Force of Kings

13

Satyrus left Apollodorus as the garrison commander of the citadel with all of his marines — the cream of his infantry, and his best commander. But Apollodorus had clear orders: to hold the city only against the lightest of opposition, and otherwise to board Diokles’ ships and sail away.

‘If you lose the city, try to operate out of Lesbos — Mytilene or Mythymna will be opposite our operations,’ he said.

Diokles laughed. ‘I can take Lesbos with twenty-five ships and the marines,’ he said. ‘I could install Abraham as governor,’ he said wickedly. Abraham had looted the countryside around Mytilene years before, in another campaign. Diokles looked at Abraham, who didn’t really deserve his reputation as a ruthless pirate.

Abraham smiled. ‘Whatever you ask,’ he said. He looked ten years younger in chiton and chlamys and armour.

‘Don’t take Lesbos,’ Satyrus said. He clasped hands with his navarch and his best friend and Apollodorus, and mounted his horse. He was training his own cavalry escort — Charmides and twenty picked marines — chosen by Apollodorus.

‘Don’t go playing foot-slogger,’ Apollodorus warned.

Satyrus smiled. ‘I’ll try and be a king,’ he said.

Apollodorus flicked his eyes to where the King of Thrace stood with a mounted Thracian bodyguard. ‘Not like yon,’ he said.

Satyrus smiled, backed his horse a few steps, and turned away with a wave. But he felt a hand on his leg, and reined in, and there was Abraham.

‘You are making me ask, and that’s not the act of a friend,’ Abraham said.

Satyrus shook his head. ‘You must already know. Why rub salt in the wound?’ He looked around to see who was in earshot, but Apollodorus — with the look of a man who’s been warned off — was taking Diokles up the steps of the citadel.

‘I want you to tell me to my face. You think I’m just going to accept this?’ he asked. He growled through the last few words — very much the terror of the seas he’d been five years before.

Satyrus finally understood that there was a misunderstanding. ‘She told me no.’ He shrugged. ‘I offered to marry her.’

Abraham looked as if he’d been kicked. ‘She told you no?’ he said. ‘But she’s gone!’ He looked around somewhat wildly. ‘I assumed … that is, I feared … Oh, fuck it, Satyrus, I thought she’d gone to live in your tent. She’s threatened it to me often enough.’

Satyrus had to laugh, although there was no comedy to the moment. ‘I don’t have her, brother of my heart if not by birth. She threw my religion in my face and asked me to leave her. I did. I said things that I regret — I told her I could find another, and I lied. I won’t find another.’ He looked around — Nikephorus was holding a messenger by the arm, restraining him physically, and the world was running on. This was too public, and neither he nor Abraham could say … everything.

Abraham slammed his fist into his hand. ‘That explains your silence, right enough,’ he said. ‘Where is she?’

Satyrus sighed. ‘With Melitta. They were always friends back when they were children.’

Abraham shook his head. ‘No note?’ he asked.

Satyrus shrugged. ‘Brother, I’m as far at sea as you.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘I guess that was for the best, eh?’

Abraham narrowed his eyes. ‘You have it that bad?’ he asked.

Satyrus snorted. ‘Of course.’

Abraham straightened his shoulders. ‘The lord does these things for a purpose,’ he said. ‘Perhaps there is a purpose to all this.’

Satyrus raised an eyebrow. ‘Don’t let Diokles and Apollodorus fight,’ he said. ‘Find us more mercenaries if you can. I have to keep Lysimachos from undoing himself.’ He smiled. ‘And teach Charmides to ride.’

Abraham looked past his friend at Satyrus’s escort. ‘Good luck with that,’ he said.

His escort was tired by the second day, and hard by the fourth. Their riding improved, too, although it was almost a pleasure to watch beautiful, athletic Charmides fail at something. He was not a gifted rider, and he didn’t love horses.

Lysimachos’s Thracian nobles were excellent cavalrymen, as tough as Sakje — half of them were Getae, the hereditary enemies of the Western Assagetae. They were in the saddle from dawn to dusk, and aside from the handful who acted as bodyguard and couriers, the rest scoured the dusty hills to the north and east.

