‘Pass the word,’ he said to his most senior captains and officers. ‘Be ready. We are on a war footing from this moment.’

42

Xanthippus leaned out from the prow, looking left and right as his trireme hissed through the waves. He had asked Themistocles for permission to scout ahead with two other ships, the three of them skimming over dark blue waters. Epikleos stood with him on the other side, his arm wrapped around the high carved beam. A figurehead of Athena stared out with them, arms back, as if she too had to hold on. Below, a bronze ram crashed through waves, dripping white froth. Though neither man spoke a word, their faces showed exhilaration.

Land reared as low brown hills on either side, that part of the strait no wider than fifty or sixty stades – a morning’s march if it had been solid ground. The Greek fleet had come through the pinch-point of Chalcis barely six abreast, then spread out to fill every part of the great channel, wider than the Hellespont. There had been the glorious sense then of a hunting wolf pack, out seeking prey.

The great dog-leg course they had chosen was slower than risking open sea, but neither would they see half the fleet smashed in gales or heavy waves. Beyond the spit of land that sheltered them, the open ocean was too perilous for warships. Even under sail in calm waters, Xanthippus saw galleys dip and bob like driftwood on the wash from the rest, always at risk.

Persian warships would be just as fragile, so Xanthippus hoped – or even more so in waters they did not know, far from their home cities, far from solid land. His Athenians were sailors born, he had discovered, men in love with the sea and all the crafts that went with mastering her. Perhaps it would make the difference.

Three hundred ships and over seventy thousand oarsmen and hoplites surged in his wake. When Xanthippus looked back, it was to see sails of red or blue or the yellow of the sun, as far as the eye could see. Spartan ships were still the first rank, with Eurybiades back acting the navarch there. Themistocles commanded the Athenian group, with Xanthippus as his formal second and Cimon’s dozen young captains in the centre. For those who had stood at Marathon, there were odd echoes of the past. If Miltiades had lived, if Aristides had not already marched from the city with the army, it might have seemed like the great battle was to be played out once again on water. Xanthippus hoped for the same result! Behind the main body of the fleet came the forty warships of Corinth and the rest of the Greek alliance. They looked to Sparta to strike first, fast and hard, with the fleet of Athens behind, as the hammer of deep waters.

Xanthippus and the two scout ships had eased ahead of them at dawn, with the dog-leg part of the strait still to navigate. The currents were unique there, with experienced tillermen saying a steady hand was needed if they were to come through without at least one ship dipping too low and being swamped. In those waters, Xanthippus and Trierarch Ereius made no attempt to intercept orders between the lookout, two sailors on the tiller and the keleustes in the centre bellowing quick adjustments down to rowers in the hold. It did not count as a war-turn while the spit of land eased by on their right shoulders. Xanthippus could still feel odd rhythms underneath the keel as the trireme hit cross-currents.