Destroyer of Cities

12

‘Hulls are wet,’ Neiron complained as they got aboard Arete, the new-minted sun a red disc on the horizon.

‘Pardon?’ asked Satyrus.

‘All of Ptolemy’s hulls are dry. Light. We’ve been in the water four weeks straight — heavy. We should have a day or two to dry the hulls.’ Neiron shrugged.

Satyrus watched his oarsmen pushing the heavy hull into the water, one step at a time, as the oar master tapped out their pushes on a small drum, very like the tambours that temple priestesses used.

‘I don’t much like the look of the weather to the west,’ Neiron said. He scratched his beard. ‘Lord, I have a very bad foreboding about today.’

‘How about not sharing that with the rest of the crew?’ Satyrus said. ‘We’re outnumbered, but not badly. Ptolemy got a messenger to his brother in the night, so all we have to do is rendezvous off the breakwater and our numbers are nearly even — holy Demeter Mother of Grain, what’s that?’ he said aloud, running to the leeward side.

There were new ships on the beach, over where Plistias of Cos had his camp. Fifteen or more new ships, all beached together, hulls glistening in the new sun, black with tar, and among them a giant hull like a vast wooden tortoise.

‘Thetis’ shining tits, that thing is enormous.’ Neiron whistled. ‘Quarter of a stade. More. Zeus Sator, stand by us.’

Satyrus watched them launch it. Men crawled over the hull like ants, and long lines of men pushed with poles.

‘Herakles,’ he said.

‘I’ve never seen a ship so large,’ Neiron said.

Underfoot, their own ship was suddenly free of the land and took on a life of its own, and men began to pile aboard up the rope ladders trailing the hull on either side, climbing in disciplined rows and racing for their oars. Launching and landing were the hardest manoeuvres for big ships, and the custom was increasingly for such ships to moor off the beach and not to land.

Anaxagoras came up the ladder and sprang down into the helmsman’s station. ‘Good morning, lord king. And Neiron, great councillor, tamer of horses.’

Neiron, whose love for the Iliad Anaxagoras had discovered, swatted him with his free hand, but Satyrus smiled. ‘Are you the old horseman, Nestor?’ he asked.

‘Wait until you are my age and younger men mock you,’ Neiron said.

‘Zeus Saviour!’ Anaxagoras said, as Charmides came up the side. ‘Please tell me that leviathan over there is on our side!’

Satyrus shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not. My guess is she’s Demetrios’ flagship. I assume the golden boy sailed in during the night, meaning that we are now outnumbered,’ he paused to calculate, ‘somewhere around two hundred and twenty against one hundred and ninety-five.’

Anaxagoras looked at the enemy beach from under his hands. ‘Is that bad?’ he asked.

‘Be still for a bit, sir,’ Charmides said. Neiron and Satyrus were rattling orders at the deck crew. Almost alone of all the ships launching, the Arete had her foremast up and rigged, and Satyrus called to Stesagoras to hoist the foresail.

Under the stern, a runner was shouting.

‘Lord,’ Charmides tugged at Satyrus’ chiton. ‘Lord — a messenger.’

‘Summons to a command meeting,’ Satyrus noted. ‘Send a boat ashore for me, Neiron. Charmides — on me, no arms. We may have to swim.’ Satyrus leaped up onto the handrail and caught the ropes of a trailing ladder, swung out and dropped to the beach. ‘Why couldn’t we have our meeting before I had my ship afloat?’ he asked the gods, and ran off down the beach, Charmides at his heels.

Amyntas — one of hundreds of Amyntases who served in the various Macedonian armies of the world, and known as Amyntas of Alexandria to his subordinates — stood at a table in Ptolemy’s tent with a chart of the bay of Cyprian Salamis. He had a pair of dividers in his hand — a tool Satyrus had seen only in the hands of architects.

‘Three bodies — three commands. All of our heavy ships in the centre, to match their heaviest — Demetrios apparently came in the night and he has an eighter. An octareme. May Poseidon roll the cursed thing in the surf — it’s larger than any ship we have, and twice as heavy as our heaviest sixer. One of our lord’s spies says it mounts twenty engines of war.’

Ptolemy spoke up from his golden chair. ‘Amyntas, you’re here to command us, not to demoralise us.’

Amyntas shrugged. ‘This isn’t the time for horse shit, either, lord. Very well. All our heavy ships in the centre — you too, Lord Satyrus. Sorry to split you from the rest of your ships, but I can’t afford to put a single heavy ship on the flanks. Very well, the fastest ships with the best crews — Meleager’s, and young Satyrus’ triremes, and all the old fleet ships with professional crews — in the right wing. And when we link up with your brother, lord — with Menelaeus, then he’ll form our left wing, closest to the beach. Our tactics must be simple, and antique. Ship for ship, our enemies have heavier ships, more marines, more towers and more engines. So we must fight the Rhodian way — the Athenian way. With rams and oar rakes and rapid flight. No closing. Once we start locking up with grapples, we’re lost.’

Satyrus was not happy — was, in fact, deeply unhappy — with being split away from the rest of his ships. In effect, his beautiful Arete was being sent to live or die at the whim of strangers. But he had to admit that in every other way, Amyntas, a man he had never liked, was giving a sound plan based on a rational appraisal of the enemy.

Satyrus raised his hand.

Amyntas ignored him for a moment, but when no one else had a question, he nodded.

‘How do we stay away?’ Satyrus asked. ‘We have to go at them, if only to pick up Menelaeus.’

Amyntas tapped his dividers on the table. ‘That part will be touch and go — especially if Plistias tries to keep us apart.’ He shrugged. ‘Watch the king’s ship for signals. We’ll back water when we get close to them — perhaps draw them off the land.’

Satyrus wanted to ask if all of them were well enough trained to back water for an hour. Only a few years before he’d watched Eumenes, his enemy, lose all cohesion — and his crown — because his ships could not back water together. But it wouldn’t do to speak out.

Ptolemy leaned forward. He looked older, all of a sudden. ‘How do we form? In columns?’

Amyntas shook his head. ‘Too unwieldy; too big a fleet. I wager that Plistias does the same — forms lines off the beach. I’ll have Phillip Croseus form our right with the fast ships, and command it, while I arrange the centre. I’ve written out the order of ships, from beach to open sea. Check the list and take your places, gentlemen.’

Satyrus found that his warships — Marathon, Troy and Black Falcon, had been given positions at the very rightmost, or seaward, edge of the line. It was flattering — Amyntas was no fan of Leon, nor of Satyrus, but he was admitting that their crews were the best.

Satyrus himself was right in the centre, four hulls to beachward of Ptolemy himself, in a fine, enormous sixer. He had a great red cloth flapping from a pole on the stern, marking the flagship — another recent innovation.

Satyrus found Neiron holding Arete just off the beach. Satyrus stripped his chiton over his head and swam out, grabbed the ladder and climbed aboard. Charmides went below and returned with towels.

Satyrus grinned at Neiron. ‘That felt good.’

Neiron shook his head. ‘Pray it’s the only swim we have today. What’s our station?’

Satyrus spat over the side. ‘We’re with the king,’ he said. ‘A place of honour, no doubt, but Akes and the rest are four stades off at the top of the line.’

Neiron nodded. ‘Lucky them. We’re with the king?’ he asked. His face grew very still. ‘In the centre — where the fighting will be hardest.’

Satyrus looked around. He had no wish to dishearten his men. ‘Amyntas is backing water after we’re close to the enemy,’ he said.

‘With this lot?’ Neiron asked quietly.

Satyrus shrugged. ‘Let’s not wish ourselves ill. Our fleet is made up mostly of Alexandrian professionals and a handful of mercenaries. We all speak the same language, and many of them — many of us — have sailed together before.’

Neiron nodded. ‘Aye, lord, and Plistias has a horde of Asiatics and Cilicians and Phoenicians. But he has some big ships. And if he keeps it simple, it’ll be hard for us to win.’

Satyrus shrugged again. ‘Plistias is not an innovator. He’ll form up in two lines and come for us, and try the contest with the gods. If we can back water and if Menelaeus comes out on time, we’ll do well. Remember, Neiron — for all our griping. We don’t have to win. We don’t even have to stay even. Plistias has to score a sweeping victory.’ Satyrus grinned.

