Destroyer of Cities

6

Heraklea. One of the strongest cities on the Euxine Sea, with high walls and a servile populace of peasants conquered by Greeks and made into serfs, like the Spartan helots. Dionysus of Heraklea was tyrant.

Satyrus’ grain fleet anchored without asking permission — twenty warships and more than forty grain ships that rose and fell on the late spring swell.

‘And we’re buggered if a storm comes up.’ Diokles shook his head. ‘Why not take the ships inside the mole?’

‘First, because Dionysus will be worried enough already,’ Satyrus said. ‘Second, because everyone is a spy, and I don’t want any of our sailors talking.’

The arrival of the grain fleet was hardly a surprise to Stratokles, who had advised both Amastris and her uncle to keep their own merchants and warships home until it came. ‘Satyrus will come like the wind when he hears Demostrate is dead,’ Stratokles had predicted, and here was the fleet, making him look like exactly what he was — a first-rate intelligencer. It had sat off the entrance to the harbour for a full day.

Their appearance outside the mole — and their inaction — had been cause enough for Stratokles to be summoned to the tyrant’s presence. The enormously fat man lay, as he usually did, on a stout couch with heavy rawhide cording under the mattress to support his bulk. His niece, Amastris, sat on the edge of the kline, as if her beauty could somehow help the tyrant’s ugliness. Stratokles had joked to his captain, Lucius, that he liked to work for the tyrant because the fat man made Stratokles seem handsome. Stratokles had never been graced with the looks that made men heroes — and a sword cut to his face a few years back had made it worse.

Satyrus’ mother, that had been. Stratokles sighed. What an error her murder had been. Not his idea, of course.

‘So.’ Dionysus had a carefully trained voice, like an actor’s. Not what you expected from such a fat carcass, but then, Dionysus of Heraklea was never what anyone expected. ‘So, Stratokles of Athens. You predicted this. Now what happens?’

Stratokles smiled at his mistress. She was without doubt the most beautiful woman he’d ever known — or at least, known well. And her beauty seemed new — or at least, subtly different — every time he saw her. She had considerable intellect, and she used a good deal of it on her looks.

‘My lord,’ Stratokles said, ‘Satyrus needs your fleet to support his own fleet. Together they will be strong enough to try to move our combined grain fleets across the Ionian to Athens.’

‘Satyrus generally sells his grain at Rhodes,’ Dionysus said.

‘I understand, my lord.’ I am, after all, somewhat famed as a spy. ‘But this year, my lord can call the tune. Satyrus cannot sail without your ships and your marines. You do not want to sell your grain at Rhodes, I take it?’

Stratokles was playing a dangerous game. Of course it was his duty, as an Athenian, to get as much of the Euxine grain trans-shipped to Athens as was possible. A glut was fine. A glut would mean low prices and exports. But he couldn’t force events. He could only manipulate them.

Dionysus shrugged, and his chins wobbled. ‘You know perfectly well that we sell our grain to Athens,’ he said. ‘You argued for the policy, and you pushed me to support Antigonus. Now he has all the warships. Surely my grain fleet can proceed as it would?’

Stratokles shook his head. ‘If only it were so simple,’ he began.

‘Don’t patronise me, Athenian!’ Dionysus shot back. ‘Dekas can’t really control the pirates, is what you mean. Or he may not want to control them. So we need young Achilles out there to help us punch through the straits.’

Stratokles nodded. ‘My lord, that is exactly what I mean.’

Dionysus nodded, and the nod spread over the fat of his body like ripples spreading in a pool from a thrown rock. ‘So — if that’s the situation, where is young Satyrus?’

At this question, Amastris looked up. ‘Exactly. Where is he?’

Dionysus pointed out over the mole. ‘His ships have been there all night, but the boy has yet to come ashore. And Nestor says that some of the ships have slipped away.’

Stratokles felt a touch of ice in his spine. ‘Slipped away?’ he asked. He walked to the edge of the balcony and looked out over the bay.

His self-control was excellent, but it didn’t prevent a single, sharp curse.

‘Well?’ Dionysus asked.

Stratokles didn’t need to count the ships riding at anchor in the strong spring sun. He had been guilty of seeing what he expected to see. He shook his head. ‘My lord, Satyrus has taken his warships and gone.’

‘Gone where?’ Amastris asked. The whine in her voice boded ill for her maids — and for her intelligencer.

