Tyrant: Force of Kings

by Christian Cameron

  Demetrios cursed. ‘Then we don’t have naval supremacy,’ he said.

  All of Demetrios’s ships landed their men to cook dinner and stretch their legs. Unnoticed amidst the multitude, half a dozen men in armour walked away from the camp, up the road to the town, and into the gates. In an hour, they had purchased horses – local nags, the sort of animals left behind when army after army passes through a city.

  Isokles had his own men, now; men of the sort he preferred, not soft-spoken women like the Athenian doctor, but scarred men from the lower classes who didn’t posture – or if they did, they postured in a way Isokles understood.

  He himself was going to kill Satyrus of Tanais. And he had a plan.

  Four days later, Demetrios caught Diokles at the mouth of the Dardanelles, his ships on the beach. Diokles had no idea that there was an enemy fleet so close, and he was giving his rowing crews a day of rest.

  Demetrios came up from the south, and the ships sitting at the north of the beach had time to launch and flee. Diokles got his ship into the water – he was the eleventh on the beach, and the eighth was already being dragged off by Demetrios’s grapnels.

  Apollodorus was twelfth. He got his rebuilt Marathon off. Diokles could see him on the stern, calling something.

  Diokles turned to his helmsman. ‘Ramming speed,’ he said.

  He saw the hope die in the other man’s eyes, but Leonidas obeyed.

  Diokles’ Atlantae turned smoothly, gathering way as the oarsmen dug deeper. The Tarentum-born helmsman smiled grimly.

  ‘It’s Demetrios,’ he said quietly.

  Diokles saw the golden figure by the helmsman on the next ship but one, a towering penteres whose heavy engines were already throwing big bolts into the Atlantae.

  Diokles nodded. ‘I have to buy time,’ he said, apologetically.

  Leonidas shrugged.

  Diokles ran forward, where men were already dead from the heavy bolts coming aboard. ‘Dead men over the side!’ he called. He turned to his captain of marines. ‘Get Jubal’s fancy repeaters over the side,’ he said. ‘I’m not giving them to Demetrios.’

  Nautarch, his top marine, smiled. ‘Over the side, weighted,’ he answered.

  ‘Then fire pots – all we have,’ he said.

  ‘Bodies over the side, Jubal’s engines, fire pots,’ Nautarch repeated. ‘We’s in it bad, eh?’

  ‘Can you swim?’ Diokles asked.

  ‘Aye,’ said the marine.

  ‘Well, pray to Poseidon and don’t jump in the water yet,’ Diokles said, and smacked the man on the shoulder. Then he leaped up into the bow above the ram, watching the enemy ships. Demetrios’s penteres was turning, trying to decide if his attack was a feint of not. The trireme beyond was threatening to foul his oars, and if they could just run over Demetrios’s stern, Diokles could put his ram in, back oars, and run clear.

  He looked at the seven ships he’d lost, already bobbing together on the waves. He felt like a fool. He felt like falling on his sword, but Diokles wasn’t interested in suicide.

  He ran aft to the helmsman’s station. His rowers weren’t all on the correct benches, and only now was the rhythm settling down – a crash forward as another heavy bolt hit.

  More rowers dead. That’s what happened when one ship rushed twenty-five. Thirty. Quite a few, anyway.

  ‘Hit him just aft of the bow. He can’t manoeuvre – look at the size of the bitch. Want me to take the oars?’

  Leonidas looked at him steadily. ‘We’re going to die, aren’t we?’ he asked.

  Diokles nodded. Quietly, he said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then let me go to Hades my own way.’ Leonidas stood straight. ‘Know who colonised Tarentum, Diokles?’

  ‘Sparta. You’ve told me about fifty times.’ Diokles thought they had perhaps a hundred heartbeats, if the enemy engines didn’t rip his bow off first.

  He watched one of Jubal’s repeating engines sinking away in the water behind him. One thing off his mind.

  Another crash forward. Satyrus had all the archers. He had nothing with which to reply except his ram.

  The enemy trireme was now clear of the penteres – they weren’t going to foul each other. It had been close – the trierarchs were still screaming at each other from their command decks.

  It had never been that good a chance, anyway.

