Tyrant: Force of Kings

by Christian Cameron

  And then, faster than even Melitta could understand, her people closed in, the dust cloud raged, and then …

  There were only Sakje.

  Satyrus came to with Eumenes under one arm and his Persian trumpeter under the other, and he was lying on the hillock above the farmyard, and the sound of battle – the lungs of Ares – made it all but impossible to hear what Eumenes was saying.

  His head rang, and there was pain … everywhere.

  ‘Your helmet – you owe the bronzesmith!’ Eumenes said. He held a wet cloth against Satyrus’s head. ‘I don’t think your skull is broken.’

  Memory returned slowly. ‘I dropped Demetrios!’ he said.

  Eumenes nodded. ‘We tried to hold his body. His men fought like lions.’ The archon of Olbia smiled. ‘So did we. We got your corpse and they got his. It seemed a good trade when we found you alive.’

  Satyrus sat up and wished he hadn’t. It was as if he had a girdle of spikes on his head. ‘Herakles!’ he said aloud.

  Eumenes put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Win or lose, we’re done. My horses wouldn’t go forward again, and our remounts are six stades away, behind the elephants.’

  ‘Get me to my feet,’ Satyrus said.

  A huge, hairy hand appeared in his peripheral vision, grabbed his arm and pulled.

  ‘I waited,’ Alexander said. ‘You look like shit. Now what do we do?’

  Satyrus forced a smile. ‘Herakles,’ he prayed.

  The farmyard was a charnel house. And the Exiles were giving way to yet more Lydians – or perhaps Phrygians or Mysians. Not giving way so much as dying.

  But on the other side of the farmyard Antigonus’s phalanx was in trouble.

  Satyrus made himself turn his head. ‘Charmides, dismount the escort.’ He took a drink of wine – unwatered wine – from Eumenes. ‘You are my favourite,’ he said to the archon.

  ‘Are you insane?’ Eumenes asked with admiration. Behind him, Coenus shook his head.

  ‘Alexander, form your peltasts as tight as you can. We go through the farmyard into the enemy phalanx.’ He met the giant’s eyes, and the man nodded.

  ‘We can do that,’ he said reasonably.

  Charmides formed the surviving marines across the front of the crowd of peltasts. The Olbian hippeis left their horses and fell in. All in all, they had quite a few men, tipped with a thin front rank of men in full armour – head to toe armour, in fact.

  Satyrus drew his sword, took a deep breath, and swallowed bile. He had to fight the reflex to retch. There was no time.

  He took another swallow from his trumpeter – water – and Herakles cleared his head, so he could see it all: he saw Crax die under the tree behind the farmhouse, the last man in a knot of brave men, and a ring of enemies at his feet. He saw Diodorus, still mounted, still fighting, and Carlus, the German, with an axe, covering his back. He saw Apollodorus in the front of Nikephorus’s phalangites. And he saw Antigonus – a tired old man, pointing to the near collapse of the Exiles and shouting.

  ‘Now or never, lad,’ Coenus said.

  ‘Follow me,’ Satyrus shouted, and ran down the hillock into the farmyard.

  They crashed through the enemy hoplites trying to storm the farmyard from the flank – scattered or killed them – then the horse marines and the Olbians plunged into the open flank of the Antigonid foot companions, heavily armoured men with axes and swords.

  The peltasts had other ideas. Not for them the desperate mêlée. As soon as the farmyard was clear – Apollodorus’s surviving marines cheering like heroes, hunting the last Antigonids out of the barns – the peltasts ran to the walls and threw everything they had – every carefully hoarded javelin, every spear, and then rocks from the walls – down into the right front corner of the Antigonid phalanx.

  Satyrus found himself virtually alone, breast to breast with fresher men, fighting for his life. He had no idea, but two horse lengths away Antigonus One-Eye, terror of Asia, the greatest strategist of his era, was dead, with a pair of javelins in his breast and his helmet crushed by a rock thrown by a Thracian peltast. And with his death, the phalanx seemed to die. Again, the knowledge of his loss seemed to be transmitted instantly to every hoplite of his army.

  The Foot Companions broke.

