Tyrant: Destroyer of Cities

by Christian Cameron

‘They must be pissing in their chitons,’ Diokles said with a laugh, looking at the beach.

  Satyrus came out of his thoughts to see the landing beach for the great Temple of Apollo – the hieron of Apollo’s birth, and of his sister, Artemis. There were at least a hundred priests and acolytes on the beach.

  Satyrus looked at them and shook his head. ‘Is that for me?’ he asked.

  Diokles laughed again. ‘You have twenty warships just a few stades away. This temple has backed Antigonus since the dawn of the war – and here you are.’

  Glaucon, Diokles’ master, was a man with one of the pleasantest voices that Satyrus had ever heard. He pointed past the headland to where the great temple stood by the sacred lake. Very little of it was visible from this close in.

  ‘Worth a few drachmas to sack yon,’ he said.

  Satyrus gasped at the blasphemy. ‘Are we pirates?’ Satyrus asked.

  Diokles shook his head. ‘No, lord. We ain’t pirates. They are.’

  Satyrus smiled. ‘My family has a legend about one of our ancestors being badly treated here – but he got a good prophecy, nonetheless, or so it is told.’

  ‘Getting cheated by the priests is part of the pilgrimage,’ Diokles said.

  ‘Worth a few drachmas to sack this place,’ Glaucon said again, his voice dreamy.

  ‘Snap out of it!’ Satyrus said, but now he was laughing. ‘I forget that I am a king, and a sea wolf. I expect that, with a little effort, I can take a sociable revenge for my ancestor.’

  ‘Bet it’s worth a thousand talents of silver,’ Philaeus said – but then he put his hand over his mouth.

  Satyrus took Helios and Charmides up the beach, where they dutifully kissed the sand and were greeted enthusiastically by the priests.

  Satyrus endured several hours of obsequious service in exchange for his sacred moments in the cleft of rock and his opportunity to worship the Lord of the Silver Bow, which he did, sacrificing a ram with his own sword, and another for Melitta on the altar of Artemis, to the high priestess’s delight. He left them some of the loot from the pirates at Timaea, which seemed to please them more than his piety.

  He stood by the sacred lake and looked into the black waters, but the god did not speak to him. And in the sacred cleft, he heard muttering and a shriek – a very dramatic shriek – but the voice of the god was still for him.

  The place itself was dramatic and beautiful, ancient with the touch of a thousand years of worship, and perhaps a thousand years before that. And when he turned to leave the sacred lake, where he felt that he had stood too long, the hierophant was waiting for him.

  ‘My lord,’ he said quietly. ‘Did the god speak to you?’

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘No. The cleft and the lake were equally silent. I confess that my thoughts are most often turned to my ancestor, Herakles, and perhaps I have neglected the Lord of the Lyre.’ Satyrus shrugged. He regretted the impulse that had brought him here.

  The hierophant shook his head. ‘You have not offended the Lord Apollo.’ He paused. ‘Not in particular.’

  ‘What, then?’ Satyrus asked. The gods he worshipped, but priests sometimes annoyed him.

  The hierophant gave him a hard look. Oddly, that made Satyrus like him better – it was the obsequious priests that Satyrus disliked.

  ‘I had a dream about you, my lord. You bear the impurity of enormous blood guilt. You have killed many men – many men, my lord, and without apology. Your line are killers, back to the generation of Herakles, may his name be blessed.’ The hierophant’s eyes bored in on him, unblinking. ‘You must consider expiation.’

  ‘Sacrifice?’ Satyrus asked. Even as a pious man, he was tempted to ask if a large enough donation would cover this supposed blood guilt.

  The priest narrowed his eyes. ‘You have a reputation as a man who loves and fears the gods,’ he said. ‘You act like a sophist from Athens.’

  Satyrus squirmed. ‘Both men may inhabit the same body,’ he said.

  The priest nodded. ‘Even the body of a priest. Listen to my dream, and the word of the Lord Apollo, and act on it or not, because the gods grant men their will, to do or not to do, and expect men to take the consequences, I think. Apollo asks that you make a sacrifice of your time, and learn to play the lyre. My dream tells me that you skimped on music as a boy. Apollo commands that you learn his instrument, and through it, perhaps, you will see things that you have not seen.’

