Salamis (15 page)

Cimon was smiling steadily now. ‘I’d forgotten how you can be, Plataean,’ he said.

‘And last is a matter of tactica,’ I said. ‘The number of ships means nothing. We saw this at Lade, even. Confess it; you defeat the first line and the rest run. It is always this way. The Phoenicians distrust the Ionians and loathe the Egyptians. The Egyptians want to defeat the Great King and be independent. Every Ionian ship has men on board, oarsmen
and
marines, who were our comrades at Lade.’

‘By Poseidon, Arimnestos, you make me feel as if it is the Great King who is to be pitied, not the Athenians!’ Cimon crossed his arms.

‘Say rather: the Greeks,’ I said. ‘You Athenians have taken to forgetting, in your desperate hubris, that you have allies.’

He winced. ‘We will never forget Plataea,’ he said.

‘In this case, the ally I would remember is Aegina,’ I said. ‘They have almost fifty ships available and they have decided to fight.’ I deflated myself. ‘Even if the Peloponnesians run.’

I’m not sure that I changed Cimon’s mind. I know I made him feel better.

But Poseidon sent us a better sign. Well – first I think that I should say that my elation was not just from the combat and the deed of the day before. Archilogos had waved at me.

You smile. I sound like one of you girls, delighted that the handsomest boy waved? No. Archilogos was the friend of my childhood and he had been my foe for many years. I had sworn never to do him harm and such oaths have power. This was the first time he had offered me anything but violence in return and I was irrationally cheered. I replayed the moment over and over, trying to test it for more or less meaning. Had he actually waved? Was he merely pointing me out to his archers?

Come to think of it, thugater, you are correct, I
am
sounding like a blushing maiden. But I loved him. The weight and injustice of his hate lay heavy on me. So I took his wave as a sign. I took the whole encounter as a sign. I was no longer despondent. In an hour of manoeuvre and combat I had allowed myself to be convinced, completely, that we had the upper hand, regardless of the numbers.

And then, on the ninth day out from Salamis, the sun was rising on a glorious day. The wind had lowered after sunset and the rain had stopped, and when I rose to piss in the night the stars were out and we had a gentle westerly.

We rose in the darkness and warmed ourselves at our fires and ate re-warmed mutton stew and some oysters. There was no wine. I got up on a rock and addressed the oarsmen, which I now did almost every morning.

‘Today we should get back to Salamis,’ I said. ‘It’ll be rowing all the way. And the Persian fleet is just over there.’ I waved at the distant dark coast of Attica, as the eastern sky behind me began to lighten. ‘But you are all better men than they. Just row. Fear nothing. If they come at us we can always turn south.’

Men nodded. They grinned and laughed and muttered darkly – and in that moment I loved them.

I had decided to send Seckla and Brasidas and twenty of my rowers to the Lesbian ship, and I had promoted six men from the oar decks to the rank of marines under Alexandros.

Brasidas hopped up on a rock and held up a wax tablet. ‘I am given to understand that the following men have the great fortune to have been promoted to being marines,’ he called. He read out six names. ‘To welcome all of them to our ranks,
all
marines can meet me in full panoply for a little run and a little dance.’ He didn’t grin. Spartans didn’t punctuate their unspoken threats with grins. They just said things and did them.

All through the crowd of oarsmen there was backslapping and good-natured cursing as the lucky six – perhaps feeling less fortunate – hurried to find their helmets.

I walked down in my own panoply. Perhaps it was penance for the day before, but I felt I needed to exercise. And Eugenios, perhaps because of his new freedom, had polished my whole kit so that the bronze shone like gold. I sparkled in the firelight and the rising sun.

So did Brasidas, and we began to exercise, first in simple stretches and then in a run up the beach to the headland and back, sprinting all the way.

Oh, for youth. I was last – last! And the new marines laughed at me. In a good-natured way. Naturally, I hated the lot of them.

