Tyrant: Force of Kings

by Christian Cameron

  Sappho called for her body servant, and asked for a stylus and a tablet.

  Leon sat back on his kline and read Sappho’s letter for the third time. By his side, Nihmu lay with her head on the armrest, her eyes out to sea.

  ‘You will go again,’ she said.

  ‘You could come with me,’ he said.

  ‘To Tanais?’ she asked. ‘To the Sea of Grass?’ Her breath caught.

  Leon shook his head. ‘We’ll rally the fleets at Rhodes,’ he said. ‘I expect that the fight, when it happens, will be in Asia – probably far from the sea. Plistias is at Miletus. Demetrios holds the mouth of the Propontus.’ Leon shrugged heavily. ‘All my ships, all Ptolemy’s and what Rhodes has left – all together, two hundred hulls. Demetrios and Plistias built all winter – no idea what they’ll have. But I’ll be surprised if they have fewer than two hundred hulls.’ Leon shook his head. ‘Everyone has their eyes on the armies and the elephants. A fleet of two hundred hulls has as many men as an army of fifty thousand.’

  Nihmu sighed. ‘Yes, dear.’

  Leon passed a hand down her back. ‘This is the end. Or at least, all of us will try to make it the end.’ He looked at the letter. ‘Diodorus and Crax and Sappho are coming up from Babylon with Seleucus.’

  Nihmu looked out over the sea. ‘All of Kineas’s people, one last time.’

  Leon looked at her, and she was crying.

  ‘Did he know what was to come?’ she asked. ‘I never saw this.’

  Leon smiled. ‘Why cry? We will see all of our friends.’

  Nihmu managed a small smile. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And then we will die.’

  Leon smiled. His wife had been a prophetess, and she was wont to say such things. Sometimes they had meaning, and sometimes they didn’t, and sometimes the meaning was subtle. So he smiled, kissed her, and got to his feet. ‘The children of men are born to die,’ he said.

  Nihmu nodded. ‘I should practise my archery,’ she allowed.

  Antigonus sat on a leopard skin thrown over a stool, and watched two oarsmen wrestling for a prize.

  Demetrios sat beside him, and the boy’s presence made him … whole. Happy. Even if the young fool wanted to be a god. That was a young man’s fantasy. Antigonus One-Eye had eighty-two years’ worth of pain, wounds, and age. He no longer wanted to live for ever, but he was damned if he was going down easily.

  ‘I have the best army I’ve had since the king died,’ Antigonus said.

  ‘You mean Alexander,’ Demetrios said. ‘You and I are kings, now.’

  ‘I mean the king. He was king. We … are fighting in the ruins of his temple.’ Antigonus watched the sun setting over the sea. ‘Bring me your whole army – everything. Leave fucking Cassander holding his limp dick and come over to Asia. Let’s do it – one throw for everything. I’m tired, and I’ve been this close ten times, and I want to win.’

  A slow smile spread over Demetrios’s face. ‘You and me … together? One army? Nothing will defeat us.’

  Antigonus nodded. ‘Nothing ever has,’ he said. ‘Mind you, buy every fucking hoplite in Greece before you come. Buy everyone. Bloat yourself. Buy them even if it is just to deny them to fucking Cassander. Buy all the Thessalians you can find.’

  ‘You have cash?’ Demetrios asked.

  ‘You own Athens, son. Don’t expect cash from me.’ Antigonus grunted. ‘I met your Satyrus,’ he noted.

  ‘You liked him!’ Demetrios said.

  ‘He’s worth fifty of Lysimachos. Not a bad little strategos – fell for an old chestnut in the mountains, then put one over on me.’ Antigonus chuckled. ‘Wish you could buy him. Since you can’t, I’ve paid to have him poisoned.’

  ‘Poisoned! Pater, he’s a hero!’ Demetrios shook his head. ‘That’s womanish.’

  ‘My child, I’m eighty-two years old. I can be as womanish as I want.’ The old man smiled, though. ‘You know why we’ll win?’

  ‘Because I’m going to be a god?’ Demetrios asked.

  ‘No. Not by a long chalk.’ Antigonus drank some wine. That part of life remained good. He still liked good wine. And strong bread with a crust. And the sight of a field he’d won.

