Tempers flared.
Keltoi picked up their gear and went home. Oddly, this was balanced by late arrivals, who wandered down from the mountains as if arriving a week late was perfectly normal. Of course, they’d never rowed, and they resented being taught.
Tertikles became surly, and only his sister being there prevented violence.
We were windbound for ten days. I rowed in the estuary, and Vasileos kept them hard at it in the Lydia, but the other two ships did nothing but eat, drink and sleep. The season was getting on; we had our first cool night.
Seckla tried to kill Doola. It was quick, and carefully premeditated. But while Vasileos was busy, commanding his ship, Alexandros was right there, and he tackled the Numidian boy, tore the knife from his grasp and then knocked him unconscious.
The next day, I sat with Seckla in my tent, watching the whitecaps in the estuary and cursing the gods.
When his eyes opened, he looked at me for a moment and then rolled over so that he faced the wall of the tent.
‘You are an idiot,’ I said.
His silence was his only reply.
‘If you had killed him, I would have killed you,’ I said.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Kill me now.’
‘In a year, this will be a bitter memory. In five years, it will scarcely trouble you. In ten years, you’ll make jokes about it.’ I put a hand on his shoulder.
‘No,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know. I know, lad. I have been abandoned, and I have abandoned others. It comes and goes.’
‘When we were slaves,’ he spat, ‘you would moan in your sleep, and say a name. Always the same name. Briseis, Briseis. Always the same.’ He rolled over suddenly, and glared at me. ‘Tell me you have forgotten her, yes, old man?’
I shrugged. ‘I have not forgotten her. But I don’t burn. And neither will you.’
‘My life is over.’ He tried to turn back over.
I pinned him with an elbow. ‘No, it isn’t. And now you can be your own man, and stop being in his shadow.’
Silence.
The young burn so hot, and they have so much energy for hate, and anger. So I put a watch on him.
The next day, the wind pinned us to the beach, and Doola came to my tent. I hugged him, and he went into Seckla, as if Seckla was sick and needed visitation, which was true in a way.
Seckla had a knife. He slashed Doola’s face, and then turned it on himself.
There are advantages to being a hardened killer. When a good friend tries to kill himself, you can disarm him without taking a scratch. I had the knife before he’d done much more than scratch his dark skin. He glared at me like an angry tomcat. I went to Doola and found that, while he was cut to the bone, it was really just a flesh wound. Face wounds bleed like — well, like face wounds. There seems to be enough blood to be fatal.
Hard to staunch, too. The blood went on and on.
Seckla watched — Alexandros was pinning him to his bed. ‘Did I kill him?’ he asked.
Doola got up with a linen towel against his face, soaked with blood.
Let me just say, the following conversation happened in a language I don’t understand — well, mostly. Most of it was in their tongue. Despite that, I understood it fine, and besides, I’ve heard the story told a dozen times.
‘Stop being a fuckhead,’ he said.
‘You betrayed me!’ Seckla screamed.
Doola shrugged. ‘Grow up. Be a man. It’s time to leave childish things. I want a wife and children. We are free now. We can have anything.’
‘I want you!’ Seckla said.
‘No, you don’t. You want someone to take care of you. I want to be a free man. I’m still your friend.’
You get the picture. It went on for as long as it took a man to run five stades. Blood flowed down Doola’s face, and he shouted at Seckla, and Seckla shouted back. Keltoi came and stood around, watching the entertainment.
Finally, they both stopped.
An odd silence fell, a sort of crowded hush as many, many people who had been listening all listened harder.
In the hush, I heard something. I had Seckla by the shoulders at the time. Vasileos, who had run to the sound of the shouting, stood in the doorway. He heard what I heard.
He ran out of the door.
I’m ashamed to say I dropped Seckla like a hot piece of meat and ran after him.
The sun was bright and the wind had dropped and now, a whisper of east wind blew across the hills like a lover’s caress.
‘Man the ships,’ I barked. I knew that once we got to sea, all this foolishness would be gone. Nothing, nothing had gone well since we reached past the Pillars. I wanted to collect my friends, steal some silver and go home.
I was no less an idiot than Seckla.
Four days sailing and rowing brought us to the Iberian settlement across the bay from Centrona. They didn’t give us a hero’s welcome — we had too many ships — but they sold us pigs and barley and we ate well enough.
‘Ships come,’ said the headman. With Sittonax to support me, we finally established that a few weeks before, a pair of triremes had come to Centrona, landed for a day and rowed away south.
That wasn’t all good.
I bought all the grain I could, which wasn’t as much as I wanted, and we rowed south.
We had to beach every evening. In a smaller boat, a triakonter, you can stay the night at sea. Right up to a fifty-oared ship, you can stay two or three days at sea and still have enough food to feed your crew, stowed in the bilges and under the benches. But triremes only carried food and water for one day. A trireme needs to make port — or beach — every night.
But I knew I needed a heavy ship. So we beached, and bought fish — fish for three hundred men. Grain. Rotgut wine, terrible small beer. At extravagant prices, and the haggling meant that the crew ate after dark, each night.
What was worse, I had to turn back every day to find the laggards. The two Keltoi ships always left the beach late and rowed slowly, if at all. The Keltoi were far too proud to row. If they didn’t have a wind, they’d idle along.
I was starting to hate them. And Tara inevitably took their side.
Useless lubbers. No wonder they hadn’t built their own ships.
Sittonax laughed. ‘Wait until you meet the Venetiae,’ he said. Then he made a face. ‘Of course they never row, either.’
Six days we spent on the coast of Iberia. For an expedition that depended on surprise, we were the most incompetent squadron since Poseidon ruled the seas. We were loud, we spread over stades, we were visible from every headland. We never sailed before the sun — we were always caught on the sea by high noon. We ate late, and the Keltoi drank too much, any night that there was anything to drink.
Little by little, I lost control of the expedition. From here, I can see just how it happened. I wasn’t interested in taking Tertikles on, day after day, night after night. He, on the other hand, was relentless in his lazy, shiftless, arrogant way. Every day, he would push his own authority.
After six days, he left my ship and moved into one of the two triakonters that were all Keltoi.
His sister went after me the next morning. ‘You treat my brother like a slave,’ she said.
‘No, Tara. I treat him like a fool who knows nothing of war or the sea.’ I wasn’t taking this, even from her.
‘My brother is a master of war. He has killed twenty men in single combat.’ She was spitting mad. ‘You cannot take the tone with him that you take. You speak as if to a child.’
‘He wanted me to put the sail up,’ I said.
‘It was a simple request.’ She stood with her hands on her hips.
‘The wind was against us.’ I shook my head. I hope you are seeing what I had to deal with.
She shrugged. ‘So you say,’ she said.
What do you do?