Destroyer of Cities t-5

by Christian Cameron

  ‘Gates!’ he panted to Apollodorus.

  A file of Argyraspides came to the same conclusion — and turned to stand in the gates. Half a dozen men — men in their forties and fifties, with silver beards over their silver shields.

  The gates opened outwards. To close them, the Argyraspides had to go.

  The enemy taxeis was close. Close enough that he could see the puffs of dust their sandals raised as they ran — ran at him.

  Apollodorus didn’t hesitate. He ran forward, all mad recklessness. The Argyraspides braced, but he stopped just short, raised himself on his toes and thrust down into the back of one man’s helmet and nailed him to the ground. Satyrus was a half-step behind — he’d mistaken Apollodorus’ intention and he went hurtling over the smaller man, into the midst of the Argyraspides in a sprawl. He should have died, but he hit them like a missile and three of them went down — and suddenly they were all locked together on the ground, grappling desperately.

  Satyrus ripped his arm out of the porpax on his shield, got the dagger from its sheath beneath the porpax and stabbed — as fast as the strokes of Zeus when he sends the lightning — at anything his dagger hand could reach, while his free right hand — he’d lost his sword — caught a man’s throat and he squeezed and stabbed with all the ferocity of a pankration fighter in his last hold. Someone was biting his bicep as hard as he could, and another blow landed between his legs, the shattering agony of a groin shot, but he rode it, stabbed again and felt his opponent’s carotid collapse under his thumb, felt the crack of the cartilage of the man’s neck. His hand moved — he felt the man’s face, and buried his thumb in the soft not-flesh of the man’s eye.

  A blow caught him in the back and sent him rolling over, and the pain in his groin flooded over him like a wave. But he could see his marines cheering, all around him. He got to one knee and threw up, and then fell forward into his vomit.

  And they were still cheering.

  He rolled back and forth for an eternity, his knees locked tight, his back on fire. Gradually, it became merely pain. A sort of cold, evil ache that owned the whole lower half of his abdomen.

  Apollodorus was leaning over him. He was grinning.

  ‘You’ll live,’ he said.

  Lying on his back, Satyrus could see that what had hit him in the back was the gates as his men pulled them shut. And in the towers either side of the gates, Idomeneus’ men were pouring arrows down into the taxeis that lay helpless at their feet.

  Miriam came out of the fog of pain. She looked like a fury — blood and dust and a look to her face that was far from beautiful — far, at least, from the kind of beauty poets and potters praised.

  She studied him for a minute.

  ‘I think-’ She steadied her voice. ‘I think you’ve looked better, my lord.’

  ‘You-’ Satyrus said. And mercifully for everyone, he bit back what came to his tongue. ‘Well done,’ he said instead, like an officer to a well-disciplined spearman. ‘Well done, Miriam,’ he panted.

  But their eyes were locked, and her eyes spoke louder than the shouts of pain in his guts and his groin.

  25

  DAY TWENTY-SEVEN

  Satyrus had no more wounds than any man who has fought all day in armour — long scrapes, mysterious bruises, three deep punctures in his lower back where spear heads were held off by his leather armour — but the points had licked through. He had a bruise on his upper left arm that turned a horrendous colour so that other veterans winced to look at it, and he had another on his butt where the gates had struck him that made it almost impossible for him to sleep.

  Altogether, he felt wonderful.

  Part of the euphoria he felt was caused by the poppy juice that Aspasia had given him for the pain in his groin, and part due to his success — by any standard, he and his men had won a notable victory. Demetrios had launched his grand assault, with almost twelve thousand men involved at its height, and he had been repulsed — repulsed with hideous losses. The heaviest assault had fallen on the beaches, and been massacred.

  But the greatest part of the euphoria came from the casualties — or rather, the lack of casualties. Luck, planning, divine aid — for whatever reason, the phalanx of oarsmen had lost just fourteen men; the city ephebes had lost just six, and the combined marines of all Satyrus’ ships, engaged all day in the very heaviest fighting, had lost nineteen men — including Amyntas, the only one of Satyrus’ hetairoi, his close companions, to die.

