Destroyer of Cities

25

DAY TWENTY-SEVEN

Satyrus had no more wounds than any man who has fought all day in armour — long scrapes, mysterious bruises, three deep punctures in his lower back where spear heads were held off by his leather armour — but the points had licked through. He had a bruise on his upper left arm that turned a horrendous colour so that other veterans winced to look at it, and he had another on his butt where the gates had struck him that made it almost impossible for him to sleep.

Altogether, he felt wonderful.

Part of the euphoria he felt was caused by the poppy juice that Aspasia had given him for the pain in his groin, and part due to his success — by any standard, he and his men had won a notable victory. Demetrios had launched his grand assault, with almost twelve thousand men involved at its height, and he had been repulsed — repulsed with hideous losses. The heaviest assault had fallen on the beaches, and been massacred.

But the greatest part of the euphoria came from the casualties — or rather, the lack of casualties. Luck, planning, divine aid — for whatever reason, the phalanx of oarsmen had lost just fourteen men; the city ephebes had lost just six, and the combined marines of all Satyrus’ ships, engaged all day in the very heaviest fighting, had lost nineteen men — including Amyntas, the only one of Satyrus’ hetairoi, his close companions, to die.

Panther and Menedemos had each held minor attacks — real attacks, but with fewer men — and each had lost fewer than twenty men.

It was a miracle — sent by Athena, men said.

Satyrus lay on his bed and ached, and thought that it was indeed a miracle, and it was sent largely by Demetrios’ arrogance, and a great deal of luck. And some forewarning from Herakles.

The sun rose on a new day — the summer festival of Apollo — and Satyrus lay on a low couch, on a magnificent Persian rug in a tent crowded with furniture rescued from the wreck of Abraham’s house. The house was gone, hit four times by rocks the size of sheep. But his slaves had remained loyal and protected his belongings from looters, and now Abraham, his family, retainers and slaves had a compound of tents in the agora, made from Arete’s sails, at least temporarily out of the range of Demetrios’ machines.

Slowly, cursing from time to time, Satyrus swung his legs over the edge of the low bed, sat up slowly and managed to rise to his feet.

Helios appeared at his side. ‘My lord!’

‘You fought like a hero, yesterday, lad,’ Satyrus said. The word lad escaped from his teeth unbidden. I am growing old, he thought, if I can call men lads. Twenty-four years old. And another year for every day of the siege.

Helios grinned at him. ‘I did, at that, lord. Charmides says so, as well.’

‘Well, that certainly makes it true,’ Satyrus joked.

Helios grew more serious. ‘As you’re awake, there’s business, lord. After the pirate slaughter last night, Demetrios managed to throw some assault troops onto the mole — the town mole. They’ve barricaded the townward end, and they have a pair of great machines there.’

Satyrus winced. ‘How many men?’ he asked.

‘Six hundred, and some ships in support. And Demetrios has pulled his engine-ships well back, and rebuilt the spiked boom. You can see it on the water. Panther was here, almost an hour ago. He’s asked for all the boule to meet. Abraham refused to have you waked.’

Satyrus rubbed his jaw. ‘Gods, I stink. Abraham is a prince. Can you get me a bath and some sweet oil, Helios? And a cup of hot cider?’

Helios handed him a cup — warm pomegranate juice. ‘I’m ahead of you, my prince.’

Satyrus sat back, sipping the juice. The euphoria was still there. ‘We won a noble victory, didn’t we?’

Helios laughed. ‘Only — lord — why does he not give up and sail away?’

Satyrus finished the juice and stood up. ‘He’s barely started, Helios.’

‘Shall I wake the others, lord?’ Helios asked.

Satyrus shook his head. ‘Let Neiron and Apollodorus sleep.’ They were stretched under awnings near his tent.

Clean, in a chitoniskos short enough to cause comment in Athens, Satyrus walked out into the blaze of sun in the agora. He went to the boule by way of the square where Amyntas had died. He found the olive tree he remembered, and he cut a long frond and made a wreath and handed it to Helios.

‘Wear this, hero,’ he said.

