Destroyer of Cities t-5

by Christian Cameron

  In the stern of Atlantae, a knot of enemy marines, shields over their heads in desperation, were lifting Demetrios the Golden off the deck where he lay as if dead, and passing him up the side of his great ship. Sailors and oarsmen cut at each other — Satyrus could no longer determine which side was winning, but the enemy marines were dying and they had clearly had enough, and even as he watched, the balance was changing. He was sure of it.

  ‘One more charge!’ He managed. He raised his borrowed sword, and Apollodorus lapped his shield onto Satyrus’.

  As a charge, it wasn’t much — they stumbled down the deck in a line, but Satyrus had read his opponents right. Their king was down and the archers were killing them and they had no way to reply. For some reason, all the archery from their own mighty ship had ceased. Satyrus’ short shield wall shoved the enemy into the helmsman’s station at the stern. One brave man stood his ground to cover the retreat of his comrades — and for a few long seconds he held Apollodorus and Satyrus both, his shield everywhere. He managed to slice Satyrus along the calf, and he got his spear point into Apollodorus’ shoulder and then Necho, in the second rank, knocked him flat with his butt-spike and the melee surged over him, but Demetrios was gone, and most of the rest of the enemy marines had escaped due to the superb bravery of one man.

  ‘Cut the grapples!’ Satyrus bellowed — or perhaps inside his head he bellowed, because what came out was between a groan and a squeak. But Apollodorus, untouched, heard him, and leaped for the side. Satyrus stayed with him, bludgeoning a wounded enemy sailor to the deck when he tried to resist the marine captain, and Satyrus got his shield up to cover Apollodorus against archery fire.

  Twice they moved to cut another hawser, each time sawing at the rope like children cutting string with dull knives, until the motion of the stricken Atlantae changed and they were free. Satyrus could not believe that they were alive — that they were afloat — that they weren’t taking the hideous damage of the immense line of war engines that hovered over their heads, a horse length away — ten engines on this side alone.

  But even as he raised his head from cutting the last grapple, he smelled the smoke. The enemy leviathan was pouring smoke like a wounded beast drips blood — smoke from the entry point forward and more smoke amidships, coming out of oar ports so that the whole incredible beast seemed to leak blood.

  ‘Pole her off!’ Satyrus croaked, and Apollodorus repeated the order. Satyrus stumbled from the ship’s side, pain forgotten in a surge of hope — real hope. He crossed the deck to the port side and got his hands on the rail. ‘Pass us a line and tow us clear!’ he called.

  ‘Get off that wreck!’ Neiron shouted back. ‘Abandon ship!’

  Satyrus felt the god in him, and he stood taller, towering over the pain in his back. ‘No! Get us a line and tow our stern clear!’

  The fire on the enemy ship was burning now, flames visible all along his side, and Satyrus saw a curious change in his own men, exhausted heroes from the fight — they panicked, as if fire was an enemy too dreadful to be faced — or perhaps, after such prolonged stress, they simply couldn’t endure another crisis. Men — brave men — broke away from the side, ran across the deck and cowered against the port-side bulkhead. A sailor dared the jump to the Arete and leaped, only to miss his grip, fall between the hulls and be crushed like an insect as the waves threw the two hulls together.

  If the flames get aboard- Satyrus caught the line that a sailor threw him and moved forward with it, belaying it on the stump of the foremast.

  ‘Come on, lads,’ he croaked. ‘Almost there. Don’t burn to death — no point. We’re going to live. Come on!’ he waved, and the two men closest to him trusted him — came away from the illusory safety of the bulkhead and joined him in fastening the tow rope.

  ‘Get the deck crew moving and get the foresail back up,’ Satyrus said. They both looked too wild-eyed to respond. Satyrus stumbled away; everything was a matter of heartbeats now.

  The tow rope began to straighten.

  Satyrus saw the marine, Necho, by the rail.

  ‘Necho! Stand up, man! Come and get these sailors to do their duty. Come on!’ Satyrus called. He slapped the man on the back, as one comrade to another — and Necho’s face cleared and his courage returned.

  ‘My lord?’ he said, as a man awakening from sleep.

