Tyrant: King of the Bosporus

by Christian Cameron

  Satyrus felt the prickle of disaster – and suspicion. ‘You had thirty ships!’ he said, and regretted the words.

  ‘Oh, if only you’d been there yourself, I’m sure you’d have done better!’ Demostrate said. He stormed out of the door.

  Coenus slipped away after him and brought him back. Demostrate’s bad temper seemed dispelled by the Megaran, and they embraced warmly. Then the pirate admiral apologized.

  ‘I’m a fool when angry, and no mistake,’ he said. ‘Coenus says your sister is up on the Tanais with an army,’ he went on.

  Satyrus nodded.

  Demostrate looked around. ‘Then we’ve got Eumeles,’ he said.

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘We need Diodorus,’ he said.

  ‘Your sister is waiting for you,’ Coenus reminded him.

  Satyrus looked around. They were all there – his own captains, and Demostrate, and all the Rhodian officers. Nestor stood alone, representing Heraklea. Satyrus rose to his feet and they grew quiet.

  ‘My sister isn’t waiting,’ he said. ‘She has an army and she’s on the move, skirmishing with the Sauromatae who are just as much my enemies as Eumeles and his ships. She can’t wait for me. Her fort at the Tanais may be besieged by Eumeles at any time, for all that she left it provisioned and garrisoned.’ He looked around. ‘If we strike now, we show Eumeles our strength and he no longer has to guess. Without Diodorus, we are weak. Weaker than Eumeles. And if we lose at sea, we’re finished – the whole war comes apart like scale armour when the cord breaks. Right?’

  Even Coenus nodded.

  ‘We wait,’ Satyrus said.

  Seventeen days after Darius sailed away, and a Rhodian officer killed one of Manes’ oarsmen in a brawl on the waterfront. Manes led his men on a riot of destruction, killing a local man and two Rhodians and burning a warehouse.

  Satyrus summoned the officers, but of the pirates, only Demostrate came.

  Telereus, Lysimachos’s navarch, began by suggesting that he’d had enough. ‘This sitting in port accomplishes nothing,’ he said. ‘I will go to Tomis, and watch the coast.’

  Panther shook his head. ‘Any day now, if Satyrus is to be believed, we’ll get our marines – and then we’re off to find Eumeles.’

  ‘This mercenary might never come. He could be forty days away. How long do we wait?’ Telereus asked.

  Satyrus held his temper. ‘I ask you to wait five more days,’ he said. ‘In the meantime, I need your crews and my crews to share the duty of patrolling the wharves, and I’d like the navarchs to work out districts of the waterfront, so that I can confine the Rhodians and the pirates to their own neighbourhoods. Panther, I must inform you that Nestor, the tyrant’s right hand, says that he must take your helmsman into custody.’

  Panther shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No man of mine goes to the axe for killing a pirate.’

  ‘Let me be clear,’ Satyrus said. ‘You gave orders that this sort of thing be avoided. This man disobeyed you, and now you treat him as a hero?’

  Panther pointed at Diokles. ‘If Diokles there had done it, would you hand him over to this Nestor?’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Not a helmsman,’ Diokles offered. ‘Lead oar, port side, on the Lord of the Silver Bow. And the other fool drew first.’ He shrugged. ‘And Manes killed two of theirs. He’s the bugger that needs killing.’

  Nestor pushed forward. Even among hard men like these, his size imposed. ‘That is for me to decide,’ he said. ‘You are allies here, not conquerors. If your man is not given up, you are no longer welcome here.’ Nestor didn’t bluff, and he was looking at Satyrus. Satyrus knew that the killing was merely the last straw, after a week of theft, some armed robbery and scuffles in every market.

  Satyrus spread his arms. ‘Must I beg you, Panther? All my hopes come down to this. I sent them to sea to prevent this – but I cannot make Diodorus arrive on time. I know that your men and the pirates are oil and water. Help me here. I will offer private surety . . .’ He looked at Nestor to gauge his reaction. ‘That the man will not be found guilty.’

  Nestor offered the smallest fraction of a nod.

  ‘Your word?’ Panther asked.

  And Satyrus knew he had kept the Rhodians. For a day or two. He turned to the pirate king. ‘And you?’

  Demostrate shrugged. ‘Manes is his own law,’ he said. ‘He’s worse every day. He wants to kill me – he certainly doesn’t take my orders.’