Helios knelt and took the wreath, and burst into tears.

Satyrus cut three more and twisted them into wreaths as he walked. ‘When we are finished with the men of the city, we will return, set up a trophy and bury Amyntas,’ Satyrus said. Then he walked to the tholos where the boule met.

‘Lord Satyrus,’ Panther said, and came to meet him at the entrance. ‘The hero of the day. We have just voted you a statue, should our town ever rise from the rubble to have such things.’

One by one, men rose and took his hand, or embraced him. These were good men — noble men, whatever their birth, and their thanks — their very heartfelt thanks — were better than a hundred golden wreaths.

Panther indicated the podium. ‘I think we’d like to hear a few words from you, sir.’

Satyrus smiled curtly and went to the podium. He cast his chlamys back over his shoulder — he was very informally dressed, for an orator — and he looked around the dim room, picking up every eye.

‘I’d like to bask in your admiration, gentlemen,’ Satyrus said. ‘Indeed, it is a great honour to have served you well. And yesterday was a victory. A very real victory.’ He nodded at their smiles and plaudits, and then he raised his voice and chopped at them with it like a woodsman with a sharp iron axe.

‘It will take a hundred such victories to preserve this city,’ he said, and they were instantly silent. ‘Every day, every assault, we must be as victorious as we were yesterday, and by such a margin. We lost sixty men, sixty good men. We killed two thousand pirates and perhaps five hundred of his Macedonian professionals. He has thirty-five thousand more soldiers and twice that many pirates. If we lose fifty men a day and he loses a thousand men a day, we will run out of men first.’

Silence.

‘We have other enemies,’ Satyrus went on. ‘I live on the rubble of the agora now. I can smell the shit of three thousand people from here. We must do better than that. Soon enough, the whole population of the city will live on the agora. We must have sanitation, organisation, proper latrines, proper wells and districts measured off. No rich man should have more tent space than he actually needs.’

Men looked around.

‘Further, we need to consider our slaves,’ Satyrus said. ‘Many have been loyal. But as the food fails — and mark my words, gentlemen, we face food shortages almost immediately — their loyalty to us will dwindle. We should consider inviting them to be citizens. And when this town survives, I promise you that we will need their numbers to make up our losses.’

Grumbling.

‘And finally, gentlemen, for all that we managed to incur Nike’s good pleasure yesterday, someone opened the west gate to Demetrios.’ Satyrus glanced around. ‘Let’s not mince words. If not for Miriam, Abraham’s sister, the town would have fallen. No amount of heroism by our converged marines, by our ephebes, by anyone could have saved us, except that Miriam came to the beach and told us that the west gates were open. The women of the town — your wives, gentlemen — bought us the minutes we needed, and then helped break the best men Macedon has to offer — and still, they would never have been in the town except that someone let them in.’

Consternation.

‘The west wall garrison had been withdrawn. Who gave that order? Decimus, the lead phylarch, died in the fighting. No one seems to know who ordered his men to leave the walls. In a way, that traitor did us a favour — we saved the west-wall garrison instead of losing them. But friends, it was so close — so very close — that even now, as I speak to you, my knees feel weak. Who is the traitor?’

‘Any slave might have done it,’ Panther said. ‘You made the point yourself.’

Satyrus nodded. ‘Almost certainly. But let us not make it easy for the traitor. Appoint a committee to investigate. Find out what slaves, if any, deserted yesterday. Question the west-wall garrison — who was there? Town mercenaries?’

Panther nodded. ‘Cretans and Greeks — two hundred hoplites and four hundred archers.’

Satyrus nodded. ‘And let us face the horrible possibility that the mercenaries themselves sold the gate.’

Panther nodded, and other men looked sober.

Menedemos rose to his feet. ‘Satyrus — you have been an accurate weathervane so far. Where will Demetrios strike next?’

Satyrus narrowed his eyes. ‘I’m no seer, Menedemos. Answer me this, first — how stands the naval sortie? What happened in the southern harbour, and does the enemy possession of the mole cut you off from the sea?’

