I remember cursing, because we looked like idiotes or untrained slaves coming off the beach. Too eager, I suppose, but we caught crabs, our hill slewed right and left and the strong southerly almost pushed the head around and broached us too — in calm water.
Suitably humbled, we managed to get moving west, across the gulf.
An hour of rowing and everyone was calmer, and my name was being cursed, which was fine. We were rowing at a fast cruise and the wind was no help, but Seckla had the ship and he was doing his best to keep the rowers together and the wake straight. The marines were armed, and Ka and his ebony archers were all over the ship — Nemet, the smallest man, was in the bird’s nest, naked but for his bow and two quivers. All the Nubians had acquired very Athenian tawed thoraxes and helmets. Ka’s was magnificent, a capture from Artemisium, a bronze helmet made to look like a lion’s head, with ostrich plumes. It was outlandish, but a seven-foot tall black archer can look as outlandish as he pleases.
Nemet was calling down to the deck what he saw.
‘Red ship, boss. Sure eno’!’ he called.
Then, ‘That’s Ajax and astern of him is Dawn and Golden Nike.’ Remember, we’d all been together many times.
‘Point at them!’ I shouted up to the masthead, several frustrating times, as my words were carried away in the freshening wind. But after some antics not to be repeated, Nemet got my intention and pointed his bow staff almost due west.
We rowed on. I didn’t want to use a sail, which would give us away to even a lubberly lookout. It seemed reasonable — I’ve seen it before — that the pursuers wouldn’t notice us.
For a little while.
I summoned all my officers amidships. ‘Here is what I plan,’ I said. ‘We sweep in, go to ramming speed and try to break up the pursuers.’
Leukas narrowed his eyes. ‘If we come in from the flank, the second ship will have us in the flank.’
‘We oar-rake, nip some steering oars, and go past,’ I said. ‘Then we turn end for end, raise the mainsail and run as fast as we can — north by east.’ I nodded over the side at the water. ‘There’s a gap between the Ionians and the main fleet. We run through it.’
Leukas shook his head. ‘You are still a madman,’ he said. ‘But it certainly sounds like fun.’
Seckla nodded, seeing it.
Brasidas looked disappointed. Perhaps he thought we were going to go hull to hull with the whole Persian fleet.
‘Just keep their marines off our decks,’ I said. ‘Ka, kill the helmsmen. Onisandros, get some fire pots on deck.’
He made a face. Sailors hate fire, even as a weapon used against others. But we had a small firebox in the bows, lined in brick and sand, for making hot wine when we spent the night at sea, and other pirate tricks, and he put ten fire pots into it with their oiled wicks hanging free.
Hector closed my bronze thorax after I popped my greaves on my legs. I remember that it took me two tries to get my left greave on, because my left side hurt and I lacked the fingers to get the best grip on the damned thing.
By the time Hector pushed the pins through their keyholes in the thorax, the Persian fleet was hull up and visible in the sunlight.
Poseidon’s Spear, there were so many of them!
They were spread over the Gulf of Marathon like athletes in a long race. The Ionians, the best sailors, were in the lead, and then there was a gap, and then the rest of the divisions in an untidy muddle trailing away to the narrows in the north beyond the edge of sight. A thousand ships?
I confess that for a moment, I couldn’t breathe.
There was Cimon, though, plain as the nose on your face and ten stades away. There was his younger brother in Dawn and a few other old pirates I knew. Just for a moment, I imagined I could see Agios there, on the stern of Ajax. In fact, he’d died at Marathon, but my eyes filled with tears anyway.
Anyway.
We were well north of Ajax already.
Someone on the Ionian ships saw us. Well, it’s the law of the sea — if you can see him, he can see you. My rowers were perfect and the sails were laid to the boom amidships and ready to raise, and every archer had an arrow on his bow. The marines were sitting on the deck, not forward in the boarding box but sitting where they had some cover and where movement wouldn’t throw off the rowing.
There was a flash, and another flash, from the Ionians and three ships — beautiful ships, with long, elegant lines and Tyrian red in their sails — turned out of their race or their pursuit, and came for us.
Remember, we’d already been fighting these men all summer. I knew the ships almost immediately. The lead ship was from Ephesus and had the half-moon of Artemis on her bow, and so did the third ship. The middle ship was bigger, higher out of the water, and bright vermilion. I suspected it was Damasithymus of Calynda, in Caria. The Carians had been against us in the early days of the Ionian War, and then our allies, and now that the Great King had conquered them again — well, there they were. The ‘Red King’ was one of their most famous fighters, by sea and by land.
They wore a lot of armour and they had the reputation of carrying the very best marines. But I didn’t spend much time looking at the red ship, because any ship from Ephesus interested me. I’d never been close to the Ionians in the fighting at Artemisium.
But the nearer trireme had to be Archilogos. He had the sign of the logos on his sail. His stern curve was painted in a livid and expensive blue, the colour of the house in which I grew up.
I walked aft to Seckla. The three ships had lost way in the turn and now their oars beat the water to bring them to ramming speed.
Archilogos — if it was he — had made the turn last and was behind the other two. The rightmost, or most northerly ship, was in front, so that the three made an echeloned line. We were running head-on for Archilogos.
‘I want you to stay on this track as long as you can — but I want you to oar-rake the lead vessel on her north side,’ I said.
That would mean a dangerous yaw to starboard at ramming seed. But Lydia did such stuff as routine, or so we bragged.
Seckla grinned. ‘Good,’ he said.
He gave the signal to Onisandros and we went to ramming speed. Seckla made a motion with both hands and every oar stopped at the height of the pull-
Seckla leaned into his turn, and I pulled the port oar to help him let go. His foot slapped the wood and the oars dipped together-
Poseidon, they were good! And now Onisandros increased the stroke past ramming speed.
We shot ahead. Seckla gave the signal, Onisandros barked, and all the oars lifted and stopped — and we turned back to our original course, almost due west. Perhaps we had turned a point further south …
The northmost adversary — the other Ephesian — struggled to match our manoeuvre. They were at ramming speed and most ships don’t manoeuvre at all at that speed. But the helmsman saw the danger and flicked his oars to move his beak, and oarsmen, unwarned, lost the stroke or missed the water — it happens. On deck, a marine fell flat.
Their oar loom began to fall apart, still rowing, as one or two failures spread. This was pure inexperience.
Ka gave a shrill cry and arrows began to connect the two ships like invisible ropes tipped in bronze. Either the Ionians had no archers or they didn’t trust their bows.
We were almost bow to bow. Our ship was cocked just a little off their path, like a swordsman attacking off line.
Onisandros roared ‘In!’ and every oar came across the catwalks. I was up on the half-deck, and safe, but any sailor unlucky enough to be on the amidships walk forward was likely to get beaten to death by oar shafts.