Destroyer of Cities t-5

by Christian Cameron

  ‘Korus!’ Charmides called out into the silence, and then blushed. He clearly hadn’t meant to be heard.

  ‘How’s the leg?’ The trainer asked.

  ‘The better for your work. I’d like to do more. Do you have time?’ he asked.

  Satyrus smiled. ‘I seem to own all of his time, Charmides. But if you’ll share, I will.’

  ‘He’s wonderful,’ Charmides proclaimed with the enthusiasm of youth. ‘Saved the muscle of my leg after the wound.’

  ‘He’s certainly effective,’ Satyrus said. ‘Gentlemen, allow me to call you to order. Ship states — Neiron?’

  Neiron had a wax slate in his hands. ‘I could have given you all this,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sure you could — I’m sure you are an excellent navarch. I want to do it this way. Humour me.’

  Neiron exhaled strongly. ‘Arete is in most respects ready for sea. We’re twenty-four oarsmen short. Full load of water in the jars, full load of oil. Can’t say the Rhodians haven’t been gracious. Bolts for the artillery. I’d like to make up the oarsmen and the deck crew, and you know as well as I that we’re very short on officers.’

  Satyrus nodded. He went around the room. ‘Daedelus? You with us?’

  The mercenary smiled. ‘You paying?’ he asked. Satyrus grimaced. ‘Yes.’

  Daedelus nodded. ‘Then I’m yours.’

  In general, their reports were the same — they’d had the winter to refit, at least before the blockade tightened, and aside from manning, all of them were fully supplied, fully armed — in most cases, in better shape than when they’d left the Euxine almost a year before.

  ‘Apollodorus, how many marines do we have?’ Satyrus asked.

  Apollodorus indicated Draco, who stood. ‘One hundred and fifty-eight of our own, lord. Lord Daedelus had been kind enough to train his men with ours this winter — another thirty-eight. Given the rumours of the coming siege, and the town offering, we’ve acquired a great deal of new armour, and have practised fighting in it — leg armour, bronze-plate cuirasses. And lots of practice on the engines.’ He nodded. ‘With the officers in armour, I can put two hundred armoured men on the walls.’

  ‘What’s the garrison?’ Satyrus asked. ‘How many hoplites can the citizens provide?’

  Apollodorus winced and looked at Abraham.

  Abraham shrugged expansively. ‘Fewer than six thousand, with every metic and every thetes in the town armoured and standing on the wall. The town is offering many of us citizenship — I’ve accepted. Memnon and Panther are asking the boule to free the able-bodied slaves, arm them and make them hoplites.’

  Satyrus nodded. Other cities did the same. The casualties would open huge holes in the male population. ‘And?’ he asked.

  Abraham made a face. ‘Things aren’t bad enough yet. The oligarchs believe we’ll negotiate a settlement — they don’t want to make unnecessary changes.’ Abraham all but spat as he said the words.

  Apollodorus shook his head. ‘We’re fucking doomed,’ he said.

  Daedelus smiled. ‘Can I withdraw from our contract, lord? We haven’t been paid yet.’

  Xiphos rose to his feet. ‘Fuck that. Lord — I’m your man, hilt and blade. But we have five. . six good ships. Give us a dark night and a fair wind and we’re gone, and none of Demetrios’ lubberly captains can stop us. Why die here, like a fox trapped in her earth? Let’s get back to Tanais — to Olbia.’

  Satyrus looked around. Sandakes kept his council — he was an aristocrat born and bred, and he had the training to keep his thoughts hidden — but it was plain that he agreed. Neiron looked away. Draco grinned and looked at his lover, Amyntas. Amyntas shrugged.

  ‘Famous fight,’ Amyntas said. ‘Men say it’s the biggest siege since Troy.’ He grinned at Draco — an impudent, boyish grin that looked odd on a fifty-year-old man. ‘I’d like the glory — one more time.’

  ‘You’re mad,’ Draco said. ‘Sieges aren’t glorious — it’s all dirt and dust and choking smoke and disease.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘Let’s put the discussion on cutting and running on hold,’ he said. ‘I’m not against discussing it, but I want all the news first. I’ve missed five months of my life — I didn’t even realise that half of you were here. Abraham — you’re the merchant prince. You collect news. How strong is Demetrios? And what of the rest of the world — Athens? Tanais? Alexandria?’

  Abraham gestured and Miriam entered, dressed beautifully in the Greek fashion, her long legs barely covered by transparent wool. Behind her were twenty slaves, paired males and females, with platters of barley bread, spiced chicken in the African manner and wine — quite a bit of wine. She stood among them, moving from couch to couch, making every man feel at home. Satyrus noticed how Amyntas, who disliked women as a matter of manliness, smiled at a joke she was telling him. Draco had a rough chivalry that she employed to shift a table. Xiphos she disarmed — Satyrus couldn’t see what she said, but the brutal fighter grinned like a boy and blushed. Anaxagoras rose to help her, stood by her elbow as she gave the slaves orders like a general, and then went to a corner of the room to sit in a chair and take up his kithara. Then she went and sat by him, almost at his feet, and Satyrus suddenly saw that they were close — quite close. The way they sat showed a long intimacy — of course, they were both musicians, and they had been together five months.

