'You did not come when I summoned you,' Briseis said quietly.
I could see Kylix standing by the embers of our fire.
'You summoned me?' I asked, my head full of sleep. Was that Briseis? The arm across my chest felt familiar.
'I brought you a note,' Kylix said. 'Please tell her you received the note.'
Paramanos was awake. I could see that he had a blade in his hand, and he was moving very slowly towards Stephanos.
'I got the note,' I said. I felt like a fool, ten times over. Of course the note was from Briseis. For a man who brags about his intelligence, I can be stupid. I had wanted the note to be from Archi.
'Yet you did not come?' she asked, and her voice was like ice and fire together.
'You sent me fifty darics?' I asked. 'I thought that Kylix came from Archi!'
Without moving the knife, she put her mouth down over mine and kissed me.
At some point, the knife vanished and she pushed herself back up and dusted sand from her chiton. 'Walk with me,' she said. 'You still love me. That is all I required to know.'
She looked at Paramanos and he froze. 'My husband is in league with the men you are ransoming,' he said. 'He communicates with the Persians, and the Phoenicians. And he has paid them to kill you.'
Paramanos gave me a look – oh, such a look. The look that older men use when they are laughing at younger men, but when she said paid them to kill you he became alert.
'I'll watch,' he said.
I nodded and followed Briseis, and the two of us walked off into the first light of dawn.
She was wearing only a linen chiton – I felt that while she was kissing me. She had light sandals and a wreath of flowers in her hair, the yellow flowers of Lesbos, and she walked with her usual grace, but I could see she was just pregnant.
'Your first?' I asked.
She shrugged. 'Second,' she said. She smiled at me. 'You live!'
'You were closer to killing me than any man since I was a slave,' I joked.
'When you didn't come to meet me, I thought I would kill you.' She stopped, put her hips against a big rock and tossed her head. 'Aristagoras wants you dead. Miltiades made him swear to keep you alive, but he's a liar, and his oaths are worthless.'
'Why does he want me dead?' I asked, and she smiled like the dawn.
'Every time he fucks me, I call your name,' she said. And she laughed.
'But-' Briseis always scared me, as much as I thought that I loved her. 'But you are married.'
'Feh!' Her contempt was palpable. 'I am married to Aristagoras. If a fart could become a man, it would be Aristagoras.' She looked at me. 'And I thought you were going to kill Diomedes – eh? But he has gone over to the Medes and taken all our property in Ephesus. My brother is all but a pauper.'
I had forgotten what she could be like. Three years had made her more like herself, not less.
'I thought of you – every day,' I said.
She sighed. 'You might benefit from reading Sappho,' she said. '"Some men say a squadron of cavalry is the most beautiful thing, and some say a band of hoplites, and some think that a squadron of ships is the most beautiful."'
'But I say it is whomsoever I love,' I said to her, deliberately warping my Sappho, and she laughed.
'I hear that you are a great hero,' she added, and smiled her approval. 'I hear that you killed more Medes at Amathus than any other Greek. I love to hear men talk of you.' She rose on her toes and kissed me, and pregnant or not, only Kylix's heavy cough stopped us from making love right there. I was hard before her mouth was open and her hands – never mind, ladies.
'There is a party of armed men coming down the beach from the Phoenician galley,' Kylix said. 'The guard is being summoned in the town.'
I had my sword, and was otherwise naked except for my chiton. My feet were bare. I had been asleep.
'Take your mistress and run,' I said.
'Run where?' Briseis asked. 'There is no entrance to the town from the sea.'
I remember shaking my head. She wanted to stay and see the blood. 'Just run,' I said, and turned back towards my own boat.
'He wants me dead, too,' Briseis said. 'He dares not do it openly, but on a beach, where you can be blamed?'
'And you thrust yourself into this lion's mouth?' I asked.
She laughed. 'You'll save me,' she said. 'Or we'll die together.'
Paramanos wasn't caught napping. As I watched, he bundled the prisoners aboard the fishing boat and put to sea. The Phoenicians came down the beach to find the birds flown.
They were all in armour and I was unarmed, which gave me an advantage – I knew that I could outrun any of them, and they didn't appear to have a bow among them. I hailed Paramanos and he ran the fishing boat down the beach to us. I put my love in the boat and pushed it off, then walked up the beach as if I had nothing to fear.
