The sun climbed above us in the haze, just visible — one of the few times in your life you can look directly at him in all his glory. And as with the other days, just past midday the fog suddenly burned off, as fast as a bird crossing the sky, so that in one moment it was all we could do to see the ships ahead and behind us in line, and then we could see three ships ahead, and then I could see Dionysus up at the head of the line, and then And then we could see the merchant trireme, six stades away, and just as surprised to see us as we were to see him.
Every ship, even Dionysus, turned out of the line as fast as their oarsmen could respond to volleys of orders, and went from a slow cruise to ramming speed. The triemiolas raised sail, as the fresh wind was suddenly coming off the land.
We could all see it was a Phoenician. Or perhaps a Carthaginian.
And he could see us, too.
His oarsmen beat the water into a froth, like a good Athenian matron making soup the evening before a feast day, and he struggled to get his mainsail up.
It was a race, of sorts. But a horribly unequal one, between ten ships in high training with full crews and marines and sailors and clean hulls, against a lone merchant with fifty oarsmen and old sails.
He could sail much closer to the wind then we could, of course. So as soon as he had his mainmast rigged, he lay over and ran north, and we all lost the wind and had to row.
Lydia was fast, but Paramanos’s new Black Raven was like a racing shell with a ram, and Cimon’s Ajax was as fast as Paramanos. Dionysus’ Agamemnon was as fast as either.
Oh, how we exhausted ourselves! We raced along, our oars all but touching the nearest ship. A missed stroke might have been disaster.
But we were heroes, of course. We didn’t miss any strokes.
We caught the merchant at mid-afternoon, about the hour a gentleman rises from his nap and goes to the agora — not in Plataea, ladies. Men work all day in Plataea. But in Athens.
We caught him, and he surrendered without a fight. Who would even try to fight, with ten sharks all around him?
Cimon’s hull was the first to come aboard his, and Dionysus was second. We carried the captured ship to the next beach and pulled her up the sand and gravel. The oarsmen were cleared off and the deck crew, the miserable owner and the trierarch all cowered together.
She had a cargo of cheap Carthaginian pottery, some Greek wine with Ionian labels that must, itself, have come off a capture and copper with the Cypriote mark. The copper was valuable. The wine we broached on the spot for our oarsmen.
Cimon and Dionysus began to argue over the spoils. Paramanos wandered over to where I stood, seeing to it that Lydia was carried well up the beach and rolled over to dry her hull. He nodded to me.
‘I thought this was your little expedition,’ he said.
I shrugged.
‘Cimon and Dionysus are going to gut each other over a handful of copper,’ he said. ‘Not because it’s valuable, but because they are important men and each has to be first.’
I sighed. The party was over.
Sharing spoils: always the moment when arete goes by the board and life among pirates becomes difficult.
I walked across the sand, cursing how it burned the sides of my feet. It was deep and soft. Try walking with determined gravity and manly elegance across deep sand.
They weren’t quite spitting like Lesbian fishwives. Not quite. But close.
‘Friends,’ I said. ‘This is unseemly.’
That may not seem like a very telling remark to a pair of bloody-handed pirates, but the two of them immediately pivoted on their heels to face me. ‘ Unseemly?’ Dionysus said. ‘I don’t remember asking your opinion.’
‘As long as you are in my squadron, you can listen to any opinion I choose to deliver,’ I said.
Dionysus’ mouth opened and closed.
Cimon laughed, slapped my shoulder and nodded. ‘You’re right, Ari! My apologies. You divide the spoils.’
I snapped my fingers and there was my pais with a stool.
As I sat, Dionysus stood, arms akimbo. He glared at me for a long fifty heartbeats or so.
‘I’m not in your squadron, pup,’ he growled. ‘You are in mine.’
I shrugged and sat. ‘No, my friend. I invited you to sail with me. You joined me.’
‘I have drilled and drilled this squadron-’
‘I appreciate that. But that’s not command. Please; you understand command. You commanded at Lade. I asked all my friends on this expedition. It is — pardon me — mine. If anyone could dispute this, it would be Neoptolymos.’
The Illyrian had come up, with all the other captains and a number of other leaders: the commander of the mercenaries from Syracusa, a Spartan called Brasidas; Doola and Sittonax, Vasileos and his nephew; Aeschylus. They gathered around my stool like any Greek assembly — all talking, all with an opinion to offer.
Neoptolymos shook his head.
Paramanos, who had never thought very highly of Dionysus, nodded. ‘You are in command, Arimnestos. Not this wine bag.’
I shook my head. ‘No insults. Dionysus, I will divide the spoils between the ships that performed the capture.’
I think, just for a moment, that he was so angry he considered leaving us. This is a thing I have seen men do. Two hours before, if asked, I think he would quite happily have allowed that I was the trierarch, in as much as anyone was. But having once got his back up Or perhaps it had been an error to allow him to drill the squadron. But he was, quite possibly, the greatest trierarch of our time — the finest innovator, the best tactician. It was from him that I learned how to perform the diekplous and the wheel, perhaps two of our most important tactics.
At any rate, he took a breath — I think to denounce me. And Geaeta did a handstand — something you have to see to believe, done in a chiton — and came to rest by me. She smiled at Dionysus. ‘You are eldest,’ she said. ‘And men talk of you as one of the noblest men of your generation.’ She smiled at him, as if the two of them were the only two on the beach.
Sometimes a woman can say something that would be a matter for swords between men.
His face was almost purple, but she went on. ‘Please, let us not mar this day and this week.’ She put a hand on his arm — she, who he had called a whore a dozen times.
He bent slightly at the waist, looked at the sand for a moment, cocked his head at me and smiled ruefully.
‘It is hard to take orders from a younger man,’ he said.
I nodded.
‘When you are my age, see how you like it.’ He looked as if he was going to say more, but he swallowed it. ‘Never mind. Cimon, my apologies.’
‘And mine to you, sir. I spoke in heat.’ The two clasped arms like men in the gymnasium.
I looked at the stack of copper ingots. It was worth a small fortune — to one man. It was, to be frank, worthless to two hundred oarsmen and marines.
I looked at the two of them. ‘Gentlemen,’ I said, ‘this is a small amount of booty. I propose that, rather than dividing it, we have a foot race, and the fastest man takes all the copper. And we dedicate the game to Olympian Zeus, pour the wine down our throats and offer some of the sheep I see on that hill as sacrifices.’
Cimon laughed.
Dionysus laughed.
A seventeen-year-old oarsman from Etrusca won the foot race. We crowned him in olive and his mates helped him carry his copper onto Gaius’s ship. Gaius put his olive wreath on his mast for luck.
That’s the incident that I remember.
Oh, I ran. Of course I ran. I lost in the first heat — Aristides the Younger flew past me from the start. I was placed fifth among eight men.
I felt old. But men said I had made a fine decision, as wise as Odysseus.