When Collam came up, we embraced.
‘He asks if you’d like to sell any of your tin,’ Gwan said.
He was on the main tin route, but then, of course, he was wearing ten pounds of the stuff in his harness. His war band probably ate bronze.
‘How much do you want?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘One pig,’ he said. Eighty pounds. The value in Marsala would be almost eighty ounces of gold. Twice that in Sicily.
Gwan turned to me. ‘He won’t — well, trade, precisely. If you give it to him, he will make you gifts of equal value. This sort of thing frustrates the Venetiae-’ He smiled.
But I had approached Collam as a warrior. So we were bound to behave like heroes.
Fair enough: I’d been a hero before. Herodikles had a team of men who had just wrestled a pig of tin to the riverside. I waved to stop them from loading it into Herodikles’ barge.
‘Yours,’ I said in passable Keltoi.
That was one-eightieth of all our profits. I was going to look like an idiot if he didn’t give me something in return.
He went and lifted it — by himself. He grunted, grinned and put it in his chariot, and the leather and rawhide stretched, and the whole light vehicle sank a little into the riverbank. The charioteer looked as if he might cry.
I said, ‘I’m missing a man — a Gaul, lent to me by the Venetiae as a guide. He has wandered off. And I would like to know anything you know about this party of armed men.’
Collam nodded when this was translated. And Gwan grew pale and looked at me.
In Greek, I said, ‘Gwan, I suspect you were told to betray me. Yes?’
Gwan couldn’t meet my eye.
‘Do you want me to tell this famous warrior that you are a hireling of the Venetiae? That you have been paid to lead me to an ambush?’ It wasn’t quite a shot in the dark.
‘They have my father,’ he said.
‘Gwan, the world is not always as dark as it seems. When Detorix knows that I am gone away south to Marsala and won’t return, he’ll release your father. Or you can come and find me, and I swear by the immortal gods I’ll come back with thirty warriors and take your father back.’
Gwan looked at the ground. Collam asked him something — asked him what was wrong, I think.
He looked at Collam and spoke for a long time.
Collam grew angrier and angrier.
It can be very difficult as an alien in another culture. Coming upon the Keltoi from the sea, it was easy to assume that the Venetiae were typical of the breed — indeed, that they were the lords of the whole people. I had fallen into this trap, and that morning, on the Sequana, I realized that I knew almost nothing of the Keltoi. Collam was no more like Detorix than Detorix was like Tara. Briseis and Euphoria and Aristides and I are all Greek, and yet four more different people could not be imagined. One wants to typify a people, but they are always too diverse to be typified.
At any rate, Collam began to ask questions, and Gwan hesitated to answer, and I began to suspect that Collam was going to injure or kill Gwan on the spot.
‘What’s the problem?’ I asked.
Gwan went on talking to Collam.
I stepped in between them. ‘Speak to me,’ I said.
‘He is angry because… my father had no right. He says my father had no right.’ Gwan was on the edge of tears.
Collam was shouting. His charioteer had his hand on the knife at his belt.
I put a hand on Collam’s arm. ‘Tell him I’ll fix it,’ I said.
Collam looked at me.
‘He says, what business is it of yours?’
Warriors are all alike, in too many ways. Most of those ways are dark, but not all.
‘Gwan, are you my man, or do you serve the Venetiae?’ I asked.
Gwan met my eye. ‘Yours, my lord.’
‘Then tell Collam that I say, “Gwan is my man. I will see to his father’s debt”.’ I offered Collam my hand.
Collam listened. He took two or three deep breaths, and took my hand.
I thanked the gods that I had just given him a small fortune in tin. It had to sway him; he had to accept that I was an aristocrat like him, not a venal river trader.
He drove away in his chariot, and I doubled the guard and told Seckla and Herodikles to hurry the loading. And I took Gwan aside.
‘You’d better give this to me straight,’ I said.
Gwan shrugged. ‘I’m supposed to leave you at the first portage,’ he said. ‘That would be tonight or tomorrow night.’
‘And then what?’ I pressed.
‘My father’s people will put together a caravan of donkeys and horses to go across the hills to the next river,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘I don’t know what happens next. But I can guess.’ He looked miserable. ‘I think they will ambush you in the hills. Or perhaps-’ He shook his head. ‘Perhaps my people will ambush you.’
I nodded. ‘I think you should come with me, all the way to Marsala. Take a share of the profits and come back and buy your father’s freedom.’ I looked into his blue eyes. ‘You really think your people want to fight me and two hundred of my men?’ I asked.
He shook his head.
When we had most of our boats loaded, a pair of heavy wagons came down to the waterside, and two chariots. Collam leaped off the lead chariot as it drove by and landed cleanly on his feet. He was a pleasure to watch, and I would have liked to wrestle with him.
The wagons were full of barrels, and the barrels were his gift to me. We had twelve big casks, and each weighed as much as a pig of tin. I laughed, embraced him and told him through Gwan that Gwan would go with me to Marsala and return rich enough to retrieve his father’s debts to the Venetiae. In effect, I involved Collam in an alliance to preserve Gwan’s honour — and my convoy.
Collam shook my hand again, and through Gwan, told me that fifty horsemen had crossed his lands the night before and that as far as he knew, Brach was gone.
Fifty horsemen. I laughed. ‘They’ll need a lot of help,’ I said.
Collam offered me twenty warriors, but I patted his shoulder and told him not to worry.
We swapped belts, there on the shore. It was a little like living in the Iliad. And then we were away, into the late morning, poling hard upstream.
Gwan usually rode ahead, but I kept him by me — the best way to avoid temptation is to avoid temptation, in fact — and I sent Seckla, who was a brilliant rider, to lead a dozen other men who could run. I’ve already said that the Sequana runs like a snake: a few men, running and resting, can easily pace a convoy of boats.
It was mid-afternoon when we ran out of water. There were good landing stages; this was the point from which the Venetiae transshipped their own cargoes. A big town stood there, well fortified with heavy palisades and a stone socle under the timber ramparts.
Gwan’s father was a minor lord in these parts. But the men who were to form our donkey train didn’t seem to be part of a conspiracy: the animals were already assembled, and they had panniers sewn to hold the big pigs of tin. There were eighty animals in the train, with forty men to handle them. The whole assemblage cost us four pigs of tin.
In the town, which was both smelly and quite marvellous, I found a gem — a goldsmith whose skill, while barbaric, was still very fine. I traded him a small amount of our gold for a pair of arm rings such as the local gentry wore. I liked them, and I needed to wear my status. It is often that way, when you are among foreigners. In Boeotia, they would know who I was even if I was naked and covered in soot from the smithy. In Gaul, I needed a pair of heavy gold arm rings. Herodikles mocked me for turning barbarian, but I think the arm rings stood us all in good stead.
We drank wine, ate well, and a day later, we were away. In any place we lingered, we spent too much. I had almost one hundred and eighty men, and they cost me an amount of gold equal to the size of your little finger every day just to keep in food and wine. Let me put it this way: we took a rich treasure from the Phoenicians, and two hundred slaves. The treasure, every ounce of it, about paid for the food. It had been the same when I served with Miltiades — there isn’t much economy to piracy.