Tyrant: King of the Bosporus

by Christian Cameron

  ‘Too close,’ Satyrus said through the liquid in his nose. ‘Mercenaries?’

  Calchus grunted. ‘War whores,’ he said. ‘Ahh – I feel like a man tonight!’ He laughed.

  ‘What of the men who ran?’ Satyrus asked. He was looking at his own men now. There were gaps in the ranks.

  Calchus pointed his chin at the mob behind him. ‘See? Not just hoplites – every slave in town. Bastards have raped and killed their fill. Every housewife’s on the roof with a handful of tiles – every boy with a sling is in the streets.’

  ‘In that case, there’ll be a lot of dead kids in the morning,’ Theron said. He shrugged his great shoulders. ‘They need our help, Satyrus. I assume that’s why you landed us – to save the town?’

  Satyrus grunted.

  ‘You’re a god-sent hero,’ Calchus said. ‘Athena Nike, you even look like your father.’

  It was hard to feel like a hero with blood running out of his nose and his arm on fire, much less face the idea that he should go into those dark and narrow streets and fight again.

  But he could hear the screams already – women and children and men, too.

  ‘All right,’ Satyrus said. ‘Marines only. Deck crew, get all the armour and shields lying around and follow us. Where’s Kalos?’

  ‘Right here,’ the man said, his satyr-face showing from under a battered Boeotian helmet.

  ‘Take all the oarsmen and help Diokles get the ships off the beach,’ Satyrus managed. His brain seemed to be moving along without his body.

  Kalos nodded heavily. ‘Can I take a nap first?’

  ‘T hose men fleeing might decide to make a fight for their boats,’ Theron put in.

  ‘All right, all right.’ Kalos shook his head. ‘Anyone have a wineskin?’ he called out to his men, who were already stripping the dead.

  ‘Apollodorus?’ Satyrus called.

  ‘Took an arrow back by the boats,’ Theron said. ‘The longer we wait—’

  Satyrus had to force himself to move. ‘Let’s do the thing,’ he croaked, and shambled off towards the town. Seeing a spear, he leaned down and picked it up – a marine’s lonche without a butt-spike.

  Good enough.

  There was a house on fire a few streets inland, and the fire was catching. Calchus was bellowing orders to his own people, and the hoplites came and joined Satyrus’s marines – just a dozen or so men in armour.

  ‘Where are all your men?’ Theron asked.

  ‘Face down in the sand,’ said a voice that rang with fatigue and anger. ‘No quarter for these fuckers.’

  They moved cautiously into a broad street lined with warehouses and a pair of wine shops.

  ‘I’m Kletes,’ one of the local hoplites said. ‘I know this part of town. Follow me.’

  Just like that, Kletes was in charge, and under his direction they spread out to cover two parallel streets and swept inland. Twice they found bodies – once an invader, already stripped naked, the next time two young slave boys with spear wounds front and back. Then they heard fighting a street away – close to the source of the burning.

  ‘Straight at ’em!’ Kletes called, and Satyrus obeyed as naturally as Theron or any of the others. They jogged up the streets and into a crossroads – too small to be a square, but a small opening. A dozen invaders were locked with a crowd of locals – fishermen and their wives. A roof tile struck Satyrus’s helmet, and his head roared again and he lost a step. The others crashed into the thin line of the invaders – desperate men now, with nowhere to run.

  Satyrus was out of the fight, and so he saw the trap. ‘Ware!’ he yelled. ‘Our flanks!’ Some canny bastard had used his own men as bait, holding half a dozen troopers in reserve in the shadow of a big house.

  Satyrus was alone against the rush. He shook his head to clear it and then, without much thought, cocked his arm back and threw the lonche overarm at the leading enemy, backlit by the house on fire.

  The throw was true and the man never tried to block or duck – a spear thrown in the dark is hard to see. He went down with a clatter – Ares, the raiders are well equipped, Satyrus thought as he ripped his sword from the scabbard under his arm and charged three steps into the second man, knocking the bastard flat on the earth. Satyrus pounded his right foot into the man’s throat even as he put his shoulder and shield into the third man, the routines of pankration adapting to fighting with weapons by the light of a house-fire. The third man’s spear came past his shoulder, slicing bare skin on his lower bicep, but Satyrus got his sword in close, cut at the man’s hands and then around his helmet, smashing into the back of his head – once, twice and the man was down.

