Destroyer of Cities t-5

by Christian Cameron

  Arimnestos looked at Socrates and smiled — not a very nice smile. ‘I’m sure that all that sophistry does you honour,’ the warrior said. ‘I lost friends the way children lose toys. What of it? Always for me the place to fight was wherever the fight was thickest — gods, how I loved it. And if my friends would follow me there — follow me to where Ares danced — then they would die, many of them. Was it my fault? I’m no madman, Satyrus. I worried about it like any commander worth two farts. But I didn’t worry too much. When the bronze rings and the iron shines, you kill or you are killed. And afterwards, you make what peace with yourself you can, or you go’ — the warrior looked at the sophist — ‘goat-fucking mad.’ He shrugged. ‘Or you lose your touch of the divine and become an animal.’

  Philokles made a face. ‘Satyrus, I sit between these two for a reason, as you, who were always a bright boy, can easily guess. Now — please. What is your verdict?’

  Satyrus looked out of the temple — and he saw the shades of thousands of men. There was Ataelus and there was Samahe, and Philokles himself, and the Sarmatian girl he’d shot, the first person he’d knowingly killed, and there was a Macedonian he’d put in the dust at Gaza — Ares, there were thousands. Was that Diokles, at the back? Shades — wisps, and yet they seemed to stretch away down the Panathenaic Way. They murmured. He couldn’t hear them, and yet they made him profoundly afraid.

  The three statues were immovable in front of him, and behind the three was Nike, slim and beautiful and remarkably like Miriam, holding a sword. She was made of marble, gilded and painted, and she smiled at him.

  ‘Who are they?’ Satyrus asked, annoyed by the fear in his voice. He jerked a thumb at the shades.

  ‘The jury,’ Nike answered. ‘Don’t even try to bribe them. They’re dead!’ and she laughed, a fluid sound like a brook in spring, easy and light.

  Back to hovering above the room, and watching Aspasia — that was her name. She’d healed him before, discovered his addiction to the poppy juice and set him on the road to recovery.

  She moved around the room with purpose, like a trierarch on the deck of warship under oars. She stepped quietly and confidently, preparing a tisane of herbs and drugs, adding warm water, feeding it to him with a spoon.

  Satyrus, watching himself, wondered why they bothered. His skin was transparent like the most expensive parchment, and the tone of the parchment was yellow — a hideous colour. Even as he flinched at the colour, the stick figure on the bed rolled and cried out.

  Aspasia murmured endearments, tenderly wiping the hair from his face. At some point while pushing the straggling curls away, she stopped, muttered something inaudible and laid the back of her hand against his forehead, and then against his cheek. And then she peeled back the bedclothes and thrust her hand into his groin.

  ‘Alas,’ she said. And folded the bedclothes over his face.

  Troy — the siege of Troy — endless. Satyrus fought and fought, day after day — he was Menelaeus, he was Achilles, he was Hektor, and Aeneas. Diomedes. .

  She returned with Abraham, already weeping, and Miriam, Helios, Anaxagoras and Neiron — Neiron was dressed in a full chiton, a man of property going to the assembly.

  She had a silver mirror in her hand, and she buffed it against her chest until it shone.

  ‘Any news of his sister?’ she asked.

  ‘None,’ Neiron replied. ‘And now — her son is king, I assume. A raven’s feast if the Herakleans-’

  ‘Are you gentiles so heartless?’ Miriam asked. ‘Was this not a man? Not your friend? And all you want to talk about is his inheritance?’

  Neiron shrugged. ‘Despoina, he was a king. If he had lived, he would want his kingdom to live, and not be cut up like a pig is cut by a butcher.’

  Zeus Sator! Too right, old man.

  Miriam sat on the edge of the bed and put the silver mirror in front of his lips. ‘It never hurts to be sure,’ she said, matter-of-factly.

  ‘He’s cold,’ Miriam said, and took a shuddering breath. ‘Neiron, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Nothing to be sorry about, Despoina. I liked him. More, I fear, than I let him know, but I’m old enough not to want the world to see everything that crosses the bridge of my thoughts.’

  Abraham shook his head. He raised his fists towards the ceiling. Then he composed himself. Miriam took his arm, and he embraced her.