Anaxagoras, who had remained silent throughout, spoke up. ‘Why? Pardon me — I’m a novice at war. But a victory is a victory, surely.’

Satyrus shook his head, and so did Neiron — so exactly simultaneously that other men on deck laughed aloud.

‘No. Look at the bigger picture. Antigonus is on the attack. He has risked a great deal to build this enormous fleet. Now he must destroy our fleet — and our ability to resist him at sea. Unless we’re wrecked, he can’t proceed against either of his two main objects — Alexandria or Rhodes.’

Neiron smiled — a rare enough expression for the man. ‘And since we defeated the pirates, it is worse for them.’

Anaxagoras said, ‘But this is as complex as a dance! Why worse?’

Satyrus turned aside and issued a string of orders as Arete passed along the rear of the first line and behind the royal flagship with her great red banner, and he began to count hulls. The line was forming well — there was none of the chaos he had feared. In fact, the Alexandrian fleet, for all of Ptolemy’s legendary parsimony, was well trained, and his rowers appeared well fed, fully paid and in good spirits. Satyrus felt his own spirits rise. His experience — not as wide as Neiron’s or Diokles’, but he had a few years behind him, now — was that a fleet that formed well would fight well.

Behind his shoulder, Neiron explained.

‘Worse for them because the pirate fleet effectively functioned to keep Rhodes out of the war,’ the older man said. ‘Antigonus is a subtle bastard. He uses the pirates to isolate Rhodes, and he uses diplomacy and the Rhodians’ own conservatism to threaten them into staying clear of joining Ptolemy’s alliance outright. But with the pirates scattered, or better, the Rhodians may decide to come in, with sixty ships — ships better, frankly, than anything either side here has to offer.’

Anaxagoras grinned. ‘It’s like the plot of one of Meleager’s comedies,’ he said.

‘It’s only a comedy if we win,’ Satyrus said.

The Alexandrian fleet formed first. Satyrus had the Arete in line early — and with lots of time to wait. He walked up and down the decks, looking at the stacks of bolts for the machines, the spare oars in racks, the full water jars. He walked down onto the oar decks, chatting with his rowers — he’d drunk wine, by this point, with many of them, and they were no longer a sea of alien faces in the murk of the thranite hold but men he knew — funny, sad, outrageous, lewd, or plain. His number two thranite, hard against the bow, was called Kronos, as he was old enough to remember the birth of the gods and still hale enough to row.

‘Good morning, Grandfather,’ he said, and got a laugh from all the men.

Rowers had to be nervous, going into action, especially down here on the bottom benches, where the first they’d know of defeat was the water running in to cover their faces. They rowed right at the water line — down in the farts, as the old-timers liked to say. They received the lowest pay, on most ships — although like the Rhodians, Leon and Satyrus paid their thranites the same as the other oarsmen. A ram that penetrated the hull would kill the thranites instantly, and more would drown, whether the ship survived or not. The other rowing decks were not so dangerous. Many captains used slaves in the lowest rowing deck.

‘We’re in the middle of the line, near the King of Aegypt,’ Satyrus shouted into the gloom. ‘We’ll go forward for a while, and then we’ll back water. That’s the most important manoeuvre in the whole battle — and not a reason for any man down here to worry. We’re fighting the Athenian way. For those of you younger than Kronos, here, that means we try to hit and run.’ He nodded at the silence. He always found it better to tell his men — on land or sea — what to expect. ‘Remember that all of our lives are bound together. I won’t abandon you. You, in turn — keep rowing. If your hearts are good, we’ll drink together on the beach and count more silver in our caps. Understood?’

He gave the same speech on the second deck and the top rowing deck, too. It was just as spontaneous each time — he’d had good tutors — and every time he got a growl of approval from his rowers.

On the main deck, he found Anaxagoras playing an odd lyre for the top-deck rowers. It was a heavy instrument, the base made of wood but covered like a drum or tambour in sheepskin, so that the notes resounded. It had a harsh, military sound, and the Athenian was playing the hymn to Nike over and over, and men were singing.

‘Hail, Orpheus!’ Satyrus said.

Anaxagoras smiled and kept playing.

As Satyrus stopped to listen, Stesagoras came aft from the bow. ‘Lord?’ He seemed unusually hesitant.

‘Speak your mind,’ Satyrus said.

Stesagoras fingered his beard. ‘Neither Neiron nor I think much of the weather, lord. And. . I do not seek to anger you, but we’re in the centre. If all does not go well — We’re lost.’

Satyrus managed a smile. ‘Tell me news, Sailing Master.’

Stesagoras sighed. ‘I’d like to run heavy ropes to the foremast head. Big ropes — like anchor cables.’

Satyrus stepped away from the lyre player and looked up. ‘Why?’ he asked.

Stesagoras looked around for support. ‘I think — that is, Neiron and I both think — it’ll keep the mast stable if we have to ram. Or if we are rammed. Even if we have the sail up.’

‘Aha!’ Satyrus could see it. ‘Especially if two of the ropes run right aft along the sides. You’ll have to be careful to keep clear of the engines. But yes — and another stay made fast forward to the ram. Make it so, Stesagoras.’ He was still looking up. ‘And while you are at it — sling a basket from the masthead, like the Rhodians do. With the new cables, the mast will surely support the weight. And put an archer or two in the basket.’

Stesagoras smiled. ‘There’s a thought.’

‘Who knows?’ Satyrus asked the gods. ‘A lookout might tell us something good.’

Another hour, and still the Antigonids’ second line was struggling to form. Stesagoras had had the foremast down on deck, laid down the middle of the top deck, and the whole of the deck crew had been employed pounding iron staples into the crown of the mast and then running cables round and round. The fire pot was brought out — carefully — and a pair of bronze loggerheads heated red hot, to put hot pitch over the newly roped masthead.

Anaxagoras played for them — songs of horse races and symposia, until they were ready to raise the mast, and then he played an old Spartan marching song with a heavy beat and the mast went up as if Apollo himself had lifted the new cap between his great fingers.

‘That’d be why Orpheus was so popular with the Argonauts,’ Neiron growled.

Satyrus had seldom seen any unit — on land or sea — with so little in the way of jitters before a fight. He himself got nerves that came in waves — he’d be deep in the process of pulling a rope, or helping lace heavy leather to the basket so that the two archers there had some protection from their rivals — and then he’d look over the side and his heart would beat faster and his mouth would go dry.

But the music would carry him out of it, either because of the natural tendency to sing along, or because the man’s playing was so good.

‘He’s god-sent,’ Satyrus said.

Neiron nodded. ‘I agree,’ he said. ‘And how often do I say that?’

They shared a laugh while the mast went up, and then the new ropes were pulled taut by forty sailors and all the marines, taut as bowstrings, and lashed to the heavy posts that held the fighting rail. It looked ugly as dung on a dancer, but the mast appeared as solid as if it had been planted like a seed, and the leather and tar-coated basket rose on pulleys into the masthead without the heavy oak pole giving so much as a creak.

‘Your lyre is the best new weapon on this ship,’ Satyrus was just saying to Anaxagoras, and the man was beaming in response, when the masthead called.

‘Lord Satyrus!’ called the men in the basket. Even thirty feet above the deck, you could see that they were excited.

‘You’re safe enough, lads,’ Satyrus called. In fact, their basket swayed with every movement of the ship, but they were volunteers and had each been promised a ten-drachma reward.

‘Enemy’s all formed up!’ the lead archer called down. ‘And — there’s a big squadron rowing away.’

‘You should get into your armour,’ Charmides said at his shoulder. ‘Lord — the king is signalling the advance.’

Satyrus stood for a second, paralysed — but surely the advance would be slow, and followed by backing water and retreat. Lots of time to get into his armour. ‘Put young Orpheus in armour, lad,’ he said, pointing to Anaxagoras. ‘I don’t want him going to this dance naked — he may find that his partner’s not as cooperative.’ Then Satyrus leaped for the stays that held the mast and started to climb, hand over hand, praising Poseidon that there’d been insufficient pitch to coat the new standing rigging and he wasn’t smearing himself black.

