Tyrant: Force of Kings

by Christian Cameron

  Achilles didn’t salute. Instead, he simply crouched. ‘Ready,’ he said.

  Up close, he was big – too big for many of Satyrus’s tactics of domination. Satyrus was used to being bigger than most men in a fight, and Achilles topped him by a hand. Ajax, absent in the house, was bigger by a head.

  ‘Ready,’ Satyrus said.

  He had expected a trick – an immediate leap, a lunge, some palaestra trick – but Achilles seemed to relax. He began to circle the dell, his footwork careful but not the trained dance steps of the gymnasium-trained man.

  Satyrus didn’t react at first, deliberately facing Achilles’ initial orientation, allowing the other man to circle him …

  Achilles launched a blow from his left – a high cut.

  Satyrus stepped back out of range, and Achilles was already back on his guard. He took another circle step, and Satyrus changed his front in a single turning step, a fluid reorientation from front to back that placed Achilles in easy sword-reach, and Satyrus feinted at his cloak-arm, rolled his wrist, and cut low, but as he had expected, Achilles was a well-trained man, and he ignored the cut at his protected side and parried the real cut at the opening line.

  They both smiled. It had been a short exchange with no real contact but Achilles now knew how precisely Satyrus could pull his blows, and Satyrus could feel how good Achilles’ balance was in close, and they both sidestepped diagonally left, opening the range.

  There was more circling. The sun came through the trees only at one point, and Satyrus considered trying to orient his opponent into it, but it seemed pointless.

  Achilles made some internal decision and chose to attack. He pivoted quickly and started a sword-foot forward attack, and Satyrus stepped into it, a tough call against a bigger man, isolated the attacker’s elbow with his cloak arm and kicked Achilles lightly just above the knee while keeping his sword ready to the real cut that came, as he expected, under his cloak – he pivoted on his own left foot, put his knee into the oncoming cut, and tapped Achilles on the head with his sword.

  Achilles stepped back.

  Satyrus fell into his guard, and saluted. ‘Hit to the knee,’ he said.

  ‘Ah, well,’ Achilles said. ‘Myself, I’m dead.’ He grinned. ‘To tell the truth, I expect you’d ha’ broken my knee with that kick, eh?’

  Satyrus shrugged.

  Achilles nodded. ‘I heard you fought the pankration, but it’s another thing to see it.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘Kicking in combat is dangerous – your leg is out where you can’t defend it. When men are in armour, with swords and spears – not much use, really, unless you are right inside.’

  Achilles nodded.

  They set again, and both men called ‘ready’.

  Satyrus felt that it was only fair that he launch the next attack, and he launched a simple one, a rising snap cut that appeared to target the lower shield leg, rolled over into a high cut, and became a thrust to the (hopefully) open chest. It was one of his favourite moves, a routine he had practised for ten years.

  Achilles baffled his feint and his whole intention by taking a long step back, out of range, as Satyrus tried to engage, and then the big man moved quickly forward and right, forcing Satyrus to turn and parry with his arm. Achilles played for his sword, trying for a grapple, and Satyrus responded with a strong, stiff arm, backed and cut; the other man caught his cut neatly on his arm and stabbed low, Satyrus blocked the low stab lower and tried to rotate his hips to isolate the sword for a disarm, and got a light smack in the side of his mouth, as Achilles’ fist just tapped him.

  Satyrus stepped back, and nodded. ‘Good blow.’

  Achilles looked happy. ‘Thanks,’ he said, amicably. ‘Ready?’

  Satyrus nodded, and this time, Achilles was on him before he could draw breath, a flurry of blows, high, middle, and low.

  Satyrus backed, and backed again, and then, his wits gathered, he struck out – cloak arm and then right foot kick. The moment he broke the other man’s rhythm, he lunged, a powerful step forward with his sword foot, a lightning transition from back foot to forefoot, from long-range cuts to being almost face to face, and his sword point was four inches above the other man’s groin.

  Achilles jumped back, and he wasn’t grinning. ‘Hit,’ he said.

  ‘Got your measure,’ Memnon said.

  Achilles came at him with another flurry of blows, this time faster – and stronger.

