Funeral Games

25

Demetrios didn’t make a treaty. After two weeks of staring at the impregnable works of Peleusiakos, losing cavalry fights and watching his plans for conquest unravel, Demetrios decamped in the night, leaving his fires burning, and retreated across the Sinai along eight hundred stades of coast road.

The morning after he vanished, Ptolemy’s army was awakened by trumpets. From the door of his tent, Satyrus could see the cavalry in the next camp rolling their blankets and putting their bronze kettles in old linen bags.

‘They’re moving!’ Satyrus shouted at Abraham, who was still in the blankets with Basis, an Aegyptian girl he’d adopted.

Philokles came up, already in armour and carrying his shield and spear. ‘Shield-bearers, get packed. March in one hour! Satyrus, see to it that every man has food in his belly and more in his pack.’

Satyrus saluted, but he caught his tutor’s arm. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

Philokles nodded in satisfaction. ‘One-Eye’s golden child has made a mistake, lad. And now we’re going to chase him.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Satyrus said. ‘You said no battle.’

‘I was wrong,’ Philokles said. ‘If we catch him short of his depot at Gaza, he’ll have to fight. I never thought Ptolemy had the balls.’ The Spartan made a face. ‘No – that’s wrong. Like Demetrios, I forgot that Ptolemy had the balls.’

Satyrus stood in the sand west of Gaza on the coast, looking at the thousand pinpoints of fire that marked the army of Demetrios.

‘His army is huge!’ Dionysius said.

Abraham stood with Xeno and Dionysius and a circle of their friends and file-mates. They had now been in the field long enough that there were friendships starting across the Hellene-Aegyptian divide – enough friendships and strong enough that Namastis would share wine with Diokles and Dionysius.

‘I thought we weren’t going to have a battle,’ Abraham said wryly. He handed some really bad Aegyptian beer around. They were six days out from the stockpiles at Peleusiakos, and there wasn’t much of anything.

‘According to Philokles, Demetrios might have avoided battle if two things hadn’t worked against him.’ Satyrus felt very all-knowing. He was the only man in the phalanx who had information every evening, straight from the command staff, and it did a lot to reinforce his reputation. ‘The first was Seleucus, who stayed on his southern flank and harried him, so that every man he had lost in the sands of Nabataea came back to haunt him. My uncles have fought his cavalry three times and put up a trophy every time.’ He grinned, thinking of what Eumenes had told him about a certain fight in the sand.

‘Horse-boys,’ Dionysius said, but he lacked his usual venom.

Xeno took a swig of the beer, spat and pretended to crouch, as if in terror at the taste. ‘Ares, I’d rather drink water,’ he said. ‘Listen, mock the horse-boys all you want, friends. You’ll be happy enough to have them around if it comes to a fight.’

‘Listen to the old sweat!’ Abraham mocked. But he smiled, and Xeno smiled back.

Satyrus, full of information to impart, tried to be patient while he waited for silence. ‘Listen!’ he said. ‘Philokles says that the worst of it is his own pride, so that even when his father’s advisors told him to take the elephants and the best of his infantry and race for his depot he refused.’

‘He’s close,’ Dionysius said. He drank the beer and made a face. ‘Ares and Aphrodite, this is horse piss! No, listen! I’m serious!’

‘He would know,’ Xeno shot in, and roared with laughter. He didn’t get to score against Dionysius often.

‘Try this, then,’ said a low voice, and Satyrus found a wineskin pressed into his hand. He turned to see his sister’s eyes – Bion, he reminded himself. He gave her a hug.

‘Who’s that?’ Dionysius said. ‘Aphrodite’s insatiable cunny, gentlemen, our Satyrus has himself a boy. A boy in barbarian trousers! Satyrus, how could you? When you had me?’

There was a brief silence, and then Abraham slapped his thighs and roared with laughter, and so did all the men by the fire – even Namastis, who was not usually loud in his demonstrations, had to hold his gut. Xeno, Satyrus and Bion stood silent while half a dozen young men squirmed. Dionysius actually went to the ground. ‘Your face!’ Dionysius managed. ‘Your-’

Abraham stumbled over to Satyrus and put his hand on his arm. ‘God – you look fit to kill us. Joke, friend.’ His eyes flicked over Bion and in a stage whisper, he said, ‘We know.’ And then he sputtered a few times and subsided.

Satyrus found that he was smiling. So was Xeno. After a while, Bion smiled too. ‘Fuck the lot of you,’ he said in his low voice.

‘Don’t go leaving angry,’ Dionysius called. ‘Or if you do, leave the wine.’

That got another round of laughter, until voices from behind them ordered them to pipe down.

Half a skin of wine later, Dionysius declaimed his hymn to the breasts of an unknown avatar of Aphrodite. Bion drank wine indifferently, and when Dionysius lay down on his cloak, he found a snake – harmless, Bion assured him several anxious moments later.

Philokles and Theron came to drink the last of the wine. Theron gave Bion a long look but said nothing. Philokles produced his Spartan cup and filled it. ‘Who among you poured a libation?’ he said.

That silenced them.

‘What a thankless bunch of recruits you are. The noisiest men in the camp, and no libation?’ He poured a good half of his cup into the sand. ‘I offer this wine to all the gods – but most of all to Grey-Eyed Athena to keep us safe, and to that god most men never name – gentle Hades, take only the old and leave the young to enjoy their youth.’

‘That’s a chilly health, Strategos,’ Dionysius said.

Philokles shook his head. ‘Men will die tomorrow. Men you know. You may be dead yourselves. Lack of sleep could kill you as dead as an enemy arrow, lads. I doubt that ten of you could get any ill from one skin of wine, but I think it’s time to get in your cloaks and sleep.’

‘Still,’ Theron put in, after taking his sip of wine, ‘I’d rather hear my front rank laughing their arses off the night before a fight, than pissing in their beer.’

Philokles smiled. ‘Anyone afraid?’

Satyrus managed a smile, and a nervous silence greeted Philokles, who laughed.

‘You’re all lousy liars,’ Philokles said. ‘But brave ones!’

Theron put an arm around his shoulders. ‘Know what, Satyrus? This will be my first fight. In a phalanx. I’m so scared I can’t get to sleep.’ He raised his cup.

Philokles took the cup from his hand and drained it. ‘This will be my eleventh fight in a phalanx on a big field.’ He looked around at the younger men, and they looked at him, the very image of the warrior. ‘I’m as scared as any of you – more, because I know what I face tomorrow. But listen – no philosophy here, lads, just the straight bronze, as we say in Sparta. Keep your spot in the line and get through their pikes as fast as you can, and we’ll be fine. We’re really quite good. Tomorrow, you’ll see how good we are.’

‘Will we win, Philokles?’ Dionysius asked.

Philokles scratched his head like a farmer. ‘Lad, I don’t know. We ought to lose. Ptolemy is taking a mighty risk. There are still men in this army – Macedonians – who want us to lose. So the Greeks and the Aegyptians have to fight extra hard. See? Now go to bed.’

And they did.