Tyrant: King of the Bosporus

by Christian Cameron

  ‘Satyrus!’ he said, rising from his stool to clasp Satyrus’s hands. ‘We feared the worst. And we still miss your uncle.’

  Satyrus bowed his head. ‘My lord, I am working to remedy my uncle’s absence. And I am preparing a spring campaign to topple his captor.’

  Ptolemy settled and Gabines motioned at the slaves for wine. ‘See to it that your planning is better than the last time!’ Ptolemy said.

  Satyrus flushed. ‘We had a spy in our midst,’ he said.

  Gabines, the lord of Aegypt’s spymaster, leaned forward. ‘Do tell, young man.’

  Satyrus took his wine, tasted it appreciatively and nodded.

  ‘A stool for the prince of the Euxine,’ Gabines ordered.

  Satyrus had to smile.

  ‘And we hear that you won yourself several victories,’ Ptolemy said. ‘After your initial defeat. Eumeles is reported to be beside himself.’

  Gabines raised a hand. ‘My lord, I would like to hear of this spy,’ he said.

  Satyrus nodded and sat on the stool that was brought for him. ‘You know Phiale, the hetaira?’ he asked.

  ‘Not as well as I would like,’ answered the lord of Aegypt. He laughed loudly, showing all his teeth.

  Satyrus frowned. ‘She spied for Eumeles, with Sophokles, the Athenian physician.’

  Gabines nodded. ‘Sophokles is gone,’ he said. ‘I had him at a certain location, but now he has fled. My informant puts him on a ship to Sicily.’

  Satyrus’s head snapped around. ‘You knew he was in the night market?’ Satyrus asked.

  ‘Yes!’ Gabines said. ‘And if your uncle had been here, he’d have had enough sense to ask me before he acted.’

  Ptolemy nodded. ‘You are not king, here, lad. You were precipitate.’

  It is not easy to keep your temper when you are young, and everyone older than you seems to be in a conspiracy to put you in the wrong. Satyrus flushed, and he felt the heat on his cheeks. He covered the onset of anger by sipping more wine.

  Gabines shook his head. ‘Next time, you’ll know better, lad. Can you prove the involvement of Phiale?’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘I think so, although Philokles would say that it depends on what you require as a standard of proof. Her slave attempted to suborn mine. We have this slave, and she has writings of her mistress – writings which Phiale says are forged.’

  ‘Circumstances are against the woman,’ Gabines said, scratching his beard. He glanced at his master. ‘I don’t recommend that you get to know her any better, my lord.’ He looked at Satyrus. ‘What do you propose to do to her, young man?’

  Satyrus sat back and smiled. ‘Nothing.’

  The lord of Aegypt and his steward exchanged smiles. ‘Really?’ Gabines asked.

  Satyrus nodded. ‘My aunt his given her word that Phiale will cause me no more . . . discontent.’ He savoured his wine. ‘Can you tell me of Eumeles?’

  Gabines was silent for a long moment. Satyrus noticed that he could hear the slave behind him, breathing. It was that quiet.

  ‘Eumeles is incensed that you destroyed his squadron at Tomis. And he has had word of you from Byzantium, and from Rhodos. And from here.’ Gabines raised his eyes. ‘But he is far more afraid of your sister. We hear that he is hiring mercenaries already.’

  ‘Where is my sister?’ Satyrus asked.

  ‘We don’t know,’ Ptolemy put in. ‘Somewhere in the back-country. There’s a song in Pantecapaeum, or so my agent there tells me – a song about her killing seven men in single combat.’ Ptolemy shook his head. ‘I remember her as such a nice quiet girl.’

  Satyrus couldn’t help but grin. ‘That’s Lita.’ He nodded to Gabines. ‘By spring she’ll have an army. When the ground is hard, she’ll have a go at Marthax – the king of the Assagatje. By high summer, if all goes well, she’ll be ready to face Eumeles.’

  ‘If Eumeles doesn’t make an alliance with this Marthax,’ Gabines said. He shrugged.

  ‘And you, lad?’ Ptolemy asked.

  ‘I have asked Diodorus to meet me at Heraklea on the Euxine,’ Satyrus said. ‘I intend to raise a fleet and go over to the attack when the weather changes.’

  ‘Just like that? Raise a fleet?’ Ptolemy asked.

  ‘I have an agreement with Demostrate, the pirate king.’ Satyrus sipped his excellent wine. ‘And with Rhodos.’

