Force of Kings

7

An hour before dawn. The air was lighter — warmer, the promise of a deadly hot day. In armour — borrowed armour, and not particularly well-fitted — Satyrus was already hot.

‘You need to pay me more,’ Achilles commented. He swung his arms again, annoyed by the shape of the shoulders on the yoke of his borrowed cuirass. ‘This is war — a breach assault? People die like sheep when a lion gets into the pen, in an assault.’

‘Done one before?’ Satyrus asked. Demetrios had been lavish in his offerings of weapons and armour — and since it was a matter of life and death, Satyrus was taking his time picking a sword.

It’s odd, he thought, that in the inn, I took the only sword to hand and grew to like it, but offered all these beautiful blades, I’m unable to choose one, much less enjoy it. Socrates would have something to say — and Philokles, too, I imagine. He had a flash of Philokles, standing in the pre-dawn light at Gaza, silent in the face of coming battle. Satyrus had seen battles, now — on land and at sea, and a year of fighting at Rhodes that left him weary. The thrill — the simple, youthful rush of eudaimonia, a frisson of fear and lust for glory — it wasn’t there. Fine weapons and beautiful armour were expressions of his status, not tools of his trade. He smiled.

He wasn’t even decently nervous.

He picked up a magnificent sword, Chalkidian, with beautifully back-swept edges from a wicked, and very prosaic, armour-piercing point. The grip was ivory, the fittings gold-embellished bronze, and the scabbard would buy an inn in Attika, or a farm in Plataea. It was sharp as a barber’s razor, the lobes of the leaf thin and vicious, with a heavy spine that ran down into the point.

Even through his lack of interest, the sword was good. It fitted his hand — the balance was better than his father’s long machaira, and that had always seemed to him the best sword he’d ever handled.

He shrugged, pulled the sword belt over his right shoulder and drew the sword, wincing when his too-small armour pinched at his right bicep on the cross-draw. ‘Where’s the slave?’ he asked Achilles, who went out of their tent — an enormous tent of red linen, and Satyrus had to wonder what Macedonian officer was sleeping under his cloak and bitter about it — and Satyrus heard his voice.

Two Persian slaves came in and bowed low.

‘I have chosen weapons,’ Satyrus said. He raised his arms. ‘All of the armour is too small. I need a bigger thorax, even if it is plain leather or undecorated linen.’

The slaves helped him out of his armour. The older slave bowed again. ‘A thousand apologies, lord. We will return with better armour.’

Achilles grinned and raised his arms, too. ‘I like this game. I want mine larger around, with a smaller yoke, and covered in gold. With jewels.’

The Persian bowed. ‘Lord, it shall be as you wish.’ He looked weary. Who wouldn’t, in the semi-dark before dawn?

Slaves came with torches, and set them in holders all around the portico in front of the tent, and more slaves came with a table, and they set it with gold and silver vessels — cups, ewers, plates, a huge platter. Wine appeared, and fruit, and good bread, fresh from the ovens, and olive oil, honey and milk and small onion sausages, and fresh grilled anchovies.

The Persians returned, each like Thetis bringing the armour of Achilles from Hephaeston in their eagerness to satisfy him.

Achilles laughed. ‘I think that Demetrios fancies you,’ he said.

Satyrus chose an unadorned bronze thorax and tried it on. The fit was close — perhaps a little tight, but the armholes were large enough and he could move his arms freely. He raised his shoulders, thrust with his legs. His ribs hurt, but he could fight.

‘I’ll take this,’ he said.

Achilles was a larger man yet, but they fitted him on the third try.

‘Had I known the kind of party I was going to, I’d have brought the right clothes,’ he said.

Satyrus dipped fresh bread in olive oil and took a bite. He was finding it surprisingly easy to eat.

‘I’m usually far more … worried … before a fight,’ he confessed. ‘I feel odd. Unconcerned.’

‘You want to watch that,’ Achilles said. ‘Fear is what keeps a man alive.’

Satyrus nodded. It was lighter outside, and a large body of men was moving through the half-light just beyond the ropes of his enormous tent. He walked around the end to get a better look, and found himself face to face with a file of heavily armoured men.

‘Make way for the king!’ one of the men said. When Satyrus did not hurry to obey, the man raised his spear and shoved …

At air. Satyrus backed, swung aside on one foot, caught the spearhead, and pulled, disarming the man.

‘Stop!’ Demetrios ordered. ‘Satyrus — I’ve come to share your breakfast.’

The soldier glared at Satyrus.

Satyrus handed him his spear. ‘That sort of thing may work in Asia,’ he said, ‘but in Greece, someone might use your skin to keep crows off their crops.’

Demetrios nodded. ‘I tell them all the time. I want the Greeks to love me, and my hypaspists want them to hate me.’

‘We protect you, lord!’ the man protested.

Slaves appeared behind the king, bearing braziers on which they cooked more fish, there was fresher bread, and fruit juice.

Satyrus ate a plate of anchovies and drank pomegranate juice, a luxury even by the standards of the King of the Bosporons. ‘I envy you this,’ he said.

‘I might be facile, and suggest that if we were allies you could share it every day,’ Demetrios said.

‘Is this how you wooed Amastris?’ Satyrus asked, only half joking.

Demetrios shook his head. ‘A very attractive woman with a very attractive sea-port.’ He took a mouthful of olive paste. ‘I didn’t seduce her. Not for lack of trying. It was her damned spymaster — he apparently counselled her to keep me at arm’s length. Excellent advice. A very, very dangerous man.’

Satyrus smiled. ‘Stratokles of Athens? Very dangerous indeed, lord. On that, we can agree.’

Demetrios snapped his fingers. ‘Neron?’ he said.

A tall, thin Syrian came forward. He was well-enough formed, but his limbs were long and they gave him a vaguely simian look. He had a bushy black beard and bleak eyes.