He climbed to where he could hold the lashings of the mast and brace a foot on the archer’s basket, which made it rock a little.

‘Leto Mother of the Archer,’ Satyrus muttered.

The apparent confusion of the Antigonid front line was a sham. Now he could see over the first line. In the second line, the gigantic turtle-ship held the very centre — his impression was that it was larger than an eighter — perhaps even a tenner, though he’d never heard of such a thing. But it was not the giant war machine that drew his attention, but a squadron — fifteen ships — rowing away from Plistias’ second line, headed north and west toward Menelaeus. They were all big ships. He counted fifteen — fifteen quadremes and penteres, all in a crisp line abreast.

Menelaeus had sixty ships, but they were all smaller ships, in the old Athenian style, undecked triremes and such. He was just forming — late to the dance, as Neiron would say.

‘Good eyes, gentlemen,’ Satyrus said. ‘Listen — when we close, you two shoot down into the enemy command deck. Nowhere else. Don’t waste a shaft on sailors. Marines and officers.’

‘Wasn’t born yesterday, lord,’ the senior archer replied. ‘You could send up some more arrows, if you’d a mind, sir.’

Satyrus wrapped his legs around the stay and slid — carefully — down the heavy rope, sparing a hand to keep his chiton off the rope where the fine stuff would be ripped to shreds. As soon as his feet hit the rail, he ran aft.

‘Another two hundred arrows to the top,’ he ordered Apollodorus. ‘Then attend me on the command deck.’

‘Yes, lord,’ Apollodorus saluted.

‘He’s thinned his centre and sent his best, heaviest ships against Menelaeus,’ Satyrus said to Neiron, who had Thrasos at the oars. ‘What does that mean, old councillor?’

Neiron rubbed his beard.

‘Enemy is advancing!’ came the call from the masthead.

‘That basket is the best new idea I’ve seen in ten years,’ Neiron said. ‘Rhodians think of everything.’

Satyrus turned to Charmides. ‘Find the sailor with the biggest lungs and have him pass the word from our masthead to the ships of the centre — so the king gets the word. Enemy is advancing.’

‘Foam under their bows!’ from the masthead.

‘What’s that mean?’ Anaxagoras asked.

‘It means they’ve already gone to ramming speed.’ Neiron clapped his hands. ‘I’ll take the conn. Give me the oars.’

Thrasos nodded, braced and Neiron put his hands on the oars. ‘You have the oars.’

‘I have the oars.’ Neiron ducked under the big Kelt’s arms and was in the helmsman’s place.

Close by Satyrus’ ear, a mighty voice roared, ‘Enemy at ramming speed,’ at Hermeaus’ Poseidon, the next ship beachward from the Arete.

Satyrus suddenly realised that the two fleets were closing at the combined speed of a pair of galloping horses and that he was unarmed and unarmoured.

‘Charmides!’ he called.

The young man was at his elbow, arms full of bronze and iron.

‘Arm me!’ he said, his eyes still on the enemy line — what he could see of it. His own foresail blocked his view forward.

‘Foresail down,’ Neiron called, reading his thoughts. ‘But brailed up, ready for raising.’

Sailors ran barefoot along the deck — the greatest advantage of the new full decking was the speed with which sailors could react to any part of the deck without climbing over rowers.

Satyrus got his corselet around his waist, and Charmides tied the waist laces, then the chest ties.

‘We’re going to ram,’ Satyrus said to Neiron. ‘Too late to back water.’

Neiron watched as the foresail came down in a rush, and suddenly they could see the centre of Plistias’ line, a stade away, coming on like a cavalry charge.

Ptolemy and Amyntas must have thought the same, because the king’s ship sped up to full ramming speed.

Charmides got the top laces done up under Satyrus’ armpit, and Satyrus reached back for the yoke of the cuirass. ‘Get my greaves on!’ he said. He began to fumble with the ties of the breastplate. ‘Herakles, Lord and Ancestor, stand by me.’

Close — very close. He felt the surge as Arete went to full speed. The ship might be heavy, but his men were in top form: well fed, well trained and confident.

Apollodorus was tying the pauldrons to his waist ties. ‘You keep commanding,’ he said quietly. ‘We’ll keep you alive.’

‘Are the machines loaded?’ Satyrus asked.

‘How stupid do I look, lord?’ Apollodorus asked. ‘Heh — don’t answer that.’

Satyrus felt the greaves snapping onto his legs. Someone was buckling the silver buckles behind his knees and his ankles.

‘Arm plates?’ Apollodorus asked.

‘Yes.’ Satyrus didn’t turn his head. ‘Neiron — take the nearside one, the vessel closest to Poseidon.’

‘Aye, lord.’ Neiron flicked the oars. ‘Thrasos, here — I need your arms. You with the lungs — tell Poseidon I’m taking the wide-arse with the green awning.’

The big sailor put his hands to cup his mouth. ‘Arete intends to ram the green awning!’ he roared.

‘Acknowledged,’ the man said to Neiron. ‘The helmsman waved.’

‘We won’t fuck that up, then.’ Neiron looked over at Satyrus. ‘I think we’re in trouble,’ he said quietly.

‘Punch through their centre and see where we are,’ Satyrus said. ‘I mean it, Neiron — diekplous and through into the second line.’

Neiron nodded, all business.

Satyrus felt the familiar weight of his harness, bent his arms, crouched.

Behind him, Neiron and Thrasos together leaned against the steering oars.

The men in the masthead shot their arrows.

Apollodorus looked at Satyrus. Satyrus nodded.

‘Engines! Fire at will!’ he called.

Only the bow engines had clear shots, and they went off together. The deep, ringing thrump of a bolt striking their fore hull showed that their opponents had heavy engines, too.

Half a stade.

Satyrus turned to Charmides. ‘No second chance now. Every armoured man to go with the marines. Apollodorus — if we board, do it like lightning, get the thing done and back aboard.’

‘Aye, lord.’

Satyrus ran forward, the straps on his greaves a little too tight and cutting at his ankles. Too late now.

Too late for a lot of things.

‘Marines! Brace!’ shouted Apollodorus, and the forward engines fired again, together, racing to be first.

To port, the king’s ship was a ram’s length ahead, aimed at the largest ship in the enemy first line — an octeres that was, timber for timber, virtually identical to the king’s. They struck, bow to bow, in an explosion of timber, a storm of splinters and a hail of arrows. Then Satyrus put his own head down, caught his cheekpieces and pulled them together and fastened the toggle at his throat.

The impact wasn’t the greatest he’d ever felt — in fact, while it pitched him into the back wall of the tower, it didn’t throw him off his feet. Above his head, the archer captain chanted orders as his men nocked and loosed and nocked and loosed again. Arete carried a much heavier contingent of archers than most ships: twenty men, most of them Sakje, with fluid recurved bows of horn and sinew and barbed arrows tipped with bronze. The Greeks were Alexandrians or Cretans, with heavy bows that shot long arrows capable of punching right through bronze.

The return volley from the enemy tower was late, and weak.

‘His bow’s crushed!’ came the call from the tower.

Satyrus, his blood up, ready to repel boarders, felt a sag.

Neiron made the hand signal for the rowers to reverse benches, and the oar master gave a great cry.

‘She’s going to sink!’ called a marine, and then the enemy came at them in a rush — fifty marines, crossing in three places where the bow towers were locked together.

Satyrus got to the starboard rail before the first enemy marine. Luck — good or ill — left him alone except for Charmides, as the enemy were trying to jump down into the waist behind the tower, where he was, instead of going to meet their peers; a tactic born of desperation.

Satyrus speared the first man in the helmet — a clean thrust into the very front of the man’s horsehair crest — and his head snapped back, he lost his grip and he was gone over the side.

‘Cut the grapples!’ Satyrus roared at Charmides. Charmides ignored him, roared a war cry and threw his spear. It hit the second enemy marine just above the nose and the broad blade collapsed his face — and he took Charmides’ spear over the side with him.

