Funeral Games t-3

by Christian Cameron

  Satyrus rolled to his feet with the ease of practice and followed his sister down the dark corridor and out across the courtyard between the two houses. He could sleep-walk the route to Philokles’ rooms.

  Carlus took up the whole of Philokles’ oversized sleeping couch and still his lower legs dangled off the end.

  ‘I must have sent a dozen of them to hell,’ he said in his thick accent. ‘And they broke, but there were more, and more. Fifty.’ The big Keltoi shook his head weakly. ‘Zeus Soter, I was afraid, and then – they left me. Gone, like a herd of deer running in the woods.’

  ‘They weren’t paid enough to go chest to chest with you, Titan,’ Philokles said. ‘If it makes you feel better, I think we’ll be going into those neighbourhoods you wanted to clean. Soon.’

  ‘Uhh,’ the Keltoi grunted, and fell asleep.

  ‘Will he live?’ Satyrus asked.

  ‘Look at the muscle on that chest!’ Philokles said, shaking his head. ‘Yes – none of these dagger blows got through his muscle. Those were brave and desperate men, Satyrus. Contempt for your opponents is always a waste of time. Imagine facing Carlus in the dark. Two men got close enough to mark him. Imagine.’

  ‘He’s passed out,’ Melitta said.

  ‘Poppy – he’s so full of it he should bleed poppy juice,’ Philokles said. ‘So we all made it home. That makes me feel better – there was a moment in the dark when I thought we were all going down. Ares, I’m not as young as I used to be.’

  ‘I wish you were coming with us,’ Melitta said.

  ‘Me too,’ Satyrus said. He found that he was holding his sister’s hand.

  Philokles got up, wincing and favouring his left side. ‘Listen,’ he said, putting a hand on each of their shoulders. ‘Pythagoras teaches that there are four seasons to life as there are four seasons to the world – spring, when you are a child, and summer, in the full bloom of adulthood – then autumn, when a man reaches his full power and a woman’s beauty fades, and winter, when we age towards death. Yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ the twins chorused.

  ‘I pronounce that you have passed from spring into summer,’ Philokles said. ‘Melitta, you are a woman, and Satyrus, you are a man. What is the first lesson?’

  Together, the twins spoke, almost one voice. ‘To your friends do good, and to your enemies, harm.’

  ‘That is the lesson,’ Philokles said. ‘See that you live it.’

  It was still dark when they were rowed aboard the Golden Lotus, which had been brought around from the yard and stood just off the beach, her oarsmen keeping her steady against the predawn breeze. Melitta went up the side, and then Satyrus swung his leg over and dropped to the deck amidships.

  Peleus the Rhodian, Leon’s helmsman, stood with his legs apart, braced against the roll of the deck. ‘Welcome aboard, Navarch,’ he said. He put special emphasis on the word, but it wasn’t mockery – quite.

  ‘Peleus!’ Satyrus said. He clasped the older man’s arm, and his clasp was returned. He stepped back. ‘This is my sister, Melitta.’

  ‘Despoina,’ Peleus said, and turned his back on her, grasping Satyrus by the arm. ‘Let’s get the Lotus clear of the land, and then we’ll have time for girls and orders and all the crap that the land brings, eh? First time out in command? Feel any butterflies, boy?’

  ‘Yes!’ Satyrus admitted. He looked at Melitta, who had the look of a woman withholding judgment – Peleus’s comment hadn’t escaped her. He had to make Peleus, whose dislike of women at sea was legendary, accept his sister’s presence. He had to make his sister – well, toe the line.

  ‘Banish the butterflies,’ Peleus said. ‘Oars, there. Do ye hear me!’

  A chorus of affirmatives, and the Rhodian turned to Satyrus. ‘Ready for sea, sir,’ he said.

  Satyrus had been to sea since he was nine years old, but his heart was beating as if he was in mortal combat. He took a breath, and made his voice steady. ‘Carry on,’ he said, as if it was nothing to command a warship at sea.

  Like wings, the oars rose together and dipped, and suddenly they were in motion, as close to flying as Satyrus was ever likely to achieve.

  Two stades away across the port of Alexandria, a scarred man leaned on the rail of a trireme, head swathed in bandages, watching under his hands as the familiar shape of the Golden Lotus gathered way as the first fingers of dawn stretched across the sky.

  ‘There they are,’ said Iphicrates. ‘Kineas’s brats,’ he growled.

