Tyrant: Destroyer of Cities

by Christian Cameron

  ‘Ptolemy has never won a naval battle with Demetrios,’ Neiron said.

  ‘Ptolemy has never fought supported by Rhodes,’ Sandakes added.

  Satyrus ran his fingers through his beard. ‘Well. Since you are so well informed, how stands Demetrios?’

  Abraham laughed. ‘Forty thousand soldiers, twenty thousand slaves, two hundred thousand oarsmen.’ He made a wry face and provided them with an elaborate shrug like a Greek mime in the theatre.

  ‘Can he feed them?’ Xiphos asked.

  ‘Has to be his weakest point,’ Satyrus said.

  Aristos winced – everything hurt the man – and put his wooden foot down on the floor with a thump. ‘We’re better at sea,’ he said.

  Satyrus nodded at Abraham, who sat, and Satyrus stood up.

  ‘I’ve had some months to do little but think,’ he said. That got a chuckle. ‘I want the option to cut and run – I won’t fool you gentlemen. I’m King of the Bosporus, not the King of Rhodes, and behind closed doors, I don’t intend to die here. I agree with what I see on all of your faces – we can vanish on any moonless night. I’ll be cocky – we don’t even need a moonless night to vanish, do we? I suspect we could beat anything they could chase us with.’ He looked around. ‘But if we can help save this town, we will. First, because I’m a rash bastard and I promised.’ He grinned at Neiron, who winced. ‘Second, because all of us – even me – serve the people of the Euxine. All our grain comes through this city, and much of it is sold through the very merchants we’re trying to defend. The loss of Rhodes would make us much poorer, gentlemen. And when Aegypt falls, Antigonus will turn his piggy eyes north.’

  They were nodding. He had a headache – his fatigue had reached the state where his stomach felt like a vat of acid – but he had them.

  ‘With Panther’s permission, I want to send you to sea – tomorrow night, if we can do it. Commence raiding. Don’t bother to fight Demetrios’ warships. Just take the grain ships – and, of course, bring them here.’ He looked around. ‘Let me predict the future for you, friends. In a week, maybe more, Demetrios will make a grab at the harbour wall. I don’t want my ships to be here because, win or lose, that harbour is going up in flames.’

  He looked around. ‘And finally, Apollodorus, I’ll be keeping half the marines. The best. You choose them and stay with them.’ He looked at the small man. ‘How’s the digging?’ he asked.

  Apollodorus nodded. ‘Nowhere near complete.’

  ‘Well, it was just a thought. We’ll rotate oarsmen through it when ships are in port. I’ll send to Panther and tell him what we intend. Any comments?’

  Daedelus raised a hand. ‘Easy to get out – once. I agree. Getting in? Not as easy.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘Point taken. That’s why you get paid so much.’

  ‘And the second time will be harder, and the third time harder still. Surely Demetrios will try to build a close blockade.’ Daedelus gave a sweep of his hand to indicate the harbour.

  Satyrus smiled. ‘It’s one of the biggest problems facing him,’ Satyrus said after a pause. ‘The harbour is huge – a double harbour, two different entrances, the mole, the wharf and the northern sea gate on the open beach – he has to cover three wind directions and twenty stades of sea wall, and I don’t think he can do it – not if Leon and Ptolemy start threatening him so that he has to put a squadron to sea to cover them. There’s no obvious way to stopper up Rhodes. He can’t just sink ships across the entrance. There’s no really good upwind port like Alexander had at Tyre. At any rate, gentlemen, let’s show the Rhodians how to run the blockade. And every ship you take is grain out of their mouths, and into ours. He has a lot more mouths to feed than we have. And Apollo’s deadly shafts fall on besiegers and besieged alike. Dysentery, plague, the fever I got in Aegypt – one epidemic and Demetrios is finished. Pray for luck. Pray to Apollo. And get us some food.’

  ‘It’s about the grain,’ Charmides laughed. ‘That line should be in Homer.’

  DAY THREE

  Exercise. Eat. Plan. Sleep. Eat. Plan. Exercise.

  Another day.

  Night on the great wharf – and no torches.

  ‘We need to build the harbour walls so tall that no one can see in,’ Panther muttered. ‘For moments like this one.’

