The Singer from Memphis Read online

  I could barely discern even a shape, but Kordax stared at this blob for long moments before he said, “That’s a pirate, all right.”

  “How do you know?” I asked. It was mid-morning, and the glare of the sun in our eyes made it impossible to see any detail of the other boat.

  “Because he isn’t moving,” Kordax said. “See how he becomes slowly larger as we approach? He’s just waiting on the standard shipping route between Crete and Egypt. That bastard’s probably from Gortyn, or maybe Chania. Or pretty much any other town in Crete. The whole accursed island is full of pirates.”

  “It’s a big sea. We can go around him,” I said. “Can’t we?”

  Kordax smiled. “He’s expecting that. He has a shorter distance to go to cut us off than we have to travel to bypass. He could easily get his grappling hooks onto us. Also, if we spend too long looping, his friend behind will catch up.”

  “What friend?”

  Kordax jerked his thumb backwards. There, coming up behind us, was another boat. It wasn’t a cargo carrier. It was long, thin, low and fast, like us, with many rowers. From the movement of the oars I could see they were pulling hard.

  “I thought he was just another traveler, like us,” Kordax said. “Now that I see this fellow in front, I realize the boat behind is his friend.” He shook his head ruefully. “It’s the good old-fashioned squeeze, with us in the middle.”

  “What do we do?” I asked. I was worried now.

  “We hold course and we wait.”

  At that moment our pursuer put on a turn of speed.

  By this time the whole crew and Diotima and Herodotus had worked out what was happening. Everyone who wasn’t rowing stood on the deck at the rear, by the steersman, to watch our fate approach.

  The pirate behind us edged closer, until our two boats were running at speed in parallel, the sea splashing up salt spray between us. Now I saw who their commander was. There, on the starboard side, stood Markos.

  Markos waved to us cheerily and called out, “Hello, dear friends! Kalimera, Nicolaos! Hello, Diotima, you’re looking lovely this morning!”

  Diotima made a rude gesture.

  Markos shrugged. He turned to his crew, cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, “Take them!”

  The pirate turned in on us.

  Men appeared on the pirate deck with grappling hooks in hand. Five of them, standing well apart. The pirates swung the hooks on the ends of long ropes. They meant to tie us to them, then board and storm.

  Kordax cursed angrily and grabbed the steering oar; the steersman relinquished control at once. He was a grizzled, sunburned man whose eyes had stared into too many horizons. Yet he was a cheery soul who always had a kind word for Diotima, a ready joke for the crew, and he even handled Herodotus with aplomb. He was deeply competent or Kordax would not have had him. Now this kind man screamed at the deck hands to break out the axes. The steersman grabbed the first to be handed out. I snatched the second, determined to be useful. I stood alongside him with axe in hand, while he shouted and dared the pirates to throw their hooks. He seemed to view being taken by pirates as a professional insult.

  Markos reappeared at the fore with his arrow-shooting machine in hand. Kordax saw it too.

  “The bows! Break out the bows!”

  Those deck hands without axes reached once more into the small hold below deck. They hauled out short bows and quivers of arrows. This was the standard armament of any civilian boat: axes to deal with boarding parties, and bows to fight ship to ship.

  Diotima needed no encouraging. She was an excellent archer and had brought her own weapon with her. It was a custom-built recurve bow in reinforced horn, especially crafted for her by a master bowyer who had tweaked the pull to exactly her strength. Diotima couldn’t shoot as far as a man, but what she aimed at, she hit. If she’d been a man in the army, she would have been a designated marksman.

  The only problem was, Diotima’s bow was at the bottom of the luggage. The crew ignored her screams to bring out her own weapon. They had the ship’s issue weapons and that was good enough for them. One of the crew told her to shut up and keep her head down.

  Diotima cursed in a most unladylike way and dived head first into the hold. All I could see were her legs sticking out as she clawed her way past boxes and chests.

  The pirates threw the grappling hooks.

