Poseidon's Spear (Long War 3) (37 page)

I looked at both of them. They both watched me.

I resisted the impulse to place a hand on my xiphos hilt.

While we were all staring – or perhaps glaring – at each other, a woman came in. She was a matron – a year or two older than me, I expect. Keltoi women are very fit, like
Spartan women, and you can’t always read their age in their bellies. But she had the wrinkles of laughter in her eyes, and the way she carried her head spoke of dignity combined with, shall
we say, experience?

She wore a sword, but that wasn’t so rare among aristocratic Kelts. She looked at me with appraisal – perhaps even challenge – and sat by Accles.

‘Is this the pirate?’ she asked.

Accles pretended to laugh.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I am. But not of Keltoi. Merely of Carthaginians.’

She raised an eyebrow. She had red-brown hair and a long, straight nose and wore a gold pin on her wool cloak that was worth . . . hmm . . . a small ship.

‘I’m Arimnestos of Plataea,’ I said.

She looked at Accles. ‘Well?’ she asked.

Detorix leaned forward. ‘He’s on his way south with a cargo of tin.’

‘Stolen tin?’ she asked Detorix.

Ten years before, I’d have slammed my fist on the table and said something like, ‘I’m right here.’

Instead, I sat back and had a sip of wine.

‘He purchased the tin at Vecti,’ Detorix said.

‘With spoils taken from the Phoenicians?’ she insisted.

I snorted.

She ignored me.

Detorix looked at me, though. ‘He says not. He says that he brought trade goods from the Inner Sea.’

‘And the Phoenicians, our most reliable trade partners, are lying – is that it?’ she asked.

Detorix shrugged and didn’t meet her eye.

She turned to me. ‘The Phoenicians landed north of Vecti, burned a village and killed a handful of people,’ she said slowly. ‘My people.’

‘And took fifty of them as slaves?’ I guessed.

She shrugged. ‘Yes, I have reason to believe it.’

I nodded. ‘When I stormed their town, I opened the slave pens. There were hundreds of Keltoi.’ I shrugged. ‘And I rescued them and brought them home. Ask around.’

‘Your attack may have provoked a war,’ she said.

‘They attacked me first,’ I said.

She shrugged, as if the rights and wrongs of the issue didn’t interest her much. And there was no reason it should. As I found out later from Detorix, she was the queen of three tribes,
and she needed to keep her peoples happy and well fed – which meant a constant tin trade, reliable alliances and open communications – with the Phoenicians.

‘Wouldn’t it make more sense to burn a couple of their ships to teach them not to enslave your people?’ I asked.

She went back to talking to Detorix. ‘If we just send them his head, will that be enough?’

Detorix shook his head. ‘They don’t even know what he looked like,’ he said.

Well, there’s barbarian honesty for you. They discussed taking me, executing me and sending my head to my enemies – in front of me. It’s honour of a sort.

‘I’m not sure there are enough men in this town to take me,’ I said, conversationally.

She looked at me the way a man would look at a pig, if the pig talked. She smiled. ‘Southerners don’t even know how to use a sword,’ she said.

‘Really?’ I asked. ‘I don’t expect many of our swordsmen come this way. The way I hear it, you get architects, tin vendors and wine merchants.’

She smiled; it was amazingly condescending. Briseis could have taken lessons.

‘And are
you
a swordsman?’ she asked.

Damn it, I was being played. She knew what I would say, and I was being manoeuvred into giving a display of skill so that I could be killed. And Neoptolymos wasn’t close.

I had a boy – a pais – named Ajax. He was tiny, underfed and fast. He was around me all the time, fetching me wine, carrying my purse – you know, a pais. He wasn’t a
slave – or rather, he had been a slave and now he was free, and I’m not sure he had noticed a difference.

‘Ajax, run and fetch Gaius, will you, lad?’ I said. The boy ran out into the afternoon.

The great lady leaned forward. ‘Are you going to show us your swordsmanship?’ she asked.

I frowned. ‘Against whom? You?’

She smiled. ‘You are as far beneath me as the pigs who eat rubbish on my farms, foreigner. Why not fight one of them first?’

I leaned back – I’m a Greek, not a Kelt. I was being bated, and I knew it. And I wasn’t fifteen years old, either.

