Force of Kings

2

‘This is all taking too long,’ Satyrus muttered. He hoped that he was keeping his thoughts to himself — his ships were lading and unlading as fast as the well-bribed slaves could work, and he’d already received payment, and still it seemed to him that every jar of grain was taking an age to move.

Anaxagoras, standing next to him on the great stone pier, his ruddy skin almost white in the full glare of the sun, made an expression with his mouth — wry, deprecating, knowing, amused, all in a single pull of the lips.

Satyrus caught the expression and knew that he was transparent.

‘You know perfectly well that she’s capable of entertaining herself,’ Anaxagoras said. Unforgivably accurate, damningly exact and on the topic of his thoughts. ‘She’s not some foolish dancing girl who will pine for you a day or two and then spread herself for the next pretty young king who wanders by.’

‘You’re not as funny as you think you are,’ Satyrus said. He tried to keep his tone light.

Both of them had been in love with Miriam — at the same time. To some remarkable degree, their friendship was based on that rivalry, and how they had risen above it. But Satyrus still avoided discussing Miriam with his friend, sometimes from a sense of propriety, and sometimes because he feared ridicule. Anaxagoras had — apparently — transferred his attentions to Satyrus’s own sister, Melitta.

‘I am,’ Anaxagoras said. ‘You’re just not in the mood to laugh. I can turn the knife on myself — your sister is out on the plains right now, with at least one former lover and ten men who want her to wife — every one of whom can ride a horse like the wind and shoot a bow.’

‘If my sister had wanted a Sakje, she’d have had one,’ Satyrus said.

‘That was rather my point,’ Anaxagoras said. ‘I know that I have nothing to fear.’ He looked at Satyrus. His tone, his expression, admitted that the exact opposite was the case, and he laughed ruefully.

‘At least you’ll see Miriam in Athens,’ Anaxagoras said.

‘If we ever get there,’ Satyrus allowed.

It was cooler on the palaestra, the sand beautiful between his toes, the sea breeze curling through the colonnade to cool his sweat-slicked skin.

He and Anaxagoras had wrestled, boxed, fought two throws of pankration, and were now facing each other with short swords made of wood and their chlamyses wrapped around their shield arms. Satyrus had the feeling one gets from heavy exercise, a few bruises, a body in the peak of condition.

Anaxagoras had had a year-long siege to make a swordsman of himself, and he was excellent — taught by the same tutor who had helped Satyrus to restore his muscles after a wasting disease. So they circled each other warily, and Anaxagoras, once an aggressive but clumsy swordsman, now bided his time, aware that, as the inferior fighter — although not by much — he needed to launch counter-strikes rather than trying to move in on Satyrus’s longer arms and greater experience.

Satyrus knew this as well, and he was tired — pleasantly tired, but with enough fatigue in his muscles to restrain him. He circled; sidestepped, and subsided again. For several long moments, both men were perfectly still.

‘This is the last touch. I want a massage,’ Satyrus said. It could be hard to be the king, all the time. Even Anaxagoras, who had the artist’s ability to be any man’s equal, deferred to him in matters of training. Anaxagoras would spar until he dropped of exhaustion — it was always left to Satyrus to call quits.

Anaxagoras nodded slightly.

He stepped to the left again, as Satyrus expected him to, and Satyrus launched a slow attack — so slow as to be almost languorous. His wrapped cloak flew off his arm like a live thing, fluttering out to snap, the cloak weight dragging the heavy cloth out flat for a fraction of a heartbeat.

Anaxagoras pivoted on both feet, rotating his hips to avoid the weight with his face, and his own cloaked arm snapped out to bat the incoming sword, but found no weapon, and dropped lower, seeking it.

Satyrus’s blow was so slow that Anaxagoras’s parry, blinded by the swirl of cloak, missed it entirely, and the wooden blade smacked him in the side of the neck — a trifle too hard. He dropped to one knee, his hand to his neck.

Satyrus was at his side, sword dropped. ‘Apollo! A thousand apologies, Anaxagoras!’

The musician shook his head. ‘It’s nothing. Or rather, it is a fitting accompaniment to my sense of humiliation. How, exactly, did you land that blow?’

Assured of his friend’s health, Satyrus was suffused with pride. ‘It is a timing blow. It would never work without the cloak — it simply baffles the opponent’s notions of the speed of the fight.’

‘Devastating!’ Anaxagoras said.

‘Not if your opponent strikes fast — expects the blow, cuts at the sword arm,’ Apollodorus commented from the colonnade.

‘Look who’s recovered from his wine!’ Anaxagoras said, clearly piqued that the other man had seen him hit so easily.

Satyrus smiled inwardly at the ease with which men — men who were friends and comrades — could nonetheless cause each other offence. Satyrus was almost never offended by Apollodorus and his abrasive commentary on all fields of martial endeavour — the man was a professional, and his comments were meant only as professional criticism, no more. But the small, sharp-featured man had never mastered the art of giving criticism.

‘Let’s fight a bout and see,’ Apollodorus said, coming onto the sand. He pulled his chlamys off and wrapped it around his arm, disclosing a body laced with scars the way barbarians wore tattoos. Satyrus had never counted them, but he expected that his captain of marines had at least a hundred scars, most of them on his forearms and lower legs, a few on his back, and one that indented his neck, where his heavy shoulder muscle met his collarbone, and ran, red, shiny and deep, across his chest to his hip.

Apollodorus was a small man, but neatly built, heavily muscled, and fast. Satyrus tossed him his practice sword, and he and Anaxagoras began to circle.

Anaxagoras remained cautious and defensive, which Satyrus read as a sign of anger. In combat, Anaxagoras was dangerously aggressive, almost as if he knew the hour of his fate and had little care until that time. Apollodorus was usually the cautious fighter — a man only survives as much combat as Apollodorus had seen by virtue of some caution. But today he was the one committed to attack.