Stratokles shook his head. ‘He didn’t ask for your fleet?’ he asked the tyrant.

‘Satyrus of Tanais hasn’t even been ashore,’ Nestor said from the door.

Nine hundred stades to the south and west, Satyrus’ entire war fleet, minus just two triremes away at Olbia, rode under oars in the last light of the sun, their masts struck down on deck. Behind them were all six of the gargantuan Athenian-built grain ships.

‘Well,’ Diokles said, watching the sky, ‘the weather’s with us. Any last thoughts?’

Satyrus looked around the deck of Arête at all of his other captains — Neiron himself, Sandakes and Akes and Gelon of Sicily. ‘Let’s sacrifice,’ Satyrus said. He went into the stern — still feeling as if he was walking across the agora, his flagship was so big — to where the altar of Poseidon was set into the rise of the stern boards that covered the head and back of the helmsman. Satyrus took the lead of a young kid, a black one, and looked into its eyes. The animal had perfect horns and bright eyes, and it looked at him-

He drew and slashed its throat in one trained movement, then stepped slightly to the side to let the blood flow past him, and the priest of Poseidon, Leosthenes, caught the blood in a bowl. Then the priest used his own knife to open the animal.

He looked at the entrails carefully, rubbing the liver back and forth between his hands. He put his nose down and smelled it — not something that Satyrus had seen before from a priest. Then he nodded.

‘Victory,’ he said. ‘Complete, entire and yours, lord.’

Satyrus was not used to hearing such emphatic pronouncements. ‘May you be correct,’ Satyrus said.

The priest cut the liver free from the animal and raised it, still dripping blood. He turned to the sailors, oarsmen and marines who waited a respectful distance down the deck. On an older ship, they couldn’t have approached even this close as there’d have been no deck to stand on, only a gangway over the rowers’ benches.

‘Victory!’ the priest shouted.

The men roared, and on twenty other ships, they took up the cry.

Night, and full darkness. Satyrus’ Arête led the way, with the tide running hard out of the Euxine and the current moving them briskly south and west towards Byzantium, which was stades away on the far bank.

Satyrus and Diokles had fought an entire season in these waters. They knew the tides, which were shallow, and the Dardanelles, which were as treacherous as the pirates who infested them.

‘Regrets?’ Neiron asked Satyrus.

‘Pah,’ Satyrus answered. He wasn’t sure what he thought of the new priest and his confident assertion of victory. It seemed like hubris.

An hour later, and the lookouts told him that Timaea was in sight. He climbed the foremast and peered into the gloom and saw lights, but they might have been any of the fishing villages, Thracian and Greek, or pirate havens that flourished along this coast.

Was it really possible that Dekas had left twenty ships in Timaea and that they wouldn’t even keep a watch? Or was it a trap? It would have to have been a very elaborate trap, counting on his headstrong ways.

Satyrus began to drum on the weather rail as he contemplated all the ways his risk — his rather colossal risk — might fail.

‘They’ll hear you in Timaea,’ Neiron called. ‘Relax, lord.’

Another hour, and they were under oars, ghosting along a stade from the muddy banks of the strait, and it was obvious to every man aboard that the harbour of Timaea was crowded with ships. More than twenty ships, and at least fifteen more pulled up on the beach. There were merchant ships anchored out at the wharves, and beached so that they tipped to lie on their high, round sides.

Satyrus blew on his cold hands and leaned over the fighting platform that sat above the huge ram of his Arête.

‘I count forty-four warships,’ said the lookout as quietly as he could manage.

Neiron made a sound with his tongue behind Satyrus, who gave a low whistle.

Satyrus was silent for fifty agonising heartbeats, during which he lived, and died, a dozen different ways. He made a decision, then another, and then another. Then he took a deep breath.

Satyrus caught the glint of Neiron’s eye in the dark. ‘Do it,’ he said.

Neiron’s eyes said that he agreed. He turned to Helios. ‘Light the rest of the lanterns,’ he said. ‘On my command — battle speed.’

There was a growl from the oar deck. Satyrus rose from his position in the bow and stretched to counter the sudden pain in his legs — too long in one position, and insufficient exercise the last three days. A private smile came to his face. Plenty of exercise in the next hour, either way.

