Christian Cameron: King of the Bosphorus

'Aye!' his helmsman called. The arrow was gone from his thigh and a loop of wool was tied in its place.

'Port-side oars! Pole off! Pole off the Herakles!' Satyrus ran to Neiron, who was lying at the foot of his mast, mouthing orders to Thron, one of the Aegyptian boys who served the sailors. The boy shrilled the orders down into the rowing decks.

'Still with me?' Satyrus asked Neiron, who raised an eyebrow.

'Must be nice… young.' He croaked. 'Poseidon, I hurt. Hermes who watches the sailormen, watch over me. Arggh!' he shouted, and his back arched.

Along the deck, a handful of deck-crewmen pulled Theron aboard and dropped him unceremoniously to the deck so that they could return to using pikes to pole off the Herakles. Satyrus loosed the ties on Neiron's cuirass and then, without warning, pulled the arrowhead from the wound. It had gone in only the depth of a finger end, or even less – enough to bleed like a spring, but not necessarily mortal.

Satyrus stood in his place. 'Port side, push!' he shouted. Rowers used the blades of their oars to push against the hull of the Herakles. 'Push!'

'We're away!' Diokles called from the stern. The gap between the two ships was growing. Falcon was light – fifty strong men could pole him off very quickly.

Quick glance aft – the golden hulls were changing direction, the early sun catching the bronze of their rams and turning them to fire. He wasn't going to make it.

He wasn't going to stop trying, either.

'Switch your benches!' he roared, the full stretch of his voice, as if a restraint had burst in his chest and now he could use all of his lungs.

A thin cheer from the green quadrireme. The enemy crews were shouting for rescue – shouting to the golden ships.

His archer-captain shot into the enemy, and an enemy archer fell – a man in robes. A Sakje. Satyrus cursed that Eumeles had suborned his own people. There were many things that he and Leon had taken for granted.

The greens cheered again and the golden triremes turned harder, now certain of their prey.

'Oars out! Backstroke! Give way, all!' Satyrus called as soon as the majority of his rowers had switched their benches. He considered everything he had learned of war – that men responded so much better when they understood what was needed. His teachers had insisted on it.

He leaned down into the oar deck. 'Listen, friends. Three strokes back and switch your benches – two strokes forward – switch again. Got it? It will come fast and furious after that. Ready?'

Hardly a cheer – but a growl of response.

'Pull!' he called.

'Athena and strong arms!' a veteran cried.

'Athena and strong arms!' the whole oar deck shouted, all together, and the ship shot back his own length.

'Athena and strong arms!' they repeated, and again Falcon moved, gliding free.

'Switch your benches!' Satyrus called, but many men were already moving with the top of the stroke, switching benches with a fluidity he hadn't seen before.

He ran along the deck to Diokles. He wanted to stop and pant. No time.

The nearest golden hull was just three ship's lengths away.

'Into the starboard bow of the green!' Satyrus shouted. 'We have to ram the green clear of Herakles.'

Diokles turned and looked at the onrushing golden ship in the lead.

'Yes!' Satyrus shouted. He read Diokles' thoughts just as the helmsman read his. With luck – Tyche – the lead golden hull would foul his partner.

There were a dozen more triremes behind that pair, strung out over two stades of water.

The rowers had switched benches. 'Pull!' he bellowed into the oar deck.

The hull changed direction. The oars came up together, rolled over the top of their path.

'Pull!' he roared. The hull groaned and Falcon leaped forward – already turning under steering oars alone.

'Pull!' he called as the oars crested their movement. He waited for the splintering crash as the lead golden ship rammed their stern, but he didn't look. His eyes were fixed on his oarsmen.

'Pull!'

'BRACE!' yelled a sailor in the bow.

Falcon hit the enemy quadrireme just where his marine box towered over his ram – just where men were rallying for another rush at the Herakles. It was a glancing blow, delivered from too close, but the results were spectacular. Something in the enemy bow gave with a sharp crack – some timber strained to breaking by the Herakles snapped. The marines' tower tilted sharply and the whole green hull began to roll over, filling rapidly with water.

'Switch your benches!' Satyrus called. Now was the moment. But the Herakles was saved – he was rocking in the water like a fishing boat after pulling a shark aboard, his trapped ram released from the stricken green.

The lead golden trireme shaved past their stern, having missed his ram by the length of a rowing boat. He was still turning and his oarsmen paid for his careless steering as they began to get tangled in the wreckage of the green as the stricken ship turtled.

Just to the port side, beyond Herakles, the second golden hull swooped in to beak the Herakles amidships – the second ship had been more careful, biding his time, waiting for the two damaged Alexandrian ships to commit to a reverse course.

The oarsmen were reversed, their faces to the bow. 'Back water! Pull!' Satyrus called. Had to try.

Had to try.

Diokles shook his head and braced himself against the side. When the golden ship struck the Herakles, his hull might be pushed right into them.

Abraham was shouting at his rowers, trying to get them to pull together. They had been locked in a boarding action for too long and many men had left their benches to fight. Herakles was dead in the water.

Why was Herakles cheering? Satyrus stood on his toes, then jumped up on the rail, grabbing for a stay.

Leon's Golden Lotus swept past the sinking stern of the green like an avenging sea monster and took the second golden hull right in the stern quarter, his bow ripping the enemy ship like a shark ripping a dolphin, spilling men into the water and goring his side so that he sank still rowing forward, gone in ten heartbeats, and Lotus swept on.

Herakles got his rowers together. With time to breathe, Abraham rowed clear of the sinking green and turned for the open water to the east. He had only two-thirds of his oars in action, but they were together.

Falcon handled badly – light as a feather, down by the stern, tending to fall off every heading. The rowers were pulling well, and he handled like a pig.

Satyrus was staring over the stern, where Lotus had rammed a second ship.

His ram was stuck.

Even as he watched, an enemy ship got his ram into Lotus, and the great ship shuddered the way a lion does when he takes the first spear in a hunt.

Satyrus ran to the stern, as if he could run over the rail and the intervening sea to his uncle's rescue.

'Nothing we can do,' Diokles said.

'Ares – Poseidon. We can do this. With Herakles, we'll-'

Diokles shook his head. 'Can't you feel it, lad? Our ram's gone. Ripped clean off when we hit the green.'

Satyrus felt as if he'd been punched in the gut. Leon was so close.

'He did it for you,' Diokles said. 'Let's save the ships we have and run.'

'Herakles, Lord of Heroes,' Satyrus choked on his own prayer.

Run, boy.

A second ram went into Lotus. And while he contemplated suicide in the form of rushing his ship to Leon's rescue, the gap widened to two stades, then three. Then five. Now there were a dozen enemy ships around Lotus.

'Run,' he said, hanging his head.

'Aye,' Diokles said. 'Now get yourself into the bow and set the men to plugging the gaps in the strakes, or we're all dead men.'

Of all the places in the world for a woman to give birth, there weren't many that could better Alexandria.