Long War 04 - The Great King Read online

  ‘Just don’t involve me in any of the shit you call politics. And don’t put me in the same sword-space as Cleitus.’ I delivered the sentence like a sword-blow. I meant it.

  ‘If you understood what’s at stake, you’d stand with us!’ he insisted.

  ‘Maybe he’d stand with us, instead,’ Themistocles said. He was standing about ten feet away, and he had one of my horn wine cups in his hand. ‘Considering that he’s a friend to the thetis and he’s been a slave. And he’s no friend to the Persians and the Medes.’

  Cimon glared. ‘You can’t pretend in a year of your fancy rhetoric that anyone in my family is a friend to the Medes,’ he said.

  Themistocles didn’t give a dactyl. ‘You come from a line of heroes back to Ajax,’ he said. ‘Your party serves the Great King and takes his bribes.’

  ‘You lie,’ Cimon said. ‘And no amount of lying will change the reality – Athens cannot stand alone against the might of the Great King.’

  I made a sign to my hypaspist. He understood at once, and slipped away.

  ‘We can if we have allies,’ Themistocles said.

  ‘Allies like Aegina and Corinth? Our mortal foes?’ Cimon asked.

  ‘They are Greeks, like us. Cimon, you have fought the Medes all your adult life. Now you propose to make an “arrangement” with them.’ Themistocles had a superb speaking voice – he sounded like the soul of reason. Cimon, by contrast, sounded arrogant.

  ‘The Great King lives in Persopolis, half the world away, and he need never trouble me in my bed. You intend to overthrow the entire world so that you can have a fleet big enough to rival the Great King, and in the end, you will make Athens the centre of a maritime empire, where the rowers are the equals of the hoplites, and the hoplites are nothing but marines. A tyranny of the lowest orders, simply to row your fleet.’ He all but spat the words.

  Men locked in argument often ignore the world around them. In this case, Cimon was speaking, not just to Themistocles, or me, but to an audience mostly composed of my oarsmen, who were serving as tavern workers.

  They began to grumble.

  Hector returned with a fine Lesbian amphora charged with wine.

  I stepped forward. ‘Gentlemen,’ I said, ‘I am the host here, and I declare that both of you need another cup of wine.’

  It says something about – well, about men – that I could agree with almost every word Themistocles said, and still find him a greasy politician; I could, as a non-aristocrat, feel insulted by almost every word that Cimon uttered, and still find him the better man. But if life were simple, we wouldn’t spend so much time arguing, would we?

  My hypaspist filled their cups, and Themistocles bowed. ‘Arimnestos, you are the prince of hosts. I hope you will agree to come and sit at our council fire while we discuss the Great King’s demands.’

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘Who have you invited from Thebes?’ I asked.

  He shrugged. ‘One of their chief priests, and a dozen of their best men.’ He looked at Cimon. ‘At the Olympic games, one is seldom able to find any members of the thetis class on whom we all depend; but there is always a reliable number of conservative aristocrats.’

  ‘As it should be,’ Cimon said. ‘The best is for the best men.’

  ‘Really?’ Themistocles asked. ‘Wouldn’t you like excellence to be for every man? Isn’t that what Cleisthenes wanted?’

  ‘Cleisthenes sought to allow the best men of the middle sort to be counted with the sons of the gods,’ Cimon said carefully, but he was thinking through his words, and I think that shot from Themistocles went home.

  ‘Don’t you think that excellence breeds excellence? And that watching the best men in the Greek world compete could only make better men of every man?’ Themistocles said. He said something like that. I’ve lost the elegance of his words, but I agreed.

  And I said so.

  ‘Cimon – you can’t condemn men based on their birth. I ask you – look at our helmsmen. Birth does not make you a good helmsman. Only time and training and years at sea make you capable of commanding between the oars – eh?’ I smiled.

  He shook his head. ‘Arimnestos – allegories always go the same way. The leadership of a city is not like the piloting of a ship. But even if it was – are you as good at piloting as Harpagos? Or that Alban of yours with the milk-white skin? They were born to the sea.’

  I scratched my beard. ‘You have the better of me there,’ I admitted. ‘But even though I was not – I can make a competent effort at taking my ship across the sea, or so men say.’

