Sword of Apollo (37 page)

It had been almost two months since the battle off Serifos and the mad chase of the Korinthian ship—with its cargo of captured women and children—that followed. After Nikias and the others had been rescued from the sea, the
Spear of Thetis
had been caught in the mother of storms. The gale pushed the boat southwestward, day after day, tossing them on the ocean like a child's toy, and it was a miracle they had survived that seemingly never-ending rage of wind and rain. Those days were a miserable memory—a fevered dream of seasickness, hunger, thirst … a constant bailing of the hold, and an unremitting terror that the ship would get broadsided and flipped, spilling all of them into the cold and merciless sea. More than two hundred people had been crammed into the cramped and suffocating hold, many injured or burned, and all in a state of profound exhaustion.

Nikias thought about Phoenix and the other ships. He reckoned that his cousin, a canny mariner, had taken the small fleet back to the safety of the harbor on Serifos after spotting the storm coming their way. At least, he prayed that was what had happened. The thought of those other three ships—the last hope of Plataea—scattered or sunk by the storm was too much to bear.

One morning, after most of them had given up hope, they awoke to a calm sea and a nearly cloudless sky. It was the fourth day after the storm. They had been blown hundreds of miles from Serifos, but they had survived the wrath of Poseidon and Oceanus. The wind, still blowing from the northeast, prevented them from sailing back in the direction of Greece. And they no longer had enough rowers to operate the trireme. There were no more provisions. The food and water had all been thrown overboard in an effort to make the ship lighter when they chased after the Korinthian ship.

Chusor knew which land lay to the south of their present position—Libya. It was a dangerous region, he told them, vast and forbidding. Its cities were ruled by the Phoenicians—enemies of the Greeks—and these seafaring people also controlled the waterways along the entire coast, from Egypt to the east to the Pillars of Herakles to the west. But they had no choice. They had to find water within the next day, so they set the masts and sails and journeyed on, drinking the rainwater that had collected in the filthy bilge to quench the terrible thirst that afflicted everyone on board.

After another day they spotted land: an endless coastline of yellow beaches and scattered palm trees—a hot, dry land where the wind blew off the desert like the heat from a forge fire. They beached the ship on a deserted shore, and everyone got off the vessel and stood on shaky legs after nearly a week at sea. Chusor immediately set out with a band of twenty armed men to look for a river or a well. A child and an old woman had already perished from thirst in the last several hours.

While they were gone, Nikias and Ji took stock of the numbers. There were only one hundred and thirty-two rowers still alive from the ship's original complement of one hundred and eighty that had set out from the Piraeus. Nearly fifty oarsmen were dead, thus rendering the trireme inoperable as a galley. Some of these rowers had died in battle with the Korinthian ships, but most of the casualties had resulted when the mariners of Serifos jumped overboard, like Nikias, in a frenzied attempt to save their loved ones whom the Korinthians had tossed into the sea. Nikias was grateful that of the forty-five Plataeans who joined the ship in Athens, only two had died.

A little more than a hundred women and children had been rescued from the Korinthians. Three times that number had set out from the stronghold of Serifos to the Double Axe cove on that ill-omened day. Many of these survivors were now ill from lack of water or wasted from seasickness. Melitta was the exception. She one of the toughest girls Nikias had ever known, and seemed perfectly healthy and full of energy. Her sister, Helena, however, had been in abject misery for most of the days of the storm: she was very pale and had black circles under her eyes.

Their stay on that Libyan beach was short-lived. Chusor and the others came running back to the boat, shouting for everyone to get the
Spear
into the sea. He and the men who had gone looking for water had stumbled upon a band of nomads—scores of warriors with skin the color of wet clay and black braided beards. These wild men chased them to the beach, but came up short when they saw the number of people huddled by the boat. The nomads shot at them with arrows, harassing them until they got the trireme back in the water.