'You're up early,' I said. 'I'm Arimnestos. Have you come to pay the ransom?'
The two best-armoured men halted the rest, and they formed a small phalanx on the beach.
'The men of the town will be here in the time it takes to sing a hymn,' I called in Persian. 'And they will kill all of you and take your ship.' I pointed up the hill. 'The lord of the town is my friend – any bribe you paid the guards was wasted.'
They were arguing among themselves.
It's a lesson you learn early – plotters never trust anyone. I was nearly certain that the town garrison were going to watch me butchered and not raise a hand – but the Phoenicians didn't know that.
I pointed out to sea. 'My prisoners are out there, in that fishing smack,' I called. 'And if you don't pay up, they'll have their throats slit and be pushed over the side.'
The two men in bronze armour argued, and finally, when I could see the new sun shining on spear points in the town, they turned and went back to their ship. 'We'll pay,' one of the men said. Honey, I've seldom heard those Persian words invested with so much hate.
They stacked bars of silver on the sand.
I ran off down the beach to Paramanos, and I didn't look back.
The exchange went well enough. I rolled the silver and gold in my cloak and carried it to my boat. Then we released all four prisoners, well down the beach, almost as far as the threshing floor where the goats play.
We were gone around the point before the freed men joined their friends. Briseis asked me to take her around to Eresus. How could I refuse? Eresus is one of the most beautiful places in the world. Briseis had made that fart Aristagoras buy her a house there, on the back side of the acropolis, good land with figs and olives, like a little piece of Boeotia in the desert of eastern Lesbos. The jasmine on the slopes of the acropolis perfumes the air, and the sun is bright on the cliffs over the town.
The people came down to meet us, then Briseis took me up to the acropolis, where I met Sappho's daughter – an old, old woman. She was strong, the lady of the town and still fully in command.
'You are her husband?' she asked.
I shook my head, no, but she smiled.
'You are her true husband,' she said.
She was an odd woman, a priestess of Aphrodite, and the lady of the Aeolian goddess, and a famous teacher. I was a tongue-tied killer in her presence, but I saw another Briseis that day – a witty, educated woman who could sing a lyric as well as an Olympic competitor.
That night we lay together in her house, with the doves cooing and the jasmine smell, and I have never forgotten it. It was the first time we had been together without an element of fear. It was different. She was different. I knew love that night – not the maddened, half-angry love of the young, but the gift of the Cyprian that turns your head for ever.
I would have stayed a second day, but Paramanos came to me, pounding on her door, and his words were hard.
'You are mad!' he said. 'And she is no better.'
And that is what is wrong with the world, thugater. Because I accepted his words. We shared a last drink of wine under her fig tree.
'You are Helen,' I said to her.
'Of course I'm Helen,' she said. 'Why shouldn't Achilles have Helen? Why can't Helen have Achilles?'
'I have to sail away from you for a time,' I said. 'Otherwise, one of us will die, or I'll kill Aristagoras and be an outlaw.'
She put her arms around my neck and it felt like the most natural thing in the world. 'When I've had my way with the world, I'll call you to me and we will make love until the sun stops in the sky,' she said. 'I'll send you a copy of Sappho's epic to pass the time.' She laughed.
I kissed her. 'I love you,' I said.
She laughed. 'How could I have doubted you? Listen, Achilles – when you have a chance, kill my husband. If you don't, I'll have to do it myself, and men will talk.' She laughed again, and ice touched my spine.
There was never anyone like Briseis. And if you know your Iliad, you'll know that it was on that very beach that Achilles took her.
She made me feel more alive.
She climbed the cliff while I walked down to the beach, and then she watched us sail away from the top.
I never promised you a happy story. Miltiades was waiting for me on the beach at Mytilene. I hadn't learned, yet, that he was the greatest spymaster in the west, and knew of every event long before it happened. Indeed, his reach was long.
He embraced me as I stepped ashore, but he was curt. 'Walk with me,' he said.
He was my commander. I walked away with him, thinking of Briseis. I saw the cloud on his face and wondered how I could next see her.
'You had Aristagoras's wife in your boat,' he said.
