The Warrior, page 25
part #3 of Orestes Series
“Bring them out.”
Phemios let down the ladder he found in an adjacent room, then coaxed the women to climb out. “The king wants to look at you, ladies. Come on up, there’s nothing to fear.” He and Aglaos assisted each woman as she crawled from that foul-smelling hole.
I would never have kept a captive enemy, much less an animal, in the condition that the harbor master had kept those women. Clad only in rags, those twenty-two females, ranging from prepubescent girls to middle-aged matrons, were half-starved, bruised, and caked with filth, not to mention utterly petrified of the well-meaning men swarming around them to cover their near-nakedness with dusty burlap foraged from other rooms.
I had them brought above where the light and air were better, and directed Phemios to find the harbor master’s servants, to have them to fetch suitable clothing, food, and water. Only when that was done did I remember Rusa. “Tell us, who is this Perimedes?”
As Rusa started to reply, a commotion in the entryway diverted my attention to the blustering, well-dressed old gentleman trying to shove his way in. “What are you ruffians doing,” the nobleman demanded, “pilfering through Master Aranaru’s storehouses?”
“Lord Eubalos,” I said coldly, “we will deal with you as soon as we finish our other business.”
“I demand—”
“You demand nothing from your king and overlord!”
Raising my voice elicited squeals and whimpers of terror from the women huddled on the floor. I claimed a footstool, so as not to tower too threateningly above them, and gestured to the nearest, crooking my finger at her. “Come here, young lady.” She might even be a pretty creature, under the grime. What price did that fat miser Aranaru think he could obtain for such wretches? “Do not be afraid. We only wish to question you. Tell us, how did you come to this sorry state?”
The fearful look she cast in Eubalos’s direction spoke more eloquently than a thousand words. Her name, she said haltingly, was Oia, and she and the other women came from a fishing village on Seriphos. Pirates had slain their men, plundered and burned their homes, and taken them captive. There was nothing dishonorable about seizing women on a raid, as they made valuable and industrious workers, or even in raping them, as that was a captor’s right. They might even be sold for a profit. But no honor accrued to the man or men who mistreated their captives as the harbor master of Minoa-in-Argolis had done.
I wanted to order Aranaru thrown down into the hole in which the women had been held—and to toss his lord in with him, for it was clear that Eubalos knew that his harbor master transacted business with pirates, and even claimed a percentage.
Another hour passed before I felt sufficiently ready to deal with him. He had stood waiting anxiously while the women were tended to, and the men, under Rusa’s direction, vacated plunder secreted all over the storehouse to bring for my inspection. “Tell us, to what extent do you and your citizens do business with pirates?”
Spittle moistened the old man’s lips as he sputtered, “We are honest fishing and trading folk.”
“Spare us your lies,” I said hotly. “Look at these vessels, and quantities of cloth, and trinkets. A rather odd cache for a clerk who deals in olive oil and salted fish, isn’t it?”
“We knew nothing about—”
“You certainly rushed down here quickly enough when you heard Aranaru’s storehouse was subject to our inspection, didn’t you? Do you always take such an immediate, personal interest in your harbor master’s affairs, or was there perhaps something you did not wish us to find?”
Eubalos nonetheless clung to his fiction. “We thought you might be raiders, pilfering goods.”
“Then where were your weapons, and the men you should have led to drive us away?” I countered. “The official who raised the alarm knew we were the king of Mycenae, because we announced ourselves when we came ashore, and thus, you knew also.”
As I spoke, servants bearing food and clean clothing led the women from the room; there was no need for them to be present during this debate. Eubalos did not answer that charge; the look on his face said it was beneath his dignity to deny such a ridiculous accusation.
“We noticed,” I continued, “that your town possesses no fleets, no garrison, and no fortifications. It’s a wonder you haven’t been raided.”