He went aft to the base of the mainmast and dropped through the deck to the cramped oar deck below. He had to stoop to move, and the cross braces that supported the main deck made him crouch to pass under them. Even on a cool spring evening, the top oar deck was stuffy and warm. In high summer, in action, it would be unbearable. And it was the coolest and draughtiest of the three oar decks. The top deck was just leaning into the stroke, and men grunted or swore or chatted — a fair amount of noise, but nothing that would keep them from hearing the oar master or the rattle of the oar pace.

‘Evening, friends,’ Satyrus said. He walked down the central catwalk that passed between the benches. A sixer like Arête had three decks of rowers, with two men on every one of one hundred and seventy oars. The oarsmen in the top deck had a boxlike outrigger to give them more leverage and stability for their stroke, and to make more room for the lower-deck oarsmen, the zygites and the bottom-deck thalamites. Only the upper oar deck had room for a catwalk.

The lower-deck rowers completed their pulls and their arms moved, hundreds of men rolling forward, sliding on their oiled leather cushions to get the most out of their muscles. These were highly trained oarsmen, just getting into top condition from a row down the Euxine. The top-deck oarsmen rested, their oars crossed in front of them so that Satyrus could barely see the end of the deck in the near darkness.

He was answered with a murmur — almost a growl.

‘Dark out there,’ Satyrus said, enunciating like a trained orator. That’s why they train you, he thought. So that your voice carries in the assembly — or the oar decks. ‘We’re going after the pirate fleet in the dark,’ he said, slowly and carefully. ‘We’ll be landing our marines to take the town. If we win, every man here will share in the loot. Understand?’

This time, the answering growl was loud, like that of an animal ready to leap. Some men said, ‘Do the thing!’ and others merely grunted, ‘That’s right.’

An older thranite at Satyrus’ left hand barked a laugh. ‘We heard the omen,’ he said. ‘Silver in our hands!’

Satyrus slapped him on the back and climbed the short ladder to the main deck. It was brighter towards the stern — a triangle of oil lamps had been lit — fifteen lamps, carefully primed and maintained half the night for this moment. In less than a hundred heartbeats, similar lamps were kindled on all the rest of the ships, so that Satyrus’ small fleet seemed to glow.

‘Battle pace,’ Neiron said to the drummer who kept the oar beat. On a ship as big as the Arête, the oar master couldn’t keep the stroke by voice alone. Before he finished speaking, the ship seemed to cough — a short, sharp scrape as sixty-two upper-deck oars were run out of their oar ports together.

The drum had been silent as they crept down the channel, but now, on all the ships, drums rolled.

The oars slid out and bent as the full crew pulled on them.

Even the Arête, easily the biggest ship in the squadron, leaped ahead.

Satyrus went forward and leaned out over the ram, watching the water flow by, feeling the speed and power of his ship. His eyes flicked over the big ballistae, unmanned and encased in painted canvas. Too dark for shooting; but he longed to use them.

Neiron was at the steering oars, and he took the big ship in first. The original intention had been to clear any opposition, but there wasn’t a single enemy ship manned, and now the Arête swept forward, the deepest hull and the most likely to run aground. They steered for the beach, passing just inshore of the moored warships, tied in long rows with heavy canvas thrown loosely over their rowing benches.

‘Pirates,’ Satyrus said, with contempt. ‘Bastards can’t even be bothered to maintain the ships they use to prey on others.’ But in his mind he saw men hiding under that loosely flung canvas.

Helios choked something in the dark. The young man had been taken by pirates as a boy. Left to himself, he’d have killed every pirate on the sea. He, at least, was entirely in favour of his master’s choice of campaign.

A stade from the shore, and there was shouting in the town. Men were running onto the beach, calling out in fear.

‘Rowed of all!’ called the oar master from amidships. Satyrus wasn’t commanding anything this night — or rather, he was commanding everything. He had his armour on, and a cloak, and once they were ashore he’d take command. But he was letting his beautiful ship have her first fight in the hands of other men, and he wanted to leap in and shout orders, ram an empty ship for the sheer joy of it-

‘Brace!’ Neiron called from the steering oars, and all the marines and deck crewmen caught hold of something.

The ram clipped one of the beached warships, bow to bow, except that Arête’s ram towered over the smaller ship the way an elephant towers over a horse, and the beached pirate ship had her bow crushed as if she were made of paper. Then the bigger ship ground to a halt, cushioned by the shattering of the smaller ship’s frames and sewn planks.

Satyrus rose from his brace, put his helmet on his head and toggled the cheekpieces under his chin.

