Four days’ west wind.
I asked the former slaves for volunteers, and let’s be frank — what choice did they have? Stay, and be enslaved by the Iberians? By the time the smoke of the slave pens was in the sky, there were already Iberian warriors prowling the ridges above the little warehouse town.
Before we’d been at sea an hour, they set fire to the lighthouse.
My Phoenician factor was a cringing coward. I might be, too, if a savage pirate and his tattooed mistress had my wife and children. But he was a fount of information as we sailed east on a perfect wind.
‘We have no defences,’ he admitted. He almost bragged it. ‘It is fifty years since any of the interior tribes attacked us.’ He looked at the sea. ‘How did you make it past the squadron at Gades?’ Then he looked at me. ‘You — you were the small ship that Dadalos was pursuing!’
I smiled nastily.
‘But — we took that ship!’ He quailed at his own words.
I was older, calmer, more mature. So I didn’t grab him by the throat.
‘What ship?’ I asked. I thought my tone was mild.
He grew very red in the face, like a maiden blushing. I took his hand and pressed my thumb and forefinger to a certain spot.
It was scarcely necessary. He shrieked. ‘Days ago. Helitkon of Tartessos took a small sailing ship — no more than a fishing boat. Laden with goods from the Inner Sea.’ He writhed in my hands.
‘Where?’
‘Helitkon brought him in to me. I supplied him — he sailed south!’
‘Where’s the ship? The crew?’ I asked.
‘He took them! To sell!’ he was screaming.
It is sickening, I’ll admit. His daughters looked at me with naked hate that transcended fear — they hated me more than they feared rape and death, which, all things considered, suggests they were brave. And they obviously loved him, which meant that, however much I wanted to see him as the enemy, as a piece of shit who dealt in human lives and stole and killed — he was a good father.
Of course, I knew that I dealt in human lives, too.
Time makes things difficult. Maturity — unless you are simply a killer, a thug — robs you of certainty.
I let go his hand. And I felt… ashamed.
Tara watched me. She looked at me the way a cat looks at something it doesn’t know. A cat is asking, Is this prey? Or predator?
Yes. Well.
I looked up at my mainsail, drawing well. I looked back at the long curve of the tow rope. I wished, for the hundredth time, that I had Vasileos.
But I sang a prayer to Poseidon that night, after I made love to my wife on the beach with the ancient pines.
The coast of Iberia had been Phoenicia’s cash cow for seventy years, and it was naked before me.
Old thoughts boiled to the surface. I had enough silver from the one raid to make the trip a success. But But there could be more.
8
Oiasso welcomed us as victors, which we were. Tertikles was enraged, at first, that we’d stormed Centrona without him.
Doola hugged me on the beach, and introduced me to his wife.
One trick of leadership that I learned young was never to question a man’s taste in bed-partners. No faster way to lose his faith, his loyalty, his courage. That said, though, I’d always known that Doola and Seckla were… together. It wasn’t a spoken thing. It just — was.
And then, one fine day, we landed at Oiasso, Doola fell for a Kelt girl and the next I knew, he was wed. Doola was my friend, practically my brother. It was not my place to even ask. I hugged him, kissed her and bade them every fortune.
But Seckla stood on the beach with death in his eyes. He was younger: tough, strong, tall and thin, and his love went to hate, all at once. I think he’d assumed that Doola would wake up one morning and be done with the woman. Instead, he married her.
And Seckla was also my friend. Seckla was touchier, more full of fire, perhaps less useful sometimes — but not on this last raid. Seckla looked at Doola, and I looked at Seckla.
Command. Leadership. A never-ending labyrinth of difficult decisions.
Tara got it all in one glance. Or maybe knew it from gossip. Either way, she was quick.
‘They were lovers?’ she asked. Actually, she asked something cruder. Her Greek was barbaric.
‘Yes.’ I was moving cautiously towards Seckla. I was afraid he’d kill his former friend right there.
She laughed. ‘I’ll find him someone,’ she said. She laughed again.
‘Men!’
Vasileos had finished both vessels. They were a little longer than Lydia, with beautiful lines, a slightly narrower entry, rather bluffer bows. The ram bow rose just a little at the tip, so that in heavy water, the cutwater would — perhaps — push the bow up, not down. Or so Vasileos theorized.
We sat down to our welcome feast, with Tertikles looking just about as happy as Seckla.
He was easy.
Tara told him that I planned to raid to the south, all along the coast, and he brightened.
A black-haired girl with a narrow face and huge eyes went to
Seckla and hesitantly sat down with him.
Tara winked at me.
Seckla ignored her.
More fool he. But I had Vasileos watch him, and then I ordered Alexandros to watch him. Alexandros, like many other young men I have met and known, had discovered that he liked to be trusted — liked to be responsible. He was rising to command.
I felt old. I’d done all this before; none of it was new.
‘What do we do with the prisoners?’ Doola asked me.
‘I’d like to ransom them,’ I said.
We left it there.
Summer was slipping away by the time we got the cathead repaired on the trireme. And my nearly two hundred former oar-slaves created a certain chaos in the town — just feeding them strained Tertikles to the maximum. So all the silver and the tin from the raid went to paying for grain from other lords.
I gave up on trade and armed them with the helmets I’d made, and we used the rest of the hides to make plain spolas with yokes over the shoulders.
You might think that I’d be away south after Demetrios, Gaius and the rest, but I knew I was up against at least a pair of triremes with expert crews. And my prisoner told me that most of the slaves who went to the south were used in the silver mines above Olisipo on the Tagus, a river to the south of Centrona with a broad estuary, a dangerous bar and silver and gold in the mountains behind it.
He was very talkative.
I promised to release him with his wife and daughters on the coast south of Olisipo — after my raid. He didn’t seem to mind.
Men can be stupid.
The grain was ripe in the fields and the apples were nearly ripe on the trees, and all four of my ships were ready for sea. I’d rowed my new warship up and down, and I’d roared myself hoarse in three languages trying to make the Keltoi obey, something at which, to be honest, they weren’t very good. Keltoi don’t obey, they discuss. Keltoi debate. Every man is the equal of every other man.
On the other hand, I ate well, exercised, trained men to use the sword and shield and made love every night to a woman who — well, who knew what she was about. It is very different for a man to make love to a woman who is the same size as he is. Very different. Very Athletic.
Ah, the blushes.
We celebrated the summer feast of Demeter — at least, that’s what it was to me — and Tertikles sacrificed a slave, which was barbaric as far as I was concerned. He came aboard my trireme, because it was more comfortable. We had three triakonters, packed to the gunwales with Keltoi warriors in good armour, and a trireme with former Phoenician slaves, armed and ready to fight.
We were ready.
The gods had other ideas. We put to sea and sailed for little more than two hours before the wind turned round and headed us, and we were lucky to slip easily back into the estuary and land on our beach at Oiasso. Two days later, we rowed out past the headland and were back before dark — the wind was too fierce for the trireme.