Destroyer of Cities

18

Satyrus awoke to the sound of music, and he slept to the sound of music. The Iliad and the Odyssey, the war poems of Tiresias, sea shanties, drinking songs, hymns to the gods. And another voice, lighter but pure, singing women’s songs — Sappho’s songs about the purity of love:

Some say that a body of cavalry is the most beautiful,

And some say the phalanx is the most beautiful,

And some say a squadron of ships is the most beautiful,

But I say that the most beautiful one

Is the one that is loved

And his eyes opened, fluttered and stayed open. At the foot of his bed Aspasia sat in a chair of ebony, her wrinkled face composed in sleep. And closer, sitting so that her hip rested in a pool of warmth against the sticks of his own hip bones, Miriam played the lyre and sang through the whole of Sappho’s greatest love song, singing of how Helen chose love over war, and how great was the beauty of that gift.

Satyrus lay for a long time with his eyes open. He couldn’t bear to look at his shoulders against the coverlet, but he could watch Miriam’s face in repose and song for a long time.

A long time.

She sang another song in a very different voice — a strange, almost discordant song that was almost more like a chant than Greek music.

In his head, he smiled to realise that he was actually awake — these were real people, not phantasms; that his brain still worked. The word Hebrew floated to the surface of his thoughts — the language of the Jews in their home. She was singing in Hebrew.

And then he was asleep again.

Days — days of gorging on soup, retching at simple beans, swallowing clear broth and then accepting more complex meals until he ate bread, and kept it down, and his friends gathered at his bedside as if it was a feast day at the temple, or as if his sickroom was a symposium.

‘You lived,’ Neiron said.

Satyrus managed a smile. ‘If you call this living,’ he said in a whisper. If he had gained any weight, he couldn’t see it. ‘How long?’

‘Almost three months, lord,’ Helios said.

A jolt — a daemon of energy coursed through his body.

‘Any. . more?’ he asked.

‘More what, lord?’ Helios asked.

Satyrus tried to raise an arm to gesture — tried to speak more precisely, and all that emerged was a moan.

‘You tax him too much,’ Aspasia said. ‘He is still close to the edge. Let him be.’

Neiron shook his head. ‘Nay, Despoina. He asks if any ships have come — if any survived the storm. Lord, it is winter here, and the worst sailing weather in fifty years. No ships have come into the harbour. There is almost no news from the world.’

‘And Demetrios has the shore opposite, and when the weather clears his ships sortie to close the blockade,’ Helios said, all in a rush.

‘He intends to lay siege to the town as soon as the weather clears. .’

Satyrus could no longer make sense of what he heard, so he went back to sleep.

Sleep, and dreams he didn’t remember, except that he fought against opponents appointed by Herakles, and in his dream his physique was the same poor wasted thing he was in life, and Herakles mocked him.

How will you save this city with the body of a dead man? he asked.

Awake, and Aspasia fed him, and he forced himself to eat, the taunts of his patron ringing aloud in his ears. He ate and ate, and Anaxagoras came and played music for him, and the notes seemed to enter his psyche like bronze nails hammered into a shield rim.

Asleep, and awake to Miriam singing, and he tried to smile at her and she played on, oblivious to his presence, alight with her own singing. And awake, he could read the depth of her unhappiness as if it was written on her face in stonemason’s letters. Tending to him wasn’t just the duty of the woman of the house — it was release.

She sang on, and he slept.

And woke, and ate.

And slept.

And eventually, became aware of the rhythm of the house, the passage of the sun across his window, the wheel of time and life. The sun was warmer. Winter was fading. There were fewer smiles from any of his visitors.

Rhodes was pleading with Demetrios to let her surrender.

Abraham and Neiron came to him to tell him of it, and it saddened him and set his feeding back a week, because he wasn’t sure he wanted to live in a world where Rhodes cravenly surrendered. Worse — humiliating — Rhodes had to send ambassadors to the Golden Man, the conqueror, and beg him to be allowed to surrender.

Across the straits, Demetrios had invited the pirates — all of them — to join him for the rape of Rhodes. Over three hundred ships had joined him: some said it was every pirate left on the face of the seas, and Demetrios, instead of destroying them, promised them the unimaginably rich plunder of the richest city on the ocean.

