Tyrant: Destroyer of Cities

by Christian Cameron

  ‘Shut your gob, wide-arse,’ said Dionysus in mock sailor talk. ‘We’s as good as any man – better than some, aye.’ He growled low in his throat.

  Satyrus laughed with the others. ‘He’s not my Dionysus. It’s my sister’s breasts he wrote the poems to, after all.’

  Apollodorus laughed. ‘I’d wager he’s never touched a breast in his life.’

  Dionysus narrowed his eyes. ‘Better than raping corpses for a sex life, Corinthian.’

  Satyrus stepped in. ‘Are we pirates now, friends? This is pirate talk.’

  Diokles nodded. ‘Lads are excited. It was a good day. Let me tell it – and let’s not hear any more asides.’

  Apollodorus raised an eyebrow. ‘I apologise, Dionysus. I meant my comments as raillery – nothing more.’

  Dionysus grinned and lisped. ‘Apologies accepted, O Gift of Apollo. And returned. I’m sure some of your rape victims are alive.’

  Apollodorus didn’t explode. He smiled. ‘I might find the time to convince you otherwise, Child of the Wine God.’

  Satyrus put a kingly elbow into Dionysus’ ribs with all the energy of the gymnasium, and Dionysus spewed wine across the fire. ‘Apollodorus, you must forgive him. He’s always been like this – I think the technical term is insufferable prick. And you two will not fight. Save it for Demetrios.’

  Dionysus was laughing uncontrollably. ‘I miss this,’ he admitted, rubbing his ribs.

  Apollodorus gave the fop a hand to his feet. ‘Let the man tell his story.’

  Diokles spread his hands. ‘So Dionysus found two of them, and he went right at them. Then he backed away – took a light ram, got his oars in. And Amon Ra and Wasp came up and they all chased each other in circles—’

  Apollodorus laughed. ‘It was pitiful. My rowers made mistakes, I gave the wrong order—’

  Dionysus laughed. ‘I ordered my men to reverse benches, and only about a third of them did it, so that we turned broadside on to one of the enemy ships—’

  Satyrus winced.

  Diokles shook his head. ‘So I came up in Oinoe and it looks like a seaborne circus, with ships in what appears to be a circle, chasing their tails like kittens. And then the biggest enemy ship turns out of its circle to ram Ramses—’

  ‘And my lads all pull their arses out of the air and suddenly we’re like a ship – I put my ram into their ram,’ Dionysus said. ‘We aren’t moving as fast as an old man walks—’

  ‘And this big trireme impales himself on Ramses,’ Diokles said. ‘His bow must have either been rotten, or wormed, or the gods blessed Dionysus. But that ship just sank.’

  ‘And just like that, the other two lost all their spirit and we had them as fast as I can say it,’ Apollodorus said.

  ‘And my lads, who’ve been rowing in that infernal heat like heroes to save these fools, are left as the cheering section. By which time we could see the storm clouds over Africa and we ran for the beach.’ Diokles looked over his shoulder at the grey wall – almost black – shot through with lightning. ‘I pity any man at sea tonight. Friend or foe.’

  ‘You must have taken prisoners,’ Satyrus said.

  Apollodorus nodded. ‘Plenty. It’s not all wine and cheese for Demetrios. Half his fleet is here, and half is strung out between Cyprus and Alexandria. He set one rendezvous and Plistias, his admiral, set another. Antigonus needs food, right now – his men crossed the Sinai at midsummer and they need everything. That’s what they were saying five days ago at Tyre, anyway. That’s where these two rode out the last storm.’

  Neiron came and stood by his king. ‘You’re plotting in there,’ he said.

  A gust of wind scattered cinders and coals across the beach, and several stung Satyrus. ‘I’m always plotting. I’ll turn into Stratokles, eventually.’

  ‘Perish the thought,’ Diokles said.

  ‘Last storm blew three days,’ Satyrus said.

  Neiron nodded.

  ‘If we put to sea the moment the sand dies away—’ Satyrus said, and Neiron interrupted him.

  ‘You’ll be launching into the biggest seas of the summer.’ Neiron shook his head. ‘Day three was better, but only by comparison.’

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘It all depends,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘Ask me in a day or two.’

  Two days of sandstorm, lightning and rain.

