King of the Bosphorus t-4

by Christian Cameron

  Nihmu was weeping.

  Melitta curled around her and stroked her forehead. 'What's wrong, Auntie?'

  Nihmu rose suddenly, throwing Melitta back against the leather cushions on the floor. 'Nothing!' she said. 'There is nothing wrong. I saw many spirit guides, and I have received much news. I must think.'

  Melitta's head hurt too much to ask further questions. She let Nihmu go, and then she breathed deeply of the fresh, cold air outside the tent. Her headache was banished in minutes and she knelt in the new snow outside, collecting the cushions, stripping the brazier and dumping the coals to hiss and steam in the snow. Then she knocked down the hide tent and folded it quickly, before it grew too cold and stiff.

  All of these things, she realized in putting them away, were Samahe's, not Nihmu's. She took them back to Samahe's yurt.

  The Sakje woman was sitting cross-legged on the floor of her lodge, working by the light of two Greek lamps. She was weaving thongs through small bronze scales, repairing an armour shirt.

  This was work that Melitta knew well from her youth, and she sat down with the other woman and began to cut a leather thong from a patch of caribou hide, holding the tough hide in her teeth and cutting with a sharp knife. They worked in silence because both women had their mouths full. After some time, Samahe spat out the last of her thong. 'You took smoke?' she asked.

  Melitta gave a wry smile. 'It took me, more like.' She started a new thong, cutting the edge of the hide carefully. A skilled man, or woman, could make a single thong many horse-lengths long, all a single thickness. Melitta wasn't that good, but she was pleased to see that her thong was not like a child's, full of knots and bumps. She still had skill.

  Samahe nodded. 'I don't like the smoke any more,' she said. 'When I was a maiden, the smoke was good. Now it brings me only dreams of all the men I have killed.' She shrugged. 'The last few years, I have killed many and many.' She did not say this with the pride of a warrior, but merely with weariness.

  'I met a guide,' Melitta said. 'Or a demon. He barred me from the tree and mocked me as a Greek.'

  Samahe's eyes met hers. 'I wouldn't share that with other people,' she said.

  Melitta shrugged. 'It makes no sense,' she said. 'My father was Greek. By all accounts, he seldom even accepted that he was baqca. Yet no spirit guide ever blocked him from the tree!'

  'That is Greek talk,' Samahe said. 'The spirits do as they do, and it is not for us to question.'

  'Bah,' Melitta said. 'That is tyranny. It is illogical.' Even as she spoke the Greek word, she understood how deep this conflict would run, and it made her angry. 'I am Sakje!' she said.

  Samahe looked up from her work. 'I don't doubt it, lady. Do not let any other of the people doubt it, either.' She chewed on the thong for a dozen heartbeats, softening the stuff. Then she leaned forward. 'And Nihmu?' she asked.

  'I couldn't say,' Melitta answered. 'She mentioned many spirit guides.'

  Samahe shook her head. 'Why must she be baqca?' she asked. 'She cursed the gift when she had it, and rejoiced when it left her. Where is her mate? Why has she returned?'

  Melitta was used to the gossip of women. She enjoyed it when it was well meant, and she judged Samahe's comments as kindly. 'Her mate is captive to Eumeles at Pantecapaeum.' She took the hide from her mouth. 'But it is many years and she has no child, and in Alexandria, we wondered if the lack of a child was weighing on her.'

  And then, unbidden, thoughts of what she had seen between Nihmu and Coenus on the trail came to her, and she frowned.

  Samahe shook her head. 'I don't think she should have returned,' she said. The next day, Melitta sat in another yurt with Tameax, the youngest baqca she had ever met. Nihmu had refused to come.

  'You are no older than I am,' Melitta said, after clasping his hand and sitting down. She saw that he had a fine drum – indeed, it looked to her to be Kam Baqca's drum, an artefact from her youth, with tiny iron charms hanging all around the rim. He tapped it idly with a long bone as he looked at her.

  'I am older than you by a number of cycles,' he said with a smile. 'But I won't expect you to believe it.'

  'Really?' she asked.

  'I have not always been a man. At least, I think I can remember being a fish.' He shrugged and smiled.

  Melitta laughed. 'Most men claim to have been some great and noble animal, like an eagle or a bear.'

  'Most men are liars,' he said.

