Tyrant: Destroyer of Cities

by Christian Cameron

  Perhaps it was wrong to say that Satyrus awoke. He emerged from the dream of his father – a dream built with colours more vivid than the waking world, with statues that talked and the souls of dead men – to a world much more like the world he inhabited every day, with the exception that he saw it from a distance, as if for the first time. There, in the bed, lay his emaciated body.

  Helios – he knew the boy immediately – dozed in a chair. The bossy woman with the iron-grey hair was asleep on a kline under a grand window. Outside, the sun shone brilliantly over the harbour of the town, and the work on the walls continued unabated. Across the harbour, tied to the new wharf, Arete rode at her moorings, the tallest ship in the harbour of Rhodes.

  So I am at Rhodes, Satyrus said to himself.

  The long-legged woman of his earlier dream came into the room with a small lekythos, from which she poured white milk into a cup. Satyrus could smell the poppy juice as soon as she poured it, and he longed for it as soon as he smelled it.

  She took a small bone spoon and put some in his mouth. He wondered that she could bear even to touch him – he looked like a corpse. His head seemed to have grown out of all proportion to his body, and his shoulders – once heavy with muscle – were all bones.

  ‘What shall I tell you today?’ she began, and something in her voice told him that this was a habit – an old habit. How long has she been talking to me? A week? A month? Two months?

  ‘Demetrios has two hundred and twenty ships gathered at Miletus, or so Panther says. He comes here often, he and Memnon. No one here has forgotten what you did for us, Satyrus.’ Her voice was gentle, and she took his hand and ran one of her fingers up the middle of his palm. ‘They say he is bound here, on the first good wind of spring – with forty thousand men in transport ships. So the whole city makes preparations for the siege, and oh, how my brother wishes for your recovery!’

  She bent down and kissed his brow. ‘Everyone asks after you, King Satyrus.’ Then she rose, and walked quietly across the tiled room, edging carefully around Helios. At the door she spoke, and her tone was different – Satyrus saw that she was speaking to a scroll hanging on the wall.

  ‘Would it be so much, O high and lonely god, to let this man live?’ she said, addressing the scroll.

  Never take that tone with the gods, Satyrus wanted to admonish her, for she sounded bitter, angry and reproachful, like a young child who has discovered the fallibility of her parents.

  Helios awoke with a start. ‘Mistress Miriam?’ he asked.

  Miriam.

  She stepped back into the room. ‘I’m sorry, Helios.’

  ‘Gods, Despoina, it is I who should be sorry. I should be awake.’ Helios rubbed his eyes. ‘He was calling out last night – calling to his father and to Philokles, and coughing blood again.’ Helios looked over at the old woman lying on the kline. ‘Aspasia no longer believes that he will live. Am I . . . right?’

  Miriam made a face. She was not old enough to act the matron, but she tried, controlling her emotions as best she could. ‘You are right. She may also . . . be right.’ Miriam sagged against the door jamb and rubbed her eyes. ‘No man should be able to live so long without food. But I am giving him poppy, and so is Aspasia. It will ease his end . . . or allow him to eat.’

  ‘He has a strong will,’ Helios said with the careful deliberation of the young who have come to great knowledge. ‘He will not die easily. And yet . . . Oh, Despoina. He blamed himself for all the ones lost in the storm. Anaxagoras says that, not the miasma, brought this on.’

  ‘Anaxagoras believes that he can be healed with music,’ Miriam replied. She sighed. ‘And yet Anaxagoras is full of wisdom, too. Why are we all so wise, and none of us can save him?’

  Lost in the storm echoed in his mind. Yes. Diokles, Sarpax, Akes, Dionysus. How many ships lost? Seven? And all their crews? Fifteen hundred men lost because he felt that he had to—

  It had to be done. Am I just defending myself from the charge of rashness? Or do I actually believe it had to be done?

  I lost my hyperetes – my oldest friend, as well – in the taking of a citadel. I mourned him but I counted the cost as light. His father had said that. In a dream.

  The body on the bed twitched and started, and Satyrus fell from above into the corpse’s eyes – down long tunnels—

  Philokles sat between two men that Satyrus knew only from statues – Socrates and Arminestos, the family hero. The Plataean who had saved Greece. All three were immortal in bronze and gold, wearing chitons of marble. Behind them stood the chryselephantine statue of Athena Nike.

