King of the Bosphorus t-4

by Christian Cameron

  She reached down and ran a practised finger up the base of his penis. 'Greek girls do this?' she asked.

  Satyrus thought of Amastris. There was a mixture of guilt and something else – something hard to describe – in thinking of Amastris with another woman's hands on his hoplon. 'No,' he said.

  Lithra leaned over. 'For you losing if not coming back, Satrax. Lithra rides ten days and never tires, five arrows in the mark before turning, ten men killing in the hills.' She leaned down, her face lit by the late sunset. 'Come back. I for liking you.'

  Satyrus loved it when she called him Satrax. He caught her hands, rolled her under him and their mock struggle filled the air with straw, the dust rising in a cloud like smoke in the setting sun until they were coughing and laughing, despite the pus on his arm wound and the now permanent ache in his thigh.

  'I'll be back,' Satyrus said, wondering if he was lying or telling the truth.

  She smiled and stayed in his blankets one more night, but in the morning she was mounted with her warriors, and they rode away. She waved once, and was gone over the first range of hills, and Satyrus couldn't decide which of his actions deserved the biggest share of the guilt he felt. Guilt from inside and shame from the taunting of his elders, until he shunned them to work on the bow himself, adzing the timbers with the best of the sailors and the farmer's grandsons, who had more experience of woodworking than any of the sailors.

  He worked until he slept, and slept only to rise and work again, and on the fifth day the last plank was fitted into its mate, the long pieces carefully edged and fitted to each other with wafers of flexible poplar between them to keep them together, and the bow was rebuilt heavily in stacked oak beams. The mainmast was fixed back into the deck a little farther aft, and so was the boatsail mast, so that the Falcon had something of the look of a triemiolia, and they gave him a broader central deck, a cataphract that would add weight and make him stiffer under sail – or so they hoped. And protect the rowers, in a fight.

  Theron had all the men not engaged in work out in the countryside all day, hunting or practising with their weapons, so that by the time the bow was ready to ship, they were, to quote Theron, the most dangerous crew of oarsmen in the Euxine. 'Some of them can even throw a javelin,' he said with a smile.

  'You look better, master,' Satyrus said. 'Perhaps we could fight a fall or two.'

  Theron shook his head. 'Your hip is still bad, and I can smell that arm from here. You need to get that looked at. It's still weeping pus. And I'm not willing to be the target of your anger,' he said.

  'I'm not angry,' Satyrus said. But no sooner were the words out of his mouth than he knew that he was.

  Diokles came up with a pair of spears over his shoulder. 'Well, if we have to, we could board,' he said. 'No one expects the oar benches to clear in the first moments of a fight.'

  He was probably joking, but Satyrus nodded. 'We should practise,' he said. 'Tomorrow, while we take him out in the bay with the deck crew, you should see how fast we can get them off the benches.'

  'By Ares, he's serious,' Theron said.

  'He's a serious man,' Diokles said, 'when his dick's dry.'

  Satyrus decided it would be bad for discipline if he said what was on his mind, so he forced a false smile and walked away to supervise the final fitting of the bow timbers and the new rails. He understood in his head that he'd done a bad thing by taking a lover – that he'd had something that the other men didn't have, which made him the target of a lot of teasing. He knew this in his head, but in his gut he was angry at them for being so petty.

  In the first of the sun, they were afloat off the creek, the lower hull full of rocks from the beach to stand him up. He wasn't the Falcon – or rather, he was the Falcon some moments, and then, in a heartbeat, he was another ship altogether – stiffer, better under sail, harder to row and down by the stern, sloppy in a turn. The bow leaked. Satyrus spent much of the day crouched over the new bow timbers, feeling the water and worrying.

  'You need to relax,' Diokles said. 'They'll swell.'

  'You need to shut up and do your work by yourself,' Satyrus spat. 'You're a good helmsman – but I can replace you. I promoted you from the oar bench. My personal life is not part of your deck, and neither is my head. Walk away.'

  Diokles turned on his heel and headed to the stern.

  Satyrus cursed his temper and his foolish words – but he did not retract them.

  They didn't exchange a word while they loaded, making every effort to bring his bow down in the water. They stood well apart while Satyrus was embracing Alexander and all his sons at the edge of the beach.