‘We are at the end of our workout,’ Satyrus said. ‘Wine-bibbers have to take the consequences of their excess.’

‘You’re next,’ Apollodorus said. As he spoke, his chlamys-arm snapped out in a feint, and his sword followed, a fraction of a heartbeat behind.

As fast as thought, Anaxagoras parried, the two swords clicking together hard.

But Apollodorus didn’t maintain the pressure. Instead, he dropped his weapon, stepped in, and grappled, his now free sword-hand seizing Anaxagoras’s wrist expertly, his cloak over the musician’s head.

Anaxagoras raised his left hand, indicating he’d lost, and Apollodorus unwrapped him from the folds of his cloak. ‘I needed last night,’ he said. The words held no apology, but the tone did.

‘I have been thoroughly put in my place,’ Anaxagoras said. ‘I’ll go back to the lyre and leave the sword to you two.’

‘Nonsense,’ Apollodorus said. ‘If you could beat me, I’d be a pretty poor specimen. I’ve fought for twenty years — and practised ten years before that.’ He nodded to Satyrus. ‘Your turn.’

Satyrus caught the sword that Anaxagoras tossed him — and found that Apollodorus was on him immediately, sword and cloak weaving like a pair of dancers. He reacted without thought, ducking, backing — got his cloak on the other man’s sword and tried for a seizure and missed, tried snapping a kick to the other man’s shin and connected — a glancing blow, but it put him in the pattern and Apollodorus fell back, and Satyrus snapped his chlamys, his sword hidden behind it, and stepped back himself to breathe — and Apollodorus’s sword hit his wrist hard enough to cause him to drop his own sword.

Anaxagoras clapped his hands together. There were other men standing under the colonnade and they applauded as well. ‘Splendid!’ called a younger man — Satyrus couldn’t remember his name, but the man had been an Ephebe during the siege. He was still thin. Satyrus wondered if any of them would return to their full weight after a year on starvation rations.

He rubbed his wrist and smiled at Apollodorus. ‘You are still the master,’ he said.

Apollodorus rubbed his shin. ‘If you had kicked for real, I might never have launched that blow,’ he said.

Satyrus found his hands were shaking — muscle fatigue and the daimon of combat together. ‘I’m done,’ he said, showing his shaking hands.

Other men went out onto the sands, wrestling or boxing, and Satyrus realised that they had all been waiting for him — giving him the sand, as men said of someone they respected. He smiled around, trying to catch every eye — thanking them for their good opinion of him.

It was good to be a hero.

He went in to get a massage and a bath.

Later, after a review of his accounts with Abraham’s steward, he met Anaxagoras in the courtyard, his lyre tucked under his arm as a much younger man would.

‘Revenge is sweet,’ Anaxagoras said with an evil smile.

Indeed, Anaxagoras was the very best of teachers — endlessly patient, his voice carefully modulated, slow to praise and slow to anger — so that when he did praise, a student knew he had done well indeed, and when his cheeks did mottle red, a student knew he’d been very foolish indeed.

Nor was this in any way a reversal of their bouts on the palaestra. Anaxagoras was a competent wrestler, an excellent boxer, a quick study at pankration, and now a brilliant swordsman. Satyrus was, at best, an indifferent musician. He loved to play — enjoyed any music, was constantly and pleasantly surprised that he could play anything at all — but seldom practised hard, so that simple fingerings were still the limit of his powers, and it was rare that duties — and pleasures — allowed him the time or the inclination to take a complete lesson.

‘Play the scale again. This time, every other note,’ Anaxagoras said.

Satyrus did as he was told.

‘Now again, with regard to the tempo. Every note exactly the same length,’ Anaxagoras said.

The control of his face suggested he was hiding a smile. Satyrus tended to play all the notes in a tune, but without the strict adherence to time essential to make the music correctly.

‘And again,’ Anaxagoras said. ‘Your habit of resting your thumb on the sound board is part of the reason you cannot make your transition correctly.’

Satyrus turned his head sharply, a retort on his lips. And relented, reason telling him that anger at a teacher who was trying to help him was unworthy — foolish and boyish. Besides, his teacher’s carefully controlled face suggested that this was, in fact, a form of revenge.

The third day in port. Miriam seemed a thousand Parasanges away, and a newly arrived Cyprian ore-freighter had somehow got ahead of his last three grain ships at the pier, and even when the confusion was sorted out, he’d lost another day. In his irritation, he slipped and got the tip of Anaxagoras’s sword in his throat — hard enough to make him feel the front of his gorge with the back, and it ached all day.

‘When we’re on campaign somewhere, in our tenth or eleventh straight day of rain, and I feel like crap, and there’s no wine, I’ll wish I’d enjoyed these days more,’ Satyrus said to Anaxagoras. He was sitting with his lyre in his lap. His throat hurt and he had no interest in playing. Or rather, he had every interest in playing well, and no interest in doing the work to get there, today.

‘You are a king, not a mercenary,’ Anaxagoras said. ‘Surely sooner or later you will stop fighting.’

Satyrus shrugged. ‘Unlikely. When Lysimachos and Ptolemy and Seleucus and Cassander and Demetrios and all the busy, scheming bastards are dead, perhaps. But there’ll be more of them, I expect. Perhaps worse. The rumour is that Lysimachos is getting ready to march into my territory — claiming that he only seeks to march his army around the Euxine to Asia.’

‘Now that he is to marry Amastris?’ Anaxagoras said.

Satyrus looked out at the sea, blue as his former lover’s eyes in the bright sunlight. ‘They’re married now,’ he said, ‘unless something happened to prevent it.’

‘Shall we drink to them?’ Anaxagoras asked. ‘Is this why you are so far away from us?’

Satyrus spilled a libation. ‘To Hera, goddess of the marriage bed. May Amastris be blessed. May they both be happy.’

‘You mean that?’ Anaxagoras asked.

Satyrus smiled. It was a crooked smile, but not a mean one. ‘I think I do. I’m doing my best to mean it.’

