The Macedonian Hazard

by Eric Flint

  The young men looked at him like he’d just killed their dog. It was Bastian who said, “We don’t read Greek. At least, not well.”

  “I think there may be a Macedonian translation,” Daniel offered. “Marie Easley has been studying Macedonian since we got here. Rico will probably have to download it from the Queen and print it, though.”

  “Ah…” Bastian said. “Almost no one reads Macedonian.”

  Daniel felt like whimpering. Even he, who was no great reader, knew the value of education.

  Thessalonike looked at Daniel, then back at the boys. “Have your tutors read them to you.” Then to Daniel, “Their tutors will be Greek slaves, probably Athenians.”

  That didn’t make Daniel Lang feel one bit better. Slavery was illegal on the Queen and in New America, but to the best of Daniel’s knowledge, nowhere else on Earth, not in this day and age. So leaving the Queen of the Sea meant that he would have to deal with slavers and slaves. And, for that matter, Daniel was going to have to enforce the property rights of slave owners. He knew that, but he didn’t like it.

  * * *

  Once the boys were gone, Daniel and Thessalonike got down to cases. Lípos was in charge of the army because Cassander couldn’t afford to be in command of the army if it lost to Eumenes, and when Cassander’s army went after Seuthes, Eumenes would almost have to come to Seuthes’ aid.

  Once again, it was made clear that this war was as much about politics as battles. He wondered what was going on with Eumenes.

  Amphipolis

  November 3, 319 BCE

  Philip III, co-emperor of the United Satrapies and States of the Empire, drew the symbol on the sheet as the discussion passed over him. They were talking tactics, and while the individual actions made sense, they didn’t fit together for him. So he worked on determining how much time would be saved by a steam hammer versus the cost of making one, and how soon the steam hammer would pay for itself.

  Eurydice came over and squeezed his arm hard. Which didn’t make him jerk the way he would have if she touched him gently.

  She looked at the calculations and nodded. She could follow some of them now. Then she turned back to the discussion.

  * * *

  “My father says you should prepare to attack Pella,” Nike said. Seuthes now had a radio team in Abdera. “He says that he can hold out against Lípos for months.”

  Eurydice nodded agreement. In her opinion they should attack Pella whether Seuthes could hold out or not. Chop off Cassander’s head and the whole rebellion would die. At least the rebellion in Macedonia and Thrace. All of the “Greek” states. She knew that Roxane and Eumenes disagreed. She even understood their reasoning. They had to be seen as defending the states and their legitimate kings.

  “In that case,” Eumenes said, “we need to get ships here to take our army to Pella. I want to go by sea because they can tell where we march, but they won’t be sure where we’re taking the army if we go by sea. For all they will know, we could be sailing for Tyre to reinforce Attalus at Babylon.” He snorted a laugh—something Eurydice found irritating—and continued. “I almost wish we could do that. I don’t like the reports we’re getting from there. Antigonus One-eye is winning the cavalry war in the area around Babylon.”

  “Frankly, I’m shocked Attalus has lasted this long,” Eurydice said. “He has kept Antigonus locked in Babylon for months. He can last a few more while we deal with Cassander.”

  West Babylon

  November 3, 319 BCE

  Karrel Agot helped the kid onto the bed. He was three, maybe four, with a distended belly from the malnutrition that was making the switch to out-and-out starvation. Rations were getting scarce in Babylon. Boats still got through, bringing food and other things from up- and downriver, but they had to make the trip at night and hug the bank once they got in sight of the walls, which gave Antigonus’ patrols a shot at them.

  The people of West Babylon weren’t starving yet. Not most of them, anyway. But the poor were always the first to suffer as a siege closed in and food got scarce. Karrel dipped the cloth in the broth and put it next to the kid’s mouth. It was goat broth thickened with wheat flour, not the milk that the kid really needed, but it would have to do.

