Destroyer of Cities

20

DAY EIGHT

Arete floated as the day she was launched, below Satyrus’ window. Every ship in the harbour was empty. Forewarned, the Rhodians knew that the attack and the great engine-ships were coming at the harbour defences, and they had stripped every ship remaining in port of all engines, all oars, oil, drinking water, amphorae — anything that might give comfort to the enemy. And the ships were moored together with heavy ropes, all across the front of the beach wall, so that there was a wooden wall in front of the unfinished land wall.

The sea wall was not so much as a span higher — Satyrus hadn’t bothered to argue with the oligarchs, who still attempted, every day, to negotiate with Demetrios. He had spent his own money, and that of Abraham, and a legion of slaves had laboured behind the wall.

Four days they had worked like slaves, and the fifth dawned clear and pink, and as soon as the light was strong, Demetrios put his great fleet to sea. Not the pirates. Not the riff-raff. Only his own magnificent fleet, escorting the ten great platforms, each as big as a herd of elephants.

Satyrus, still pained in every joint from yesterday’s exercise, stood on the roof of Abraham’s house. The roof had changed — flying buttresses now reinforced the front walls and the corners of the main towers, and the reinforced roof now held a pair of Arete’s ballistae behind stone curtains. Four days can be a long time, if you have enough men to work.

The Theatre of Dionysus was no more. The Temple of Poseidon had lost its east face and its retaining wall. A decree stood in the agora that promised every god so affected a ten-fold return should the city survive. The decree — and the permission to tear down public monuments — had been passed by the boule by a single vote.

‘Ready to try, lord?’ Helios said by his side. His hypaspist had his armour laid out on the roof. Satyrus had not worn armour since before his sickness. He had muscles, now — he could see them on his arms — but they were nothing like the muscles he had carried a year ago. Abraham’s armourer had taken his breastplate in, and made him plain greaves for his legs. His old greaves were merely a painful reminder of the body he once had.

But when the breastplate was buckled securely onto his thorax, he bore it only as long as it took the enemy fleet to silence the battery of engines on top of the harbour tower with their dozens of ballistae, sweeping the crews right off the tower — minutes — before he was breathing hard, and stooped under its weight.

Humiliated, he allowed Helios to take it off him. Satyrus felt better immediately, and he watched the unfolding action as his sweat cooled.

Demetrios was in no hurry. In fact, he was making a demonstration. The great engines worked — but the crews were untrained, and it took them hours to get the range. Stones the size of a man’s head fell harmlessly into the harbour a stade or more from the target. Rhodians jested that Demetrios meant to fill the harbour with stone.

By afternoon, the jests had fallen away. All at once, all of the great machines, which fired about four times an hour, found their range. Three great stones in a row reached the top of the tower, and then, with a rumble, the fourth drove in the top of the tower the way a big man can be driven to his knees by a strong man — and then six or seven more stones hit, all low, and the tower vanished in a cloud of dust and a roar of shattered timber and cracked stone, as if the fist of a god had smashed it flat.

A hundred Rhodian citizens perished in five heartbeats.

‘Lord?’ Helios asked. Miriam was behind him. She had something in her arms.

‘I had this made for you,’ she said. ‘Because you are stubborn and rash. And weak.’ Her smile belied the harsh words.

She looked like Thetis on the old vase paintings, holding a man’s breastplate — of leather. Beautiful, Athenian leather, tanned and then coloured with alum, the edges bound in bronze, with an iron belt over the kidneys.

It weighed very little. It was plain — as plain as something a marine might wear, but it fitted, and he could bear the weight. She closed it around his waist with her own hands, and Satyrus kissed her — a decorous kiss, in thanks, but their lips touched for too long, and when Satyrus turned back to his men, her brother looked at him, his brow furrowed.

The loss of the harbour tower signalled the end of the day. Demetrios’ fleet withdrew, jeering at the defenders.

Rhodians wept.

Satyrus went down to his room, ate and exercised. In the agora, the assembly met and voted to offer complete submission to Demetrios, and ambassadors were dispatched immediately.

Satyrus went to sleep.

DAY NINE

In the first grey of dawn, Helios woke him and together they ate dry bread soaked in wine. Korus came and made him exercise — before dawn’s rosy fingers extended over the harbour, Satyrus had run half the circuit of the walls, and he walked back to the house, greeting the other men of the city. Rhodes was a true democracy — it did not appoint a single commander, even in war. The boule commanded. The oligarchs feared a unified command — feared, with some reason, to create a tyrant worse than Demetrios who could never be ejected. Satyrus was wise enough to know that he, as a king, was dangerous to the oligarchs, more even than to the commons, and he went running through the town naked on purpose, as much to show his essential vulnerability as anything.

The loss of the harbour tower had crushed any spirit the Rhodians had. The officers of the paid troops — the professionals — had expected nothing else, but the boule were panicked. Even Panther shook his head. ‘Surrender is the best we can expect — and a garrison of his soldiers,’ the older man said. ‘Will you take me, at Tanais?’

