Sword of Apollo (9 page)

After the grain was delivered the crew of the
Spear
would fill their pouches with more Athenian owls—shining silver coins made from the ore of the fabled mines of Laureion. But right now Chusor could give a fig about spoils. He pushed the bowl of squid away, then leaned over and puked violently into a bucket. Groaning miserably, he lay back down on the wool-stuffed mattress in the tiny cabin he shared with Zana—the only private cabin on the ship—listening to the heavy snoring of the naked woman sprawled next to him. Outside the shut door he could hear the wooden poles of the rowers squeaking in the oarlocks, and the rhythmic beat of the drummer keeping time. He couldn't decide which of the noises was more grating: the oars, the drum, or Zana's snoring.

She murmured sleepily and reached out, groping between his legs. But he pushed her hand aside.

“What's wrong with your prick?” said Zana lazily.

“I have to spill some water,” he said.

Zana had the sexual appetites of a man. Which was perfectly fine with Chusor, for she was built like an Amazon, with big firm breasts and legs that seemed to go on forever. She could do things in bed that no other woman he'd lain with knew how to do. Her face was not beautiful, but it was not unlovely, either. She resembled a stern temple goddess—handsome rather than pretty. But she also possessed many bad habits. She was insanely jealous. She was murderous and rapacious. And she was as haughty as a Persian satrap.

Excellent qualities, he had to admit, for a captain of a pirate ship. She was, in fact, the exiled daughter of a deposed Phoenician ruler. She had been raised in a palace and had been taught to rule sternly and without mercy. Chusor was the one man who had managed to tame her.

But only just.

The satrap of Lydia, a Persian upon whose ships the
Spear
often preyed, had offered a bounty for this ship that would have made any man as rich as Kroesus, were he to win it. For the bounty was the weight of Chusor himself in the coins of Lydia: shining yellow electrum stamped with the head of a snarling lion.

And Chusor was no small man.

“The Egyptian” was what the people of Plataea had called him. He was a half-African, half-Phoenician giant, with a head of woolly untamed hair and a thick black beard. Not too long ago he had been as muscular as an Olympic athlete, with bulging biceps and pectorals as big as serving plates. That was when he'd been a blacksmith in the citadel of Plataea, hammering iron and bronze all day long to forge armor and weapons and other inventions. That's where he had befriended young Nikias.

But the luxury and indolence of a marauder's life at sea had made Chusor bloated. Eyes that once shone with intelligence were now glassy. A jaw that used to be lean and strong had turned into a double chin covered with a tousled beard. And his stomach, once rippled and defined, was now a flabby paunch.

Last week his friend Diokles told him that he was as fat as a pig. Fat! He'd never been called that word in his life until the stocky yet absurdly muscled Diokles—a runaway Spartan slave—hurled the insult at him. And if any man on the ship other than Diokles the Helot had insulted him that way, he would have ripped off his head. But Diokles was one of his oldest and most trusted friends.

“And sadly,” Chusor mused, “he's right about my present condition.”

He heaved himself to a sitting position and reached for a wineskin, draining the last drops from the leather bag, swishing it in his mouth, then spitting it into a bowl. The image on the bottom of the bowl showed an Amazon woman wearing a giant phallus and taking a muscular man from behind. Zana had had the bowl painted especially for Chusor as a gift. It was her own design. Was the picture a symbol of their relationship?

He glanced at something in the corner of the room—an empty cage hanging by a hook, banging against the hull with the rocking motion of the ship. The cage used to hold a messenger pigeon—a pretty bird that Chusor had kept as a pet for years. But the animal had flown off one day and never returned. A very bad omen.

He got up, stumbled to the door, and flung it open, ducking under the low sill and stepping awkwardly down the ladder to the floor of the hold. He stared blearily along the long gangway that ran from bow to aft between the three decks—one hundred and seventeen feet long. Rowers—twenty-seven on either side in single file—stared back at him with dull, glassy eyes: the long, staring look of men lost in the ceaseless rhythm of the oars. These were the men of the bottom deck. Their oar holes were so close to the waterline that the openings had to be covered with oiled leather sleeves to keep the ocean from flooding the ship—tight-fitting covers that, from the outside, resembled sagging pricks. Thus veteran mariners called the hold rowers “foreskins.” This was the worst deck in the ship—sweat, piss, and occasionally even vomit from the men above leaked down on them through the planks. It was the hottest part of the boat, too, and if the trireme got rammed during a battle and the ship was swamped, the hold rowers were most likely to be drowned first.

