Tyrant: Force of Kings

by Christian Cameron

  ‘And again,’ Anaxagoras said. ‘Your habit of resting your thumb on the sound board is part of the reason you cannot make your transition correctly.’

  Satyrus turned his head sharply, a retort on his lips. And relented, reason telling him that anger at a teacher who was trying to help him was unworthy – foolish and boyish. Besides, his teacher’s carefully controlled face suggested that this was, in fact, a form of revenge.

  The third day in port. Miriam seemed a thousand Parasanges away, and a newly arrived Cyprian ore-freighter had somehow got ahead of his last three grain ships at the pier, and even when the confusion was sorted out, he’d lost another day. In his irritation, he slipped and got the tip of Anaxagoras’s sword in his throat – hard enough to make him feel the front of his gorge with the back, and it ached all day.

  ‘When we’re on campaign somewhere, in our tenth or eleventh straight day of rain, and I feel like crap, and there’s no wine, I’ll wish I’d enjoyed these days more,’ Satyrus said to Anaxagoras. He was sitting with his lyre in his lap. His throat hurt and he had no interest in playing. Or rather, he had every interest in playing well, and no interest in doing the work to get there, today.

  ‘You are a king, not a mercenary,’ Anaxagoras said. ‘Surely sooner or later you will stop fighting.’

  Satyrus shrugged. ‘Unlikely. When Lysimachos and Ptolemy and Seleucus and Cassander and Demetrios and all the busy, scheming bastards are dead, perhaps. But there’ll be more of them, I expect. Perhaps worse. The rumour is that Lysimachos is getting ready to march into my territory – claiming that he only seeks to march his army around the Euxine to Asia.’

  ‘Now that he is to marry Amastris?’ Anaxagoras said.

  Satyrus looked out at the sea, blue as his former lover’s eyes in the bright sunlight. ‘They’re married now,’ he said, ‘unless something happened to prevent it.’

  ‘Shall we drink to them?’ Anaxagoras asked. ‘Is this why you are so far away from us?’

  Satyrus spilled a libation. ‘To Hera, goddess of the marriage bed. May Amastris be blessed. May they both be happy.’

  ‘You mean that?’ Anaxagoras asked.

  Satyrus smiled. It was a crooked smile, but not a mean one. ‘I think I do. I’m doing my best to mean it.’

  Anaxagoras chuckled. ‘Listen, philos. When I was young—’

  ‘Look at the grey beard!’ Satyrus said.

  Anaxagoras glanced at Charmides, who was admiring a serving girl as she, quite self-consciously, carried water on her head across the street. ‘Charmides makes all of us feel old,’ he said, and they both laughed. The younger man glanced at them and smiled.

  Satyrus smiled back at him. ‘Will Charmides ever be old?’ he asked.

  Anaxagoras shook his head, dismissing the topic. ‘At any rate, when I was young I wanted to marry a beautiful girl – a free girl. A local farmer’s daughter. She was modest and clever and her legs – oh, even now, I think of her—’

  ‘Aphrodite, philos, this was, what, six years ago? Stop telling it as if you were decades from her!’ Satyrus laughed.

  ‘And my father forbade it, of course. Rich men’s sons do not wed farmer’s daughters, no matter how good their legs are.’ He laughed, but his eyes were far away.

  Satyrus felt a prickle of unease.

  ‘And the worst of it was that I knew – I knew from the first that my pater was right, and that I would never marry her. But I was stubborn, and romantic, and I pursued her. Long enough to convince her father I meant business.’ He shrugged. ‘And then I realised that she was merely clever, not actually intelligent. That she cared deeply for money and fine things.’

  ‘It is easy to sneer at such thoughts, when you are rich,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘Too true. This is not a pretty story, nor one that shows me to best advantage.’ Anaxagoras poured himself more wine. ‘Eventually, I sopped seeing her. It was easy to do – after all, she was a free woman and modest, so that seeing her at all had required enormous effort. You understand?’

  ‘Of course,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘And then – within a year – she married. She married well – better, in fact, than me. An aristocrat’s son – a powerful man with powerful connections and an old, old family. And to this day I cannot decide what my role in all of this was – did I love her? Do I bless her success? Should I have wed her myself ?’ Anaxagoras drank off his wine. ‘See? No great lesson there. Just real life.’

