Tyrant: Force of Kings

by Christian Cameron

  ‘Lord Antiochus wishes to attend,’ Phoibos said. ‘The King of Babylon. The King of Thrace. The strategos of Macedon.’

  Satyrus looked grim. ‘Not the party I intended.’

  Melitta shook her head. ‘Of course it is. If Mater and Pater were here, wouldn’t they do just this? What can better hearten the army than to see the chiefs together in piety and amity?’

  Satyrus smiled. ‘Very well. We host the world.’

  ‘Very good,’ Phoibos replied. ‘I have already taken the liberty of telling them so.’

  It wasn’t yet full dark, and the Sakje were clamouring for the fires to be lit. There were quite a few eastern Saka with the satrapal levies, and now there were two hundred of them alone flooding the area set off for the symposium. Most of them had enough sense to bring wine, and pallets to lie on.

  A tall, handsome man with a big nose and beautiful dark skin like fine wood bowed low to Satyrus. ‘You don’t know me,’ he said. He had the voice of a Greek actor playing a Persian.

  ‘Darius,’ Satyrus said.

  They embraced, and Darius embraced Melitta. ‘Where’s Leon?’ he asked.

  ‘Out on the sea, covering our flank,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘Ahh. He will be sad to have missed this.’ Darius looked out at the Saka and the Sakje. ‘I apologise – many of them are mine, Persae and Saka. So I have brought some wine and some extra hands to serve.’ In fact, every man behind him had an amphora of wine – a veritable fortune.

  ‘I am not a poor man,’ he said with a smile. ‘Seleucus has given me high rank.’

  ‘You will be in the morning if we drink all that,’ Melitta said.

  ‘And this handsome man?’ Darius asked.

  ‘My friend, Anaxagoras,’ Satyrus said.

  Melitta laughed. ‘My husband, whenever he troubles to ask me.’

  Satyrus had the pleasure of watching Anaxagoras blush in consternation.

  Old friends crowded around to offer their congratulations, but Melitta gave her shout of war and they stilled. ‘He has to ask me,’ she said. ‘I’m Greek enough in my heart that I cannot ask him.’

  Anaxagoras grinned, bowed … and vanished.

  Satyrus wondered if he was angry. Anaxagoras was not easy to hurt – perhaps he had not liked this public denouement.

  Hard to know.

  Old friends pressed close once more, and Satyrus forgot in a whirl of reminiscence.

  Sophokles needed to get clear of the compound and ride for it. He knew everything – everything useful that he could get.

  He’d spent the day wooing Seleucus’s physician, a man who had never been to Athens and needed all the help he could get. Sophokles gave him good advice, shared two of his best drugs, free of charge, and discussed bandages and poisons. In exchange, he asked nothing except to sit one tent wall from the command tent and listen.

  He didn’t like how confident the Seleucids were. But he had the fault lines of their alliance firmly in his head, and now he could tell Neron which of the satraps could be bribed; he’d heard it from Antiochus himself.

  He bowed to all, and hurried out of the palace complex of tents – hurried too fast, so that the sentries in the outer cordon stopped him. It was the sort of mistake he hated to make. He vowed never to make it again.

  Draco dismounted at the officer’s picket line, near the King of Babylon’s tents. His horse hated the smell of elephants, and he drove her picket pin in to the ring. Then he walked up to the sentries, dusting his hands to get the sand off.

  There was a handsome enough man just passing out of the palace of tents, walking too fast. The soldiers didn’t like it – Draco applauded their professionalism – they stopped and asked his business.

  Draco thought that perhaps he knew that voice. He froze.

  When the man finally passed the cordon, Draco followed him into the streets behind the palace of tents, where the companion cavalry and infantry were camped.

  Indecision was not in Draco. He watched the man walk, and he was sure.

  He followed him down the main street of infantrymen, and then along a side street, past the petty-wine shops, the men who sold olive oil and new pans to soldiers.

  He followed the man right to the door of his tent, and there, without breaking stride, he plunged his sword into his back.

  Then he rolled the man over. His eyes were glazing.