The hold rowers sat with their faces practically in the arses of the oarsmen of the middle deck; these were called the thwart rowers and were of equal number on either side. And above them, seated on outriggers that jutted from the top of the boat, were the stool rowers, the elite men of the topmost deck—thirty-one to each side. The top deck was the most preferable place to be on a trireme, and only the strongest and most veteran oarsmen had the honor of keeping those positions, for the air was better up there, and you weren't covered in anyone's sweat or piss or vomit but your own.

One hundred and seventy rowers, along with a helmsman, a shipwright, a boy drummer, the captain, and the exhorter—the man who encouraged the men at their seemingly endless labor. Zana had given Chusor the title of prow officer, which was a meaningless rank but suited Chusor just fine, for he could wander freely about the ship, “prow-ling about,” as he jokingly said.

All told, there were one hundred and seventy-five men and one woman on board the
Spear
—a small army of cutthroats and adventurers. They had already made a fortune in pay, such was the combined luck and skill of the
Spear
. Chusor had used his share to buy land on the small island where the marauders made their outpost. There, in that little haven, protected by the walls of a small but sturdy stronghold, his most important treasure lived, safe from the dangerous world: a coltish fourteen-year-old girl, his slender beloved, the only child he'd made with the courtesan Sophia—beautiful Sophia, dead and gone forever. He had not known of the girl's existence until two and a half years ago, when Nikias returned from his ill-starred journey to Athens with the news. And when he had learned that Melitta was living in the household of an evil man, he immediately went to Athens and took her, saving her from a life of indignity.

It was strange having a full-grown child, however. Especially one who gave him as much trouble as Melitta. He reckoned he knew how Zeus must have felt when, upon suffering a splitting headache, Athena emerged fully developed from a crack in his forehead.

He caught sight of his friend Diokles. He sat in the thwart row on the left side, pulling hard with his huge arms, squinting at Chusor with a disapproving look on his flat-featured face. Diokles was skilled enough to row in the top deck, but he liked being in the middle of the ship, hidden behind the wall of the boat; the sight of the sea unnerved him, for a soothsayer who used to be a member of their crew prophesied that Diokles would drown one day.

Chusor and Diokles had been mates on Zana's first vessel years ago, but they bolted from her ship after growing tired of Zana's caprices and the murderous life of a marauder. The friends had traveled to Plataea in the hopes of finding an ancient treasure that was rumored to be buried beneath the citadel. After years of searching, they had found the legendary trove—a tomb from the days of Homer's heroes filled with gold, statues, and precious gems. With the threat of war looming in the Oxlands, they had rejoined Zana and used most of the treasure to buy the
Spear of Thetis
—a warship built in an Athenian shipyard that Chusor, along with the ship's carpenter, had modified along Chusor's designs.

These changes had made the
Spear
a terror on the seas. On the topmost deck—the battle deck, as it was called—they had built a railing, which most triremes lacked. This was a foolish omission, in Chusor's opinion. Shields could be attached to this balustrade to create a wall for warriors to use for cover when the
Spear
was forced to fight hull to hull with an enemy. At the prow was a detachable bronze ram of his own design. And mounted on the prow and aft were giant bolt shooters. A bolt shooter resembled a heavy bow set on its side, mounted on a swiveling wooden base. Turning a crank pulled the taut string back and locked it in place. The bolt shooters launched three-foot-long arrows, forged of solid iron, with such force that the projectiles could pierce the side of an enemy ship.

The
Spear
also carried Chusor's deadliest creation—the secret to the marauders' success on the seas. The thing sat in a special compartment at the prow, separated from the rest of the hold by a sealed bulkhead. Inside was an odd-looking contraption: a huge bronze container sealed by a stopper, with pipes connecting it to a great bellows attached to the floor. Coiled on the floor around it, like a fat black snake, was a long watertight tube crafted from skins and sealed with pitch. The chamber reeked of naptha—a flammable oil—and no man was allowed to enter the chamber, save Chusor and Diokles.