  The other three hesitated.

  ‘He’s just one man!’ that hated voice sang. ‘All together!’

  Satyrus stepped back – they weren’t eager to come to grips with him – and spat. It wasn’t a gesture of contempt – his mouth was full of blood. He looked over his shield at the three of them, and they kept their distance, more than a spear’s length away.

  ‘Why don’t you come and try me yourself?’ Satyrus heard himself say. Inside his helmet, he flashed a painful smile. It was the kind of line he dreamed of saying. A god had put it in his mouth. He felt his back straighten, he stood straighter and the bronze didn’t weigh his limbs.

  None of the three men came forward. Behind Satyrus, he heard the roar of men fighting and dying and the screams of women, and he thought of Teax. ‘Harder than killing women in the countryside, isn’t it, you bastard?’ he shouted.

  ‘Fuck you, kid,’ the voice said. The middle warrior pushed forward. ‘Let’s get him and run for it,’ the voice added. ‘No fair fights in the dark, kid.’

  Satyrus waited one beat, crouched and then leaped to the right, engaging the man at the end of the enemy group. He landed, put his shield up over his head, leaned low and cut under the man’s shield, but his sword rang on the man’s greave. Nonetheless, the man stumbled back, and Satyrus pressed him, got his shield up and took a heavy blow on it from his left, then tripped over something on the ground – clang, and he was down in the dirt, his shield face up, arms spread wide.

  ‘Nice try,’ the voice said, and Satyrus saw the man stomp on his shield – unbelievable pain in his already wounded arm, a white flare of pain. Satyrus screamed.

  Neither Satyrus nor his opponents saw Theron coming, but the athlete knocked clown-voice flat, turned on his partner and dispatched him with two quick spear-thrusts to the face.

  Quick as a cat, clown-voice was back on his feet, his spear licking at Theron in the orange light. The fire was starting to spread.

  Satyrus got the shield off his damaged arm, and screamed again. He couldn’t help it. But he had endured years of pain – of fighting in the palaestra, broken bones and contusions galore – and he somehow stuffed the arm into his sword belt, unable to breathe with the pain, and for the third time that evening he rose to his feet like Atlas shouldering the weight of the heavens. He felt for the dagger that was strapped to the inside of his shield, got his good right hand around it, blood still flowing over his face, and slammed the knife into clown-voice’s kidneys while the man had his whole being focused on Theron. The triangular blade punched right through the bronze and sank a hand’s depth with the power of Satyrus’s blow. Clown-voice stumbled, turned his head and got Theron’s spear through the bridge of his nose.

  Satyrus sank to his haunches and then fell over, twisting to keep his broken arm off the ground and landing heavily.

  ‘How bad are you, boy?’ Theron asked.

  Satyrus screamed. ‘Arm – broken!’ he said, and then crouched on the blood-soaked earth, wishing that he could faint but not quite able to do it. Instead, he vomited.

  He lost track of the actions around him, not quite unconscious and not quite able to register anything, floating on a tide of pain like a beached ship refloated on the highest tide. Theron said some things to him, and he found himself explaining that in Olympic pankration, he would never have double-tea
med an opponent – he was explaining this to an offical wearing a long white robe and a chaplet of olive leaves, who looked at him with weary distaste.

  ‘We were fighting in the dark,’ he said. ‘Not the Olympics! The man refused single combat!’

  The old man shook his head, and then Theron said something about the ship.

  ‘What ship?’ Satyrus asked.

  ‘We have poppy juice,’ Calchus said clearly. ‘I’ll get him some.’

  Fire all around him, and then he was walking, hands guiding him, more pain as someone handled his arm and he screamed and fell and the pain almost – almost – knocked him out. Satyrus gasped, gulped air and voices told him to drink, and he drank a thin, milky liquid – bitter and somehow bright.

  Then he was cold, and then hot, and then the colour of the fire exploded around him, so that colour defined everything – war and love and missing friends, Amastris’s kisses, Philokles’ love, all had a colour – and he was swept away on a surge of these subtle shades, lifted and carried, and the pain roared its lavender disappointment and went far away.

  Against Coenus’s judgment, she didn’t hide her identity.

  The first night, they stopped at a byre, a small stone cottage with fields that stretched away from the track. The people were Maeotae, dark-haired, cheerful, with a yard full of freckled girls in good wool smocks, and two young boys who were sword-fighting with sticks.