  Panther and Menedemos had each held minor attacks — real attacks, but with fewer men — and each had lost fewer than twenty men.

  It was a miracle — sent by Athena, men said.

  Satyrus lay on his bed and ached, and thought that it was indeed a miracle, and it was sent largely by Demetrios’ arrogance, and a great deal of luck. And some forewarning from Herakles.

  The sun rose on a new day — the summer festival of Apollo — and Satyrus lay on a low couch, on a magnificent Persian rug in a tent crowded with furniture rescued from the wreck of Abraham’s house. The house was gone, hit four times by rocks the size of sheep. But his slaves had remained loyal and protected his belongings from looters, and now Abraham, his family, retainers and slaves had a compound of tents in the agora, made from Arete’s sails, at least temporarily out of the range of Demetrios’ machines.

  Slowly, cursing from time to time, Satyrus swung his legs over the edge of the low bed, sat up slowly and managed to rise to his feet.

  Helios appeared at his side. ‘My lord!’

  ‘You fought like a hero, yesterday, lad,’ Satyrus said. The word lad escaped from his teeth unbidden. I am growing old, he thought, if I can call men lads. Twenty-four years old. And another year for every day of the siege.

  Helios grinned at him. ‘I did, at that, lord. Charmides says so, as well.’

  ‘Well, that certainly makes it true,’ Satyrus joked.

  Helios grew more serious. ‘As you’re awake, there’s business, lord. After the pirate slaughter last night, Demetrios managed to throw some assault troops onto the mole — the town mole. They’ve barricaded the townward end, and they have a pair of great machines there.’

  Satyrus winced. ‘How many men?’ he asked.

  ‘Six hundred, and some ships in support. And Demetrios has pulled his engine-ships well back, and rebuilt the spiked boom. You can see it on the water. Panther was here, almost an hour ago. He’s asked for all the boule to meet. Abraham refused to have you waked.’

  Satyrus rubbed his jaw. ‘Gods, I stink. Abraham is a prince. Can you get me a bath and some sweet oil, Helios? And a cup of hot cider?’

  Helios handed him a cup — warm pomegranate juice. ‘I’m ahead of you, my prince.’

  Satyrus sat back, sipping the juice. The euphoria was still there. ‘We won a noble victory, didn’t we?’

  Helios laughed. ‘Only — lord — why does he not give up and sail away?’

  Satyrus finished the juice and stood up. ‘He’s barely started, Helios.’

  ‘Shall I wake the others, lord?’ Helios asked.

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘Let Neiron and Apollodorus sleep.’ They were stretched under awnings near his tent.

  Clean, in a chitoniskos short enough to cause comment in Athens, Satyrus walked out into the blaze of sun in the agora. He went to the boule by way of the square where Amyntas had died. He found the olive tree he remembered, and he cut a long frond and made a wreath and handed it to Helios.

  ‘Wear this, hero,’ he said.

  Helios knelt and took the wreath, and burst into tears.

  Satyrus cut three more and twisted them into wreaths as he walked. ‘When we are finished with the men of the city, we will return, set up a trophy and bury Amyntas,’ Satyrus said. Then he walked to the tholos where the boule met.

  ‘Lord Satyrus,’ Panther said, and came to meet him at the entrance. ‘The hero of the day. We have just voted you a statue, should our town ever rise from the rubble to have such things.’

  One
by one, men rose and took his hand, or embraced him. These were good men — noble men, whatever their birth, and their thanks — their very heartfelt thanks — were better than a hundred golden wreaths.

  Panther indicated the podium. ‘I think we’d like to hear a few words from you, sir.’

  Satyrus smiled curtly and went to the podium. He cast his chlamys back over his shoulder — he was very informally dressed, for an orator — and he looked around the dim room, picking up every eye.

  ‘I’d like to bask in your admiration, gentlemen,’ Satyrus said. ‘Indeed, it is a great honour to have served you well. And yesterday was a victory. A very real victory.’ He nodded at their smiles and plaudits, and then he raised his voice and chopped at them with it like a woodsman with a sharp iron axe.

