Tyrant: King of the Bosporus

by Christian Cameron

  They passed Laodikea in the dark, its position marked only by the dull glow of a town at night – and even then, most of the light came from the Temple of Poseidon’s eternal fire on the height behind the town.

  The morning star was rising when they passed the headland at Gigarta and Neiron indicated the darkness of the open ocean. ‘There’s a set of islands north and west of Tripolis,’ he said. ‘If I line up the Kalamus headland with the North Star, we should be on a beach in an hour.’

  The wind was dropping, and the sails flapped every few minutes as the wind backed and spat.

  Satyrus nodded. ‘Weather change?’ he asked.

  ‘Like enough,’ Neiron answered.

  ‘Do it,’ Satyrus ordered, and an hour later he was eating hot stew on a beach just big enough for seven warships and their crews. And he noticed a certain regard among the helmsmen and trierarchs. Night sailing was not for the weak of heart.

  In the morning, they rowed away north, with the wind blowing from off the land. The triemiolia could sail on a broad reach, but the triremes and quadriremes couldn’t, and their rowers got plenty of practice.

  Noon saw them north of the old pirate haven at Arados, and they ate their evening meal on the beach at Gabala on the coast of Syria.

  In fact, they spent three days on the beach at Gabala, lashed by winds and heavy rain that made launching the light triremes impossible, and Satyrus was forced to use his manpower to pull the ships clear of the water, high up on the beaches. And he had a thousand rowers to feed, so that his men were roaming the countryside for food before the winter storm ended, every scrap of provision consumed.

  On the fourth day, he got them under way with empty bellies and some empty benches where men didn’t return. The Plataea made heavy going of the launch, and laboured in the waves, because his upper-tier rowers had eaten something bad and dysentery was rife.

  They’d been at sea less than an hour before Satyrus saw the squadron astern. He pointed, and Neiron swore. ‘Poseidon’s stade-long member,’ he said. ‘Where’d they come from?’

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘Tyre? Sidon? I always knew there was a risk, coming up this coast. We’re sailing right through Demetrios’s fleet.’ He shook his head. ‘Ptolemy has a lot to answer for.’

  Noon, and they passed the headland at Posideion, and every man threw a handful of barley into the sea if he had any grain. The squadron behind them was just a series of nicks on the horizon, and even those sightings were occasional. No one had a mast raised on a day like this, with the wind blowing more north than anything else, and all the rowers cursed their lot at every stroke of the oars.

  In early afternoon, the wind shifted back to the east, blowing off the land, and the pursuing squadron began to gain ground, their fresher rowers and more recent food beginning to tell.

  Satyrus watched as they drew closer. He stood in the stern and watched the pennants of the mast as they fluttered back and forth, showing every wind-change. ‘Neiron?’ he called.

  ‘Sir?’ Neiron woke up fully alert. He had the oar master at the helm and he himself was asleep on the helmsman’s bench.

  ‘I intend to turn west, put the wind at our sterns and sail for Cyprus,’ he said. ‘What do you think?’

  Neiron licked his fingers and raised them, and then looked at the clouds. ‘Risky,’ he said.

  Satyrus pointed astern, and Neiron’s eyes followed until he saw the pursuit. ‘They may not be after us,’ he said, stroking his beard.

  Satyrus nodded. ‘They are persistent, though. There’s another blow coming up, and these gentlemen are still at sea.’

  ‘And they do look like warships.’ Neiron looked under his hand. ‘Six hours to the first sighting of the Temple of Aphrodite Kleides.’ He shook his head. ‘If the wind changes, we’re in the open sea at night with a storm rising behind us.’

  Satyrus nodded.

  Neiron shook his head. ‘Do it,’ he said.

  Satyrus took the helm himself. Neiron went forward and ordered the deck crew and the sailors to raise the mainsail, and as soon as it was laid to the mast, Satyrus gave the orders and the Lotus, still under oars, turned from north to west in his own length. Satyrus was pleased to see that the next ship in line, the Oinoe, was prepared, and although he took longer to get his mast up, he made the turn in good order. Behind him, Plataea redeemed himself from an earlier poor performance and made the run with alacrity, and the two light triremes turned like acrobats and raised their masts even as they turned.

