And as it proved, the enemy fleet was gathered at the eastern edge of the Phaleron beaches. Of course Cimon wanted to scout them and perhaps even put fire into their ships, and of course I wanted to as well.
But our rowers spoke in loud grumbles and some very slow rowing. So we promised them a quick trip home and contented ourselves with a distant reconnaissance, safely out of bowshot. We could see that Mardonius had moved much of the army down onto the plains above Phaleron, so they clearly feared that we would attack. There was even a stockade, and we could see slaves digging and others bringing up cut olive trees — cutting olive trees, curse them!
But there we were, perhaps ten plethora off the beach, beyond extreme bowshot, anyway. The day was clear, the wind soft and steady, and no one was coming off the beach.
But the bastards were busy. And I could now pick out individual ships — there was the Red King, for example, and there was Artemisia’s elegant ship — and there was Archilogos’s ship.
If I hadn’t seen his trireme, beached bow out and with Briseis’s beautiful eyes painted either side of the ram, I might not have noticed. But I stepped up on the platform amidships, wishing my shoulder was good enough to climb, watching Archilogos’s ship. Three hulls to the west was Diomedes’ ship.
There were men moving around all of them, all the best Ionians.
I looked for as long as a man might speak in the agora to a friend. Then I waved for Seckla’s attention. I didn’t want to move my eyes and lose my targets.
‘Take us in,’ I said.
Kineas thumped for the oarsmen, but close by me old Giorgos spat. ‘You said, “easy day”,’ he commented — not to me precisely, which might have been bad for discipline. His head was turned away, as if he was speaking to the air.
‘I won’t get us in a fight, and I’ll serve out good wine with my own hands,’ I said quietly.
‘And a drachma per man,’ old Giorgos said. He shrugged. ‘I could be gettin’ me dick wet. ’Stead of getting all of me wet, so to speak. Eh? Lord?’
‘And a drachma per man. But not paid today, mate.’ I was not a rich man just then.
He spat over the side and looked along the gangway at one of his own mates.
‘Well, then, since yer so agreeable, like,’ he said.
And they all started rowing.
We crept for ten strokes and then, at a shouted command, we went for it — straight to a fast speed — faster than a long cruise, anyway. We covered the stade to shore like a good runner and turned end for end even as the first arrows began to fly from the Persian troops on the beach. They were well shot, but passed over us — a dozen went into our canvas screens along the forwards rowers’ banks, but not a man was hit, thank all the gods.
In the time we turned, I had confirmed what I suspected.
Then we raised our sails and raced for home and oarsmen came on deck. It was a free day, and after the victory, only a fool or a very bad officer indeed would have forbidden anything to an oarsman, so they came and went, and laughed, and discipline was almost nonexistent. Seckla looked worried and I think Brasidas, whose wounds made him stiff, would have been appalled, but I had some notion of what they’d done the day before and what it took to go out again, and I let men loll on deck, watching the headland reach by — I even let young Kineas and two of his friends try their hands as steering, with Seckla and Megakles giving laconic advice and encouragement. The ship had a festive atmosphere that was marred briefly by the dead washed up like sea wrack after a storm on the Cynosura headland and we had to pull down the sails and row carefully after we struck a submerged wreck and almost lost Megakles over the side.
He looked at me wryly — he was probably the oldest man aboard.
‘I think I’m for home,’ he said. No preamble, and no argument.
‘I need you for one more thing,’ I said.
He shrugged. ‘Will you give me a boat to take home?’
I nodded. I owed him too much to make conditions.
‘Just the triakonter,’ he said. ‘I’ll take her in lieu of my wages and my shares.’ He shrugged again. ‘What thing, boss?’
I pulled at the knots in my beard. ‘I’m going to Ephesus,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Course you are.’ The men who’d been with me for years knew it all. ‘Fighting?’
‘I expect,’ I admitted.
He shrugged a third time. ‘Triakonter?’ he asked.
‘Yours,’ I said. ‘And anything else you ask for.’
He laughed. ‘You’re like a story,’ he said. Perhaps the best compliment I’ve ever been paid.
That afternoon we saw Xerxes come down, in person, to the beaches opposite. I didn’t see it, but others rowing our guard ships say so. And the Persians began to salvage any wreck close enough to the beach to be pulled ashore. They immediately began to fill the hulls with earth.
You could see all this activity as a smudge of busy, distant ants over by Piraeus.
‘He’s trying to build a bridge,’ Themistocles said. I think there was genuine admiration in his tone.
Aristides sat on his heels — still, I think, exhausted from the day before. ‘Can’t be done,’ he said. ‘Insane hubris.’
Themistocles and Eurybiades took the threat seriously, however, and were discussing sending ships and archers to attack the workmen.
Anaxagoras had a different point of view. He was silent for a long time, unusual for him. Then he raised his hand cautiously, like a schoolboy afraid to speak.
Our Spartan navarch was not a fan of the Ionian boy. ‘What, youngster? In my home, a ten-year man doesn’t speak at all unless invited.’ The ten years were in the first phase of manhood — older, in fact, than Anaxagoras.
Anaxagoras nodded. ‘That’s interesting, sir. But what I wanted to say is — it cannot be done.’
Eurybiades was never very fond of being brought up short, even by men he saw as his peers. ‘Oh?’ he asked. Spartans see sarcasm as a form of weakness (I think they’re wrong) but short answers often betray anger.
‘If you would consider,’ Anaxagoras said, ‘the volume of mythemnoi of earth required to fill a basket that is six stades long and, say, a plethora wide?’
The mythemnos was a volume of grain that Athenians used to measure a man’s wealth. In Athens they sell grain by that measure, and many other things. You can put a mythemnos of grain into a basket as big around as two men’s arms in a circle and knee-high.
We all tried to do the maths.
‘It’s millions,’ Anaxagoras said, using the Persian word. ‘Tens of thousands times tens of thousands of mythemnoi and all that has to be dug and moved and rolled out over the jetty as it forms. Can’t be done.’
Aristides was a fair head at arithmetic and I had studied with Heraclitus and read my Pythagoras, and we looked at each other — and frowned.
‘I think he’s right,’ Aristides said. ‘Even if he does talk too much.’
‘I agree,’ I said.
Themistocles stroked his beard. ‘Then why is he doing it?’ he asked.
We all passed a bowl of watered wine — Cimon’s — and I watched Themistocles and his slave and tried to decide if he’d intended to betray Greece or not. To be honest, it no longer seemed to matter.
It was Eurybiades who spoke. ‘He’s covering something,’ he said. ‘He wants us to watch him build that bridge. Or he’s run mad with anger, which I hear from Bulis is well within his character.’
Cimon looked at me. ‘Someone’s boiling to tell a tale,’ he said with his usual light mockery. ‘Go ahead, Plataean.’
I shrugged. ‘We went in close when we scouted their ships,’ I said.
Eurybiades nodded.