Funeral Games

by Christian Cameron

The priestess nodded. ‘The men in the trireme are searching for you. You will be safe here, and nothing is more important than that we make you clean. I will send a slave to your friends. They must come here.’

  Satyrus turned and for the first time saw the trireme coming into the harbour under sail.

  Coenus came up the bluff in a litter while the trireme was performing the laborious task of turning around under oars and backing her stern on to the beach. She was full of men - Satyrus could see the warm wink of sun on bronze on her deck. Philokles put the horses in a stand of oaks behind the temple.

  ‘You bet your life on an old priestess,’ he said.

  Satyrus stared at the marble under his feet. ‘You didn’t lie to the people in the wine shop.’

  Philokles nodded. ‘I didn’t tell them the truth, either. They assumed that we were small merchants from up the coast, and I let them think it.’ He shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter. The navarch on that fucking trireme will be on to us in twenty questions.’

  Theron dumped a heavy wool bag inside the precincts of the temple. ‘Are we asking sanctuary? Or running?’

  The old priestess emerged, supported by the larger of her two slaves. ‘The children are bathing to be clean in the eye of the gods,’ she said, ‘a process that would benefit you too, oath-breaker.’ Then she pointed at Coenus with a talon-like finger. ‘Take him to the sanctuary. We will not give him up, nor will those dogs from Pantecapaeum have him. The rest of you should ride as soon as you are clean. He’ll only slow you.’

  Philokles bowed. ‘As you will, holy one. Why do you help us?’

  She shook her head in annoyance. ‘I can tell the difference between good and evil. Can’t you?’

  ‘Then you know why I broke my oath,’ Philokles said.

  ‘I?’ she asked. ‘The gods know. I am a foolish old woman who loves to see brave men do worthy deeds. Why did you break your oath?’

  ‘To save these children,’ Philokles said.

  ‘Is that the only oath you’ve broken?’ she asked, and Philokles winced.

  She turned. ‘The girl is bathed and clean,’ she said. ‘Come, boy.’

  He followed the old woman into the sanctuary, which was sumptuous beyond anything in Tanais, with walls picked out in coloured scenes showing the triumph of Herakles, the birth, the trials of Leto and more than he could easily take in. There was a statue of Apollo as a young archer, in bright orange bronze, his eyes and hair gold, and his bow of bronze shooting a golden arrow. In the centre of the sanctuary was a pool. The water moved and bubbled. Above the pool stood a great statue of Herakles, nude except for a lion skin, standing in the first guard position of the pankration. The sight of the statue made the hair stand up on the back of Satyrus’s neck, and he smelled wet fur, a heady, bitter smell like a cat. Or a lion skin.

  ‘This is the pool of the god,’ she said. ‘It was here before there was a temple. We do not let just any traveller enter this pool. Remember as you go in that Herakles was a man, but by his deeds he became a god.’

  An attendant took his chiton, unpinned the pins and threw the garment into the fire that burned on the altar. He dropped the brooches - not his best pair, but solid silver - into a bowl on the altar, and the fire on the altar flared and smoked.

  ‘The god accepts your offering and your state,’ the priestess said. ‘Into the water with you.’

  Satyrus thought that his sister had just done this. He wondered why he hadn’t seen her.

  Strong hands grasped him and he hit the water and was under it in a moment. The water was warmer than blood and bubbled fiercely, fizzing around his limbs and with bubbles rising between his legs and up his chest. He rose to the surface and took a breath, eyes tightly closed, and somebody placed a hand on his head. ‘Pray,’ he was commanded, and the hand pressed him down into the pool.

  He could hear the voice counting above him. The bubbles continued to rise around him and he was on the edge of panic, his hair rising in the water and his skin scoured and his breath stopped so that coloured flashes came before his eyes, and still the hand pressed on his head. The pool was too small for him to stretch his arms. He was trapped.

  ‘Pray!’ the voice said.

  Lord of the sun, golden archer, he began. What was he praying for? He wanted to live! Not drown!

  Coenus.

  Golden archer, take your shaft from the side of my friend Coenus, he prayed. And forgive me for killing that girl. I only did it because - she begged - I couldn’t stand her pain!