Anaxagoras chuckled. ‘Listen, philos. When I was young-’

‘Look at the grey beard!’ Satyrus said.

Anaxagoras glanced at Charmides, who was admiring a serving girl as she, quite self-consciously, carried water on her head across the street. ‘Charmides makes all of us feel old,’ he said, and they both laughed. The younger man glanced at them and smiled.

Satyrus smiled back at him. ‘Will Charmides ever be old?’ he asked.

Anaxagoras shook his head, dismissing the topic. ‘At any rate, when I was young I wanted to marry a beautiful girl — a free girl. A local farmer’s daughter. She was modest and clever and her legs — oh, even now, I think of her-’

‘Aphrodite, philos, this was, what, six years ago? Stop telling it as if you were decades from her!’ Satyrus laughed.

‘And my father forbade it, of course. Rich men’s sons do not wed farmer’s daughters, no matter how good their legs are.’ He laughed, but his eyes were far away.

Satyrus felt a prickle of unease.

‘And the worst of it was that I knew — I knew from the first that my pater was right, and that I would never marry her. But I was stubborn, and romantic, and I pursued her. Long enough to convince her father I meant business.’ He shrugged. ‘And then I realised that she was merely clever, not actually intelligent. That she cared deeply for money and fine things.’

‘It is easy to sneer at such thoughts, when you are rich,’ Satyrus said.

‘Too true. This is not a pretty story, nor one that shows me to best advantage.’ Anaxagoras poured himself more wine. ‘Eventually, I sopped seeing her. It was easy to do — after all, she was a free woman and modest, so that seeing her at all had required enormous effort. You understand?’

‘Of course,’ Satyrus said.

‘And then — within a year — she married. She married well — better, in fact, than me. An aristocrat’s son — a powerful man with powerful connections and an old, old family. And to this day I cannot decide what my role in all of this was — did I love her? Do I bless her success? Should I have wed her myself?’ Anaxagoras drank off his wine. ‘See? No great lesson there. Just real life.’

Satyrus nodded. The silence floated between them, easy enough. Easy silence had been the first sign they were friends, and now it endured, a token of esteem.

‘I worry that I cannot marry Miriam,’ Satyrus said.

The connection was obvious enough. Miriam was a Jew, not a Hellene. The daughter of one of the Middle Sea’s richest merchants, no one could suggest that marrying her was marrying down. But she was a barbarian, a foreigner, an alien.

‘I know,’ Anaxagoras said. ‘I wondered the same. I even wondered if, by courting her, I was — oh, I don’t know. A foolish thought.’

Satyrus smiled. ‘Redeeming yourself, brother?’

‘Proving that I wasn’t such a snob, more like. Although Miriam does rather rise above snobbery.’ Their eyes met, and Satyrus grinned.

‘My mother was more of a barbarian than Miriam will ever manage to be,’ he said.

‘Your father was not a king, of course. Were they married? Your parents?’ Anaxagoras asked.

‘Before Greeks and Sakje,’ Satyrus said. ‘I almost feel as if I was there, I’ve heard the tale so often. Pater was campaigning against Alexander, out on the Sea of Grass.’ He poured wine to the shade of his father. ‘Do you know that most of our sailors and marines worship my father as a god?’

Anaxagoras nodded. ‘I know that Apollodorus wears his amulet, and so does Charmides.’ He smiled. ‘Does it trouble you?’

Satyrus shrugged. ‘When I was a boy, I thought that he spoke to me. And when I was sick last year, he and Philokles seemed to visit me constantly. And yet Philokles never suggested to me that my father was anything but a good man. A difficult standard by which to measure myself, a worthy one, but no more.’ He shrugged again. ‘As I grow older, I find … how can I say this? I find the idea of my father’s deification a little offensive. Obscene.’

Anaxagoras nodded. ‘I’m trying to imagine how I would feel if my own father were deified.’ He laughed. ‘And I can’t. A good man of business — a pious man and a good father for a ne’er-do-well son. But godhood is not in him, and when he passes, his shade will not reach to the heavens for apotheosis.’ Anaxagoras rubbed his beard. ‘I’m not sure he’d want it even if offered.’

Satyrus took a deep breath. Then he changed his mind. ‘Tomorrow?’ he asked.

Apollodorus nodded. ‘Why don’t we stop being so serious, walk down to the pier, and see?’

The land breeze of the early morning found them already clear of the harbour mouth, the great mainsail rigged to catch the world’s wind, a gentle Boreas blowing them west, almost dead astern on their track for Athens after they weathered the northern promontory of Rhodos. The ships that had been laden with grain for Rhodes were full now of copper from Cyprus, cedar planks from Lebanon, skilled slaves who would become freemen in a year or two at Tanais or Pantecapaeaum, marble, spices and even a consignment of fine Aegyptian furniture for a rich merchant in Olbia. They also had the hard silver specie that had paid for the abundance of grain. Two days later, he sent them away north off Lesbos, under guard of half his ships, with Diokles, his most trusted trierarch, in command.

Aekes, a small, fiery man, brought his Ephesian Artemis off the beach in style and rowed away west — the scout ship. Satyrus followed him with two penteres, two triemiolas, and six triremes; almost a quarter of his full fleet, and some of the best ships — and some of his rawest, too.

He missed Diokles already, having seen little enough of the man in Rhodos, but keeping all of his best captains at his side all the time was poor strategy and unfair to them. He kept Aekes, though, because he could be trusted with anything — he had worked his way up to trierarch from the starting position of a Spartan helot, and he owed Satyrus his status, his citizenship, and his fortune.

