The Great King (43 page)

Old Lord Achilleus was dead – and his son Neoptolymos had died at Lades. But the new King of Gortyn was Scyllus, Achilleus’s brother, and his son Brotachus was already a famous soldier. I was feasted in the palace, sold some fancy perfume bottles – wait, I lie. I
gave
the Cretans the perfume bottles of Aegyptian glass, and they
gave
me rich gifts in return. Very aristocratic, the Cretans. Too good for trade.

Bah – none of that matters. What matters is that in the town – the fishing port that supplied the king and his soldiers – I met Troas, the fisherman – still hale, still rude. He crushed me to him, and invited me to dinner.

So I went. Troas no longer lived in a rude shack on the beach. He’d had two boats and a fine son-in-law and some war loot, and from that he’d gone to a dozen fishing boats, nets in a tangle in every direction, a small army of fishermen who worked for him – and a fine stone house.

Gaiana didn’t share our dinner – that was not the Cretan way. But her oldest son did. His name was Hipponax, and he was . . . mine. There was no hiding it – he had my nose, my mouth, my eyes – and her long limbs.

He was overeager to please me, and rude to his mother and his grandfather, and it was quite clear to me that he was a handful.

After dinner, he was sent to the agora on an errand, and we three sat together. Gaiana had aged. She was tall and plump and had lines around her eyes, and probably had a thousand other flaws, but I was older myself and I saw her as . . . the same girl I’d bedded in the rain under Hephaestion’s porch, fifteen or more years before. She smiled nervously when first I came in, and then she had to find fault with me . . .

‘I’m sure our manners are too coarse for a great lord like you,’ she said.

‘Do you ever stop talking to hear yourself think?’ she asked, and:

‘Do you know any stories that are not about you?’

And a dozen other quips. But after a cup of wine, she looked at her father.

He leaned forward on the kitchen table and held his bronze cup between his hands. ‘Would you take your son?’ he asked. ‘He’s going to kill someone. He’s set on being a warrior, and fishermen’s sons are not warriors on Crete. He fights all the time – with the boys from the warrior societies. He wins, too.’ Troas grinned in pleasure. Then shook his head.

‘You do not have the best record around here,’ Gaiana put in. ‘Half the island died at Lades!’

I shrugged. At thirty, I might have launched into some hot-blooded defence of my actions, and Miltiades and the whole Ionian Revolt – a diatribe against the treasons of Samos. But instead I shrugged and smiled at her.

And she smiled back.

‘Stop looking at me like that,’ she said.

At twenty, I’d have assumed she meant just that, but there and then, I knew she meant the opposite.

‘Will you take him?’ Troas asked.

‘Yes,’ I said. I felt good saying it. ‘Bless you for raising my son. I’ll take him to sea and try to keep him alive.’ I looked at Troas. ‘You know there is no guarantee.’

Troas raised his chin. ‘I lost her husband,’ he said gruffly.

‘Pater . . .’ she began, and then paused.

I think we talked more, but eventually old Troas glared at his daughter. ‘Shall I leave you two lovebirds alone?’ he asked testily.

‘Yes,’ she said, defiant.

And he did.

Much later, she lay beside me. The gods were smiling – rain was falling on the roof.

‘I’m old and fat,’ she said.

‘No,’ I said. I spent some time proving my point.

She laughed and laughed and tickled me. ‘Damn you for coming back,’ she said. ‘I loved my husband. But I’m sick of being in a bed alone.’

And later still, she said, ‘Keep him alive. I have two other boys. They’ll make good fishermen. But Hipponax is . . . something else. When he’s not a violent fool, he’s . . . like a poet.’

Like a poet
? I liked the sound of that.

The world is a strange and wonderful place, and one of the ways in which it is strange is this – few women in my life have stirred me as quickly or as deeply as Arwia of Babylon, with her scents and her earthy brilliance and her remarkable body. But while she was an adventure – and a sensual pleasure – Gaiana was . . . better. Truer. Better for my soul, anyway.

We laughed a great deal. We talked about . . . nothing – but we talked and talked, and then she complained again about her fat, as she called it.

‘The answer to weight,’ I said, ‘is exercise.’

She hit me quite hard.