  The Latin, Lucius, shrugged. ‘Frankly, boss, I think the gods love ’em. I think we should just let ’em go and good riddance.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Stratokles said. ‘Despite which, I want you to find them at sea and kill them. It is probably better this way,’ he said after a moment’s hesitation. ‘Last night was too bloody and too obvious, and sooner or later, that fat parasite Gabines will know we did it.’

  ‘Fucking public service,’ Lucius said. ‘The sheer number of street thugs who died last night has got to make this city a better place to live.’ He laughed.

  Iphicrates shook his head. ‘We should have had them last night. And Diodorus and fucking Leon into the bargain.’

  ‘They were on to us from the start of the evening, gentlemen,’ Stratokles said. ‘I don’t like losing a contest any more than the next man, but it is a pleasure to be up against men of worth. You’ll have to be on your toes, Iphicrates. Golden Lotus is the toughest ship in these waters, or so I’m told.’

  The scarred Athenian mercenary stretched and shook his head. ‘I’ve been fighting at sea since I was twelve, Stratokles. And I’ve taken a few Rhodians in my time, and they are never easy. But if I have a clean chance, I’ll take ’em. The new engines will give me an edge they can’t be ready for.’

  ‘Engines?’ Lucius asked. He had quite a bit of intellect, but most of it was reserved for war.

  ‘Like big bows, with ratchets to hold ’em cocked. Shoot a bolt the size of a sarissa. Goes right through a trireme’s hull.’

  ‘Despite which,’ Stratokles added, ‘your first duty to me is information. I need to know what One-Eye is up to on the coast of Syria – and Cyprus. And what Rhodos is doing. Golden Lotus is bound for Rhodos. Need I say more?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Iphicrates said.

  ‘Go get them then,’ Stratokles said, and slapped the mercenary on the back. ‘I’ll take care of business here. I’ve fomented a fair amount of treason,’ he said. ‘Macedonians are the most perfidious race on the face of Gaia. And they call Greeks treacherous.’ He laughed. Then he turned back to Iphicrates and put a hand on his arm. ‘Don’t loiter out there. I know you have piracy in your blood, but I need your reports – and I need to know I have a way out of here. When Gabines starts to follow up on the tags I’ve left – I can’t help it! He’s going to be after me like a pig on slops. And Leon will strike back after last night – count on it.’

  ‘Hurry out, take the Lotus, check Rhodos and Syria, hurry back. Anything else?’ Iphicrates shook his head. ‘Tall order and no mistake.’

  ‘That’s why I’m sending the best,’ Stratokles said.

  17

  T wo hundred miles north-north-east of Alexandria, and the helmsman, Peleus, had made a perfect landfall at Salamis of Cyprus, the island’s beaches just a heat shimmer while the headland temple to Aphrodite Lophos shone in the sun.

  ‘Peleus, you are the very prince of navigators,’ Satyrus said. He had the steering oar under his arm.

  Peleus was not looking ahead at all, but watching the wake. The Golden Lotus was a triemiolia, a three-and-a-half-er that carried an extra half bank of oars and a permanent sail deck and the crew to manage her sails even in a fight. Pirates loved the smaller version, the hemiolia and so did the Rhodians, the best sailors in the world. Golden Lotus was Rhodian-built, and Peleus was Rhodian-born, a seaman from the age of six. His current age was unknown, but his beard was white and every sailor in Alexandria treated him with respect.

  ‘When you talk, there
’s a notch in the wake,’ the helmsman said.

  With the grim determination of youth, Satyrus gripped the steering oar.

  ‘Never had a boy your age train to be a helmsman,’ Peleus said. But he had half a smile when he said it, and the curl of his lips suggested that maybe – just maybe – Satyrus was the exception. ‘If I tell you to steer north by east, what’s the first headland you’ll see?’

  Satyrus looked back at the wake. ‘Open sea until we see Mount Olympus of Cyprus rising on the port oar bank,’ he said.

  Peleus nodded. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘It’s the right answer. But what’s wrong with the order?’

  Satyrus hated questions like this. He stared out at the blinding white of the distant temple. ‘I don’t know,’ he said after a gut-wrenching interval.