Neron bowed. ‘Satyrus of Tanais,’ he said. ‘It is a great pleasure to see you in the flesh, after reading so many reports about you. My master here delights in stories about you. You keep me busy.’

Against his inclinations, Satyrus liked the man — his wit spoke well for his mind. ‘A pleasure, sir,’ Satyrus said, taking his hand.

‘Does everyone like you, Satyrus?’ Demetrios asked. ‘How wearying it must be for your friends.’

Satyrus didn’t have an answer for that. He shrugged.

‘Ask Neron your questions,’ Demetrios asked.

‘What difference will that make?’ Satyrus asked. ‘You might have told him to tell me anything.’

Demetrios rolled his eyes and went on eating.

‘Who paid to have me taken at Athens?’ Satyrus asked.

Neron bowed to Demetrios. ‘May I eat as well, lord?’ he asked, and when Demetrios inclined his head impatiently, the spy took a cup of wine and began to pile a silver plate with fresh fish.

‘You know Phiale of Alexandria?’ Neron asked.

‘Very well,’ Satyrus answered.

Neron smiled unpleasantly. ‘Many do, to their regret.’ He shrugged. ‘Women who sell their bodies are seldom nice or comfortable people to know — and always bad agents.’

Satyrus raised an eyebrow. ‘How very Socratean of you. But I knew that Phiale was an agent in my taking — I spoke to her.’

‘Ahh!’ Neron said. He glanced at his master with a certain weary tolerance. ‘Sometimes the most difficult source of information I have is my own lord, who does not always share everything he should.’

Satyrus nodded.

‘Amastris of Heraklea was wedded some weeks ago,’ Neron said. ‘At her wedding, to the best of my information, Cassander arranged the murder of Stratokles of Athens. You know him? A gifted man in my line.’

‘Your rival, perhaps?’ Satyrus asked.

‘Hmm. Not, I think, a player at my level, my lord, but only because of his ridiculous loyalty to Athens — to an Athens which hasn’t existed for a hundred years. Perhaps I offend you with my frankness?’ Neron sipped his wine, added more water.

‘Far from it. And yet, I assume you are similarly loyal to your master?’ Satyrus asked. The discourse was barbed — he wanted to show his own teeth.

‘Loyal enough, in these dark times,’ Neron answered. ‘At any rate, the murder of Stratokles was botched.’

‘I am surprised at myself, but I’m glad to hear it.’ Satyrus had to laugh.

Neron answered him with a gleam of teeth. ‘How remarkable, my lord, that those are my exact feelings. Stratokles has been a great help to me and a desperate enemy, and the world would seem emptier if he were to be swept from the board.’ He looked around. ‘So far, everything I’ve said is available information to any merchant. This is not. Lysimachos, Cassander, and envoys from Seleucus and Ptolemy met. They discussed things. Lysimachos met Cassander privately, as well. They discussed different things.’ Neron shrugged. ‘My master, as you call him, has told me to be direct with you, and I will be, as far as our interests converge — but you will pardon me if I note that you are not really our friend, and your friends are most definitely our enemies?’

‘And misleading me to sow confusion among your enemies is too tempting?’ Satyrus asked.

Neron looked disappointed. ‘Amateurs play these pointless games. I’m sharing information.’

Demetrios nodded from across the table. Slaves brought him a chair and he sat. ‘Satyrus, listen to me. I aim to be king — absolute king — of the world. I need men — men like you — to trust me. If you catch Neron in a lie today, tell me, and I will have him killed, despite all his service to me, because if men like you won’t trust me, my cause is doomed. Understand? And my cause — to which I seek to win you — is the cause of justice, good government, a single empire from world edge to world edge, with courts and city states and philosophers, where a merchant or a scholar can travel from India to the Gates of Herakles without fear of pirates or robbers or tolls.’

Satyrus frowned — because Demetrios made a good argument. And because, unless Demetrios was a magnificent liar, he seemed utterly earnest — the way a man who wanted to be a god had to be. Single-minded to the point of … insanity, or godhood.

‘Ask your questions, and don’t be petty minded,’ Demetrios said.

Satyrus drank a whole cup of fruit juice. ‘Cassander and Lysimachos,’ he prompted.

Neron shook his head at Demetrios. ‘Suffice it to say that they discussed matters of strategy. My master makes no secret of his intention to drive Cassander first from mainland Greece, and then from Macedon. Cassander wants Lysimachos in Asia, against Antigonus. Lysimachos would prefer to stay in Thrace and tax his Thracians.’ Neron nodded. ‘For a minor player, Lysimachos is wise, cautious and able. He has survived two major military defeats — the mark of a truly able commander. He refused to allow your murder when Cassander proposed it — he said that he owed you for support in former years.’

‘While he married my Amastris,’ Satyrus said, with more bitterness than he had known he felt.

‘More an act of statecraft than lust, I suspect,’ Demetrios said. ‘But you understand, his possession of Heraklea — and he has possessed it, just as fully as he has no doubt possessed Amastris’s welcoming body — and your sister’s expulsion of my ships from the Pontus have placed me in an impossible position, as Lysimachos has moved almost half of his army across the Euxine into Asia, to the great discomfort of my father.’ Demetrios rose to his feet, resplendent in armour of gold. Behind his chair, the sun was ready to rise — Dawn was coming out of her bed over the ocean. ‘We have an assault to make. And afterwards — after we have swung our swords together — I hope that we can sit together as friends, and I can convince you that my side is the side of arete.’ He accepted a purple cloak from a slave and slung it around his shoulders.

Neron leaned over. ‘But Cassander insisted, and in the end Lysimachos accepted your death in exchange for naval support from Cassander, which he has not received, and a free hand in the Euxine, where he intends to be king after you. These, lord, are your allies.’

