Force of Kings

6

Satyrus awoke with all the pains of a man who has lost a fight. His head pounded, he could feel the blood matted in his hair, and when he put his right hand tenderly against the right side of his scalp, it moved, and the flesh squelched like a bathing sponge.

His right elbow hurt, and when he tried to roll over, his ribs … at least one was broken. A spike of agony rolled him back, and the combination of his injuries went off like a series of internal fires.

‘He’s awake,’ said Arse-Cunt.

You ought to be dead, Satyrus thought. So damned close.

Satyrus smelled her before he saw her, and he knew immediately who had him, and why, and he was afraid.

‘My poor Satyrus,’ Phiale said. She came to the side of the box upon which he’d been laid out. She rested a light hand on his forehead. ‘Poor Satyrus.’

‘You,’ he managed.

‘Me,’ she replied. ‘How very satisfying. Money is a wonderful thing, Satyrus. I paid this man a sum, and he produced you. Very little effort.’ Satyrus assumed that she was smiling. His vision was too blurry to be sure.

She had a knife, though. He felt it when she laid it against his cheek. ‘You sent me out of Alexandria as if I was a disposable thing,’ she said, her voice thick. ‘I cannot decide which I would prefer: to cut your nose and your penis clear of your body and then send you back to your whore of a sister, or simply to execute you.’

Satyrus grunted. He wanted to say something — to tell her that she was insane, for instance. She was insane — Satyrus was confident of that much, not that it seemed very relevant from where he was, her knife cool against his cheek.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘to be honest, I’d like you in a little better shape than this, Satyrus. I’m afraid you are such a wreck that cutting you seems a waste of time.’ Her knife licked at his cheek. It was sharp; he felt the blood flow before he felt the sting of the cut.

‘See, Tenedos, he’s all but ruined. I just cut a slice out of his face and he hasn’t even cried out.’ Phiale got to her feet and he could hear her dusting her hands together as if his blood was dirty — perhaps it was, to her. ‘Sticky,’ she said, and giggled. ‘Call me when he’s better,’ she said. ‘You know where to find me.’

Arse-Cunt grunted. ‘As you say, despoina.’

‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘As I say.’

The next day, his cheek was infected where she’d opened it almost to the bone, and he was weaker — loss of blood, he expected. His whole face was hot, and he couldn’t move his shoulders much, either, and he didn’t even know why.

‘She’s mad as a tanner,’ Arse-Cunt said. ‘And she’s going to hurt you. It’s funny — I worked so hard not to kill you, back outside Piraeus. You killed quite a number of my men — worthless fucks, most of them, but Aeneas was a good man. If I’d killed you right away, I’d have done us both a favour.’ He laughed merrily. ‘I’d like to off you for Aeneas, but I’d be doing you a favour. See the irony?’

Arse-Cunt settled for kicking him in the ribs.

When Satyrus next approached consciousness, he was aware that he had dreamed of his father, and Herakles, and Olympus. The dream empowered him.

He determined to escape. He didn’t have a plan, or any idea where he was, but only the determination to escape, immediately. He swung to a sitting position, and his lungs pressed against his broken rib, and he fell to the floor … a wave of pain washed over him …

Do not surrender now!

He was on the floor, a floor of fire, his head had been cut from his body and floated above him, a separate thing from his headless corpse — he crawled, his hands burned by the fires rising from the floor every time he moved his arms. His elbow touched something — he kept going, the pain in his knee and the pain in his right shoulder nothing to the pain of his head, cut clear of his shoulders and burning in the golden haze over the stump of his neck.

Keep going.

His hands were in something cool. He didn’t know what it was, but he dragged his body into it. He pulled himself by his arms when his legs refused to answer. Now his hands were hot and his knees were passing though the cool thing.

He allowed himself to sink down on his stomach.

No! Now! Go now!

He raised himself onto his elbows — infinite agony — and dragged himself, one arm-reach at a time, until there was nothing under his hands. He wriggled, pushed with one trapped foot … and fell.

The feeling of falling was disassociated from movement, and for one long heartbeat, he was not in pain, as no part of his damaged body was pressing against the ground. And then he hit the ground.

Wake up! Almost there! Go!

He came to in the fetal position. He didn’t feel any worse — or better. He lifted his head, rolled on his stomach — efforts of will — raised himself, and crawled towards what seemed to him to be an opening, although his eyes were nearly swollen shut.

Arm over arm. And then a push with a knee, with a foot. Another. Another.

Nothing under his hands. Again. This time, he was more lucid and thus more afraid, and he reached down … and felt stone. Not a long drop. A step — a single step. He levered himself on his arms, winced as his ribs passed over the sill, collapsed panting in what had to be sunlight.

‘Apollo!’ said a woman’s voice. ‘There’s a fucking corpse in the street — it’s moving!’

‘Pluto, he looks like donkey shit,’ said a boy’s voice. ‘Been stripped, too.’

‘And beat. Hey — you alive?’ said the woman. A hand touched his shoulder. Rolled him over so he gave a small scream.

Satyrus rallied his will, licked his lips. One chance.

‘Gold!’ he hissed. ‘Get me clear of here.’

And then he was gone. Again. And no voice came to tell him how he had done.

He came to in pain: hot pain, like spikes of ice and fire into his head and back, and dull aches over everything; cold, dull aches that were always there between the spikes. He was being bounced — up, down, up, down. His eyes wouldn’t open. People talked, all around him. It was as if half the human race was shouting, all around him, but two voices came clear.

‘Wide-arse weighs like a double sack of grain!’ said a voice under him.

‘Worth more, sweetie.’

A bed. He was on a bed, in the narrowest room he’d ever seen. He was on a low, narrow bed with clean sheets, and the walls weren’t much wider than his shoulders. The cushion at his head was covered in pus.

That pus was coming from his face. It felt wet, and sticky, and hot. But at least he could feel, and the swelling had to be down, because he could see from his left eye. He flexed his shoulders, felt the edges of the pain of broken ribs under a tight bandage. A good, workmanlike job.

If he had a fever, it was a light one — he could think. See. Move, a little.

There was a curtain at the end of the narrow room, and it was lifted, and a stoop-shouldered man came in with a satchel over his shoulder and a mop of curly white hair. ‘Still alive,’ he said, with a smile. ‘I had you marked as a tough one.’

Satyrus tried to return the grin, but his attempt was lost in a wash of pain and some sort of bursting on his face, and hot fluid ran down his chin, and he coughed.

‘Pus,’ the man said, and opened his satchel. ‘Someone really didn’t like you, son. I’ll do what I can, but your face is never going to be what we call right. Lie still, now. I’ve seen worse — when a sarissa goes right through a man’s cheek, puncture wounds on both sides, all the teeth ruined.’

‘Did,’ Satyrus managed. His voice was rough, the word incomprehensible. ‘Did he live?’

Curly Hair laughed. ‘No. Starved to death. I kept him alive a long time, though. He didn’t really want to live. His boy left him for another man.’

‘You — are — doctor?’ Satyrus managed.

‘Hmm. Yes. Although I don’t know if Hippocrates would have me if he saw my practice. You have a name, lad? The whores who brought you in want to be paid. You said gold.’ The man winked. ‘Beat as bad as you were beat, I’d have claimed to have gold, too. My advice? Don’t be too eager to pay.’

Satyrus coughed. ‘Why?’ he asked weakly.

‘Because you’re bleeding internally, son. Pissing blood right and left. Pay if you live, that’s my advice. You have family in Athens?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Satyrus said.

‘Don’t be telling me you’re a slave. You had two rings on until some cocksucker — and I use the term precisely — took them.’ He began to unwind Satyrus’s bandage. ‘This is going to hurt. Anything you want to say, first?’

‘Kineas,’ Satyrus said, on the spur of the moment. He was clear headed enough to know that his own name probably wasn’t the wisest idea. ‘Alexandria.’

‘Ah,’ said the doctor. ‘So you do have a few darics, eh? I can tell the girls and boys?’

Satyrus nodded.

‘In that case,’ said the doctor, ‘I’ll give you some poppy for the pain.’

The god lay by his stream, as he ever did, a magnificent figure — bigger than Theron, bigger than any man Satyrus had ever seen, his skin smooth and unmarked, heavily muscled. He wore a lion skin like a kilt.

Satyrus was healed. He walked to the edge of the stream and sat easily, all of his muscles responding perfectly.

‘You will have to make decisions,’ the god said. ‘You will have a friend — a weak friend.’

Satyrus wanted to bathe his head in the cool stream, not listen to the god. He rolled on his stomach. The ground underneath him was moss — damp and cool and slightly springy. The stream was narrow but swift, and he could see the gravel bottom. He put his hands in the stream, and it was cold as ice. He dipped his head-

‘Are you awake, sir? Sir? Awake, sir?’ said an insistent voice.

Satyrus rose out of a deep well of sleep and poppy towards the voice.

‘Please wake up, sir. Please wake up, sir. Sir, please wake up.’ It was an unpleasant voice — a surprisingly unpleasant woman’s voice, squeaky, grating, the sound of a sword on rock.

Satyrus tried to respond. A meaningless mumble emerged, and his eyes opened.

‘There’s a good gentleman, sir. How nice. Lovely morning — very cool. And can you tell me sir, what is your name? Where can we find your … people?’ she asked.

There was a man standing behind her. ‘Bankers. Ask if he has bankers.’

Harpy Voice sounded impatient. ‘Don’t be stupid. He can barely talk. We’ll be lucky if he’s a ship owner.’

Satyrus wasn’t thinking very clearly. He was afraid, not a common feeling for him. Afraid that this coarse-voiced woman would sell him to Phiale. Afraid that Phiale would find him — he was in a brothel, he assumed. With his left eye open, he could see that Harpy Voice was a plain-faced girl of sixteen or seventeen with short legs and magnificent, prominent breasts and hips worn under a chitoniskos so short as to be indecent. But of course it was indecent. She was a whore. A porne. Her eyes, though, were fierce, independent — interested.

The boy behind her was younger — wide shoulders, narrow waist. Fit, but his face was misshapen, as if he’d been hit hard as a small child, or had his jaw broken and badly set. He looked stupider than an ox. An ox with a broken jaw.

‘Maybe a ship’s name, then?’ Ox Face asked. ‘Maybe he’s off a ship and they can pay us?’

‘Shut up,’ Harpy Voice said. She leaned over Satyrus — she had to, as there wasn’t room to stand next to the bed. ‘A name, sweetie. Just a name, so we can get you help. No offence, sir, but we’re not doing this for our arete.’

Her use of the upper-class word made him smile.

‘Ooh, sweetie, you know that word, do you?’ she said, and she sat by his feet, coiling neatly on her haunches. ‘The better for us, Alex.’

‘Why?’ he asked, in his ox voice.

