Tyrant: Destroyer of Cities

by Christian Cameron

  ‘This is supposed to make me feel better?’ Satyrus asked.

  ‘Pep talk over. Back to work,’ Apollodorus said, and slapped his commander on the back.

  The circuit of the walls was more than a dozen stades, and took them from the harbour, where they were intimate with every foot of the defences, both old and new, south to where the great tower was complete, rising a hundred feet above the stone-based, mud-brick wall of the main battlements – the most modern defensive structure in the world, with three levels of war machines and a new killer on the roof: a counterweight engine that Neiron and Jubal had built from the washed-ashore wreckage of the engine-ship destroyed in the harbour. With the iron fittings in hand, Jubal had rigged the engine in just four days.

  Satyrus hadn’t seen the black man in weeks – Jubal had reinvented himself as an engineer, where his skills as a sailor were most helpful to the city. Today, he led a dozen carpenters in building a second counterweight engine.

  ‘We was out of wood,’ he said after he clasped hands with his king. ‘But since Golden Boy keeps knocking people’s houses down, we took to lifting the roof timbers. I want to put four of these things up here, but all the smiths in the city are making armour and spears and arrowheads – and I need fittings.’

  Satyrus looked at the carefully built wooden models of elbow joints, a pivot bearing, a dozen binding plates. ‘I’ll take it up with the war council,’ he said. ‘We could certainly do with these at the harbour.’

  Jubal nodded. ‘Nah, you’re wrong.’ He smiled.

  Apollodorus grew purple-red. Neiron laughed aloud. ‘Jubal, we try not to tell the king straight out like that when he’s wrong.’

  Jubal nodded. ‘Aye – but he’s in a hurry. Lord, look here. Golden Boy has forty of these engines, and he’s building more today. See?’

  Sure enough, Jubal’s sharp eyes had seen what the dozen incoming triremes had brought – heavy timber. Demetrios’ engineers were making up their losses in engines. Satyrus watched them work for a minute, his eyes watering and his head pounding.

  ‘I see that,’ Satyrus said, his heart falling flat again.

  ‘If we put five engines at the harbour, Demetrios knows we have them and his engines pound them to splinters.’ Jubal shrugged. ‘Put ’em here first – I can hit his camp, I think. Not that I want to let him know. But this is one tall-arsed tower.’

  Neiron was leaning out of the east rather than the south face of the tower. ‘Storm coming,’ he said. ‘Hadn’t noticed it. Look at the sky.’

  Long lines of dark clouds raced along the eastern horizon.

  Satyrus nodded, but his thoughts were elsewhere. ‘Strong enough to bear the weapons firing?’

  Jubal grinned. ‘Neiron asked the same. I don’t know, and that’s a fact.’

  Satyrus made a face. ‘All right. But we shouldn’t be building these a few at a time. We should have forty of them that we can shift wherever we need them.’

  Jubal smiled. ‘Have to knock down every house in the city,’ he said. He looked rueful. ‘And you understand – I haven’t even loaded one yet. We’ve fired them empty, but I can’t afford to have Golden Boy see what we’re up to. I don’t intend to shoot until he’s come close.’

  Satyrus rubbed the back of his head and then the spot between his eyes where the pain came from. ‘That may happen,’ he said.

  Neiron took him on a tour of their excavations under the wall. The city was built on rock – most houses had cellars cut out of the rock – and the progress of the tunnel was slow until they got free of the rise of rock that the first city had used for foundations. After the rock there was clay, and Satyrus stood with a reeking tallow torch in his hand, looking at a tunnel the height of a man and a little wider than his own shoulders that stretched away into the darkness. He felt as if the weight of the earth above was pressing on his shoulders, but he had to admit that his headache was less down here.

  ‘It stinks,’ he said.

  ‘Most men don’t go above to relieve themselves,’ Neiron said. ‘They’re sailors, after all.’

  ‘Getting a lot of complaints?’ Satyrus asked while he walked forward.

  ‘Did I mention they were sailors?’ Neiron quipped. ‘The bickering is constant.’

  The gallery was surprisingly long, shored up at intervals with timbers that looked remarkably like the stem of a heavy ship.

  ‘We salvaged Arete’s keel,’ Neiron said.