Satyrus raised an eyebrow. ‘You have given me much to think about while I kill men who have done nothing to offend me,’ he said. ‘Despite your protestations and those of the king, you’ll pardon me if I don’t automatically accept that my allies are hot to betray me.’

Neron bowed. ‘You would be both naive and inhuman if you thought otherwise,’ Neron said. ‘But I have told you the truth as I know it.’

Satyrus slung his sword over his shoulder and picked up the shield he’d chosen — not a real aspis, but a smaller Macedonian shield, a circle three spans and a little in diameter, with the star of Macedon in gold.

He and Demetrios walked out from the tent lines, crossing the horse pickets and walking past thousands of waiting men, slaves bringing water, men currying horses, women washing. The hypaspists closed around them when the crowds were thick, but otherwise Demetrios appeared to stroll through his army with the freedom of a philosopher walking through the Athenian agora. No man approached him — there appeared to be some sort of rule — but he would stop to address soldiers, even slaves, and their obedience was as immediate as their bows were profound.

It was all very un-Greek.

‘He’s very comfortable with slaves,’ Achilles murmured, at his shoulder.

Satyrus thought that it was a very astute observation.

Two long bowshots from the walls, the ramp to the outworks of the suburbs began. A battery of siege engines squatted behind elaborate mounds of earth, gravel, stone, and wood. Enormous wicker baskets, filled with loose stones and sand or earth, covered the batteries. Trenches were dug both in front of the walls and behind them. Newer works were narrow and low — older works were deep, with high walls and carefully terraced interiors reinforced with heavy wooden beams.

Thousands — possibly tens of thousands — of slaves laboured like ants on the works. Men dug earth, women carried baskets of earth on their heads, children wove baskets to carry more earth or to act as forms for engineering. Everywhere that Satyrus looked — everywhere — the siege was prosecuted with a massive labour force.

Demetrios smiled. ‘Have you ever seen the like?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Satyrus said. ‘At Rhodes. Or had you forgotten?’

Demetrios was clearly put out. ‘Fine, then. But it’s different when you are the prime mover. Who could prosecute a siege like this and not feel like a god? I snap my fingers, and this happens. I could order the very mountain reduced — and it would be done.’

‘Hmm,’ Satyrus said. He had been given a long spear, a heavy dory, and he didn’t like it — liked it less and less as he carried it. Still, Demetrios had one, and he supposed it was the rule. On ship, he carried a pair of longche, heavy javelins.

The ramp stretched away in front of him, filling his vision, and his usual nerves had finally begun. His hands began to shake.

‘You are not impressed by my slave army?’ Demetrios asked.

Satyrus rammed the saurauter of his spear into the earth, took a handful of sand, rubbed his hands to get the sweat off, and drew his sword.

‘I thank you for the sword. It is excellent,’ Satyrus said.

Demetrios beamed. ‘Ahh! I can please you, then. Why do you like it?’

Satyrus shrugged, caught himself grinning at the weapon. ‘It is superb,’ he said. ‘Beautiful to look at, perfectly balanced, and not too gaudy.’

‘It was made for me,’ Demetrios said. ‘Brought by an embassage, I think. Wear it in health. Are you ready?’

Satyrus nodded.

Demetrios motioned to the hypaspist commander. Satyrus noticed then that the commander had been in conversation with Neron — and that Neron slipped away quickly.

The hypaspist officer walked over. At a sign from Demetrios, he signalled by raising his spear, and the engines began to launch their projectiles with a whip-crack as their casting arms struck the retaining beams and the long slings opened. They were five-talent engines, and Satyrus watched as they cast and saw their projectiles raise puffs of powdered stone when they struck the towers at the top of the breach. He had the strangest feeling, just for a moment — the feeling that this was predestined, that he had done this before or seen it in a dream, overlaid with the feeling that he was about to assault himself — that he would find himself standing with the defenders.

‘Lord?’ the hypaspist captain asked him. ‘Will you stand to the right of the king, and your man in the rank behind you?’

‘Breeze is perfect,’ Demetrios said.

Satyrus turned to look at him. ‘Perfect how?’ he asked.

‘A little something my engineers have come up with since Rhodes. I like to fancy that if we’d had it, I’ve have taken the city.’ He turned to a slave and took what appeared to be a scarf.

The sun was just getting a rim above the edge of the sea, and it was already hot. Satyrus was perspiring inside his armour. He had no interest in a scarf.

‘Best take one,’ the king said.

Satyrus smelled smoke. He stepped out of the ranks and looked around, and there they were — thousands of bundles of green brush, the fires under them just licking at the foliage. Satyrus had taken the pile for another entrenchment.

‘The smoke will cover us all the way in,’ Demetrios said. ‘Wear a scarf.’

Satyrus took one from the slave. He noted that most of the rank and file hypaspists had them on already, making them look like a regiment of hill bandits. Most of them had magnificent Thracian-style helmets with elaborate cheek-plates fitted like faces, some with heavy beards and moustaches in black paint, enamel, or blackened silver — or even bright gold. The scarves vanished as they buckled the cheek-plates down.

Satyrus pulled down his own cheek-plates. He had a simple Attic helmet, a light thing of tinned bronze with an ordinary plume of red and white horsehair — nothing like the elaborate horsehair coifs worn by the veterans around him.

Sealed in his helmet, Satyrus’s vision was limited to a few degrees off the centreline — his peripheral vision was almost completely lost. And the damp scarf was stifling his breath. The cuirass he had chosen was slightly too small, and now it seemed like a torture device, constricting his lungs even as he tried to wrench air through the damned scarf — and the smell of smoke was everywhere.

Why am I doing this? he asked himself. There was no easy answer.

The ramp stretched away, apparently to the edge of the heavens. It was almost a stade long, and rose ten times the height of a man. The first two-thirds were well surfaced in carefully laid turf, but the last third looked like loose dirt.