  * * *

  Susan Godlewski sat at the table with Attalus, Menander, and the rest of the general’s staff. It was a decent but not overly fancy meal. There was bread, cheese and, of course, olives. A sour wine that was cut with water. Out the window, they could see the river wall. It was a short wall compared to the outer walls, because the river was expected to provide part of the defense and because the other side of the city across the Euphrates River was taller.

  “But every day we hold out is another day for Eumenes to catch Cassander,” Attalus said, just as though that had been his plan from the beginning. It hadn’t, of course. By now Susan knew the history. Partly through anger and partly through arrogance, Attalus attacked Babylon trying to prove that he was a better general than Eumenes, and at the same time trying to kill the murdering bastard who had his wife killed. Attalus got caught in a trap of his own making and only survived by luck. None of that changed the validity of the statement, however. As long as West Babylon held out, Antigonus was stuck in East Babylon. And every day Antigonus was stuck here, he got weaker and the empire got stronger.

  “I don’t disagree, Satrap, but the poor are starting to starve. If we don’t do a better job of sharing out the rations, we are going to lose West Babylon to disease, if we don’t lose it to betrayal first.”

  Attalus’ face got hard and Susan was quick to add, “It’s not disloyalty. It’s hunger. If your wife was starving, what would you do to save her?”

  “It’s not just the sharing of rations,” Menander said, “it’s getting supplies in through the blockade. Antigonus’ cavalry owns the east side of the Euphrates, and we don’t own the west side, not really.”

  East Babylon

  Boulos the slave sat on his pallet of bound reeds with a small knife and whittled. He had a pattern and two chunks of wood. The pattern was in bronze, two cups with a narrow tube between them, a tall cup on one side and a short, fat one on the other. And if Boulos didn’t finish it to the overseer’s satisfaction, he would be beaten. Though skilled, a childhood of chronic malnutrition had left him not overly bright, and a life lived in a world where questioning authority got you killed left him profoundly incurious.

  So Boulos slid the short-bladed steel knife over the wood, taking off a paper-thin sliver at a time, and gave no thought at all to what he was making. That was up to the masters, not to him.

  * * *

  One of those masters, Rahel of Rhodes, a cavalryman in Antigonus’ army, was trying to fit a venturi onto the body of a rocket. Rahel was a reasonably well-educated man by the standards of Rhodes. He could read, write, do basic math, and had never missed a meal until he joined Alexander’s army at sixteen, and not often since. He picked up the often read Ship People Basic Physics and reread the section about every action having an equal and opposite reaction, and still couldn’t quite get his head around the idea that it meant they needed venturi. A hole in the back for the gas to escape should work. He shrugged, put the booklet down, and went back to the rocket.

  It was all magic, anyway. It didn’t really need to make sense. The venturi was just part of the spell.

  He looked at the fins. Those made sense to him. They were like the feathers on an arrow. They would make the rocket spin and the spinning would keep it going straight. Then he got up from the bench and nodded to the overseer, a slave but higher ranking than the average. “How many? And how soon?”

  “It’s slow work, master. And new designs…we don’t know which parts matter, so we can’t scrimp anywhere. It will be months before we have the number of rockets that Strategos Antigonus demands.”

  Rahel nodded and looked over at the palace where the increasingly irritable Strategos Antigonus resided.

  * * *

  Antigonus One-eye sto
od on the balcony of his palace and looked across the Euphrates River at the thorn in his side. I’m winning. He had to keep telling himself that, because it didn’t feel like it was true. He looked at the antenna rising up from the tallest building in West Babylon, so tall that it could speak to Fort Plymouth on the other side of the world. That radio told him what was going on in Macedonia and Thrace. It let him send messages to all the satraps of the eastern empire, and without it the fragile alliance would have already collapsed. But, at the same time, it told everyone of every loss that Cassander’s army suffered and, worse, it was portraying the rebels in West Babylon as courageous defenders of empire.

  He turned and looked down at the shop. It was located in East Babylon, just a few blocks from the palace, and in it he was building the rockets and the boats that would open a way into West Babylon and end this farce.

