Tyrant: Force of Kings

by Christian Cameron

  Satyrus shrugged. ‘That doesn’t make it any better. He can bleed us white, once his access to food and water is secure.’

  Mithridates rubbed his beard. ‘You Greeks are the barbarians. He’s enslaving virtually the whole population of northern Mysia to build that camp.’

  Anaxagoras barked a laugh. ‘Mithridates, you will be a great king but you are a poor historian. The Assyrians did the same, and the Babylonians, and the Persians, your ancestors. No people have a monopoly on barbarism. It is a human trait. All humans share it.’

  Mithridates sighed. ‘I believe that is a cold comfort for my people over there.’ He looked at Satyrus, who was chewing an apple – a new apple, too green for eating, but the taste was delicious. ‘Can we do anything?’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘We need wood and iron and bronze for war machines. Jubal is gathering them with the cavalry. When that is done, I will send my little band around the lake. Antigonus will do it as well. It would be best if you sent some of your noble cavalry and their retainers as far as you can – all the way into Mysia, if possible – to harry his patrols and his efforts at collecting wood. And slaves.’

  Mithridates shook his head. ‘If I release my nobles, they will never come back,’ he said. ‘Most of them are already prepared to change sides, for certain assurances.’

  Satyrus nodded once, briskly. ‘As I expected. Very well. Let’s find Lysimachos.’

  Stratokles looked interested. ‘Why? I mean, from fear? Or because they already hate you?’

  Mithridates laughed. ‘They hate anyone greater than themselves. It is our way. And they say – with some justice – that Antigonus has done nothing to them but enslave some peasants.’

  Stratokles nodded. ‘Who would you say was your most dangerous nobleman? The one most likely to desert?’

  Mithridates laughed again. ‘I really would be hard put to choose one among all of them,’ he said. ‘But Darius Thrakes, as we call him, is the worst of the lot, and he leads almost a thousand riders. I can’t touch him.’

  Stratokles saw the look that passed between Satyrus and Lucius.

  ‘You can do this one yourself, boss,’ Lucius said.

  Stratokles sighed.

  Lysimachos, when they found him, was watching Jubal build war engines. He had sixty men – his own men, many former sailors and some former slave artificers – all laying out machines together, and he had another three hundred Bithynian workmen with adzes and axes.

  ‘That is a dangerous man,’ Lysimachos said. ‘Would you sell him to me?’

  ‘He’s not mine to sell,’ Satyrus said. ‘Try asking him.’

  Jubal was standing, his chiton pulled down to his hips, showing a young smith the patterns for corner plates for a torsion engine – demonstrating how to form the plates, cut them, and bend them to shape with the minimum of work.

  ‘We need a cavalry raid,’ Satyrus said.

  Lysimachos nodded. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Mithridates says his men will desert if allowed out of our lines,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘Aphrodite’s tits!’ Lysimachos exclaimed. ‘So you want my Getae?’

  ‘And all of my Sakje. Yes.’ Satyrus shrugged.

  ‘They hate each other. Your Scopasis and my Sakarnus – they are not friends.’ Lysimachos shook his head. ‘And if we lose them … Ares, Tanais, if we lose them, we can’t cover our retreat.’

  If he calls me Tanais, should I call him Thrace? Satyrus thought. Lysimachos was a curious blend of old campaigner and parvenu king. ‘If we don’t try, we might as well retreat right now,’ he said.

  Lysimachos shook his head. ‘We have a few days.’

  Satyrus was still mounted, and he used his height and his voice to show his discontent. ‘I don’t agree,’ he said. ‘We do not have a few days. Antigonus will have his cavalry on the south shore by tomorrow.’

  Lysimachos grinned at his own staff, all waiting a few horse lengths away. ‘This from your years of experience as a strategos, eh?’

  Satyrus raised an eyebrow. ‘Your scouting is poor at best. Antigonus owned your flanks at Magnesia and again when I found you because you won’t send your best troops out into harm’s way to find and eliminate the enemy scouts.’

  ‘How nice! Lessons in hoplomachia from a Greek stripling.’ Lysimachos shook his head. ‘Listen, Tanais, don’t turn red on me like a maiden with her first dick. I’ve fought Antigonus and his son for as long as most of you have been alive. Scouting – listen. I can see his camp. He can see mine. If he wants to ride around and kill barbarians, let him.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘You fought for Alexander, right?’ he said. ‘So you really should know better.’ I should keep my mouth shut and ride away.

