Tyrant: Force of Kings

by Christian Cameron

  Satyrus pulled his sodden cloak over his head and sat as still as he could.

  Neron looked at him.

  Demetrios looked at him. He was laughing – in a torrent of rain, he laughed like Dionysus. He was confident and happy.

  That alone shook Satyrus as much as anything. And Demetrios and Neron were talking, but Satyrus couldn’t hear them over the rain.

  Neron turned his head, looked back at Satyrus, and shouted.

  Satyrus held his breath.

  A pair of soldiers rode forward to Neron.

  Satyrus backed his horse, step by step, along the conduit that ran by the road – now the water was deeper, and icy cold. Poor beast.

  Satyrus prayed to Herakles, and his prayers were answered in the form of a small path – probably the route that the road’s maintainers used to get at the conduit walls.

  More shouts behind him.

  ‘Up,’ he said to the horse, and put his heels into her sides, and gamely, she rose and made the jump – trusting him – and then she was on the barrow trail, and he didn’t hurry. There was now a thin screen of acacia between him and the road itself, on the other side of the ditch. He rode a few steps, dismounted, and put his cloak over her head.

  ‘There was a man – right there by the road,’ Neron insisted.

  Demetrios nodded. ‘No doubt as miserable as we are, my friend. May he find warmth and shelter.’ He slapped his spymaster on the back. ‘Probably one of your own prodromoi.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ Neron said. ‘I’d kill for a report – any report – on where Seleucus is.’

  ‘Let’s not look too far ahead,’ Demetrios said. ‘Or put another way – fuck Seleucus. We’ve slipped Lysimachos, and now we join up with Pater and the world is ours.’

  Neron rode on, but he looked behind him every hundred heartbeats until the rain stopped.

  The two cold, wet men were careful. They searched the edge of the conduit and the trees. Then they searched in the conduit, but by luck they were up the hill twenty horse lengths, stabbing their spears down into the water.

  Demetrios – and Neron – were well served. They weren’t giving up.

  Satyrus waited for the rain to get fiercer, and when it did, he walked his horse north along the conduit. He didn’t hurry and he didn’t look back.

  In half an hour, the rain eased off, and by the end of an hour, he’d made ten stades and was on the road, and the rain had stopped.

  He considered going back, and decided that the risk would be insane. He had one horse, no camping gear, and no weapons but the knife under his arm.

  The sky cleared as he walked on the road, and the moon came up, and it was cold. He mounted up and rode, mostly to keep himself warm, jumping off every couple of stades and running alongside.

  His mare was flagging. He searched his sodden leather bag and found a sausage. She ate it. A morsel of wet, stale bread. She ate it.

  A linen napkin rolled around his fire-making kit. In the bronze tin, he remembered, he’d put pressed dried grapes from the farm where he’d hidden. The mass of grapes was dry, and the size of his fist. He broke off a piece and gave the rest to his horse.

  It was full night. His good campaign chlamys was wet through, but it was still warm, or better than nothing, and the horse was warm. It was the horse that worried him. He needed her alive. In fact, he’d come to like her.

  They walked. He didn’t remount. He needed her for an emergency, and short of that, he’d just keep going.

  Morning. A beautiful morning, with the sun rising above the ridge to the east like the figures of the poet – long, gentle rays of red-pink reaching across one ridge to lick at the next. Rosy fingers lasciviously teasing earth.

  Satyrus was mostly asleep, plodding along. Trying to think of a name for his mare. It seemed like an important thing to name her before she lay down and died. And she was exhausted. And he had no more tricks to play, no more sugar, no more warmth.

  But somewhere on the hillsides above him, there was a man with a fire. He could smell it. It gave him hope. He pushed forward, one step in front of the other, up a steep climb. He remembered this stretch of road, and knew just where he was – entering the Mysian Gates.

  Near the top he saw the smoke, and then saw the fire, and then saw the men – he laughed.

  They’d been watching him all the way up the pass, cooking breakfast.

  He kept walking. They were Sakje – he was pretty sure he knew the tall, dark-haired man by the fire as Thyrsis, the Achilles of the Assagetae.

  ‘Thyrsis!’ he yelled.

  Every head came up. Two men he hadn’t seen emerged from cover and let their arrows off their strings.