And then we began to dance the Pyrrhiche. I probably forget to say everything important, but by that time, thanks to my time with the Spartans and Brasidas joining us, we had more than a dozen dances. In fact, sometimes when only the veterans did them, we improvised, adding elements, or took turns in a dance game where one of us would lead and the others would imitate the leader’s motions: thrusts, cuts, throws. Armed and unarmed, swords and spears and shields, drawing and sheathing, footwork …

But the first dance was still the old dance of the spear from Plataea, with some Spartan modification, and we began to teach it. Many oarsmen knew it and some did it every morning, hoping to be promoted, but none knew it in the detail with which Brasidas preached it. Now the worm turned; the biters were bit and Brasidas and I pointed out any small errors – phalanxes of them – to our new marines.

One man, Polydorus, shook his head. ‘What does it matter whether I turn my foot or not?’ he whined.

Brasidas didn’t smile or frown. He merely paused. ‘It only matters,’ he said, ‘if you would rather live, than die.’

‘Ouch,’ muttered Sitalkes.

Cimon emerged out of the murk of the early morning with young Pericles at his shoulder. He swirled his cloak to get my attention and I trotted over to him.

Pericles nodded at the new marines. ‘You train them,’ he said, ‘as if training can make a man into a gentleman.’

‘Young man, the Spartans, held as the noblest of all the Greeks, train relentlessly, and so do you.’ I shrugged.

‘When this is over, we are going to be in debt to our oarsmen,’ Cimon said. He was looking out to sea.

‘When we faced the Medes at Marathon, your father used the little men to shame the hoplites,’ I said. ‘Are you
more
of an aristocrat than your father?’

‘What in the name of Pluton is that?’ Cimon said. My stinging remark was blown away on the west wind. Pericles heard it and raised an eyebrow

I saw it too. The flash of oars, coming from the north-east.

‘Poseidon’s dick,’ Cimon said. ‘ALARM!’ he roared.

We were off the beach faster than a boy drops his chiton for a run. Cimon’s
Ajax
was first off and that annoyed me, but I was trying to help Seckla get his less-than-piratical Aeolians into their places while my own
Lydia
, in the very peak of training, waited for orders.

There were three ships. They were spread over a wide swathe of the ocean, as if not really together. And because of the sun rising in the east behind us, our hulls were black against the black rock of the coast, an old pirate’s trick, and they didn’t see us for a long time.

Farther out there was a line of ships, perhaps sixty, but they were hull down, just a flash of oars on the horizon.

Then things grew more complicated.

The closest enemy ship turned towards Cimon’s
Ajax
and ran right at her. But they ran something up to their masthead and they didn’t take down their mast, which almost any trireme did before combat.

I was still on the beach, virtually the last man on it, chivvying the Aeolian oarsmen into their ship. Watching the drama at sea play out, my heart in my mouth, desperate to get aboard
Lydia.
Naiad
got under way and began to turn end for end.

Well out from
Ajax
the enemy ship turned her bow towards the beach, laying her vulnerable flank open to
Ajax’s
ram and folding in her oars like a bird preparing for a rough night at sea.

Ajax
turned in a flash of oars – a beautiful display of seamanship – took in her oars and lay longside to longside. But no grapples flew.

I ran into the shallow water in my armour – how poor Eugenios must have cursed me – and got over the side.
Lydia
was hovering in the shallow water just over the first drop-off of the beach – another fine art of rowing – and the moment Leukas roared ‘on board’ the oars all dipped and we were away like a sea eagle.

The other two enemy scouts were running, but Cimon’s brother in
Salamis
was faster. He had everything in his favour – better rowers, better rested, with a drier ship.

And he dared run the fleeing enemy down, in full view of their oncoming fleet. There were sixty ships bearing down on us.

Of course, they all had their masts down. Even though the west wind was at their backs, they were rowing.

Because they were afraid of us.

But Metiochus was not afraid of them, and while
Lydia
left the beach and ran upwind under oars to where Cimon and his capture lay, Metiochus caught the fleeing trireme and rammed it in the stern. You seldom see it, even though it is the dream shot of oared combat. But his ram caught her right under the curve of the swan’s neck, and although we could neither see nor hear because we were a dozen stades away, she sank.

Metiochus turned and came back, seeming to skim the water like a bird of prey.

Cimon’s capture had, in fact, come right up and raised a branch of laurel. She was from Naxos, crewed with various survivors of the storms of three weeks before, and the crew had voted to change sides.

