Tyrant: Force of Kings

by Christian Cameron

  Stratokles laughed through his tears.

  Four stades away, Demetrios stood looking at the glow coming from the south-east – the left end of his enemy’s camp. Roar after roar came from the glow, and now he could hear the unmistakable sound of the paean.

  A man came out of the dark – an officer, short, stocky, with blond hair that shone in the firelight. ‘Lord,’ he asked, ‘what is the watchword for the night?’

  Demetrios didn’t recognise the officer but he wasn’t worried about a night attack. ‘Zeus and Victory,’ he said.

  The officer stopped, listening to the sound of the paean. ‘Ahh,’ he said. He seemed disappointed.

  He turned and began to walk towards the distant fires, and Demetrios wondered who he was. But when he turned to call out after the man, there was no one there.

  He shrugged and went into his father’s pavilion. Antigonus was subdued – he ate a good dinner, but he was neither ribald nor dismissive of their enemies – not his usual pre-battle performance at all, Demetrios thought.

  ‘I have had such dreams, the last few nights,’ Antigonus said.

  ‘Something you ate, I suspect,’ Demetrios said. He shook his head. ‘Pater, one more battle. We’ve got them where we want them – all of them, except Ptolemy.’

  Antigonus raised his head, and his half smile and cunning eyes were those Demetrios had known all his life. ‘Aye, lad. We have all of them in a basket. But I begin to wonder: can a pack of hyenas make themselves into lions? Have you heard the sounds from their camp?’ He shook his head. ‘And where in the great girdle of Mother Earth has Seleucus found so many elephants?’

  Demetrios had never been the one to reassure his father – it felt odd. ‘Pater, relax. Are you not the one who always tells me that elephants are a gimmick? That they have little effect on a battle?’

  ‘Two hundred elephants can have a mighty effect,’ Antigonus said. ‘I intend to put all of ours into the front line – spread at intervals to add weight to our skirmishers and overawe their elephants.’

  Demetrios shrugged. ‘There you are, then. I’ll take the right flank cavalry—’

  ‘You’ll have most of the good cavalry. I have planned a little surprise for the morning.’ Antigonus drank some wine.

  Demetrios nodded. ‘Which is?’ he asked.

  ‘What, afraid you’ll miss the sound of the trumpet, boy?’ Antigonus asked. ‘Just because I’m old doesn’t mean I’m past mark of mouth. You’ll get my orders with all the other officers – in the morning.’ He sipped his wine. They were singing again, four stades away. Antigonus shook his head.

  ‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ he said.

  Charmides sang the Iliad – almost the whole first book, the Rage of Achilles, like a reminder of how pride and anger could divide an army of allies. His voice was beautiful, his postures noble, and Anaxagoras’s notes fell from his lyre like flames of a fire, igniting the imaginations, soothing the fears, and Charmides sang the poet’s words until his voice was gone.

  Satyrus sang a poem of Sappho, and when he sang, he sang to Miriam, a thousand stades away.

  Melitta sang a bawdy song of Theogonus, about a man who loved boys too much – funnier than ever, from a woman – and the Greeks pounded their thighs and laughed, and then she sang a Sakje song about a maiden who avenges the death of her lover by killing his murderers, one by one, and the Saka howled their shrill war cries.

  Sappho came to the fire, poured a libation, and stood still in the dark for a long time, and then came and stood with Diodorus, Crax, Antigonus and all of the ‘old men’ who had served with Kineas and Diodorus.

  Satyrus found that he was weeping. He watched Sappho embrace Diodorus, and he watched Apollodorus sacrifice a lamb – chanting a prayer to Kineas, with half a hundred men.

  ‘Will we win tomorrow?’ Satyrus asked Coenus.

  Coenus shrugged. ‘I am not a commander,’ he said. ‘But these men are in high heart.’

  Stratokles, who had been talking to Antiochus – plotting, Satyrus suspected, and plotting without conscious thought – stopped talking. He came and offered his horn cup full of wine to Coenus. ‘I feel that we will win,’ he said.

  Seleucus extricated himself from Prepalaus, who had drunk too much. ‘We will not lose,’ he said. ‘We have a good army and a safe retreat, and this evening has done much to bind our army together.’

