Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [192]
‘Go with Hermes, lad. In fact, I’ll see to it that Herk or Paramanos runs you home. Take a couple of men – you’ll want to kill the bastard and not take any crap from neighbours.’ He nodded. ‘Anything you need, you ask. It’s as much my fault as anyone’s. I knew something was wrong – I didn’t give it enough thought. When your father died, I mean.’
He shrugged. I knew what he meant – when the Plataeans helped Athens defeat the Eretrians, Miltiades was done with that part of his busy plotting, and he let his tools drop. That was the sort of man he was. But he was also enough of a gentleman to regret that he had allowed the tools to become damaged when he dropped them.
I spent the next few weeks making arrangements for my absence. I didn’t tell Miltiades, but I wasn’t sure that I would return.
I gave Herakleides one command and Stephanos the other.
Herakleides and his brothers were trusted men by then, and they showed no signs of running back to Aeolis. Both Nestor and Orestes were promising helmsmen, and they had the birth and military training to carry rank.
Stephanos did not. He wasn’t an aristocrat, and he didn’t have all the command skills that I had learned – nor the enormous, heroic and largely unearned reputation that I had acquired, which grew with every day and vastly exceeded the reality of my accomplishments, even though I was in love with it.
Reputation alone is enough to carry most men – but Stephanos was a fine seaman and a careful, considerate officer. He’d led the marines for a year and they worshipped him. I thought that he was ready.
Idomeneus informed me that he was coming with me. So was Hermogenes. ‘You think I came all the way out here just to grab a pot of Persian silver?’ Hermogenes asked. ‘Pater sent me to find you so that you could restore order. Simonalkes is a bad farmer and a fool. But when he’s dead, it will take time to rebuild.’
I found it comic that Hermogenes had spent three years looking for me so that he could get the farm in order.
Paramanos offered to take me home, all the way to Corinth if I wanted, but I had other plans. Plans I’d worked at for a long time.
Miltiades supported me as I moved captains. So Paramanos moved from Briseis to the newly rebuilt Ember, the ship we’d taken, still smoking from our attempt to burn her, during the boat raid. The smaller ship we’d taken was Raven’s Wing, and Stephanos had her, and Herakleides took command of Briseis. I had Briseis stowed for a long voyage, and I gave him his own two brothers as officers – Nestor as the oar master and Orestes as the captain of marines. I spent money like water – I had plenty. And the rowers in that ship still owed me three months of service before wages were due.
I intended to sail that ship into Aristagoras’s town at Myrcinus, in Thrace, and take Briseis – or give her the ship and go horseback, overland. It was a foolish plan, a boy’s plan, but without it, the next weeks would have been worse. It is a fine example of fate, and how the gods work. Had I left all to chance, I would have died, and many others with me. But I planned carefully. My plans all failed, of course – but among the shards of my broken plans lay the makings of an escape.
The first rain of autumn came and went, and my intentions were set. I sent Briseis a message via the Thracian king, asking her to be ready. Miltiades cautioned me again – directly – against killing Aristagoras. I don’t remember what I told him. Perhaps I lied outright. I thought myself tremendously clever. So did Miltiades. The hubris flowed thick and fast, that autumn.
The grain was sheaved in the fields along the Bosporus. The peasants had their harvest festivals, and the sun shone in an autumn that seemed more like summer – when Hymaees descended on the Troad with thirty ships and a thousand marines. The first we knew of his arrival was that our southernmost town was burned and all the inhabitants sold into slavery, and the refugees poured up the one bad road with