'The bastard tried to ambush me.' I didn't know what else to say.
'He tried to ambush you when you sneaked off to fuck his wife,' Miltiades said. He turned to face me. 'That's what he's going to say.'
'She's two months pregnant!' I said – which was not, strictly speaking, a denial. 'I went to get my ransoms!'
'What ransoms?' Miltiades asked me, and he was as shrewish as a woman buying fish in the agora.
I hadn't told him, and suddenly I realized that this, not Briseis, was the real matter. 'I had Phoenicians to ransom after the fight at Amathus,' I said.
'You thought to take the money for yourself?' he asked, and his voice was dangerous.
I stopped walking. 'What?'
'The ransom for the Phoenicians,' he said. 'You sought to sneak away? You thought that I wouldn't know?' This was a different Miltiades – a sharper, more dangerous man.
'What?' I asked, foolishly. And then, 'What concern is it of yours?'
'Don't try that on me,' he said. 'Half of anything you take is mine. You expect me to squander political capital to save you from Aristagoras and then you try to steal my money?'
I stepped back. 'Fuck off,' I said. I shook my head. 'Those are my ransoms from Amathus. Nothing to do with you.'
'Half,' he said. 'Half of every penny you take. That is the price of being my man. I pay the wages on your ship. You agreed to the contract.' He spat. 'Don't act like a fucking peasant. You got more than a talent.'
I think that my hand went to my sword hilt, because he looked around – suddenly the great Miltiades was afraid to be alone on the beach with me. It wasn't the money, thugater. I am a killer and a lecher, but I have never been a greedy man.
But I thought that he was cozening me, and I can't stand to let other men get the better of me. 'This is my money from before the contract!' I said. 'I've promised part of it to my men!'
'That will have to come from your half, then,' he said. He crossed his arms. He was a little afraid – even then, men saw me as a mad dog. But he was bold, and he must have needed the silver.
If you want to know how great a man truly is, see him talk about money.
I sighed. 'Why didn't you come to me – like a man?' I might have said, like a friend, but I had just discovered that pirates have no friends.
'If you ever speak to me that way again, I'll have you killed,' Miltiades said. 'Now pay up your half, and we can forget all about this.' He was shaking with fury, and yet he was above mere insults of manhood. He didn't point at the boat behind me, but he did jut his chin at it. 'You think it's going to be easy to keep you alive after this? He hates you. And you come sailing back from a rendezvous with his wife.'
Oh, I can be a fool.
I paid. Perhaps you'll think less of me, but Miltiades was the only anchor I had in that world. I had no family and no friends, and I was living far above my birth. So I walked back down the beach, took the rolled cloak out from under the floorboards of my boat and I paid Miltiades half of the ransoms that I had earned without him.
Paramanos watched me do it without a muscle moving on his face, but I knew who the sycophant was by watching. Herakleides wouldn't meet my eye.
I couldn't believe it. He was such an upright man.
But he was an Aeolian, and such men can be bought.
Cheap.
I cursed.
Miltiades counted it out and threw me back a gold bar – an enormous sum of money. 'That's to take the sting out,' he said. 'I'm going to assume you misunderstood. Don't let it happen again, and let's just forget.' He grinned and offered his hand.
I took it and we clasped.
Miltiades looked over his shoulder. Then he looked back. I think he was measuring my value to him. I met his eye. I trusted Miltiades. As I heard it from him, Aristagoras had plotted to kill her, and me, and that was enough.
Later, he came back and told me. 'I earned every penny of the ransom you tried to hide from me, ungrateful boy,' he said. Then he waved, always the great man. 'Forget it,' he chuckled. 'We're going to have some wonderful times together.'
I never forgot, though, and I assume he didn't either. He sent me to sea immediately, that evening, with orders to haunt the Asian coast. It should have been a happy autumn, but the politics of the Ionian camp were vicious, and I would have done better to enquire more closely from where my fountain of gold had come. Now that I served Miltiades, I was tied to the faction that favoured the war. There was a peace faction led by none other than the author of the revolt, Aristagoras, who now espoused a peaceful solution. Men said that he had been bought by the Medes with golden darics, and other men said that he feared the Great King.
