Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [160]
By Poseidon, thugater, that was a fine moment. We’d sunk a Phoenician in one pass. Call it luck if you like. It was luck. Nike was with us and her handsomer sister Tyche, too!
And Troas, just by thinking fast and steering, got us around the wreck, our timbers creaking but our ship intact. There was water coming in – I can’t imagine how hard those two ships must have hit – but the sailors were bailing and we weren’t finished yet.
Archi’s ship was gone into the maelstrom in the centre. There were a dozen Phoenicians coming our way.
I looked at Nearchos. ‘Pick one and let’s get it,’ I said. My oath would have to wait. We were, in effect, alone against the Phoenician centre.
The trick to staying alive in a sea-fight is never to show the long side of your ship – the oar banks – to the enemy. If you keep your bow to their bows, there should be a limit to how much damage you can take. Despite what had just happened to the ship we’d killed.
Troas played safe and Nearchos didn’t interfere. We bumped hulls with the second Phoenician ship in line, cathead to cathead, and we damaged his oars a little, but he got most of them inboard. We lost two men – one oar fouled in the port and the loose end killed the rower who should have had it in and knocked the man above him in the oar loft unconscious, and just that small error left us vulnerable, because when the rowers were ordered to put their oars back in the water on the next stroke the whole port bank faltered and we turned to port, losing way and turning across the path of another enemy.
But the gods were with us and he passed us just a spear’s length astern, and then we had our stroke back and we were alive.
But our rowers were tired. I could feel it. Tension is its own fatigue, thugater – the more you are afraid, the more tired you feel. And the more tired you are, the easier it is to feel fear.
I looked around, because suddenly we were between the fights. To the north, Archilogos and Epaphroditos and their allies were engaged with the second line of the Phoenician centre. Behind us, the Cretans were overwhelming the first line by weight of numbers, and the Samians had already polished off the enemy Greeks.
Even Aristagoras could scent victory. He released the centre and left, and the Milesians and the Chians went forward.
In fact, we had won the battle. I knew it and, more important, the Phoenician navarch knew it. His right flank declined the engagement and began to row backwards again. I never saw their signal, but all at once, enemy ships began to flee.
Not the ships around Archi, though. They were locked together with grapples and marines, spear to spear.
I pointed to the fight in the centre.
Nearchos’s fears were gone. He grinned.
‘Now we make you a name,’ I said. Not the words Achilles paid me to say.
But we were young.
Troas put us in well. We actually rowed a little past the mêlée and turned south, taking our first Phoenician in the flank. I was in the bow, my helmet down over my eyes, arms braced against the bulkhead, when we hit, and I could see the upper-deck oarsmen and their round mouths and terrified eyes as our damaged ram broke open their long side. We’d had a full stade to turn and race at our target; the men had the heart for one more burst and we were a heavy ship.
The enemy keel snapped under our ram and the ship broke in half. It was a spectacular kill and every ship in the centre of our line saw us do it. That’s how you make a reputation, honey.
We probably also killed our own ship with that impact. The bow seams probably gave way right there.
We were too wild with the daimon of combat to care. Our beak went home into another enemy lashed alongside the one we’d broken like an old toy, and we spent our remaining momentum scraping down his side and coming to a rest broadside to broadside, oar bank to oar bank.
I leaped up on our ship’s