Eubalos fell back on an old man’s quiet dignity, again offering no reply. So I stood up, let him gaze upon me in my towering splendor, while I regarded him like the insect he was. “We must leave you for a short time. The contents of this storehouse, including the women, are now our property. While we are gone, you will see to it that our possessions are well cared for, or upon our return we will exact a form of compensation that you will not like. And to make certain that our commands are carried out, we will take with us your eldest son, who will—”
“Surrender my heir, for the sake of a few menial women?” Eubalos’s face flushed scarlet. “We will do—”
Within the space it took him to spit out those last syllables, I had him pinned against the wall with a dagger to his throat. “You will do as you are told, or we will remove you and your family, and set in your place someone who will obey.” A meaningful prick drew blood from the skin above his throbbing artery. “You have consorted with and abetted brigands against our vassals. You have disrupted our trade routes through the Aegean. Obey our orders, and your son will be returned unharmed, but defy us, and you will watch him die in the most agonizing manner possible. Is that understood?”
That night, I left fifty men to guard Aranaru’s ill-gotten goods and family, who had been released, and keep strict watch over the lord and his family. Phaestus, Eubalos’s eldest son, bore his burden bravely, even answering questions that his father had refused to acknowledge. I liked his breeding, but that would not stop me from cutting his throat should circumstances demand his execution. “What can you tell me about a brigand called Perimedes?” I asked.
Perimedes had been a Minoan fisherman until the war, when he joined a ship’s crew and fought with the Argive contingent. After the war, he and his companions had quickly squandered their meager spoils, stirred trouble with their quarrelsome ways, and, finding themselves unable to return to the placid fishermen’s life they had once known, they turned to piracy. “They have a place on Hydra,” Phaestus said. “Aranaru might have been there to deliver or acquire goods, because Perimedes never comes here, but that’s all I know.”
“And your father?”
He shook his head. “Father deals with Aranaru because all lords consult with their clerks over the tallies, but those times when he took me, I never heard them talk about anything other than olive oil or salted fish, or witnessed anything out of the ordinary.”
Perhaps I could have put the young man to the question and wrung more information from him, but during our interview I sensed he had revealed all he knew. And leaving him be afforded me a semi-legitimate excuse to knock the harbor master about.
As the sailors on the beach watched and jeered, I terrorized the man: shoving, backhanding, and pinching him while spewing the most vile obscenities and threats to heighten his terror, before sending him sprawling bruised and blubbering into the wet sand. Aranaru gasped like a landed fish, and then promptly vomited into the surging foam. He struggled to his knees, and tried to dash out into the waves, his bonds notwithstanding, simply to get away from me, but Thestalos and Phemios tramped into the surf after him, seized his meaty arms, dragged him back, dumping him unceremoniously at my feet.
Despite the fact that his terror left him somewhat incoherent, Aranaru proved most forthcoming. He named a site on Hydra where Perimedes had established a settlement, and revealed that Perimedes had two swift triaconters and eighty men under his command. There were also women among the group, most captives whom the men had since taken as wives and menials, and the children born to them.
Nephos observed the interrogation, and afterward privately offered additional details. “Perimedes chose his hideout well. There’s only one way in and out of that cove, and a clever fellow like him will have lookouts posted. That is, if he’s home. In fine sailing weather like this, he’s just as likely to be at sea.”
I glanced back at the bonfire, around which the sailors were drinking their sour wine and trading stories. “Then let us hope our appeals to Poseidon and Hermes will keep him ashore.”
At dawn, we sacrificed five goats to the gods, and set out again with three pentekonters and our thirteen hostages; Aranaru and Phaestus both traveled with me aboard Sea Nymph, and could not have been more opposite in their temperaments. Aranaru constantly groaned. He wanted food, water, ointment, shelter from the sun—a never-ending catalogue of demands and complaints which abraded my patience until at last I strode over to him and roughly hauled him to his feet.
“You could stand to miss a few meals.” I struck him hard across the face. He flinched and whimpered, and might have pissed himself again, for all I knew; he already stank of vomit, shit, and urine. “At least you have sunlight and fresh air, and we won’t let the sailors bugger you, which is far better treatment than you allotted the women you held captive.”
“Slaves,” Aranaru wheezed between swollen, cracked lips.
