King of the Bosphorus

6

Two cold camps, because Sarpax, the navarch, didn't fancy showing fires. They rowed up the Propontis into the teeth of a strong autumn wind and passed Byzantium at first light, rowing hard, so that the oarsmen grumbled. They parted with their convoy there and continued north.

Melitta could only think of how much she missed her son. Her breasts were heavy with milk, and they alone served to keep Kineas on her mind all the time – milk so plentiful that it hurt her, and every time she considered donning her armour she flinched from the thought. The lightest brush of fabric on her nipples started the flow again, so that she lived in a perpetual state of embarrassment and her chitons were all stained with milk and the biting wind froze her nipples.

So much for the great adventure of her life. She missed her son, and she played no role at all in the ship, except to watch the horizon and worry.

And miss her son.

Nihmu was little help. She stood in the bow, watching the sea, smelling the air like a dog, scrutinizing every ship they passed as if Leon might be aboard.

It was Nihmu who spotted the patrol ship, just as the water changed colour and the high banks of the Propontis fell away on either side. She came back, her leather boots scuffing the deck.

'Trireme,' she said. 'Just on the horizon.'

Coenus went forward with the navarch and came back shaking his head. 'He's got the wind,' Coenus said. 'And he's coming for a closer look.'

Sarpax joined him. 'Ladies, into the tabernacle, if you please. Serve out weapons. Gentlemen,' he said, as the ship's officers gathered, 'we will act as if we're willing to be boarded until I give the word. The word is "attack". If I give the word, do your best to kill them. The truth is – once they're alongside us, we have more marines. Eh? But if ever they break away, we are all dead men. Eh?' Sarpax's oiled moustache gleamed like the pearl he wore in his right ear.

'I can shoot,' Nihmu said. She grinned at Idomeneus. 'Better than him.'

'Me, too!' Melitta blurted.

'Take your bows to the tabernacle, then,' Sarpax said. 'No archery before I say. Quickly now! If they want a quick peek below decks, we all look as innocent as lambs.'

Melitta opened the hatch cover in the forward bulkhead of the tabernacle – the small, enclosed space just under the bow, the only closed space on a ship as small as a trade pentekonter. Through that narrow aperture, she saw the other ship closing on the opposite tack, her great square sail drawing with all the wind that had forced curses from the rowers for five days.

'Heave to!' the other ship called. 'What ship?'

'Who says?' Sarpax roared. 'Tunny, fifteen days out of Rhodos.'

'Heave to!' the other commander called. 'I'm coming under your lee.'

The trireme got her mainsail down neatly enough, although they made a hash of closing the last few boat-lengths to come alongside.

'Throw me a grapple!' the other man called.

Melitta could hear Sarpax mutter something as he ordered a grapple thrown across. Then he ordered another.

'Who are you?' Sarpax roared.

'Wasp, of Pantecapaeum. In service to the king of the Bosporus. Now stand clear – I'm coming across!'

Melitta couldn't see a thing, but the pentekonter was so small that she could feel as six men crossed, the smaller boat rolling and shaking as each new weight came aboard.

'What cargo?' the commander asked.

'Wine for Tomis, copper ore for Gorgippia,' Sarpax replied.

'Twenty silver owls,' the other man demanded. 'Tax.'

'Tax on the open sea?' Sarpax sounded outraged.

'Tax for our suppression of piracy,' the other returned. 'Pay, or I'll sink you.'

Playing the injured merchant, Sarpax cursed. 'You're the only pirate I see here!'

The other man laughed. 'Pay up, little cock.' Melitta heard his feet moving. 'We're looking for a man – twenty to twenty-five years old, tall, dark-haired. Goes by the name of Satyrus. Seen him?'

Sarpax laughed. 'What, walking on the sea?'

The other man did not laugh. 'Satyrus of Alexandria. Know the name?'

'Of course I do. What of it?'

'Seen him?' the other man pressed.

His tone had changed. Melitta felt something stir in her chest, something as profound as the urges of her body. They were looking for her brother. That meant they didn't have him!

'Last year at Rhodos. Listen, Trierarch – I'm a poor man with my way to make. Here's your tax. Can we go?'

Melitta could hear his booted feet on the narrow plank that ran between the oar benches. 'Where's this cargo? Gods, this is a smelly scow you have here.'

'Wine's in the ballast. Copper pigs are the ballast.' Sarpax sounded too confident, as far as Melitta was concerned.

'What's in the bow, then?' the other man asked, and Melitta could hear his steps coming closer.

'Barley and cheese for the lads,' Sarpax said.

'And whatever you put aboard for your private trade, you sly-minded Tyrian. A little purple dye? Some ostrich eggs?' He laughed. 'Open it!'