  By the olive tree behind the farm, Diodorus sat on his exhausted charger, the big gelding’s legs straddling the corpse of Andronicus the Gaul, killed by ten men. Half a dozen wary Lydians faced Diodorus. He’d already killed two. He had a spear in his hand, and since this was the end, he had no need to surrender – to live to see a day of defeat.

  Victory, or death without knowledge of defeat. Wasn’t that what men asked of the gods?

  Goodbye, Sappho, who made my life a joy.

  Kineas, I’m coming, and taking at least one more of these bastards with me.

  He backed his horse a step, and shortened his reins, and saw a wave of peltasts come over the farmyard wall behind the Lydians. They were so wild, he thought they must be panicked, routed men.

  The Lydians turned their heads, almost as one man.

  One took a rock in the side, and fell. Diodorus’s spear licked out and took another.

  Diodorus could see men he knew – the archon of Olbia, the boy Eumenes – not a boy any more, but one of the old ones. He had an axe, and he was waving it, and suddenly the Lydians were gone.

  Diodorus’s horse died gracefully – he gave Diodorus time to slide from his back, and subsided to the ground, faithful to the very last. Diodorus was left standing in the shade of the olive tree, a spear in his hand.

  When Eumenes came to embrace him, he had fifty troopers gathered around him, and they managed to form something like a line on the spot Andronicus the Gaul had died because, like Diodorus, they weren’t dead. And that meant that they had to keep to their standards.

  Eumenes hugged him. ‘We … won!’ he said, as if he didn’t quite believe it.

  Diodorus let out a long, deep sigh. ‘I guess I’m alive, then,’ he said. He thought of Niceas and Graccus, of Philokles, of Crax and Andronicus and Kineas and all of them.

  One of his youngest troopers – a new boy out from Athens, named Niceas, too – was drinking. ‘Can I offer you some, sir?’ he asked Diodorus.

  Well-mannered boy. ‘What’s in that canteen, lad?’

  The boy smiled. ‘Wine, sir.’

  Diodorus took the canteen and poured half of its contents into the blood-soaked ground. ‘Nike!’ he said.

  24

  Miriam arrived at Tanais after the fall of the last of Plistias’s garrisons opened the Propontus to allied ship traffic, and she rode the first ship north into the Euxine. Her brother’s ship.

  She landed at Tanais, and Theron took her to the citadel, where she felt like a stranger. He took her to the agora, where she felt like a stranger, and to the synagogue, where Alexandrian Jews she’d known from infancy made her feel … like a stranger.

  If I stay here, she thought, this will be my life. Always an outsider.

  She stood in the agora, on the third uncomfortable day.

  ‘Recognise him?’ Abraham asked her, pointing at the gilded bronze statue on its marble pedestal.

  She shrugged. ‘I can read,’ she said. ‘I met Philokles, but I don’t remember him being plated in gold.’

  Abraham laughed. ‘And this is Satyrus’s father, Kineas. And this woman must by the famous Srayanka.’

  Miriam nodded, her heart thudding in her chest and her breath short. What she felt was like rage. ‘No statues for our parents, of course,’ she said.

  ‘Miriam!’ Abraham said.

  ‘You know, brother, you wear armour when it suits you, command a fighting ship, when it suits you. Play feed the flute girl … I’ve heard. Stop affecting to be shocked by your sister. There are things in the world I don’t love right now.’

  ‘Yo
u want to go?’ Abraham asked.

  ‘No, brother, you want to go. You want to go and stand in the phalanx and save him. You burn, even now.’ She crossed her arms over her breasts.

  Behind her, Achilles and Ajax looked at each other and took a few steps away.

  Abraham held his temper. ‘It is too late,’ he said. ‘If Leon is right, they fought a few days after we carried the city.’ He shrugged. ‘I knew when I took command that I might miss the fight. It is Leon I feel for.’

  ‘Why must you be so relentlessly good?’ Miriam asked.

  She whirled to see her three hardened killers dissolve in mirth.

  Theron dined with them – insisted that Achilles and Ajax and Odysseus recline, and they were served by the chief steward.

