stools, with a huge amphora of good Chian wine that was buried in the sand. The shopkeeper charged by the ladleful. The wine was good.
'You have a wife and children,' I said, after asking permission to sit.
He drank some wine. 'I have a pair of daughters. My wife died bearing the second. They live with her sister.'
I nodded. 'What would I have to do to convince you to sail as my helmsman?' I asked.
He put a copper down for another cup of wine. 'Buy me,' he said. 'And aim high.'
I laughed. 'One eighth,' I said. 'That's my opening offer and my final offer.'
He raised both eyebrows.
'You know Miltiades of Athens?' I asked.
He nodded. 'The Pirate King,' he said.
I nodded. 'Exactly. He wants me to serve him. Someday, I imagine he'll stop milking the trade fleets for money and he'll go back to Athens and make himself tyrant there.' I saw a dramatic new vista opening before me – a vista where I was a nobleman, a shipowner, the sort of man who could marry Briseis. 'But I have a mind to spend a year or two making money. I'll give you one eighth of our take – in silver – if you'll serve a whole year.'
He drank more wine. 'Tell me who gets the other eighths,' he said.
'One for me, one for you, one for keeping the ship,' I rhymed off. 'One for the other officers, three divided among all the other men. One in reserve – for a crisis. If there's no crisis, then in a year, we share it out – by eighths.'
He sat back. 'I'm a merchant,' he said, 'not a pirate.'
'Fifty silver owls down,' I said. It was from my own hoard, but I had money coming from Miltiades. I let the sack clink on the table.
'Fifty silver owls bonus,' he countered, and he put his hand on the bag but did not seize it.
Who wants a helmsman who doesn't have a high opinion of himself? I had to smile, because three years earlier I had been a penniless slave in Ephesus. Fifty silver owls was a high price – but I'd seen him in the storm. Yet there was still something about him I did not trust. He was older, and more experienced – I think I assumed that was the problem. And he feared me without respecting me – that was another problem.
But he was Poseidon's own son. 'Done,' I said, and took my hand off the pouch.
He made it vanish. 'I should have asked for more,' he said. He leaned forward. 'So – do you know that two men are following you?' I went back to Herk with the Nubian at my shoulder, and found him in another wine tent. He was enjoying a massage while drinking. I let him interrogate Paramanos and he was satisfied.
'You found yourself a Phoenician-trained navigator just lying around?' he asked. 'The gods love you.'
'The men dividing the spoils saw him only as a black man,' I said.
'More fool them. So you have a helmsman. And you think that makes the difference – that now I should hire you.' He raised his head and the man kneading his back slapped him down.
I would have laughed, but there was a familiar face peaking at me from a corner of the stall – Kylix the slave boy.
Kylix the slave boy, a foot taller and four fingers broader. He didn't look like a boy any more – he was right on the cusp between boy and man.
He grinned. My promotion from slave to free man to hero hadn't changed much, for Kylix – I'd always been a hero to him.
'Message,' he said, and put a piece of animal skin in my hand. 'And – for your ear,' he said, and I bent down for him.
'That ship of yours is so heavy I wonder if she'll fit through the Bosporus,' Agios was saying, unaware that I was listening to Kylix.
'A friend wants to see you be a lord,' Kylix said, handing me a leather sack. It clinked. My surprise must have shown on my face – slaves love to surprise masters. 'It is a free gift, lord.'
'How are you, Kylix?' I asked.
He shrugged. 'Me? I'm a slave.' He laughed, but it was forced. 'Maybe I'll become a sea lord, too.'
'Tell Archi I'll buy you,' I said.
'I wish you could,' he said. He looked around. 'He hates you.'
I nodded. 'I know.'
I clasped Kylix's hand. He frowned, and then looked into my eyes. 'Aristagoras has paid men to kill you,' he said. 'Like Diomedes at home.' He looked at Paramanos, and somehow I thought that he was accusing the man. Then he was gone.
Herk leered. 'Friend of yours? Nice-looking boy.'
'Someone else's slave,' I said.
'Sure.' Herk laughed and made a rude gesture. 'Learned a thing or two from the Cretans, eh?'
I grimaced. And looked in the leather sack. It held gold – dozens of gold darics. Fresh gold darics.
I was holding a small fortune. And as usual, my thoughts showed on my face.
'Good luck? Death of a rich but unloved relative?' Herk asked.
Agios peered at the bag from over my shoulder. 'The slave just gave you his life savings?'
I couldn't imagine why Archi, who spurned me in public, had just sent me so much money. With Ephesus fallen to the Medes, his own fortune must have suffered, or so I thought.
I cocked an eyebrow, though. Oh, how the former slave loves to play the great man. 'I don't think I need to hire out my ship after all,' I said.
'Really?' Herk asked. 'Your friend sent you money for rowers, too?'
How soon the bubble bursts.
