Christian Cameron: Poseidon's Spear

Up the Cithaeron, to the altar of my family. The old altar of ash and ancient stone where the Corvaxae have worshipped the mountain since Leitos left for Troy, and before.

I had nothing to sacrifice, and it had begun to rain. The rain fell and fell, and I stood at the ash altar watching the rains wash it, watching the water rush down the hillside. And my life was like those ashes — so useless it was fit only to be washed away. Lightning flashed in the sky, the thunderbolts of Zeus struck the earth and I stood by the altar and prayed that Zeus would take me — what a grand way to go! I stood straight, and with every crash I expected But the lightning passed me by. It is odd — I decided to slay myself, and only then realized that I had neither sword nor spear. Looking back, it is almost comic. I was exhausted — I had fought at Marathon only a week before, and I hadn’t recovered, and the cold rain soaked me. My sword and spear were back on the plains below me — at my sister’s house, where even now they would be looking for me, and looking for Euphoria to bury her.

I wasn’t going back.

Cithaeron is not a mountain with a crag from which a man can easily hurl himself. The whole thing has an aura of dark comedy — Arimnestos, the great hero, seeks to slay himself like Ajax, but he’s too damned tired.

Before darkness fell, I started down the mountain, headed west over the seaward shoulder, intending — nothing. Intending, I think, to jump from the very first promontory that I came to.

Or perhaps intending nothing at all. May you never be so tired and so utterly god-cursed that you seek only oblivion, my daughter. May your days be filled with light, and never see that darkness, where all you want is an end to pain. But that was me.

I walked and walked, and it grew dark.

And I fell, and then I slept, or rather, I passed out of this world.

I woke in the morning to the cold, the rain, deep mist — and to the knowledge that there was nothing awaiting me. It came to me immediately — my first thought on waking was of her death. And I rose and wandered the woods, and I remember calling her name aloud, more a groan than a greeting.

On and on I walked, always down and east and south.

I slept again, and rose the third day, with no food, no water, endless rain and cold. I wept, and the rain carried my tears to the earth. I prayed, and the skies answered me. I thought of how, on the eve of Marathon, I had dreamed of Briseis and not of Euphoria, and I knew in my heart that I had killed her with my betrayal.

I was an animal, fit only to kill other animals, and I was not a worthy man: death was what I deserved.

It may seem impossible, my friends, that one of the victors of Marathon should feel this way a week after the greatest victory in all the annals of men, but if you know any warriors, you know the revulsion and the fatigue that comes with killing. Truly we were greater than human at Marathon. But the cost was high.

I could see the faces of the men I’d killed, back and back and back to the first helot I’d put down with a spear cast at Oinoe.

I thought of the slave girl I’d sworn to protect, and then abandoned.

I thought of the beautiful boy I’d killed on the battlefield by Ephesus, while he lay screaming in pain.

And of the woman I had left, pregnant, on Crete.

And of Euphoria, with whom I had often fought, and seldom enough praised.

I went down the mountain, looking for a cliff face.

Eventually I found one.

The rain stopped when I reached the top of the cliff. I couldn’t see the base — it was hidden in fog. But the sun was about to burst through the clouds. And even as I stood there, it did — a single arm of Helios’s might reached through a tiny gap to shine on the ground before my feet and dispel the cloud of fog below the cliff.

Well.

Apollo pointed the way. He has never been my friend, that god, and I might have ignored his summons, but I wanted only extinction.

I said a prayer. I said her name out loud.

I jumped.

I hit water.

How the gods must laugh at men!

I had jumped into the ocean. It was a long fall, and I struck badly. It knocked the wind out of me, and then I became the butt of the laughter of the gods because instead of letting the cold water close over my head and drowning — I had, after all, intended to die — I began to fight to live. My arms moved, my legs kicked and my lungs starved for precious air until my head burst from under the waves and my mouth drank air like precious wine.

Against my own desire, I began to swim.

I was just a few horse-lengths off a rocky coast — it was deep water, or I’d have been dead — but with nowhere to land.

Oh, how the gods laughed.

Because now, suddenly, I was filled with a desire to live, and my arms swam powerfully, and yet there was nowhere to go but onto rocks. The sea struck the rocks sharply — three days of rain had raised a swell.

I turned my head out to sea in the fog and began to swim.

The change from suicide to struggle for life was so swift that I never questioned it. I merely moved my arms — as strong as any man’s arms, and yet weak from four days of no food, and from the incredible effort that was Marathon. I was not going to last long. But I swam, drank mouthfuls of air and swam more, and eventually — long after I think I should have been dead — I turned the headland and saw a beach at the base of the next cove, a beach with a small fire on it. The smell of the burning spruce came to me like a message from the gods, and I swam like a porpoise — twenty strokes, fifty strokes.

My toes brushed sand.

I was swimming in an arm’s-span of water.

I dragged myself up the beach.

I lay with my legs in the water and my elbows in the sea wrack and kelp, and strong arms came and lifted me clear. They dragged me up the beach. I didn’t know their language, but they rolled me over and they had serious, hairy faces — skin the colour of old wood, and black beards.

I stammered my thanks. And went down into the darkness.

That was probably for the best.

Because when I awoke, we were at sea, and I was chained to an oar bench.

Remember, I had been a slave before.

This was worse. Far, far worse, but having been a slave before saved me. I knew all the petty degradations, I knew the perils and I knew the penalties.

I was chained in the very depths of a trireme — as a thranite, the very lowest tier of oarsmen. Air came to me through my oar-port, which was mostly covered in leather and leaked air and water in equal profusion.

When the men above me relieved themselves, the piss and shit fell on me. Oh, yes. That’s the way in the lower decks of a slave-driven trireme.

I lay quietly for as long as I possibly could, because I knew that as soon as they noticed me, I would be made to row. But a man can only stand so much piss in his hair and beard. I moved my arm, and the oar-master was on me. He struck me several times with a stick, grinning with delight, and put an oar in my hands. It took time for him to bring it from amidships.

He seemed to speak a little Greek, and I barely understood him, but the man above me in the second deck leaned down.

‘He’s a killer, mate,’ he said. ‘Obey, or he’ll gut you.’

For a moment I thought he was talking about me, rather than to me. I thought perhaps he was telling the oar-master that I was a killer.

Hah!

Pride goes first, when you are a slave.

The oar-master grinned at me, took a knife from under his arm and poked it into my groin. Smiled more broadly.

‘Tell him I know how to pull an oar!’ I shouted. Instant surrender.

The oar-master laughed. And hit me.

I’m sure you are waiting to hear, my friends, how I recovered my wits, rose from my bench and slaughtered my enemies.