Leukas lay us alongside
Ajax
as prettily as a kore dances at Brauron, and I jumped from helm to helm.

Cimon’s helmsman laughed. ‘They’re all over there,’ he said. ‘Tell ’is lordship that if we don’t want to join the Persians, we need to get underway.’

I jumped again, onto the deck of the Naxian ship,
Poseidon
. She was a fine vessel – a decked trireme, a heavy ship built on the latest Phoenician lines, capable of carrying cargo or fighting. A little slow for running away, though.

I grabbed Cimon’s arm. He was mobbed by excited Greeks – Euboeans and Ionians. Being a heavy ship, they had more than twenty marines. They also had a pair of Persian captives – two men assigned to the ship by their admiral, Ariabignes.

‘They just sailed up and joined us!’ Cimon shouted.

‘Your helmsman wants to get out of here,’ I shouted. ‘So do I.’

Cimon grinned. ‘This is a sign. From Poseidon.’ He slapped my back. ‘You were right!’

I pointed over the Naxian ship’s starboard bulwark. ‘There is a Persian squadron
right there.’
I waved. ‘Can we help Poseidon help us by not fighting them all ourselves?’

Cimon shook his head. ‘I feel the power,’ he said.

‘Feel it when you have two hundred brothers at your back,’ I said. ‘Sixty to ten is long odds.’

Cimon laughed. ‘Sixty to twelve is only five to one,’ he said. But he shook his head rapidly, indicating he was only leading me on. ‘I agree. Let’s go.’

He left his marines aboard, however, like the practical old pirate he was, and he took half the Naxian’s marines as hostages. He made it sound like guest-hosting in the most noble and ancient way and the Naxians – well, the Ionians, really – leapt to the
Ajax
with a will, delighted to be invited aboard.

We all put our oars in the water. By then the oncoming Persian squadron, all Phoenicians, were ten stades away.

I had time to see young Pericles in an animated conversation with one of the Ionian marines, a boy only a little older, maybe eighteen.

Then I jumped back to
Lydia
and we turned south.

By a good chance, Cimon had scrawled his usual message inviting the Ionians to desert on the rocks above our beach and that’s what the Phoenicians found when they went inshore. They didn’t really bother to chase us. In fact, as we rowed due south, I wondered if they’d make a blunder. If they raced after us, a dozen ships well manned, we might have snapped up their lead ships, especially as I had a sailing rig.

But they did not. They chose to be cautious and, in truth, their ships were the very antithesis of the ships for a long chase; they were heavy and slow and damp.

We put them over the horizon in two hours and then turned west at a flash of Cimon’s shield, a loose line abreast to a long, straggling column, but we were old shipmates and we knew the signals. We neatened up the line as we rowed, only one deck at a time to rest the oarsmen. Just in case. It wasn’t just the Phoenicians who were cautious.

But we made good time. The west wind was gentle, barely rippling the water. We had started the morning with a victory and that put great heart into the men.

But for all that, the west wind
was
against us, and by mid-afternoon it was clear we would not make Salamis. We’d come too far west to make Andros and night was coming.

Cimon and I had the same thought – to find the narrow beach two bays west of Sounion. But we were cautious; just short of the bay we went in lone in
Lydia
and Alexandros and four mariners swam ashore, naked. They ran up the beach and climbed the ridge behind.

We hovered, the sun sank, and our oarsmen cursed.

Alexandros ran back down the sand and did a little dance, the agreed ‘all clear’ signal.

We landed. It was tight; it required all our seamanship and, to be honest, a great many blasphemies and some splintered wood to get us all ashore. The last ship in, Metiochus’s
Salamis,
was beached between two big rocks and no sane trierarch would ever have put a ship there.

Not to mention that we had neither food nor wine.

We put all our marines together in a body under Brasidas and sent them inland to fetch any forage that could be managed, with two hundred oarsmen to carry it and all our archers as a covering force. Cimon and I went as volunteers and it was as scary as campaigning in a foreign land. North, we could see fires burning unchecked on the ridges and mountains towards Brauron and Marathon. East, the mountains toward Athens were afire.

Aside from Persians and their slaves, Attica was empty. There wasn’t much food. We found some olives and some grain and, not far from the beach, we found a village that had chosen not to evacuate.