  ‘Foremast up! And the sail cleared away so that it doesn’t catch fire!’ Satyrus called, as loud as his throat could manage, and Necho looked as if he understood. Then Satyrus went aft. He could feel the Atlantae leaning to port with the tow, and he knew she was moving — not fast, but her bow was coming off the enemy vessel.

  Apollodorus had never panicked. He and Laertes were in the stern, pushing at the enemy stern with spears, trying to pole off. The fire was so hot here that Satyrus knew another moment of terror — sparks were coming aboard, hissing into the pools of blood that lay like puddles after a rain shower where the fighting had been thickest.

  Other men had followed Satyrus, and they threw themselves against the spears and long poles, pushing with what strength they had left, and as one more sailor leaped to help them the stern moved, and suddenly they were sliding through the water, the bow curving off to port to follow Arete, and Satyrus felt life in his steering oars. The brave man — the one who had held them there at the very end — was lying across the steering oars, fouling them, and Satyrus got his feet and Apollodorus his head and they moved him a few feet, setting him down as gently as they could in unspoken respect for his heroism.

  Then Satyrus settled into the oars. ‘Laertes!’ he said, in what voice he had left. ‘Get the rowers to their stations — oars out.’

  ‘Aye, lord,’ Laertes answered. He had a cut on his brow and blood was running down his face.

  To Apollodorus, Satyrus said, ‘As soon as the rowers have way on us, cut the tow.’

  Apollodorus nodded. ‘You going to pass out?’ he asked.

  Satyrus managed a grim smile. ‘Not if I can help it. Now get to it. We’d look like idiots if some cruiser snapped us up now.’

  13

  The promised storm held off, the clouds towering from the horizon to the very peak of the heavens away to the south and west, so that a superstitious sailor might imagine that Zeus in his wrath was present, hovering over the sea. The sun reflected on the clouds and down on the darkening sea, a sheet of bronze over a sea of blood.

  Arete and Atlantae were not the only ships crewed by heroes — this was evidenced by the fact that the titanic enemy tenner had got her fires out, off to windward, and the column of smoke was carried away by the rising wind. Satyrus could imagine what it must have been like — the rowing decks an inferno, and a handful of brave men forcing themselves into the fire to pour helmets full of water on the flames. But the burning ship had covered their retreat, and the desperation of every Antigonid ship to come the aid of their stricken king had saved Ptolemy’s centre.

  Satyrus, leaning exhausted between the oars of his helm, had no need to count the Ptolemy fleet to see who had won. The result was obvious. Ptolemy’s fleet was badly gored — thirty or more ships lost in the action and the rest moving sluggishly, running downwind towards Aegypt, abandoning their camp.

  The worst of it was that Demetrios and Plistias were so relatively unhurt that their lighter ships were mounting a pursuit. As the storm clouds piled up to the west and the sun set in wrath and thunder, the squadron of penteres — every ship the size and weight of Arete — that had spent the day inactive, facing down Menelaeus and his sixty inactive ships, now came on, rowing powerfully in the fading light, determined to capture a dozen more of Ptolemy’s limping triremes. And from Plistias’ centre emerged another two dozen triremes, equally eager to continue the contest.

  Most of Ptolemy’s ships had left all their masts and sails ashore, and now they ran downwind under the power of their exhausted oarsmen. They were slow. Only darkness would save them.

  Arete and Atlantae had their foresails up, and were
ten stades south and east of the rest of the retreating Ptolemy fleet, already safe by the inexorable mathematics of the sea. But in late afternoon, when the last sight of Cyprus was gone, the promontory now below the horizon, and when the storm clouds were beginning to look like something supernatural to the west, Arete’s lookout saw sails to the east and his shouts alerted Laertes, amidships on Atlantae, and he ran aft to Satyrus, who was dozing at his oars.

  ‘Sails to the east,’ he said.

  Satyrus had trouble focusing. Every part of him hurt — and from where he was slouched between the oars, he could see the marines, or at least the dozen survivors, crouched in attitudes that expressed the same weariness and pain.

  ‘I can take the helm,’ Laertes said.

  ‘Have you ever done so?’ Satyrus asked.