  Helios wept.

  Anaxagoras sat in the chair, lifted a small lyre and began to play.

  Aspasia shot him a look.

  ‘Worked for Orpheus,’ he said with a smile.

  ‘To Hades with your blasphemy,’ the doctor-priestess said.

  But the simple tune he played was like a dirge, like a march, like a hymn — his hands seemed to flow over the strings of the lyre and it rang, louder than might have been expected, the notes slowing until they fell one by one like drops of water falling on a desert, and then Anaxagoras moved his right hand across all the strings like a man wiping a slate clean, and he began to tap his sandal on the floor, a rhythm so compelling that Miriam, clutched in her brother’s arms, found herself patting her brother’s back in time, and Helios through his tears was slapping the chair arm in time and Neiron’s chin moved fractionally up and down.

  ‘Come and take your stand, Satyrus,’ Anaxagoras said. ‘Achilles said,’ and here his rhythm beat harder, ‘Achilles said that it was better to be the slave of the worst master among the living than to be a king among the dead.’

  And then his right hand moved and the notes began to fall and then flow, faster and more insistent-

  Anaxagoras began to sing, and Neiron’s harsh croak joined in instantly, and Aspasia, her eyes shining, and Helios, hesitant-

  Daughters of the muses, who walk the slopes of well-wooded Olympus! rang the paean to Apollo, the song that maidens sang to the newborn god and that men roared in defiance when preparing to sell their lives dearly.

  Notes fell like a waterfall of sound and glory, and Satyrus found that he might make the choice, if he willed it, and he chose to fall down the waterfall of music back into the deep pool of his body-

  And the music rolled on, man’s most potent magic against the dark, the oarsman’s salvation, the aid of the warrior, the light of the dancing maiden until his head was more full of the notes than of the fever.

  And when the music ended, there was silence, and dark.

  Far, far away, he heard the healer say, ‘Look, there. I’m wrong, and all that fuss for nothing, dear. See where his breath mists the silver? Always best to be sure.’ But her breath caught and there was the hint of a sob, and behind her, Helios and Anaxagoras finished the hymn.

  18

  Satyrus awoke to the sound of music, and he slept to the sound of music. The Iliad and the Odyssey, the war poems of Tiresias, sea shanties, drinking songs, hymns to the gods. And another voice, lighter but pure, singing women’s songs — Sappho’s songs about the purity of love:

  Some say that a body of cavalry is the most beautiful,

  And some say the phalanx is the most beautiful,

  And some say a squadron of ships is the most beautiful,

  But I say that the most beautiful one

  Is the one that is loved

  And his eyes opened, fluttered and stayed open. At the foot of his bed Aspasia sat in a chair of ebony, her wrinkled face composed in sleep. And closer, sitting so that her hip rested in a pool of warmth against the sticks of his own hip bones, Miriam played the lyre and sang through the whole of Sappho’s greatest love song, singing of how Helen chose love over war, and how great was the beauty of that gift.

  Satyrus lay for a long time with his eyes open. He couldn’t bear to look at his shoulders against the coverlet, but he could watch Miriam’s face in repose and song for a long time.

  A long time.

  She sang another song in a very different voice — a strange, almost discordant song that was almost more like a chant than Greek music.

  In his head, he smiled to realise tha
t he was actually awake — these were real people, not phantasms; that his brain still worked. The word Hebrew floated to the surface of his thoughts — the language of the Jews in their home. She was singing in Hebrew.

  And then he was asleep again.

  Days — days of gorging on soup, retching at simple beans, swallowing clear broth and then accepting more complex meals until he ate bread, and kept it down, and his friends gathered at his bedside as if it was a feast day at the temple, or as if his sickroom was a symposium.

  ‘You lived,’ Neiron said.

  Satyrus managed a smile. ‘If you call this living,’ he said in a whisper. If he had gained any weight, he couldn’t see it. ‘How long?’

  ‘Almost three months, lord,’ Helios said.

  A jolt — a daemon of energy coursed through his body.

  ‘Any. . more?’ he asked.

  ‘More what, lord?’ Helios asked.

  Satyrus tried to raise an arm to gesture — tried to speak more precisely, and all that emerged was a moan.