And then the breeze took the smoke and tossed it forward, and he couldn’t see anything.

Arrows were beginning to come down from the battlements on the suburbs, and bigger, more deadly projectiles came from higher on the Acrocorinth; bolts and stones from engines.

Demetrios stepped out of the ranks. ‘I am your king,’ he said, ‘and my eye is on you. Stand with me and be my brothers, or prove craven and go be less than men.’ His eyes met Satyrus’s, and he raised his spear in salute.

Satyrus returned the salute.

‘Smoke is good,’ coughed the hypaspist commander. ‘Thick.’

‘Let the engines fire again,’ Demetrios said.

Satyrus stood and sweated and shook.

‘Remind me why I said we should do this?’ Achilles muttered.

One of the hypaspists laughed. ‘This is work for men,’ he said. ‘You foreigners should probably sit this out.’

Achilles grunted. ‘Foreigner? Where were you born, Asia man?’

‘Silence in the ranks!’ a phylarch called, and Satyrus smiled to think that he was going into combat as a hoplite, not a king.

‘Ready, there!’ the commander called.

The phylarchs answered, and Satyrus realised that as he was at the head of an eight-man file, he had best answer. ‘Ready,’ he coughed, through the smoke.

‘Ever been in a fight before?’ asked the man next to him.

‘Once or twice,’ Satyrus said.

‘He fought us at Rhodes!’ said the phylarch on his left. He laughed. ‘Watch him, Philip! He’ll do his part.’

Satyrus was oddly pleased at the compliment.

‘Up we go, then,’ said the commander.

Demetrios stepped into the middle of the front rank at the last moment, and raised his shield. The arrows were falling faster — they were walking right into the thick of them.

‘Shields up!’ yelled the commander. ‘Right up — don’t be lazy fucks!’

Satyrus wished for an aspis as he raised the smaller Macedonian bowl over his head. Arrows began to strike the surface, and something bit his shin.

The smoke was debilitating, and Satyrus was not sure, as a sometime commander, that he thought it was worth the cover. The arrows seemed to fall with wicked minds of their own, and the smoke got in his lungs and made him want to puke — he had the burning sensation in his guts that a man gets when he eats too much fat.

Up and up — his feet were still on sod, so they hadn’t gone very far yet, but Satyrus could feel the burn in his thighs, and the arrows were coming faster, and suddenly a ballista bolt swept away the phylarch next to him and the man behind, a ringing, screaming chaos of death, and the whole front bent as men fell, wounded or only struck by pieces of the corpses — the headless phylarch fell back into his file-

‘Halt!’ screamed the commander. ‘Close up!’

The smoke was thinning. The range was almost point-blank, and the enemy engines were firing down with more force and more accuracy, and a second direct hit cleared the rear half of another file in a wave of screams and ringing armour.

‘Are you ready to be a hero?’ Demetrios asked. The two of them were nose to nose. ‘Did I mention that the breach is only eight men wide? We go first, whatever Philip tries to do. He wants to protect me. I want to be first on the wall.’ Under his ornate cheek-plates, Satyrus could see the white rims around his eyes, the slightly mad grin.

‘I’ll be right beside you, lord,’ Satyrus said. Then he allowed himself a smile. ‘Or ahead of you, if you stumble.’

Demetrios smacked his shield face with his spear. ‘I love this moment. May it last for ever in memory.’

‘Forward!’ Philip, the hypaspist commander, sounded panicked. His losses were already more than he’d expected, and Satyrus was, frankly, surprised that they weren’t retreating. With a tenth of his men down and the breach so narrow — it looked like foolishness.

Foolishness that Demetrios was committing because he had to impress the King of the Bosporons?

Sling stones began to hit them — first a punch against his shield, and then a blow like a giant fist to the crest on his helmet. Satyrus adjusted his shield, crouched, and began to go faster. So did the new phylarch to his left.

Suddenly the ground was gone beneath his feet, and he was on loose dirt and sand, grateful for his boots. He went faster, and the sling stones were like a storm of deadly bees — zipping through the air, ringing when they hit armour, thudding when they hit flesh.

This breach is not prepared. Demetrios has made a mistake.

Self-preservation said that if he couldn’t turn tail, he could run at the breach, and Satyrus did. He was suddenly conscious of how narrow the ramp really was, and how far he still had to go. He was out of the smoke, the breach was full of men, and he was … in front. If he slipped to the right or left, he would fall — probably to his death on the rocks at the base of the ramp.

And then all the worry, all the thought, all the strategy fell away, and he was running up a steep slope at men who intended to kill him, and it no longer mattered whether Cassander had tried to kill him or was really his ally, because there was only right here and right now, and a tall man in a yellow horsehair crest who seemed to fill the breach.

Satyrus paused, perhaps ten paces from the wall — shifted his weight, slowed, and threw his dory, twice the height of a man, a long thrusting spear, not a throwing spear.

Yellow Plume took it right through his shield, gave a scream, and went down.

Satyrus drew his sword, stepped on Yellow Plume, still squirming with the spear in his side, and put his shield into the next three men, who all attempted to spear him together. He caught two of the spears and the third hammered into his helmet, caught for a moment on his crest-box and skidded away, snapping his head back painfully against his chin-strap.

He got his feet under him and stepped in, passing his right foot forward to get under the spearheads and stay there. Behind the men in front was another rank, and their spearheads thundered on his shield and one ripped his thigh, a hard overhand thrust that he never saw. Another glanced off his bronze thorax.

Then he was shield to shield with the front rank, and he stabbed at their thighs and feet, ruthlessly sweeping the razor edges of his new sword across their tendons while his aspis went high. He collected their spears and pressed in like a lover against their chests.

Men began to fall.