Satyrus nodded. ‘I’ll be happy to,’ he said. ‘But Demetrios will not accept your surrender. He doesn’t need to. Try to surrender just after you sting him with a victory. When he’s won one, what needs he to treat with you contemptible mortals?’

Panther winced. ‘Avert,’ he said, making a peasant sign.

Nicanor shot back. ‘Is that how you think, O great king?’

Satyrus was a small, thin naked man among a dozen rich men in armour. He laughed. ‘Do I threaten you?’ he asked. And ran back to Abraham’s house, where his trainer made him lift weights until Helios called him to the roof.

Korus handed him a basket. ‘Pork. Eat it. You need bulk.’ The slave frowned. ‘You are doing well,’ he said grudgingly.

Satyrus sat on the roof, chewing pork and watching the sun walk across the ground between the camps. When it reached the enemy walls, he heard the murmur before he saw for himself.

The ambassadors had been crucified.

Satyrus scratched his beard and finished his pork, then licked his fingers. Sometimes, he had to wonder if he was, indeed, like other men. He’d known two of the ambassadors. Good men, with children. But seeing their corpses, he smiled. He thought of his father, and of Philokles, and even, a little, of Socrates.

The enemy fleet came in fast. There was no counter-fire from the harbour batteries, so they burst into the entrance, forty big ships, quadremes and penteres mixed. They cleared the harbour entrance, and behind them came the great engine-ships, their double hulls gigantic in the morning light.

They got into the harbour, and fired their first salvo at the sea wall. A single stone flew right over the wall, over Abraham’s house, to strike the roof of the next house and crush it flat, so that the two machines on the roof were masked in a thick cloud of powdered mud and concrete that rose from the collapsed building. Men who had survived major earthquakes said how much like one this was.

But before they could reload, the town unleashed its first surprise. Engines, stripped from ships or purchased before the sailing season closed, had been placed on the roofs of the highest houses — and not on the unfinished towers of the sea wall. Now they fired, all together, when a red flag was raised by Helios.

Most of the bolts used by the defenders were wood, with iron tips — nowhere near heavy enough to penetrate the thick hulls of the heavier ships, although they might have been deadly enough to a trireme.

But Satyrus and his men were not the only innovative men in Rhodes, nor did Demetrios the Golden have the only engineers. His engines were carried in ships. That imposed limitations.

The defender’s engines were higher. And every one was on a rooftop — the roof of stone buildings with kitchens and giant hearths. Their bolt-tips had been heated red hot.

Some missed. They were wasted, sinking hissing into the blue water of the harbour.

Others struck metal and screeched away. A few hit unlucky flesh, destroying a man — and every man around him — in a grim shock of heavy metal and wood.

And the best of them struck the ships.

The results were not immediately apparent. Red-hot metal will not straight away ignite wood — even carefully dried wood exposed to the Mediterranean sun and coated in black pitch.

But just about the time the fastest of the great engines aboard the nine double-hulls were being readied to fire, ships began to burst into flame — as if Apollo had rained fire on them. The result was so sudden and so spectacular that it surprised the defenders as much as it surprised the attackers.

The Golden King was no fool, and he had no intention of running risks or losing.

He withdrew. In minutes, the harbour was clear, except for the burning wrecks — infernos now — of fifteen of the Golden King’s ships. The trapped oarsmen screamed, and the citizens of the town carried the smell of roast pork with them for a day. They burned to the waterline, and then sank.

DAY TEN

Satyrus never did his exercise on the tenth day. Before he was fully awake, Demetrios had his fleet on the water and the Rhodians, warned by their sentries, manned their machines and heated their missiles.

Demetrios’ ships had wet hides across their bows and decks, and they came on boldly into a withering fire. Their boldness was misplaced. Three handspans of red-hot iron with a barbed tip cares nothing for a sodden bull’s hide. Sailors wrestled with the red-hot shafts, trying to prise them loose, and the town’s mercenary archers and all the archers from sixty Rhodian triremes — hundreds of men — shot shaft after shaft across the harbour into the sailors and the harbour began to fill with corpses, the way dead flies can litter the surface of a bucket of wine in the sun.

After an hour, the engine-ships had fired three times, and found the range. A hail of stones fell on the sea wall, just two streets to the south from Abraham’s house, hammering the half-built wall down on its underpinnings. Dried mud bricks vanished in puffs of mud-smoke, and stones cracked under the onslaught, and the facing broke and broke again.

At the centre of the maelstrom a breach was opened, fifty paces wide.

But Demetrios’ ships could not stand the counter-battery of heated missiles, fire arrows, javelins — anything that could be thrown or shot across the harbour. Two thousand of his sailors died in that one hour, and ten more ships caught fire, and the other trierarchs, threatened with ruin, backed water against orders and fled. Because they fled without orders, they jammed the harbour entrance, and then the slaughter commenced.