The army had food, and thanks to the citizens of Ephesus, who would never love them, they had baggage animals and carts, and the army’s baggage marched inside a tight square of Lysimachos’s most trustworthy phalangites. Satyrus kept his own troops together in one division — four thousand heavy infantry under Nikephorus, another thousand not as good under Stratokles and Herakles, and three hundred archers — armoured archers — under Scopasis, Melitta’s guard captain. Many of the archers — not all, but most — were Sakje or Persian, and while they had come as archers on warships, Satyrus found them horses around Ephesus and more horses in the valleys to the north, and every horse gave him another mounted archer; a far, far more valuable warrior. So far, Satyrus had sixty of them mounted.

Horses were rare in this part of Asia. More than that, though, was that mounted archers needed more than one horse per man. At home, on the Sea of Grass, the Assagetae counted a warrior poor if he had only four horses.

The fifth day of the retreat, and the process of breaking camp had become routine. Behind a screen of mounted men and an interior screen of formed infantry, the slaves and lower-class infantrymen struck the tents and the rude shelters that the poorer men built from whatever was to hand. The Thracians built huts — and burned them when they sauntered away.

Scopasis strolled up to Satyrus while he watched a dozen slaves — all his, at a remove — striking his small pavilion that his new butler had purchased — or had made — and loading his gear on a train of donkeys. The man was very good at his job, and freedom made him even better. Phoibos was his name — Apollo had sent him.

He’d paid cash for Satyrus’s baggage animals. They got the best. Most of the soldiers had simply taken the animals they needed.

‘Lord of the Marching Men,’ Scopasis began formally.

Satyrus grinned. The scarred Sakje was a former lover of his sister’s, a former outlaw, and one of the hardest men Satyrus had known — as hard as Apollodorus, or worse — and yet, his courtesy was somehow cautious and reticent. ‘Scopasis, how are you this morning?’

Scopasis bowed. ‘I wish to ask a favour, lord.’

Satyrus had seen that coming. It was written in every line of the man’s stance. ‘Ask away.’

‘I want to take my best — my own men — and leave the column.’ He took a breath. ‘For a few … days.’

Satyrus also took a deep breath, held it, counted to ten, and let it go. ‘Whatever for?’ he asked.

‘Horses,’ Scopasis said with a shrug. ‘Antigonus’s men have them. We need them. To be honest, lord, if we do not mount my people, some of them will walk back to the ships.’ He shrugged again. ‘We do not like to walk.’

Satyrus winced. But he knew that Scopasis wasn’t making this up.

‘What’s your plan?’ he asked.

Scopasis laughed.

Satyrus woke to hear the patter of rain on the roof of his tent. Most of Nikephorus’s pikemen would have no shelter but the Aeolian coast of Asia was not a damp climate, and he didn’t expect the rain to last. He turned over on his bed of fleeces and went back to sleep.

He awoke again to waves of rain — the slashes of water hit his pavilion roof like blows from a stick.

Charmides came in, his light wool chlamys wet through. ‘Zeus Hospites. Lord, Lysimachos says we must march.’

Satyrus rubbed his eyes. It was raining so hard that when a gust hit the roof of the pavilion, a fine haze of water appeared inside the tent. ‘I’m surprised the pegs didn’t pull,’ he said.

Charmides smiled. ‘There’s a dozen slaves standing in the rain holding your lines,’ he said.

Satyrus sighed. ‘Better the slave of a bad master,’ he quoted. ‘Need a dry chlamys?’

Charmides shook his head. ‘No point.’

‘Like that, is it?’ Satyrus asked.

An hour later, he was soaked to the skin, head down under a straw hat, riding like a farmer with his seat well back on his horse’s rump and his feet dangling. The water wasn’t cold, but it was wet. Shoots and falls of water decorated the steep hills on either side of the pass they were marching though, and the rocks were shining in the watery sun, and the sky was a pile of dark clouds, stacked one on another as thunderheads came in off the sea and raced inland.

That night, Phoibos shook his head. ‘It is not dry in there, lord,’ he said. He gestured at the pavilion, the lines taut as hawsers between fighting ships, the roof stretched tight. Sheets of rain flowed off it in waves of water. Inside, Phoibos had a smaller tent — almost certainly his own — set up. The inner tent protected Satyrus’s bedding.

‘I have some deer meat and a cup of wine, lord.’ He bowed his head.

‘Splendid,’ Satyrus said. ‘You are a miracle worker. Invite Charmides and Anaxagoras.’