  ‘Pirates and Rhodos don’t mix, lad!’ Ptolemy said.

  ‘And I’m hoping to add Lysimachos.’ Satyrus leaned forward. ‘He has few ships, but I need his good will – and I can clear Eumeles off his part of the seaboard. And move the pirates off his lines of communication. He needs me.’

  Gabines nodded. ‘We need him as well. Without his little satrapy, Antigonus One-Eye can move freely between Asia and Europe – and Cassander is doomed.’

  ‘Yet Cassander supports Eumeles,’ Satyrus said.

  Ptolemy shrugged. ‘We’re allies, not brothers. Eumeles is no friend of Aegypt’s – as you well know.’

  ‘You have the lord’s blessing to take the Euxine – if you can,’ Gabines said. His eyes flicked to the slaves. ‘But our hand cannot be seen in it. We cannot spare you any ships.’

  ‘Really?’ Satyrus asked. ‘I thought that you might lend me—’

  Gabines shook his head. ‘Lord Ptolemy needs every oar in the water for his expedition to Cyprus,’ he said.

  Satyrus looked at Ptolemy, not his steward. ‘Is this true, lord? I had counted on ten or fifteen triremes from here.’

  Ptolemy leaned forward. ‘You failed,’ he said bluntly. ‘You had a go at Eumeles, and failed. He captured two of my ships and the repercussions were annoying. I can’t afford to go through that again – with Cassander.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘I need ships,’ he said. Then he shrugged. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘But I have your permission to proceed?’

  Ptolemy shook his head. ‘I give no permission,’ he said. He shrugged as broadly as an actor. ‘I can’t control you!’

  Satyrus couldnt help but laugh. ‘My lord, it seems to me that if I succeed, you’ll claim to have been my benefactor, and if I fail, you’ll disown me and show how you offered me no aid.’

  Gabines nodded. ‘Precisely, young man. What we will do,’ Gabines said, ‘is to cover your back. We were,’ he cleared his throat, ‘embarrassed by the attacks on your sister. Nothing like that will happen again.’

  Ptolemy nodded.

  Gabines leaned forward like a conspirator. ‘But I will keep a man on this Sophokles. And I will ensure that no agent of Eumeles can communicate from here – for ten days after you sail.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘That is worth some ships,’ he said. ‘May I ask how you can do that?’

  Gabines shrugged. ‘We are ready to send our first scouts to look at the coast of Cyprus – and a diversion up the coast of Syria. We will stop all shipping for ten days.’

  Satyrus whistled and shook his head. ‘The blessings of my patron, Herakles, attend you in every endeavour,’ he said.

  Ptolemy grinned. ‘My patron as well, lad.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘I still need the ships. I believe that my uncle Leon would say that promises are easy.’

  ‘When you are a king, you’ll quickly get the hang of this posturing,’ Ptolemy said. He rose and clasped hands with Satyrus like an equal. Then he leaned forward and whispered into Satyrus’s ear. ‘May Tyche bless you,’ he whispered. ‘I have two ships – good ships, quadriremes with heavy hulls – going at auction later today. And a pair of triremes that my architects have condemned as too small for modern war.’ He stepped back and winked. ‘They will all four be sold at salvage rates.’ He held Satyrus’s hand in his. ‘It’s the best I can do.’

  Satyrus grinned. ‘Bless you, lord,’ he said.

  Ships sold for their wood are rarely auctioned off with all their rigging and oars – nor do their crews ordinarily stand by the auction, waiting to be hired by the new owners – yet these things happened. Satyrus and Isaac Ben Zion were the only buyers at the a
uction.

  ‘Don’t bid against me on the big quadrireme with the engine in the bow,’ Ben Zion said. ‘It’s for Abraham.’

  Satyrus stripped Leon’s establishment of officers without hesitation, taking the cream of his merchant captains, helmsmen and oar masters for the new ships. He was delighted to find a captured trireme, the Wasp, lying on the beach.

  ‘How’d he come here?’ Satyrus asked, and sailors scrambled to tell him how Sarpax had taken him with a pentekonter at the mouth of the Euxine. Satyrus tracked Sarpax to a brothel and recruited him to command the Wasp for the summer, against Eumeles.

  ‘Can you shoot as well as your sister?’ Sarpax asked. He laughed, and the pearl in his ear glowed. ‘Will it bring Master Leon back?’

  ‘Yes,’ Satyrus said, and they clasped hands, and the thing was done.