It was the most terrifying kind of war Satyrus had ever experienced, and he had stood his ground against a charge of elephants. But here, great rocks fell from the sky without warning and without mercy. A single stone might kill an entire family — might wipe out a bloodline two hundred years old, or a huddle of terrified slaves, or a family cat or dog — the stones were merciless and like some dark embodiment of Tyche, and veterans began to flinch every time the telltale hissing of the passage of one of the big stones was heard.

A marine — a good man — screamed and threw himself face down on the roof.

Apollodorus was there — not a terrifying disciplinarian, but a hero, who took the man by the shoulder and raised him, speaking into this ear until, red-faced, the man returned to his engine.

‘Imagine ten days of this,’ Neiron said, at Satyrus’ side.

‘Imagine a hundred days of this,’ Satyrus said.

Miriam came up the ladder with a basket, followed by a dozen of her maids. She was smiling. If she was afraid, she was above it. Satyrus and Anaxagoras caught each other watching her. But with death falling like granite fists from the gods, Satyrus could only smile. And Anaxagoras could only smile back. When she reached the top of the ladder and lifted a long leg around to clamber onto the roof, every man at the machine smiled.

Then Satyrus saw the enemy ships retreating — hard to see, with the smoke of burning ships, collapsed buildings.

‘Neiron!’ Satyrus said.

Neiron was munching bread from Miriam’s basket. ‘Lord?’

‘Is that an engin-eship?’ Satyrus asked. He was looking clear across the harbour through the battle haze.

‘By Hephaestos!’ Neiron said. He ran to one of the engines, and

Satyrus to the other.

Down in the courtyard, the slave-women had heated a pair of bolts — too much heat, in one case, so that the barbed point was deformed.

‘No matter,’ Satyrus said. ‘Load!’

Men got the thing into the firing channel — already charred in places where hurried men had made mistakes — and winched the heavy cord back. Men were standing straighter, taking their time, making fewer mistakes — there were no stones falling. And, of course, Miriam and her women were on the roof, passing out bread — no marine wanted to be seen by a woman to flinch.

‘Ready!’ Necho said. Satyrus waved — the marines had practised all winter while he had lain helpless, and he wasn’t taking charge of a weapon now when there were men better fitted to shoot, but it galled him. He wanted to participate.

He leaned over the roof, caught the eyes of the head woman and waved. ‘More missiles — four more, red hot, as fast as you can!’

The woman all but saluted. She was enormously fat, and as strong as an ox, and she had mastered the heating of the heads without crisping the heavy shafts better and faster than any other person.

‘Hit!’ roared Neiron, and he turned but couldn’t see a thing. Neiron wore an unaccustomed grin, and he waved his absurd Boeotian hat at the enemy.

Necho’s machine fired, and then they were raising the next pair of red-hot shafts, hurrying to avoid the moment when the shaft caught fire from the head. Satyrus could no longer see the principal target. But Helios could, and he leaned over to help Necho.

After a pause, both machines let fly together with a crash that shook the roof.

Far off, across the harbour, a tongue of flame leaped to the sky like a sacrifice to the gods.

Satyrus joined the cheer, and even as they whooped the vast double-hulled leviathan caught — a single sheet of fire, and then two.

But that was not the end, because now the burning ships were acting as a barrier to the escape of their other ships. Satyrus’ crews could no longer see anything for the smoke, but other machines on the other side of the harbour could, and they shot and shot again into the helpless enemy ships. It was over an hour before a handful escaped.

Nineteen enemy ships burned in the harbour mouth, and the engine-ship’s double hulls were visible just above the surface of the water at low tide. Eight engine-ships slunk away, and Satyrus doubted that there was celebration in Demetrios’ tent that night.

He sank onto his own bed, exhausted. He slept the afternoon away, dreamed of his father again, rose and dressed without help — little things were becoming easy again, and he was to begin pankration and swordsmanship again the next day. The thought cheered him.

He awoke clear-headed — and with the memory of a dream of Herakles and a firm notion of his next step. He leaped from his bed, put on yesterday’s chiton without repinning it, buckled on a belt and was pleased to see that it was tight. He was so excited, he almost forgot sandals.

He found Miriam outside his door — each as surprised as the other — and she froze like a deer caught by a stealthy hunter who does not use dogs.

‘I was-’ she said.

‘I’m awake,’ he said. ‘I have to talk to the boule.’

She flushed. ‘Of course,’ she breathed.

She smiled, and walked away down the hall. ‘Don’t be late,’ she called over her shoulder.

Satyrus shook his head and walked down the steps without feeling light-headed — a matter of some pride — and then into Abraham’s receiving room, now one of the command stations of the defence.

There were a dozen messengers waiting, and Panther, in full armour, seemed to be in charge.

Satyrus shook his hand. ‘I wanted a word,’ he said. ‘With the whole boule, if I can manage it. Even as he said the words, it struck him. What was she doing outside my room? Was she about to come in? And then?

