Tyrant: King of the Bosporus

by Christian Cameron

  She got the bed roll on to the back of her horse with an effort of will, surprised and dismayed at the loss of strength from just two days without food or much rest. The wound on her face felt odd, and she was light-headed, and all her dreams had been full of colour.

  She wondered at the possibility that she might die out here, alone. It made her laugh. The sheer unlikelihood of her survival cheered her – long odds had an appeal of their own.

  An unshod horse hoof struck a rock, somewhere upstream, clear as the noise of a temple gong.

  This time, she didn’t hesitate. Her choices were clear – even stark. She was up on Gryphon in a heartbeat, and she didn’t even untether her other horse. She rode downstream, moving from one stand of trees to the next in the new moonlight, her bow strung and in her hand, an arrow nocked and three more clutched along her bow.

  ‘All or nothing,’ she said aloud. There were three of them again, riding single file on the far bank. They were bickering. Words and pieces of words came to her on the still air – the older man wanted to stop for the night.

  The stream hid the sounds of her horse’s hooves, and when she was just a few dozen horse-lengths from them she half-rose and let her mount go, galloping across the moonlit river meadow. One hole, and she was dead.

  She swept alongside them, just the thin rivulet of the stream and its steep banks between her bow and their soft skin, and she shot the last man first. No following the flight of the arrow in the dark. She drew and shot again, and again, and again, and then her last arrow was gone.

  One man was whispering, perhaps grumbling to his gods, but he was face up in the long grass, and all three horses were standing in the new moonlight, as if waiting for their new owner to come and take them.

  She left the horses and rode on, cantering through the dark along the stream in the weak moonlight, confident in her mount and still terrified, still amazed at her own boldness and the totality of its result. She rode almost two stades downstream, but she was alone in the valley.

  Then she rode back. Two of her victims were still alive – the elder she had shot three times and he still tried to shoot her as she rode up, but his left arm couldn’t support this bow and he fell to his knees.

  She rode up, a javelin pointed at his face, a white circle in the moonlight.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

  She couldn’t think of anything to say – exhaustion robbed her of speech – so she killed him.

  The other wounded man watched her with open, glittering eyes as she searched their bodies and their kit – a good hide tent on a packhorse and a bronze kettle. She collected the horses and rode back.

  ‘I have to kill you,’ she said to the young man, after some thought. But even as she spoke to him, she realized that she couldn’t kill him. She had, quite simply, had enough.

  He nodded, though, and turned his face away.

  When she had mounted, she shook her head, wondering if the borders of the waking world and the sleeping world had drifted, because she felt as if she could see the dead men following at her horse’s tail – quite a few dead men, for a girl her age. The shock robbed her of speech for a moment and made her neck hairs quiver. She rode back to the boy with the arrow in his chest. The ghosts were terrifying apparitions – as if they were being tormented by some mad god.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she said to the wounded boy. ‘If you live, you live.’ She put a heavy wool blanket of Greek weaving over him, and then another.

  He grunted.

  She watched him for a moment, and knew her sudden burst of mercy was for nothing. He coughed blood, cursed her and died. She watched as his shade dragged itself from his corpse like some slithering maggot leaving the skin of a dead thing and joined the grim troupe at her tail.

  ‘Artemis, stand with me,’ she said, and slitted her eyes to avoid seeing the apparitions. Then, ever practical, she stripped the blankets back off him, rolled them tight and rode back to her camp, mind blank. There, she made a big fire for the first time in three nights, killed the smallest horse and gorged herself on half-cooked horsemeat before falling into a dream-haunted sleep that made her moan and toss. Twice she awoke, to relieve herself and to shiver in fear at the killing and the blood and what she had so easily become. Both times, she went back to sleep, and the third time she awoke it was day, and the ghosts were gone, and no new pursuers were on her trail.

  She bathed in the icy stream and washed the blood off her hands and the pus off her cheek. The water was as much of a shock as the ghosts, and she wondered how bad her fever was. Then she warmed herself by the fire and put on the fresh, dry wool shirt of one of the dead men.