Menedemos glanced at Panther, and Panther scratched his chin.

‘We’re ready enough,’ he said. ‘We have the ships ready. We’re a little short on oarsmen, to be honest — all our oarsmen are on the walls. But we can put to sea any night, now.’

Satyrus nodded. ‘Look, friends, I cannot guess what Demetrios will do — or even if I can, I can’t be right every time. We have to make him dance to our tune. Our best course of action remains to strike him — to break the boom and destroy his engine-ships.’

‘His men hold the mole!’ Carias the Lydian was a former metic who was one of the town’s richest men. ‘We can do little while they hold the mole.’

‘The engines on the mole can hit any point in the town,’ Menedemos said.

Satyrus nodded. ‘Demetrios wants us to try to storm the mole, my friends. And I predict he’ll have those engines drop rocks — perhaps even bundles of small rocks — on the agora, in an indiscriminate killing to goad us to assault the mole.’

Panther looked at him. ‘I think we must.’

Satyrus shook his head. ‘No! Listen to me! We cannot afford to be bled like that. Retaking the mole — it might cost us five hundred men. We might lose that many and fail. His engines, however evil, will not kill so many.’

Panther shook his head vigorously. ‘Not today, perhaps,’ he said.

They argued half the morning. At last they decided to prepare the naval sortie and ignore the mole, and they appointed committees to organise the displaced citizens, another to begin recruiting slaves — the best of them — as citizens, and another to search for the traitor, if he existed.

Menedemos moved that the west-wall garrison be relocated to the north wall, and that the citizen hoplites, held on the north wall to avoid casualties among the richest citizens, be put on the west wall, at least temporarily.

The motion was carried unanimously, which showed Satyrus how seriously the men in the room took the threat of treason. The richest four hundred men were unlikely to betray their own town.

Satyrus shook hands with the other councillors and walked through the broken rock and clay of the streets. In every street, there were houses that had survived — some were shells, where a rock had dropped through the roof without touching the walls. Some stood because they had been overbuilt to start with, using heavy timber against earthquakes. Some were protected by the Moira. But there were few enough houses on the seaward end of the city, so that they looked like the teeth of an elderly man — more missing than remaining, and pitiful piles of rubble in between.

And there were bodies in the rubble — men and women, children, pigs and dogs and cats and rats, all rotting together, so that the east side of the town stank like an abattoir, or a temple the week after a great sacrifice. And that miasma would breed disease.

Satyrus walked through the rubble and headed south, to the great tower that the Rhodians had built to dominate the plain south of the town and the most vulnerable stretch of wall. Legs aching, he climbed the tower.

Jubal was already there. He laughed to see his king.

‘You’re up early, no joke, lord.’ Jubal smiled.

‘You fought well yesterday, Jubal,’ Satyrus said. He reached under his chlamys and produced a rather straggly wreath of olive, taken from the tree in the courtyard where Amyntas died. ‘Yours to wear.’

Jubal smiled. ‘Heh,’ he grunted, then shook his head. ‘Not for Jubal, lord. Di’n want to be a hero. Just stood my ground.’

‘That’s about all there is to being a hero, Jubal,’ Satyrus said. ‘How’re the engines?’ he asked, leaning out over the tower.

‘Had a try las’ night in the dark,’ Jubal said. One of his petty officers grinned like a death’s head. ‘Wen’ pretty well.’

‘Yes?’ Satyrus asked. Jubal and his men were a pleasure to be around. No big issues here — just the cat-and-mouse of siege engineering.

Jubal’s grin was that of the raven putting one over on the fox. ‘Reinforced the walls and floor, eh? And then we made the throwing arm longer, uh? And then we put yon heavier weight on the end. And then we shot her.’ Now his grin was triumphant. ‘Dropped a rock right over the west wall — don’t you worry, honey, no one was awake to see or hear.’

Satyrus had to grin. ‘You tested your range over our city?’

Jubal shrugged, and his gold tooth shone. ‘One rock more or less ain’t gonna do much harm.’ He looked around. ‘Made the whole tower move, though.’