  'Perhaps, by claiming to have been a small thing, you seek to disarm me into believing other things,' Melitta drawled. He had deep cushions, leather ones filled with horsehair, and she allowed herself to slip back on to them. In a curious way, it was like debating with Philokles.

  'You are not like a Sakje,' he said. 'Your brain runs like a river that has many channels.'

  'I have been in many places,' Melitta said. 'Yet I am a Sakje.'

  'I have seen this same thing in Ataelus,' Tameax said. 'Why do the Greeks think so differently?'

  'I wish I had Philokles here to tell you,' Melitta answered, and found her eyes filling with tears. 'He was my teacher, in a kind of learning called "logic".' She sat up. 'He spoke at length with Kam Baqca, a whole winter.' She felt it important that he see that the greatest baqca of the current age had approved of the Greek thinking. 'You understand what the Greeks call mathematics?'

  'Understand? No. But I know to what you refer.' He smiled at her. 'Did you really kill six Sauromatae?'

  She nodded.

  He shrugged. 'I will tell the spirits. Some spirits object to you, as an alien. Others call you the daughter of Srayanka. Others say you will kill the people.' He laughed, and he had a clear laugh. 'Spirits are all a little mad – how can they be otherwise, when they are already dead?'

  'I met one in the smoke,' Melitta said. Samahe had advised her to keep this to herself.

  He leaned forward. 'Yes?'

  'A skeleton,' she said.

  'Bah – most of them have but naked bones, until you clothe them with your own dreams. Who was he?' The baqca was intensely interested, quivering like an Aegyptian cat watching a mouse in a grain sack.

  'I didn't ask.' She shifted uncertainly on the cushions. 'He annoyed me and I threatened him.'

  Tameax laughed his clear, silvery laugh. 'You may be Sakje,' he said. He rocked back on his heels and poured herb tea from a kettle on his tripod. 'Nihmu is avoiding me. She is not recovering her powers. Why would she, who had so much power, pretend? All here honour her.'

  Melitta felt that she was on dangerous ground. 'She seeks more than honour,' she allowed. 'I'm not sure that I understand her.'

  'You treat me as an equal,' Tameax said.

  Melitta met his eye. 'How should I treat you?'

  Tameax shook his head. 'The people have two ways to deal with me,' he said. 'Some deny that I have power, insisting that I am too young, that I have not given my manhood for power, that I cannot be real. Others treat me as an object of fear. No one treats me as an equal. Yet you, a queen, speak to me as if I am your brother.'

  Melitta shrugged.

  'Will you treat all the people this way, even when you are the war queen of the Assagatje?' he asked. 'The scar on your cheek says that you could be a hard queen to follow.'

  'What is your place in all this?' she shot back.

  He nodded, pinching his lips. 'If you become queen, I will become your baqca.' He handed her a cup of tea. 'I seek to know what kind of queen you might be. Ataelus will follow you whatever I say, and my loyalty to him is depthless. So I will not leave your side. I come with Ataelus, his horse and his bow – part of his equipage.' He used the Sakje word that meant the same as the Greek panoply – all the war things. 'You do not fear me, or despise me. This will mean much to me.' He nodded. 'Why will you ride against Marthax, and not to the tribes that will support you?'

  Melitta raised her head and looked away from the intensity of his blue eyes, at the hangings behind his head. She thought for a time that seemed to her long. 'There are many reasons, all true, and
yet some are more true than others,' she said.

  He nodded.

  'If I ride to Parshtaevalt or Urvara, I will build an army. In answer, Marthax will also build an army. When armies are built, they fight. Once that battle is fought, it will no longer matter whether I win or I lose, because the people will have split.'

  Tameax fingered his wispy black beard. He was remarkably handsome. The remarkable part is that he was a baqca, and they were usually ugly men, or mad ones. He was strictly sane, and had the straight nose and blue eyes of the Medes and the Persians. 'This seems true to me. Did you dream it?'

  'No,' she said. She shrugged, wondering why she was being so honest. She'd considered her strategy again and again, and it had occurred to her to tell the people that she had dreamed it, but his eyes disarmed her.

  The shadow of a smile touched the corners of his mouth. 'Perhaps I will,' he said. In another man, it would have been an admission of the falsity of his dreams, but that was not how it came from him. 'But there is more.'

