It was a brilliant counterstroke. Twenty Athenian ships were taken or sunk in the blink of an eye, and then the Phoenicians were in among the lesser ships of the Athenian second and third lines, making the breakthrough that we’d robbed them of in the early going, forcing the open-water fight our lesser captains dreaded. You could see the Athenian line stretch and sag as trierarchs and helmsmen in the back lines tried to manoeuvre, and friends collided with friends. Ships moved backwards — crews backed water for their lives — and other ships, struck hard by rams, recoiled. The noise was like nothing I’d ever heard, because water allows sound to travel more easily than ground — hundreds of thousands of men roaring for the approval of the gods, or screaming for mercy, or both, and the snap of oars, the heavy, crushing thud of the bronze ram at impact, the zip of arrows, the clash of bronze and iron.
I made myself take my time to bring my little squadron into action where it would matter most, and in the best possible order. I considered all my signals, while at the same time I considered what had to be done. It is true that for a fleeting moment the flank of the Phoenicians was vulnerable, but it was very close to the beach, on purpose, and a regiment of Immortals stood there, with arrows to bows. To fight a boarding action in the shallows was to take a heavy risk and to abandon Xanthippus and the Athenians’ centre to their dooms.
It is a maxim of many navarchs and strategoi to always make the bold stroke and never reinforce failure and this is, I confess, often true. But in this case, it appeared to me — and there was no one with whom to share my decision — that if Xanthippus and the Athenian centre were not saved, the Persians would restore their line, win a morale advantage, and be able to isolate us to the west and reinforce at will. I could not even have said this then. I had heartbeats to decide and a very limited number of codes to tell my trierarchs what I fancied.
What I decided was that I had a dozen of the finest captains on the waves and I’d let every man go for his own kill. Athens was not a great sea power in those days: many of her ships were officered by cavalrymen, if you take my meaning, and rowed by desperate lower-class men who had never touched an oar before that summer. They had strict rules and manoeuvres, taught over the summer and autumn, by Eurybiades and Themistocles.
But, with a couple of exceptions, the men under my hand were old sea wolves who didn’t need formations to kill. We were in a formation, a pretty one, sweeping west and a little south.
It was time for us to act like Phoenicians, in fact.
We had a signal from pirate days. We’d used it enough times that I hoped every captain would know it. After battle a pennon from my masthead summoned all the captains to my ship by saying the traditional ‘Now we divide the spoils of war.’ But in the midst of an action, against a Carthaginian tin convoy or Egyptian merchants, it meant ‘Pick one and take her.’ In effect, it allowed every trierarch to use his head.
Hector usually handled the signals, such as they were, but he was gone with our capture, so I pulled the wicker basket from under Seckla’s bench and found the little red pennon, and put it on the halyard kept for the purpose. We were two hundred paces from where Xanthippus’s ship was being taken. His marines were fighting and dying like Olympians or titans, but he had four ships on his one.
I ran my signal up.
I leaned out over the side to Eumenes of Anagyrus, who was not really one of us, and shouted, ‘Pick a target and take or kill her! Forget formation!’
He smiled. He raised his arm in the salute Olympic athletes give the judges and shouted an order.
I leaned the other way and got Harpagos’s attention, but he’d already seen it. He pointed up, said something to his helmsman, and waved to me with his kopis in his hand. He was smiling, and his face was full of light — that very fire, I think, that Heraclitus thought made us greater than mere men when in battle.
So having formed, we broke apart, like a pack of wolves breaks when they see the deer.
I ran back to Leukas. ‘Pick one by Xanthippus and put me where I can board Horse Tamer,’ I said.
Then I ran forward to the marines. ‘Let me past,’ I grunted. Hipponax was there — wherever he’d been off to, he was back. He wouldn’t meet my eye — the young man personified. He was up to something, and it did not matter in that moment.
Brasidas grinned at me — very un-Laconian. ‘Good to have you here.’
‘We’ll make you a Plataean yet, with all these displays of wild emotion,’ I said, but I clapped him on his armoured shoulder and smiled at the men around us.
‘We winning, boss?’ Achilles, my cousin, asked. As if we were friends.
So we were. ‘When we clear the centre,’ I began. Then I realised they had no notion what was happening. ‘We’re going aboard Xanthippus’s ship,’ I said. ‘Clear the Medes off Horse Tamer and I promise you we will win. This is it. All or nothing.’
I stood up and an arrow slammed into my aspis. We were close. But the gesture is everything. Men had to know.
I pointed to the golden throne, less than a stade away.
‘Want to show the Great King what you think?’ I roared. ‘He’s right there, watching us.’
Arrows came past me. Ka and his pair were using us as cover, shooting carefully. They had their own orders — to kill archers. Every marine with an aspis was a shield, and we practised this.
My marines began to sing the paean — just ten men. But by the gods … by the gods, my eyes fill with tears to say it, the sailors and the oarsmen took it up. Oh, that moment, and that day.
The paean of Apollo came off my benches and spread to other ships. I have met men from Horse Tamer who said that the sound of the paean coming towards them was the sound of salvation, that they joined in who could.
Leukas put our bow into the bow of a Phoenician ship that was grappled alongside. It was a daring, precision strike, and the result was spectacular. We smashed into his bow, our own oars safely in, and we were just a few finger widths to the inside of his bow, so that after the shattering first blow, our ships went between Horse Tamer and the enemy ship, popping the grapnels and breaking the ropes, smashing the enemy ship’s cathead and heaving it away, oars smashed, rowers injured, and cutting all its marines off from their ship. It wasn’t as instantly satisfying as the strikes that sank ships immediately, but it was one of the two or three finest ship-strikes I’ve ever witnessed.
We boarded Horse Tamer. We were long side to long side, stern to stern, and Seckla led the sailors in grappling close and then boarding. Seckla did not wait for me to tell him to go. My big deck gave me the power of carrying more marines and more sailors than most, and as I’ve said, most of my sailors were better armoured than more people’s marines.
We went from our bow into his bow, right into the teeth of an Ionian contingent coming from another ship directly opposite us. The press of ships was amazing — like nothing I’ve ever seen.
No time to think about it. No time to worry that my own ship was going to be boarded — unavoidable.