Tyrant: Force of Kings

by Christian Cameron

  ‘A stool for the King of the Bosporus,’ Seleucus Nicator called. ‘Diodorus said you’d been wounded. You look well enough.’

  ‘I am – a few days and I’ll be fit. May I accompany you west?’ Satyrus subsided onto the stool with relief.

  ‘My pleasure. And your Exiles will be delighted to have you – the famous Satyrus of Tanais? Worth a thousand men.’

  Satyrus smiled up at Seleucus. ‘You didn’t used to be such a flatterer.’

  ‘I wasn’t King of Babylon, then,’ Seleucus said, seriously.

  Six days, and the advance guard was across the Taurus Mountains and making camp at Cybistra, in Lycaonia. The elephants were still in the high passes of the mountains, and the rearguard hadn’t left Zeugma.

  Diodorus sat by a fire with Crax and Andronicus on either side of him. Sappho passed the wine. She rode astride with the men, and refused to be with the baggage. She’d made more campaigns than many of the veterans. Satyrus felt like embracing her every time he saw her.

  She and Diodorus moved him the most – perhaps because they were the eldest. Diodorus was old. Satyrus had never expected it; the man had remained adamantine, proof against time, throughout Satyrus’s childhood, and now he was a stick figure, all sinews and scorched skin with deep furrows in his face and his cheekbones so sharp they could cut. And Sappho’s beauty was blasted – she was an old woman, and no one would mistake her for a great beauty.

  So it had taken him two days to discover that looks deceived, and that the people who had raised him were essentially unchanged. No one had told them how old they were. Diodorus was not in his dotage – when his voice lashed a trooper, the man wilted. Sappho had much the same effect on Diodorus – and Crax, and Andronicus, and soon enough Satyrus himself, who discovered that she felt he was cosseting his wound when he might have been exercising.

  ‘What a Spartan you would have made,’ he grunted, when she forced him to bend his left leg to her satisfaction.

  ‘I am a woman of Thebes – a far, far better place than Sparta, with better men. Ask them at Leukra.’ She nodded, another argument won, and directed her slave to help him bend the leg again.

  So … two days, and he had returned to being their child. It was not so bad.

  Especially when he was treated as an adult child.

  ‘What do you think One-Eye will do?’ Diodorus asked. He sat back on his cloak, and Sappho joined him, burrowing into his arms like a much younger woman.

  Satyrus shifted, winced, and looked at Apollodorus. ‘He’ll try to defeat us in detail. About now he’ll be getting his first reports that Seleucus is really on his way. So he can come east to us, or go north to Lysimachos.’ He paused. ‘It’s not that simple, though,’ he added.

  Diodorus grunted. ‘It never is,’ he said.

  ‘There will or won’t be a fleet action in the Dardanelles. That could change everything. Or Demetrios might march inland and join his father – and that would change everything.’ He paused. ‘Or … Hades, I don’t know. Demetrios might go off to crush Cassander and leave his pater …’

  ‘Never happen,’ Diodorus said. ‘That’s their edge on us. That they have each other. Demetrios won’t abandon his pater. Will he win in the Dardanelles?’

  Satyrus took a cup of wine from Charmides. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said, as if repeating a lesson for Diodorus. How often had he gone from Philokles, having just had Plato beaten into him, to repeat the lesson for Diodorus, as he sat in his armour?

  ‘Ahh,’ Diodorus said. ‘Why?’ His tone said he liked the answer.

  ‘If we win, then our troops move freely on the coast of Asia. But Alexander and Lysimachos have both shown that even if our ships lose, the army can move across the Troad into Phrygia without hindrance. We have Bithynia. That one change is everything. Lysimachos doesn’t need a fleet to move an army down on Antigonus, and his supplies will be safe.’ Satyrus sat back, feeling fifteen.

  Diodorus nodded. ‘Well, you’ve commanded more armies than I have, son. But it seems to me that the navies will still have two effects. First, morale: if we win, it will have an effect on the troops. And second, if our ships win, then Antigonus can’t go far from his logistics, for fear that Lysimachos will land behind him. You know that we’re in contact with Ptolemy’s fleet?’

  Satyrus hadn’t heard.