  Her cheek smelled bad. She couldn’t get away from it – she smelled like death. Perhaps the man’s arrowpoint had been poisoned. Perhaps she was already dead – that might be why she could see the dead so clearly.

  She didn’t remember packing up her camp or riding – only that sunset came and found her still mounted, moving directly away from it, following the shadows of the trees as they pointed north and east.

  But suddenly, as if by magic, she was sitting on a bluff, looking down at an immense sheet of water – ten stades across. She laughed, because she knew this place – indeed, the last rays of the sun shone on the distant Temple of Artemis on the far bank, impossibly remote from her and yet painfully close. Coenus had built the temple of white marble with the spoils of his campaigns.

  She was on the Tanais, in country she knew. She just couldn’t make her mind work.

  She rode east all night, on the firm high ground above the river. She rode, not so much because she feared pursuit as because she feared to get off her horse.

  Finally, in the first faint grey light of not-dawn, she dismounted and squatted to piss, her back against a birch tree, her reins in her hand like some hero in a Sakje tale, and she understood, as if it was the most profound thing of her life, that she was living in a Sakje tale – as if Coenus and her father had lived in the Iliad. She saw it as clearly as she saw the salmon running in the winter river at her feet.

  To no one in particular, or perhaps to the gods – perhaps to the dozens of ghosts who screamed in silent torment at the edge of her vision, she spoke. ‘If I live,’ she said, ‘this feat of arms – this endless butchery of men and horse – will live for ever among the people.’ She shrugged. Then she smiled and her face hurt. ‘I smell of death,’ she said suddenly, to the ghosts.

  They never answered her, but they followed, and as the sun climbed the sky she saw that they came closer and closer, and she cursed them. ‘Coenus must have killed a hundred men!’ she said. ‘Haunt him!’

  And later, as she crossed a feeder stream running white and cold down the hillside above her, she addressed Nihmu. ‘Why are you lying with him?’ she asked, but received no answer.

  She’s not here, silly, she reminded herself, unsure whether that was good or bad.

  That night, she made no fire and she lacked the strength to cook the horsemeat or even to unpack the animals. She pulled her riding horse down to the ground with her, drew the dead man’s furs over her head against the horse and slept fitfully. She was awakened when her horse, annoyed, pushed itself to its feet, dumping her on the ground and letting in the icy air.

  She tried to lie still – perhaps even to accept death. Death was very, very close; she could smell his carrion breath. The moon had set and it was utterly black. Her heart roared and pounded, and she waited for him to take her.

  Her horse farted.

  She laughed, and forced herself to her feet. With the patience of the survivor, she rolled the furs in a bundle and got them tied with thongs, and then slung them over her riding horse. She was unsurprised to find that all the horses were still gathered around her. She picked up the lead rein and mounted Gryphon, then rode away into the utter dark.

  She slept while riding, the horses finding their own way, and awoke to pale grey light and the sound of her own horse whinnying and another horse answering from he
r right. She froze. Half asleep, half in the world of dreams, she raised her head and saw a figure from her childhood sitting on a shaggy pony – Samahe, ‘The Black-Haired One’.

  ‘Oh, Auntie,’ she said, and then shook her head. ‘Silly me.’

  But the image of Samahe didn’t waver. Instead, she pushed her mount forward and emerged from the grey light, a bow bent in her hand and the arrow pointed right at Melitta’s breasts. ‘Who are you?’ her aunt asked.

  ‘Oh,’ Melitta said. ‘Am I dead?’

  The arrowhead lowered a fraction. The Sakje woman whistled shrilly between her teeth.

  Then Melitta had time to be afraid, because suddenly she was surrounded in the dawn, the first pink light showing her a dozen riders, both men and women, all around her, their breath rising on the frozen air and their horses making the noises of real horses in the world of the sun.

  ‘Sauromatae girl,’ said a man at her shoulder. ‘I have something nice and round for her!’ he said, and gave a cruel laugh.

  But the woman shook her head. ‘I think I know her. Girl! What’s your name?’

  Melitta shook her head. ‘I smell of death,’ she said.