  Philokles leaned over the table in front of him. Satyrus didn’t dare turn his head, but he thought that they must be in Athens, of a sudden – in the Temple of Athena Nike on the Acropolis. No idea why.

  ‘You charge yourself with the loss of fifteen hundred men,’ Philokles said. ‘Do you really wish a full examination? Or will you merely wallow in guilt for a time, and then wall that guilt away?’

  ‘An unexamined life is not worth living,’ Socrates said. ‘Let the trial be a fair one.’

  ‘Any commander who wastes his time counting the corpses of his friends isn’t worth a shit,’ Arimnestos said. ‘All this sentimentality will only make you weak.’ He, in turn, leaned over the table. ‘Unless you just squandered them, eh? That’s shameful. Men have lives – even slaves. Even oarsmen. Perhaps not as worthy as ours, but they aren’t there to be squandered.’

  ‘Let the boy speak,’ Socrates said gently. ‘Listen, boy. Once we start down this path, you will try yourself, and if you find yourself wanting, it will be far worse than the fools who ordered me to drink hemlock.’ He snorted. ‘No man can run from himself. Nor does any man need to account himself wise for knowing that the worst furies are one’s own.’

  Philokles had a pair of dividers in his hand. ‘Come,’ he said, just as he had when he had summoned a much younger Satyrus to give him an answer in geometry. ‘Come – will you try the case?’

  Satyrus sat up. ‘I will.’

  Arimnestos laughed. ‘Then I am ready with my verdict.’

  Socrates nodded. ‘Yes, boy. I, too, am ready.’

  Satyrus felt as if he’d been struck by a storm. ‘But – the evidence!’

  Philokles nodded. ‘Is complete. Listen, boy – it’s all in your head.’ He gave one of his rare grins to Arimnestos. ‘I would hate to have to tell his father that he was found guilty.’

  Arimnestos nodded respectfully to Philokles and then turned to Satyrus. ‘You, lad, are rash.’

  Socrates nodded. ‘Over-bold. Foolish. Given to taking risks because you believe that you can overcome them with luck and planning.’

  Philokles nodded. ‘In fact, it is this very talent – the ability to take an enemy at a rush, to make a plan on the fly, calculate the risk and overcome it in your head – that is at risk in this tribunal. Having lost fifteen hundred men, will you ever trust yourself again?’

  Socrates nodded. ‘Exactly.’ He glanced at Philokles. ‘You say you are from Sparta?’

  Philokles shrugged. ‘It’s true.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Socrates said. ‘An educated Spartan. Still, the world is wide and no man in it has the knowledge of the gods, or even of other men.’ He ran his fingers through his beard. ‘Listen, boy. When I made my stand at Delium – when young Alcibiades rescued me – I lost my two closest friends, because when I stood, they stood. And later, men all but worshipped me as a living hero – and I believed the men. And yet, I knew that I killed my Nikeas and my Cassander as surely as if I’d taken my kopis to their necks. And yet I was sure – with all the surety of the young – that I was doing the right thing. The moral thing. The thing that Achilles would have done.’ Socrates shrugged. ‘They haunted me all my days, of course. Even while I remained sure. In fact, I could say that their ghosts made me Socrates the Sophist. I had to search for answers.’

  Arimnestos looked at Socrates and smiled – not a very nice smile. ‘I’m sure that all that soph
istry does you honour,’ the warrior said. ‘I lost friends the way children lose toys. What of it? Always for me the place to fight was wherever the fight was thickest – gods, how I loved it. And if my friends would follow me there – follow me to where Ares danced – then they would die, many of them. Was it my fault? I’m no madman, Satyrus. I worried about it like any commander worth two farts. But I didn’t worry too much. When the bronze rings and the iron shines, you kill or you are killed. And afterwards, you make what peace with yourself you can, or you go’ – the warrior looked at the sophist – ‘goat-fucking mad.’ He shrugged. ‘Or you lose your touch of the divine and become an animal.’

  Philokles made a face. ‘Satyrus, I sit between these two for a reason, as you, who were always a bright boy, can easily guess. Now – please. What is your verdict?’