The daimon took him, and he moved, spun, and cut as if guided by an invisible hand, or as if he was a dancer in a carefully practised routine. He stopped sensing time as a linear thing and moved through his opponents, seeing them as fractional images of the action — a descending back-cut through a man’s nose guard, a wrist-roll thrust with an off-axis left foot advance that penetrated through a man’s leather cuirass and his belly, a ripping blow from a heavy spearhead that chopped a piece from his shield rim — the spearman’s second attack, using the spear like a long-handled axe, and his response — deflection, avoidance, inside the spear’s reach, the man’s terrified eyes as Satyrus cut him down …

He saw the blow. The stop-start universe of instant to instant life and death showed him the little man’s spear as it came in from his unprotected right side — he was trying to withdraw his sword from his last victim, and the fine edge was stuck in bone — the realisation in less than half a heartbeat that he could never block the blow — the enemy spear — another spear driving into it, and Satyrus was alive, his sword ripped from his last victim, and over his shoulder Demetrios was glowing with triumph as he pulled his own spear out of the little man.

‘Saved your life,’ he said with real satisfaction.

Satyrus didn’t pause, as there were three men trying to kill him.

The beautiful sword stuck in the ribs of another victim, a few heartbeats later, and Satyrus was all but driven from his feet by a powerful blow to his shield — a man tripping and falling to his shield side, but the man was ideally positioned to topple him, and Satyrus went to one knee — spear thrusts clattered on his shield and one rang on his helmet, and his searching sword-hand found nothing in the gravel and rubble of the breach.

Achilles stabbed over his head, fast as the sting of a wasp — one, two, three — and the rapidity and force of his blows was godlike — the third blow sank the width of a man’s hand through an enemy shield, and the man screamed as his shield arm was ripped open by the needle point on the spear.

Baulked of a weapon, even a broken spear shaft, Satyrus rose, grabbed the injured man’s shield with his free hand, and spun the rim, breaking the man’s already injured arm and dislocating his shoulder. Stepping through him, Satyrus slammed the edge of his shield into the next man in the breach, catching his shield and driving it back into the man’s unprotected mouth, spraying teeth, and Satyrus took his spear as the man screamed and sank to his knees.

Now Satyrus was the point of a wedge, with Demetrios at one shoulder and Achilles at the other, and the defenders of the breach were hesitant, because the best men had been at the front and now the survivors were brittle.

The pause gave Satyrus time to realise that he’d been wounded twice, that his imperfectly-healed ribs were burning as if on fire and that the fight for the breach was almost won. One of his adversaries, bolder than the others, lunged overarm at his outstretched left leg where it projected from under his shield. He dropped the head of his spear and swept the weapon sideways as he passed his right foot forward — collected his opponent’s spear on his shaft, rotated his own and thrust with his sarauter, taking his opponent off line and in the throat, killing him instantly. And he heard Demetrios grunt in admiration. He hefted his spear, pivoted, and threw it at a man who was looking elsewhere, and who paid with his life for his inattention, and then Satyrus let his aspis fall off his arm, collected a big rock — formerly part of the wall — and threw it into the enemy rank — just a little above the upper rim of a front-ranker’s shield. The man raised his shield and was knocked flat as the weight of the rock took him.

Demetrios was there, and ten other men — into the gap, widening it like workmen with chisels working marble, and in the time it took Satyrus to stoop and recover his shield, the defenders were pushed back out of the breach.

‘Take my sword,’ Achilles said.

Satyrus turned his head, saw the offered hilt, and took it. He spat. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘But I think this is done.’ Nonetheless, he picked up his shield and took his time fitting it correctly on his arm.

Hypaspists pushed past them, desperate to get to their king, who was now three horse lengths ahead, and Satyrus was carried forward by the rush. Someone’s spear point opened the back of his calf like a line of fire on his skin — careless bastard.

Satyrus moved to his right, and again to his right, pushed forward by the relentless pressure of the hypaspists but controlling his approach. The enemy were falling back and back, trying to rally, trying not to run.

Satyrus saw the flashes of new crests and well-made helmets over the beaten defenders — reinforcements.

‘Form up, there!’ he bellowed, but his accent was Greek, not Macedonian, and the eager men around him ignored him. The hypaspists pressed forward in a mob, their spears upright or pinned against them by the press.

The enemy — the beaten enemy — turned their heads, almost as one, like a flock of birds changing direction in the air. And then they opened their ranks — not well, but well enough — and let the newcomers through. The exchange of ranks took fifty heartbeats, and during that time the new enemy were vulnerable, but the hypaspists weren’t in order to make a cohesive attack, and mostly they gathered around their king and walled him off from the fighting.

And then the enemy attacked. They were mercenaries — most of them political exiles with a burning hate for Demetrios and his pseudo-democratic ways, and they crashed into the disorganised hypaspists and drove them back ten paces, killing as they came, and in the time it takes an Olympian to run the stade, Satyrus was in the front rank.

His opponent had a magnificent crest on one of the new helmets — a small, fitted Attic helmet with engraving on every surface. He had a thick blond beard under the cheek-plates, and he slammed his spear into Satyrus’s aspis with the confidence of the larger man.

Satyrus shuffled back to absorb the impact of the man’s spear, and then stepped forward — push with the back, right thigh, lead left, collect balance, and he was under Blond Beard’s spear, pressing shield to shield — Blond Beard trying to stab almost straight down over the locked shields. Satyrus stooped to get the pushing face of his aspis under the other man’s rim, and as the man responded to that threat, sliced the edge of his sword across the other man’s instep — flicked it back into the man’s unprotected ankle under his greaves, and then powered forward against him, making him stumble back and fall into his own line …

Now Achilles was next to him, and he put his spear point through a man’s face, and the enemy line paused.

But Demetrios’s hypaspists were not Alexander’s hypaspists, and they were still not in fighting order. A dozen or more — twenty, perhaps — were clustered around Satyrus and Achilles, but the rest had surrounded the king and forced him down the ramp.

