Sword of Apollo (31 page)

The Korinthian spearman nearest to Nikias pulled back his weapon, but before he could thrust it forward, his forehead exploded in a spray of blood and he pitched forward, dead.

The other two spearmen snapped their heads around. The man to Nikias's left pitched backward as though kicked by an unseen fist and lay stunned on the ground. Nikias didn't hesitate. He leapt on the last man standing, bringing his sword down upon his neck, cleaving his head and shoulder from his torso with a mighty stroke. Blood sprayed from the wound like a wave breaking on a rock—a red plume of gore.

Konon jogged up warily, his sling hanging lose at one side. He held the thong to his mouth, spat a lead pellet into the strap, swung it twice, and let fly at the one-armed Korinthian who was running away. The pellet slammed into the enemy's skull and he fell headlong on the stones.

The blinded man had gotten to his feet and was now slashing at the air with his dagger.

“Where are you?” he said with rage.

Nikias strode over to him and slashed him across the belly, and the Korinthian dropped to his knees, spilling his guts into the dust.

“All dead?” asked Konon.

Nikias grunted.

The woman who had been raped scrambled over to her baby and clutched it to her breast, trembling and gibbering violently. The woman was not Helena. Nikias ran to the prisoners and turned over the other woman—a grandmother in her fifties. He turned over another and saw a teenaged girl's face surrounded by a mop of short hair. She bled from a cut to her cheek and one of her eyes was nearly swollen shut. He pulled the gag from her mouth.

“Nikias!” she cried, tears pouring from his eyes.

Nikias drew in his breath. “Melitta!”

“You know this one?” asked Konon.

“She's Helena's sister,” said Nikias, slicing through the girl's bonds. “The girl you met in Athens. Her hair's been cut. Unbind the others,” he commanded. “Quickly.”

“They have her,” said Melitta, her teeth chattering as Nikias helped her to stand. “I c-came to look for her when I got word of the K-Korinthians. I knew she had come to you. She told me. I said she was foolish.”

“I sent her back to the stronghold,” said Nikias.

“They caught her near the temple,” said Melitta. “At the top of the hill. That's where I was waiting for her. They b-bound her like a goat and carried her off as a prize. I tried to stop them. I had your sword—the one you left in Athens. But they knocked me down and took the sword from me. The Korinthians divided us up and that's how we got separated.” She stared at all of the corpses of the enemy warriors with a bewildered expression.

“Where is she?” asked Nikias. “Where did they take your sister?”

“To a ship,” said Melitta. “A cove called the Double Axe.” Her eyes grew hard and she bent over and snatched a sword from the dead hand of the Korinthian Nikias had blinded, then gutted. Then she kicked him in the side of the head and spat upon on the warrior's corpse. “A curse upon your shade!” she screamed, then handed Nikias the sword. “This is your blade.”

Nikias saw the familiar pommel with the boxing Minotaur—his grandfather's old sword, which Nikias had been forced to leave in an armory outside the gates of Athens two and a half years ago upon entering the city. He had been handed a metal disk as a token by the keeper of the armory, and later gave this token to Melitta and Helena as a pledge that he wouldn't leave the citadel without helping them to escape. But he was forced to leave Athens by sea, abandoning both of them
and
his grandfather's sword.

“You keep it,” he said. “The sword is yours now.”

She nodded solemnly and slipped it into the scabbard on her belt. Nikias and Konon quickly cut the bonds of the other captives, and Konon helped find the dress of the woman who had been raped, covering her trembling body with it.

“Do you know where this cove is?” Nikias asked Melitta. “The Double Axe?”

“Yes,” she replied.

“Can you run?” Nikias said.

“Like the wind,” she replied.

“Follow us to the cove,” Nikias said to the freed Serifans. “Follow us as quickly as you can.”

And then he and Konon took off after Melitta, who was already sprinting ahead across the rocky ground.

 

FIFTEEN

“We have to turn back! Make sail and run for the open sea!!”

