King of the Bosphorus t-4

by Christian Cameron

  'Here they come!' Gaweint roared, and shot his bow.

  Angered, Melitta glanced at Scopasis. His axe was in his hand, red to his elbow, and with it he tried to parry a lance-point that appeared out of the fog of her anger and slammed into the side of her head, twisting her helmet.

  Gryphon reared, punching with his hooves, and another blow rang on her back, and then she lashed out with her whip, the only weapon in her hand, and she felt it connect and then she was down, all the breath torn from her body, mouth full of bloody grass. She rolled over – blue sky – and her head rang with pain.

  Above her towered a man in a golden helmet, his lance cocked up overarm, and he rammed it down into her gut. The scale coat held the point, even though the blow made her puke and choke, and she managed to roll on her right elbow and pushed, not a thought in her head, pushed, and she was on her knees. She had her akinakes in her hand and she plunged it into the horse's guts and entrails blew out over her face and the horse bounded away. She kept the blade in her hand and ripped the animal from girth to cock, and it stumbled two leaping steps and collapsed, its last effort tearing the weapon from her grasp.

  The melee was all around her. She wiped her face, the bronze and silver scales of her hauberk ripping the ordure from her cheeks as she wrestled with her helmet. The chin strap was broken and the helmet was on sideways, which had saved her life from the last blow but now limited her vision too much. It came off and her braided hair fell free.

  Golden-helmet was on his feet, limping, and he had a sword and an axe.

  She threw her helmet at him – a last act of defiance. He was big, middle-aged, scarred under that magnificent helmet.

  'Upazan,' she said. He was much easier to hate up close.

  He hesitated on hearing his name. Then he smiled.

  Hands grabbed her under her arms, heedless of the scales of her armour coat, and suddenly she was being borne away through the press. Her knights closed in around her, and then she was on Gryphon.

  'Oh, my lady, I failed you,' Scopasis cried, and she thought his heart would burst before her, he looked so abject.

  'You're an idiot,' she said, and touched his cheek. 'You saved my life. Twice. Ten times.' She looked around – Gaweint was there, and she didn't see anyone missing. 'I'm alive. You're all alive. That was Upazan.'

  'Upazan!' Gaweint said, turning in the saddle. 'Uh! I am cursed! Upazan unhorsed, and we missed him?'

  'Hush,' Agreint said. 'He cannot be killed by sword or spear. It is prophesied!'

  A dozen young men competed to tell each other that they feared no prophecy.

  'Well, he can't be killed by a thrown helmet,' Melitta said. 'I tried that.' An hour later, Upazan tried to rush their retreat with a sudden charge across the last fields of the sea of grass. Instead of turning to fight, Ataelus's rearguard – Buirtevaert's men – made for the forest edge. Then a sudden shower of Sindi arrows fell like deadly hail on Upazan's knights, reaping their unarmoured horses. Ten went down in tumbling heaps and the charge swerved and became a flight.

  Ataelus grinned like the very image of death, but he forbade any warrior from a counter-charge.

  He turned to Melitta and Scopasis. They were the last three mounted warriors on the road. All around them, Temerix's Sindi were shooting from cover. Melitta could see Upazan in the setting sun, his helmet flaming gold – but he was falling back. He had only a thousand warriors – more joined him every second. He'd hoped to surprise Ataelus with a sudden charge, and instead, he'd been galled.

  'We could have had him,' Scopasis spat.

  Ataelus smiled and shook his head. 'Upazan is not for you,' he said without looking at the former outlaw. 'Many men, and not a few women, claim the right to kill him.' Ataelus watched the Sauromatae king retire with undisguised glee. He rode out on to the grass, and the last light of the sun turned his armour to fire.

  'Hah! Upazan, I feel your hate from here, and I laugh at you!' Ataelus called. 'You fight like a fool! Your women have more sense!'

  Arrows began to fall near Ataelus.

  Upazan sat alone, out of range, his golden helmet like a beacon, and he said nothing.

  'Or are all your women dead?' Ataelus yelled. 'Go home, usurper, or we will water the grass with your blood.'

  A man – a man in good armour, well mounted – reacted. He set his horse to a gallop and rode at Ataelus, his voice a scream of rage. He had a long-handled axe over his head, and his face, as he came close, was a mask of grief and rage.