  Satyrus was ready this time, met him body to body, and parried the second cut sword to sword – not a typical block, but a high counter-cut that slapped hard at the opposing sword and then cut down at the opponent’s wrist. But Achilles’ cut was a feint – the result was both men stepping back and rubbing their wrists.

  ‘Too hard,’ Satyrus said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Me, too. Takes two to fuck up that badly.’ Achilles had to sit down. Both of them had hit with roughly the speed of both arms hurling together.

  Satyrus was clearly the less injured of the two, and he stood, rolling his wrist back and forth.

  Memnon got to his feet. ‘Got enough in you to try a bout wi’ me, sir?’ he asked.

  Satyrus nodded, and Memnon picked up a longer sword.

  Achilles grunted, got to his feet and walked to the other side of the dell, cradling his wrist.

  ‘Broken?’ Satyrus asked. ‘I’m sorry—’

  ‘Bah,’ Achilles said. ‘My pride’s hurt worse than my wrist.’

  Memnon said ready, and Satyrus answered, and they were off. They circled each other a long time – far longer than Satyrus and Achilles had circled. After some time, Memnon began making very cautious feints – always the same feint, leading with his left foot and cutting over his head at Satyrus’s sword side. By the time he’d done it for the tenth time, Satyrus had grown impatient – parrying on that side forced him to move his feet and arms in a way that annoyed his rips, at least, and it was a dull move – a move done entirely to measure him and to make him move.

  Satyrus counter-cut at the wrist on the eleventh attack, timing to catch the instant after the launching of the feint.

  Memnon pulled his feint, stepped sideways, and Satyrus turned to face him again, feeling a new twinge from his ribs.

  Memnon gave a small smile, and launched a whole new attack – a left-right combination that started with his rolled chlamys arm thrusting hard, a straight punch to Satyrus’s chlamys, and then the black man stepped in – hard – and raised his sword. Suddenly the attack was the same attack he’d feinted so many times – and when Satyrus went to parry, his ribs screamed in sudden pain – and Memnon scored on him, touching him on the head cleanly right over his feeble counter-cut.

  Satyrus stepped back, clutching his ribs. ‘Good hit,’ he spat.

  Achilles shook his head. ‘Memnon is no gentleman,’ he said. ‘But he saw you favouring your ribs, and he went for you there. And you let him.’

  Memnon took his sword while Satyrus sat heavily. ‘There’s no “fair” in a sword fight,’ he said. ‘But I din’t mean to hurt ye so bad.’

  Satyrus took a deep breath – the pain was already better. ‘What you did was well done,’ he said.

  Memnon grinned. ‘’Twas!’ he said. ‘Y’er a fine swordsman. Had to beat you fancy.’ He spat. ‘Cup o’ wine, lord?’

  Satyrus drank wine with them, trying to suss them out. Achilles had tried to fight him in a palaestra fight – careful, scholarly. Memnon had ignored such conventions. He wondered what that said about them, since both were sell-swords, hired killers, mercenaries. Which was the more honest? Which was the real swordsman?

  Satyrus wasn’t sure. But he knew his ribs hurt, and he knew that both men were good company, and that he’d rather have them at his back than across a shield wall.

  ‘How much to hire the four of you?’ Satyrus asked. ‘For, hmm, a year?’

 
Memnon laughed. Achilles glanced at him from under his heavy brow and raised an eyebrow. ‘Serious?’ he asked. ‘What’s the job?’

  ‘Bodyguards. For me.’ Satyrus shrugged. ‘I assume you’re trustworthy. For cash, paid down.’ He smiled.

  Achilles smiled back. ‘A year? We work by the day – most of the time.’

  Memnon dipped a piece of hard bread in olive oil. ‘When we’re broke, we rent out of Demetrios or Cassander for soldier’s wages,’ he said. ‘How much are we talking, here?’

  Satyrus raised an eyebrow. ‘I don’t know. I’m not Croesus. What’s your daily rate?’

  ‘Jason gives us ten drachma a day, and expenses if we need equipment or horses,’ he said. ‘Double what a hoplite is paid, if he brings his own gear.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘And a bonus?’

  Achilles shook his head. ‘Often, but not always. Sometimes the job comes with its own bonus. Kill a rich man …’ he said, and left the rest of the thought to tail away.