‘We’re fucked,’ Achilles said.

Satyrus spat. He’d been wounded again, and the futility of the whole fight was overweighing the daimon.

He backed a step, and Achilles matched him.

He backed three more steps, and he was in the breach. The hypaspist on his left locked up, their aspides touching, and Achilles’ rank partner did the same, and they almost filled the breach.

Satyrus risked a look over his shoulder.

Demetrios was screaming at someone, his voice rough with strain, but his men were forcing him out of the breach. The rest were clearly intent on retreat, except the handful already committed to standing with Satyrus and Achilles.

The enemy mercenaries were hesitating.

‘Back,’ Satyrus ordered. He stepped back, and the man at his back gave ground as well.

‘We had them, gods curse on them!’ said the man on Satyrus’s left.

Now the mercenaries were preparing for a charge.

Satyrus stepped back again, and again, and now his head and shoulders were level with the outside of the breach, and he had the gritty dirt of the ramp under his sandals and between his toes. A bad position from which to fight.

But the mercenaries hesitated again.

‘Back,’ Satyrus said. The danger of falling off the ramp was very real.

Down below, a ballista fired, its bolt crashing into the right side of the breach and ricocheting crazily until it struck the front rank of enemy hoplites. It didn’t kill anyone, but in its tumble it broke a man’s ankle and knocked another unconscious.

‘Give that man a bag of darics,’ Achilles grunted.

Satyrus shared his view — the first ballista shot stopped the enemy at the back edge of the breach, and Satyrus and his little band were able to skid down the ramp unmolested — not even by javelins or arrows.

Satyrus reached the base of the ramp, and men hastened to hand him water, wine; they were chastened by their defeat, and aware that the last men off the ramp had taken greater risks and were the better men.

They weren’t his men — it wasn’t his place to berate them or demand explanations. Besides, he was bleeding in three places and the damned thorax he was wearing had cut into his waist to the extent that he could barely keep his feet. He opened the cheek-plates on his borrowed helmet, ripped it off his head, and drank air, his sides heaving.

His right leg was red to the knee.

Demetrios pushed through his cordon of guards and threw his arms around Satyrus. ‘I feared you were dead. By the gods, I’d have killed the lot of these cowards if you had fallen. Say the word, and I will.’

Satyrus didn’t know what to do with Demetrios’s embrace — he returned the pressure for a moment, and then stepped back. Another man offered a wineskin, and Satyrus took a long drink and handed it to the man who had stood at his left shoulder.

‘Satyrus of Tanais,’ he said.

‘Kleon Alexander’s son of Amphilopolis,’ the man answered, pressing his hand. ‘An honour, lord. If I live, I’ll tell my sons I stood with you in a breach.’

‘He stood? At the breach, when they carried me down the hill?’ Demetrios said. ‘You are a phylarch. Give your name to my military secretary.’

‘All these men stood,’ Satyrus said, his sense of justice piqued. ‘And if I may — they have orders to protect you at all costs, I suspect. So they did. When you exposed yourself, they assumed the worst.’

‘I saved your life!’ Demetrios said. ‘It was worth it.’ He grinned. ‘I didn’t expect to take the suburbs today.’

Satyrus shrugged. The attack had been dangerous and demanding and had come within a moment of success — the golden king was rationalising defeat, a surprisingly human thing for him to do.

‘As you say, lord,’ he said. ‘And may the gods stand by your shoulder as you stood by mine,’ he added, because it was good manners — and true enough. Satyrus wasn’t too exhausted to recall the unwavering spear point of the small man, calmly waiting his moment to kill him. That close. That man had been a killer — Satyrus had seen it in his eyes. Tyche had cheated him of his moment of glory, and saved Satyrus’s life.

He was having trouble breathing, and the world was shrinking, somehow.

Achilles put his hand on his shoulder. ‘You need to get those wounds looked at,’ he said. ‘You’re making a puddle.’

Satyrus glanced down and saw that Achilles was literally speaking truth.

The sight of so much blood shook him, and he stumbled.

Fell.

He awoke to the thought that it would have been stupid to die fighting for Demetrios, and he was a fool for taking part, and then he was awake, his eyes gummy and his throat sandy, his mouth feeling as if he’d eaten glue — or spent a long night drinking with good companions.

‘You with us?’ a strange voice asked.

Satyrus had trouble focusing his eyes for a moment, and the other man’s face swam and then steadied.

‘Sort of,’ he muttered.

‘How many fingers?’ the doctor asked.

‘Three?’ Satyrus answered.

‘Close enough,’ the doctor answered. ‘Don’t be in a hurry to raise your head. You lost blood — I had to burn your thigh, but I think you’ll be fine if you don’t pick up a contagion.’

Even as the man spoke, the pain in his thigh began to push through a hundred other scrapes and pains.

‘No poppy,’ he said.

‘You’ve already had some,’ the doctor said.

‘No more,’ Satyrus said.

‘Fair enough. You’ve had too much? Fairly common soldier’s complaint.’ He nodded again. ‘I’m Apollonaris of Tyre — I’m Demetrios’s physician.’

The world was coming into focus, and Satyrus would have thought that he was in a palace, or even a temple complex, except for the odd light filling the structure. A tent then. A tent hung in tapestries and decorated with a heavy, hanging gold lamp.

‘How long will I be on my back?’ Satyrus asked. He had a thought of Miriam — a sharp pang of longing. What am I doing here? he asked himself.

‘Two days, or perhaps three, unless your wounds infect.’ Apollonaris grinned. ‘In which case, you’ll soon be dead.’

Satyrus cursed. ‘This is how you talk to the golden king?’

Apollonaris laughed. He had a rich laugh. ‘Yes. He likes my banter. Don’t fret, lord, I won’t let you infect. Apollo and I are old friends.’