  ‘You tax him too much,’ Aspasia said. ‘He is still close to the edge. Let him be.’

  Neiron shook his head. ‘Nay, Despoina. He asks if any ships have come — if any survived the storm. Lord, it is winter here, and the worst sailing weather in fifty years. No ships have come into the harbour. There is almost no news from the world.’

  ‘And Demetrios has the shore opposite, and when the weather clears his ships sortie to close the blockade,’ Helios said, all in a rush.

  ‘He intends to lay siege to the town as soon as the weather clears. .’

  Satyrus could no longer make sense of what he heard, so he went back to sleep.

  Sleep, and dreams he didn’t remember, except that he fought against opponents appointed by Herakles, and in his dream his physique was the same poor wasted thing he was in life, and Herakles mocked him.

  How will you save this city with the body of a dead man? he asked.

  Awake, and Aspasia fed him, and he forced himself to eat, the taunts of his patron ringing aloud in his ears. He ate and ate, and Anaxagoras came and played music for him, and the notes seemed to enter his psyche like bronze nails hammered into a shield rim.

  Asleep, and awake to Miriam singing, and he tried to smile at her and she played on, oblivious to his presence, alight with her own singing. And awake, he could read the depth of her unhappiness as if it was written on her face in stonemason’s letters. Tending to him wasn’t just the duty of the woman of the house — it was release.

  She sang on, and he slept.

  And woke, and ate.

  And slept.

  And eventually, became aware of the rhythm of the house, the passage of the sun across his window, the wheel of time and life. The sun was warmer. Winter was fading. There were fewer smiles from any of his visitors.

  Rhodes was pleading with Demetrios to let her surrender.

  Abraham and Neiron came to him to tell him of it, and it saddened him and set his feeding back a week, because he wasn’t sure he wanted to live in a world where Rhodes cravenly surrendered. Worse — humiliating — Rhodes had to send ambassadors to the Golden Man, the conqueror, and beg him to be allowed to surrender.

  Across the straits, Demetrios had invited the pirates — all of them — to join him for the rape of Rhodes. Over three hundred ships had joined him: some said it was every pirate left on the face of the seas, and Demetrios, instead of destroying them, promised them the unimaginably rich plunder of the richest city on the ocean.

  Abraham sat in the ebony chair, his hands clasped as if he were the one pleading to be allowed to surrender.

  ‘Antigonus turned our envoys away and said that he would prefer to see us as slaves,’ Abraham said. He frowned. ‘But Demetrios is made differently. He sees himself as being greater than men — as a god come to earth. He will relent, if only for his reputation.’

  Neiron did not look so sure.

  Satyrus could see it. All too well. ‘He will not relent,’ he said.

  ‘Because he thinks he is a god, and that he has no need for the morality of a man.’

  Neiron narrowed his eyes as if seeing something new.

  Satyrus fell asleep. And dreamed dark dreams of defeat and enslavement, and spurned his food.

  He awoke to music. Anaxagoras played him awake, and then stopped — stopped in the middle of a rousing war tune. ‘Wake up, you sluggard!’ Anaxagoras said. ‘You think we saved your hide so that you could die? There are men here who need a king, a leader. A fighter. Wake up and strive, or lie back and die. My fingers grow tired of playing for you.’ And he laughed, his big laugh rolling out through the windows into the spring air like a hymn to Dionysus.

  Satyrus took his medicine, and then he ate.

  He lay back and listened to the tales men told him.

  He tried to raise his legs in the bed, and he lay, humiliated, while Aspasia and Miriam and a host of slaves rolled him over, cleaned his body of excrement and laughed at him.

  ‘The baby I never had,’ Miriam chided him.

  ‘If I had let you die, I’d have saved us all a lot of work,’ Aspasia quipped.

  After another few days — perhaps a week, although his grasp of time was not yet strong, and there was poppy juice in his water, he suspected — he dreamed again of his father, Kineas, the statue, speaking of the ways of the siege. When he woke, the dream was far away and unclear, very unlike the immediacy of the first. Except in one regard.

  He asked Miriam to summon Neiron, and he came soon enough, again dressed in the long sweeping chiton of a citizen in formal attire.

  ‘You were at the assembly?’ Satyrus asked.