I discovered, in between short cruises in the Ionian Sea, that Miltiades had informers everywhere, and that being his man did have benefits. He heard of a pair of Phoenician biremes taking a cargo of copper and ivory up the coast of Asia for Heraklea in the Euxine. We took them off the islands – without so much as a fight – and you can be sure that I had Miltiades' half bagged and ready before my stern touched the beach.
Autumn was well-advanced when we heard that the Ionian cities of the Troad had all fallen in two short weeks, as Artaphernes took the Great King's army and besieged and captured them. Our morale plummeted, and men and ships deserted. The last of the Chians sailed away and only the Aeolians remained.
The tyrant of Mytilene demanded that Miltiades leave. Our piracy – that's what he called it – was bringing the city into ill repute. What the bastard meant was that our ongoing commercial war against the Medes was costing his city, which was losing business to Methymna, around the coast of Lesbos.
Salamis, the last free city of Cyprus, fell in late autumn.
Miltiades called his captains to council. It was a fine day, with a stiff west wind blowing. We'd been beach-bound for ten days with bad weather and no targets. The Asians were staying well clear of Lesbos, and the bad feeling between Aristagoras and Miltiades had reached a new height. Men said I was to blame. Some even said that Briseis had had an affair with Miltiades himself – foolishness, as she was eight months pregnant and hundreds of stades around the coast of the island, but that's the sort of wickedness that spreads in a divided camp.
'We're leaving,' he said. That was it – the whole council reduced to a few words. He wasn't much for a lot of talk, unless it was his own.
'Back home?' Heraklides asked.
'What do you call home, Piraean?' Miltiades asked.
'Chersonese,' Herk said. He grinned. 'Don't act the tyrant with us, lord. The wind is fair for the Chersonese and we can lie on our couches with buxom Thracians before the first snow falls.'
One of Miltiades' captains was Cimon, his eldest son. Metiochos, his second son, was his other most trusted captain. That's how the old aristocratic families worked – plenty of sons who could be trusted as war captains. I love to hear men call the Athenians 'democrats' as if any of them ever wanted to give power to common men. If Miltiades had had his way, he'd have been lord of the Chersonese first and then tyrant of Athens. He only loved democracy when it packed the phalanx with fighters.
Hah! I'm a fine one to talk. Look at me, lording it in Thrace. There's no hypocrite like an old hypocrite.
At any rate, Cimon was my age, a man just coming into his reputation. I liked him. And he was not afraid of his father. 'We're going back to bad wine and blonde Thracian women because Pater is under sentence of death in Athens!' he said – the first the rest of us had heard of it.
Miltiades' look told me that he hadn't intended the rest of us to know, but Cimon just laughed.
I never knew exactly when and where Miltiades and Aristagoras had started to be allies, and I never knew when they had a falling out, although I suspect that Briseis and I played our part. I still don't know. But Miltiades did all the thinking that won us the Battle of Amathus – in that much, I suppose the bastard deserved a share of my spoils. And I guess that Miltiades had no stomach for peace with the Medes – not that he hated them, but because he made his fortune preying on their ships and he needed that money to make himself tyrant at Athens, or that's how I see it now.
I should have said earlier that by the time Miltiades wanted us to leave, Aristagoras had been supplanted by his former master, Histiaeus of Miletus, who had served the Great King as a general for years and then deserted suddenly. He must have been a great fool – the Ionians were all but beaten when he joined us, and many men thought that he was a double traitor come to betray us into the hands of the Persians. In fact, I suspect he was one of those tragic men who make bad decision after bad decision – his betrayal of the Great King was foolish and dishonourable, and all his subsequent behaviour was of a piece. I only met him once, and that was on the beach at Mytilene. He was haranguing Aristagoras as if the latter was a small boy. I stayed to listen and laugh, and Aristagoras saw me, and the hatred in his eyes made me laugh louder. No one respected him by then. His failure to lead us against the Medes – anywhere – and especially to help the men of the Troad, when our fleet was just a hundred stades away, showed that he was a fool, if not a coward.
At any rate, Histiaeus's arrival was the last straw. I think that Miltiades imagined that he would become the leader of the Ionian Revolt – and eventually the tyrant of all Ionia. And they would have been better for having him, I can tell you, honey. He may have been a bastard about money, but he was a war-leader. Men loved to follow him.