We were sitting on three-legged wooden stools at a wooden table in the open, under a linen canvas awning that stuck out from a timber building. When I leaned back on two legs, I could put my
back against one of the supports that held up the awning.

I pointed a finger – my left hand – at Detorix as if I was going to make an accusation. And then my left hand darted to her right arm and pinned it down, and I drew my kopis and laid
it on her throat.

Her eyes were fairly large.

‘Leukas, tell this woman exactly what I say. Are you ready?’

Leukas swallowed. ‘She’s my queen, boss.’

I nodded. ‘Good. Tell her, she can fight me herself. I don’t see any reason to fight the pig, the pig-keeper – you getting this? The pig-keeper’s boss, her warlord, her
top swordsman – no, I’ll wait until you’re done.’ I kept her pinned in place. She tried to get to her feet and I slammed her back down on the stool.

‘Or, I’ll just cut her throat and burn the town and steal what I need to get home,’ I said to Detorix. ‘Understand me, Detorix? You tried to take my things and my ships
once before. Call me pirate? What you lack here is the
force
to carry out your will. Understand?’

The silence went on a long time.

Gaius came in. ‘There’s some very unhappy barbarians over there. I think they are sending for archers,’ he said.

‘You will be my second in a duel,’ I said.

He shrugged. ‘Detorix?’

I let go of the queen and backed away.

She looked at me with pure, unadulterated hate.

I smiled. ‘You haven’t met a swordsman, lady. I know, because a swordsman wouldn’t have let that happen. I don’t think you want the humiliation of facing me with a sword
in your hand, but unless you apologize to me, now, and swear an oath to the gods that you will not harm me, you can fight.’

She stood straighter. ‘Fight,’ she spat.

I turned my back on her and walked out into the sun.

Leukas followed me. ‘Aristocrats – all they do is fight. And practise to fight.’

I was looking at her sword, which was long and straight. ‘Ajax, go and fetch me my long xiphos,’ I said.

Six burly Kelts in heavy leather came and stood around the queen. I smiled at them. None of them smiled back. Two were huge, and two were quite small – thin and wiry. Such men can be the
most dangerous.

Detorix came towards me, hesitating with every step. ‘I really need to stop this,’ he said. ‘This is not our way. This woman is a guest. You are a guest.’

‘And we have agreed to play a little game,’ I said. ‘Gaius, ask her if she wants a shield.’

Leukas asked the question. No one answered him.

Ajax ran back with my longest, slenderest xiphos. I had taken it off a Carthaginian, and I rather liked it.

I walked in the sun, a little way along the gravel, turned and drew the sword. I put the scabbard in my left hand, and threw my chlamys over my left arm.

She had a shield. A big shield.

I saluted and she did not. I stepped in, flicked my blade up and she raised her shield, and I kicked it and her to the ground with a pankration kick which she didn’t see coming because I
was too close, and she’d raised her shield and thus couldn’t see.

I stepped back and let her get to her feet. When she set her stance again, I shook my head. ‘No, you lost. There is no second chance. If you want to send another man, so be it – but
you lost.’

She glared. But she walked over and tapped one of the big men.

His sword was as long as my arm, and longer. He took the shield.

It didn’t look thick enough to be stable. It was oddly shaped and too damned long, and his arms were like an octopus’s arms – too long and too fast.

He came at me, whirling his sword in front of his shield.

Polymarchos had made me practise against this sort of thing, which he called the whirlwind. I made myself relax, moved with him, backing away, letting him slowly close the distance. He had a
tempo to his spin, and I moved with it, almost as if we were dancing.

I had my strike prepared, but he surprised me, leaping forward with a shriek, the sword cutting up from below my cloak. I got my scabbard – my heavy, wooden scabbard – on his blade,
and he cut right through it and into my chlamys. The blow didn’t cut into my arm, but he almost broke my arm with the blow.

Of course, he had a foot of my steel through his head. A little punch, a hand-reverse to clear his raised shield – one of Polymarchos’s best tricks.

He was dead before he hit the ground.

I hadn’t intended to kill him. In fact, it’s worth noting that he was too good. If he’d been worse, or slower, or less long-limbed, I’d have let him live.

And he was certainly trying to kill or maim me.

