She's no Ephesus. Methymna sits high above the sea, yet the sea is at her doorstep. Methymna is where Achilles landed and took the first Briseis as his war bride. The beach is black and the town rises to a high citadel on the acropolis that has foundation stones laid by the old people – or giants. The town itself climbs the hills and sits below the fortress where the lord lives. That fortress is the only reason the men of Methymna are not serfs of Mytilene. It is almost impregnable. Indeed, only Achilles has ever taken it.
We beached on the black gravel and kissed the first good ground. The beach was full of hulls – twenty, stretching along to the east, each black ship with its own fire and two hundred men, so that the beach itself was like a city.
I went to a shrine to Aphrodite and said a prayer that Briseis would not quicken. Archi found the customers who had ordered his goods and began putting things ashore. It was early afternoon before we had the benches clear. We sold every hide we brought and every ingot of copper that hadn't been ordered. I saw that Archi had kept a full ingot back.
I raised an eyebrow and pointed.
'Your armour,' he said. 'You can pay an armourer and have your metal, too.'
I clasped his hand. 'Thanks,' I said. I couldn't think of a jibe worth giving. Then we climbed into the town, up the steep streets, some with more steps than a temple, and explored, leaving flowers at the shrines. Later we went back to the beach to meet the other shipowners.
The men on the beach were Athenian. When they learned we were from Ephesus, one of their helmsmen came up to us and joined us where we'd started a fire to feed our rowers. Heraklides was a short, powerful man with sandy blond hair and a no-nonsense manner. He looked at our helmsman and spoke to him, and our man sent him to Archi. They clasped hands and Archi had me fetch a cup of wine. Slavery doesn't just fall away from you.
By the time I'd returned, they'd exchanged all the formulas of guest-friendship. Captains were always careful that way. When you meet a man on a beach, you want to be sure of him.
I handed them both wine, and then defiantly poured my own. Archi smiled.
'Doru, this is Heraklides of Athens, senior helmsman of Aristides or Athens. He commands three ships.' Archi was excited.
'Arimnestos of Plataea,' I said. 'Son of Technes.'
'Technes the war-captain of Plataea?' the older man asked. His clasp tightened. 'Aye, you have the look, lad. Every man who stood his ground against the fucking Euboeans knows your father.'
I wept. On the spot, without preamble, as if I'd been struck. I was free, and on the first beach I landed as a free man, I met men who knew my home and honoured my father. Heracles was with me – even in the name of our new friend.
'I was there,' I said, perhaps more coldly than was warranted. 'I saw him fall.' Suddenly I was chilled on the beach. And afraid, as if it was all happening again.
Archi looked at me as if he'd never seen me before.
'You were there?' Heraklides asked. He wasn't exactly suspicious, but he gave me a queer look. 'He died. There was a fight over his body. Aye,' he said, peering at me. 'I remember you. You took a blow, eh? We sent you home in a wagon. My uncle, Miltiades, said you were to get special treatment. We sent you home with your cousin. Cimon? Simon?'
'Simonalkes?' I said, and a terrible suspicion came to me. 'I fell at the bridge when they tried to strip Pater's armour,' I said. 'When I awoke, I was a slave in a pit.'
That took him aback. He looked at Archi. Archi shook his head. 'I've never even heard this story,' he said. 'We just freed him, the day before yesterday.' He looked at me. 'Why didn't you tell me?'
I drank some wine. I knew Pater was dead – but there is knowing and knowing.
Heraklides shrugged. 'Aye, I too was a slave for a year when pirates took my ship. What's to tell? Masters don't give a rat's shit, eh?' He nodded at me. 'Thing is, you're free now. Miltiades will want to know. He was – an admirer of your father, eh?'
'I've met Lord Miltiades,' I said. But I had to sit. My knees grew weak, and down I sat on the sand, unmanned.
It's all very well to say I never mourned Pater. In a way, that's all crap. Cold bastard that he was, he was my father. And the next thought that came unbidden – unworthy – was that the farm was mine, and the forge. Mine, not anyone else's.
I needed to get my arse home and see what was what. Because if they'd sent me home with Cousin Simonalkes – why, then, what if the bastard had sold me into slavery himself? That thought came to me from a dark fog, as if the furies were signalling my duty through a cloud of raven feathers. What if he was sitting on my farm, eating my barley?
I stood up so quickly that I bumped my head against Archi's chin where he'd leaned down to comfort me.
I think I'd have gone for home that very night – that hour – if I could have walked. Or – and the gods were there – if there hadn't been war. But war was all around me, and Ares was king and lord of events. I took to Heraklides very quickly. Most men who've been slaves never admit to it – you flinch every time I mention it, honey. He had it worse than me – pirates and a lot of ill treatment – but it never broke him, and you'll get to know him as the story goes on. He was a few years older than me, but young to be a helmsman already, and getting a name as one of the best. He wasn't really any relation of Miltiades at all, but his father's brother had died in the family service and that made them like family – Athenians are like that.
The Athenians were on their way to Miletus, because Aristagoras had convinced them that the town was ready to revolt. That evening, over roast pig, I met Aristagoras for the first time. A few weeks ago we'd called him the traitor of the Ionians – running off to Athens, revolting against the King of Kings – and now I was standing behind him on a beach of black sand and toasting the success of the war.
He was not the leader I would have chosen. He was handsome enough, and he pretended to be a solid man, a leader of men, bluff and honest, but there was something hollow about him. I saw it that night on the beach – even with everything at the high tide of success, he looked like a stoat peering around for a bolthole.
He promised them all the moon. Greeks can be fools when they hear a good dream, and Ionian independence was like that. What did Ionians need with independence? They were hardly 'oppressed' by the Medes and the Persians. The taxes laid by the King of Kings were nothing – nothing next to the taxes that the Delian League lays on them now, honey.
More wine.
You'd have thought that Persians had come to Methymna and raped every virgin. The men on the beach were ready for war. They had their own ships, and they'd already met with their tyrant and held an assembly. Methymna manned only three ships, but they were all joining the Athenians, and so were the eight ships from Mytilene. And you knew, back then, that if the men of Methymna and Mytilene were on the same side, something was in the wind.
But what really excited the Athenians was that Ephesus – mighty Ephesus – had sent the satrap packing.
'We could have this war over in a month,' the Athenian leader said.
He too was no Miltiades. In fact, at the ripe old age of seventeen, I looked at the Athenians – good men, every one – and the rest and thought that we were forming a mighty fleet, but we didn't have a man as good as Hipponax – or Artaphernes or Cyrus, for that matter – to lead.
Even a seventeen-year-old is right from time to time. I never did get that panoply made, and that ingot of copper sat in our hull as ballast – well, you'll hear soon enough – until she went to the bottom. None of the smiths in Methymna were armour-makers. They made good things – their bowls are still famous – but none had ever shaped the eyeholes on a Corinthian. I did buy an aspis, though – not a great one, but a decent one.