  ‘Know who I am?’ Draco said. ‘I hope so. Here – eat this, you fuck.’ He buried his sword in the man’s mouth, so the point came out the back of his neck. Draco put a little more pressure on the point and snapped the vertebrae, sawed messily a little and beheaded him. He sighed when he remembered that he was wearing his best cloak. But he wrapped the head in the cloak.

  Pushed the corpse to bleed out in the door of the tent.

  Picked up the head and went looking for a priest of Zeus.

  Anaxagoras returned to the party like a thunderbolt. He was mounted, and he had – of all people – Scopasis and Thyrsis at his side, and they rode through the party like an enemy charge, scattering the guests, but not a one was injured. It was a pretty feat of riding, and it was made better by the agility with which Anaxagoras snatched the Queen of the Assagetae from the conversation she was sharing with Sappho and the Lady Thais, Antiochus’s concubine, as well as Lucius and Stratokles. One moment she was talking to them, and the next she was across his horse, riding away.

  His arms were strong, and his grip on her was like a band of bronze.

  ‘Marry me?’ he asked.

  The sound of her laughter trickled past the sound of his horse’s hooves, back through the party.

  It made a fine way to launch the festivities, especially when they came back, dismounted and more orderly, and announced their betrothal. Phoibos glared at Draco, who entered looking rumpled, drunken, and soiled, but had indeed brought the priest, who hastened to do his master’s bidding.

  But Satyrus insisted, as host, in sacrificing the bull.

  Even the Sakje were silent.

  No man – no worshipper, no priest, no pious aristocrat – sacrifices a bull lightly. Not just the money – but the cut. A bull does not die as easily as a lamb or a dove. A priest might slash the bull’s throat with a sharp knife, but a soldier was expected to do it the old way.

  Satyrus believed in the old way. He stepped up to the altar and handed the rope to Anaxagoras, who pulled it tight, stretching the animal’s neck across the altar. The old way.

  Satyrus looked off into the heavens, into the last light in the sky, and it seemed to him that he saw an eagle there, or perhaps a raven, on the auspicious right side of the sky – spiralling away – and just for a moment, he wished that he was there in the sky, high above the needs of men and women.

  He sent his thoughts up to Olympus, to Herakles, and drew – rotated his hips, and brought the blade down.

  It was not his fighting sword, it was the heaviest sword he could borrow. And Tyche was with him: his blade went between the vertebrae of the neck as if the God himself had his hand on the hilt.

  The bull slumped – the last morsel of flesh tore with the weight of the body – and the head rolled free, falling at Anaxagoras’s feet.

  The roar of the soldiers was like an avalanche of sound.

  Seleucus – dignified, gracious Seleucus – slapped his back as if they were wine-bibbers. ‘Spectacular!’ he shouted over the crowd.

  Satyrus wiped his blade clean and bowed to the priest, who gave him the look of a man with a hard act to follow.

  But the priest did a competent job, making his way through lambs and goats, and the pool of blood under the altar grew deeper and deeper – libations were poured, and smoke rolled into the heavens from the long bones wrapped in fat and laid on the fires on the altar. A pair of acolytes cut the meat and passed it to Phoibos – a dignified Phoibos in a shining red chito
n – who cut it into slices with an expertise and speed that made his flaying look like magic.

  Satyrus, his act of piety complete, felt like a hero, and he poured a special libation and then stood with his friends, passing a cup of watered wine, watching the priests – a sacrifice to Athena, a sacrifice to Hera, a sacrifice to Aphrodite …

  Seleucus came up by Satyrus. ‘Thank you, King of Tanais. This was well thought out – a proper way for men to show their respect for the gods on the eve of battle. A proper show that we are Hellenes, here in the land of the barbarians.’

  Satyrus was looking at a crowd of Darius’s tribal Saka gathered around Melitta, and smiled. But he appreciated that Seleucus was trying to be genial, to overcome his habitual reserve – and besides, the two had shared Ptolemy’s court.

  ‘Great king, your praise is sweet in my ears,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘I don’t call myself “Great King”,’ Seleucus said.

  But you will, Satyrus thought.

  ‘Is there news from the fleets?’ he asked.

