Free Poseidon's Spear (Long War 3) by Christian Cameron

was healing, and no one was unfriendly. Doola and I were becoming comrades. I learned some of his words – I still remember
that
nitaka
means ‘I want’. He learned more of mine. Enough words that when I came back from my wander – he had been sleeping – he rose, threw a
chiton
over his nudity and sat with me.
    ‘Was it good?’ he asked. Let me just say that there were grunts, gestures and incomprehensible words interspersed with our very small shared vocabulary. I’ll leave that
out.
    ‘Not bad,’ I said, and shrugged. ‘Hektor’s brother gave me wine.’
    ‘He’s not bad,’ Doola agreed.
    We sat in companionable silence until Hektor himself joined us. He lay down. He was a very big man – a head taller than me – and handsome. He had a small amphora and a
mastos
cup, and he poured a libation. Doola and I both raised our hands in the universal sign of prayer to the gods, and he grinned. He said some words. Then he drank from the cup and
passed it. After a while a small boy, I think Hektor’s son, came and brought small fish fried in olive oil. Neoptolymos joined us and ate the fish with the closest thing to a smile I’d
seen from him. We ate them, got greasy, drank the wine. One by one the other rowers came, and then the rest of Hektor’s deck crew – all relatives, I guess.
    I still think they had made a profit. It was a good little party.
    So the next morning, when the boat rowed away, I was at my bench. I was happy enough.
    That’s the best evening I remember. I can’t say exactly how long I rowed for the Sikels. At least a month, and perhaps longer. But sometime after that, on a clear
day, we saw a trireme hull up to the north, and the Sikels spoke in agitated tones, and we turned south and ran downwind. The two brothers argued, and I will assume that the younger was in favour
of maintaining our course to the west and appearing unfazed, while the older was in favor of running immediately and gaining sea room.
    We ran south across a darkening sea, and as the wind grew less and less, we went to the oars and pulled. Hektor began to cheat the helm more and more west of south.
    But the black trireme was on us.
    I rowed looking over my shoulder. I’d been the hunter a hundred times. I’d snapped up coasters just like this one – sometimes three and four at a time. I knew in an hour that
the trireme had us.
    So did Hektor.
    He gathered his family in the stern. I couldn’t hear them, or understand them. But they didn’t shout, and they took weapons. They had a look about them that I know too well. They
weren’t planning to resist because they believed they could win. They were resisting so they would die with honour.
    The youngest boy smiled and kissed his father and uncles and brothers and then jumped into the sea just before the trireme came alongside, and drowned. Just like that.
    Hektor was a giant, a fine figure of a man, but he was no fighter, and the marines from the black hull knew their business. He inflicted no wounds. They spitted him on a spear. He screamed a few
times, until one of the marines hit him with the hilt of his
kopis
the way a fisherman whacks a fish to kill it. Hektor died.
    The other Sikels fought, but they didn’t fight well. Two were wounded. But Hektor’s brother and the rest were taken.
    They looted the boat, and then they took us aboard. In less time than it takes to tell it, I was a slave rower. Again. On a Carthaginian military trireme.
    I know you think I should have risen from my bench with Doola and perhaps Seckla and killed all the marines. But my body was far from healed – healed for fighting, I mean – and I had
neither weapon nor armour, and they had everything. I considered fighting. I wondered, almost idly, if I had learned cowardice at last. Doola and I certainly exchanged a look, in the last few
moments before the marines came aboard. Neoptolymos grunted once, in real agitation. He wanted to fight, but he looked for my lead.
    Well, I’d led