They headed west with the wind, the exhausted rowers straining at the oars, limping along like a wounded beast until they left the hostile nomads far behind. And then their luck changed. Chusor spotted a dead whale stranded in the shallow water of a lagoon, and they brought the
Spear
into the cove. The whale had not yet started to bloat—it hadn't been dead long. It was a gift, Chusor said, from Poseidon. The crew went to work cutting into the thick fat and carving it up for meat. They made fires with driftwood and the dry shrubs and grasses that grew near the beach, and feasted on the flesh of that enormous beast.

They found a spring close to the lagoon, and for the next week they stayed in that place, living off the flesh of the whale and making what repairs they could to the ship. Once the whale had been stripped of its meat, Chusor set men to work fashioning bows from the rib bones, for they had very few bows onboard the
Spear
and the warlike nomads, he said, were a forewarning of worse to come. The women cut off their long hair—hair that went past their buttocks—so that the strands could be woven into strings for the bows.

Most everyone regained their health, including Helena, which was a great relief to Nikias. They spent most of the time working together, collecting fuel for the fires or gathering mussels along the rocks near the lagoon. When they chanced to find themselves all alone, they made love under the sun—an uncontrolled and savage kind of lovemaking that left them craving almost immediately for more.

One day Nikias went farther inland, about half a mile from the cove, and discovered something horrible: a destroyed village of mud huts where the villagers had all been executed. He brought Chusor and some others back to the evil place. All of the dark-skinned people, including the smallest children, had been hanged in a cruel manner—their necks pinioned between pieces of wood affixed to a pole. Most of the villagers' feet were inches above the ground, and they had most likely died straining desperately to touch the earth, slowly choking to death under the blistering sun. Chusor told them that this was the work of Karthaginians—this sort of gallows was their cruel mode of execution. He had no idea why the impoverished villagers had been wiped out, but the Karthaginians, he said, were a strange and oftentimes vicious people. Nikias and the others spent the day taking down the corpses and burying them.

They spent two weeks or more in this lagoon, but eventually they ran out of food and had to move on. Chusor's goal was to head west for as long as they could until they came near the great port of Karthago. From here, Chusor explained, they would be able to see the island of Sicily and the Greek colonies in Italia—lands and cities that were allies of Athens. They could hop along the coast all the way back to Naupaktos—the fortress where the Athenian admiral Phormion had gone with his fleet—in the Gulf of Korinth.

Nikias thought of his cousin. If Phoenix had steered the
Argo
, the
Spartan Killer
, and the
Aphrodite
toward Naupaktos after the great storm had ended, and they had not met with disaster along the way up the coast of the Peloponnese, the small fleet would already be halfway to the Athenian port by now. He said a silent prayer to Poseidon to protect his cousin's journey. Right now, he mused sadly, the
Spear
wasn't likely to get to Naupaktos for months … if ever.

Because the ship could not operate properly without all of the oars in the water, the hardiest women took up rowing. They were strong and did not complain, though the labor was backbreaking and they were unused to it. Nikias's seat was directly behind Helena's, and he gave her encouragement throughout the day, marveling at the beauty of her neck and back, his mind wandering in a daze of lust mingled with exhaustion. Whenever they beached the ship at night, the two would sleep in each other's arms, oblivious to the world around them.

Another three weeks went by—the
Spear
hugging the coast by day and resting on sandy beaches by night. They encountered another aggressive tribe of nomads, but they were able to hold them off with their makeshift whalebone bows and drive them away. After that, the few natives they did encounter along the way wanted nothing more than to trade for goods. The women gave up what little jewelry they had to buy goat meat or fish or containers for water, and the men traded their daggers for the same. But it was hard to keep more than two hundred people fed. Rowing all day was hungry work, and everyone's bellies rumbled.

One morning, after pushing off from a lagoon, they came upon a trireme as it rounded a headland. It was a warship from Karthago, most likely out patrolling for pirates, and the
Spear
had surprise and the tactical advantage with its nose pointed directly at the ship's hull. Chusor didn't hesitate. He gave the helmsman the order to steer straight into the side of the Karthaginian, and shouted at Ji to order the oarsmen, “Move quick!” The
Spear
cut through the water like a porpoise and the ram pierced deep into the enemy ship's hull. The
Spear
's mainmast snapped off in the middle and slammed onto the enemy deck, doing great damage.

