‘One should never come to see one’s friends off on their journeys,’ he said. ‘One can never do anything with the rest of the day. But we all do it, just as we all pick at our mosquito bites, which is equally foolish.’ He glanced at the Halkyone as she swung out from the jetty. ‘Yours, I think, was the big rower with the red beard.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but like all the rest of Athens, it was Alkibiades too.’ And then I felt that I had been clumsy and could have bitten my tongue off.
His smile made all well again. ‘Not quite all the rest of Athens. Indeed I was thinking that the harbour was somewhat less crowded than I had expected.’
I said quickly, ‘Never any man went from Athens leaving more love behind him.’
‘Or more passionate defenders,’ he said, smiling with his voice and eyes. ‘But also jealousy and distrust. Men generally distrust what they do not understand. Enemies enough — and his worst danger of all, in his own colossal prestige.’
I was startled. ‘Why do you say that?’
He was looking out beyond the Mole, and something in his face made me wonder if his Daemon was speaking to him.
‘Athens expects nothing but victory from him. He is victory. More God than man, nothing he cannot do. If he fails, we shall break him, you and I and the rest of Athens. We shall say, “He pretended to be a God, and he was only a man”, and we shall break him.’
20
The Seaman
We raided Andros on the way out. They had been interfering with the corn ships and needed a lesson. At first all went well; we defeated the islanders, and drove the Spartan garrison that sallied against us back into the fort. But we carried no siege equipment, and unless we were prepared to spend time that we could not afford, on a blockade, there was nothing much more that we could do. We made one attempt to take the tower by storm, but suffered heavy casualties among the marines, and in the end Alkibiades whistled them off; and there was nothing for it but to fortify the second town of Gaurium and leave a squadron of twenty triremes there under the command of young Konon, and take the rest of the fleet on to Samos.
I wish we hadn’t to detach Konon; he’s a good man, and we’re going to need good men. But Alkibiades picked him as the best man for the job, so I suppose there’s no help for it.
We made Samos on a choppy blue autumn day; the ships of the squadrons left behind there lining the docks and slipways.
But the news that met us there was black as the throat of Cerberus.
Myron, one of the senior Trirarchs, brought it on board with him as soon as we dropped anchor. ‘What money have you brought with you?’ he asked Alkibiades, standing on the quarter-deck, almost before the trumpets had sounded him aboard.
Alkibiades says, ‘Enough to pay the fleet their three obols a day for something under a month. Athens is a poor city, these days, and Cleontius and his cronies have ways of making sure she puts what she’s got to other uses than paying her fleet.’
The Trirarch cursed, quietly, but long.
‘We shall collect tribute,’ Alkibiades says. ‘We’ve done it before.’
‘And meanwhile, Lysander has got round young Cyrus to bring the Spartan’s pay up to four obols. And more than half our rowers are bought men from other states.’
‘Who will naturally go to the highest bidder.’ There’s a silence full of the lap of water and the gulls crying and the voices along the waterfront. Then Alkibiades says, ‘We must bring Lysander and the Spartan fleet to action before the desertions start.’
‘The desertions have already started,’ Myron says. ‘We’re losing men every day.’
A few days later — so soon as we’d had time to get shipshape again after the voyage, and before there was time for many more of the rowers to slip away — we has the fleet out and stands across the straits for Ephesus. We cruises across and across just outside the harbour like a whore, with ‘Follow me’ on the soles of our sandals, and our rumps wagging behind us. But Lysander refused to take the bait, and we could not go into the harbour after him.
We tried it for days, till it was clearly no use trying any longer.
‘I was a fool to think there was the least chance of getting him out; but it had to be tried,’ Alkibiades says to me in his own quarters. ‘Time’s on his side and he can afford to wait. He has the support of Cyrus, his men are well-paid and contented, and he has more galleys coming off the slipway every day. It’s dead against us, with everything I’ve worked for cancelled out by this latest flowering of Lysander’s love life …’ He gets up quickly, and walks to the edge of the terrace and stands looking down between the saffron painted columns, at the lights of Samos pricking out in the dusk. ‘I wonder how many of our rowers are slipping off to Ephesus tonight. Time’s running out on us, pilot. It’s running out at exactly the speed that the money’s running out. The morale of the fleet is dropping like a stone. We have got to get more money. It’s not pretty, and that’s the first priority now.’