  The penteres was coming for him.

  ‘Let’s get the trireme,’ Leonidas said. ‘We can’t miss – he’s still turning.’

  ‘And the penteres gets us,’ Diokles said.

  Leonidas nodded.

  Diokles nodded.

  The Tarentine leaned on the oars and they turned, the sea foaming at their bow. Diokles saw a bolt vanish into the water, a clear miss – the turn had bought them that, if nothing else.

  And then they hit. The ram caught just a few feet behind the cathead and smashed the oar-box in an explosion of splinters, and men screamed. The impact was so strong, and Atlantae was going so fast that she pushed the stricken ship down and back, water foaming over her stern as she sank. Her stern ran aboard the next trireme’s bow, and down his oars – more oarsmen screaming, dislocated shoulders, men flayed by splinters.

  The penteres had them, of course. But Diokles had twenty heartbeats, and he used them. ‘Throw the fire pots!’ he ordered. Then he roared, ‘Over the side! Swim for it!’

  Men jumped immediately – they’d been waiting for it. The marines had stripped their armour, and the rowers had left their oars as soon as they struck the enemy trireme.

  Leonidas stepped up on the rail. ‘You coming?’ he asked. The lead enemy trireme was afire, and her consort’s bow had caught.

  ‘After you,’ Diokles joked, and then an enemy marine’s javelin caught him in the back, just above his kidneys, punched right through him so that he had a brief glimpse of the shiny point emerging from his gut. And then he fell forward into Poseidon’s embrace.

  15

  Achilles was dour after the fight in the pass. He hadn’t stayed at Satyrus’s shoulder, and he’d missed the fight, and after that he was a shadow at Satyrus’s shoulder, night and day.

  Anaxagoras behaved much the same way, although with plenty of self-mockery.

  Satyrus just nodded. ‘I roam up and down the column, seeking to put heart into men,’ he said. ‘I have a horse and I go where I please. You two don’t have to be with me every moment.’

  Achilles looked at him. ‘We have a contract,’ he said.

  Satyrus nodded again. ‘We do, at that. So far, I have no reason to complain.’

  Achilles shook his head. ‘I should have been there.’

  Over the last ridge of the Pelekos Mountains, and down – precipitously down – to the plains by the Mekestos river – with the mountains towering on either hand. The two armies were beginning to blend – men shared fires and food, and when the three phalanxes and their auxiliaries paraded, the third day on the Mekestos, they looked like an army. It was the first time in a thousand stades that there had been room to form up.

  Lysimachos nodded to the north. ‘We’re about halfway,’ he said.

  Scopasis twirled his moustache. ‘So is One-Eye,’ he said. ‘His cavalry will be hard on us now.’

  Lysimachos nodded. ‘You and my Getae will have to keep them away, then,’ he said.

  Scopasis looked at the Getae chiefs, and spat.

  The feeling was mutual.

  But the sun shone for three straight days. The forage was better, the horses’ coats began to shine again, and the thrush in the hooves began to smell better. Or less bad.

  Scopasis led a raid on one of Antigonus’s outposts and rode it down in the dark, returning with fifty horses and twenty captives, all members of the elite Aegema. Satyrus sent them with a herald, and received back the wounded Apobatai and four Cretan archers from the fight in th
e pass – a good trade as far as he was concerned.

  But the sun made Antigonus’s horsemen bolder, and there was fighting in the rearguard every day. Satyrus felt that the Getae hung back and watched the Sakje die. After the third time that Scopasis’s three hundred fought unsupported, he rode up to the lead Getae chief – a man who wore so much gold he glittered like Demetrios in the sun.

  ‘Are your tribesmen women?’ he asked. He grinned. ‘Not women – my sister has killed more enemies than these children.’

  The old Getae just smiled, showing his scars. ‘Anything you say, lord,’ he grunted.

  Satyrus nodded. ‘I say that the Getae are all children – any man’s brats. You – pais – get me water,’ he said to a bearded warrior. The man flushed.

  Satyrus took him by the throat – mounted – and boxed his ears swiftly, as if the man was a slave. ‘Water, boy.’

  The Getae man roared ‘I am no boy, Greek fucker!’