  And he commands five ships – ships that I need, Satyrus thought.

  In private, he asked Nestor to ignore Manes. He sent his own marines to watch Manes, but the monster seemed glutted with his latest rampage, and sat in his ships. Satyrus paid restitution to the merchant whose warehouse burned and tried to think of a way to make this all better.

  He tried to get the whole fleet to practise rowing, to practise the complex battle tactics that professional captains and crews used to win battles. The Rhodians were at sea every day, rowing up and down, and his own ships emulated them. But Demostrate laughed. ‘We don’t need any schoolbook tactics,’ he said, and walked away, leaving Satyrus fuming.

  According to rumour, Manes had farted when told of the orders.

  Satyrus planned to dine that night with his own captains. He felt besieged – Amastris would not meet with him, and Dionysius the tyrant was daily less receptive to him as Diodorus failed to appear. Without marines, he had little chance of striking a firm blow, as his ships were outnumbered. Panther was too angry to be supportive, and Demostrate wouldn’t meet his eyes. His fleet was divided and untrained. He wondered what Eumeles’ fleet was doing. Drilling, no doubt.

  Satyrus was in his room at what had been Kinon’s, brooding, when there was a knock.

  ‘Lord Satyrus?’ Helios came in. ‘Visitors, my lord.’

  Out in the main room, Satyrus could hear the tone change – men were speaking happily.

  He heard a man’s voice, and then a woman’s, and then he was there, embracing Crax and then Nihmu.

  ‘By the gods!’ he said.

  In two hours he had the situation in his head, and when he was done drawing maps on the floor, he turned to them. Diokles and Abraham were on the floor with him, following the new campaign, and Theron lay above them on his couch. The other captains and some of his ship’s officers ringed them.

  ‘We’ll have our marines in two days,’ he said.

  Coenus shook his head. ‘Well done, Nihmu,’ he said.

  ‘I can still ride,’ she said. ‘Even if other things have left me.’ She turned to Satyrus. ‘As soon as we landed and Coenus told me, I rode for the hills. I took six horses and I rode them hard.’ She motioned to Crax.

  Crax gave his golden laugh. ‘We’ve had the very Furies dogging us, Satyrus,’ he said. ‘Phrygia is full of soldiers. Half serve Demetrios and the other half are masterless men. Either way, they prey on each other.’ He shrugged. ‘There’s no food and no maintenance for the roads. The peasants are gone or dead. The weather has been – brutal.’ He looked around, acknowledging men he knew with a wave or a wink. ‘But Lord Diodorus is over the mountains at Bithynia.’

  ‘But Eumeles has his reinforcements and his money,’ Satyrus said. ‘We’ve missed one opportunity, or possibly two. I need to strike quickly.’

  ‘Pshaw, lad,’ Crax said. Then he smiled. ‘You are no lad. Listen then. Diodorus is coming. And from what Coenus says, your sister is fine. She’s every bit the soldier you are. She’ll keep ten days – maybe more.’

  ‘Darius won’t keep,’ Satyrus said. ‘He expects me in seven days. I can’t see being there.’

  Nihmu raised her head. ‘I can be there in seven days,’ she said. ‘One barbarian woman – no one will notice me.’

  Satyrus turned. ‘How will you find Darius?’ he asked.

  Nihmu laughed. ‘We are Pythagoreans,’ she said. ‘Even a barbarian like me. Trust me, Satyrus – I will find him.’

  Satyrus sighed.

  ‘I’ll go
back,’ Coenus said, ‘and find Melitta.’ He glanced at Nihmu, and a long look passed between them. ‘But first I’ll have a word with Demostrate.’

  That night, Satyrus dreamed that he was juggling eggs. One after another he dropped them – each containing a tiny man who died as his egg splattered on the cobbles of the street. At first the men were faceless, but then he watched Demostrate die, gasping for air like a fish, and Nihmu, her body broken. He woke to silence and lay awake for an hour, and then another. Eventually he rose and walked to the yard, where Coenus was putting his bed roll on a horse. He had another pair behind him. Satyrus recognized Darius’s magnificent Nisaean charger.

  ‘That’s Darius’s horse!’ Satyrus said without thinking.