  Mid-morning on the first day of the storm, and Satyrus was lying on his pile of skins, watching the sail over his head move and flap and wondering if it would tear its pegs out of the sand when Anaxagoras ducked under the heavy rugs blocking the open end of the tent and stepped in, streaming sand from his red chlamys.

  ‘Time for a music lesson,’ he said.

  Satyrus sat up with a laugh, boredom vanquished, and spent a difficult hour trying to make his calloused hands match the gestures of his master on the strings of the kithara – ten strings, all running from a fine ebony rod at the tips of the instrument’s hollow wooden horns, down across the belly of the instrument to lie across the sound box. Anaxagoras’ kithara was a beauty, as befitted a professional musician, all lemonwood and ebony inlaid with ivory.

  ‘Pluck the strings with the right,’ Anaxagoras said for the eighth or ninth time. ‘Calm them with the left hand.’

  Satyrus had no trouble using the plectrum to strum the strings with his right hand – it felt quite natural – but his teacher’s constant demand that he dampen the sound of some strings while allowing others to ring true puzzled him.

  ‘But you say you have studied the mathematics of Pythagoras,’ Anaxagoras said, clearly flustered and perhaps growing angry with a very stubborn student.

  Satyrus sighed. ‘When I see a ship running diagonally across my course, I see the mathematics of Pythagoras,’ he said. ‘You can tell me about the lengths of a chord until you are blue in the face, and it does nothing for me.’

  Anaxagoras took a deep breath and forced a smile – a very false smile. ‘I believe that you were ordered by the god to learn to play?’ Anaxagoras said.

  Satyrus was about to tell Anaxagoras exactly what he and the god could do with a kithara when there were shouts from outside.

  One of the captured triremes had blown over and the sides splintered as the ship rolled on her beam ends. The sea rose until Satyrus feared that Wasp would be pulled out into the water, and they got the men out in the lashing, sandy rain to pull the little ship higher on the beach – and then they endured two more hours of it to pull Oinoe and Arete higher up as well.

  ‘You bastards sailed through this?’ Dionysus asked on the evening of the second day. ‘It scares me on the beach.’

  Apollodorus and the Alexandrian had reached some sort of understanding.

  Apollodorus shot the younger man a smile. ‘I won’t say this storm isn’t worse, m’dear. But yes – we sailed in this for three days and three nights.’

  Dawn of the third day, and Satyrus rallied all his men – over two thousand, rowers and oarsmen and marines all told – on the beach. But the wind off Africa hadn’t blown out, and the sun didn’t come out from the clouds until noon.

  ‘Too late in the day,’ Satyrus said, as the wind began to fall away and the mosquitoes from the swamps to the east rose from their enforced rest to find a rich source of blood waiting on the beach. They made it the worst night of the three, their high-pitched whine eventually forming a terrible sound, like the distant breathing of a malignant insect god. They didn’t relent with full dark, and it was hot and airless.

  Satyrus launched his ships in the dawn on a sea that seemed to have been blown absolutely flat; but a stiff shore breeze sprang up, banished the evil insects and sent the squadron winging north over a sea so calm it looked like wet faience in the new sun.

  ‘Three days’ full rations,’ Jubal reported, and spat through his teeth. ‘That’s after dividing everything we took out of the captures.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘Mainsail up. Head for Cyprus.’ He shook his head. ‘Let’s see if we can make some trouble.’

>   Their first capture was two hours later – a swift message boat that had been dismasted in the last of the storm and lay helpless under their bow, snapped up almost in passing and then sunk to prevent recapture. The captive oarsmen reported that the storm had damaged Antigonus’ resupply badly, but that he’d sent to Cyprus for his son and all the ships of the victorious squadrons there.

  Satyrus spent the day in the lookout basket forward, shielding his eyes from the sparkling sun, watching the north and then a long line of dark clouds piling up on the western horizon. Storms from the west were all but unknown in the Cyprian Sea, but so were sandstorms out of Africa.

  ‘I may have made a poor throw,’ Satyrus said back on the deck, talking to his officers and miming a cast of the knucklebones. ‘We’ve got no beach under our lee, and that storm . . . is coming.’

  ‘So we sail until the wind rises,’ Neiron said. ‘And then we row. You’re too nice to the rowers, lord. They can do it.’

