Salamis by Christian Cameron Read Free Book Online Page A

property and eventually a probate court in Athens or Salamis would see to it that someone bought her and Paramanos’s daughters were paid, but that was all in some hazy future where the rule of law applied. In the immediate future, Athens needed every ship. Paramanos had a mostly Athenian crew, including Thracians, Cilicians, and men of Cyrenaica, his port of origin so to speak, but they had taken terrible casualties fighting three Egyptians at Artemisium and we had to refill the benches. Aristides was going to Corinth with his wife, but his helmsman Demetrios had his own long Athena Nike well in hand, and he’d made captures at Artemisium and seemed content. Amastis, our rebuilt Corinthian trireme that has been the source of so much trouble, had come through both battles untouched and her crew was professional and under Moire, who needed no help from me. But Moire, like many of his men, had taken up their Plataean citizenship and had homes or families in Plataea. For some oarsmen it was an empty honour and their families were already on Salamis, but others, and especially my old crews in Lydia and Storm Cutter , crewed by Chian exiles and other men who’d settled at Plataea, had deeper roots – and they were needed. Many of them wanted to go back to Plataea, even for a few hours, to see to their families.
    Moire had adjusted to ‘being Greek’ better than many of my other foreign (or barbarian) friends. His name was an allegory for his acceptance. In his own tongue, Moire (or something that sounded that way) meant ‘a jet black horse’ or so he told us, but in Greek, Moira is the Goddess of Fate and Fortune and many newly enfranchised ex-slaves chose to call themselves ‘Moiregeneus’ or ‘Born of Good Fortune’. Moire never changed his name. And that, I think, represents the man. He sacrificed to our gods, especially to Poseidon, Lord of Horses. But he always had his own gods, small images he carried with him at sea. It was his particular skill, or tact, that he seemed to like being Greek, but never ‘needed’ us particularly. In Athens or in Syracusa you could find him squatted down on his heels with a dozen other men of his kind, jabbering in their barbarous tongue and then he’d stand up, pull his himation around himself, and walk off for wine with another kubernetes or helmsman.
    As usual, I digress. Harpagos offered to stay with the ships and he was the best kubernetes or trierarchof the lot. I left him in command with good officers and loafing warriors like Sittonax the Gaul and orders to keep the men who stayed busy every day, either training to fight or training to row. He had about three full crews when the rest of us headed for Plataea and I had almost four hundred men.
    Brasidas shook his head. ‘I’ll stay and train the marines,’ he said. He meant the ten best oarsmen he’d chosen to replace all the men who’d died on Black Raven. I pitied them. But I also knew I’d sleep better knowing that he and Seckla would run a tight camp with sentries and watchtowers – and that Brasidas, although it hurts me to say it, could command a respect from the Athenian oligarchs that Seckla would not. I was to regret not taking him, but that’s the way decisions go.
    That night on the beach we burned Paramanos. We’d saved his body, or rather, Harpagos and Cimon had, in hard fighting, and we put him on a funeral pyre as his people’s traditions’ demanded, sang the paean of Apollo and other hymns, and drank too much. He had been first my captive, then my not-very-willing helmsman; then a rival pirate under Miltiades and, only later, my peer and friend. He was the best navigator I ever knew, except perhaps Vasileus. He was a good father to his daughters and a right bastard to his enemies. Here’s to his shade.
    Aristides the Just was in exile. He wasn’t even supposed to be on Salamis, but we all stretched a point. He was eager to get over the mountains to Plataea where his wife awaited, but he wept –