  ‘How long have the four of you been together?’ Satyrus asked.

  Memnon looked away.

  Achilles shook his head. ‘Not all that long, eh? Memnon only joined up, what, before the feast of Demeter, eh? It were just me an’ Odysseus – time out of mind. Years, anyway. Longer than we’ve any right to be alive. Ajax … well, we met him fighting against him, a few years back. Memnon here’s the latest recruit.’

  ‘He’ll raise an army in a hundred years or so,’ Memnon added. He laughed cautiously, the way he fought.

  ‘Well?’ Satyrus said. ‘If I pay your daily rate for a year, half in advance, for all four of you?’

  Achilles raised an eyebrow again, an expression that made him look like a philosopher and not a warrior at all. ‘Have to ask the others.’ He nodded. ‘How dangerous?’

  Satyrus shrugged. ‘I’ve been in six ship fights in four years,’ he said.

  ‘So … fucking dangerous,’ Achilles said. ‘Well, fair enough – at least you tell the truth.’ The man glanced at him. ‘Spear fightin’ is more real than sword. Just sayin’.’

  Satyrus’s whole face hurt when he smiled, but he managed one. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But people get hurt—just playing with spear poles.’

  Achilles nodded. ‘Try me tomorrow,’ he said.

  Satyrus could see the man’s pride as a soldier had been hurt. After his experience with Polycrates, he was more sensitive to another man’s feelings. ‘I’ll try spears,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow.’ He yawned, cursed the pain in his cheek, and then tried again.

  ‘How long’s your contract with Jason?’ he asked. They picked up the swords and shields and started back to the house.

  Achilles shrugged. ‘Haven’t seen any money yet,’ he admitted. ‘I assumed it was until Jason came to collect you. I don’t really want to linger too long here – folks saw you arrive. But I need to hear word from Odysseus before we move again.’

  Satyrus chewed on that as he climbed the stairs of the old tower. He had time – too much time – to think, and he worried about the people in the village, and watched them walk about from the top of the tower – watched the steady flow of traffic up the flank of Kithaeron, and back down the valley of the Asopus – men and women with donkeys or just walking alone or in groups. Plataea wasn’t on the main trade route from Attika to Boeotia – that was the road from Thebes to Athens, over Parnassus – but this was the second most-travelled road, and Satyrus saw a potential spy in every traveller.

  He also had time to worry about Abraham and Miriam. If Demetrios had tried to take him, he must not intend to release the other hostages. Satyrus spent a day with a borrowed wax tablet and a stylus, trying to work out what he knew of the attack on him and what it might mean.

  If Demetrios had attacked him, on purpose, he should have used Polycrates as his tool, and done it at Polycrates’ house. Where Satyrus had been headed. The more Satyrus turned this logic over in his head, the less it seemed possible that any set of murderers could possibly have been hired so ineptly that they murdered a major ally of Demetrios – casually – as part of the seizure of a political opponent. The more so as a botched attempt – and it had been close – would have resulted in immediate military consequences. And perhaps it already had; Satyrus hadn’t considered it before, but the more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed that Apollodorus and his sister would have taken action by now.

  On the other hand, if Demetrios’s lieutenants had botched their instructions – and such things happened all too frequently – then the other Rhodian hostages were either dead or under renewed threats, as the only hope Demetrios would have to keep Rhodes in check.

  Satyrus drank cup after cup of the excellent well-water in the sweltering heat, watched the roads about the old house, and tried to work through all the different possibilities.

  One that he couldn’t discount was that the attack had been sponsored by Cassander. He played with the idea, idly making dots with his stylus in the soft wax of his tablet. It was warm, and he was sleepy, and it was too easy to daydream instead about the length of Miriam’s body stretched against his …

  Satyrus wondered if there was another man in the world as powerful as he who spent more time pining for women rather than simply mounting them. The slaves Achilles kept were clearly for the very purpose, and some had offered themselves in one way or another. The only one he fancied was Tegara, a free woman, who had something about her he admired, but she had not made herself available – far from it. Satyrus recognised that there was something to that – the unattainable was always to be preferred, he supposed.