‘The grapples!’ Satyrus bellowed, and now he was facing three men — he took a big risk and attacked the middle one, counting on the tendency of all men to want to be sure of their footing before making a lunge. His thrust went in over the man’s shield and just ticked the side of his unarmoured throat, and he went down. Satyrus was too close, now — no choice but to be wild. He roared, dropped his spear, grabbed the right-hand man’s shield in his right hand at the base, and shoved it up under the man’s helmet plates, breaking his jaw.

The third man rammed his spear into Satyrus’ unprotected back and knocked him flat. The scales held the point, but the pain was intense — like a pankration opponent’s punch to the kidneys. The world went white, then red and Satyrus was dead.

But in the time it took him to think that he was down and dead, he realised that he was still in control of his limbs and he rolled, got his back against the marine tower and pushed against the deck with his legs. A sword rang off his greave. Charmides threw himself across Satyrus and took the spear thrust from overhead meant for his king, and Satyrus sat heavily, his back against the marine tower, with Charmides’ weight on top of him.

Apollodorus roared, and the Arete’s marines charged out of their tower. Charmides squirmed.

An Antigonid marine stood over them, raised his spear and grinned from sheer lust of killing.

Anaxagoras stabbed him from behind, a brutal, short spear jab, and then spun like a dancer, putting the butt of his spear into the next marine, using the power of his rotating body, and though his shaft snapped the enemy marine went down like a tree before a woodsman. Charmides screamed — there was blood flowing out of him — but Satyrus had no time for that, and he threw the boy off his legs and stumbled to his feet.

Hand up under arm — sword hilt — draw — lunge!

Satyrus put his point through an enemy marine’s eye. The man fell back over another marine, also dead.

‘Cut the grapples!’ Satyrus croaked.

Anaxagoras was at the rail, watching his third victim fall away into the sea. He looked up. ‘The boy is right. This is wonderful.’

Satyrus vomited over the side, and there was blood. ‘See to the boy,’ he said.

Swords and axes were slashing at the grapples, and the enemy ship was sinking, his bow ripped away in the first contact — bad timbers, shipworm, bad design — it should never have happened, but the Arete’s ram was caught in the sinking ship and Satyrus could hear his own timbers popping.

‘Row!’ Philaeus called. ‘For your lives!’

The last grapple rope parted with a crack like lightning and thunder on a stormy day, and the enemy ship slid — grudgingly — off their ram, and suddenly they were floating free, the oars moving them away.

Satyrus was unengaged, still retching, and he could see an enemy trireme, low in the water from his vantage, coming around the wreckage to ram them broadside or break their oars.

He spat and raised his head. ‘Oars in!’ he called. ‘Starboard side!’

Philaeus heard him, with the help of the gods — and repeated the order. ‘Starboard-side oars in!’ he roared, and Anaxagoras sang it, and the oars came in as if the ship were a machine built by mighty Hephaestos — and the trireme’s bronze beak struck low into their unprotected side and the timbers held.

Idomeneus raced his archers to the engaged side. ‘All together, now — loose!’ he called, and twenty arrows fell into the trireme’s unprotected rowers. Then all the starboard-side engines fired together — one, two, three, their bolts going downwards at point-blank range, down through men and benches and probably right through the bottom of the enemy ship.

The enemy trireme tried desperately to back water, but he had twenty dead rowers or more, and his oar loom was in chaos, his oar master nearly cut in half by an iron bolt thicker than a man’s arm. The trireme wallowed in the swell, and Idomeneus ordered another volley right at Satyrus’ ear.

‘The king is finishing off his adversary,’ Apollodorus said.

Satyrus felt his head clearing. ‘Get me water.’

‘Wine?’ Apollodorus asked, and thrust a canteen under his nose.

Satyrus drank, spat and drank again. ‘Good wine,’ he said.

‘Why die with the taste of cheap wine on your lips?’ Apollodorus asked.

Anaxagoras was bent over the Lesvian boy. Satyrus tottered over.

‘Alive?’ he asked.

‘He’ll dance again, if the gods will it,’ Anaxagoras said. ‘I’ve seen this done — never done it myself. I need help.’

Satyrus crouched by him, and Apollodorus, with two marines, took the boy’s shoulders and held him while Anaxagoras searched with slippery fingers. ‘Got it!’ he said. He had a loop of sinew in his fingers — a piece of bowstring. ‘Apollo, brace my fingers. Pull!’ he said to a marine, and the other man pulled on the sinew like a poacher pulling a snare — and shook his head.

Blood spurted across the deck.

Satyrus looked up. Neiron was calling — pointing.

‘Sailors, here!’ Satyrus called, and gave Charmides’ feet to two men. He loved the boy, but he had four hundred men to save.

‘It’s too slippery!’ grunted the marine.

Two more low triremes were coming out of the enemy line. They were warier than the first, but they had the marines to board, at least between them.

‘Leave him!’ Satyrus called up to Idomeneus. He waved at the stricken trireme under his feet — a ship he could take if he could get ten marines into the hull, but for what?

He glanced up, and saw both of the archers in the masthead shoot — they were methodical, and fast, for men shooting from a swaying basket. The one tapped the other and pointed at something out over the bow.

Satyrus couldn’t watch any longer. ‘All engines, all archers — that one!’ he cried, and his voice broke from fatigue, already. He pointed a spear — whose spear? Where was it from? — at the nearest of the two new attackers, and almost as quickly as thought an iron bolt flashed out and struck the trireme’s bow a glancing blow and then it wheeled down the rowing deck. The enemy rowers lost the stroke and fell off to their starboard, and the other ship was coming on alone.

He had time to note that the engines killed comparatively few men. But they killed them in a spectacular, horrifying fashion, so that they sapped an entire ship’s morale.

Satyrus stumbled back to the helmsman’s position. Thrasos was screaming, down on his stomach, an arrow in his back low and deadly. Satyrus looked to port for the first time in what seemed like hours and saw a big penteres — a ship as big as his own — approaching broadside on. Their archers were shooting across at him. Even as he watched, an arrow screeched off the bronze facing of his aspis and vanished behind his shoulder.

‘You have to get Idomeneus to fire at their archers!’ Neiron screamed, while ducking under his aspis.

Satyrus shook his head. Neiron couldn’t see, but the broadside-on penteres was not the greatest threat. The two triremes were. Amidships, the huddle of men over the body of Charmides gave a cry, and men pumped their fists. There was a heavy crash as the enemy trireme hit their starboard side, and then all of Idomeneus’ men leaned out over the side and shot straight down into the bow of the enemy ship.

‘We have to get clear!’ Neiron shouted. ‘They’re concentrating on us! Gods only know why!’

At some level of his tactical thought, the notion that they were matched against five enemy ships pleased Satyrus extremely. But it couldn’t last, and the timbers of his strong new ship would not stand for many more ramming attempts, despite all the manoeuvring Neiron could manage and the puny size of the enemy rams. But he blessed the shipwrights, and every obol he’d paid them.

Another volley of arrows came in, hitting his shield like wind hitting a man’s cloak in a storm at sea, and two hit his leg on the greave and a third his helmet, so that he staggered.

Two marines appeared from amidships, bearing big shields. ‘Apollodorus says to let us protect the helm,’ Phillip of Tarsus said. He was an old friend, a veteran of all Satyrus’ battles, and allowed the king to feel that he was leaving Neiron in good hands.

Overhead, his masthead archers had switched targets. They began to shoot into the penteres to port — and every other arrow seemed to mark a man down. Even as Satyrus ducked and moved aft, stepping over a shocking number of bodies — Polycrates, dead with a pair of javelins in him — and what was he even doing above decks? Satyrus saw, in his peripheral vision, as the enemy oar master went down, rose to his feet and took a second arrow in the top of his shoulder and fell like a sacrificial victim — and the enemy helm was empty.

The port-side engines fired, point blank — everything was suddenly point blank. They were clearing their opposite numbers, firing into the enemy engines, an excellent strategy and one Satyrus wished he had thought of himself.

He looked down and realised that he was losing blood — in a bad way, flowing out of his groin.

‘Shit,’ he said, and stumbled.