They marvelled at the inner tent, drank their wine, ate skewers of meat, and complained about the weather. Satyrus sent a slave for Nikephorus and Stratokles, and he brought Herakles, all of them soaking wet and muddy to the hip, and Phoibos had them wiped clean in the outer tent.

The inner tent was packed with his friends, all praising Phoibos. The man glowed with the unaccustomed praise.

‘We may be merrily dry in here,’ Satyrus said, ‘but the phalangites are soaked and cold.’

Nikephorus grunted. ‘I was soaked and cold myself until you sent a pais.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s unnatural. Never seen rain like this.’

Satyrus nodded. ‘We have to march anyway. For all we know, three valleys over, there’s no rain.’

Anaxagoras nodded as if this was the wisest thing he’d ever heard. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I had never considered this.’

‘How many fires are going?’ Satyrus asked young Herakles. Charmides leaned forward to speak, and Satyrus shushed him.

‘I don’t know,’ Herakles said. He was just recovering from the misery of being wet through and colder than he could remember being.

‘Five? Fifty?’ Satyrus asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Herakles repeated.

‘Go and find out,’ Satyrus said. ‘If the men have no fires, they’ll be too cold to sleep and too wet to move in the morning, and we’ll have desertion. By tomorrow, men will start to die. They are your men.’

Herakles shook his head. ‘So what? If they die, we’ll hire more.’

Satyrus’s eyes seemed to sparkle in the lamplight. ‘Out you go, young Herakles. That’s an order.’

‘It’s not fair,’ Herakles said. But he got to his feet. Stratokles rose to follow him. Satyrus restrained him.

‘Let him learn to be a king,’ he said. ‘Or at least to be a phylarch.’

Herakles made a thorough job. He came back an hour later. ‘Our men have fifty-four fires,’ he said. ‘More are being lit now. The wood is coming up the pass from the farms below us.’

Satyrus clapped him on the back.

‘Well done,’ he said, and gave him a cup of wine.

In the morning, the rain was less, but it was still raining, and there were head colds and sneezes throughout the camp. Lysimachos’s men had had a worse night, being further from the wood, and they were slow to start. Satyrus’s men stood in the rain waiting. Many of them had straw hats and straw cloaks, and Nikephorus’s men marched armed and armoured, only their sarissas in the carts. Most of Lysimachos’s men marched in their chitons, and they were cold.

‘If they have their arms, they have something to sell if they desert,’ Lysimachos said. ‘Besides, with so many Thracians, I know I won’t be surprised.’ He had thousands of the barbarians, and they moved like waves, covering the distant ridges and the rocky valley floor. Even in the rain, they glittered with armour and gold.

Satyrus saw no reason to argue. ‘When we crest that ridge,’ he said pointing north and east, ‘we’ll see the sea. Then we need to press for Sardis.’

Lysimachos nodded. ‘We need to take some time to forage,’ he said.

Satyrus grunted. ‘You mean, to buy food from farmers? Or just take what you want?’

‘This is Antigonus’s satrapy,’ Lysimachos said. ‘We’ll take whatever we want.’

‘Not that they were ever offered a choice. Why not pay? We’ll get better intelligence and leave a friendly populace behind.’ Satyrus tipped his hat and watched the water run off it.

Lysimachos looked at him as if he had two heads. ‘No one has that kind of money,’ he said. ‘If we had to buy our supplies, there’d be no war.’

Satyrus just looked at him. Melitta was sounding smarter and smarter.

The eighth day, and Stratokles took Lucius and went ahead to Sardis with a picked troop as an escort. The rain hadn’t ended, and Lysimachos’s men were deserting. Nikephorus had lost a dozen.

‘We need a siege train,’ Satyrus mentioned to Jubal. The Nubian grinned. He hadn’t played any role in the campaign so far — just ridden quietly with the escort. He was a natural horseman.

‘I’ll be happy to be at building it,’ he said. ‘But I’ll need a few things: wood, iron, bronze. Some skilled artisans.’

‘Sardis,’ Satyrus said.

Jubal smiled. ‘Sure.’

‘Either we’ll stop to lay siege, and you’ll have to build us some artillery, or they’ll open the gates, and you can get what you need.’ Satyrus looked at Lysimachos, aware that he was ordering Jubal to take what he needed.

Jubal made a face. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Lord.’

But Sardis opened its gates for a cash payment to the commander of the garrison, and Lysimachos kept his men outside. Jubal bought a pair of slave smiths and some metal and a talent in silver’s worth of cut and planed wooden beams. He bought wagons and linen tarps coated in linseed oil.

