Tyrant: Destroyer of Cities

by Christian Cameron

  Grumbling.

  ‘And finally, gentlemen, for all that we managed to incur Nike’s good pleasure yesterday, someone opened the west gate to Demetrios.’ Satyrus glanced around. ‘Let’s not mince words. If not for Miriam, Abraham’s sister, the town would have fallen. No amount of heroism by our converged marines, by our ephebes, by anyone could have saved us, except that Miriam came to the beach and told us that the west gates were open. The women of the town – your wives, gentlemen – bought us the minutes we needed, and then helped break the best men Macedon has to offer – and still, they would never have been in the town except that someone let them in.’

  Consternation.

  ‘The west wall garrison had been withdrawn. Who gave that order? Decimus, the lead phylarch, died in the fighting. No one seems to know who ordered his men to leave the walls. In a way, that traitor did us a favour – we saved the west-wall garrison instead of losing them. But friends, it was so close – so very close – that even now, as I speak to you, my knees feel weak. Who is the traitor?’

  ‘Any slave might have done it,’ Panther said. ‘You made the point yourself.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘Almost certainly. But let us not make it easy for the traitor. Appoint a committee to investigate. Find out what slaves, if any, deserted yesterday. Question the west-wall garrison – who was there? Town mercenaries?’

  Panther nodded. ‘Cretans and Greeks – two hundred hoplites and four hundred archers.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘And let us face the horrible possibility that the mercenaries themselves sold the gate.’

  Panther nodded, and other men looked sober.

  Menedemos rose to his feet. ‘Satyrus – you have been an accurate weathervane so far. Where will Demetrios strike next?’

  Satyrus narrowed his eyes. ‘I’m no seer, Menedemos. Answer me this, first – how stands the naval sortie? What happened in the southern harbour, and does the enemy possession of the mole cut you off from the sea?’

  Menedemos glanced at Panther, and Panther scratched his chin.

  ‘We’re ready enough,’ he said. ‘We have the ships ready. We’re a little short on oarsmen, to be honest – all our oarsmen are on the walls. But we can put to sea any night, now.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘Look, friends, I cannot guess what Demetrios will do – or even if I can, I can’t be right every time. We have to make him dance to our tune. Our best course of action remains to strike him – to break the boom and destroy his engine-ships.’

  ‘His men hold the mole!’ Carias the Lydian was a former metic who was one of the town’s richest men. ‘We can do little while they hold the mole.’

  ‘The engines on the mole can hit any point in the town,’ Menedemos said.

  Satyrus nodded. ‘Demetrios wants us to try to storm the mole, my friends. And I predict he’ll have those engines drop rocks – perhaps even bundles of small rocks – on the agora, in an indiscriminate killing to goad us to assault the mole.’

  Panther looked at him. ‘I think we must.’

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘No! Listen to me! We cannot afford to be bled like that. Retaking the mole – it might cost us five hundred men. We might lose that many and fail. His engines, however evil, will not kill so many.’

  Panther shook his head vigorously. ‘Not today, perhaps,’ he said.

  They argued half the morning. At last they decided to prepare the naval sortie and ignore the mole, and they appointed committees to organise the displaced citizens, another to begin recruiting slaves – the best of them – as citizens, and another to search for the traitor, if he existed.

  Menedemos moved that the west-wall garrison be relocated to the north wall, and that the citizen hoplites, held on the north wall to avoid casualties among the richest citizens, be put on the west wall, at least temporarily.

  The motion was carried unanimously, which showed Satyrus how seriously the men in the room took the threat of treason. The richest four hundred men were unlikely to betray their own town.

  Satyrus shook hands with the other councillors and walked through the broken rock and clay of the streets. In every street, there were houses that had survived – some were shells, where a rock had dropped through the roof without touching the walls. Some stood because they had been overbuilt to start with, using heavy timber against earthquakes. Some were protected by the Moira. But there were few enough houses on the seaward end of the city, so that they looked like the teeth of an elderly man – more missing than remaining, and pitiful piles of rubble in between.