  Kordax threw the steering oar far to starboard. Dolphin swerved left.

  The pirates had expected Dolphin to run away from the hooks. Instead, Kordax had steered us into the attack. That caused the pirates to completely misjudge their throws. The hooks flew over our deck and landed on the far side. Five ropes hung transverse over Dolphin’s deck.

  Kordax’s maneuver had prevented the grapples from taking hold, but we collided with the enemy. Throughout the voyage, Kordax had winced if a sailor so much as scratched Dolphin. Now his beautiful boat bounced hard against the pirate ship.

  Everyone went down. One of our axemen staggered backwards and went over the starboard side with a scream. There was no stopping to collect him. Two pirates fell, one after the other. They too were left behind.

  The steersman was the first back up. He swung his axe onto one of the ropes. He was a powerful man. The rope parted on the first strike. The axe blade embedded itself in the deck.

  As the steersman struggled to free the blade, Markos brought the arrow machine to his stomach and fired. The heavy bolt took the steersman in the throat and passed through his neck. I was standing beside him and I heard the bones crack. The bolt disappeared into the water on the other side of Dolphin.

  The steersman’s body fell to the deck, almost decapitated but for shreds of flesh. His blood gushed across the deck onto Diotima, who only now was emerging backwards from the hold with bow in hand. I hoped she took the crewman’s advice and kept her head down.

  I took the steersman’s place and hefted my axe in two hands that were suddenly sweaty. Meanwhile, Dolphin’s other axemen cut the remaining four ropes.

  The two boats were flying side-by-side at incredible speed. The gunwales ground against each other in an act of mutual destruction.

  Kordax pulled the steering oar the other way.

  The boats parted company, but not before several pirates made an attempt to cross. They leapt with short swords in their hands.

  I’d never fought with an axe before, but it wasn’t the most subtle weapon. I swung at the pirate coming my way as if he were a tree. The axe caught him in mid-jump, center of the stomach. We stared at each other in shock, my weapon embedded inside him, before he fell back into the growing gap. The blood-soaked axe handle slipped through my hands and went with him. I never even heard the splash.

  Of the other three pirates who’d jumped, two had been dispatched as mine had. The fourth made it onto our deck alive. He stood forward of the mast.

  Diotima didn’t miss. He went down with an arrow to the stomach. He was quickly surrounded by four furious axe-wielding Dolphins. Their axes rose and fell, and that was it.

  The two boats had drifted apart during the fight. If the grappling hooks had held it would have been a different story, but we had defended well. The threat of a pirate boarding was over. Kordax shouted, “Oars!”

  The men stumbled back to the benches. Men were pulling even before everyone was in place. Dolphin accelerated.

  Now that there was a distance between us and with speed on, Kordax slammed the steering oar hard to the right. The experienced crew knew what to do without being told. The starboard side lifted oars. The port side sailors dug in hard. Their biceps bulged and the men cursed mightily under the strain. But they held on.

  Dolphin spun on the spot with an agility that would have done a real dolphin proud. Incredibly, the pirate ship passed behind us. We were pointing the other way.

  “Pull!” Kordax shouted to his crew. “Pull like Lord
Hades is on your tail!”

  The crew needed no encouragement. Dolphin surged.

  “This is where you thank me for making sure the men were well rested,” Kordax said to me and Herodotus. I hadn’t noticed the writer throughout the whole battle. I wondered where he’d been.

  The distance between us and our attackers grew. The only problem was, now the pirates were between us and Egypt, our destination.

  “So that was your friend from the other night?” Kordax asked me.

  “Markos? Yes.”

  “I’ll kill him for what he did to Olas.”

  The steersman’s body had been carried to the side and dropped overboard. I objected, but was told roughly that it’s the only thing to do at sea. If I died this day, that would be my fate too. The thought made me queasy. When my time came, I wanted a decent burial, with the coin beneath my tongue, to pay Charon the Ferryman to take me to Hades.