‘’Cause idiotes and poor men have nothing to do with arete, that’s why. Not for the likes of us.’ She smiled at Satyrus — a totally false smile, and not a very effective one. ‘Give me a name, lover.’

Satyrus couldn’t think of a name that would help him without compromising him. Leon had factors in Athens — but surely Phiale would have them watched. Even in one of their houses, he’d be vulnerable to Phiale, or to her master.

Satyrus had to assume that Phiale was working for Demetrios.

The girl leaned down the bed, moving her feet along the bed’s edge, crawling over him like a spider — with the ease of long practice, he assumed. Her breasts hung before his eyes, and even through the poppy he was aware of her.

‘Oh-ho,’ she said. ‘So you are alive. Listen to me, sweetie. I need a name and some promise of reward, or I’m clearing this bed. I’m paying four obols a day for this bed, I’m paying for the doctor in blow-jobs, and to be honest, I have plenty of work just now. So … a name.’ She smiled. It was a better smile. ‘Come on. I don’t care what husband beat the crap out of you. You’ll live — you won’t be pretty, but you’ll live. Doctor says you ain’t pissing so much blood. So give over, lover. A name.’

He was dead, but he was a name, from one of the great families of Athens, and if Demetrios was behind this, the man’s family would help him anyway. He didn’t pause to check the mushiness of his logic. He could drive an elephant through the flaws, but he needed out of this brothel before Phiale, who’d come out of one of these and knew them like he knew the plains below Tanais, looked for him.

‘Polycrates of Lysander,’ he croaked.

‘Ooh, dearie,’ she said, and clapped her hands. ‘Ooh, sweetie. For that name, I’d keep you for a week.’ She leaned down and kissed his forehead — he had a flash of his mother, and she bounded off the bed.

‘Come on, Alex,’ she said. ‘We’re going to be rich.’

She was gone, and her ox-faced partner with her.

Once she was gone, Satyrus had a long time to examine what he’d done and doubt it. After all, the man was dead. It was possible that the news wasn’t out yet. Satyrus lay in his narrow bed and couldn’t decide how many days had passed. Two? At least two. Perhaps as many as … he really didn’t know.

It was possible that Polycrates’ body hadn’t been found. In which case, his family would still be loyal to Demetrios — Satyrus grunted. He could follow this line of thinking to one disaster after another.

The skin under the heavy linen wrap around his torso itched as if he had a dozen mosquito bites wrapped under there, but his arms were better. He tried to scratch, and found that he could move his shoulders and neck — real improvement.

He watched the shadows roll down the curtain. Somewhere over his head was a small, unglazed window — there was no breeze, but somehow the air in the room was alive.

When he lay still, he could listen to the sounds of the house. As the shadows lengthened on the curtain, customers began to arrive. Many of them tramped right past his curtain — feet both loud and soft, aggressive and secretive, hurried and measured. Some were talkative — enquiring after their partner’s health, as if a chance-met friend in the agora — others were silent, or pre-emptive, or demanding.

His first evening of lucidity. He wondered how many times his sheets had been changed. His mouth was dry, and he needed to urinate so badly that it made his back hurt, and he suspected from the smell that he’d relieved himself into the bed up until now.

Down the hall, a man was beating his whore. The boy’s sin was failing to give the man an erection — a hideous scene, played out through thin walls. Satyrus had little experience of brothels. Listening made him feel ill — right though his pain and his bladder.

Right next to him, a woman was moaning with pleasure, her voice getting higher and faster. Satyrus had never heard a woman make such noises while making love, and he had to assume that they were simulated.

Simulated from what knowledge of pleasure, he wondered. Clearly the brothel had rules of its own. Certainly the porne had to thank his customer, or her customer, when he was finished.

The pain on his bladder was now too much to bear. And no one was going to come, he could tell. The whores were all working, and the doctor …

He got his elbows under him and wriggled down the bed, his hips almost free from pain and his ribs protesting, but bearably. He managed to get his feet on the floor at the end of the bed, then he had to lie and watch the fly specks on the ceiling — the room spun for a moment when he raised his head. But he saw an old, deep amphora with the top smashed in, in the corner — a makeshift chamber pot.

He got his feet on the floor again and wriggled his hips towards the end of the bed again. Raised his head. Bad.

He was going to do this.

He raised his head and got his hands against the walls. His wrists hurt — his right shoulder felt as if it had been dislocated.

Herakles, stand by me, he thought — a war cry to go and urinate. It made him laugh — a low gurgle.

‘Hey! You’re not running off on me, are you?’ Harpy Voice poked her head through his curtain.

‘Must … piss,’ Satyrus managed.

‘Oh! Sweetie, I’m sorry. You usually just wet the bed. And the poor slaves clean up after you. Here, that’s it, honey, let me get my shoulder in there.’

She got him up and off the bed — she was strong. But when he stood over the makeshift chamber pot, he untangled his left arm from her shoulder. ‘Thanks,’ he said.

‘You are a gent,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen a few pricks in my day, sweetie. Just piss.’

‘Go,’ he said. He felt his face flushing, and his bladder was on fire, but he couldn’t get a drop out while she stood there.

She giggled — a genuine reaction, he thought. ‘I’ll just wait in the hall,’ she said.

It came out of him in a rush — orange and red. Blood in it, but no more than when he’d taken a blow in the kidneys through his armour. Not enough for despair, anyway. Enough to take seriously.

The process went on and on — embarrassingly — and he had to use the corner walls to hold himself up.

‘You having a symposium, lover?’ Harpy Voice called, and she laughed. Next door, the same crescendo of passion was being acted out for the second time that evening.

‘Tell me how big I am,’ demanded a male voice.

‘Ooh. You fill me up!’ answered the porne in the next cubicle.

‘Now lick my ear,’ said the male voice.

Satyrus shook his head.

‘Are you through yet?’ Harpy Voice asked.

‘My time isn’t fucking up yet!’ called a male customer.

‘Not talking to you, sweetie,’ Harpy Voice said.

Satyrus wiped himself on a rag provided for the purpose and was appalled to see how red, bruised, and swollen his penis was. He’d been beaten before, he’d been hit in his genitals before, but never like this. No wonder it all hurt so much.

He turned to stumble back to the bed, misjudged the distance, and fell.

‘Damn you, sir,’ Harpy Voice said. ‘All you had to do was call, you know. Can’t let a working girl see your yard, can’t be seen to piss? Men are fools.’ She got him to his feet with her legs, a lift that a wrestler might have envied, and he flopped onto his back on the bed.

In the distance a bell rang. ‘Eurydike!’ called a charming, cultured voice.

‘Ah. Sorry, sweetie. Customer for me,’ she said. She patted his foot. ‘Tell me you are going to make me rich, sweetie. Please.’

Satyrus grunted. He hurt. But he managed to twitch the right side of his face. ‘Rich,’ he said.

‘Hmm. I might be falling in love with you,’ she said cheerfully, in her grating voice. ‘See ya!’

And she was gone.

It was hours before he slept. He heard several porne beaten — some by customers who just wanted to hit someone. But other customers were tender, solicitous, and thus sounded just as foolish as the lusty ones and the violent ones.

At one point, every bed on the hall must have been working at the same time. Satyrus could smell the sex. He could hear it all around him. It was … curious.

Eventually the sounds began to die away. It was quite late — in fact, in farmer’s hours, it was more very early. Satyrus had slept — he had trouble ungumming his eyes, and now he was desperately thirsty.

He tried to swallow, tried to raise saliva. Decided he would have to get up. He was sure he could do it.

He had started to wriggle down the bed when the curtain opened. Ox-head glanced at him.

‘You doing all right?’ the boy, a young man, really, old enough to be a junior ephebe, asked.

Satyrus raised a hand. ‘Water,’ he said.

‘Oh, sure!’ the young man responded. ‘I was supposed to bring it to you when I came on shift, but I was sent to a party.’ He vanished.

Somehow, waiting for him to return was harder than all the waiting until then.

He came back through the curtain with a whole water jar, plain black ware, full to the brim. He dipped a sponge in and handed it to Satyrus, who slurped it dry.

Satyrus repeated this three times, and he felt immensely better.

‘Help me sit up,’ he said.

Young Alex got an arm around him and lifted. He was gentle, and strong and Satyrus leaned back against the wall, took the water jug and drank. ‘Of course,’ he said, to no one in particular, ‘now I’ll have to piss again.’

Alex laughed. ‘Happens to me whenever I have to stay over at a party,’ he said. ‘When they’re done with me, I get sent to the kitchen. I won’t go to the slave quarters — I’m not a slave. But they always lock me in — as if I’d steal from my customers? And when I have to piss?’ He laughed.

‘Not a slave?’ Satyrus asked.

‘Oh, no, sir. I’m a citizen. Both my parents were citizens.’ Despite his face, the boy sounded quite intelligent.

Satyrus drank more water. ‘What do you do at parties?’ he asked.

Alex rolled his head back and forth. ‘I dance, usually. Sometimes I play drums for one of the girls. Some parties pay for us to fuck — me and Aella, usually, which is fun. We do it well.’ He nodded. ‘At a good party, after we dance, someone will take me aside, and then it’s just business. Right?’ he smiled. ‘At a bad party, the men get drunk, and then they all want to fuck me at once. Sometimes it hurts, and sometimes the idiotes don’t pay.’ He shrugged. ‘My hair’s coming in, so my days of parties are about over, and that’s as well. I’ve made a bundle.’

Satyrus nodded. He’d been at parties with flute girls and boys. Now he was talking to the other side of the coin.

Aella poked her head through the curtain. ‘How’s our gentleman?’ she asked.

‘Better,’ Satyrus said.

‘Good for you, sweetie. I have some bread and honey for you, and some dates. What the doctor said to try.’ She came in, and she was naked. Satyrus smiled.

‘I will certainly try to make you both rich,’ he said. He had to get their loyalty, right away — before they sold him to someone else. Demetrios.

Aella grinned. ‘Do you know how many men have promised to make me rich, honey?’ she said. ‘But the only purse they want to deposit in never seems to hold any cash. Eh?’ she laughed.

Alex rolled his eyes.

‘I need to go to bed,’ Aella said. ‘Alex will go and find your friend Polycrates tomorrow, won’t you, Alex?’

‘Day off, after a party,’ Alex said. He shrugged. ‘A bad party.’

‘Oh, honey,’ Aella said — the first actual empathy she’d shown, Satyrus thought.

Alex shrugged. ‘I was well oiled — Sappho took care of me. But none of them wanted her and all of them wanted me, and some of them were bastards.’ He shrugged. ‘Let’s get to bed.’

They left the narrow room. Satyrus, who would have ignored them, scarcely even seen them as human under other circumstances, missed them instantly. He was bored and lonely, and afraid. He lay and thought about these things. Eventually, instead of passing out, he fell asleep, craving opium.