I ramble. Here, mix some of that lovely water from the spring in the bowl, and add apples – by Artemis, girl, do you blush just for the mention of apples? What a delicate flower you must be – thugater, where did you find her? Now pour that in my cup.
We sailed away ahead of the first winter storm, and just as Heraklides predicted, we were soon snug on our couches at Miltiades' great palace at Kallipolis.
Aristagoras took his own retainers and fled to the mainland of Thrace. He had founded a colony there, at Myrcinus, and he abandoned the rebellion, or so Miltiades' informers reported. I wondered where Briseis was. She must be bitter, I thought – from the queen of the Ionian Revolt to the wife of a failed traitor in three short years.
The winter passed quickly enough. I bought a pretty Thracian slave and learned the language from her. I taught the Pyrrhiche to all my oarsmen, and kept them at it through the whole rainy winter, and we went together to celebrate the feast of Demeter, and the return of the sailing season.
I was another year older. I dreamed all winter of ravens, and when the flowers began to bloom I saw a pair rise from a day-old kill and fly away west, and I knew that it was an omen, that I should be going home to Plataea, but there was nothing there for me – I thought. I worried more about my oath to Hipponax and Archilogos, which goes to show what fools men are about fate.
In the spring, Histiaeus declared himself commander of the Ionian Alliance, and set the rendezvous of the fleet at Mytilene again, where he had, over the winter, made himself tyrant. He did it the simple way – his picked men infiltrated the citadel, then he killed the old tyrant with his own hands and every one of his children, too. Soaked in blood, he stepped forward to the applause – the terrified applause, I assume – of the town.
Miltiades told us the tale at dinner, shaking his head with disgust. 'Should have been you,' I said. I didn't mean it as flattery – simple fact. 'Not the killings – the lordship.'
He grinned at me. We were almost friends again – which is to say, he was unchanged, and I had almost forgiven him. Miltiades' land of the Chersonese was the most polyglot kingdom I'd ever seen – Thracians and Asiatics and Greeks and Sakje at every hand, at dinner and in the temples. If Paramanos was the only black man, he was not the only foreigner. He loved the place, and my fear about his loyalties began to relax. At any rate, that afternoon, we had been joined by Olorus, the king of the local Thracians and Miltiades' father-in-law.
He grunted. 'That Aristagoras,' he said. 'I visited him over the winter. He's a greedy fool, and if he keeps taking slaves out of the Bastarnae and the Getae, they'll kill him.'
Miltiades nodded. 'He is a greedy fool,' he said.
'Does he have his wife with him?' I asked, trying to sound uninterested.
He grinned. 'Now, that is a woman!' he said. 'By all the gods, Miltiades – count yourself lucky you didn't marry her. She is all the spine Aristagoras lacks.'
Miltiades shrugged. 'I met her on Lesbos,' he said. 'She is too intelligent to be beautiful.' He looked at me.
Heh, honey, that's how men like Miltiades like their women. Dumb. Fear not – I won't marry you to one of those. Miltiades' chief wife – he had several concubines – was Hegesipyle, as beautiful as a dawn and as stupid as a cow tied to a post. Olorus's daughter, in fact. I couldn't stand to talk to her. She had never read anything, never been anywhere – my Thracian slave was better educated. I know, because I taught her Greek letters in exchange for her teaching me Thracian, and then we read Sappho together. And Alcaeus.
Oh, I'm an old man and I tell these stories like a moth darting around a candle flame.
The point of telling you about that dinner is that Miltiades rose and told us that we would not be joining the rebels. 'The Ionian Revolt is only dangerous to the fools who play at it,' he said, and his bitterness was obvious. He was a man who sought constantly for greatness, and greatness kept passing him by.
Cimon was there. He had a lovely girl on his couch, I remember, because she had bright red hair and we all teased him about what her children would look like. Miltiades had red hair, too, remember.
He rose. 'So what will we do to win honour this summer?' he asked.
Miltiades shook his head, and he sounded both bitter and old. 'Win honour? There is no honour in this world. But we'll fill the treasury while old Artaphernes is busy with his rebellion.'