  But what if she, too, could have been healed?

  Lion killer, hero, make me brave! He prayed fervently, and an image of the golden statue of the god at pankration filled his mind.

  The hand on his head released him and he shot up from the pool, then the temple slaves pulled him on to the marble and a towel began to rub him vigorously.

  ‘Did you hear the god?’ the old woman asked.

  ‘No,’ Satyrus said. Or perhaps I did.

  The woman nodded. ‘That’s as well. Your sister did.’ She held something under his nose, something with a strong scent. Like hot metal. ‘You are clean. Do you know how to sacrifice an animal?’

  Satyrus, who had sacrificed for his family since he was six, was tempted to make a childish retort, but he bit it back. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Good,’ she said. The slave led him out of the back of the sanctuary, to an altar at the top of wooden steps that led down to the oak woods. His sister was drying her hair.

  An attendant - a young priest, he thought - handed him a blade - a narrow blade of stone with a gold-wire handle. ‘It is very sharp,’ he whispered. ‘And as old as the stars.’

  Satyrus took it. The kid was tethered to the altar. Satyrus put a hand on the young beast’s head and asked its forgiveness. He raised his eyes to the sky and cut its throat in one pull, stepping clear of the fountain of blood.

  The attendants caught the animal and slaughtered it with the precision of long practice.

  ‘Well done,’ the priestess said. ‘Now go. I will look to your friend.’

  Satyrus went down the steps, wiping the blood from his left hand on the grass at the bottom.

  Melitta mounted first and tossed her wet hair over her shoulders. Her eyes were sparkling. ‘There are gods!’ she said.

  Satyrus got up on the horse he had named Platon for its broad haunches. ‘I know,’ he said.

  Philokles had the train of spare horses in motion.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Satyrus asked Theron.

  The athlete shook his head. ‘Philokles got a tip in town,’ he said.

  ‘We’re going to Bata,’ Philokles said. ‘We’ll be there tonight if we ride hard. There’s a Heraklean merchant in the harbour, if he hasn’t left yet. If he has, we ride for the mountains. We can’t come back here.’

  ‘What if the marines follow us?’ Satyrus asked as they jogged along, already moving at a trot and screened from the beach by the trees.

  ‘They’d need horses,’ Philokles said. He smiled grimly. Then he shook his head. ‘Don’t ask,’ he said to Theron.

  There was a ship waiting off the beach in Bata, stone anchor deep in the mud and waiting for twenty more jars of Bata’s salmon roe in oil before unfolding his wings for Heraklea. The ship had seemed like a gift from the gods; the more so when they sailed down the coast to Sinope without the sight of a trireme. Satyrus and his sister were too tired to examine the gift, or question it, and the ship ran south with a fair wind and the gentle hand of Moira to guide it.

  Five days out of Bata, Melitta had her first sight of Heraklea in the last full light of the sun, and the marble of the public buildings shone like coral in jewellery or well-burnished bronze, pale orange in the setting sun, and gold and bronze sparkled from statuary and adornments. Heraklea was as rich as Sinope or Pantecapaeum or Olbia. Richer than Athens. The tyrant, Dionysius, was not a friend of their mother’s, or their city. But nor was he a friend of Eumeles of Pantecapaeum. He was a friend of his own power, and P
hilokles said they had no other choices.

  ‘Tanais might have looked like that in twenty years,’ Melitta said.

  ‘Tanais is a blackened corpse,’ Satyrus said, his mood dark.

  Melitta took his hands, and together they stood against the rail of the merchant ship as she heeled into the evening breeze and thrust her way across the waves to Heraklea. ‘You need to take life for what it is,’ she said. ‘Look!’ She waved her arm like an actor. ‘Beauty! Enjoy it!’

  ‘You need to stop pretending to be an all-wise priestess,’ he shot back. ‘Our mother is dead and our city is lost. Do you realize that we could be enslaved? That any man on those wharves with the strength to take us could kill us or sell us? We could be pleasuring customers in a brothel before another sun sets. Do you get that?’

  She nodded. ‘I get it, brother.’ She looked at Theron and Philokles, who were rolling dice in the cover of an awning. ‘I think they will protect us, and I think the gods will see us right.’

