Funeral Games t-3

by Christian Cameron

  Theron came back with Philokles and Diodorus, now out of his armour and with an ancient mastos cup full of wine. ‘Sorry, lad,’ he said. ‘And you, wife. My apologies.’

  Sappho nodded. ‘Very well.’

  ‘We need to know what happened, lad,’ Philokles said.

  Satyrus had the force of will to make himself recover, to avoid the indulgence in passions that marked a weak man – or marked him any further. He didn’t sob. He told his story as best he could – again.

  ‘Theo’s father has two other sons, but he’s ready to go to war personally on this matter. He’s got a reward out for this Persian archer.’ Diodorus shook his head. ‘This is a bad time for Leon to be away.’

  Philokles was interested in other matters. ‘You did not kill Theo, Satyrus. Listen to me, lad. Your illogic is overwhelming and very much a piece with your age. The assassins intended his death. It was their actions-’

  ‘Don’t treat me like a child!’ Satyrus said. ‘The assassins intended my death. I failed to read the signals – clear as trumpets on a summer day! And then, when the attack started, I didn’t help Theo – the youngest of us, and the least trained. And what of Cyrus? Doesn’t Leon teach us that slaves are men, too? Cyrus is just as dead as Theo – and his blood was just the same colour. Come to think of it, Theo’s killer bled the same – when I put him down. I’m sick of it. I’m no good at it and it goes on and on and the bodies just pile up. How many of my friends will die? Some fighting Stratokles, some fighting One-Eye – more to make me king of the Bosporus, perhaps! Fuck it! It’s just violence, on and on, bloody slaughter to the end of the world!’

  Silence greeted his outburst. Theron winced. Diodorus shrugged and turned away, anger obvious on his face. Sappho wore an odd and somewhat enigmatic look.

  Philokles actually smiled. ‘You are growing up,’ he said. ‘Some men never do. We tell children nice tales so they’ll learn – lies that often have truth in them. Fables. Some men cling to those lies all their lives, Satyrus. Lies about how one nation or city or race is better than another that justify killing, death, war.’ He sat straight. ‘Nothing makes killing right. If you wish to live a life of pure righteousness, I think you must turn your back on killing – on violence. On raising your voice when angry, on hurting others to accomplish a goal.’

  Satyrus made a noise, and Philokles raised a hand, forestalling him. ‘Killing is always wrong. But many other things are also wrong – oppression, theft, tyranny, arson, rapine, on and on, the catalogue of human wrongs. When you turn your back on killing and violence, you also surrender the ability to prevent wrongs to others, because in this world, we stop oppression when we stand firm in our ranks with the bronze.’ He gave an odd smile. ‘You know what amuses me, Satyrus? What I just told you is what the elders taught in Sparta. I have spent a lifetime reading and listening and studying and hating war, and what it makes me become – and all I can say is that life is a choice, an endless series of choices. Men can choose to think or not to think. They can choose to lead or to follow. To trust or not to trust. You may choose not to take life – even not to fight. That choice is not cowardice. But that choice has consequences. Or you can choose to kill – and that choice, too, has consequences. When the blood fills your lungs and the darkness comes down, all you have is what you did – who you were, what you stood for.’

  ‘So what’s the answer?’ Satyrus asked. ‘How do I…?’ He couldn’t even enunciate his question. How can I stop seeing the corpses? How do I avoid the consequences?

  ‘Shall I just give you an answer, lad?’ Philokles got to his feet. ‘Or can you take the truth like a man? There is no answer. You do what you can, and sometimes what you have to. So – if I am to be your judge, putting your steel in that man-killer was no sin before gods or men. Nor can any man hold you responsible for young Theo – not even his father, whose grief is formidable.’ Philokles put his hand on Satyrus’s shoulder, and Satyrus didn’t shake it off, and Theron, who had been silent because Philokles had said everything he had to say, came over and embraced Satyrus.

  Diodorus grunted. ‘I’m glad to know that my life is immoral, Spartan. What a fine thing philosophy must be!’ He shrugged. ‘But the immediate problem is that Stratokles, or somebody like him, is out there trying to kill the twins. Satyrus – no leaving the house, except with one of us. Understand?’

  ‘No,’ Satyrus said. He looked around at these men – these heroes. ‘No. If I’m a man – I can do this. You can’t nursemaid me. I can stay alive. I think I proved it today.’

