Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [157]
Aristagoras chose to take on the fleet. I suspected that he made the choice so that it would be easier to cut and run, but I was in the minority. Most of the rest still worshipped him, and he wore his purple cloak at every meeting, as if he was the King of Kings.
After making the decision, we had three days of rough weather, and we put out every day, struggled to form our lines and suffered from the wind and waves. The Phoenicians stayed on their beaches by their camp and jeered at us. The Great King’s commander was cautious – he fortified his camp and would not risk battle until his fleet was there to cover his flank.
The fourth day dawned like a proper summer day on Cyprus, the sort of golden pink dawn when you can imagine the Cyprian goddess coming across the foam to your beach. We rose, cooked our breakfasts and sang a hymn to that goddess and to Zeus, and then to all the gods, and finally we boarded our ships.
The sea was as calm as a sheet of hammered bronze, and I knew that this time we would fight. My hands shook, my stomach did flips inside my scale thorax and I drank a little too much wine.
We formed up well, though, and that counts for a great deal in a sea-fight. North and west of us, on the beaches north of the city where the Persians had their camp, we could see them forming, and their allies with them, and the Cyprians forming against them, two great phalanxes and a taxis of cavalry on either flank, with the chariots farthest from the sea.
We Cretans were untried, and our heavy Phoenician-style ships were slower than the other Ionians, so they put us in the second line. It was an insult, if you like, but the fleet was well ordered and there was a rumour that Aristagoras was receiving advice from a Samothracian navarch. Whoever he was, I thought that he knew his business. We Cretans were on the landward flank, the left of our line, so far out from the centre that my ship was second from the beach, and by the whim of the gods, Archi’s ship was in the first line, just seaward and ahead of us.
I swore to myself that if I had a chance to make good my oath to his family, I would do it.
Nearchos was shaking with nerves. I hugged him, our breastplates rubbing together oddly. ‘Relax, O phile pai. The fear falls from you with the first arrow.’
He gave me a shaky smile, and we began to row forward with our line, as did the enemy, until we could see the eyes painted on their bows as clearly as we could see our own rowers. But then, before we could come to grips, I had cause to bless all the training Achilles had done with us, because the Phoenicians tried the oldest trick in naval warfare – they backed water. They were professionals, and we were amateurs, and they assumed that if they backed far enough, we’d lose our order and they’d kill us in small groups.
And indeed, our line did begin to break up after half a dozen stades – keeping a line at sea is hard enough, and every wave and current is against you. We split our first line into three, because there was a current off the rivermouth by the city and the rowers couldn’t stay in the midst of it.
But the strong current from the river split the enemy, too. And they didn’t break into three even groups, as we did – again, the whim of the gods and no cleverness of man. But their beachward division was the smallest, and it seemed to be out of order – caught in some indraught near the beach by their camp, or so it appeared to me.
‘Troas!’ I called, and he came to my side. We were rowing lower bank only, creeping across the great bay and saving our men for ramming. I pointed at the chaos among the landward Phoenicians. And now that they were closer, I could see that they weren’t Phoenicians, either – they were Greeks.
There were plenty of cities who served Artaphernes, of course.
‘Tide rip,’ Troas said before he even reached the command deck. ‘Not much, but enough