Satyrus looked out from the great vantage point of the tower. He could see the new works built across the mole — four times the height of a man. And he could see that there were no defences on the flanks of the mole, because Demetrios had ships — a dozen warships — lashed all along it, full of men. And another four hundred men on the mole itself.

South, he saw that more ships were anchored out from Demetrios’ camp. Either he’d sent another force away, or another force had arrived. Satyrus wished he had spies — good spies. But only a fool deserted from a giant army of comfortable, well-fed besiegers to the desperate garrison of the city — and such fools were thin on the ground. There had been a few, but most knew so little, they had nothing to offer.

‘If we can just burn his engine-ships,’ Satyrus said, and scratched his chin.

‘Then he have to come at me,’ Jubal said. ‘I walk all round this fewkin’ city. An’ the only way in be right here.’

Satyrus was glad to hear Jubal say it, because he’d come to the same conclusion months ago, before the siege had even begun, and he knew that the Italian who had built the great tower had had the same view.

‘We should start work on a false wall here,’ Satyrus said.

‘Oh, aye,’ Jubal agreed dismissively. ‘But first, I wanna shoot the squirtin’ shit out of his landward engines. An’ then he’ll build more, an’ more, an’ finally he’ll knock down the whole fewkin’ tower, an’ then we’ll need a false wall.’ Jubal shrugged. ‘I’ve made the measurements, with Neiron. We done the maths.’ He grinned evilly. ‘I even know where the new tower’ll go, when this one falls.’

Satyrus shook his head. ‘Where’d you learn all this maths, Jubal?’

Jubal made a face. ‘Anaxagoras. An’ Neiron. An’ me dad. Great one for countin’ stars, me dad. Always fancied numbers.’

Satyrus grinned. ‘I think I’ll start a book of sayings: You never know a man until you stand a siege with him, is my first.’

Jubal raised an eyebrow. ‘Not bad, lord. An’ how ’bout Them what overbuilds the foundation course can always put engines on their towers. Heh?’

Satyrus hid a smile. ‘I’ll put it in the book, Jubal.’

DAY TWENTY-EIGHT

Satyrus woke to more aches and pains than even the day before — the siege was teaching him the rule of the second day, at least with bruises. He hurt.

He rose anyway, and Charmides brought him a cup of sage tea, and another of warm juice, which he drank down and felt better. And then Korus insisted that he exercise, and then he ate — more food than he felt he needed.

‘You still need weight, lord,’ Korus said. ‘You’re better than you were — you may be the only man in this town gaining weight.’

Miriam came up with a bowl of barley meal and coriander. The smell attracted him as much as the person carrying it, and he scraped the bowl clean before smiling at her. Then he went into his tent and emerged with another scraggly olive wreath.

‘From the marines,’ he said, and Apollodorus, just awake, came over and saluted her the way he would a man, an athlete or a hero.

Miriam blushed — a remarkable blush that started somewhere near the top of her head and seemed to run down to her navel — but she never lost her composure. ‘Some of us are delighted with the opportunities for weight loss, Korus. My hips will be the better for it. Indeed, every single woman needs a siege: men, good company, opportunities for heroism and exercise.’ She took the bowls, smiled at Satyrus and walked back to her own tent and the pair of cooking fires burning behind it.

Anaxagoras emerged from the open ground nearest the former Temple of Poseidon and took Satyrus’ oil bottle without asking, scooping it from Satyrus’ towel. He came and stood with Satyrus, using his expensive cedar oil liberally.

‘Is she not the very wonder of the world?’ he asked quietly.

Satyrus grunted. ‘That’s my oil,’ he said.

‘Learn to share, is my advice, lord king,’ Anaxagoras said. From another man, the words might have been a calculated insult. Anaxagoras was too open for such petty things. ‘Have you kissed her?’

‘And you have?’ Satyrus asked, stung.

Anaxagoras laughed.

Men compete in many ways, and Satyrus was not so petty as to pass on this one. If Anaxagoras could be the cheerful athlete, why, so could he.