  ‘That’s true,’ said another Sakje, a bearded man in a red jacket at her elbow. ‘She’s got five Sauromatae horses and her quiver is empty. How d’you get that cut on your face, girl?’

  ‘Killing,’ Melitta said.

  ‘Her Sakje is pure enough,’ the older woman said.

  ‘Samahe?’ Melitta asked. She was hesitant, because this could still be a dream.

  The men and women around her fell back in wonder.

  ‘You know me?’ Samahe asked, her voice eager.

  ‘Of course I know you. You are the wife of Ataelus, and I am the daughter of Srayanka. We are cousins.’ All this seemed as natural as breathing. ‘Am I dead, or do you yet live?’

  As soon as she said ‘Srayanka’, the woman pushed her horse forward and threw her arms, bow and all, around her. And the horsemen began to shout, a long, thin scream – Aiyaiyaiyaiyai!

  ‘Oh, my little honey bee. What – what has happened?’ Samahe ran a finger down her face and shook her head.

  ‘I killed some men, and I thought perhaps that I died.’ Melitta took a breath. ‘I smell like death.’

  And with those words, she fell straight from Samahe’s arms to the ground, and the world fled away.

  PART II

  LIVING WITH LIONS

  PROPONTIS, WINTER, 311 BC

  Poppy juice and bone-setting got Satyrus through the days in Tomis alive, although the arm never ceased to trouble him. A gale blew against the breakwater and all hands worked to save the captured ships. Then winter closed in a sheet of rain, and then another. His arm was setting badly, but Calchus’s physician put more and more water and milk into the poppy juice, gradually weaning him from the colours and the poetry. The man was an expert, and Satyrus missed only the happiness of the dreams.

  His appetite returned in a rush, and they had been ten nights in Calchus’s big house when he found himself reclining at a dinner, eating mashed lobsters and drinking too much and almost unable to follow the conversation in his urge to eat everything that the slaves brought him.

  ‘By all the gods, it takes me back to see you lying there, lad,’ Calchus said. He raised a cup and swigged some wine. ‘Eat up! More where that came from.’

  Theron ate massively as well, and Calchus watched him consume lobster with an ill-grace. ‘You eat like an Olympic athlete,’ Calchus said.

  ‘I was an Olympic athlete,’ Theron answered.

  Silence fell, as the other guests looked at each other and smirked.

  Satyrus almost choked on his food. Calchus was his guest-friend, his father’s friend, and his benefactor, his host – and yet, a hard man to like. His childhood visits to Tanais had always been full of ceremony and self-importance, and Satyrus could remember the face his mother would make when she heard that the man was coming. And yet, in his sixties, he’d risen from his bed to lead the men of the town against the raiders – not once, but three times, taking wounds on each occasion. He was not a straw man – but a brash one. Just the kind to have Theron in his house ten days and never trouble to learn that the man was an Olympian.

  Calchus shrugged and drank more wine. ‘Satyrus, I have another problem for you,’ he said. ‘T hose pirates locked up all their rowers in our slave pens – mercenaries and hirelings and slaves. Thanks all the gods they weren’t free men like yours, and armed, or we’d all be dead!’

  Satyrus tried to roll over. Without the poppy, the break in his arm ached all the time. The old infected wound was polluting it, and Satyrus missed Alexandria, where the doctors knew about such things. He had other wounds, but they weren’t so bad. But it wasn’t polite to lie flat at a party, and his left hip had a bad cut, so there was just one position that suited him.

  ‘I was going to order them all killed,’ Calchus said. ‘But it occurred to me that you might take them – you’d could make them row your ships as far as Rhodos, at least. And then let them go – or sell them. Or keep them – they’re hirelings.’

  Theron nodded. ‘Better than killing four hundred innocent men,’ he said.

  ‘Innocent? Athletics doesn’t teach much in the way of ethics, I suppose,’ Calchus said.

  ‘Not much beyond fair play,’ Theron said.

  ‘They came here to rape and burn,’ Calchus said, mostly to the audience of his own clients on their couches across the room. ‘Their lives are forfeit.’

  Theron raised an eyebrow at Satyrus. Satyrus nodded. ‘We’ll take them. When our wounded are recovered, we’ll take them away.’

