Miriam chuckled. ‘You’ve met some girls.’
‘One or two. But honey, when the god-sent power falls away, I have a dead friend or two and I’m covered in other men’s blood, or unconscious from a wound. And sometimes, when the wine goes down the wrong way, I have to remember that every man I’ve sent to Hades had a life like mine – love and hate, wine and olives. And Achilles says:
Better a slave to a bad master
Than king among the dead
‘They’re dead when I kill them. And the next fight, or the fight after – I’ll be dead. And when I look at you, when I play music with Anaxagoras, I can’t help but see that there are better things.’ He took a deep breath, and all he breathed in was her – jasmine and a woman’s sweat. ‘It’s not a competition in the palaestra. What I mean—’
He was so close to her that he could see the pores of her skin, the smudge of dark oil under her right eye, the trace of cosmetics hastily rubbed out of her eyes.
Her lips filled his head, the way an opponent’s sword can fill your head. He saw nothing else, and wanted nothing else.
It was easy to fall into her, and it was easy to break his oath to Abraham—
Who was lying sick in a tent.
Satyrus stood up, his erection painful against his leg, ashamed of his weakness and his stupid moral qualms. He wanted her as he had never wanted a woman. The cold eye of light might tell him that she was a dirty, dishevelled waif, skinny from not enough food, dirty from battle, wearing a dead boy’s chiton and armour – but all he could see was the perfection of the lines of her lips, the spacing of her eyes, the swell of her breast when she reached up to touch her hair, her collarbones, her legs—
‘I promised your brother,’ he said miserably, backing away as if she had a dagger at his throat.
‘Me too,’ she said. She giggled. It was an incongruous sound. She covered her mouth, bent double with laughter. ‘Menander couldn’t write a better comedy, Satyrus.’
‘I imagine he’d make it funnier,’ Satyrus said. He sat down on a different stone.
She adjusted her hair, taking her time. ‘I once heard that this is the most aesthetic posture a woman can adopt,’ she said.
‘I wouldn’t know,’ Satyrus said. ‘At the moment, they’re all pretty much the same to me.’
She chuckled, her voice low. ‘You do pay the very best compliments.’
Satyrus smiled to himself. ‘Do you have any wine?’ he asked.
She shook her head.
‘I’ll get some,’ he said.
‘I’ll wait,’ she responded.
Satyrus walked back through the ruined temple to the Sakje youths. Two of them were copulating – some of the rest watched or called suggestions – but not loudly. Sakje were never loud in camp after dark.
‘Could you spare me a skin of wine?’ he asked, averting his eyes. The ecstatic face of the Sakje girl – on top at the moment – was not what he wanted to see.
‘Hah!’ Scopasis rose from the ground – he had been lying on an animal skin, and he rose with a chuckle. ‘Satyrus, son of Kineas – I have wine to share.’
Satyrus pointed off into the dark. ‘I have . . . a girl.’
Scopasis smiled darkly. ‘As do I. I will give you half what I possess.’ He pulled out a skin – a skin that seemed to have a certain stench – and took a long drink, and then poured some into his cloak-mate’s mouth, and more into a cup. Then he tossed the skin. ‘Drink to me when I am dead, Satyrus son of Kineas.’
The Sakje girl was breathing hard, fast and rhythmically beyond the small fire. She raised her face and gazed unseeing on the autumn night, and shrieked softly.
Satyrus caught the skin. ‘Gods bless you, Scopasis,’ he said. He went back through the ruins, stumbling. The girl shrieked again and her man laughed, a low, happy sound.
Satyrus sat close to Miriam, who had loosened and removed her armour. She was as close to naked as a person might be, wearing a single layer of thin wool that covered her to the base of her thighs.
‘I’m cold,’ she said. ‘Give me your cloak and sit close.’
He untied the laces of his shoulder yoke, lay down and rolled out of the harness, feeling lighter and younger. Then he sat next to her, shoulder to shoulder, and threw his chlamys over them both.
He handed her the wineskin and she wrinkled her nose.