‘Hold hard there, Achilles!’ Anaxagoras said, getting a shoulder under his sword arm. ‘If you fall, we’ll all be too busy weeping to fight.’

‘I’m hurt — shit. Look at the blood.’ Satyrus couldn’t even work out where it was coming from, but his back hurt enough for five wounds. The sight of his own blood made him feel weak.

Arrows hit his shield. Anaxagoras winced and looked down to where an arrow had passed right through his thigh. He opened his mouth and fell silently to the deck.

Idomeneus had switched targets — high in the forward tower, his men had swept all three of the trireme’s command decks, and now he was firing volleys into the penteres to port.

Satyrus shot a look over the starboard side. One of the triremes had fallen foul of the other’s oars, and they were no threat — at least, not for some long minutes.

Satyrus made his way across his own ship to the port side, but the penteres had had enough. His rowers were untouched, but his top deck ran with blood — an easy thing for poets to sing about, but in this case, the archers and engines had massacred the sailors and enemy archers, and there was no armour to be seen. Someone was telling the rowers to row — but there was no command.

Satyrus looked up at his masthead. ‘Where is the king?’ he called.

‘Moving south. Prize in tow.’ Came the reply.

‘Where’s that big ship? The huge wide-arse?’ Satyrus shouted.

‘Half a stade north!’ they called.

Satyrus turned — and his back hurt. But he wasn’t dead yet, and it was time to do more than survive, noble as that seemed against the odds.

Apollodorus. He had his marines formed under the loom of the tower — safe, for the moment.

‘Apollodorus — see the penteres? No crew on deck. Fine ship.’ Satyrus knew when a little acting was called for. ‘I rather fancy her. Let’s take her.’

The men whooped.

Satyrus ran aft. ‘I’m taking the penteres and turning her around. You go through the hole and head south.’

‘South?’ Neiron asked.

Satyrus nodded. ‘If we’re winning, you and I will break their line. If we’re losing, we’re running downwind to our own ships. Either way, we go south. If you lose me, and we’re losing, go for Alexandria. Understand?’

‘Yes, lord!’ Neiron said. ‘Go with the gods!’

‘Stesagoras!’ Satyrus managed to attract his attention. Apollodorus had a dozen men throwing grapples, and Neiron already had the oars out. ‘Stesagoras — you and every sailor not required to manage the foresail. And a spare foresail and a yard. And right now.’

Stesagoras nodded and ran down a ladder.

Satyrus looked over at the penteres. Even as he watched, Neiron and Philaeus got the oars out — just the aft oars, a miracle of command and control — and laid the Arete’s ram gently alongside the enemy’s stern, making a path for Apollodorus’ marines. They rushed the handful of enemy marines left — one was shot down even as he rose from cover. Satyrus had meant to lead the rush aboard, and instead he was the last armoured man to cross, and there was nothing alive on the enemy deck, a deck remarkably like his own, but with only one engine a side, fixed forward, and now wrecked. All this he took in in a glance, and then he had the steering oars in his arms.

Stesagoras crossed after him, and twenty sailors with a great bundle of canvas and a long yard.

‘Get the foremast up,’ Satyrus said. ‘And the sail and yard on it. I need you at the helm, here.’ He turned to Apollodorus. ‘Storm the oar galleys,’ he said. ‘Accept no resistance, and tell them that if they row, we’ll free them, and if they fight, we’ll sink them here.’

Apollodorus grinned — the man was untouched amid the maelstrom, not a mark on him. ‘Aye, lord,’ he said. ‘Give me a moment to persuade them, and I wager they’ll row as well as any in Piraeus.’

The man charged down the central ladder with all his marines.

The Arete had blood running from her scuppers, and one of her port-side machines was a wreck — and from here he could see the damage to deck and rail, and shattered strakes in the hull that had to be leaking water — but Neiron had her under way and moving well, already half a boat length off, scattering the little triremes the way a shark scatters bream.

‘I need an oar master,’ Satyrus said. ‘Stesagoras — who do I take?’

Stesagoras shook his head. ‘Laertes is my best, and he’s putting up that mast. Patrocles was the big voice when we were coming up to fight.’

Satyrus nodded. ‘Well, he’s loud. Get him amidships.’ He stooped at the stern and spat blood into the water and his eyes caught the ship’s name, done in Asiatic Greek letters of gold under the stern planks — Atlantae; the huntress, beloved of Artemis, his sister’s heroine. Satyrus decided to take this as a good omen, although when he raised his head he saw stars, and he had to spit blood again to clear his mouth of the bitter copper taste.

He decided to let himself believe that there was less blood flowing out of his back — in reality, if it was as bad as he’d feared, he should have passed out. As he was still standing, the odds were he’d live, unless the god of Contagion and Infection struck him with a poisoned arrow. He offered a prayer to Apollo, and another to Poseidon, and yet a third to Hephaestos for the fine construction of his ship — and then Apollodorus was up, breathing like a bellows but grinning.

‘Slaves!’ he said. ‘It’s a miracle from Ares, lord!’ He embraced his king — under the circumstances, it was an embrace that Satyrus was happy to return.

Slave rowers meant men who would be free if their new side won the battle; men with no loyalty whatsoever to their dead masters.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Go below — get this right. We’re going to back oars for two ship lengths — and then we’re going to turn hard to port, port oars reversed. Forty strokes back, port side reverse benches, fifteen strokes all ahead.’

‘Forty back, port reverse, fifteen, port reverse, all ahead,’ Apollodorus said. ‘Ares — I’m a marine, not a sailor.’ And he was gone.

The new oar master had a spear. He broke it between his hands to be rid of the saurauter, and thumped time on the deck.

‘Row!’ Satyrus called. ‘All benches back!’

Fear, or passion, or courage — it scarcely mattered, but the rowers were motivated and the ship moved — heavily for five strokes, and then like a bolt from an engine, so that Satyrus realised that his estimate of forty strokes was far too high. But he also knew what changing orders on a raw crew would mean. The stern shot ‘ahead’, and the ship began to turn to port — simply because his steering oars couldn’t correct from the temporary ‘bow’. But he was turning in the direction he’d wanted. He was just plunging much deeper into the enemy second line than he’d intended.

It was empty here. To the south, he could see the giant tenner crushing one of Ptolemy’s penteres, and turning to engage a pair of quadremes — ships that were otherwise considered heavy, but in this case, hopelessly outmatched. And to the north — ruin. Ptolemy was not winning.

But Satyrus had time: the enemy’s centre was all but empty, stripped by the ships detached to face Menelaeus and by the failure of the smaller ships to engage Arete successfully.

Arete was close — twenty horse lengths to port, just turning to go south. But the gap between them was widening because of the speed of Satyrus’ retreat.

Thirty-eight, thirty-nine, ‘Reverse your benches!’ Satyrus called. ‘Still have your wine?’ he asked Apollodorus.

Wordlessly, the man put his canteen into Satyrus’ hands.

The bow began to swing — too fast.

‘All benched for rowing ahead!’ Satyrus called. Trying to fight the overswing with his steering oars made his back hurt like ice and fire on bare skin. He’d miscalculated by many degrees of turn — their current course took them right into the side of the distant leviathan, the enemy flagship, which towered above the battle like an elephant over infantry.

The new oar master was on top of it. ‘Starboard side — trail your oars!’ he roared — no missing that voice. ‘Now row, you bastards!’

And now they were moving. He was clear of the enemy line and he was moving — right along the sterns of the enemy ships, far too close for comfort. He could do devastating damage — once — with his own ship, but it looked to Satyrus as if the battle had been lost. Upwind, Ptolemy was backing out of the action, covered by the heavy ships of his bodyguard — Poseidon was backing water slowly, her engines still firing away into the triremes that Arete had crippled. But elsewhere, there was little cheer for the Ptolemy side. Menelaeus had either never come out or been bested, and so the Aegyptian centre had collapsed from shoreward — always the weakest part of Amyntas’ plan. To the south, the enemy flag was trying to close the gap to take Ptolemy’s flagship, itself desperately backing oars to get clear of the trap.

