Tyrant: Destroyer of Cities

by Christian Cameron

  ‘And look how well you’re doing,’ Satyrus said.

  Abraham managed a smile. ‘You are incorrigible,’ he said. ‘Do you mean to marry my sister?’

  Satyrus froze. ‘I will marry Amastris of Heraklea,’ he said carefully.

  ‘No, you won’t,’ Abraham said. ‘She’s a fucking whore from hell, your Amastris. Time somebody told you so. You look at my sister . . . I could be angry. Sometimes I am angry. She’s a widow, not a flute girl.’ Satyrus couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘Talk to me when you’re sober,’ he said curtly, and rolled off the kline.

  ‘Shit on that, brother. You can trust me to back you up in war – is that it? That’s what makes us brothers. Listen – I have brothers, brothers born of my mother. When they do things to piss me off, I tell them. When they blaspheme against our God, for instance. And I have a sister, and I am responsible for her. You look at her in a way that is fucking inappropriate. How’s that, brother?’ Abraham had come to his feet, and he was breathing hard.

  ‘Please withdraw your comments about Amastris,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘Her cunt’s as wide as the harbour entrance. She deceives you, brother. No one wants to tell you this, but she just sent Demetrios five more ships bursting with marines. Marines commanded by fucking Stratokles the Athenian. With Nestor. And she’s sitting in that camp over there, watching us die.’ Abraham shrugged, suddenly appearing both smaller and more sober. ‘I’m sorry, brother. Someone had to tell you.’

  Apollodorus appeared at Abraham’s elbow and hissed, ‘We talked about this.’

  Abraham looked at the floor, glanced up and then shrugged. The party was falling silent.

  Satyrus looked at his marine captain. ‘These are not drunken ramblings, are they?’

  Apollodorus shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Prisoner report.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘There’s probably a reason. She’s a queen, gentlemen. She has things that she has to do – for her people, for herself, to ensure her rule. And she has Stratokles – that wide-arse wouldn’t hesitate to put a sword in me.’

  Apollodorus looked him in the eye. Satyrus realised that the smaller man seldom did – hadn’t noticed how eagle-sharp the man’s brown eyes were. ‘I think he already has,’ Apollodorus said. ‘Put a sword in you. Our prisoners say the word is that you’re dead.’

  Satyrus shrugged. ‘It was close,’ he said.

  ‘You’re not going to run off to the enemy camp to reassure her? Win her back?’ Apollodorus asked.

  Satyrus shook his head, pursed his lips. Now they were all standing around him – Neiron, Charmides, Anaxagoras, Abraham. ‘You all think I’m a fool,’ he said.

  Neiron shook his head. ‘You think – differently,’ he said.

  ‘I need more wine,’ Satyrus said.

  Outside, the moon rose. Satyrus had matched Abraham’s wine intake for two hours, and the man just kept apologising. Satyrus hugged him close and went to lie beside Anaxagoras, who raised a cup in welcome.

  ‘Charmides and I are talking of Eros,’ Anaxagoras said.

  ‘Do you two want to be alone?’ Satyrus asked with a smile.

  ‘Might ask the same of you,’ Anaxagoras asked. ‘Sorry about the queen. Never met her. Don’t know what to think.’

  ‘Are we talking about Eros?’ Satyrus asked.

  ‘Charmides says that men and women can never be friends. That the tension is too much, that they can only be lovers, competitors, or enemies.’ Anaxagoras raised the cup to the beautiful Lesvian man. ‘While I think he has a point, I find that women make good friends.’

  Satyrus honoured their attempt to have a real symposium with good talk by participating. ‘You are a musician, Anaxagoras. And Charmides is, if you’ll pardon me, young. So as a musician, Anaxagoras, you have something to share with women. You can perform together. You can honour the god together. It is like standing in the battle line – yes? I get that much from my lessons – if we play and play well, together, we have shared something real. Yes?’

  ‘Ahh!’ said Anaxagoras, delighted. ‘You are not just a pretty face.’

