Tyrant: Force of Kings

by Christian Cameron

  Arm over arm. And then a push with a knee, with a foot. Another. Another.

  Nothing under his hands. Again. This time, he was more lucid and thus more afraid, and he reached down … and felt stone. Not a long drop. A step – a single step. He levered himself on his arms, winced as his ribs passed over the sill, collapsed panting in what had to be sunlight.

  ‘Apollo!’ said a woman’s voice. ‘There’s a fucking corpse in the street – it’s moving!’

  ‘Pluto, he looks like donkey shit,’ said a boy’s voice. ‘Been stripped, too.’

  ‘And beat. Hey – you alive?’ said the woman. A hand touched his shoulder. Rolled him over so he gave a small scream.

  Satyrus rallied his will, licked his lips. One chance.

  ‘Gold!’ he hissed. ‘Get me clear of here.’

  And then he was gone. Again. And no voice came to tell him how he had done.

  He came to in pain: hot pain, like spikes of ice and fire into his head and back, and dull aches over everything; cold, dull aches that were always there between the spikes. He was being bounced – up, down, up, down. His eyes wouldn’t open. People talked, all around him. It was as if half the human race was shouting, all around him, but two voices came clear.

  ‘Wide-arse weighs like a double sack of grain!’ said a voice under him.

  ‘Worth more, sweetie.’

  A bed. He was on a bed, in the narrowest room he’d ever seen. He was on a low, narrow bed with clean sheets, and the walls weren’t much wider than his shoulders. The cushion at his head was covered in pus.

  That pus was coming from his face. It felt wet, and sticky, and hot. But at least he could feel, and the swelling had to be down, because he could see from his left eye. He flexed his shoulders, felt the edges of the pain of broken ribs under a tight bandage. A good, workmanlike job.

  If he had a fever, it was a light one – he could think. See. Move, a little.

  There was a curtain at the end of the narrow room, and it was lifted, and a stoop-shouldered man came in with a satchel over his shoulder and a mop of curly white hair. ‘Still alive,’ he said, with a smile. ‘I had you marked as a tough one.’

  Satyrus tried to return the grin, but his attempt was lost in a wash of pain and some sort of bursting on his face, and hot fluid ran down his chin, and he coughed.

  ‘Pus,’ the man said, and opened his satchel. ‘Someone really didn’t like you, son. I’ll do what I can, but your face is never going to be what we call right. Lie still, now. I’ve seen worse – when a sarissa goes right through a man’s cheek, puncture wounds on both sides, all the teeth ruined.’

  ‘Did,’ Satyrus managed. His voice was rough, the word incomprehensible. ‘Did he live?’

  Curly Hair laughed. ‘No. Starved to death. I kept him alive a long time, though. He didn’t really want to live. His boy left him for another man.’

  ‘You – are – doctor?’ Satyrus managed.

  ‘Hmm. Yes. Although I don’t know if Hippocrates would have me if he saw my practice. You have a name, lad? The whores who brought you in want to be paid. You said gold.’ The man winked. ‘Beat as bad as you were beat, I’d have claimed to have gold, too. My advice? Don’t be too eager to pay.’

  Satyrus coughed. ‘Why?’ he asked weakly.

  ‘Because you’re bleeding internally, son. Pissing blood right and left. Pay if you live, that’s my advice. You have family in Athens?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘Don’t be telling me you’re a slave. You had two rings on until some cocksucker – and I use the term precisely – took them.’ He began to unwind Satyrus’s bandage. ‘This is going to hurt. Anything you want to say, first?’

  ‘Kineas,’ Satyrus said, on the spur of the moment. He was clear headed enough to know that his own name probably wasn’t the wisest idea. ‘Alexandria.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the doctor. ‘So you do have a few darics, eh? I can tell the girls and boys?’

  Satyrus nodded.

  ‘In that case,’ said the doctor, ‘I’ll give you some poppy for the pain.’

  The god lay by his stream, as he ever did, a magnificent figure – bigger than Theron, bigger than any man Satyrus had ever seen, his skin smooth and unmarked, heavily muscled. He wore a lion skin like a kilt.

  Satyrus was healed. He walked to the edge of the stream and sat easily, all of his muscles responding perfectly.

