Men who use the sea know that life is sweet — and can be short. What use the farm, when your mouth fills with the salt water that will drown you? Why save? The next storm may be your last.
And if you spend all today’s gold, and you do not die, then perhaps another fat Egyptian merchant will appear through your oarlock tomorrow, eh?
Bah. I should have been a philosopher instead of a pirate.
Finally, we had Ka, and Nemet, and Ithy, and Di and Pye. They were Nubians — actual Nubians. Men called Seckla Nubian but he was from some outlandish place further east, or so he claimed. Anyway, they were from south of Egypt, and they were professional archers. They’d been slaves, and Egyptian soldiers, and then slaves again. They were as talkative as Spartans. I think Ka liked me, but I know he fairly worshipped Seckla. The five of them were expert archers and all improved by having the captured Saka bows, with which they’d been shooting since dawn.
We got Lydia off the beach well enough. And when we were skimming across the Bay of Salamis with little wind and almost no waves, she handled as sweetly as I’ve ever known her. There were some men up on the headland of Cynosura, and they cheered us. They were erecting a lookout tower. I thought of my daughter, and we swept on.
But as soon as we were abreast of Phaleron, where a dozen merchant ships were loading the last refugees and all the naval stores that could be rescued from Athens military port, I turned two points to starboard and put the coast over my left shoulder, and we continued at a good pace. The wind was wrong for sailing, but by noon it came under our quarter off the hot fields of Attica. We couldn’t see any burning from the seaward, or smell it. But we ran up the mainsail and braced the boom hard, and the rowers sat back and drank water and cursed the sea.
In truth, it was a beautiful day and the breeze was, if not perfect, certainly enough. We ran along at about the pace a strong man walks, watching the coast, which I kept about ten stades distant, with a boy up at the masthead in a huge straw hat. We sent him water from time to time.
We had the sea to ourselves, which came as no surprise. As the afternoon wore on, I cheated the helm more and more to seaward until we lost the coast altogether in the late afternoon haze.
A few benches forward of the helmsman’s bench, Leon’s deep voice spoke up from under the half-deck like a disembodied god. ‘Poseidon’s dick,’ he said. ‘Here we go out of sight of land, and off into the deep green.’
Men around him laughed.
I smiled.
We landed, a little late for my taste, but the western sky was still orange, on the island of Kea about a parasang south of Cape Sounion. I half-expected to find Cimon there, on that very beach, because it made a fine position from which to watch the coast of Attica and retreat to the open sea if something went wrong. In the morning we put a tower on the headland made of fir trees and dried our hull while we had a big meal. It had been a long pull and a longer sail. The peasants were happy enough to see us and to sell us some sheep, which we consumed after making an appropriate sacrifice in a nice little temple to the Sea God. But despite our sacrifices, the breeze came against us at the height of the sun and in the afternoon we had a heavy rain. Our tents were all back on the beach at Salamis, so we were wet.
We built big fires and slept soundly, then woke to stiff muscles and a beautiful day, and launched into the light surf. There was no sign of yesterday’s foul weather, and the wind was a stiff southerly with a little hint of sand in it.
I ran north to Chalkis, but with the wind so strong from the south, I didn’t dare risk being embayed. That is, it’s not that the waters off Marathon are really a bay, but the narrows at Chalkis are so narrow that a few Persian ships could snap us up, and I needed to watch my back. So we sailed — pure, sweet sailing without toughing a halyard or a line — from Kea north to the southern tip of Euboea, and then we rowed back west, carefully, with the masthead manned and many an invocation to the Sea God. We didn’t see anyone, except a pair of Euboean fishing boats. We ran them down and bought all their catch, transforming their terror into wonder. Which was good fun.
We ate their fish on the beach of a little volcanic island in the gulf opposite Marathon, which I estimated was hull down and due west about two parasangs. That little islet was sent by the gods. There was a small village of very poor people, who nonetheless had some store of grain and dry fish to sell us, and from their peak we could see right across the gulf and all the way north to Chalkis, or near enough. The gods gave us a clear day on our fourth day from Salamis. Now we could see smoke over Attica, but no Cimon and no enemy fleet.
Now I cursed that I hadn’t brought another vessel. I had the perfect watching post, unless the Persians had decided to go the other way around Euboea, and even then we’d see them as they passed across the southern end of the gulf.
I wasn’t too worried about Cimon, who had ten ships and could handle himself. In fact, he was probably the best ship-killer alive at the time, very much his father’s son. My only fear for him was that he might try some doomed action, like holding the narrows at Chalkis with ten ships.
I needn’t have worried. Or rather, I knew him all too well.
The next morning, the fifth, we saw nothing all morning and we dried our hull, but around the height of the sun the lookout way above us on the mountain signalled with a piece of bright bronze that he saw something.
I went and climbed the mountain myself.
From the top of Megalos, as the locals called the islet, the Gulf of Marathon was like a big Spartan lambda, or an inverse V. The point at the top was the narrows of Chalkis. The opening at the bottom was the Aegean. The left arm was the coast of Marathon and the right arm was the coast of Euboea.
Attica was afire. You could smell it, forty stades away and more, and see the smudges of grey and black.
But what interested us was in the water. Up at the edge of our vision, where the land and water seemed to meet in the noontime haze, there was rhythmic flashing.
For once, there was no hurry. They were half a day away, at least. So I sent for wine and lay in the shade of the little grass shelter we’d built, and watched.
The longer I watched, the more I became convinced that I was looking at Cimon’s ships, and the Persians — actually, Ionians — pressing them hard.
But then I’d tell myself another story: that I was seeing a Persian advance guard in front of the Persian fleet.
Aye, but you really can identify some things a great way off, just as you know the silhouette and the movements of an old friend so far away you could never see their face — just the set of the shoulders tell you everything. Yes?
I was sure that one of the lead ships was Ajax.
I’d known that ship through three major refits and almost twenty years.
Of course, our strong southerly wind had stayed on, so Cimon — if that was him — was rowing into the teeth of it.
As they came down the coast of Attica, I could see it better. There were nine ships out in front, and two dozen coming behind. My eyes were already too old to pick so many out of the sun dazzle, but Hector and Achilles seemed to be able to look into the very eye of the sun and pick out details, and Leukas claimed to see that the lead ship was red.
Ajax.
Cimon was in trouble. Or, at worst, I was wrong, and that was the Ionian vanguard of the Great King’s fleet. Either way, my hull was dry and my crew superb, and I was pretty sure I could outrun any ship on the sea.
‘Let’s go,’ I said. We went down the mountain in a sliding stumble and it was a miracle no one broke their ankles.