‘The hide is untanned. The Sakje think it keeps the taste in the wine. There’s a sheep’s stomach inside, and the mouthpiece is horn – you’ll take nothing from it but wine. But the Sakje drink like this.’ He flipped the skin up expertly and a line of wine fell from the neck of the skin into his lips.
She reached for the skin, and he shook his head. ‘Let’s not spill it. Raise your mouth.’
She did, and he carefully poured wine into it.
She spluttered. ‘This is unwatered wine!’ she said. ‘Oh – and good wine, at that.’
‘The Sakje do not drink bad wine. But drink sparingly – this has something in it. Poppy or lotus or ground hemp seed. Coriander. Something else.’ He drank another mouthful. ‘The Sakje do not believe in moderation.’
Now the man was moaning, a campfire away.
‘I can tell,’ Miriam said. She took the skin and drank, leaving a line of drops spattered along the edge of his chlamys. They both laughed.
‘One of us should go,’ Satyrus said some time later, when they’d fallen asleep briefly with her head against his shoulder.
‘Why?’ Miriam said. ‘I will be true to my oath. But I would rather be true with you beside me.’
Satyrus smiled into her hair. ‘Will you marry me?’ he asked.
‘Ask me when the siege is over,’ she said. ‘We are living in a world of heroes and horrors, not in the real, waking world. When you awake, I will be a scrawny Jew with a big mouth, and you will be a godless Hellene who needs a dynastic marriage. But I will tell my granddaughters that I might have been a queen—’
Satyrus got a hand under the chlamys, and with all the practice of years of brotherhood and martial training, rammed his thumb in under her arm so that she leaped in the air and squealed.
‘You’re ticklish!’ he said, delighted.
‘Uh-oh,’ she said.
He fell asleep with her sprawled across him for warmth, held closer than any lover he’d ever slept with – oath unbroken. And woke to her eyes on his in the light of a new day. She rubbed the tip of her nose on his, and her fingers pressured his, and she touched her lips against his – and leaped to her feet.
‘It’s a new day,’ she said.
PART V
THE DESTROYER OF CITIES
The Athenian delegation might have been chosen specifically to argue against their own best interests, or so it seemed to Stratokles.
‘You must explain to the king how hard pressed Athens is,’ Stratokles said. Again.
‘We don’t want to seem like beggars,’ Democrates said. ‘No, that would never do.’
‘We represent one of the most powerful states within the girdle of the ocean,’ said Miltiades the Younger. ‘It would not do to appear as supplicants.’
‘No, no,’ said a chorus of elderly aristocrats.
Stratokles all but tore his beard. ‘Do you think that King Demetrios the Golden will come to you to ask if he can send troops to relieve your city?’
Miltiades nodded. ‘Well put. That is exactly what we should do.’
‘That would preserve the dignity of our city,’ Democrates said.
‘There is no dignity in a city sacked by a conqueror!’ Stratokles said. These men appalled him – they were the scrapings of the areopagitika, the worst sort of orators. They had told him themselves that Cassander’s forces were at the gates. That the olive groves of Attica were on fire.
Democrates looked at Stratokles as if he were a piece of filth. ‘You would not understand, young man. We have the city’s best interests at heart. We represent the best families. We have not exchanged the tyrant Demetrios of Phaleron for a
new master. Our city must have her own rulers – good men, from good families.’
‘We know how to rule well,’ said the chorus of aged sycophants.
From the doorway of the tent, Lucius the Latin chuckled and farted.
Stratokles was too angry for reason. ‘You are a group of aged idiots,’ he said.
That got him silence, at least. ‘You must go before Demetrios the Golden as supplicants – as very beggars, because that’s what we are! And we needn’t care if Holy Athens is under siege! May Athena blast me if I speak a lie – I have watched six months of siege here. You gentlemen have no idea what Rhodes has survived – but you do not want this war to come to Athens. You do not want your maidens ravished, your lands burned, the Acropolis pulled down around your ears or torched the way the Persians torched it. Save yourselves – let me help you. Go to Demetrios with halters around your necks and beg him to break the siege here and send troops to Athens before it is too late.’
Stunned silence greeted his tirade. For a moment – just a moment – he thought that he’d carried them.