‘Marines!’ he called, and Draco roared behind him, and then they were pouring over the bow into the stricken vessel and racing down her central catwalk, using the pirate vessel as a bridge between the gargantuan Arête and the land.

Labours of Herakles, the penteres, did the same, coming to lie alongside a beached trireme and using her as a wharf, but the rest of his fleet beached themselves, except five triremes that stayed out in the dark, putting marines aboard the moored ships.

‘The wharves!’ Satyrus shouted as soon as his feet hit the beach. ‘Take the wharves!’ The marines had been told to offer no quarter, and they weren’t being too choosy about who they killed. It was ugly work, but the first resistance was quickly crushed and the wharves had to be seized at all costs. They were central to Satyrus’ plan.

The King of the Bosporus was himself in the front lines, for no better reason than that he needed the wharf area taken fast, and there was no one better suited to the task than he. Or that’s what Satyrus told himself. He was one of the first men onto the wharves, and he could hear junior officers shouting to get the marines — most of whom were unused to working in groups larger than ten or fifteen men — to form a line across the cobbled square.

But the pirates were not slow to react. The alleys west of the wharves were suddenly full of men and javelins, darts and arrows coming out of the darkness. Helios was hit on the helmet by a heavy tile thrown from the roof of one of the nearest warehouses.

Then, before Satyrus and Draco and Apollodorus had the marines steady, the first counter-attack came. There were more than a hundred men, most with spears, some with axes, and they came at the marines like Thracians, yelling defiance.

The marines were veterans, and most of them carried the small Macedonian aspis and a long spear. All of them had good armour. Armour that, even in the dark, made them confident. They locked their shields, the second and third ranks pressed forward on the front, and the pirates met with a volley of javelins at point-blank range. Their charge never reached the aspis wall. With little armour and few shields, the javelins knocked a fifth of the attackers flat and the rest ran.

Satyrus led his own marines into the maze of alleys west of the wharves, following the broken men from the first counter-attack. Some men stopped to execute the wounded, and Satyrus did nothing to stop it.

A javelin flew from the dark, and the shaft hit his helmet with a heavy clang and he had to drop to one knee, the pain was so intense.

‘On the roof!’ called Apollodorus, behind him. ‘Archers! On me!’

The rush into the alleys had slowed when they reached the narrowest passages and the long back walls of the second street of warehouses, shops and residences. The air here smelled of smoke and blood.

Helios pushed forward and held his aspis over Satyrus’ head. ‘Lord?’

‘Give me a moment,’ Satyrus grunted. He unfastened his cheek-plates and raised his helmet over his head, pulled off his arming cap and felt the spot on his skull. Blood — his hair was full of it. Then he put it all back on again. ‘Ouch,’ he said.

Men around him laughed.

More javelins were coming off the roofs around them, and no archers were to be seen.

‘We either have to back off and give them this street, or take it to them,’ Satyrus said.

Apollodorus winced and Draco grunted.

Satyrus looked around. The alley, and the cross alley behind him, had about forty marines in it.

‘Let’s take it to them,’ he said. ‘Right onto the roofs. No quarter. Try not to kill captives and slaves, but if in doubt, put your man down.’

Draco’s golden Thracian helmet shone in the firelight of the buildings already aflame to the south. ‘Listen to the king!’ he said. ‘More men go down in a house-to-house fight than in a field battle. Stay with your file, and don’t let up the pressure once you start.’

Satyrus looked around, down the alley and into the smoke. ‘We used to have a warehouse at the end of this street,’ Satyrus said. ‘On the other hand is a big cross street. No advance beyond that.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Draco looked around. ‘Everyone got that?’

Apollodorus laughed. ‘I get it that the taxiarch and the navarch are about to lead a reckless charge in the dark,’ he said. ‘Perhaps the king should sit this one out, eh?’

Draco laughed. ‘Good times, lord. My sword has touched nothing but wood in three summers.’

‘By Ares and Herakles,’ Satyrus said. ‘I’m here.’ He was afraid and exalted at the same time.

The marines pressed in around him, shields raised against a rain of missiles, huddled up together at the corners of two buildings and waiting for the next shower of javelins, which obligingly came down at them from just ahead.

‘Go! Go! Go!’ the officers shouted. As soon as the missiles rang against the roof of shields, the men were up and running, one file of six men for each of the first half-dozen houses and warehouses on the narrow alley. It wasn’t well planned or neat, and men fell, or tangled in their armour, but they made quite a lot of noise.