I struck him again. “An honorable man takes captives openly, and treats them with care, but you have no honor. You conspired with and abetted those brigands who attacked our vassals, and fleeced your pockets at our expense. Right now, you’re fortunate you’re still breathing, but continue to complain and make yourself as disagreeable as you’ve already done, and we might change our mind about letting you live.”
Although I allowed him water so he should not perish, I forbade him food and shelter, and compelled him to evacuate his bladder and bowels right there on the deck, weeping, with his bare ass hanging over the rail.
Phaestus, on the other hand, received the courtesies due his station as a young nobleman. I shared with him good wine from my stores, and roast meat from the sacrificial carcasses, with fresh bread and fruit from the town. He had no appetite, though, except for contemplating the dwindling horizon. Like a condemned man, I reflected, who stood with one foot in the mortal world, and the other already on the opposite shore of the Styx.
“To be a hostage,” I told him, “is an honorable thing.”
Still staring into the distance, he commented, “You are much bigger than I thought you would be.”
“The Atreidai are giants among men.”
A pause. “If you must kill me,” he said quietly, “all I ask is that you do it swiftly.” Phaestus’s cheeks were fuzzed with his first beard, and he was tall and broad-shouldered, but his jaw was quivering, and his voice was a fearful tremor. I knew what he was thinking. Fifteen was far too young to die.
“Do you not trust your father to keep his word?” I asked.
Phaestus maintained his silence, breaking it only as I turned to leave. “We Minoans do not consider ourselves true Argives, King Orestes. Our customs are different, older.”
Securing the loyalty and obedience of Minoa-in-Argolis could wait until after I had dealt with Perimedes. We did not have far to travel. Hydra lay across a narrow channel from the mainland, and Artemis was with us, filling the sails with her divine breath. It was a cool morning, already promising to grow hot. Fighting weather. I donned a leather corselet and a boar’s tusk helmet topped with an imposing scarlet horsehair crest. The sailors fastened their greaves and stowed their arms under their rowing benches. Nephos looked like a stranger in his bronze helm, which, he said, he had not worn in ten years.
I doubted we would surprise Perimedes, as my years flushing out Phocian brigands had taught me to never underestimate the intelligence or resourcefulness of one’s enemy. Nephos suggested hitting the cove fast and hard, and landing before Perimedes could get his triaconters into the water; it was the shrewdest move I could make, though it also carried considerable risks.
“An amphibious landing is much harder to manage than it appears,” he explained. “When we landed at Troy, we lost ten men for every inch of beach we captured.” He gazed out over the bow, and nodded. “It won’t be long now. Watch the heights. Perimedes will use smoke signals.”
As we rounded a rocky headland, Nephos called an order to the steersman, who shouted down to the oarsmen, and doubled the rowing speed. More shouts sped across the water, orders passing from ship to ship. I tightened my grip on my javelin, while focusing on the dark cliffs, watching for some sign. Perimedes could be elsewhere, plundering Argive merchant vessels, raiding more Cycladic settlements, and all this would be for nothing. When the king ventured forth to dispense justice, then, by the gods, he set an example! I did not relish going home empty-handed, and as the butt of jokes simply because my opponent happened to be making mischief elsewhere when I sought him out.
“There!” Iobates shouted.
A thin line of smoke curled up from the distant cliffs, and then, ten heartbeats later, it was joined by an even thinner, more distant signal. Thank the gods! Now it was a race to trap Perimedes inside the cove, and reach the shore before he could muster his men to counter our offense.
As we veered to port, we came up against the wind; a pair of sailors scurried to tack the sail. I could see the cove two hundred yards ahead: a narrow crescent of sand and blue water bounded by sheer cliffs. Men raced down the beach toward the nearest of two triaconters, but they clearly did not have enough time to shove the keel into the surf and board. Nephos had not given the order to ship the oars, which meant we were coming in too hard and fast, and Teledamas, from the looks of it, was going to ram Amphitrite’s bow straight into that triaconter.
