Destroyer of Cities t-5

by Christian Cameron

  Apollodorus grinned. ‘Anything you ask, lord — so long as you will obey me in physical things, and allow me to begin training you. It took me a month to restore my flesh — and you are far worse than I have been.’

  Satyrus nodded. He was burning to transmit his idea.

  ‘Buy a house,’ he said. ‘Buy a house in the western part of the city, close to the wall. And dig a tunnel.’

  ‘An escape tunnel? Under the wall?’ Apollodorus asked. He sounded surprised, and not particularly pleased.

  ‘The tunnel must run all the way to the low rise beyond the great tower — there is a barn. Your tunnel must run to the barn.’ Satyrus nodded.

  Apollodorus shrugged. ‘I doubt that anyone on the face of the earth can tunnel so far.’

  Satyrus forced himself up. ‘Dig, damn it,’ he said. ‘You have months.’

  And then he was asleep, again.

  Sleeping, waking and eating. Now he tried to walk, and fell into the arms of Helios and Anaxagoras. But he would not lie still, and he walked — his stick-figure arms over their shoulders until his muscles burned like those of a man who had fought a long bout against a heavier man on the sands of the palaestra. When they left him, laughing, joyful at the pace of his recovery, he wept to be so weak.

  But walking brought its own rewards, and exercise created appetite, and appetite fed exercise. He walked on other men’s legs, and then with a stick, his arm around Miriam as he crossed his chamber, back and forth, five times and then ten and then fifty, the circle of her waist a delight.

  But as fast as his body healed, the world outside seemed to rot. The sun shone, and then a burst of spring storms wrecked a pair of grain ships that had almost run the blockade, and the spirit of the town fell again. Demetrios caught another grain ship and crucified the captain, and that was the end of blockade-running. His ships began to be visible in the straits all the time, and even Miriam was touched by fear and Abraham seemed to age before Satyrus’ eyes.

  ‘We have food for five months,’ Abraham said. ‘Oh, Satyrus! I should have sent my sister away. May God keep me from having to open her neck.’

  ‘Brother,’ Satyrus said, and put his hand on Abraham’s shoulder. ‘We will stand side by side again, and we will not lose this city.’

  ‘Almost I believe you,’ Abraham said.

  ‘We worship different gods,’ Satyrus said. ‘But perhaps you will understand if I say that I was sent back to save Rhodes, if I may. Or so I believe.’

  ‘May these words be true,’ Abraham said. ‘For a heathen, you are pious. I have never known you to blaspheme. Is this the truth?’

  ‘By Zeus Sator,’ Satyrus said. ‘I swear to you — my father spoke to me of saving the city, and Philokles, too.’

  Abraham stood up. ‘I think that I want to believe you too much,’ he said.

  Later, Helios came in with his hands dirty, dirt under his nails.

  ‘You are filthy!’ Miriam said.

  Helios looked guilty, and he slunk away to wash. He returned when Miriam had gone to manage the household affairs. ‘We are digging, lord,’ he said.

  Fifteen days he walked, enjoying the feel of Miriam under his arm — some appetites return very easily, he mocked himself. Miriam was a widow, the sister of his closest companion, and a woman who was deeply unhappy. She did not need to be the king’s mistress to add to her evils. Satyrus knew this, but the sickness had drawn a bond between them like a fetter of iron, and he felt it keenly. And her hand would linger on him when she washed him, or touched his face, a fraction of a heartbeat longer than it needed to — or was that his imagination?

  Fifteen days, and then Apollodorus brought him an old slave from the gymnasium, a professional trainer of the new sort, a grizzled man with scars on his arms and a missing finger.

  Apollodorus introduced him. ‘This is Korus,’ he said. ‘I have promised him his freedom when you can wear armour and swing a sword.’

  And with Korus’ introduction to the household, torment began that was worse, in many ways, than the illness that had preceded it. Korus ruled like a tyrant, ordaining food and exercise, and the exercises were brutal — lifting jumping weights, at first, until Satyrus couldn’t use his arms. And his legs — he was forced to run on the spot, his feet on towels of linen on the smooth tile floors, half crouched with his legs behind him, until he would fall forward and crack his head.

