Funeral Games t-3

by Christian Cameron

  Satyrus returned the bow. ‘Everyone is someone’s barbarian idolater,’ he said. ‘And thanks for the qua-veh.’

  ‘I shall send a bag to your house. Have a care of my son. He’s the best of the lot.’ Ben Zion bowed again.

  Abraham coloured as they went out of the gate, accompanied by Satyrus’s worthless slave. Ten courtyards further down the avenue, Abraham peeled off his wool robe and flung it to the slave, now another bearded Hellene to outward appearance. ‘That’s the best thing my father has ever said of me,’ he said, in wonder.

  ‘I liked him!’ Satyrus said.

  ‘You stood up to him. He likes that – right up until religion enters the picture. Then he doesn’t like it. But you did well. And I’m sorry for Miriam. There’s nothing sluttish about her, but she’s starved for life the way a drowning man starves for air. She claims she’ll go and serve as a hetaira to escape my mother, and sometimes, in her naivety, I fear she will.’ Abraham looked around. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Cimon’s.’ Satyrus wondered if he could do several people a favour at once. ‘Would your father let Miriam see my sister?’

  Abraham raised an eyebrow. ‘Your sister is not exactly a byword for genteel behaviour,’ he said. ‘But she is the same age and she and Miriam would probably start their own phalanx together.’ He nodded. ‘I’ll try it on my mother. I should have thought of it myself. You liked her?’

  ‘I scarcely saw her,’ Satyrus said. Not quite the truth. He’d seldom seen anyone he so instantly liked. Like Amastris.

  Queens and Jews, Satyrus thought to himself. I really have to find a nice Greek girl somewhere.

  With Abraham to guide him, they made three more stops at Hebrew houses where Abraham was welcomed in a way that suggested that he was a man of more worth than Satyrus, a Hellene, had guessed. And young men sprang to follow him, and their fathers guaranteed their panoplies, so that by the time they arrived at Cimon’s they had twenty young men behind them and the porter gawked.

  ‘I can’t seat all these!’ he said. But he smiled, seeing a great evening and a pile of silver.

  ‘May I see Thrassylus?’ Satyrus asked the porter, and the great man was sent for and arrived in heartbeats.

  ‘Master Satyrus?’ he asked.

  ‘Thrassylus, Antigonus One-Eye and his golden son are coming with a mighty army to burn fair Alexandria to the ground,’ Satyrus declaimed. ‘I need to address your patrons from the stage.’

  Thrassylus bowed. ‘Your uncle had already mentioned something of the sort,’ he said. ‘The stage awaits.’

  Satyrus walked in, followed by two files of Jewish men, most of whom were quite familiar with Cimon’s. He walked straight up the steps to the wooden stage, where musicians and other performers were commonplace. He stood on the stage and drew his sword, and silence fell over the whole tiled room, punctuate by a buzz of gossip.

  ‘Demetrios the Golden is two weeks’ march away,’ he said. ‘Every man in this room is a citizen. Demetrios means to destroy all we have – all we hold dear. Our temples, our hearths, our homes. Demetrios will sell our women into slavery and we will be sent to foreign places – if we preserve our own freedom.’ Satyrus had thought his speech out carefully, like the orator he wanted to be. So now he pointed at Abraham and the men seated around him. ‘The Jews will fight. They know freedom – and they know slavery. Look at them – twenty of the richest boys in this town, and they will go to be the front rank of the new phalanx.’ Satyrus raised his sword. ‘Greeks? Macedonians? Hellenes? Are we the worse men? The greater cowards? I will go! I will go with the new phalanx. And you? Anyone out there?’

  One young man had the courage to stand up. ‘But I’m a Macedonian!’ he said. He was Amyntas, son of Philip Enhedrion, household officer at the palace. What he meant was that if he was going to fight, his father would find him a place with the other pure-blood Macedonians. ‘And – aren’t you exiled?’

  Satyrus shook his head, sword still held out. ‘Bullshit, Amyntas. You are no more Macedonian than Abraham. You, sir, are Alexandrian. Now, get off your arse and fight for our city!’ In his head, he considered that coming to Cimon’s perhaps wasn’t the best way to keep the low profile that Lord Ptolemy had required of him.