He awoke to a quiet brothel. From the angle of the sun, he knew it was morning — late morning, and the beds were quiet. He lay and listened, and all he heard was some distant laughter and the cry of a baby. Two babies.

He thought about young Alexander. About how bad a bad party might be — bad enough when you were a guest. He’d seen how a group of Macedonian officers could behave; to each other, to any man they might use. Worse if you were a porne. Probably much worse.

The swelling in his cheek was down. The pus was crusted over.

Alex or Aella had put more water in his jug, and he drank some. He made it to the amphora unaided. It hadn’t been emptied.

He was just back on the bed when the doctor came in.

‘Up and about, are we? Excellent.’ He opened his bag and took out a small alabaster jar.

‘No more poppy, thanks,’ Satyrus said.

‘Really? Don’t tell me you’re a miser.’ The doctor put the jar away, rolled in a piece of soft leather.

‘I’ve had quite a lot of it,’ Satyrus said. ‘Too much, for one life.’

‘Soldier?’ asked the doctor.

‘Something like that,’ Satyrus said.

The doctor nodded. ‘Well. You’d know best. But when I take that bandage off, it’s going to hurt like Hades.’

He was right. It did.

He didn’t pass out, but the pain was remarkable. He cried out — not once but twice. Then he was wrapped up again.

‘Somebody really doesn’t like you,’ the doctor said.

Satyrus nodded.

The doctor grinned. ‘Well. Hope you make the whores rich, lad. You can keep this bandage wrapped, I assume, and if you don’t want poppy … well, your cheek wound is clean and dry, and you’ll hurt for weeks — but I’m done with you. I’ve crotches to look at.’

Satyrus offered his hand, but the man vanished through the curtain.

Satyrus began to think that he could tell the difference between different sex acts by the sounds. He was appalled — sometimes amused — by the frankness of the vulgarity and the customers. Men asked for the crudest things — some in sing-song, little boy voices, some in harsh demands. Aella came in to check on him, and stayed to chat while washing and rubbing olive oil into her vagina, an act she performed without the least coyness or shame.

‘No girl can make enough juice to last a whole night — not during the feast of Aphrodite,’ she said. ‘That’s my bell!’ And she was off out the curtain.

Feast of Aphrodite! Satyrus thought. I’ve been here two weeks.

Afternoons were slow. The boys and girls talked, or bathed, sulked, read, debated — they were Athenians, and Satyrus had to laugh at how very Athenian they were: debating political matters, arguing the relative merits of Cassander and Lysimachos, Ptolemy and Antigonus. Aella was a confirmed supporter of Demetrios, who she had seen in person.

‘He’s like one of the gods,’ he heard her say as she walked down the hall. ‘His father has captured Mithridates — not the good one. The bad one. The one who’s against us.’ She laughed like the supporter of a winning sports team. No one disagreed.

Satyrus lay and wondered about how easily men could be labelled ‘good’ and ‘bad’ because of their beliefs, or which side in a civil war they backed. It was … fathomless. He philosophised on it until he heard the proprietress inspecting the girls.

The proprietress was an older woman, with wide-set, large eyes and hair dyed jet black. In some lights she could be quite hideous, with a large nose and bad teeth — but when evening came, she was lovely, attractive the way an older matron is attractive, with a sense of dignity that Satyrus would never have associated with this world of porne and sex. Her name — frequently called out — was Lysistrada.

He knew her by voice and by glimpses through his curtain, but that afternoon she entered his cubicle.

‘Medea!’ she called — the voice of command, or of a mother.

A young woman came in. Her Sakje blood was obvious — her cheekbones were high, and besides, she had tribal scars on her right shoulder and down her arms. She had a strong face, not a pretty one. ‘Yes, despoina?’ she asked. She was meek, and her eyes were downcast.

‘Empty this pot. It stinks. The smell of urine is not an aphrodisiac, young lady.’

‘Yes, despoina.’ The Sakje girl flicked her eyes at Satyrus.

‘Good afternoon,’ Satyrus said, in Assagetae.

She started, eyes wide. Then she fled, carrying the broken amphora full of waste. In moments, she could he heard sobbing in the hall.

‘That was a fine trick to play me, sir, and my house footing your bills.’ Lysistrada glared at him. ‘I came to see to your well-being, and — what did you say to her?’

‘I gave her good afternoon, in the language of her folk.’ Satyrus suddenly felt exposed. Traders from Alexandria don’t know Sakje languages.

‘She’s the worst slave imaginable,’ she sniffed. ‘She’s injured two gentlemen. I should sell her as a nurse but some of those households are … well, worse than brothels.’ Lysistrada smiled. ‘And it took me for ever to break her to our ways. I’ll make my investment back — and you, sir. I will make my investment back on you, as well. I understand from my young people that you have a connection with our Polycrates.’

Satyrus nodded.

She crossed her arms. ‘Only, dear, there’s another rumour on the street that someone is offering a very large sum of money in cash for the location of a man from Olbia or Pantecapaeaum. A man with a cut on his cheek like an alpha, and tall.’ She smiled.

Satyrus knew he was taken. She’d sent the Sakje girl in on purpose. His brain ran on — he was fit enough to grab her. Perhaps … use her as a hostage?

No. Phiale would care nothing for that. He had to run. Immediately. He was naked on the stained sheets of a cot in a brothel — no clothes, no money …

‘What is it worth to you — in cash, not promises — for me to continue to hide you? Sir?’ she asked.

Satyrus struggled for a calm he really didn’t have. He took a breath, as if squaring off on the palaestra. ‘Polycrates will pay for me,’ he said, more to buy time than anything. The most likely result was that she would sell him to Phiale and to Polycrates. Except that Polycrates was dead, and unless he managed to meet with, and talk to, a family member, they’d have no reason to help him.

Two weeks! His grain ships would be gone. Leon’s factor would have the grain money — plenty to ransom a king or two.

A bold front was the essence of the thing. He managed a smile. ‘There is a woman seeking to have me killed,’ he said, succinctly. ‘If she succeeds, and your house is blamed …’ Satyrus left the threat unspoken. ‘Whereas, if I make it to my friends, I would expect that you might receive a great deal of money, and perhaps something more.’

‘Empty threats and promises I might receive from any agora ruffler,’ she said — but she was interested.

Satyrus had seen Leon and Diodorus do this — had watched Philokles do it a thousand times, using a person’s cupidity and greed against their better judgement. But Philokles, sometime spy and spymaster, had spoken against it for a king. ‘Manipulation is the poorest form of management,’ he was wont to say.

Satyrus had no options. ‘My promises are not empty. You be the judge — do I look to you like a man of worth?’

‘Give me a name,’ she said.

‘I have. Polycrates. Bring me a member of his family.’ Satyrus paused — this woman was intelligent, and he didn’t want to give away his weaknesses. ‘Or the man himself, and I will see you paid — an enormous amount. A shocking amount.’

‘My dear sir, your rival is offering a shocking amount. And you may even have multiple rivals.’ She laughed — a harridan’s laugh. ‘Maybe they will bid for you, like men bid for a beautiful slave.’

He’d misjudged her. Somehow she was personifying in him all the men she disliked — all the men who had bought and sold her. Or perhaps that’s how she reacted to all men. ‘I can pay more,’ Satyrus said, with a confidence he didn’t feel. ‘And my death — you would feel it.’

‘I know every politician in this crooked city,’ she said. ‘I have most of them by the balls.’

Satyrus shrugged. ‘It would be a pity to see you sold back to slavery,’ he said.

She started, went white and then red. ‘Fuck you, you rich ponce.’ She was gone through the curtain before he could retract.

The moment her cork sandal soles had gone down the steps, Aella appeared. ‘Bitch,’ she said. ‘She’s trying to cut me and Alex out of our money, ain’t she, sir?’

Satyrus nodded. ‘Help me up.’

Aella looked out in the hall. ‘She’s gone out.’

‘She’s gone for my enemies. Please — this is life and death.’

Aella paused. ‘Swear!’ she said. ‘Swear by Styx that you’ll make me rich, and Alex too.’

Satyrus raised his hand. ‘I swear on Styx, and on my father’s grave, and on all the gods, may the furies plague me, that I will raise you and your friend Alex, and make you rich.’

She pursed her lips. ‘It’s a beating for me, or worse, if she catches me.’

Satyrus smiled. ‘It’s death, for me.’ He took a breath — having failed miserably as a manipulator, he tried a different tack with Aella. ‘How long will you be able to live like this, honey? Before … before your skin coarsens and your breasts sag? What other chance do you have?’

Outside, in the street, there was a stir.

‘Aella!’ came Alex’s voice.

She ran out through the curtain.

Satyrus got himself to his feet. If Phiale was close by, her people would be here any moment.

He used the wall, moving as fast as he could, until he reached the curtain.

‘He looks rich enough, I suppose,’ he heard Aella say.

‘He’s Polycrates’ slave — his boy.’ Alex’s harsh whisper carried up the stairs. Satyrus was in the hall — a hall he knew only from sounds. Whitewashed, swept clean with tiles underfoot, it was narrow and ran the length of the second floor — probably had twenty small rooms.

The rooms on the other side of the hall opened on the street — some of them had an exedra, or second storey balcony.

‘Fuck!’ Aella said. ‘She’s coming back. With thugs.’

Alex made a noise of despair. Another voice spoke, urgently.

‘Try!’ Aella said. ‘Go — go before she sees us!’

Now Satyrus was paralysed, standing at the head of the stairs. He didn’t even know if there was another access to this level. Exedras often had their own stairs, but in a brothel that seemed unlikely.

Aella came pounding up the steps, her bare feet ringing on the stone flags. ‘By Aphrodite,’ she said. ‘You’re up! You look like shit. Here, come with me.’ She grabbed his hand, tugged him along he hall, and he stumbled, and almost fell.

‘Top of the stairs,’ Lysistrada said, outside. ‘Big man.’

‘Oh, I know him,’ said Arse-Cunt.

Aella pulled him along the hall, past the only three cubicles that were occupied. Near the end of the hall was a door, where all the other rooms only had curtains.

‘Hers,’ Aella said. She took a breath. ‘I’m fucked if she catches me at this,’ she said.

There were rapid steps on the stairs.

She opened the door, and the two of them went through. Aella slammed the door back, but Satyrus caught it and closed it softly. There was a bar. He dropped it carefully.

It was a fine room — a woman’s room, with an unused loom and two fine tapestries, a Persian rug, a scroll basket full of scrolls.

‘She lets us read here, when we’re in favour,’ Aella whispered.

‘Gone!’ roared Arse-Cunt. ‘Can’t be far. Search the rooms!’

‘Always wanted to search a brothel,’ said another voice. ‘Hey, open up!’

The unmistakable sound of a sword pommel on a wall.

Lysistrada was shrill. ‘You may not search where my customers are!’