Steering his own penteres — not his beloved Arete, lost to fire in the siege of Rhodos, but Medea, a smaller, lighter fiver built in Olbia — Satyrus pondered on Athens as a destination and what this visit meant to him. More than just seeing Miriam — although seeing Miriam was the greatest part of it, he admitted to himself. He must decide, before his prow touched the great pier at Piraeus, whether he meant to marry her. But there were other opportunities in Athens, other perils — he was a citizen there, and one whose activities made him both famous and infamous; a hero and a monster. Demetrios the besieger was the city’s current lord. Satyrus wanted to land in Athens ready for anything that might transpire. He wanted to be done with his state of war against Demetrios because, among other things, he expected shortly to be at war with Lysimachos.

Looking at Anaxagoras, taking a nap in the sun, Satyrus thought back to their last conversation in Rhodes and frowned to himself. Hard to lie to a friend. Harder to hide from yourself. Satyrus’s sense of bitterness — betrayal, even — over Amastris’s change of heart was deeper than he wanted to admit to another man. He told himself that the feeling was not just the jealousy of the jilted lover. He reminded himself that he would have lain with Miriam a hundred times — a thousand — during the siege, had she only been willing. He allowed that Amastris was a ruler, as he was, and had duties to her city, as he did.

Despite all of that, he couldn’t think of her without a rush of anger. Her decision to marry the Satrap of Thrace — a major player in the war against Antigonus — made war with Lysimachos almost certain; a war that would pit him against Ptolemy, if not in immediate fact, then in form, and would have repercussions across his personal, professional and mercantile life. It was this that had caused him to be so very careful of the trierarchs he chose to take to Athens. He wanted only his most trustworthy men, men who would look after his interests even when offered major bribes, even when threatened. He had no idea what the city might try to do. But he needed to keep the door opened by the truce with Demetrios ajar, at least, even if it meant trading with the enemy. Amastris’s wedding had put him there, and he had no choice but to react this way.

Or that’s what he told himself.

So he had Aekes scouting ahead, and Anaxilaus and his brother Gelon — both aristocrats from Sicily, wealthy men and no friends to Athens. They had Oinoe and Plataea. And Daedelus of Halicarnassus brought up the rear of the column in another heavy penteres — Glory of Demeter, a famous ship.

He could not take only his most trustworthy captains, however. None of the rest of his captains were remarkable men, and all of them were new to him — he had Eumenes of Olbia’s son Ajax, a fine young man with a fine new ship called Apollo of Olbia, and two ships from Pantecapaeaum commanded by relatives of his former adversary, Heron, the last Tyrant of Pantecapaeaum — Lykeles son of Draco, and Eumeles son of Tirseus, both too young to have reputations. They had light triremes — Tanais and Pantecapaeaum.

And finally, he had a pair of Rhodian-built triemiolas, decked triremes with a half deck for carrying full sail and more sailors — or marines. Their captains were prosperous men who had been made by Leon: Sandokes of Lesbos, a foppish man famed for his daring navigation, trierarch of the powerful Marathon and the Etruscan; and Sarpax, whom Leon had employed for twenty years. Satyrus could see Sarpax from the helm, because the tall Etruscan was standing in the bow of his Desert Rose just a few horse lengths astern of Medea.

He put the inexperienced men in the middle of his line, the way a good strategos would place them in the phalanx. They had expert helmsmen to help them — his money and reputation now attracted some of the best on the ocean.

It was all very satisfying. He looked back down the line of his fighting ships, all heeling well to starboard with the press of wind, sails well set, the ropes that crossed them appearing to be restraints on mighty Boreas himself. And behind his warships, sixteen heavy merchants — six Athenian grain ships, towering over the rest, and ten of his own. A fortune in grain, carefully guarded, representing the wealth of his kingdom and a new avenue of diplomacy. Grain for Athens.

Where Stratokles had begged him to take it. Stratokles, who had single-handedly engineered Amastris’s betrayal — her wedding to Lysimachos.

On the bench built under the rising strakes of the stern by the helmsman’s station, Anaxagoras opened his eyes. ‘Who could doubt the gods on a day like this one?’ he asked.

Satyrus smiled and looked away.

‘Aha,’ Anaxagoras said, swinging his feet onto the planks of the deck. ‘You could. Thinking of Miriam?’

Satyrus shook his head. ‘Lysimachos. Cassander. Stratokles.’ The last name he spat.

‘He has done you no disservice,’ Anaxagoras said.

‘Hmm,’ Satyrus said.

‘None, philos. You need to keep everyone a little further away — arm’s length, I think Coenus said.’ Anaxagoras nodded north, towards distant Tanais, where Coenus was regent. ‘The appearance of alliance with Athens will give everyone pause.’

Satyrus shrugged. ‘I know.’

‘And you don’t like it,’ Anaxagoras said. ‘Do you ever think that men make war because they don’t want to go through the tedious process of keeping peace?’

Satyrus laughed. ‘You have me exactly. I was just thinking how much simpler open war was than peace. We overawe Athens with our fine warships while we sell her grain from our fine merchant fleet — while selling to Rhodes and offering our ships to Ptolemy. At least when Demetrios was firing his huge rocks at us, we knew which way the enemy lay.’

Anaxagoras shook his head. ‘No we didn’t. Think of Nestor’s betrayal. Think of all the idiotes who would have sold Rhodes for some cash and a guarantee of survival. Think of the welter of cross-purposes — slaves, mercenaries, soldiers, your men, Rhodians, old versus young — all the factions, all the sides. That was war.’ Anaxagoras smiled when his eye caught that of Charmides, who was exercising amidships. ‘What you wish for, lord, is the freedom that man has to pretend that the world is simple, when you and I both know that in war and in peace the world is very, very complicated.’

Satyrus nodded. ‘Who made you so wise?’ he asked.

‘Dionysus,’ Anaxagoras said. ‘And old Aristotle played his part, I expect.’

‘We could go wrestle at the Lyceum,’ Satyrus said. ‘There’s glory for you.’

‘Now you’re talking, brother. Wrestling at the Lyceum, and the finest courtesans in the world. Oh — I didn’t mean to say that aloud.’ He roared with laughter at Satyrus’s reaction. ‘Got you, got you.’