  Satyrus went to sleep worried, and awoke with the first of the thunder and then it was morning, a grey-white morning, hot and airless. The rowers groaned and set to, a cruising stroke, and Satyrus put his little fleet into two columns of six ships, headed due north.

  The sun was high in the sky and past noon when the first gusts of wind from the west hit them. By the third gust they could see a squall line coming, and Neiron ordered all the sails struck down, the masts lowered and stowed and the ship rigged for heavy weather.

  ‘Where do you place us, Old Man of the Sea?’ Satyrus asked Neiron.

  Neiron made a sign to avert evil. ‘A hundred stades south of Cyprus, give or take a hundred. Hard to tell how much northing we made in the dark last night. Eh?’

  Jubal spat between his teeth. ‘More thouth than that,’ he said confidently. ‘Not enough wind for a fart latht night, lord.’

  Satyrus walked forward with Anaxagoras.

  ‘Teach me,’ he said.

  ‘Only if you will learn,’ Anaxagoras said.

  Satyrus sighed. He called for stools, and sat down in the shade of the forward tower. So that he was the closest officer when the lookout shouted.

  16

  ‘Sails! Sails to the east! Ten square . . . fifty triangles!’ The man sounded as if panic had taken the lower registers of his voice.

  Satyrus sprang up the steps into the marine tower without feeling a twinge in his back. Away to the north and east was a great fleet – all their sails up, running east and south on the wild west wind.

  Running for the coast of Asia.

  Satyrus kept himself still for several long breaths, counting sails. The closest squadron was hull up – big ships, and in a crisp formation, and he guessed that these were the squadron of penteres that had faced down Menelaeus. Beyond were two more squadrons of triangles, hull down, and perhaps another further. And at least twenty merchant ships – and more away to the north.

  Satyrus looked away to the west, away from the enemy. A line of squalls all the way to the horizon.

  Helios climbed up the ladder. ‘Neiron asks, how many and what are we doing?’

  Satyrus managed a smile. ‘I’m sure he put it in a more direct way than that.’

  Anaxagoras came up the tower, the kithara still in his hand. ‘Sex acts were mentioned,’ the musician laughed.

  Helios handed his master an apple. ‘You haven’t eaten, lord.’

  Satyrus took the apple and ripped at it with his teeth. He looked at the enemy fleet, which now filled the horizon. Then he looked back at the squalls.

  ‘Let’s take this aft,’ he said, and by the time he reached Neiron at the helm, he’d made up his mind.

  ‘We’re going to fight in the storm,’ Satyrus said.

  Everyone nodded – even Neiron.

  Despite the fact that no one demurred, Satyrus felt he had to explain. ‘We’re going to get caught in the wind, anyway,’ he said. ‘The crews are as good as they’ll ever be. And if we can hit them this afternoon, any ship we even damage is dead in the night.’

  Neiron nodded. ‘But no ramming, and no boarding,’ he said.

  ‘That’s it,’ Satyrus said. ‘Oar rakes, archers, the engines if we can get them to work. And fear. Don’t forget fear.’ He looked around, and they seemed confident. He was proposing to fight a galley action in a storm and they looked like they agreed.

  He nodded, chewed the last bite of his apple and threw the core over the side. ‘Line ahead. We’ll row another half an hour, get the foresails up and run free – oar ports closed. Arete in the lead. If we do it well, we should come in behind the penteres and right into the grain ships.’ He smiled at them; he felt few of his usual pre-battle fears. He grinned. ‘Because, my friends, this is about grain. Burn the grain, and Antigonus can’t invade Aegypt.’

  ‘For grain!’ Anaxagoras shouted. Despite his obvious irony, the other men answered.

  An hour later, under foresail alone, and still it took two men to keep Arete to her course, one on each steering oar, so great was the pressure of the speed. Oinoe was just astern, and now the rest were lost in the spray, and the storm line was so near astern that it would be a close race whether Satyrus came up with the grain ships ahead before the storm, with all the rain it seemed to hold, came crashing up behind.

  All the ships were running the same way – east, towards the coast of Asia. But the enemy’s supply ships were slower, even under sail and with the wind dead astern, than the slim warships, most of which had raised their mainsails and raced ahead. To the south, a pair of penteres loomed like sea monsters in the grey light. Beyond them were other ships, south and west.