‘Don’t be shy,’ Arse-Cunt said. ‘I’ve fucked every girl here!’ He laughed. ‘They won’t care if my boys watch ’em a little.’

‘Back off, bastard. This is my house. Theo!’ she called. Her bouncer.

‘Fuck you, bitch,’ Arse-Cunt said. ‘Search all the rooms. Kill anyone who tries to stop you.’

The sound of a heavy slap, and Lysistrada shrieked again, and then feet were pounding.

‘Is there another way out?’ Satyrus asked. His heart was hammering inside his chest.

‘Yes. Off the exedra. She has her own steps.’ Aella was having trouble breathing. ‘Go!’

‘You first,’ Satyrus ordered. He was just about able to hold himself up, but he wanted a weapon.

He held himself up with his arms and moved from surface to surface, but there was nothing. Out in the hall there was the sound of fighting, and an angry customer was shouting at someone — chaos.

Satyrus followed Aella out onto the exedra, which ran across the side of the house, overlooking an alley no wider than his shoulders.

‘Whose room is this?’ A whiny voice — not Arse-Cunt. One of his men.

‘That’s my room,’ Lysistrada said. ‘You stay out of it!’

A mistake to have barred the door. Too late to regret. Satyrus got down the steps well enough. Aella was there, and Alex, and another man who looked familiar.

‘He’s in there!’ shrieked Lysistrada. ‘My door is locked. You bastard!’ Her voice sounded close. She must be on the other side of the door.

‘Follow me, lord,’ said the familiar-looking man. ‘Not far. Come.’

The four of them moved as fast as Satyrus could manage. They went from alley to alley, with Aella scouting ahead and the two young men holding Satyrus up — after twenty steps, he needed a shoulder under each arm just to keep him upright.

‘Jason!’ Satyrus managed.

‘That’s right, lord.’ Jason was panting with the exertion of carrying half of a big man.

Two alleys, and a cross street with pedestrian traffic and a donkey cart, and four men standing by an enormous breadbasket at the mouth of an alley. Jason led them into a donkey shed, and in moments — and not without pain — Satyrus was inside the breadbasket and the top was bound on.

‘You two go back to work,’ Jason said. ‘You know where I live. Come tomorrow.’

It was Jason — Polycrates’ body slave. He was well dressed, clean and neat and had silver pins in his chiton — the slave of a very rich man, or a well-off middle-class man himself.

Aella sounded fierce. ‘He promised us gold.’

Jason nodded to her. ‘And he will. But girl, if we don’t get him out of here soon, he’ll be dead.’

‘I’m no girl,’ she protested.

‘When do we get paid?’ Alex asked.

‘When I have him safe at my house,’ Jason said.

‘You’re a slave, ain’t you?’ Aella asked Jason.

‘I am,’ Jason answered. For the first time, he sounded less than confident.

‘Thought so. We’re not slaves, see? So if you fuck us, we’ll fuck you right back.’ She sniffed. ‘We’ll be by tomorrow. Better have some money for us.’

Then silence — sounds in the street — and then many men, all together, and the basket was lifted.

‘Heaviest fucking bread I ever carried,’ said a porter.

‘It’s a body, idiot. That pretty boy ain’t no baker’s apprentice — silver pins in his chiton? This is politics. Just take the money, carry the basket, and wait and find out who was murdered. Tomorrow. When we’s safe.’

Now they moved fast. Satyrus could feel the speed, and he could see a little bit through the basket — changes in light and shade, mostly, but sometimes, when the sun was at the right angle, he could see figures.

They went a long way. Satyrus had time to get thirsty, to feel the need to urinate, to get cool as the evening air came on his naked skin. Fighting on the deck of a warship was much better than this helplessness.

An hour passed, at least. Or so it seemed.

‘Zeus Panhellenios, where are we going?’

‘What are we getting for this, boss?’

‘Four drachma a man. Don’t be such a crew of faggots.’ Voice change. ‘Sir? Young sir? Are we close?’

‘Right here,’ Jason said. ‘My farm wagon will be along any time now. Thanks. Here’s your money. Here you go.’ Clink of coins. ‘And here you go.’ More coins.

Grumbles and mutters. Farewells.

‘Where is my master?’ Jason asked, from outside the basket.

‘Dead,’ Satyrus managed.

The top came off the basket. ‘I had to make sure that they were gone. I’m making this up as I go. Who killed him?’

Satyrus got his head out of the basket and drank in some better air. ‘I don’t know. A courtesan, Phiale — she was the agent, I think.’ He shook his head.

Jason helped Satyrus to a sitting position. ‘Who was behind her? There’s men searching everywhere for you, lord. I paid men to find my master — my informers run across them everywhere. I guessed … well, I guessed that they killed Master and you got away. It was a possibility that fitted the facts. They’re looking for a “man from Olbia”.’

Satyrus nodded. ‘I was taken. I … escaped.’

Jason looked at him. ‘I heard from Master you are a famous fighter. Listen — please. I have found you, and I will get you to Master’s house. Yes? Then I beg you to do something for me.’

Satyrus nodded. ‘Anything I can, boy.’

‘Take me with you,’ Jason said. ‘Master kept me safe. From some things. I want free of them.’

Satyrus wondered how desperate the world of slaves and freedmen was. Constant bargaining. And how tempted Alex or Aella would be when they learned what he was worth to Demetrios.

‘I’ll free you,’ Satyrus said. He meant it, but he also knew that it was an offer that would trump most offers of money.

Jason smiled. Satyrus hadn’t seen him smile. It made him look much younger.

‘I want more than that,’ Jason said. ‘I want to be a citizen. Not here — too much baggage here.’

Satyrus, naked, and almost unable to walk, had to smile. ‘I can make you a citizen of Olbia or Tanais of Pantecapaeaum just by saying that you are,’ he said.

Jason nodded. ‘I know you can, lord. My master is dead. I can serve you.’

Satyrus took a deep breath. ‘You have not told me anything of your troubles — or your master’s plots,’ he said. ‘Get me clear of this, and I’ll see you have your freedom. I cannot promise more than that.’

Jason nodded. ‘Lean on me. Let’s go.’

They went through a farm gate, along a stone wall, through an olive grove, up a hill and down through another grove, and this time they had to endure the barking of dogs and the angry stares of a herd of sheep.

They came down a low ridge to a great house, and by then Satyrus was hobbling, but he felt better, not worse, as if stretching his muscles healed them.

‘Can you ride, lord?’ Jason asked.

Satyrus nodded. His breath was short.

Into the yard of the great house, where there were four men — big men, all wearing swords. Satyrus wanted to shy away, but Jason merely gave them a nod. ‘Usual rates,’ he said.

The biggest man chuckled. ‘We love working for you, Jas.’

Jason turned to Satyrus. ‘I had to arrange this on the fly. This is Achilles, and his friends Ajax, Memnon, and Odysseus. Gentlemen, this man needs your protection. Take him somewhere, and tell me where when you can. I have some loose ends to tidy up. He can pay — and he can be a good friend. Lord, just do as they say.’

Satyrus shrugged. ‘I would like clothes and a sword,’ he said. Achilles was tall and might have been handsome, if he didn’t have a rip a finger broad across his face that left his mouth in a permanent leer. Even with the big scar, he had carriage — dignity. Ajax was taller and heavier, with a paunch, and legs as big as a small man’s chest — and a disarming grin. Memnon was African, thin and hard, and Odysseus had a mouthful of gold teeth and a wispy beard, and looked altogether more like a lout than the other three, who might easily have passed for gentlemen.

Achilles looked him over. ‘You may have mine, lord, if you insist, but right now, you don’t look like you’re worth spit in a fight.’

Satyrus had to agree with that.

Jason broke in. ‘I can get him a couple of chitons and a chlamys,’ he said. ‘I doubt there’s a sword in the house.’

He vanished inside.

Memnon gave him a long look. ‘Who’s hunting you? And why do we have to call you “lord”?’

Satyrus sat heavily on a farm bench. ‘You don’t have to call me lord. Jason seems to do it too easily.’

Jason came back with a basket, a leather satchel, and a bundle. ‘No sandals — but good boots. Put your legs out, lord.’ Satyrus stretched his legs out, and Jason laced the boots on, and they fitted well enough — tall Boeotian boots, well tooled.

Jason then helped him into a chitoniskos — the wool was well-washed, and soft, but raising his arms over his head made him grunt.

‘Those is some amazing bruises, boss,’ Odysseus said. ‘I used to fight barehand in taverns — never got me no bruise like yon.’ He was pointing to the mark of a heavy oak staff on Satyrus’s left bicep — still purple after more than two weeks, a deep bruise indeed.

‘You win or lose?’ Ajax asked.

‘Lost,’ Satyrus said.

All four of them nodded.

‘Let me see your hands,’ Odysseus said.

Satyrus stuck out his hands.

‘I need you to get moving,’ Jason said. ‘Those porters will be easy to trace.’

Achilles held up his hand. ‘A moment, Jas. We don’t call this brute Odysseus for nothing.’

The gold-toothed man felt Satyrus’s palms. ‘Hard enough. Swordsman? Hoplite fighter?’

‘Yes,’ Satyrus said.

‘Can you talk low and act — like us?’ Odysseus asked.

‘Hopeless,’ Ajax said. ‘Look at him. Fucking gymnasiums every day. Manners.’

Satyrus grinned, spat to one side the way he remembered Neiron doing, and bobbed his head. ‘Fuck off,’ he said.

Odysseus smiled. ‘Not bad. Don’t talk much, and try not to keep your back straight all the time. Ride by me. We’re sell-swords looking for work with Demetrios, and you’ve known all of us since …’

‘Rhodos,’ Satyrus said.

‘We weren’t at Rhodos, sorry. We don’t get out of Attika much.’ Achilles smiled, and his scar moved. ‘Never mind. Just spit and look angry and injured. Let’s get moving.’

Memnon brought six horses out of the barns and Jason helped Satyrus mount.

He felt better on a horse. ‘You didn’t ask me if I could ride,’ he said to Odysseus.

The man’s teeth winked in the last of the midsummer sun. ‘Didn’t need to,’ he said. ‘We know who you are.’ He pulled at his reins as Jason came up to them.

‘Leave word for me in the usual way,’ he said. ‘I don’t expect to be a public man after today.’

Achilles nodded. ‘So it’s true? Polycrates is dead? Who got him?’

Jason shook his head. ‘Still trying to find out. Likely need you lot to sort that out, too.’

Satyrus was amused to note that his rescue — if indeed he was being rescued — was not centre stage. Polycrates’ death was centre stage.

‘You are Polycrates’ men?’ Satyrus asked.

‘Hmm,’ Achilles answered. ‘Hmm. Some would say we was, and some would say we wasn’t, like.’

Odysseus nodded. ‘We’re our own men. Polycrates pays — paid, I guess — well, and he’d stand up when we asked ’im to.’

