Athens, he could appear as a great man on the front lines of the
conflict.
What Miltiades didn’t need was for the rebels to defeat
Persia. If the rebelion was victorious, he would suddenly be
nothing but the tyrant of the Chersonese. Athens wouldn’t need
him, and neither would the rebels. Further, his greatest rival
among the Ionian tyrants was Histiaeus. Aristagoras had been his
greatest rival – but I’d kiled him in Thrace. Aristagoras had been
Histiaeus’s lieutenant, and Miltiades had no reason to want
Miletus to be free of siege and powerful in the east. At one level,
Miltiades wanted control for himself. At another level, he was an
Athenian, and Athens wanted Miletus humbled – Miletus and
Ephesus and al the Ionian cities that rivaled Athens for
supremacy at sea.
I won’t tel you that I realy understood al this, that dark
autumn and winter, with the rain lashing the shutters and the fires
sputtering and smoking, and a hundred bored and angry Greeks
sputtering and smoking, and a hundred bored and angry Greeks
fighting like dogs for the leadership of the rebelion. But I
understood that al was not as it seemed. And it slowly dawned
on me that whatever men said aloud, Samos and Lesbos and
Rhodos and Miletus al hated each other, and Athens more than
most of them hated Persia.
So you children can see that it’s a miracle we ever got a fleet
together at al.
Cimon left, but Miltiades and I both stayed, and over the course
of hours of debate, it was decided to relieve Miletus for the
winter, fil the city with supplies and go back to our homes. We
were to raly in the spring on the beaches of Mytilene, find the
Persian fleet and crush it. With the main Persian fleet finished,
we’d have the initiative, and then we could act against the
Persian land forces as we saw fit.
It was a good plan. Dionysius and Miltiades hammered it out,
even against their own interests. Miltiades had no love for
Miletus, as I have said, and Dionysius had every reason to
favour a long war of commerce, as he was a pirate by
profession. But the two of them joined together in something like
aliance, and the Lesbians and Chians backed them. It is odd – a
thing I’ve seen many times – that men wil rise to nobility out of
squalor and greed, especialy when there is competition and
worthy felowship. On their own, Miltiades and Dionysius were
greedy pirates. Together, they competed against one another to
be the saviours of Greece.
Their plan left a lot unsaid. There was nothing about rescuing
Their plan left a lot unsaid. There was nothing about rescuing
the cities of the Asian coast. Rather, it was the strategy of al
those Greeks who had water between them and the hooves of
the Persian cavalry. It left the mainlanders as slaves.
It was also the first realistic plan the rebels had ever made.
Dionysius offended everyone by insisting that most of the
ships were il-trained and that we should spend our first months
when we ralied together in spring training our rowers and
marines. I agreed with him, but his manner of stating this obvious
truth was arrogant.
‘You aristocrats are like children when you go to sea,’ he
said. ‘My boys do nothing but row. They don’t go to sea with
their heads ful of the Iliad. They go to sea to win – to take
enemy ships and turn them into silver and gold. Have you seen
the Phoenicians manoeuvre? Have you seen how hard they train
their crews? Ever face a Cilician in narrow waters? Can your
oarsmen row you into a diekplous? Turn on an obol and ram an
enemy under the stern? No. Hardly one of you. When we come
to the day – the moment of truth – there’s not twenty ships here
that can be trusted in a close action. Let me train your crews. A
little sweat now, and liberty is the prize.’
If he’d stuck to that as a theme, he might have won them
over, but every one of them fancied himself the greatest captain
of the ages, fit to be trierarch on the Argo. It is a Greek failing.
So with nothing decided on save action, we loaded grain and
root vegetables and ships ful of pigs and goats, and we sailed for
Miletus in midwinter, which was thought to be daring in those
days. Not like now, when we make war in every season. We
were so powerful that we went through the Samian channel,
caring nothing whether the Persians knew we were coming.
The enemy squadron at Lade had had word of us, and their
sails were just notches on the horizon by the time we sailed
down the bay, and their camp was a field of burning embers.
They hadn’t even left a garrison. We took the island and landed
the stores in Miletus.
The populace of the lower town hailed us as heroes and we
al feasted together, but I noticed that whole families wanted to
be taken away when we sailed. Histiaeus frowned, but he didn’t
forbid any of the lower-class families to leave.
I drank wine with Istes – wine I’d brought myself. We sat on
folding stools in the agora, and drank from a kylix his slave boy
carried, Athenian work with two heroes fighting.
‘Ever think of leaving?’ I asked.
He watched my ship for a long time, drank his wine and
shook his head. ‘No. But yes.’ He laughed. ‘You’re a hero. You
know the rules. I can’t leave. I’l die here – this year or next.’
