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moved a fraction, then a fraction more, and then, despite the muttering, the men were either back on their benches, or bailing. Kineas hoped that the master really knew where he was, and where they could beach, because the next time he didn’t think his voice or his sword would be enough to cut the tangle of animosities on the deck.
     

2
     
    T he two old men who kept the harbour light at Tomis saw the pentekonter well out in the offing.
     
    ‘He’s lost his mast,’ said one. ‘Ought to have ’er stepped in this wind.’
     
    ‘Rowers is done in, too. He’ll have a job of it making the mole ’fore dark,’ said the other.
     
    They sat and shared their contempt for a sailor so foolish as to have lost his mast.
     
    ‘Gods on Olympus, look at her side!’ said the first as the sun crossed the horizon. The pentekonter was well in with the land, her bow only a dozen lengths from the mole. Her side was fothered with a length of linen and roughly painted in tar, a pitiful sight. ‘Them’s lucky to be alive.’
     
    His companion had a pull at the nearly empty wineskin they shared, gave his cousin a black look, and wiped his mouth. ‘Pity the poor sailors, mate.’
     
    ‘Truer words never spoke,’ said his cousin.
     
    The pentekonter pushed her bow in past the mole before full dark, her deck silent as a warship’s except for the call of the oar beat. The strokes were short and weak, and discerning eyes all over the port could see he’d pulled long past the ability of his oarsmen to look sharp or keep up speed. The pentekonter passed the long wharf where the traders usually berthed and ran her bow well up the pebble beach that fringed the river’s mouth. Only then did the crew give a cheer, a sound that told the town all they needed to know about the last four days.
     
    Tomis was a large town by the standards of the Euxine, but the number of her citizens was small and news travelled fast. By the time Kineas had his baggage over the side, the only man he knew in the town was standing with a torchbearer on the pebbles under the bow and calling his name.
     
    ‘Calchus, by the gods,’ he shouted, and dropped on to the shingle to give the man an embrace.
     
    Calchus gripped him back, first hugging him, then grasping for a wrestling hold so that both men were grappling, down on the gravel in the beat of a seagull’s wing, Calchus reaching around Kineas’s knees to bring him down, Kineas grappling the bigger man’s neck like a farmer wrestles a calf. And then they were both standing, laughing, Calchus adjusting his tunic over his muscled chest and Kineas rubbing the sand off his hands.
     
    ‘Ten years,’ said Calchus.
     
    ‘Exile seems to suit you,’ responded Kineas.
     
    ‘It does, too. I wouldn’t go back.’ Calchus’s tone implied that he would go back if he could, but that he was too proud to say it.
     
    ‘You got my letter.’ Kineas hated demanding hospitality, the lot of every exile.
     
    ‘Don’t be an idiot. Of course I had your letter. I have your letter, a string of your horses, and your hyperetes and his little gang of louts. I’ve fed them for a month. Something tells me you don’t have a pot to piss in.’
     
    Kineas bridled. ‘I will repay you . . .’ he began.
     
    ‘Of course you will. Kineas - I’ve been where you are.’ He indicated Kineas’s baggage with a negligent hand to his torchbearer, who lifted the bag with a heavy grunt and a long sigh. ‘Don’t get proud, Kineas. Your father kept mine alive. We were sorry to hear that he died - and you exiled, of course. Athens is a city ruled by ingrates. But we haven’t forgotten you. Besides, the helmsman says you helped save the ship - that’s my cargo. I probably owe you .’ He looked past Kineas in the dim torchlight as another man leaped over the side to the beach.
     
    The Spartan bent, his locks swinging to hide his face and loudly kissed the rocks of the beach. Then he came up behind Kineas and stood