The Great King (58 page)

It was to be a fine day.

We sacrificed, and the sacrifices were all confused – some excellent omens and some poor and some merely acceptable. One black ram – a royal animal, to the Spartans – made Eurybiades cringe. When the sun was a third of the way up the sky, the sacrifices grew better, and we were ordered to sea. Eurybiades had given simple orders. We put our rigging aboard the ships so that we didn’t have to protect the camp, and then we set sail, offering battle.

Not an oar touched the water. We used our sails to reach across the channel.

And the Persian fleet began to come off the beach. It was not like the first day. They came off and formed their squadrons neatly, even as we manouevred under sail in sloppy, lubberly confusion. Again, this is what Themistocles had designed and Eurybiades ordered.

We used the sails to preserve our rowers. And to slip east, deeper into the channel.

And they followed us.

Where the channel narrows suddenly to twenty-five stades wide, we turned and formed line of battle. We formed in a great crescent with the centre advanced – the Corinthians and other Peloponnesians – and the flanks refused.

The Great King’s fleet came out and formed in a great crescent facing us, and they were very great. Even with two full lines of fighting ships, they had reserve squadrons at the tips and behind the centre.

They still had us, two ships to one.

The biggest difference was that while we were still as fearful as ever men are when they face death – still, we were confident. When Eurybiades signalled for us to row backwards, we did. Our centre stretched away first, and gaps opened. But we righted ourselves, and our whole fleet coasted back, and back, into the narrowing channel, forcing the overweighted ends of the enemy crescent to compact on the centre.

I had Phoenicians opposite me – the right of their line. Lucky Plataea, we always face the very best the enemy has to offer. The flanking squadron was second-rate ships – some Lydians and some Carians – and they began to foul the Phoenicians. The coast of Thessaly was getting closer and closer, and it was not beached, but steep, rocky and still dangerous, like an animal gnashing its teeth from the remnants of the swell.

The Carians were good seamen, but the Lydians were not, and they flinched away from the surf and fouled the line.

I could no longer see the other end of our line in the haze. The sun was almost directly overhead, and I was hot, very tired and a little fevered.

But I knew what was coming next, and with the calm acceptance of the fatalist – not my usual role – I could see a certain ship.

I turned to Brasidas and Hermogenes. ‘See the dirty red and white ship?’ I said.

Pericles, my acting hypaspist, was laying my armour out on the deck. I had a new bandage on my hand and I felt light headed and prickly, but so did every man on the deck.

You can only face the fire so many days in a row, friends.

Pericles got the thorakes around my body and Brasidas closed it with pins.

‘When I give the word, go for that ship,’ I said.

‘So we’re going to attack,’ Hermogenes said.

I nodded.

He sighed. ‘I really want to be old,’ he said. ‘I have a good life and a good place. But . . .’ he smiled so sweetly ‘. . . I owe it to you. So if this is the price . . .’ he shrugged ‘. . . red and white it is.’

I went around the deck, informing men and shaking hands.

Brasidas turned and waved. ‘Signal!’ he called.

I’d really like to leave this tale here.

But the gods love tragedy, and we’ll play this one to the end.

I saw the three flashes.

So, of course, did the enemy.

It was our last ruse. It didn’t wreck any ships, but it bought us another hour, as we backed water again, and the Great King’s fleet suddenly closed up on the centre to repel our attack. We backed water. They collided and lost spacing – six hundred hulls scattered over forty stades of water. Ships lost oars and fell away behind.

We fed our oarsmen water and some honeyed sesame seeds and garlic sausage.

Again, Eurybiades’ ship flashed once.

‘Signal!’ Brasidas called.

This time, I pulled down my cheek pieces.

This time, men loosed their swords in scabbards and checked their spearheads one more time. Oarsmen spat on their hands.

Aft of me, an old salt looked at the man on the cushion on the other side and winked.

They both grinned.

Men shook hands.

‘Ready!’ I called. I looked at Hermogenes.

‘Red and white,’ he said. ‘I have him.’

Eurybiades flashed his bronze aspis three times.

We attacked. Let the world remember that when we were outnumbered two to one, we attacked. We waited until the sun was in the west – in their eyes. We tired their rowers all day.