Satyrus laughed too. Astern, Sarpax waved. He was laughing, too.

They made landfall at Delos in late afternoon. Satyrus was a pious man, and the opportunity to revisit the temple complex was appealing, even with Athens looming — or rather, the more appealing because Athens was looming — just a few days away. And he told himself that he needed a body slave.

He beached his ships on the windward side of the island, and paid a fisherman to take him around the point to the temples. Sandokes and Aekes and their helmsmen came, as did Apollodorus and Charmides. Anaxagoras had eaten bad shellfish on the beach and was busy returning it to Poseidon, or so he croaked between bouts of being sick.

This time, Satyrus sent Apollodorus ashore first to make sure that the priests knew that his visit was religious and not official, and then waded ashore himself, paying the fisherman a gold daric to stay on the beach waiting. The man bit it, looked at it carefully, and then gave him a pleased smile.

‘I’d a’ sold you my boat for it,’ he said cheerfully.

‘Don’t tell the priests or they’ll find a way to take it from you,’ Satyrus said, only half joking.

The fisherman laughed and rowed away down the beach to where poorer men waited in lines for a turn in the temple.

No waiting for kings, of course, even those not on official visits.

Satyrus sat in the anteroom to the oracle, trying to put his mind in a state receptive to the god. He had wrestled with Anaxagoras before crossing, and the bout was very much in his mind — Anaxagoras had thrown him with an outstretched arm and what had seemed the gentlest nudge to his hip, and Satyrus found in the move a whole new expression of balance in combat. It filled his mind, kept him from the meditative state.

With apologies to the two men waiting with him — an Athenian from one of the priestly families and a Corinthian — he stepped out onto the porch of the temple and took up a fighting stance and began to rotate his foot at odd angles.

The hierophant was watching him when he stopped. ‘I have seen a woman offer her dancing to the god, but never a man offer his footwork at the pankration. Nonetheless, yours is fine.’ He grinned — not the grave, dignified high priest at all, just for a moment, but a Greek man with an appreciation for a fine sport and a fine body.

Satyrus was abashed — a very rare feeling for him. ‘My apologies, I meant no disrespect. I have been practising the lyre …’ He trailed off, feeling like a teenage boy caught nuzzling a slave girl.

The hierophant cackled. ‘Your lyre work will probably never match your fighting skills, my lord. Will you come with me?’

‘It is not my turn,’ Satyrus said.

‘I gave you my turn,’ the Athenian priest said, inclining his head. ‘I am here for my city on a very minor matter of religious law.’ He smiled. ‘Had I known that I would see a famous pankrationist, I’d have come sooner.’

The Athenian priest was plainly dressed, and yet clearly a man of enormous worth. He also had a fine physique — barrel-chested and tall.

Satyrus smiled at the compliment and inclined his head in return. ‘Sir, I am on my way to Athens, where, I, too, am a citizen. Perhaps we might have a bout at the Lyceum?’

‘Polycrates, son of Lysander,’ the Athenian said, and they clasped hands. ‘We are keeping the hierophant waiting.’

The hierophant nodded. ‘It seems to me that this meeting was the reason the god brought you here. This may have been the only moment that the god required.’ He nodded at their confusion. ‘It is often thus. Brasidas met the King of the Thracians here. He was coming to ask, “By what means may I defeat the Athenians in Thrace?” I understand that he never even had to ask the question.’

He led Satyrus by the hand to the sacred lake, and prayed aloud to Apollo — a very old prayer in the old Ionian style, with his arms spread wide. Satyrus assumed the same pose and waited.

‘Ask your question,’ the high priest said.

‘Do not go to Athens! ’ called a hoarse, low voice in the distance. And there was laughter. Satyrus turned his head and saw a group of retainers — possibly Polycrates’ men — playing by the side of the temple.

The omen was clear to Satyrus. He looked at the priest, who looked back at him, arms outstretched. ‘Were you contemplating a trip to Athens?’ he asked mildly enough.

‘I have a fleet of grain ships, fully laden, en route to Athens. The woman … that is, my best friend is a hostage there. My grain ships are the guarantee of my good behaviour. I must go to Athens.’

The priest nodded curtly. ‘I wish that I had a drachma for every time a supplicant has received a direct order from the god and then informed me, and my lord Apollo, that he cannot possibly obey,’ he said. ‘I would be a rich man.’

Satyrus had meant to ask something grand — to ask how he might best serve his people, or something equally vague. Delos was, he thought, best at vague questions. But now he went with the divine inspiration. ‘Lord Apollo, Lord of the Silver Bow, God of the Lyre, what must I do to survive Athens?’

The hoarse voice down in the temple yard floated across the temple lake: ‘Guest … friendship is still sacred… even in Athens.’ as clear as if the priest had spoken it himself. In the distance, men laughed. Many conversations merged into the voice of the god.

Satyrus considered running outside to find the men — to ask what they were discussing, what joke was being told, what ribald story gave rise to these pronouncements, so like the voice of the god. But only to see the mechanism of the god’s breath. For Satyrus was as sure as anything he’d ever known that he’d heard the voice of the god floating over the sacred lake.

‘You are very close to the gods,’ the hierophant said.

Satyrus raised an eyebrow. ‘I have been told so,’ he said.

‘I know men who would kill for an answer as clear as that,’ he said. ‘Come.’

Together they walked back to the anteroom on the temple porch. The Athenian was moving his feet in just the way that Satyrus had been. He grinned, also like a much younger man caught in some secret sin.

‘I see it,’ he said. ‘A very small movement of the hips can be as powerful as a much larger movement.’

Satyrus shrugged. ‘Perhaps not as powerful,’ he said. ‘But good enough in a confined space, or a real fight.’

Polycrates nodded. ‘May I hold you to our bout at the Lyceum?’

Satyrus narrowed his eyes. ‘Allow me to go one better, sir. Let us swear a guest friendship here, and I’ll give you a ride back to Athens. We can fight on every beach from here to there.’