  And then food: he heard Miriam’s voice raised in anger — rage, really — at the demand that the kitchens produce roast pork in quantities suitable for a feast, and this in a household that forbade pork. Pork became the cause of a war: Miriam would allow none in her kitchen, and Korus acquired it elsewhere and forced Satyrus to eat it until he loathed the smell. Miriam fed him fish and chicken, and Korus fed him pork — five or six meals a day — and sometimes he vomited from surfeit.

  Korus had no conversation at all. He was not an educated man, like Theron, and he didn’t debate philosophy or discuss religion. He did not speak of war threatening the city. He had no interest beyond Satyrus’ body, and he was remorseless in the pursuit of his goal.

  Some days into this regimen, when Satyrus had just laid his head open smashing it against the tile floor in sheer fatigue, when Korus stood over him requiring him to rise and carry on, Satyrus lost his temper.

  ‘I wish to rest,’ he said in the voice of command.

  ‘Fuck that, boy,’ Korus said. Everyone was a boy, a pais, to the trainer. ‘Get your arse off the floor. You can do better.’

  Satyrus rolled to his feet, proud that he could control parts of his body again after five months of illness — and then fell on the bed as he lost control of his legs and the room spun.

  ‘Get up, you useless turd. Get on your wide-arsed feet and move.’ Korus didn’t even raise his voice.

  ‘Can’t you see he’s exhausted?’ Miriam asked sharply. ‘How dare you speak to him like that!’

  Korus looked hurt. ‘Like what, Despoina? Now you — get on your fucking feet.’ He ignored Miriam and stood over Satyrus. ‘On your feet.’

  ‘He’s finished!’ Miriam yelled. ‘How stupid are you?’

  Korus looked at her. ‘Not stupid at all, Despoina. Smart enough to know that he has some power left in them arms and legs, and I want to milk every fucking drop of his strength so that I can put it back into him twice over in food. In pork.’

  ‘Get out of my house!’ she said with murderous intensity.

  He nodded. ‘No, Despoina. I have your brother’s permission. It ain’t pretty, what I’m doing. But I do it well.’

  ‘You are hurting him.’ Miriam said. ‘Do you like it?’

  Korus shrugged. ‘Not me getting hurt, is it? But the sooner I do him, the sooner he’s strong. And can fight. That’s what the contract says. And if it’s all the same to you, Despoina, I’m fighting for my freedom. Been a slave too fucking long. Let me get him ready, and you can do anything you like with him.’

  His meaning was so clear that Satyrus rose from his bed in anger, and Miriam flushed right from the roots of her red-brown hair to the middle of her back, where it showed among the folds of her long chiton.

  ‘Knew you had some power left, laddie,’ Korus said as Satyrus rose.

  Rumours came, of Demetrios. More rumours that Ptolemy was dead, and Satyrus told Abraham that this was just the sort of deadly rumour that Demetrios would send into the city to cause panic.

  More sleep. Another day of endless agony — lifting, carrying and falling — more failure than success. Satyrus hated Korus’ voice, his rudeness, his lack of conversation.

  And then, in the night-

  He awoke to the sound of fighting — fighting close by, at the sea gate, and when he had his eyes open he could see the golden-red reflection of fire against the ceiling of his room, and he got to his feet.

  He had no sword, no armour. But an attempt was obviously being made — he could hear voices, the unmistakable sound of mortal combat. The voice of the sword blade, the song of the axe
, the ring of the hollow shield under the spear and the keening chorus of the wounded and the dying. From his window, which opened on the harbour, he could see it as clear as day — the new sea gate on the mole was flooded with men, and there were ships against the mole that hadn’t been there before. Satyrus found a chlamys — probably one of Helios’, left by chance — and wrapped himself in it and walked to the head of the stairs that led down from his room to the courtyard garden.

  He hadn’t put a foot on a step in five months, and by the base of the steps he had a two-handed grip on the stair rail like a dying man at sea grips a floating spar. Down the steps to the courtyard gate — it was shut. And a heavy bar laid across.

  A bar he could have lifted when he was thirteen; a bar of heavy wood that would have made Theron laugh. He couldn’t budge it — couldn’t move it in its well-worn channel of stone. As if he were an infant.