I stepped back and the pain of his blow hit me. I stepped back again, and one of the little bastards came for me.

He leaped the corpse of the big man, and swung his heavy sword with two hands.

I cut his sword to the ground and pinked him in the hand.

He roared and cut at me again.

Again I cut his sword to the ground with my lighter weapon, and this time I skewered his right hand. But he raised the sword with his left, so I ripped my point out of his hand and brought the
blade down on his left forearm. And then stepped in and kicked him in the crotch.

And he slammed his maimed right hand into my face.

Kelts: they’re insane.

He didn’t break my nose. That was lucky.

I was blind with pain for a moment, so I slashed the air in front of me to keep him back. I connected with something, but most of my long xiphos was scarcely sharp and all it did was raise a
welt, I suspect.

He leaped at me again just as I got control of my head.
He didn’t have a weapon
. And he was as fast as a fish in the stream. His wounded hands were up, and he was reaching for my
blade.

I had to kill him, too.

Now I was breathing like a bellows, and I fell back.

I wanted to say something witty and insulting, because I was angry – full of rage, like Ares. But all I could do was breathe.

It didn’t feel good.

In fact, I felt . . . wretched. These two men had never done anything to hurt me – well, except to attack me at the behest of their mistress – and now they were dead.

She looked at me, and at the four men beside her.

I breathed hard. And waited.

Gaius nodded. ‘That’s it, then,’ he said, in his aristocratic Greek. ‘Tell that woman that it is over, or it is war, and if it’s war, we have two hundred men and
she has four.’

I looked at him. I hadn’t expected him to step in. But that’s what friends are for.

I turned to Detorix. ‘We will leave in the morning,’ I said. ‘Let this be an end to it, and don’t let me regret not walking over and killing her.’

Detorix nodded.

That was good. I was done with the Venetiae.

So we left without Doola, and that didn’t make me happy. Nor did I trust our hosts any more, or our boatmen, or anyone.

We had to pole our boats north. Some of the oarsmen were quite good at this, and some were not. We had a pair of guides and interpreters, but otherwise we were on our own.

After the first night, we built a regular camp by the river and we put brush all the way around it and stood to, fully armed, an hour before darkness and an hour after dawn.

The third day, we saw horsemen on the horizon as we poled upstream.

By the fourth day, we were quite aware of the horsemen, who scarcely troubled to hide themselves. And the river was a snake, swimming on the sea – an endless curve and back-curve.
Sometimes we could see a town or settlement a dozen stades before we reached it. Some settlements were on both sides of a peninsula, so we’d pass the town twice. And it did seem like we
paddled or poled twice the distance that we’d have walked – or that our shadows rode.

I’d had about enough of the Keltoi by then. And I was unhappy with myself – the more I thought on it, the more I decided I’d allowed myself to be ruled by Ares in the taverna.
I didn’t need to show her my arête. I didn’t need to fight. I could be Odysseus instead of Achilles. And the two dead men were powerfully on my conscience.

But even as I thought these thoughts – thoughts largely fuelled by Heraclitus, of course – I also thought like the pirate I often was. I considered setting an ambush for the riders.
It was foolish to let them pick the time for an attack.

But it would be worse to fight them. Once we fought, we’d be the enemy to every barbarian on the river, and that would be the end of us and our tin, too.

I thought about it for another day, as we poled on and on and seemed to make very few stades.

That night, Gaius and Seckla and I took Herodikles and one of the younger shepherds, Leo, who was growing as a man and as a leader. The five of us slipped downstream in a small boat, and we
floated silently in the darkness until we came to a campfire. We landed well upstream, and crept carefully down on them.

Eight men, a dozen horses.

It was the work of two minutes to cut all the hobbles of the horses and chase them off into the darkness. They roused themselves, and we were gone.

The next day, we had no contact with them.

We poled on. We were low on food, and I had to bargain with a fairly hostile village of Kelts who lived in reed huts that stood on stilts in the water. We bought grain for silver, and got the
worst of the bargain.

Two nights later, one of our interpreters tried to run. He was surprised to find that I was right there, waiting for him.

Three more days poling, and I was sure we had slipped our pursuers. The poling had become quite difficult, as we were travelling into the upper reaches of the river.