  Theodorus was sharing his couch with a flute girl, and he suddenly rose up, a little drunk and flushed. ‘My father will kill me. Don’t we have an army to do this, Satyrus?’

  Satyrus was still holding out the sword, steady, unwavering, like a male Athena. The sword said, symbolically, that he was judging them. And they were reacting as if they feared his judgment.

  ‘Defend yourself, Theo. This is our hour. This is when we stand up for the city that nurtured us. I’ve only been here three years, but this is my home, and when I see the foundations of the lighthouse from the deck of the Golden Lotus I know that this is the place that I will defend. Who will stand with me?’

  Theo sneered. ‘Who commands this phalanx? Is this the foreign phalanx that my father laughs at on his way to the sea wall?’ Young men were stirring on their couches.

  ‘Foreign? If your Macedonian father means that the rank and file were born here, then he has the right of it. We will be the front rank of the Phalanx of Aegypt. Philokles the Spartan will lead us and train us. But you – every man here – you train at the gymnasium. You can afford the fullest panoply – better than any mercenary and better trained than some Pellan farm boy who has never wrestled a fall. Stand up! Flex those muscles! Show your elders that we aren’t soft!’ Satyrus spoke to the room in general, but his eyes were on Dionysius the Beautiful, who flirted with him and wrote verses about his sister’s breasts.

  Theo stood up. He was swaying. ‘My father will kill me,’ he said. ‘Can I come and live at your house?’ But when his hands were steady, he said, ‘I will serve.’

  ‘Fuck, I’ll serve too,’ Amyntas said, and stood by his couch.

  Dionysius, the handsomest young man in Alexandria, and one of the richest, smiled – and stood. ‘If I’m willing to put my body between Demetrios and this city,’ he said, ‘then the rest of you should be with me.’ He smiled wickedly. ‘You all have so much less to lose.’

  Dionysius was the deciding vote, if it had been an assembly. Suddenly all the young men were standing, and the older ones – most of them already soldiers, looked around, muttering. Some applauded, but others looked angry. Satyrus did a quick count and found that he had eighty-six adherents.

  He took them as a mob to the parade ground, the keener boys attempting to march and failing utterly. He handed them over to Philokles, who kept a straight face and made the Spartan salute.

  ‘I need Theo and Dio and Abraham,’ he said. ‘For recruiting.’

  ‘Carry on,’ said the voice of Ares. Then Philokles grabbed his shoulder. ‘I take it that every patron of Cimon’s saw you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Satyrus said, defiantly. ‘I told you I was going there.’

  ‘You are a man now, and not a boy. But if they saw you, they will start adding things together. Understand?’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘I understand. I’m at risk.’

  ‘Good lad. Watch yourself. Your uncles are probably all starting at shadows.’

  21

  T heo knew the richest boys. Dio knew the handsomest boys and the athletes and musicians. Abraham knew the Jews, and some of the Nabataean metics and other Arabs. They went as a group of four from door to door, portico to portico, palace to warehouse.

  They gathered a hundred and forty more young men, one and two at a time. It took days, precious days, and every armourer in Alexandria had orders for the finest armour, the lightest corslets with the best iron and bronze scales.

  It was curious work that left Satyrus exhausted at the end of the day, full of minor triumphs and equally minor snubs and rebuffs – doors closed to him that he’d always imagined opened, a share of curses, but worst of all, the bored refusal of the rich – men who mocked him for his recruiting campaign, and men who questioned his sanity.
>
  Croseus the Megaran, for instance, waited only to be told the magnitude of the threat before ordering his best things packed and taking one of his own ships for Corinth. ‘I owe this city nothing,’ he said. ‘Neither do you. Stop being foolish – you will not get my son to stand in the ranks. That’s for slaves and fools – poor men who have to do such things. Men like us don’t fight. Leon won’t be in your precious phalanx, I’ll wager.’

  ‘No, sir,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘See? Childhood fantasies. Myths. Like thinking that Alexander was actually a god.’ Croseus shook his head.

  ‘Master Leon will serve with the cavalry,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘Take your foolery and your rudeness and get out of my warehouse,’ Croseus said.

  Again, he found his Macedonian friends vanishing like startled gazelles in a hunt down the Delta. Not all of them – Theo’s father was delighted to see his son in the ranks – but others spoke, quietly or openly, with derision, of the city and of Ptolemy. It was one of these meetings that showed that the war of the factions had reached explosive proportions.