Abraham sat in the ebony chair, his hands clasped as if he were the one pleading to be allowed to surrender.

‘Antigonus turned our envoys away and said that he would prefer to see us as slaves,’ Abraham said. He frowned. ‘But Demetrios is made differently. He sees himself as being greater than men — as a god come to earth. He will relent, if only for his reputation.’

Neiron did not look so sure.

Satyrus could see it. All too well. ‘He will not relent,’ he said.

‘Because he thinks he is a god, and that he has no need for the morality of a man.’

Neiron narrowed his eyes as if seeing something new.

Satyrus fell asleep. And dreamed dark dreams of defeat and enslavement, and spurned his food.

He awoke to music. Anaxagoras played him awake, and then stopped — stopped in the middle of a rousing war tune. ‘Wake up, you sluggard!’ Anaxagoras said. ‘You think we saved your hide so that you could die? There are men here who need a king, a leader. A fighter. Wake up and strive, or lie back and die. My fingers grow tired of playing for you.’ And he laughed, his big laugh rolling out through the windows into the spring air like a hymn to Dionysus.

Satyrus took his medicine, and then he ate.

He lay back and listened to the tales men told him.

He tried to raise his legs in the bed, and he lay, humiliated, while Aspasia and Miriam and a host of slaves rolled him over, cleaned his body of excrement and laughed at him.

‘The baby I never had,’ Miriam chided him.

‘If I had let you die, I’d have saved us all a lot of work,’ Aspasia quipped.

After another few days — perhaps a week, although his grasp of time was not yet strong, and there was poppy juice in his water, he suspected — he dreamed again of his father, Kineas, the statue, speaking of the ways of the siege. When he woke, the dream was far away and unclear, very unlike the immediacy of the first. Except in one regard.

He asked Miriam to summon Neiron, and he came soon enough, again dressed in the long sweeping chiton of a citizen in formal attire.

‘You were at the assembly?’ Satyrus asked.

‘We went to hear the ambassadors,’ Neiron said. His face told Satyrus everything.

‘Demetrios refused you,’ Satyrus said flatly.

‘Demetrios intends to raze this city to the ground, kill every man, sell all the women as slaves and salt our fields. He intends to leave nothing, so that men will see what defiance of the Antigonids receives as a reward.’ Neiron looked away. He choked a little. ‘He escorted the ambassadors from town to town to show the completeness of his armaments. He has five hundred ships of war with the pirates. He has four hundred merchant ships to carry fifty thousand soldiers.’

‘Troy,’ Satyrus whispered.

Neiron strained to hear him. ‘What’s that you say?’ Neiron asked.

‘Troy!’ Satyrus said aloud. ‘He’s playing at being Achilles, or perhaps Agamemnon.’ He laughed a little. ‘Or perhaps he merely plays at being Alexander.’

‘If he’s playing, he’s playing in earnest. He has a thousand ships, or near enough.’ Neiron sighed.

‘If we are to be the Trojans, we had best prepare to resist,’ Satyrus whispered.

‘Resist?’ Neiron barked a bitter laugh. ‘Men are more interested in discussing who bears the fault of this disaster than in discussing defence. The harbour wall is not finished because the oligarch party will not spend the money to complete it. The only reason they haven’t run to exile is that they fear being captured by the pirates.’

‘If Demetrios has refused the offer of surrender,’ Satyrus said, as loudly as he could manage, ‘it is time to resist.’

Neiron shrugged.

‘Our men, Neiron?’ Satyrus asked.

‘Many were sick, lord — the same sickness that you had. Indeed, it is rumoured that Ptolemy had it, and died. It is one of the reasons that the town despairs. There is no hope.’ Neiron put his face in his hands.

Abraham took a deep breath. ‘Your captain of marines — Apollodorus — had the worst fever, except you; his eyes turned yellow as yours did, but he lived, and that gave us hope, lord. But he has been up for two months, and exercising in the gymnasium for a month. Four men died, and fifty were sick. The marines were sicker than any oarsmen.’

Satyrus nodded. ‘But they are recovered?’ he asked.

Neiron nodded. ‘And Abraham has cared for them and paid them, so that they remain a crew.’

‘Good,’ Satyrus said. He squinted. ‘Get me Apollodorus.’