  Lysimachos swung up onto the back of a pretty Nisean mare, the kind of warhorse men killed for. He was unruffled. ‘I remember what it is like to be young,’ he said. ‘I forgive you. You are a good ally, Satyrus of Tanais, and I don’t need a quarrel. So I’ll give you fifty Getae – no more.’

  Several of his staff officers – Macedonians all – laughed. Lysimachos whirled on them. ‘Keep it to yourselves, gentlemen. Remember where we’d be without these men.’

  Satyrus took a deep breath, held it, counted, and listened to the inaudible sounds of a lyre scale. When he was done, his eyes were clear and his smile was genuine.

  ‘Send me the cavalrymen at nightfall,’ he said. ‘And thank you.’

  He and Lysimachos clasped hands.

  As he rode away, Stratokles came up beside him. ‘I’m going,’ he said. ‘And I want Mithridates to send his goat-boy – Darius what’s-his-name. With fifty men.’

  ‘I’m commanding myself,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘All the better,’ Stratokles said.

  Satyrus wanted a fine Nisean like Lysimachos’s horse. His gelding chewed the bit constantly, and now thrust out with his head, trying to act like a stallion. Satyrus slapped his neck. ‘You have plans for Darius?’

  ‘I think he should give his life for his country,’ Stratokles said. ‘Can you give Herakles a command?’

  Satyrus turned in his saddle and eyed the young man. ‘I had intended to raise twenty cavalrymen from the mercenaries. Can Herakles be trusted to do it?’

  Stratokles nodded. ‘Let’s find out.’

  Anaxagoras laid his hand on Stratokles’ reins. ‘I hate to interrupt a good plot,’ he said.

  ‘But?’ Satyrus smiled.

  ‘You know that the men now know who he is, eh?’ Anaxagoras asked.

  ‘Who he claims to be,’ Satyrus added.

  Stratokles shrugged. ‘It was bound to happen,’ he said.

  ‘Draco and some of the Apobatai are … emotional about it.’ Anaxagoras shook his head. ‘If he’s Alexander’s son, should we be sending him on cavalry patrols?’

  ‘Let them show their worship of him by keeping him alive,’ Satyrus said. He wondered whose voice uttered those words in such a tone of hard finality.

  Anaxagoras clearly wondered, too. He met Satyrus’s eyes and held them. ‘Have a care,’ he said. ‘I think a music lesson is required.’

  ‘After the cavalry raid. Charmides, fetch me Scopasis: my compliments, and would he meet me at my pavilion.’

  Satyrus’s pavilion was another topic of contention. They all used it – Anaxagoras, Charmides, Nikephorus and Stratokles all sat and drank wine and used the stores of cedar oil that Phoibos had against mosquitoes, and the lavender soap and whetstones and … everything. The man thought of everything.

  But somehow, with the red oiled-silk pavilion and the slaves – now more than fifteen – who attended it, he gave Satyrus the air of a potentate, of a king. Satyrus understood better than some of his men understood – that he had always lived like one of them on campaign, and consequently, the appearance of his pavilion set him apart in a way he had never been set apart before.
>
  The pavilion offended Anaxagoras and Charmides and Draco, but not Nikephorus, who simply wanted one of his own, nor Scopasis, who never seemed to notice it, as long as a cup of wine was put in his hand as soon as he dismounted.

  Satyrus understood their discontent, which was really about him. And the change he was experiencing – from captain to king. From leader of a few to leader of an army. He seldom had time to talk about philosophy with Charmides, to play his lyre with Anaxagoras, or even to discuss Miriam. He longed to discuss Miriam, but his sense of justice made him hold his tongue. Anaxagoras had his own troubles, and didn’t need to talk about a woman who had, in effect, left them both.

  Scopasis was waiting at the pavilion, long legs stretched before him as he leaned against a tent wall, a cup of wine in his hand.

  ‘I greet you,’ he said, formally.

  Satyrus slipped down from his gelding, passed the reins to a slave, and smiled at Scopasis. ‘I greet you, hipparch.’

  Scopasis smiled at the Greek word. ‘When did you last love a horse?’ Scopasis asked.

  ‘I was just thinking the same,’ Satyrus said, and nodded. ‘Too long. They die. Like flies.’

  Scopasis folded his legs under him and rose to his feet. ‘Let me show you something I have for you, then,’ he said.