  Sitalkes was a young man that Satyrus knew from pankration. His father was an officer in the Foot Companions, a captain of ten files, who shared the name Alexander with most of the Macedonian men of his generation. Sitalkes stood in his own courtyard, enthusiastically nodding as Dionysius and Satyrus gave him the whole recruiting speech – and then his father came through the courtyard gates.

  ‘Well, well,’ he drawled. ‘Boy, are these your friends? Please introduce me, unless we don’t use such polite conventions any more.’

  Sitalkes bowed. ‘Pater, this is Abraham, son of Isaac Ben Zion. This is Satyrus, son of Kineas of Athens. Dionysius, son of Eteocles; Theo, son of Apollion. All of them-’

  Whatever all of them did together was not something in which his father took much interest.

  ‘You’re Satyrus? The famous Satyrus?’ The Macedonian officer nodded. He made a motion. Then he stopped and swallowed. ‘Well!’ He looked around his courtyard. ‘Hold on a minute, boys. I’m eager to hear Satyrus’s proposals, as is every citizen, I’m sure.’ The man’s heavy teasing had the same smell as his breath – red wine and garlic. He snapped his fingers and wine was brought, and he sent the wine slave away, but Satyrus noticed that the slave went and spoke to one of the Macedonian soldiers who loitered around the gate. The soldier put his shield against the wall and sprinted off down the street.

  ‘Wine?’ the officer asked.

  Sitalkes appeared stricken. He tried to speak and then shook his head.

  ‘No wine? Perhaps you are too young to have a head for it. I hear you are a pankrationist. Go inside, boy,’ Alexander ordered his son.

  ‘No wine, thank you,’ Satyrus said. ‘I’m trying to convince Sitalkes to join the Phalanx of Aegypt.’

  Alexander smiled – a false smile that made Satyrus’s guts roll over. ‘We’ll consider it,’ he said.

  Abraham was already by the gate. Theo was on his feet, having caught on that something was not right. Dionysius sneered. ‘Macedonian debates must be like Macedonian flirting.’

  ‘Come away, Dio,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘No, stay,’ the officer said. ‘I love punishing unruly children.’ And when Satyrus dragged Dionysius away, the officer roared, ‘Close the gate!’

  Abraham was ahead of the Macedonian gate guard all the way – he got his back against the gate, and he was bigger. And when the man went to grapple, Abraham gave him an elbow in the temple and down he went.

  The officer thrust Dionysius from behind. ‘Go, then,’ he said. ‘Get your foreign arse out of my house and don’t come here again.’ Then he laughed, and even the laugh was surly. ‘I imagine you’ll get all the chastisement you have coming to you, Greek.’

  Satyrus swept up the Macedonian shield by the gate and got it on his arm. ‘Run!’ he shouted.

  Cyrus, his slave, needed no further admonition. Theo bolted through the gate, and Dionysius, seeing the gate guard put his hand on his sword, hesitated, and Abraham shoved him.

  The gate guard tried to knock Theo down and Satyrus caught the man’s shoulder on the shield and turned it, then kicked out under the shield and knocked the man sprawling, and he was out of the gate.

  ‘What in all Tartarus does that madman think he’s doing?’ Dionysius asked when they stopped at the next corner.

  ‘He sent a man,’ Abraham said between gulps of air. They began to walk as they all gasped for breath and then Theo laughed. ‘What an idiot!’ he said. ‘Our fathers will bury him in court.’

  Abraham shook his head. ‘He didn’t seem very worried about court. Listen – he sent a man!’

  ‘I saw it,’ Satyrus said. He was trying to think ahead. ‘We should go home by a different route, then we-’

  ‘My father will order him arrested,’ Dionysius insisted.

  ‘I don’t think…’ Abraham said, and then Cyrus, who was walking next to Satyrus, leaned forward to point at something on a roof and took an arrow in the neck. The boy dropped like a sack of flour, the main artery in his neck severed, his blood splashing like a badly sacrificed bull’s.

  Satyrus looked around. ‘Cover,’ he yelled, and jumped under the overhang of the exedra of the nearest building.

  Abraham copied him and Dionysius had the reactions of an athlete, but Theo had never been in real danger before and he froze in the middle of the street. There was the rush of feet behind them, and Theo cried out and went down. Satyrus saw the man who killed him – a mangy footpad who carefully put his sword in Theo’s eye as the boy thrashed on the ground.