  Satyrus fell back a step, stunned by the simplicity of the god’s demand and its subtlety. ‘I thank you, lord priest. I will . . . I will consider the god’s demand. Will act on it.’ Indeed, the faintest whiff of damp cat’s fur came to his nostrils, the first sign from his ancestor god in many passages of the moon, and he was moved. He embraced the priest, who nodded graciously.

  ‘Teachers will come to you,’ the priest said suddenly.

  ‘A music teacher?’ Satyrus asked.

  The priest shrugged. ‘I – some daemon gave voice. I spoke without thought.’

  Satyrus was satisfied. The gods had spoken, and his visit was not wasted. Blood guilt – aye, Satyrus admitted that the deaths of many of his victims sat just below the surface of his mind, waiting for his every dive into deeper waters. The Sakje girl he’d killed in his first fight. The sailors he had once executed on a beach to maintain discipline. The dead of his battles. The women massacred when his marines stormed the town. A king quickly piled up corpses.

  Back on the beach, Charmides thanked him prettily for allowing him to come along.

  ‘Are you pious, Charmides?’ Satyrus asked. He was deep under, seeing all his dead.

  The young man blushed – a remarkable talent in a man who could throw a javelin half a stade. ‘I – I believe in the gods, lord.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘Helios?’

  ‘I believe in the gods more strongly as a free man than I did as a slave,’ he said. ‘The gods have very little to offer a slave.’

  Satyrus stared out over the stern. ‘Helios, do you play the lyre?’

  Helios looked uncomfortable. ‘No, lord.’

  Satyrus glanced at Charmides. He blushed, and stammered something.

  ‘I’ll bet he plays very well indeed,’ Satyrus said to Helios. ‘All the people of Sappho’s island should be musicians.’

  Charmides shook his head. ‘No, lord. I never – I never put in the time. Music is difficult.’ He shrugged. ‘I spent my time running and learning to fight.’

  Satyrus pursed his lips. ‘I seem to have surrounded myself with non-musicians. And yet Theron and Philokles both loved to play and sing. Apollo commands me to learn the lyre, gentlemen. When I have engaged a teacher, I will invite both of you to learn with me.’

  The two younger men beamed with pleasure, and that made Satyrus happy as well.

  Satyrus thought about music all the way back to Mykonos.

  South and east, down the ‘gullet’ between the Cyclades and the Sporades. A night on a beach with no name on an islet off the coast of Astypalaia, eating stores and keeping the fires small, and in the morning they were off again, due west of Cos. That morning, they saw two ships away north on the horizon – sixty stades or more.

  ‘Miletus is off our port quarter,’ Neiron said.

  ‘With most of Antigonus’ smaller warships, if Phillip of Mythymna was right,’ Satyrus said. ‘We should be south of Dekas, though.’

  ‘Unless those were his scouts,’ Neiron said.

  ‘We won’t beach until dark,’ Satyrus said, and went back to watching the sea. Twilight found them coasting along a headland that should have been Telos but looked strangely different.

  ‘Stay at sea,’ Satyrus said. ‘Light the stern lamps and press on.’

  In the dark, the stars began to vanish overhead in the second watch, and Neiron woke Satyrus to take a turn at the steering oars. There was an oil lamp flickering fitfully in the sheltered space under the stern strakes, and otherwise it was as black as the cleft of Apollo.

  ‘Poseidon, stand by
us,’ Satyrus whispered to the wind.

  The wind stayed steady through his watch and the ship moved fast – perhaps too fast. But it had to be time to turn east and run between Syme and Chalke – hadn’t it?

  Satyrus waited as long as he felt he could, and he worried – about the ships behind him, watching for his lights, and about the silence of the god at Delos, and his sister’s anger – and most of all, about Amastris. The middle of a night watch is a dark place, and all of his responsibilities came to him, the weight of every relationship, the numbers of his dead.

  Then he leaned on his steering oars and his Arête turned east into a night as black as new-melted pitch. Behind him, he could see Diokles’ Black Falcon make the turn – or rather, he knew the Falcon well enough to know that that was the ship astern. After that, he counted lights – six, seven, eight – and then the gloom was too much. Some of his ships were astern. He wished that he had gone ashore at Cos. He wished he had beached at least for dinner and to remind his captains—

  Most of whom were his elders, and had sailed these waters longer than he had been alive.