  'You are – very like my tutor.' She sat up fully and crossed her legs. Then she picked up her tea cup – a beautiful thing of pottery, unlike any other cup she had ever handled. 'If I go to Parshtaevalt, he will advise me. And Urvara – she will advise me. And each will have their own needs and desires and they will quarrel, and I will lose by it. And each will expect my mother – always my mother. When I go straight to Marthax and…' She paused, having almost revealed her entire plan. Not even to this handsome young man. She took a breath. 'When I win him over, I will be queen. By my own hands.'

  Tameax nodded. 'Would you take me as a lover, Queen of the Assagatje?'

  Melitta felt herself blush. 'No,' she said with real regret. 'Not if you are to be my baqca.'

  Now it was his turn to flush – clearly, it was not the answer he expected. 'Maidens seldom refuse me,' he said.

  She shrugged, smiling at him. 'Many of your maidens are not queens, I expect,' she said.

  'We will see,' he answered. 'I am a patient man. And to be honest, right now we sit in my yurt on a field of new snow, far from our lands, the enemy of every man and horse in the vale of the Tanais, and part of my mind imagines what it might be to be baqca of a queen, but the other says that we will never be anything but a band of brigands, and that you dream big dreams for nothing.'

  'This from a baqca?' she asked. She rose to her feet. 'Is the cup from Qin?' she asked.

  'Yes,' he said. 'I had four, and now I have but two.'

  'Perhaps we will go there one day.' She touched his hand in giving him the cup. 'Nihmu went with Leon.'

  'I have been to the grass that laps on the shores of Qin,' he said. 'I would like to go again. Indeed, it was that trip that made me baqca.' He put the cup reverentially into a small lacquer box and then he took her hand. 'You see deeply,' he said.

  She took her hand out of his and stepped away. 'You say that to every spear-maiden who comes to this tent,' she said.

  His eyes sparkled. 'I do too.'

  'Keep it for them and be my friend,' she said.

  'The cycle will bring what it brings,' he said.

  11

  AEGEAN, WINTER, 311-310 BC

  The days after the feast of Aphrodite were full of work. Satyrus heard the views of each of his officers and then made his own decisions, and it was a week after the mad symposium that he briefed them all on how he saw the winter.

  'I am going to take the Golden Lotus to Alexandria,' he said. 'My people deserve to know that I am alive. Further, I need money in quantity and counsel. If I'm lucky, Diodorus will be home for the winter. We need our hired Macedonians – as marines first, and then as the core of our army.'

  Theron nodded. None of the other officers had any comment to make.

  'Theron will go to Lysimachos as my ambassador in the Herakles.' Satyrus was satisfied with the condition of the Herakles. 'We need to choose a crew from our own sailors, Abraham's and any of the captives who will take service with us for the Hornet.'

  Diokles nodded. 'Most of them still come around to the warehouse every morning,' he said. 'You paid them. They're like stray cats when you give them a bowl of milk.'

  Theron shook his head. 'You threatened to kill them all!' he protested.

  Diokles grinned. 'He's got quite the reputation now,' the Tyrian said.

  'Daedalus should be here,' Theron said.

  'He's a mercenary and what I need to discuss is still too raw,' Satyrus answered.

  Theron shook his head in disagreement. 'Daedalus has been loyal ever since we got here. And he commands a powerful ship and a good crew. And despite what men say, he's no pirate.'

  'And what of me?' Abraham asked.

  'You're my ambassador to the pirates,' Satyrus said. 'And you get the Hornet for your own, if you want him.'

  'Nice.' Abraham smiled. 'That's the best present I've ever had. Mine to keep?'

  'Unless you lose him to one of Eumeles' cruisers,' Satyrus shot back.

  Abraham shook his head. 'T hanks,' he said again. Then, after a moment, 'You'll go to Rhodos?'

  Diokles shook his head. 'I've sailed for Rhodos most of my life,' he said. 'They won't like it, that you came from here. And there must be rumours in every port in the east now – that we're here.'

  Satyrus leaned back until his head was against the Sakje tapestry that hung behind him. 'I've thought about this for a week,' he said. 'Hear me and tell me if I'm in the grip of delusion.' He gave them a rueful smile. 'We need Rhodos and the pirates. And Lysimachos. We need them all.'

  Diokles smiled. 'Pigs can't fly,' he said.

  Theron shook his head. 'Hear him out,' he said.

  Abraham rubbed his chin and looked at his friend. 'Do they have a common interest?' he asked.