  I had to force my mind back to the immediate problem.

  “Markos must have followed us from Thera,” I said to Kordax.

  Kordax thought about it. “We were in dock for five days. Yes, that would be just enough time for him to travel to Crete, find pirates and bribe them to go after us.”

  “How could Markos have bribed pirates?” I wondered. “We’re carrying nothing valuable.”

  “What do you think we’re worth in ransom?” Kordax shot back.

  “Oh. I didn’t think of that.”

  The captain nodded. “The crew will be sold as slaves. They’ll take Dolphin from me. You, I, and Herodotus will be ransomed, assuming our families will pay to have us back. Your wife will be raped,” he finished, matter-of-fact.

  “I’ll defend her to the death,” I said, and meant it.

  “Then you’ll be dead. And she’ll still be raped.”

  “I’ll ransom her the moment they step on board.”

  “You’d better have a lot of coin then,” Kordax said. “Diotima would fetch an absolute fortune as a brothel slave.”

  That depressing comment was enough to make me think we’d taken on too big a job. It was time to turn around, go back to Athens, tell Pericles I had failed.

  “Can we return to Crete?” I asked Kordax.

  “Where do you think those bastards came from?” Kordax said.

  “Oh. Right,” I said, abashed. If we turned tail for Crete, the pirates need only follow us back to their base.

  “There’s no safe landfall within sailing distance but the African coast,” Kordax said. “We’ll have to break their cordon.”

  “How do we do that?”

  “By being faster than them.”

  The two pirates were to our southeast, exactly where we needed to go. Kordax made a minute adjustment to the steering oar. Dolphin commenced a wide, long arc to the east. Some time later, the pirates turned the same way, shadowing us.

  “If we continue on this heading, we’ll come to Phoenicea,” Kordax said.

  “That’s the plan?” Diotima asked. She had joined us after seeing to the injured men. She had learned basic medicine from doctors back in Athens.

  “No. But every stadia we travel this way takes our enemy further from home.”

  “You’re deliberately tiring out their men,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “It won’t work,” said the proreus. The officer of the forward deck had come aft to ask for orders and couldn’t resist butting in. “They can attack us in relays,” he added. He sounded worried.

  “What does that mean?” Herodotus asked. Even in this dire situation, he pulled out his brush and papyrus and prepared to write.

  The proreus said, “The pirate boats take turns to come at us fast. Their crews rest in between sprints, but our men have to sprint all the time. They wear us out. Then they catch us.”

  Kordax ignored the pessimism and ordered the proreus to have all lines ready and repair anything that could slow us down.

  It wasn’t yet midday and already everyone was exhausted. I insisted I rest one of the men at the oars. Our lives depended on the oarsmen and I was going to give them every chance to be rested before the next crisis. Herodotus joined me on the bench.

  I took the smooth oar in both hands, put my feet on the footrest, and tried to pull in time. My hands were bleeding and my arms and back were aching before the sun hit noon. The men before and behind me maintained the rhythm while I struggled, and they’d been doing this all day. These sailors must be demigods.

  Diotima brought fresh water and food to every man. Throughout this time the pirates had held station, daring us to come south.

  The mast cast very little shadow when Kordax eyed the sky, the water, the pirates, and us. “Prepare to head south,” he said quietly.

  I relinquished my spot on the bench. Dolphin turned to the enemy.

  “They have three choices,” Kordax said, as we watched the pirates maneuver. “They can split and attack us from both sides—”

  “That sounds bad,” I said.

  “On land it would be,” Kordax said. “At sea, it means we can slip between and run away.”

  “Oh.”

  “Or they could chase us down in a relay of sprints, like the proreus said.”

  “That must be bad if it worries a good seaman,” I said.

  “Have you noticed the wind is behind us?” Kordax said. “Directly behind us.”

  “Uh, yes?”

  “What do we have that they don’t?” Kordax asked.

  “Innocent men?”

  “Besides that.”