  Satyrus smiled. ‘Really? You can’t fight. So fetch water.’

  The chief nodded. ‘You could get hurt, foreign king.’

  Achilles’ blade appeared along the barbarian’s throat. ‘Lots of people could get hurt,’ he said, pleasantly.

  ‘Sakje so noble,’ the Getae spat. ‘Let them show us how great they are.’

  ‘It’s true,’ Satyrus said. His Getae wasn’t great, but he knew a few words. ‘Men with penises are generally better fighters then men with no penis.’ He turned his back and rode down the hill towards the column.

  The next morning, Lysimachos joined Satyrus and Stratokles for a crust of bread and a cup of wine. ‘My Getae hate you,’ he said.

  ‘They’ll hate me worse later today,’ Satyrus said. ‘They don’t plan to fight, and they’re none too fond of you, either.’

  Lysimachos nodded. ‘I think they’re negotiating with Antigonus,’ he admitted. ‘It’s the rain,’ he added.

  ‘It’s the Sakje,’ Satyrus said. ‘Stratokles has a plan.’

  The sun was well up when Antigonus’s cavalry raid – late, but determined – overran the pickets and came flooding up the valley. The Sakje were caught flat-footed. There were only a handful of them, the rest asleep or elsewhere, and the enemy Aegema poured up the banks of the river, killed a handful of light infantrymen and some slaves still bathing in the river, and continued towards the infantry rearguard. A dozen Sakje fled before them, shooting from their saddles.

  The enemy wanted them badly. So badly that they pursued them over a low ridge to the left and straight into the Getae camp, where they scattered the Getae herd, killed several men’s wives, and burned the Getae tents.

  Then the Sakje counter-attacked, pushing the Macedonian cavalry back through the Getae camp again, back to the river, shooting as they went. They saved fifty Getae women and most of the children, and in the pursuit, they picked up most of the Getae herd.

  The next morning, without orders, the Getae raided the Antigonid camp.

  Stratokles was disgustingly smug. So was Scopasis.

  And still they marched north, and still Antigonus pursued them.

  At the forks in the Royal Road, Satyrus sent Charmides north with a message: to send the fleet east to Kios, covering the flank. Then he led the army down the east fork, towards Miletopolis and Apollonis and the Greek cities of the northern Troad.

  ‘We’re at the edge of Bithynia,’ he said to Stratokles.

  ‘I’m on it,’ Stratokles said. He winked at Herakles.

  Lysimachos shook his head. ‘If the Bithynians put an army across our path,’ he muttered, ‘we’re done.’

  In fact, Scopasis had already located the nucleus of a local army – six hundred cavalry and some peltasts – forming on the banks of the great lake to the east, near the town Eumenes had founded at Niceas, just three hundred stades away.

  ‘I’m on it, I said,’ Stratokles insisted.

  The army marched east, right into the Bithynian trap.

  Mithridates the elder, uncle of the younger man who Demetrios had captured and lost, sat on a camp stool, listening to his scouts report on the army of Lysimachos, who was marching straight into his hands. Not that that was altogether good – his own small army would have the fight of its life, even in the constricted terrain on the banks of the lake with the mountains towering above them, and he’d pay dearly.

  Could Antigonus be trusted to make it worth his while?

  He sat and wondered why Lysimachos hadn’t at least made him an offer.

  So he was unsurprised when his guards told him that there was a messenger from Lysimachos. With a woman.

  That was more like it.

  They were brought in; the messenger had been roughly handled, and stripped of weapons. He was bleeding from his mouth, and his eyes – he had the eyes of a killer, and just for a moment, Mithridates wasn’t amused.

  ‘You’re no herald,’ he said.

  ‘If I was,’ the man said, ‘you’d be guilty of impiety.’

  ‘Heralds,’ Mithridates said. ‘Do I look like a fucking Greek? Anyway, you have no staff. I can order you killed. I should.’

  The man shrugged. ‘I’d like to live,’ he said through his split lip. ‘I’m here to tell you that Satyrus of Tanais is behind you with four thousand Sakje, and to offer you terms.’