‘If you use my oil, we’ll smell the same,’ Satyrus said.

‘And?’ Anaxagoras paused.

‘Well, when she kisses you, she’ll assume it’s me. Starving poets don’t use cedar oil.’ Satyrus smiled with a confidence that was entirely artificial — like showing courage when the Argyraspides charged, sometimes a man has to make himself stand to the challenge.

Anaxagoras sighed. ‘I haven’t kissed her.’

‘Nor I,’ agreed Satyrus. ‘Now give me my oil back. Before Abraham kills us both.’

DAY TWENTY-NINE

Another day of inaction — exercise, food, stinking corpses dug from the rubble and burned. Funeral games for Amyntas, and a dinner by the tents. Scattershot dropped by the engines on the walls killed a dozen citizen children playing with some goats, and killed all the goats.

Towards evening, the storm that had threatened for a week suddenly began to manifest, and Miriam and Aspasia bustled around with other women arranging every unbroken vessel to catch water. The town had a dozen wells, but the constant rain of heavy rocks was damaging cisterns and dropping dirt and sand into well shafts.

The sun sank, a bright red ball in dark grey clouds, and Leosthenes the priest claimed it was an omen. He demanded Satyrus’ attention.

‘Lord, it is a sign from the Golden Archer. I had a dream to accompany it, and I take it to mean that we should attack the mole.’ Leosthenes began a complex discourse on his dream and on the interpretation of dreams, and the importance of the dreams of a priest.

Satyrus nodded and walked away, leaving the priest to tell his dream to an audience of marines and sailors. Leosthenes — and Apollo, for that matter — wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know, and he took Neiron with him to find Panther in the small square at the south end of the port, where they’d first landed, what seemed like ten years before.

‘Navarch,’ Satyrus said, to greet the older man.

‘My lord,’ Panther said, rising from a late supper of olives and bread. ‘A cup of wine for the king.’

Satyrus shook his head. ‘I need my head clear. Panther, you’re the best sailor here — how long until that storm breaks?’

Panther raised an eyebrow. ‘Three hours?’ he guessed, looking at Neiron as a gust of wind shot through his tent.

Neiron nodded. ‘That’s what I said.’

‘Two hours after dark,’ Satyrus said. ‘I’ve heard it said that Rhodians are the best sailors in the world, Panther. Care to put it to the test?’

Panther shot to his feet. ‘Ares, Satyrus, you want to hit them tonight?’

Satyrus shrugged. ‘Neiron usually calls me rash.’

Neiron shook his head. ‘Not this time. Navarch, we think that if you give us one of the ships you’ve readied — well, we have the best armoured oarsmen in the town. Perhaps in the world,’ he said, with a piratical gleam. ‘We’ll land on the mole — right out of the storm.’

Satyrus leaned over to explain as another gust hit the tent. ‘Even now, all those ships lashed to the mole have to cut their grapples and row away, or be dashed to pieces.’

Neiron nodded. ‘Jubal saw it two days ago, but we couldn’t risk talking about it.’ The town now had desertions every day — so many slaves and mercenaries that there was no point in investigating the treason of the west gate.

Panther nodded, and finished his wine in two gulps. ‘Let’s do it,’ he said.

An unfamiliar ship, in total darkness.

But he had the best one hundred and sixty rowers of Arete’s complement, and the best twenty marines of the whole combined force, and all of his own officers.

In fact, the town was again risking everything in one throw. Menedemos commanded the largest trireme, and Panther the second largest: both intended to break the spiked boom protecting the engine-ships and throw fire pots into them. Satyrus saw to it that they had dozens of householders’ fire pots aboard.

‘The attack on the mole will, at least, even if we fail, provide a diversion,’ Satyrus said when they gathered the commanders.

And the boule voted to take the risk. All the knucklebones in one helmet.

It took an hour to get the men to their oars. They were in armour, with helmets and swords and spears which were lashed in piles on the main gangway — the trireme wasn’t a cataphract and lacked a main deck above the rowers.