  ‘That’s a load off my mind,’ Calchus said. He shrugged. ‘I’m a hard man – but four hundred? Where would we bury them all? The pirates were bad enough.’

  Two hundred pirates – two hundred armoured men – all killed in a night of butchery, and their bodies lay unburied for too long, so that the charnel-house sweetness crept into everything, even through the poppy juice.

  Satyrus couldn’t be gone too soon, once he was free of the poppy.

  The town and the crew of the Falcon shared the armour and weapons of the dead men, and the Falcon’s crew – a little thin on the decks of the Golden Lotus – was probably the best-armoured crew in the Mediterranean, although it was all stored below in leather bags under each man’s bench.

  The professional rowers from the enemy ships were mustered and sent to row in their original ships, but with every man stripped and a handful of heavily armed Falcons on every deck. Satyrus, Diokles, Theron and Kalos made difficult choices, promoting men to important positions just to get the captured ships off the beach.

  One of them was Kleitos. He’d failed once as an oar master – too young, and too afraid of his sudden promotion. This time, on a rain-swept beach on the Euxine, he pushed forward and asked for the job.

  ‘Let me try again,’ he said to Satyrus. He stood square. ‘You was right to put me back down – but I can do it. I thought and thought about it.’

  Theron didn’t know the history, and raised an eyebrow. Diokles, the man who had taken over when Kleitos froze, surprised Satyrus by taking his side. ‘He’s ready now,’ Diokles said.

  Satyrus nodded. ‘Very well. Give him the Hornet.’

  ‘Oar master?’ Kleitos asked.

  ‘Oar master, helmsman, navarch – call yourself what you will. It’s going to be you and Master Theron taking the Hornet all the way to Rhodos. You up to it, mister?’ Diokles raised an eyebrow.

  Kleitos stood straight. ‘Aye!’

  Diokles cast Satyrus a look that suggested he had his doubts, but—

  ‘Thrassos of Rhodos,’ Theron said, calling another man forward. He was often a boat master, and he’d been slated for command back in Alexandria.

  The big, red-haired man stepped forward. He looked like a barbarian, and he was, despite his Greek name. He wore a leather chiton like a farmer and had tattoos all over his arms. ‘Aye?’ />
  ‘You’ll have the deck with Master Satyrus,’ Diokles said. ‘Can you handle it?’

  Thrassos smiled. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Nah. Serve good, eh?’ His Greek had a guttural edge to it. Slaves washed up as free men at Rhodos, because their little fleet took so many pirates and freed their slaves. Thrassos was clearly a Dacae, or even more of a stranger, a German like Carlus in the Exiles.

  Satyrus clasped hands with him anyway. ‘Keep me alive,’ he said.

  Thrassos smiled. ‘Me, too.’

  *

  Two weeks in Tomis and the weather broke, with two days of sun drying the hulls and more promised in Satyrus’s broken bone. His hip was almost healed, and he found himself trapped in endless erotic dreams, as if, having come near death, he needed to mate. It made him feel as if he was still a boy, and at Calchus’s symposia he struggled to hide his instant reaction to the man’s slave girls and their admittedly pitiful dances. Satyrus’s opinion of the man went down again at the sight of these girls – bruised, stone-faced and too young. His mother’s commands about sex with slaves seemed perfectly tailored to them, despite the urges of his sleeping mind and Calchus’s broadest urgings. ‘Take one? Take two – they’re small!’ Every night, the same joke.

  ‘I need to get going,’ Satyrus said to Theron. ‘Help me! I’m too damned weak to get it done.’

  Theron clasped his shoulder softly and moved around, giving the necessary orders and placating Calchus with promises of future visits.

  On the beach, with a fair north wind blowing as cold as Tartarus, Satyrus embraced his host. ‘T hanks for your hospitality,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you worried about Eumeles? He’ll need a reprisal.’

  ‘Not before spring,’ Calchus said. ‘And we’re Lysimachos’s men, here. We’ll get him to send us a garrison. It may even mean war.’

  ‘How will you send him word?’ Satyrus asked, chilled to the bone already.