The Macedonian Hazard

by Eric Flint

  * * *

  Telos reached the edge of the field and looked around. His cavalry was caught in a melee with a good part, the better part, of Lysimachus’ cavalry, but a contingent of the enemy cavalry had broken away. It was even now riding down on the rear of their infantry.

  * * *

  Seuthes saw the cavalry bearing down on his infantry and his son. But he had no force to send. Only himself and some of his household.

  He charged.

  * * *

  Through the pain, Cotys heard a flute signal. His head swung around and he saw the enemy cavalry coming. A cavalry charge is not an instant thing. He had a minute, maybe two. “Oineus!” he shouted. “Keep them going!” Then he rode for the rear.

  He reached the rear of his sixteen-rank-deep phalanx, and shouted orders, the arrow still sticking out of his shoulder like a standard. “Rear rank, lift sarissas!” Time, while the men looked at him. Time, while the men, by main strength, lifted the twenty-foot poles to the vertical.

  Cotys tried to lift his arm but it wouldn’t come up. He did manage to shout, “Rear rank, face about!” Time, while they turned in place and saw the oncoming cavalry. Time, while he bled.

  He tried to shout for them to lower their sarissas, but blood came out his mouth, not sound.

  It didn’t matter. The men in that rank could see the enemy cavalry just as well as he could. They lowered their sarissas without orders.

  Almost in time.

  Almost.

  The cavalry hit the rear rank of his infantry and hammered it. But some of the sarissas had come down in time and the cavalry charge was blunted, if not stopped. Slowed as it rode over the half-prepared rear rank. Slowed long enough for the rest of their force to break Lysimachus’ infantry.

  Once the infantry broke, the archers ran.

  Then the king and his bodyguard hit Lysimachus’ cavalry from the rear.

  The battle was a stalemate. Seuthes’ forces held the field, if barely. But Lysimachus’ men retreated, in good order for the most part.

  * * *

  Seuthes looked down at the body of his son, Cotys. He cursed himself for a fool. He never should have left Chernomorets. He never should have allied with Eumenes and Eurydice. For he knew that in that other history his son had ruled after him. A diminished Thrace, perhaps, but Cotys lived and fathered sons of his own. Seuthes’ wife was dead these last ten years, and Cotys’ sister Nike was barely fourteen years old.

  Thrace

  February 25, 319 BCE

  Eumenes read the message, then passed it over to Eurydice, who passed it over to Philip.

  “It’s good that he’s retreated to Chernomorets,” Eumenes said.

  “No, it’s not,” Eurydice said. “As long as he was out there pulling Lysimachus’ forces out of position, we were in a better position to hit Lysimachus. Or, if he refused us battle, to bypass him and go after Cassander.”

  “It doesn’t matter. With the rockets, Lysimachus can’t face us in a stand-up battle.”

  “But we don’t have the rockets. At least, we don’t have enough of them. We need at least two thousand to break Lysimachus’ army, you said. And even with the load we got yesterday from Lydia, we only have three hundred.”

  “But Lysimachus doesn’t know that,” Eumenes said. “That’s why we have the wagon loads of the mockups in the baggage train.” Eumenes looked over at Philip. The co-king of Alexander’s empire was improving. He could stand to be touched and he spent time in his hug box every day. But he still had no real comprehension of deception and his approach to war was as an equation that had specific answers.

  But war was an art, a thing of perceptions and impressions. Bravery, the rightness of a cause, or at least its perceived rightness, all affected the outcome, not just of wars, but of battles. Right now, today, if Lysimachus’ army was forced into combat, they would probably break with the first salvo of rockets.

  Probably.

  It wasn’t a chance that Eumenes was willing to take, and conniving bastard that he was, Lysimachus wasn’t stupid. Eumenes doubted the man had spent more than a waking hour without thinking about how to defeat an army equipped with rockets. Eumenes had done the same exercise. But it was unlikely that they had come to exactly the same answers.

