Poseidon's Spear (Long War 3) by Christian Cameron Read Free Book Online

down.
    And Hasdrubal, the trierarch, used him as his scapegoat. Every wrong answer was punished with a blow. His every thought and opinion was ridiculed.
    Another week at sea, and the new slaves began to be broken. Our rations were cut – I can’t even remember why, just the satisfied voice of the oar-master telling us that we deserved
it.
    We rowed.
    Another week.
    But the navigational lessons at my back had begun to keep me alive. They gave my brain something on which to seize. And Hamilcar’s obstinate ignorance became my closest friend, because my
understanding of the Phoenician tongue – bad to start with – became more proficient, and because Hamilcar needed everything repeated two or three times, three days in a row. Bless
him.
    One night, the sea grew rougher and the wind came from all directions, and after a while, rowing grew dangerous. A new slave below me lost the stroke, got his oar-handle in the teeth and died.
His oar went mad, and other men were injured. None of us was very strong, and the sea was against us – and suddenly the bully-boys were afraid, and they showed their fear by beating us with
sticks and spear butts.
    The wind steadied down from the north, but it grew stronger and stronger.
    We got our stern into the wind by more luck than skill, and suddenly, we had to row or die.
    ‘Do you want to die, you scum!’ roared the oar-master. He laughed and laughed. ‘If you die, I die too!’ he shouted. ‘Here’s your chance! Rebel, and we all go
down to Hades together – you as slaves, and me as your master!’
    The trierarch and the two helmsmen had three shouted conferences on the spray-blown deck that convinced me we were close to the coast of Africa – too damned close to be running before a
north wind. But the oarsmen were badly trained and brutalized, and the officers were shit – pardon me, ladies – and the trierarch didn’t have the balls to try anything. So on we
rushed, the oars just touching the water to keep our stern into the wind.
    After some time – it was dark, cold and wet and all I knew was the fire in my arms – one of the Keltoi women stepped over me and jumped over the side. I saw her face in a flash of
lightning – she was Medea come to life. To me, that face is printed for ever on my thoughts the way a man writes on papyrus, or carves in stone. It was set with purpose – hate,
determination, agony and even a tiny element of joy. She was gone before my heart beat again, sucked under by Poseidon. To a kinder place, I hope.
    But something passed from her to me. Her courage, I think.
    Right there, in the storm, I swore an oath to the gods.
    And we rowed.
    We took a lot of water, but we weren’t lucky enough to sink. About a third of our oarsmen drowned or died under their oars, and yet somehow we made it. The bully-boys
threw the corpses over the side, and cut the oars free, too. And on we went.
    The morning dawned blue and gold, and we were alive.
    After that, there was no food and only about eighty whole men to row, and we were on the deep blue. We rowed, and we rowed, and we rowed.
    I should have been dead, or nearly dead. But the Keltoi slave woman had told me something with her eyes – I can hardly put this into words. That resistance was worthy. Perhaps, that I
could always restore my dignity with death. Either way, I was coming to my senses.
    And of course, my brain was engaged, too. I had taken to listening to the men at the steering oars, and now I was interested. Hasdrubal talked about the trade – about how the tin was no
longer coming in from northern Illyria in the old amounts, and how the Greeks were trying to cut into the trade from Alba, and that interested me. He talked about new sources of copper down the
coast of Africa and up the coast of Iberia, outside the Gates of Herakles, and I discovered, from listening to him, that Africa was much bigger than I had imagined.
    I had no cross-staff with which to try calculations, but I used my