Two of the
Spear
's veterans immediately rushed to the hold and yanked the huge wooden pins holding the ram to the ship, and Chusor gave the order, “Back oars!” The
Spear
pulled away from the Karthaginian ship with its great ram stuck into the ship's side like a spearhead. Water rushed into the enemy boat's hull. It was already starting to swamp and would not be able to follow them. But now the
Spear
was without its mainmast and its ram.

From his seat on the outrigger deck Nikias saw the Karthaginian captain on the prow of his ship shouting angrily in Phoenician at Chusor, who was calling back to the enemy in the same language, laughing and making an obscene gesture. But Chusor stopped laughing when the Karthaginians started shooting flaming arrows at the
Spear
—parting shots fired from the powerful bolt shooter. The sails of the two other masts caught fire and had to be cut down and thrown overboard.

Chusor said they could not go along the coast anymore. They were too close to Karthago. So they headed out to the open sea. They were two hundred miles, by Chusor's estimate, from the island of Sicily. And they would have to row the entire way without benefit of sails.

Another storm came, and they were buffeted about for several days, and the mariners cursed the malicious nature of the sea and winds that seemed to be trying to drown them. The ship sprang a leak and became swamped. When the weather finally cleared, they rowed and rowed, the ship moving slowly because the hold was filled with water. Days went by in a miserable muddle of rowing or bailing. They seemed stuck in one spot, never moving.

Finally, a week after they had attacked the Karthaginian ship, they came at last to the southern shore of Sicily and dragged the ship onto an isolated beach. The
Spear
was in need of substantial repairs that only a shipyard of Syrakuse could provide, but that would be costly. A good mainmast and sails alone were wildly expensive—far more than the bit of silver that Chusor had on hand. Besides that, they needed food and supplies—enough to last all the way to Naupaktos.

Chusor asked Nikias to come into his cabin. He opened a secret compartment and showed him a golden carving—an ancient head of Apollo that had been hidden inside. Nikias held the well-crafted object and stared at the enigmatic face.

“There is a man in Syrakuse,” said Chusor, “named General Pantares. He is a wealthy man who owns the biggest shipyard in the citadel. He collects things. Objects and people alike. He will pay far more than the value of this relic, than the mere weight of it in gold. I would take it to him myself to sell, but he knows me and hates me. When I was a young man I bedded his daughter.” He shrugged and rolled his eyes as if to say, “I was a young idiot.”

“I will go to this man,” said Nikias. “What's the worst that could happen? He refuses to buy it or steals it from me? We have no choice. We must repair the ship or else we'll be stuck here on a beach with a boat full of starving women and children, prey for pirates and thieves and slavers.”

“You don't know Pantares,” said Chusor. “He's a beast. A barbarian masquerading as a Greek. It's a gamble.”

“We have no choice,” said Nikias. “And I'm lucky at dice.”

“A
desperate
throw of the dice,” Chusor had said. “But one we must risk. Remember this: my old shipmate Barka the eunuch, whom I've told you about over the years, may be living in the house of Pantares once more. If you need help, go to him.”

It was decided that Diokles and Ji, who knew their way around Syrakuse but were unknown to Pantares, would accompany Nikias. They set out in the evening for the citadel, which lay fifteen miles or so from the beach. When they crossed the land bridge to the isle of Ortygia, Ji said that he would wait for them by the bridge, just in case something went wrong. Unarmed and dressed in their filthy tunics, Nikias and Diokles found the house of Pantares and begged an audience. They were first scrutinized by the general's scornful housekeeper, who interviewed them, took a long look at the object, then told them to wait in the slaves' quarters.

Three hours later they were brought before Pantares, who was surrounded by his guard of Tyrsenians. Nikias told a tale about finding the relic in Ionia in the ruins of a temple that had been destroyed by the Persians. The general held the head in his hands and stared at it with a detached look that Nikias knew was a mask. Pantares coveted the thing. That much was obvious. But he didn't seem interested in the origins of the relic. He wanted to know where Nikias's ship was located and how many men were on his crew. When Nikias balked at answering these questions, the general simply smiled and ordered his men to seize him and Diokles.