  ‘That’s a fair-enough answer and no mistake,’ Peleus answered. ‘It’s true, boy – you don’t know, and you can’t. Here’s the answer – we’re too far in with the land to keep the sea breeze, so our lads would have to row every inch of the way.’ He was watching the land. ‘I aim to make for Thronoi for the night – the beach there is soft white sand and the villagers will bring us food for a little cash. I used to have a boy there.’ He gave a smile that creased the long scar down his face.

  ‘What happened?’ Satyrus asked. He was in love, and so wanted to hear about the loves of others.

  ‘He grew up and got married to some girl,’ Peleus said gruffly. ‘Mind your helm, boy. There’s a notch in the wake.’ He looked behind him, across the water and almost straight into the sun. ‘We have companions. ’

  Satyrus looked back until he saw the dark smudges, right on the edge of the horizon and almost invisible in the sun dazzle. ‘I see them,’ he said.

  Peleus grunted.

  Thronoi stood well back from the sea – no unwalled village could afford to be too close to the water – and the first men to approach carried spears and javelins, but they knew Golden Lotus and they knew Peleus, and before the sun became a red ball in the west, the crew was cooking goats and lobsters on the beach, drinking local wine and discussing their chances with the navarch’s beautiful sister, who excited comment even wrapped from head to toe in a chlamys big enough for Philokles. She had pleaded to be allowed to ship as an archer, but Peleus had put his foot down, and she was merely a Greek lady of means with her maid. The oarsmen couldn’t see her as anything but a beautiful mascot. They competed for her glance, and Peleus had told Satyrus that he’d never seen such powerful rowing in all his days at sea.

  ‘Every ship needs a beautiful woman,’ Peleus allowed, standing at Satyrus’s elbow. Like every other man on the beach, he was watching Melitta. She was standing apart, watching some archers shoot at a mark. Satyrus knew she had her bow in her baggage, and he also knew she could outshoot most of these men. Her posture was defiant. Her maid stood behind her, muttering. Dorcus was the middle-aged free-woman Leon had sent in place of Kallista, whose sea-sickness was as legendary as her beauty. Dorcus’s beauty lay in her practical application of the back of her hand.

  ‘That friend of yours is going to break his face staring at her,’ Peleus said, pointing at Xeno. Coenus’s son was stripping off his cuirass, but his eyes were on Melitta.

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘What do I do?’ he asked.

  Peleus pursed his lips. ‘She’s Artemis’s avatar, boy,’ Peleus said with a pious glance towards the temple of Artemis’s heavenly rival, Aphrodite. ‘Nothing you can do but hope that she doesn’t tear anyone apart.’

  They slept in watches. They did everything in watches, because all the major states hired pirates to pad out their navies, and piracy was the biggest business in the Aegean that summer. Satyrus slept alone, because he was the navarch, technically in command, with a tent of his own. Melitta slept on the other side of the tent with Dorcus.

  He awoke with the sun, noted that his sister was absent from her bed, cursed the stiffness in his shoulders from sleeping on sand and threw himself into the ocean as the sun rose and swam down the beach and back. From the water he couldn’t see the sentries, but he could see his sister swimming on the other side of the headland.

  ‘I thought I saw the flash of oars,’ she called out to him.

  Naked, he climbed out of the water and climbed the cool rocks of the headland to the sentry post.

  Both of the sentries were sound asleep. It was understandable, as they’d had three days at sea and too much rowing, but it was unforgivable too. Dawn was the time that pirates attacked.

  Satyrus looked off into the rising sun with his hand up to shade his eyes while he was still considering how to waken the two offenders. He saw the flash of low sun on oar blades to the north beyond the headland at Korkish. Twenty stades at the most.

  His heart rate surged.

  ‘Alarm!’ he called. Melitta took up the cry and ran down the line of sleeping oarsmen, ignoring her own nudity to kick each man and shrill the alarm as she ran. ‘Alarm!’

  Peleus was out of his sheepskins and bounding up the rocks like a much younger man. Satyrus watched the distant flash of oars – afraid that he had it wrong, and equally afraid that he was correct.

  The beach was full of movement. This was a veteran, and well-paid, crew. The oars were already going back aboard. The marines were forming on the beach, led by their captain, Karpos. He watched Melitta run by with an appreciative glance while checking his men’s readiness. Xeno stood in the front rank, his aspis on his shoulder and a pair of heavy javelins in his hand.

  Behind the marines, the archers formed. There were only half a dozen of them, with Scythian bows and quivers that held two dozen arrows and some surprises, as well.