We were gaining. A hundred yards, eighty... I saw more men running out from the huts on higher ground with spears and bows, and then my companions were hustling me toward the stern for protection against the coming barrage, and to brace for impact Phaestus was already there, crouching under a shield the steersman had thrust at him. Everyone forgot about Aranaru, and he, cognizant of his surroundings, and knowing he was a target, sobbed and pleaded for help.
“Now!” Nephos shouted.
I heard the oars lift from the water and lock, then the stampede on deck as sailors-turned-fighter scrambled for their weapons. There was another, more urgent shout, a whistle over the bow, and the thud of an arrow striking the deck. More missiles raced through the air; dozens of shafts spiked the planks. Screams from the injured. Had anyone been killed? Someone had taken pity on Aranaru at the last moment, and dragged him under a wooden shelter. I raised my shield ahead of the next incoming barrage, and felt the shock of the arrows striking the layers of stout ox-hide.
Then the hull shuddered under us as Sea Nymph’s momentum carried us onto the beach; the inertia propelling the vessel forward almost sent me sprawling facedown on the deck, and onto my own arrow-riddled shield. Gravel crunched under the weight of the sliding keel.
A second, louder crash to port drew my attention to Amphitrite slamming bow-first into the triaconter with a force that splintered the smaller vessel’s timbers, and almost capsized the pentekonter. Oars snapped and spun into the air. Men from both ships spilled flailing into the water.
Teledamas was a reckless fool; his gambit had stopped the triaconter from launching, but might have cost me a ship. There was no time to assess the damage, however, or reprimand him. The shock of the collision afforded us an opportunity to storm the beach that we could not squander. I ordered the steersman and his mate to remain behind with our hostages, then scrambled from the stern and, with my companions a hair’s breadth behind, rushed toward the bow, weaving past injured men; there did not seem to be as many as I feared.
Just as I reached the rail to leap into the surf, I saw a man with tangled hair rushing forward, shouting, holding aloft a resinous torch spitting flame. Nephos shouted an order from somewhere behind me. I heard the twang of bowstrings, even as I took aim at the would-be arsonist. A heartbeat later, he crumpled onto the wet sand still clutching the torch, pierced by so many arrows and javelins that it was hard to judge whether mine had struck true.
Ares pulsed through my veins. High time to bloody my hands with sword and axe, and my bare hands, if need be. I did not stop to check whether my companions followed, or how far it was from the deck to the shallows below, but, drawing my axe, and slinging my shield over my back, I clambered without hesitation over the side and leapt into the surf.
I slogged through the water, pushing forward against the weight of my saturated tunic, shield, and corselet. All around me, sailors and companions splashed into the water, even the surviving pirates waded out to stop us. There was no order to the ensuing chaos; it was a free-for-all slaughter. To the left, Teledamas’s men were surging ashore, swarming the ruined triaconter to finish the stunned, wounded raiders struggling among wrecked oars, while Nephos’s men fought with a different goal in mind: to hack their way toward the huts perched on the high ground, and rape the women.
This close-quarter combat was brutal work. I laid about me with the axe, slaughtering anyone I did not recognize, and anyone stupid enough to challenge me. Sharp bronze gashed open flesh and splintered bones, until the axe’s edge dulled, forcing me to draw my sword to continue killing. Blood sprayed everywhere. It spattered into my eyes and mouth. It made my hands slippery. It stained the white foam churning around my ankles pink, and soaked into the sand.
I cleaved into a man’s collarbone where it met the tendons of his neck, releasing great gouts of blood, and nearly decapitating him. He collapsed to the sand, and then, suddenly, there were no more men to kill. Only mangled bodies and limbs floating in the water among buoyant gobbets of gore, or sprawled across the beach where the wounded had crawled seeking escape, or simply a place to die. Panting, I listened to their agonized groans, which mingled with and were almost lost amid the cries of the women being assaulted in the huts.
I was drenched with sweat and blood, little of which was my own, and I itched where sand had gotten into my sodden clothes. My steadfast companions, who had remained by my side throughout the fighting, milled around prodding corpses, and dispatching dying survivors.
