Salamis by Christian Cameron Read Free Book Online

riding. I sent Ka and his archers and they found mules and a pair of horses to carry our messengers. I didn’t ask Ka too many questions about where the horses had come from.
    ‘Let’s take the ships around to Athens,’ I said to the men on the beach. ‘They need them for their evacuation. And we can go as swiftly over the mountains from Eleusis as across Boeotia from here.’
    Myron nodded. ‘There might already be Persian troops loose in Boeotia,’ he said. ‘Their cavalry—’
    Hermogenes nodded. ‘And the Thebans have already Medised,’ he said, as everyone spat. ‘They’re between us and home, here.’
    Styges glared. ‘Traitors,’ he said.
    We chose a dozen steady men – well, Idomeneus was one, and no one ever called him steady, but they needed a killer to get them through if the going got rough. Ka stole more horses – let’s call it what it was – and the messengers rode off with careful instructions and Timaeus to see they were obeyed.
    The rest of us woke before dawn and rowed. We were in advance of most of the rest of the fleet, because we were rowing to save our goods and families. We passed the headland at Brauron south of Marathon under sail and I could see the temple and the old bridge and I was delighted to see that there was no one moving – no girls dancing in the courtyard, no children playing at goats on the old hill above the cave of the goddess. We had a beautiful wind and we ran towards Sounion on an empty coast, but towards afternoon, as we prepared to weather Poseidon’s promontory, we saw the flash of oars behind us. We knew Cimon’s squadron had stayed to watch the Persians and we guessed the Athenian’s public ships were moving in a body under Xanthippus, rowing as hard for home as they could.
    I feel I should explain that, in the years before Artemisium, the Athenians had invested the whole output of their silver mines in building a fleet of more than a hundred well-built triremes. Five of them were being crewed by Plataeans, and had Plataean officers and marines. It seemed to me awkward – at best – to leave these five ships on the beaches of Boeotia while we ran home to save our furniture and I said so.
    We were not, as it proved, the first ships of the Allied Fleet to reach the beaches at Phaleron. But we rowed past, despite the late hour, and swept into the narrow channel between the Island of Salamis and the mainland as the sun dropped into the sea beyond Megara to the west.
    The Bay of Salamis was covered in ships. Fishing boats, merchant ships of every size, rowing boats, military pentekonters and even older triakonters of thirty-oared ships were going back and forth, turning the sea to froth by the beating of their oars, or so the poets liked to say.
    I landed my ships on one of the north-facing beaches on the island of Salamis, and after borrowing a horse and making some hasty arrangements, we gathered the men together – all the Plataeans in one great council. It was, to all intents and purposes, a meeting of the City of Plataea.
    Why Salamis? Because that’s where most of the Athenians were. Like I said, I didn’t want to leave their precious ships to rot on the beach or be captured. I handed the five public ships over to a member of the Athenian boule and he was already finding rowers for them while Myron negotiated our passage across to Attica – easy enough, as the Athenians’ shipping was mostly empty going that way. We arranged for all our men to go to Eleusis.
    Then I spent time putting my professional crews back together. I had men who were Plataean citizens, but my oarsmen, in several ships; we’d sent them out through the fleet to train other rowers. My Lydia had kept her crack crew, and now I left her under Seckla with a skeleton crew and no marines, but with Ka and all his archers and Leukas as his helmsman. Paramanos was dead but we’d retaken Black Raven and I gave her to Giannis with Megakles as his helmsman. In fact, Black Raven was not my