  And there were bodies in the rubble – men and women, children, pigs and dogs and cats and rats, all rotting together, so that the east side of the town stank like an abattoir, or a temple the week after a great sacrifice. And that miasma would breed disease.

  Satyrus walked through the rubble and headed south, to the great tower that the Rhodians had built to dominate the plain south of the town and the most vulnerable stretch of wall. Legs aching, he climbed the tower.

  Jubal was already there. He laughed to see his king.

  ‘You’re up early, no joke, lord.’ Jubal smiled.

  ‘You fought well yesterday, Jubal,’ Satyrus said. He reached under his chlamys and produced a rather straggly wreath of olive, taken from the tree in the courtyard where Amyntas died. ‘Yours to wear.’

  Jubal smiled. ‘Heh,’ he grunted, then shook his head. ‘Not for Jubal, lord. Di’n want to be a hero. Just stood my ground.’

  ‘That’s about all there is to being a hero, Jubal,’ Satyrus said. ‘How’re the engines?’ he asked, leaning out over the tower.

  ‘Had a try las’ night in the dark,’ Jubal said. One of his petty officers grinned like a death’s head. ‘Wen’ pretty well.’

  ‘Yes?’ Satyrus asked. Jubal and his men were a pleasure to be around. No big issues here – just the cat-and-mouse of siege engineering.

  Jubal’s grin was that of the raven putting one over on the fox. ‘Reinforced the walls and floor, eh? And then we made the throwing arm longer, uh? And then we put yon heavier weight on the end. And then we shot her.’ Now his grin was triumphant. ‘Dropped a rock right over the west wall – don’t you worry, honey, no one was awake to see or hear.’

  Satyrus had to grin. ‘You tested your range over our city?’

  Jubal shrugged, and his gold tooth shone. ‘One rock more or less ain’t gonna do much harm.’ He looked around. ‘Made the whole tower move, though.’

  Satyrus looked out from the great vantage point of the tower. He could see the new works built across the mole – four times the height of a man. And he could see that there were no defences on the flanks of the mole, because Demetrios had ships – a dozen warships – lashed all along it, full of men. And another four hundred men on the mole itself.

  South, he saw that more ships were anchored out from Demetrios’ camp. Either he’d sent another force away, or another force had arrived. Satyrus wished he had spies – good spies. But only a fool deserted from a giant army of comfortable, well-fed besiegers to the desperate garrison of the city – and such fools were thin on the ground. There had been a few, but most knew so little, they had nothing to offer.

  ‘If we can just burn his engine-ships,’ Satyrus said, and scratched his chin.

  ‘Then he have to come at me,’ Jubal said. ‘I walk all round this fewkin’ city. An’ the only way in be right here.’

  Satyrus was glad to hear Jubal say it, because he’d come to the same conclusion months ago, before the siege had even begun, and he knew that the Italian who had built the great tower had had the same view.

  ‘We should start work on a false wall here,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘Oh, aye,’ Jubal agreed dismissively. ‘But first, I wanna shoot the squirtin’ shit out of his landward engines. An’ then he’ll build more, an’ more, an’ finally he’ll knock down the whole fewkin’ tower, an’ then we’ll need a false wall.’ Jubal shrugged. ‘I’ve made the measurements, with Neiron. We done the maths.’ He grinned ev
illy. ‘I even know where the new tower’ll go, when this one falls.’

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘Where’d you learn all this maths, Jubal?’

  Jubal made a face. ‘Anaxagoras. An’ Neiron. An’ me dad. Great one for countin’ stars, me dad. Always fancied numbers.’

  Satyrus grinned. ‘I think I’ll start a book of sayings: You never know a man until you stand a siege with him, is my first.’

  Jubal raised an eyebrow. ‘Not bad, lord. An’ how ’bout Them what overbuilds the foundation course can always put engines on their towers. Heh?’

  Satyrus hid a smile. ‘I’ll put it in the book, Jubal.’

  DAY TWENTY-EIGHT

  Satyrus woke to more aches and pains than even the day before – the siege was teaching him the rule of the second day, at least with bruises. He hurt.

  He rose anyway, and Charmides brought him a cup of sage tea, and another of warm juice, which he drank down and felt better. And then Korus insisted that he exercise, and then he ate – more food than he felt he needed.