  Satyrus nodded. The silence floated between them, easy enough. Easy silence had been the first sign they were friends, and now it endured, a token of esteem.

  ‘I worry that I cannot marry Miriam,’ Satyrus said.

  The connection was obvious enough. Miriam was a Jew, not a Hellene. The daughter of one of the Middle Sea’s richest merchants, no one could suggest that marrying her was marrying down. But she was a barbarian, a foreigner, an alien.

  ‘I know,’ Anaxagoras said. ‘I wondered the same. I even wondered if, by courting her, I was – oh, I don’t know. A foolish thought.’

  Satyrus smiled. ‘Redeeming yourself, brother?’

  ‘Proving that I wasn’t such a snob, more like. Although Miriam does rather rise above snobbery.’ Their eyes met, and Satyrus grinned.

  ‘My mother was more of a barbarian than Miriam will ever manage to be,’ he said.

  ‘Your father was not a king, of course. Were they married? Your parents?’ Anaxagoras asked.

  ‘Before Greeks and Sakje,’ Satyrus said. ‘I almost feel as if I was there, I’ve heard the tale so often. Pater was campaigning against Alexander, out on the Sea of Grass.’ He poured wine to the shade of his father. ‘Do you know that most of our sailors and marines worship my father as a god?’

  Anaxagoras nodded. ‘I know that Apollodorus wears his amulet, and so does Charmides.’ He smiled. ‘Does it trouble you?’

  Satyrus shrugged. ‘When I was a boy, I thought that he spoke to me. And when I was sick last year, he and Philokles seemed to visit me constantly. And yet Philokles never suggested to me that my father was anything but a good man. A difficult standard by which to measure myself, a worthy one, but no more.’ He shrugged again. ‘As I grow older, I find … how can I say this? I find the idea of my father’s deification a little offensive. Obscene.’

  Anaxagoras nodded. ‘I’m trying to imagine how I would feel if my own father were deified.’ He laughed. ‘And I can’t. A good man of business – a pious man and a good father for a ne’er-do-well son. But godhood is not in him, and when he passes, his shade will not reach to the heavens for apotheosis.’ Anaxagoras rubbed his beard. ‘I’m not sure he’d want it even if offered.’

  Satyrus took a deep breath. Then he changed his mind. ‘Tomorrow?’ he asked.

  Apollodorus nodded. ‘Why don’t we stop being so serious, walk down to the pier, and see?’

  The land breeze of the early morning found them already clear of the harbour mouth, the great mainsail rigged to catch the world’s wind, a gentle Boreas blowing them west, almost dead astern on their track for Athens after they weathered the northern promontory of Rhodos. The ships that had been laden with grain for Rhodes were full now of copper from Cyprus, cedar planks from Lebanon, skilled slaves who would become freemen in a year or two at Tanais or Pantecapaeaum, marble, spices and even a consignment of fine Aegyptian furniture for a rich merchant in Olbia. They also had the hard silver specie that had paid for the abundance of grain. Two days later, he sent them away north off Lesbos, under guard of half his ships, with Diokles, his most trusted trierarch, in command.

  Aekes, a small, fiery man, brought his Ephesian Artemis off the beach in style and rowed away west – the scout ship. Satyrus followed him with two penteres, two triemiolas, and six triremes; almost a quarter of his full fleet, and some of the best ships – and some of his rawest, too.

  He missed Diokles already, having seen
little enough of the man in Rhodos, but keeping all of his best captains at his side all the time was poor strategy and unfair to them. He kept Aekes, though, because he could be trusted with anything – he had worked his way up to trierarch from the starting position of a Spartan helot, and he owed Satyrus his status, his citizenship, and his fortune.

  Steering his own penteres – not his beloved Arete, lost to fire in the siege of Rhodos, but Medea, a smaller, lighter fiver built in Olbia – Satyrus pondered on Athens as a destination and what this visit meant to him. More than just seeing Miriam – although seeing Miriam was the greatest part of it, he admitted to himself. He must decide, before his prow touched the great pier at Piraeus, whether he meant to marry her. But there were other opportunities in Athens, other perils – he was a citizen there, and one whose activities made him both famous and infamous; a hero and a monster. Demetrios the besieger was the city’s current lord. Satyrus wanted to land in Athens ready for anything that might transpire. He wanted to be done with his state of war against Demetrios because, among other things, he expected shortly to be at war with Lysimachos.