  Temerix stepped out of the woods and shot him. It was a long shot, and a man less desperate would have seen the flight of the shaft.

  'That makes me happy,' Temerix's grim voice said.

  'This is not a war of revenge,' Melitta said.

  Temerix looked up at her. 'Yes,' he said. 'Yes it is. Revenge. They burned us, and we will bury them. Anything else is foolishness.'

  Ataelus rode his horse back under the trees. He shook his head. 'Not for revenge?' he asked. 'I heard that you swore an oath that made the hills ring. I heard it on the sea of grass. So it must have been quite an oath.'

  Melitta hung her head. 'I did. So did my brother.'

  'Lady, Upazan hunted us like animals. Our women and our children and our animals have been prey for his lance for many years.' Ataelus's eyes seemed to glow in the last light.

  'We killed their children,' Melitta said.

  'Yes!' Ataelus said. 'And now their hate will be a pure thing – a blind thing. Only blind with hate could Upazan be so foolish as to follow us down the Tanais.'

  Melitta took time to sleep. And when the images of the day came back again and again, she rose, collected a wineskin and drank it. She was scarcely the only warrior to behave so, and soon enough, she was asleep.

  PART IV

  TANAIS RIVER

  21

  NORTH EUXINE SEA

  Eumeles looked out over the morning waves and spat contemplatively into the dark waters.

  'Where did my little nemesis get so many ships?' he asked.

  None of the officers on the stern chose to answer him. Idomenes took a deep breath and said what was on his mind.

  'I warned you,' he said. Go ahead and kill me, you Cretan, Idomenes thought. I said it. I feel better. I hate him, Idomenes realized with a start.

  'Yes,' Eumeles said, looking at the rows of masts on the horizon. 'Yes, you did. Why is he keeping his ships in column?'

  Aulus, his admiral, bowed his head. 'He hides his strength. Until he deploys, we cannot count his ships. We're in formation – he can count ours.'

  'Then why are we in formation?' Eumeles asked with the impatient tone of the superior mind who must do all the thinking.

  Aulus kept his eyes on the deck. 'His rowers must be better trained, lord. I cannot trust mine to deploy so fast. You saw, lord.' The man was aggrieved. 'It took us an hour to form this line.'

  Eumeles continued to watch the oncoming fleet. 'I suppose it is fruitless for me to ask where he got these ships with their trained oarsmen. Ptolemy must have given him the whole fleet of Aegypt. I have been used as bait.' He shook his head. 'Never mind. If I survive, I'll work this out. What can we do? Half our ships are inside the Bay of Salmon, covering Nikephoros. Advise me.'

  The officers all looked at each other.

  Idomenes was in the remarkable position of actually having an answer – and yet, in his head, he'd changed sides. Murdering bastard wants to enslave his own farmers? Too dumb to live, Idomenes thought, but at the same time, he spoke good advice. Perhaps he was so used to being ignored, he didn't think his advice would be followed. He thought that it was strange how his head could be so divided.

  'Run,' Idomenes said.

  The naval officers all breathed together – relief, because he had stated what they all feared to say.

  Eumeles turned his head slowly, until his mad eyes rested on Idomenes. 'Go on,' he said.

  'Run to Nikephoros, combine the fleet and fight with the beach and our new fort at your back. With Nik
ephoros's men aboard as marines, you'll have an advantage.' Idomenes was shocked at his own temerity, but he kept right on. 'You may lose Pantecapaeum – for a week or a month.'

  Eumeles' pursed lips jerked as if he'd been struck. 'Pantecapaeum may already be lost,' he said. 'My not quite namesake and those treacherous curs from Olbia…'

  Idomenes shrugged. 'I doubt that the Olbians can take the city, lord. But I don't doubt that Nemesis can. Either way, when you combine your fleet, you can beat him. And then take it all back.'

  It occurred to Idomenes that he was giving bad counsel. The people of Pantecapaeum loathed Eumeles. He would never recover the city once it was lost. Even if he won a naval victory, he'd become a species of pirate.

  I could kill him, Idomenes thought, but he was not a killer.

  'Foolishness,' said old Gaius, one of their Italiot mercenaries. 'Fight now. Once you run, his men will be heartened. Fights like this are all heart, lord. None of it is skill. The harpists lie. Once his men have a taste of our fear, we're done.'

  And Idomenes could see that there was truth in that argument, too.