'But as you are in funds, I think I can trust you to get rowers. Don't play high and mighty with me, lad – I knew you when you were a slave like yon. I'm not sure I like your Phoenician-trained helmsman and I'm not sure I think you are ready to command a ship. Does that kill our friendship?'
It was a far cry from what I'd heard all afternoon, and a good deal more like straight talk. 'But?' I asked.
'But I'll hire you on for Miltiades, at the usual rate. Two hundred obols a day. That's all found.' He smirked. 'You have to fill up your own compliment of oarsmen.'
'And fifty a day for me?' I asked. 'I assume the average man gets a drachma a day?'
It was Agios, not Herk, who cut in. He frowned. 'I didn't agree to any such foolishness. You pay yourself out of the two hundred a day.'
Now it was my turn to frown. 'That's for aristocrats, friend. They can pass it all to their men and take nothing but political profit.' I shrugged. 'I'll look for another offer. Epaphroditos made a mention-'
'He is lucky to keep command of his ship. The Aeolians are full of tyrannicides.' He smiled. 'It's good to be the officer of an Athenian aristocrat – you get to have a foot in both camps.' He looked around as if he feared interruption. 'Two hundred obols, and five drachmas a day for you.'
'Two and forty,' I said. 'I can't actually serve for less.'
'What did the Cretans do to you, boy?' he asked. 'You used to be a tender morsel. Two and ten. That's it.'
'Two and fifteen,' I said, and held out my hand.
Herk took my hand. 'Fine. But I'm going to charge you two days' pay to get rid of the two twits who have been paid to kill you. They're waiting outside.'
Fifteen drachmas a day was more than I had made with the Cretans – not much more, because the Cretans had bought my bed and board and food and clothes, good clothes, too. But the thought of men waiting to kill me scared me far more than thoughts of spending the summer fighting other men face to face. The more men you kill, the easier you know it is – and the easier you know it will be for some bastard to kill you.
But I'd be commanding a ship with Miltiades, and that was enough for me. 'Done,' I said. We spat and clasped hands. And then I left him to his massage and took my bag of gold to the Storm Cutter.
I still couldn't see the two men. But later that afternoon, I saw two heads on spears near Miltiades' ship. There was a board between the spears, and it said 'Thieves'.
Herk pointed them out, as if I hadn't already seen them. 'You owe us,' he said.
Somehow, those words made me feel as if my fate had been sealed. Paramanos was recruiting, right on the beach. He was shameless – he asked every good-looking oarsman who walked down the beach if he wanted to raise his pay. Shameless twice – he was spending my money. But he'd already engaged a dozen more Aeolians.
When I came up behind him, he was talking to a big man with his back to me, but I knew the man's voice. I darted under his arm and gave him a squeeze, and then he crushed the air out of my lungs.
'Stephanos!' I said. Indeed, I'd all but forgotten the big Chian. 'Why aren't you at home?' Most of the Chian contingent had left to bring in their harvests.
He shrugged. 'I don't want to go back to being a fisherman,' he said. 'I'm a marine with Lord Pelagius.' He was proud. He had a fine quilted-linen corslet that must have come from Cyprus and a beautiful Cretan helmet.
'Well, don't talk to this Nubian too long or you'll be an oarsman on my ship,' I said.
He nodded. 'Lord Pelagius is heading home tomorrow,' he said. 'I'd be – honoured – to serve. That is, as a marine. Not as an oarsman. '
'And your brothers?' I asked. Two of them had been pulling oars. 'And any other Chians?'
In the end there were six of them, five oarsmen and Stephanos. So I went to Lord Pelagius, because that's how the Cretans did things. He was surprised – but pleased – that I'd asked.
'All free men,' he said. 'I can't hold them.' He nodded. 'When you are hailed as the new Achilles, young man, may I brag that I gave you your first award?'
I thought fleetingly of his grandson, Cleisthenes. I forced a smile. 'Yes, my lord.'
Perhaps he was thinking of his grandson, too. He nodded curtly. 'Take good care of Stephanos,' he said. 'He's a good man.' The addition of Stephanos seemed to change everything for me. I made him my captain of marines, which might have gone to another man's head, but he'd been much talked of among the Ionians, too, and the two of us together in one ship – how many times have I blessed Lord Apollo and the day of the competitions on Chios?
Stephanos and Herakleides got along from the first, and the crew settled down to have a decidedly Aeolian flavour. Paramanos recruited promiscuously, without regard to race, Dorians and Ionians together, Aeolians and mainlanders and Asiatics. But the core was Aeolian, and their lisping, lilting accents could be heard in our camp and on every gangway of the ship.
I forgot the note Kylix had given me until a day had passed, such was the effect of the gold, and when I read it, I was shocked to see that it asked me to a meeting on a beach well around the headland – a meeting whose time had already passed. I looked long and hard at the writing, but it didn't seem familiar – indeed, the ink had scarcely left a mark on the deer-hide and was difficult enough just to read. I tossed it aside, determined to speak to Kylix about it when next we met, and my heart soared at the thought that Archi wanted to see me.