  ‘You are merely an aristocrat pretending to be a bronzesmith,’ Cimon said.

  Themistocles frowned with real anger, I think. ‘You bastards say that of every man who defies your narrow ideas of excellence. You just promote him in your minds to being one of you.’

  The sun was setting. Cimon’s face was red, but I thought it might just be the setting sun. Still, I didn’t think that the two of them were headed in a useful direction. I waved for their cups to be refilled. The line into my canvas taverna now ran all the way to the temple precinct wall.

  ‘I had Artapherenes aboard my ship a week ago,’ I said.

  That got their attention.

  Themistocles glared at me. ‘The Satrap of Phrygia?’ he asked.

  I nodded. ‘The same. The storm wrecked his ship, and panicked the oarsmen.’

  Cimon grinned. ‘You took the Satrap of Phrygia?’ he asked.

  I shook my head. ‘No – we’re guest friends.’

  Cimon nodded. ‘Of course – I knew that. My father has spoken of it – and he is married to your – ahem – friend. Briseis of Ephesus.’ He coughed.

  Themistocles sputtered. ‘Poseidon’s rage! Are you all friends of the Medes? You – the famous warrior, the hero of Marathon?’

  I laughed – Themistocles was easy to dislike. Cimon, like a gentleman, immediately appreciated that guest friendship overran any thoughts of ransom. Themistocles couldn’t see beyond the advantage it would have brought to have Artapherenes.

  I shrugged. ‘You know I was a slave in Ephesus. Yes? Arta-pherenes . . .’ I smiled ‘. . . was instrumental in my freedom,’ I said carefully. No lie there – just a carefully nuanced truth. I shrugged. ‘Later, he saved my life. And the life of many people close to me.’

  Themistocles shook his head. ‘You have fought the Medes on many fields,’ he said.

  I smiled. ‘And I count many of them among my friends, Themistocles. Almost as many as I have friends in Athens. Of the two, I feel the Persians are the more honest.’

  ‘So despite all your fine words, you will support the aristocrats,’ he said.

  I looked at both of them. Talking about politics to Athenians is exactly like managing the helm of a trireme in heavy seas. ‘No,’ I said, right at him. ‘I don’t think that I will. But neither am I interested in a war for the emerging empire of Athens, Themistocles. This much I’ll tell you both. The Great King is determined on war. He is building his fleets and his armies and his targets are Athens and Sparta.’

  Cimon shook his head vehemently. ‘No! If we send him tokens of submission – if we offer a small tribute—’

  I had to take a step back to get his attention. ‘No, Cimon. Don’t delude yourself. The Great King is coming. It will not be next year – but it will be soon. Two years at the earliest, is what my friends say. Do you know that he’s building a canal through the isthmus of Athos? Do you know that he’s raising a fleet from the Ionian cities? Do you know that he has promised two great satrapies in Europe? And one of those to Mardonias, or that’s what I heard.’ I shook my head. ‘Cimon – you know what it is to decide on a voyage. You know how long it takes to gather your oarsmen, to get enough amphorae to ballast your ship in clay and fresh water, to lay in the sand, to gather salt pork, to find the right braziers and replace the broken oars—’

  He held up a hand to indicate that he did, and my rhetorical device could be brought to an end.

  ‘Think about a
fleet of a thousand galleys and a quarter of a million oarsmen and marines. Think of an army of half a million soldiers. How long would it take to gather the supplies and scout the roads? And once you have started – once you have spent the money and told your friends you are going . . .’ I paused and took a breath. ‘Do you imagine that he’ll just stop because you offer a tribute?’

  Cimon took a breath. ‘And you spoke to him in person?’ he said.

  I nodded.

  ‘And Briseis, of course,’ he said, admitting to himself that I knew what I was saying.

  ‘She said so, too. She would know.’ I shrugged.

  Themistocles looked at me suspiciously. ‘You can’t have convinced the eupatridae in one sentence,’ he said. ‘You are mocking me.’

  Cimon was frowning. ‘Themistocles – do you think it is possible for honest men to disagree?’