  Seleucus nodded. ‘Our fleets are already dispersing. Demetrios’s fleet is in Athens and Corinth. There were two actions – Plistias declined both times. I understand that your friend Abraham, the Jew – how well I remember him from Alexandria, always the handsomest of the young men – distinguished himself in the Dardanelles. But each time he was offered battle, Plistias rowed backwards and tried to draw our fleet into disarray.’ Seleucus shrugged.

  Antiochus, his son, grinned. ‘Lord Leon insisted that the fleet row and row. He would never allow them to raise their sails, not even on the reach from Alexandria to Cyprus. And Leon made sure the rowers were paid every month at the full noon. Strong, well-paid rowers – that’s all anyone needs to know about naval tactics.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘Leon was one of my father’s men, and they are all gathered here. I was hoping he’d make his way over the mountains.’

  Antiochus shook his head. ‘Lord Leon and Abraham the Jew and your Aekes – what a polyglot crew your people are! He’s a Spartan helot, isn’t he?’

  ‘I think that he is now a Bosporon navarch,’ Satyrus said.

  Antiochus didn’t take offence. ‘Oh, of course. At any rate, they took some city on the Propontus less than a week ago – Plistias’s last garrison. So now the grain fleets can sail, and our allies have both sides of the Propontus. They must be twelve hundred stades from here.’

  Lysimachos came up and offered Satyrus wine in a gold cup – unwatered wine. Satyrus had a sip. ‘Thanks for doing this, Satyrus. The troops like a display of piety. Makes the prospect of battle easier to swallow. Eh?’ He smiled and drank.

  The priest was sacrificing the last ram – a black one, for the god many called ‘Pluton’, god of good fortune. But every Hellene present knew that the priest was invoking Hades, god of the underworld.

  He poured a heavy phiale of wine onto the altar, and with the stinging copper scent of blood, the rich aroma of cooking fat, and the spiced and steaming wine over the spitting, burned bones, the air was full of the smells of the gods.

  ‘Pluton, lord of good fortune – husband of Persephone, who brings the spring in all its abundance, Demeter’s lovely daughter; brother of Zeus, all powerful under the earth, lend us your daughter Tyche and withhold your hand from us. And let the shades of our friends drink deep of these libations of wine and blood, and remember when they were men, and walked the earth beneath the kiss of the sun.’

  The sun was just setting – a red fireball on the distant horizon of the ridges to the west.

  Coenus was there. He was born of one of the oldest families in Greece, who claimed descent from Zeus, or so the poets told, and he was unmoved by Macedonian kings.

  Seleucus extended his arm. Coenus had been an intimate of Ptolemy’s at Alexandria, and the two men knew each other well. They clasped hands, and Coenus embraced Diodorus, who had made his career with the King of Babylon.

  ‘If he raises the shades of all of our friends,’ Coenus said, and there were tears in his eyes.

  Seleucus nodded. ‘All the men that Alexander took to Granicus, Issus, Arabela, the Jaxartes River and the Hydaspes, Persepolis, Babylon, India. There must be five armies there.’

  Lysimachos habitually wore an air of irony, as if there was nothing he took seriously, neither life nor death, danger, scorn, even defeat. But as the sun sank below the horizon, he shook his head. ‘Why did the priest say that? Those shades – they would outnumber every man here, in both armies.’

  Coenus nodded. ‘Perhaps the night before a battle is the time to remember the fallen – as we may well join them tomorrow. When you are cold and rotten in the ground, brothers, would you not want to think that other men will pour wine over your memory from time to time, and think of all your deeds, and praise you?’

  They were a great circle of men and women around the altars, then – the sun was going down, and he cast a last blaze of bronze colour over everything.

  Unbidden, a man – a Macedonian – spoke up. ‘I remember Granicus,’ he said. ‘I remember trying to climb the river bank, and Memnon and all his fucking hoplites at the top, killing us. My brother fell there.’

  Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of voices came out of the dark. ‘Aye!’ they shouted, and they said aloud the names of the men they’d known who fell there.

  Diodorus held up his wine cup. ‘I remember Chaeronea, brothers. I stood with Athens against Macedon, and I saw my father’s corpse, and two of my boyhood friends died there.’

