The Seaman
We joined the Spartan fleet at Aspendus, a little apart from the great Phoenician squadrons that I didn’t like the look of at all. Alkibiades sent word across to the Persian Satrap’s state galley, beginning with all the formal courtesies, and suggesting a meeting between himself and Tissaphernes, for he had something of great importance to discuss.
‘And what would that be?’ says I.
And he laughs, and says, ‘I’ll think of something. The main thing is that it should sow a little fresh distrust where it will do most good — and that the Spartans and the Phoenicians should see what a dear friend is Alkibiades to the Persian Satrap.’
And in due time, off he goes in the ship’s boat, with his best cloak on and oil of rosemary in his hair and the beginnings of his re-grown beard.
I sees him on the deck of the Persian galley, with his arm lying across Tissaphernes’ plump shoulders, and I reckon the Spartan Admiral sees it, too; and then they goes ashore together. I’ve no idea what story Alkibiades tells the Satrap, or what excuse he makes for joining him. All I know is that for four days they sends each other wine, and sups together in the little blue and crimson pavilion Tissaphernes has had set up for him ashore under some shade trees beyond the town, and walks the decks of both ships leaning on each other’s shoulders. And the Spartan Admiral, the couple of times I sees him, looks like squally weather.
On the last evening they sups on board the Icarus, and plays kotabos after, laughing like boys as Alkibiades teaches Tissaphernes the Greek game; and tries to throw each other’s initials on the deck in the lees of the wine.
And when Tissaphernes has gone back to his own ship, My Lord says, ‘Get watered and victualled at first light, Pilot, we’re for Samos again.’
‘With the Phoenician fleet for allies?’ I says, jerking my head at the long lines of them drawn up and blackening the moonlight all along the shore. ‘And talking of water, will you look at my deck? I’ve been half a day in battle and come out with a cleaner deck than that.’
‘At least with the Phoenician fleet not as enemies,’ he says, ‘and talking of water, your damned deck will scrub.’
So we pulled out for Samos at noon next day; and when we beached the squadron at their old berths, found that while we were away two things had happened: over half the remaining Spartan fleet had sailed from Miletus, heading north and Thrasybulus had sent off three fast scouting vessels to keep them in view, but there was no further news of them yet. And a fast penteconta had come in from Athens, with word that the city had thrown out the Four Hundred, and bringing Alkibiades’ recall.
He read it when the envoys brought it to him, standing beside the beached galley. And when he had finished he let the parchment roll up on itself and looked up and said, ‘This is the second time Athens has called me home in mid-campaign, gentlemen.’
The envoys did their best to look pleasant and as though they did not know what in the world he meant. But he only smiled at them affably and shook his head. ‘Not this time. Not yet. I’ll come when the time is ready. But now for a while, I’ve other things to do.’
Three days later he took the first squadron and a few more, and headed for Cos. Cos itself is nothing, but it is easily held and makes a good base; and just across the straits from it is Halicarnassus, where the East comes and goes and the markets drip with gold and Tyrean purple and essence of roses as a honeycomb drips with honey. The merchants were no more keen on lightening their purses than most of their kind; but the fleet sorely needed paying, and so we strung the squadron across the harbour mouth with their rams smiling at the merchant vessels along the mole, and all our marines on deck, and that made a powerful argument.
We’d have got still more if we could have waited a day or two longer; but we got news of the Spartan fleet that had sailed from Miletus; they had gone to throw in their lot with the Persians of the Hellespont, and the Samos fleet was out after them. ‘It’s pleasant to think we didn’t waste our time at Aspendus,’ Alkibiades says thoughtfully when the dispatch came. ‘Our visit must have decided Admiral Mindarus against waiting for Tissaphernes’ help any longer; so he’ll try Pharnobazus in his stead … Make ready for sea again, Pilot; it’s a pity we can’t stay to milk the cow dry, but I’ve a feeling we may be needed elsewhere.’
