There is a saying in Plataea that the frog would rather be alive in the desert than dead in the pond. It’s not a pretty saying, but it is a true one. My oarsmen grumbled and looked west with desperate anxiety, but as long as we sailed west with the world’s wind at our backs, the Phoenicians were not likely to catch us.
So I sailed west. I had a plan, one that depended on my being a little more cunning than my adversaries. I sailed west, and planned to double back around the tin island and leave them all a-stand in the channel. I didn’t expect it to work, but I wanted to try.
We sailed west a day, and made camp in an estuary — not a place I’d been, of course. Leukas told us it was safe to land.
He insisted that if we beached and drew our ships up, the Dumnoni would protect us.
‘Of course,’ he said with a shrug, ‘it would have been better if you’d sailed north into the heart of our country.’
It was late, and we had a dozen small fires burning behind the dunes that separate the cold beach from the sea. I had as many men on watch. All the Phoenicians had to do was to catch us against the beach and we would either be dead men, or we’d spend the rest of our lives on Alba. All the natives said it was an island. An island with three hundred stades of sea between it and the mainland.
I don’t think I went to sleep that night. It wasn’t just the ships. The truth was, with Vasileos — possibly my greatest weapon — I could build more ships.
No, it wasn’t ships. It was the cargo. The tin, the silver and the gold. If we abandoned or burned the ships, we lost the cargo: no two ways about it. There was no way to keep thousands of pounds of tin — or even a couple of hundred pounds of gold and silver. And I hadn’t come all this way to lose it.
Long before dawn, I stumbled around in the dark until I had located Doola, Seckla, Gaius, Neoptolymos and the rest. I had heated enough wine to fill my old mastos cup, and above us, the stars wheeled across the sky — bigger and farther away, I think, than they were back in Greece.
I had built up a fire and I handed the cup around, and they pulled their cloaks as tightly as they could. Beyond the circle of the fire, men were rising from sleep — and none of them was happy to rise so early.
Doola looked at me blurrily over the rim of my cup. ‘So?’ he asked.
‘I see two choices,’ I answered. ‘We can burn the ships and lose the cargoes. Go inland, find Leukas’s people and wait the Phoenicians out.’ I looked around. ‘We have three hundred men, and they rely on us. We’ll have to feed them, or risk having them either turn on us or to banditry.’
I looked around. Demetrios shrugged. ‘You took them,’ he said.
‘I did, so they are my responsibility,’ I agreed. ‘But we are in this together, and that cargo is our cargo.’
Doola nodded.
Neoptolymos shrugged. ‘Let’s fight,’ he said.
‘That’s a third option,’ I agreed. ‘We could put to sea and fight: five triremes against one trireme, two triakonters and a tub of a merchantman — all brilliantly handled, of course.’
Demetrios shook his head. ‘Suicide,’ he said. ‘We’d just die.’
Seckla grinned. ‘No, the gods will make a way for us.’ He looked at me. ‘Because Arimnestos has the luck of Hermes.’
Gaius was staring out to sea. ‘You have another option?’
I nodded. ‘We run west. According to the Dumnoni, it is a long promontory. Then we run north, around the north end of the island.’
Demetrios whistled. ‘How far?’ he asked.
I raised my hands to the heavens. ‘How would I know? Leukas says ten days’ sailing, but — let’s face it — he doesn’t really know any waters but these right here. Just like all the other Keltoi.’
‘Except the Venetiae,’ Demetrios said.
Doola handed me the cup. ‘If we run all the way around Alba — and stay ahead of the Phoenicians all the way — where do we get to?’
‘The coast of Gaul,’ I said. I drew them a chart, as best I could, in the sand. ‘Alba is a triangle, about three days’ sailing by ten,’ I said. I remember saying that. Laughable, but the Venetiae had said it, and Leukas said it. I believed it. I drew the long line of the Gaulish coast — another angle.
‘North around Alba, then east to Gaul, looking for the estuary where the Venetiae have their homes,’ I said. ‘We sell them our ships, and move our tin over the mountains and down to Marsala.’
Demetrios was looking out to sea. ‘And all we have to do is stay ahead of the Phoenicians all the way.’
I nodded. ‘It’s true.’
He shook his head. ‘Listen, I’m a good sailor, and not a good warrior. But that plan seems foolish to me. Fifteen days’ sailing — twenty days’, more like. Twenty days for them to catch us on a beach. Twenty days where we have to find a safe route and a site to camp, and all they have to do is follow us. It is a landlubber’s plan, that depends on our navigation being perfect. One error, one blocked channel, one day of adverse winds — and they have us.’
I rubbed my beard, chagrined. ‘Do you have a better plan?’ I spat. For all my vaunted maturity, I didn’t really like to be questioned.
He shrugged. He was watching the ocean. ‘Do we all agree we can’t run the Pillars again?’ he asked.
He looked around, and we all nodded.
‘So: we have to make the coast of Gaul. Right?’ He was very serious. He leaned forward. ‘I say we sail west — yes. But as soon as the wind shifts a few points, we sail south into the deep blue. South for Oiasso. Right across the hypotenuse of the triangle — right, Ari?’
I had been teaching him basic geometry. There’s a lot of time to kill when you are at sea, or camping on headlands every night. And teaching your best navigator some geometry can prove quite valuable.
Seckla nodded, and even the cautious Doola looked pleased. ‘This is a better plan,’ Doola said.
Neoptolymos and Gaius and I felt differently. ‘This plan is all luck and seamanship,’ I said. ‘All the Venetiae fear the deep blue. They say ships die out there. We’ve already ridden out two storms, Demetrios — I don’t really want to face a third.’
Neoptolymos nodded. ‘Ari’s way keeps us on a coast all the way,’ he said. ‘If the Phoenicians catch us, we can abandon the ships and run inland.’
Gaius agreed. ‘Demetrios, you have a ship that sails closer to the wind than mine. You have a deck for men to sleep under. And — honour requires me to say this — you are a far better sailor than I. You could weather a storm that would kill me.’ He looked around. He was a proud man — who is not? But he hung his head. ‘When I lost you, I was afraid. Afraid right up until I found you again. I want a plan that keeps us together.’ He shook his head. ‘Or I want to give my command to someone who is… better at it.’
Seckla, of all people, put an arm around him. ‘You command very well,’ he said.
Gaius shrugged. ‘Outwardly, perhaps. Inwardly-’
I looked at Demetrios. ‘But surely that is how command is for all men,’ I said. ‘You worry for them. They row for you.’
Well, at least that line won me a laugh.
Demetrios came and stood by me. ‘Your plan is the plan for the warrior-landsmen. My plan is the plan for the fishermen.’ He made a rocking motion with his hand. ‘Either might work, or be disastrous. But I agree that you have the luck of the gods, so I will do as you desire. Choose!’
‘I held this council so that I would not have to make this decision alone,’ I said.
Seckla laughed. ‘Nice try. Let’s get moving, before the Phoenicians solve the whole thing by hitting us in the dawn.’
I agreed, but first, I explained my plan for losing the enemy around Vecti. And Gaius and I wrote out a simple signal book on wax tablets and handed them around.
We got off our rocky beach in fine style, and we were out in the rollers before the morning raised the wave height and made launching impossible. And we were at sea for three hours and hadn’t seen a sail, and hopes were beginning to rise.