  Hyacinth was late in his turn, and lost ground as he rowed slowly north, his helmsman apparently asleep at his oars.

  But however slow the Hyacinth was, the pursuers were slower. They continued north so long that Satyrus began to wonder if he was fleeing from shadows. Only when they had cut Satyrus off completely from the coast did they turn their bows out to sea – but they didn’t raise their sails.

  ‘I count ten,’ Neiron said. ‘Heavy bastards. Everyone’s building bigger and bigger – is that a hepteres? A seven?’

  The largest pursuer towered over the others, with three decks of oars and a wide, heavy hull that nonetheless seemed to sail with speed.

  ‘That’s Demetrios, or his admiral,’ Satyrus said. He shook his head. ‘He must think we’re the long-awaited raid out of Aegypt.’

  ‘So he’s kept us off his coast,’ Neiron said. ‘And now he leaves us to Poseidon’s mercy.’

  ‘I wish you hadn’t said that,’ Satyrus said.

  They drove on, into rising seas, with the wind howling behind them.

  But they had good ships and good officers, and before the last pink rays of the winter sun set behind the mountains of Cyprus, the Lotus had his stern on the black sand west of Ourannia, with a promontory between them and the east wind’s might. Cypriot peasants came down to the beach with baskets of dried fish and fresh crabs, and Satyrus paid cash for a feast even as the wind rose and the rain began to fall.

  For three days they crawled along the coast of Cyprus, with their bow pushing straight into a fresh westerly that followed the storm, and they continued along the coast all the way to the beach at Likkia – a beach Satyrus had used before. He provisioned his ships there, paying on credit with his uncle’s name, which was good for anything here. He waited for two days for an east wind, and when it rose, he made sacrifice on the beach and launched his ships.

  ‘Straight west for Rhodos,’ he said.

  Neiron shook his head. ‘Why risk it?’ he asked.

  ‘I can feel the time slipping away from me,’ Satyrus said. ‘Any day, word of our departure will get out of Alexandria.’

  ‘Anyone going north has to go the way we’ve gone,’ Neiron said.

  ‘And I’ve done it before,’ he said.

  Neiron nodded. ‘So I’ve heard,’ he answered. ‘Isn’t once enough?’ Most ships stayed on the coast, sailing from the point of Cyprus north to the coast of Asia Minor and then crawling west from haven to haven.

  ‘If this wind holds for twelve hours, we’ll raise Rhodos before the stars show in the sky,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘If the wind drops, we’ll be adrift on the great green and praying for Poseidon’s mercy.’ Neiron shrugged. ‘But you are the navarch. I just hope that when Tyche deserts you, I’m already dead.’

  Satyrus smiled, but his hands remained clenched and his stomach did back-flips until he made his landfall that evening. The crew cheered when the lookout sighted the promontory at Panos, and again when they glided down the mirror-flat water of the city’s inner harbour, past the Temple of Poseidon. Satyrus didn’t hide the libation he offered to the waters of the harbour.

  ‘All that to save a day?’ Neiron asked.

  Satyrus finished pouring the wine into the sea and stood up. ‘My gut tells me that every day matters,’ he said.

  ‘Do you think they’ll accept your offer?’ Neiron asked.

  Satyrus pointed at the beach under the temple, where a full dozen Rhodian triemioliai lay on the beach. ‘Can you think
of any other reason they’d prepare a squadron in midwinter?’ he asked.

  Neiron smiled. ‘The gods love you,’ he said. He nodded grimly. ‘Use it while it lasts.’

  PART III

  THE EAGLES FLY

  PANTECAPAEUM, LATE WINTER, 310 BC

  ‘And how is our august prisoner?’ Eumeles was in rare good humour. He sat on his iron stool and looked out over the battlements of his citadel at the Euxine sparkling in the late winter sun. Or was it the early spring? The weather was mild, and the sun shone.

  Idomenes had a list of important issues, and Leon, the prisoner, was not one of them. ‘He’s alive. Do you really need to know more?’

  Eumeles shrugged. ‘I wonder how young Melitta will feel if I send her a hand or an eye?’

  Idomenes shut his eyes for a moment and then opened them slowly. ‘I wouldn’t recommend it, lord. She has our farmers in her hands already.’