It seemed that he had only to blink, and things were done. The next time he opened his eyes, Apollodorus was there, sitting in the ivory chair. As soon as he saw Satyrus’ eyes on him, he sank to one knee and kissed Satyrus’ hand. ‘Lord — I feared for you. I will send a hecatomb to heaven, to Asclepius.’

‘Better send another to the deadly archer, for it was his bow which shot me, and you. Anaxagoras changed the balance with a hymn to Apollo. I saw it — and many other sacred things. This is what I want to say to you, Apollodorus.’ Satyrus beckoned with his stronger hand, and Apollodorus came closer.

‘Listen to the words of my father, spoken in dream,’ Satyrus said, and was satisfied to see the marine captain touch the blue amulet at his throat. ‘The swift onset of the secret force will seldom triumph in the taking of a city. As a besieger, it must be tried — even at the cost of losing the picked men of your army, the savings in blood and gold of such an attempt is almost incalculable. Never, when you are commanders, allow yourself to count the loss of such a picked group against the possibility of success. If a city must fall — if that is the objective of your campaign — there is no personal price you should not be willing to pay short of impiety or immorality in the taking of the city.’

‘Your father is warning you that Demetrios will try to take one of the gates by stealth — before his fleet lands.’ Apollodorus rubbed his hands. ‘I will see to that.’

‘You must be secret,’ Satyrus croaked. ‘The simplest way to take this city would be by treason, and there are plenty here to play the traitor. I charge you to look for him. . or them.’

Apollodorus nodded.

Satyrus sagged back against his pillow. ‘There is another thing,’ he said. ‘It does not come from a dream — or rather, something was said in dream and I have thought and thought on it, sometimes in fever and sometimes as clear as the sea. I need you to accomplish it without demur. It will take all our sailors, and keep them employed. Will you see it done?’

Apollodorus grinned. ‘Anything you ask, lord — so long as you will obey me in physical things, and allow me to begin training you. It took me a month to restore my flesh — and you are far worse than I have been.’

Satyrus nodded. He was burning to transmit his idea.

‘Buy a house,’ he said. ‘Buy a house in the western part of the city, close to the wall. And dig a tunnel.’

‘An escape tunnel? Under the wall?’ Apollodorus asked. He sounded surprised, and not particularly pleased.

‘The tunnel must run all the way to the low rise beyond the great tower — there is a barn. Your tunnel must run to the barn.’ Satyrus nodded.

Apollodorus shrugged. ‘I doubt that anyone on the face of the earth can tunnel so far.’

Satyrus forced himself up. ‘Dig, damn it,’ he said. ‘You have months.’

And then he was asleep, again.

Sleeping, waking and eating. Now he tried to walk, and fell into the arms of Helios and Anaxagoras. But he would not lie still, and he walked — his stick-figure arms over their shoulders until his muscles burned like those of a man who had fought a long bout against a heavier man on the sands of the palaestra. When they left him, laughing, joyful at the pace of his recovery, he wept to be so weak.

But walking brought its own rewards, and exercise created appetite, and appetite fed exercise. He walked on other men’s legs, and then with a stick, his arm around Miriam as he crossed his chamber, back and forth, five times and then ten and then fifty, the circle of her waist a delight.

But as fast as his body healed, the world outside seemed to rot. The sun shone, and then a burst of spring storms wrecked a pair of grain ships that had almost run the blockade, and the spirit of the town fell again. Demetrios caught another grain ship and crucified the captain, and that was the end of blockade-running. His ships began to be visible in the straits all the time, and even Miriam was touched by fear and Abraham seemed to age before Satyrus’ eyes.

‘We have food for five months,’ Abraham said. ‘Oh, Satyrus! I should have sent my sister away. May God keep me from having to open her neck.’

‘Brother,’ Satyrus said, and put his hand on Abraham’s shoulder. ‘We will stand side by side again, and we will not lose this city.’

‘Almost I believe you,’ Abraham said.

‘We worship different gods,’ Satyrus said. ‘But perhaps you will understand if I say that I was sent back to save Rhodes, if I may. Or so I believe.’

‘May these words be true,’ Abraham said. ‘For a heathen, you are pious. I have never known you to blaspheme. Is this the truth?’

‘By Zeus Sator,’ Satyrus said. ‘I swear to you — my father spoke to me of saving the city, and Philokles, too.’