“The Kiss of Hephaestos”—that's what men called it, after the god of fire.

And hidden in a secret compartment under a false part of the hold was the last of the treasure: a gold cup, some rings and necklaces, and an exquisitely carved head of solid gold, about the size of a pomegranate, with the name Apollo inscribed at the base. These Chusor had saved so that one day he could return them to Nikias and the rightful heirs of Plataea. But when would that day ever come?

“You should take a turn at an oar!” called out a short and wiry man with squinting eyes who was standing in front of the bulkhead. He spoke cheerfully in Phoenician—the language in which he and Chusor usually conversed. This foreigner was named Ji, and he came from a far-off eastern land, a place of mighty warring kingdoms—so he said—where he had begun training in the arts of hand-to-hand combat as soon as he could walk. He was one of the longest-standing members of Zana's crew. His good-natured smile and pleasant demeanor always unsettled Chusor, for he knew these were merely an act: Ji was one of the deadliest killers he had ever met. He served as the ship's exhorter, the man who encouraged the rowers and also kept them in line. But the crew of cutthroats didn't need much motivation, and so Ji's duties on the boat were, like Chusor's, largely pretense. Ji's chief duties were protecting Zana and, when need be, the killing of men.

Ji left his post and stepped lithely across the things stowed in the hold—the bags of grain, masts, sails, and rigging—and came to a stop a few feet from Chusor, grinning up at him with his wide upper jaw of uniform teeth.

“I'm not feeling up to it,” said Chusor.

“It would do you good. You could use one of Zana's silk pillows for your fat arse.”

Diokles let forth a barking laugh and he and Ji exchanged a knowing look.

Chusor smiled wryly. “An oarsman is only as good as his arse,” as the old saying in Athens went. So the men were careful to protect their posteriors by buying the finest padded leather cushions they could get their hands on. But Chusor hated rowing. When he'd first joined Zana's crew years before, he'd been forced to plow the sea with an oar, and it had been misery. The effort hadn't been the hardest part. It was the spectacular boredom that had nearly destroyed him.

It always amazed him that such wild and freedom-loving men could have the discipline to pull the oars for eight hours at a stretch. They always made Chusor think of the automatons who served Hephaestos, god of smiths, in his magic castle.

Ji gestured toward Diokles. “I'm sure Diokles would give up his place.”

“I can fart longer than he can pull an oar!” called out Diokles.

Some of the oarsmen within earshot laughed heartily, but others turned their eyes away from Chusor, not wanting to incur his anger. He was the captain's man, and they were afraid of him.

Chusor scowled at Diokles. Then he clambered up the stairs to the battle deck, grumbling under his breath. For an instant he wished he were back inside Plataea, surrounded by the enemy. He wondered what Nikias was doing now. He wished that he could make an invention that would send thoughts across the sky. But what would he say to his friend now? “I stole your city's treasure … and I have grown fat.”

 

TWELVE

Chusor stood on the deck at the stern of the
Spear
, pissing with the wind, sending a stream of urine soaring off the aft in a great arc that reached all the way to the water fifteen feet below. The two captured cargo ships, their sails unfurled in the strong breeze, followed in the
Spear
's wake. He felt a sudden urge to dive into the sea and just swim until he either drowned or was washed up on the shore of some little island. He felt like Odysseus taken captive by Kalypso—only instead of being a prisoner on a witch's island, he was trapped on this stinking ship, screwing in that stuffy little cabin night and day. The thought made him queasy again.

His life in Plataea had been so much more fulfilling. There he had made things rather than destroyed, and he had gained the respect of his friends because of his skills rather than his deviousness. Menesarkus had assigned him to be the master of walls as a reward for his services during the sneak attack on the citadel, and had even offered to grant him citizenship if he stayed in Plataea and helped devise ways to repel a Spartan siege. Chusor had been born a slave in Athens, and the notion of citizenship had held the lure of a siren's song. But he had betrayed the people of Plataea, and his friend Nikias, by stealing the treasure from beneath their city, and had bolted from danger, abandoning his friends and giving up forever the opportunity to become a citizen of a city-state.