The Soldier
We got twenty-one of the Spartan League ships off Cynoscura, for fifteen of ours, and the Commanders called it a victory, and sent word back to Athens — chiefly I think because they knew that Athens needed a victory as a sick man needs hope to hold on to. But it did not seem like a victory to us who fought it; there is too little difference between fifteen and twenty-one, and the Spartan fleet was not driven off the seas. Indeed, the fighting that began at Cynoscura never really ceased, but trailed on into a series of skirmishes and small scattered dog-fights about the mouth and southern reaches of the Hellespont; and they in turn intensified and became more general until on a squally autumn morning, we found ourselves drawn up in battle formation, facing the whole Spartan fleet in the narrows opposite Abydos, where the mountains of Phrygia come down almost to the water’s edge. The lower land of Chersonese Thrace to the west was growing green with the autumn rains; and the rain squalls came sweeping over it, spattering on the decks as we waited, hissing in the water about the oar blades that scarcely moved, just holding us against the current. And then the trumpets sounded and we raised the Paean, and the rowers bent to the oar looms and sent the galleys springing forward. We lined the fighting deck; and I remember how the Trident lifted and nose-dipped to the swell; and ahead of us, shadowed below the foamed and rain-pocked surface, the Spartan rams …
We fought them all day; but in the eddies and racing currents of the narrows it is not possible to hold to any intelligible fighting pattern; and by evening, the battle had become a scattered dog-fight, and seemed likely to end as inconclusively as Cynoscura had done. Marsyas, my second, was gone, shot below the breast and toppling over the side with the air of surprise men so often wear in their dying. And I remember the chill greyness closing on my heart, dragging it down within me, because once again we had lost men and galleys to no purpose; and I knew how a wave feels when it breaks with all its power and forward rush spent, and begins to fall back upon itself. That is dangerous knowledge for a fighting man — and I would not be the only man in the fleet to have reached it.
And then, as we hung on the turn, suddenly from the galley astern of us a shout went up. I was busy just then, but I snatched a glance that way; and there, ruffling up the straits came a new squadron. The evening light struck on the gilded leopard-head prow of the Icarus in the van; they came on at racing speed, the white water curling back over their rams; and if a squadron could be said to swagger …
For a moment the breath caught in my throat, and I wondered if Callias could have been right after all. Alkibiades to our aid? Or Alkibiades acting spearhead for the Phoenicians?
For that one long moment, both fleets seemed to hang in uncertainty. I suppose the Spartans were wondering exactly what we were wondering ourselves. And then from the Icarus there broke out the blue and white ensign of Athens. The oars changed their rhythm, and we saw the steersman swing his whole weight over with the steering oar; and the Icarus came about in a curve like a sea swallow, her whole squadron behind her, and bore down from windward into the densest massing of the Spartan fleet!
Gods! How we cheered him! The Alcestis and the Marathon, the Trident and the Vixen and the Hesperus! Every ship in position to do so swung in behind or beside him, thrusting through the water like hounds slipped from the leash. I remember leaning out from the fighting deck, sword in hand, as we swept on, and the crash and shudder as our ram took toll of a Spartan trireme below the water-line, and the heave as the rowers backed water to shake off the kill.
The ships of the Spartan League broke and ran before us, and we drove them toward the land.
Again and again the rams made their killing; and others we engaged quarter-
bow to quarter-bow, and swept from end to end. Some of the galleys grounded in shoal water close in to Abydos, and their men splashed ashore, and still we went after them, till we were within a finger’s breadth of grounding ourselves; and we went over the side and after them still. Pharnobazus’ cavalry that had been waiting on the shore, pushed forward to cover them, thrusting their horses even down into the shallows. But the light was growing uncertain by that time, the light of a stormy sunset that shone in their eyes and not in ours, and showed us the tall blue crest of Alkibiades way up ahead of us; and among shallows and sand-dunes and rocks and tamarisk scrub, there’s not much to choose between horse and foot.
By nightfall, when the fires of the burning galleys began to bite, we had regained every ship that had been captured from us earlier in the day, and had taken thirty of the Spartans’, beside those wrecked and sunk or burned out.
Athens had her victory.
16
The Seaman
Tissaphernes must have found himself an uncommon worried man, because next thing we knew, he was up from the south to confer with Pharnobazus, and they’re not what you might call drinking cronies, those two.