Satyrus bought pots — fire pots, the type his triremes used to keep a fire going all day at sea. He bought every scrap of canvas in the city: every party pavilion, every sail from the fishing boats. A convoy came over the mountains from the seaport with more. He spent a summer’s tithes from the Propontus on tentage.

It didn’t stop the rain, but it earned him the thanks of the army.

The third morning at Sardis — the eleventh since they had marched from Ephesus — they marched again, just as One-Eye’s scouts came over the high pass. Satyrus sent a runner back to Apollodorus ordering him to abandon Ephesus. It wouldn’t matter to them — in twelve hours, Antigonus would cut the road.

Satyrus cantered over to Lysimachos, who was watching Antigonus’s scouts descending the road behind them. Nikephorus came, and Stratokles, and two of Lysimachos’s Thracian chiefs and Nikeas, his escort commander and right-hand man, and Lucius.

‘Two thousand stades from here to Heraklea,’ Lysimachos said.

‘Most of it through the mountains,’ Satyrus said. ‘You have a route?’

Lysimachos nodded. ‘I planned to go the Royal Road from here,’ he said. ‘I didn’t expect Antigonus to be on our heels.’

Satyrus watched the first formed troops come over the ridge. ‘I don’t think that the Royal Road is a good option, anyway. Until Plistias recovers, my ships on Lesbos will cover the seaward flank. I’d like to stay in touch with them. I suggest we go north through the mountains to Cyzucus on the Propontus — or to where the road goes east, at least. My ships hold the whole of the straits. From there we can move east by stages with our flanks secure.’

Lysimachos rubbed his beard. ‘That means marching through Bithynia. Hostile, very hostile.’

Satyrus waved at Mithridates, rescued from Demetrios at Ephesus. ‘Handy that we have a spare King of Bithynia, then, isn’t it?’ he said.

Lysimachos looked at him. Even Stratokles looked at him with respect.

Satyrus nodded. ‘But first — if I may be so bold — we had better brush One-Eye’s advance guard back, or they’ll be crawling all over us.’

The fight at the fords of the Hermos River was not memorable in any way, except that Anaxagoras told them that the Ionian Greeks had fought the Lydians and Persians here. ‘It is in Herodotus,’ Anaxagoras said. ‘Right here at the bridge — two hundred years ago, give or take a few. The Greeks held, and the Persian satrap was wounded, and the Greeks slipped away.’

‘And then they won at Marathon,’ Charmides said.

‘Hah!’ Satyrus put in. ‘Not the Ionians. They were tools for the warring powers.’

‘Still are,’ Stratokles added. ‘Too rich.’

‘Too soft,’ added Lucius.

Charmides narrowed his eyes. ‘Now see here …’ he said.

Anaxagoras raised his hands. ‘It’s history!’ he said. ‘Not a calculated insult. Besides, didn’t you tell me once your father was a Spartan?’

Satyrus turned his head. ‘What?’ he asked. ‘How did a Spartan come to Lesbos?’

Out across the plain, the enemy scouts came forward warily, and behind them came two big squadrons of cavalry and a taxeis of pikemen, marching hard.

Charmides grew red and said nothing.

‘Here they come,’ Anaxagoras said, and pulled his helmet down. They were manning a barricade of stakes hidden by a line of woven matts with greenery on them — it was hard to arrange an ambush at a frequented ford with no cover for ten stades in any direction.

The scouts came to the river bank opposite but they didn’t like what they saw. Ten minutes later, the enemy cavalry pushed into the river, but they didn’t cross, and the taxeis halted on the far bank.

Their baggage came up, and they began to make camp.

Satyrus watched them with real respect. ‘Antigonus is good,’ he said.

Lysimachos, already pulling his best barbarians out of their ambush positions, nodded. ‘He’s the best of us who are left. Why?’

‘He’s laid a counter-trap, that’s why. We’re supposed to make a lunge at this advance guard, so far from his army, no support. But look — cavalry on both ridges.’

Lysimachos nodded. ‘I’ve been duped by him a dozen times, and yet, I swear we could take the taxeis before the cavalry could save them.’

Satyrus shrugged. ‘If that’s the war we were waging. I thought we were retreating?’

Lysimachos laughed. ‘We are, we are.’

