Christian Cameron: The Great King

Ka ran along the catwalk, shooting. .

My armoured deck crew poured grapples into their midships bulwarks and Siberios led the marines over the bow. .

My son and his friend stood back to back on the enemy catwalk and killed men. A tall man in armour covered in gold — who was he, the Great King himself? — flung a javelin and it went through my son’s thigh and he fell, and Hector stood over him. .

Hermogenes’ hand closed on my arm. ‘You aren’t in your armour. You are the navarch. ’

Both were true.

But my son was lying in a pool of his own blood on an enemy deck.

All of my marines were away. To the north and east, Sekla was running free, past the easternmost Phoenician, and all my other ships were engaged. A glance to the west — Paramanos had broken an Aeolian ship in half. He was, after all, the best helmsman in the world. None of the other ships was engaged yet.

‘Cut the grapples!’ I roared, leaving my son to whatever fate awaited him.

Deck crewmen cut the ropes of the very grapples they’d thrown. Others used pikes to push us off.

Siberios killed the man in gold armour, hammering his teeth into his throat with the pommel of his sword.

Hipponax hamstrung a Carian marine in full panoply from his postion lying on the deck, and Hector stabbed the man in his open-faced helmet with his spear — Hector fought fastidiously, like a cat, his spear flicking out.

I wanted to bandage my son’s wound. I wanted to fight.

‘Oars out!’ roared Hermogenes. Hermogenes, who could not command his way out of a linen sack. He glared at me.

Well he might.

‘Arm me,’ I snapped at young Pericles.

He didn’t bother to protest. He opened my bronze thorakes and got it on me.

Sekla was turning in, and Machaira was indeed going to cut like a knife.

The two fleeing ships had their sails up.

Paramanos was turning Black Raven to the west, where Harpagos lay oar bank to oar bank with a bigger Phoenician, their marines clearly engaged.

The red and white ship — it had to be Dagon, it had a Phoenician build — turned suddenly away from Athena Nike. I had to assume that Dagon had found a good helmsman. Or perhaps it wasn’t Dagon at all.

But the red and white ship turned so fast her starboard oars were buried in the water and Athena Nike swept by to ram Harpagos’s opponent amidships, killing that ship instantly.

I had a moment to regret that we were Greeks killing Greeks.

I turned west, against an unengaged Carian. He was rowing desperately, at full ramming speed, while turning as fast as he could, and all he managed to do was to lose the turning contest to me. We turned in place, our starboard cushions reversed — and again, the quality of Lydia ’s oarsmen allowed us to leap to ramming speed and catch him just forward of the helmsman’s station. We didn’t have enough way to break the hull, but our ram caught his gunwale and began to roll his ship over, and Ka’s archers cleared the Carian’s command deck. We came to a stop — I’d ordered the oars in rather than risk them — and there we lay, our bow against his helm.

I ran down the catwalk and leaped over the marine box — the gate was still open from the first attack — and I stepped down on to our ram rather than leaping.

Ka’s arrows flicked over my head.

No marines waited for me, and I put my back to the enemy gunwale and rolled on to their deck at the stern, and everyone there was dead.

The rowers were in shock.

Nicolas — the oar-master — came behind me, with a dozen sailors, but there was no resistance from the oarsmen.

‘Greeks!’ I roared. ‘We are your liberators, not your enemies!’

No one looked relieved, but no one came at me with a sword, either.

‘Get her ashore,’ I said. I stepped up on to the gunwale amidships and leaped for my own ship — and barely made it, scrambling up the side like a terrified cat.

I used to leap from ship to ship without a qualm for the fate that awaited me if I missed.

I looked west. The red and white ship was running. The blue and gold Carian was now rowing sedately for the allied beach.

Cimon’s ships were angling into the flank of Paramanos’ melee.

It was over.

Gelon was in the only boarding fight still burning, and Hermogenes put the helm down even while I acted as my own oar-master and we turned, under way again. Lydia ’s dry, light hull seemed to be powered by the gods.

Gelon had caught a tiger. He’d got the worst of a ramming exchange with a big-hulled Phoenician and had then been flooded with the other ship’s desperate marines. Giannis, in the lightest and fastest of the Athenian public ships, had also gone head to head with a Phoenician and couldn’t help. Sekla had brought Machaira into Sea Horse ’s adversary.

I went for Nemesis. I could see Gelon fighting hand to hand by his helm. He didn’t have time for me to manoeuvre.

I pointed to Hermogenes. ‘Our bow to his stern,’ I said. Then I ran forward and grabbed all the best armed sailors. Armoured like hoplites, they had the most remarkable assortment of weapons — chains, axes, a trident. I had no idea how we’d do against real Phoenician marines.

Hermogenes kissed the stern of Nemesis as if he’d been a helmsman all his life and not a farmer. I was ready, standing over the ram. I went sideways, from the top of the marine box into the helmsman’s bench. .

Nemesis was almost taken.

The first Tyrian made the simple mistake of thinking he could finish Gelon before I was on him. Gelon got a foot on the man’s spear against the deck, and he turned to see my spear take his life, and then I was beside my former slave, and suddenly, everything felt right — my armour, the sun on my back, the deck under my feet.

As if my body said, Ah! This!

There was a rush — a press. I punched repeatedly with the rim of my aspis, putting my opponents against the rail, bouncing one man so hard that he stumbled and Giorgos got a chain over his head and put a dagger in his neck, and then we went at them. I rifled my spear at an officer and killed him and then I had my lovely long sword in my hand — thrust, change feet, slip on the blood and cut to cover the loss of balance.

Feint, and see my effort wasted as a long black arrow kills my opponent.

I punch with my aspis, and the spear shaft of his weapon crosses my chest and I get it in my shield hand and my enemy is wide open for my thrust. I have time to watch him watch his death.

I punch with the shield rim and cut with the sword, taking a spearhead cleanly off its shaft, and a spear comes from behind me to finish him. Young Pericles, with no armour on, is fighting as my hypaspist.

What joy.

I go sword to sword with a Phoenician. He is a big man in red, with gold on his armour, and at some point I have moved from Nemesis to his ship. He bashes at me with his shield, his shoulder in the top of the rim, and I meet him shield to shield and I flick my long blade up into his eyes. I don’t score, but the blow to his helmet rocks his head back and he stumbles. I thrust, passing my right foot forward over my left even as he backs away a step, and he sweeps his sword across his body because his shield is committed — I roll my wrist over the parry, and I can see his eyes as he tries to reverse his parry. .

I roll my sword over his again, the double deception I learned in Sicily from Polymarchos, and my thrust goes in just under his ribs, right through his gold-plated bronze scales and into his gut and down into his pelvis — one of the prettiest blows of my life.

Unfortunately, I have to leave my beautiful sword in his body.