  ‘There’s twenty triremes shadowing us on the coast.’ Diodorus nodded. ‘Pray to Poseidon, son. A victory at sea would save us a world of trouble. But otherwise, your analysis is correct. He’s got to go for one or the other of us, as soon as he can. I reckon he’ll go for Lysimachos – he’s beaten him like a drum, and he’s never beaten us.’

  Satyrus rolled his hips. ‘I just hope we don’t fight for ten days,’ he said. ‘I can barely ride.’

  Sappho laughed. ‘But you will,’ she said.

  ‘It’ll take ten days to get the rearguard up to here,’ Diodorus said. ‘Our army is spread across six hundred stades of crappy roads. But ten days … that’s about it. Ten days will see us near enough that we’ll be fighting.’

  Five days, and two days of rain. Satyrus could ride well again, and he exercised hard, sparring with Anaxagoras, and Crax, whose Keltoi sword was three palms longer than any Greek sword and who used it in an alien way, snipping with long sweeps and cutting straight into attacks.

  Five days brought them to the shores of the Karalis Lake, more than a hundred stades from the sea and covered in gulls. The rain filled the water courses and, uncomfortable as it was, it allowed the vanguard to move faster – suddenly, water for horses was abundant.

  Seleucus knew the business of war, too. Every night, when they halted, there was an agora of merchants from the nearest towns – even if those towns were fifty stades distant – with wagons full of produce, sheep, goats, fodder for horses. All they required was cash, and Diodorus’s war-chest seemed to be bottomless.

  ‘No point in being a rich mercenary if you can’t keep your horses fed,’ he said.

  On the evening of the fifth day, Crax came in from a long scout north and west – he’d taken six men and gone as far and fast as a string of ponies would take them. Seleucus and a dozen of his officers came up the column from Iconium to hear the report.

  Crax was drinking cider. He was covered in dust, he appeared to be a wraith; and the men who had ridden with him simply fell from their saddles and lay like the dead.

  Crax was uncowed by having Seleucus present, although he bobbed his head to the King of Babylon – rather, Satyrus felt, like one Maeoti farmer greeting another on the road.

  ‘Well?’ Seleucus said.

  ‘Antigonus is supposed to be at Sardis, trying to link up with his son, who’s coming south from the Troad with eighteen thousand men. I didn’t see any of them, lords, but there’s a detachment of Antigonus’s cavalry up the road a piece, north of the mines at the road junction. Locals call it Kotia. I took a man there – he hasn’t been paid since the festival of Ares in the autumn – and he talked. Said that they expect us at Gordia, and they have troops ready to march that way and hold us in the passes.’

  Seleucus nodded. ‘It is so helpful that One-Eye thinks I’m a fool. Still, if they expect us at Gordia …’

  ‘Send some of your satrapal levies marching that way,’ Diodorus said.

  ‘Sardis …’ Seleucus began. ‘That’s six hundred stades. Where’s Lysimachos?’

  Crax shook his head. ‘I don’t know, lord, and my prisoner doesn’t know either.’

  Diodorus swore, and so did Seleucus.

  Satyrus finished the wine in his cup. ‘Give me a dozen men with six remounts a man, and I’ll find him,’ he said. ‘I know these hills – I campaigned around Sardis last year.’

  Diodorus nodded. ‘I’d rather send—’

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘No – no assassin is going to follow me across Phrygia.’

 
‘I was considering what would happen if one of One-Eye’s cavalry patrols got you,’ Seleucus said. ‘But I need information more than I need you, Satyrus. If you’ll do it … go with Athena and Hermes.’

  Satyrus took his friends, as well as Andronicus the Gaul and a dozen troopers – all with strings of horses. And Crax. The Bastarnae man was unstoppable, and he was awake at first light with his own horses.

  They were off before dawn, and they rode until dusk, slept with their reins on their arms, and were off in the dark again, sweeping around the north end of the lakes, then across country to Akmonia, through tribal territories where people lived high on the hillsides in villages that seemed to hang from the sky. They weren’t troubled.

  They picked up the Sardis road at Thyrai and went due east, into the rising sun. They left the road when their vedettes saw soldiers and rode along the ridges above the Kogamas River.