  ‘It will take a hundred such victories to preserve this city,’ he said, and they were instantly silent. ‘Every day, every assault, we must be as victorious as we were yesterday, and by such a margin. We lost sixty men, sixty good men. We killed two thousand pirates and perhaps five hundred of his Macedonian professionals. He has thirty-five thousand more soldiers and twice that many pirates. If we lose fifty men a day and he loses a thousand men a day, we will run out of men first.’

  Silence.

  ‘We have other enemies,’ Satyrus went on. ‘I live on the rubble of the agora now. I can smell the shit of three thousand people from here. We must do better than that. Soon enough, the whole population of the city will live on the agora. We must have sanitation, organisation, proper latrines, proper wells and districts measured off. No rich man should have more tent space than he actually needs.’

  Men looked around.

  ‘Further, we need to consider our slaves,’ Satyrus said. ‘Many have been loyal. But as the food fails — and mark my words, gentlemen, we face food shortages almost immediately — their loyalty to us will dwindle. We should consider inviting them to be citizens. And when this town survives, I promise you that we will need their numbers to make up our losses.’

  Grumbling.

  ‘And finally, gentlemen, for all that we managed to incur Nike’s good pleasure yesterday, someone opened the west gate to Demetrios.’ Satyrus glanced around. ‘Let’s not mince words. If not for Miriam, Abraham’s sister, the town would have fallen. No amount of heroism by our converged marines, by our ephebes, by anyone could have saved us, except that Miriam came to the beach and told us that the west gates were open. The women of the town — your wives, gentlemen — bought us the minutes we needed, and then helped break the best men Macedon has to offer — and still, they would never have been in the town except that someone let them in.’

  Consternation.

  ‘The west wall garrison had been withdrawn. Who gave that order? Decimus, the lead phylarch, died in the fighting. No one seems to know who ordered his men to leave the walls. In a way, that traitor did us a favour — we saved the west-wall garrison instead of losing them. But friends, it was so close — so very close — that even now, as I speak to you, my knees feel weak. Who is the traitor?’

  ‘Any slave might have done it,’ Panther said. ‘You made the point yourself.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘Almost certainly. But let us not make it easy for the traitor. Appoint a committee to investigate. Find out what slaves, if any, deserted yesterday. Question the west-wall garrison — who was there? Town mercenaries?’

  Panther nodded. ‘Cretans and Greeks — two hundred hoplites and four hundred archers.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘And let us face the horrible possibility that the mercenaries themselves sold the gate.’

  Panther nodded, and other men looked sober.

  Menedemos rose to his feet. ‘Satyrus — you have been an accurate weathervane so far. Where will Demetrios strike next?’

  Satyrus narrowed his eyes. ‘I’m no seer, Menedemos. Answer me this, first — how stands the naval sortie? What happened in the southern harbour, and does the enemy possession of the mole cut you off from the sea?’

  Menedemos glanced at Panther, and Panther scratched his chin.

  ‘We’re ready enough,’ he said. ‘We have the ships ready. We’re a little short on oarsmen, to be honest — all our oarsmen are on the walls. But we can put to sea any night, now.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘Look, friends, I cannot guess what Demetrios will do — or even if I can, I can’t be right every time. We have to make him dance to our tune. Our best course of action remains to strike him — to break the boom and destroy his engine-ships.’

  ‘His men hold the mole!’ Carias the Lydian was a former metic who was one of the town’s richest men. ‘We can do little while they hold the mole.’

  ‘The engines on the mole can hit any point in the town,’ Menedemos said.

  Satyrus nodded. ‘Demetrios wants us to try to storm the mole, my friends. And I predict he’ll have those engines drop rocks — perhaps even bundles of small rocks — on the agora, in an indiscriminate killing to goad us to assault the mole.’

  Panther looked at him. ‘I think we must.’

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘No! Listen to me! We cannot afford to be bled like that. Retaking the mole — it might cost us five hundred men. We might lose that many and fail. His engines, however evil, will not kill so many.’

  Panther shook his head vigorously. ‘Not today, perhaps,’ he said.

  They argued half the morning. At last they decided to prepare the naval sortie and ignore the mole, and they appointed committees to organise the displaced citizens, another to begin recruiting slaves — the best of them — as citizens, and another to search for the traitor, if he existed.