  For Eumenes, the answer was basically the same as the answer for bow or catapult. Get in amongst the bowmen or the catapulters and kill them. Wreck the catapults. He was also familiar with the notion of artillery duels from the ship people books, and from his own experience. But Eumenes’ experience suggested that they were less decisive than the ship people seemed to think they were. Eumenes suspected that that was because artillery itself was less effective. He wished that he had been able to talk the ship people out of some cannons. Absent the powerful but tiny industrial base of the Queen of the Sea, this was a handcrafted world and handcrafting took a very long time compared to the ship people’s magical machines.

  So, for now, the rockets represented almost as much of a vulnerability as they did an advantage. A cavalry raid that got in amongst them and started fires would destroy his advantage, and at the same time be a crushing blow to his army’s morale.

  Cassander had to know that.

  Pella, Macedonia

  February 25, 319 BCE

  Cassander did know that. He’d spent the months since he got home not just building his alliances, but thinking about how he would fight the new tools of the Queen of the Sea and the ship people. For the most part, Cassander thought the changes that the ship people wrought would help him more than hurt him. It didn’t take strong arms or strong hands to wield a pistol. He knew that because he had paid Malcolm Tanada a small fortune. Not for his pistol, but to be allowed to fire it.

  It turned out that Cassander was not a bad shot for a novice. And he had a smithy working on a copy of the six-shot revolver caplock that had been made on the Queen after The Event. He would have bought one from the Queen, but they were not selling them. Only ship people got the pistols.

  A servant came in and Cassander waved him over. “Have the guests arrived?”

  The servant ran through a list of nobles who had arrived and another group who hadn’t. Cassander listened with care, taking note of who was early, who was late, and who wasn’t coming at all.

  He would remember.

  If Lysimachus could keep Eumenes occupied long enough for Cassander to build his army, Cassander thought he could win. He had his father’s alliances, and there was a strong core of Macedonian noble families who had hated Alexander the Great. That was the core of his army. And soldiers, some infantry but mostly cavalry, were joining his army in small contingents. Money was coming in now, hesitantly, but coming in. He would be able to hire infantry soon. But it all depended on local Macedonian politics and family alliances. Thessalonike would help with that.

  Cassander, king of Macedonia, would today be married into the family of Philip II, and thereby bolster his claim.

  “The queen?”

  “She is in her rooms, preparing.”

  * * *

  Thessalonike paced in her rooms. There were beautiful rugs on the floor and wall hangings that kept the chill mostly out, but not entirely. The shutters were open for the light, but they also let in the moist, chill air. Thessalonike rubbed her hands together and adjusted her cloak, then paced back to the brazier. She was going to get married, and while not exactly thrilled with marrying Cassander, an old man to her thinking, and not a particularly fit or handsome one, that wasn’t her major concern. Olympias, according to radio messages, was opposed to the marriage. And Thessalonike loved her foster mother, even if she was a bit terrified of her. She didn’t want to be caught in the middle between Cassander and Olympias, but she could see no way out. If she refused to marry Cassander, this comfortable palace could become a very uncomfortable prison quickly.

  A maid came in. Thessalonike spun and the maid made a hasty retreat. She took a deep breath. She was one of Olympias’ favorites. She knew that. She had
even been included in some of the rites of the Cabeiri. But politics were politics, and she was in Cassander’s hands, not those of Olympias. She took another deep breath and used some of the techniques that she was taught among the cult of the Cabeiri for use when the holy drugs didn’t work the way they were supposed to and the dreams became nightmares. She took another deep breath and visualized Axiocersus, god of death, of peace, and the quiet grave, and took into herself some of his quietude. She let Cadmilus and his excitable youth flow out with her exhalation.

  Then she called in her slaves to dress her for the wedding. She would apologize to Olympias later.

  CHAPTER 9

  Where Do We Go from Here?