  Thyrsis put his cup on the ground and ran down the road to him, wrapped him in an embrace.

  ‘What are you doing here, oh king?’ Thyrsis said.

  ‘Scouting,’ Satyrus said. ‘Would you be so kind as to feed this excellent horse?’

  A young Sakje woman took his mare, and he sat on a rock by the road.

  The next thing he knew, he was waking to a bright day with his wounded thigh burning and stiff but he felt so much better that he chuckled.

  ‘Soup,’ Thyrsis said.

  The Sakje maiden gave him a cup, and Satyrus drank it all off, and three more like it, and ate some stale bread.

  ‘How far to the army?’ he asked.

  Thyrsis laughed. ‘Six hundred stades,’ he said. ‘We’re just a feint.’

  Satyrus rubbed his thigh and chewed his bread. ‘I need three horses and a partner. I need you to push south; find Anaxagoras, Apollodorus and Jubal. They’re up that ridge somewhere. We thought Demetrios had Lysimachos right behind him.’

  Thyrsis laughed and slapped his thigh. ‘We are the best. There’s two hundred of us, and Eumenes and his Olbians. We’ve had him running for sixty stades.’

  ‘Lysimachos?’ Satyrus asked.

  ‘With the queen – up by Helikore, the Bithynian capital.’ He smiled at Satyrus’s discomfiture. ‘Your sister and the King of Thrace get along very well. They are waiting at the Royal Road junction for news.’

  Satyrus groaned. ‘I have the news,’ he said. ‘I just have to get there.’

  Satyrus took the time to visit his mare, who was sound asleep, lying flat, the sleep of an exhausted animal. Then he mounted a Sakje pony, and with Thyrsis himself at his side, galloped for Helikore, two hundred stades to the north.

  Sunset, and Thracian cavalry pickets – Getae, who had no love for Thyrsis, but a certain wary respect. Satyrus rode into the largest army camp he’d ever seen. He lost count of the tents, the huts, the wagons … there were easily twenty thousand men, and he suspected that the mass of them was still smaller than Antigonus’s fires in the valley below Sardis.

  Calicles, the Thracian nobleman, recognised Satyrus right away, and took him to Lysimachos while he dined.

  Melitta saw Satyrus and nodded to him as if his arrival was the most natural thing in the world. He kissed her on both cheeks.

  Lysimachos embraced him. ‘You have news?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve seen Demetrios retreating, and his father – and I come from Seleucus.’ He raised his hand to forestall a babble of questions. Bowed to Prepalaus – Cassander’s general. ‘Strategos, we met near Corinth,’ he said.

  The older Macedonian nodded without warmth. ‘I seem to remember that I was at the point of your spear,’ he said.

  Satyrus bowed again. ‘Your master had recently ordered me killed,’ he said, ‘and yet I regret serving with Demetrios, even out of spite.’

  The old Macedonian pursed his lips. But rather than say what was on his mind, he shrugged. ‘Tell us where Antigonus is,’ he asked.

  ‘Antigonus is at Sardis. That was four days ago – I doubt he’s moved. He’s there to effect a junction with Demetrios, who must have join
ed him by now.’

  Lysimachos looked serious.

  ‘When I left Seleucus, he was in Cappadocia. Antigonus believes he is at the Gordian Gates, and he is not.’ Satyrus seized a parchment provided by his sister and started rendering a chart, just as he’d learned among Ptolemy’s pages in Alexandria. ‘Here’s Gordia. Here’s Dorylaeum. Here we are in Bithynia. Here’s Seleucus – over here, at Koloneia in Cappadocia. See it?’

  Prepalaus saw it first.

  ‘We need to go east to Dorylaeum.’ The Macedonian scratched his head. ‘But Antigonus can be there before us.’

  ‘Antigonus and his son will, almost certainly, thrust up the coast at where he thinks you are – in the passes north of Sardis. Going for Ephesus … or Sardis. Yes?’ Satyrus had it all in his head – the grand strategy. He could see it as if he were Zeus’s eagle lording it in the heavens, watching men crawl like ants along the valleys of Asia.