His heart beat as if he was in combat.

Panther put a hand on his shoulder. ‘You doing all right, lad?’

Satyrus smiled. ‘The boule?’ he managed.

Panther nodded. He wrapped his salt-stained military cloak around his shoulders, summoned a pair of ephebes as bodyguards and messengers and led Satyrus out of Abraham’s house. Together they walked up the street to the row of statues outside the Temple of Poseidon, and then left up the steepest of the hills to the agora. Everywhere they walked, there were dead and wounded people — men, women and children — the dead laid out on the street, many already wrapped in linen according to the Ionian custom, the wounded screaming or silent. A small boy lay with both of his feet crushed and amputated, his eyes huge, his mouth open and flies everywhere about him. A woman lay on a bier, the side of her head crushed so that her hair and the shards of her skull were a single grotesque shape — but she was alive. Alive, and lying on her funeral bier.

‘If your people want to surrender,’ Satyrus said, ‘tonight is the night.’

‘What?’ Panther asked. ‘This, from you?’

Satyrus followed the Rhodian navarch into the agora — already, slaves were stripping the facade from the gymnasium to get at the big stones underneath the marble. But the round tholos of the boule was untouched, and they walked into the cool, shaded interior, which cut off the sounds from outside — the sounds of people dying.

Panther led him into the main chamber, where thirty men — most in armour — sat on benches or lay on kline. There were charts, chalk drawings of parts of the walls and baskets of scrolls — every book in the city on the art of war was being devoured at speed by the government.

‘Satyrus of the Euxine would speak to us on matters that affect the city.’ Panther looked around. ‘I move that we allow him to speak.’

Nicanor rose, red-eyed, from his couch. ‘He is a king and a tyrant. I stand against your motion.’

But when the men present were summoned to vote, Panther’s motion carried easily.

Panther spoke quietly to Satyrus. ‘I should have told you on the way, but your thoughts put my head in a whirl. Nicanor’s sons — two of them — died in the collapse of the tower.’

Satyrus nodded. Then he stood in the centre of the floor.

‘Demetrios will be as mad as Ares tonight, but he’s had his first taste of defeat. Look — this is my opinion, nothing more — but in some ways, Nicanor has a point. We do think much the same, Demetrios and I — we are kings, we are used to getting our way. And surrender — a surrender that keeps the city intact and your families alive — gentlemen, I’ll fight as long as it takes, but let’s not kid ourselves. You’ve seen what just half an hour of bombardment does. Just imagine — imagine that we survive the harbour attack. And I think that we will. Then — then he builds more of those engines, and goes after the land wall — and there’s nothing to sink. My mathematics says he can concentrate a hundred engines on fifty paces of wall. We won’t even be able to hit back. Every day he’ll clear another fifty paces of wall. A breach a day.’ Satyrus shrugged.

‘You are in favour of surrender?’ Nicanor asked. ‘Surely this is a sudden reversal?’

Satyrus bit his lip. ‘No. First, I doubt he’ll accept. Second, he’s as likely to butcher us after we surrender as anything. He respects nothingbut his father’s will. But if the boule is still set on this course, the time will never be better.’

Panther nodded. ‘I am still against it,’ he said.

Nicanor made a face. ‘I have only one son left to me. People died today. We lost almost a twelfth of the total citizenship of military age in one day. I am surprised that Satyrus the Tyrant has come around to my way of thinking — but I move that we take his advice and send a deputation.’

Satyrus gave the man a wry smile. ‘Who will lead this deputation? He has the bodies of your last ambassadors crucified on his camp walls.’

Damophilus rose. ‘I think that Satyrus seeks only to show us all the possible paths. And I, for one, would not trust Demetrios to count the coins in a warehouse. I say we fight. I will go farther, gentlemen. I say we need a centralised command. I move that we appoint Panther as polemarch — as war archon. And three strategoi, as in former times, to command the city.’

Nicanor rose. ‘This is the first breath of tyranny. Let this city be governed as she has always been governed — worthily governed by men of worth.’ Nicanor looked around. ‘And who are these strategoi? Yourself, Damophilus?’

Panther rose and thumped the floor with a spear. ‘We are not barbarians. Vote the items as moved, one at a time. For the creation of an embassy of surrender?’

Almost five hundred citizen soldiers had already perished. Many had been in the tower when it collapsed — the Rhodians had thought it impregnable. More were in their homes, or on the sea wall, or simply unlucky. And citizen women, children, slaves — the casualties from the initial bombardment were staggering.

A twelfth of the citizen population was already dead. By the twists of bright Tyche, six of the dead were oligarchs — and members of the boule. And not one of the Demos party or the Navarch party had died yet.

So, by luck, the domination of the boule by the oligarchs had been broken in the first hail of the besieger’s engines.

The vote to surrender failed by three votes.

Only then did Panther and his allies realise that they had the boule. Nicanor was a proud man — and a mournful one. He rose, pulled his himation about him and stared at them all.

