Force of Kings

Part IV
14

Cassander stood in the doorway of his pavilion, looking across the dusty plain towards where Demetrios was encamped, with the beach and his ships behind him. It was still dark — he could see his opponent’s fires.

‘Today?’ he asked aloud, to the woman on the bed. ‘Ares and Aphrodite. He can finish me whenever he wants, the bastard. Why wait?’

Phiale lay in Cassander’s bed, contemplating her options. She had not expected Cassander to be so easily defeated. Six months before, he had been the captain general of his alliance, at the very edge of victory, and now they were on the edge of annihilation, their armies hunted across mainland Greece, their small fleet utterly defeated.

‘The thankless bastards — Athens, Corinth, Plataea and Megara — none of them will stand with me.’ Cassander took a cup of juice from a slave. ‘Leave me,’ he ordered the slave.

Phiale wondered if he would be … difficult. Defeated men made the most trouble.

‘I offered him my absolute surrender if he would leave me as King of Macedon. I offered to change sides and attack Ptolemy and Lysimachos.’ Cassander stood there, the sun rising beyond him. He looked old — old and evil.

Phiale found that she was lying in the bed of an old, evil man who had lost his war. She sighed. He’d lost the Greek cities through wanton ill-treatment, but this was scarcely the moment to tell him.

She wondered if she could jump from his bed to that of Demetrios.

What if she killed Cassander? That would certainly ingratiate her with Demetrios.

The sun was just peaking over the shoulder of the world. Phiale stretched. I am thirty five, she thought. Too old for this life. And soon my body will not be everything a man desires.

‘Do you know that Satyrus of Tanais is still alive?’ Cassander said bitterly. ‘I wonder if an astrologer could have helped me. Everything I put my hand to this year has come undone.’

Phiale sat up. As she was naked, she caught his attention.

‘Ah, that gets you moving, my dear alley cat.’ Cassander came over and put a hand on one of her breasts, flicked the nipple — more in cruelty than passion. ‘Lie back down,’ he ordered.

Phiale was not a courtesan for nothing, and she obeyed languorously. Attractively. As if his desires inflamed her. And as he mounted her, she considered him — hated him — and savoured her newfound emotion for him. Sex with hate was not new to Phiale but it was rewarding, in its way.

He didn’t take long, and when he was through, she watched him go back to the doorway. The sun was up — cocks were crowing in camp. And a messenger was racing towards them across the cleared ground in front of the pavilion.

‘Lord!’ shouted the man. ‘Lord! Demetrios is gone!’

‘Hah!’ Cassander said, and came and kissed her on the head. Something she hated. ‘You are the touchstone of my fortune! Tyche’s daughter — make love to Phiale and the world turns!’

How I hate you, she thought. And sighed.

Demetrios was the first man to leap from the deck of his ship on the Ephesian beach, but there were no enemy hoplites to kill, no heroics to be performed. Instead, there was Philip, his father’s general, and two hundred men.

‘Thank the gods you are here,’ said Philip.

Demetrios rolled his eyes. ‘I had Cassander. I had him. What happened?’

Philip rolled his eyes. ‘We had Lysimachos … and then the King of the Bosporus appeared out of the sea with fifty ships, took Ephesus, drove Plistias south, and saved fucking Lysimachos. His fleet holds the Propontus, and their armies — no match for ours — are retreating on Heraklea across the mountains. Your father wants you to sail into the Propontus, defeat his navy, and pounce on his fleet.’

Demetrios smiled. ‘Oh, Satyrus,’ he breathed. ‘Alive?’

Philip looked angry. ‘Of course he’s alive!’ he said.

Demetrios walked up the beach. ‘You’ve retaken the citadel?’ he asked.

‘The commander simply sailed away. A deputation of citizens met us at the passes and told us that the city was open to us.’ Philip shrugged. ‘Satyrus stripped them of baggage animals. Your father has taken all their gold. I’m to garrison the city and return with you.’

Demetrios shook his head. ‘No — no, I think I’ll do just as you suggested, and hunt his fleet into the Dardanelles.’ He looked at the man. ‘Hostages?’ he asked.

Philip shrugged again. ‘The Rhodians have them back,’ he said.

Demetrios cursed. ‘Then we don’t have naval supremacy,’ he said.

All of Demetrios’s ships landed their men to cook dinner and stretch their legs. Unnoticed amidst the multitude, half a dozen men in armour walked away from the camp, up the road to the town, and into the gates. In an hour, they had purchased horses — local nags, the sort of animals left behind when army after army passes through a city.

Isokles had his own men, now; men of the sort he preferred, not soft-spoken women like the Athenian doctor, but scarred men from the lower classes who didn’t posture — or if they did, they postured in a way Isokles understood.

He himself was going to kill Satyrus of Tanais. And he had a plan.

