Force of Kings

Part I
1

‘By Herakles! This little worthless instrument will not defeat me!’ Satyrus growled.

‘Put your fingers on the strings again, and stop trying to be perfect,’ Anaxagoras insisted.

‘I promised Miriam that I would learn to play this before I saw her,’ Satyrus said. He was sitting on a folding stool just forward of the helmsman’s station, and Anaxagoras was sitting with his back to the light aft-mast that they had mounted to catch the light airs of late summer. They were an hour off their breakfast beach, cruising south of Lesbos en route to Rhodos.

‘Your promise won’t be worth the spit you put in it if you don’t allow yourself to be human,’ Anaxagoras said. He played the first measures flawlessly. ‘It comes with practice. Like fighting with the sword, or pankration.’

Satyrus’s eyes went back to the Antigonid penteres, now just a nick on the horizon.

‘I thought that they behaved oddly. Too damned cheerful. There ought to have been catcalls and curses.’

Anaxagoras nodded. ‘Perhaps. But you have thirty merchant ships and half as many warships in your tail, brother, and I dare say they were daunted by the sight.’

Satyrus laughed. ‘I’ll keep the truce — they have half my friends as hostages.’

Anaxagoras raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m sure that the Antigonid navarch knew that in his intellect, my friend, but I suspect that your line of battle made his arse pucker nonetheless. Give the poor man his due. He was polite, and so were you, and now we’re done.’

Satyrus shifted his seat on the deck. The weather was already hot, humid as only the surface of the sea can be humid, and the salt in the air burned in every minute laceration on his shoulders and back from practising in armour. He was thoroughly dissatisfied.

‘I want to be away for Athens,’ he said.

Anaxagoras laughed. ‘I want to be back in Tanais, or perhaps Pantecapaeaum.’

Now Satyrus had to laugh. ‘She won’t be in either. She’s off to the high plains — she was away from her people three-quarters of a year and she needs to be seen.’ He was speaking of his sister, who was, by birth and inclination, Queen of the Assagetae, the western clans of the Sakje, the Scythian tribes of the Western Door of the Sea of Grass.

Anaxagoras nodded. ‘I should be riding with her.’

Satyrus smiled. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You should be right here with me. Selling grain like merchants, playing our lyres, having adventures. Tonight we can beach on the south of Chios. I know an islet that can take the whole fleet. Besides, you can barely ride.’

Anaxagoras bowed his head to acknowledge the truth of that. ‘If only I’d known as a child that my future happiness depended on my ability to ride,’ he said.

‘You can be such a sophist,’ Satyrus said.

‘I was only speaking the truth,’ Anaxagoras returned.

‘No, you are implying that riding is a worthless accomplishment,’ Satyrus said.

‘No more than you imply to me every day that playing the lyre is the action of a dilettante and not a proper gentleman,’ Anaxagoras said. ‘You will not tame the lyre by force, brother.’

Silence reigned for as long as it took the oarsmen to pull ten times.

‘When you take that superior tone, you sound just exactly like Philokles, minus the Lacedaemonian accent.’ Satyrus clambered to his feet.

‘I shall take that as a compliment, since I know you loved him. Perhaps he, too, used logic to debate you, instead of raw emotions from the gut?’ Anaxagoras raised an eyebrow.

‘Sometimes he simply hit me,’ Satyrus agreed. ‘Which had its own logic. I do not enjoy being as bad at anything as I am at playing the lyre.’

‘I can’t imagine you were born to your skills at pankration?’ Anaxagoras asked wickedly.

‘Xenophon says all men are born natural swordsmen. Old Socrates used to say that men are born to natural wisdom.’ Satyrus grinned. ‘But no. Your point is fair and well taken. I came to my skill in pankration down a long, hard road. And as you saw in Pantecapaeaum, I’m still hard-pressed to tumble Theron, even when he’s past forty and I’m in my prime.’

Anaxagoras nodded. ‘That was something to see. I could have watched all day — every man present felt the same. Like watching lions fight.’

Satyrus stuck out a discoloured shin. ‘My bruises haven’t healed yet.’ He looked up at the masthead, and back at his helmsman, Thrassos, a red-haired barbarian and now a citizen of Rhodos. ‘Wind is backing, Thrassos,’ Satyrus said.

‘Aye,’ the Keltoi said. He wasn’t a big man, but his tattoos, the scars around his eyes and his red hair made him a fearsome sight, and despite holding citizenship in three cities, no one would ever have mistaken him for a Greek.

‘Planning to do anything about it?’ Satyrus asked.

‘Ain’t steady yet,’ Thrassos said.

As if to prove his weather-sense, a gust from the west tossed the bow and almost cost the rowers their stroke.

Satyrus shook his head. ‘I feel as if the god tried to tell me something this morning and I ignored it,’ he said. ‘But for my life, I’ve no idea what. Did I commit impiety? Oh, forgive me, Anaxagoras. I’m in a foul mood.’