  Peleus kicked one of the half-asleep sentries in the crotch. ‘Fear the evening, Agathon!’ he spat at the other one. ‘I’ll have the hide off you, you whore’s cunt-washing.’ He looked under his hand and turned back. ‘Dead right, boy. Coming out of the eye of the wind at dawn – no honest sailorman would do such a thing.’ He looked at the beach. ‘Fight or run?’

  Satyrus wasn’t sure his opinion was even being asked, but curiosity got the better of him. ‘Surely we could just wait for them on the beach. The men of the town would stand with us.’

  Peleus nodded. ‘Yes – but we’d lose the Lotus. If we were lucky they’d just beak her and leave her to sink. More likely they’d board her over the bow and row her away. Hard to hold a boat on a beach. Not impossible.’ He shrugged. ‘Thanks to you, we’ve got the jump on ’em. I think we should run.’

  ‘Run?’ Satyrus asked. ‘Can’t we take them?’

  Peleus curled the corners of his lips down. ‘Listen, Navarch – this is your call. Your uncle put you in charge of the Lotus and that makes it your decision. But we’re merchants. We have a full cargo and your sister, too. And fighting pirates is soldiers’ work.’ The old helmsman pointed at the beach. ‘How many of them are you ready to lose so that you can have a hack at some pirates? And what happens to your sister if we lose?’ The man frowned. ‘Or you, for that matter.’

  ‘Point taken, helmsman. We’ll run.’ Was it cowardice that Satyrus felt better already?

  ‘Good lad. You may yet make a sailor.’ Peleus sprang off the rocks like a man in his prime and started bellowing at the oarsmen.

  Xenophon already had his armour on, and Melitta had her gorytos out of her deck baggage and an Aegyptian corslet of white quilted linen and a small Pylos helmet on her hair. ‘Pirates?’ she asked, her eyes gleaming.

  ‘Put that away!’ Satyrus said.

  Xenophon’s grin was just the same. ‘Let her fight!’ he said from the ranks. ‘She’s a better shot than Timoleon!’

  ‘We’re running,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘We’re what?’ Melitta asked. ‘Are you joking?’ She went from elated to angry in a heartbeat.

  ‘Running.’ Satyrus shrugged. ‘We’re merchants, Lita. We’re running. ’

  He hated the looks on his sister’s face and on Xenophon’s.

  ‘This is Amastri
s’s noble warrior?’ Melitta asked him. ‘How will you tell this story to her? Eh, brother?’

  ‘Lita, mind your manners.’ Satyrus turned away, because Peleus was calling to him.

  Melitta wouldn’t let up. She followed him down the beach. ‘Peleus told you that you couldn’t risk me, right? Fuck that, brother. Let’s get ’em! Think about the ones they’ve sold into slavery – think about whoever they catch tomorrow – all on our heads.’ She glared at him. ‘You’re afraid I’ll be raped? Fuck that. You’re as pretty as I am.’

  ‘No!’ Satyrus said, a little too loudly.

  ‘Are you afraid, brother?’ she shot back, and she said it so loud that every man left on the beach could hear her.

  ‘Fuck off, sister. We’re running!’ Satyrus was up the plank in three long strides.

  Peleus pulled Melitta up behind him and then kept her hand pinned in his. ‘If you were a man, I’d beat your fucking head against the steering post,’ he said. His face was red. ‘Dare to question the officers?’ he asked with murderous quiet.

  Angry men did not intimidate Melitta. ‘Only when they make bad decisions, Peleus. Those are pirates. We should kill them.’

  ‘You may yet get your wish,’ Peleus said. ‘If you want to impress me, you’re going about it the wrong way, girl. Now get to your station. Not with the archers, missy!’ She went sullenly to the amidships awning with Dorcus, glaring at every man in sight.

  ‘You should discipline her,’ Peleus said.

  ‘You first,’ Satyrus said, and drew a quick half-smile. And then the half-deckers and the sailing crew were pushing on the stern and the Lotus hissed down the last of the shingle and her stern bumped the beach again, causing a little restrained chaos among the rowers for two strokes, and then they were clear of the beach, and Lotus’s bow was cutting the breakers, the bow-ram showing copper-red on the rise in the red morning sun.

  ‘Left one of the cauldrons’ the sailing master said, pointing at the beach.

  ‘We’ll get it next time. If we live. Poseidon, stand with us,’ Peleus said, and he tipped a phiale of red wine into the sea.