  And again, the chorus – smaller, this time. Again the shouts of names.

  Coenus took the cup. ‘I remember Issus. I was with the allied cavalry. Kleisthenes fell there, where we broke the Persian nobles.’

  Now the chorus from the dark was louder, hundreds of voices raised, and the list of shouted names went on for as long as a man might drink a cup of wine, on an evening under the stars.

  ‘I remember Arabela,’ Seleucus said. ‘I was with the Companions, when we won Asia. So many of my friends fell there …’

  And again, louder yet. Hundreds of voices, hundreds of names.

  ‘Ectabana!’ shouted one of the pikemen.

  ‘The fight in the passes by Persepolis!’ shouted another.

  ‘Hydaspes!’ shouted one of Seleucus’s staff officers. ‘The elephant fight!’ And the chorus had become a throaty shout.

  The names of battles continued from the dark around the fire as the sun finally settled below the horizon – the siege of Tyre and the battles of the Lamian War, named in order by Stratokles, the first contests of the Diadochoi … skirmishes of which Satyrus had never heard.

  His sister came and put a callused hand in his. The names came from the darkness – never strictly chronological, but as men drew the courage to shout a name – famous battles and skirmishes, an eternal litany of war and the victims of war. And sometimes the voices in the dark were women’s voices.

  Eumenes of Olbia raised the cup. ‘The Ford of the River God,’ he said.

  The Sakje roared their approval.

  Lysimachos shook his head. ‘Zopyron died there, and four thousand Macedonians, farm boys and veterans, and Thracians – not the wisest choice to mention.’

  ‘Jaxartes River!’ Melitta called into the darkness, and again the Sakje roared, and all the Saka, and many of the Bactrians and Persians.

  ‘Kineas fell there, defeating Alexander!’ Melitta shouted again.

  Lysimachos growled but Seleucus nodded as the Saka and Persians were emboldened to add their dead. But Herakles, Alexander’s son, looked at the fire. And Lucius put his arms around the boy and led him apart, lest he be recognised and acclaimed, or worse.

  It was fully dark now, and the bonfires roared, full force, their fire an exchange for the sun.

  And the veterans of a hundred battles continued to shout the names of their fights, and their abs
ent friends – Raphia, Tanais River, Cyprus, Gaza, – land fights and sea fights, skirmishes and battles, and now the chorus was the roar of a thousand lions that filled the darkness.

  The priest of Zeus came and bowed to Seleucus. ‘My lord … I had no idea … my apologies. I did not mean this to happen.’

  Seleucus poured wine on the ground from the cup that Phoibos pressed into his hand. ‘I can feel them pressing in – and I am no superstitious man, priest.’

  Apollodorus, emboldened by wine, shouted at the commanders, ‘You helped make the shades! Now endure them!’ and hundreds of voices roared approbation.

  It might have led to a fight—the contest of victories and the bitterness of the lost friends. There stood Persians with the men who had killed their fathers, and there were Macedonians with the Saka who had fought them on every field.

  But Phoibos kept the wine flowing, a legion of slaves carrying amphorae as far as the firelight carried, with wine bowls that were, by day, wooden campaign bowls, or mess pots, or simply fire-hardened clay that had a sticky feel and stained black with the wine – and the Sakje shared with the Persians, with the Macedonians and the Greeks, the Ionians and the Syrians – the wine passed, and with it, some of the fear.

  And then Anaxagoras began to play.

  He may, indeed, have been playing for an hour – the sound of a lyre is not loud enough to compete with the roars of five hundred men. But as silence fell, respectful and tired, his lyre song rose above the whispers in the dark.

  And when he was sure that he had them, he played the paean of Apollo.

  Of all the songs of the Hellenes, the paean of Apollo was one that the Sakje and the Bactrians knew as well. Lysimachos began to sing, and Prepalaus, and Diodorus and Antiochus and Seleucus, and Coenus and Apollodorus, Melitta and Scopasis and Charmides and Thyrsis and Draco and Phoibos – even the slaves sang, so that the song rose to the night with the wine and the blood.

  A little away from the fires, Stratokles wept. Lucius put an arm around him. ‘At least this time, we’re on this side of the line,’ he said.