Abraham stood up. ‘I think that I want to believe you too much,’ he said.

Later, Helios came in with his hands dirty, dirt under his nails.

‘You are filthy!’ Miriam said.

Helios looked guilty, and he slunk away to wash. He returned when Miriam had gone to manage the household affairs. ‘We are digging, lord,’ he said.

Fifteen days he walked, enjoying the feel of Miriam under his arm — some appetites return very easily, he mocked himself. Miriam was a widow, the sister of his closest companion, and a woman who was deeply unhappy. She did not need to be the king’s mistress to add to her evils. Satyrus knew this, but the sickness had drawn a bond between them like a fetter of iron, and he felt it keenly. And her hand would linger on him when she washed him, or touched his face, a fraction of a heartbeat longer than it needed to — or was that his imagination?

Fifteen days, and then Apollodorus brought him an old slave from the gymnasium, a professional trainer of the new sort, a grizzled man with scars on his arms and a missing finger.

Apollodorus introduced him. ‘This is Korus,’ he said. ‘I have promised him his freedom when you can wear armour and swing a sword.’

And with Korus’ introduction to the household, torment began that was worse, in many ways, than the illness that had preceded it. Korus ruled like a tyrant, ordaining food and exercise, and the exercises were brutal — lifting jumping weights, at first, until Satyrus couldn’t use his arms. And his legs — he was forced to run on the spot, his feet on towels of linen on the smooth tile floors, half crouched with his legs behind him, until he would fall forward and crack his head.

And then food: he heard Miriam’s voice raised in anger — rage, really — at the demand that the kitchens produce roast pork in quantities suitable for a feast, and this in a household that forbade pork. Pork became the cause of a war: Miriam would allow none in her kitchen, and Korus acquired it elsewhere and forced Satyrus to eat it until he loathed the smell. Miriam fed him fish and chicken, and Korus fed him pork — five or six meals a day — and sometimes he vomited from surfeit.

Korus had no conversation at all. He was not an educated man, like Theron, and he didn’t debate philosophy or discuss religion. He did not speak of war threatening the city. He had no interest beyond Satyrus’ body, and he was remorseless in the pursuit of his goal.

Some days into this regimen, when Satyrus had just laid his head open smashing it against the tile floor in sheer fatigue, when Korus stood over him requiring him to rise and carry on, Satyrus lost his temper.

‘I wish to rest,’ he said in the voice of command.

‘Fuck that, boy,’ Korus said. Everyone was a boy, a pais, to the trainer. ‘Get your arse off the floor. You can do better.’

Satyrus rolled to his feet, proud that he could control parts of his body again after five months of illness — and then fell on the bed as he lost control of his legs and the room spun.

‘Get up, you useless turd. Get on your wide-arsed feet and move.’ Korus didn’t even raise his voice.

‘Can’t you see he’s exhausted?’ Miriam asked sharply. ‘How dare you speak to him like that!’

Korus looked hurt. ‘Like what, Despoina? Now you — get on your fucking feet.’ He ignored Miriam and stood over Satyrus. ‘On your feet.’

‘He’s finished!’ Miriam yelled. ‘How stupid are you?’

Korus looked at her. ‘Not stupid at all, Despoina. Smart enough to know that he has some power left in them arms and legs, and I want to milk every fucking drop of his strength so that I can put it back into him twice over in food. In pork.’

‘Get out of my house!’ she said with murderous intensity.

He nodded. ‘No, Despoina. I have your brother’s permission. It ain’t pretty, what I’m doing. But I do it well.’

‘You are hurting him.’ Miriam said. ‘Do you like it?’

Korus shrugged. ‘Not me getting hurt, is it? But the sooner I do him, the sooner he’s strong. And can fight. That’s what the contract says. And if it’s all the same to you, Despoina, I’m fighting for my freedom. Been a slave too fucking long. Let me get him ready, and you can do anything you like with him.’

His meaning was so clear that Satyrus rose from his bed in anger, and Miriam flushed right from the roots of her red-brown hair to the middle of her back, where it showed among the folds of her long chiton.

‘Knew you had some power left, laddie,’ Korus said as Satyrus rose.

Rumours came, of Demetrios. More rumours that Ptolemy was dead, and Satyrus told Abraham that this was just the sort of deadly rumour that Demetrios would send into the city to cause panic.