Satyrus was in front, Draco running hard beside him, and their files were aiming farther up the street, well beyond where the javelins had come from.

A woman screamed and a large tile shattered next to Satyrus’ foot. He almost fell from the pain, but he managed to keep his footing and he and Draco hit the gate of their chosen building together, and it burst inward. The yard was full of people. Satyrus narrowly avoided cutting a young woman in half. She saw him and screamed, and then the whole courtyard started screaming.

Slaver’s yard, he thought.

‘On the ground and you won’t be killed!’ he roared. He pushed through the crowd and they fell to the ground as if dead. Then he was at the steps to the main house, while Draco took his file into the warehouse. There were shouts. Screams. All the sounds of despair and death.

It occurred to Satyrus that his men were too thin on the ground already, the forward edge of the bloody bubble that might pop at any second. That’s why he needed the wharves clear — and without them, his men were going to start dying.

There was a man in the stairwell with an axe. He took a cut at Satyrus, and Satyrus took the blow on his shield and felt it on the old break but shield and arm both held. Then Satyrus punched out with the rim of his shield, caught the axe head, pushed against it and stabbed under his shield until the man was down and dead.

An arrow hit his shield.

‘Need some help, here!’ he called.

There was no answer. Another arrow hit his shield, and this one punched through the bronze facing to gleam three fingers clear of the inner face of his aspis.

‘Herakles, Son of Zeus,’ he roared. Then he slammed his shield face into the wall next to him to break the arrows and ran at the stairs, holding his shield in front of him.

Another arrow hit the shield when he was halfway up the stairs, and then he reached the top.

There were three of them.

One shot him, point blank. The man was partly behind him, and the shot should have been deadly, but in his excitement the man hurried, or simply missed, and the arrow vanished into the night.

I have as long as it takes him to reload, Satyrus thought.

Satyrus leaped forward, slammed his shield into the larger man and sliced hard to the right with his sword at the same time, at the other opponent. His blade touched home — high, somewhere on the man’s face or head — and then Satyrus was rolling to the left, keeping his shield pressed against his opponent.

The man cut under his shield and Satyrus couldn’t do much about that, as his aspis was entangled and his sword elsewhere. His greaves took most of the blow, and his right shin suddenly exploded in agony and he stumbled back, placed his good foot and sank to one knee with his shield facing the archer.

‘Let me shoot!’ the man was screaming, but Satyrus’ first attacker had blocked the other man who was also screaming, and the three of them were uncoordinated. Satyrus backed up a step, and the closest man came at him — blocking the archer.

Satyrus let him come, and then slammed his shield forward, his shoulder in the blow, stepped up close and cut at him overarm, and their swords rang together. The other man backed up a step and Satyrus cut at him again, another heavy overarm blow and the man flinched and parried, but his much lighter — and cheaper — sword had had enough, and the blade snapped and he lost fingers. He cried out and fell back, trying to get his shield up, back-pedalling across the roof and into the archer.

Satyrus didn’t give them a moment to untangle, but cut at everything he could reach, blows too fast to count in the dark — and then he whirled, wondering where the third man had gone.

He was kneeling with his head in his hands. ‘I’m blind!’ he screamed with the raw intensity of a woman in childbirth. Satyrus’ blade had cut through his ocular region and his nose. There was blood everywhere, shiny black on matt black in the fire-stabbed darkness.

Satyrus decapitated him.

The roof was still. Women were screaming in the courtyard, but the roof was clear, and against the fires back by the wharves, he could see the great grain ships landing.

They weren’t full of grain.

They were full of two thousand Macedonian veterans, who poured out onto the newly secured wharves, formed up in a rough approximation of their usual formation and proceeded to storm the town. They were ruthless, they were thorough, and the pirates had nothing with which to match them.

There was more fighting, but Satyrus was out of it — his ankle burned, he had a nasty cut down his leg and his damaged greave needed to be pulled clear of the wound.

He stumbled back off the roof, his right sandal squelching blood at every step. In the courtyard, the slaves lay prone amid so much blood that it appeared they might all have been butchered.

A thin trickle of blood flowed out of the courtyard and into the street’s central gutter.

His Macedonians were pouring up the street, bellowing, scenting victory and a town to rape. Satyrus had to flatten himself against the wall to avoid be trampled — or worse — as a taxeis fought its way through the skein of alleys towards the town’s agora and public buildings. Satyrus saw Draco emerge from the warehouse behind him. The Macedonian officer gave him a sketchy salute and plunged into the river of phalangites screaming orders, and vanished, leaving the King of the Bosporus to bleed in relative peace.