  ‘You will have to make decisions,’ the god said. ‘You will have a friend – a weak friend.’

  Satyrus wanted to bathe his head in the cool stream, not listen to the god. He rolled on his stomach. The ground underneath him was moss – damp and cool and slightly springy. The stream was narrow but swift, and he could see the gravel bottom. He put his hands in the stream, and it was cold as ice. He dipped his head—

  ‘Are you awake, sir? Sir? Awake, sir?’ said an insistent voice.

  Satyrus rose out of a deep well of sleep and poppy towards the voice.

  ‘Please wake up, sir. Please wake up, sir. Sir, please wake up.’ It was an unpleasant voice – a surprisingly unpleasant woman’s voice, squeaky, grating, the sound of a sword on rock.

  Satyrus tried to respond. A meaningless mumble emerged, and his eyes opened.

  ‘There’s a good gentleman, sir. How nice. Lovely morning – very cool. And can you tell me sir, what is your name? Where can we find your … people?’ she asked.

  There was a man standing behind her. ‘Bankers. Ask if he has bankers.’

  Harpy Voice sounded impatient. ‘Don’t be stupid. He can barely talk. We’ll be lucky if he’s a ship owner.’

  Satyrus wasn’t thinking very clearly. He was afraid, not a common feeling for him. Afraid that this coarse-voiced woman would sell him to Phiale. Afraid that Phiale would find him – he was in a brothel, he assumed. With his left eye open, he could see that Harpy Voice was a plain-faced girl of sixteen or seventeen with short legs and magnificent, prominent breasts and hips worn under a chitoniskos so short as to be indecent. But of course it was indecent. She was a whore. A porne. Her eyes, though, were fierce, independent – interested.

  The boy behind her was younger – wide shoulders, narrow waist. Fit, but his face was misshapen, as if he’d been hit hard as a small child, or had his jaw broken and badly set. He looked stupider than an ox. An ox with a broken jaw.

  ‘Maybe a ship’s name, then?’ Ox Face asked. ‘Maybe he’s off a ship and they can pay us?’

  ‘Shut up,’ Harpy Voice said. She leaned over Satyrus – she had to, as there wasn’t room to stand next to the bed. ‘A name, sweetie. Just a name, so we can get you help. No offence, sir, but we’re not doing this for our arete.’

  Her use of the upper-class word made him smile.

  ‘Ooh, sweetie, you know that word, do you?’ she said, and she sat by his feet, coiling neatly on her haunches. ‘The better for us, Alex.’

  ‘Why?’ he asked, in his ox voice.

  ‘’Cause idiotes and poor men have nothing to do with arete, that’s why. Not for the likes of us.’ She smiled at Satyrus – a totally false smile, and not a very effective one. ‘Give me a name, lover.’

  Satyrus couldn’t think of a name that would help him without compromising him. Leon had factors in Athens – but surely Phiale would have them watched. Even in one of their houses, he’d be vulnerable to Phiale, or to her master.

  Satyrus had to assume that Phiale was working for Demetrios.

  The girl leaned down the bed, moving her feet along the bed’s edge, crawling over him like a spider – with the ease of long practice, he assumed. Her breasts hung before his eyes, and even through the poppy he was aware of her.

  ‘Oh-ho,’ she said. ‘So you are alive. Listen to me, sweetie. I need a name and some promise of reward, or I’m clearing this bed. I’m paying four obols a day for this bed, I’m payin
g for the doctor in blow-jobs, and to be honest, I have plenty of work just now. So … a name.’ She smiled. It was a better smile. ‘Come on. I don’t care what husband beat the crap out of you. You’ll live – you won’t be pretty, but you’ll live. Doctor says you ain’t pissing so much blood. So give over, lover. A name.’

  He was dead, but he was a name, from one of the great families of Athens, and if Demetrios was behind this, the man’s family would help him anyway. He didn’t pause to check the mushiness of his logic. He could drive an elephant through the flaws, but he needed out of this brothel before Phiale, who’d come out of one of these and knew them like he knew the plains below Tanais, looked for him.

  ‘Polycrates of Lysander,’ he croaked.