A stick-figure girl came by with a heavy pot on her head –
carrying water. She glanced admiringly at the two of us – fine,
wel-muscled men, and kilers too.
‘What’s her glance worth?’ Istes said. ‘What would it be like
for you to awaken one day to find that she spits on your
shadow?’
I understood al too wel. ‘But if we take too many of your
people away . . .’ I began.
people away . . .’ I began.
Istes shook his head. ‘Don’t say it, my friend,’ he whispered.
‘My brother . . . does not feel as I do.’
‘How do you feel?’ I asked.
‘I think we should go to Sicily and start again, far from the
Persians, the Medes, the Lydians and the fucking Athenians.’ He
shrugged. ‘I am filed with joy at every citizen family that gets
away, to remember what Miletus was.’
I must have looked startled at the force of his expression,
because he leaned back and drank more wine. ‘You asked. I
answered. But my brother – he is determined that we wil meet
our ends here. Al of us. Sail before he makes a law against
emigration.’ His deep brown eyes locked with mine. ‘Take al
the families of those archers.’
I looked around. ‘Why?’
Istes shrugged. ‘He is mad,’ he said, and then would say no
more.
We sailed that afternoon, as the first of the great winter
storms brewed to the east. We were the last to be alowed to
take citizen refugees out of Miletus. The city had new heart, and
food for the winter.
But the siege mound was not any smaler, and Datis did not
decamp, as the Persian army had in other winters. He stayed,
and his men built a proper wal around their camp, so that the
raids had to stop. And the mound grew higher.
I took sixteen citizen families to Lesbos. Most of them had
money, and they offered us – me and Stephanos – a good rate
to take them al the way across the deep blue to Sicily.
to take them al the way across the deep blue to Sicily.
Miltiades convinced them to come and settle in the
Chersonese instead, and before the second Heracleion, we
landed them at Kalipolis and settled in for the winter. My red-
haired Thracian had found another man, but there were more fish
like her in the sea, and I caught one quickly enough with a
necklace of gold beads – a delicate blonde with a heart-shaped
face and no other heart at al. She spoke Lydian and Greek and
another language, too, close enough to what the Iberians spoke
to make each other laugh.
It might have been a good winter for me, except that there
was a long letter from Penelope about the farm, and it wasn’t
good – Epictetus the elder was dead, some of our stock had
died in a pest and she needed me to come home so that she
could be wed – but not a word of whom she might marry.
And enclosed in her letter was another slip of white velum,
written in the same hand.
Some say a phalanx of infantry is the most beautiful thing, but I still
insist it is you who is the most beautiful. Come and be rich.
I held the parchment close to an oil lamp, and more words came
through on the surface – written in acid, and now burned into the
hide.
Come soon.
6
I was able to help Penelope. I sent my gold home to her, with
Idomeneus as my courier. He went with a good grace – he
wasn’t missing any kiling, and he knew it.
Briseis was another matter. It is harder, when the first flush of
love is past, to understand what value to place on that love. I had
gone to her rescue before – more than once – and never been
better for saving her. In fact, I was never sure I had saved her.
Should I cast life aside, crew up my ship and race for Ephesus?
I’d thought about it al autumn. Ephesus is less than six
hundred stades from Miletus, and on that night when I’d found
myself on a stolen horse, avoiding Persian archers, my first
thought had been to ride for Ephesus and find her.
But I was no longer eighteen. I was fulfiling my duty to
Apolo, or so I thought. In fact, in my head, it was clear to me
that I was one of Apolo’s tools in the success of the Ionian
that I was one of Apolo’s tools in the success of the Ionian
Revolt. Apolo was leading the Greeks to victory. The constant
luck of the autumn – the escapes from Miletus, the seizure of the
two rich Aegyptians – al pointed to the Lord of the Silver Bow’s
favour. And in my head, the needs of the Ionian Revolt
outweighed the needs of a single, selfish woman.
Which tels you two things. First, that I stil held her refusal of
me against her. Second, that I was as much a fool at twenty-five
as I was at eighteen. But I could rationalize my irrationality
better.
So I spent the winter caling my blonde Briseis and forging
excuses as to why I could not possibly go to her rescue.
Spring, when it came, was the longest, wettest, stormiest
spring anyone could remember. I took Storm Cutter to sea
before the cakes were fuly burnt on Persephone’s altar, and I
brought him right back in when a combination of wind and wave
snapped my boatsail mast like a twig.
We spent four weeks locked in the Bosporus when we
should have been at sea, and a rumour started to spread that
Miletus had falen. But no real news came to us at Kalipolis, and
we fretted and quarreled with each other, and my decision not
to go to Briseis in the autumn began to look shockingly like
faithlessness.