  CHAPTER 23

  Dancing in Thrace

  Lípos’ army, en route to Seuthopolis

  November 7, 319 BCE

  Lípos sat his horse and looked around. His army was heading inland, ignoring Abdera and the coastal cities entirely. They were going to Seuthopolis, the symbolic center of King Seuthes’ power. If Seuthes stayed on the coast, he would be abandoning the temple of Hephaestus, Zeus, and Sabazios which was his primary duty and source of authority.

  Lípos laughed. Seuthes and Eumenes probably think that I’m headed for Abdera to put it under siege. Cassander may be a gutless conniver, but he’s smart. He took a wineskin from his belt and had a drink, then rode back to the head of his army.

  Amphipolis, headquarters of Eumenes’ First Army

  November 9, 319 BCE

  Eumenes looked at the soldier. He was a standard Greek infantryman with his sarissa broken into its two parts and pointed at the sky. He had one new feature, a patch sewn onto his tunic. It was red with a white sword and the legend “1st Army.” The patches were delivered by the Reliance last time it came through, and were part of the transformation of Alexander’s army into the Army of the Empire. The introduction of unit numbers and names was going to introduce a basis for unit pride that wasn’t based on Alexander or any general, but on the unit and the army and government. He checked the man’s sarissa for cleanliness and condition, then returned it and stepped to the next man.

  A clerk came running up and Eumenes turned to look at the man. Then he reached out and the man put a sheet of paper in his hand.

  It said: The army of Philip Lípos is not where it is supposed to be.

  Eumenes folded the sheet and went back to his inspection.

  * * *

  Back in the headquarters after the inspection, Eumenes looked at Eurydice, who was standing by the map, muttering, “So where is he if he’s not on his way to Abdera?”

  “We don’t know. We’ve sent out more scouts, but it looks like he may have gone north.”

  Eumenes walked over to the map. Pella was almost due west of Amphipolis, and since Lípos’ army didn’t take ship, Eumenes had expected it to travel northeast to avoid Amphipolis on its way to Abdera. Perhaps along the far side of the Strymon River Valley, or perhaps even farther north. Eumenes looked at the pins in the map indicating where the earlier scouts had looked.

  “Eumenes, I think we have to delay moving on Pella, at least until we know where Lípos has gone,” Eurydice said. “We can’t afford to attack Pella and have Lípos fall on our rear.”

  “I’m more concerned with what he might be doing in Macedonia or Thrace while we are investing Pella, but I agree that we need more information before we move.”

  November 11, 319 BCE

  The scout was muddy and his hair was plastered to his head by the rain. But he saluted Eumenes fist to chest, then bowed to Eurydice. “I saw them, Majesty,” he said to Eurydice, and at her gesture he went to the map and put his finger on a spot almost fifty miles due north of Pella. “Wherever he was going, he wasn’t heading for Abdera.”

  “Where can he be going? This makes no sense!” Eurydice said.

  “It could be that he is simply going out of his way to avoid the coast,” Eumenes said. “Remember, not all decisions are rational. And with our alliance with New America, he may wish to avoid coming anywhere near range of the Reliance’s cannon.”

  “You think Cassander is that frightened of the Reliance?”

  “Not really, no.” Eumenes scratched his chin. “Cassander is afraid of the Reliance certainly, but he is more afraid of looking like he’s afraid of it. So rather than go along the coast just out of range of the Reliance’s guns, he makes some excuse to avoid the coast altogether.”

  “You sound like Philip,” Eurydice said, smiling. “I think you’re overthinking it.”

  Eumenes chuckled. “Perhaps, but it feels right.” He turned to the scout. “Go find some hot food and a place to dry off. We need to think about this.”

  Once the man was gone, Eumenes said, “What about the ship people?”

  Eurydice shook her head. “I don’t think so. They have to be careful. Part of the deal that keeps them safe is the promise that they don’t act as spies. Would you want Tacaran spying on us?”

  Eumenes snorted at that.

  “It’s true they can pass on what others tell them, and they can certainly send messages for spies just like anyone else, but they can’t gather information for us against Cassander, or for Cassander against us.”

  “I understand. But see what you can find out anyway.”