  ‘Welcome to Lydia,’ Satyrus said. He felt wonderful – his thigh hurt, but in the usual ways of an injury. Three days in the saddle, and he was like a god. And free of the plodding columns.

  The Valley of the Kogamas was full of men. When they made camp, the light of their fires stretched away east as far as they could see.

  ‘That’s Antigonus,’ Crax said. ‘I didn’t get this far, but here he is. He’s east of Sardis – where’s his son? Where’s Lysimachos?’

  Andronicus grunted.

  Anaxagoras dropped to the ground and unrolled his blankets.

  Satyrus laughed. ‘You know, Anaxagoras, I’ve done my sister a great service the last two weeks.’

  Anaxagoras was already in his blankets. ‘Yes?’ he asked.

  ‘You can ride,’ Satyrus said. ‘Like a Sakje. Now she’ll marry you.’

  ‘I’m not sure that equine riding is the skill she’ll marry me for,’ Anaxagoras said. He smiled, turned over, and was asleep.

  Another day of careful riding – walking, often, and it was the slowest day they’d made yet – and they were clear of Antigonus. His cavalry was on the roads, but the high ground on the north flank of the valley was empty of everyone but refugees.

  They had news – all of it conflicting. Demetrios had won a great victory at Kallipolis – had lost his fleet – had abandoned his fleet and marched inland – defeated Lysimachos – been defeated – everyone was dead.

  ‘See why scouting is such a pain in the arse?’ Crax asked.

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘Crax, you know that I’ve been conducting campaigns as a strategos for eight years, eh?’

  Crax slapped him on the back. ‘And see, you still have so much to learn.’

  ‘Crax, my mother taught you to scout.’ Satyrus was tired of the patronising lectures.

  Crax laughed. ‘Ataelus taught me to scout, young king. And if you know so much, why do you sit and argue with an old tribesman while the sun to anyone in the valley below silhouettes you? Eh?’ He laughed. ‘Your mother would know better.’

  Satyrus shook his head and resigned himself to being a perpetual adolescent to these men.

  Tyateira, and Satyrus, riding as a vedette with Apollodorus, met a messenger and took him. He had a scroll from Demetrios to Antigonus.

  Satyrus read it, handed it to the messenger, and said, ‘On your way.’

  The young man, a Lydian, terrified with Apollodorus’s knife at his throat, relaxed. ‘Thank you, lord.’

  Satyrus bowed. ‘How far to Lord Demetrios?’

  The messenger remounted, took his satchel and his scroll tube, and saluted. ‘Forty stades, lord. Stratonika. And marching this way as fast as his pikemen will go.’

  ‘And Lysimachos is pressing him?’ Satyrus asked.

  ‘Hard. But we’re holding.’ The messenger saluted, gathered his reins, and rode off, and Apollodorus shook his head.

  ‘I’m going to guess that bastard is off to tell One-Eye something you actually want the bastard to know.’ He shrugged. ‘Otherwise, we just had the best piece of intelligence we could have had, dropped on us by the gods, and you’re letting him ride away.’

  ‘He’s marching to meet his pater, and he’s sent the fleet back to Athens rather than face ours. And he’s telling his pater that our troops are at Gordia.’ Satyrus took a deep breath. Suddenly his hands were shaking. ‘Athena – we may yet pull this off. Let’s find the others.’

  That night, all of them gathered around a fire no bigger than a man’s head. When Satyrus went off to piss, he couldn’t see even a flicker of light. They crouched, cloaks spread to catch the heat and hide the flame, and Crax fed it patiently from scraps of wood.

  Satyrus explained the situation to every man.

  ‘The whole war may turn on one of us getting back to Seleucus,’ he said. ‘I need every man to know. Antigonus and Demetrios are about to join forces – perhaps tomorrow – on the plains north of Sardis. Then they can either go north against Lysimachos or east against Seleucus. They think Seleucus is way up north by Gordia.’ Satyrus tried to choose his words carefully, trying to imagine a cavalry trooper reporting this to the King of Babylon. ‘If Seleucus marches like lightning, he can pass west of Antigonus and join Lysimachos.’

  Drawing in the stony dirt and using bread pills to mark the positions, he built a little map complete with ridges marked by rocks.