  Queen of the Sea, Saint Helena

  February 27, 319 BCE

  “What do the passengers say? Jane?” Lars Floden asked as they sat at the conference table. It was the same conference table they sat at on the day of The Event, when Marie Easley came to tell them what was going on in this part of the world. And right now, today, that was what worried Lars most. They had Marie Easley to advise them about the Alexandrian Empire, the diadochi, and the culture of the fourth century BCE Mediterranean. They didn’t have an equivalent for dealing with East Africa or India. They didn’t even know for sure whether Madagascar was occupied.

  “It’s mixed, Captain,” Jane Carruthers said. Jane was still in charge of the hotel function of the ship. The casino was under her authority, as were guest services, even if the guests were now the high nobility of the Mediterranean and some from South America. “The scholars, for the most part, want to make the trip around the Cape of Good Hope. The merchants and politicians want to go back to the Med. But it’s not consistent. Roxane wants us to go around the cape, and so does Capot Barca from Carthage. His government wants to extend their trade around Africa and hope to get information about it and what they will face. There are several others of like mind, and some of the merchants are interested in possible new trade opportunities.”

  “Daniel?”

  “I would love to make the trip, Skipper, just to get some real coffee.” He lifted his cup of cocoamat and grimaced. “But, as for security, it really doesn’t matter. I have my contingent of retrained Silver Shields and the augmented security staff. No one is going to take the Queen unless they have a lot more than we’ve been told. Not against steam cannon and caplock-armed Silver Shields.”

  The Silver Shields he was talking about no longer carried shields. They did have badges made of silver, polished and lacquered, in the shape of a shield. They wore them on the right breast of their new uniforms. Nor were they strictly the Silver Shields of Alexander. That was the core, and where the traditions came from, but now they included locals from New America as well as ship people, Carthaginians, Romans, and other Greeks. There were five hundred in all, and they were the Queen of the Sea’s marine force. They bunked six to a room and their families were in New America, because the Queen didn’t have room for all of them.

  The Queen, Lars thought, doesn’t have room for half the people it needs on board or half the industry or half the anything, really.

  “Eleanor?”

  Chief Purser Eleanor Kinney said, “The bank is pretty full so we don’t need the immediate income from the New America to empire trade, Skipper. And the long-term profits from sugarcane and the other stuff we will be able to pick up in exploring the world would be amazing. I say go.”

  “Marie?”

  “It’s a difficult decision, Captain. We need to be in two places at once. Plying the route between New America and the empire to tie them together and, at the same time, we are going to need the resources of India, China and the rest of the world.” She shook her head, then looked back at Lars. “Madagascar, I would say. Find out if there is anyone there, and if there is, find out if they are people we can work with. If we can put a station there, we need it for the weather data anyway.”

  “Anders?”

  “I’d like to go, Skipper,” Staff Captain Anders Dahl said, “but Madagascar and back would nearly run our tanks dry. And if we go on up the East African coast to Suez, we won’t have enough fuel to get back. We won’t be dry, not quite, but we will be at Ptolemy’s mercy and I don’t trust Ptolemy.”

  “I don’t think he’s going to try anything like he did in Alexandria, sir,” Dag said.

  “Maybe not, Dag, but all he has to do is keep the fuel a few miles back from the shore and insist that he’s having transport difficulties until our tanks are dry, and we’ll have to make whatever concessions he wants or become a helpless island that can’t even provide drinking water.” The Queen of the Sea made drinking water from seawater with a system of reverse osmosis that required the engines to function. When they ran out of fuel, they ran out of everything.

  “No, he can’t,” Lars said. “Oh, he can make things difficult for us, but the Reliance can make it to Suez with enough fuel to get us back here to Saint Helena. And once we got refueled, Ptolemy would not like what happened to Alexandria.”

  “Yes, sir. But does Ptolemy understand that? Or, more importantly, believe it?”

  “I think he does,” Dag said. “Or at least Thaïs does, and he listens to her.”