‘How?’ I says.
‘Karia and the Islands.’
‘They’ve already paid this year’s tribute.’
He smashed his hand down on the low wall, and I mind how the heavy gold signet ring he always wears rang on the stone. ‘Then by Night’s Daughters, they can pay next year’s in advance. They’re rich enough, with all trade routes from the East passing at their back door. I’ll take ten ships — it’s time I had a look at Thrasybulus, see how things are going with him, maybe gets his views on the situation.’ (Thrasybulus has finished the work that he was left to clear up along the Thracian coast, when we left for Athens, and come south. Now he’s blockading Phocaea, which revolted in the summer. You can’t take your eyes off them an instant.) ‘Then make for Karia, and gather what I can in the way of a further levy.’
‘With ten ships?’ I says.
‘It should be enough. The sight of a few warships works wonders in a merchant port, especially a rich one.’
He comes back to the table and pours out more wine, and drinks standing, rocking a little on his heels. I watches him a bit anxious. Men say I drink like a fish, and I’m not denying it; but it don’t matter with my sort, so long as we can still handle a ship, and drunk or sober, there’s not a pilot in the fleet my equal. Alkibiades drinks different, mostly when he’s bored or banging his head against something, and in the long run it dulls him — makes him like a galley clogged with weed below the water-line, slow to answer to the steering oar, a danger to herself and the rest of the fleet. He’d been drinking heavily in the past few days, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before it began to take effect.
‘When do we sail?’ I says.
‘I sail as soon as the ships can be victualled and ready.’
‘Three days,’ I says, not noticing till after, that he says ‘I’ and not ‘We’.
‘Two,’ he says. ‘We’ve been here in Samos eighteen days; we can’t make it more than twenty. Have the ships ready for sailing at first light, two days from now.’ And then he sets down his wine cup and looks at me. ‘I’m leaving you in command here, Antiochus. From the moment the squadron sails, you take over.’
That has me out of my seat as though it had suddenly sprouted nettles, and we stands facing each other across the wine. ‘You’re drunker than I thought,’ I says.
‘No, I’m not drunk, only desperate.’
‘Then you must be more desperate than I thought,’ I says. ‘I’ve been your pilot twenty years, take or leave a few, and never held a command — never the command of one bloody little penteconta, and now you ask me to take command of the whole fleet.’
‘I’m not asking,’ Alkibiades says, ‘I’m ordering.’ He leans across the table, jutting his beard in my face. ‘I use men for the tasks that they do best. I’ve plenty of good troop commanders, and a good troop commander makes a good Trirarch. He doesn’t need to know how to handle sea craft, he doesn’t need to know much even about his own trireme. His pilot sees to all that for him. Good pilots are harder come by; and you’v
e said it yourself, often enough, you’re the best pilot in the fleet. So you’ve served twenty years as my pilot and never had command of one bloody little penteconta. And now I’m ordering you to take command of the fleet while I’m away.’
‘Why?’ I says. My mouth feels dry and my heart’s hammering as though I’ve just run the Stade. ‘In Poseidon’s name, why?’
He says, ‘Think for yourself. If Konon was here, I’d give the command to him; but it would take too long to get him back from Gaurium; and failing Konon, I’ve two senior officers with equal claim to the command; and whichever I appoint, they’ll be at each other’s throats.’
‘So you’ll appoint me, and they’ll both be at mine.’
He lets out a sudden roar that nearly takes the top off my head. ‘Will you listen!’ And then he goes quiet again. ‘Furthermore, there’s neither one of them I can trust. Think of them, man, Theramenes — Thrassylus —’
And I thinks, and I sees what he means.