Chusor could barely hear Phoenix shouting across the space between their two ships as the
Spear
and the
Argo
—cutting through the waves side by side and a stone's throw apart—fought with their sweeping oars against the strong wind, a growing gale that threatened to push them against the rocky eastern shore of Serifos an arrow's flight to their right. The
Spartan Killer
and the
Aphrodite
had fallen behind them by several ship lengths.

“There's too many of them!” shouted Phoenix.

Chusor, standing all alone on the small railed deck at the prow of the
Spear
, didn't need the Athenian captain to state the obvious—he could see for himself the eight Korinthian triremes heading for them on a collision course from the opposite direction, only a quarter of a mile away. The enemy ships had come into view as the
Spear
and the
Argo
rounded a headland. The ships coming at them were heavy Korinthian triremes—far bulkier than their Athenian-made counterparts. And they stood like a wall of death between Chusor and the cove called the Double Axe where the inhabitants of the stronghold had fled—two small coves separated by a narrow isthmus leading to a triangle-shaped promontory. He could just make out the promontory in the distance behind the Korinthian ships.

But Phoenix was right. They were coming too fast. The Korinthians were sailing with the wind and under oar power as well, which meant they were making at least twenty knots—four times the
Spear
's speed right now moving under oars alone and into the wind. If a Korinthian ship collided with the
Spear
, it would be like a man on horseback riding at full speed into an unarmored hoplite. The destructive force would be devastating.

But there was no way that Chusor was turning back now. He had to get to the cove or die trying.

“Did you hear me?” yelled Phoenix. “This is suicide!”

“We can't outrun them!” Chusor called out. “They've got the wind at their backs! They'd be on us before we turned round! Better to face them head-on! Fall in behind me! I told you before—I have a plan!”

Chusor wiped the sweat dripping from his forehead and said a silent prayer. He thought of his daughter Melitta. She must be at the cove now, waiting for him to come to her rescue, along with the wives and children of half the oarsmen on this ship. The marauder crew members of the
Spear
, just like Chusor, had no choice. Turning and running from the Korinthians now would mean losing a treasure they could never regain. Death was preferable to living a life knowing that their loved ones had been captured and turned into slaves. Fortunately the Plataean and Athenian rowers who made up half the crew were all on the lower decks and had no idea what was coming. Otherwise they might have jumped from their seats and flung themselves into the ocean in despair.

He glanced back at the helmsman at the other end of the battle deck. Agrios was shielded on either side by wooden screens that Chusor had fitted into place before they departed the camp. This temporary shield was another of Chusor's inventions: protection for the steersman against enemy arrows. If a helmsman was killed in a fight—something Chusor had seen several times in sea battles—a trireme would suddenly and disastrously lose its brain, like a horse without a rider. The old man was leaning to one side, fighting with the rudder against the powerful swells, but his face was rigid … stoical. Earlier that morning, back at the camp, Agrios had sniffed the air and told Chusor that a proper gale was coming. He could feel it in his bones, he said. Chusor didn't believe him at the time, but now he was starting to think the old man was right, for the wind was howling and the waves were capped with foam. Beyond the approaching ships he could see a mass of gray clouds—and far out to sea, a swath of dark rain.

“Diokles!” barked Chusor, looking down into a small open hatch in the floor of the prow deck. The reek of naptha—the distilled resin of pine pitch—emanated from the opening. He had been taught to make the highly flammable chemical by Naxos of Syrakuse—a master inventor and a genius in the craft of war. But Naxos had dabbled too much in the incendiary arts, and was burned alive before Chusor's eyes after an experiment went awry.

“Here!” said Diokles as his head popped up through the hatch. He handed Chusor the end of a black tube capped with a brass funnel, then disappeared below. Chusor clamped the tube to the swiveling frame of the prow's bolt shooter, the other end snaking back into the hatch.

“Did you check for leaks coming out of the container?” Chusor called down into the chamber below.

“There was one, but I sealed it up tight with pitch,” came Ezekiel's voice.

“Then get up here—now! I need you. And bring the pandoras.”