But as he watched, the foremast in the bow of his new capture began to rise, stayed by four lines running aft. The marines were pulling like sailors — not the time, apparently, for old grudges — and the foremast came up and was belayed as smoothly as if it had been done in a yard.

Neiron was lagging, holding the Arete at a walking pace. He was waiting for his king — when Satyrus ranged alongside, his hands white-knuckling on his oars, afraid he’d slip and send his oar loom into Arete’s oar loom — Neiron called out across the water.

‘Fight, lord? Or run?’ he called.

Satyrus leaned on his oars again. ‘Give me space!’ he called. ‘I want to get clear of their sterns!’ The enemy was far too close. ‘Run!’ he called.

Neiron waved.

The Arete turned to port and Satyrus tried to do the same, getting his vulnerable starboard side clear of the enemy, but the port-side steering oar snapped under his hand — probably victim to the original collision and the boarding action. Then chaos ensued, his marines trying to find a spare oar in a strange ship, and their new oarsmen afraid — afraid of massacre, of defeat. Neiron fell in to port, keeping station just a quarter-stade distant. Both had their foresails up now, and with the wind in them they began to move well, even for heavy ships.

Satyrus spared time for a glance around. He could see trouble to the south — either there were new ships there, or someone had worked out that he was not on their side. But the rear of Demetrios’ fleet was all confusion — the confusion of victory, but no ship challenged them as they began to pull away. Laertes was trying to compensate for the lack of steering oars by trailing the ship’s oars, first one side and then the other, but the result slowed the ship and sent them in a lazy curve back under the sterns of the enemy. No ship responded — no ship seemed to notice them.

No ship except the great tenner, the mighty deceres that had started the battle behind the centre. Satyrus assumed that the ship was Plistias’ command ship, and he had no intention of engaging. Through no choice of his own, he had to pass close under the stern of the leviathan, and just as he began his pass, wincing to be so close to so much danger, the enemy flagship began to back away from the pair of quadremes that she had engaged — grappling both and boarding them simultaneously, so large was his marine contingent compared to theirs — a hundred men massacring perhaps fifteen on each quadreme, leaving them adrift, with blood running in trickles from the deck edges like a child’s attempt to write on parchment where the rowers had been murdered to save time. And the vast weight of the enemy ship backed under control, her oars sweeping like the legs of some ungainly millipede.

Neiron saw the enemy flagship begin to move at the same moment that Satyrus saw it begin to back, and both of them shouted orders at their oar masters. The same orders.

‘Ramming speed! All oars!’ Satyrus shouted, and Neiron gave the same command.

Satyrus felt the surge of power through the soles of his feet, but the huge enemy vessel was already moving and her stern towered over their side, and the enemy crew was now aware of them — shouting at them, assuming they were friendly — and then realising their error.

Satyrus stood tall at the starboard oar, testing his weight against them. ‘I intend to sheer off!’ he shouted at his temporary oar master across the length of the deck.

Laertes nodded and shouted down through the amidships hatch at the rowers. Satyrus shook his head. His hands were clenched on the red-painted steering oars like a pankration fighter in the last grappling of the bout, and his brow was covered in sweat. There was blood down his right side and back, and he was cold.

Apollodorus stood by him, covering him with his aspis. The enormous enemy ship had archers, and they were firing down at him.

‘Thanks,’ Satyrus said.

‘Why not turn?’ Apollodorus asked, grasping the rail.

‘Too close,’ Satyrus said. ‘If I turn to port, our stern is no farther from them. If I turn to starboard, I’m running right down their side — look at those war engines!’

The tenner loomed over them like an adult over a child. Her sides rose like cliffs, and she had the same advantage over Atlantae that Arete had had over the light triremes. Neiron, a quarter-stade astern, had one advantage, however: all of his starboard engines could bear, and none of the enemy’s engines could — yet.

Satyrus caught at the shoulder of Apollodorus’ chiton. ‘Get the forward engine firing,’ he said.

Apollodorus nodded. ‘I’ll have a go,’ he said.

So close.

Satyrus jerked the remaining oar as another marine came up the main ladder dragging an oar. Satyrus managed to nudge the bow off to port and then straighten again — port, and back straight — trying to cheat away from the enemy stern and yet maintain all his speed. And the marine — not anyone Satyrus really knew — had a head on his shoulders. Now he was lashing the new steering oar home against the side with quick, professional knots.

But the new oar was just too late.

‘Oars in! Now!’ Satyrus roared, and Laertes repeated it instantly. They were too close — there was no way to avoid the collision, and Satyrus could already see — as if it were a maths lesson — that if the enemy ship hit his stern, the two ships would come to rest broadside to broadside, each pivoting on the collision at the stern, crushing their oars between them.

Grapples were flying, now. The deceres wanted them. One thumped home into the stern rail just an arm’s length from Satyrus’ shoulder, and another into the deck just forward, and then the enemy stern tapped into their stern — the angle was too acute for the enemy ship to damage them, but momentum and the grapples spun them to starboard, so that as the mammoth ship coasted, her rowers desperately trying to get their oars in, the smaller Atlantae crashed alongside like a tethered foal against a fence, splintering oars and making a mess of the magnificent enemy ship’s paintwork.

Atlantae’s oarsmen got their port-side oars in and home before they were rubbing alongside.

A flight of arrows struck all around Satyrus, but by luck or the will of the gods none of them struck him.

Satyrus wanted to curse. He felt a tide of despair, the spiritual kin to the feeling in his back and the cold in his spine, but he shook his head. We were that close to escape, he thought. Even as he watched, his newly raised foremast collapsed, splintering, and the sail obscured the whole foredeck. There was a pause.

Surrender?

But there was no surrender in a sea fight. If he’d considered it, the gouts of blood painting the sides of the pair of derelict quadremes just to the east told of what lay in store for him.

Forward, Apollodorus got the one heavy engine on the port side to fire. The whole ship moved when the great bow released, and the bolt went right in through an oar port and appeared to vanish into the hide of a great beast, like a barbed arrow into an elephant.

Just aft, the Arete fired all three of her engines together, and the bolts slammed into the deceres. But they had no more effect than a child’s sling does against a mad bull.

Satyrus let go of the oars and slipped his aspis onto his shoulder. He felt perversely annoyed to have to die here, in a lost battle for a monarch who didn’t deserve his sacrifice. Nothing about the situation was remotely heroic — he was only in this position because he’d mistimed his turn as he backed away from the battle, and it was his own hubris in seizing the stricken Atlantae that had brought him to his death.

He got his helmet strap in his right hand and pulled it tight. ‘No one’s fault but my own,’ he said. ‘Herakles, stand with me.’

The smell of wet fur was sharp, heady, pungent. The smell heartened him — meant he was still in touch with the other world, the world of the heroes. But it touched him in another way; he’d never smelled the cat so clearly, and he suspected that the veils between his world and the world of the heroes were stretched thin.

I’m going to die, he thought. It was not a new thought, but it had never been so immediate, and he had a frisson of hesitation as he thought of fifty inconsequential things he would like to have done. He thought, among a hundred other foolish thoughts, of Miriam’s hips under her chiton. It made him smile.

‘Not dead yet,’ he said aloud — so loud that the marine at his elbow grinned back.

‘No, we ain’t, lord.’ The man stood taller for a moment, and then settled his apsis on his shoulder and raised his spear.

‘Here they come,’ he said.

Satyrus wished he could remember the man’s name. He’d got a new oar from below, lashed it in place and then got his aspis between Satyrus and the enemy arrows. None of it was the stuff of the Iliad, but it was all done fast, and well — the sort of things that could tip a battle one way or another, as completely as a commander’s decisions.

There were fifty enemy marines in the first rush — fifty professional soldiers. Apollodorus had his twenty all formed up, and Satyrus and his companion — he’s called Necho. Satyrus suddenly found the man’s name against a welter of recollections. Together they raced forward, abandoning the helmsman’s station and apparently fleeing. Enemy marines, clambering over the stern, mocked them.

As they came up to Apollodorus amidships, the marine captain was stating his orders — calmly and quietly so as not to be heard by the enemy.

