Treason of Sparta: Pre-order the brand new book from the master of historical fiction (The Long War) by Christian Cameron

Author:Christian Cameron [Cameron, Christian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781409198239
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2023-09-13T22:00:00+00:00

In an hour, we were at sea. We had too many marines – I had all of my own, along with young Dionysios, and of course, Hipponax, who’d brought our round ship Lotus out with the hides and refused to be left behind.

I’d never had Hipponax and Heraklitus under my eye at the same time before, and I’m sad to say that I have nothing profound to offer. Young men are very similar, at least the good ones. These two were mostly steady, occasionally fractious, handsome enough, annoying, given to pointless boasting and …

And all the other sins I’d committed. And how well I remember them …

Hipponax had an edge on his half-brother. A season of commanding a round ship in all weathers, even with a crew of six, had rubbed a good deal of foolishness off him. Sailors are not slaves. Even with Sekla or Leukas or Megakles on the same deck, he’d had to win some authority.

And we had Achilles aboard – my cousin. I introduced him as such when I was introducing Dionysios around, and he glowed.

Quite an assembly of young men. They postured a little, and I noted that both Leander and Zephyrides had some of Brasidas’ talents – a smile and no more attention for a young man’s bragging.

Bah. You aren’t here to listen to me prate about my sons.

We got to sea in no time, and we were rowing into a headwind as soon as we were off the beach.

I walked to the point, amidships, where all the oarsmen could hear me.

‘This will be a long chase,’ I called out. ‘But I think our quarry is stuffed with Persian gold, and you’ll all share, and it’s double pay each day until we catch him.’

Poseidonos yelled, ‘Then we should all row more slowly, eh, lads?’

The roar of laughter told me that my crew was sound and ready to play hard.

We passed down the channel between Lesbos and the mainland, and into the waters south of the island. Moira, or Tyche, gave us a little fishing boat out in the great blue sea, and we bought all his fish, and he gave us news from earlier in the day. The fisherman had been fishing in the deep water north of the Chios channel. Our heavy Phoenician trireme had not gone away south into the channel, but west around the island.

She had turned west. That meant the west coast of Chios, or somewhere to the south. But not by the direct route to Samos.

We tossed a purse of coins to the fisherman and turned to starboard, and now the wind was abeam, right on the port side, pushing us back to Lesbos. I could see Mimas, the Black Mountain, on the port bow before I turned, and it was so clear I could almost see into the Bay of Erythrae. That was a town on my list to visit, and I was, to all intents, sailing away from her.

We passed close to the black cape and opened the Chios channel.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.