  ‘You still need weight, lord,’ Korus said. ‘You’re better than you were – you may be the only man in this town gaining weight.’

  Miriam came up with a bowl of barley meal and coriander. The smell attracted him as much as the person carrying it, and he scraped the bowl clean before smiling at her. Then he went into his tent and emerged with another scraggly olive wreath.

  ‘From the marines,’ he said, and Apollodorus, just awake, came over and saluted her the way he would a man, an athlete or a hero.

  Miriam blushed – a remarkable blush that started somewhere near the top of her head and seemed to run down to her navel – but she never lost her composure. ‘Some of us are delighted with the opportunities for weight loss, Korus. My hips will be the better for it. Indeed, every single woman needs a siege: men, good company, opportunities for heroism and exercise.’ She took the bowls, smiled at Satyrus and walked back to her own tent and the pair of cooking fires burning behind it.

  Anaxagoras emerged from the open ground nearest the former Temple of Poseidon and took Satyrus’ oil bottle without asking, scooping it from Satyrus’ towel. He came and stood with Satyrus, using his expensive cedar oil liberally.

  ‘Is she not the very wonder of the world?’ he asked quietly.

  Satyrus grunted. ‘That’s my oil,’ he said.

  ‘Learn to share, is my advice, lord king,’ Anaxagoras said. From another man, the words might have been a calculated insult. Anaxagoras was too open for such petty things. ‘Have you kissed her?’

  ‘And you have?’ Satyrus asked, stung.

  Anaxagoras laughed.

  Men compete in many ways, and Satyrus was not so petty as to pass on this one. If Anaxagoras could be the cheerful athlete, why, so could he.

  ‘If you use my oil, we’ll smell the same,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘And?’ Anaxagoras paused.

  ‘Well, when she kisses you, she’ll assume it’s me. Starving poets don’t use cedar oil.’ Satyrus smiled with a confidence that was entirely artificial – like showing courage when the Argyraspides charged, sometimes a man has to make himself stand to the challenge.

  Anaxagoras sighed. ‘I haven’t kissed her.’

  ‘Nor I,’ agreed Satyrus. ‘Now give me my oil back. Before Abraham kills us both.’

  DAY TWENTY-NINE

  Another day of inaction – exercise, food, stinking corpses dug from the rubble and burned. Funeral games for Amyntas, and a dinner by the tents. Scattershot dropped by the engines on the walls killed a dozen citizen children playing with some goats, and killed all the goats.

  Towards evening, the storm that had threatened for a week suddenly began to manifest, and Miriam and Aspasia bustled around with other women arranging every unbroken vessel to catch water. The town had a dozen wells, but the constant rain of heavy rocks was damaging cisterns and dropping dirt and sand into well shafts.

  The sun sank, a bright red ball in dark grey clouds, and Leosthenes the priest claimed it was an omen. He demanded Satyrus’ attention.

  ‘Lord, it is a sign from the Golden Archer. I had a dream to accompany it, and I take it to mean that we should attack the mole.’ Leosthenes began a complex discourse on his dream and on the interpretation of dreams, and the importance of the dreams of a priest.

  Satyrus nodded and walked away, leaving the priest to tell his dream to an audience of marines and sailors. Leosthenes – and Apollo, for that matter – wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know, and he took Neiron with him to find Panther in the small square at the south end of the port, where they’d first landed, what seemed like ten years before.

  ‘Navarch,’ Satyrus said, to greet the older man.

  ‘My lord,’ Panther said, rising from a late supper of olives and bread. ‘A cup of wine for the king.’

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘I need my head clear. Panther, you’re the best sailor here – how long until that storm breaks?’

  Panther raised an eyebrow. ‘Three hours?’ he guessed, looking at Neiron as a gust of wind shot through his tent.

  Neiron nodded. ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘Two hours after dark,’ Satyrus said. ‘I’ve heard it said that Rhodians are the best sailors in the world, Panther. Care to put it to the test?’

  Panther shot to his feet. ‘Ares, Satyrus, you want to hit them tonight?’