‘You are full of passion,’ Democrates said. ‘But you have little idea how great nations do business.’
For a moment, Stratokles considered killing the man. For ten years he had served Athens – served in secret, hidden in shadows, gathering information and money and mercenaries. He had served with Cassander and the Tyrant, Demetrios of Phaleron, with Dionysus of Heraklea, with Antigonus One-Eye, with Ptolemy and with Demetrios the Golden, shifting sides as a breeze turns on a cloudy day at sea, all for the best interests of Athens.
And these old fools were going to throw it all away.
He was blind with rage for a long moment – perhaps fifty heartbeats.
The chorus babbled.
Democrates said something that was lost in his rage.
When he was able to see them, they were cowering away from him in the edges of the tent, and he had a sword in his hand. He took a deep breath. And said the words Athena whispered in his ears.
‘No matter how beautiful a woman may be,’ he said, ‘she wins no suitors sitting at home. You, gentlemen, are fools. Sit in this tent, if you like. I will endeavour to save our city without you.’
Straight from the chorus of useless old men to the tent of his mistress, Stratokles entered without announcing himself and walking past her maids, who shrieked. He found her sitting on a stool, reading.
‘Pack, Despoina,’ he said. ‘You must leave – soon.’
She sat up. Raised an eyebrow. ‘I had not expected this level of impertinence from you—’ she began.
Stratokles struck her. It was not a hard blow, open-handed, a mere tap – but across her face. The shock of it knocked her to the floor and she squealed.
‘Wake up, Despoina.’ Stratokles was ashamed of hitting her, but he’d done worse things. ‘Demetrios is going down. Now – soon – a year from now – perhaps five years. He gambled here, and he has lost badly and you are dallying. We need to cut our losses, save your best soldiers and sail away – and put some new pieces on the board.’
She lay on the floor, staring at him with enormous, hurt-filled eyes. ‘You hit me.’
‘You needed the blow.’ Stratokles’ voice was hard, and his face closed. ‘I have served you well, as well as I am able, and I have to leave you soon. I will see you clear of the wreck. I guessed wrong, Despoina. Demetrios will either lose here, or win with such losses that he will destroy his father’s best army. You have options. It is time to employ them.’
‘You would leave me?’ she asked.
‘My city is threatened, Despoina. I have never hidden my first loyalty from you. Indeed, I intend to use you to save my city, and use my city to save you, all in one roll of the dice. Now, please cease your struggles and obey.’
She got to her feet. ‘I have never seen you like this. I might like it.’
Stratokles shook his head. ‘I apologise for the blow. And I have no interest in being your master, Despoina – I am in haste. Pack. Now.’
‘I will,’ she said. There was wonder in her voice. ‘Should I leave—’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Leave everything that is not gold.’
He nodded curtly and turned to leave.
She met his smile with a brave smile of her own. ‘I’ll get on with it. Is it so bad? Can we save me? And your city?’
He nodded. ‘If the gods will it.’
Stratokles met Lysander in the great red tent where men waited to be received by Demetrios the Golden. The Spartan took his arm as he entered.
‘Satyrus son of Kineas told me to send you his greetings,’ he said.
Every head in the tent turned, despite Lysander’s attempt to speak quietly. The name carried its own force.
Stratokles nodded. ‘You saw him,’ he said.
‘I was his prisoner for a day and a night,’ Lysander responded.
Stratokles nodded again. ‘He is well?’ he asked.
‘He has six thousand hoplites.’ Lysander shook his head. ‘He has less disease than we have. How could he have so many men? He started the siege with six thousand.’ The Spartan stared at the ground. ‘I asked that you be present when I tell the king, because you know this man.’
Stratokles nodded a third time. A courtier was approaching. ‘Well, thanks for the warning,’ he said.
Demetrios was sitting in an alcove of a Tyrian purple tent of linen and wool, with hangings on every wall – scenes from the siege of Troy, worked by the needle and by loom, shot with gold and silver threads. He sat on an ivory throne set on a floor of lion skins, and he was wearing his golden armour over a spotless white wool chiton. Plistias of Cos stood at his right shoulder. The Ionian bowed – sardonically, it seemed to Satyrus.