Philip, with One-Eye’s advance guard, made camp across the water, ready to sell his life dearly.

Satyrus broke contact and rode away behind a screen of Thracians.

And that night, Scopasis appeared in camp. Satyrus had some warning of his coming — the rumble of horse’s hooves. His sentries grasped their weapons and stared into the darkness.

He had more than a thousand horses, all told. All his Sakje were mounted, and their horse herd covered the space of the whole of the rest of the camp.

‘I hate rain,’ Scopasis said. He grinned. ‘But it is good for stealing horses.’

‘How’d you get so many?’ asked Charmides.

‘Patience,’ Scopasis said.

‘Will you teach me?’ Charmides asked.

‘Yes,’ Scopasis said.

The irony — the hand of Tyche, to some — was that Satyrus suddenly had superb cavalry scouts — the best, in fact, in two thousand stades — just as both armies entered the mountains. The plain of Sardis gave way to the rising passes of the Tennon Mountains. The Sakje were penned in with the army, crossing high, wooded passes that narrowed to the width of the tracks that followed them.

But Scopasis seemed determined to scout, so Satyrus sent him far to the north and south, marking alternative passes over the great folds of earth that separated the deep green valleys of Lydia and Mysia.

Behind them, Antigonus pushed his cavalry and light infantry to keep the pressure on.

And in the skies above them, the clouds rolled in from the sea, on and on, so that it seemed to Satyrus, riding up his third steep climb of the day, that he had been wet through for ever. Now he made a practice of riding among Nikephorus’s Apobatai, calling out names and asking men for a dry chiton to get a laugh. Sometimes he would dismount, hand his horse to a slave, and march on foot with his own rations in a leather bag — not because the act had any value in itself, but only because the infantry needed to know that he was there.

Five days out of Sardis — when the rain seemed eternal, and the farmers by the road were showing signs of despair at the weather, which was flooding their fields — Satyrus was marching with the Apobatai. He found that the men sharing the trail with him were Lucius, Stratokles and Herakles.

Herakles gave him a look — half reproach, and half a request for praise. ‘They told me I had to do this,’ he said with a shrug.

He was carrying an oiled linen tarp, a bronze cook pot and the same big leather wallet as Satyrus — although his was covered in ornate bronze work. He was actually carrying the whole marching kit of a hoplite or a phalangite. Behind him stumbled an adolescent boy with his shield and helmet.

Satyrus laughed. ‘You’re carrying more than I am, lad,’ he said.

Herakles smiled.

Satyrus realised that it was the first time he’d seen the boy smile.

He spoiled the effect by panting and then crowing, ‘It’s easy!’ The combination was risible. Satyrus hid his smile, slapped the boy’s back, and marched on into the rain.

Two stades up the pass, Stratokles fell in beside him. ‘He worships you,’ he said.

Satyrus laughed. ‘He’s an ephebe in a man’s body.’

Stratokles shook his head. ‘He asks all the time — how does Satyrus do it? What does Satyrus wear?’ Stratokles smiled. ‘Look at his hat — he had to find the same peasant who made your straw hat.’

Satyrus laughed, but then he nodded his head. ‘Everyone needs someone to follow,’ he said. ‘I had Philokles. The boy could do worse than me.’

Stratokles looked at him and raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re an arrogant sot, you know that, lord?’

Satyrus nodded. ‘If I can’t be a model for ephebes as the war-king of the north, what good am I?’ he asked.

‘Right, then,’ said the Athenian. ‘I’ll just keep him away from Jews, shall I?’

Satyrus counted twenty steps before he allowed himself to answer.

‘Sorry,’ Stratokles said. ‘Meant it as a joke.’

Lucius, trudging along in the rank behind them, laughed. ‘The men I’ve killed because of your so-called sense of humour.’

‘Tell me your story, Lucius,’ Satyrus said, to pass the time.

The Latin pushed forward, his long legs eating the rocky trail. Now the army was just two abreast, strung out along the passes for twenty stades and more. Satyrus and the Apobatai were the rearguard — except for scouts and archers posted to annoy Antigonus and his vanguard. When Satyrus topped a big ridge, he could see the distant, watery twinkle of iron and bronze. One-Eye.

Lucius turned and looked down the back trail. They were almost last. Satyrus had the strangest feeling, all of a sudden, that he was alone with Stratokles and Lucius and that this was just the sort of carelessness that his sister had warned him against. They weren’t really alone — he knew Philos and Miltiades in the clump ahead — but he tried not to be too obvious as he eased his sword in the scabbard — felt it stick, and flicked his glance at Lucius.