Hipponax was a trained sailor, and a remarkably sullen and difficult boy. I’ve known dozens, if not hundreds, of young men, and they have much in common – they do not think, they lie when the truth would have done as well, they think failure is a crime, they think they are the gift of the gods to war, the sea and all of womankind – I’m just getting started, and these views are based mostly on knowing myself.

But even by that standard, Hipponax was difficult. It was as if he was constantly wrestling with some inner daemon, and losing. He said the most astounding things – out loud. He told Demetrios that he – Hipponax – was the best helmsman on the ship.

He came to me our second day at sea and said that he ‘wasn’t going to take any more crap’ from my captain of marines. Siberios was probably not the best warrior on the waves – he was a Corinthian sell-sword I’d found on the beach in Aegypt – but he was a good man in a fight, he had scars to prove it, and he could discipline men.

‘He’s riding me. Because he knows I’m a better man. I can take him,’ Hipponax said.

I looked at him for a moment. ‘Are you here on the command deck as my son, or as a marine on my ship?’

He shrugged. ‘Whatever,’ he said.

‘As my son, I’d suggest you learn some humility. As a marine – get the fuck off my deck before I have you bound to an oar, and never approach me again with such whiney crap. Do I make myself clear?’ I did think a moment before I shot that out.

He turned red. ‘Fuck you,’ he said. ‘I don’t have to take your crap either.’

Demetrios saved me a lot of trouble by knocking him flat – from the side. I think it was better that Demetrios did it.

He bounded to his feet, ready to fight. He really was incredible – fast, brave, strong.

Overweight Demetrios dropped him a second time, and he didn’t move.

‘I should apologise,’ Demetrios said.

‘Don’t bother,’ I said.

But I was wise enough to send Hector to look after him. Hector got him under the awning and kept him cool, and was waiting with water.

I can guess some of the things they said to each other – but they became friends. Hector was younger, but as my right hand, he knew me better. Hipponax craved my good opinion but had all the wrong notions of how to achieve it.

They became . . . inseparable. We had a day in port on a tiny island west of Lesvos, and they did something that must have been insanely reckless and stupid, because I still haven’t been told.

At any rate, Hipponax became manageable, although, as you will hear, this did not apply to combat.

A day west of Thasos, with all my rowers well rested and a deck full of marines, a pair of pirates came out of the morning haze and were foolish enough to try us – two ships to two, in the open ocean.

I won’t bother with the fight. I’ll only say that I would have loved to be aboard their lead ship when we turned and attacked them.

See? I still laugh.

They were brutal animals with a dozen women chained to their midships deck and the corpse of a man rotting against a boat sail mast. Neither ship had any recognisable identity – they weren’t Samian aristocrats making a little money, or Phoenicians or Carthaginians. These were scum. I’ll only relate one incident. I was standing in the bows, waiting to climb on to the rail of the marines’ box and leap on to the enemy deck. My marines were all formed behind me, and we were silent with the tension. That heart-grabbing tension that never changes. Every fight.

We bore down, with Demetrios’s powerful hand on the tiller, and we made the little leap to the side that Demetrios always makes about fifty feet out from a strike – and my fool son pushed past me and clambered on to the rail.

Even as we struck, he leapt. A full twenty heartbeats before I would have gone – and no one was ready to support him.

No one but Hector.

Hector ran along the side rail – you try that in bronze – and leaped.

It was many, many years since I had been the
third
man on to an enemy deck.

We killed every free man. The slaves caught the last of their marines – he tried to hide among them, and they killed him. I won’t describe it, but I’m going to guess he had it coming.

The whole incident reminded me of Dagon. As I have said before, I’m sure you’d like me to have sailed the seas looking for him and for revenge, but by Poseidon and by Herakles, I had better things to do with my time.

But seeing the ruins of the women chained to the deck did something in my chest. I dreamed of Dagon that night, and the next night, and the next. The gods were telling me something.

We were close to Delos. We had a good cargo and time. I put the helm down and took the women we’d saved – if indeed they were saved – to the sanctuary of Delos. I found Dion of Delos, who had helped me with dreams before.

After some time, I decided, with the help of the worthy priest, that I had been commanded to avenge the women – the women who leaped into Poseidon’s arms. That’s what the priest of Apollo concluded, and I think he had the right of it.

