‘When you talk, there’s a notch in the wake,’ the helmsman said.
With the grim determination of youth, Satyrus gripped the steering oar.
‘Never had a boy your age train to be a helmsman,’ Peleus said. But he had half a smile when he said it, and the curl of his lips suggested that maybe – just maybe – Satyrus was the exception. ‘If I tell you to steer north by east, what’s the first headland you’ll see?’
Satyrus looked back at the wake. ‘Open sea until we see Mount Olympus of Cyprus rising on the port oar bank,’ he said.
Peleus nodded. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘It’s the right answer. But what’s wrong with the order?’
Satyrus hated questions like this. He stared out at the blinding white of the distant temple. ‘I don’t know,’ he said after a gut-wrenching interval.
‘That’s a fair-enough answer and no mistake,’ Peleus answered. ‘It’s true, boy – you don’t know, and you can’t. Here’s the answer – we’re too far in with the land to keep the sea breeze, so our lads would have to row every inch of the way.’ He was watching the land. ‘I aim to make for Thronoi for the night – the beach there is soft white sand and the villagers will bring us food for a little cash. I used to have a boy there.’ He gave a smile that creased the long scar down his face.
‘What happened?’ Satyrus asked. He was in love, and so wanted to hear about the loves of others.
‘He grew up and got married to some girl,’ Peleus said gruffly. ‘Mind your helm, boy. There’s a notch in the wake.’ He looked behind him, across the water and almost straight into the sun. ‘We have companions. ’
Satyrus looked back until he saw the dark smudges, right on the edge of the horizon and almost invisible in the sun dazzle. ‘I see them,’ he said.
Peleus grunted.
Thronoi stood well back from the sea – no unwalled village could afford to be too close to the water – and the first men to approach carried spears and javelins, but they knew Golden Lotus and they knew Peleus, and before the sun became a red ball in the west, the crew was cooking goats and lobsters on the beach, drinking local wine and discussing their chances with the navarch’s beautiful sister, who excited comment even wrapped from head to toe in a chlamys big enough for Philokles. She had pleaded to be allowed to ship as an archer, but Peleus had put his foot down, and she was merely a Greek lady of means with her maid. The oarsmen couldn’t see her as anything but a beautiful mascot. They competed for her glance, and Peleus had told Satyrus that he’d never seen such powerful rowing in all his days at sea.
‘Every ship needs a beautiful woman,’ Peleus allowed, standing at Satyrus’s elbow. Like every other man on the beach, he was watching Melitta. She was standing apart, watching some archers shoot at a mark. Satyrus knew she had her bow in her baggage, and he also knew she could outshoot most of these men. Her posture was defiant. Her maid stood behind her, muttering. Dorcus was the middle-aged free-woman Leon had sent in place of Kallista, whose sea-sickness was as legendary as her beauty. Dorcus’s beauty lay in her practical application of the back of her hand.
‘That friend of yours is going to break his face staring at her,’ Peleus said, pointing at Xeno. Coenus’s son was stripping off his cuirass, but his eyes were on Melitta.
Satyrus shook his head. ‘What do I do?’ he asked.
Peleus pursed his lips. ‘She’s Artemis’s avatar, boy,’ Peleus said with a pious glance towards the temple of Artemis’s heavenly rival, Aphrodite. ‘Nothing you can do but hope that she doesn’t tear anyone apart.’
They slept in watches. They did everything in watches, because all the major states hired pirates to pad out their navies, and piracy was the biggest business in the Aegean that summer. Satyrus slept alone, because he was the navarch, technically in command, with a tent of his own. Melitta slept on the other side of the tent with Dorcus.
He awoke with the sun, noted that his sister was absent from her bed, cursed the stiffness in his shoulders from sleeping on sand and threw himself into the ocean as the sun rose and swam down the beach and back. From the water he couldn’t see the sentries, but he could see his sister swimming on the other side of the headland.
‘I thought I saw the flash of oars,’ she called out to him.
Naked, he climbed out of the water and climbed the cool rocks of the headland to the sentry post.
Both of the sentries were sound asleep. It was understandable, as they’d had three days at sea and too much rowing, but it was unforgivable too. Dawn was the time that pirates attacked.
Satyrus looked off into the rising sun with his hand up to shade his eyes while he was still considering how to waken the two offenders. He saw the flash of low sun on oar blades to the north beyond the headland at Korkish. Twenty stades at the most.
His heart rate surged.
‘Alarm!’ he called. Melitta took up the cry and ran down the line of sleeping oarsmen, ignoring her own nudity to kick each man and shrill the alarm as she ran. ‘Alarm!’
Peleus was out of his sheepskins and bounding up the rocks like a much younger man. Satyrus watched the distant flash of oars – afraid that he had it wrong, and equally afraid that he was correct.
The beach was full of movement. This was a veteran, and well-paid, crew. The oars were already going back aboard. The marines were forming on the beach, led by their captain, Karpos. He watched Melitta run by with an appreciative glance while checking his men’s readiness. Xeno stood in the front rank, his aspis on his shoulder and a pair of heavy javelins in his hand.
Behind the marines, the archers formed. There were only half a dozen of them, with Scythian bows and quivers that held two dozen arrows and some surprises, as well.
Peleus kicked one of the half-asleep sentries in the crotch. ‘Fear the evening, Agathon!’ he spat at the other one. ‘I’ll have the hide off you, you whore’s cunt-washing.’ He looked under his hand and turned back. ‘Dead right, boy. Coming out of the eye of the wind at dawn – no honest sailorman would do such a thing.’ He looked at the beach. ‘Fight or run?’
Satyrus wasn’t sure his opinion was even being asked, but curiosity got the better of him. ‘Surely we could just wait for them on the beach. The men of the town would stand with us.’
Peleus nodded. ‘Yes – but we’d lose the Lotus. If we were lucky they’d just beak her and leave her to sink. More likely they’d board her over the bow and row her away. Hard to hold a boat on a beach. Not impossible.’ He shrugged. ‘Thanks to you, we’ve got the jump on ’em. I think we should run.’
‘Run?’ Satyrus asked. ‘Can’t we take them?’
Peleus curled the corners of his lips down. ‘Listen, Navarch – this is your call. Your uncle put you in charge of the Lotus and that makes it your decision. But we’re merchants. We have a full cargo and your sister, too. And fighting pirates is soldiers’ work.’ The old helmsman pointed at the beach. ‘How many of them are you ready to lose so that you can have a hack at some pirates? And what happens to your sister if we lose?’ The man frowned. ‘Or you, for that matter.’
‘Point taken, helmsman. We’ll run.’ Was it cowardice that Satyrus felt better already?
‘Good lad. You may yet make a sailor.’ Peleus sprang off the rocks like a man in his prime and started bellowing at the oarsmen.
Xenophon already had his armour on, and Melitta had her gorytos out of her deck baggage and an Aegyptian corslet of white quilted linen and a small Pylos helmet on her hair. ‘Pirates?’ she asked, her eyes gleaming.
‘Put that away!’ Satyrus said.
Xenophon’s grin was just the same. ‘Let her fight!’ he said from the ranks. ‘She’s a better shot than Timoleon!’
‘We’re running,’ Satyrus said.