And the very day that we hears of his coming, Alkibiades starts making ready to go visiting yet again.
I says, ‘You’ve made enough trials at getting Persian help for Athens; what in Typhon’s name makes you think you’ll stand a better chance this time?’
‘Abydos,’ he says. ‘A naval victory might just tip the balance and decide our dear friend to come in on the victor’s side. There’s a chance — a damnably slim one I grant you; but it’s worth the taking.’
So he gathers his Admirals together and bids them keep a tight eye on Abydos. ‘For I’ve an idea the Spartan fleet may be getting reinforcements soon, and our own position at Sestos is none too secure.’ (We’d made fleet headquarters at Sestos by then.) ‘If the need arises before my return, take the fleet round Cape Helles and make winter camp on the west coast out of their way.’ They didn’t above half like the suggestion that they couldn’t handle the Spartans without him. Then he orders out the choicest of the Halicarnassus pickings — if any other Commander had done it there’d have been a mutiny — and sails stuffed below deck with bales of silk and jars of oil of roses, with amber and storax and gold. There’s a magnificent black-maned lion’s skin, too. I says, ‘You wouldn’t like purple sails worked in silver while you’re about it?’
And he says, ‘Very much, Pilot, but I’m in too much of a hurry to wait for the dyers and embroiderers.’
So we sails for the Propontis with three others of the squadron; leaves the galleys at the port for Daskylon with their crews to guard them, and gets horses for ourselves and pack-ponies for the gifts, and pushes on up to the Satrap’s capital; Alkibiades and me and a couple of Trirarchs, with the Icarus marines by way of escort.
Daskylon clings like a colony of swallows’ nests under the eaves of its mountain; but Tissaphernes had his camp on the level ground below the town. He had come to talk with Pharnobazus, but I’m thinking they weren’t sure enough of each other to share the same city walls. From the outside the great dark tents had something the look of crouching animals on the mealy paleness of the first snow; but inside they were coloured and rich enough to make a man think of the pavilion in the Paradise of Alkibiades at Sardis. The tent that was made over to us had rugs patterned like a flower garden, with lilies and fishponds and pomegranate trees and flying birds spread on the cold ground, and the dark skin walls lined with hangings of blue and violet cloth; and cushions of fine skins were piled high for our ease; and they brought us good food and better wine; but none the less, the place had the smell of a trap. I tells Alkibiades so, but he only laughs and says it’s the camels.
The pack-ponies were unloaded, and slaves carried Alkibiades’ gifts away, with his message to Tissaphernes; and the pack saddles were stacked about the tent-poles; and we made ourselves comfortable and waited. It was well on into the next day when messengers came from Tissaphernes, bringing Alkibiades a present of a talking bird with a gold chain on its leg, and bidding him into the Satrap’s presence.
He had been ready for the summons since first light, his best cloak on and his beard scented; and walking up and down the tent, looking dangerous, while the rest of us played draughts and pretended not to notice. But the summons, when it came, was courteous enough. Only, when I and the lieutenant of his marine guard got up and would have followed him, we were met by crossed spears in the tent opening; and the official who had brought the message, said, ‘The summons of the Satrap is for his dear friend Alkibiades alone.’
I knew the man of old; and many’s the time I’d have like to flatten his smirking face for him. But Alkibiades turned and looked at us, one long look, and we fell back and let him go on alone. I watched from the tent opening, how he went up through the camp, past the picket lines and the dark humped tents towards the great tent of the Satrap with its fluttering pennons, in the midst of all.
And then we sat down again and waited. I don’t think any of us was too happy. The day dragged on, and Alkibiades did not return. And presently slaves brought lamps, and the fading day-light beyond the looped back tent-flap turned deep blue. By that time we had given up trying to play draughts, and half of us were standing and walking about. Great bowls of steaming kid’s flesh were brought to us at the time of the evening meal; and we heard the ponies stamping in the picket lines, and a thin wind came sifting over the steppe-lands, thrumming faintly through the taut tent-ropes; and beyond, were the evening sounds of the camp.
