Tyrant: Destroyer of Cities

by Christian Cameron

  ‘Satyrus, King of the Bosporus, and attendants,’ intoned Nestor.

  ‘You might have told me!’ Amastris said as soon as they were alone. Alone meaning together with a dozen attendants, slaves and Nestor.

  Satyrus was not wearing armour. He had imagined, in the winter, coming ashore to her wearing his splendid scale thorax and his magnificent silver helmet, itself a trophy. He’d imagined coming fresh from a sea fight.

  The taking of Timaea wasn’t something he cared to brag about, nor was he interested in wearing armour. He wore an old sky-blue chiton that had been washed so often it felt like an old friend on his shoulders. He wore Boeotian boots because he always wore them at sea. He did not look like a warrior king, and he could see the plainness of his appearance reflected in her glance.

  ‘I needed to move swiftly,’ he said. He was surprised to hear how normal his voice sounded.

  ‘You needed to reassure your allies, who include my uncle and me. My uncle thinks, even now, that you might pounce on us, seize Heraklea and put it under your crown as “king”.’ Amastris didn’t sound angry – just detached. A good stateswoman, he realised. Probably far better with ambassadors than he would be. Her beauty – more than beauty – made his loins ache. Her breasts showed – just the very tops of the rich fruit of them, pale – he could remember the feel of them—

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Satyrus said. He changed the tone of his voice; no more the detached statesman. ‘Amastris, if I had come ashore, when would I have ever left?’ He reached out and took her hand, but she pulled it away before he touched her and turned her shoulder.

  ‘You paw me. It makes people talk.’ She stood suddenly. ‘I think that you have to make me a better apology than that empty flattery, based solely on lust.’ She only came to his chest, but her eyes burned into his. She was angry – so angry that her shoulders trembled. ‘You didn’t trust me!’

  ‘How could I?’ he said, before he thought too much about it. ‘You employ the man who murdered my mother.’

  ‘You know that is not true,’ Amastris said. ‘I defy you to prove it. Anyway, even if he was involved, it was just politics. Nothing personal.’

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘That’s exactly what he said, or so my sister tells it.’

  ‘So what?’ Amastris said. ‘You don’t want me to have a councillor as good – as thorough – and as deep as Stratokles. Better I be a nice ignorant virgin, ripe for the wedding market. You can tell me whatever you see fit, and I’ll at least pretend to be happy to have such jewels of your manly wisdom shared with me. You are no better than my uncle, except that you are better to look at.’

  Satyrus had never seen her like this. He wasn’t sure that he didn’t like this Amastris – enraged, uncaring and strong – better than the complacent temptress of Ptolemy’s palace. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk like rulers, shall we?’

  ‘Don’t patronise me,’ she spat.

  ‘I’m not patronising you, Amastris. I’ll tell you the unvarnished, unflattering, unstatesmanlike truth.’ He sat carefully on a couch. ‘My attack depended on speed and surprise. Speed to catch Dekas’ warships still in their berths. Surprise because it saves casualties and, as it turned out, I was hideously outnumbered. I—’ He fingered his cup, ‘I miscalculated pretty badly, and only the favour of divine Herakles—’

  ‘You are such a depressingly pious man,’ Amastris said, shaking her head. ‘The favour of divine Herakles. Did you grow up in a mighty city? Or are you secretly a shepherd from Attica?’

  Satyrus began to smile – much the same sort of smile that came to his face in a fight, although he didn’t know it. ‘Perhaps I am a shepherd boy, at that,’ he said. ‘Nonetheless, I needed surprise to take Timaea. I don’t trust Stratokles. I’m sorry that you like him – sorrier that you trust him.’ He paused to take a sip of wine.

  ‘He helped you win your throne,’ she said carefully.

  ‘I suspect you pushed him to it, and I further suspect that it coincided with the interests of Athens.’ Satyrus shrugged. ‘It’s not about Stratokles, my dear. We always argue about him – and for nothing, this time. Even if he was not at your side, I would not have come ashore. Most of my oarsmen and marines already know too much. If I had landed here, rumour would have gone on falcon wings over the isthmus to Timaea.’

  She shrugged. ‘So? Perhaps some things should be more important to you than the lives of a few mercenaries.’ She smiled at him, her dimples appearing as if summoned.