  Looking at Anaxagoras, taking a nap in the sun, Satyrus thought back to their last conversation in Rhodes and frowned to himself. Hard to lie to a friend. Harder to hide from yourself. Satyrus’s sense of bitterness – betrayal, even – over Amastris’s change of heart was deeper than he wanted to admit to another man. He told himself that the feeling was not just the jealousy of the jilted lover. He reminded himself that he would have lain with Miriam a hundred times – a thousand – during the siege, had she only been willing. He allowed that Amastris was a ruler, as he was, and had duties to her city, as he did.

  Despite all of that, he couldn’t think of her without a rush of anger. Her decision to marry the Satrap of Thrace – a major player in the war against Antigonus – made war with Lysimachos almost certain; a war that would pit him against Ptolemy, if not in immediate fact, then in form, and would have repercussions across his personal, professional and mercantile life. It was this that had caused him to be so very careful of the trierarchs he chose to take to Athens. He wanted only his most trustworthy men, men who would look after his interests even when offered major bribes, even when threatened. He had no idea what the city might try to do. But he needed to keep the door opened by the truce with Demetrios ajar, at least, even if it meant trading with the enemy. Amastris’s wedding had put him there, and he had no choice but to react this way.

  Or that’s what he told himself.

  So he had Aekes scouting ahead, and Anaxilaus and his brother Gelon – both aristocrats from Sicily, wealthy men and no friends to Athens. They had Oinoe and Plataea. And Daedelus of Halicarnassus brought up the rear of the column in another heavy penteres – Glory of Demeter, a famous ship.

  He could not take only his most trustworthy captains, however. None of the rest of his captains were remarkable men, and all of them were new to him – he had Eumenes of Olbia’s son Ajax, a fine young man with a fine new ship called Apollo of Olbia, and two ships from Pantecapaeaum commanded by relatives of his former adversary, Heron, the last Tyrant of Pantecapaeaum – Lykeles son of Draco, and Eumeles son of Tirseus, both too young to have reputations. They had light triremes – Tanais and Pantecapaeaum.

  And finally, he had a pair of Rhodian-built triemiolas, decked triremes with a half deck for carrying full sail and more sailors – or marines. Their captains were prosperous men who had been made by Leon: Sandokes of Lesbos, a foppish man famed for his daring navigation, trierarch of the powerful Marathon and the Etruscan; and Sarpax, whom Leon had employed for twenty years. Satyrus could see Sarpax from the helm, because the tall Etruscan was standing in the bow of his Desert Rose just a few horse lengths astern of Medea.

  He put the inexperienced men in the middle of his line, the way a good strategos would place them in the phalanx. They had expert helmsmen to help them – his money and reputation now attracted some of the best on the ocean.

  It was all very satisfying. He looked back down the line of his fighting ships, all heeling well to starboard with the press of wind, sails well set, the ropes that crossed them appearing to be restraints on mighty Boreas himself. And behind his warships, sixteen heavy merchants – six Athenian grain ships, towering over the rest, and ten of his own. A fortune in grain, carefully guarded, representing the wealth of his kingdom and a new avenue of diplomacy. Grain for Athens.

  Where Stratokles had begged him to take it. Stratokles, who had single-handedly engineered Amastris’s betrayal – her wedding to Lysimachos.

  On the bench built under the rising strakes of the stern by the helmsman’s station, Anaxagoras opened his eyes. ‘Who could doubt the gods on a day like this one?’ he asked.

  Satyrus smiled and looked away.

  ‘Aha,’ Anaxagoras said, swinging his feet onto the planks of the deck. ‘You could. Thinking of Miriam?’

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘Lysimachos. Cassander. Stratokles.’ The last name he spat.

  ‘He has done you no disservice,’ Anaxagoras said.

  ‘Hmm,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘None, philos. You need to keep everyone a little further away – arm’s length, I think Coenus said.’ Anaxagoras nodded north, towards distant Tanais, where Coenus was regent. ‘The appearance of alliance with Athens will give everyone pause.’

  Satyrus shrugged. ‘I know.’