‘Not like fucking Demetrios of Phaleron,’ Memnon muttered.

They began to ride — first downhill, through a wheat field, and then along a donkey path through a vineyard, through a gate in a high stone wall, and out to a road.

Satyrus didn’t know Athens really well, but he could see the Parthenon as clear as the moon — the last of the sun was shining on the roof, eight or ten stades to the south. They rode west, into a red sky, and they rode as fast as he could handle. No part of him was badly hurt any more — but he was tired and his hips hurt.

He didn’t complain.

The moon rose and the sky went from dark blue to black, and the stars came out, and still they rode. They crossed two small rivers, and swung more south than west, and when Satyrus had almost fallen asleep in the saddle, Achilles called a halt, and they all dismounted and onion sausage was handed out by Odysseus.

Satyrus had his bearings. ‘Headed for the Eleusian Way,’ he said.

‘Got it in one,’ Odysseus replied.

They all relieved themselves, drank water, and got mounted, riding more quickly. Achilles and Ajax, the two biggest men, changed horses.

They began to climb steeply, and hills, heavy with rock, loomed on either side, even in moonlight. Twice they passed villages — not a light to be seen — and then, well after moon rise, when Satyrus didn’t feel that his discomfort could be greater, they entered a third village. This one had a big inn, and the yard gate opened when Achilles spoke a phrase from the mysteries.

Slaves took their horses — cursing, surly slaves called from their pallets.

‘Yer late,’ said a shrewish voice.

Achilles made a bow, like a priest before his god. ‘Despoina, Tyche affects all men, even heroes.’

Satyrus couldn’t see her, whoever she was. Since Odysseus was holding his arm lightly, and had cast the hem of his chlamys over his head, he assumed they didn’t want the woman to see him.

‘The room over the stable — just as you requested. Let’s see the shine of some silver.’ He heard the clink of coins, saw the shape bite one. ‘World is full of thieves,’ she said. ‘That’s full payment, boys. Thankee. Sleep well. There’s bread and opson and a nice piece of venison waiting for you.’

Up steep, narrow steps with no handholds, and there was a low trestle table. Satyrus sat down, and a small clay cup of wine was pressed into his hands. Downstairs, Achilles was still talking to the woman — the the woman who owned the taverna, he assumed. The wine was wonderful — full of flavour, dark as blood in the lamplight.

Ajax ate quietly, quickly, efficiently, while Memnon watched from the barred window and Odysseus curried the horses and fed them — quite an efficient team. As soon as Ajax had eaten, he took Memnon’s spot and the black man ate the same way — pushing food into his mouth, chewing quickly, every motion efficient. The only sign of enjoyment of the excellent venison came when Memnon finished his and had his first gulp of wine.

‘Lessa’s a good hostess,’ he said. He gave Satyrus a nod, and walked down the steep steps.

Achilles came back up. He went to a chest in the corner, a big enough box for a body, and opened it. From it he fetched a Sakje bow, a Greek quiver, and a Spartan sword.

‘All I have,’ he said, handing the long knife to Satyrus. ‘But you know how to use it, right?’

Satyrus put the cord of the scabbard over his shoulder. At worst, now, he could see to it that he wasn’t taken alive. He nodded. ‘Thanks,’ he said.

‘Don’t thank me till you pay,’ Achilles said. ‘We need to get some things straight. There’s a mort of people lookin’ for you. Right?’

Satyrus nodded.

‘Now, Odysseus says you’re the King of the Bosporons. That right?’ he asked.

Satyrus nodded.

Achilles nodded a few times back, and winked at Ajax.

‘I can retire on a farm in Attika right now — all four of us can — for selling you on.’ Achilles sat back, arms crossed.

‘So everyone tells me,’ Satyrus said. ‘Until I get back to my people, I have nothing to offer you.’

‘And when you get back to your people?’ Achilles asked. ‘Then what? Make us an offer.’

Satyrus shook his head. ‘You gave me the knife,’ he said. ‘And you already have a deal with Jason. Why should I make a new deal?’

Achilles nodded. ‘I’m a fair man. I won’t sell you straight — but me and mine, we might just ride away. Jason said this was escort work. But we know who you are, and the old witch who keeps this place says the roads are full of men looking for you.’

‘Whose men?’ Satyrus said.

‘Demetrios’s men,’ Achilles said.

‘Soldiers?’ Satyrus asked.

‘Exactly.’ Achilles said. ‘So?’

‘A silver talent each?’ Satyrus said.

‘Zeus Panhellenios!’ Ajax said. ‘We’d get you out of Tartarus for that.’

‘Shush, you.’ Achilles laughed. ‘No head for negotiating. But fine. For that fee, we’ll see you clear of Attika and put you up in one of our hidey holes for a week, until the excitement dies down. It always does.’

Satyrus nodded.

Six days on the road, as his muscle tone returned, and they climbed out of Attika, over the shoulder of Mount Kimeron, past Eleutherai, to Plataea.

Boeotia was beautiful at high summer, the dance floor of Ares stretching away, a patchwork of fields in gold and green, like a tilled version of the Sea of Grass. Plataea sat high on the shoulders of Kimeron, looking out over the valley, down to the Asopus — the walls were new, and shone in the sun. The Spartans and the Thebans together had destroyed the town twice, and Alexander of Macedon had ordered it rebuilt at considerable expense — fair recompense for the men and women who had fought among the hardest to preserve Greek liberty, or so Alexander said.

‘Land here was cheap as dirt when we were new to the business,’ Odysseus said as they rode along Asopus and started up a low ridge. ‘We had a little windfall early on — bought us this farm.’ He grinned.

The farm was on a hilltop, with a low stone tower and an old forge building, a fine vineyard and some scraggly apple trees. Several slave families lived in a hamlet behind the main house.

‘Here, we’re like lords,’ Achilles admitted. ‘Hey, Tegara! We’re home.’

Women came out of the tower — some attractive, and some looking as hard as bronze, and two of them older than the rest. Two boys emerged from the shed and took all six horses.

‘This one is a guest,’ Achilles said to the gathered women. ‘See to it he has a pleasant stay. He’s a paying customer.’

From this, Satyrus gathered that not all visitors were welcome, or voluntary.

The next morning, Odysseus was gone.

‘Other business,’ Achilles said with a casual wave. ‘But he’ll put us in touch with Jason, if the boy’s still alive.’

Satyrus slept in a bed and took some exercise the next day, shooting arrows with Achilles and Memnon outside the walls of the courtyard. It fatigued him more than it should have, and he took a nap under the old olive trees. Tegara, the older of the women, brought them olives and cheese. She sat down by him, gathering her chiton under her hips as she sat, a very ladylike gesture.

‘Who are you, really?’ she asked. She had a beautiful, husky voice, far richer than her farm-matron appearance.

‘No one important, despoina,’ he said.

She smiled at him, her eyes bold. ‘I beg leave to doubt that. You look exotic, to me.’ Without another word, she shifted behind him and started to massage his back and shoulders — not an erotic job, but a workmanlike job, the kind of thing a man might expect at a gymnasium.

Achilles rumbled a laugh. ‘You’ve made an odd convert, there, lord. Tegara never likes anyone!’

Satyrus slept better that night, and the next morning he met Achilles in the courtyard with Tegara pouring water over his head. She winked at Satyrus, who winked back. There was something about the woman that transcended age or sex — she was easy to like, untrammelled, somehow, by convention.

‘Swords?’ Satyrus asked Achilles while he bathed himself.

Achilles grinned. ‘I have a few.’

‘Practice?’ Satyrus asked. A bucket of cold water hit him from the side — Tegara tittered. He spluttered.

‘Happy to — but I’d like to see you work through some exercises first.’ He nodded.

Satyrus understood — no man wants to play at wooden swords with a stranger, who may not pull his blows or behave with decency. He nodded. After he bathed, and took oil from Achilles’ aryballos and anointed himself, he picked up a stick and began his own exercises — the six cuts and the two thrusts, the legwork from pankration, the arm blocks and the sword blocks — up and down in front of the well, until Achilles slapped his thigh.

‘So you’re a hoplomachos, eh? That’s what I get for asking, I guess.’ He shook his head. ‘Promise you won’t humiliate an old mercenary, eh?’

Satyrus caught an odd look on Tegara’s face. Her impish grin was late to her face when she caught his eye, leaving her looking oddly false.

‘I had good teachers,’ he said, as much to her as to Achilles.

‘You are an aristocrat,’ she said, without much kindness. Her implied comment was I thought you were a man.

She stalked off, head high.

‘And she’s taken agin’ ye as fast as she was for ye,’ Memnon said, coming down from the exedra. He shrugged. ‘Don’ be angry wi’ she. She’s the real owner here. She’s not had an easy life, like enow.’

Achilles nodded at Satyrus. ‘Our guest wants to play at the sword.’

Memnon looked surprised. ‘Well, well,’ he said.

The three of them walked out of the courtyard with half a dozen wooden swords under their arms, and two small Macedonian-style shields. Once they got to a handsome dell of turf below the olive orchard, Memnon dropped the gear he was carrying and sat down.

Satyrus chose a wooden sword he liked — shorter and a bit heavier than most of the rest, and wrapped his chlamys carefully around his arm.

Achilles nodded. ‘Let’s swear,’ he said. ‘No man will bear ill will into this ring of grass, nor take ill will out when he leaves, despite competition, error or injury. I swear this by Ares and by Athena, God and Goddess of War.’

The words were old-fashioned — Ionic Greek, like the Iliad. The oath itself made Satyrus happy, as if he was living in elder days. He repeated it, trying to match Achilles’ diction and pronunciation.

Achilles didn’t salute. Instead, he simply crouched. ‘Ready,’ he said.

Up close, he was big — too big for many of Satyrus’s tactics of domination. Satyrus was used to being bigger than most men in a fight, and Achilles topped him by a hand. Ajax, absent in the house, was bigger by a head.

‘Ready,’ Satyrus said.

He had expected a trick — an immediate leap, a lunge, some palaestra trick — but Achilles seemed to relax. He began to circle the dell, his footwork careful but not the trained dance steps of the gymnasium-trained man.

Satyrus didn’t react at first, deliberately facing Achilles’ initial orientation, allowing the other man to circle him …

Achilles launched a blow from his left — a high cut.

Satyrus stepped back out of range, and Achilles was already back on his guard. He took another circle step, and Satyrus changed his front in a single turning step, a fluid reorientation from front to back that placed Achilles in easy sword-reach, and Satyrus feinted at his cloak-arm, rolled his wrist, and cut low, but as he had expected, Achilles was a well-trained man, and he ignored the cut at his protected side and parried the real cut at the opening line.

They both smiled. It had been a short exchange with no real contact but Achilles now knew how precisely Satyrus could pull his blows, and Satyrus could feel how good Achilles’ balance was in close, and they both sidestepped diagonally left, opening the range.