  Satyrus nodded at Abraham. 'Give that man a golden daric. Rhodos wants the pirates gone. We can take them away. If we defeat Eumeles, Demostrate will return to Pantecapaeum and the pirate fleet will disperse. At the very least, they'll be out of the Propontis and the grain fleets will move.'

  Diokles whistled. 'Just like that? And Rhodos will just let them go?'

  'Rhodos is facing extinction,' Satyrus said. 'They are trying to be the balance point in the war between One-Eye and Ptolemy. They need peace for their hulls to carry cargoes, and they need peace to be able to apply their sea power to the pirates. Instead, they have war all around them and their losses mount. At any moment, one of the adversaries is going to take a fleet and have a go at laying siege to Rhodos. If, at the same time, the pirates are ravaging their merchants – they're dead.'

  'Indeed,' Theron said. 'In fact, Antigonus One-Eye is trying to hire pirates on the Syrian coast to serve in his fleet.'

  'And while the pirates sit in the Propontis, Lysimachos lacks the power to go into the Euxine and defend his satrapy against Eumeles,' Abraham said. 'I see it! Whereas, when you offer to take the pirates out of the Propontis, you actually turn them into a navy that, to all effects, serves Lysimachos against Eumeles!'

  Diokles shook his head. 'But they all hate each other!' he said.

  Satyrus sat up, the claw feet of his iron chair smacking the floor with a crack. Then he stood. 'Exactly. They all hate each other – so without a fourth party, they'll never make common cause.'

  He looked around at all of them. Kalos sat silent, interested only in returning to his new girl, or to sea, and indifferent to all this politics. Apollodorus had a new bronze thorax with silver inlay and buckles that was attracting most of his attention. Neiron listened attentively, as did the much younger Kleitos, still unsure of himself in such august company.

  'Listen,' Satyrus said, and even Apollodorus sat up. 'This planning is just so much dreaming of farms in Attica until they all sign articles. It may be more than we can manage, but it will cost us nothing but a winter under sail. We'll ship small cargoes and turn a profit like good Alexandrian merchants, and if this fails, we will start hiring mercenaries until we can fight Eumeles beak to beak. But this alliance is now. And it will serv
e Ptolemy as well as it serves us, by freeing Rhodos and empowering Lysimachos, his ally.'

  'Too fucking deep for me,' Kalos said. 'You lead, I'll sail.'

  Satyrus looked at Theron. 'Is this too complex to succeed?' he asked.

  'You need three groups of men to see clearly to their own best interest, past a web of personal loves and hates,' the athlete replied. 'And then you need a port on the Euxine, or have you forgotten? Do you expect Lysimachos to give you Tomis as a base?'

  Satyrus nodded. 'I haven't forgotten,' he said. 'I have hurt Tomis too much already. I'd rather not go there again.' He looked around. 'I will if I must. But I have another plan for a port, which I'll share in time. Until then, I think I'll keep it to myself.'

  'What of Manes?' Abraham asked. 'Or is he too small for us to worry ourselves with?' He was already drinking wine.

  Satyrus addressed all of them again. 'Demostrate ordered me to rid him of Manes.' He shrugged.

  'His sailors are making trouble for ours whenever they meet,' Diokles said. 'Ask Neiron.'

  Neiron rubbed the back of his head, looked around and shrugged. 'In Rhodos, I'd call the watch. Here, I asked the lads to carry sticks.' He grinned.

  Satyrus looked at Abraham. 'So – tell me about Manes.'

  'He sees himself as Demostrate's heir,' Abraham said. 'He's a vicious animal without the leadership skills of a shark. Men fear him. Rhodos has a tremendous price on his head.' Abraham shrugged. 'He scares me – he'd do anything to achieve power. The other captains walk around him.'

  'Why is he making trouble with us?' Satyrus asked.

  Abraham looked at Theron. They shared a look, and then Theron spoke up. 'Already, there's word on the streets here that Demostrate has offered you an alliance. Or perhaps…' Theron grinned. 'Perhaps you are lovers. Don't look shocked – sailors love a good sex scandal. Or perhaps he's naming you his heir. Maybe all three.' Theron shook his head. 'Manes is reacting to all these rumours. Which may come straight from Demostrate, who's pushing him to violence and hoping you'll get rid of him.'

  Abraham leaned in. 'Or hoping that Manes will get rid of you,' he added. He shook his head apologetically. 'They're pirates!' he said, as if that explained any amount of treachery.