He had a grand plan for a raid down the Asian coast, all the way past Tyre to the harbour of Naucratis. I frowned when I heard it, because I knew the idea must have come from Paramanos.
We sailed after the spring storms seemed to have blown themselves out. We sailed right past the beach at Mytilene. They must have thought we were on our way to join them, but we didn't so much as spend the night. We stayed on Chios instead, and Stephanos gave money to his mother and impressed all his friends with his riches and then sailed away, and I was a little jealous of the ease with which he returned home and left. His sister was married now and had three sons, and I held one on my knee and thought about how quickly the world was changing. And I wondered if Miltiades was right, that there was no more honour to be had.
We fell on the Aegyptian merchants like foxes on geese. All the cities of Cyprus had fallen by then, and they didn't think there was a Greek within a thousand stades. We came out of a grey dawn, five warships, our rowers hard and strong from the trip south, and they didn't have a single trireme to protect them. I didn't even get blood on my sword. Greeks have a name for when a wrestler wins a match without getting his back dirty – we call it a 'dustless' victory. We took those poor bastards and we were dustless.
I took three merchants myself.
When a squadron came out of the port, too late to save their merchants, we scattered.
I ran south, at the advice of Paramanos. I dumped the rowers from the ships we'd taken on the low dunes of Aegypt and kept the gold and bronze and the gigantic eggs of some fabulous animal – Africa is full of monsters, or so I'm told. There was a slave girl, too – ill-use all over her, and a flinch reflex like a beaten dog. I kept her and treated her well, and she brought me luck.
We picked up another pair of Aegyptian merchants just north of Naucratis the day after the raid, ships inbound with no idea of what had happened. More silver and gold, and Cyprian copper. The bilge of Storm Cutter was filled so deep that we had a hard time beaching the ship, and rowing was a horror.
I beached again, carefully, fed my crew on stolen goat meat and sent the newly captured crewmen to walk back to Naucratis. Then I went west, to Cyrene. That was for Paramanos. He'd found a girl he fancied in the Chersonese, a free Thracian woman, and he'd decided to pick up his children, which filled me with joy – because that meant that he was committed to me. It was touch and go in Cyrene – the authorities knew us for what we were, but Paramanos was a citizen, and they chose not to tangle with my marines. His sister brought his daughters to the boat, clutching their rag dolls, the poor little things – they wept and wept to be put on a boat full of men, and hard men at that. But some things earn the smiles of the gods, and my Aegyptian slave girl turned out to be a fine dry-nurse. She was ridiculously thankful, now that she found she wasn't to be raped every night. And I have noticed this, honey – animals and people repay good treatment. And the gods see.
We put to sea with a strong south wind coming hot and hard off Africa. We hadn't dared to sell even an ostrich egg out of the hold in Cyrene – they didn't like us, and Paramanos feared that the council would seize the ship. I spent the whole night afraid that he would change his spots and betray us. Which shows that I had something to learn about men.
The wind was fair for Crete. We had a hold full of copper and gold and I knew a good buyer. Besides, I wanted to know how Lekthes was doing, the bastard.
I'm laughing, because most Greek captains thought that it was a great thing just to go down the coast of Asia, or across the deep blue from Cyprus to Crete, but thanks to Paramanos, I sailed the wine-dark as if I owned it, and every night he showed me the stars and how to read them the way the Phoenicians read them.
Good times.
Paramanos was showing off for his daughters and they reciprocated, turning into a pair of little sailors. Ten days at sea and they could climb masts. The elder girl, Niobe, had a trick that scared me spitless every time I saw her do it – when we were under way, rowing full out, she would run along the oar looms, a foot on each oar.
The oarsmen loved her. Every ship needs a brave, funny, athletic eleven-year-old girl.
Probably as part of his showing-off for his girls, Paramanos made a disgustingly accurate landfall on Crete, and was insufferable as a result. We walked up the beach at Gortyn's little port and were welcomed like Homeric heroes – better, in that quite a few of them were murdered. Nearchos embraced me as if he'd forgotten that we weren't lovers, and his father was decidedly warmer than I feared.
'Tell me everything!' Nearchos said. 'Nothing has happened here, of course,' he said, glowering at his father.