  ‘While Charmides – pardon me, lad – is beautiful, rich and young. Women want him in their beds, especially in the marriage bed. Am I right? And you hold them in contempt when they fawn – and when they behave ill to each other, in competition. And seeing this, you think, they cannot even be friends with each other.’ Satyrus lay back, satisfied that he had contributed to the conversation like a proper guest.

  Charmides waited while the kylix was refilled. ‘My lord, you speak well, and I am chagrined to admit that you have a point.’

  ‘Women are quite worthy, when men allow them to be,’ Satyrus said. ‘And when they behave like children, you will usually find that men have forced them to act like that.’

  ‘Who made you so wise?’ Anaxagoras asked.

  ‘His sister,’ Miriam said. She sat so that her back pressed against Satyrus’ back – her sudden warmth against him caused an instant physical reaction that he had to hide. If she noticed, she didn’t hesitate. ‘His sister is a magnificent woman – the sort of woman other women either admire or despise. She is brave and strong, and she lives almost entirely the way a Greek man thinks men live.’

  Charmides had eyes as big as wine bowls. ‘I meant no disrespect,’ he said.

  ‘I took none. Women are like men in this – that every one is a kingdom to herself, and no one should ever be judged by another.’ She rose to her feet, and now Satyrus could see her. ‘But I do appreciate when one of you rises to defend us,’ she said, and her mocking smile was briefly serious as she looked at Satyrus.

  He watched her as she moved away. Then he looked at Anaxagoras, who shot him a wry smile.

  ‘That’s one to you,’ he said.

  ‘This isn’t a competition,’ Satyrus said hurriedly.

  ‘No?’ Anaxagoras asked. ‘Could have fooled me.’

  24

  DAY TWENTY-SIX

  There were some hard heads in the morning, and Abraham made men stand at his well and drink water until they vomited it. Satyrus felt better – much better – than he had in days, and he took exercise with Anaxagoras, Apollodorus and Helios in the agora while the men sat in the shade. He wrestled briefly with Helios – a boy who would not, a year ago, have offered him anything like a match – and he lifted jumping weights and rocks under Korus’ harsh eye until he’d sweated out the last of the wine.

  The stones fell and fell. The men of the town had to watch the methodical destruction of their waterfront temples, which had been the city’s pride for a hundred years. They were dismembered stone by stone, and when the roof of the Temple of Poseidon crashed to the ground, the answering cheer from the Antigonids sounded just as loud.

  Satyrus was chewing a dried apple. ‘That was our counter-attack route,’ he said to Neiron.

  ‘Best do something, then,’ Neiron said. And the day ended, and Abraham’s house still stood, by a miracle. Satyrus arranged through Panther for the town slaves to clear him six routes through the temple rubble.

  The naval sortie wasn’t ready. So they all went to bed, and woke in the morning to a red sunrise and another promise of a storm on the eastern horizon. Satyrus woke and found Korus asleep in the courtyard.

  ‘Exercise me now,’ he said. ‘They will attack today.’

  When Panther appeared, Satyrus briefed him on the use of the town slaves even as he exercised, and he asked Apollodorus to get the men into position and drill them at passing through the gaps built by the slaves and reforming the phalanx in the clear ground east of the destroyed temples. He wanted it done before the engines were in position, and quickly, while it was still barely light, unobserved by the enemy.

  Another hour, and a breakfast the size of a dinner, and Satyrus donned his light armour with more ease than he had in weeks.

  ‘I might consider wearing bronze,’ he said.

  Korus nodded. ‘You have some muscles, but I’m not finished yet,’ he said.
>
  Then out to the agora, to their now accustomed places, and the fall of the shot, the rising columns of clay dust, and fires – the enemy was throwing fire into the rubble. Or into the ships in the harbour – what remained of the ships. A pang hit Satyrus again – that his beloved Arete was dead, her charred keel supporting the tunnel under the walls.

  Messengers ran back and forth from Jubal’s tower, explaining the movement of the engine-ships. Sometimes Jubal lost sight of them for an hour at a time – a column of powdered masonry or woodsmoke could hide the whole harbour as effectively as a blanket over the eyes. But his reports were accurate and timely, and Satyrus depended on them.

  By afternoon, the men were completely relaxed, and many were sound asleep when the stones ceased to fall.