  Satyrus also took the Hyacinth, sister ship to the Golden Lotus, another triemiolia out of Rhodos, the flag of Leon’s Massalia squadron, bringing his squadron to seven.

  He had dinner with his officers – all men he knew from Sappho’s table. ‘Oinoe? Plataea?’ Sappho asked from her couch. ‘T hose are the names of nymphs.’

  ‘No – battles at which Athens did well.’ Satyrus raised a cup of wine. ‘Here’s to the Painted Stoa, friends. And to Philokles’ friend Zeno. He gave me the idea for the names. Oinoe and Plataea are the fours. Marathon and Troy are the threes.’

  Sandokes, the new navarch of the Oinoe, was an Ionian from Samothrace. He had beautifully curled black hair, a pair of gold chariots hung from his ears, and his body showed the muscles of a man who took special care at the gymnasium – despite which, he was one of Leon’s favourite captains, a man who had made the run to Massalia four times and had once taken a merchanter outside the Pillars of Herakles. He knew Sarpax of old, and the two shared a couch.

  Aekes, who also had the reputation of being Sandokes’ friend, was of an opposite temperament. He had salt-washed hair and wore a simple leather chiton made of two deer skins sewn together, like a farmer. He was clean enough, and his arms and legs showed the muscle of a working seaman, but no earrings graced his ears, nor did he appear to have any special clothes to wear to a symposium. What he did have was a long Celtic sword in a bronze scabbard that rested against his couch, and a reputation as a successful pirate-hunter. He commanded the Hyacinth. He was said to have been born a Spartan helot, but no one ever questioned him about it. Satyrus knew that he had been close to Philokles, and had donated a hefty sum for the Spartan’s statue in the library – as yet uncast.

  Dionysius – one of dozens of men in Alexandria to bear that name, or perhaps hundreds – was one of Satyrus’s childhood friends. He lay near Sandokes, whom he idolized. He was taking the Marathon. Satyrus had hesitated to take him again – Dionysius had almost lost his ship at the battle off Olbia, and he’d spread the rumour of Satyrus’s death. But Dionysius had paid the cost of the ship and the rowers from his father’s fortune, in hard cash – and the truth was that Satyrus’s fleet was beginning to cost so much that he could see the bottom of Uncle Leon’s coffers.

  Anaxilaus was a scientific captain, a friend of many of the philosophers at the library, a man of education who nonetheless followed the sea. He had red hair, which alone enabled him to stand out among guests, and his excellent manners betrayed his Sicilian origins. His father and grandfather had both been tyrants in Italy, and Anaxilaus often joked that he’d gone to sea because it was safer than staying at home. He had Troy. His younger and much handsomer brother Gelon would have the Plataea until he got him to Byzantium for Abraham. He’d been promised a trireme there. He lay opposite Apollodorus, who fancied himself a gentleman and insisted on naming his pedigree to the Sicilians – in detail.

  They were social men – sailors are social by nature – and if the conversation was loud and nautical, it was also well-bred. Sappho was still smiling at Anaxilaus’s gallantry as she escorted the last of the guests to the door. ‘Sicilians have the very best manners,’ she said, as her steward closed the garden door.

  ‘I think Philokles would have argued that Spartans have the very best manners,’ Satyrus said. They walked back to the main room together and lay on adjacent couches.

  ‘Are you still angry with me?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ Satyrus said. ‘No. You were right, of course. I miss Philokles. He used to say that it is sometimes easy to mistake the hard thing for the easy thing.’ Satyrus could feel the wine in his brain. His aunt was really quite beautiful – not the first time he’d noticed. He banished the thought as unworthy. ‘It is easy to kill, and difficult to find another way – but it is difficult to make myself kill, and that clouds the issue.’ Satyrus took a long drink of wine. ‘I think I killed two men in the Euxine to show myself that I could.’

  Sappho rolled on to her stomach – not the posture of a well-bred woman of Thebes, but of a hetaira. ‘Dear nephew, we all do things we regret – often merely to prove things to ourselves. May I say that I think you are lucky in your captains?’

  Satyrus smiled and tried to dispel the heaviness in his brain – and his heart. ‘I agree. Fine men – and a good party, too.’

  Sappho smiled into her cup. ‘As the veteran of a few parties, my dear, I can tell you that good men are what make a good party – not the quality of the lobsters or the antics of the flute girls.’

  Satyrus smiled at her. ‘Philokles might have said the same.’