  Lysimachos nodded at Melitta. ‘That’s what we wanted to do all along – sweep east and pick up Seleucus on his line of march.’ He nodded at Cassander’s general. ‘Some were more cautious.’ Hungrily, Lysimachos leaned forward. ‘How many men does Seleucus have?’

  ‘Twelve thousand Persian cavalry, that again in satrapal levies, and two hundred elephants. And his household troops.’ Satyrus shrugged. ‘Some infantry, but not as good as ours.’

  Prepalaus stood up. ‘I’m not the cautious old fool that Lysimachos would have me – I just never thought Seleucus would actually come.’ He gave them a wry look. ‘Don’t look so superior, King of Thrace. If you and I have anything in common, it is that we’ve both been beaten badly by young Demetrios.’

  Lysimachos winced.

  Melitta shook her head. ‘We can bicker while we march.’

  With a thousand cavalry and two thousand infantry, the Bosporon contribution was so small as to be almost negligible, but Prepalaus and Lysimachos needed a foil, or a balance, and they listened to Melitta.

  ‘Are we agreed?’ Melitta asked.

  Lysimachos nodded.

  Prepalaus rubbed his grey chin and nodded. ‘This is where we cast the die,’ he said. ‘If Antigonus is ahead of us in the mountain passes, we have to retreat. And that will leave Seleucus alone.’

  A slave handed Satyrus wine, and he collapsed onto his sister’s couch. She kissed him, and he almost fell asleep on the spot.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ Prepalaus said.

  When Satyrus awoke the next morning, he found himself in a camp all but empty of soldiers. Tents and huts had become mere piles of straw; horse lines were nothing but small mounds of dung. Slaves toiled to fill in latrines.

  The sun was in the middle of the sky. He’d slept half a day away. He was in his own camp bed in his own pavilion, and Phoibos had a breakfast of sweet bread and pomegranate for him, washed down with grape juice and sparkling water from a spring.

  Satyrus felt old. His muscles were stiff. But food helped, and a slave came in after breakfast and massaged him with a thoroughness verging on violence, and then he slept again.

  Phoibos served him dinner – lamb on skewers and Chian wine. Scopasis joined him, left behind by Melitta to run his escort and collect the Sakje scouts and Greek cavalry of the feint. Thyrsis was already gone away back down the road towards Sardis.

  It was odd to sit in the fading sunlight and look out over a dwindling camp. There were men left behind – sick or lame, tending spare mounts, or simply in charge of the last baggage, some regretful deserters and some hopeful recruits, late for the fair.

  Satyrus went to sleep for the third time in a day, considering what the remnants of an army looked like, and awoke to the stiffest legs he’d ever had. But he couldn’t hide in his tent like Achilles for ever, so he allowed Phoibos to dress him in a Tyrian red chiton and matching chlamys with gold embroidery. His best sword was either on his pack horse with Charmides and Jubal, or lost, so he took another, lighter and longer.

  Mounting was no pleasure – riding was worse. Satyrus trotted a riding horse around the camp for half an hour, easing his muscles to their task, and then he mounted his warhorse; a horse he’d scarcely ridden since acquiring him on this very spot, more or less.

  Phoibos and his slaves had the tent down and all the gear packed on a dozen donkeys and a wagon. Their little baggage train was already moving but Phoibos had two stools, a table, and a cup of wine waiting in the open where the pavilion had been – and one last donkey waiting to receive them.

  Satyrus sat on the stools and the masseur rubbed some of the pain out of his calves and thighs, especially where he had taken the wound. The flesh had closed.

  Satyrus drank the wine. ‘You are the very best of servants, Phoibos.’

  ‘I endeavour to give satisfaction,’ Phoibos said. ‘If I might be so bold, lord, I gather that we are at war with my former master, Demetrios?’ he asked.

  Satyrus nodded. He drank the wine off. ‘Yes.’

  Phoibos nodded. ‘I think it would be best if I avoided falling into his hands. He wouldn’t be forgiving.’

  Satyrus smiled. ‘I’ll do my best to keep that from happening.’

  ‘May all the gods bless you, my lord.’ Phoibos held Satyrus’s horse while he mounted.

  Satyrus had the whole day’s ride to contemplate how in two days he’d gone from starving fugitive to King of the Bosporus.

  Philokles would laugh, he thought.