  ‘Stand to,’ Satyrus ordered.

  Before the last men had fallen into the ranks, a messenger from Jubal confirmed that lighter boats full of assault troops were coming into the harbour.

  Satyrus sought out Idomeneus. ‘Archers forward,’ he said. ‘All the psiloi. Get into the buildings – whatever is left – and kill what you can.’

  Idomeneus nodded warily.

  ‘I’m not asking you to fight them hand to hand,’ Satyrus said. ‘Just break them up and harass them.’

  Idomeneus raised an eyebrow. ‘We’re mercenaries,” he said.

  Satyrus nodded. ‘And you’ll be well paid.’

  ‘Man likes to live to collect,’ Idomeneus said.

  Satyrus realised that the Cretan was serious, not making pre-battle small talk. ‘Idomeneus, I could talk to you about loyalty, about my sister’s esteem for you, or about how we’ve raised you from an archer to a captain.’ Satyrus paused. ‘But instead, I’ll talk to you as one professional to another. I’m not Ptolemy – I haven’t turned you out for the winter and rehired you in summer. I’ve paid a steady wage – a damned good steady wage – for three years of peace.’

  Idomeneus bowed his head to the logic of the argument, but he made a face. ‘This is like suicide, lord.’

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘Not at all. Brief your men, lead them into the rubble and stay alive. We’re less than five minutes behind you.’

  Idomeneus looked desperate. ‘I’m doing this on behalf of my men. I can’t—’

  Satyrus wasn’t angry. He liked Idomeneus – he was one of the best soldiers he’d ever known. And he knew the pressure that was on the man from his archers, who felt naked when not covered by armoured men. But time was being wasted – Satyrus could feel the water-clock of fate somewhere in his head, running fast. Drip, drip, drip.

  ‘Go now. Promise them a bonus, if you must. But get them into the rubble.’ Satyrus pitched his voice just so. The voice that meant the argument was at an end.

  Idomeneus met his eye. ‘On your head be it,’ he said. In his glance was a straightforward accusation: his eyes accused Satyrus of sacrificing the archers.

  But Idomeneus sprinted to his men, already spread wide along the cross-street where the gymnasium had stood, and he blew a long note on a bone whistle round his neck and they followed him into the rubble.

  Satyrus went and walked along the front face of his formed phalanx. On the right, he set Apollodorus and the picked men of the marines and sailors in heavy armour – two hundred men of bronze. In the centre, with a thin front of marines, stood the bulk of his rowers and some Rhodian rowers and citizens as well, almost eight hundred. After the second rank, there was no armour. On the left were the Rhodian ephebes – all very young, but brilliantly armoured as the sons of the rich always are. The sailors were only six deep at the centre, whereas the flank units were deeper and heavier.

  The received wisdom of this style of warfare was that more lightly armed troops would operate better in the rubble. If Satyrus had possessed peltasts – fighters with light shields and javelins and perhaps swords – he would have been expected to use them as shock troops.

  Satyrus was not following the received wisdom. Instead, he’d posted his lightest troops in the densest phalanx formation he felt that they could maintain, and placed them where they could move over the flattest terrain with the least rubble, east of the temples. And his most heavily armed men – men virtually head-to-toe in bronze – he’d put out on the flanks in ridiculously open formations, almost as open as the ancient writers suggested men had fought before Marathon – six feet or more per man. His logic was simple: in the bad footing of the rubble, a man might easily face opponents from several directions, and only armour would keep him alive. Or so it seemed to him, and there was no one to tell him how bad an idea it might be.

  Satyrus finished walking along the front of the phalanx. He nodded to men he knew, or smiled at them, and they returned it. He knew most of them now – even the Rhodians. He had old Memnon right there in the second rank, Aspasia’s husband. And one of his sons, Polyphemus, stood a stade away in beautiful bronze, in the front rank of the ephebes. Satyrus found his eyes meeting those of Apollodorus and Neiron, of Anaxagoras, of Charmides and Jubal, hurrying to join in from his observation post with his team of upper-deck sailors.

  But no one spoke to him. He was alone. He smiled at them and they smiled back, but never the other way round.

  He turned to find Helios close behind him.