His friend used the mast to push to his feet. ‘No apology required between friends, philos. You’ll feel better when we’re clear of Rhodes and headed towards Athens and Miriam.’

Rhodes was not the same as he had left it, just four months earlier. The Rhodians were pouring treasure into the restoration of their city, and the whole north end of the port, pounded nearly flat by siege engines, had begun to grow roofs and walls like a particularly colourful crop of forest mushrooms; new whitewashed houses with red and brown tiled roofs, and here and there a daring man had a yellow roof or a blue one, made from the new coloured ceramic tiles that were all the rage from Sicily to Asia.

The temple of Poseidon was almost fully restored, all his columns standing tall, and the new roof almost half complete — a better roof than it had had before the siege, with the tiles and beams of solid marble, like the Parthenon on the Acropolis in Athens. The harbour was clear of hulks, and forty warships lay, warped alongside a pair of stone piers, ready for sea in a few moments, while another twenty were in ship-sheds up the beach — all new construction that included a rebuilt harbour wall with a dozen strong towers.

Satyrus took in the harbour in a single glance, and smiled despite the remnants of yesterday’s foul mood. Rhodes had survived the mightiest siege since the Achaeans went to Troy. And he’d done his part to see them victorious.

When his ship dropped its anchor stone off the beach, the pilot tried to insist that as a hero of the town, Satyrus could lie alongside the stone piers, but Satyrus didn’t need the space, and he waited while his oar master and his helmsman made the ship fast and then watched as his grain ships — those designated for Rhodes — came into the inner harbour and made for the great pier, one after another.

Menedemos, the serving archon, came down from his offices in the harbour tower to greet him when he waded ashore.

‘A great man like you could keep his feet dry,’ he said.

‘Not if it would slow the unloading by a heartbeat,’ Satyrus laughed. ‘I’m away on the wind for Athens with the balance of my grain.’

Menedemos raised an eyebrow.

Satyrus shrugged. ‘All right, I admit I’ll be lucky to be out of here in two days, and even then I’ll leave rowers in your brothels.’

Menedemos laughed and clasped his hand. ‘It is good to have you back. You’ll have no trouble getting lodgings — in fact, I’d be delighted to host you.’

‘I promised Abraham I’d see how his house was coming along,’ Satyrus said.

‘I assumed as much, but the offer is there. Any problems on the way?’ Menedemos asked.

‘None. I’m assuming that, as a signatory to the truce, I’m safe — besides, having guaranteed half my grain to Athens, it is rather in Demetrios’s best interest for me to be well treated. We came across one of his penteres off Chios, sailing on the wind, bound for Ephesus. The navarch was perfectly polite.’

‘Pirates?’ asked Menedemos.

‘Menedemos, we must have killed half the pirates on the ocean, this last year.’ Satyrus laughed. ‘There’s not a pirate in the Bosporus, nor the Pontus. Word in the Pontus is that the survivors went west, to Sicily and Corsica.’ He looked around. ‘But Demetrios’s fleet is in the Pontus — charging tolls and hemming Lysimachos out of Asia.’

‘That’s news. How bad are the tolls?’ Menedemos asked.

Satyrus made a face. ‘Since half my grain was for Athens, I was excused. Which was probably best for everyone concerned. But watch out for your own, Menedemos. Demetrios can squeeze you without breaking the truce.’

‘He can squeeze,’ Menedemos said, ‘but he needs to sell his products from Asia, too. He needs us. Hades, if Antigonus would see sense, he’d see that he needs Alexandria, too. We could all make money — no need for this endless squabble.’

Satyrus smiled. ‘I think that Demetrios has other interests besides a healthy trade balance,’ he said.

The last time he’d been at Abraham’s house, the tile floor of the andron had been naked to the stars. Now the walls were back up, and the whole house smelled of fresh clay and fresh plaster — an earthy smell with a hint of lime and acid under it.

Jacob, Abraham’s steward, let him inside the courtyard. ‘My lord!’ he said, and took Satyrus’s hand.

‘Jacob,’ Satyrus said. He embraced the older man. ‘I sent a letter.’

‘We had it, lord. The plaster is still wet, but everything is to order. I have hardly any slaves, lord — Abraham freed most of them during the siege. But I have enough staff to move furniture and make food.’ Jacob bowed to Menedemos. ‘May I fetch you gentlemen a cup of wine?’

Satyrus nodded. ‘And something for Anaxagoras and Apollodorus, as well, Jacob. They’ll be along shortly. Do you have a shortage of slaves, then?’

Menedemos nodded. ‘The city — that’s me — we’re buying almost every load that comes into town. We need them just to rebuild the walls — and level the besiegers’ camp.’

Satyrus grimaced. ‘I’d hoped to get myself a new hypaspist. Or at least a body slave.’

Jacob shook his head while an older woman served wine. ‘Perhaps at Delos, lord. Not here.’