  Philokles nodded. ‘He has a point,’ he conceded.

  The evening breeze whispered through the palm trees and the Mediterranean surf hissed against the gravel of the beach behind the main wing of Leon’s house, and the north wind carried the smell of the sea – rotting fish and kelp and salt, a smell that could sink to a miasma or rise to a wonderful scent of openness, blue waves and freedom.

  Satyrus had a porch off his rooms that opened on the sea, and tonight he felt the need of it. He took a cup of wine from a slave and walked out into the breeze. Out here, in the dark, the sound of the sea was much louder.

  ‘When we first came here, I used to sit just like this and listen to the sea,’ Melitta said from a chair. ‘I used to imagine that the water coming up the beach was the same water that had passed out of the Tanais.’

  Satyrus sipped some wine. ‘I still think the same thing,’ he said. ‘All the time.’

  Melitta got out of her chair. ‘After the sea fight off Syria, I lay with Xenophon. It’s not his fault, it’s mine. I’m sorry. I told Sappho – I didn’t want you to hear it second-hand.’

  Satyrus digested this in silence.

  ‘Say something!’ Melitta said.

  ‘Theo is dead,’ he said. ‘Killed by men sent to kill me. I left him standing in the street. I didn’t do it – I just let it happen.’

  ‘It’s not all about you,’ Melitta said.

  ‘No,’ Satyrus agreed, and drank more wine. ‘I’m learning that.’

  ‘I’m sorry about Theo. What did his father say?’ Melitta asked.

  ‘Nothing. He was frightened. Frightened! What is this city coming to?’ Satyrus took a breath and drank more wine. ‘Why Xenophon, though? I mean, he’s my best friend, you’ve spent my whole adult life teasing him and telling me about his shortcomings, and he’s enough of a gentleman to feel – things. You won’t marry him, I assume?’ Satyrus wished he sounded a little more adult.

  Melitta was silent. Then she said, ‘I don’t plan to marry anyone among the Hellenes, Satyrus.’

  ‘Going to go to the sea of grass without me, Lita?’ Satyrus knew that he’d had too much wine.

  ‘If I have to,’ Melitta said. ‘I want to be a queen, not a girl.’

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘That’s just where we differ, sister. I’d like very much not to be a king.’

  ‘You wallow a lot, you know that? It’s not all about you! You didn’t kill Theo. You didn’t kill your precious Peleus. Sometimes you make me want to punch you.’ Melitta shook her head. ‘You get everything I want – and you don’t even like it!’

  ‘After this campaign-’ Satyrus began, but Melitta cut in savagely.

  ‘After this campaign? After we sail to Rhodos? After we make war on Antigonus One-Eye? How long do I have to wait?’ Now they were shouting at each other.

  Satyrus raised his hands, spilling some wine in his frustration. ‘What’s so bad?’

  ‘What’s so bad? How did you spend the day? Recruiting? To save the city from Demetrios and his one-eyed father? Was it frustrating? Did useless merchants turn you down? Fighting for your life against assassins? Lost a friend?’ She was shouting now. ‘I sat at home and wove some wool.’

  He was silent.

  ‘In my spare time I worried that I was pregnant,’ she muttered. ‘I want to go and fight Demetrios. I want to ride free, or be a helmsman, or recruit young men to fight. But most of all I want the attention of the men and women wor
th a conversation. Tonight, I confessed my transgression to Sappho. Do you know what she said? Best not tell Satyrus until the battle is fought. Philokles treats me like a girl. Why? Because I have breasts and my body can make a baby! Why doesn’t somebody recruit me? Demetrios is going to have forty elephants and we don’t even have one, and by Apollo, I may be the best archer in this city. What are we doing about raising a corps of archers?’

  ‘Maiden archers?’ Satyrus said, looking to win a smile and failing utterly.

  ‘Is the loss of my virginity painful to you, brother? Was our family honour strapped between my thighs?’ Melitta swelled with rage.

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘Stupid joke. Sorry, Lita.’ He made himself reach for her, refusing to be cowed by her anger and believe that she really aimed her darts at him, and she was in his arms, her head on his shoulder, and at the speed of their embrace they stopped being at odds.

  Melitta rocked back and forth for a little while, and Satyrus watched the stars behind her head blur with his own unshed tears and then return to normal.