  Themistocles thought for a long time, looking for a trap. ‘Yes,’ he admitted.

  ‘I’m not pleased by what the Plataean has to say – but I have to believe it. I do not love your . . . your democracy, Themistocles. But if Athens must fight for her life . . .’ He shrugged. ‘If there is no hope of reconciliation with Persia . . .’

  ‘Your father helped create this war,’ Themistocles said.

  Cimon nodded. ‘That’s true. And because I know it to be true, I know it can be mended.’

  Themistocles looked at me. ‘What side will you choose, Plataean?’ he asked.

  I confess that I laughed. ‘I’ll be on the Plataean side, of course,’ I said.

  Themistocles stalked off soon after. Even though I could see that Cimon’s mind was changing, Themistocles was such a domineering bastard that he wanted Cimon’s absolute agreement – his slavish obedience.

  In my observation, demagogues are the harshest tyrants. And you’ll see how this comes out, if you stick with me.

  I never liked Themistocles. He was too keen on his own power, and he made it a little too obvious to the rest of us that he was smarter than we and felt that we should leave him in peace to decide our futures – for our own good. I really, truly believe that’s what he thought, in his heart.

  Now, let me confess something to you, my daughter. He was smarter than almost anyone. He alone saw all the ramifications of building a mighty fleet for Athens, and he remained true to them. Other men made compromises – Themistocles was above such stuff. But in the world of mortals, there are no absolute answers, and so, when Themistocles became the saviour of all Greece, he had already planted the seeds of treason.

  Hah! Aeschylus might yet write a play. It has all the great themes, does it not?

  It is one of the little tricks of the gods that, as soon as a man takes part in some great moment, discussing the affairs of all Greece or considering ethics or philosophy, in the next moment he either has to deal with an angry child, an intestinal ailment, or a bureaucracy. Or perhaps all three at the same time. Just when you feel your most godlike, someone will come along to remind you that you really live in a Cratinus play, not an Aeschylus.

  The evening began well, with Paramanos and Harpagos and Moire and some of my other friends and former associates in piracy joining us for wine. It had only been a few weeks since we had raided Illyria, and we were all rich and full of ourselves – which, I can tell you, makes for a fine symposium. We had couches of straw laid out, and the slaves and my oarsmen built us a fine fire of wood they collected high on the slopes – I remember Leukas complaining about how far the men had to go to get wood. Truly, with twenty thousand people on the plain, wood was hard to find.

  And the place stank – have I mentioned that? Humans are not the cleanest of animals. I had Megakles pace off our camp and we dug latrines. Most other people didn’t. If you catch my drift.

  At any rate, I was just reclining on my elbow, with Hector pouring me some wine mixed three to one with water, while Harpagos was telling of our heroism at Lades. There must have been fifty men at our fire, and a few women – drawn not so much by my famous name as by the promise of free wine.

  Out of the sunset came Polymarchos, like the proverbial ghost at the wedding.

  He crouched by my pallet like a slave waiting on his patron. I could tell it annoyed him to be so subservient, and thus I could tell he needed something.

  Power has many difficult aspects.

  ‘Relax,’ I said. ‘What’s the trouble?’

  He shook his head. ‘They’re threatening to disqualify my athlete. You know he’s late?’

  I nodded. Like any Greek, I knew that athletes had to be present thirty days before their event, to train – very hard. In effect, to prove that they had the right to compete. Young Astylos was only four days early. I shrugged. ‘He was shipwrecked,’ I mentioned.

  Polymarchos hung his head. ‘Would you consider . . . speaking to the judges?’ he asked.

  I misunderstood. ‘I can speak about the storm, surely.’

  He met my eye. ‘I suspect they’ve been bribed.’ He looked around. ‘There’re other men here who came late, and there have been many men admitted late over the years.’

  Cimon, at my elbow, leaned in. ‘Bribed is such a strong word,’ he said with a smile. ‘You mean that someone has an interest – perhaps a political interest – in strict enforcement.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘What events are we discussing?’

  Polymarchos looked annoyed to be interrupted, but he shrugged it off. ‘Stadion and diaulos,’ he said.