  ‘Herakles!’ Satyrus yelled. Even as he shouted the god’s name as a war cry, he knew that Theo was dead. He threw himself forward at Theo’s killer in a muddle of conflicting thoughts – terror and a desire for revenge, expiation, some vague thought that with a shield he could cover everyone’s retreat. That was his thought as he got his feet on either side of his friend’s corpse and punched the bronze rim of his shield into the mangy footpad’s face. The man had no shield – all he could do was step back.

  One. Two.

  Just as he was taught, Satyrus stepped forward and drew his sword, then cut the man down with the back cut, the edge of his sword right in the man’s neck, and then Satyrus spun, ready for the next man, as an arrow thudded into the shield where his back had been seconds before.

  The other two murderers ran.

  Satyrus could see the archer up on the roof of the nearest house. The man wore Persian clothes, all in the dullest of colours, and he had a Sakje bow. He aimed carefully – the oddest feeling, Satyrus thought, to be so carefully singled out for death – and shot.

  Satyrus moved the shield and ducked, and the arrow clanged against the rim. With a full-size aspis, he’d have been immune. With the smaller Macedonian shield, he had to react like a snake.

  The man raised his bow again. Abraham was calling for help, shouting at the top of his lungs for the watch, and Theo was still dead between his feet.

  Thump. The man was shooting for his head. Relentlessly. Satyrus felt an irrational desire to stand his ground and not flee back to the exedra – after all, fleeing the first time had killed Theo. And perhaps dying would solve it all – all the endless complexity.

  Thump. He just barely caught that one – shot for his knees. His shield arm had no interest in death.

  There were calls from the watch – a dozen armoured men running full tilt down the Alexandrion.

  The archer shook his head in frustration, cursed and vanished across the roof line.

  Listless, angry at himself and the world, Satyrus was interrogated by the officer of the watch – a Macedonian, of course – and then again by Theron when his coach arrived to take him from the clutches of the law, and again by Sappho when he arrived at home.

  ‘You’re lucky the watch officer was an honest man,’ Sappho said. ‘Or you’d be dead.’

  Satyrus sat looking at his hands. He had blood under his nails. Theo was still
dead.

  ‘They fucking killed him,’ Satyrus whispered.

  Diodorus came in, resplendent in a bronze breastplate and a gilt helmet with a white horsehair crest and a pair of exotic blue plumes on either side of his head like ram’s horns. He had a dark blue cloak embroidered in gold laurel leaves, and the hilt of his long kopis was solid gold. He looked like a king, or a very great man. ‘Satyrus, there’s no time for revenge. How did Theo die?’

  Satyrus was aware that somewhere, four troops of elite cavalry were training without their hipparch. He shook his head, and the anger choked him. ‘Thugs. Two-obol thugs. One of them got him, thinking he was me.’ He all but spat in disgust.

  ‘Ares and Aphrodite!’ Diodorus said, pulling off his helmet. ‘His father is going to wreck what’s left of the pro-Ptolemy faction.’

  Sappho rose gracefully, put a hand on her husband’s golden armour and shoved. ‘Get out of my rooms,’ she said softly. ‘Come back when you have the temper for it. He’s been through a great deal, Dio – you are not helping.’

  Diodorus grew as red as a piece of Tyrian wool – but he walked out through the door.

  Satyrus ran after him. ‘No – I can do this,’ he said. ‘They were thugs – an assassination attempt, organized on the fly. We visited Sitalkes – a friend of mine from the gymnasium. I could tell his father was – turned. Already a traitor. Call it what you will. He wanted to kill us himself.’

  Diodorus put a hand on his shoulder. ‘It’s not your fault.’

  ‘I know it’s not my fucking fault!’ Satyrus shouted. ‘I want this done! Over! Before they get you or Melitta or Sappho or the lot of us!’

  A slave handed him a cold cloth without being asked, and Satyrus put the cloth to his face. With his eyes closed, he could see Cyrus’s body lying half in and half out of the gutter, the blood running out of his neck and swirling away with the bilge water and the urine and the faeces – and Theo’s blood creeping along behind. And then another stream from the almost-severed neck of the man he’d killed.