  ‘Where are we?’ Satyrus said. He was at the forward face of the shaft, and there were a half-dozen of his oarsmen, some cutting at the rock face with picks, some collecting the resulting rock and dirt and clay in baskets.

  ‘Just under the wall. If you go back – see here? We think that’s the lowest underpinning of the south wall, about a dozen horse lengths east of the great tower.’ Neiron shrugged.

  Satyrus shrugged back. ‘Keep digging. If we hold the sea wall, then I guess he’ll come here next. The north wall is impregnable and the west wall is like adamantine, all new construction and all stone.’

  ‘Jubal thinks he’ll go there anyway, to avoid Jubal’s precious tower. Boy loves that tower.’ Neiron smiled as they turned and started back out of the shaft.

  Satyrus got to the foot of the ladder. ‘Jubal’s as smart as a whip, but Demetrios won’t want to have the siege happen so far from his camp – and he’ll want to bring that tower down. And the way I see it, if he does go for the west wall, we’ll have plenty of time to prepare.’

  ‘You have a point there,’ Neiron admitted.

  ‘But let’s go and have a look at it anyway,’ Satyrus said.

  The west wall looked like what people imagined a city wall to look like. It was three times as tall as a man, stone sheathed on both sides with no mud-brick at all. In between the stone sheathing – whole cells of stone, in fact – there was heavy earth and gravel fill that would simply eat the shock of the largest engine’s strike. And the wall was crowned with heavy towers – squat, low towers just twice the height of the wall, and the whole length was crenellated. There were four sally ports that passed under the wall, and behind the wall was a ditch and a low rampart, and in front of it was a wide, deep dry ditch.

  ‘If they’d done this to the whole city, we could whistle at Demetrios,’ Apollodorus said, and all the other officers made noises of agreement.

  ‘He’d be a fool to come at this,’ Neiron agreed. ‘Jubal’s putting lotus in his wine.’

  Satyrus looked at the west wall with a jaundiced eye. ‘But here, his engines are at much the same height as our own,’ he said. ‘Forty of those big killers out there – he could turn a few feet of wall into rubble in a day. The collapse of the wall would fill in the ditch. Jubal may have a point. If he’s patient—’

  ‘Messenger coming,’ Charmides called.

  Satyrus straightened. He’d been leaning out over the wall. He was already tired, and it was time for his workout. His head hurt and his every limb hurt – of course they did, men had walked on his arms, fought on them, died on them. He was lucky that they weren’t broken—

  ‘Demetrios is moving his fleet, lord. Panther sends to say it is in the harbour. Again.’ The messenger stood and panted – he’d run hard.

  ‘You are not fighting in the front rank,’ Apollodorus said.

  They ran across the city. Satyrus was already tired when he put his light armour on. Today he took a long spear from the rack Abraham had installed in the courtyard.

  Miriam was in the courtyard, too, arming Anaxagoras. Her hair was in a scarf, and her long chiton was kirtled up, showing her legs like a dancing girl.

  Abraham shouted something at her – something that sounded like mockery – and she snorted as she tied the laces under Anaxagoras’ arm, and Satyrus felt another stab of jealousy: it should have been him in the heavy armour. But he answered her smile and waved. She called something else in Hebrew, and Abraham looked serious as he hefted a spear.

  ‘What did she say?’ Satyrus asked his friend.

>   ‘It is a feast day for us,’ Abraham said. ‘And I am going to fight. It is allowed – but I didn’t make any observance this morning, nor did I pray. It is as my father says: I can be a warrior, or I can be a Jew.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘Perhaps. But for the moment, I suggest that we save the city and hope that our gods stand by us.’

  ‘There is but one God,’ Abraham said stubbornly.

  Satyrus gave his friend a steady look meant to convey a number of things – that this was not the time, that he did not happen to agree, that he loved Abraham and would take all kinds of crap from him – and Abraham smiled.

  ‘Come on,’ Satyrus said.

  The marines and many of the sailors and oarsmen – most of whom now had some armour, helmets and good weapons – gathered in the streets behind Abraham’s compound. The marines were in front, already formed in their ranks, and Neiron and Satyrus set to organising the sailors into a phalanx.

  Panther appeared with a dozen armoured men. ‘The engine-ships are just dropping their anchor stones,’ he said. ‘Ten minutes until they open fire.’