‘Stratokles of Athens,’ Demetrios said, with a nod.
‘Lord King,’ Stratokles returned with a bow.
‘Tell me of this delegation from Athens, Stratokles.’ Demetrios did not look like a man who had just lost two thousand elite soldiers. He looked like a temple statue in ivory and gold.
‘Old fools, lord. Men that Pericles would have called idiotes, devotees of faction.’ Stratokles spread his arms. ‘Just my opinion,’ he said, to draw the king’s laughter.
He got it. ‘Please, Athenian, tell me what you really think.’ The king chuckled.
But Stratokles refused to play the clown. ‘I will tell you, Lord King. I think that Cassander threatens Athens closely. I think that you stand to lose Greece – Attica and the Peloponnese – unless you or your father can act swiftly. Cassander is at the gates of Athens, lord.’
Demetrios nodded. ‘So I hear, Stratokles. But sieges take time – who would know that better than me, eh?’ he laughed. ‘Athens will keep, and in my way, I am delighted to know where crooked-minded Cassander is. If he is penned in in Attica, laying siege to Athens, then he is not harming me elsewhere.’ Demetrios smiled. ‘Greece is the past, Athenian. The future is Asia and Aegypt.’
The focus of the king’s regard lifted from the Athenian and settled like the aegis on the shoulders of Lysander. ‘You were a prisoner with the Rhodians,’ he said. His voice was mild, and it made Stratokles tremble.
He had been dismissed – both he and his city.
‘Yes, lord,’ Lysander said.
‘And?’ Demetrios asked.
‘Satyrus son of Kineas sends his greetings,’ Lysander said. ‘He offers you a truce of three days to collect your dead. He says he will raise no trophy to goad you. And that he asks that you name terms, that this siege may be brought to an end.’
Demetrios had an ivory wand, tipped with gold – the kind of staff Hermes often carried, and that Hephaestos had made for Atreus. He toyed with it. ‘He is gracious, my Hektor. What do you think, young Spartan?’
Lysander shook his head. ‘May I tell you a tale, lord?’
‘As you will,’ Demetrios said.
‘Lord, their council met yesterday, after their victory. And one of the councillors demanded that the
town’s statues of you and your father be pulled down – turned to rubble – and used to fill fortifications. But Satyrus,’ the Spartan paused, ‘said that they were being short-sighted. And the statues were cleaned and honoured.’
Demetrios smiled. ‘You are too subtle for me, my Spartan friend.’
‘They want peace,’ Lysander said. ‘They will fight to avoid extinction, but they will accept any honourable terms. They have the same disease in the town that we have in our camp. They are as thin as rails. Given any kind of terms, and they will surrender.’
Demetrios looked at them. He smiled – a young god.
‘Terms,’ he said pensively. ‘Terms. An agreement. Negotiated. Men sitting around a table, bickering.’ He shook his head. ‘How many hoplites has my Hektor got left?’
‘I saw six thousand,’ Lysander said.
‘Lord Ares, so many?’ Demetrios smiled. ‘I love him for his resilience – six months, and more!’ He smiled again, and Stratokles, who had known Cassander and Antigonus, could not help but shudder.
‘We have thirty thousand,’ Plistias said. ‘Arming our oarsmen would double that.’
Demetrios nodded, eyes glittering. ‘Let us not brag. It offends the gods. But we have soldiers. And the rump of the pirates – they are still some thousands strong.’
‘They are the hardest hit by the fever,’ Plistias admitted. ‘And they lack discipline.’
‘But I suspect that they can each be used as an arrow shield at least once,’ Demetrios said lightly.
‘My lord,’ Plistias protested.
‘Surely it suits everyone if we exterminate the pirates?’ Demetrios asked mildly. ‘Surely that is a moral act?’
Plistias hesitated. ‘They came as allies.’
‘We can bury them as allies. How about supplies, navarch? Do we have supplies?’ Demetrios was mocking.
‘We do. Food for another six months, if required. Although we’re losing ships.’ Plistias spoke hesitantly. No one liked to give Demetrios bad news.
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