  'Your father's friend – the hero. He's brought me nothing but luck. Glad I could help you.' Alexander had given them a farewell dinner, a big fish from the bay and wine for all hands that must have cost the man a small fortune.

  'When I am king, you will never pay a day's tax,' Satyrus promised.

  'That's right, I won't!' the farmer responded. 'Don't now, neither. Good luck, lad. You're the image of your dad – a little longer, I think, but a good man. Go and put the bronze to that bastard in Pantecapaeum for all the other farmers.'

  The old man embraced Theron, who had spent time with his grandsons, and Diokles, who bore it stiffly, and then they were away, tearing up the bay on a fresh breeze.

  'If the wind holds, there's no cruiser in the Euxine can take him on this reach,' Diokles said, to no one in particular. He nodded to Theron. 'Quit wrestling and become a shipwright.'

  Theron gave a half-smile. 'I suppose something of my father rubbed off on me,' he said, watching Satyrus.

  Satyrus knew that Diokles meant his little speech as a peace offering, but he couldn't bring himself to answer, or apologize, and that made him feel like a fool. His arm was becoming heavy and swollen and he felt light-headed. If there was an enemy ship off the bay, they never saw him, flying along with the wind astern as soon as they turned south, so that the farm seemed a dream. Satyrus spent the morning watching his precious bow like a mother cat with her first kittens, but the leakage was no more than any dry ship gives in his first hours at sea, and by noon he was dry, as the wood swelled to close the gaps in the new construction. Satyrus wiped his hand against the fresh-cut timbers, smiled in satisfaction and walked up the new cataphract deck to the stern.

  'Straight on for the Great Bosporus?' Diokles asked. It was the closest to direct communication that the two of them had tried in two days. 'We might make it if we sailed the deep green. Tomorrow night, with a good landfall and the will of the gods.'

  'Tomis,' Satyrus said, and regretted his terse answer immediately. Diokles was trying to apologize. Satyrus had the ready wit to know that this flow of conversation wasn't really about their course. Was and wasn't. He tried the same in return. 'Tomis is in Lysimachos's satrapy. Should be friendly. Besides, we have friends there – my father's guest-friends and others. At this rate, we'll be there before nightfall. We'll weather the strait in daylight, day after tomorrow.'

  'Tomis?' Diokles said. 'I could get a new ship there.'

  'Don't be an ass, Diokles,' Satyrus said. He braced himself. 'I need you,' he said, with the same effort he'd use in a fight.

  'Huh,' Diokles said, with the air of a man with more to say. They'd coasted all day, never losing sight of the Ister delta and her thousands of islands and broad fan of silt, and then followed the coast as it turned due south, the land visibly civilized, with Greek farms as far as the eye could see and the loom of the Celaletae Hills in the west.

  'Tomis breakwater!' the lookout called.

  'High time,' Neiron said. He'd had an easy day, with the wind just right for sailing.

  'Ships on the beach,' the lookout called.

  Satyrus nodded to his officers. 'I'll go.'

  None of them seemed inclined to argue. He pulled his chiton over his head and dropped it on the deck and raced aloft up the boatsail mast. The lookout was Thron, the youngest and lightest of the ship's boys.

  'Look at t
hat, sir!' he said, pointing at the sweep of the beach beyond the breakwater. Tomis boasted two galley beaches, one each side of a rocky headland. They could only see the northern beach.

  There were three triremes on the beach and a fourth warship floated at a mooring in the broad curve of the bay. He was the Golden Lotus.

  'Kalos! Get the sails off him! Now!' Satyrus called from the lookout.

  'Aye, sir!' Kalos called back, and bare feet slapped the decks as the deck crew ran to their stations.

  'Good eye, boy,' Satyrus said. He pointed at the deck. 'A silver owl for you when your watch is over.'

  'For me?' Thron beamed.

  Satyrus ignored his hero-worship and dropped to the deck.

  Diokles was already turning them out to sea. 'What's up?' he asked.

  'Golden Lotus is in the roadstead,' Satyrus said. He looked around. 'All officers!' he called.

  Neiron was getting the rowers to their benches. He waved.

  Kalos had the telltale sails down. An observer on the beach would have only bare poles to look for against the sunset now. He came aft, pausing to curse a deckhand who was sloppy in his folding of the precious sail.