  Five Rhodian warships were going to sea with Satyrus’ ships. One by one his captains – men he’d been so happy to have back – shook his hand and boarded their ships. Neiron was last, and Satyrus embraced him, hugging him close. Tried to tell him with an embrace how much he valued the old mariner.

  Neiron had the most difficult mission of all, because he was viewed as having the best ship. At dawn, he would sweep down the beach past Demetrios, risking interception and capture to have a look at what was going on behind the enemy’s new camp walls. Arete was the mightiest of the ships in the port, and fast – the most likely to survive a dawn patrol along the enemy beach. Charmides was going with the ship – his mission, just as difficult and dangerous – was to re-enter the city from the south, disguised as a slave, with the report.

  And then, when the moon set, they slipped away, only a handful of oarsmen rowing until they were near the harbour mouth, and then the oars would go, all together, unfolding like the wings of swift swallows, shining against the night, and they were away.

  All ten ships slipped away into the darkness, and there were no answering shouts from the enemy sentries.

  The harbour seemed empty in the not-so-dark darkness.

  And then Satyrus went to sleep.

  He was awakened by Helios. Dawn was pale outside – Helios looked like a ghost.

  ‘Time, lord. Neiron will be making his run at the beach.’ Helios had an oil lamp in his hand, and hot oil spilled on Satyrus’ shoulder. He yelped.

  ‘Watch yourself, youngster!’ he said. ‘Do I look like Eros?’

  Helios laughed and helped his lord into a simple chiton, and then they climbed the tower together.

  Satyrus could see the line of dawn, but not much else, and not a sail nicked the horizon that he could see.

  Noise below – first in the courtyard, then on his balcony, and then Abraham appeared, followed by Anaxagoras and Miriam. She looked very beautiful in the first flush of dawn.

  ‘You all right?’ Anaxagoras asked him. He was a social man, and he could tell that something was amiss.

  ‘I’d rather be doing it than watching,’ Satyrus said. He was quite proud of his answer, because it was a perfect dissimulation. He was telling the truth – just not the truth about why, suddenly, he was cold to the music teacher.

  Abraham put a hand on his shoulder.

  Miriam smiled. ‘May I stay?’ she asked.

  Satyrus couldn’t muster even a shred of coldness. ‘Of course,’ he said. She sat close to him – between him and Anaxagoras, in fact. It was chilly.

  You are in a bad way, Satyrus thought to himself. You need to go and offer sacrifice to Aphrodite – and perhaps find a nice pliable slave-girl, too. Neiron is about to risk your ship, your crew and your friends – and you are angered by where this girl sits.

  The worst of it was that he knew – knew very well, in his heart – that he wasn’t training like a madman for the noble purpose of saving Rhodes, but for a much simpler reason.

  When Miriam and Anaxagoras were comfortably distant – say, downstairs – he could see how much they suited one another. And he was going to marry Amastris – any day. Amastris was her own mistress now, Queen of Heraklea, and together, they would rule the Euxine. He could remember the swell of her breasts; the line of hair that ran up her thigh into her groin, the smell of the nape of her neck—

  So different from the woman next to him.

  ‘There he is!’ Helios said.

  They all stood up together, like spectators at a horse race.

  Satyrus hadn’t even been looking in the right place. Neiron had used the night brilliantly. He was approaching from the south, sails down, masts down, moving quite fast, righ
t along the beach.

  Even on the rooftop overlooking the harbour of Rhodes, the enemy camp was less than six stades away – close enough to hear the sudden hum of activity, hear the screams – and see the tongue of fire that shot out of the dead ground invisible to them.

  And then nothing: except that they could see Demetrios’ army stand to. Men poured from tents, not even ants at this distance, more of an impression of men than palpable men, and they mounted the new walls and poured into the fields.

  Ships were launching, all along the beach.

  In the enemy camp, something went up with a whoosh, as if a god had taken a deep breath and coughed. A column of flame reached to the clouds.

  Nothing. Just waiting.

  More waiting, except that men were shouting all along the enemy camp. The enemy cavalry emerged, and cantered out into the scrub to the south.

  ‘Gods send that they are not already tracking Charmides,’ Satyrus said.