  Satyrus shrugged. ‘Neiron usually calls me rash.’

  Neiron shook his head. ‘Not this time. Navarch, we think that if you give us one of the ships you’ve readied – well, we have the best armoured oarsmen in the town. Perhaps in the world,’ he said, with a piratical gleam. ‘We’ll land on the mole – right out of the storm.’

  Satyrus leaned over to explain as another gust hit the tent. ‘Even now, all those ships lashed to the mole have to cut their grapples and row away, or be dashed to pieces.’

  Neiron nodded. ‘Jubal saw it two days ago, but we couldn’t risk talking about it.’ The town now had desertions every day – so many slaves and mercenaries that there was no point in investigating the treason of the west gate.

  Panther nodded, and finished his wine in two gulps. ‘Let’s do it,’ he said.

  An unfamiliar ship, in total darkness.

  But he had the best one hundred and sixty rowers of Arete’s complement, and the best twenty marines of the whole combined force, and all of his own officers.

  In fact, the town was again risking everything in one throw. Menedemos commanded the largest trireme, and Panther the second largest: both intended to break the spiked boom protecting the engine-ships and throw fire pots into them. Satyrus saw to it that they had dozens of householders’ fire pots aboard.

  ‘The attack on the mole will, at least, even if we fail, provide a diversion,’ Satyrus said when they gathered the commanders.

  And the boule voted to take the risk. All the knucklebones in one helmet.

  It took an hour to get the men to their oars. They were in armour, with helmets and swords and spears which were lashed in piles on the main gangway – the trireme wasn’t a cataphract and lacked a main deck above the rowers.

  Outside the ship, the wind howled like the living embodiment of wind, and the stern of the ship crashed into the stone wharf again and again, even in the inner harbour of Rhodes. A stade away, across the harbour, the waves broke on the mole and arched up to the height of two men, even three, in the cool night air, and the wind brought the spume across the harbour.

  ‘Bastards on the mole ain’t too comfortable,’ Neiron said.

  ‘They’ll be awake,’ Satyrus said. ‘Take the helm, friend. I’ll go in with the marines.’ He had Draco with him. Apollodorus was ashore, at the sea gate opposite the mole, awaiting some signal that the attack was on the mole before he led a hundred picked men out into the dark and up the landward face – the piled rubble, old barrels and sacks of sand with which Demetrios’ men had built their temporary wall.

  ‘Cast off,’ Satyrus sa
id softly, and men sprang into action. Xiron, the new oar master – better known now as the right file in the phalanx, a hard drinker called the Centaur by his men – called the beat softly, beating time with a spear butt, and the oars dipped, held water and moved.

  Aphrodite’s Laughter sprang across the harbour. It took fewer than four strokes for the crew to remember their profession, and then the warship moved at ramming speed.

  Neiron had practised this route over and over, the last few hours, rehearsing how he would turn. His intention was to keep the ship hidden by the anchored ships in the inner harbour until the last possible second, and he’d talked them through it, every oarsman standing in the agora in torchlight, so that no man could say later he hadn’t known the route.

  Under the stern of a big grain freighter, and then a sudden turn to starboard, and another to port, and they were flying up a line of anchored hulks – a dozen once beautiful triemiolas now stripped to their decks, a wooden wall protecting the town, a screen. Only the most observant man on the mole might glimpse Aphrodite’s Laughter running up the line – almost as far as the harbour entrance.

  ‘Ready, all decks!’ Satyrus called. He risked a yell – everything depended on this one turn.

  The handful of oblivious men were slapped by their oar-mates. Men rose a little on their haunches, ready to back their oars.

  ‘Ready about!’ Satyrus called from amidships. The full weight of the sea wind caught them, but they’d planned for it, and the bow was already slipping south, just as they wanted it to—

  ‘Hard to starboard!’ Satyrus called, in case some laggard had forgotten the drill. ‘Port side reverse benches all aback starboard ahead full row – row – ROW!’

  Simultaneously, Jubal dropped a pair of heavy stones from the stern – stones roped by hawsers to the mainmast stanchions, so that the ship became a horizontal pendulum at the end of a pair of anchor ropes belayed amidships.