  Satyrus made a wry face. ‘I’m not satisfied to avoid defeat,’ he said. ‘Wine has made me over-bold, perhaps, but I am not in this war to avoid defeat. I’m in this war to see it over. I am twenty-eight—’

  ‘Not for nearly a month,’ said his twin.

  ‘I am nearly twenty-eight, and I have been at war since I was twelve. The men around these fires know no other life. They deserve an end.’ Satyrus crossed his arms, having said more than he intended.

  Anaxagoras smiled. He took the cup and drank deeply. ‘Playing that long is like an athletic competition,’ he said. ‘Listen, Satyrus, I agree that this war should end. But consider, if you will – there are fifty thousand men around these fires, and the enemy has the same again. And the last thirty years – by the gods, Satyrus, the last fifty years – have given men the habit of war. Hellenes have lost the habit of peace. They settle everything by war. One battle will not fix that. The losers will creep away to rebuild, the winners will squabble among themselves.’

  Stratokles nodded. ‘How will these men make their livings, Satyrus? War is an honourable profession – should they be bandits? The gentlemen – where will they go? Back to the cities that exiled them, back to ruined farms and dead families? The smaller men – to what shall they return? The cowards who stayed at home – the young men who stayed with the loom and the potter’s wheel and the blacksmith’s shop – they have all the jobs. They rise in the trades. What, exactly, is a man who has been the file leader of a file of hoplites for twenty years to do, back in Corinth? Go back to his dye vat? Serve as an apprentice under a man ten years younger?’

  Satyrus took the wine cup – freshly filled by Phoibos himself – and drank. Pure water with a little vinegar; Phoibos was telling them all it was time for bed. He nodded.

  Melitta agreed. ‘I wouldn’t be here at all but my brother insisted we tip the scales so that the allies could end this stupid dream of a universal empire and everyone can return to their own grass.’

  Anaxagoras smiled at her, but he shook his head. ‘It has become fashionable to blame King Alexander for everything,’ he said. ‘But I am a student of history, and I say that Ashniburnipal and Darius and Xerxes – and Agamemnon and Priam – Sargon – the dream of universal conquest is everywhere. Alexander didn’t start it.’

  Seleucus nodded. ‘I know those names from Babylon,’ he said. ‘Sargon – you are an educated man. But Alexander did more than any man before him.’

  Anaxagoras nodded. ‘Perhaps. But smashing Antigonus will not smash the restless urge to conquer. Nor will you, Lord King, give up your spear-won lands – nor Ptolemy, nor Lysimachos, nor Cassander.’

  Seleucus nodded. ‘It is true.’

  ‘War is the king and father of all,’ Anaxagoras said. He shrugged. ‘I do not know how to make men make peace. To be honest, I’m not even sure it would be a good idea.’

  Satyrus handed the vinegar water on. ‘I’m sure that it is a good idea for me,’ he said.

  Water was sent out to the revellers. And Satyrus walked from group to group as they dispersed, with his sister and his friends, clasping hands and wishing men good fortune. He found Draco regaling a crowd of Macedonians with some tale.

  ‘Bed,’ Satyrus said. Draco was so drunk that his face was flushed bright red – so flushed that it was visible by the flicker of firelight.

  ‘Killed that fucking doctor!’ Draco said, throwing his arms around Satyrus.

  Satyrus’s thoughts were far away – he had no idea
what the drunk veteran was saying. ‘Who?’ he asked.

  Draco had a cloak rolled under his arm, and he laughed. ‘Wait a mo,’ he said, and howled with laughter. He unrolled the cloak with a practised flick, and the Macedonians cursed when they saw what was wrapped in the folds – but they laughed.

  Melitta didn’t flinch. She picked the head up by the hair. ‘Sophokles,’ she said with satisfaction.

  Satyrus spat to avoid retching. ‘Where’d you find him?’

  Draco guffawed. ‘Wandering about the camp like the fucking spy he was.’

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘I hate to think how many other spies Antigonus has with us,’ he said. ‘Stratokles, have you seen this?’

  The Athenian looked at the head for a long time. Then he took it from Melitta. ‘I knew him,’ he said, with unusual candour. ‘Sometimes we were comrades. May I take this for burial?’