  He gritted his teeth and put both hands on the bar. Once, he could have cut through a backstay with a single blow of his sword. Once, he could have severed the head of an ox with a single axe blow. Now, all he desired was to move the bar on a house gate. He strained, and prayed to Herakles, and the thing slid — a hand’s breath and more, and the gates opened wide enough to admit a man and he slipped out, even as the shouting began behind him.

  He tried to run towards the sea gate, and he fell — caught a foot on the cobbles. Ahead, a troop of men ran at him, armed and armoured. He was helpless — now that he was down, he didn’t think that he could get to his feet. Weak and unable to resist, he watched them come. They ran right over him. A single foot found his ribs — the massive pain of a hobnailed boot in his belly, and then the squad of men was gone, running on, ignoring him lying in the filth of the street.

  It was almost enough to make him laugh. They were Antigonid marines, and they had unknowingly ignored the King of the Bosporus, lying in the muck of a Rhodian street. But he hurt too much to laugh, and he tried to roll onto his side to protect his guts.

  A clash of iron and bronze erupted at the head of the street. The sounds came clear, and his head was working even if his sinews were not. The men who had passed over him were under attack.

  ‘You are surrounded,’ he heard Apollodorus say over the sound of men dying. ‘Throw down your arms, or die.’

  Even in a haze of frustration, rage, pain and fear, Satyrus was glad.

  The joy of the defenders at saving their town from the attempted escalade was tempered by finding the King of the Bosporus lying in the street outside the house of Abraham the Jew, cursing his own weakness. Many men carried him back to his bed, and Aspasia, looking like a fury with her iron hair flying in all ways around her head castigated him like a boy and humiliated him far more thoroughly than Korus ever had.

  ‘You thought perhaps to take a sword and shield? To help the city in its defence? You are a fool, King Satyrus. Did we save you so that you could risk your life like an idiot?’

  And Neiron stared at him. ‘It is like a sickness, this rashness. Listen, King. You killed half a thousand men in your hubris in the storm — and you almost killed yourself last night. This city needs you — who was it who made the preparations to repulse the surprise attack? And you are still such a lackwit as to go yourself?’

  Satyrus lay on the bed while Aspasia and Miriam cleaned him and put him on clean bedclothes. Both of them were clearly so angry they couldn’t speak. Miriam handled him roughly — again he had the feeling of being a small boy, this time one who had displeased his mother and aunt.

  But in himself, he felt unaccountably better.

  With dawn, any residual anger at Satyrus was burned away by the new sun. Spring was fully on the ocean and the water was as blue as new-cut lapis, and the sun was a red-gold dish in a shining bronze sky. The day was as beautiful as all of the memories of youth of all the people watching from their windows, from the walls, from the hills above the town and from the smoke-blackened harbour where Apollodorus had sprung his trap, destroyed the assault and burned their boats.

  The beauty of the day was lost on all of them, as was the fleeting triumph of the night before. For the sea to the north, which stretched away in unshadowed blue, was crowded almost black with ships. A thousand ships. An invincible horde of ships.

  19

  DAY ONE

  Satyrus was almost instantly asleep, despite the obvious disapproval of his caretakers. He was awakened by Miriam, with a cup of hot soup. The sun was high in the sky. Miriam’s dignity seemed, at first, a further reproach for his rashness of the night before, but Satyrus had spent enough time with her, asleep and awake, over the last month and a half of recovery to know her.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. Very unGreek. Greeks never admitted weakness.

  ‘You behaved like a boy last night,’ she said bitterly. ‘A rash boy. A foolish boy who must always try himself against every obstacle.’

  Satyrus managed a smile. ‘I was just such a boy,’ he said.

  ‘Why? Why waste all the effort of so many people? Did you think your puny arm would save us all?’ She looked at him, but her eyes kept straying to the window.

  Satyrus drank his soup. ‘I do not like being an invalid,’ he said.

  ‘Do you think it is pleasant, lying here while the town is threatened? Sending my friends to fight while I lie in bed?’ He shrugged. ‘May I tell you something, Miriam?’

  Her eyes were out on the sea. ‘I have washed your body and listened to you rave. I don’t think there are any secrets that you have from me.’ She meant it to sting, and it did.