  Coenus smiled. ‘Darius is my brother,’ Coenus said, ‘as Leon is. As Philokles was and Diodorus. Surely you know that.’

  Satyrus had never thought about it. In a heartbeat, he understood better what had been before his eyes all his life. ‘You really do share,’ he said.

  Coenus ruffled his hair. ‘Wish me luck,’ he said. He vaulted into the saddle. ‘Getting too old for this. Listen – my last military advice. Take your time. Force Eumeles to a battle on the sea if you can. But remember – it is the sight of your fleet that will aid your sister and crush Eumeles. Your sister will be pinched hard for the lack of you. Understand me? I’ll go hard. If she’s on the Hypanis, I’ll find her in ten days – perhaps less.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘I understand. And I know how you hate to give advice.’

  ‘Bah, your sister’s got me into the habit.’ He used his knees to turn the Nisaean and made for the gate. ‘Athena guide your guile, Satyrus.’

  ‘And Hermes your travels,’ Satyrus said. But the dream was still with him. And he shivered.

  And in the morning, Nihmu was gone as well.

  *

  Twenty-three days after Darius sailed away, Diodorus’s advance guard marched into Heraklea. Satyrus rode out to meet them, and he almost wept to see the men of his childhood – Sitalkes and the giant Carlus, the Keltoi, a handful of Olbians and dozens of men he knew by sight if not by name. Diodorus himself led the column in a plain breastplate, his copper and grey beard moving with his horse.

  ‘You look like a king,’ Diodorus said. He reached out and clasped Satyrus’s arm. ‘Sorry to be late, lad,’ he added.

  To Satyrus, his soldier uncle, the one who had always seemed the most vital, the most powerful, now seemed a husk of himself. He seemed smaller. He hunched his shoulders.

  ‘Will of the gods,’ Satyrus said. ‘How much rest do your men need?’

  Diodorus took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. ‘The horses need a week of food and pasture. It’s still winter in the hills. The infantrymen – they could march right up the gangplanks. Crax says you need our Macedonians for marines.’ He waved at the infantry trudging along. They were four files wide on the road, two files of shield-bearers between two files of spearmen. The two officers at the head of the column looked familiar.

  Satyrus touched his heels to his mount and trotted over to the road. ‘Amyntas! Draco!’ he called, and the two mercenaries grinned at him.

  ‘Thought you’d forgotten us,’ Draco said.

  ‘Although it didn’t seem all that likely,’ Amyntas said.

  Satyrus slipped down and clasped their hands. ‘I need your taxeis,’ he said. ‘I need them as soon as I can get them afloat. How much rest do you need?’

  Amyntas stared at the sky and Draco laughed. ‘I’d like to have a cup of wine and a fuck,’ he said.

  ‘He’s old,’ Amyntas said, as the soldiers behind Draco shouted their agreement. ‘All I need is the fuck.’

  ‘I’ll take that as meaning you can sail tomorrow,’ Satyrus said. He felt the weight of the world lifting away, to be replaced by a new feeling in his stomach.

  He carried that feeling up the hill to the palace, where suddenly he was again welcome. Dionysius the tyrant received him like a peer, and he sat through a dinner on a couch at the man’s right hand.

  The tyrant mocked his former soldiers. Draco and Amyntas had left Heraklea years before as escorts and had never returned. Macedonian soldiers were too valuable to be allowed to wander about. ‘Deserters!’ he roared, and laughed to watch them flinch.

  Satyrus watched Amastris. She looked everywhere but into his eyes until the meal was mostly gone, and then her gaze skipped over his – her eyes drew his to her maid-slave, who handed something to Helios.

  She was a fine actress, his Amastris. She acted her indifference to him so well that he was coming to believe it, except for these notes.

  ‘You’ll sail tomorrow?’ Dionysius asked, snapping him out of his reverie.

  ‘With the favour of the gods,’ Satyrus said piously.

  ‘I’d swear you asked me for twenty days,’ Dionysius said. ‘And now you’ve been here twenty-five. You owe me, boy.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘I do owe you, my lord,’ he said. ‘On the other hand, I have not stormed your city to pay my bills,’ he added.

  Dionysius laughed. ‘Did I teach you to speak so?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Satyrus said.

  He swayed when he walked away from the symposium that followed the dinner, and Helios put a hand under his arm and helped him walk.