  Theron’s physique was unaffected by the years … apparently. He looked magnificent by lamplight, and he led them in some poetry, poured wine for all of them, and did his best to make Miriam happy.

  The next morning, he appeared at the door to her room. At his back was a lovely woman – perhaps thirty.

  ‘I am Kallista,’ she said, entering Miriam’s room. ‘Theron seems to think you need cheering up.’

  Miriam shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’

  Kallista smiled. She was beautiful and had the gracious good manners of great ladies. Great Hellene ladies. ‘You are the woman Satyrus wants. If you want him, that’s all you need worry about.’

  Miriam looked at this lady, and hated her, at least in part for her perfectly plucked eyebrows, conical breasts and neat hair. ‘I am a Jew,’ she said with tragic finality.

  Kallista nodded for a moment. ‘You never met me in Alexandria?’ she said.

  Miriam shook her head.

  ‘Nice Jewish girls,’ Kallista said, ‘don’t meet prostitute-slaves. I was a porne, and then I was a courtesan – slave, then free. And now I am Theron’s wife. In Alexandria, it would be a shame to him. In Tanais,’ she said with calm happiness, ‘we are whomever we want to be. That is all I can tell you. You bring what you have here, and make what you want.’

  ‘You make it sound easy,’ Miriam said. She was embarrassed – mortified – that this woman must have overcome ten times the obstacles that she had overcome.

  ‘My husband says that every fight is the only fight – that’s what he says about pankration.’ She shrugged. ‘It is true for all people. Your challenge: can you be a queen? Because Satyrus wants a partner, not a bed-mate. I’ve known him for a long time.’

  ‘And been his bed-mate?’ Miriam asked with an acerbity she regretted.

  Kallista rose to her feet, the picture of elegance. ‘Perhaps, and perhaps not – I would never tell, and you, my dear, should not care either way, as that would belong to a different world, would it not? I have never been his bed-mate in Tanais. I sleep with just one man here, and only when I desire him. It is like paradise for me. Now – I can go, or I can entertain you with music and poetry.’

  Miriam found herself on her feet, feeling very ungracious. ‘Stay and drink wine.’

  Kallista smiled, and sank into a chair. ‘Tell me about being a Jew,’ she said.

  Banugul sold her cargo, put money with bankers, and cooled her heels. Once she drank too much and cried for Herakles and for Stratokles. For what she would lose if they were gone.

  One of Leon’s ships swept into harbour, borne on the wings of its oars. Borne on the wings of Nike.

  Leon was on board in person, and Nihmu, his Sakje wife, and they came to visit her. They told her that Seleucus and the allies were absolutely victorious, and that Herakles would lose his left arm at the elbow, but was strong.

  ‘He will never fight again,’ Leon said. He clearly didn’t know how this news would be received.

  Banugul rose on her toes and kissed him. ‘Hah! I love his lost arm!’ she said. ‘He is coming home?’

  ‘When he can travel, he will come here,’ Nihmu said. ‘And Stratokles is alive. No more wounded than other men, and much in demand. Sends you this letter.’

  Banugul read the letter, and then she cried so hard that the kohl ran out of her eyes, and only the man who truly loved her would have found her beautiful.

  Nihmu and Leon, who had expected a very different reaction, rose to go.

  ‘Stratokles swore it would make you happy!’ Nihmu said. ‘Bastard.’

  Banugul rolled the letter away. ‘It does,’ she said. ‘I have been alone for too long with only my guards. Which reminds me … a piece of unfinished business.’

  She explained.

  Leon saw Amastris alone as his next visit, gave her the official letter from her husband Lysimachos, and she, too, wept. Then Leon craved the loan of her captain of guards, who followed Leon out the door and was immediately taken into custody by two files of Leon’s marines.

  Who further blocked six alleys and two streets in the foreigners’ quarter with the ruthless efficiency of victorious men with too much to lose to want to take any chances. And they’d cleared a great many neighbourhoods in the last few summers. They knew the business.

  Banugul’s Hyrkanians and her Sogdians had done the scouting, and they stormed the building, killing everyone, slave and free. Isokles and his people were so surprised that his retainers were mostly unarmed. The Hyrkanians were not disturbed by such things.