  ‘And you don’t like it,’ Anaxagoras said. ‘Do you ever think that men make war because they don’t want to go through the tedious process of keeping peace?’

  Satyrus laughed. ‘You have me exactly. I was just thinking how much simpler open war was than peace. We overawe Athens with our fine warships while we sell her grain from our fine merchant fleet – while selling to Rhodes and offering our ships to Ptolemy. At least when Demetrios was firing his huge rocks at us, we knew which way the enemy lay.’

  Anaxagoras shook his head. ‘No we didn’t. Think of Nestor’s betrayal. Think of all the idiotes who would have sold Rhodes for some cash and a guarantee of survival. Think of the welter of cross-purposes – slaves, mercenaries, soldiers, your men, Rhodians, old versus young – all the factions, all the sides. That was war.’ Anaxagoras smiled when his eye caught that of Charmides, who was exercising amidships. ‘What you wish for, lord, is the freedom that man has to pretend that the world is simple, when you and I both know that in war and in peace the world is very, very complicated.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘Who made you so wise?’ he asked.

  ‘Dionysus,’ Anaxagoras said. ‘And old Aristotle played his part, I expect.’

  ‘We could go wrestle at the Lyceum,’ Satyrus said. ‘There’s glory for you.’

  ‘Now you’re talking, brother. Wrestling at the Lyceum, and the finest courtesans in the world. Oh – I didn’t mean to say that aloud.’ He roared with laughter at Satyrus’s reaction. ‘Got you, got you.’

  Satyrus laughed too. Astern, Sarpax waved. He was laughing, too.

  They made landfall at Delos in late afternoon. Satyrus was a pious man, and the opportunity to revisit the temple complex was appealing, even with Athens looming – or rather, the more appealing because Athens was looming – just a few days away. And he told himself that he needed a body slave.

  He beached his ships on the windward side of the island, and paid a fisherman to take him around the point to the temples. Sandokes and Aekes and their helmsmen came, as did Apollodorus and Charmides. Anaxagoras had eaten bad shellfish on the beach and was busy returning it to Poseidon, or so he croaked between bouts of being sick.

  This time, Satyrus sent Apollodorus ashore first to make sure that the priests knew that his visit was religious and not official, and then waded ashore himself, paying the fisherman a gold daric to stay on the beach waiting. The man bit it, looked at it carefully, and then gave him a pleased smile.

  ‘I’d a’ sold you my boat for it,’ he said cheer
fully.

  ‘Don’t tell the priests or they’ll find a way to take it from you,’ Satyrus said, only half joking.

  The fisherman laughed and rowed away down the beach to where poorer men waited in lines for a turn in the temple.

  No waiting for kings, of course, even those not on official visits.

  Satyrus sat in the anteroom to the oracle, trying to put his mind in a state receptive to the god. He had wrestled with Anaxagoras before crossing, and the bout was very much in his mind – Anaxagoras had thrown him with an outstretched arm and what had seemed the gentlest nudge to his hip, and Satyrus found in the move a whole new expression of balance in combat. It filled his mind, kept him from the meditative state.

  With apologies to the two men waiting with him – an Athenian from one of the priestly families and a Corinthian – he stepped out onto the porch of the temple and took up a fighting stance and began to rotate his foot at odd angles.

  The hierophant was watching him when he stopped. ‘I have seen a woman offer her dancing to the god, but never a man offer his footwork at the pankration. Nonetheless, yours is fine.’ He grinned – not the grave, dignified high priest at all, just for a moment, but a Greek man with an appreciation for a fine sport and a fine body.

  Satyrus was abashed – a very rare feeling for him. ‘My apologies, I meant no disrespect. I have been practising the lyre …’ He trailed off, feeling like a teenage boy caught nuzzling a slave girl.

  The hierophant cackled. ‘Your lyre work will probably never match your fighting skills, my lord. Will you come with me?’

  ‘It is not my turn,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘I gave you my turn,’ the Athenian priest said, inclining his head. ‘I am here for my city on a very minor matter of religious law.’ He smiled. ‘Had I known that I would see a famous pankrationist, I’d have come sooner.’

  The Athenian priest was plainly dressed, and yet clearly a man of enormous worth. He also had a fine physique – barrel-chested and tall.