  He went up on the roof as the sun began to decline. He took a lyre he’d found in the main hall and tuned it, the old gut strings holding despite years of neglect, and he tried his scales and found them waiting for him. He played a simple tune – the opening lines of the Iliad, the way the rhapsodes played them. Thought about Anaxagoras.

  Really, it was time he stopped being a prisoner of the attack, and took action himself. The obvious course was simple – woo Achilles, buy his services, and get to the Chersonese, where Melitta would be.

  Down the valley, he saw a woman talking to a horseman. Horses weren’t common in Plataea. Something about her straight back and the carriage of her head alerted him. But the horseman walked his horse along with her for some distance, quite openly, and he lost interest.

  The other option was to go to Demetrios.

  It was, after all, what had brought him to mainland Greece – the opportunity to see Miriam and to discuss the release of the hostages. And now there was no better way for him to judge the man’s intentions – except for the price of being wrong.

  It pleased his sense of action, though, and he began to weigh methods of providing for his own safety.

  Now the horseman was mounted – well over towards Cithaeron. But he didn’t ride over the pass to Athens, rather, he rode west, and Satyrus dismissed him. A boyfriend, a local aristocrat – not that she seemed to like the breed. For surely the woman down at the bridge had been Tegara.

  She didn’t meet his eye that night, at dinner, which she didn’t eat with the men, but merely supervised.

  ‘I think that it is time to move,’ Satyrus said. ‘Have you considered my offer?’

  Satyrus was surprised when Ajax responded. He was the largest, and his face typically wore a look of deep and bovine stupidity.

  Not when he spoke, however. ‘We like it,’ he said, and shrugged his giant shoulders. ‘But we await the views of Odysseus. We have sworn oaths – the view of one is the view of all.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘I understand,’ he said.

  Achilles nodded. ‘I, too, think it is time to move. There were horsemen up towards Eleutherai today, and down at the bridge, as well.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘I saw them. Or rather, I saw one of them.’ He looked at Tegara, and had his suspicions confirmed. She l
ooked away, and she was not a great dissimulator.

  ‘Tegara was speaking to one of the horsemen,’ Satyrus said quietly.

  She stood taller. ‘Well?’ she said to Achilles. ‘What if I was? He was pretty enough, and asked me nicely the road to Corinth.’

  Achilles looked at Satyrus.

  Satyrus nodded. ‘He did ride off towards Corinth,’ he said.

  Achilles gave her a long look. ‘Woman, you have a good life here,’ he said. ‘And we need you to run the house, so don’t …’ He shook his head.

  She turned red, then white. ‘A good life, is it?’ she asked.

  Satyrus rose. ‘I think we should be gone in the morning,’ he said.

  Memnon nodded. ‘I agree. Demetrios is at Corinth, right?’ He looked at Tegara, and she glared at him.

  Ajax swore. ‘Y’er crazed, woman! This is our business. You ha’ no right.’ He looked at Achilles, who had her by the arm. ‘The man is right – we ought an’ be gone. But then Odysseus won’t know where to fin’ us.’ He glared right back at Tegara. ‘An’ we can’t exactly tell her.’

  ‘Kill her?’ Achilles said wearily.

  They were such pleasant men, in a bluff, soldier-like way, that Satyrus almost missed the moment where their professional needs overbalanced any pretence of morality. Tegara was crying – not dramatically, but simply standing still, sobbing quietly, and Achilles had his sword at her throat.

  ‘Wait!’ Satyrus said. ‘Why not ask her what she did? And why? And then … Gods, gentlemen, why kill her?’

  Achilles looked puzzled. ‘She crossed us,’ he said. ‘It’s on her face.’

  ‘She’s just a woman,’ Memnon added. ‘She’s got no one to come back on us.’

  Satyrus stood up. ‘If you’re working for me,’ he said, ‘then I forbid you to kill her. As long as she tells us who she told and why.’

  She drew herself up. ‘You lot act like lords,’ she said. ‘I am a woman of Plataea, and you are robbers, thieves, and war-whores. You think I like watching what you do?’ She shrugged. Slumped. ‘I think they’re Demetrios’s men. Cavalrymen.’ She looked at Satyrus. ‘They was looking for him before you lot got back – except that they called him the “King of the Bosporus”.’