Later, Satyrus walked out of the house alone — a rare moment for a king — and along the newly restored back streets towards the back of the temple of Poseidon, where the agora was.

It was late in the day. Down at the piers, his ships were disgorging grain as fast as slaves and oarsmen could empty the holds, and his marines and sailors were already filling the wine ships and taverns on the waterfront. Anaxagoras was sound asleep in the heavy heat of late summer.

Satyrus had a hard time moving on the streets, because everyone in the town knew him, and men would stop to embrace his arm, or bow. Women raised their eyes to him, and men smiled and pointed him out to their children.

He wondered if he were better known in Rhodes than in Pantecapaeaum. Theron had told him that this was going to be his last adventure — that it was time for him to stay home and act like a king.

Satyrus had every intention of acting like a king — when he had Miriam by his side. He was cruising the Mediterranean to honour his commitments to Demetrios — grain for Athens — and to get his hostages back. When his duty was done, and when Miriam was free, Satyrus was ready to go back to his kingdom and never, ever leave. He smiled at the thought.

Even this trip … Tanais had never looked finer, and his new ships being built at the new slips had been a sight he wanted to stay and enjoy. He’d come to enjoy giving justice, and walking in the agora, and having men listen to his opinions.

He smiled at another veteran of the siege, and bowed a little to a trio of women — widows — by the wall of the temple, where he and Miriam had curled side by side in the first light of morning, preparing for another day of siege. He felt close to her here — illogical, as she was in Athens, but he felt as if she might step out of the back streets, or emerge with her women behind her from the market.

Then he walked across the agora, where his own statue stood near those of Demetrios and Antigonus and Lysimachos. The Rhodians were great ones for dedicating statues, and even at the height of the siege they hadn’t destroyed the statues of the men laying the siege. And now he had his own. He stood looking at it.

There was no echo in it, and he felt an obscure disappointment. What had he expected? A conversation with himself?

Past the statues. Small boys were trailing him, more than a dozen of them, some begging and more just shouting his name.

At the far western end of the market there was a small grove of olives, just six or eight trees, and the entrance to an underground temple of vast antiquity, where the city’s reserve grain supply had been stored during the siege. Now there was a new altar atop the underground temple, a large, ornate marble with a deeply indented top and scrolled sides. In front of the altar were placed a dozen stele, markers for the dead of the siege.

Jubal, his oar master and sometime siege engineer, sat on his haunches by one of them. He had some teeth missing, and his face had the deep brown of old, salt-stained leather. His dusty cheeks were marked by the tracks of tears.

Satyrus ignored the boys and squatted by Jubal.

‘Neiron,’ Jubal said.

‘Helios,’ Satyrus added.

One by one, they traced the names of their own dead on the newly cut stele. Even the boys were silent.

When they were done, they paid the priestess to sacrifice a young ox, and gave most of the meat away. Before the smoke from the fat and bones began to rise to the gods, Anaxagoras came, and Apollodorus. They, too, looked at the stones. They, too, wept.

Other men came forward — some drawn by the free meat, and others by the observance, and hours passed before they were free to walk, arm in arm, back to Abraham’s house.

Menedemos was with them by then, and the five of them held a small symposium under the stars in the restored garden.

Apollodorus grew drunk quickly, and he cried and cried — a fountain of tears. Anaxagoras watched him cry like a man watched a dangerous stranger.

‘I have never seen him cry,’ he said.

Satyrus took another drink. ‘I doubt he cries while the enemy are still on his deck,’ he said.

‘Men don’t cry for lost friends, they cry for themselves,’ Anaxagoras said.

Satyrus shook his head. ‘Easy to say, philos. But when I think of Helios, I don’t think just of what I lost — good hot wine every morning. Clothes ready when I wanted them. A spear at my shoulder I could trust. By the gods — if that were all, I’d be a pitiful specimen. Apollodorus, too. What does Achilles say? Better a slave to a bad master than a king in Hades? Helios is gone to the land of shades. I’ll be there soon enough, myself.’

‘Maudlin, too.’ Anaxagoras held out his cup for more wine and flopped on his stomach.

‘What do you do when you aren’t criticising me?’ Satyrus asked.

‘I criticise myself. The unexamined life is not worth living.’ Anaxagoras laughed. ‘Where is young Charmides?’

‘Out in a brothel putting all that youth and beauty to good use, I suspect. Or perhaps wooing under some lucky maiden’s balcony.’ Satyrus spilled wine. ‘Here’s to him.’

‘Ares, you sound like some forty-year-old with a paunch and no hair,’ Anaxagoras said. ‘You are, what, five years older than Charmides?’

Across the couches, Jubal had managed to stand. He embraced Jacob, or perhaps just fell against him, and went off to bed. Satyrus rose, and so did Anaxagoras, and they left Apollodorus, face down on his kline, weeping as if he would never cease.