Melitta put an arrow on her bow. By the light of the scuttle, she saw Nihmu do the same.

'I'd rather not,' Sarpax said. 'It won't be good for you, either.'

'Was that a threat, you dirty fucker? Get it open, right now, and I won't put my boot up your arse.' The other man put his hand on the hatch. Melitta could see it move.

'I'm just so worried about an – attack!' Sarpax said, and the door opened.

Melitta shot the boarder from the length of her forearm, and her shaft went in under his arm where he'd pushed on the hatch. Nihmu's slipped into his right eye.

Before she had her second arrow on the string, all the marines were dead or pushed over the side, and Idomeneus was up on the rail, shooting down into the Wasp's cockpit, the command centre of the enemy ship. Unlike Auntie Nihmu, Melitta had been in a sea fight and she knew Idomeneus. She ran along the deck, avoided slipping in all the blood and stepped past the rowers – the benches were clearing as they all surged up, swords and javelins ready for action, over the rail. Tunny lay lower in the water than her opponent, but the difference wasn't enough to deter boarding.

'Just like old times!' Idomeneus said. He shot again.

Melitta couldn't pick a target – the enemy deck was full of men, and most of them were bare-backed oarsmen – her own.

'We're done here,' Idomeneus agreed. He looked at Nihmu, who drew to her ear and lofted a long shot at a man on the stern – an enemy archer. He fell into the sea.

'Nice shot!' Idomeneus said.

It was the last blow of the action. The enemy rowers were paid men – perhaps pressed, perhaps slaves – and they didn't rise from their benches. The Tunny's men cleared the cockpit in no time.

Coenus came back aboard, his sword dry, but a big smile on his face. 'Master Sarpax, you are now owner of that trireme.'

Sarpax was standing on the rail next to Melitta. 'What the fuck do we do with him?' he asked. 'I'm a fucking Rhodian – I can't bear to kill the rowers and sink him.'

Melitta felt the milk starting. As the daimon of combat fled her body, she felt all the irritations flood back, but she still had room for a smile. 'I have an idea,' she said. Inside her head, she was rejoicing, because Satyrus was alive. Two days later, a military trireme slipped on to the beach south of Gorgippia near the Temple of Herakles. It caused a certain consternation at the temple until Melitta jumped over the side and ran all the way up the beach and up the steps. The same old priestess greeted her with open arms. The cataracts in her eyes showed her to be quite blind, but she smiled and embraced Melitta tightly. 'The god told me you would come,' she said. 'Eumeles hunts your brother everywhere since the battle.'

Melitta laughed. 'Eumeles' days are numbered,' she said.

Down on the beach, Nihmu clambered over the side and walked up the shingle until she had dirt and leaves underfoot. She waved her bow at Melitta and Melitta waved back. Then the Sakje woman fell on her knees and kissed the ground, and let forth a war cry that echoed off the ship and the walls of the temple.

'A Sakje!' the old woman said. 'Once, they used to come here. It has been many years.' She ran a hand over Melitta's face. 'You are a mother!' she said. 'Where is your child? A boy?'

Melitta smiled. 'Back in Alexandria,' she said. 'The milk still runs. But I had to save my brother.'

'Let us go in and see the will of the god,' the old seeress said. 'Your brother is in his care – one hero to another. But it is good you came.' She leaned on Melitta's shoulder and gestured to an attendant, a pretty young girl. 'Lissa can get a tisane for the milk in your breasts. What else do you need? I look forward to playing my part in repaying Eumeles. He has been a hard master to the people here.'

'Horses,' said Nihmu, who had quickly made her way up from the beach. She smiled as she said it. 'The smell here is the smell of home! I can smell the grass! Horses, reverend lady, and we will be gone.'

The old priestess sniffed. 'You took all my best horses last time,' she said. Then she shook her head. 'Oh, the demands of the young – and the gods. I'll have horses fetched.'

A day later, they were mounted, in Sakje clothes, their gorytoi by their sides, riding across the first blades of the sea of grass. Behind them, Coenus pulled in his stallion to wave at Sarpax, who paused in his stream of orders to unmoor the Wasp to wave back.

'I may never go to sea again,' Nihmu said with a laugh. 'Oh, I pray that Leon is well – but I am happy to be back on the grass!'

'Where to, Nihmu?' Coenus asked. They were at the top of a long ridge that ran east into the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains. North and east, the plains rolled away beneath their feet to the river, and again beyond the ferry. A cold wind blew from the north, rippling the grass and making them shiver.

Melitta pulled her fur cap down over her ears. 'North?'

Nihmu shook her head. 'North and east – to the high ground between the Tanais and the Rha.'

'That's where the bandits live!' Melitta said.

'That's where we will find Ataelus,' Nihmu said. 'He is the bandit now.'