  Then he leaned forward, looking for breakers, listening for a change in the sound of the sea. Twice he gave the steering oars to Helios, who huddled awake because his lord was awake, and went forward to check on his lookouts, but they were awake, as sharp-eyed and anxious as only men at sea on a dark night can be.

  ‘I’ll never keep a squadron at sea in the dark again,’ Satyrus said to Helios. The younger man sat with his back against Satyrus’ back, sharing warmth. The cool, damp wind sucked the heat right out of them, worse than a winter wind on the Sea of Grass.

  Helios laughed. ‘So you say, lord,’ he said. ‘Don’t swear to it, or the gods will hear you!’

  Satyrus nodded at the dark. Was that the first grey light of day? ‘I mean it,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, yes, lord. Until the next time it seems the best way,’ Helios said.

  Dawn, and rain – first a light shower, and then heavier, with some wind behind it, so that Satyrus ordered the sails down. Visibility was the length of the ship and perhaps a little more

  ‘I don’t hear breakers,’ Neiron said, coming awake. ‘I gather we lived?’

  Satyrus squatted by the helmsman. ‘Don’t count your drachma yet,’ he said. ‘The morning fog’s so thick I can’t see my nose.’

  There was a loud crash astern and shouting, swearing – all of which sounded as if it was coming from their own ship.

  Satyrus could hear Diokles shouting insults at someone.

  ‘Someone fouled the Falcon,’ Neiron said. ‘Not good.’

  ‘Men are hungry,’ Stesagoras said at his elbow. ‘We need to get ’em ashore soon.’

  ‘I know,’ Satyrus said. He reflected on the causes of fear – in daylight, if they were where he expected, his men would be quiet, respectful, eager for port. But in the fog of dawn, they were hag-ridden with worry.

  ‘Don’t pace,’ he said to Neiron.

  Neiron stopped walking up and down the command deck. ‘Yes, lord.’

  Satyrus lay down in the protected stern area behind the helmsman’s bench. ‘Wake me when the fog burns off and Rhodes is in sight,’ he said. He pulled his chlamys over his head and lay alone with his fears and apparently asleep, listening for the first presage of disaster.

  But it had been a long night, and he fell asleep.

  In his sleep, Herakles came to him and put a hand over his face. ‘If you had everything you desired,’ the god said, ‘you wouldn’t be much of a hero, would you?’

  Then he was in the agora – the agora of the Tanais of his childhood. Men pressed around, and women too, Sakje and Greek and Maeotae.

  And there was Ataelus, and there was Philokles. They stood together.

  ‘Not for having everything,’ Ataelus said with a shrug. ‘You must be for choosing.’

  Philokles nodded. ‘When the time comes,’ he said slowly, ‘I suspect that the choice will be obvious.’ He smiled ruefully, a smile that Satyrus remembered so well that even in his dream his heart flooded. ‘Trust the musician, boy.’

  Then, suddenly, there were two horses in a paddock. Both were fine – a black and a pale cream horse with a pale mane.

  Stratokles came up, wearing the red felt hat of a Sakje horse-trader. ‘Whichever you keep, I’ll take the other one,’ he said, with a leer.

  ‘She bites,’ Ataelus said, pointing at the pale mare.

  ‘Touch that head and you’ll land in—’ Stratokles began, but the words ‘head’ and ‘land’ did something in the dream, and Satyrus was awake. Men were cheering.

  ‘The headland of Rhodes!’ Neiron called from the bow.

  Satyrus smiled and waved, and lay at the edge of tears, so moved was he by the memory of Philokles and Ataelus. He wished himself back to sleep, but if he dreamed, he didn’t remember it.

  The sun was at its apogee when they passed the headland for the harbour of Rhodes.

  Neiron pointed at the walls. ‘Will you look at that?’ he asked.

  ‘By the spear of Ares,’ Stesagoras said. His sailors were all over the main deck, preparing to lower the mainsail and then the mainmast. He stood with his feet planed well apart, amazed. ‘They’re building a sea wall.’