Four days later, Demetrios caught Diokles at the mouth of the Dardanelles, his ships on the beach. Diokles had no idea that there was an enemy fleet so close, and he was giving his rowing crews a day of rest.

Demetrios came up from the south, and the ships sitting at the north of the beach had time to launch and flee. Diokles got his ship into the water — he was the eleventh on the beach, and the eighth was already being dragged off by Demetrios’s grapnels.

Apollodorus was twelfth. He got his rebuilt Marathon off. Diokles could see him on the stern, calling something.

Diokles turned to his helmsman. ‘Ramming speed,’ he said.

He saw the hope die in the other man’s eyes, but Leonidas obeyed.

Diokles’ Atlantae turned smoothly, gathering way as the oarsmen dug deeper. The Tarentum-born helmsman smiled grimly.

‘It’s Demetrios,’ he said quietly.

Diokles saw the golden figure by the helmsman on the next ship but one, a towering penteres whose heavy engines were already throwing big bolts into the Atlantae.

Diokles nodded. ‘I have to buy time,’ he said, apologetically.

Leonidas shrugged.

Diokles ran forward, where men were already dead from the heavy bolts coming aboard. ‘Dead men over the side!’ he called. He turned to his captain of marines. ‘Get Jubal’s fancy repeaters over the side,’ he said. ‘I’m not giving them to Demetrios.’

Nautarch, his top marine, smiled. ‘Over the side, weighted,’ he answered.

‘Then fire pots — all we have,’ he said.

‘Bodies over the side, Jubal’s engines, fire pots,’ Nautarch repeated. ‘We’s in it bad, eh?’

‘Can you swim?’ Diokles asked.

‘Aye,’ said the marine.

‘Well, pray to Poseidon and don’t jump in the water yet,’ Diokles said, and smacked the man on the shoulder. Then he leaped up into the bow above the ram, watching the enemy ships. Demetrios’s penteres was turning, trying to decide if his attack was a feint of not. The trireme beyond was threatening to foul his oars, and if they could just run over Demetrios’s stern, Diokles could put his ram in, back oars, and run clear.

He looked at the seven ships he’d lost, already bobbing together on the waves. He felt like a fool. He felt like falling on his sword, but Diokles wasn’t interested in suicide.

He ran aft to the helmsman’s station. His rowers weren’t all on the correct benches, and only now was the rhythm settling down — a crash forward as another heavy bolt hit.

More rowers dead. That’s what happened when one ship rushed twenty-five. Thirty. Quite a few, anyway.

‘Hit him just aft of the bow. He can’t manoeuvre — look at the size of the bitch. Want me to take the oars?’

Leonidas looked at him steadily. ‘We’re going to die, aren’t we?’ he asked.

Diokles nodded. Quietly, he said, ‘Yes.’

‘Then let me go to Hades my own way.’ Leonidas stood straight. ‘Know who colonised Tarentum, Diokles?’

‘Sparta. You’ve told me about fifty times.’ Diokles thought they had perhaps a hundred heartbeats, if the enemy engines didn’t rip his bow off first.

He watched one of Jubal’s repeating engines sinking away in the water behind him. One thing off his mind.

Another crash forward. Satyrus had all the archers. He had nothing with which to reply except his ram.

The enemy trireme was now clear of the penteres — they weren’t going to foul each other. It had been close — the trierarchs were still screaming at each other from their command decks.

It had never been that good a chance, anyway.

The penteres was coming for him.

‘Let’s get the trireme,’ Leonidas said. ‘We can’t miss — he’s still turning.’

‘And the penteres gets us,’ Diokles said.

Leonidas nodded.

Diokles nodded.

The Tarentine leaned on the oars and they turned, the sea foaming at their bow. Diokles saw a bolt vanish into the water, a clear miss — the turn had bought them that, if nothing else.

And then they hit. The ram caught just a few feet behind the cathead and smashed the oar-box in an explosion of splinters, and men screamed. The impact was so strong, and Atlantae was going so fast that she pushed the stricken ship down and back, water foaming over her stern as she sank. Her stern ran aboard the next trireme’s bow, and down his oars — more oarsmen screaming, dislocated shoulders, men flayed by splinters.

The penteres had them, of course. But Diokles had twenty heartbeats, and he used them. ‘Throw the fire pots!’ he ordered. Then he roared, ‘Over the side! Swim for it!’

Men jumped immediately — they’d been waiting for it. The marines had stripped their armour, and the rowers had left their oars as soon as they struck the enemy trireme.

Leonidas stepped up on the rail. ‘You coming?’ he asked. The lead enemy trireme was afire, and her consort’s bow had caught.

‘After you,’ Diokles joked, and then an enemy marine’s javelin caught him in the back, just above his kidneys, punched right through him so that he had a brief glimpse of the shiny point emerging from his gut. And then he fell forward into Poseidon’s embrace.