‘Look scared. Hang back. Look unwilling — and when I give the word, charge. Any man who shirks is a dead man.’ He paused. ‘Look like the crap you aren’t!’ he said. He pointed aft, past the enemy. ‘Arete is on the way. Show some yourselves.’

This speech seemed to put heart into the marines, who were, of course, used to Apollodorus and his acerbic commentary. No man who followed him would expect a salutation to the gods or a flowery speech.

The enemy marines came over the stern, and Apollodorus let them get aboard — most of them. He played that he was terrified — that his men were hanging back.

He flicked a look at Satyrus, who nodded. Apollodorus was a marine for a living, and Satyrus was merely a king. The nod permitted Apollodorus to keep the command.

‘Cowards!’ Apollodorus shouted. An arrow from the enemy stern hit his helmet and danced away. ‘Stand your ground, stay with me — NOW!’ he bellowed, all play-acting gone, and he raced down the deck for the mass of enemy marines.

Satyrus would have said that it was impossible to surprise men in open warfare, on an open deck in the midst of a battle — but the enemy marines were plainly shocked when the whole of his marine contingent rushed them as one man. Perhaps they had been counting on negotiation, surrender, massacre-

Satyrus slammed his aspis into his first man, an officer in an ornate blue and gilt Attic helmet with a pair of feather crests, and the man went down hard, flying back into his file partner and he, too, went down, and Satyrus put his butt-spike into the second man’s eye slot, ripped it free and plunged the fighting point, the sharp steel, into the neck of a third man. Then blows rained on his shield like storm-driven waves on a ship’s bow — three, four, five and he was rocked back as one blow almost cost him his balance. He thrust his spear out, stabbing blind, his eyes under his shield rim in a storm of pain, and he felt his needle-sharp point cut — slide — plunge like a knife into roast meat, and then the shaft was snapped by a blow from the right, and he had nothing but a bronze butt-spike and a few feet of ash. He blocked an overarm blow from an axe with his shattered shaft — the axe cut away part of his own crest in a shower of blue and white horsehair — and he threw the butt-spike at an unarmoured giant to his front and made the man flinch back, and then Apollodorus was into the man, under his guard, stabbing as quickly as thought, once, twice, and the big enemy marine folded and vanished from Satyrus’ limited line of sight. What felt like an armoured fist struck Satyrus’ helmeted head and he rocked, tottered but did not fall because he was hemmed in so close by other fighters — he stumbled, recovered his balance, blessing long days on the sand of the palaestra. Without conscious thought he got his right hand under his armpit and pulled out his sword, stepped forward and cut overarm at the first man to come under his hand, and hit the man on top of his helmet crest so that he fell, unconscious.

The enemy was roaring, shouting, and marines were pouring onto the deck, but Satyrus and Apollodorus has cleared the deck around them, and the first batch of enemy marines were penned into the stern, terrified and yet shouting for aid — for something — Save the king! they called to each other and came in again.

Satyrus looked down between his legs and realised that he was straddling the enemy commander, who he had felled with his shield rush in the first seconds of the melee. He only had to look at the man for a second to know him.

‘Demetrios!’ he said.

‘Satyrus the Euxine,’ said the man lying under him. Demetrios the Golden grabbed his ankle and threw him in one practised move, and then Satyrus was on the deck, his left arm encumbered by his shield — a wonderful implement in a sea fight, but an impediment in grappling — and Demetrios reached out for his windpipe but Satyrus drove his sword hilt into the golden man’s faceplate and the silvered bronze buckled under the blow and Demetrios grunted. Blood fountained. Still, Demetrios landed a heavy blow to Satyrus’ throat just as Satyrus got his feet under him and he was rocked back, blackness encroaching on his vision and his breathing ruined, just as the second group of enemy marines charged.

Apollodorus’ men met them like gods with a charge of their own — heavily outnumbered, but desperate and charged with Apollodorus’ quiet courage — and the sight of Arete’s foremast looming up close. Demetrios was back-pedalling like a crab on his hands and knees, trying to get to his feet. Satyrus managed to cling to consciousness — Demetrios was leaking blood from under his helmet, but Satyrus had to assume that was just a broken nose. That’s why they’re dumping every marine they have into my ship, he thought. Save the king, indeed. He got to his feet, as did Demetrios, just a spear length or two apart.

‘You are the man I wanted to fight,’ Demetrios said. He drew his sword with a deadly flourish. Under his helmet, the bastard was grinning. ‘The Hektor to my Achilles. A worthy hero for me to conquer — not poor old Ptolemy.’

Satyrus could see that Demetrios was fresher, and unwounded, and thought, as if from a distance, that if the man had simply struck without the Hektor speech, he might have finished the fight there and then. Satyrus was unarmed — in bashing Demetrios’ helmet, he had shattered the pommel of his sword and the bone hilt was in shards. Satyrus dropped it, stepped back once and his now empty hand found a spear stuck in the railing by his shoulder. He pulled the weapon free, skipped his return speech, set his feet, took a choking breath and threw.

The spear was not light. It was a full-weight longche, the weapon most marines carried, and Satyrus took a big step forward as he released, the whole weight of his hips behind the missile, and it struck the Antigonid king right in the centre of his torso, knocking him flat to the deck. But kings wear good armour, and Satyrus’ best throw didn’t lodge — no mortal blow — but skittered away down the deck.

Satyrus stumbled two paces. The enemy marines from the first rush were rallied — and then stopped in their tracks to see their gallant king laid low, again. Instead of a making charge that would have finished Satyrus, they were gathering around the fallen Demetrios. They were poised to rush into the rear of Apollodorus’ men-

Oarsmen erupted out of the rowing decks, led by Stesagoras swinging a great twin-bladed bronze axe. The axe head glowed like fire — like fire. .

Like fire.

Satyrus gulped another breath while he considered his ludicrous plan, which appeared fully formed in his head like Athena from Zeus, and another while Stesagoras cut a swathe through the enemy front rank with the axe, before the inevitable — a spear in his guts and death, for him.

It was one of the hardest decisions of Satyrus’ life, because the natural decision — the Heraklean decision — was to throw himself swinging into that fight and die with his newly freed oarsmen, with Stesagoras, a gallant man who had just died like a hero.

But in the flash of Stesagoras’ axe, Satyrus saw a way to save them all — a poor chance, but some chance.

He leaped down the central ladder of the ship in a single jump of faith, and fell flat when some outside blow moved the ship. He got to his feet, tried to ignore his own blood all around him on the deck and staggered forward along the central gangway. There were oarsmen here — only the bravest, most desperate, least sane had joined Stesagoras — and he pushed past them, headed forward, past the midships stations, past the forward rowers, past the elite lead oarsmen who sat in the bow, to the tabernacle, the small space under the forward tower and over the ram where the sailors kept the fire pot that allowed them to heat iron or to start fires on the beach. A heavy, carefully protected clay pot the size of a man’s head that was full of coals set in leaf mould and bark to smoulder slowly. Satyrus picked it up by the heavy linen wrap which surrounded it — sailors fear fire the way Ares fears Athena — and pushed himself erect, got to the forward ladder and climbed, now two horse lengths behind the fighting. He climbed up the ladder on willpower and staggered to the side of the ship, and looked up at the immense height of the enemy’s sides — and his heart seemed to stop, to die within his breast. At his most fit, unwounded, he would never have been able to throw the heavy pot over the enemy rail.

He took a shuddering breath and stood straight. An arrow struck his helmet and ricocheted away, and a second hit his chest so hard that he staggered, but the point didn’t puncture his armour and he got his feet under him and lifted the pot off the deck by the linen bag, and in a moment of inspiration he whirled it above his head — the pain in his back flared as if the coals had burst into flame there — and he ignored the pain for the movement, the purity of the great circle over his head, and he twirled, his feet moving nimbly, and then, when it seemed right, when the god spoke to him, he let the fire pot go.

It was never going over the enemy rail. For an instant, in the perfect physical moment as he spun, he had thought that perhaps, by the glory of Herakles. . but his throw was too flat.