And then we turned like the desperate dogs we were, and went for their throats.

Who knows whether Dagon knew me. He should have known
Lydia
, but it is possible that my fixation on him was not returned.

Bah – I doubt it.

Lydia
had the best, fittest rowers, and we leaped ahead of our line and went for the enemy line like an arrow from a string. Nor was the red and white trireme directly opposite us, but a little closer to the enemy centre, so that we ran a little south of east as we started our ramming attack.

You wouldn’t think we could have surprised them again. But we’d been retreating for three hours, and we hadn’t offered any fight, and then, suddenly . . .

The Phoenicians were up to it. Their ships went to ramming speed so fast that their oars beat a froth as if the sea were boiling. And their big ships were fast.

‘Show ram,’ I said quietly to Hermogenes. ‘But go for the oar rake, not the ram. We won’t board. We’ll sheer off and go through.’

Dagon must have expected me to go for him. To go for the epic fight, the head-to-head ram, the boarding action.

He never had good oarsmen, though, because he ruined his slaves. And I
wanted
that to tell against him. This was not my revenge. This was the revenge of the gods.

A hundred paces out, I saw him and my body moved like a lute string. I
knew
him and, at some level, my body feared him. No man had ever hurt me so. No man had ever made me feel so weak.

But I had planned this moment for a month, and I would not be tempted.

Fifty paces from his ship, Hermogenes suddenly veered hard to the right, and our oarsmen pivoted us brilliantly – right, left, out of the other ship’s line completely like a good swordsman. We lost a great deal of speed, but we weren’t ramming his ship.

We rammed her oars, and of course his poor slaves and down-trodden thugs couldn’t get their sticks in the ports in time. We went by in an orgy of arrow shafts.

I stood by Ka, pointing to Dagon. ‘Don’t kill him,’ I said.

His marines threw grapples, and my men cut them, and we were by, leaving a shambles and blood running over the red and the white, and then our speed picked up as my rowers put their backs into it. Nicolas was shouting, praising them, begging for more speed.

There was a Phrygian pentekonter under Dagon’s stern, and he tried to turn, and we went right over him – pressed his whole ship right under the waves. That’s why small ships cannot stand in the line of battle.

And just clear of the drowned Phrygian was a Lydian from the reserve squadron in a heavy trireme. He was too close to the first line to do anything to help.

I was with Ka. Hermogenes made the call, and we went ram to ram with the Lydian. He was moving at the pace a man might walk, and we, by then, were a little faster than a cantering horse, and our ram struck somewhere on his bronze.

The bow of the Lydian caved in like a broken nose in a fight, and suddenly we were deep in the enemy fleet and
our ram was stuck.

‘Reverse your cushions!’ Nicolas screamed.

Already, our stern was starting to rise. The timbers groaned as the strain of a sinking galley fell on the backbone – the keel.

I thought of Vasileos, thousands of stades away, and all the love and work he’d lavished on this ship.

The first oars bit the water.

Dagon’s ship was turning, now. I could see him on the stern, pointing at us.

I could see my ship beginning to torque. I could see deck planks springing out as the immense force of the sinking ship came to bear on the bow and the stern rose another hand’s width from the water. The Lydian was sinking with all hands.

I spread my hands to the gods and roared, ‘Poseidon!’

The ram seemed to explode straight up out of the enemy galley. All the timbers in her cat-head gave at once, and the marine box on the Lydian flew into the air, and my beautiful
Lydia
righted herself, slapped the water and rocked like a child’s toy in a tub of water.

In a big battle, the trierarch has to make ten decisions every heartbeat. I looked aft, where Dagon was turning – my prey, but too far. To my right, towards the centre, a dozen triremes were turning towards me. To my immediate left, Sekla’s
Machaira
and the capture
Huntress
burst out of the Phrygian squadron’s rear. Even as I watched, a Lydian struck
Huntress
amidships and splintered oars, and Sekla put
Machaira
into the Lydian’s side – this in ten heartbeats.

I pointed with my spear at the enemy centre. ‘Starboard,’ I said.