  ‘Because we have Athens and Tyre and all the money?’ Demetrios said.

  ‘I won’t pretend that won’t help,’ Antigonus said, and chuckled. ‘But no. It’s because Cassander is a useless fuck, and Ptolemy wants it to end, and Lysimachos can’t find his arse with both hands in the dark, and Seleucus is an arrogant pup … and they all hate each other. You and me, son, we trust each other, and when the bronze meets the iron, that’s what will count.’

  Demetrios put his arms around his father and kissed him. ‘I’ll be there when you call,’ he said.

  Antigonus drank off his wine and tossed the cup into the sea. ‘Then sod ’em all,’ he said. ‘We’ll be kings of the world.’

  The caravan came to Heraklea with fifty camels and a hundred horses, laden with spices and silk and fine cottons, wool shawls from the lands east of Hyrkania, swords forged by legendary giants, and twenty loads of lapis lazuli quarried in the high, high passes of Sogdia and Bactria.

  The caravan was commanded by a woman, and her tribesmen called her ‘The Widow.’ She was rumoured to be beautiful, and her voice was gentle, but the tough, dark Sogdian mercenaries told the boys in the souk how she had killed a bandit in the high passes with her steel, and how she had killed another – one of their own, who thought she might warm his bed – with a thumb into his brain through his eye.

  Covered in dust, robed to the throat and wearing a Persian burnoose, she was slim, but that was all that could be said of her. And rich – she was certainly about to be rich. The lapis alone was the largest cargo of the fine stone to arrive in thirty years.

  She spoke Greek with rapid, accurate fluency. The traders of the souk loved and hated her at once, and her vicious guards, who caught a thief by the camels, gutted him, and staked him by their lines as a warning to others.

  She was still covered in dust when she finished bargaining with a jewel merchant for a handful of uncut rubies – the only sale she was interested in making – and it brought her a bag of gold darics and the eyes of every thief in Heraklea. Only her eyes showed, which the jeweller thought was an unfair advantage in making a deal, but they were beautiful eyes, large and liquid and a remarkable, lapis-dark blue, and besides, for all her bargaining, he’d just made a year’s wage. He felt beneficent when she asked her question.

  Leon the Nubian? Of course he still had a factor here. Directions were provided.

  The widow shouted orders, and men did things, and the souk made room for fifty camels and their attendants. She had an astounding number of Sogdian mercenaries, and some Hyrkanians. Their horses alone were enough to excite envy.

  She walked, accompanied by two Hyrkanians, through the alleys behind the agora to the warehouse she’d been told to visit. Really, an old Greek home sandwiched between two warehouses.

  Leon’s factor was a young man with a black beard and dancing eyes – hard to see that he had been a slave since birth, or perhaps all that joy was the result in ending free. He bowed; informants had already brought him word of her arrival, but he was stunned to have the agora’s new star descend on his doorstep.

  Before her heart had beat a hundred times, she was reclining on a couch with a cup of wine in her hand. A slave helped her roll the burnoose off her shoulders and head, and under the folds of her dusty Persian coat, she wore a man’s chitoniskos. Her Persian boots were replaced by gold sandals from her bag.

  Leon’s man, Hector, raised his cup. ‘To Hermes, god of travellers, who brings you to my door. And to whom should I pledge this cup, lady of the beautiful eyes?’

  She had a playful smile, for a matron of mature years. ‘Your master and I have been more rivals than friends,’ she said. ‘Nonetheless, I believe we are allies now, an
d I have brought a cargo to help finance an army.’

  Hector shook his head. ‘You have the better of me, my lady. If my master had a rival such as you, I would surely know.’

  ‘Bah,’ she said, and the lapis eyes flickered. ‘I am an old woman and the world has forgotten me. My name is forgotten. But when I was young, men called me Banugul.’

  Hector knew her then: the woman that his master called the ‘Viper of Hyrkania’.

  But as she was proposing to give him the contents of the richest caravan in thirty years, he was hard put to see how she might be plotting against him.

  By the end of the day, she and her men had largely taken over his house. It worried him but she allowed – insisted, in fact – that he write letters to Tanais and to Alexandria. He sent a third copy to Rhodes. And then he was busy, as he found himself in control of the lapis market. It was a delightful way for a merchant to live.