  He was overcome with unaccustomed jealousy — a feeling he scarcely recognised and immediately loathed. Anaxagoras was a gentleman of means, an honourable man, unwed, a legitimate match for the sister of a citizen of Alexandria and Rhodes, a rich man with twenty ships.

  They began to play, and the sound of music changed the gathering. Xiphos might have made a comment — he spurned what he called the ‘fake graces’ of the gentlemen captains — but Miriam had disarmed him already, and instead he listened, caught in the web the two instruments spun, and he was not alone. Daedelus played — Satyrus remembered it from beaches across the Ionian sea — and his fingers moved in sympathy, as if he desired to play himself, and certainly Sandakes felt the same.

  They drank wine, ate their spiced chicken and their barley rolls, and the music died away to laughter and applause.

  ‘Soon enough we’ll have neither barley nor chicken,’ Neiron said.

  ‘You are the very life of the party, aren’t you, Neiron,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘I think-’ Neiron began.

  ‘Shut up,’ Satyrus said. He was human enough to allow the bile created by his jealousy to flow out over Neiron, and he regretted it, but on another level, the man had it coming. ‘Either you are one of my captains, or you are not. I am absolutely sure you did a fine job commanding in my absence. You think me ungrateful? You do me another disservice. I am not. But by the gods, Neiron, I made the decision I had to make — as I have in the past. I am deeply sorry men died. Men I loved. Dionysus!’ For a moment, Satyrus choked on his emotion and he was ashamed of the outburst, but hardly anyone was listening except Neiron, who looked as if he’d been struck by lightning, white-faced on his couch, and Miriam, who happened to be pouring him wine. ‘Zeus Sator! Herakles, my ancestor — you think I am careless? I am not. But now I am in command. These men — and this town — need heart. Soul. Passion. Belief. Not carping and short answers.’

  Neiron stirred — and Miriam vanished, fully aware she should not have heard any of this.

  ‘I think that you were wrong to take us to sea in the second storm,’ he said. But then he shook his head. ‘But you are king, not I. I apologise for my attitude, lord.’

  Satyrus took a deep breath. ‘Thank the gods, Neiron. I couldn’t win here without you. But I need you willing, and not doubting my every thought because I’m rash.’

  Satyrus smiled at the other men — they’d mostly noticed that something was happening, but Anaxagoras had intercepted their stares with a bawdy story that made Miriam blush as she arranged her slaves, and caused Aristos to roar and shake with laughter.

  ‘Finish up,’ Satyrus said.
‘We need to hear from Abraham.’

  The men settled down. The double file of slaves swept in again, collected everything — down to the last crumb — with an efficiency that bespoke good training and some elan, rare in slaves, and swept out again.

  Abraham cleared his throat. ‘You play beautifully, Anaxagoras. I have seldom heard the like.’

  Other men joined him in praise.

  The musician bowed. ‘All praise is sweet. Your sister has a unique talent — few women are so accomplished.’

  ‘Few receive the training. My father said it was the best way to shut her up. She has quite a mind.’ Abraham smiled, and Anaxagoras smiled back.

  It is all arranged, Satyrus thought. I should be pleased. Why am I not pleased?

  ‘At any rate,’ Abraham went on, ‘let us look at the world.’ He went to stand alone in the centre of the circle of couches. ‘Of Tanais, Pantecapaeaum and Olbia I know little — but the little I hear is not bad. Your sister is not returned to Tanais — not yet returned from her journey east. So much I heard from Leon’s factor in Alexandria.’ He glanced around and shrugged. ‘This news is no better. Dionysus of Heraklea is dead — he died just four weeks ago.’ That got everyone’s attention: small news in the big world, but mighty news for the men from the Euxine. ‘Amastris is now queen.’

  Satyrus felt a qualm. ‘And I am here.’

  ‘So you are,’ Abraham said. ‘Amastris has sent five ships to support Demetrios.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘She has to. Her father had a treaty.’

  Abraham raised an eyebrow and moved on. ‘Ptolemy is alive. He retains control of Aegypt. I had a bird today from the mainland — and may the messenger still be alive who sent it. Ptolemy is preparing an armament, to come here. And Leon is alive, and at Alexandria.’

  ‘Praise the gods,’ Satyrus said, and many of the officers echoed him.

  ‘I only received as much news as would fit on a piece of papyrus as small as Miriam’s hand,’ Abraham said. ‘But it is less bad than it might have been. If we can hold — even for a few months — Ptolemy will come.’

  ‘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 i
nto 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, right along the beach.