  ‘Ooh, dearie,’ she said, and clapped her hands. ‘Ooh, sweetie. For that name, I’d keep you for a week.’ She leaned down and kissed his forehead – he had a flash of his mother, and she bounded off the bed.

  ‘Come on, Alex,’ she said. ‘We’re going to be rich.’

  She was gone, and her ox-faced partner with her.

  Once she was gone, Satyrus had a long time to examine what he’d done and doubt it. After all, the man was dead. It was possible that the news wasn’t out yet. Satyrus lay in his narrow bed and couldn’t decide how many days had passed. Two? At least two. Perhaps as many as … he really didn’t know.

  It was possible that Polycrates’ body hadn’t been found. In which case, his family would still be loyal to Demetrios – Satyrus grunted. He could follow this line of thinking to one disaster after another.

  The skin under the heavy linen wrap around his torso itched as if he had a dozen mosquito bites wrapped under there, but his arms were better. He tried to scratch, and found that he could move his shoulders and neck – real improvement.

  He watched the shadows roll down the curtain. Somewhere over his head was a small, unglazed window – there was no breeze, but somehow the air in the room was alive.

  When he lay still, he could listen to the sounds of the house. As the shadows lengthened on the curtain, customers began to arrive. Many of them tramped right past his curtain – feet both loud and soft, aggressive and secretive, hurried and measured. Some were talkative – enquiring after their partner’s health, as if a chance-met friend in the agora – others were silent, or pre-emptive, or demanding.

  His first evening of lucidity. He wondered how many times his sheets had been changed. His mouth was dry, and he needed to urinate so badly that it made his back hurt, and he suspected from the smell that he’d relieved himself into the bed up until now.

  Down the hall, a man was beating his whore. The boy’s sin was failing to give the man an erection – a hideous scene, played out through thin walls. Satyrus had little experience of brothels. Listening made him feel ill – right though his pain and his bladder.

  Right next to him, a woman was moaning with pleasure, her voice getting higher and faster. Satyrus had never heard a woman make such noises while making love, and he had to assume that they were simulated.

  Simulated from what knowledge of pleasure, he wondered. Clearly the brothel had rules of its own. Certainly the porne had to thank his customer, or her customer, when he was finished.

  The pain on his bladder was now too much to bear. And no one was going to come, he could tell. The whores were all working, and the doctor …

  He got his elbows under him and wriggled down the bed, his hips almost free from pain and his ribs protesting, but bearably. He managed to get his feet on the floor at the end of the bed, then he had to lie and watch the fly specks on the ceiling – the room spun for a moment when he raised his head. But he saw an old, deep amphora with the top smashed in, in the corner – a makeshift chamber pot.

  He got his feet on the floor again and wriggled his hips towards the end of the bed again. Raised his head. Bad.

  He was going to do this.

  He raised his head and got his hands against the walls. His wrists hurt – his right shoulder felt as if it had been dislocated.

  Herakles, stand by me, he thought – a war cry to go and urinate. It made him laugh – a low gurgle.

  ‘Hey! You’re not running off on me, are you?’ Harpy Voice poked her head through his curtain.

  ‘Must … piss,’ Satyrus managed.

  ‘Oh! Sweetie, I’m sorry. You usually just wet the bed. And the poor slaves clean up after you. Here, that’s it, honey, let me get my shoulder in there.’

  She got him up and off the bed – she was strong. But when he stood over the makeshift chamber pot, he untangled his left arm from her shoulder. ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  ‘You are a gent,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen a few pricks in my day, sweetie. Just piss.’

  ‘Go,’ he said. He felt his face flushing, and his bladder was on fire, but he couldn’t get a drop out while she stood there.

  She giggled – a genuine reaction, he thought. ‘I’ll just wait in the hall,’ she said.

  It came out of him in a rush – orange and red. Blood in it, but no more than when he’d taken a blow in the kidneys through his armour. Not enough for despair, anyway. Enough to take seriously.

  The process went on and on – embarrassingly – and he had to use the corner walls to hold himself up.

  ‘You having a symposium, lover?’ Harpy Voice called, and she laughed. Next door, the same crescendo of passion was being acted out for the second time that evening.

  ‘Tell me how big I am,’ demanded a male voice.