  Satyrus looked out of the temple – and he saw the shades of thousands of men. There was Ataelus and there was Samahe, and Philokles himself, and the Sarmatian girl he’d shot, the first person he’d knowingly killed, and there was a Macedonian he’d put in the dust at Gaza – Ares, there were thousands. Was that Diokles, at the back? Shades – wisps, and yet they seemed to stretch away down the Panathenaic Way. They murmured. He couldn’t hear them, and yet they made him profoundly afraid.

  The three statues were immovable in front of him, and behind the three was Nike, slim and beautiful and remarkably like Miriam, holding a sword. She was made of marble, gilded and painted, and she smiled at him.

  ‘Who are they?’ Satyrus asked, annoyed by the fear in his voice. He jerked a thumb at the shades.

  ‘The jury,’ Nike answered. ‘Don’t even try to bribe them. They’re dead!’ and she laughed, a fluid sound like a brook in spring, easy and light.

  Back to hovering above the room, and watching Aspasia – that was her name. She’d healed him before, discovered his addiction to the poppy juice and set him on the road to recovery.

  She moved around the room with purpose, like a trierarch on the deck of warship under oars. She stepped quietly and confidently, preparing a tisane of herbs and drugs, adding warm water, feeding it to him with a spoon.

  Satyrus, watching himself, wondered why they bothered. His skin was transparent like the most expensive parchment, and the tone of the parchment was yellow – a hideous colour. Even as he flinched at the colour, the stick figure on the bed rolled and cried out.

  Aspasia murmured endearments, tenderly wiping the hair from his face. At some point while pushing the straggling curls away, she stopped, muttered something inaudible and laid the back of her hand against his forehead, and then against his cheek. And then she peeled back the bedclothes and thrust her hand into his groin.

  ‘Alas,’ she said. And folded the bedclothes over his face.

  Troy – the siege of Troy – endless. Satyrus fought and fought, day after day – he was Menelaeus, he was Achilles, he was Hektor, and Aeneas. Diomedes . . .

  She returned with Abraham, already weeping, and Miriam, Helios, Anaxagoras and Neiron – Neiron was dressed in a full chiton, a man of property going to the assembly.

  She had a silver mirror in her hand, and she buffed it against her chest until it shone.

  ‘Any news of his sister?’ she asked.

  ‘None,’ Neiron replied. ‘And now – her son is king, I assume. A raven’s feast if the Herakleans—’

  ‘Are you gentiles so heartless?’ Miriam asked. ‘Was this not a man? Not your friend? And all you want to talk about is his inheritance?’

  Neiron shrugged. ‘Despoina, he was a king. If he had lived, he would want his kingdom to live, and not be cut up like a pig is cut by a butcher.’

  Zeus Sator! Too right, old man.

  Miriam sat on the edge of the bed and put the silver mirror in front of his lips. ‘It never hurts to be sure,’ she said, matter-of-factly.

  ‘He’s cold,’ Miriam said, and took a shuddering breath. ‘Neiron, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Nothing to be sorry about, Despoina. I liked him. More, I fear, than I let him know, but I’m old enough not to want the world to see everything that crosses the bridge of my thoughts.’

  Abraham shook his head. He raised his fists towards the ceiling. Then he composed himself. Miriam took his arm, and he embraced her.

  Helios wept.

  Anaxagoras sat in the chair, lifted a small lyre and began to play.

  Aspasia shot him a look.

  ‘Worked for Orpheus,’ he said with a smile.

  ‘To Hades with your blasphemy,’ the doctor-priestess said.

  But the simple tune he played was like a dirge, like a march, like a hymn – his hands seemed to flow over the strings of the lyre and it rang, louder than might have been expected, the notes slowing until they fell one by one like drops of water falling on a desert, and then Anaxagoras moved his right hand across all the strings like a man wiping a slate clean, and he began to tap his sandal on the floor, a rhythm so compelling that Miriam, clutched in her brother’s arms, found herself patting her brother’s back in time, and Helios through his tears was slapping the chair arm in time and Neiron’s chin moved fractionally up and down.

  ‘Come and take your stand, Satyrus,’ Anaxagoras said. ‘Achilles said,’ and here his rhythm beat harder, ‘Achilles said that it was better to be the slave of the worst master among the living than to be a king among the dead.’