  ‘I thought we were speaking as statesmen?’ he asked her. He wasn’t sure what he felt. He had come – why had he come? Leon was waiting, and he was wasting a day.

  Suddenly, in the space between heartbeats, he felt the change, like the moment when the rim of the sun appeared above the world.

  ‘My lady, I need to be in Rhodes,’ he said.

  She appeared confused for a moment. Satyrus had never seen her confused.

  ‘I am sorry if my tactics confused you, or your uncle. I meant no harm to you or yours. The straits are open to your ships. I must be gone.’ He leaned forward to kiss her cheek, but she bolted from her chair and put it between them.

  ‘You are leaving? Do you have any idea what you are doing? We have plans to make—’

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘Plans we can make another time. The wind is fair for me, and my uncle is waiting for me at Rhodes. I’ll be back in a few weeks and we can make arrangements then.’

  ‘Aphrodite, stand with me. Are you leaving me, Satyrus? Are we not lovers? What service is this?’ She was angry again – or perhaps had been angry all along.

  Satyrus was angry too, although he was only just discovering it. ‘Perhaps if we were married, I’d take these protestations more seriously,’ he said. ‘As it is, we are a pair of rulers duelling for power. I can do that elsewhere, and I am needed elsewhere. I long to marry you, Amastris – but until your uncle agrees, what’s the point in these meetings? Anger, recrimination—’

  ‘Then go,’ Amastris said. ‘You’re quite right. There is no point. Please leave, immediately.’

  Satyrus picked his chlamys off a stool. He’d said too much – said the unsayable. And now he regretted it.

  But there was nothing he could add without surrendering, and he’d never been much for surrender.

  So he looked at her, hoping to communicate with his eyes, but she swept from the room. He heard the sound of metal impacting plaster.

  Satyrus sighed and left the room. He collected the silent Helios from the kitchens, and found his guard of marines waiting under the eaves of the palace. Nestor was there, talking to Apollodorus.

  ‘Evening, Nestor,’ Satyrus said as he came up.

  ‘Lord,’ Nestor said, inclining his head. ‘A famous victory.’

  ‘A lot of dead women and children,’ Satyrus said with some bitterness.

  ‘Nest of vipers, if you ask me,’ Apollodorus said.

  ‘I didn’t ask you,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘Not a good day with my mistress, then?’ Nestor said with half a smile.

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘I think it’s over,’ he said. He felt like weeping – felt that saying it aloud might make it so.

  Nestor shook his head. ‘Not unless you no longer want her,’ he said. ‘It is just the poison of that Athenian hyena.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps one day I will kill him for my king – and for you.’

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘Heraklea has never been lucky for me,’ he said. He caught the eyes of his escort. ‘We’re needed in Rhodes. We should be gone.’

  7

  Days under sail and oar – nights under canvas on beaches from the neck of the Bosporus to the coast of Asia. The second night they camped below the ruins of Troy, and Satyrus went and sacrificed to the shades of Achilles and Patroclus and Hektor. The fourth night they camped under the walls of Mythymna, on Lesvos, and Satyrus drank wine with the garrison commander, Phillip Xiphos, an old friend of Draco’s.

  ‘Catamite bastard is waiting for you off C
hios,’ Phillip said with no preamble.

  Satyrus nodded. ‘Thanks for that,’ he said.

  Phillip laughed. ‘Draco says you’re a good man, for all you’re an effeminate Greek and a barbarian, too,’ he said. Phillip had lost an eye, like his namesake, and had a pair of scars that looked like fingers reaching across his face. His couch-mate at dinner was a beautiful boy with the body of an Olympic athlete, one of Sappho’s descendants.

  ‘I’m descended from Sappho and Alcaeus,’ he proclaimed proudly.

  After he had sung some of his ancestor’s poetry, and played very well on the lyre, the boy came and joined Satyrus on his couch. ‘Would you take me to be a marine?’ he asked. ‘I want to go to war. All I do here is train.’

  ‘What’s your name?’ Satyrus asked.

  ‘Charmides,’ said the boy.

  ‘How old are you, lad?’ Satyrus asked, feeling a thousand years old.

  ‘Eighteen – in a few weeks.’

  ‘Months,’ Phillip said. ‘He won’t be an ephebe until the Feast of Herakles. That’s my feast of Herakles – in Pella.’

