Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [187]
I shrugged. ‘Can’t you find your own?’ I asked.
He laughed. ‘Why not give me all your marines? You don’t use them any more.’ He chuckled, and I frowned. It was true. My ship was too heavy for the new tactics.
Stephanos shook his head. ‘Why don’t we go after them where no one can run?’ he asked.
Now, it’s worth saying that the Phoenician commander, Ba’ales, had a dozen warships at Lampasdis, down the Bosporus towards the Troad. Miltiades had eight ships, all smaller. We always ran when the warships came out. They always ran from us when they were outnumbered.
It was a hard summer for oarsmen on both sides.
I fingered my beard and admired my ship. I loved to sit and look at him while I had a cup of wine. ‘Miltiades can’t risk it,’ I said. ‘We only have to lose once and Artaphernes has us. He can lose two or three squadrons and he can always force Tyre to send more.’
Stephanos drank some wine, admired the woman serving it and began to dabble in the spilled wine on the table. ‘I just keep thinking of the Aegyptian raid,’ he said. ‘No risk, no blood and a crippling blow.’
My eyes met Paramanos’s over the rims of our wine cups.
‘We could catch them on the beach,’ he said. I had the same thought in my head.
‘They must have lookouts and coast-watchers,’ I said. ‘All down the strait. Every three or four stades.’
‘We certainly do,’ Stephanos said, morosely. Indeed, every farmer on our side of the Bosporus reported on ship movements.
We broke up without any decision. But we talked about it every time we were together – catching Ba’ales on the beach, his men asleep.
And some time just after that, while I was arguing with Paramanos on the beach, Cimon brought a man up beside me.
‘I can make Lekthes’ career,’ Paramanos was insisting.
I knew he was right. But Lekthes was closer to me than any of my other men except Stephanos and Idomeneus, and I was loath to give him up. Thugater, there is no argument as harsh as one where you know that you are wrong.
‘By Zeus of the waves, you are a thankless bastard. I found you a prisoner and I’ve made you a captain—’ I was spitting mad.
‘You? Made me a captain?’ Paramanos grew in size. ‘Without me, you’d be at the bottom of the ocean three times over. I taught you everything you know. There’s no debt between us—’
‘My lords?’ Cimon asked. He was my own age, of impeccable ancestry and had beautiful manners. He was already a prominent man, not least because he disdained his father’s politics. Cimon always wanted to fight. What he wanted was glory – glory for himself and glory for Athens. On that day, he leaned forward, holding his staff, and the only sign that anything was amiss was the trace of a smile on his lips that suggested we were making a spectacle of ourselves.
‘Your heart is as black as your skin, you fucking ingrate!’ I did say that.
‘And which of us is a former slave? I can smell the pig shit on you from here, turd-flinger!’ Paramanos pointed a finger at me. ‘You are like all dirt-grubbers – you can’t stand to see another man succeed. You think it makes you fail! Lekthes deserves—’
Cimon stepped between us. ‘My lords?’ he said again.
‘Keep out of it, Cimon. I’m tired of his poaching my best crewmen. ’ I was equally tired of how, now that he was an independent captain, Paramanos was the highest earner. It suggested that he was right – he had made me. And that enraged me.
Some friend. Youth is wasted on the young. I knew he was right about Lekthes, and I suspected that he was right about how much I owed him.
‘Arimnestos?’ asked a voice I knew.
The man standing at Cimon’s side was dressed like a peasant, in a dirty hide apron over a stained chiton, with a dog’s-head cap on blond curls. The name was said so softly that I wasn’t sure I had heard right, and I turned, my tirade