  Behind the tent was a Nisean – grey like a storm at sea, with a small, high head and a pale mane and tail.

  ‘Is Antigonus dead?’ Satyrus asked. ‘Where did this horse come from?’ The stallion – his status was obvious – had red leather tack decorated in bronze, and a polished bronze bit in the Persian, and thus the Sakje, style, and a high-backed saddle like the Sauromatae used.

  Scopasis shrugged. ‘I found him wandering the plain to the south, a broken hobble on his fetlock,’ he said. ‘My mare wanted him.’

  ‘He is magnificent,’ Satyrus said. Indeed, he was the tallest horse Satyrus had ever seen, or close enough. Melitta had a pair of war-Niseans, and they were of a size. ‘You should have him.’

  Scopasis shook his head. ‘Too finicky. He needs five slaves and a constant supply of grain. But in a fight … by the gods, Satyrus, that is a fighting horse. My gift.’

  Satyrus gave the Sakje a hug. Scopasis thumped his back.

  ‘The gods must have sent that horse,’ Satyrus said. ‘Because I was just thinking about how poor my horses are – and about leading a cavalry raid. I want all the Sakje – all your cavalrymen. We’ll have fifty Getae and another fifty Bithynians and at least fifty Greek cavalry. I plan to strike south around the lake – a long scout into the rear of his army.’

  Scopasis nodded. ‘High time. I will come, of course, and all my men.’

  They all ate dinner together: Satyrus and Scopasis, Charmides and Herakles, Nikephorus and Anaxagoras and Jubal and Orestes, his foreman, and two of the phylarchs, chosen by Phoibos; Naxes, an Athenian thetes risen to command, and Niceaos, an exiled aristocrat from Samos who looked like a Spartan from tip to toe. It was a good dinner – roebuck and rich bread and a plate of figs so good that the men ate them to the last fruit and sat on their stools, licking their fingers and laughing like boys.

  ‘Phoibos, you are a miracle worker,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘I endeavour to give satisfaction, lord,’ the man replied. ‘I must say, lord, that I find this – exhilarating. I might wish that I’d gone on campaign earlier. The challenges of maintaining the oikia in such circumstances – splendid. May I mention that our money supply is running low, lord?’

  That brought Satyrus up short. ‘Low? I gave you a talent of silver.’

  ‘Yes, lord. I have a little more than a quarter of that left. You did insist that I pay for everything.’ He shrugged. ‘The figs were not cheap. Nor the roebuck, to be frank. The market here is very … expensive.’ The butler smiled ruefully.

  Satyrus was taken aback. He was not used to thinking about money at all. But a talent of silver would pay a hundred mercenaries for the summer. ‘By Hephaestus, sir – how much did you pay for the figs?’

  Phoibos shrugged. ‘A moment, if you please, lord?’ he said, and returned with a five-fold wax tablet. He flipped it open on his knee.

  ‘Ahh … here. Mykos did the shopping. A good pais with a head on his shoulders. Five silver owls of Athens.’ He nodded and snapped the tablets shut.

  ‘Five drachma? For figs?’ Satyrus turned to his assembled guests. ‘Please pardon me, gentlemen, but I need the figs back. We have soldiers to pay.’

  Charmides fell off his stool he was laughing so hard.

  Anaxagoras slapped his back. ‘That’s the first joke I’ve heard from you since Athens,’ he said.

  ‘Up until now, the food has been cheap,’ Satyrus said back. He turned back to Phoibos. ‘You are an excellent steward, and I recognise that you have the highest standards. I need them a little lower. A talent of silver has to last the entire campaign. And then some.’

  Phoibos sniffed. ‘Ah. Very well, lord. I will economise.’

  Scopasis held out his cup. ‘Do that thing tomorrow! For now, pour us more of the Chian!’

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘A talent of silver is the value of twenty farms north of Olbia – the whole tax of a district.’

  Phoibos nodded. ‘It is not cheap, to be a king,’ he answered gravely.

  When they gathered, it was still dark. The Getae came in early – only thirty of them instead of fifty, under a young, blond nobleman who looked more like a Keltoi than a Getae. His Greek was excellent – he was called Calicles, and while he kept his distance from Scopasis, he was not ill at ease with the other officers.

  His men all came with two horses apiece, or more.