  Satyrus had no problem catching the army. They made a little more than one hundred stades that day, but their vanguard managed to go almost twice that, coming up to Trikomia on the Hermos River, almost close enough to Dorylaeum to touch the walls.

  An hour after Satyrus came into camp, Melitta was sharing his dinner in his pavilion, and Thyrsis, Eumenes of Olbia and Scopasis came in for a cup of wine – the Olbians and the Sakje had retired out of the Sardis Road and Mysia.

  ‘Demetrios is north of Sardis with thirty thousand men,’ Eumenes said. ‘His probes up the passes were pretty cautious yesterday. We took a couple of prisoners but they didn’t know anything. We let them go.’

  Satyrus passed on a second cup of wine. ‘I’m still tired,’ he said. ‘Did you find my friends?’

  Eumenes smiled. ‘They found us. Your marine – he’s some sort of hero from epic poetry – he wanted to mount a fresh horse and come with me. But the boy … Charmides? Went to sleep on his horse, and had a fall. I left them with my prodromoi.’

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘When I was lost in the rain, I couldn’t imagine it would end this well.’

  Before the first rays of the sun shone down the valley of the Hermos, Satyrus was up, and he’d built a small altar on a rock above the cavalry camp. He sacrificed a lamb to Hermes for protecting his friends, and another to Apollo for the healing of his wound. Then he rode down into the camp, spoke with Nikephoros and Lykaeaus who was temporarily leading all the marines. Then he mounted his bay riding horse, had a slave lead his charger, and headed east with his twenty horse marines – as the other Bosporons now called them – under Draco, who laughed at him and reminded him that they’d crossed this country together when Satyrus was a boy.

  Lysimachos was with the vanguard – he had a thousand Thracian cavalry, and they were enthusiastic burners, so that the limits of their exploration could be read on every horizon. It was a brutal form of war but Satyrus, sitting with Lysimachos, had to admit that it did keep the commander informed of his men’s progress.

  ‘This is all enemy country,’ Lysimachos said.

  Satyrus doubted that the peasantry of the hills were really allies – or friends – to any man. And the first village they rode through showed the Thracians’ savagery – dead men, dead women, and dead animals. All the roofs burned.

  Melitta came up in the late afternoon with Scopasis and all her people. Her knights were stripped of their armour – it was off with their wagons, somewhere in the
baggage behind them – and their adolescent men and women were armed only with a bow and a knife.

  Melitta saluted Lysimachos with her whip. ‘Give your Getae a day off,’ she said. She said it so pleasantly that only Satyrus caught the violence with which she said Getae. ‘We’ll pass through them at sunset.’

  Lysimachos shrugged. ‘I don’t think they need to be called in. We’re making good progress.’

  Melitta slapped her leather-clad leg impatiently. ‘My people can make twice the time, and we don’t stop to rape the animals.’ Her true feelings were coming through, and the scars on her face burned red. ‘And if we’re as close to Antigonus as Prepalaus thinks, we need to keep the smoke off the horizon, eh?’

  Satyrus had seldom loved his sister as much as that moment – Lysimachos accepted her suggestions with a smile. It was a condescending smile – that of a man in his prime to a mere woman – a woman play-acting a cavalry commander.

  Melitta shrugged off the implied insult, accepted the part of his agreement she needed, and cantered away with her knights at her horse’s heels.

  Lysimachos shook his head. ‘She actually fights, I hear,’ he said.

  Satyrus looked at him and smiled, albeit for a completely different reason. ‘She actually wins,’ he said. ‘You know what the Assagetae call her?’

  ‘Long legs? Lovely eyes?’ Lysimachos chuckled.

  ‘Smells Like Death.’ Satyrus smiled at the King of Thrace. ‘Our mother was called Cruel Hands. And not for nothing. Ask your Getae.’ Then he bowed, waved to his horse marines, and cantered off in his sister’s wake. He had to ride quickly – Draco was threatening to spit on the King of Thrace.

  They rode through Dorylaeum, and no one tried to hold it or the passes beyond against them. The Sakje crossed the Hermos ford at a gallop, caught an Antigonid patrol off guard and captured the lot – five troopers and a phylarch. The men had nothing worthwhile to report, but their shock at the appearance of the Sakje told its own story, and their phylarch was not so ignorant.