We tired of exercising our crews, of painting our ships, of
games and contests. We tired of girls and boys, and we even
tired of wine. But the wind howled outside the Bosporus, and
every attempt I made to round the point at Troy and head for
every attempt I made to round the point at Troy and head for
Lesbos was foiled by a cold, dark wind.
Demeter showed man how to plant grain, and the new grain
peeped above the earth, and finaly the sun leaped into the
heavens like a four-horse chariot, and the ground dried, and the
sea was blue.
Miltiades had a good squadron. He had two volunteers from
Athens who came in with the first good weather – Aristides,
sailing a fine light trireme, and his friend Phrynichus, the
playwright, with Cleisthenes, the Spartan proxenos and a
powerful man in the aristocratic faction who was, nonetheless, a
solid supporter of the Ionian Revolt. Aristides had Glaucon and
Sophanes with him, but they didn’t meet my eyes. I laughed.
They were in my world now.
The Athenians brought disturbing news.
‘It’s al but open war in the city,’ Aristides said quietly.
‘Are you exiled?’ Miltiades asked.
Aristides shook his head. ‘No. I thought I’d come and do my
duty before I was sent away without having the ability to
influence the decision. The Alcmaeonids have almost seized
control of the assembly. Themistocles is the last man of the
popular party to stand against them.’
Miltiades sneered. ‘Our blood is as blue as theirs,’ he said
dismissively. ‘Bluer. Why do they get caled aristocrats?’
Aristides shook his head. ‘You don’t need me to tel you that
the colour of our blood is not the issue. Let’s defeat the Persians
first and worry about the political life of our city second.’ He
frowned at Miltiades. ‘Don’t pretend you are a byword for
frowned at Miltiades. ‘Don’t pretend you are a byword for
democracy, sir.’
Miltiades threw back his head and laughed. I thought the
laugh was a trifle theatrical, but he puled it off wel enough. ‘Not
much democracy here,’ he admitted. ‘Pirates, Asians and
Thracians al living together? By the gods, we should have an
assembly, except that the first debate would be on what language
to debate in!’ He drank some more wine. ‘And you are a fine
one to talk, Aristides the Just! For al you prate of this
democracy, you distrust the masses, and when you need
company, you run away from the aristocrats – to me!’
Aristides bit his lips.
I stood up. ‘No one has run from anyone,’ I said, raising the
wine cup. ‘Tomorrow, we sail against the Great King.’
Aristides looked at me in surprise – a surprise that wasn’t
altogether complimentary. ‘Wel said,’ he replied. ‘You’ve made
your peace with Apolo, or so I hear.’
‘Not yet,’ I answered. ‘But I am working on it.’
‘No man can say fairer when he sp
eaks of the gods,’
Miltiades answered. Miltiades believed in the gods to exactly the
same extent at Philocrates – which is to say, not at al – but he
spoke piously and offended no one.
Cimon hid a guffaw and Paramanos winked at me. Don’t
imagine that because I don’t mention Paramanos I didn’t see him
every day, drink with him every night. He’d gone his own way
and left my oikia to be a lord in his own right – a lord of pirates –
but he was a fine man and stil the most gifted son of Poseidon
on the wine-dark.
on the wine-dark.
‘Let us drink to the defeat of the Medes,’ Miltiades
proposed, as the host.
We al rose from our couches and we drank, each in turn –
Aristides; Cimon; Cleisthenes; Paramanos; Stephanos;
Metiochos, who was Miltiades’ younger son; Herk, who had
been my first teacher on the sea; the Aeolian Herakleides, who
now had a trireme of his own; Harpagos and me. Eleven ships –
as big a contingent as many islands sent, al in the name of
Athens – not that Athens paid an obol. I remember that
Sophanes was there, and Phrynichus the poet, his eyes flitting
from one man to the next – so that we knew we were living in
history, that this cup of wine might be made immortal.
We drank.
In the morning we rose with the dawn and put to sea. We
were a magnificent sight, sails ful of a good folowing wind as we
passed the cape by Troy and sacrificed to the heroes of the first
war between Greeks and barbarians. Miltiades was like a new
man – ful of his mission, and his place as its leader.
Every night we camped on the headlands and beaches of
Ionia – Samothrace, Methymna, Mytilene – and celebrated the
unification of the Ionians and the victory we were going to win.
Our rowers were at the height of training – a month trapped in
the Bosporus had alowed us to work them up as few crews
have ever been hardened, and the rich pay of last autumn kept
them loyal to their oars. I noted that al the Athenians kept their
distance from me.
When we came to Mytilene, the beaches were empty, and in
the Boule, the old councilors told us that the storms that had
trapped us in the Chersonese hadn’t blown on Lesbos. The
alied fleet had gathered three weeks before and sailed for
Samos. And they had appointed Dionysius of Phocaea as
navarch.