  Satyrus clapped his hands for silence. ‘Listen to me!’ he called.

  The sailors fell silent, then the marines, and then other men – Rhodians on the hidden wall, engine crews on the rooftops.

  ‘I want every man off the hidden walls and every man off the rooftops and down here in the centre,’ Satyrus shouted. ‘Into the agora, formed in your companies. Now.’

  Neiron faced the sailors about and led them through the now familiar web of alleys to the agora. He led them to the western edge, and formed them and set them to rest in the shade of the trees that fronted the ruins of the gymnasium. The marines formed in front of them and used the portico of the Merchants’ Stoa for shade.

  ‘Enjoy it,’ Satyrus said to Apollodorus. ‘It’s next on my list to quarry for stone.’

  Panther’s eyes widened. ‘You will leave us nothing to defend.’

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘Lots to defend,’ he said, thinking of Miriam. ‘Stone can be replaced. The west wall is beautiful, by the way.’

  The Rhodian ephebe company – two hundred young men, the sons of the wealthiest citizens – manned the northern end of the hidden wall, and now they formed across the northern edge of the agora. Satyrus went over to their captain, a mercenary professional from Thebes called Gorgus.

  ‘This isn’t a complex plan,’ he said.

  ‘Good,’ Gorgus said. He managed a smile.

  ‘I intend to leave them nothing to shoot at. I want to let them get their men ashore. Then I’ll feed our archers back into the buildings, and then we’ll attack. We’ll be up-slope and organised. And we’ll have the numbers.’

  Gorgus looked around. He looked at Panther. ‘It’s a risk,’ he said. ‘Letting them into the city.’

  Panther looked at Satyrus. ‘I’ve never heard of anyone doing this, Satyrus.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘The Plataeans did it against the Spartans,’ he said. ‘Over and over. And the Spartans have done it once or twice.’ His eyes were locked to the east, where he expected to see the first volley of stones appear.

  Panther mopped his brow. ‘I’ll tell the citizen company in the south,’ he said.

  Menedemos came up, and Nicanor, who looked different in armour.

  ‘You are insane!’ Nicanor said – he said it with emphasis, but he did not shout it, so as not to dishearten the men.

  Satyrus had not had a day of light, but a day of darkness, and his spirit had been heavy with foreboding. But once he’d made a decision, it was not in him to change it.

  ‘Right or wrong, sane or insane, the knucklebones are cast,’ he said as a hail of heavy stones fell into the town with the sound of the thunder of Zeus from a clear blue sky, and a cloud of mud-brick dust rose from their impact.

  The second hail shower fell, and the third.

  Satyrus watched the stones fall. ‘Everyone out?’ he asked Abraham. In his heart, he meant Miriam.

  Abraham had his aspis against his legs, his helmet cocked back on his head, the cheekpieces open, and he had never looked more Greek. He pointed at his sister with his chin. ‘She’s appointed herself the polemarch of women,’ he said.

  Miriam was shepherding women and children into shelters on the western edge of the agora.

  Satyrus turned to Neiron. ‘You think Jubal is high enough to see what’s happening in the harbour?’ he asked.

  ‘I could see the harbour this morning,’ Neiron said.

  Satyrus nodded. ‘Charmides – go to the tower, get an eyeful of the action in the harbour and come back with a report. And tell Jubal to send me a runner when the landing ships stand in.’ To Apollodorus and the other officers he smiled, hoping that he looked confident. ‘We ought to know anyway – the engines will stop firing.’

  He was proud of them. His head was pounding, and he was not sure he hadn’t made a terrible mistake in pulling all of his forces out of the beaten zone of the enemy artillery – it seemed so obvious, to him, that they should not be under the bombardment, but the engines were so new that the tactics to use against them were equally new, and everything had to be tried. There were fewer than five thousand armed men in the town, and he had two thousand of them in the agora.

  Under his eye, a couple of his marines were playing knucklebones in a helmet. One of them was Phillip, he thought, one of Draco’s men.

  ‘Winning or losing, Phillip?’ Satyrus asked.

  ‘Who the fuck cares?’ the man grunted. ‘And what’s it to you? Oh – lord. I’m sorry. Didn’t see you there.’