  Herakles had two dozen men, most of them older veterans. Most Macedonians could ride, and the infantry was full of Thessalian peasants who had been born to riding but couldn’t afford a horse or panoply. The young man looked more terrified than inflated by his first command.

  ‘Don’t fuss,’ Satyrus said. ‘Who’s your hyperetes?’

  Draco came forward out of the murk. ‘I am, lord,’ he said. He was grinning from ear to ear.

  ‘I wondered where you were,’ Satyrus said. I am so far from these men, he thought. ‘You can be the hyperetes of the whole force. Get me a trumpet. Charmides, find me a trumpeter. Even if he’s a slave.’

  Mithridates provided the trumpeter – a young boy, no more than twelve. His trumpet seemed as long as he was, and he rode a magnificent horse – almost as tall as Satyrus’s gelding, an enormous horse for a boy. ‘My great-uncle’s son, Artaxerxes,’ he said. ‘He’s lucky I haven’t executed him. If he doesn’t come back,’ Mithridates’ eyes grew hard, ‘I shall shed no tears.’ The new King of Bithynia looked troubled in the grey light of first dawn. ‘I should ride with you. If only to keep an eye on that one.’

  Satyrus looked at Darius Thrakes, the lord of the northern Bithynians, a man who looked more like a Getae nobleman than Calicles who led them. But the Thracians had been in Bithynia for generations. ‘We’ll keep an eye on him,’ Satyrus said, his eyes flicking to Stratokles.

  Stratokles was tightening his girth. He was a hippeis class Athenian, and an expert cavalryman – one of the few Satyrus had. Lucius was a cavalry-class Latin – also a professional. The three of them had more professional cavalry experience than most of the rest of their Greek troopers combined.

  Stratokles got his girth the way he wanted, played with the buckles on his Sakje-style bridle, and Lucius gave him a leg up into the saddle. The Athenian then turned his mare. ‘I’ll go make friends with him,’ he said.

  The Bithynians were strong – almost a hundred cavalrymen, all with two mounts. They had a baggage wagon, as well.

  Satyrus rode up to Lord Darius and clasped his hand. The hand was not offered with any great willingness. ‘Good morning. Fine-looking horseman, lord. Please leave your baggage wagons.’

 
Darius smiled. ‘No,’ he said.

  Satyrus shrugged. He turned to Draco. ‘Burn them,’ he said.

  Darius froze. ‘We will—’

  Satyrus forced himself to smile. ‘You and your men will all die. Understand? War is not a game. You want those wagons so that you can ride away and leave us. That won’t be happening, my lord. If it does, we will hunt you down and kill you. Every man. Understand? You think you are a wily, dangerous man. The men sitting around you have been at war for their entire lives. Understand, lord?’

  He saw it all in the other man’s eyes – fear, and hate, and acceptance. It made Satyrus tired.

  Behind the Bithynian nobleman, Stratokles smiled mirthlessly.

  By noon, they were well south of the lake, edging along the downslope behind the crest of the main ridge of the hills ringing the lake, so that they were hidden from Antigonus – unless his horsemen had beaten them to the ridge top. There were parties of Sakje and Getae all around them, and each of them had one Bithynian trooper as a scout and guide.

  And Darius rode between Stratokles and Lucius, so obviously a hostage that his men understood and obeyed.

  ‘You’ve done this before?’ Satyrus asked Stratokles.

  Stratokles grinned. ‘I’m an Athenian,’ he said. ‘Before the Macedonians, we had an empire that covered most of Thrace and all of the Asian coast. Unwilling allies – it’s an Athenian speciality. Don’t worry, when we’re done, the Bithynians will be as eager as Scopasis. More so.’

  Lucius grimaced.

  Herakles was cautious and careful of his men, and Draco had to drive him forward. Scopasis was too rash, and Satyrus had restrain him, finding a fine edge between speed and foolishness.

  Anaxagoras rode at his shoulder and shared his canteen. ‘You play them like I play the kithara,’ he said. ‘Charmides is a first rate leader.’

  ‘But a poor rider,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘So you coach him on riding. Herakles is a good rider,’ Anaxagoras said.

  ‘But a nervous man with his first command, starting at shadows.’ Satyrus dug his knees into his gelding’s back and rose up, looking forward and then down the ridge to the left and south. He could see Sakje – red jacketed, most of them – away to the south on the next ridge, and well ahead, too. He longed to be on the back of his stallion, but he was saving the Nisean for the inevitable moment.