Outside the ship, the wind howled like the living embodiment of wind, and the stern of the ship crashed into the stone wharf again and again, even in the inner harbour of Rhodes. A stade away, across the harbour, the waves broke on the mole and arched up to the height of two men, even three, in the cool night air, and the wind brought the spume across the harbour.

‘Bastards on the mole ain’t too comfortable,’ Neiron said.

‘They’ll be awake,’ Satyrus said. ‘Take the helm, friend. I’ll go in with the marines.’ He had Draco with him. Apollodorus was ashore, at the sea gate opposite the mole, awaiting some signal that the attack was on the mole before he led a hundred picked men out into the dark and up the landward face — the piled rubble, old barrels and sacks of sand with which Demetrios’ men had built their temporary wall.

‘Cast off,’ Satyrus said softly, and men sprang into action. Xiron, the new oar master — better known now as the right file in the phalanx, a hard drinker called the Centaur by his men — called the beat softly, beating time with a spear butt, and the oars dipped, held water and moved.

Aphrodite’s Laughter sprang across the harbour. It took fewer than four strokes for the crew to remember their profession, and then the warship moved at ramming speed.

Neiron had practised this route over and over, the last few hours, rehearsing how he would turn. His intention was to keep the ship hidden by the anchored ships in the inner harbour until the last possible second, and he’d talked them through it, every oarsman standing in the agora in torchlight, so that no man could say later he hadn’t known the route.

Under the stern of a big grain freighter, and then a sudden turn to starboard, and another to port, and they were flying up a line of anchored hulks — a dozen once beautiful triemiolas now stripped to their decks, a wooden wall protecting the town, a screen. Only the most observant man on the mole might glimpse Aphrodite’s Laughter running up the line — almost as far as the harbour entrance.

‘Ready, all decks!’ Satyrus called. He risked a yell — everything depended on this one turn.

The handful of oblivious men were slapped by their oar-mates. Men rose a little on their haunches, ready to back their oars.

‘Ready about!’ Satyrus called from amidships. The full weight of the sea wind caught them, but they’d planned for it, and the bow was already slipping south, just as they wanted it to-

‘Hard to starboard!’ Satyrus called, in case some laggard had forgotten the drill. ‘Port side reverse benches all aback starboard ahead full row — row — ROW!’

Simultaneously, Jubal dropped a pair of heavy stones from the stern — stones roped by hawsers to the mainmast stanchions, so that the ship became a horizontal pendulum at the end of a pair of anchor ropes belayed amidships.

The bow came around like a living thing. For a second, their whole port side was exposed to the gale, and the wall of wind took them and moved the ship the length of a house, sideways and rolled them so far that some starboard-side oarsmen got their hands wet in the ocean and their oars were almost straight up and down, or so it seemed. But they held their ground and pulled like they had held their ground in the phalanx and the port-side men pulled like heroes, and the ship shot about in her own length, her force keeping her out against the hawsers of the fulcrum — turned at racing speed.

Jubal, armed with a great axe, chopped at his hawsers and they parted with the sound of close-in thunder.

Like a great arrow from the god’s bow, Aphrodite’s Laughter shot out of the storm-lashed darkness at the mole. Satyrus ran forward from amidships to join the marines.

‘Ares!’ Satyrus could see forward now — over the marines, every man already soaked to the skin — and he saw now that Demetrios had not recalled the flanking ships. Half were sunk, their ruptured timbers showing above the water like spiky teeth, and the others were rolling into the mole with mighty crashes, pounding themselves to flinders. ‘Poseidon!’ Satyrus prayed, and ran aft.

‘The mole’s still full of ships!’ Satyrus yelled.

‘Then we don’t need to back water!’ Neiron roared in reply.

‘Brace!’ called the men in the bow. Satyrus threw himself flat and grabbed a stanchion.

The bow hit something with a gentle tap, and then something else — Satyrus kept his helmeted head down, well clear of the stanchion, and felt impact after impact — four, five, a great shudder and a ripping noise, as if the veils that hid the world of the immortals from men had parted asunder, and then a crash forward.