‘Now you will order everything your own way — and you will fail. Democrats can never govern — the so-called people lack the arete to succeed. When the conquerors are riding your daughters like whores, do not look to me.’ He turned to go.

Panther raised his arm. ‘Nicanor — you are grieving, and any mortal man would do the same. Stay, and help us choose our strategoi. It is in my mind that you should be one of them. Why not? You are a worthy man, a good spear-fighter and you lead a party that is of account. Let us not count every vote. Let us act together for the good of the city.’

Nicanor paused in the doorway. ‘You seek only to catch me in the toils of your own failure.’

Panther made a dismissive noise. ‘Nicanor, I am a sailor. When the storm blows, I do not ask the oarsmen for advice. Nor do drowning men criticise me if I’m wrong. If we fail, there will be no politics in this city, because we’ll all be dead.’

Nicanor had more dignity in defeat and anger than he did in victory. ‘No. I will serve on the walls, but I will not lead. I resign my seat. Good day to you.’ He turned and walked through the door. Two of the younger oligarchs rose to follow him — Hellenos and Socrates — but they paused.

Damophilus intercepted them at the door and spoke to them, and they returned to their couches.

The boulechose Panther to command the defence. And then the bouleelected Satyrus of the Euxine to be a member. No one present was more surprised than Satyrus.

He was led to a couch, and Menedemos, the young aristocrat, but a democrat, came and lay by him. ‘You are an aristocrat like us,’ he said fiercely. ‘We play kithara with your friend Anaxagoras and we know you are one of us — Nicanor is blind with grief.’

Satyrus shrugged. ‘I’m a king,’ he said. ‘And my people were aristocrats in Athens and Plataea since the time of the gods.’

Menedemos nodded. ‘Exactly. And you are friends with Panther — and with Damophilus. The three of you will unite the parties.’

‘I am a foreigner,’ Satyrus whispered.

Menedemos laughed aloud. ‘You are a king, and all the foreigners know you. There are a thousand metics in this city. Many are worthy men: Abraham the Jew-’

‘Is a citizen now, but I agree he’s a worthy man.’ Satyrus looked at the other man — who was his own age, or even a little older. ‘Where is this going?’

Menedemos pointed at Panther. The navarch rose.

‘I move that the bouleappoint me three strategoi for the conduct of the siege,’ he said. ‘I request Damophilus son of Menander, Menedemos son of Menedemos and Satyrus son of Kineas.’

Satyrus lay back and laughed. ‘Now I see,’ he said.

DAYS ELEVEN TO EIGHTEEN

Satyrus stood on the sand of the gymnasium’s palaestra — still smooth under his feet, but a breeze blew across the sand where the whole front wall had been removed, quarried for stone.

He was naked, holding a wooden sword, his left arm wrapped in his chlamys. Anaxagoras faced him. The musician had never been trained as a swordsman, and wished for lessons. Korus stood by them with a heavy staff. Satyrus was covered in sweat, and Anaxagoras gleamed only with oil, having just arrived.

‘Again,’ Korus growled.

Satyrus moved forward in the guard position, left leg advanced and left arm steady and high, the trailing folds of the cloak covering his side and leg, the cloak weights in the embroidered border holding the edge down. His sword arm was well back, so that his opponent could not easily get control of the sword — his right elbow was cocked back, almost like a boxer ready to throw a punch — the tip of the blade was high, pointing at his opponent’s neck.

Anaxagoras smiled. ‘I’m not convinced that a man can learn anything from a “sword master”,’ he said. ‘Does Xenophon not say that holding a blade is natural to every boy?’

Satyrus nodded across the wooden blades. ‘I’m not sure I’m strong enough to demonstrate the superiority of art over ignorance. But ask yourself, music teacher: how well does that same boy do at playing the kithara — with his natural skill?

Anaxagoras stood square on to Satyrus, sword well out, cloak held close to his body.

He grinned. ‘I certainly cede the point intellectually. Well hit.’

Satyrus found it hard to dislike the musician, even when he had seen him standing at the entry to the women’s quarters, exchanging witticisms with Miriam in the early-morning light while she coached her women on their weaving.

He smiled, and his cloak arm moved a fraction — he slid forward half a step, and his cloak arm shot out, pinned Anaxagoras’ sword and his own sword tapped his opponent on the throat — hard enough to make the musician stumble back in pain.

Very satisfying, really.

When Anaxagoras came back on guard, his face was flushed. ‘Trick,’ he growled, and sprang forward, his sword swinging in vicious arcs. Satyrus ducked, parried with his sword and rolled his wrist, clipping Anaxagoras on the side of the head — a blow which he carefully pulled.

The big musician didn’t pause, but cut back.

Satyrus blocked that blow, using the heaviest part of his wooden sword closest to his hand, and the two swords locked for a moment and Anaxagoras, even at a mechanical disadvantage, easily pushed Satyrus down and away — but Satyrus sprang back, substituting training for strength, and extended his sword, which Anaxagoras ran on — too late: he swung his sword, failing the parry and smacking Satyrus’ right arm so hard that he dropped his weapon.