  ‘We went to hear the ambassadors,’ Neiron said. His face told Satyrus everything.

  ‘Demetrios refused you,’ Satyrus said flatly.

  ‘Demetrios intends to raze this city to the ground, kill every man, sell all the women as slaves and salt our fields. He intends to leave nothing, so that men will see what defiance of the Antigonids receives as a reward.’ Neiron looked away. He choked a little. ‘He escorted the ambassadors from town to town to show the completeness of his armaments. He has five hundred ships of war with the pirates. He has four hundred merchant ships to carry fifty thousand soldiers.’

  ‘Troy,’ Satyrus whispered.

  Neiron strained to hear him. ‘What’s that you say?’ Neiron asked.

  ‘Troy!’ Satyrus said aloud. ‘He’s playing at being Achilles, or perhaps Agamemnon.’ He laughed a little. ‘Or perhaps he merely plays at being Alexander.’

  ‘If he’s playing, he’s playing in earnest. He has a thousand ships, or near enough.’ Neiron sighed.

  ‘If we are to be the Trojans, we had best prepare to resist,’ Satyrus whispered.

  ‘Resist?’ Neiron barked a bitter laugh. ‘Men are more interested in discussing who bears the fault of this disaster than in discussing defence. The harbour wall is not finished because the oligarch party will not spend the money to complete it. The only reason they haven’t run to exile is that they fear being captured by the pirates.’

  ‘If Demetrios has refused the offer of surrender,’ Satyrus said, as loudly as he could manage, ‘it is time to resist.’

  Neiron shrugged.

  ‘Our men, Neiron?’ Satyrus asked.

  ‘Many were sick, lord — the same sickness that you had. Indeed, it is rumoured that Ptolemy had it, and died. It is one of the reasons that the town despairs. There is no hope.’ Neiron put his face in his hands.

  Abraham took a deep breath. ‘Your captain of marines — Apollodorus — had the worst fever, except you; his eyes turned yellow as yours did, but he lived, and that gave us hope, lord. But he has been up for two months, and exercising in the gymnasium for a month. Four men died, and fifty were sick. The marines were sicker than any oarsmen.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘But they are recovered?’ he asked.

  Neiron nodded. ‘And Abraham has cared for them and paid them, so that they remain a crew.’
>
  ‘Good,’ Satyrus said. He squinted. ‘Get me Apollodorus.’

  It seemed that he had only to blink, and things were done. The next time he opened his eyes, Apollodorus was there, sitting in the ivory chair. As soon as he saw Satyrus’ eyes on him, he sank to one knee and kissed Satyrus’ hand. ‘Lord — I feared for you. I will send a hecatomb to heaven, to Asclepius.’

  ‘Better send another to the deadly archer, for it was his bow which shot me, and you. Anaxagoras changed the balance with a hymn to Apollo. I saw it — and many other sacred things. This is what I want to say to you, Apollodorus.’ Satyrus beckoned with his stronger hand, and Apollodorus came closer.

  ‘Listen to the words of my father, spoken in dream,’ Satyrus said, and was satisfied to see the marine captain touch the blue amulet at his throat. ‘The swift onset of the secret force will seldom triumph in the taking of a city. As a besieger, it must be tried — even at the cost of losing the picked men of your army, the savings in blood and gold of such an attempt is almost incalculable. Never, when you are commanders, allow yourself to count the loss of such a picked group against the possibility of success. If a city must fall — if that is the objective of your campaign — there is no personal price you should not be willing to pay short of impiety or immorality in the taking of the city.’

  ‘Your father is warning you that Demetrios will try to take one of the gates by stealth — before his fleet lands.’ Apollodorus rubbed his hands. ‘I will see to that.’

  ‘You must be secret,’ Satyrus croaked. ‘The simplest way to take this city would be by treason, and there are plenty here to play the traitor. I charge you to look for him. . or them.’

  Apollodorus nodded.

  Satyrus sagged back against his pillow. ‘There is another thing,’ he said. ‘It does not come from a dream — or rather, something was said in dream and I have thought and thought on it, sometimes in fever and sometimes as clear as the sea. I need you to accomplish it without demur. It will take all our sailors, and keep them employed. Will you see it done?’