Nicolas had the port side reverse benches so that we turned in ten paces, and as the turn started, the starboard-side rowers picked up their cushions and turned, so that, as we faced south into the enemy centre, all our rowers were again facing aft, and rowing forward – and the stroke never faltered.

I could tell you stories of the next hour, but they would be lies.

Twice, I was able to rest my rowers. Once, after we were boarded from three ships – Aegyptians, with their fine marines, and I was only saved when Harpagos slew the biggest ship and put his marines into the rear of the men on my deck.

We just lay on our oars or knelt on the deck in the blood of our enemies and breathed.

And the second time was later, when we saw Eurybiades oar bank to oar bank with a ship that appeared to be made of gold – one of the Ionian tyrants. The Spartan thought the man must be the navarch of navarchs and went for him. I led my son on to the enemy deck, boarding on their undefended side, and ran for the back of the enemy marine line.

Two strides from the enemy, my chosen prey turned.

I slipped in the entrails of a dead man, and before I could recover my balance, a dying Spartan, taking me for the enemy, grabbed at my ankle, and down I went.

Hipponax stood over me. He thrust, he cut, he jumped on his wounded leg and danced like a flute girl – and men died.

I got a spear in my crest that wrenched my neck, but I stumbled to my feet, and watched my son kill.

And then, when he made a mistake, I reached over his shoulder and put my spear in a man’s eyeholes, and put a hand on his shoulder, and Eurybiades came and smiled at us.

We were almost in the centre of the line.

That time, we rested, watching the battle and helping no one, for almost as long as the oration of a dull man.

In that time, I saw Dagon’s ship.

He’d moved rowers about, put oars in empty oarlocks, and he was creeping away. He was not alone – wounded ships on both sides were leaving the fight.

I had had ten minutes to watch. There were huge holes in the allied fleet.

But again, the Great King’s fleet had had the worst of it, and was retreating, and Eurybiades and Themistocles were on them – the Peloponnesians and the Athenians and the Aeginians found their second wind, and I limped down the length of my ship to where Hermogenes stood with an arrow in his bicep.

‘You have to take the oars,’ he said.

Brasidas got him free of the leather harness.

I was back to being a helmsman. My helmet burned my brow, my plume hurt my head every time the wind caught it, my armour weighed like the world on the shoulders of Atlas, my hips had developed a strange new pain and I had a wound somehow
under
my right greave, which was cutting a bloody groove in the top of my foot.

I was better off than many.

‘Friends!’ I roared. Perhaps I squeaked it, but it was loud in my ears. ‘The day is ours. Now – we can rest on our oars, or we can go and help the Athenians finish the Great King’s fleet.’

One of the old salts laughed. ‘Easy, mate – I’ll rest here.’

Other men laughed, too.

‘By Poseidon!’ I roared, with a little of my old battle lust. ‘Then help me get my revenge!’

The old man cackled and flexed his muscles, and in that moment he was like Poseidon himself – old and solid.

‘Revenge, is it?’ he said. He cracked his hands, spat on his palms, and took his oar.

Men around him shook themselves as if they were coming awake.

Men understand revenge. It is easier than patriotism or love or strategy or tactics or even the rough world of consequence.

And revenge is a universal language.

I left the oars to walk the deck. ‘Most of you know I was a slave,’ I said. ‘The man who made me a slave and tried to break my body lies yonder, and there is nothing between me and him but five stades of water.’

Maybe I should make more speeches.

I got between the steering oars and aimed us astern of Dagon’s ship.

And now I had the bit in my teeth.

We passed another Phoenician, wallowing with a bank of dead oarsmen. Easy pickings, and we passed her by. And a Carian full of men who had probably once been my allies – they could scarcely row, and we passed them hand over fist, because of revenge. My oarsmen were heroes, the very Argonauts themselves, and we swept east, the sun under our quarter. I had time to drink some water, to pour more over the wound under my greave, time to take my son’s greave strap – his wound had opened. Greave straps are padded rolls of leather you wear on your ankles – fashionable Athenian boys wear them to parties now.

I walked forward, feeling better. Like a man who had fought hand to hand every day for four days. I spared a thought for the allied army, who would be fighting the Persians again in rotation.