There was fear, too – what if Archi had made the first step towards a reconciliation, and he thought I had spurned it?
But my first command took all my time. I was everywhere, seeing to the underside of the ship, watching Paramanos train the oarsmen, choosing officers and arranging for the Cretans to travel home. I bled gold darics the way a sacrifice jets blood, buying better rigging, paying wages and buying a pair of slaves that Paramanos said were trained oarsmen going cheap. They proved a bargain – I traded them their freedom for a year's rowing without wages, a good deal for both parties, but I still had to pay gold for them up front.
I bought the Cretans a fishing boat, a good hull with a fine sail. Paramanos was teaching me to sail in small boats, a pleasure in itself and a wonderful way to come to understand the sea, and through him I had come in just a week to love the sleek lines of the local fishing craft. The Cretans all felt the same and squabbled about whose boat it would be when they reached home.
'It is for Troas, and his daughter,' I said.
Then Lekthes came to me and asked to go with them. 'I will come back, lord,' he said. 'But my share of the spoils will buy me my bride.'
He was an Italiote, a man from the lovely coast of southern Italy. 'You will settle on Crete?' I asked.
'After I make my fortune with you, I'll take her home to my mother,' he said.
He was one of my best men – but what kind of lord stands between his men and happiness? I let him go. I knew that if he was on the boat, the other men had a better chance of getting home alive. I gave him my second-best helmet and a new bronze thorax and a fine red cloak with a white stripe, so that men would know that he was a man of consequence. Idomeneus surprised me by giving him a fine silver brooch with garnets set in the rivets. 'For the girl,' he said.
So the Cretans sailed away with many salutations and backward looks, and Herk laughed to see them go. He and Paramanos were virtually inseparable now, playing polis in the shade of the beach-edge trees and hunting wild goats together whenever they could, or sailing one of the local fishing boats for sport.
Paramanos shook his head. 'The quality of our crew just improved threefold.'
To be honest, honey, they were happy days. And as usual, I can't remember exactly what happened when – the golden summer of my life is long ago. But I think the Cretans left first, and then I received the message that the Phoenician was waiting at Methymna. Epaphroditos told me – his people held the citadel there.
And that saved my life.
I took Paramanos and his fishing boat, with Herakleides and Stephanos to help guard the Phoenician prisoners. The four of us were enough to work the boat, and we made a party of it – three hundred stades in a fishing boat, and I was beginning to 'learn the ropes', as the fishermen say. I thought that I knew sailing and the sea – until I met Paramanos. He taught me that I didn't even know how much I had to learn, and I'm lucky the lesson didn't cost a lot of men their lives.
At any rate, we had beautiful weather. Even the three Phoenicians seemed to enjoy the trip – at least, they laughed at our jokes and ate our food with gusto.
It was early autumn, and the rain might have fallen on us, but it didn't, and we went around the long point of the islands and kept the mountain of Lepetymnos on our left hands, and before the moon rose on the third day we had the port of Methymna over the bow. I knew it from my visits as a slave, and when I was first a free man sailing with Archi. And I remembered that he had a house here, and a factor.
We beached with the fishing boats, right under the walls of the town, where a spit of rocks makes Poseidon's own natural harbour. There was a Phoenician merchant trireme on the deep beach south of the citadel. I walked up to the guard post, explained my business to the captain of the guard and received his respectful salute. He knew my name. I was flattered, and flattery put me in a good mood, so when I returned to my crew, I thought to do the Phoenicians a favour.
'Any point in waiting?' I asked.
Paramanos shrugged. 'I expect these gentlemen would like to be free,' he said.
I walked them down the beach and left them with Stephanos and Herakleides, right under the wall where the gate-guard could hear us if the Phoenicians decided to take their friends by force.
But of course, the Phoenician captain wasn't aboard. He was up in the town, being hosted by his trading partners. The war hadn't stopped trade – far from it. And Mytilene's loss was Methymna's gain.
But the fourth man – the youngest – was there. He jumped down to the beach, ran past me and threw his arms around his uncle and the other two.
'The ransom is down in the hold,' he said. 'We will sway it up in the morning.' He looked at me, and I didn't like the look. I was getting to be afraid of my own shadow. 'Or you could come and get it right now,' he said, and his smile was forced.
Now, it's hard to tell whether a man hates you because you killed his friends or whether he's just scared or whether he plans to kill you. Best to play safe.
I shook my head. 'That's good,' I said. 'And you can all spend a last night with me, until I see it.'
Then he started away, but I caught him easily, put a knife to his throat while the rest of the Phoenicians muttered angrily. I pushed him off to Herakleides and turned back. 'All four of them are my prisoners until the ransom is paid,' I said. 'I am an honourable man, but don't try me.'
My prisoners were surly now, and I was suspicious. We all slept badly under the hull of our overturned boat. We could hear voices on the Phoenician boat.
Perhaps I should have posted a sentry.
I awoke with the point of a dagger at my throat.