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The first day of sailing from Samos is a frustrating one – the breath of Boreas is absent, which is to your benefit, but the riptides and currents are unusually strong, pushing your ships against the coastline of the Troad. At any moment, the winds could return, and so extreme caution must be utilized - there is significant risk of smashing the hulls of your vessels against rocky shoals or the exposed stone cliffsides. As a result, your party creeps along at a snail’s pace, spending almost as much energy keeping your vessels out of the dangerous shallows and away from the cliffsides as you do rowing north. On a few occasions, you’re asked to lend your prodigious strength at the oars to give some of the exhausted sailors a break, and one other time – they need your strength to hold the galley away from a rocky shelf with fire-hardened wooden poles designed for this purpose.
These actions help break up the boredom – but the lack of meaningful activity doesn’t bother you as much as the heat. It is an arid, baking heat – mercilessly driving the moisture from your body. For a man accustomed to the chilly clime of the Thessalian hills, like yourself, it is unpleasant, and you are sweating constantly.
Your other companions seem to be struggling as well. Pollux, in particular, grows increasingly agitated and twitchy as the day of poor sailing rolls on; you wouldn’t dare call him sour to his face, but his cheerful affect has vanished along with the wind. With the sea against you, you realize that it may take <span class="mu-i">weeks</span>, not days, to reach Erythrae. It’s a bitter pill to swallow for Ajax, whose temper flares repeatedly as he directs the Salaminian oarsmen this way and that. The Kings had hoped to reach Ilion by midsummer, and then return to Hellas well before autumn and the dangerous storms of the season, but now - who can say?
You see a few ships crawling north as well, but many more heading south, borne by the favorable tide, presumably with holds full of goods from the colonies beyond Ilion, on their way to the East. These vessels are a broad mix of Hellenic, Phoenician, Hittite and Trojan manufacture, but none appear interested in piracy, as you struggle against the coast. The same dangerous coastline that you are struggling against serves to protect your boats from attack – few pirates would risk running aground or foundering their ship.
By evening, your group of galleys finds a relatively obscured part of the Troad coastline, a shallow bay shielded from view. The mood is glum, as the men drag the ships onto the sandy beach. Years of leading men in the foothills of Thessaly have caused you to detest poor morale – put simply, you cannot stand to let this linger. You must take action to set the men in a better mood! With Pollux’s prior crack at your spearmanship ringing in your ears from yesterday, you have an idea…
Finding Pollux alongside Menelaus, Castor and Ajax by one of the evening cookfires, you get to business.
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