‘That sounds like hubris,’ Satyrus said.

The doctor smiled, and while Satyrus slipped away into sleep.

Each successive sleep caused him to awake better and more restless, and there was food — mutton soup, and then ever more solid things — delicious, rich foods straight from the golden king’s table, and twice Demetrios came in person.

After his third long sleep, he awoke to find Achilles at his bedside, and he grinned at the man.

‘Next time tell me when I’m bleeding — a little sooner.’ Satyrus took a deep breath, waited for the pain from his thigh. It was there, but definitely better. No fever.

Achilles smiled. ‘The rest of the boys have come in,’ he said. ‘And young Jason. Still a lot of people looking for you. Jason had a go at offing Phiale and didn’t pull it off — trying to avenge his master. He’s here for you — claims you said you’d take him on.’

Satyrus sighed. ‘So I did,’ he answered, wondering how many plots he’d be saddled with if he accepted the boy as his freedman.

‘Her people killed a lot of people in a brothel, and Jason brought a couple of survivors. I’m sure they can find work here,’ Achilles said, with a leer. ‘You planning to go into business?’

‘Too complicated for me,’ Satyrus said. ‘You run it.’

Achilles nodded. ‘I thought I might, with Memnon and the boys. That’s how you serve with an army — run a string of boys and girls, protect ’em, rake in the owls. We staying here for a week or two?’

Satyrus realised the man was serious. ‘I’m not going anywhere until I have Demetrios’s permission. And I need to be able to walk. But if you plan to stay in my service, you have to know that I’ll be out of here as soon as I recover — one way or another. Being wounded has its advantages — I’ve had time to think. This is a diversion. I have things I need to be doing.’

Achilles didn’t seem to have listened to a word after the first sentence. ‘Two weeks, you say?’ he answered. ‘That’s fine.’

When Achilles was gone, the doctor and a pair of slaves changed the bandages and salves on his arms and legs. Satyrus was amused to see how heavily bruised he was — the breastplate itself had done as much damage as enemy weapons. When he was settled, drinking iced wine and water with fruit juice, Demetrios came in. Slaves brought him an ivory folding stool and he sat, took some juice, and dismissed the slaves.

‘How are you doing?’ he asked. It was a curiously human opening for the golden king — he seemed tentative, uncertain.

‘I’m well enough,’ Satyrus said. ‘No infection. I’ll be ready to leave in a week or so. Will you be allowing me to leave?’

Demetrios looked away. Then he looked back. ‘I’d rather like you to stay,’ he said.

There it was. ‘No,’ Satyrus said. Relations with many people had taught him that in situations like this, where people’s emotions ran high, straight answers were better than prevarication. ‘No,’ he said again. ‘I want to be back with my own people.’

Demetrios’s face flushed. ‘Have I been less than hospitable?’ he asked. ‘Did I not give you the best I had?’

Satyrus smiled. ‘That sword is the finest I’ve ever held in my hand,’ he said. ‘Damn. I lost it, didn’t I?’

Demetrios shook his head. ‘No, I’ll have it back for you — Prepalaus is ready to surrender the citadel on terms if I allow him to withdraw into Achaea in good order. He may even be making the right decision, but he’s gutless. I wouldn’t give that citadel up until my men were eating the dead.’

‘The way we were at Rhodes?’ Satyrus asked.

‘Exactly!’ Demetrios said, uninterested in Satyrus’s tone, or perhaps unused to sarcasm. ‘The defence of Rhodes will always be my touchstone — that’s how a city should hold.’

Satyrus shrugged, and it hurt his ribs and side and all his bruises. ‘Prepalaus isn’t Corinthian.’

Demetrios shook his head. ‘No — but can’t a man love an ideal bigger than his city? He should fight as well for Cassander-’

Satyrus tried not to laugh — laughing had consequences — but he couldn’t stop himself. He wheezed a little. ‘Would you die for Cassander?’ he asked.

Demetrios looked puzzled. ‘Why on earth would I die for Cassander?’

Satyrus wheezed again, and thought, If I live, someday I’ll tell my children this story. ‘I mean, if you were merely a Macedonian spearman.’

Demetrios shook his head. ‘How would that happen?’ he asked. ‘Honestly, sometimes you make no sense.’

Satyrus nodded. ‘So you can’t put yourself in another man’s shoes?’

‘Whatever for?’ Demetrios asked. ‘I am myself. To pretend otherwise would be a lie — perhaps hubris.’

Satyrus shrugged, with attendant consequences, and winced. ‘Aristotle has a lot to answer for,’ he murmured.

‘I want to convince you to stay,’ Demetrios said.

Satyrus didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing. The golden king was pausing his day to woo him, and Satyrus decided that he could do worse than hear him out.

‘Can we agree that the current state of perpetual warfare is a curse to all men?’ Demetrios asked.

Satyrus raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m surprised to hear you say so,’ he said.

Demetrios frowned. ‘At any rate, my dear fellow king — will you concede that? Good. So I ask you: what is the quickest, most efficient way to avoid future wars? And the answer is obvious — a single, unified government. One king, one empire — the whole world. From one edge of the girdle of ocean to the other, the whole circle. One king, one empire, one law, one set of gods. Then men will be free.’

Satyrus absorbed this for a long moment. ‘Free of what?’ he asked.

‘Free of war,’ Demetrios answered. ‘And honestly — speak freely — who is more fit to rule them all than I?’

Satyrus frowned.

‘I have a good staff and I am myself both hard-working and brilliant. My goal is worthy, Satyrus; peace and prosperity, a universal standard — think of it. You are a king — a universal set of coins. Of weights and measures. One language — one art — one poetry to breed excellence in men.’

Satyrus shook his head. ‘This is going to make men free?’ he asked.