‘I shall make my decision known to the Council of Trirarchs tomorrow,’ he says. ‘And the same moment that I go aboard the Icarus, you will take over the Belerophon, and assume the command.’ He reaches out and gets me by the shoulders. I’m strong, but I doubt I could have broken his hold. ‘And while I’m gone, you’ll lay off the drink, and you’ll keep the fleet out of trouble; and you’ll not engage the enemy, no matter how perfect the chance may seem. You’ll not lift a finger against them unless they attack Samos. If there’s anything you cannot handle, send word to me by one of the fast scout boats. Understood?’
If ever I’m sober in my life, I’m sober now. Ye God! I’m sober, and I’m thinking fast and hard. But there isn’t any other way that I can see. And something starts boiling up inside me — much the same as boils up inside me in the last moment before going into action, after I’m past the stage of being cold with fright. ‘Understood,’ I says. ‘But by Blue Haired Poseidon, I can see storm water ahead, when you make it public!’
‘You’ll ride it,’ he says.
‘Who’ll you take for pilot?’
‘Meton,’ he says.
‘May his guts rot!’ I says.
*
Next morning Alkibiades calls the Council of Trirarchs, and tells them he’s sailing with ten of the fleet for Phocaea and Karia. There’s a silence while they waits to hear who’s to command in his absence. And then he tells them; and I stands up beside him, and I sees their faces go blank and then bitter angry.
‘Sir,’ says Thrassylus, ‘with all due respect, have you been bitten by a mad dog?’
And Theramenes puts his oar in, ‘A mere drunken seaman —’
They says a good deal more, and none of it complimentary, till I’m minded to smash my fist into their fine clean disdainful faces. Alkibiades hears them out. Then he says, ‘Gentlemen, may I remind you that you are speaking of your temporary Commander?’ and turns on his heel and walks out, trailing that damned cloak along the floor behind him. I stays behind long enough to look a few of them in the eye and show them I’m not hurrying; and then I strolls out after him.
*
They’ve been gone a month and more. And name of the Dog! What a month! Left to command this bunch of landcrabs that call themselves a fleet!
The flag squadron hasn’t been a day and a night over the skyline before I finds that the whole fleet from the Admirals to the seediest slave rower thinks it hasn’t got a Commander at all, and can take life easy. So I calls a Trirarchs’ Council — it does me a power of good to see them come in answer to the summons, and know how much they hates it — and I tells them, ‘Gentlemen, we shall get soft, sitting here on our backsides in this nice comfortable port. From tomorrow we shall take the squadrons out on manoeuvres daily, just so’s we don’t forget how to use to oar or keep station, or which end of a galley the ram is —’
‘I’m damned if we do,’ says one of the Samian Trirarchs, and looks at me through narrow eyes; and adds ‘Pilot’ for good measure. And there’s a murmur of agreement among the rest.
So then I lets them have it. I’ve tried to do it friendly-wise, without ill-feeling, but if they don’t want it that way … ‘You’ll be damned if you don’t!’ I says. ‘Or are you all safely in the pay of Sparta?’
‘You’ll pay for that when Alkibiades gets back,’ someone says. And I looks at him good and hard, and he doesn’t say any more.
‘You can put that to the test when he does get back! Meanwhile you can remember that it was Alkibiades that put me in command here. And while we’re all here I’ll tell you something — he’s maybe told you already but it won’t harm you to hear it again; for whatever reason, or for no reason except that we’ve all been campaigning a long time, and the first flush of it has worn off with victories coming too early and too easy — we’re letting the mastery of the seas, which we had fast in our hands this time last year, dribble through our fingers. Half you rowers, those who haven’t deserted, have forgotten how to keep time; your ships are dirty, your seamen and marines go whoring in the daytime for lack of anything else to do. Tomorrow at first light, we put to sea for squadron manoeuvres, except for the ships actually undergoing refit, and for ten triremes left on guard.’
And we did.