Polycrates’ eyes sparkled. ‘Nothing would give me greater pleasure,’ he said. ‘The more especially as it would allow me to dispense with a particularly annoying pup of a trierarch who has made my life a misery. Now I can send him on his way to Corinth. You are no friend to Demetrios, as I remember?’

Satyrus bowed. ‘We are not at war, he and I,’ he answered carefully.

Polycrates nodded. ‘Well — best you know — I am his friend. Perhaps his greatest supporter in Athens. Will you still carry me home?’

Satyrus extended his hand.

Polycrates took it. ‘Let us go before the god.’

Arm in arm, with the hierophant behind them, obviously pleased, they walked into the divine presence, where the flame burned. They made their gestures to the god, and then, with the hierophant leading them, they swore guest friendship. Satyrus undertook it as King of the Bosporus, with full solemnity, and Polycrates answered him in kind, as high priest of Herakles in Athens.

When they were done, Satyrus nodded to his new friend. ‘So you are the priest of Herakles,’ he said.

‘And you are his descendant, are you not?’ asked Polycrates. ‘As are we — Heraklidae all.’

The grain fleet might have made Athens in two long, hard days, but Satyrus allowed three — he was suddenly in less of a hurry, and more determined to know Polycrates, and to gather what news he could from fishermen. The most likely threat came from Demetrios — it seemed obvious, when he thought of it, lying on the sand at Syros watching the wheel of the stars over his head, that Demetrios meant to take him and hold him. No surer way of preventing his re-entering the war when the truce sworn at the end of the siege of Rhodes expired.

Besides, Polycrates was a wonderful close-in fighter, and Satyrus found that the man had things to teach him. He had a technique for fighting from the ground — a technique that Satyrus had seen Theron use, but had never been taught. Polycrates could lever himself up on his shoulders and neck and grasp with his legs like a pair of blacksmith’s tongs, seizing his opponent and pulling him to a ground grapple which Polycrates, built like a large rock, would inevitably win.

Charmides was annoyed by the technique. ‘What is to keep me from walking away as soon as you go to ground?’ he asked the older Athenian.

Satyrus shook his head. ‘We do not always fight by choice, Charmides. What if circumstance or Tyche places you on the ground? What if you are attacked after being knocked down? We do not always fight from a position of advantage.’

‘In fact,’ Apollodorus said with a quick smile, ‘we never seem to fight from a position of advantage. No one attacks you because you are ready to be attacked, young man.’

Charmides was abashed, and blushed. ‘Of course not. I should have held my tongue.’

In fact, there was quite a crowd to spar with the big Athenian man. He was courteous, careful, and very good.

So good that he won the first night against Satyrus, three throws to two. Satyrus lay watching the stars. It was a long time since anyone had beaten him. He could console himself that he had not used all of his skill — but neither had the other man, he was sure. No one would, in a friendly grapple on the beach. And it was a long time since he had lost, and he was trying to bear it with good grace.

After lying awake an hour, he rolled off his cloak and his two furs and walked up the beach to where his kit lay under his aspis, and took out his canteen. It was full of wine. He sat with his back against the stern, and said some poetry to himself, and then he fetched his travelling lyre and went around the headland and played it for half an hour.

He fell into the playing — some of the best he had ever done. When he had finished with his practices and his hymn to Apollo, he was sleepy, so he went back to his cloak and fell immediately asleep.

‘Am I growing more arrogant?’ Satyrus asked.

He was between the steering oars of his Medea, an hour off the beach at Syros, driving along over the choppy sea with the wind dead astern, all the rowers enjoying being passengers while the deck crew worked like ants to keep the mainsail and the boatsail trimmed and drawing in a tricky wind.

Anaxagoras grinned. ‘I’m sorry — how would I know? I mean, if one throws pitch on a black statue-’

Satyrus swatted him with an open hand. ‘I’m serious,’ he said.

Anaxagoras frowned. ‘Are you? All the tragedies seem to have this moment held in them, brother. And have you ever known a woman to ask you if she was gaining weight, and to want a genuine answer?’

Satyrus looked away in consternation. ‘So the answer is — yes.’

Anaxagoras shrugged. ‘Yes. That is, the siege hardened something in you. You used to be somewhat hesitant about giving some opinions — now you take for granted that your opinion is necessary in all situations.’ He held up a hand to forestall Satyrus’s explanations. ‘Now, to be sure, philos, you are a king, and you are a commander. But since you asked, may I say by way of allegory that I am a famous musician, and that I find that this does not particularly increase my ability to pronounce on how this ship sails?’

Satyrus tried to laugh — he got a smile to his face, at least. ‘Whereas I feel that my expertise as king justifies voicing my opinion on all subjects?’ he asked.

Anaxagoras shook his head. ‘See? You don’t really fancy my opinion.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘I expect I’ll be executed.’

Satyrus looked at the horizon. ‘Fuck off,’ he said. ‘I asked. I was hoping for a less adamant answer.’

Anaxagoras shook his head. ‘You knew the answer before you asked.’

Satyrus sighed. ‘I’m not taking the losses at pankration at all well.’

Anaxagoras grinned. ‘There, I can put your mind at rest. I think that you are bearing them splendidly, in that you haven’t cursed or shouted out loud. When did you last lose?’

‘Lose outright?’ Satyrus thought. ‘Three or four years, anyway.’

Anaxagoras nodded. ‘Well, it’s good for you. Builds character.’

‘My tutor, Philokles, used to say that.’ Satyrus nodded. He was stung, and trying very hard not to show it.

‘All tutors say that,’ Anaxagoras said. He put a hand on Satyrus’s shoulder. ‘May I say — at the risk of hurting you further — that it’s brave of you to ask? And that you can remedy this simply by being silent on occasion?’

Satyrus looked away, and a variety of responses occurred to him. But again, he managed a smile. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said.