  ‘The gods help those who help themselves,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘Then get off your arse and start helping,’ Melitta said. ‘Killing that girl is the best day’s work you ever did. Stop moping like a little boy. You are a king in exile. Start acting like one.’ She looked over the side. ‘You must follow my lead in this. I know what I’m doing.’

  Satyrus watched the wharves. Melitta had assumed that the sea would cure him - the sea that he loved, where he went on his summers to sail on Uncle Leon’s ships and learn the ropes. This voyage, he hadn’t even watched the sailors rig the sail.

  ‘Fine,’ Satyrus said.

  The angry silence that followed lasted them until the ship’s side scraped along a stone jetty, and then again until they were standing in the dust and ordure of the Heraklean waterfront.

  Philokles had spent some time with the captain of the merchant ship throughout the voyage - keeping him sweet, or so Theron said. As they approached the wharves, Philokles took the man aside on the platform where the steersman conned the ship. When they were done talking, Philokles came down the gangplank with a worried look. Theron was trying to unload the horses with the help of the deck crew. They had kept the three best horses from the farmer, and Melitta’s Bion. The rest of the horses had been sold at Bata, where they had got a good price. Shipping the horses had cost more than shipping the people - but Philokles had told the twins that without horses, they were too vulnerable.

  Bion hadn’t liked being swayed aboard in a sling, and now he didn’t like walking down the gangplank, resisting every step, showing his teeth and acting like a mule. Melitta had to coax him on to dry land with a hastily purchased honey and sesame confection.

  ‘Stupid horse,’ she said fondly.

  Satyrus ignored her. He stood with his back against his own horse and his arms crossed.

  Philokles tugged at his beard. ‘I have to take a risk,’ he said. He was not quite sober - in fact, he had drunk steadily once they were on board.

  Theron shrugged. ‘It’s been all risk since I joined this crew,’ he said. ‘Why do you stay?’ Melitta asked. She was drawing looks from passers-by on the wharves, as a young woman of good family out in the public eye. In fact, she was a young woman of good family who was out in public wearing a short chiton with a scarlet chitoniskos over it and she was wrangling horses. She got a great deal of attention.

  Theron smiled. ‘The company’s good,’ he said. ‘And I’m not bored.’ Philokles gave them all a crooked smile. ‘This is not the place to have this conversation,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

  Satyrus got on to his horse with a wriggle and a push. Melitta did her usual acrobatic vault, and every head on the street turned.

  ‘You have to stop doing that in public,’ Theron said. ‘Girls don’t ride. They certainly don’t ride astride. They don’t vault on to horses, and they don’t do acrobatics.’

  ‘Of course they do,’ Melitta said with a toss of her head. ‘I see it on Athenian plates and vases all the time.’

  Theron made a choking noise that Satyrus recognized through his sullenness as ill-concealed laughter. ‘Those are flute girls and hetairai!’ he said.

  Melitta shrugged. Then she turned her Artemis smile on the people around them, and some of the men smiled back.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Melitta asked.

  ‘Leon the Numidian has a factor and warehouses here,’ Philokles said.

  ‘Uncle Leon?’ Melitta asked. ‘Will he be there?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Philokles said. ‘Gods, what a salvation that would be. Zeus Soter, let Leon be there.’

  PART II

  FORMING

  4

  316 BC

  Stratokles rode up to the wall of the barn before the Macedonian mercenary could get the girl’s knees apart with his own. He had her hands pinned and he’d headbutted her to stop the screams, but she was a tough woman with a farmer’s muscles and she wasn’t giving up without a fight, as the Macedonian’s face testified.

  Stratokles slid down from his horse, pivoted on his left foot and kicked the man in the head so hard that his body made a gentle thump as it hit the stone barn.

  ‘Who allowed this?’ he asked the ring of mercenaries who had gathered to watch. ‘You - you’re a phylarch, aren’t you?’

  The man so addressed, a Sicilian from far-off Syracuse, flinched at the man with the livid red scar across his face. ‘Yes,’ he muttered.

  ‘Are you aware that without these people, we’ll never catch the fucking children?’ Stratokles was furious - not just from the constant pain of his face, but from the stupidity of the men he was saddled with.