‘I killed you twice, you ignorant fuck,’ Satyrus said angrily.

‘You never touched me!’ Anaxagoras laughed. ‘Just as I thought — you dance around and I hit you anyway.’

‘I hit you on the head and I just poked you in the gut,’ Satyrus said.

‘Not hard enough to do any damage,’ Anaxagoras said. ‘Don’t be a poor loser. Is this something about being a king? If I knew I had to lose, I’d have been better prepared.’

Satyrus felt the blood rush to his face. For a moment, he actually saw red. Then he counted — ten, nine, eight — slowly down to one. At the end, he took three deep breaths and set himself to guard. He was covered in sweat and his arms hurt, and he was naked. In armour — even light armour — he would already be exhausted.

‘Ready,’ he said.

This time, Anaxagoras put his cloak well out in front and ran at him, sword swinging.

Satyrus didn’t move. Choosing his moment precisely, he punched with his cloak and swung his sword the same way. Even through his wrapped cloak, Anaxagoras’ blow stung his arm. But Satyrus’ blade caught the musician’s out-thrust shin and the man went down like a sacrificial ram.

‘Gods curse you, arse-cunt!’ Anaxagoras said angrily. He rolled to his feet and thrust at Satyrus, who stepped back. Anaxagoras lunged forward, off balance, his sword held clumsily across his body, and Satyrus stepped forward, shoved the sword into the out-thrust cloak and put his wooden blade into his opponent’s armpit. ‘Don’t be ruled by anger, musician,’ he said.

Anaxagoras didn’t pause: he cut overarm, a wild Harmodius blow, one, two, three, as fast as he could, heavy blows that jarred Satyrus’ arm and made his jaw ache.

Satyrus punched his opponent in the gut with his cloak hand. Once, it would have been a stout blow, even for a left-handed jab. Now it was merely a poke. But Anaxagoras flinched away from it, and Satyrus rolled his blade off the other man’s clumsy attempt to stop-cut and jabbed the blade where the punch had gone.

Anaxagoras didn’t stop coming. But Satyrus was used to his rage now — he spun back, ducked, and caught the blow on his cloak and it stung.

There was a crack, and Anaxagoras stopped, stunned.

Korus had hit him with his staff. ‘Stop, now,’ he said.

Anaxagoras stopped. He was bleeding in three places: one was his head, where Satyrus’ second blow had caught him. He was breathing hard. The fire died away from his eyes, and he dropped his oak sword.

‘Oh, lord, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘The fire comes on me. . fuck. You hurt me. I’m an arsehole.’

Satyrus hadn’t seen the musician like this — angry, or remorseful.

‘You scared me, Anaxagoras,’ he said.

‘Me too,’ Korus said. ‘You kill him, I lose my freedom.’ The trainer grinned.

Anaxagoras hung his head. ‘Sorry,’ he said.

Satyrus dropped his cloak. The welt on his cloak arm was red and livid and already raised in a long ridge. ‘You hit hard.’

Anaxagoras nodded. ‘I find that it works, in combat.’

Satyrus had to smile.

Korus nodded. ‘You hit like a girl,’ he said to the king of the Euxine.

‘You should see my sister fight,’ Satyrus said. ‘And I was pulling my attacks, you idiots.’

Korus spat on the sand. ‘The music-maker doesn’t want to admit how easily you hit him. You don’t want to admit that you have no strength in your hand. You’re a pair of liars.’ He shrugged. ‘Tomorrow, in armour.’

Three days of respite — Demetrios never left his camp.

Three days of fighting on the sand of the palaestra, while the gymnasium itself vanished around them.

The fourth day, Demetrios’ fleet moved forward. The Rhodians stood to. Satyrus ran from the sands of the palaestra, already armoured, when the alarm sounded from the Temple of Poseidon, Anaxagoras at his side. They went up the ladders together, onto the roof of Abraham’s house.

‘Get the marines formed — four streets back, and well spread out, so no one rock can kill them all,’ Satyrus barked at Apollodorus. ‘You are the reserve for this sector. Any questions?’

Apollodorus got his chinstrap tied and nodded. ‘I hate this,’ he said. ‘I want to hit something.’

Out in the harbour, a pair of light boats were manned. They were fire boats, directed by Menedemos. He intended to burn another engine-ship if he could.

But Demetrios was on to a different tactic. His fleet came up to the seaward edge of the main harbour, but they stayed outside the mole, beyond the headlands that marked the small harbour. Five engine ships crept slowly across the mouth of the small harbour, and four dropped anchor just off the large harbour’s southern headland.

In minutes, their lever arms were swinging and their stones began to fly — over the moles, over the harbour. They only had range to hit the northern and southern ends of town by the port, and about one hundred and fifty paces of wall at either end of the harbour.