  ‘Understand – if we get this wrong, Seleucus will face Antigonus in the plains, alone.’ Satyrus looked around. They looked like they understood.

  ‘So … we all ride for it in the morning?’ Crax asked.

  ‘You ride for it. I’m taking Anaxagoras, Jubal, Charmides and Apollodorus and riding west for Lysimachos. We’re so close we can’t afford it if he rests for a day or hesitates … or heads for the coast to link up with the fleet.’ Satyrus shook his head. ‘A day – a few hours – and we could lose.’

  Crax nodded. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I guess you’re all grown up.’

  In the morning, they all shook hands – every man with every other – and the two parties split.

  Before the gulls had descended to eat the beans they left on the ground, they were five stades apart.

  20

  It cost them two days to get around Demetrios and his army; two days of climbing higher and higher on the ridges north of Sardis; two days of hiding among the rocks and the scrubby wild olives. Two days of short rations for man and horse.

  On the third day it rained. The water poured down as if the gods were upending buckets on them, but they seized the moment to move – visibility was less than two horse lengths. The rocks were slippery, and Satyrus and Apollodorus, who took turns in the lead, both had falls, and Apollodorus had to put one of his horses down.

  Late afternoon, and even Apollodorus was unsure as to their direction. They had angled away from the ridge, looking to make up time, and now, as they rode through the deluge, heads down, Satyrus was worried that they had in fact ridden off in the wrong direction. Descents can be more difficult than ascents.

  The sun was setting, somewhere beyond the endless clouds, and a wind was picking up, lashing the water against them. Their cloaks were long since soaked through. The light was tricky, and Satyrus was afraid that they were riding due south – right into Antigonus – and worried again that they were losing time.

  The ground was levelling off.

  Satyrus pushed his tired horse to a trot and drew level with Apollodorus.

  ‘I want to go downhill to the road,’ he shouted. ‘I want to be sure where we are – I want to make some time.’

  Rain poured through Apollodorus’s straw farmer’s hat and down his face, soaking his beard, and making him look old. Old and worried.

  ‘Do it,’ the man shouted back.

  Satyrus felt his way down the ridge, pushing his horse when she hesitated. He didn’t love the mare but she was the best of his string and he had to hope that she could find her footing in the tricky light an
d pouring water.

  They went down and down and down … and Satyrus began to worry again. He couldn’t imagine that they had climbed this far – couldn’t imagine that he’d have to ride back up all this rock to find his friends.

  It occurred to him that, hurry or no, the wisest course was to go back up the ridge, find his friends, and make some sort of miserable camp until the rain cleared. One glance in sunlit daylight would show them where they were.

  Down and down. Now Satyrus was sure he was lost – he could see a watercourse at the base of the valley, and the darkness was coming down like the water – too damned late to climb the ridge.

  And then he saw the road.

  There couldn’t be a road at the base of every valley. It had to be the Sardis road – the Royal Road.

  He sat on his horse’s back for a moment, and then slipped down to give the animal a rest and let her drink from the gushing rainwater in the conduit by the road. He had a handful of grain and he put it in his straw hat and she ate it, ravenously, and his hat went with the grain. He had a lump of honey-sugar, almost as big as his fist, in his bag – a sticky, sodden mass, but he ate half and gave the other half to the horse, and she flicked her ears forward as if acknowledging that this, at least, was worth her time.

  For the first time, he loved her.

  ‘Good girl,’ he said, and patted her neck.

  Now he had to climb the ridge again.

  He was so busy with the horse that he missed the men.

  They came along, heads down in the pouring rain – more than a hundred cavalrymen, sodden men in sodden cloaks on sodden horses.

  Satyrus was in the middle of the road. He managed to leap onto his horse’s back – he had that much time – and then they were all around him.

  ‘Get off the road, you stupid fuck!’ shouted a phylarch.

  He hid his head and walked the mare clear of the mass of men, so that she was fetlock deep in the conduit of rainwater. He sat there and watched as Demetrios’s Aegema, his elite cavalry, marched past in the very last light. Five hundred cavalrymen, and in the midst of them, Demetrios himself and two men Satyrus knew at sight – Neron, his spy, and Apollonaris, his physician.