  ‘I knew which one you meant,’ Satyrus said tolerantly. ‘What do you think of this, sir? Do you want him to go to sea as a marine?’

  The old Macedonian smiled tenderly at the boy. ‘I hope he never sees a spear flash in a foe’s red hand,’ he said. ‘But for all that, he’s eager for it, as we all are, eh?’ Phillip made a face. ‘You’ve seen a fair amount of action – for a Greek.’

  Satyrus shrugged.

  ‘I could send him to Antigonus, but he has the reputation of eating men,’ Phillip said. ‘Cassander may be regent of Macedon, but I can’t love him. Ptolemy – he was always my favourite. But Aegypt is a long way away.’

  ‘Are you asking me to take this boy?’ Satyrus asked.

  ‘Let me think on it,’ Phillip allowed.

  In the morning, the handsome lad was on the black sand beach of Mythymna with a heavy wool sea bag and wearing a fine suit of armour. Phillip stood by him in a cloak, half purple, half tan. It made Satyrus smile – the mark of the Companions of King Alexander. A magnificent brag. And a true one.

  ‘I guess that he must go sometime, eh?’ Phillip asked. ‘I had hoped to send him with Draco—’

  ‘He’s holding Timaea for me,’ Satyrus said. ‘What’s your name again, boy?’

  The young man looked shyly at the ground – really, too well bred to be believed. ‘I’m called Charmides,’ he said.

  The boy reminded Satyrus of someone, but he couldn’t put his finger on just who that was.

  Satyrus turned to Apollodorus. ‘We have a new marine,’ he said.

  Apollodorus smiled. ‘Likely lad, I must say. Can you throw a javelin, lad?’

  Charmides dimpled when he smiled. ‘Well enough,’ he said, cautiously.

  ‘Well enough to throw in the boys’ events at the Olympics!’ Phillip said. ‘You take good care of my boy. I’ve been his father, in everything but blood.’

  Satyrus clasped hands with the old man. ‘I’ll do my best,’ he said. ‘The sea is not always kind.’

  ‘Let’s see if I can make it kinder,’ Phillip said. ‘Walk with me on the beach.’

  In a few minutes of walking, Phillip laid out the naval dispositions of Antigonus, Demetrios and the pirate Dekas. ‘Dekas has sixty ships,’ Phillip added, ‘including four of mine.’

  Satyrus made a face. ‘I can’t face sixty ships. I’d like to. I think I could take him – but the risk is too high, and my merchantmen would suffer.’

  ‘Wait a few weeks, then. Dekas can’t wait for ever – Antigonus needs him to fight Ptolemy down off Cyprus. Or blockading Rhodes—’ Phillip shook his head. ‘You can wait here. I won’t charge you much,’ he added.

  Satyrus nodded. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘But no.’

  ‘You mean to fight?’ Phillip asked, and his glance at Charmides, already stowing his gear under a rowing bench, spoke volumes.

  ‘No,’ Satyrus said.

  Satyrus went west out of Mythymna, rather than east through the Straits of Lesvos as he had planned. It was a risky course in late spring, and his next move was still riskier, leaving the safety of the Lesvian coast at Eressos on a clear morning, crossing the deep blue to the lonely island of Psyra, south by west, and raising her as evening fell. His men ate crab and lobster on the beach, and danced with the local men and women who came down to them when it became clear they were not raiders.

  They sailed before Eos, the lust-filled goddess of the new morning, had touched the sky with her rosy fingers, and they sailed due south all day, more than a hundred stades of the deep blue and never a single sight of an island or even a gull after they left the rocky slopes of Psyra astern. And into the night – the greatest risk of all, forty ships sailing the deep blue in darkness, and every stern lit like a temple on a festival.

  In the morning, Satyrus’ squadron was spread over fifty stades of sea but he sailed on, the wind fresh and dead astern, carrying him south by south until, at the rising of the stars, Mykonos rose between the bow post and the foremast.

  Neiron nodded. ‘Good landfall,’ he said. Then he grinned like an Aegyptian jackal. ‘Excellent landfall.’ Few things made sour old Neiron smile, but good seamanship was always worth a laugh. ‘What’s on your mind, young man?’