Satyrus was on his feet without actually thinking that the way was off the ship, and he ran forward — the foremast had snapped off cleanly and lay over the bow, right across the deck of a half-sunk trireme — and onto the mole.

Satyrus ran down the deck, already knowing what he had to do. Because only a god could have delivered the foremast like a boarding plank, cutting across the half-sunk wreck the way that Herakles cut across most of the problems posed to him.

At full charge, Satyrus leaped onto the butt of the fallen mast and ran — ran along the rounded, slippery bridge, eyes locked on the mole, blocking his fear — fear of heights, fear of slipping, fear that no man would follow him. He ran across the fallen mast and slipped — at the very end — and skidded on his knees at the edge of the mole to fall in a heap-

— on the mole.

Only his greaves kept him from ripping all the skin off his knees, and the salt-water spume hurt like a hundred avenging furies, but he was up on his feet in a heartbeat, his spear still in his hand, shield on his shoulder — he’d hurt that shoulder falling, hell to pay later — and he looked back to see Draco coming across the foremast, jumping effortlessly onto the surface of the mole.

‘Let’s kill every fucker here,’ he said, and ran off down the mole into the dark.

The oarsmen were clambering off their benches, impeded by their armour, but the marines were coming across the mast. Satyrus didn’t wait for them.

He turned, and ran down the mole after Draco.

The whole length of the mole seemed deserted.

And it seemed to stay that way until he heard a scream, and then a massive lightning flash lit up the scene.

Draco was killing men. And the mole was packed — packed with men. All the men from all the ships.

Zeus sent lightning from heaven to give them light, Poseidon blew wind and rain at the men on the mole, and Satyrus and his puny handful came out of the storm and started to kill.

Satyrus ran shield first into a clump of men illuminated by the levin-bolts. The thunder seemed to roll on now in one continuous peel, and the rapid flashes of the storm strobed together in an almost continuous light that nonetheless had a terrifying quality to it.

Most of the men closest to him were unarmed oarsmen. Satyrus killed them anyway, because a night assault in the heart of a storm is not a time when a man shows mercy. He was economical, fighting as only a veteran of dozens of hand-to-hand combats can fight — killing as only the veteran knows how to kill, shallow jabs to eye and throat and abdomen, no long thrusts — the needle-sharp point of his best short spear was a reaping scythe, into temples, through skull-fronts, into necks — any stroke that left the victim dead without risk to the attacker, risk of a wound or of his weapon binding in the wound.

The storm roared. It gave the fight an Olympian quality, as no sound of mortal man could be heard.

Men came up out of the storm, more marines and more and more again, and then Jubal and the deck crew — and the oarsmen, packed like herd animals died without response, their screams lost in the scream of the storm.

But behind the living wall of oarsmen were good soldiers, professionals, men who knew how to shelter themselves on a stormy night, and knew when they were under attack, knew that their lives were forfeit if they failed. The oarsmen died to buy them time, and they awoke, took up their weapons and formed.

Satyrus could see them forming, and he tried to cut his way through the last fringe of terrified oarsmen, who now pressed back into the forming ranks of the enemy soldiers — now the enemy soldiers were killing the oarsmen as ruthlessly as Satyrus’ men, defending the integrity of their formation. All in the lightning-lit roar that filled the senses.

Satyrus broke through the last rank of oarsmen, face to face with an officer in a bedraggled double crest. He thrust — hard — and his spear point caught on the other man’s breastplate and knocked the man down, but failed to go through the heavy bronze. Satyrus stepped in, kicked the man in the groin and went for the kill-

A spear caught his in the descent, parried him, swung up, inside his guard — Satyrus sprang back and the counter-thrust just touched the front of his helmet under the crest, a killing blow a finger’s width from its target.

Satyrus planted his feet, caught the replacement blow on his shield and went in with the other man’s spear safe on his shield, and now the other man sprang back.

Time to think this man is a brilliant spear-fighter and then a flurry of blows, blocking on instinct, and an overarm swing with his spear point to catch what he couldn’t see — pure luck, his bronze saurauter caught the man in the side of the helmet — just a tap, but it staggered him and they fell apart, and five flashes of lightning showed Satyrus that he was facing Lucius, who he’d seen before.