The Latin was gazing down the back trail. ‘I think Antigonus got up early this morning,’ he said.

At the base of the ridge, in the valley they’d just left, a dozen horsemen and a thick column of infantry appeared, trotting strongly right at them.

Satyrus pulled at his sword again, and it came free of the scabbard fitfully, the blade red with rust.

Lucius looked at him. ‘Where I’m from, that’s a crime,’ he said.

Satyrus nodded. ‘If my tutor saw me with a rusty sword,’ he said. Then he looked into the valley. ‘Apobatai!’ he called.

Heads turned.

‘Philos!’ Satyrus called. ‘Run up the track and tell Nikephorus to start forming the rearguard — One-Eye’s making a grab for us. Look on the heights above us!’

Philos dropped his shield and ran, sprinting up the steep trail with the hoarded energy of the professional soldier.

Lucius was looking at the cliffs above them. ‘We’re fucked,’ he said.

Satyrus was shaking his head. ‘I have scouts in every valley!’ he said.

‘They went over the ridges,’ Lucius said. ‘Once you climb to the top, moving along isn’t that hard.’

Rocks began to roll down on them from the heights.

The first attack was really just a probe — fifty tribesmen of one sort or another, charging out of the rocks.

Satyrus stood his ground between Herakles and Lucius. Herakles was afraid — terrified — and he talked and talked, his young voice carrying over everything. He talked about his mother, and about a contest he’d won — a pitiful story — and about how he wasn’t afraid.

‘Here they come,’ said Lucius. His first words in an hour.

By luck, good or ill, the only determined attackers — a pair of men too young to understand the word feint, or so it seemed to Satyrus — made unerringly for their part of the line while javelins fell like rain. Herakles took a javelin in his shield and stepped back half a step, reached around it to pull it free — and they were on him.

Lucius got one — a simple, brutally well-timed thrust into the man as he ran at them, full tilt. A running man is vulnerable. Most men slow when they hit the shield wall, but not these Mysians. He went down.

Satyrus tried to do the same but Herakles, in his panic, was shuffling and then — full of fear — thrust forward at the tribesman, effectively cutting Satyrus out of the fight.

The enemy spear hit him just over the heart, glanced off his bronze thorax, skipped up his neck, across his face, and past. Herakles caught the shaft — hurt and desperate — and they were face to face, and Herakles’ hand went up under his arm as he was trained, caught at his sword hilt — backwards — ripped it clear of his scabbard overhand and thrust it into his attacker’s face, by luck or Tyche through an eye, and the enemy — a boy Herakles’ own age — went down, and his shade left his body.

The fall of javelins had stopped.

‘I killed him!’ Herakles said, elated. ‘By the gods! I stood my ground!’

Lucius nodded. ‘Yep,’ he said. He flipped the two dead men over and checked them. They had nothing.

‘I–I killed him! Man to man! You saw me, Satyrus!’ the young man said, and he almost danced — skipped a little, and his eyes were bright.

‘That was the easy part,’ Lucius said. ‘Now they come at our flanks. Where is Nikephorus?’

Satyrus was on the same message. ‘Back!’ he told the Apobatai.

‘He … smells like … a deer.’ Herakles was looking at the boy at his feet. The dead boy’s lank hair was in his own blood, and flies were already landing on the mass of potential food. Slowly, and with awful certainty, the corpse voided its bowels.

‘Oh … gods!’ Herakles said, and threw up on the corpse at his feet.

Lucius had his hair. He stood there until the boy was done, and Satyrus gave him some wine from his pottery canteen.

‘I … killed him,’ Herakles said.

Satyrus’s eyes met Herakles’ eyes. ‘We know,’ he said, his voice as soothing as a mother’s. ‘Have some wine.’

‘Welcome to the brotherhood of Ares,’ Lucius said.

Satyrus slapped the younger man on the shoulder of his armour-yoke. ‘Move faster, or you’ll lie with him.’

They began to trot up the pass.

More rocks began to fall.

Just short of the top of the pass, they found Philos, dead, his throat cut.

‘Uh-oh,’ Lucius said.