And then suddenly, I had had enough of it. I remember getting up from the food bowls with my mouth full of kid, and hitching at my sword in its sheath — we had none of us unarmed — and saying to the faces that turned towards me, ‘I’m away to see what’s happened.’
The Trirarch of the Marathon, the senior officer there, gets up also, and looks at me with narrowed eyes. ‘Our orders were to stay here, and I’ll not have you running this whole company into trouble.’
‘I’m away to see what’s keeping Alkibiades.’
‘I forbid it,’ says he, with his jaw jutting.
‘Forbid and be damned!’ says I, and out I goes.
I’d half-expected to find my way barred by crossed spears again, but there was no guard on the tent opening.
I goes towards the great tent; the acid smoke of the camel-dung fires drifts low in the cold air, and the ragged flares burns between the tents and the picket lines. A group of tents makes a kind of forecourt to the Satrap’s huge pavilion, and as I comes up to the first of them, the same court official steps suddenly into my way. I’d have thrust past him, but I sees that the open space before the pavilion is full of the Satrap’s Nubian guard, with the flare-light shining on their spears; and I’ve enough sense to know that if Alkibiades is in any kind of trouble, tangling with the Satrap’s guard isn’t going to be the best way to get him out of it.
The official says, ‘Ah now, here’s a fortunate meeting, for I was about to send for you.’
He’s eating sugared rose-petals out of the palm of his hand.
I says, ‘Were you so? And why would that be?’
‘Because your Lord Alkibiades wishes to see you, and the Satrap has graciously given orders that his wish is to be granted,’ he says.
I don’t much like the sound of that; and I likes it still less when he makes a gesture with the hand that isn’t full of sweet stuff, and two of the Nubian guard steps up on either side of me. But before I can ask what it’s all about, he nods, and turns back into the tent behind him, still eating sugared rose-petals.
One of the Nubians points the way we should go, and we goes. Across the open space and between two tents on the far side to another space beyond, walled in as far as I could make out, with uprooted camel thorn, which looked to be the Satrap’s baggage park. The dark humped shape of yet another tent rose in the midst of it, with more guards posted about it; my own two falls back, and
I goes in alone — and finds Alkibiades sitting very comfortably on an embroidered camel pad beside a brushwood brazier. I thinks for the moment that he’s alone, but then another man stirs in the shadows and gives a dry cough. I suppose I glances that way, for Alkibiades says pleasantly, ‘Only one of Tissaphernes’ friends, one of that illustrious body, the Eyes and Ears of the King, set here to keep a check on our conversation.’
‘In Poseidon’s name, what’s happened?’ I demands.
‘Have they not told you? My dear, you behold in me the Satrap’s most wretched prisoner. You said it was a mistake to come, didn’t you?’
And all I can think to say is, ‘Why? Why?’
He says, ‘Our friend the noble Tissaphernes is uneasy. Really uneasy this time. It seems that evil-minded men have made complaints against him to the Great King, accusing him of dilatoriness in aiding the Spartans.’ (This he says, flicking up an eyebrow at the faint movement from the man in the shadows.) ‘Therefore he seeks to prove his good faith — as though it needed any such proof — by the capture of the Athenian Admiral.’
My first real thought is to tear the place apart, and he must have seen that in my face, for he says quickly, ‘No, Pilot, not a good idea.’
I’m not clever with words, and I don’t know how to put it, not with the King’s Eyes and Ears listening in the shadows. So I drops the Attic Greek for the clicking patois of the seafaring kind from Sidon to the Pillars of Heracles. ‘Not now, with no more than a dozen of us, but when the fleet hears —’
He says carefully, still sticking to the Attic, ‘My poor friend, you speak wildly, and forget that I do not understand that tongue. Now listen, Antiochus, for it was to tell you this, that I have been howling the place down to get word with you — apart from the fact that I knew you would run amok and end up with a spear in your belly, my old hothead, if you were left long without word of me. Listen as you never listened before; any attempt to break me out, either from here or from Sardis, or during the journey between the two, would be disastrous. It might very well bring the Persians in after all, and on the Spartan side. And if the attempt failed, the Athenian Navy would then be called on to face the Phoenician fleet as enemies, lacking the only Commander it has who could handle the situation.’