‘Free to build and live and raise their families,’ the golden king said.

‘According to your laws and the customs that you dictate.’ Satyrus met his eyes. ‘You would subject the Sakje to the same laws as the Greeks?’

Demetrios leaned forward. ‘Not initially, but eventually, by remorseless interchange. What would seem strange to them initially would grow more familiar with trade and contact, until they accepted it of their own will.’

Satyrus pursed his lips. ‘And if they did not?’

Demetrios shrugged. ‘There are always malcontents,’ he said.

‘In other words, a war of reprisal,’ Satyrus said.

‘If you must,’ Demetrios said.

‘And when your empire collapses?’ Satyrus asked.

‘What?’ Demetrios asked. He looked truly befuddled.

‘Empires fall,’ Satyrus said. ‘Babylon. Aegypt. Mycenae. Troy. Athens. Sparta.’

‘An empire based on the work of rational men and led by heroes and demi-gods?’ Demetrios said.

‘Faster than any,’ Satyrus answered with derision.

‘You are making me angry,’ Demetrios said. ‘I want you to stay. Many men follow me from self-interest or even love, but you … are my friend. I can talk to you. Even if you disagree, you understand what it is to be different. You are god-touched, too. I saw you fight, Satyrus. You are greater than mortal. So it is with me. Come — let us be friends. Counsel me, and we will be remembered until the sun falls from the sky and the sea of chaos sweeps over the last men.’

Satyrus didn’t feel that this was the time for astraight answer — but he thought it might be time for a straight question. ‘Demetrios, may I tell you something? A human thing, about myself, that is not godlike?’

Demetrios laughed. ‘I have spoken above myself and affrighted you.’

Satyrus shook his head. ‘No. I dream of Herakles, and I believe in the gods. I seek to be a hero — I won’t hide it. A hero. I pray that Herakles will stand by my shoulder.’ He nodded. ‘Why not aspire to be a hero?’ he asked. Smiled. ‘But listen. I love a woman — and she is your hostage.’

‘I took no hostages who were women,’ Demetrios said. ‘Who is she?’

Satyrus took the plunge. ‘Miriam, sister to my friend Abraham the Jew of Rhodes.’

Demetrios slapped his thigh. ‘You love a Jew?’ he asked. ‘Well, they’re a handsome race, I admit. Stiff-necked, too.’

Satyrus smiled at a memory. ‘Will you release her for me — and release her brother so that she will go free? And let me go to them?’

Demetrios looked puzzled. ‘Why?’ he asked.

Well, Satyrus thought, it was worth a try. ‘Because that is all I need for happiness,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe in your universal empire. And even if I did, I wouldn’t fight against my friends to help accomplish it.’

Demetrios’s puzzlement was turning to anger. ‘Your friends are arrogant fools who seek to limit me when I can make the world better.’

‘Quite possibly,’ Satyrus said. He shrugged. ‘But they are my friends. And I find that I no longer need dominion to make me happy.’

Demetrios seemed to ignore him. ‘Ptolemy? He’s no hero — a fat old man with no dreams left in his head, who wants nothing but to rule Aegypt and enjoy its revenues.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Leon is a merchant — he has no honour, merely money.’

Satyrus shook his head. ‘You are wrong there, lord, but let us not quarrel.’

Demetrios got a sly look on his face. ‘I have it,’ he said. ‘Your allies tried to kill you. I told you before — Cassander ordered your assassination.’

Satyrus shrugged. ‘Not the first time. Cassander has never been a friend of my family.’

‘If you stay with me, together we can destroy him,’ Demetrios said.

Satyrus shrugged. ‘I want Abraham and Miriam, and I will go back to Pantecapaeaum and interfere no more in the affairs of the Middle Sea,’ he said. ‘The truth is that I have been a dreadful king, swanning about with my warships, helping this place and that, and spending my revenues on war when I could have built roads and strong places and granaries and lyceums. Time for me to stop playing king and expecting one of my friends to do the work.’ He nodded, aware that he was speaking to himself, and determined in his conviction. No more time-wasting. ‘I should thank you. Through you, I have seen my errors.’

Demetrios shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. He got to his feet. ‘You will remain here with me. I would think less of you if you didn’t try to recover the hostages — why not? And when I give you the one who matters to you — then you will make war on me. Your sister has already closed the Pontus against me. I would be within my rights to execute the Rhodian hostages.’

Satyrus felt anger blaze up within him. ‘If you execute them, I will die fighting you and your father and your cursed universal empire.’

Demetrios nodded. ‘It’s good that we understand each other.’

Satyrus chose his next words carefully. ‘Am I to understand that you don’t intend to release the hostages on time, as according to the agreement?’ he asked.

Demetrios shook his head. ‘No one could possibly expect me to. If I release the hostages, Rhodes will be free to act against me — as will you. And then, I expect that your combined fleets would destroy mine, and then I might fail. So, much as it pains me, I’ll just keep them until Lysimachos and Cassander have been neutralised. Two years — three at most. You want this woman so much? Speed their fall. Tell your sister to open the Pontus to me and close it to Lysimachos.’ He nodded. ‘In the meantime, you are my friend and will remain my guest.’

Angry denunciations crowded Satyrus’s mouth, but he spat them out. He was awake enough and wise enough to know that an open break with Demetrios would serve no purpose. ‘I will think on it,’ he said.

Demetrios rose to his feet. ‘That’s the spirit,’ he said. ‘Swear allegiance to me, and I’ll have this Hebrew maid brought here to you — and more. I felt the power that we would have together — did you not? In the breach? Oh, it makes my heart beat faster to think what we might accomplish.’

Satyrus thought: We failed. We didn’t even storm the breach.

But he smiled. ‘I’ll think on it,’ he said again.

Demetrios smiled again. ‘I’m sure you will,’ he said.