  She stepped back. ‘I know it’s not your fault. But suddenly everyone in this house is treating you like a man. Whereas I get to be a perpetual child.’

  ‘I can’t get you a corps of archers, maiden or not,’ Satyrus said. ‘But when Leon lands his marines, I know a ship that could easily land one more archer. But Lita – this isn’t a fair battle. We’re the trapped dogs – Demetrios has everything his way.’

  Melitta raised her chin. ‘I was there when we took two pirate galleys,’ she said.

  ‘True enough,’ Satyrus said, and kissed the top of her head. ‘Why Xenophon? He’s so nice – he’s going to follow you like a dog for the rest of your life.’

  She shrugged. ‘Hard to describe, really. He knew that I had saved his life – thanked me for it. Comrade to comrade, even though he had fought like Achilles and I was a mere girl.’ She shrugged again. ‘And I saw – things. The same things – gods, you know as well as I. I was dead when your spear put that man down. I felt dead. And then – I was alive.’ She hung her head. ‘I don’t care a fig for my virginity, brother. But I agree that actions have consequences, and I insist that Xeno should not pay the price – the bride price or any other price.’

  Satyrus slugged back his wine. When they were children, they had fought – and then one big hug and it was over. Tonight, he felt the loss of that simplicity, because she was closed to him on some level, and because no, he had not really forgiven her. But his failure to forgive her weighed on him, like a failed sacrifice.

  She felt his hesitation. She stared at him.

  He stared back. Once, they had been eye to eye. Now he was half a head taller.

  ‘Will you really help me get away?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. He imagined her lying dead, trampled by an elephant as he had seen back in the great battle on the salt plains. He shook his head – too much wine. ‘Fuck it, Lita. Yes, you have as much right to lie with a man as I do to lie with a woman. I, too, have spent too much time with Hellenes.’ He smiled bitterly. ‘It’s going to be hard to talk to Xeno.’

  ‘Imagine how I feel,’ Melitta said. She rose on her toes and kissed his cheek. ‘Thanks,’ she said, and went back inside. She turned back and smiled. ‘I have a rendezvous for you. With Amastris. I was going to throw it in your face if you played high and mighty with me.’ She shook her head. ‘Which you didn’t. So I feel like a fool.’ She reached in her bosom and pulled out an oyster shell. ‘Tomorrow night,’ she said.

  The slip of papyrus leaf had two lines from Menander, and Satyrus smiled, because the lines named the hour to anyone who had seen the play.

  ‘By the steps of the Temple of Poseidon,’ Melitta said. ‘Do you love her?’

  Satyrus looked at his sandals. ‘Yes,’ he mumbled. And yet…

  ‘Don’t be foolish, brother. Don’t get caught. I don’t think – I shouldn’t say this! I don’t think you’re Amastris’s first boy, man, what have you.’ She shrugged, clearly unhappy at having said what she had said.

  ‘What?’ Satyrus asked. ‘But-’

  ‘I’m sure it is different for men,’ Melitta said. ‘Listen – don’t go. It’s not worth the risk.’

  ‘This from my sister who wants me to smuggle her into the archer corps to fight elephants?’ he said.

  She smiled. ‘That’s a hit and no mistake, brother. Very well – go if you must. But she won’t show. Not the first time. The first time will just be a test of your devotion, I’m her friend – I know these things.’ She turned and slipped away, leaving him with an oyster shell and a feeling of confusion.

  The next morning, the wind still carried the sting of the sea in its tail, and it blew hard enough to cool the sweat on two thousand backs and breasts as they drilled without shade. Panion, the commander of the Foot Companions, stood at the head of the taxeis with Philokles and Theron and half a dozen Macedonian officers.

  ‘They’re absurd,’ Panion said, loudly enough to carry into the first three ranks. ‘Children and slaves. One-Eye’s veterans will go through them the way his elephants will push through our cavalry.’

  His Macedonian officers laughed ruefully or disdainfully, depending on their faction. Philokles said something softly, and Panion shrugged. ‘Work as hard as you like, Spartan. I’ll put them in the second line, or somewhere where their flight won’t cost us much. Perhaps we can use them to carry baggage?’ He laughed, and the six Macedonians laughed again.

  Philokles fingered his beard. ‘I need more sarissas,’ he said. ‘We don’t have enough.’