  ‘What’s Amastris say?’ Satyrus asked. His head was swaying as if his ship was moving under his feet.

  Helios stopped, propped him against an alley wall and reached in his script for a piece of papyrus. ‘She asks if you intend to sail away without tasting her,’ he said, his voice deadpan.

  ‘Tasting?’ Satyrus asked. ‘Aphrodite – how does she expect me to get to her?’

  Helios shook his head and held out the note. ‘You read, lord,’ he said.

  Satyrus walked along the buildings until he came to a prosperous shop with a torch in a cresset. ‘Aphrodite’s long and golden back,’ he muttered. Do you truly intend to taste salt water before you taste me? it said.

  Helios stood still.

  Alcohol swirled in Satyrus’s head. ‘I needed to see this before I drank so much,’ he said. He looked up at the citadel above them, and he saw that a lamp burned on one of the balconies that hung over the sea. And that the rooms beyond the balcony were lit. He shook his head and there was anger at the bottom of his love. ‘She treats me unfairly,’ he said.

  Helios nodded agreement.

  ‘To Hades with her,’ Satyrus said. He began to walk down the road, towards the house that had been Kinon’s, and bed. Then he stopped and looked back. ‘I love her, Helios,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Helios agreed.

  ‘What would you do?’ Satyrus asked.

  Helios shrugged.

  ‘What if I command you to speak?’ Satyrus said. He was mocking the boy. Picking on a freedman because he couldn’t allow himself to be angry at his love.

  ‘Then I will speak,’ Helios said. His tone of voice suggested that he had something to say. ‘Do you command me?’

  ‘I command you,’ Satyrus said, responding to the challenge in the boy’s tone.

  ‘Then I say that she demands you to visit to prove her power, not because her body wants yours. And I say that if you were caught, the tyrant would have you taken or killed. And that you are not a citizen of Alexandria, the city of love, but a king who goes to win his kingdom.’ Helios shrugged. ‘And if you need to lie in a woman’s arms tonight, I can find you one who will not steal your kingdom.’

  Satyrus stumbled. ‘You don’t like her!’ he said.

  Helios shrugged again. ‘I am less than the sandals on her feet,’ he said. ‘My likes or dislikes are nothing to her.’

  Satyrus looked up, and saw the light on the balcony. There was someone moving there, too.

  ‘The fleet sails at dawn,’ Helios said. ‘You ordered it.’

  Satyrus nodded. He turned away from the palace. ‘To bed,’ he said.

  Dawn, and a warm breeze off the land carried the hint of rain. Diodorus, Crax
and Sitalkes stood on the beach with a dozen other officers, telling off files of pikemen on to the pirate vessels and any other ship short of a full load of marines. The Rhodians were already in the water, and behind them, Satyrus’s own ships were just getting their sterns off the beach.

  Horse transports were loading the cavalry chargers – thin mounts who would die if too long at sea, and would need grain and rest when they landed. Satyrus was staking it all on this throw. He was out of time. He stood on the helmsman’s bench of the Golden Lotus and looked aft. ‘Good to have you aboard,’ he said to Draco, who stood just behind him.

  Draco laughed. ‘Amyntas will be jealous that I have you all to myself,’ he said.

  ‘Theron needs him more than I do,’ Satyrus said.

  Stesagoras came up. ‘Where do you see me stowing all these marines?’ he asked. He was speaking to Neiron as helmsman and trierarch, but he pitched his complaint to carry to Satyrus.

  Satyrus watched the panorama of his fleet forming for another few heartbeats and stepped back off the bench.

  ‘Put the extra marines aft, with the helm,’ he said. Twenty marines to a ship was too many for fine fighting, but it would give them a decisive advantage in a boarding fight.

  ‘We’ll be low in the water,’ Neiron said quietly.

  ‘Poseidon has sent us a fine breeze and a beautiful day,’ Satyrus answered. His eyes found Helios, standing by with a gilt-bronze shield.

  ‘Give the signal!’ he called.

  Helios found the sun with the surface of the shield – a flash that could be seen for stades – and gave three long flashes.

  Sixty-six warships. At least twenty fewer than his enemy had. And his decks were crammed with marines, which meant that he could not afford to be caught in a hit-and-run battle of seamanship.

  Neiron had the helm. Up forward, Philaeus began to call the stroke.

  ‘I’m impressed,’ Draco said.