  I looked from Dolphin to the enemy and back again.

  “A mast.”

  “Yes, and with the wind at our backs we can use it. If they try to chase us down in a sprint relay, we hoist sail and relax.”

  “That’s why you took us out here.”

  “Yes.”

  “Kordax, you’re a genius!”

  “Only if the plan works.”

  “What can go wrong?”

  “They can do the third and most clever thing. One of them can block our path, perhaps even by ramming, and then the other can hit us midships. That would be standard trireme tactics, if we were fighting a navy boat. It’s what I’d do.”

  It was what the pirates tried, after they had chased us long enough to learn that we could hold our speed. I looked up, willing the sun to descend so we could escape in the dark, but Apollo was stubbornly high in the sky. I doubted it was even yet mid-afternoon. The light wouldn’t save us.

  Kordax grunted when he saw one pirate hold station, while the other swung out wide. “This is it,” he said.

  Axes and bows were handed round once more.

  “We hoist sail now?” Herodotus asked.

  “No, that would commit us to a line they can predict. I must be free to maneuver.”

  Kordax told the rowers to slow down. “Conserve your strength,” he shouted to them.

  Naval battles aren’t at all like land battles. It takes ages to reach your opponent. In the meantime all you can do is stare at the people you’re planning to kill and feel socially awkward.

  The pirate to our flank had gone far out and was matching our pace. The one in front was headed right for us. I could see their proreus directing from the bow. He pointed left or right as necessary to make sure they stayed on our line.

  “If we hit at these speeds, we’re both going to sink,” I said quietly to Diotima.

  “You’re such an optimist, Nico.”

  “No, listen, if it happens, grab onto something that floats.”

  “Such as?”

  I had no answer. But my mind repeated over and over that Diotima couldn’t swim.

  She held her bow and I held another axe, but neither did us any good. It was all up to Kordax.

  Kordax made no effort to avoid the imminent col
lision. The two captains stared each other down.

  We were ten ship lengths apart when our proreus pointed to the right and shouted, “Pirate midships to starboard!”

  Everyone turned their head, except for Kordax.

  Dolphin was sailing south as fast as she could go. If we continued on this path we would reach Egypt. But that wouldn’t happen, because there was a pirate in front of us, heading north, and at any moment we would collide head-on. When we did, both of us would be dead in the water. Meanwhile, the second pirate was charging in from the side. The second pirate could ram us midships.

  Markos stood at the bow of the second pirate. I thought about asking Diotima to take a shot at him, but really, what would be the point?

  While we were looking right, the first enemy was upon us.

  I was horrified when I turned my attention forward. We were practically on top of each other and closing at crash speed.

  Kordax jigged Dolphin to the right at the last moment. The pirate turned the same way. When he saw the pirate’s bow match his move, Kordax pulled the steering oar the other way and shouted. “Starboard oars in. NOW!”

  The oarsmen were ready. They had known one side or the other would have to pull in. But Kordax had given no hint of which side he would choose until it was practically too late. The starboard men swore and heaved. The oars began to come in.

  The pirate captain saw the change too late. He’d already committed to the other direction, fooled by Kordax’s fake. But he tried hard to correct. The pirate started to swing our way.

  The two boats struck, but at an angle. The sides crunched against each other with such a force that I thought they must break, but they held, and dragged against each other as they passed.

  The rowers on the pirate had not been fast enough. Dolphin’s bow broke through every oar on that side. It was one sharp crack after another, amid the screams on the other boat as the rebounding wooden poles broke the rowers’ arms.

  Kordax smiled at the sound.

  We stared at the men on the enemy deck as we passed. We were so close we could practically smell them. The bowmen on both boats took the chance to fire. A stream of arrows went both ways. I ducked. Diotima stood calmly and managed to get off two shots. I heard a couple of shouts from the enemy, but whether any of our shots had struck I couldn’t tell. Our proreus took an arrow in the arm but otherwise we had survived.