  ‘Ptolemy sent too much equipment off to Cassander,’ Panion said with a shrug. ‘Make do with what you have. After all,’ he said cheerfully, ‘if Ptolemy’s kingdom relies on this lot, we’re doomed.’

  Philokles said something quiet, and Panion shook his head. ‘I think you forget your place. I am a Macedonian. Your people once had a certain reputation for war, I’ll allow. But I assure you, sir, that no amount of drill will make these slaves into soldiers, and that I don’t give a flying fuck for their morale.’ Panion looked around him and spat in contempt.

  Later, he and his staff reappeared as Philokles forced the phalanx through another wheeling movement – badly executed, like every wheel.

  This time, the Macedonian went along the first two ranks. He called every Macedonian out of the ranks. He stopped at Satyrus.

  ‘You?’ he said. Then, when he’d recovered his confusion, he gave Satyrus a smile. ‘You don’t belong here, with this rabble,’ he said. ‘Come with me.’

  Satyrus could see Amyntas shuffling nervously among the young Macedonians. ‘What rabble?’ Satyrus said.

  ‘Aegyptians.’ Panion shrugged. ‘Good for farm work.’

  ‘Seems to work to train Macedonians,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘Yes,’ Panion said. ‘But they’re men, not slaves. These boys are Macedonians.’

  Satyrus wiped the sweat from his eyes. ‘Not a one of them was born in Macedon, sir,’ he said, meeting the commander’s eyes. ‘I recruited them here in Alexandria. For this phalanx.’

  Panion narrowed his eyes. ‘Another uppity Greek,’ he said. ‘Very well – swelter on, boy. Revel in your remaining hours.’ Then, louder, ‘You Macedonians, come with me.’

  When Panion was gone, Philokles continued to drill the men, and as the shadows lengthened, he tried to provide the physical training that would allow Aegyptians to go up against men in the peak of fitness. They weren’t weak – many of them had fine bodies and heavy muscles from labour – but Philokles walked around, urging them to lift greater weights or run farther.

  The men were listless – worse than usual – and when the sun touched the rim of the world, Philokles dismissed them, obviously keeping his temper in check. Satyrus fell in next to the Spartan as they walked back in the last light of evening.

  ‘Half of them won’t come back,’ Philokles said after they had walked a stade. ‘That fool, that posturing ninny. I should have pu
t my sword up his arse on the spot.’

  ‘Philokles!’ Satyrus said. ‘Master, I have never heard you speak in this manner.’ He managed a grin, his first since Theo died. It had occurred to him that Panion might have had something to do with that death. ‘You are not always a philosopher.’

  ‘Do you know what the Macedonian officers discuss?’ Philokles said. ‘Putting on a good show. Fighting long enough to get the best possible terms from Demetrios. Remember what happened to Eumenes? When part of his precious Macedonians decided not to fight. It’s happening here, lad. Another week or two and our taxeis would be worth something, too. They shape well – better than many Greeks. Strong backs, these Aegyptians. But Panion just told them that they are slaves to him.’ Philokles spat. ‘Six weeks’ work, for nothing. And he took half of the cream of your boys. Every one of those Macedonian boys knew which end of a spear to wield.’

  ‘We still have the Greeks and the Jews,’ Satyrus said.

  Philokles gave half a smile and put a hand on his former student’s shoulder. ‘So we do,’ he said. ‘I don’t think they’re enough, and I think that we need ranks and ranks of strong, faithful and courageous Aegyptians behind us, or it won’t matter. But I should swallow my own medicine and deal with these troubles when they present themselves. What do we do for sarissas?’

  Theron leaned in. ‘For now, the first three ranks can use their hoplite equipment – all the Hellene ephebes have them, and even the Jews came with heavy spears.’

  Philokles agreed. ‘Shorter spears in front is not a way to build the confidence of your front ranks, lad. Do you know what it is like to face a Macedonian taxeis? Unless they’re disordered, every file has six or eight spearheads sticking out in front. They move, just from the natural movement of the men carrying them – like the ripple of grass in the wind. Hard to face. Terrifying.’

  ‘You told me yourself that with an aspis and discipline, you had no problem penetrating the wall of spears.’ Satyrus had heard the tale of the fight at the fords of the Borysthenes a dozen times or more, from different men. He knew that Philokles and the elite men of two Euxine cities had held, and then beaten, a Macedonian phalanx.