  ‘Ooh. You fill me up!’ answered the porne in the next cubicle.

  ‘Now lick my ear,’ said the male voice.

  Satyrus shook his head.

  ‘Are you through yet?’ Harpy Voice asked.

  ‘My time isn’t fucking up yet!’ called a male customer.

  ‘Not talking to you, sweetie,’ Harpy Voice said.

  Satyrus wiped himself on a rag provided for the purpose and was appalled to see how red, bruised, and swollen his penis was. He’d been beaten before, he’d been hit in his genitals before, but never like this. No wonder it all hurt so much.

  He turned to stumble back to the bed, misjudged the distance, and fell.

  ‘Damn you, sir,’ Harpy Voice said. ‘All you had to do was call, you know. Can’t let a working girl see your yard, can’t be seen to piss? Men are fools.’ She got him to his feet with her legs, a lift that a wrestler might have envied, and he flopped onto his back on the bed.

  In the distance a bell rang. ‘Eurydike!’ called a charming, cultured voice.

  ‘Ah. Sorry, sweetie. Customer for me,’ she said. She patted his foot. ‘Tell me you are going to make me rich, sweetie. Please.’

  Satyrus grunted. He hurt. But he managed to twitch the right side of his face. ‘Rich,’ he said.

  ‘Hmm. I might be falling in love with you,’ she said cheerfully, in her grating voice. ‘See ya!’

  And she was gone.

  It was hours before he slept. He heard several porne beaten – some by customers who just wanted to hit someone. But other customers were tender, solicitous, and thus sounded just as foolish as the lusty ones and the violent ones.

  At one point, every bed on the hall must have been working at the same time. Satyrus could smell the sex. He could hear it all around him. It was … curious.

  Eventually the sounds began to die away. It was quite late – in fact, in farmer’s hours, it was more very early. Satyrus had slept – he had trouble ungumming his eyes, and now he was desperately thirsty.

  He tried to swallow, tried to raise saliva. Decided he would have to get up. He was sure he could do it.

  He had started to wriggle down the bed when the curtain opened. Ox-head glanced at him.

  ‘You doing all right?’ the boy, a young man, really, old enough to be a junior ephebe, asked.

  Satyrus raised a hand. ‘Water,’ he sai
d.

  ‘Oh, sure!’ the young man responded. ‘I was supposed to bring it to you when I came on shift, but I was sent to a party.’ He vanished.

  Somehow, waiting for him to return was harder than all the waiting until then.

  He came back through the curtain with a whole water jar, plain black ware, full to the brim. He dipped a sponge in and handed it to Satyrus, who slurped it dry.

  Satyrus repeated this three times, and he felt immensely better.

  ‘Help me sit up,’ he said.

  Young Alex got an arm around him and lifted. He was gentle, and strong and Satyrus leaned back against the wall, took the water jug and drank. ‘Of course,’ he said, to no one in particular, ‘now I’ll have to piss again.’

  Alex laughed. ‘Happens to me whenever I have to stay over at a party,’ he said. ‘When they’re done with me, I get sent to the kitchen. I won’t go to the slave quarters – I’m not a slave. But they always lock me in – as if I’d steal from my customers? And when I have to piss?’ He laughed.

  ‘Not a slave?’ Satyrus asked.

  ‘Oh, no, sir. I’m a citizen. Both my parents were citizens.’ Despite his face, the boy sounded quite intelligent.

  Satyrus drank more water. ‘What do you do at parties?’ he asked.

  Alex rolled his head back and forth. ‘I dance, usually. Sometimes I play drums for one of the girls. Some parties pay for us to fuck – me and Aella, usually, which is fun. We do it well.’ He nodded. ‘At a good party, after we dance, someone will take me aside, and then it’s just business. Right?’ he smiled. ‘At a bad party, the men get drunk, and then they all want to fuck me at once. Sometimes it hurts, and sometimes the idiotes don’t pay.’ He shrugged. ‘My hair’s coming in, so my days of parties are about over, and that’s as well. I’ve made a bundle.’

  Satyrus nodded. He’d been at parties with flute girls and boys. Now he was talking to the other side of the coin.

  Aella poked her head through the curtain. ‘How’s our gentleman?’ she asked.