  'Even now, my ally Upazan must be in the vale of the Tanais, reaping the peasants like wheat and sowing fear among the barbarians,' Eumeles said. 'We lose nothing by retreat. At the Tanais, I'll have our new fort at my back, beaches packed with our men and Upazan to counter any landing ashore.' He nodded at Idomenes. 'I recognize that I have not always followed your advice. In this I will, and perhaps in future I will be slower to ignore you.'

  Idomenes couldn't hide the smile that crossed his face. And in his head, the god said, 'This is irony. And so hubris is punished.'

  *

  Satyrus watched his enemy's ships flee with something akin to despair.

  At first, they'd rowed backwards, attempting to lure him into a bad deployment. But Satyrus had signalled the Bull, and his columns had deployed like the unfolding of a cloak, and that had destroyed any lingering thoughts of resistance. It occurred to Satyrus that he might have trained his men too well.

  When it was clear that there would be no engagement, both sides raised sails and suddenly his squadron and the Rhodians had all the advantage – their masts stood all the time, and their rigging was up, so their sails went up like a cloud rising from the sea and suddenly the two flanks of his formation were shooting ahead, minus their borrowed Aegyptian ships and recent captures.

  Neiron ignored his rantings and continued on his course without raising sail, because the Golden Lotus was alone in the centre of the great crescent and if he raised sail he would be alone in her pursuit.

  'Don't be a tunny,' Neiron said. 'We've won. Let your boys play.'

  Eumeles lost eight ships in an hour – slower triremes, or those that usually beached to raise a mast. The Rhodians and Leon's ships – all the triemioliai – swept in like hawks among pigeons and took what they wanted.

  Satyrus wanted to be in the thick of the fighting, but he was not. And when night fell, his fleet beached, with his own squadron fully manned and sleeping on their oars out in the roadstead. Eumeles was an hour's row along the coast.

  At Diokles' suggestion, they rose with the morning star, launched in the dark and rowed as if for a prize – but Eumeles had done the same. They caught a store ship, slow off the beach, and Melitta's friend Idomeneus boarded the ship and then swam from it to the Lotus. He reported aboard dripping wet.

  'Full of wine,' he said cheerfully.

  'Sink him,' Neiron said, even as some sailors began to cheer. 'Shut up, you lot.'

  Satyrus looked at his helmsman. 'Sink him?'

  'Probably poisoned,' Neiron said. 'An old trick. We stop and get drunk…'

  Idomeneus shook his head. 'And people think Cretans are evil?' he said.

  They set fire to the wine ship and sailed on.

  *

  'He'll make his stand at the Cimmerian Bosporus,' Satyrus predicted.

  'He'll run till he finds the rest of his fleet. Where do you think they are?' Diokles asked Panther.

  Panther shrugged. 'I have to admit this is going better than I expected,' he said. 'But we're a long way from home, lad. That is, my lord. We need to get this over with.'

  Satyrus looked at Diokles. 'Why not make a stand at the Bosporus?' he asked. 'It's so narrow where the sea runs into the Bay of Salmon that his ships will form two lines and still have a reserve.'

  'And then we come with bigger, better crews and better marines, plough in bow to bow and eat him alive.' Diokles shook his head. 'We've got him, lord. And we'll get a little better every day. He's running – his rowers are afraid. And they don't try to keep formation as they run, so they're not practising anything but running.' Diokles poured wine on the sand. 'I speak no hubris. Unless the gods take a hand, he is ours.'

  Satyrus shook his head. 'How I wish you hadn't said that,' he said.

  The next day, Eumeles made no attempt to hold the straits that the Greeks called the Cimmerian Bosporus. And when the Golden Lotus appeared, leading the centre column, a swarm of small boats put off from the sandy beaches on either hand, local Maeotae fishermen at the helm.

  'Let a few aboard,' Satyrus called out. 'But don't take the way off the ship. We're going on. I don't want to let Eumeles out of my sight!'

  He heard the thump as a fishing boat came alongside, but he and Theron were stripped, wrestling falls in the deck area just in front of the helm, a sacrifice for Poseidon and Herakles of their strength and sweat. They were well matched – Theron's shoulders were still a finger broader, and Satyrus was now a touch faster – and every man off duty was gathered to watch, so that the Lotus was down a strake by the stern.