  Now the camp seemed to descend into chaos, and more ships were launching – indeed, it seemed as if the entire enemy line of ships was moving, and then Arete emerged from the smoke, the flames and the dead ground, still moving at a racing pace right along the beach, and she was suddenly close, less than two stades distant, and even as they watched, all her port-side machines fired together and a hail of lethal iron flew into a half-formed infantry unit standing by the beach, and their screams carried the most clearly of all as they were flayed off the beach the way fat is flayed off a stretched hide when the tanner starts his work.

  Now there were Rhodians on every wall and tower, and they were cheering the way people cheer for a great runner as he nears the finish, and Arete passed the sea tower at speed, already dragging his oars on the port side, and suddenly the great ship turned like a dancer turns as the music doubles the tempo – turned and darted into the harbour.

  ‘That wasn’t the plan,’ Helios said, with the inexperience of youth.

  Anaxagoras caught Satyrus’ eye – no longer a rival, just a staff officer. ‘Shall I go, lord?’ he asked.

  Satyrus shook his head.

  ‘I can only expect he saw something too important to leave to

  Charmides,’ he said. ‘Let’s run – he’ll want to be away.’

  They ran to the port – even Miriam, running on her long legs like a maiden runs in the Artemisian Games – but it was too late. By the time they reached the port, there were fifty triremes just outside, and two floating upside down where they had dared to test the range of the sea tower’s artillery and been destroyed.

  Arete entered the harbour at racing speed and slowed on his oars, the men putting their backs into holding the water, and the great ship slowed, Neiron piloting him brilliantly – he made the turn under the Temple of Poseidon and brought the great ship close in to the beach, almost at Satyrus’ feet.

  He jumped straight from the helm to the wharf. ‘Too important to leave to Charmides,’ he said.

  Panther came running up, with Memnon, Damophilus and thirty other leading Rhodians. Nicanor was there, already proclaiming that they were provoking Demetrios.

  ‘Wait – tell us all at once,’ Satyrus said. Miriam was leaning against him – very slightly, but the pressure was real. Anaxagoras was already aboard Arete.

  Satyrus smiled.

  When most of the boule was assembled, Neiron looked out of the harbour. ‘He’s built a dozen double ships,’ he said. ‘Two big hulls – they look like penteres to me, lord, as big as our Arete. Decked between the hulls, with massive engines – Zeus, I’ve never seen anything like this.’

  ‘How big are the bolts, do you think?’ Memnon asked.

  ‘No bolts,’ Charmides said. ‘Baskets. They aren’t bolt-throwers like ours. Different design entirely. Here, I drew it.’ He handed round a sketch, and the waiting men shook their heads.

  Anaxagoras was back. He looked over Charmides’ shoulder. ‘Counter-weight.’

  Sandakes agreed. ‘Lord, you’ve never been to Sicily. The old tyrant there loved the things. They can throw a stone – a thirty-mina stone. Even a talent. Even five talents, although not very far.’

  ‘By Hephaestos!’ Panther declared. ‘Ten double hulls, each the size of a penteres, carrying one of these great engines?’

  Charmides shook his head, curls flying in all directions. ‘Five engines on every platform.’ He grinned. ‘But only nine platforms.’

  Neiron allowed himself a satisfied smile. ‘We put fire into one. And there was something on their wharf – they have built a wharf.’ His smile widened. ‘They won’t store oil there any more.’ He grinned. ‘And the wharf itself is gone.’

  Panther raised his arms. ‘That was a great deed – under the eyes of every man in the city.’

  ‘A deed which will only provoke King Demetrios further,’ Nicanor said.

  Ignoring him, Panther went on, ‘But despite your best efforts, you tell us that he has forty-five engines that can throw a talent each – on ships.’

  That silenced everyone.

  ‘They’re coming for the sea wall,’ Satyrus said. ‘Short and sweet – bombardment, and then a rush. Demetrios means to take the city in one attack. As befits a god.’

  20

  DAY EIGHT

  Arete floated as the day she was launched, below Satyrus’ window. Every ship in the harbour was empty. Forewarned, the Rhodians knew that the attack and the great engine-ships were coming at the harbour defences, and they had stripped every ship remaining in port of all engines, all oars, oil, drinking water, amphorae – anything that might give comfort to the enemy. And the ships were moored together with heavy ropes, all across the front of the beach wall, so that there was a wooden wall in front of the unfinished land wall.