  Dinner was mutton, served with barley soup on fine Athenian plates. And good Greek wine.

  The farmer was Gardan, and his wife was Methene. They eyed the travellers with some suspicion, and spoke quietly at their own end of the great table that dominated the house’s one big room.

  After dinner – delicious, and doubly so for the cold rain that blew against the door – Gardan moved to their end of the table, the end closest to the hearth, for he was a hospitable man. ‘What news, then?’ he asked. He was speaking to Coenus.

  ‘We come from Alexandria,’ Melitta said.

  The farmer gave her a startled look, as if he hadn’t expected her to speak. But he smiled. ‘As far as that?’ he said, but he wasn’t very interested.

  Coenus sipped his wine. ‘Do you care for news from the Inner Sea?’ he asked.

  The farmer shook his head. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘Nothing to do with folks hereabouts.’ He glanced at their bows, stowed snugly in a hutch by the door. ‘Not so many Sakje folk on the roads any more,’ he said. And let that sit.

  ‘That’s what they said at the Temple of Herakles,’ Melitta said.

  ‘Temple has no love for the tyrant,’ the farmer said. He looked from under shaggy brows, and the comment was muttered out into the air, as if he could disclaim it, if he needed to.

  ‘Who is this tyrant?’ Nihmu asked.

  Melitta was disturbed to realize that Nihmu’s leg was pressed close to Coenus’s under the table.

  ‘Eumeles of Pantecapaeum. He claims all these lands, but mostly, it’s Upazan of the Sauromatae who sends his raiders to collect what they call “tax”.’ The farmer shrugged.

  ‘He’s no proper tyrant,’ Methene said. ‘We used to have law.’

  ‘Tish, woman. Not the place.’ The farmer gave his wife a mild look and turned back to his guests.

  ‘You will have law again,’ Melitta said.

  The farmer nodded, as if this was a commonplace, but his wife looked at Melitta and then put her weaving back on the loom. ‘Husband,’ she said, standing, ‘she’s a Twin.’

  Coenus stood up. ‘We don’t want trouble.’

  Gardan went to his wife. Only when he stood between her and the strangers did he turn. Their children clustered around them, aware that something dangerous had just been said.

  ‘Is that true?’ Gardan asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Melitta said, ignoring Coenus. ‘I am Srayanka’s daughter, Melitta of Tanais.’

  ‘By the Ploughman,’ Gardan said.

  ‘I knew you in the yard,’ Methene said. She shrugged. ‘But my eyes is old, and I thought again.’ She looked at the three of them, all on their feet. ‘You have nothing to worry about in this house,’ she said. ‘We’ve sheltered Temerix and his foreign lady many times, and their band, too.’

  ‘Temerix?’ Coenus said. ‘Temerix the smith?’

  Gardan relaxed a little. ‘The same,’ he said.

  ‘I thought he was dead,’ Coenus said.

  ‘Not last summer, anyway,’ Gardan said. ‘You really a Twin, lady? You three going to raise the Sakje?’

  ‘Yes,’ Melitta said.

  ‘Only we ain’t seen a Sakje in four years,’ he said. ‘Word is that the Sauromatae have wiped them off the plains. Leastwise, round here.’

  Melitta looked at Coenus, and then at Nihmu.

  ‘If you make war on the tyrant . . .’ Gardan said, and paused. ‘He’s a hard master, and no friend to the farmers,’ Gardan said. He raised his cup. ‘But we do well enough. Lady, if you plan to make a war in the Tanais, be sure. Be fucking sure. Because the farm folk will rise for your name alone.’ He nodded, emphasizing his words. ‘Name alone. I will myself. But if you fail – by the Ploughman, he’ll make us slaves on our own farms. What he wants, the bastard. Sorry, wife.’

  But Methene nodded. ‘Truth, guests. If you have some wild plan to raise us to make war – pass us by.’

  Melitta went to bed in a pallet of river rushes on the floor, having refused to move the farmer and his wife off their bed. She had much to think on.

  The issue of her identity arose again at the ferry over the Hypanis River the next day, where it flowed across the soggy autumn fields near the great cairn at Lahrys. Melitta could remember her first crossing here, with Upazan’s horsemen behind her.

  Coenus looked at it. ‘This is what – the Hypanis?’ he asked.

