Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [163]
But darkness was coming. I knew that I’d fucked up – pardon me, ladies, and by Aphrodite, despoina, you blush like a maiden of twelve – I mean that I knew I’d left it until too late in the day, and I knew we weren’t on a course of true north, and that meant we were still at sea when we should have been cooking. And no sight of a coast.
The rowers were sitting on their benches enjoying the rest, and no doubt planning how to retake the ship.
I called my two men and gave it to them straight. ‘We’re going to spend the night at sea,’ I said. ‘And the crew will try for us once it is too dark to see.’
Lekthes winced. Idomeneus grinned maniacally. The sea-fight had changed him. For all his limp wrists and exaggerated pretty-boy habits, he was getting to be a hard man. And he knew it and loved it.
‘Let them come,’ he said. ‘There aren’t ten men among them.’
I shook my head. ‘The ten men you kill are the same ten men we need to get to Lesbos alive,’ I said.
Lekthes shook his head. ‘So, what then?’
‘Get the Cretans up and armed. Then walk up and down confidently and see if there are any of the Greeks worth having. If you find a man you like, send him aft while there’s still light.’
The two of them went forward, armed the Cretan deck crew and then began to move through the ship. I’m sure that none of you well-bred ladies has ever been on a warship, so I’ll tell you how it is at sea. A trireme has three decks of rowers – they aren’t really decks, but three levels of benches with a sort of crawl-space between them. It takes men time to come and go from the oar benches. There’s a single walkway, the width of a man’s shoulders, that runs from stem to stern the length of the ship. On an Athenian ship, there’s a command platform amidships. Some of the easterners do the same and some build a little deck aft, by the helmsman. Regardless, the helmsman sits in the stern between his two oars, which in a modern ship are strapped together with bronze or iron. He’s the real commander of the ship, and it is the helmsman’s voice that the other officers – the deck crew – obey. Under the helmsman there’s an oar master who keeps order and counts time, and a sailing master who manages the two masts and their sails – the mainmast and the boatsail mast, which is up forward in the bow. The rest of the deck crew manage the sails and bully the oarsmen and provide a reserve of labour. On a Cretan ship they also serve as extra marines. Then there are marines – usually citizen-hoplites.
Lord Achilles didn’t send me with any marines. I had two dozen of his men as deck crew, and not one of them would make an officer. A more worthless group of men I’d seldom seen, and Troas had his revenge for my ‘corrupting’ his daughter – by the gods, I swore to have vengeance on him if I ever caught him – not one man who could be trusted between the steering oars. Nearchos may have wanted me to get the very best men, but what I got was the dregs. Men no one needed. Human waste.
The prisoners were the better men in every instance. I had at least forty Phoenicians and twice that in captured Greeks. I didn’t even have a full rowing crew – I couldn’t man all the lower-deck oar shafts. In good weather, it should have been enough, but there was a storm coming and Lord Achilles didn’t give a ram’s fart whether this ship made it through the storm or not.
Well – I’d made a small fortune from him, and I didn’t mean to die at sea. And yet I remember thinking that I had, at least in part, redeemed my oath, and that meant that I was free to die, in a way. The thought relaxed me, to be honest. I was an honourable man again.
So I stayed in the steering oars, and we sailed north, or more likely