  Draco nodded. ‘Sure. Listen, I could take you to his body. I left it in his tent.’ He laughed.

  Anaxagoras watched the two of them go off into the darkness together. ‘What does peace hold for them?’ he asked.

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘I take your meaning,’ he said, ‘but there must be something. Draco is more like the ruin of a man than a man.’

  ‘I do not speak this way because I love war,’ Anaxagoras said, ‘although I confess that it does have sharp joys, like love. But merely because of what I observe. Draco lives here, the way a farmer lives on his farm. And he killed that assassin. Without him …’

  Satyrus nodded. And sighed, and clasped his sister’s hand. They walked to the fire, and poured libations – one for their father, and another for their mother, and a last for Philokles. He could feel them, right there in the darkness.

  An hour later, Draco and Stratokles came to the fires. They had burned well down, but the piles of embers were as high as a man’s thighs, and Draco went off into the dark and returned with Phoibos and a file of slaves, and they piled one fire high with fresh logs – old cedar, from a fence up the valley. And then the Macedonian picked up the corpse of the Athenian doctor and hoisted it onto the fire, burning his leg in the process. And Stratokles put the head with the corpse, and poured wine and oil on the fire. Stratokles went to put oil on the Macedonian’s burns, but the man stumbled away into the dark.

  Lucius found Stratokles sitting alone, wrapped in his chlamys, watching the fire burn down.

  ‘He was no friend of yours,’ Lucius said.

  Stratokles nodded.

  ‘By the gods – he wasn’t working for you?’ Lucius demanded. ‘We are … I thought you’d chosen a side.’ He spoke with sudden suspicion.

  ‘I have,’ Stratokles said. He sounded tired. ‘I’ve chosen a side, and tomorrow, I will stand in the front rank of my own phalanx and do my best to see Antigonus defeated. But Sophokles and I…’ He looked away. ‘We started together. We ended differently. But I wonder, sitting here, if tomorrow my body will go in a pit – a life of scheming, and a few moments of brutality.’ He shook his head and reached out for Lucius’s canteen, which was handed to him, full of heavy, sweet wine. ‘We started together. I don’t think it’s too late for us to end together.’ He drank.

  Lucius took the canteen back and took a drink. ‘Stratokles, you’ve been a good boss. And I’ve made money … piles of money. But win or lose, tomorrow is the end. I’ve had enough for a couple of years … to go back and buy my exile off.’ He shrugged, sat back. ‘So let’s stop being so fucking maudlin and enjoy tomorrow.’

  ‘One more time?’ Stratokles said. ‘You’ll keep me alive?’

  ‘Have I ever let you down?’ Lucius asked. ‘You’re alive, aren’t you, you thankless Greek?’

  They laughed.

  23

  Seleucus assumed that he was the commander, and neither Lysimachos nor Prepalaus gainsaid him, so when he summoned the strategoi at dawn, they came, still full of the good fellowship of the night before.

  Seleucus was back to his reserved, cautious and dignified self. He nodded as Satyrus came up, and handed around cups of water. ‘If you expect a complex battle plan,’ he said, ‘you are in the wrong tent.’

  While they chuckled, he led them out onto the open space in front of his pavilion, and then up the hill to its highest point, where they could see the broad, flat extent of the plain from the low ridges to the east, all the way to the river on the west – a patchwork of small fields wearing the colours of summer in the first light of day.

  Lysimachos nodded agreement without a word being said.

  Prepalaus frowned. ‘We are facing the subtlest and most able mind of the age,’ he said.

  ‘We have more cavalry and more elephants, and with this many men from this many lands, the best we can hope for is that we all go forward together and we don’t fight among ourselves,’ Seleucus said. ‘I wish to put all the infantry in the centre – Prepalaus and all of the mercenary foot – Prepalaus on the right, by the single olive tree. That is where your rightmost file will form – clear of the village, and facing the open ground.’

  Prepalaus nodded, a man reserving judgement.

  ‘My sense is that our phalanx is smaller. We will only fill the plain to the walled farm … no, there, to the left.’ He was pointing with a baton, and Satyrus shook his head.

  ‘That’s ten stades,’ he said.

  Seleucus nodded.