  Sappho nodded. Her laugh was self-mocking, and Satyrus didn’t know what to make of it, so he tried to change the subject. ‘You are satisfied that you can restrain Phiale?’ he asked.

  She nodded. ‘Gabines sent me a note,’ she said. ‘We will watch Phiale. And Sophokles has gone to Sicily. He won’t return unless you do. I am not a worthy target.’

  Satyrus snorted. ‘That just shows what a fool he is. You command me and my sister. You direct the finances of the Exiles and as far as I can discern, it was you, not Coenus, who dispatched my sister to take the leadership of the Sakje.’

  Sappho raised her wine. ‘Flatterer!’ she said.

  ‘Men are strange,’ Satyrus said. ‘Greek men pretend that women are inferior, when it seems to me that you, who are the daughter and former wife of boeotarchs, wife now of a strategos, are the match for any man in a contest of wits.’

  ‘I have had a triumph or two,’ Sappho said. She drank again. ‘All flattery gratefully accepted. I’ve passed the age when men will be stopped in the street by my looks.’

  He got up unsteadily, having had too much wine for a man so close to his recovery. ‘You are wrong, Aunt! Men still praise your beauty.’ He walked towards her unsteadily. She had seldom been so beautiful.

  Sappho rose from her couch and straightened her chiton. ‘You are the image of your father, Satyrus. Right down to his clumsy, but welcome, flattery. Your feelings for Phiale have left you vulnerable. Be wary.’ She embraced him, and he felt her warmth, the press of her breasts against his chest – and then she stepped away.

  He flushed, because as usual, his aunt was dead on the mark. ‘Will I ever grow up?’ he asked.

  Sappho laughed, her eyes sparkling, until he laughed, too. ‘A good party brings out the lechery in all of us,’ she said. ‘Go and conquer the Euxine,’ she added. ‘And get your sister to come back for her son, before I decide to keep him.’

  ‘You said you wanted no more children,’ Satyrus said. ‘I remember you saying it to us.’

  She shook her head and turned away. ‘I have seen men who have a will of iron where women are concerned – until one takes them by the hand, and at the first touch, they become clay in her hand.’ She shrugged. ‘Women can be that way about children.’

  ‘But—’ he began.

  ‘Shush, nephew,’ she said. ‘Go and conquer the Euxine. I’ll see to the child.’

  In the morning, his squadron came off the beach all together. Leon’s officers – Satyrus’s officers now – were all professionals, better officers, man for man, than Ptolemy’s navy
had available to them. Satyrus lounged against the rail of the Lotus and listened to their orders, watched the rowers and the deck crews race to get the ships down the beach and into the water. The two light triremes were easy, but the heavy quadriremes with their bow catapults and their heavy crews were slower to launch, and Diomedes, the new helmsman of the Plataea, could be heard from a stade away.

  But their hulls were newly cleaned. The Lotus had been scraped and dried while Satyrus lay in his bed shouting at visions in his head, and the rowers pulled him north along the coast of Palestine at a fair clip.

  Satyrus watched the coast go by, his eyes always flicking to the empty horizons to the west, where Cyprus lurked out of sight. But winter – high winter – was not the time to risk a heavy blow on the open sea south of Cyprus.

  They beached at Ake, the northernmost outpost of Ptolemy’s power, and rested a day and a night before racing north with a rare favourable breeze. They passed Tyre in the full light of day, and saw the inner harbour crammed with military shipping, but all their masts were down and most of the hulls were stacked out of the water. And three hours later, they blew past Sidon, their sails still full of their good north wind. The helmsmen and the trierarchs all offered libations to Poseidon, and they stood on. If a pursuit was launched, they never saw it.

  ‘I thought Ptolemy had a squadron moving up this coast as a feint,’ Neiron said. ‘We should have seen it.’

  ‘I have a growing suspicion that we are Ptolemy’s feint,’ Satyrus answered. He looked at the land in the ruddy light of a winter evening. ‘We might not get weather this good again for ten days. It is too good to stop for the night.’ He looked at Neiron. ‘I’m of a mind to try to get north of Laodikea before we look for a beach.’

  Neiron nodded. ‘Ask me to solve your land quarrels and I’m all at sea,’ Neiron said. He nodded and scratched under his beard. ‘Here, I’m happy to give advice. We’ll have this wind until at least the rising of the morning star. The sky is clear and the men are still fresh – no one’s touched an oar all day.’ He frowned. ‘Besides – you want them ready for anything by the time we enter the Euxine. Some small risks now will give us better crews.’