There was more circling. The sun came through the trees only at one point, and Satyrus considered trying to orient his opponent into it, but it seemed pointless.

Achilles made some internal decision and chose to attack. He pivoted quickly and started a sword-foot forward attack, and Satyrus stepped into it, a tough call against a bigger man, isolated the attacker’s elbow with his cloak arm and kicked Achilles lightly just above the knee while keeping his sword ready to the real cut that came, as he expected, under his cloak — he pivoted on his own left foot, put his knee into the oncoming cut, and tapped Achilles on the head with his sword.

Achilles stepped back.

Satyrus fell into his guard, and saluted. ‘Hit to the knee,’ he said.

‘Ah, well,’ Achilles said. ‘Myself, I’m dead.’ He grinned. ‘To tell the truth, I expect you’d ha’ broken my knee with that kick, eh?’

Satyrus shrugged.

Achilles nodded. ‘I heard you fought the pankration, but it’s another thing to see it.’

Satyrus nodded. ‘Kicking in combat is dangerous — your leg is out where you can’t defend it. When men are in armour, with swords and spears — not much use, really, unless you are right inside.’

Achilles nodded.

They set again, and both men called ‘ready’.

Satyrus felt that it was only fair that he launch the next attack, and he launched a simple one, a rising snap cut that appeared to target the lower shield leg, rolled over into a high cut, and became a thrust to the (hopefully) open chest. It was one of his favourite moves, a routine he had practised for ten years.

Achilles baffled his feint and his whole intention by taking a long step back, out of range, as Satyrus tried to engage, and then the big man moved quickly forward and right, forcing Satyrus to turn and parry with his arm. Achilles played for his sword, trying for a grapple, and Satyrus responded with a strong, stiff arm, backed and cut; the other man caught his cut neatly on his arm and stabbed low, Satyrus blocked the low stab lower and tried to rotate his hips to isolate the sword for a disarm, and got a light smack in the side of his mouth, as Achilles’ fist just tapped him.

Satyrus stepped back, and nodded. ‘Good blow.’

Achilles looked happy. ‘Thanks,’ he said, amicably. ‘Ready?’

Satyrus nodded, and this time, Achilles was on him before he could draw breath, a flurry of blows, high, middle, and low.

Satyrus backed, and backed again, and then, his wits gathered, he struck out — cloak arm and then right foot kick. The moment he broke the other man’s rhythm, he lunged, a powerful step forward with his sword foot, a lightning transition from back foot to forefoot, from long-range cuts to being almost face to face, and his sword point was four inches above the other man’s groin.

Achilles jumped back, and he wasn’t grinning. ‘Hit,’ he said.

‘Got your measure,’ Memnon said.

Achilles came at him with another flurry of blows, this time faster — and stronger.

Satyrus was ready this time, met him body to body, and parried the second cut sword to sword — not a typical block, but a high counter-cut that slapped hard at the opposing sword and then cut down at the opponent’s wrist. But Achilles’ cut was a feint — the result was both men stepping back and rubbing their wrists.

‘Too hard,’ Satyrus said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Me, too. Takes two to fuck up that badly.’ Achilles had to sit down. Both of them had hit with roughly the speed of both arms hurling together.

Satyrus was clearly the less injured of the two, and he stood, rolling his wrist back and forth.

Memnon got to his feet. ‘Got enough in you to try a bout wi’ me, sir?’ he asked.

Satyrus nodded, and Memnon picked up a longer sword.

Achilles grunted, got to his feet and walked to the other side of the dell, cradling his wrist.

‘Broken?’ Satyrus asked. ‘I’m sorry-’

‘Bah,’ Achilles said. ‘My pride’s hurt worse than my wrist.’

Memnon said ready, and Satyrus answered, and they were off. They circled each other a long time — far longer than Satyrus and Achilles had circled. After some time, Memnon began making very cautious feints — always the same feint, leading with his left foot and cutting over his head at Satyrus’s sword side. By the time he’d done it for the tenth time, Satyrus had grown impatient — parrying on that side forced him to move his feet and arms in a way that annoyed his rips, at least, and it was a dull move — a move done entirely to measure him and to make him move.

Satyrus counter-cut at the wrist on the eleventh attack, timing to catch the instant after the launching of the feint.

Memnon pulled his feint, stepped sideways, and Satyrus turned to face him again, feeling a new twinge from his ribs.

Memnon gave a small smile, and launched a whole new attack — a left-right combination that started with his rolled chlamys arm thrusting hard, a straight punch to Satyrus’s chlamys, and then the black man stepped in — hard — and raised his sword. Suddenly the attack was the same attack he’d feinted so many times — and when Satyrus went to parry, his ribs screamed in sudden pain — and Memnon scored on him, touching him on the head cleanly right over his feeble counter-cut.

Satyrus stepped back, clutching his ribs. ‘Good hit,’ he spat.

Achilles shook his head. ‘Memnon is no gentleman,’ he said. ‘But he saw you favouring your ribs, and he went for you there. And you let him.’

Memnon took his sword while Satyrus sat heavily. ‘There’s no “fair” in a sword fight,’ he said. ‘But I din’t mean to hurt ye so bad.’

Satyrus took a deep breath — the pain was already better. ‘What you did was well done,’ he said.

Memnon grinned. ‘’Twas!’ he said. ‘Y’er a fine swordsman. Had to beat you fancy.’ He spat. ‘Cup o’ wine, lord?’

Satyrus drank wine with them, trying to suss them out. Achilles had tried to fight him in a palaestra fight — careful, scholarly. Memnon had ignored such conventions. He wondered what that said about them, since both were sell-swords, hired killers, mercenaries. Which was the more honest? Which was the real swordsman?

Satyrus wasn’t sure. But he knew his ribs hurt, and he knew that both men were good company, and that he’d rather have them at his back than across a shield wall.

‘How much to hire the four of you?’ Satyrus asked. ‘For, hmm, a year?’

Memnon laughed. Achilles glanced at him from under his heavy brow and raised an eyebrow. ‘Serious?’ he asked. ‘What’s the job?’

‘Bodyguards. For me.’ Satyrus shrugged. ‘I assume you’re trustworthy. For cash, paid down.’ He smiled.

Achilles smiled back. ‘A year? We work by the day — most of the time.’

Memnon dipped a piece of hard bread in olive oil. ‘When we’re broke, we rent out of Demetrios or Cassander for soldier’s wages,’ he said. ‘How much are we talking, here?’

Satyrus raised an eyebrow. ‘I don’t know. I’m not Croesus. What’s your daily rate?’

‘Jason gives us ten drachma a day, and expenses if we need equipment or horses,’ he said. ‘Double what a hoplite is paid, if he brings his own gear.’

Satyrus nodded. ‘And a bonus?’

Achilles shook his head. ‘Often, but not always. Sometimes the job comes with its own bonus. Kill a rich man …’ he said, and left the rest of the thought to tail away.

‘How long have the four of you been together?’ Satyrus asked.

Memnon looked away.

Achilles shook his head. ‘Not all that long, eh? Memnon only joined up, what, before the feast of Demeter, eh? It were just me an’ Odysseus — time out of mind. Years, anyway. Longer than we’ve any right to be alive. Ajax … well, we met him fighting against him, a few years back. Memnon here’s the latest recruit.’

‘He’ll raise an army in a hundred years or so,’ Memnon added. He laughed cautiously, the way he fought.

‘Well?’ Satyrus said. ‘If I pay your daily rate for a year, half in advance, for all four of you?’

Achilles raised an eyebrow again, an expression that made him look like a philosopher and not a warrior at all. ‘Have to ask the others.’ He nodded. ‘How dangerous?’

Satyrus shrugged. ‘I’ve been in six ship fights in four years,’ he said.

‘So … fucking dangerous,’ Achilles said. ‘Well, fair enough — at least you tell the truth.’ The man glanced at him. ‘Spear fightin’ is more real than sword. Just sayin’.’

Satyrus’s whole face hurt when he smiled, but he managed one. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But people get hurt-just playing with spear poles.’

Achilles nodded. ‘Try me tomorrow,’ he said.

Satyrus could see the man’s pride as a soldier had been hurt. After his experience with Polycrates, he was more sensitive to another man’s feelings. ‘I’ll try spears,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow.’ He yawned, cursed the pain in his cheek, and then tried again.

‘How long’s your contract with Jason?’ he asked. They picked up the swords and shields and started back to the house.

Achilles shrugged. ‘Haven’t seen any money yet,’ he admitted. ‘I assumed it was until Jason came to collect you. I don’t really want to linger too long here — folks saw you arrive. But I need to hear word from Odysseus before we move again.’

Satyrus chewed on that as he climbed the stairs of the old tower. He had time — too much time — to think, and he worried about the people in the village, and watched them walk about from the top of the tower — watched the steady flow of traffic up the flank of Kithaeron, and back down the valley of the Asopus — men and women with donkeys or just walking alone or in groups. Plataea wasn’t on the main trade route from Attika to Boeotia — that was the road from Thebes to Athens, over Parnassus — but this was the second most-travelled road, and Satyrus saw a potential spy in every traveller.

He also had time to worry about Abraham and Miriam. If Demetrios had tried to take him, he must not intend to release the other hostages. Satyrus spent a day with a borrowed wax tablet and a stylus, trying to work out what he knew of the attack on him and what it might mean.

If Demetrios had attacked him, on purpose, he should have used Polycrates as his tool, and done it at Polycrates’ house. Where Satyrus had been headed. The more Satyrus turned this logic over in his head, the less it seemed possible that any set of murderers could possibly have been hired so ineptly that they murdered a major ally of Demetrios — casually — as part of the seizure of a political opponent. The more so as a botched attempt — and it had been close — would have resulted in immediate military consequences. And perhaps it already had; Satyrus hadn’t considered it before, but the more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed that Apollodorus and his sister would have taken action by now.

On the other hand, if Demetrios’s lieutenants had botched their instructions — and such things happened all too frequently — then the other Rhodian hostages were either dead or under renewed threats, as the only hope Demetrios would have to keep Rhodes in check.

Satyrus drank cup after cup of the excellent well-water in the sweltering heat, watched the roads about the old house, and tried to work through all the different possibilities.

One that he couldn’t discount was that the attack had been sponsored by Cassander. He played with the idea, idly making dots with his stylus in the soft wax of his tablet. It was warm, and he was sleepy, and it was too easy to daydream instead about the length of Miriam’s body stretched against his …

Satyrus wondered if there was another man in the world as powerful as he who spent more time pining for women rather than simply mounting them. The slaves Achilles kept were clearly for the very purpose, and some had offered themselves in one way or another. The only one he fancied was Tegara, a free woman, who had something about her he admired, but she had not made herself available — far from it. Satyrus recognised that there was something to that — the unattainable was always to be preferred, he supposed.