  The sea wall was not so much as a span higher – Satyrus hadn’t bothered to argue with the oligarchs, who still attempted, every day, to negotiate with Demetrios. He had spent his own money, and that of Abraham, and a legion of slaves had laboured behind the wall.

  Four days they had worked like slaves, and the fifth dawned clear and pink, and as soon as the light was strong, Demetrios put his great fleet to sea. Not the pirates. Not the riff-raff. Only his own magnificent fleet, escorting the ten great platforms, each as big as a herd of elephants.

  Satyrus, still pained in every joint from yesterday’s exercise, stood on the roof of Abraham’s house. The roof had changed – flying buttresses now reinforced the front walls and the corners of the main towers, and the reinforced roof now held a pair of Arete’s ballistae behind stone curtains. Four days can be a long time, if you have enough men to work.

  The Theatre of Dionysus was no more. The Temple of Poseidon had lost its east face and its retaining wall. A decree stood in the agora that promised every god so affected a ten-fold return should the city survive. The decree – and the permission to tear down public monuments – had been passed by the boule by a single vote.

  ‘Ready to try, lord?’ Helios said by his side. His hypaspist had his armour laid out on the roof. Satyrus had not worn armour since before his sickness. He had muscles, now – he could see them on his arms – but they were nothing like the muscles he had carried a year ago. Abraham’s armourer had taken his breastplate in, and made him plain greaves for his legs. His old greaves were merely a painful reminder of the body he once had.

  But when the breastplate was buckled securely onto his thorax, he bore it only as long as it took the enemy fleet to silence the battery of engines on top of the harbour tower with their dozens of ballistae, sweeping the crews right off the tower – minutes – before he was breathing hard, and stooped under its weight.

  Humiliated, he allowed Helios to take it off him. Satyrus felt better immediately, and he watched the unfolding action as his sweat cooled.

  Demetrios was in no hurry. In fact, he was making a demonstration. The great engines worked – but the crews were untrained, and it took them hours to get the range. Stones the size of a man’s head fell harmlessly into the harbour a stade
or more from the target. Rhodians jested that Demetrios meant to fill the harbour with stone.

  By afternoon, the jests had fallen away. All at once, all of the great machines, which fired about four times an hour, found their range. Three great stones in a row reached the top of the tower, and then, with a rumble, the fourth drove in the top of the tower the way a big man can be driven to his knees by a strong man – and then six or seven more stones hit, all low, and the tower vanished in a cloud of dust and a roar of shattered timber and cracked stone, as if the fist of a god had smashed it flat.

  A hundred Rhodian citizens perished in five heartbeats.

  ‘Lord?’ Helios asked. Miriam was behind him. She had something in her arms.

  ‘I had this made for you,’ she said. ‘Because you are stubborn and rash. And weak.’ Her smile belied the harsh words.

  She looked like Thetis on the old vase paintings, holding a man’s breastplate – of leather. Beautiful, Athenian leather, tanned and then coloured with alum, the edges bound in bronze, with an iron belt over the kidneys.

  It weighed very little. It was plain – as plain as something a marine might wear, but it fitted, and he could bear the weight. She closed it around his waist with her own hands, and Satyrus kissed her – a decorous kiss, in thanks, but their lips touched for too long, and when Satyrus turned back to his men, her brother looked at him, his brow furrowed.

  The loss of the harbour tower signalled the end of the day. Demetrios’ fleet withdrew, jeering at the defenders.

  Rhodians wept.

  Satyrus went down to his room, ate and exercised. In the agora, the assembly met and voted to offer complete submission to Demetrios, and ambassadors were dispatched immediately.

  Satyrus went to sleep.

  DAY NINE

  In the first grey of dawn, Helios woke him and together they ate dry bread soaked in wine. Korus came and made him exercise – before dawn’s rosy fingers extended over the harbour, Satyrus had run half the circuit of the walls, and he walked back to the house, greeting the other men of the city. Rhodes was a true democracy – it did not appoint a single commander, even in war. The boule commanded. The oligarchs feared a unified command – feared, with some reason, to create a tyrant worse than Demetrios who could never be ejected. Satyrus was wise enough to know that he, as a king, was dangerous to the oligarchs, more even than to the commons, and he went running through the town naked on purpose, as much to show his essential vulnerability as anything.