  Amphipolis, radio section

  Tacaran Bayot sipped his coffee with the care of a connoisseur long denied the delicacy. It was shipped here from Egypt. Ptolemy had a source and was making friends and influencing people by shipping small amounts of the holy beans to the radio operators and ambassadors around the Med. He grimaced. More than two years without had left his taste buds unprepared for the bitter flavor. He went to the sideboard and got milk and sugar—well, granulated honey.

  Erica Mirzadeh and the servants watched. Erica with unveiled amusement, and the servants slightly more careful of their expressions. But only slightly. Several of the servants were former slaves whom Erica and Tacaran bought and manumitted, then hired. But they were free people now, and if loyal to Erica and Tacaran, they were not particularly subservient.

  There was a knock and then Eurydice was ushered into the room. Tacaran waved at her, then sipped his coffee and sighed in bliss. “Would you care for some coffee, Your Majesty?”

  Eurydice sniffed the air. “That smells lovely.”

  “Don’t be fooled,” Erica said, holding up a glass of red wine that was actually made of glass. Most of them were ceramic, but the Carthaginians, who were producing glass beads and artworks before The Event, had used ship people knowledge to produce clear blown glass and were selling glassware at a premium around the Med. “Coffee smells glorious, but tastes as bitter as an ex-lover’s heart.”

  “Yes, it does,” Tacaran agreed, then sipped happily. “It’s what is known as an acquired taste. Since you’re just starting out, I suggest goat milk and honey to soften the flavor.”

  “I’ll take it without.” She paused a moment, thinking. “Ah…yes. I will take it straight.”

  Tacaran shrugged and fixed her a cup of black coffee. She tasted it, grimaced, but kept sipping. She took a seat and looked at Tacaran. “Have you heard anything from Rico Gica recently?”

  Tacaran looked around, then said, “Salucas, Alala, that’ll be all for now. We’ll call you if we need anything.”

  The two servants left and Eurydice grimaced again. She knew that the ship people didn’t think you should tell secrets in front of servants, even loyal servants. She even knew they were right. But she often forgot.

  “No,” Tacaran said. “Is there some reason I should have?”

  “Lípos is going north.”

  “Okay?” Tacaran looked at Erica, who looked back and shrugged.

  “We were expecting him to head east. Fairly close to due east. Passing just to the north of us and traveling along th
e coast to Abdera. That’s why we’re still here, hoping he would think we were going to hit him from behind. Instead, he is going north. Far enough north to add at least a week to his trip to Abdera.”

  “Are you sure he’s going to Abdera?” Erica asked.

  “Where else would he go?”

  “I don’t know. You’re the general. Tacaran and I just run the radio.”

  Eurydice rolled her eyes.

  “I can send him a message and ask what he knows, but don’t expect too much. You know we aren’t supposed to act as spies. And before you roll your eyes again, that thing with Rico Gica’s girlfriend was gossip, not spying.”

  “Then ask him for some gossip.” Eurydice stood. “Good coffee. I’ll have to order some.”

  Pella, Radio Building

  Rico Gica lay on the bed with one arm around Sara as he looked at the timber ceiling. Sara wasn’t her actual name, but it was a name he could pronounce, and her real name started with an s sound. She giggled the first time he called her Sara, so he assumed that she was okay with it. Rico was from Port-au-Prince, a short black man with crooked teeth. He was self-educated and knew electronics from fixing busted radios back in the world. On the ship he had been a steward. But he could read a circuit diagram better than he could read English, or even his native French, so he got this gig as radio tech.

  Sara snuggled closer and Rico tried to figure out a way of convincing Thessalonike to sell him Sara. So far he hadn’t had any luck with that. His plan was to free her, but he hadn’t told anyone that.

  There was a knock at the door and he got up. “Yes?”

  “You have a message in the radio room.” It was one of Malcolm’s servants, a manumitted slave whose name Rico couldn’t pronounce. He had a lot of trouble with Greek names. He had a lot of trouble with Greek, period, but he understood it a lot better than he spoke it.