  Laertes shook his head. ‘No, lord.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘Sail’s drawing well. Rowers are resting. All you have to do is go straight. I’m willing to give you a try, if you’ll take the responsibility.’

  Laertes managed a smile. ‘I would be proud to try, lord.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘Put your hands on the oars. Now you say, “I have the helm”.’

  ‘I have the helm,’ Laertes said.

  ‘You have the helm,’ Satyrus said, and slipped under the man’s arms from between the shafts and Laertes passed him, clumsy in his eagerness to do it right. The ship seemed to skip, the stern moving the length of a man’s arm to port as Laertes tried to balance the two shafts, and then he got the pressure right — right enough — and the ship steadied on his course.

  Satyrus walked to the port-side rail and watched the basket suspended from the Arete’s foremast. Neiron was standing at the foot of the mast, and the men in the basket were gesturing and speaking.

  ‘They don’t looked panicked,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘I don’t have the strength to panic,’ Apollodorus said. ‘Lord — it’s a pity that we lost, because that was our best fight.’

  Satyrus sketched a smile. ‘Your men were like gods.’

  Apollodorus nodded, and Satyrus saw that tears were flowing down his face, although he didn’t sob — his expression didn’t even change. ‘Eight dead already, and three who probably won’t make it.’

  ‘And Stesagoras,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘Yes.’ Apollodorus hung his head. Satyrus realised that the smaller man with his arrogant posturing and his endless energy — his annoying superiority, his fighting skills, his near perfection and his apparent contempt for his men and all those about him — was weeping inconsolably.

  Satyrus put his arms around the marine captain. ‘Sometimes it’s worthwhile to remember that we’re alive,’ Satyrus said. ‘I was sure I was dead there — twice, I think.’ He found that he was crying, too. ‘I think that — that — that I may work a little harder on being alive. And the men that died — Zeus Sator, Apollodorus, a least we can look to see that they died for something.’

  ‘For the King of Aegypt?’ Apollodorus asked, his voice raw. ‘For glory?’

  ‘No idea,’ Satyrus said. He took a deep breath. Men were cheering on the other deck, and pointing east. ‘No idea. But we should find something, before we’re dead ourselves.’ He was rambling. Apollodorus didn’t seem to mind. The smaller man stood straighter.

  ‘I’m all right. Sorry, lord. Sorry. Poseidon, I didn’t know I had such weakness in me.’ Apollodorus stumbled away, caught himself on the rail and threw up into the sea.

  Satyrus walked back to the helmsman’s station, found his own canteen under the bench and poured a horn cup of wine. He looked at Laertes, who was focused on his task with heroic intensity, his whole being urging the ship to stay on course. Laertes flicked a glance at him and tried to smile. ‘Doing my best,’ he said.

  ‘Notch in your wake,’ Satyrus said. It made him smile, despite everything. ‘When you looked at me, you let up on your port oar.’

  He turned and walked back to Apollodorus. ‘Wine?’ he asked.

  Apollodorus raised his head, and his eyes were clearer. ‘Thanks.’ He drank the whole cup off. His head came up; something had caught his eye. ‘You there!’ he shouted past Satyrus’ head. ‘What in Hades do you think you’re doing, Stilicho?’

  Neiron was waving from the other deck, and Satyrus leaned out over the rail to hear. All he caught was Diokles. But when he looked again, he understood.

  Marathon was coming on from the east, under foresail and mainsail and oars, with Troy and Oinoe and half a dozen other ships in line astern. Even Satyrus could see that the third ship in line was their capture from the beach on the Asian shore, the beautiful long, low trireme of Phoenician design.

  ‘Well,’ Satyrus said. There was no one near him except the marine, Necho. Necho was younger than he had expected, and with his helmet off he didn’t look like a veteran at all. In fact, he looked pathetically young. He had two black eyes from some blow that had rocked his helmet into his forehead, and he looked terrible. Terrible, but alive, and his eyes glittered as they met Satyrus’.

  ‘Lord?’ he asked.

  ‘Well,’ Satyrus said. ‘I think we’re going to live.’