‘Herakles, stand with us,’ Satyrus said. ‘Right.’ He had most of the Apobatai — almost two hundred men. The obvious choice was to form them in the open space at the top of the pass and hold off all comers until Stratokles or Charmides or Nikephorus sensed what was wrong.

Against that solution, the top of the pass was overhung by two big ridges within a stone’s throw. The men holding the top of the pass would be bombarded with small rocks and scree — not the end of the world, but annoying. And there was a light fog — almost a haze — as far as Satyrus could see. If his messenger was dead, it could be an hour before Nikephorus inquired.

‘Any great ideas?’ Lucius asked.

Satyrus found he had the daimon on him, and the smell of wet cat that he hadn’t smelled in years. Perhaps I die here, he thought. It would be like Herakles to grant his worshippers the time to get their thoughts in order so that they could die like heroes.

‘Yes,’ he said. He looked around for phylarchs. ‘All officers,’ he said. ‘On me. Form your ranks, gentlemen.’

The phylarchs of the Apobatai gathered around him, and Delios tipped his helmet back, looking around through the haze. ‘We can hold here, lord,’ he said.

Satyrus shook his head. ‘That’s just what they want us to do,’ he said. ‘As soon as all the boys are together, we’re going up the ridge — there. Don’t point. All together. Men at the flanks will have to scramble and fight. But if we get up there we’ll hold. Who has water left?’

No one did.

‘There’s a stream right there. Every file waters up. Then we go. Phylarchs, take the time to look for your way up.’

‘Ares — this will suck,’ Delios said. He shook his head. ‘But … you’re right. Better to die like lions.’

Satyrus grinned. ‘I don’t intend to die,’ he said. ‘I intend to get to the top of that ridge and kill everything I find there.’

Delios wasn’t sure if his king was joking. ‘Lord?’

Satyrus nodded to all of them. ‘Herakles is with us,’ he said.

Behind him, he heard young Herakles say to Lucius, ‘What does that mean? Is he talking about me?’

‘Shush,’ said the Latin.

It took for ever for the men to fill their canteens. Arrows fell on them, and javelins, and rocks with increasing frequency as the enemy filled in on the ridge above them — more men on the ridge behind them. Satyrus took a heavy rock on his shield and had to skip to avoid it crushing his ankles.

Somewhere, they had friends, too. Probably the archers out with their morning scouts — there were enemy tribesmen dying up there on the ridge, and arrows going both ways.

‘I don’t get it,’ Lucius said. ‘Who’re those bastards?’

‘No idea. Don’t look a gift archer in the mouth,’ Satyrus said. Louder, he said, ‘Dump everything but your canteen and your fighting gear. If you have a long spear, ditch it. If you can get a javelin or two — take them.’

The ranks shuffled as men stripped their food bags. Veterans took a bite of bread, or dropped a ripe fruit down the front of their chitons. Some men dumped everything — some kept everything.

Men were edging forward, eager to start, to get it over with. To get out from under the rain of death. Two men were already down — one with his skull crushed, another with a broken ankle and then a crushed skull.

‘Wait for it,’ Satyrus yelled. Above them, the Mysians were screaming war cries.

Young Herakles shuffled and spat, trying to get the taste of death out of his mouth. Lucius looked bored. Satyrus watched the hills above them, wishing that he could suddenly hear the trumpets of the main column.

It seemed an odd and somewhat pointless place to die. But the smell of wet cat was powerful in his nostrils, and his hands shook with the power of his eudaimonia. He felt the strength of ten men flowing through his hands.

‘If this is your last hour,’ Satyrus called in his storm-at-sea voice, ‘use it to show the gods that you are a hero, not a man.’

The Apobatai, poised on the edge of desperation and defeat, heard him, and their roar of defiance was the sound of a wounded lion, crouched in the thicket, still dangerous.

‘At them!’ Satyrus roared, and they were away — a mad scramble, rock to rock, and the javelins flew thick and fast, and rocks — almost impossible to climb with an aspis straight-armed over your head. Satyrus got a leg up on a big rock, and something hit him in the exposed hip, and then he was up — no idea how — and instead of slipping down and climbing the next rock, he simply jumped — landed on the peak of the next giant rock, his foot already slipping, and he did it again, running from rock-peak to rock-peak while javelins hit his shield.

He wasn’t the only man to run along the top of the rocks instead of picking his way.

He was just the fastest.