  Antiochus smiled. ‘Twelve stades and some odd paces, Satyrus. I paced it off myself. Enough for a phalanx formed sixteen deep and three thousand four hundred files wide at the normal order.’

  Satyrus thought of his largest battle – at Gaza—and the only one where he had commanded an army, at the Tanais River. At Tanais, both sides would have vanished into fifty thousand men, and that was just one phalanx.

  ‘He will overreach us on one flank or both,’ Seleucus said. ‘Outguessing Antigonus is a waste of time. So let us assume both. We will divide our cavalry evenly on both flanks. Lysimachos, I wish you to take the right-flank cavalry. I wish all of the Saka and Sakje there. My own cavalry will form on the left, under my son. Diodorus will hold the extreme left of the line, with his leftmost files on the river.’

  Seleucus turned to Satyrus. ‘I regret that I have, in effect, broken your contingent among all the commands – your cavalry is with Lysimachos, your infantry with Prepalaus, and the Exiles are with my son.’

  Satyrus nodded. He was irked – he was not an inexperienced commander, and he’d just been deprived of a command.

  Every eye was on him.

  He thought, None of them are satisfied. Lysimachos wants more cavalry. Prepalaus wants command of the whole centre. And if I voice my complaints, I do not help the alliance. And why am I here?

  And next to these men, I am the least experienced.

  He nodded. ‘I will hold myself in reserve, then,’ he said. ‘Where will you be?’

  ‘I will keep a thousand cavalry and fifty elephants in reserve,’ Seleucus said.

  ‘Fifty elephants!’ Prepalaus exclaimed. ‘But we could have them in the front line.’

  Seleucus nodded. ‘Perhaps. But they are mine, and I believe that a battle of this size can only be won with a massive stroke – a knockout blow. This will not be a dustless victory, gentlemen. My plan – if it can be called a plan – is to abide. To take the best punch that Antigonus and Demetrios can throw, and to have one more punch to throw back. I will echelon the phalanx – Prepalaus and his Macedonians on the far right, and every taxeis eight files back, like a set of steps.’

  They nodded. That was the formation that they had all known since Philip’s time.

  ‘The right-hand cavalry forward, the left-hand cavalry back behind the leftmost phalanx – your Nikephoros’s men, I think. They can hold the left end of the line.’

  ‘We let them approach us?’ Lysimachos asked.

  Seleucus shook his head. ‘N
o, that’s bad for morale. No, when we are formed, we will go forward. But the left flank cavalry – I want you to hold back. Wait my signal.’

  Satyrus leaned in. ‘Where do you plan to throw your knockout punch?’ he asked.

  Seleucus shook his head. ‘I have no idea,’ he said. ‘If the battle goes as I plan – and I don’t expect it – I will throw them at the junction between their right-flank cavalry and their left-end phalanx.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘But that is pure hubris. I will throw them where I must.’

  A slave – or perhaps a freeman, but certainly Seleucus’s secretary – walked around the group, handing out wax tablets bound in wood.

  ‘This is the order in which I wish you to form,’ he said, ‘with the name of every contingent. All of the psiloi and all of the peltastoi into the centre. I doubt that their order matters very much – they won’t last long.’

  ‘Don’t let the useless fuckers disorder my phalanx,’ Prepalaus said.

  Lysimachos was not quite so contemptuous of his Thracians. ‘Form with gaps,’ he said. ‘Files double back so that the peltasts can come through. It’s foolishness to ask them to go out and discomfort the enemy phalanx and not take some precaution for their exit from the centre.’

  Prepalaus shrugged, obviously uncaring.

  Satyrus leaned forward again. ‘I wish to support the King of Thrace in this,’ he said. ‘If there are gaps then even cavalry can be committed to the skirmish battle in the centre. And when the peltastoi retire, they can be collected and added to the reserve.’

  Prepalaus snorted, but Antiochus agreed, and Seleucus was swayed. ‘It is true,’ he allowed, ‘that it seems wasteful to leave the peltastoi to die, but there’s no room for them on the flanks. Very well. If every taxeis has four files pulled in the centre of its line, that’s a two-horse gap every stade.’

  Prepalaus shook his head. ‘Those gaps will collapse shut every time we lose, and those men are lost out of the line,’ he said.