Read Poseidon's Spear (Long War 3) for Free Online

their spear points while we dug in the sand. Planting corpses in sand is useless – an offence to gods and men, an invitation to scavengers. But
he didn’t care, and the trierarch was silent and withdrawn.
    We were down into the gravel layer under the sand, and making heavy work of it – we were digging with bare hands and no shovels – when the trierarch came up, stroking his beard.
    ‘A little hasty, attacking guests,’ he said. His voice trembled. He was speaking to the oar-master, but since no one on the beach was making a noise, his voice carried. He spoke in
Greek, accented, but clear enough.
    ‘You think so?’ said the oar-master. He sneered. ‘Don’t be weak. We need slaves. That’s what we are here for. And now we don’t have to pay for the tin.’
He looked at the wood line. ‘Besides, you know as well as I,
my lord
, that his uncle offered us—’
    The trierarch spat. ‘We are here for iron,’ he said primly. ‘Not tribal feuds.’
    ‘Bullshit, I’m here for slaves and tin.’ The oar-master smiled. ‘And we’ll get more. The same way. Epidavros has promised.’
    ‘We let them approach as guests,’ the trierarch said.
    ‘Don’t be weak,’ the oar-master said. ‘We need Epidavros.’
    There was a long pause. I had to assume that Epidavros was the oar-master’s contact.
    ‘Why were the women killed?’ Hasdrubal asked.
    The oar-master shrugged. ‘My people got carried away,’ he said. ‘It won’t happen again.’
    ‘See that it doesn’t. Now I want out of here.’ Hasdrubal gestured at the ship. ‘They’re too weak to dig gravel with their hands. Leave the bodies. Let’s be
gone.’ He paused, his fear showing even in the way his right foot moved on the sand. ‘One escaped. They will attack us.’
    The oar-master shrugged his infuriating shrug. I could tell that he, not the trierarch, was actually in command. And the name
Epidavros
stuck in my head. There’s a town of that
name on Lesbos. I met Briseis there, once. At any rate, he smiled insolently. ‘Epidavros won’t attack us,’ he said. ‘Even if he wanted to – it’ll be days before
he’s finished off their relatives.’
    The Carthaginian trierarch turned and looked at those of us digging. ‘I want the men who killed those women to pay,’ he said. ‘Those women were worth the value of the rest of
our cargo.’
    The guard next to me kicked me. ‘Work faster, motherfucker,’ he spat. He knew his turn was coming, so like a good flunky, he passed his anxiety straight on to a slave.
    Hasdrubal pushed us back onto the ship. He switched any slave who was slow getting aboard, and he ordered the oar-master, in a voice suddenly as strong as bronze, to flog the last man on his
bench, and when that order was given, we went like a tide up the side and almost swamped the ship.
    The Illyrian man could barely walk.
    The oar-master ordered me to carry him, thus guaranteeing I would be the last man up the side. And I was. I was naked, my loincloth lost in the night, and he shoved me over a bench and caned me,
his stick making that dry, meaty sound as he struck me.
    Then he put his head close to mine. ‘I can read your thoughts, pais. You take good care of the Illyrian slave. Show me what you are made of. The more you care for him, the longer
he’ll live for me.’ He smiled and let me up. ‘He called me a coward, do you know that, pais? So I’ll keep him alive a long time, and show him what a man is.’
    Somehow, I got the Illyrian onto a bench – the starboard-stern thranite’s bench, that had been mine. Lekythos, the biggest guard, pointed at it, and then put me in the bench
above.
    Now I noticed that a third of the benches were empty. The mad fucks were killing oarsmen and not replacing them.
    All we needed was an Illyrian pirate. At worst, he’d kill the lot of us. I really didn’t care.
    Time passed.
    I cared for the Illyrian a little – not really that much. I had to survive myself. I’d like to say the