Funeral Games

PART VI
FLEXING THE BLADE
23
312 BC

S tratokles rode easily, most of his attention concentrated on controlling his craving for water. The rest of his attention fell on his captive, who rode calmly, her head up, and occasionally favoured him with a smile.

Her smiles disconcerted him.

Around him rode the best of his hired killers, Lucius at their head, and beyond, just a few stades unless he had utterly missed his mark, lay the army of Demetrios the Golden, son of Antigonus One-Eye – the youngest and handsomest of the contestants in the wars that men called ‘God-like Alexander’s Funeral Games’.

Stratokles straightened his back, trying to erase layers of fatigue and a dozen hours in the saddle, and trying to arrange his thoughts to prepare for the interview to come. He had failed (so far) to kill Ptolemy. Best not to dwell on that.

Hermes, god of spies, his mouth was dry.

‘How long did you plan my abduction?’ the princess asked. She smiled and dropped her eyes, the very model of feminine dignity.

Stratokles shrugged. ‘It was on the fly, my lady,’ he admitted. He rubbed the stump of his nose. Why, he asked himself, did I say that? Surely a more elaborate fiction would have won more prizes than that single bare fact.

‘So, having failed to kill the regent of Aegypt, you thought that I might do as second best?’ she asked as if deeply interested in the inner workings of his mind.

He straightened his back again and cursed inwardly at his own lack of discipline – his craving for her good opinion. ‘Lady, it is my intention to barter my services to Antigonus for a satrapy. Phrygia lacks a lord. You would make an effective ally – even a consort. Or so I reasoned. ’

‘My, my,’ she said. They rode in silence for more than a stade, and she began to fall behind. She pulled her shawl over her face and rode with her face covered, and he alternated thinking about that face and about his desire for water.

Then she pushed her horse to a faster walk and nudged the weary animal back to a position next to Stratokles, and he felt his heart rise with foolish happiness when she did. ‘Because my father is the tyrant of Heraklea, you mean? Or because you observed some quality in me that would make – how did you put it? – an effective ally?’

Stratokles considered answers from the offensive to the flattering, but again, despite years of practice, he found that his mouth was spitting out the truth. ‘Your father and his city, of course. Although,’ he said with a bow, ‘now that I have your measure, despoina, I know that I underestimated your qualities.’

‘Oh, fairly spoken!’ she laughed, throwing her head back – no falsity at all. ‘For a man as careful and as wily as you to admit that you underestimated me is quite a compliment.’

That made him smile. When had he ever smiled this many times in an hour? ‘You take my meaning exactly, lady.’ As they rode, he found himself telling this lady the truth, if for no other reason than that she asked, and seemed content to ask, riding by his side and talking as if he were an old and trusted advisor. It made him feel foolish. And old.

They were laughing together by the time they reached the first cavalry pickets. ‘It’s like speaking to Pericles,’ Lady Amastris said. Stratokles glowed.

‘You tried to kill old Ptolemy?’ Demetrios asked. He was sitting on a plain wood camp stool in the midst of a circle of his companions, but the simplicity ended there. His golden hair and his matching golden breastplate contrasted with the leopard skin he wore in place of a cloak, and his feet were encased in magnificent open-toed boots of tooled and gilt leather. Indeed, he looked like an image of one of the heroes – Theseus, Herakles or a burly Achilles.

Stratokles had seen him before, but never been confronted with all his charm and charisma face to face.

‘Yes, lord,’ Stratokles said.

‘Well, high marks for the attempt, but I’d rather defeat him myself. Hand to hand, if I can do it. That’s the stuff that myth is made of, Athenian.’ Demetrios’s youth shone from him like light from a lamp.

Stratokles was still struggling with his shoulders, both of which wanted to slump down, lower and lower, until he lay on the ground and slept. He’d had a hard week. And he disliked how the golden boy’s eyes slid off him. It was a reaction men had always had to his ugliness. Cassander didn’t do it. Cassander could at least meet his eye. ‘You will certainly master Ptolemy, my lord – in combat or any other way, but those that love you will do their best to ease your path,’ he said. Pericles couldn’t have put it better.

In the privacy of his thoughts, Stratokles was already doubting his commitment to this arrogant pup.

Perdikkas, son of Bion, one of Demetrios’s young officers, with curly hair and an equally curling lip that promised arrogance, snapped his fingers. ‘What of the Macedonian officers?’ he demanded.

Stratokles shrugged. ‘I arranged for the leaders of the mutiny to meet, and I made sure that they were armed in preparation for the attack on Ptolemy. In any event, they didn’t come. My fault? Perhaps. Perhaps they got cold feet.’

‘We hear a rumour that they were massacred,’ Demetrios said. His eyes no longer rested on Stratokles. He was assessing the qualities of the young woman who sat quietly behind Stratokles, swathed in wool, one demure ankle and foot the only clue to her age and vitality.

Stratokles felt more than protective towards the girl. He stepped forward to draw the commander’s eyes. ‘I doubt it. Wouldn’t you spread such a rumour if you feared a mutiny, lord?’

‘Is ugliness like a disease, that can be caught?’ Demetrios asked, and all his companions laughed. ‘I’m sure that you’ve done me good service, Athenian, but it wearies me to look at you. What did you bring me? Is that a present? Briseis, brought to my tent?’

Stratokles couldn’t resist. ‘Briseis was taken from Achilles, lord.’