  Night, and the swell was rising, and Satyrus feared for the remnants of Ptolemy’s fleet, last seen strung out over thirty stades of water and with the enemy in sight to the north. Ptolemy’s bodyguard had hung together, managed somehow to rig foresails to rest their oarsmen and the big ships, who could better endure the coming weather, began to pull away to the south.

  In the last light, Satyrus went below on Atlantae, passing along the oar benches, talking to a rower here and another there. ‘We lived,’ was the burden of what he had to say, and they were glad to hear it.

  ‘You men don’t know me,’ he said. ‘I’m Satyrus of the Euxine, and at least for the moment, you’re my men. I’ll see you paid and fed, and no man on this ship will be a slave as long as you keep slavery away by pulling your oars. Any of you who want to leave this ship may do so — once we reach Alexandria. Until then, I need you to row!’

  He didn’t get much of a cheer, but it hadn’t been much of a speech, and he felt that, on balance, they were content enough — alive and free were powerful feelings — but he also felt that Stesagoras might have taken all the real leaders with him in his mad rush to glory. The rowers seemed remarkably unspirited. They needed reinforcements, officers, lead rowers, and his handful of utterly spent marines and sailors were not up to the job — and neither was he.

  He went aboard Oinoe, all but falling to the deck from the rail, his legs no longer interested in supporting him, and Diokles and Helios caught him.

  But in return, dozens of deckhands, junior officers and oarsmen went aboard Atlantae. They winched across a spare foremast from Oinoe that was to be raised as a temporary mainmast, come the dawn.

  As darkness fell, all the Euxine ships lit oil lamps and placed them in bronze storm lanterns on their sterns. All the captains preferred communications to stealth. Under close-brailed foresails in the bows, with the oar ports closed and the thranites cleared off their benches because the lowest oar deck always leaked, with men already queued on the decks to straddle the side-pumps, the squadron stood south. Oinoe fell back at dark to the centre position.

  Satyrus tried to listen to Diokles, but he couldn’t. He fell asleep.

  He awoke to a red, red dawn. The sun was rising in the east, his bronze-bright light reflected oddly all around them.

  ‘You’re awake,’ Diokles said.

  Satyrus was no longer in his armour — he was wearing a frowzy wool chiton over a heavy linen bandage that was wrapped around his middle, over and over so that he couldn’t bend at the waist, and even as he thought about his back, pain bloomed there.

  ‘So,’ Satyrus grunted. His mouth felt as if someone had painted it with rust.

  ‘You smell like blood. We let you out of our sight for a few days, and you go and try to get killed. Just as I said!’ Diokles shook his head.

  Helios was washing his feet and
legs. They were covered in dried blood. ‘I was afraid to wake you,’ he said. ‘Lord.’

  Satyrus shook him off — kicked him off, more precisely — rose to his feet with heavy effort and went to the downwind rail. He hiked his chiton and pissed downwind — and felt his heart stop as he pissed red, red blood.

  ‘Oh, Apollo,’ Satyrus said weakly. His kidneys hurt like fire by the time he was finished, and the stream was as red at the end as at the start, and Satyrus felt weak.

  ‘I had a master who beat me with a stick,’ Helios said quietly. ‘I always pissed blood after he beat me.’

  Satyrus lay down on the sheepskins they’d piled up for him. He was cold, and Helios put a cloak over him. He felt better for Helios’ words. ‘I didn’t know. I’ve never pissed blood before — well, once after a fight in the palaestra, but not — not so much.’ He grunted.

  ‘You’ll heal,’ Helios said gently.

  Satyrus went back to sleep, even as the wind’s note in the stays rose an octave.

  ‘We need to beach,’ Diokles said, somewhere off in a dream of riding on a winged monster. Satyrus struggled to the surface of the dream like a man pulled under by a breaking wave on a beach, and he managed to get his head above the nightmare to get his eyes open. The light was the same as it had been before.

  ‘I guess I didn’t sleep,’ he said to Helios, before he realised that the boy was asleep himself.

  Diokles smiled. ‘You slept all day, lord. Now the sun — such as it is — is setting. And the wind is rising, and we’re in the middle of nowhere.’ He shook his head. ‘Wind is veering right round — into our faces, and the sails all have to come down, and there’s sand in the wind off of Africa. Bad night ahead.’