  Cimon nodded. ‘Athenians in both events,’ he said.

  Let me tell you how the world works.

  In that one line, Cimon was saying that he – he, one of the most powerful men in Athens – had an interest in the two running events. It was all in the twist of his mouth, the light of his eye. But it was there.

  As was – by implication – the question. Is this important to my friend Arimnestos?

  I had become one of them. I understood the nuance of power. I was being asked – politely, one aristocratic pirate to another – if I was prepared to expend my prestige and patronage on Polymarchos and his runner.

  No, pause and think. You must understand this, or you will never understand what happened in the years of the Long War, as we fought the Medes. Hellenes compete about everything. Small men will race turtles, and great, rich men and women race chariots, and those of us in between will compete with whatever comes to hand. So here was Cimon – a friend of my youth, a man I trusted absolutely – stating that he was not going to help me to help Polymarchos – unless I made it worth his while. And nothing bald had been said.

  Greeks are not natural allies. That’s all I’m trying to say. Business and political competitors; always looking for advantage. In business, in politics, on the seas or in the stadium.

  I met his eye. ‘I’d like to see this young man entered,’ I said.

  Cimon smiled. He didn’t say anything as wild as ‘what would that be worth to you?’ but I was suddenly reminded of Anarchos. There were similarities.

  He rolled to his feet with the agility of a trained man. ‘Let’s go and see the judges, then,’ he said. ‘I came through the storm, too. Perhaps they’ll want my testimony.’ He flashed me a toothy smile, and I knew I owed him a favour. He was going to help me put ‘my’ runner in the race, despite the fact that Athens had a competitor in that race.

  But I owed Polymarchos. It is hard to say exactly why, or how. Part of my general debt to the gods for my mistreatment of Lydia, I think.

  I had a name, then, but not nearly the name I have now. The same was true of Cimon. Yet, despite the fact that we were not yet truly famous men, it took us almost an hour to cross the camp to the temple. Night was falling – fires were lit across the plain. The smell of burning wood and the smell of dung – human and animal – and the smell of cooking onions and meat and the sweat of twenty thousand mostly unwashed and unoiled humans rose to the gods. Small clay oil lamps lit the camp, and sparkled in the falling twilight like a thousand tiny stars. It was a glorious night, except for
the smell.

  Polymarchos was impatient – he clearly thought that the judges would pack it in for the night. And he might have been right, except that I sent Hector running across the camp as my herald. So we walked, and men accosted us and offered us wine and praise, and asked us pointless questions so that we would speak to them, or asked us to make judgements on things about which we knew almost nothing. Such is the life of fame.

  Eventually we made it to the temple, with Polymarchos all but bouncing up and down as we approached the broad steps. But the judges were still seated at their five tables, all lit by handsome bronze and silver lamps, and as we approached, most of the judges rose and bowed.

  We were interrupting something official, that much I could tell. There was a man – a very handsome older man with the long, oiled hair of a Spartan aristocrat, and a woman – I assumed his wife, not beautiful, yet somehow magnificent, with arm muscles like an oarsman’s and hair, thick and black as the falling night, piled like a tower on her head. She had the oddest eyes – one very slightly higher than the other, and both very slightly slanted, as you see in some people from the Sakje and the Aethiops.

  I am not doing either one of them justice. He was dressed in nothing but a simple scarlet cloak pinned with gold, and she wore a fortune in jewellery – but for both of them their principal adornment was their sheer fitness. They looked like gods.

  They looked angry. Deeply angry.

  So did the judges. Who also, let me add, looked afraid.

  Cimon nodded pleasantly to the Spartan couple, and the man – he was over fifty, and he had the kind of dignity that I’ve only seen a dozen times in my life – returned a small, but very genuine nod. He said, ‘Under any other circumstance I would be delighted to speak to you, Cimon.’ Of course, he didn’t do anything but nod, but that’s what he meant.

  There were two more Spartiates – Spartan aristocrats – standing behind them, a middle-aged man in top shape and a much older man who had the beard of a philosopher and the body of an athlete. When the Spartan woman turned away from the judges with a look that might have turned almost anyone to stone, the other two followed her mutely. They wore their resentment more openly.