  Satyrus’ hulls were smooth from the yards and dry, and for once it was he who had the speed advantage – an advantage that was as clear as the waning day as Arete caught up with the trailing grain ship like an Olympic runner overtaking a fat man.

  ‘Light the fire pots,’ Satyrus ordered. He was literally playing with fire. ‘Poseidon, forgive me the use of this foreign flame on your sea – my need is desperate.’ He had nothing to hand to offer as a personal sacrifice.

  The grain ship was a merchant – probably Tyrian – with rounded sides like a wooden soap bubble, virtually storm-proof. She had two tall masts, with only a scrap of linen set on the foremast. The captain gave Satyrus a wave as he drew alongside assuming, as so many others had, that Satyrus was from his escort.

  Neiron barked an order, and the Arete’s bow swung a few degrees. The oars were in, and the big penteres’ marine tower matched the grain ship’s side for height. The best athletes – Anaxagoras, Charmides, Necho – threw fire pots across the few feet of water, and then they were past, their port-side engines and all their archers firing into the helpless ship. The wicked west wind whipped the coals to flames that seemed to explode from the wounded ship’s bow as her captain sank to the deck with one of Idomeneus’ barbed shafts in his throat.

  Every ship in the squadron fired into the hapless grain ship, but the damage was done – she broached, cutting across the wind, her helm empty.

  Two more ships fell in quick succession, and then the enemy began to respond the way fish respond to a pod of dolphins – the grain ships began to scatter, throwing their helms wildly to port or starboard, choosing the perils of crossing the wind against the immediate and definite threat of the ships coming up so fast from astern, but the wind had risen to a gale behind them and the edge of the storm was a palpable thing, somewhere just aft of Wasp.

  Satyrus watched a grain ship roll – too much canvas, too wild a turn. She rolled to port, her rail went under the water and Poseidon took her – just like that. Gone.

  He turned to Neiron. ‘Done. And worth it: if we all go to the bottom now, Aegypt is safe.’

  Neiron made a face. ‘That makes it worth it?’

  And then the storm hit.

  As men told the story in later years, it wasn’t much of a battle, as battles went. None of Satyrus’ ships received as much as a single arrow. It was more like the storming of a city –
ugly work, a massacre of the almost innocent.

  But war is an ugly tyrant, and the tactics of terror and death were the only tactics that Satyrus had left. His ships pounced out of the storm like sharks on whitefish, like furies avenging an insult to the gods, and every ship they forced to turn out of the wind died.

  As battles went, it was more like a massacre.

  But as a storm, it was quite a storm. Men talked about the storm for the rest of their lives, those that lived.

  No one on Wasp lived. A freak cross wave caught Wasp before night fell, rolled her too far and the ruthless wind served her and her two hundred rowers as the Athenian grain ships had been served – with death, no reprieve, for Sarpax and all his crew. Satyrus saw them go, and something harsher than rage – something like fault choked him. Losing men he liked to Ares was the stuff of war, but the sea was cleaner and worse – two hundred men in between breaths.

  No one on Ramses lived. Ramses was just astern of Oinoe when the light failed, riding west under a scrap of sail, and they died so close astern that the men at Arete’s helm heard them scream as a wave filled them, or as some plank failed, or the bow split against wreckage or a floating log. Poseidon had a thousand ways to take a man down, and Dionysus went to the bottom with his men.

  And when the sun rose somewhere over Asia, too close under their bows, so that they could see the surf in the first light, the others were gone. Arete ran west until there was no more water, and the sea behind her wake was empty of life. Neiron conned the ship close to the beach, stripped the last scrap of canvas at the edge of the surf and ran the great vessel ashore ram first, taking his chances with the sea god to keep his men alive, ignoring the king’s protests in his ear. And under the lash of Neiron’s anger, Satyrus leaped into the water with his deck crew and his marines and oarsmen and hauled and hauled again until the penteres was clear.

  Not every ship had been so lucky. There were wrecks on the beach, ships which had run ashore in the dark and died there. Satyrus counted four wrecks on this beach alone. He had to visit them. He walked, alone, from wreck to wreck. None was his.