‘Nothing more fitting, then, although I have a hard time casting you as Achilles. Let’s see you, girl.’ Demetrios rose from his throne.

‘She is the daughter of the tyrant of Heraklea. She is a modest girl.’ Stratokles moved swiftly to her side.

She moved back, to put Stratokles between her and Demetrios. No other action could have tugged so firmly at the shreds of Stratokles’ sense of honour – a tattered garment, but one with more body to it than he himself might have expected.

Demetrios found himself reaching out towards Stratokles. Men behind him put their hands on their sword hilts. ‘Don’t be foolish, ugly man,’ the golden boy said.

Just give him the girl. Stratokles’ political sense, a daimon finely honed from a generation of Athenian politics with a voice of its own, told him that he could have anything he wanted with this golden boy – if he gave him the girl. Or better yet, the voice suggested, the more you struggle before giving this new master the girl, the better this new master will value her – and her giver.

For the first time in some years, Stratokles ignored the dispassionate daimon that ruled him on affairs of state. His flexible wit sprang to his aid.

‘I’m no fool,’ he said calmly. ‘And neither are you, lord, to offend the tyrant of Heraklea when your father depends on his ports and his shipping.’

‘She has the ankles of Aphrodite!’ Demetrios said. He put his hands on his hips. ‘I don’t give a fig for the tyrant of Heraklea.’

‘I imagine that you’ve used the Aphrodite tag before,’ Stratokles replied.

Amastris laughed at his elbow, and he felt like the king of the world. Then she allowed the folds of her himation to fall back off her head, and she stepped forward. ‘You may care nothing for my father,’ she said, and she smiled at Demetrios, ‘but I promise you that he will have a care for me.’ The sun of her smile overwhelmed her words, and Demetrios clapped his hands together.

‘Have her conducted to a tent – throw the occupants in the sand. See to it that she wants for nothing.’ Demetrios bowed low. ‘Let me rescue you from this toad.’

Amastris turned the sun of her smile on Stratokles. She shook her head. ‘He is my toad,’ she said. ‘I trust him, and I do not know you.’

Something hot boiled up in Stratokles’ heart. His face flushed, and his nose hurt.

‘I will protect you,’ he said thickly – the wrong words, he knew, and said the wrong way. He didn’t care.

She flipped her himation back over her head, but her eyes remained on his. He hadn’t noticed how dispassionate they were before. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You will.’

Her smile was visible only at the corners of her eyes, but it was for him. It was a long time since he had seen eyes do that – for him. It made him wince.

Then she stepped back. His guards surrounded her.

‘We will be pleased to occupy any tent you see fit to give us,’ Stratokles said.

‘No, toad. She is mine. I’ll see to it that you are paid a talent or two for your betrayals, but she is mine. Perhaps I’ll add to your reward for bringing her. Really, she makes the conquest of this strip of sand almost worthwhile.’ Demetrios laughed, and all the companions laughed with him. ‘Aphrodite, goddess of love, you didn’t imagine that she found you anything but horrible? The man who abducted her? Have you ever looked in a mirror? While I, the golden one, chosen of the gods, will save her from your venomous clutches.’ Demetrios laughed. ‘She’s moist for me now, toad.’

That last made all the companions roar with laughter.

Stratokles had the strength to smile. He stood straight. I am the hero of this piece, he thought. Not you, boy. Me. The toad. ‘This is not how your father deals with men, lord,’ Stratokles said above the laughter. ‘Schoolboy insults insult only schoolboys.’

Demetrios turned suddenly, his eyes narrow. ‘You dare to tell me what my father would or wouldn’t do? You call me a boy?’ His companions fell silent.

‘Your father offered me the satrapy of Phrygia. I have done my best to honour my part of the bargain and I still have agents in place. Now,’ slowly, carefully, as if the words were dragged from him, ‘now you call me names and take from me my ward and offer me a few talents of silver?’ Stratokles shrugged. ‘Kill me, lord. For if you don’t, I will tell your father that you are a fool.’

‘My father-’ Demetrios began. Then he stopped, as if listening to someone speak. Demetrios stood like a statue, staring off above his friend Paesander’s head, and then he turned back.

‘You are right to upbraid me, sir.’ The alteration in Demetrios was so total that Stratokles, still in the grip of his own acting, felt that he had to step back before the power of the gods. Demetrios bowed to the Athenian. ‘It was ill of me to call you names – although you must confess that you will never model for Ganymede.’

Some of the companions laughed, but the laugh was nervous, because Demetrios’s voice sounded odd.

Stratokles inclined his head in a token of agreement. ‘I have never bragged about my looks. Nor have I ever sought to model myself on Ganymede,’ he said, pointing the barb at the handsomest of Demetrios’s companions, a beautiful boy who stood next to Paesander. ‘Although I gather that some do.’

Demetrios laughed. ‘There’s more to you than that ugly face,’ he acknowledged. ‘We are on the edge of battle – the battle that will give us Aegypt. Then we shall reward all of our faithful soldiers. It was wrong of us to speak in terms of a few paltry pieces of silver. Please accept our apologies.’ Demetrios bowed, and Stratokles had to fight the urge to forgive him out of hand.

That is power, he thought.

‘And the girl?’ he asked.

Demetrios smiled. ‘Let it be as she wishes.’

Stratokles led her away, with Demetrios’s friend Paesander as a messenger. The daimon hectored him that he had fallen prey to a pretty girl.