  ‘If that fool Marthax had come to me . . .’ Eumeles shook his head. ‘But she has no fleet, and the only infantry she’ll get are those mutinous dogs from Olbia. Our army will eat her – and while we’re at it, we’ll make Olbia loyal. Once and for all.’ Eumeles smiled. ‘That’s a campaign I really look forward to. No more two steps forward and three steps back. When Olbia is crushed, I will actually be king.’

  Idomenes nodded. ‘Yes, lord,’ he said automatically. ‘In the meantime, the Athenians want their grain quotas filled or they threaten to withdraw our loans.’

  ‘Where, exactly, do they expect this grain to come from?’ Eumeles shook his head. ‘How can they expect to fill their ships twice a year, where they used to fill them once?’

  ‘You sold them the second cargo last autumn, lord.’ Idomenes shouldn’t have said that – he’d allowed his actual views to colour his voice, and his master whirled on him, his pale eyes murderous.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Eumeles said, his voice just above a whisper, ‘I must be mistaken. I think I just heard you offering to criticize my policies.’

  Idomenes opened his tablets and ran his stylus down the list of action items. ‘Lord, the fact is that the Athenians demand more grain immediately. And if they are not satisfied, your mercenaries will not be shipped – and we will have nothing to pay the men we have. On the same subject, Nikephoros requests audience. He intends, I assume, to demand payment. His men are three months in arrears.’

  Nikephoros was Eumeles’ exceptionally competent strategos. He was both loyal and intelligent, a remarkable combination.

  Eumeles nodded. ‘Let’s see him, then.’

  ‘You understand that we have no money?’ Idomenes asked.

  Eumeles looked at him and laughed. ‘You have a hard life, Idomenes. Criticize the tyrant and live in fear. Fail to advise him and if he falls, you fall.’ Eumeles shook his head. ‘Listen – I was riding this tiger when you were a pup. My father was tyrant here. Have a little faith. Things have turned for the better this winter. I can feel the end of the worst part. These money matters are never that difficult to solve. And once the barbarians on the sea of grass are in their place – then we will see power. Real power. I don’t think Lysimachos and Antigonus and all the busy Diadochoi actually understand how rich we are up here.’ Eumeles smiled. ‘I intend to be very strong indeed before I let them discover that I can buy and sell the lords of the Inner Sea.’ He looked at Idomenes’ tablets and sighed. ‘I just have to get through the usual sordid details to reach the good part.’

  Idomenes went to fetch Nikephoros. He preferred his master in the darker and more pragmatic moods. His ebullient moods were the most dangerous for his clarity.

  ‘How is he today?’ Nikephoros asked. He had a magnificent bronze and silver breastplate under his Tyrian crimson cloak.

  ‘At his best,’ Idomenes said.

  Nikephoros raised an eyebrow. ‘You always say that. It is not always true.’ He shrugged. ‘I speak no treason. We need him at his best. I do not like the reports from the georgoi. We could lose the countryside to this witch.’

  ‘Farmers are notorious for their superstitions,’ Idomenes said.

  Nikephoros stopped just short of the citadel doors. ‘Listen, steward. I pay you the courtesy of discussing matters of state with you like an equal, because I think that you are a man with your master’s best interests at heart. Do not mutter platitudes to me.’

  ‘I must take your sword, Strategos,’ the guard said. His voice was apologetic.

  Nikephoros didn’t take his eyes off the steward as he handed his plain, straight sword to the guard.

  ‘The georgoi have reason to fear,’ Idomenes admitted.

  ‘Exactly.’ Nikephoros nodded. ‘Let’s go.’

  He inclined his head to the tyrant, and no more. Eumeles returned this with a civil bow. ‘You’ve come for money?’ Eumeles began.

  ‘The lads are three months in arrears. You know that, so I won’t belabour it. If the new phalanx arrives and they’ve been paid, there’ll be a mutiny.’ Nikephoros crossed his arms. ‘Not why I came, though.’

  ‘Your men haven’t yet been called on to fight.’ Eumeles seemed to think that this was an important point. ‘They’re fed and warm. I’ll pay them when I need them.’

  Nikephoros rolled his eyes. ‘Lord, save it for the assembly. My men expect to be paid. You tasked me to find you soldiers – real soldiers, not Ionian crap. I hired them away from Heraklea and even from Lysimachos, and now they want cash.’