  ‘They know where the children are!’ the Macedonian spat. He sat up and retched. ‘Fuck me.’

  ‘I may, at that,’ Stratokles said. He had a knife in his hand and it was pressed against the Macedonian’s temple. ‘Don’t move around too much.’

  The Sicilian phylarch shook his head. ‘It’s been a hard ten days, lord. The boys need some—’

  ‘Some rape? I recommend that they practise on each other, then. Listen, you fuckwit. These people are Heron of Pantecapaeum’s citizens .’ Stratokles shook his head.

  ‘We done worse when we took that town - Tanais. You weren’t so high and mighty then.’ The phylarch knew he had the rest of the men with him.

  Stratokles shrugged. ‘Sometimes men have to do evil deeds to attain an end. Tanais had to be sacked. It was a symbol - a symbol your master can’t afford. But one day of sacking a town - an event that should have sated your urges for a little longer - does not give you the right to rape your way across the countryside.’

  The phylarch shrugged. ‘They all hate us anyway.’

  Stratokles nodded. He sheathed his dagger, and the Macedonian breathed again. Stratokles shook his head. ‘Are you surprised?’ He picked the girl up. She had a broken nose, two black eyes and blood all down the front of her chiton, but she tried to resist him. He grabbed her wrists and threw her over his shoulder, then carried her around the barn to where other soldiers had the wife and the farmer himself penned in the house.

  ‘Let me past, you idiots,’ Stratokles roared. He walked up the steps to the stone house and put the girl on the floor. ‘I’m sorry for what my men have done here, but her virtue is not stolen, and her nose will heal. Sooner than mine,’ he said with an attempt at humour, but it fell to its death on the iron-hard faces of the farmer and his wife. She leaped to her daughter, put her arms around her and the two began to talk - fast - in the local tongue.

  ‘We know you had the twins here - three days back? Perhaps four?’ Stratokles looked at the boy, cowering against the hearth. ‘I’m doing my best to restrain these animals, but it could get ugly here and I’m just one man. If you tell us what we need to know, we’ll be gone the sooner. And no one needs to get hurt.’

  ‘This is what Heron of Pantecapaeum stands for, is it?’ the farmer spat.

  Yes, it is, Stratokles thought to himself. Politics made strange allies - and for Stra
tokles, a democrat of the most rabid sort, a man of principle, dedicated to the freedom of Athens, to be forced into a yoke with the tyrant of Pantecapaeum was the richest sort of irony.

  ‘Please,’ Stratokles said. ‘Help me to help you. When were they here?’

  The farmer wilted. His eyes went to his son and daughter. Outside, the mercenaries were moving around with heavy footsteps, their very silence ominous.

  ‘Three days back,’ the farmer said. ‘They took our horses.’

  The best of the mercenaries was an Italian named Lucius, a big man with a brain who had stood by Stratokles repeatedly during the chase. Stratokles demoted the phylarch on the spot and promoted the Italian in his place. There was a lot of ugly muttering.

  Stratokles rode in among them, pushing his horse right up against the Macedonians. ‘Listen, children,’ he said. ‘I could have killed fuckwit here for mutiny and rape - but I chose to assume that his useless phylarch shared some of the blame. So you get to live.’ Stratokles grinned around at the ten of them. ‘If you annoy me enough, I’ll just start killing the ones I find most annoying - get me? I can take all ten of you - together, apart, one at a time, any way you want it. Care to start dancing? If not, shut up and soldier.’

  ‘You ain’t our officer,’ the ex-phylarch said - in a whine. ‘We’re paid men - mercenaries. We have our own rules.’

  Stratokles’ smile widened. ‘I’m your officer now.’ He looked around at them again - a useless assortment of boys and thugs. ‘And the only rules here are mine.’

  They were badly mounted, and he suspected that the children he’d been sent to kill were now better mounted, but he knew horses and they made the best time he could manage, five days across the hills and down the valleys to the Hypanis. There should have been a ferry across the swollen torrent, but instead they found an angry ferryman and a cut rope.

  ‘Yesterday, the thieves! The fucking catamites!’ the ferryman shouted.

  He had a dozen or more customers camped around his stone house, waiting for the water to go down.