He went up the side of the ridge, and three bounds brought him to his first opponent — his balance was already slipping, and the man was below him, and Satyrus put a spear point unerringly into the top of the man’s head as he turned to run, right through the top of his skull, and Satyrus leaped again. Now he was on a patch of grass the size of a helmsman’s station, and two men stood there, one with a bow and one with an axe. The bowman shot the axe man in the back and died to Satyrus’s spear, his eyes still full of the remorse of his panic-driven error. And then the Mysian tribesmen were breaking, running, and the Apobatai hunted them through the rocks to the top of the ridge, until their flight was stiffened by Agrianian javelin men from northern Macedon — professional light infantry, some of them veterans from Alexander’s earliest campaigns. There were fifty of them there, and some slingers.

They were professionals, but they didn’t have armour, shields, or desperation. Satyrus’s men suffered from the slingers — ten men went down in as many casts — but then, out of nowhere, a dozen of his scout-archers appeared higher on the hill and let fly into the back of the Agrianians, and the ridge was taken. The Mysian tribesmen were butchered, thirty of them were taken prisoner, and the Agrianians fought a dogged rearguard action of their own, their javelins outranged by the Sakje bows of the scouts. But they knew cover and they knew how to move, and they slipped away with fewer than a dozen casualties.

Satyrus made the top of the ridge and slumped against a stone. His sword was red with blood and light rust, and when he raised the blade to point out the enemy slingers and call an order, the blood ran untrammelled down the blade and over his hand. He had one more fight — not his choice — when a wounded Mysian chose to die rather than surrender and attempted to take Satyrus with him. Satyrus had to kill him twice, a blow to the head that should have put him down and another that all but severed his head before the man fell at his feet.

And then he slumped against a rock again, the pain in his hip so intense he could barely stand, the sword stuck to his hand with dried blood.

Herakles found him first, gave him water, and then poured water over his sword hand until the dried blood ran away and he could open his hand.

‘It’s dry here,’ Satyrus mumbled. At his feet, he could see Nikephorus coming hard with three hundred pikemen.

‘Can you walk, lord?’ Herakles asked him.

Satyrus laughed. ‘You, too, are a king, lad. You and I don’t call each other “lord”.

Herakles looked around. ‘Is this … all there is? Satyrus? Is this all there is to … to war?’ He looked at his feet — crusted with the mud of Ares — blood, excrement and dirt. ‘I was so scared.’

Lucius came up and put his arm around the young man, and Satyrus drank wine from his canteen and rubbed his hip. The thorax had held, but now that he had time to look, he could see that the rock — he thought it had been a rock — had crushed the flange at the hip right into his skin.

‘Help me get this off,’ he gasped. The blood was soaking his buttocks and his groin, running down his legs.

He dropped his shield and they unlatched the thorax and folded it off him. He wished for his scale shirt, but it was thousands of stades to the north.

The wound itself was nothing; the rock had crushed the armour, and the corner of the broken bronze had cut his hip deeply and repeatedly with every stride he took — a series of fifty semicircular cuts, every one of which had drawn blood.

‘That’s going to make a spectacular scar,’ Lucius said. ‘Can you walk?’

Satyrus shook his head. ‘I’ll be fine. Dump the thorax — we can’t fix it here.’

Young Herakles shook his head. ‘And let them put your breastplate in a trophy?’ he said. ‘Never!’ He took a rock and bashed at the place where the hip was bent in and the metal was torn asunder. In three blows he’d knocked it back into shape, the jagged edges now thrust out and away from Satyrus’s hip.

‘Well done, young man!’ Lucius said. They got it over Satyrus’s head, and latched it, and Satyrus felt only the pain of the wound and some additional pressure where the weight sat on his hips. He pushed his blood-soaked chlamys up onto his hips, and managed to wink at Herakles. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Although I don’t really care if they build a trophy,’ he added.

‘That was incredible,’ Herakles said, as they started to descend the mountain. ‘I feel like a god.’

Satyrus nodded. The wine had gone to his head, and all he wanted was sleep. The rain had stopped. The sun was starting to burn through the haze. Nikephorus was running to meet them, relief in his eyes.

‘I had no idea!’ he shouted, fifty paces away.

When Satyrus reached him, he slapped the mercenary on the back. ‘Neither did I. Antigonus is one wily bastard.’

They collected the rearguard, picked up their dead and retreated over the top of the pass.

Yes, Satyrus thought. That’s all there is.