  Apollodorus, another survivor of Gaza, came forward from the bow. Unarmoured, he was magnificently muscled, though short. A very tough man, indeed. With Abraham gone, he was the phylarch of their marines.

  Satyrus pointed at the harbour. 'Leon might have come here,' he said.

  'Can't be Leon,' Theron said. 'He had ten ships around him when we escaped. He was taken.'

  'We escaped,' Satyrus said.

  'He didn't,' Theron insisted.

  'No chance at all?' Satyrus asked, which quieted them. 'Tomis is a friendly port. If those are Eumeles' ships, he's an idiot, or his navarch is. And we have a hull packed with oarsmen trained to fight. But – if that's Leon, we'll look like fools and possibly kill some of our friends. We need to know.'

  Kalos shrugged. 'Sail in, lay alongside and put our knives to their throats. If it's friends, we say we're sorry and let them buy us some wine.'

  'That's why you're not a navarch,' Neiron said, rubbing the back of his head. 'I agree with the master. We need to know.'

  Theron nodded slowly. 'I agree.'

  Satyrus nodded. 'Good. I'll go.'

  Theron shook his head. 'Don't be foolish, lad.'

  Satyrus turned and looked at his former athletics coach. 'I am not a lad, and I am not foolish, Theron. We'll talk of this another time.' He spoke carefully, without anger as best he could manage. Time to stake out some new ground with all of them, he decided. 'I have guest-friendships here. I am young, and I can swim, and I'm mostly unwounded.'

  'Let Diokles go, or one of the boys,' Theron said. He was clearly stung by his former student's rebuke. 'Your arm is bad.'

  'I've had worse,' Satyrus said.

  'Bullshit, boy.' Theron stepped forward.

  'Watch yourself, sir. I am not your pupil here. I am your commander. And I am not boy to you. Understand?' He turned.

  'Very well, sir.' Theron was angry. 'Send Diokles!'

  'Diokles is my first officer, but he lacks the social distinctions that will protect me,' Satyrus said.

  'Which is a nice way of saying that they could just pick me up and make me row, if they was hostile,' Diokles said.

  'If they capture you, you won't live an hour,' Theron said.

  'The price of glory,' Satyrus said. 'I'm going. Diokles, lay me ashore just north of the headland. Go up the coast, get a meal in the oarsmen and come back for me tomorrow night. Off and on until the moon rises. If you see three fires on the beach, come in and fetch me off. If there are just two fires, I'm taken and it's a trap. No fires – well, I'm not there. Clear?'

  Theron shook his head. 'I'm against it.'

  Theron was a gentleman and a famous athlete, and the rest of them were plain sailormen. None of them spoke up, either way. Satyrus looked at his former coach. 'Your reservations are noted,' Satyrus said, a phrase of Leon's that leaped to his mind and sounded much more adult than fuck off.

  Theron's face darkened, but over his shoulder, Diokles grinned and then turned away to hide it. The water was cold – winter was less than two feasts away and the Euxine was already more like the Styx than seemed quite right. Satyrus went over the side less than a stade from the shore, his leather bag and sword belt and all his clothing inside a pig's bladder, which he tried to keep over his head as he swam with a spear in his left hand. The distance was short, but the first shock took the breath from his lungs, and he was labouring by the time his feet brushed the gravel of the beach, his arm burning like fire from the salt and the exertion. He lay on the shingle, panting, for a minute before he got up, brushed the sea-wrack off his body and got dressed. Water had penetrated the bladder and his wool chiton was wet, and so was his chlamys – but they were good wool, and he was warmer by the time he pulled the sword belt over his head, set his bag on his shoulder, picked up his hunting spear and loped over the dune and on to the road.

  There were farms on either hand, their vines along the road and their barley fields stretching away in autumnal desolation, interspersed with scraggly olive trees and heavy apple trees. Even as Satyrus watched the fields, he saw a slave propping a branch that was heavy with fruit.

  Satyrus jogged along the road behind the dune until he came even with the slave. The man was quite old.

  'Good evening!' Satyrus called out.

  The slave turned, looked at him and went back to cutting a prop.

  'How far to Tomis?' Satyrus asked.