Satyrus swayed, caught himself on a warehouse wall and limped back down the cobbled street towards the wharves. He was losing blood, but he could see where men had fallen — a marine with his face a red ruin from a paving stone, another with a javelin in the back. At the corner where they’d started their charge, Helios was lying on his aspis. There was a deep dent in his helmet.

Satyrus bent and picked the boy up. Even in armour, he didn’t weigh much. Helios coughed and spat and cursed. Several steps later he gave something like a choked scream.

Satyrus carried him down to the wharves where the iatroi, the healers, were gathering the wounded. They were a recent innovation — every ship had one — and Satyrus didn’t really know any one of them from the others. He stumbled over a bale of cloth and fell with his hypaspist on top of him. They both cried out.

‘My lord!’ called a man, and suddenly he was surrounded by men with torches.

‘You take the king, I’ll get the man he carried,’ said a voice, and then Satyrus was gone.

He came back to life stretched across a pair of upturned barrels. After a long — and painful — moment of disorientation, he realised that he was in the courtyard of what had once been Abraham Ben Zion’s warehouse, having his shin bandaged tight in a whole length of superfine linen while around him, men screamed under the knife or murmured thanks to the men who tended them. The courtyard was bright with new sunlight and the air reeked of dirty smoke — burning buildings, charred meat.

Diokles found him about an hour later, when the pain had started to build in his leg and in his shoulder. He didn’t even know why his shoulder hurt, and he’d had to decline the poppy juice that kept most of the other wounded men quiet.

Helios was lying on the cobblestones on top of his cloak, deeply unconscious and with a line of sewing up his sword arm and a bruise on his head so deep that the iatros feared that his skull was broken. Satyrus was looking at him and contemplating his bold, rash, brilliant attack in the light of the cost.

‘I think we won,’ Diokles said.

Satyrus was light-headed from blood loss and some related drunkenness. ‘Oh yes. Very glorious. Any idea of losses?’ He took a pull on the wineskin in his hand and shook his head. ‘Losses beyond those I can see here?’

Draco stepped up out of the street and seized the wineskin. ‘Lost a dozen in the first fights, before we had the numbers,’ he said. He had blood dripping from under his helmet and his right arm was brown-red to the elbow. He took a long drink. ‘I haven’t taken a town in a long time. Makes the boys happy, it does.’ He grinned. ‘Once the rest of the boys were ashore, there wasn’t much fighting.’

‘Not that we took a lot of prisoners,’ Diokles said.

Satyrus shrugged. Pirates were vermin. That some of them had once been his allies was — Moira. He fought with that thought to establish it in his head as what he really felt. Because otherwise he would vomit, and be unfit to command men. Or be a king.

He sat up, forced himself to look away from Helios and nodded. ‘Light casualties and, I assume, some worthwhile loot.’

Draco nodded. ‘A good start. We’ve been lax — and the boys have had three easy summers. This will get their blood up.’

Satyrus considered a number of replies — their blood was all over the courtyard — but finally shook his head. ‘I want to be away before nightfall,’ he said.

Diokles saluted with his fist and Draco grunted. ‘Easier to pull a drunk out of a brothel than a soldier out of a taken city,’ he said. ‘Brothel costs money.’

Satyrus tried putting weight on his shin. That made it hurt more, which seemed to clear his head. ‘Nightfall,’ he said.

Satyrus sacrificed to Apollo at the setting of the sun, and before the calf was split for butchering and burning Draco declared the town secure. The captured ships — those worth saving — were towed. The rest were burned. The town, save only the wharves and warehouses, was burned. The survivors were either herded aboard ships to be sold as slaves, or, if too old or useless, were pushed into the chora, the farms around the city, to make their own way. Many would be taken by Thracians and sold as slaves anyway. Others would starve, or succumb to disease, or simply be killed as useless mouths.

Satyrus hardened his heart and reminded himself that these were pirates. Their fate was justice.

Of course, he knew perfectly well that most of them were the pirates’ baggage — wives, whores, slaves, servants and the small craftsmen who were attracted to any community. They had chosen to come here to live. Most of them were innocent of any crime save poverty.

Four days of no news — of an ever more restless grain fleet anchored off Heraklea. And then the warships returned.