  Satyrus laughed. ‘I thought that you old sweats could smell an officer.’

  ‘Fucking stones from the sky must have covered the sound of your sandals,’ Phillip said.

  ‘Smell of all this shit covers your scented oil,’ said the other man. But he was grinning.

  ‘Caryx the Gaul,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘Got me in one, lord. Didn’t even think you knew my name.’ The man smiled.

  ‘Herakles guard you, gentlemen.’ Satyrus bowed to them and moved on, to where a dozen marines were watching a pair of sailors sewing with heavy bronze needles. They were repairing sandals – sandal straps took a beating, and men were wearing their footwear long after they would have expected to replace it in a city not so thoroughly blockaded.

  Men were pushing forward to get their sandals repaired, paying a couple of obols for the service. Satyrus pushed in behind two big marines, craning to see who the sailors were.

  ‘Think the king knows what he’s doing?’ one man asked.

  ‘Nary a fucking clue, mate,’ said the other. ‘He looks calm, and Soldier Boy looks eager, and all that’s a gods-cursed act to keep thee happy and ready to fight.’ The man laughed.

  ‘We just gave up the wall, like.’ The first marine sounded puzzled.

  ‘Well – we ain’t being crushed to death by rocks falling out of the sky, is we? We is not, mate. That we is not. So worry thee not about the king. He’s as shit-scared as thee.’

  I am lucky to have these men, Satyrus thought.

  The bombardment continued all afternoon. By the time the sun was well down in the sky, it was plain that no assault would come that day, and Satyrus dispersed the garrison troops to cook.

  The promised storm brought no more than cool winds and an hour of light rain at dusk, and the bombardment stopped as Demetrios’ ships drew back out of the harbour for the night.

  As the light began to fail, Satyrus climbed the tower again. This time he had Panther with him. They spent the whole of the end of the evening watching Demetrios’ fleet at its moorings off the town.

  ‘We could do it,’ Panther said. ‘I have nine ships left. Turn half into fire-ships and go after them.’

  ‘They have something in the water, there,’ Satyrus said, pointing. ‘Jubal? Can you see it?’

  Jubal watched for a while and shook his head. ‘I see something – it flattens the waves. Can’t make it out, though.’
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br />   They watched a while longer, but the light was failing fast.

  ‘Tonight, do you think?’ Panther asked.

  Menedemos shook his head. ‘That storm means business. I think tomorrow. We want to go at them just before the storm.’

  ‘Pray we survive tomorrow, then,’ Satyrus said.

  Abraham’s warehouse was gone. His slave barracks were just a mound of fired brick and mud-brick dust. But by the irony of the gods, his beautiful house, with the vulnerable war engines on the roof, was untouched.

  ‘Symposium, gentlemen?’ Abraham asked while they were all wriggling out of their armour in what remained of his garden. ‘I don’t expect the house to last another day, and I have a great deal of wine to be rid of. And I owe my God a feast.’

  Apollodorus laughed, but he looked at Satyrus.

  Satyrus shrugged. ‘Demetrios keeps city hours in this siege. I think we can drink.’

  It was a rough-and-ready symposium, with every cup of wine scented with mud brick and sewer water. But Abraham was as good as his word – when the slaves had finished clearing the courtyard and the main rooms sufficiently for the men to recline, he invited them – and all the sailors and marines – to partake of his wine.

  ‘It’s in pithoi in the basement,’ he said. ‘It’ll be gone tomorrow, anyway.’

  Dozens of huge pithoi – cheap wine for slaves, sharp wine for sailors, Cretan wine and Lesvian wine and the deep red of Chios. Satyrus moved from couch to couch – this was not just relaxation, it was command responsibility, too. He lay beside Abraham, thanking him for the largesse.

  ‘I missed you, brother,’ he said. ‘It is almost worth being trapped in a doomed city to see you.’

  ‘The problem with you, brother,’ Abraham said, ‘is that having lost your parents, you seek constantly to create a family.’ He leered, as if he’d said something profound. Perhaps he had. He was already more drunk than Satyrus had seen him in some time.

  Satyrus rolled to the edge of the kline and poured a libation. ‘To the one God of the Jews,’ he said. ‘May he stand with us here.’

  Abraham’s eyes grew wide. ‘We do not pour libations to our God,’ he said.