Just as quickly, refugees were pouring out of the threatened parts of the town. They fled to the temples, which were out of range of the current bombardment.

At dark, the ships withdrew. The sea wall didn’t exist anywhere that the engine-ships could reach: from the harbour entrance, north and south, almost three hundred paces of wall had been reduced to pulverised clay, broken concrete and smashed stone. Dozens more were dead, and fires had started where panicked householders had abandoned homes while lamps were lit in household shrines.

The northern quarter burned for two days. Panther ordered that the town’s reserve simply destroy two rows of houses to isolate the fire, and return to their duty.

At the height of the fire, Demetrios sent ships into the harbour — thirty ships crammed with soldiers. But they had trouble navigating the wrecks, and there were dozens of Rhodian ships anchored, empty, in the shallow water by the beach under the sea wall, and despite damage, most of them had survived to impede navigation.

Not a single enemy soldier got ashore, and Panther’s ruthlessness in abandoning the northern quarter to fire was proven sound.

Four enemy triremes were caught and destroyed.

On the seventeenth night of the siege, Panther, Damophilus and Menedemos each manned light guard ships in the dark, rowed silently out of the small harbour entrance and attacked the engine-ships with fire. Satyrus stood on the roof, unable to settle to sleep. The engine up there hadn’t fired in days — the enemy didn’t come within range — but the roof was the highest in the neighbourhood of the temples and Satyrus could see a long way.

Anaxagoras came up the ladder while Satyrus sat. The attack was secret — so secret that Satyrus hadn’t even told Abraham — but everyone knew something was up.

‘Am I welcome here?’ Anaxagoras asked.

Satyrus grunted. He was standing on top of the left-hand ballista for the added eight, watching the sea.

‘I brought wine,’ he said.

Satyrus grinned in the dark. ‘Well, in that case. .’

Anaxagoras handed up a metal cup and then clambered onto the other machine. ‘Night attack?’ he asked.

Satyrus drank the wine in a single gulp. He was nervous, and angry — angry at his body for not being ready.

‘All of the commanders,’ he said. ‘All except me are out there on the water.’

Anaxagoras nodded. ‘They’re amateurs,’ he said.

Satyrus looked at him, but the musician was impossible to read in the moonless gloom.

‘I’m no soldier, but I’m a professional singer,’ Anaxagoras said. ‘I know how to plan and execute a big commission. A huge party, a temple entertainment — fifty musicians, ten pieces of music, a chorus, a sex act and a fighting act and a pair of famous lyre players — how to keep them all happy and together so that the client is happy.’

Satyrus tried to get wine out of an empty cup. ‘Do you have more wine?’

‘Yes. Catch,’ Anaxagoras said, and threw something.

Satyrus caught it — a wineskin — balanced on the main slide of the ballista, and was proud of the body he was rebuilding. He poured more wine. ‘You have the right of it,’ he said. ‘They don’t see the whole siege, just pieces of it. Demetrios will assault the harbour, perhaps tomorrow. But he’s been moving men around the city for days, and he’ll have a go at the land walls — another attempt at surprise, I expect. And the men of the city are as brave as lions, but they aren’t looking ahead and they won’t listen to me. They’re thinking in days. This siege will last a year. That is, if we are lucky enough to survive tomorrow.’

Anaxagoras shuffled around in the dark. ‘A year?’

Satyrus shrugged, not that the motion communicated anything. So he spoke. ‘At least. All Demetrios needs to do is realise that if he kills one of us for every fifteen of his men, he’ll win — and then we’ll be finished. So far, he has disdained such tactics.’

Suddenly, there was fire on the water. One fire sprang up, and then another, and suddenly, as fast as Satyrus could take a breath, the fires leaped into pillars, the roar like the distant hum of bees.

‘Poseidon,’ Satyrus said. ‘Herakles, stand with us.’

The flames grew until the whole area outside of the harbour was illuminated as if by daylight. The three Rhodian ships could be seen clearly, and a dozen enemy ships launching from the beach and a pair of guard ships already moving at ramming speed.

One of the Rhodian ships got fire into a third target at the price of being rammed — hard.

Satyrus writhed, his body moving to and fro as he tried to fight the battle himself.

‘You drinking all the wine?’ Anaxagoras asked.

Satyrus threw the wineskin back, and the musician caught it. ‘Your arms are getting stronger,’ he said.

Satyrus smiled to himself. ‘Yes,’ he said.

‘We’re not so different,’ Anaxagoras said.

‘No?’ Satyrus asked, his eyes glued to the fight beyond the harbour. There were four enemy ships around one Rhodian. The other two Rhodian ships had made their escape.

‘No. You’d rather be fighting — even at the risk of your life: you, a king, a rich man — than watching.’ Anaxagoras snorted.

Satyrus saw that the third Rhodian ship had set herself on fire. That was courage. ‘Yes,’ he said.

‘I hate to watch, too. I have to play — whatever everyone else plays. Music. Games. Sword work.’ Anaxagoras snorted.