  Satyrus bridled as he always did to be called ‘young man’, but then he shrugged. ‘The price of grain,’ he said. ‘It is never far from my thoughts, these days.’ He looked out over the sea towards Mykonos. ‘I have ten thousand mythemnoi of grain – more, I suspect. All the grain from my farms, all the grain from most of the Maeotae farms on the Tanais and all the surplus from Pantecapaeaum. At four drachma per mythemna, Athenian price, we break even. Not a good year for the small farmer. At five and a half drachma, we make a small profit.’

  ‘I’m no farmer,’ Neiron said. ‘What’s a small profit?’

  Leosthenes, the priest of Poseidon, made a snorting noise. He’d been sitting on the helmsman’s bench, reading from a scroll. He got up. ‘Didn’t you even grow up on a farm, old man?’ he asked.

  Neiron smiled and shook his head. ‘Fishing boats and merchant ships.’

  Leosthenes nodded. ‘My pater was hard put to make his zygote quota of two hundred mythemnoi every year. Two hundred measures or more, and you are a full citizen. Fewer, and if the assessor wants to, he can take away your right to serve – lots of rights. If you don’t make quota, your son can’t train in the gymnasium.’ Leosthenes looked out to sea, clearly remembering something painful.

  Satyrus hadn’t thought of it like that. Of course, except for being a terrified exile for a few weeks, Satyrus had never wanted for money. He looked at the priest. ‘Did it ever happen?’

  Leosthenes laughed grimly. ‘Never. Once in a while we’d have a year where the crops were good and the olives were good and we’d make quota and then some – and pay our taxes and lay aside money for dowries. One year in five. The rest, we’d work in the fields with the slaves, gleaning every grain before the crows took them. In Athens, they have a special name for oat grains with dirt on them.’ He shrugged.

  Satyrus looked back at Neiron. ‘So – at five drachma, we make a small profit. One of my Maeotae farmers is lucky to have two hundred mythemnoi – like Leosthenes’ father. Let’s say he has four slaves and a horse and oxen and a plough, six children – well, do the maths. Two hundred mythemnoi of grain at five drachma gets him a thousand drachma. Ten mina of silver. A sixth of a talent. Seems like riches, until you feed the children, the slaves and the oxen. Not to mention the horse.’

  Neiron nodded. ‘Every merchant ship knows the score, lord.’

  Satyrus made a face. ‘When I look back there,’ he waved at the merchant ships in their trailing arrowhead, ‘all I see are the hopes and fears of a thousand small farmers. If I lose it all in a storm – what then? Pirate attack, bad choice of port, low prices when we get there—’

  Leosthenes looked interested. Neiron frowned. ‘Tha
t’s life in the merchant trade, Satyrus. Every cargo bears its weight in worry, or so my pater used to say.’

  Satyrus jutted his chin at Mykonos, now well up on the horizon. ‘So it’s not just a landfall. It’s a risk passed. We should be around Dekas now. I could fight him. Hades, I’d like to fight him, outnumbered or not. But this isn’t my grain. Or half of it isn’t.’

  Leosthenes nodded. ‘Lord, you should cross the strait and visit the god at Delos.’

  The idea appealed to Satyrus, and he was surprised he hadn’t thought of Delos at all, separated from Mykonos by a narrow strip of water. ‘My mind has been too much at sea,’ he said. ‘I will find the time to visit the god.’

  They lay the night on the north beaches of Mykonos, with ships coming in all night. Satyrus declared the next day a day of rest, and the sailors mended ropes and sails while the oarsmen slept and the marines drilled, did the war dances and threw javelins until their arms hurt. Young Charmides threw so well that Apollodorus refused to be responsible for the boy.

  ‘The men will either throw him over the side or get lovesick over him,’ Apollodorus said. He shook his head. ‘He’s so likeable.’

  Satyrus laughed. ‘I’m just trying to decide who he reminds me of,’ he said.

  He took Helios and young Charmides with him, walked down the sand to Diokles and the Black Falcon and arranged to be rowed across the narrow channel to Delos and the Temple of Apollo – the holiest shrine in the Hellenic world. Satyrus had never seen it – never had a chance to visit. And while he led his ships in a long end-round of Antigonus’ naval dispositions, he’d felt – perhaps as a result of his encounter with Amastris and its results – a sense of pollution, of having made himself unclean.

  What did he owe Amastris?

  Why had he not made sure to part on better terms with his sister?

  Diokles’ men rowed with a will, every one of them as eager for the market at Delos – one of the best markets on the sea – as Satyrus was for the temple.