He went up on the roof as the sun began to decline. He took a lyre he’d found in the main hall and tuned it, the old gut strings holding despite years of neglect, and he tried his scales and found them waiting for him. He played a simple tune — the opening lines of the Iliad, the way the rhapsodes played them. Thought about Anaxagoras.

Really, it was time he stopped being a prisoner of the attack, and took action himself. The obvious course was simple — woo Achilles, buy his services, and get to the Chersonese, where Melitta would be.

Down the valley, he saw a woman talking to a horseman. Horses weren’t common in Plataea. Something about her straight back and the carriage of her head alerted him. But the horseman walked his horse along with her for some distance, quite openly, and he lost interest.

The other option was to go to Demetrios.

It was, after all, what had brought him to mainland Greece — the opportunity to see Miriam and to discuss the release of the hostages. And now there was no better way for him to judge the man’s intentions — except for the price of being wrong.

It pleased his sense of action, though, and he began to weigh methods of providing for his own safety.

Now the horseman was mounted — well over towards Cithaeron. But he didn’t ride over the pass to Athens, rather, he rode west, and Satyrus dismissed him. A boyfriend, a local aristocrat — not that she seemed to like the breed. For surely the woman down at the bridge had been Tegara.

She didn’t meet his eye that night, at dinner, which she didn’t eat with the men, but merely supervised.

‘I think that it is time to move,’ Satyrus said. ‘Have you considered my offer?’

Satyrus was surprised when Ajax responded. He was the largest, and his face typically wore a look of deep and bovine stupidity.

Not when he spoke, however. ‘We like it,’ he said, and shrugged his giant shoulders. ‘But we await the views of Odysseus. We have sworn oaths — the view of one is the view of all.’

Satyrus nodded. ‘I understand,’ he said.

Achilles nodded. ‘I, too, think it is time to move. There were horsemen up towards Eleutherai today, and down at the bridge, as well.’

Satyrus nodded. ‘I saw them. Or rather, I saw one of them.’ He looked at Tegara, and had his suspicions confirmed. She looked away, and she was not a great dissimulator.

‘Tegara was speaking to one of the horsemen,’ Satyrus said quietly.

She stood taller. ‘Well?’ she said to Achilles. ‘What if I was? He was pretty enough, and asked me nicely the road to Corinth.’

Achilles looked at Satyrus.

Satyrus nodded. ‘He did ride off towards Corinth,’ he said.

Achilles gave her a long look. ‘Woman, you have a good life here,’ he said. ‘And we need you to run the house, so don’t …’ He shook his head.

She turned red, then white. ‘A good life, is it?’ she asked.

Satyrus rose. ‘I think we should be gone in the morning,’ he said.

Memnon nodded. ‘I agree. Demetrios is at Corinth, right?’ He looked at Tegara, and she glared at him.

Ajax swore. ‘Y’er crazed, woman! This is our business. You ha’ no right.’ He looked at Achilles, who had her by the arm. ‘The man is right — we ought an’ be gone. But then Odysseus won’t know where to fin’ us.’ He glared right back at Tegara. ‘An’ we can’t exactly tell her.’

‘Kill her?’ Achilles said wearily.

They were such pleasant men, in a bluff, soldier-like way, that Satyrus almost missed the moment where their professional needs overbalanced any pretence of morality. Tegara was crying — not dramatically, but simply standing still, sobbing quietly, and Achilles had his sword at her throat.

‘Wait!’ Satyrus said. ‘Why not ask her what she did? And why? And then … Gods, gentlemen, why kill her?’

Achilles looked puzzled. ‘She crossed us,’ he said. ‘It’s on her face.’

‘She’s just a woman,’ Memnon added. ‘She’s got no one to come back on us.’

Satyrus stood up. ‘If you’re working for me,’ he said, ‘then I forbid you to kill her. As long as she tells us who she told and why.’

She drew herself up. ‘You lot act like lords,’ she said. ‘I am a woman of Plataea, and you are robbers, thieves, and war-whores. You think I like watching what you do?’ She shrugged. Slumped. ‘I think they’re Demetrios’s men. Cavalrymen.’ She looked at Satyrus. ‘They was looking for him before you lot got back — except that they called him the “King of the Bosporus”.’

Satyrus nodded. ‘I am the king,’ he said.

Achilles hit her so hard she crumpled to the floor. ‘I guess that I am working for you, lord,’ he said. ‘So I won’t kill her — though I think you’re being a soft fool.’

‘You’re hardly the first to think so,’ Satyrus said. ‘Ethics matter. How matters, not just where and why.’ He stepped over, looked at the woman, and sighed. ‘If we ride now, can we get clear?’

‘Head for Delphi,’ Memnon said. ‘I’ll go up the mountain and hide — no bunch of gentlemen-cavalry will find me. I’ll find Odysseus.’

Then they were all business — Satyrus wolfed down the rest of his meal, having long experience with riding hard. He ran to the top floor of the tower, filled a leather bag with clothes and pins, a comb — left the lyre.

The courtyard was dark, even with torches lit, but Memnon took him by the hand.

‘Ajax says we’re not to light anything else, or watchers’ll know what’s afoot,’ he said. ‘Here’s your horse.’

Achilles was already mounted. ‘I’m going down across Asopus, and cross country to Thebes,’ he said. ‘Then north to Delphi. I expect to make it there in two days unless we have to hide.’

Memnon gave a rough salute, his dark skin glinting in the fitful torchlight like polished iron. ‘I’ll find you.’

Then they were away, down the hill, picking their way carefully along the road in moonless darkness. The stars were like distant lamps on the clear night, and the sound of insects was only drowned by the gurgle of the river as they rode to the bridge.

Achilles leaned over and handed Satyrus a spear. ‘I don’t see anyone on the bridge,’ he said, ‘but fuck, there could be twenty men behind that house and I wouldn’t see them.’

He rode forward first, and Satyrus followed him, feeling freer with a good cavalry spear in his fist. The feeling lasted until their horses’ unshod hooves were ringing on the stone bridge, and then Achilles stopped his horse and cursed, filling the narrow bridge, and Satyrus glanced back to find that there were at least a dozen horsemen closing in behind him.

He couldn’t see past Achilles, but even over the sound of water he could hear the sounds of a troop of horse — sounds familiar from childhood.

‘Boss …’ Achilles turned in his saddle. He had a sword in his hand, but it wasn’t pointed at Satyrus. ‘I think we’ve fucked away your talents of silver, I’m sorry to say.’ He shrugged. ‘We’re surrounded. Demetrios’s men, I’d say.’

Satyrus looked back again. ‘Damn.’

Achilles shrugged. ‘To be honest, it’s probably our fault, but I’d rather not die for it. Will you surrender?’

Satyrus patted the blade at his side. He balanced the spear in his hand. The horsemen behind him were sitting — not calm, either. ‘Probably not,’ he said.

Achilles nodded. ‘Try talking to the officer. Look, lord, he probably has a hundred men and they’ve been all around us since afternoon.’

‘Satyrus of Tanais?’ called an officer. He was tall and blond. Satyrus could remember him from Demetrios’s staff. His armour was worth the value of the farm on the hill, or more.

Satyrus nodded. ‘Here I am. I have a truce with your master. Why are you here?’

The officer’s grin showed obvious relief. ‘Lord, I’m so damned glad to find you I could burst. Lord, we’re here to protect you. Thanks to all the gods you’re alive.’

Satyrus looked around. ‘This is not what I expected,’ he said to Achilles. He looked at the sell-sword. ‘You didn’t sell me yourself?’ he asked quietly.

Achilles frowned. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Bad for my reputation, something like that.’

‘Would you four ride with me? If I went with them?’ Satyrus pointed at the Aegema. ‘My offer is still good.’

‘Escort?’ Achilles asked.

‘If he agrees to it, and leaves us all armed, I learn something,’ Satyrus said. ‘To be honest, if you and he can’t agree to that — I might as well fall on my sword. I’m not going to be taken again. And for whatever reason, I trust you.’

Achilles nodded.

Satyrus called down the bridge, ‘I’ll come with you if I can take my escort — armed and mounted — with me. I keep my weapons, and he keeps his.’

The officer — Philip? Amyntas? All the Macedonians had the same set of names — nodded eagerly. ‘Yes, yes. Anything you like, lord, only come to Corinth with me.’

Achilles shrugged. ‘Memnon’s sharp enough. He’ll figure out we was took, and come, or not.’

‘We’re coming in, then,’ Satyrus called. He loosened his sword in the sheath, and rode down the bridge behind Achilles.

No one grabbed his bridle or made other aggressive motions, which was a good sign. Satyrus rode right up to the officer. ‘I’m Satyrus of Tanais,’ he said. ‘This is my bodyguard, Achilles. He’ll be wanting to knock at the ferryman’s door, here. You won’t stop him, will you?’

‘Amyntas son of Philip,’ the man said, pulling his helmet off and hanging it from a web of equipment behind his saddle with the ease of long practice. ‘You’ve just earned me a promotion, lord, and no mistake. Rumour is men are trying to kill you — Demetrios addressed us himself, offered a reward to find you.’

Achilles dismounted at the old ferry house, where the ferry had been before Alexander ordered the bridge built. The old man who lived there was wide awake and terrified — every peasant in the village, if not all of Plataea, had to know that the countryside was full of cavalrymen that night. But he accepted Achilles’ message, promised that his eldest would take the news up to the Middle Hill Farm in the morning, and that he’d send another son up the mountain. Satyrus gave him a silver owl, and the man managed a smile.

And then they were away, into the dark.

They surprised Satyrus by riding due west — not the straightest way to Corinth, by any means, and very quickly they picked up the Oeroe, at first merely a dry gully on their right, but soon enough a gurgle of water. They stopped once to water their horses, and again at Kreusis — a sleepy village in starlight, with four triremes lying off the beach.

‘They want you bad,’ Achilles said.

Satyrus could only nod, his mouth dry.

They left their horses with the cavalrymen, and the centarch, Amyntas, came in person. ‘No point in pleasing the king if you don’t get the reward in person,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Please come aboard with me.’

‘You’re not acting as if you’re going to kill me in the morning,’ Satyrus said.

Amyntas shook his head. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t think so,’ he said, in a voice that was not completely reassuring. But he led them up onto the trireme, and then he lay down by the oarsman’s bench and went straight to sleep.

As the sun rose over the Gulf of Corinth, it revealed the ancient city and the ongoing siege in stages, so that Satyrus saw the Acrocorinth and the defenders’ citadel first, kissed by the lips of Dawn as she ascended from her lascivious couch to brighten the day, or so some of the oarsmen were asserting in the crudest terms.