  No commander likes to have his subordinates hear about failure – especially one whose hold on power was as poor as Mithridates III of Bithynia. ‘Clear the tent,’ he said, glancing at his most dangerous rivals – the Lord of Niceas and the Lord of Apollonis, former mercenaries under Alexander, now petty tyrants in Asia. ‘Hold your tongue,’ he said to the man with the split lip.

  He kept two guards and four slaves.

  ‘Now tell your story,’ he said. He’d had a moment to think about it, and while Satyrus might have got by him – by ship to Heraklea – Mithridates couldn’t see how he’d got four thousand Sakje. It didn’t hold water.

  The man shrugged. ‘I’m here to offer you terms.’

  ‘You have a curious accent,’ Mithridates said. ‘Why the woman?’ he asked. He turned to look at her, and got a dagger point in the eye.

  Lucius breathed out, a long exhalation like a sigh of despair. Both of the guards were dead, and the slaves had fled, and Mithridates IV was sitting on the stool. ‘That was not my best work,’ he admitted.

  The young man on the ivory stool raised an eyebrow and rocked his head back and forth slightly, more like a handsome philosopher than a warlord. ‘Luckily, he was a fool,’ he said.

  ‘Should we be worried about the rest of the nobles?’ Lucius asked.

  Mithridates sighed. ‘If we’re not dead in fifty heartbeats, I’ll be king for a while,’ he said.

  ‘Ares – that’s your plan?’ Lucius asked. He ran his thumb idly down his sword’s edge.

  The Lord of Niceas pushed his head into the tent. His eyes widened – once at the blood, and again to see the young man on the stool. The Lord of Niceas was grey-haired, Greco-Persian, tall and hawk-nosed.

  ‘Come in, my lord, and swear fealty,’ Mithridates said.

  ‘Lord?’ the man said. Then he stepped in. He seemed unsure of himself. A dozen more local warlords came in behind him – too many for Lucius to kill all of them.

  ‘We are now allies of Lysimachos and Satyrus of Tanais,’ Mithridates said. ‘I will be receiving a small subsidy in gold. You will all receive a share.’ The handsome young man smiled.

  They all smiled back. No one likes a battle, when the alternative is a subsidy.

  They began to kneel and swear.

  Lucius found that he felt light-headed. I need to get out of this business, he thought.

  Antigonus found his enemies waiting on the shores of Lake Askania, and it became clear that his shaved knucklebone, the Bithynians, had betrayed him.

  He sat on his horse and watched t
he enemy form opposite him. Their three big phalanxes filled the shores of the lake, and they had plenty of cavalry. He outnumbered them two to one, but they had started entrenching the narrow slice of farmland between the hills and the water.

  ‘Fucking Bithynians,’ he spat.

  His numbers were still great enough to push through. He was sure his Macedonian veterans could rout whatever levies they used. But things happened in battles, and suddenly he was in hostile country, and if he lost here … well, he could forget conquering the world. He would be lucky to get buried.

  Antigonus had been fighting wars since he was fifteen, and he was eighty-one. He had not arrived at this age by making rash decisions. So he halted his army on the banks of the lake and ordered his engineers forward. And he ordered his cavalry to start rounding up the population of the countryside. If their leaders chose to oppose him, the people would serve as slaves.

  Besides, his son was ferrying his army over from Europe, in Lysimachos’s rear. He didn’t need to fight here.

  Unless he could win. And one thing the fucking Bithynians wouldn’t do well was sit and wait while he raped their land.

  Satyrus watched as the Antigonids began to lay out a fortified camp behind the heavy screen of cavalry and light infantry – thousands of men. Behind them, two full taxeis – almost as many pikemen as all of Lysimachos’s army – stood to, their pikes upright in the sun.

  Anaxagoras, Stratokles and Mithridates watched with him. Slightly to the rear, Lucius and Herakles and Charmides played at dice. Herakles had begun to adopt Charmides as his role model – or his erastes. It was early days yet. Satyrus watched them with a reserve he hadn’t had on earlier campaigns. His sister was right. The joy was gone from the thing. No longer did he watch with fascination as war cemented the bonds of honour and friendship between warriors. Now he watched from a distance, expecting the best of them to die.

  ‘Why so glum?’ Anaxagoras asked. ‘He’s doing exactly what you said he would do.’