Lucius must have recognised him. The Italian grinned, showing all his teeth. ‘Let’s dance,’ he said. And rifled his spear overarm, a beautiful throw.

Perhaps Herakles or Athena lifted his shield. Perhaps it was just the wind. The spear, meant for his eye, sprang off the bronze of his aspis rim and leaped high in the air over his head.

Lucius was right behind it, having quick-drawn his sword, and his swing blew chips out of the aspis. He was inside Satyrus’ spear.

Satyrus dropped his spear and punched his open hand at Lucius’ face, a pankration blow — he only caught the man’s armoured forehead but he rocked his head back, powered forward on his leg change and knocked the Italian off his feet and went for his own sword, but the Italian’s legs came up and kicked him square in the chest and he was down, his aspis rolling away into the light-punctuated darkness.

Satyrus had no idea which way the fight was oriented now, and he’d lost Lucius when he fell. He ripped his sopping chlamys over his head and rolled it on his left arm, shoulder burning — and took a pair of blows on his back, but neither was hard and he got to his feet, head swinging like a hawk’s, looking for the Italian, terror stealing his breath.

And then he saw the Italian — the man had the officer he’d knocked down in his first rush by the heels, was dragging him clear.

Satyrus pushed forward and found himself facing an enormous man with a spear that hit as hard as an axe, and Satyrus was forced to one knee to parry the spear with his cloak. He couldn’t take another such blow, so he powered forward, like a man tackling a goat, and cut behind the man’s knees as the man’s spear-butt crashed on his helmet — he smelled blood, saw a bright light and continued forward and the man fell back, cursing, fell to the ground, his hamstring cut, and Satyrus pinned his shield to his chest and thrust his sword point through the man’s eye-

As he realised that he had just killed Nestor, the captain of his lover’s guard. His friend, from childhood. Guest friend, sworn friend-

Satyrus screamed into the god-filled night, a cry of pain and rage as loud as his lord Herakles had ever bellowed, a cry so loud that it carried over the roar of the storm.

Men flinched from that scream. Something died in Satyrus with that scream, which tore from him whatever shreds of youth still clung to him, so that the sound leaving his throat might have taken something of his soul with it out of the trap of his teeth and into the hateful night.

Draco’s head snapped around — because a man who has just lost a friend of forty years knows exactly what is contained in that scream — and the Macedonian fought his way to Satyrus’ side and pulled him to his feet, heedless of the enemy, who had mostly fallen back to cower against the wall.

Satyrus looked at the enemy, eyes blank with hate — not hate for the men who faced him, either.

‘Amastris!’ he roared at the night. Aphrodite’s Laughter, he thought. I hate the gods.

Draco plunged back into the cold inferno of the fight. Satyrus stumbled back, watching his life burn before his eyes as surely as if a lightning bolt had hit him.

Amastris was helping Demetrios. With her best. And Satyrus had just faced Stratokles, and Lucius, and. . Nestor.

He wrenched his helmet off his head, wiped the streaming water from his eyes and pulled the helmet back on.

The storm was less severe, now, and men were pouring over the makeshift wall at the south end of the mole — Apollodorus and his marines.

Satyrus watched a boat pull away from the mole into the teeth of the storm — three times its pair of oarsmen tried to leave, only to be smashed alongside, but the boat didn’t capsize and the oarsmen kept their nerve and then the boat was away, climbing a breaker into the storm.

Lucius and Stratokles, of course.

Satyrus’ face worked like that of a horrified child, and he ran to the edge of the mole, roared ‘Amastris’ at the storm and hurled his sword at them. It arched up into the storm and vanished into the huge waters.

The boat slipped over the height of the wave and vanished into the darkness.

And Satyrus began, like an adult, to work on controlling his fear, his anguish and his horror.

Behind him, in between the flashes of lightning in the dwindling storm, columns of fire rose to the heavens. Even in driving rain, pitch-painted ships burn well.