  ‘Korus says I am not to let you fight in the front rank,’ Helios said.

  ‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ Satyrus said with a smile. He looked up and down the ranks one last time, and his ears told him something – he could not have defined it, quite, but there was a quality to the enemy war cry that suggested men were being hit by arrows. He’d seen enough war to know the sound.

  Now he had to fear that he’d waited too long, that his centre phalanx would take too long to file through the ruins of the three great temples into the clear ground to seaward. He reached up and tipped his helmet forward on his head and pulled the leather loop on the left cheek-plate against the pressure of the spring to hook over the right cheek-plate. An Italian design, men said. Very well made – much plainer than his magnificent silver helmet, taken years before from Demetrios.

  Funny thing to think about, at that moment.

  ‘Forward,’ Satyrus said.

  The sailors filed through the carefully cleared gaps in the smashed temples just as they’d practised. It was well enough done, and when men made mistakes, forgetting who they followed or what file went first, other men pushed them roughly but firmly. They flowed more than marched, but they crossed the deep rubble to the open ground by the harbour and reformed even as Satyrus, first across the rubble of the Temple of Poseidon, in the centre, watched the enemy forming his phalanx under a light hail of archery.

  It was just short of noon, and the midsummer sun beat down like a fall of scorching sand, a second enemy to both sides.

  Satyrus formed his phalanx with both flanks apparently empty. And then, when his whole body was formed – and it seemed to take for ever – he stepped out of his place in the second rank.

  ‘Friends!’ he roared.

  Not much movement. Behind him, Idomeneus’ men shot a volley of arrows and ran – they had done their part, as they saw it, and now they made for the safety of the sailors’ phalanx.

  ‘You can defeat these men. You have beaten them before. When you lock your pikes with them, put your backs into the push and wait for my word. When I call, let’s hear your war cry – and not until then. Ready?’

  There was the growl – the same growl with which, as oarsmen, they answered the call to ramming speed.

  Not for the first time, Satyrus wondered if there was an aggregate creature in the head of every oarsman – if, when together, they formed some sort of thousand-headed monster with but one set of thoughts.

  He slipped in behind Helios.

  ‘Forward!’ he called, and the centre bowed out as the phalanx went forward, but it was too late to worry about such things.

  The oarsmen were wearing sandals – siege sandals, men called them, because they’d learned how nasty
the rubble was on their feet, even the rock-hard feet of an upper-deck man, and they’d made light leather boots to wear under heavy-soled sandals, and the marines had pulled every hobnail from their ‘Isocrates’ sandals, because the lifesaving purchase on a wet wooden deck was a ticket to slipping and lost footing on crumbled rock and broken marble.

  Satyrus was betting that the enemy would be barefoot. Greek soldiers – even Macedonians – often fought barefoot, for a surer footing. And if the men coming up the beach had never fought in a siege – and who had fought in a siege like this? – then they would probably be barefoot.

  The flanks of the sailors’ phalanx hurried to keep up, and the front rippled.

  The enemy was already close. They were deeper and formed loosely, and they had a curious mixture of weapons.

  Pirates.

  It took Satyrus precious seconds to see that Demetrios had not committed any of his precious Argyraspides or his Macedonian phalanxes this time. These were the pirates – the men who’d come only for plunder.

  Good or bad?

  There were heartbeats to impact. The pirates had the numbers by a factor of ten to one, but they were curiously hesitant. And barefoot.

  Crash!

  Satyrus’ men smashed into the front of the pirates like a battering ram into a gate, and men were knocked flat at the impact – men were actually impaled on the incoming pikes, as the pirates were so inexperienced, they hadn’t closed up or placed their shields to endure the storm of iron that was a pike phalanx oncoming, even with just six ranks of spearheads going home.

  But there were blows in return – a torrent of blows, a staggering ocean wave of blows.

  Satyrus had never been in the second rank before. It was terrifying. In the second rank, you could see. Men in the first rank crouched, tucked their eyes mostly under their shield rims and endured, parrying on instinct. In the second rank, a fighter could see the enemy. Could feel the press of his file behind him and translate it to the file leader – carefully, not allowing the file leader to be pushed to his death.