Stratokles watched Satyrus of Tanais sail up the coast. He had good eyes, and he could see at quite a distance that Satyrus’ warships had either bred like rabbits or met with friends.

Or taken enemies. Stratokles shook his head. The boy was good. Stratokles hurried to his mistress.

‘He’s taken Timaea?’ Dionysus asked. He was quite calm, for a man who had just heard that a potential rival now owned the closest sea base.

‘That’s my guess, lord,’ Stratokles said. ‘I’m sure he’ll be here soon enough, ripe with his triumph, to explain.’

Amastris was not amused. ‘He might have told us!’ she said.

Dionysus watched the fleet now at anchor. ‘He might,’ Dionysus said slowly. ‘But he did not, nor did he allow his sailors to land. He didn’t trust us. This is the man you wish to marry, my dear?’ he asked Amastris.

Amastris shrugged. ‘Yes. Although I am not happy with this turn of events. It’s your fault, Uncle! You’ve kept him dangling for so long — he will find another wife and come here-’

‘Silence,’ Dionysus said. He sat up on the kline, and it protested. ‘Let me think. Dekas has lost his base and a third of his fleet. And probably his treasure.’

‘Now he has no choice but to serve Antigonus,’ Stratokles put in.

‘And Satyrus of Tanais holds the entrance to the Dardanelles,’ Dionysus said. ‘He can control our grain.’

‘We won’t know until we hear what he has to say,’ Amastris said. ‘I will speak to him.’

‘He may just come and take you,’ Dionysus said. ‘I hadn’t considered the possibility that Demostrate was a better neighbour than Satyrus.’ He laughed without mirth. ‘And to think that I gave that boy his start.’

Stratokles nodded, because he hadn’t considered the weakness of the pirate position at all, only its strength. I’m getting old, he thought.

‘Satyrus, King of the Bosporus, and attendants,’ intoned Nestor.

‘You might have told me!’ Amastris said as soon as they were alone. Alone meaning together with a dozen attendants, slaves and Nestor.

Satyrus was not wearing armour. He had imagined, in the winter, coming ashore to her wearing his splendid scale thorax and his magnificent silver helmet, itself a trophy. He’d imagined coming fresh from a sea fight.

The taking of Timaea wasn’t something he cared to brag about, nor was he interested in wearing armour. He wore an old sky-blue chiton that had been washed so often it felt like an old friend on his shoulders. He wore Boeotian boots because he always wore them at sea. He did not look like a warrior king, and he could see the plainness of his appearance reflected in her glance.

‘I needed to move swiftly,’ he said. He was surprised to hear how normal his voice sounded.

‘You needed to reassure your allies, who include my uncle and me. My uncle thinks, even now, that you might pounce on us, seize Heraklea and put it under your crown as “king”.’ Amastris didn’t sound angry — just detached. A good stateswoman, he realised. Probably far better with ambassadors than he would be. Her beauty — more than beauty — made his loins ache. Her breasts showed — just the very tops of the rich fruit of them, pale — he could remember the feel of them-

‘I’m sorry,’ Satyrus said. He changed the tone of his voice; no more the detached statesman. ‘Amastris, if I had come ashore, when would I have ever left?’ He reached out and took her hand, but she pulled it away before he touched her and turned her shoulder.

‘You paw me. It makes people talk.’ She stood suddenly. ‘I think that you have to make me a better apology than that empty flattery, based solely on lust.’ She only came to his chest, but her eyes burned into his. She was angry — so angry that her shoulders trembled. ‘You didn’t trust me!’

‘How could I?’ he said, before he thought too much about it. ‘You employ the man who murdered my mother.’

‘You know that is not true,’ Amastris said. ‘I defy you to prove it. Anyway, even if he was involved, it was just politics. Nothing personal.’

Satyrus shook his head. ‘That’s exactly what he said, or so my sister tells it.’

‘So what?’ Amastris said. ‘You don’t want me to have a councillor as good — as thorough — and as deep as Stratokles. Better I be a nice ignorant virgin, ripe for the wedding market. You can tell me whatever you see fit, and I’ll at least pretend to be happy to have such jewels of your manly wisdom shared with me. You are no better than my uncle, except that you are better to look at.’

Satyrus had never seen her like this. He wasn’t sure that he didn’t like this Amastris — enraged, uncaring and strong — better than the complacent temptress of Ptolemy’s palace. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk like rulers, shall we?’