  She nodded.

  Coenus shook his head. ‘Why do the Assagatje give the same name to every river? Tanais – or Hypanis. There’s one by Olbia.’

  She shrugged. ‘And this is the Hypanis of the east. Don’t be so Greek.’ She looked around. ‘Philokles cut their rope. I hope they don’t remember!’

  But they did remember. The ferryman knew her as soon as he saw her, and shook his fist at Coenus. ‘There’s new law here!’ he yelled. ‘Rope-cutters! Worse than thieves!’

  Melitta pushed her horse forward. ‘I am Melitta,’ she said. ‘Queen of the Eastern Assagatje.’ It made her choke a little just to say it. ‘This is my river – my ford. You pay your taxes to my people.’

  ‘Not any more, barbarian!’ the ferryman shouted, pushing his boat off into the stream. ‘This is all the land of the king of the Bosporus. No barbarian rides here but the king’s man – Upazan!’ But the man was clearly afraid.

  Coenus restrained her – she was about to ride into the river.

  ‘Forget him,’ Coenus said. ‘I wish you’d let us ride on. He’ll tell all the world.’

  ‘Good,’ Nihmu said. She smiled a strange, faraway smile. ‘Eumeles will spend the winter gnawing on the ends of these rumours.’

  Coenus pointed at the swollen river. ‘Eumeles’ rage won’t help us cross the Hypanis.’

  Nihmu shrugged. ‘Let’s stay on the south bank until she’s a little stream in the foothills of the mountains,’ she said. ‘I was a little girl here, before the Great War. I know the paths.’

  Coenus pulled his cloak tighter. Then he dismounted, opened his bedroll and donned a second cloak. ‘It must be old age,’ he said. ‘But I’m cold just thinking about the foothills of the Caucasus.’ He smiled at both of them. ‘I’d like to find Temerix.’

  Nihmu nodded. ‘I, too. But he could be anywhere in these hills.’

  They rode east for two days, through fields shorn of their wheat and then across scraggly fields of barley that gave way to smaller plots and bigger patches of woods between narrow villages where highland peasants raised oats and sheep. After the second night, Nihmu refused to sleep in another peasant hut – the last one had held more insects than food. But the peopl
e knew Temerix, and they were hardy folk – a bow and an axe in every hut. They disdained the valley farmers and their slavish obedience to the tyrant, but none knew where to find Temerix.

  ‘He comes and goes, like,’ said an old Maeotae, braver than the rest.

  ‘Bah, dirt people,’ Nihmu said with all the contempt of the sky people.

  ‘You’ve lived in a house for ten years,’ Coenus said.

  ‘A house with a breeze and a bath,’ Nihmu said, ‘and still I’ve wished every night for stars. Alexandria – oh, the haze in the sky. Tonight, I will feast my eyes on the whole of the sky god’s road!’

  Coenus hunched in his cloak. ‘Tonight, I’ll freeze,’ he said. The two women wore trousers and heavy coats. Coenus, the most aristocratic Hellene Melitta had ever known, was wearing a chiton and a chlamys and no trousers at all. High Thracian boots were his only concession to riding.

  ‘You should wear trousers,’ Nihmu said. Not for the first time.

  ‘When Zeus Soter comes down from Olympus and shows me how to put them on,’ Coenus answered.

  ‘Blasphemy!’ Melitta said, because an argument with her child’s grandfather passed the time.

  Coenus shook his head. ‘It would be blasphemy if I claimed not to believe in Zeus,’ he said. ‘It would be hubris if I refused to obey his bidding to wear trousers. As it is, I’m secure in the knowledge that should I run across a Megaran ephor in this gods-forsaken wilderness of peasants, wolves and winter, I will still look like a civilized man.

  Melitta had to laugh, because Coenus, despite his manners and his accent, was the best of hunting companions, a man with a hard-won knowledge of the plants and animals of the wilderness, a man who rode from dawn until dusk without complaint. Coenus was a good rider, even by Sakje standards.

  He just wouldn’t wear trousers.

  ‘My mother used to say that my father wore trousers,’ Melitta said.

  ‘Your father was in love with your mother,’ Coenus said. ‘Love makes people do strange things.’ He shrugged, as if acknowledging that he was doing a strange thing that moment.

  ‘You would be more comfortable,’ Nihmu said.