  Miriam sat on a couch, her legs stretched out before her, and opened the scroll. She did a great deal of her brother’s business – it kept her from thinking. And thinking made her feel ill.

  But the letter from Heraklea was for Leon, not for Abraham. She hesitated, but the name Satyrus of Tanais leapt off the page at her, and she couldn’t help herself. At some point in the long missive, she pivoted her legs from couch to floor, rose and walked out of the garden – lovingly restored – across the tile floor of the former andron, now part of the larger reception hall, and up the short steps to her brother’s warehouse.

  Abraham, dressed in the long robes of a Jew, stood with Daedelus of Halicarnassus. They were old comrades, of course, but her brother’s eyes positively glittered.

  Miriam was suddenly conscious that she was not dressed to receive. But she was in the warehouse, where women were not welcome, and she couldn’t bring herself to leave and change.

  Abraham grinned at her like a fool. ‘Leon’s on his way!’ he said. ‘Ptolemy has sent part of his fleet – I’m to have a command!’ He caught himself, tried to restore the imperturbable demeanour of a man of worth. Failed, and grinned again. Then tried to put his grin away, all too aware how Miriam was going to feel when he rowed off to fight alongside Leon … and Satyrus.

  ‘This letter is for Leon,’ she said. She shrugged, an eloquent shrug that suggested that she, as a mere woman, made these mistakes, and she’d read it, and really, no one should chide her for it – all in a shrug. ‘Banugul of Hyrkania is at Heraklea with a convoy of goods to be made into money for her son to buy mercenaries.’ She held out the letter. ‘Almost a thousand talents, the letter says.’

  Daedelus shook his head. ‘A thousand talents? By Hephaestus’s forge – that’s enough to buy Antigonus.’

  Abraham scratched his beard. ‘She’s … an enemy. But of course, her son is with Stratokles, and Stratokles …’ He looked at his sister.

  Miriam sighed. ‘Stratokles is a side all by himself.’

  Daedelus made a face. ‘I’ve heard of her, too. Alexander’s mistress. But what does this change?’

  Abraham shook his head. ‘Nothing. But we couldn’t get a message back through anyway. As soon as the winter storms are off the heavens, Demetrios will close the Propontus. As it is, the captain who brought the letter must be a madman.’

  ‘Insane,’ said a voice from the warehouse door.

  Miriam’s heart stopped.

  ‘I thought that the winter winds were a safer bet than two hundred triremes,’ Satyrus said. He had on his ancient, pale blue chiton and his sea boots, and he looked more like a fisherman than the King of the Bosporus.

  Abraham threw his arms around his friend.

  Satyrus had the good grace to look at his friend while he embraced him. Then his glance went back to Miriam.

  ‘I came to try you one more time,’ he said. He seemed unembarrassed to have Daedelus and Abraham present.

  The hardened sea-mercenary grew red. His eyes met with Abraham’s.

  ‘I … think I hear my mother calling me,’ he muttered.

  ‘Cup of wine before you go?’ Abraham asked.

  ‘Jews are the most hospitable of men,’ Daedelus said.

  He reached out for her hand, and she gave it to him. They sat – uncomfortably – on a chest of Athenian blackware and wood shavings. For a time that would have bored an onlooker, they said nothing.

  ‘You must be Poseidon’s own son,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Surely your Jehovah doesn’t tolerate Poseidon,’ Satyrus said. ‘As he’s a jealous god.’

  She grew red.

  ‘There are Jews in Tanais, now. I tried to get their priest to teach me Hebrew. He had to admit he wasn’t very good at it himself.’ Satyrus shrugged. ‘We spent the winter talking Greek, instead. He’s building a temple – a small one. I’m paying.’

  She looked away.

  ‘I can’t be a Jew,’ Satyrus said. ‘Please look at me, this is no jest. I understand that it is the religion of your people. I can respect it, but I heard nothing from that good man in Tanais that would cause me to leave the worship of Herakles … or Apollo, or Athena, or Pythagoras or Socrates or even Aristotle. But to me, it is a list of rules – rules made to govern people in a place far from my people. Perhaps every religion is such. But Herakles cares nothing for my taste in meat, only that I be excellent. That I pour everything I have into that excellence, and never allow myself to settle for second-rate. And it occurred to me, this winter, that you were the most excellent person I had ever met – that I would not settle for some Greek girl or some Sakje princess with a thousand horses, any more than I would allow other men to settle the world while I watched.’