  ‘I might have a secret or two, yet,’ he said, trying not to rise to her. She was angry. He thought that he knew why, and he wanted to help her, but her armour was thick.

  She tore her eyes away from the window, turned herself with visible effort to face him on the bed. ‘Surprise me, then.’

  ‘I’m a coward,’ he said.

  She laughed. But that was an automatic reaction, the woman’s response to the man. It was false laughter.

  ‘No — it’s true. I think it is true of many men, and I’m just bitten worse than others by the snake of fear. I am afraid of so many things: death, betrayal, the loss of those close to me. But most of all, I am afraid of showing fear. Even to myself. I throw myself at things that scare me, and sometimes,’ he said with a smile, ‘they hit back.’

  She narrowed her eyes. ‘Nicely put. But somehow, you have succeeded in sounding more noble rather than more like a small boy.’

  He started to rise from the bed.

  ‘Satyrus, put those feet back in that bed this instant.’ She spoke at him, like an officer giving orders. Like a nurse giving directions to small children. ‘You must stop it, Satyrus. Neiron despairs of you. Abraham is sure you’ll die. And Satyrus, you don’t know it, but this town is already hanging by a thread. For myself, I would like to live — free, unraped, in my own house until I grow old, and you, sir, are my chief hope of surviving this — the famous soldier-king of the North. If you die in the streets fighting, your name may well be remembered for a generation, but my chances of ending my life in a brothel are greatly enhanced.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘You are afraid, Miriam.’

  She narrowed her eyes. ‘Of course I’m afraid. Have you looked out there? Fine — get out of the bed. Be my guest. Look!’

  While every armed man in the town stood to the walls and watched, Demetrios’ vast armada sailed unopposed past the harbour and down the coast, to land at the next curve of beach beyond the next headland — a handful of elite ships full of Argyraspides first, and then a full taxeis of pikemen who formed on the dry ground above the shingle. Psiloi splashed ashore to cover them, and then a full squadron of cavalry, the horses pushed over the sides of the horse transports to swim ashore where their equally wet riders waited, rode off into the low hills and spread out in a long line of vedettes to cover the initial landings. It was all very professional.

  ‘Some say a squadron of cavalry, and some a phalanx of infantr
y, and some a squadron of ships is the most beautiful,’ Satyrus said. He leaned against the sill of the window, warm in the Mediterranean sun.

  She turned to look at him. She was suddenly very close — there was jasmine in her hair.

  Both of them knew the next line of the poem perfectly well.

  Satyrus made himself turn back to the window. ‘I can’t say that I’m happy to be in this town, or happy that any of my friends are here,’ he said. ‘We are Troy. Young Achilles there is determined to take us, and all of his father’s ambitions require our fall.’ He glanced at her. Her eyes were lowered — her cheeks had the faintest touch of pink, the way a new dawn brushes the grey sky at the break of day. He could feel the heat in his own face — and in other places, as well.

  Miriam had none of Amastris’ sensual marvels; no one would write poems to Miriam stating that she was Aphrodite fallen to earth. Her nose had too much shape; her hair rose from her head in a cloud of red-brown curls that could never be ruled by the hand of man or woman, and she seldom dressed herself to best advantage, a thing Amastris did every day. But in the erectness of her carriage she ceded Amastris nothing, and in her chin and in her eyes was character — strength of purpose, depth of spirit. She could be stern.

  All of this came at Satyrus rather like the band of Antigonid marines had the night before. He was helpless before a rush of observations, as he saw her all at once. And he felt the heat on his cheeks increase.

  ‘But,’ he managed, trying to keep his tone light, ‘for all that, with the gods, we’ll stand.’

  She turned to him, and suddenly she was very close indeed, and he was unsure which of them had bridged the last handspan but now, without touching, he was close enough to feel the heat of her hip and her breasts and her face-

  ‘Good morning, lord,’ Korus said from the doorway. ‘Despoina, good morning.’

  ‘I have work to do,’ Miriam said. She didn’t whirl away, which Satyrus rather admired — he had flinched when Korus spoke. Instead, she looked up into his face and smiled. ‘Heal fast,’ she said. And then she smiled at Korus, who was as surprised as anyone, and left the room at her usual dignified pace.