  Work crews were labouring so hard that the walls of Rhodes seemed to be rising before their very eyes. At the north end of the harbour, men were raising a tower of heavy stone blocks with a giant crane powered by men in a treadmill – slaves, no doubt. Even as they watched, the crane raised a block the size of Satyrus’ chest, held in a sling of heavy hide, and deposited it where a foreman straddled the growing tower wall. Under his shouted directions, the block settled, meshing neatly with the rest of its brothers and sisters in the course.

  At the south end of the great bend of the harbour, a second mighty tower was rising, and at its feet, a mole – or perhaps a long wharf – was already built in timber, and rubble-fill was being dumped between the standing uprights. Enough of the wharf was complete that ships were already tied up by the finished side.

  For as long as Satyrus had known the harbour of Rhodes, it had been undefended, the unstated claim being that Rhodes’ great navy was the bulwark against invasion from the sea. The last time Satyrus had sailed into this port, he’d been able to see the great Temple of Apollo at the centre of the curve of the bay, the Temple of Poseidon next to it and the gilded bronze rose that was the city’s device sparkling in the distance towards the agora. Now there was a wall rising all along the waterfront, pierced with gates and crenellated with towers.

  The landward side was getting its share of new fortifications, as well. To the south, Satyrus could see that an enormous tower had just reached its third storey. It appeared to be a quarter of a stade on one side – the length of twenty horses tied nose to tail.

  The part of his head that could calculate the value of any new construction in Tanais was running like a colt on a spring day, and Satyrus couldn’t believe the amount of money he was seeing being spent.

  ‘By the Silver Bow of Lord Apollo,’ he said. ‘There’s the value of our city in that wall alone.’

  Neiron shook his head. ‘They must be scared shitless,’ he said. He pointed towards the new mole. ‘There’s some good news.’

  Satyrus hadn’t noticed Leon’s ships gathered around the new wharf – they were built almost exactly on the pattern of the Rhodian cruisers, and they were berthed alongside the Rhodian navy, so that they vanished among the long rows of carefully anchored warships.

  ‘I count one hundred and sixteen hulls, with Leon’s ships included,’ Neiron added.

  ‘We have heavier metal,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘We won’t be as fast or as handy,’ Neiron noted. ‘But if we can get the time to try these new-fangled engines, we might show my cousins a thing or two.’ He looked back over the stern at the long line of warships and merchantmen coming in behind.

  ‘Best close in the arrowhead,’ Satyrus said, and waved to Helios, who r
aised his master’s gold-faced aspis and flashed it several times. They were still missing six ships, but a long night at sea and a foggy morning were bound to cause some vessels to wander off course. The rest of them had gathered back to the arrowhead formation while Satyrus napped, and now he put them in a column astern to pass the arms of the Rhodes harbour.

  Ashore, men stopped working to watch. Many raised their arms and cheered.

  ‘Good to be popular,’ Satyrus said, to no one in particular. Heads came up all along the deck – the perfect rhythm of the oars faltered as men gazed at the shore. Sailors swung up on to the rails to get a better look, and the ship heeled a strake as the sailors all gathered on the landward side.

  Helios smiled and looked at Charmides, who blushed.

  Neiron frowned at everyone on the command deck. ‘This is a working ship,’ he barked.

  Everyone went back to work.

  The landing was smooth enough, especially as the pilot vessel that met them cheered and waved them away from the stony beach and alongside the new wharf. As if to make amends for their moment of inattention, the rowers were as sharp as a blade approaching the stone and wood, and the starboard-side oars shot in as if pushed by a god’s hand, and the ship settled against the leather-padded pilings like a seabird onto water.

  The first man to meet them ashore was Panther, Lord Admiral of the Navy of Rhodes, and the second was Leon. Satyrus hadn’t seen the Numidian in more than a year, and his dark skin contrasted sharply with his white hair.

  There were crowds – anxious crowds, Satyrus guessed – and they poured out of the side streets onto the main wharf and cheered. Panther had forty Rhodian marines – mercenaries, mostly, and a hard-looking crew – all around him. Leon had eight of his own men, four black men from Africa and four blond barbarians from the far north, yet all were matched like brothers, wearing identical muscled bronze cuirasses and fitted Attic helmets with red and white plumes. They were eight of the largest men Satyrus had ever seen. He opened his mouth to say something complimentary, but Leon spoke first. Then Panther shouted.

  Whatever both of them said was drowned out by the sound of the crowd.