  They were locked on the deck, grappling, when Satyrus became aware of the silence. And it was clear that they were getting nowhere.

  'Break?' Satyrus grunted.

  Theron slapped the deck and they both rolled to their feet.

  'This is how you keep my flagship?' a familiar voice asked. 'Sporting events at sea?'

  And then Satyrus had his uncle Leon locked in an embrace. Behind him, Nihmu looked ten years younger, and Darius had a certain glow of satisfaction. Satyrus embraced each in turn.

  Darius wrinkled his nostrils at Satyrus's sweat. 'I've been a slave for a month, my dear,' he said. 'I only want to smell good things.'

  Theron laughed. 'You are too fastidious, Persian!'

  But Leon stepped in. 'I owe him my life – at least. By all the gods, Darius, I never thought it would be your face I saw! And you should see him with a sword!'

  Nihmu nodded. 'Kineas always said he was the best,' she put in.

  Satyrus picked up his discarded chiton and laughed. 'Now,' he said. 'Now I feel the favour of the gods.'

  In truth, Leon was shockingly thin, and he looked old. His hair was grizzled white and grey, and his sheath of muscle had vanished. His arms were like sticks.

  'You look like a young god,' Leon said.

  Satyrus bowed at the compliment. 'It is so good to have you back among us, Uncle,' he said.

  'I do not look like a young god, do I?' Leon shook his head. 'They didn't feed me for – some time. I wasn't tortured, but suddenly the treatment went from ransom captivity to something worse. Later I found out that Melitta had landed and raised the Sakje, and suddenly I was a liability.' He coughed into his hand.

  Darius put a hand on the Numidian's shoulder. 'We got to you as soon as we could organize,' he said.

  Satyrus shook his head. 'I feel guilt, Uncle. I left you at the battle, and then I left your rescue to others.'

  Leon smiled. 'Lad, you lived, and I lived, and now…' He grinned, and some of the wrinkles fell from his face. 'And now, we'll have our revenge.'

  The story of the rescue came out over two days – how Darius recruited Persian slaves inside the palace, then insinuated himself among them, armed a dozen, massacred the guards and opened the cells.

  'I suspect that some truly bad men are now free,' Darius said. 'I can't really bring myself to care. But I do have hal
f a dozen Persian gentlemen who have come with me, and would expect a reward.'

  'Can they ride?' Satyrus asked.

  'I did say they were Persians,' Darius said.

  'I'll take them,' Diodorus said, coming out of the darkness with a wineskin over his shoulder. 'Leon, you bastard, you made a lot of work for us!'

  Satyrus was one of them, but in a way, he was not. He sat with his knees drawn up to his chin, his back against Abraham's back, and he listened to them – Leon and Crax, Diodorus, Nihmu, Darius and all the men who had ridden with Kineas. He listened to them tell stories far into the night.

  Abraham laughed. 'Is this what we'll become?'

  Satyrus shook his head. 'Only if we're lucky,' he said.

  'Listen to them brag!' Abraham shot back. 'They sound like pirates!'

  Satyrus reached over and took the wine his friend was hoarding. 'Darius walked into Eumeles' palace and rescued Leon. Leon survived without food for a month. Nihmu found Darius disguised as a slave and then joined him. These people are larger than mere mortals, Abraham. They are like the men of former days, or so they have always seemed to me.'

  Abraham grunted. 'Like Philokles, then,' he said.

  Satyrus was silent for a while. 'Yes,' he said. 'They are all like Philokles.'

  'Makes you wonder what your father was like,' Abraham said.

  'Yes,' Satyrus said. 'Yes.'

  'I think I have a pretty good idea,' Abraham said. He took a breath and got up. 'Where do you think your father found these demi-gods?'

  Satyrus used his friend's hand to get to his feet. 'They find you,' he said. In the morning, Diodorus asked to land the horses. 'The Exiles can ride from here,' he said. 'Our horses will be fat and happy in three days. But if we sail another day, we'll have nothing but rotting horse meat.'

  All the Exiles nodded.

  Satyrus shrugged. 'Can you get to Tanais?'

  Diodorus scratched his head. 'I think I can puzzle it out,' he said.

  Crax laughed aloud.

  Diokles cut in. 'If we get under way immediately, we might yet catch him today. Wind's against us, now. Against Eumeles, too. So we row – and our rowers are better.'