That was more than a month ago. And I’ve kept them at it, except in the very foulest weather. Some of the young Trirarchs are all right, quite keen in fact; it’s the senior men that make the trouble. I heard one of them say to another only yesterday, ‘It is all very well for the young bloods who have stepped into dead men’s shoes. If they lose a ship, unless they go with her they’ve lost nothing of their own. But it’s a different matter for you and me and the rest of us who have furnished our own triremes, to be asked to have them out day after day in these seas, suffering all the wear and tear of a winter campaign for nothing; let alone the risk of losing them.’
Well, I suppose nobody likes risking what came out of his own purse; but it’ll be a sight more risky to go into battle when the day comes, with ill-trained crews and rowers who’ve grown rusty for lack of practice. Can’t the stupid bastards see even that far beyond their own noses? It’s enough to drive a man to drink.
Mustn’t think about drink. I’ve obeyed orders and kept off it since Alkibiades sailed — well almost off it. And Gods! I feel as though Night’s Daughters had me by the throat.
I’ve moved half the fleet up to Cape Rain; keep a better eye on Ephesus from here. From the terrace of the little farmhouse where I make my quarters when I’m up here, I can see the town clear across the straits; a white stain of town climbing up the dark of the hills behind. It would be so easy, when the fleet is out one morning to take them over — an hour would do it. A good fight might even clear the black rot that holds the fleet like a plague … No, it wouldn’t. Thrassylus and Theramenes would see to that. They hate my guts, the sons of bitches, and they hate Alkibiades worse than before, for giving me the command over them; and they’ll see to it that the fleet feels the same, at least so far as I’m concerned. It would take more than those two to turn them against Alkibiades, once he’s back among them. But at least the rowers are keeping better time, and the crews are beginning to remember how to handle a ship again. If only it wasn’t for those cursed desertions — and there’s nothing I can do about them; not when the rowers are bought men.
Hades! I want a drink!
The Soldier
We made Phocaea, and found Thrasybulus there, busy with his blockade; and after a Council of ways and means with him, put out again in a vicious north-easterly squall, and headed for the coastwise towns of Karia.
We collected a certain amount of tribute; not as much as we’d hoped, but enough to keep the fleet in pay for a few months more. It was wonderful, the effect our triremes beating in out of the winter murk had on the merchants of the Karian cities, sadly though they protested that they had paid one year’s tribute, and could not pay another until the next year’s merchandise came in when spring opened up the caravan route from the East.
After the payment was made, things generally got more friendly. ‘Never grudge a cup of wine to the man who’s purse you’ve just slit,’ Alkibiades said to me on one such friendly evening. It was at Mylasa on the way north again. He seemed full of the old lazy insolent laughter, but there was an ugly twist of his mouth as he said it. And I think the mood he was in accounted for the kind of night we all spent afterwards. Alkibiades and three of the Trirarchs, including myself, and a couple of Syrian merchants. It began in the house of one of the merchants — a small rich house, with the kind of statues one generally only sees in a high class brothel standing gracefully in every niche. Later, under Alkibiades’ leadership, it spilled out into the nearest wine-shop, and then into another. Our General-in-Chief was received like a long-lost brother in each one, and anxious enquiries made for Antiochus. I fancy there weren’t many wine-shops or pleasure houses among the coastwise cities that hadn’t seen those two at one time or another.
‘Antiochus has got promotion,’ Alkibiades told the wine-shopkeeper, flinging an arm across his shoulders. (It was one of those nights when he chose to be blood brothers with the gutter.) ‘Drinking like his can’t go unrewarded for ever. He’s in command of the Samos fleet, while I come to disport myself among you.’
The other Trirarchs and I exchanged a quick glance; and Telamon’s mouth tightened. Even among those of us in Alkibiades’ own squadron, there was a good deal of feeling as to his choice of the Commander we left behind on Samos.
‘Where’s Arsinoe?’ Alkibiades was asking. ‘Her door was shut when I passed.’
The shopkeeper said, ‘Arsinoe?’
‘The whore who lives by the East Gate.’
‘Oh, that one. She’s got a rich client who likes her to go to his own house, I believe. She’s probably there tonight.’