Polycrates came back from the bow, where he’d gone to catch the breeze. ‘What a perfect morning!’ he said. He nodded to Anaxagoras. ‘My lord, you keep very good company — good men, with good manners and real excellence. That Charmides …’

Satyrus raised both eyebrows.

Anaxagoras smiled. ‘Everyone loves Charmides,’ he said.

‘Where is he from?’ asked Polycrates. ‘Is he of a good family?’

Apollodorus appeared on deck in armour. ‘Very good,’ he said curtly. ‘Swords, Satyrus?’

It was days since Satyrus had practised in armour. Charmides came forward and assisted him in putting on his thorax of bronze, and he and Apollodorus began to move up and down the central gangway.

Satyrus fought with restraint, fighting the temptation to work too hard to vindicate the loss of the night before. And in a few hits, he was too deep in the moment to worry about such stuff. Apollodorus had always stretched him to his limit, and today was no different — if anything, the smaller man was better than usual, leaping high in the air, stepping up off an oarsman’s bench to land a cunning blow along the back of Satyrus’s neck.

But Satyrus, after a slow start, rose to his level. He fought so well that when the two of them came to a stop, they were on the amidships fighting platform, neither man having pushed the other to the bow or stern. Each landed a simple blow, and almost as one they removed their helmets, panting hard, and laughed.

‘Well fought,’ Apollodorus said. ‘You’ve winded me.’

Satyrus had to use his will to keep from bending double to take bigger breaths. He didn’t risk talking, but merely laughed and slapped his marine captain on the back.

Polycrates clapped his hands together. ‘May I?’ he asked. ‘I don’t have armour …’

Satyrus felt much better. He grinned. ‘You may have mine if you don’t mind the sweat.’

Polycrates sent his body slave for a chitoniskos. ‘I should say something nice about the sweat of a king,’ he said, taking the thorax, ‘but you have about soaked the thing through.’

‘You go that long against Apollodorus,’ Satyrus said. In fact, he meant no rivalry by it — Apollodorus was the best fighter and the fittest man.

‘Ah,’ Polycrates said. ‘Then I should wait until tomorrow, when he’s fresh.’

Apollodorus bridled — perhaps at being discussed in the third person. ‘I’m fresh enough right now, Athenian,’ he said. ‘Let’s see what you have.’

Polycrates wasn’t sure he liked that response — it showed in his face — and Satyrus had a moment to see what a powerful man looked like when he was displeased. He looked pompous and silly — and Satyrus knew that he had looked the same the night before when he had lost at pankration. He nodded to no one in particular. He was a day from Athens, with all the danger of the prophecy combined with his anxiety on seeing Miriam — it seems a good time to honour the gods and work on excellence.

Polycrates’ slave brought him a linen chitoniskos, a fine one with a red stripe. The Athenian stripped and put it on, and then Satyrus helped him into his scale thorax, which fitted him well enough, if a little small in the chest. Satyrus tied the cords a full two fingers looser than he would on himself — when he tied it, the rings touched.

Polycrates picked up Satyrus’s practice aspis, and moved it around. ‘Heavy,’ he said, sounding human.

‘I practise with a heavier shield …’ Satyrus began.

‘Of course you do — you fight for real.’ Polycrates flexed his knees, picked up the wooden sword, and saluted Apollodorus. ‘At your service. And I meant no slight, sir, when I said I’d wait for you to be fresh. I feel very much at a disadvantage here — you are professional soldiers, athletes, men who live like heroes from Homer, and I am a rich politician from Athens. If I spoke badly, please accept my apologies.’

Apollodorus hooked his cheek-plates down. ‘Not necessary,’ he said simply, and turned to walk down the command catwalk to the amidships command platform.

Satyrus caught a glance from the Athenian which suggested that he felt he’d been rebuffed.

‘It was a handsome apology,’ Anaxagoras said.

‘He can be a prick, though,’ Satyrus said.

Anaxagoras pursed his lips. ‘If you were alone on his ship, surrounded by killers …’

Satyrus rocked his head from side to side. ‘Good point. Hadn’t seen it that way.’

After a few moments of staring, the two contestants came together — two cautious blows, one each, both easily turned on the shield rim, and they were apart.

They batted at each other for as long as it took for the ship to sail the length of a tiny islet, and then Polycrates closed.

Or rather, he attempted to close, pushing forward with his back leg and levering his hips to shield-slam his opponent.

Apollodorus met him, but his shield was angled to the impact, and his sword arm shot out, past the Athenian’s head, and then the bigger man was on the deck, the point of Apollodorus’s wooden sword at his throat.

Polycrates slapped the deck in surrender and got smoothly to his feet — a fine display of muscle for an older man. He rubbed his hip where it had hit the wood planking.

But he was on his guard in heartbeats, and they came together again, and the next time Apollodorus tried a simple throw, the Athenian blocked it and stepped back. Each of them landed some hits — a few more to Apollodorus — and then Polycrates hit Apollodorus in the forearm, hard enough to draw blood.

In the time it takes a man to say a single word, he had his helmet off and was apologising.

‘Too damn hard — I’m sorry, comrade. You’re beating me easily and I’m trying too hard.’ He shook his head.

Apollodorus smiled. ‘I’d be a poor man if I couldn’t take the cut of a wooden sword, Polycrates. But I think I’m done for the day.’

They embraced, though, and Polycrates was more human, and better received, after the fighting on the deck.

That night they fought again on the beach — pankration again — and this time Polycrates won three straight bouts. Other men were waiting for a turn with him, and Satyrus didn’t feel he could ask for a fourth. It wasn’t just a matter of size, although the man’s reach was impressive — so was Theron’s, and Satyrus could hold Theron to a draw.

‘You are very good,’ Polycrates said, reaching to embrace him.

Something about the compliment angered Satyrus, but he accepted the embrace and went off to his lyre. He sang Sappho’s songs to the waves and the sunset, and thought of Miriam, and wondered what surprise was waiting for him in Athens.