  The old man looked up, clearly annoyed. He pointed down the road. 'Not far enough,' he said.

  Satyrus had to laugh at that. He set off again, running a couple of stades to where the road turned as it rounded a low headland and the farms fell away because the soil was so poor. Olive trees on terraces climbed beside the road, and just past the turn, a big rabbit perused a selection of wild fennel in the sunset. Satyrus put his spear through the animal and gutted it on the spot, and he ran on with a prayer to Artemis on his lips and the rabbit dangling from his lonche.

  A few stades further on, he found an apple orchard full of men and women picking in the last light. Satyrus smiled at two women who were sharing a water bottle by the road, and they lowered their eyes and retreated towards the trees.

  'How far into Tomis?' he called.

  The younger maiden shook her head and kept backing up. The elder stopped well out of his reach and shrugged. 'Around the headland, you see her,' she said in Bastarnae-accented Greek.

  A man came up from the apple trees, holding a spear. 'Greetings, stranger,' he called from a good distance.

  Satyrus bowed. 'I am Satyrus,' he said.

  'Talkes,' the man said. He was wary, but he eyed the rabbit greedily. 'You were hunting, sir?'

  'I was lucky,' Satyrus said. 'I'm looking for friends. Where can I find Calchus the Athenian? Or Isokles, son of Isocrates?'

  'You are in luck,' the man said. 'My pardon, sir. My mistress is Penelope, daughter of Isokles.'

  'Does she reside on this farm?' Satyrus asked. He vaguely remembered that Isokles had a daughter. She'd be twice his age. Married – to Calchus's son Leander. Or so he seemed to recall.

  'Not safe in town just now,' the man said quietly. 'If you hadn't come up so quiet, we'd have been gone ourselves – we're supposed to flee armed men. She'll be at the farmhouse. If you tell me your errand, I'll approach her.'

  'I'd rather tell her myself,' Satyrus said.

  Talkes shook his head. 'No, sir. These are hard times round here. No one is getting near my mistress 'less she says.' Talkes held a spear like a man who regarded the weapon as an old friend, the partner of many a day in the field. A dangerous man.

  Satyrus nodded. 'Very well. Tell your mistress that I am Satyrus, and my father was Kineas, and I am a guest-friend of her father's, and I crave her hospitality.' Satyrus sighed for the foolishness of it – if any of these slaves talked, he could be taken very easily. 'Do you k
now who has those boats on the beach in town?'

  'They're the king's. Not our satrap – not old Lysimachos. They belong to the new king. Eumeles.' Talkes shook his head. 'Killed some men from the militia yesterday morning in a fight on the beach. Killed mistress's father, too. Burned some farms. Thought you might be one of them. Still not sure, mind. Teax, get back to the house, now. Tell mistress about the stranger. I'll wait here.' The man looked at him, tilting his head. 'You are Satyrus, then? The one the soldiers are looking for?' Talkes turned. 'Run, girl!'

  The woman so addressed – the younger one – vanished like a foal from a spring hunt, pulling her heavy wool chiton up her legs and running as fast as an athlete.

  'I have some wine I could share,' Satyrus offered.

  'Keep it,' Talkes said. 'The rest of you, back to work.' Talkes backed away and lowered his spear, and he stood in the shadow of an old apple tree, watching his labourers and Satyrus by turns.

  Satyrus thought that he probably knew everything he needed to know. But curiosity held him. He drank a mouthful of his own wine and hunkered down on his haunches to wait.

  'I'd have a swallow of that now, if you was to offer again, stranger.' Talkes took a hesitant step closer.

  Satyrus nodded. He put the stopper back in his flask and set it on the ground. Then he picked up his spear, rabbit and all, and stepped well clear. 'Be my guest.'

  Talkes sidled up to the canteen carefully, as if afraid it might be a dangerous animal. But he took a swallow and smiled.

  'You're a gent, and no mistake,' he said. 'Mind you, you could still be one of the tyrant's men,' he added, and took another swallow. He grinned, and went back to watching his workers.

  Satyrus had another swallow of his wine. 'How long have they been here?' he asked.

  'Four days,' Talkes responded.

  Three weeks and more since the sea battle. Plenty of time for Eumeles to refit a captured ship and sail it here – especially as fine a ship as Golden Lotus.