‘Don’t patronise me,’ she spat.

‘I’m not patronising you, Amastris. I’ll tell you the unvarnished, unflattering, unstatesmanlike truth.’ He sat carefully on a couch. ‘My attack depended on speed and surprise. Speed to catch Dekas’ warships still in their berths. Surprise because it saves casualties and, as it turned out, I was hideously outnumbered. I-’ He fingered his cup, ‘I miscalculated pretty badly, and only the favour of divine Herakles-’

‘You are such a depressingly pious man,’ Amastris said, shaking her head. ‘The favour of divine Herakles. Did you grow up in a mighty city? Or are you secretly a shepherd from Attica?’

Satyrus began to smile — much the same sort of smile that came to his face in a fight, although he didn’t know it. ‘Perhaps I am a shepherd boy, at that,’ he said. ‘Nonetheless, I needed surprise to take Timaea. I don’t trust Stratokles. I’m sorry that you like him — sorrier that you trust him.’ He paused to take a sip of wine.

‘He helped you win your throne,’ she said carefully.

‘I suspect you pushed him to it, and I further suspect that it coincided with the interests of Athens.’ Satyrus shrugged. ‘It’s not about Stratokles, my dear. We always argue about him — and for nothing, this time. Even if he was not at your side, I would not have come ashore. Most of my oarsmen and marines already know too much. If I had landed here, rumour would have gone on falcon wings over the isthmus to Timaea.’

She shrugged. ‘So? Perhaps some things should be more important to you than the lives of a few mercenaries.’ She smiled at him, her dimples appearing as if summoned.

‘I thought we were speaking as statesmen?’ he asked her. He wasn’t sure what he felt. He had come — why had he come? Leon was waiting, and he was wasting a day.

Suddenly, in the space between heartbeats, he felt the change, like the moment when the rim of the sun appeared above the world.

‘My lady, I need to be in Rhodes,’ he said.

She appeared confused for a moment. Satyrus had never seen her confused.

‘I am sorry if my tactics confused you, or your uncle. I meant no harm to you or yours. The straits are open to your ships. I must be gone.’ He leaned forward to kiss her cheek, but she bolted from her chair and put it between them.

‘You are leaving? Do you have any idea what you are doing? We have plans to make-’

Satyrus shook his head. ‘Plans we can make another time. The wind is fair for me, and my uncle is waiting for me at Rhodes. I’ll be back in a few weeks and we can make arrangements then.’

‘Aphrodite, stand with me. Are you leaving me, Satyrus? Are we not lovers? What service is this?’ She was angry again — or perhaps had been angry all along.

Satyrus was angry too, although he was only just discovering it. ‘Perhaps if we were married, I’d take these protestations more seriously,’ he said. ‘As it is, we are a pair of rulers duelling for power. I can do that elsewhere, and I am needed elsewhere. I long to marry you, Amastris — but until your uncle agrees, what’s the point in these meetings? Anger, recrimination-’

‘Then go,’ Amastris said. ‘You’re quite right. There is no point. Please leave, immediately.’

Satyrus picked his chlamys off a stool. He’d said too much — said the unsayable. And now he regretted it.

But there was nothing he could add without surrendering, and he’d never been much for surrender.

So he looked at her, hoping to communicate with his eyes, but she swept from the room. He heard the sound of metal impacting plaster.

Satyrus sighed and left the room. He collected the silent Helios from the kitchens, and found his guard of marines waiting under the eaves of the palace. Nestor was there, talking to Apollodorus.

‘Evening, Nestor,’ Satyrus said as he came up.

‘Lord,’ Nestor said, inclining his head. ‘A famous victory.’

‘A lot of dead women and children,’ Satyrus said with some bitterness.

‘Nest of vipers, if you ask me,’ Apollodorus said.

‘I didn’t ask you,’ Satyrus said.

‘Not a good day with my mistress, then?’ Nestor said with half a smile.

Satyrus shook his head. ‘I think it’s over,’ he said. He felt like weeping — felt that saying it aloud might make it so.

Nestor shook his head. ‘Not unless you no longer want her,’ he said. ‘It is just the poison of that Athenian hyena.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps one day I will kill him for my king — and for you.’

Satyrus shook his head. ‘Heraklea has never been lucky for me,’ he said. He caught the eyes of his escort. ‘We’re needed in Rhodes. We should be gone.’