More sleep. Another day of endless agony — lifting, carrying and falling — more failure than success. Satyrus hated Korus’ voice, his rudeness, his lack of conversation.

And then, in the night-

He awoke to the sound of fighting — fighting close by, at the sea gate, and when he had his eyes open he could see the golden-red reflection of fire against the ceiling of his room, and he got to his feet.

He had no sword, no armour. But an attempt was obviously being made — he could hear voices, the unmistakable sound of mortal combat. The voice of the sword blade, the song of the axe, the ring of the hollow shield under the spear and the keening chorus of the wounded and the dying. From his window, which opened on the harbour, he could see it as clear as day — the new sea gate on the mole was flooded with men, and there were ships against the mole that hadn’t been there before. Satyrus found a chlamys — probably one of Helios’, left by chance — and wrapped himself in it and walked to the head of the stairs that led down from his room to the courtyard garden.

He hadn’t put a foot on a step in five months, and by the base of the steps he had a two-handed grip on the stair rail like a dying man at sea grips a floating spar. Down the steps to the courtyard gate — it was shut. And a heavy bar laid across.

A bar he could have lifted when he was thirteen; a bar of heavy wood that would have made Theron laugh. He couldn’t budge it — couldn’t move it in its well-worn channel of stone. As if he were an infant.

He gritted his teeth and put both hands on the bar. Once, he could have cut through a backstay with a single blow of his sword. Once, he could have severed the head of an ox with a single axe blow. Now, all he desired was to move the bar on a house gate. He strained, and prayed to Herakles, and the thing slid — a hand’s breath and more, and the gates opened wide enough to admit a man and he slipped out, even as the shouting began behind him.

He tried to run towards the sea gate, and he fell — caught a foot on the cobbles. Ahead, a troop of men ran at him, armed and armoured. He was helpless — now that he was down, he didn’t think that he could get to his feet. Weak and unable to resist, he watched them come. They ran right over him. A single foot found his ribs — the massive pain of a hobnailed boot in his belly, and then the squad of men was gone, running on, ignoring him lying in the filth of the street.

It was almost enough to make him laugh. They were Antigonid marines, and they had unknowingly ignored the King of the Bosporus, lying in the muck of a Rhodian street. But he hurt too much to laugh, and he tried to roll onto his side to protect his guts.

A clash of iron and bronze erupted at the head of the street. The sounds came clear, and his head was working even if his sinews were not. The men who had passed over him were under attack.

‘You are surrounded,’ he heard Apollodorus say over the sound of men dying. ‘Throw down your arms, or die.’

Even in a haze of frustration, rage, pain and fear, Satyrus was glad.

The joy of the defenders at saving their town from the attempted escalade was tempered by finding the King of the Bosporus lying in the street outside the house of Abraham the Jew, cursing his own weakness. Many men carried him back to his bed, and Aspasia, looking like a fury with her iron hair flying in all ways around her head castigated him like a boy and humiliated him far more thoroughly than Korus ever had.

‘You thought perhaps to take a sword and shield? To help the city in its defence? You are a fool, King Satyrus. Did we save you so that you could risk your life like an idiot?’

And Neiron stared at him. ‘It is like a sickness, this rashness. Listen, King. You killed half a thousand men in your hubris in the storm — and you almost killed yourself last night. This city needs you — who was it who made the preparations to repulse the surprise attack? And you are still such a lackwit as to go yourself?’

Satyrus lay on the bed while Aspasia and Miriam cleaned him and put him on clean bedclothes. Both of them were clearly so angry they couldn’t speak. Miriam handled him roughly — again he had the feeling of being a small boy, this time one who had displeased his mother and aunt.

But in himself, he felt unaccountably better.

With dawn, any residual anger at Satyrus was burned away by the new sun. Spring was fully on the ocean and the water was as blue as new-cut lapis, and the sun was a red-gold dish in a shining bronze sky. The day was as beautiful as all of the memories of youth of all the people watching from their windows, from the walls, from the hills above the town and from the smoke-blackened harbour where Apollodorus had sprung his trap, destroyed the assault and burned their boats.

The beauty of the day was lost on all of them, as was the fleeting triumph of the night before. For the sea to the north, which stretched away in unshadowed blue, was crowded almost black with ships. A thousand ships. An invincible horde of ships.