  And then his right hand moved and the notes began to fall and then flow, faster and more insistent—

  Anaxagoras began to sing, and Neiron’s harsh croak joined in instantly, and Aspasia, her eyes shining, and Helios, hesitant—

  Daughters of the muses, who walk the slopes of well-wooded Olympus! rang the paean to Apollo, the song that maidens sang to the newborn god and that men roared in defiance when preparing to sell their lives dearly.

  Notes fell like a waterfall of sound and glory, and Satyrus found that he might make the choice, if he willed it, and he chose to fall down the waterfall of music back into the deep pool of his body—

  And the music rolled on, man’s most potent magic against the dark, the oarsman’s salvation, the aid of the warrior, the light of the dancing maiden until his head was more full of the notes than of the fever.

  And when the music ended, there was silence, and dark.

  Far, far away, he heard the healer say, ‘Look, there. I’m wrong, and all that fuss for nothing, dear. See where his breath mists the silver? Always best to be sure.’ But her breath caught and there was the hint of a sob, and behind her, Helios and Anaxagoras finished the hymn.

  18

  Satyrus awoke to the sound of music, and he slept to the sound of music. The Iliad and the Odyssey, the war poems of Tiresias, sea shanties, drinking songs, hymns to the gods. And another voice, lighter but pure, singing women’s songs – Sappho’s songs about the purity of love:

  Some say that a body of cavalry is the most beautiful,

  And some say the phalanx is the most beautiful,

  And some say a squadron of ships is the most beautiful,

  But I say that the most beautiful one

  Is the one that is loved

  And his eyes opened, fluttered and stayed open. At the foot of his bed Aspasia sat in a chair of ebony, her wrinkled face composed in sleep. And closer, sitting so that her hip rested in a pool of warmth against the sticks of his own hip bones, Miriam played the lyre and sang through the whole of Sappho’s greatest love song, singing of how Helen chose love over war, and how great was the beauty of that gift.

  Satyrus lay for a long time with his eyes open. He couldn’t bear to look at his shoulders against the coverlet, but he could watch Miriam’s face in repose and song for a long time.

  A long time.

  She sang another song in a very different voice – a strange, almost discordant song that was almost more like a chant than Greek music.

  In his head, he smiled to realise that he was actually awake – these were real people, not phantasms; that his brain still worked. The word Hebr
ew floated to the surface of his thoughts – the language of the Jews in their home. She was singing in Hebrew.

  And then he was asleep again.

  Days – days of gorging on soup, retching at simple beans, swallowing clear broth and then accepting more complex meals until he ate bread, and kept it down, and his friends gathered at his bedside as if it was a feast day at the temple, or as if his sickroom was a symposium.

  ‘You lived,’ Neiron said.

  Satyrus managed a smile. ‘If you call this living,’ he said in a whisper. If he had gained any weight, he couldn’t see it. ‘How long?’

  ‘Almost three months, lord,’ Helios said.

  A jolt – a daemon of energy coursed through his body.

  ‘Any . . . more?’ he asked.

  ‘More what, lord?’ Helios asked.

  Satyrus tried to raise an arm to gesture – tried to speak more precisely, and all that emerged was a moan.

  ‘You tax him too much,’ Aspasia said. ‘He is still close to the edge. Let him be.’

  Neiron shook his head. ‘Nay, Despoina. He asks if any ships have come – if any survived the storm. Lord, it is winter here, and the worst sailing weather in fifty years. No ships have come into the harbour. There is almost no news from the world.’

  ‘And Demetrios has the shore opposite, and when the weather clears his ships sortie to close the blockade,’ Helios said, all in a rush.

  ‘He intends to lay siege to the town as soon as the weather clears . . .’

  Satyrus could no longer make sense of what he heard, so he went back to sleep.

  Sleep, and dreams he didn’t remember, except that he fought against opponents appointed by Herakles, and in his dream his physique was the same poor wasted thing he was in life, and Herakles mocked him.

  How will you save this city with the body of a dead man? he asked.

  Awake, and Aspasia fed him, and he forced himself to eat, the taunts of his patron ringing aloud in his ears. He ate and ate, and Anaxagoras came and played music for him, and the notes seemed to enter his psyche like bronze nails hammered into a shield rim.