Satyrus joined him. ‘It’s true,’ he laughed, although his heart was in his throat. Who had just died?

‘And we’re in love with the same woman,’ Anaxagoras went on. ‘I’m sorry about that.’

Satyrus all but fell from the ballista. ‘What?’ he asked.

‘You want Miriam. So do I. I see how you look at her — Hades, I look at her the same way. I’d like to eat her raw, too.’ Anaxagoras laughed. It was not a happy laugh. ‘The thing is — you, the king — what can you offer her? I can give her music, and a good name. I would marry her, if Abraham would have me.’

Now more ships were burning — the three enemies grappled to the Rhodian ships, dying in the fatal embrace. Someone had made a noble sacrifice. Who was it?

‘I’m doing this badly, lord. You have other things on your mind.’ Anaxagoras made a noise like a man choking.

Satyrus jumped down from his ballista without another word, and then climbed down the ladder closest to him, ignoring Anaxagoras. He wasn’t ready to consider the validity of Anaxagoras’ claim — and he thought that he’d seen men going over the side of the distant burning ships.

‘Apollodorus!’ he called. ‘Marines!’

He gathered the first dozen, with Idomeneus and some archers, and ran for the harbour mouth — slow going when they came to the edge of the southern quarter, where the buildings had been crushed as if by the hand of a god. They climbed across the rubble that covered the streets — whole houses collapsed, or walls that had fallen straight outward, dreadful footing — but the distance was short, and then they were on the breakwater of the small harbour. Satyrus led the marines and archers along.

‘Look for men swimming!’ he called.

One of the enemy ships was looking for swimmers as well — a trireme. She came on strongly, her archers shooting down into the water, and Idomeneus began shooting at the archers. His men supported him, and the glare of the burning ships backlit the enemy, while Idomeneus and his archers were invisible in the darkness. In heartbeats, the enemy archers were shot silent.

‘I see men!’ Apollodorus called. ‘Spearmen, to me!’

Idomeneus glanced at Satyrus. The enemy trireme was coming right in — it was possible she intended to land her marines on the breakwater to cut off the swimmers.

‘See if you can clear her command station,’ Satyrus said.

‘Aim amidships,’ Idomeneus sang out. ‘All together. Loose!’

A dozen arrows flew, and then another dozen before the first had struck, and suddenly the enemy ship turned — not to port, away from the breakwater, but to starboard, and in two breaths she struck, at cruising speed, her ram hitting the piled stone of the ancient harbour mole from the time of Agamemnon and Achilles.

Then the night was full of fighting. The enemy crew, desperate, poured over the side into the deep water and came up the side of the breakwater. Satyrus had only a half-dozen marines, and they had to move up and down the stone road on top of the harbour works, killing the men climbing.

And they had to be careful, because from the first, some of the climbing men were friends — swimmers from the burning Rhodian ship.

Satyrus stood at the head of an iron ladder built into the breakwater, and his shield felt as if it was made of iron on his shoulder — he could not remember feeling so tired before a fight. Some enemy had made it up this ladder or another, and most were unarmed or poorly armed, but Tyche sent a rush at him — three men in armour, who had clambered straight from the dying trireme onto the wharf, and a dozen unarmed sailors behind them — and he was alone.

He kicked another man on the ladder and the poor wretch retreated, and then Satyrus set his shoulder and the rush came in.

There was nothing he could do but retreat — he could not have held the head of the ladder even in top shape. He managed two good blows, both of which struck home, but not with enough strength, and neither of his first opponents fell.

Back and back and back again, cursing his weakness. A shape beside him in the dark, swinging wildly, and men fell back before them — and now a flicker of light, a burst of flame and Satyrus lunged, changing feet, and his point sank into a man’s eye-slit and he died.

And then — suddenly — the breakwater was covered in men. Menedemos brought his ship in close on the inside of the breakwater and landed his marines and his deck crew, and they stemmed the rush. As soon as they pushed past Satyrus, he fell to his knees — a few seconds of wrestling with his helmet and he vomited from fatigue.

Anaxagoras held his hair out of the vomit, and then passed him a rag, silent in the fitful light of the dying ships.

Satyrus got to his feet. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I think you saved my life,’ he continued.

Anaxagoras grinned. ‘I think you saved mine, back in the fight at Salamis.’ He shrugged. ‘Even?’

Satyrus couldn’t raise his arms above his shoulders. ‘I can’t help myself,’ he said.

Anaxagoras nodded. ‘Me neither.’

The Rhodians cleared the mole, killing every enemy on it and offering no mercy. All of the Rhodian swimmers were rescued, including the three men supporting Panther, who was still in armour and had nonetheless made it across the harbour.

‘There’s a man more tired than I am myself,’ Satyrus said. He went and embraced the old navarch.

‘Now he’ll go away,’ Panther gasped.

Satyrus shook his head. ‘Now he’ll get serious,’ he said.