The sun caught the temple at the peak of the citadel first, and then the walls, which looked, at the distance of ten stades, as if they were utterly impregnable, towering at an unimaginable height over the plain below, and the rising sun only illuminated the besiegers’ works and camp last. But Demetrios’s camp was vast, covering the plain below Corinth, and he had not one but two siege lines surrounding the whole of the city. From the height of the stern platform, Satyrus could see that Demetrios had two squadrons — one in the Gulf of Corinth, and another blocking the Aegean beaches to the south, so that, with two military camps, twenty stades of earthen walls, and two fleets, he had the defenders completely blockaded; a difficult feat against mighty two-beached Corinth.

Achilles was as awake as he, and stood at his shoulder. ‘The king has them whenever he wants them,’ he said. ‘A strong place ain’t no guarantee, ’gainst the besieger.’

Satyrus had to disagree. ‘We had less to defend at Rhodes,’ he said. ‘And we held him.’

Achilles nodded. ‘And well done, I’m sure. But you had citizens with their lives and fortunes on the line. Prepalaus — that’s Cassander’s strategos in Corinth — he’s got mercenaries, and too many of ’em are not worth goat shit. You can fertilise a field with goat shit.’

Satyrus had to laugh. It made him feel less tense, but his side hurt, his shoulders ached, and his stomach was flipping every minute. And it hurt to laugh — hurt his ribs and his cheek.

Achilles expelled a long fart, and gave a rueful grin. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t like this.’

Satyrus shrugged. ‘Me neither. We may be about to die for a misunderstanding.’ He rolled his shoulders. ‘Waiting is worse than fighting,’ he said.

‘Any time,’ Achilles admitted.

It was half an hour before the ship was landed. The crew beached it sloppily, stern first but without much care, and an oarsman leapt over the side and ran up the beach towards the military camp, clearly the herald of Satyrus’s arrival.

Satyrus didn’t have a high opinion of the rowers or the trierarch or their care for the ship, and then he was jumping into the surf, low gurgling waves a few fingers high. The three of them walked up the beach.

‘The best sign,’ Satyrus said openly to Achilles, ‘is that they’ve left us alone with young Amyntas, who’s really quite well born. I assume that if they meant us harm, they’d have met the ship with an escort.’

The sun was well up, and Achilles caught Satyrus’s glance even as he started to speak. Amyntas whirled, intending either to protest or to threaten, but Satyrus took the sword out of his hand and Achilles had his sword at the Macedonian’s neck so smoothly that it looked as if the three of them were practising.

‘No offence intended,’ Satyrus said. ‘But I’m not eager to be executed by Demetrios.’

Amyntas was purple. ‘He’s not going to execute you!’ he said.

Satyrus nodded. He exchanged looks with Achilles. Now — a little late, perhaps — there were twenty soldiers coming down the beach from the camp, led by a man in ornate armour with a leopard skin over his shoulders.

Satyrus headed up the beach. ‘Demetrios!’ he shouted.

The king of half the world laughed. ‘Satyrus, you are the limit. But alive.’

‘Your cavalryman found me — trapped me very neatly, so no shame to him. But he’s the only bargaining counter I have right now.’ Satyrus motioned over his shoulder, where Satyrus was confident that Achilles had the other man by the throat.

‘He’s my father’s sister’s youngest,’ Demetrios admitted. ‘So I suppose that I want him back.’

Satyrus took another step forward. ‘As I say, he took me neatly enough.’

Demetrios nodded. ‘Good for him, then. He’s earned a reward — even if he did get himself captured on his own beach.’

Satyrus well remembered the bantering voice and the hard steel will behind it. ‘Listen, then, lord. I will hand him over with apologies as soon as you swear to me that you mean me no harm, that you take an oath to the gods that you will not harm me or cause me to be harmed, nor that you yourself have attempted such since the siege. Swear that, and all the swords will vanish.’

Demetrios smiled — an angry smile. ‘Always you seek to force me to oaths, Satyrus. An oath makes a man tributary to the gods. I seek to be with the gods.’

‘Swear by Styx, if that pleases you,’ Satyrus said.

Demetrios looked at him. ‘If I kill you right here on this beach, for the seizure of one of my officers, I could thumb my nose at your sister and her allies.’

Satyrus lifted his spear. ‘If you had a thumb left,’ he said.

Demetrios nodded curtly. ‘You are a cocky son of a bitch. Very well, I swear — by Styx, on which the gods themselves swear, on my living father and on my own dead, that I mean you no harm now, nor ever have since the end of the siege of Rhodos, nor will, unless you turn on me. And now you swear the same.’

Satyrus said, ‘I swear by Kineas my father, and Arimnestos of Plataea, and all my family back to Herakles, that I intend you no harm, unless you turn on me, or we face each other on the battlefield.’

Demetrios nodded. ‘And I the same — that’s a clever addition, and I add it to my oath. You’re a clever man. May I have my young scapegrace back?’

Satyrus motioned to Achilles, who released the Macedonian. He glared at Satyrus. ‘I was perfectly courteous to you, my lord.’

Satyrus raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘You are Macedonian, are you not? I learned these habits from your kin.’

Demetrios nodded. ‘I hate walking on sand,’ he said. ‘My best riding boots are full of it now. But you do amuse. This siege had begun to bore me to death, and there’s months left in it. Will you join me for a meal?’

Satyrus sheathed his own sword. ‘With pleasure,’ he said.

The twenty elite hypaspists closed in around him as soon as he sheathed his sword, and for a moment he froze, but Demetrios stood at his elbow, completely relaxed.

‘I had a pair of Cretan archers on you the whole time,’ he said.

Satyrus looked up the beach and saw the two men unstringing their bows. ‘Ah,’ he said.

‘I really mean you no harm,’ he went on. ‘Your sister has bitched my spring campaign completely on your behalf, moving my third fleet out of the Pontus.’ He looked at Satyrus. ‘It was Cassander, cousin. Not me. A woman — Phiale — acting for him. My spies tell me that it was planned at the wedding of your former ally, Heraklea, to that fool Lysimachos.’

Satyrus winced.

They continued to walk up the beach. ‘Oh, I don’t think Amastris or Lysimachos had a thing to do with it,’ Demetrios said. ‘Not that I wish them anything but ill, but Amastris served me well enough against Rhodes and elsewhere. A moment,’ said the besieger, and he turned away to speak to a man in plain armour — an engineer, as it proved, who gave his report on the progress of a ramp of earth going against the walls of Corinth.

Satyrus turned to Achilles. ‘We’re not at threat.’

Achilles looked around. ‘We’ll see,’ he said. ‘But at least we’re not going to be stuck full of arrows in the dawn.’ He grinned at Satyrus. ‘So far, I don’t think much of working for you.’

Satyrus sat on a rock and cleared the sand from his sandals. A hypaspist offered him water, and he took some.

Demetrios returned. ‘Let’s eat. I’m not always fond of getting up this early, but the promise of food can lure me from my rest.’

They ate on the terrace of a farm that overlooked the Gulf of Corinth.

‘I could envy this man,’ Demetrios said as he dipped some golden honey bread in olive oil and honey.

‘The farmer?’ Satyrus asked.

Demetrios nodded. ‘This is how a man should live.’

‘But you wish to be a god?’ Satyrus asked.

Demetrios nodded, his mouth full. ‘I am a man still,’ he admitted. ‘I like the honey bread, the oil, the feel of a breast under my fingers. Hah — if the stories are to be believed, the gods like all those things themselves. But the tale of Herakles has all the clues, does it not? A man may become a god.’ He looked at Satyrus, snapped his fingers, and a slave came to refill his cup. ‘You think me mad,’ he said.

Satyrus shook his head ruefully. ‘Becoming a god has never interested me in the least,’ he admitted. ‘But I should like to be a hero.’ He surprised himself with his own temerity. But it was true.

‘Perhaps that is why I like you,’ Demetrios said. ‘Many men humour me — few enough meet me on my own ground. I intend to assault the suburb at dawn tomorrow. Will you come and swing your sword beside me? It would please me,’ he added, as if this was the most important thing in the world.

Satyrus shook his head. ‘Not my fight, lord. And men might say that I had changed my feathers — that I was fighting against my own allies.’

Demetrios laughed. ‘Cassander wants you dead. He’s no ally. Your ally is Farm Boy — Ptolemy of Aegypt, and he and Cassander are no friends at all. But for an accident of history, my father and Ptolemy would be allies, and then the rest of this riff-raff would whistle for a victory and never get it.’ He sipped wine. ‘I will allow you to question Neron, my spymaster. Perhaps he can satisfy you.’

Satyrus shrugged, held out his cup and got more fruit juice — delicious stuff, sweet as nectar. ‘I came to deliver a grain shipment, as I promised. And to see my friend Abraham. Let me offer this. If you release Abraham to me, I’ll stand by your side tomorrow.’

Demetrios looked pained. ‘Ah, the Rhodian hostages,’ he said uneasily. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘When your sister threatened my shipping, I sent my hostages away.’

Satyrus sat up. ‘Where?’ he demanded.

Demetrios lay back. ‘Don’t take that tone with me,’ he said. ‘They’re gone to Ephesus, where I can keep them out of plots — closer to Rhodos, closer to home. I am not a harsh man. But I wanted to let you and your sister see that they were in my power.’

‘The treaty specified Athens,’ Satyrus said, suddenly worried. The whole purpose of keeping the hostages at Athens was so that they could not be used for further bargaining. Although Demetrios was powerful in Athens, the citizens there had their own opinions and the ability to keep some neutrality. Ephesus, on the other hand, was an Antigonid possession.

‘Yes, well, the treaty didn’t allow your sister to close the Pontus against my ships, and let bloody Lysimachos take a third of his men into Asia,’ Demetrios said, suddenly angry. ‘Why do I tolerate you?’

Satyrus realised that the besieger was enraged. Challenged. ‘All I want,’ he said, ‘is for my friends to be safe and my trade uninterrupted. With Rhodes and Alexandria and Athens. I am not the one attempting to conquer others.’

Fickle as the seasons, Demetrios was suddenly playful. ‘Is that what passes for rhetoric in the Euxine?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps if I married your sister, we might be allies?’

Satyrus almost spluttered his juice.

Demetrios slapped his thigh. ‘See? I am not a dull companion. Come and storm the breach with me tomorrow, and let us see what we can arrange.’

Satyrus was on the point of blank refusal when Achilles leaned forward. Satyrus hadn’t even seen the man enter the room.

‘Do what he asks and then crave a boon,’ Achilles suggested. ‘Act as if he’s bigger than you.’ He was back in his place behind the couches in a wink.

‘Your bodyguard?’ Demetrios asked. ‘A noted ruffian.’

‘My only advisor, at the moment,’ Satyrus said. ‘Very well. I’ll go up the breach tomorrow.’

Demetrios changed — again. He seemed to grow larger, and he rose to stand, cup in hand. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is wonderful. Let us make it — memorable!’