In the morning, he called all his fighting captains together, and walked them around the headland to where the merchant ships were gathered off the beach. ‘Apollo told me that Athens will be a danger to me,’ he said. ‘I’ve given this a certain amount of thought, and if I have understood the god’s words, then Demetrios will seek to take me in Athens,’ he said.

If he expected consternation, he was disappointed. His captains knew the gossip, had heard more about his visit to Delos than might have made him comfortable.

‘We’ll be right there behind you,’ Apollodorus said.

Satyrus shook his head, seeing in his mind the punishment Demetrios might mete out on the hostages if Satyrus landed armed marines in Athens. ‘No. I don’t want to seem a threat at all. So the fighting fleet will not enter the harbour. In fact, I want to see all the warships drop off when we have Piraeus in sight. I’ll signal with my shield — all of you sail for Aegina. If all is well, I’ll meet you there in three days. If all is not well, Apollodorus has the command and must do as he sees fit. No rescues — even if Demetrios takes me, it will only be as a prelude to further negotiation.’ He looked around. ‘Let me say that again, friends: if Demetrios takes me, it is not an act of war. No seizing Athenian shipping, no striking at his fleet up at Corinth. You hear me, friends?’

They growled — all except Aekes, who simply nodded.

Satyrus looked around. ‘If for some reason, Demetrios has me killed — well, you are all released from your oaths, but I’d take it as a favour if you would do all the damage to his shipping that you possibly can.’ He grinned.

No one grinned back. ‘Is it that bad?’ asked Apollodorus.

Satyrus shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘If not for the prophecy, I’d have no fears for myself at all. It would be the height of folly for Demetrios to attack me. But Apollo does not speak lightly to mortals.’

Aekes shook his head. ‘Makes no sense at all,’ he said. ‘If he grabs you, you forfeit very little — and Rhodes is free to break the treaty.’

‘Not while he has all their hostages,’ Satyrus answered. ‘But still — I agree, Aekes. I’ve thought about it every night — I can’t get my head around it.’

‘Why not stay here?’ Anaxilaus asked. ‘Camp on this beach — we take the grain fleet into Athens, sell the grain, meet you here. You can wrestle with Charmides.’

They all laughed.

Satyrus shook his head. ‘I have private business in Athens,’ he said.

‘Business with long legs?’ Aekes asked, but his voice was very low. ‘Listen, lord,’ he said louder. ‘I’m not a pious man, but if the god spoke to you direct, why not just obey? Stay here? Tell us who you want to meet and we’ll bring him to you.’

‘Abraham is a hostage,’ Satyrus said. ‘You can’t bring him out of Athens, and I need to see him.’

His captains looked at him with something like suspicion.

‘I’m going to Athens,’ he insisted.

‘Without your fleet?’ Sandokes asked. ‘Haven’t you got this backward, lord? If you must go, why not lead with a show of force?’

‘Can you go three days armed and ready to fight?’ Satyrus asked. ‘In the midst of the Athenian fleet? No. Trust me on this, friends. And obey — I pay your wages. Go to Aegina and wait.’

Sandokes was dissatisfied and he wasn’t interested in hiding it. ‘Lord, we do obey. We’re good captains and good fighters, and most of us have been with you a few years. Long enough to earn the right to tell you when you are just plain wrong.’ He took a breath. ‘Lord, you’re wrong. Take us into Athens — ten ships full of fighting men, and no man will dare raise a finger to you. Or better yet, stay here, or you go to Aegina and we’ll sail into Athens.’

Satyrus shrugged, angered. ‘You all feel this way?’ he asked.

Sarpax shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Aekes and Sandokes have a point, but I’ll obey you. I don’t know exactly what your relationship with Demetrios is, and you do.’ He looked at the other captains. ‘We don’t know.’

Sandokes shook his head. ‘I’ll obey, lord — surely I’m allowed to disagree?’

Satyrus bit his lip. After a flash of anger passed, he chose his words carefully. ‘I appreciate that you are all trying to help. I hope that you’ll trust that I’ve thought this through as carefully as I can, and I have a more complete appreciation of the forces at work than any of you can have.’

Sandokes didn’t back down. ‘I hope that you appreciate that we have only your best interests at heart, lord. And that we don’t want to look elsewhere for employment while your corpse cools.’ He shrugged. ‘Our oarsmen are hardening up, we have good helmsmen and good clean ships. I wager we can take any twenty ships in these waters. No one — no one with any sense — will mess with you while we’re in the harbour.’

Satyrus managed a smile. ‘If you are right, I’ll happily allow you to tell me that you told me so,’ he said.

Sandokes turned away. Aekes caught his shoulder.

‘There’s no changing my mind on this,’ Satyrus said.

Sandokes shrugged.

‘We’ll sail for Aegina when you tell us,’ Aekes said.

Satyrus had never felt such a premonition of disaster in all his life. He was ignoring the advice of a god, and all of his best fighting captains, and sailing into Athens, unprotected. But his sense — the same sense that helped him block a thrust in a fight — told him that the last thing he wanted was to provoke Demetrios.

He explained as much to Anaxagoras as the oarsmen ran the ships into the water. Anaxagoras just shook his head.

‘I feel like a fool,’ Satyrus said. ‘But I won’t change my mind.’

Anaxagoras sighed.

‘When we’re off Piraeus, I’ll go off in Miranda or one of the other grain ships. I want you to stay with the fleet,’ Satyrus said. ‘Just in case.’

Anaxagoras picked up the leather bag with his armour and the heavy wool bag with his sea clothes and his lyre. ‘Very well,’ he said crisply.

‘You think I’m a fool,’ Satyrus said.

‘I think you are risking your life and your kingdom to see Miriam, and you know perfectly well you don’t have to. She loves you. She’ll wait. So yes, I think you are being a fool.’

Satyrus narrowed his eyes.

‘You asked,’ Anaxagoras said sweetly, and walked away.