  Isokles was dragged out into the street, cursing in his curious voice.

  ‘I have friends here – every man in the guard, every courtier is mine. You are a dead man,’ he said to Leon.

  ‘Name them,’ Leon said.

  After he had, one of the marines opened his neck.

  And Phiale – taken screaming – watched with growing horror, and finally threw herself violently at Leon’s feet. ‘He would have killed me!’ she shrieked. ‘Oh, Leon, you were always my friend!’ She grabbed his knees. ‘Mercy, lord!’

  Leon hesitated. She was beautiful. He could remember her dancing at a party …

  She was not so beautiful when Nihmu put an arrow in her throat.

  ‘There is my mercy,’ Nihmu said. ‘I didn’t ruin her face.’ She looked at her husband, and smiled.

  ‘Men,’ she said, and bent to retrieve her arrow.

  Epilogue

  Satyrus landed from his own flagship to find that Theron and Leon had arranged the sort of reception that Alexandrians regularly provided Ptolemy – in miniature, and at a greatly reduced cost, as both of them assured their king with grins wide enough to split their faces.

  The Olbian cavalry performed one last duty for their king, escorting him to his palace, and hoplites lined the streets, and farmers – Thracians, Maeotae, and Sindi and Sakje – all the men and women who hadn’t felt the ice-cold touch of war – pressed against their backs and yelled themselves hoarse.

  In the agora, the Exiles dismounted – the survivors – between the statues of Kineas and Srayanka.

  Diodorus mustered them one last time, and paid them.

  And the priests of Apollo and Herakles, Athena and Zeus made sacrifice, and all the people gathered to sing the paean.

  Satyrus embraced them all; man after man, his father’s friends and his own friends. His patience was unbreakable … because he already knew that she was here. She was waiting.

  He went from man to man. And finally, when gods and men were done, he climbed the steps to her.

  He wasn’t thinking it, but he had never looked better in his life – in his blue military cloak, armour and a fresh white chiton.

  The steps seemed quite remarkably long, and he was not without doubts, although Abraham had embraced him at the foot of the steps as if they would never be parted.

  But when he saw her with Banugul and Sappho, and Kallista, he knew his case was made, and the jury was all his own.

  Their eyes met.

  She gave him the grin – the impish grin – he remembered from
her father’s house. She stuck out the tip of her tongue.

  Something flowed out of him, then – some lingering effect of wounds, or the last spirit of the blow to his head, or just some lingering poison of evil, and he was filled with eudaimonia. He walked up to her and – greatly daring – bent to kiss her in public.

  Her eyes suggested he would pay later for this familiarity, but she stood her ground.

  ‘Marry me?’ he asked.

  ‘What, no foreplay?’ she asked. ‘I hear you make pretty speeches.’

  ‘Marry me?’ he asked again.

  ‘This is your notion of wooing?’ she asked.

  ‘It is when all the people I love are together – and I’m in a hurry.’ He grinned.

  And she grinned.

  And somewhere beyond the rim of the world, armies marched – Pyrrhus of Epirus prepared to invade Sicily, and Cassander laid siege to Corcyra, and busy, busy plotters and hardened killers up and down the Inner Sea faced each other across tables and battlefields.

  But north of the Euxine, the grain grew in endless plains, unburned by war. The farmers tilled the ground, and the groves gave olives, if only small ones, and the horses grew fat on the plains, and cattle grew fat in the fields, and the Sakje and the Sarmatians, the Maeotae and the Sindi, the Greeks in the cities, from the lowest to the highest, put their shields on the walls and their swords and axes above their hearths and made babies. And grain, and silver and gold. And older men told boys what it had been like when Niceas held the dooryard in Hyrkania, when Philokles fell saving Alexandria, when Kineas defeated Alexander, when their king warred the One-Eye and saved Asia.

  But they were also careful to tell their sons and daughters that in war there was blood and torment, fire and loss, many losers and few victors.

  It might have lasted for ever, this paradise.

  In fact, they had less than thirty years.

  But they used them well.