Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [97]
Athens had a hundred ships, and Miltiades alone, or with his father, had another twenty. Then there were other Athenian noble families with ten or fifteen ships of their own.
Athens was half-committed to the Ionians. Not even half. They sent a tithe of their strength. I had spent enough evenings listening to Artaphernes to believe him when he said that the weight of Persia would crush the Greeks like so many lice between his fingers. He always said this in sadness, never in boastfulness.
I looked at our fleet, and it seemed very great to me. We filled the beach at Chios, and by the time the levy came in and all the Chian nobles and traders brought their warships, we had a hundred hulls – I counted them myself.
That night, while men sang Ionian songs around the fires and chased Chian girls up the sand, I sat on my new aspis with Archi.
‘I think Athens is using us,’ I said.
Archi laughed. ‘Stop being a slave!’ he said, which made me angry. ‘These men have great souls. I have talked to a dozen of the Athenian captains, and they are gentlemen. Why, one or two of them are rich enough to be Ephesians!’
I shook my head, stung by his slave comment and sure that he was wrong. ‘Athenians are the most grasping bastards in the world,’ I said. I had watched the slow seduction of Plataea – I had been there as Miltiades brought the men of Plataea to his way of thinking. I could imagine him doing the same from island to island across the Aegean.
Archi sat back, took a long drink of wine from a skin and laughed. ‘We’re going to go home heroes,’ he said.
‘Has it occurred to you that we’re going home just weeks after we left? Diomedes won’t be over his injuries yet. His father will be panting for revenge. Niobe’s children will be nothing on us, Archi!’ I was growing louder and angrier because his good humour and cheerfulness were like the feathers on a heron’s back, and my words rolled off him.
Archi laughed. ‘I understand that you are a good companion, warning me of dangers ahead. But I’m the hero – I won’t be worried. You can whisper good advice in my ear and I’ll use my spear to cut my way to glory.’
He looked very much the hero on that beach, by firelight. He’d been homesick for the first few days, but he loved the sea life, camping on beaches and drinking wine by the fire every night.
‘Soon we’ll be home,’ he said, watching a pair of Chian girls run by, their oiled hair swinging and their linen chitons plastered to their bodies. One looked back over her shoulder. She knew just how to play the game. Archi shot me a look. Then he rose to his feet and chased her.
Her companion flicked me a glance and then came nearer. She was younger and seemed too shy for her business.
‘Not interested,’ I said gruffly.
She stood there. I drank wine and saw in my mind’s eye the Persian fleet crushing us against the coast. I must have been the only seventeen-year-old on that beach who wasn’t chasing a girl.
I’m a killer, and I lie sometimes, and my stories go on and on – but I have never been called inhospitable. So, when a hundred heartbeats had passed and she squatted by our fire and began to play with the embers, I poured my bronze cup full of wine and handed it to her. She was sitting on her haunches, a very unladylike posture. I’d never even seen a slave do it.
‘Careful,’ I said. ‘No water.’ I sat back on my shield, curious about the Chian girls. ‘Are you a porne?’
She spat my wine in the sand, put down my cup and jumped up. ‘No,’ she said. ‘And fuck you.’
‘Sorry,’ I said. I stood up. ‘Stay and drink the wine. I thought that you and your sister were prostitutes.’
‘That’s an apology?’ she asked. ‘Some alien stranger calling me a prostitute?’ But she squatted down again and picked up the cup. ‘I’d slap you, but your wine’s too good.’
I sat back down. ‘There’s bread, olive oil and fish.’ I waved around the fire. We were messy, and our baskets were spread over three or four oxhides of beach. Men only learn from long campaigns to be tidy when they camp, and we were as raw as an ingot of copper.
She wandered