“Coming!” Ezekiel pulled himself up through the hatch bearing a heavy leather bag. He set it down at Chusor's feet, then leaned against the ear timbers—the square wooden shields that protected the prow—peeking over the top and staring with horror at the approaching enemy ships.

“Remember, Diokles,” said Chusor, calling down the hatch, “when I say, ‘Go,' you pump with all your might and don't stop.”

Diokles nodded vigorously and fit his feet into the straps of the big floor bellows mounted in front of the bronze container, then grabbed two rings in the ceiling, ready to move up and down with his powerful legs to work the double-action pump.

“Your tunic is soaked with naptha,” said Chusor, turning his attention to Ezekiel.

“Some leaked out and I sopped it up,” said Ezekiel.

“Take off your clothes or else you'll go up in flames.”

Ezekiel's eyes grew wide. He quickly tore off his clothes and stood there naked, his scrawny body a stark contrast to Chusor's hulking torso.

“Are you drunk?” asked Chusor.

“Hardly,” replied Ezekiel, hiding his purple-stained teeth with his hand as he spoke.

Chusor turned and peered down the gangway, where Ji was calling out encouragement to the men and upbraiding those who were slacking off. Thank the gods he had returned to the ship.

“Ji!” he yelled. “Come stand by the ladder now!” He needed the exhorter to be within earshot of him to relay orders to the oarsmen—they would never be able to hear his voice in the cramped space of the ship, where sound was deadened by so many bodies. Ji came quickly to the base of the ladder and stood, his right ear cocked toward him.

Chusor went to work in the little prow deck arranging his supplies: a bow and quiver of arrows that had been dipped in pine resin, flint and knife, some pine pitch torches, and a bronze container with a flat bottom and a pouring spout that was plugged with waxed cork. There was a big iron pot riveted to one corner—it was as black as the pitch that the mariners melted in it and used for sealing the hull. The pot was also useful for setting flaming arrows on fire. Archers could stand in this protected area at the prow and dip their darts into the pot before shooting them at enemy ships. Chusor tore the cap off the amphora and poured a clear and foul-smelling liquid into the pot.

He reached for the leather bag that Ezekiel had brought up and opened it, taking out a score of little jars that had been wrapped in straw and capped with papyrus and beeswax plugs. Each jar was marked with a red
P
. They contained a combination of volatile chemicals, including gypsum and crystals made from bat guano. When these ingredients were set alight, they created a sticking fire that burned through wood and flesh alike, and no water could douse the flames. Chusor called them “pandoras,” and he had used them in Plataea to help immolate the Theban invaders on the night of the sneak attack.

“They're getting closer,” said Ezekiel urgently.

Chusor stood up and looked over the prow. The Korinthian ships had formed up into two lines of four. The ships in the lead would be on the
Spear
in minutes. He shot a quick look aft: Phoenix's ship had fallen back and was following in the
Spear
's wake, and the
Spartan Killer
and the
Aphrodite
were well behind the
Argo
.

He ducked back down and shielded the iron cauldron with his body, making a windbreak from the gust that played about on the deck of the prow. Then he struck a piece of firestone with a knife, sending a shower of sparks into the pot. The naptha caught fire instantly and a blue flame leapt from the pot, singing the hairs of his chest. He stepped back and handed Ezekiel one of the unlit torches.

“I'll be right back,” Chusor said, and before the startled Ezekiel could reply he jumped out of the prow and onto the battle deck, sprinting the hundred feet to the helmsman.

“Steer straight between the two lines of ships!” Chusor commanded.

Agrios nodded grimly, never taking his eyes from the approaching ships.

“If one of them tries to ram us head-on, steer away from it,” continued Chusor. “You hear me? Don't meet the ramming ship head-on. We must not become locked ram to ram. I can't shoot the liquid until we're upwind of them, otherwise it will blow back on us, setting the
Spear
on fire.”

“I understand, damn you!” growled Agrios. “Now get back to your station!”

Chusor dashed back to the prow, nearly falling into the open space of the galley in the middle of the deck, and took his position at the bolt shooter with its snakelike hanging tube strapped to the top.