So I bragged a little of the raid and I talked of the sea. I was falling in love again – with Poseidon's daughters, as the fisherfolk say. But the sea bored Nearchos – boats were a tool for glory, not an end in themselves.
'You raided Aegypt?' Lord Achilles asked. 'Your Miltiades is a bold rascal. You must be a bold rascal yourself.'
I raised my cup to him and we pledged each other until I stumbled out of the hall into the rose garden and puked up an amphora of good wine. But I gave each of them a cup of beaten gold – half the wages they'd given me, returned in a guest-gift, and then they were my friends for life.
In the morning, I had a hard head, but I went to visit the bronze-smith. He wanted to buy all my copper, as I expected he would. I gave him a good price and we parted with a dozen embraces.
'Any time you want to give up piracy,' he said, 'I could make you a decent smith.'
I waved to him and went down to the fishermen's village and found Troas. He was sitting by his Lesbian boat, mending a net.
'I heard you was back,' he said. He didn't look up. 'She's wed and well wed, and it's your boy she calved first. So don't go making trouble.' Then he looked at me. 'She called him Hipponax,' he said. 'And we all thank you for the boat.'
I'd sold a pair of the eggs and all the copper. I put a bag on the upturned boat hull. 'For the boy, when he's a man,' I said. I had planned a long speech – or perhaps just a blow. I hadn't forgotten how he'd given me a boatload of fools.
But standing there on the beach, by his upturned boat, I had to acknowledge to the gods that his boatload of fools had made me the trierach I was. His hands and the gods had helped make me. Still, I glared at him.
'You nigh on killed me with your cast-off men,' I said.
'I had no reason to send my neighbours and friends with you, boyo,' he said, calmly enough.
'I got them home – even the fools,' I said.
'Aye, you're a better man than some,' Troas said. He nodded, and that was my apology.
'I'd like to see my boy,' I said.
'Nope,' Troas answered. 'My fool of a daughter took quite a shine to you, my young Achilles. She's just about over it now, and settling down to be a prosperous fisherwoman. She almost loves her husband, who's a good man and not a fucking killer.' His eyes held mine, as tough in his way as Eualcidas or Nearchos or Miltiades. Then he nodded. 'On your way, hero,' he said. 'No hard feelings. Come back in five years, if you're alive, and I'll see to it that you and your boy are friends.'
I felt a rush of – sadness? Rage? And a lump in my throat as big as one of the ostrich eggs.
'Can I give you a piece of advice, lad?' Troas asked.
I slumped against the boat hull. 'I'm listening,' I said.
He nodded. 'You think you're happy as a hero, but you ain't. You're a farm boy. It's not too late to go back to the farm. I saw you play house with my daughter and I didn't figure you'd ever come back. But the fact that you did come back tells a whole different story.' He went back to his net. 'That's all I have for you, son.'
It is odd how quickly you go from the killer of men to the bereft boy. 'I have no home,' I said. I still remember the taste of those words, which slipped past the fence of my teeth against my will.
Troas looked at me then. Really looked at me. 'Don't give me that shit,' he said, but his tone was kind. 'Go and make one.' And he got up and embraced me – Troas, giving me a hug for comfort.
That's the way of youth, honey. One moment you are Achilles risen from the dead, the next an old net-mender feels sorry for you. And each moment is as real as the other.
I got to my feet. I was crying, and I didn't know why.
'Still some human in you, eh, boy?' he said. 'Give me another hug then, and I'll pass it to your son in a few years.' He held me close. 'If you don't leave this life soon, all you'll be is a killer,' he said.
I held him hard, and then I went back down the beach to my ship. Nearchos was waiting, with Lekthes. Lekthes was standing with a sea bag on his shoulder and all his armour nicely shined. His wife held his hand and wept. I kissed her and promised to bring him home, and then I embraced Nearchos.
'I have three ships and all the men to man them,' Nearchos said. 'When you – when you want me, call. We'll come.'
I sailed away with a lump in my throat. Part V An Equal Exchange for Fire All things are an equal exchange for fire and fire [is an equal exchange] for all things, as goods are for gold and gold for goods. Heraclitus, fr. 90
It is necessary to know that war is common and right is strife and that all things happen by strife and necessity. Heraclitus, fr. 80