It is one thing to pursue a personal revenge. It is another – I hope – to be told by the Sea God to right a wrong.

But the fight made the bond between the boys as strong as Chalcidian steel. And it confirmed my notion that my ships, despite their lading with luxury goods, were fast enough to run. So I bore away north on a favourable wind for a little spying along the Thracian coast. West of the Dardanelles, it is flat – the delta of the Evros river is rich in birds and fish and mosquitoes. We beached, built hasty stockades to protect our ships against the locals, and stood guard all night, but some of the Thracians traded with us, and we had a good look into the Great King’s preparations.

Zeus and Poseidon sent the storm that wrecked the bridges, but the Great King was equal to the challenge. I got close enough to see one span of ships already rebuilt, and another laid out along the Asian coast.

Men say that Xerxes ordered the waters beaten with whips. I think that sounds unlikely, but he was a man not fully in control of his passions, and I suppose he might have given way to a fit of rage.

I also counted almost three hundred and fifty military ships.

I touched at Athens to sell my cargoes and pick up hides and salt for Corinth, but I was in a hurry and all my friends were gone. We were late for the Council, and everyone was already there.

Corinth is a fine city. The magnificent acropolis towers over the town itself, and it is a long climb to the temples, and the pottery workshops aren’t what they were in my father’s youth, but they have beautiful buildings and superb bronzesmiths. To say the least.

As we beached, a runner came down to invite me to drink wine with Adamenteis. I would not have been suspicious, even though I disliked the man, but the runner would not meet my eye. The whole thing sounded odd, and I read the message tabled several times.

‘Please tell our lordly host that I will attend him after I report to Themistocles,’ I said.

He cringed. ‘No! That is, lord, he needs to see you – immediately.’

Never make a slave improvise.

‘Why?’ I shot out.

The man’s eyes were everywhere. ‘I . . . lord, I don’t know. Perhaps about Persia?’ He still didn’t look at me, and I smelled a dead rat. Perhaps several dead rats.

I turned to Hipponax. ‘Set this man ashore,’ I said.

‘No!’ he said, but he went quietly enough. I sent a runner to Themistocles, and sat tight.

Before the sun set the width of a finger, a small army of magistrates and armed men came down to the beach.

It was all about the ship – the wreck we found in Aegypt. A pair of Corinthians claimed her – and said that I had no doubt attacked her and taken her, as I was a notorious pirate.

Adamenteis supported them. I suppose he’d intended to take me when I went to visit him.

Let me explain that men in Greece do not recognise the laws of other cities, so no man of Plataea cares a fig for the laws of Corinth, least of all me. I told the two magistrates to go about their business or I’d have them thumped by my marines. I was informed that I could not land or sell my cargoes.

This sort of thing happens. I sent Hipponax to Aristides and Hector to Gorgo and got my ships off the beach.

That should have been enough. It should have worked. Adamanteis should have, at the very least, put the interests of the League ahead of his own and let the matter go, but he did not, and by that action revealed himself, at least to me. I still think he took a bribe from the Great King. I know that other men dispute this.

But I say he was a traitor, and he was hosting the conference.

I lost six days in Adamanteis’s pettifogging labyrinth of accusations. Among other things, it became apparent – to me – that he had known I had the ship
before
I landed. A priest on Delos, perhaps? But my innate sense of self-preservation said that something was not right, and that this was the long arm of Xerxes reaching across the waves for me.

Neither Aristides nor Cimon would accept a word of it. They saw me as deluded, and while they worked tirelessly to rid me of the burden of accusations, they declined to accept that the Corinthian was an enemy.

So I didn’t hear any of the opening orations, and I missed it when the whole delegation of Thebes – a delegation of oligarchs that excluded some of the cities’ aristocrats – spoke against resistance. I missed the King of Sparta – Leonidas – giving what Themistocles insisted was the best speech he’d ever heard.

Instead, I took my ships along the isthmus, landed in the Peloponnesus at Hermione, and took a horse back with all my marines trailing away behind me in a cacophony of curses – most of them had never forked a horse before. I lost two more days riding through the Peloponnese – beautiful, but not for riding. We came down out of the mountains and I saw Corinth in the distance, and sent Hector ahead to see whether the way was clear.