Six ships — only four warships. Easy pickings. A fortune in ransoms and gold.
We passed across their bows and left them in our wakes, with a new pod of dolphins escorting us. As the sun rolled down the sky we lost the wind against the island and began to row. Our attendant, the captured merchant, went far to leeward on the wind. I missed Megakles, but he was the best ship-handler among us.
We began to pass Tenos. I was going south of my intended track because of the wind. I had a feeling for it, and I wanted to have one more meal on land. But I needed to beat the fastest of the enemy ships across the deep blue. My choices in navigation were severely limited and the knowledge that I was wagering Briseis’s life and honour was always with me.
I do not seek your sympathy, but some among you wish to know what it was like for us, then. So let me say — my left hand was still not healed of the loss of fingers, and when I rolled over the side of the trireme in the Bay of Salamis I wrenched my left shoulder, and a day of fighting — again and again — is more wearing that even the blind poet Homer could tell. It was, I think, three or four days since the great battle, and I was only starting to feel like a man, and my moods swung wildly between elation and depression, so that I had to watch my words the way a good shepherd watches his flock, for fear of speaking dung to a friend, or spitting bile on someone I loved. To add to this the burden of a long seaward chase against odds -
I only say this to say that, despite the years and the events, I loved Briseis enough to try. With everything I had.
We made the southern tip of Tenos and the beach there was empty. We were now south of the track of the fleeing Ionians and we’d made a remarkable passage.
We landed well before sunset. I gathered my people and laid it out for them: we were going into the Deep Blue in the darkness. This had always been my plan, my secret weapon to beat Artemisia and the Red King into Ephesus.
And I wanted them all to eat well first. We slaughtered the sheep and boiled the grain and drank the wine — thin stuff, but infinitely better than no wine at all, I promise you.
No one was grim. Indeed, a day of fair sailing and dolphins made even the superstitious old men like Sikli and Leon pronounce the night crossing of the open ocean to be ‘something to remember, boys and no mistake’.
We left Megakles on the beach. He chose the role, and he was most fit for it — to hold tight three days and if we did not return, to bolt for Salamis or Hermione. He still had a day’s food for my whole squadron, and that could be our salvation. I had to plan for the escape, too, not just the rescue.
And then we were away, running east into the darkening sky.
I hadn’t tried this exact trick before, but it stood to reason, and even Megakles voted for it. My thought was that the rising sun should show us the mountains of Samos at the very least. It is ten parasangs, more or less, from the southern tip of Andros due east to the southern tip of Chios. A day’s sail with a perfect wind. Why not a night’s? And thus, no worries about navigation with the stars.
Men slept.
I did not.
There is nothing to tell. The rising sun showed me Chios on my port bow, and well it should have — I had a dozen of the best navigators on the ocean with me, and all perfectly willing to tell me if my heading went from their reckoning. We raised Chios in the first dawn and then the race was on.
Full dawn showed me more than Chios.
Away to the north of me, as I turned north on the morning breeze to run up the west coast of Chios while I had a favourable wind, I saw ships coming off the beaches of Chios.
I knew the Red King as soon as there was enough light in the sky, and I was fairly certain that I knew Artemisia.
They were at least a parasang — thirty-six stades — away. But it was no coincidence, if you do your reckoning. They’d had a few hours’ jump, and we’d just earned that back running all night on the Great Blue, and now they were under my lee. I had the wind, and the initiative.
Artemisia had the Great King’s sons, and six ships — a perfect match for my people, except that we’d just beat them like a drum at Salamis.
I went into the bow with Brasidas and Seckla, leaving Hipponax in the steering oars, where he was almost competent.
I had a great many choices. At the start of an engagement, especially when you are upwind, you have a full range of choices, like the first guest to arrive at a banquet. My views were coloured by the knowledge that my oarsmen were rested but without sleep, and that five of my six ships would be forced to fight with their masts aboard, a useless weight of canvas and wood. My ship was built for it — a different matter.
Against that, whatever Artemisia might want, I suspected her oarsmen’s morale would be low, to say the least. Beaten men do not wage battle. And believe it or not, morale is far more important than equipment. Every fight sees dead men in superb armour, but high-hearted people win battles. And my people had had two days of leaping dolphins and fat prizes and other men’s gold.
All that was the thought of ten beats of the heart.
I took a sip of wine and handed the clay canteen to Brasidas. He already had his armour on, the bastard.
‘I’d be happy to hear your thoughts,’ I said. ‘Please don’t drone on in your usual long-winded way.’
Brasidas looked out over the sea, a thousand sun-dazzles sparkling away in the new sun.
‘Fight,’ he said. ‘But don’t forget what you are here for.’
‘Sometimes you sound like an oracle,’ I said.
He shrugged.
Seckla merely winked. ‘Do the thing,’ he said.
I went aft and armoured, keeping my own council. I nodded to Seckla, who pointed our bow at the Red King, and we sailed after them in a file, with Lydia still in the lead and Black Raven tailing, but the trierarchs closed up on me. I never even flashed a signal.
Even with Lydia in hand like a restive mare, we were coming down on them rapidly. The Ionians had choices, but they were all bad. They clearly wanted to weather the southern tip of Chios and run for the coast of Samos and an easy reach into the delta of the Kaystros and up to Ephesus, now only half a day’s sail or a full day’s rowing away. But to weather the headland of Chios at Dotia, they had to come south and east, a little too much into the wind for sailing in a trireme, and that meant rowing. Not quite straight at me, but close as it made little difference.
Or they could run north with the wind on their quarters, but of course then they’d be coming off the beach with their masts in.
In fact, that’s the choice they made.
But as we raced forward into the sparkling waves they didn’t make much of a job of getting their masts up.
Now we could see them all quite clearly and I no longer thought they had any chance of escape. Nor did my lookout report any other sails.
All of them turned their bows towards me. One ship threw his mast and sail over the side.
Then another.
They were going to fight.
At about six stades, when I could see Artemisia’s ship and was almost sure that I could see Archilogos’s ship hard by the Red King, I reached around my own stern and flashed my aspis in the sun three times. I wished I had a trumpet and a trumpeter, but in those days the skill was almost unknown among Greeks. We used smaller horns to signal, but the sound didn’t carry well at sea.
Ships make noise — do you know that, thugater? The oars strike the water — splash! — no matter how well trained the oarsmen. Pitylos we call it. The word is the sound. And then the surge of motion as the oarsmen pull the water with the mighty stroke that hurtles the ship forward — we call that rothios. These two sounds are like the beating heart of a warship. And then, over all, the sound the bow makes cutting the water — the curl of waves, the sound of the wind over the hull, and the voices of the oarsmen singing, chanting, or merely grunting, depending on the exhaustion of the crew and the needs of the ship.