  Lars looked around the room. Then he nodded sharply. “Very well. Jane, inform the passengers that the Queen will proceed to Madagascar and in all probability from there to the port at Suez. I need to have a chat with Adrian. I don’t want to make it too blatant, but I do want to be sure that the Reliance is not anywhere that Ptolemy can get his hands on it until we get refueled at Suez. And I want Ptolemy to know it.”

  “Well, Skipper,” Anders said, “if he goes back to Trinidad for a full load of fuel, we’ll have reached Suez, been refueled, and be on our way before he gets back here.”

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, in his day cabin, Lars picked up the phone and had the radio room connect him with Adrian on the Reliance. Adrian had changed. No, that wasn’t right. But the Reliance was the property of New America, while the Queen of the Sea at this point was owned by its crew. “Well, Adrian, the consensus is we go. But I want something from you.”

  “Yes, sir?” Adrian asked cautiously.

  “It’s nothing too severe. I just want you to go back to New America and pick up another load of fuel. If everything goes well and Ptolemy has the fuel he says he has, we pick it up and everything is fine. But if he doesn’t, if he tries to get clever, I want you out here with a full load of fuel and out of his hands.”

  “That won’t be a problem, sir,” Adrian said. “I just got word a Carthaginian ship arrived in Trinidad this morning. We are no longer the only link between New America and Europe.”

  “That’s great, Adrian, and no, I hadn’t heard. I’ve been in meetings all morning. Look, make sure that Ptolemy gets the word on what we’re doing. Not blatantly, but make sure he knows that we are going to have access to fuel, no matter what he does.”

  “Not a problem, Skipper.”

  Alexandria, Egypt

  March 1, 319 BCE

  When Ptolemy walked into the private chamber he shared with Thaïs, she was lying on a couch on her side, reading a scroll. Her breasts were exposed and the breeze off the Med came in the window to caress her hair.

  She looked up from the scroll and lifted an eyebrow in question.

  Ptolemy handed Thaïs the sheet of paper he carried. Paper that was made in a factory right here in Egypt, printed in ink that was also made in Egypt, but printed on a dot matrix printer that was made from parts furnished by the ship people and New America.

  Thaïs took the message and read. It was an apology. A personal apology from Captain Adrian Scott.

  Sorry to tell you, but the New America Godiva chocolates you were expecting will be delayed. The Reliance will be making an additional trip to Saint Helena and probably on to Madagascar to put a fueling station there.

  She sat up and looked at Ptolemy. “You know this is not the message.” It wasn’t a question.

  Ptol
emy laughed. “Of course, I do. I’m not an idiot. It’s a warning. No matter what we do, the Queen will have the fuel to do…whatever it should decide to do. What I’m asking is what you think I ought to do about it.”

  Thaïs leaned back on the couch and considered. Egypt had very little oil of its own, but it had been shipping it in from Trinidad whenever Ptolemy could get it. They had also informed Antigonus and the other eastern satraps that they were interested in acquiring it. That, along with the ship people knowledge, had by now resulted in two producing wells near the Persian Gulf. Whatever the ship people might have thought, not all of the oil wells in what the twenty-first century called the Middle East were deep wells. That meant that Ptolemy had access to more oil than expected, but at the same time he had more uses than expected too. Oil is a lubricant as well as a fuel, and the base for several products such as tar. Still, so far demand was mostly based on its use as fuel. An oil flame is more readily controllable than any other flame source. You can turn it up or down to control the heat of a steam-engine boiler or a pot of stew. The price of oil was increasing because, so far, demand was growing faster than supply.

  She looked at a map on the north wall of the room. “In spite of the cost, I think you should send the fuel not just to Suez but on to Socotra.”

  “I’m still not sure it’s worth it.” Ptolemy followed her gaze. “We can’t really charge them more in Socotra than we could at Suez, and the transport will cost rather a lot.”