  ‘You might have died, sailing here.’ She was angry.

  He nodded. ‘I thought that I would die last autumn. Melitta thought so. There was an augury.’ He rubbed his chin. There was salt in his hair, making him look older than he was. ‘I am not a stripling. So I won’t tell you that I will die without you. But I would certainly live with you.’

  She nodded. ‘Shouldn’t you be at Heraklea with Cassander and Lysimachos? Preparing for the last act of the war?’

  He looked into her eyes. ‘No. That’s for Stratokles. He should be there by now. My sister and I have sent out the word, gathered our taxes, talked to our farmers and our tribesmen. Stratokles can negotiate for us.’

  ‘You trust him?’ she said, her eyes wide.

  Satyrus smiled. ‘There is some magic to him,’ he said. ‘I have come two thousand stades across storm-racked seas to see the woman I love, and we are discussing Stratokles.’

  They gazed at each other.

  ‘If you will live with me – wife, mistress, friend, whatever role you choose – we can look into each other’s eyes for ever,’ he said.

  She licked her lips, then looked away. ‘No,’ she said. ‘In time, it will lose its savour. We will argue about raising our children, about the rights of Jews in the town, about the way you levy tolls. About Stratokles. About war.’

  Satyrus got to his feet. ‘Yes, I agree. I think it sounds like a lovely way to pass the time. I’d rather argue acrimoniously with you than grow restless with the dull smiles of a princess and feel guilty while I fuck her slaves.’ He turned back to her. ‘Was that too blunt?’ He took both her hands. ‘We survived a year in the siege of Rhodes, and I saw you tested in the crucible of Ares – and you wanted nothing.’

  She took a deep breath. He saw it in her face.

  ‘Must I beg?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘Listen, Satyrus. Stop your chatter and listen. After Ephesus, I asked myself this: if I am not a Jew, what am I? Who am I?’ She shook her head. ‘And inside my head, I hear the same voice I have heard since my husband died. Since I told my father that I wouldn’t go back to him.’ She clenched his hands hard, as if she was drowning and he could save her. ‘I think that you imagine that I am strong, and I am weak. I fear t
o fail you, and I fear to find that you have subsumed me – that I will become a body and a complacent smile. I am not your match.’

  He was smiling. His smile annoyed her.

  ‘You think that you know everything,’ she said pettishly.

  ‘I know you. What you say is true, but you are you. You think I lack these fears? Last year, I nearly lost my life and my kingdom through ignoring the counsel of my counsellors. I am ignoring my sister to plunge my kingdom into debt to fight a war that may not be my business. I am more like Demetrios than I would admit to anyone but you, and to be honest, my love, I am giving my all to defeat Demetrios and Antigonus, and I’m all but sure that they are the better men. I am tired of war and I’m no longer sure of what my motivations are for fighting. My road here is littered with corpses of people I loved – Diokles died in the autumn, Helios died here, Philokles, Nestor – like paving stones in the road, and when I am drifting off to sleep, I wince and roll and roll again, trying to be someone else, someone who does not kill people every summer. And despite all that, I enjoy my wine, and I love the sea, and I would trade the rest of my life to lie tonight in your bed.’

  She flushed. ‘That was too blunt,’ she said with a smile.

  ‘No it wasn’t.’ He put his arms around her.

  She kissed him. He had hesitated, because forcing his kisses on her was far from his intention. She didn’t raise her face and wait – she locked her hands behind his head and kissed him.

  ‘You … changed your mind?’ he said.

  ‘No. Listen, love. I will talk to Abraham, and if I have his agreement, I will try you – us – a day at a time.’ She shrugged. Kissed him, and stepped away. ‘And you will not be in my bed tonight. Curse it. But once you are there, I suspect that I will never have you out of it.’

  Satyrus grabbed her, ran a hand down her side to her hip, and she squealed, and he laughed.

  The sound of their laughter carried into the garden.

  ‘The King of the Bosporus is seducing my sister,’ Abraham said, and raised his cup for more wine.