  Menedemos moved that the west-wall garrison be relocated to the north wall, and that the citizen hoplites, held on the north wall to avoid casualties among the richest citizens, be put on the west wall, at least temporarily.

  The motion was carried unanimously, which showed Satyrus how seriously the men in the room took the threat of treason. The richest four hundred men were unlikely to betray their own town.

  Satyrus shook hands with the other councillors and walked through the broken rock and clay of the streets. In every street, there were houses that had survived — some were shells, where a rock had dropped through the roof without touching the walls. Some stood because they had been overbuilt to start with, using heavy timber against earthquakes. Some were protected by the Moira. But there were few enough houses on the seaward end of the city, so that they looked like the teeth of an elderly man — more missing than remaining, and pitiful piles of rubble in between.

  And there were bodies in the rubble — men and women, children, pigs and dogs and cats and rats, all rotting together, so that the east side of the town stank like an abattoir, or a temple the week after a great sacrifice. And that miasma would breed disease.

  Satyrus walked through the rubble and headed south, to the great tower that the Rhodians had built to dominate the plain south of the town and the most vulnerable stretch of wall. Legs aching, he climbed the tower.

  Jubal was already there. He laughed to see his king.

  ‘You’re up early, no joke, lord.’ Jubal smiled.

  ‘You fought well yesterday, Jubal,’ Satyrus said. He reached under his chlamys and produced a rather straggly wreath of olive, taken from the tree in the courtyard where Amyntas died. ‘Yours to wear.’

  Jubal smiled. ‘Heh,’ he grunted, then shook his head. ‘Not for Jubal, lord. Di’n want to be a hero. Just stood my ground.’

  ‘That’s about all there is to being a hero, Jubal,’ Satyrus said. ‘How’re the engines?’ he asked, leaning out over the tower.

  ‘Had a try las’ night in the dark,’ Jubal said. One of his petty officers grinned like a death’s head. ‘Wen’ pretty well.’

  ‘Yes?’ Satyrus asked. Jubal and his men were a pleasure to be around. No big issues here — just the cat-and-mouse of siege engineering.

  Jubal’s grin was that of the raven putting one over on the fox. ‘Reinforced the walls and floor,
eh? And then we made the throwing arm longer, uh? And then we put yon heavier weight on the end. And then we shot her.’ Now his grin was triumphant. ‘Dropped a rock right over the west wall — don’t you worry, honey, no one was awake to see or hear.’

  Satyrus had to grin. ‘You tested your range over our city?’

  Jubal shrugged, and his gold tooth shone. ‘One rock more or less ain’t gonna do much harm.’ He looked around. ‘Made the whole tower move, though.’

  Satyrus looked out from the great vantage point of the tower. He could see the new works built across the mole — four times the height of a man. And he could see that there were no defences on the flanks of the mole, because Demetrios had ships — a dozen warships — lashed all along it, full of men. And another four hundred men on the mole itself.

  South, he saw that more ships were anchored out from Demetrios’ camp. Either he’d sent another force away, or another force had arrived. Satyrus wished he had spies — good spies. But only a fool deserted from a giant army of comfortable, well-fed besiegers to the desperate garrison of the city — and such fools were thin on the ground. There had been a few, but most knew so little, they had nothing to offer.

  ‘If we can just burn his engine-ships,’ Satyrus said, and scratched his chin.

  ‘Then he have to come at me,’ Jubal said. ‘I walk all round this fewkin’ city. An’ the only way in be right here.’

  Satyrus was glad to hear Jubal say it, because he’d come to the same conclusion months ago, before the siege had even begun, and he knew that the Italian who had built the great tower had had the same view.

  ‘We should start work on a false wall here,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘Oh, aye,’ Jubal agreed dismissively. ‘But first, I wanna shoot the squirtin’ shit out of his landward engines. An’ then he’ll build more, an’ more, an’ finally he’ll knock down the whole fewkin’ tower, an’ then we’ll need a false wall.’ Jubal shrugged. ‘I’ve made the measurements, with Neiron. We done the maths.’ He grinned evilly. ‘I even know where the new tower’ll go, when this one falls.’