Too flat, and too hard. No arc at all, and it shot like one of the bolts of the war engines, straight as an arrow across the deck and over the water — into the staved-in oar port where Apollodorus’ first missile had hit, so that where the iron bolt struck, all the oarsmen were dead; the pot went through the hole and shattered, spilling coals onto the summer-dried wood of the rowing benches, and there was no one by to pour a canteen of water or wine on them.

And then Satyrus had to turn away, because it had been an act of desperation, and the gods had, at least, seen his throw go aboard the enemy, but there was no result — no smoke, no tongue of flame.

His sword was broken, lost somewhere. His aspis was leaning against the podium where the fire pot usually rested in the tabernacle, close under his feet but as far as Hyperborea.

But there were plenty of them on the deck, and Satyrus scooped up a short, heavy weapon almost like an iron mace, and an aspis, stripped from one of his own dead marines.

Now for death.

He was behind the enemy marines, and he would kill a few of them before they, in desperation, turned on him. He took a great shuddering breath, and his back hurt, and he wondered why it would matter how many enemy marines he killed — he was going to die, and were they not men, as he was? Perhaps better men. Perhaps men with loves, with lives ashore. He was saddened, as he cleared the breastplate from his neck and freed his right arm for one more fight, to discover how little he had to live for. My sister, he thought. And her son. They will miss me, and I them. Pater, I have failed, and I am sorry.

Then, by an act of will, he banished doubt, banished self-pity, shook his head to get the sweat out of his eyes and charged into the rear of the Antigonid marines.

He pulled up short — no need to commit suicide — and slammed his heavy sword into the back of a helmeted head, and the man fell. Satyrus took his time; his shoulder hurt. He put a second man down, and a third, and now they were aware of him.

But instead of closing on him in a pack, Satyrus saw, as if down a tunnel, as one of those things men talk about over wine — the real veterans, the men who’ve stood in the closest fights and who find humour in the horror, or at least room to live with it — the Antigonid marines slide to the right and Apollodorus’ men, exhausted, just let them go, as if, by agreement, the vicious fight was over. Each side watched the other like dogs in a dogfight, but no weapon moved, and Satyrus joined the unspoken truce, although he was in a position to reap another man or two. It was, in fact, the oddest moment he had known in combat.

Satyrus stepped up to Apollodorus, who stood, unwounded and magnificent, in the midst of a dozen of his men, the survivors of the fight.

The truce was broken when enemy marines began falling as if cut down with a scythe — arrows, appearing out of the air, took two of them even as Satyrus slumped over, the pain in his back conquering his training so that he could no longer stand erect. Arete, game to the end, had ranged alongside, and her archers were reaping the enemy. Even as he watched, Idomeneus leaned far over his own rail and shot an officer who was trying to force another charge.

In the stern of Atlantae, a knot of enemy marines, shields over their heads in desperation, were lifting Demetrios the Golden off the deck where he lay as if dead, and passing him up the side of his great ship. Sailors and oarsmen cut at each other — Satyrus could no longer determine which side was winning, but the enemy marines were dying and they had clearly had enough, and even as he watched, the balance was changing. He was sure of it.

‘One more charge!’ He managed. He raised his borrowed sword, and Apollodorus lapped his shield onto Satyrus’.

As a charge, it wasn’t much — they stumbled down the deck in a line, but Satyrus had read his opponents right. Their king was down and the archers were killing them and they had no way to reply. For some reason, all the archery from their own mighty ship had ceased. Satyrus’ short shield wall shoved the enemy into the helmsman’s station at the stern. One brave man stood his ground to cover the retreat of his comrades — and for a few long seconds he held Apollodorus and Satyrus both, his shield everywhere. He managed to slice Satyrus along the calf, and he got his spear point into Apollodorus’ shoulder and then Necho, in the second rank, knocked him flat with his butt-spike and the melee surged over him, but Demetrios was gone, and most of the rest of the enemy marines had escaped due to the superb bravery of one man.

‘Cut the grapples!’ Satyrus bellowed — or perhaps inside his head he bellowed, because what came out was between a groan and a squeak. But Apollodorus, untouched, heard him, and leaped for the side. Satyrus stayed with him, bludgeoning a wounded enemy sailor to the deck when he tried to resist the marine captain, and Satyrus got his shield up to cover Apollodorus against archery fire.

Twice they moved to cut another hawser, each time sawing at the rope like children cutting string with dull knives, until the motion of the stricken Atlantae changed and they were free. Satyrus could not believe that they were alive — that they were afloat — that they weren’t taking the hideous damage of the immense line of war engines that hovered over their heads, a horse length away — ten engines on this side alone.

But even as he raised his head from cutting the last grapple, he smelled the smoke. The enemy leviathan was pouring smoke like a wounded beast drips blood — smoke from the entry point forward and more smoke amidships, coming out of oar ports so that the whole incredible beast seemed to leak blood.

‘Pole her off!’ Satyrus croaked, and Apollodorus repeated the order. Satyrus stumbled from the ship’s side, pain forgotten in a surge of hope — real hope. He crossed the deck to the port side and got his hands on the rail. ‘Pass us a line and tow us clear!’ he called.

‘Get off that wreck!’ Neiron shouted back. ‘Abandon ship!’

Satyrus felt the god in him, and he stood taller, towering over the pain in his back. ‘No! Get us a line and tow our stern clear!’

The fire on the enemy ship was burning now, flames visible all along his side, and Satyrus saw a curious change in his own men, exhausted heroes from the fight — they panicked, as if fire was an enemy too dreadful to be faced — or perhaps, after such prolonged stress, they simply couldn’t endure another crisis. Men — brave men — broke away from the side, ran across the deck and cowered against the port-side bulkhead. A sailor dared the jump to the Arete and leaped, only to miss his grip, fall between the hulls and be crushed like an insect as the waves threw the two hulls together.

If the flames get aboard- Satyrus caught the line that a sailor threw him and moved forward with it, belaying it on the stump of the foremast.

‘Come on, lads,’ he croaked. ‘Almost there. Don’t burn to death — no point. We’re going to live. Come on!’ he waved, and the two men closest to him trusted him — came away from the illusory safety of the bulkhead and joined him in fastening the tow rope.

‘Get the deck crew moving and get the foresail back up,’ Satyrus said. They both looked too wild-eyed to respond. Satyrus stumbled away; everything was a matter of heartbeats now.

The tow rope began to straighten.

Satyrus saw the marine, Necho, by the rail.

‘Necho! Stand up, man! Come and get these sailors to do their duty. Come on!’ Satyrus called. He slapped the man on the back, as one comrade to another — and Necho’s face cleared and his courage returned.

‘My lord?’ he said, as a man awakening from sleep.

‘Foremast up! And the sail cleared away so that it doesn’t catch fire!’ Satyrus called, as loud as his throat could manage, and Necho looked as if he understood. Then Satyrus went aft. He could feel the Atlantae leaning to port with the tow, and he knew she was moving — not fast, but her bow was coming off the enemy vessel.

Apollodorus had never panicked. He and Laertes were in the stern, pushing at the enemy stern with spears, trying to pole off. The fire was so hot here that Satyrus knew another moment of terror — sparks were coming aboard, hissing into the pools of blood that lay like puddles after a rain shower where the fighting had been thickest.

Other men had followed Satyrus, and they threw themselves against the spears and long poles, pushing with what strength they had left, and as one more sailor leaped to help them the stern moved, and suddenly they were sliding through the water, the bow curving off to port to follow Arete, and Satyrus felt life in his steering oars. The brave man — the one who had held them there at the very end — was lying across the steering oars, fouling them, and Satyrus got his feet and Apollodorus his head and they moved him a few feet, setting him down as gently as they could in unspoken respect for his heroism.

Then Satyrus settled into the oars. ‘Laertes!’ he said, in what voice he had left. ‘Get the rowers to their stations — oars out.’

‘Aye, lord,’ Laertes answered. He had a cut on his brow and blood was running down his face.

To Apollodorus, Satyrus said, ‘As soon as the rowers have way on us, cut the tow.’

Apollodorus nodded. ‘You going to pass out?’ he asked.

Satyrus managed a grim smile. ‘Not if I can help it. Now get to it. We’d look like idiots if some cruiser snapped us up now.’