  Eumeles looked down his nose at his strategos. ‘Very well. I need them to find the means of their own pay. An elegant solution. Send the phalanx into the countryside and collect the grain – all of it. Anything these georgoi have in their barns. Send a taxeis to the Tanais back-country first – we’ll not pick on our own farmers until there’s nothing left on the Tanais.’

  ‘You want me to take their seed?’ Nikephoros asked.

  Eumeles nodded. ‘Yes. Every grain of it.’

  ‘But—’ Idomenes began.

  ‘Do I look like a fool?’ Eumeles shouted, and rose to his feet. He was taller than most men, rail thin, and the hair was gone from the top of his head. He looked more like a bureaucrat than a terrifying tyrant, until he rose to his full height. ‘Take their profits,’ he said. ‘Take their means of supporting this petty princess, this Melitta. And take their means of farming, and they’ll starve.’

  Idomenes shook his head. He caught Nikephoros’s eye, and they agreed, silently. ‘Master – lord, if we strip the farmers on the Tanais, we cast them into her arms.’

  Eumeles nodded. ‘I see how you might think that. But frankly – and let us not delude ourselves – these peasants are lost to us already. They are all traitors – why not take their goods?’

  ‘As soon as I withdraw the men from gathering this tax, the whole region will go up in flames,’ Nikephoros said.

  Eumeles shook his head. ‘No. You are wrong. As soon as you gather this tax, they will become refugees, homeless men wandering, scrubbing for food. After I beat the barbarians, I will come back and give my soldiers grants of land – big ones, complete with an abject and starving population of serfs. I will have a loyal and stable population of soldiers, the soldiers will, overnight, become prosperous land owners and the fractious peasants will be reduced to slavery – as is best for them. And the only weapon I need use against them is hunger.’

  Nikephoros scratched his chin. ‘It becomes a matter of timing then, lord.’

  Eumeles laughed. ‘Yes – and the timing is all mine. Listen – this girl cannot rally the tribes in a matter of days. Before her “army” is formed, we will flood her with useless mouths – Sindi and Maeotae peasants, starving, desperate men. And their useless families. As soon as the money is in, we pay our men, our new troops arrive and we’re away after her. We crush her as soon as the ground is dry, and we’re done. The peasants have nowhere to turn – and we’ve changed the basis of landownership. The way it should have been from the first.’

  Idomenes nodded. ‘It is – well thought out.’ He
nodded again. ‘I acknowledge your – breadth of vision, lord.’

  Nikephoros gave half a smile. ‘I have to admit that it will go over well with the lads. Gentlemen farmers? What Macedonian boy doesn’t fancy that? But I have two issues, lord. First, the kind of campaign you envision against the georgoi – that’s the death of discipline. Bad for ’em. Second, these ain’t Spartan helots. They have arms – bows, armour, big axes.’

  Eumeles nodded. ‘Are those military problems?’ he asked.

  Nikephoros nodded. ‘I suppose they are, at that.’

  Eumeles sat down again and drank some wine. ‘Get me a military solution then. But I need that grain on the docks in a month. And no excuses.’

  ‘What of the brother?’ Nikephoros asked. ‘Satyrus?’

  Eumeles raised an eyebrow at Idomenes. He flipped through his tablets. ‘Five weeks ago he was in Alexandria.’ Idomenes couldn’t help but smile. ‘Being treated for dependence on the poppy.’ He snapped his tablets closed. ‘No more reports.’

  ‘It is winter,’ Eumeles said. ‘He may have the balls to try again in the spring. He may become a lotus-eater. It matters not. Either way, I’ll have crushed the girl in six weeks, and there’s nothing he can do to stop me.’ Eumeles raised his cup. ‘Here’s to an end of this petty crap. Here’s to the kingdom of the Bosporus.’

  Idomenes poured wine for Nikephoros and for himself. They all drank, and only Nikephoros seemed to worry that no libation had been poured.

  17

  ‘He’s seen us,’ Neiron said. He was looking into the late winter sun, and the sparkle on the wave-tops was enough to fool most eyes. ‘Coming about.’

  Satyrus got a hand on the standing shroud and pulled himself up until he was standing on the rail. The speed of their passage – crisp west wind heeling them over – raised his chiton and he slapped it down.