Free The Great King by Christian Cameron Page B

part of something greater, and this had many effects. First, because I taught Sekla and Leukas whatever I knew. Leukas was a far better natural sailor than I was – his guesses of our speed over water were far better than mine, and his notions of currents and his feel for the weather were better, but he was not very good at explaining things. However, he tried. Sekla knew the southern coast of the Inner Sea, and we began to discuss the possibility of exploring it. Greeks tend to know Greek waters. We’re limited to what the Phoenicians allow us. Or we were then.
    Not any more. Heh.
    The ability to cross the blue deep without touching – I began to think about that tactically. We had often used a small round ship – the sort of ship that could be handled by four to six men – as a supply ship, and I determined to get my hands on one.
    And I began to think about what war with Persia would mean. The last time that Greeks had tried to face Persia at sea, the Persians had outspent the Greeks, created a fleet with almost six hundred hulls – and purchased the treason of the Samnians. They won the battle of Lade hands down.
    And now all those Ionian Greek cities were in their hands. In effect, that gave them a thousand good ships. My friends – my Athenian friends, who were, I hoped, just over the horizon, or headed for Athens, because I hadn’t seen them in two weeks – my Athenian friends had told me that in my absence, Themistocles had seized the products of the Athenian silver mines and built a one-hundred-ship fleet for Athens with public money. A hundred ships was an incredible number for a Greek city. Rumour was that Aegina had another eighty.
    Corinth might have another eighty.
    Sparta would have . . . none.
    Even if the three mightiest sea powers among the remaining Greek cities united – they would have two hundred and fifty ships.
    I looked out at the endless waves, and shuddered. In the whole of my life, Athens, Corinth and Aegina had never allied for any reason whatsoever.
    The second sunset, and I saw seabirds. I was pleased, and said so to Leukas, who nodded.
    Nonetheless, I was on deck all night. The night is a time when a man can think too much, and I had eight hours of darkness to smell the wind and think about Briseis. I could smell her hair on the wind, and I could feel her kiss on my lips, and I could wonder why I hadn’t gone to her at night on the beach. I could think a hundred conflicting thoughts.
    I could remember that she had said that some day we would live as man and wife.
    I could take my Phoenician cross-staff and measure the heights of stars and their movement, and I could watch my wake and the sea.
    I remember – that night, or the one following – I recalled a moment of wry annoyance when I realised that I had sworn to Apollo to learn the kithara or the lyre, and I hadn’t done much with it. I didn’t even have a lyre on which to practise. The gut strings are no friends to the sea – or rather, the sea air is no friends to wood and gut.
    I thought about Polymarchos, and I thought far too much about the young slave I’d killed with my first cut on the beach of Africa. He hadn’t deserved to die. He had mostly been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
    He was the same age as my son by Briseis. I had seen the boy, carried by a nurse, in Thrace, when I killed the man I had assumed to be his father.
    I had a son.
    The bow ploughed the waves, and I thought about what Heraklitus the philosopher said about dipping our toes in the river. And we rushed on.
    The next day was very long. We were already low on water, and all the salted pork was gone, most of the dates, all the bread.
    My veterans had done all this before.
    The new men, the former slaves – they were plainly terrified. I began to worry that they would mutiny again – not because they had any real chance of success, but because such behaviours can become a habit.
    But an hour before dawn, I could smell land. I had the most