Destroyer of Cities t-5 Page 15

  The engines spoke again — doing no further harm, but sowing fear. To port, Panther’s long Amphytrite had rammed the leaderless penteres amidships while to starboard, Leon had chosen to race through the huge gap in the enemy line untouched — and now he would be first into the enemy second line.

  Except that the enemy second line had hung back, and rather than launching counter-rams they were breaking and running.

  It didn’t seem possible, and Satyrus was too pious to curse success — but the enemy was broken by the daring rush of three heavy ships and didn’t abide the flying trap of the swift Rhodians, Bosporans and Alexandrians racing at their flanks. The sudden destruction of four of their ships shattered any courage they’d brought, and they fled.

  ‘Cowards!’ Neiron shouted. ‘Damn them! We had them!’

  Every man aboard, from the lowest thranite to the navarch, felt the same, but Satyrus restrained them. ‘Give only thanks for victory,’ Satyrus called, and he ran below to repeat his orders on the subject.

  To port and starboard, the fastest Rhodians and Alexandrians caught the slowest pirates. Their execution was swift — but so were the rest of the pirates, happy to buy life at the expense of their comrades.

  Satyrus’ ship was the slowest in the fleet, and the transition from sudden killer to helpless observer was painful. But there was one more thing he could do, and he did it. He climbed the forward tower and signalled a long-practised set of shield flashes.

  ‘General pursuit’, he sent.

  And then he ordered the Arete turned and the sails raised, in the hope that they could at least keep the fleeing enemy in sight.

  10

  Night, on a beach — an islet south of Cos. Satyrus had left his beloved Arete for the speed of the Black Falcon, and the fleet had scattered — Satyrus suspected that there were ships from Miletus to Rhodes now, as the pirates had run in every direction. But Black Falcon and Diokles’ Oinoe had stayed together.

  The taste of too much wine in his mouth, and the tension in his shoulders from three days and two nights in armour and no sleep, no rest — two sharp fights, against desperate men who knew they would have no mercy. And now, wrapped in his cloak under the stern of Black Falcon at the edge of sleep, something tingled in his head — some stray thought, some sound from the surf. He sat up in the cool night breeze.

  Running feet. Not a horde — just one man, or perhaps two. He leaped up, kicked Helios who lay to his left and slapped his left side to be sure that his sword was there.

  ‘The king! Take me to the king!’ said a man. There were torches.

  The sentries were awake and alert and the alarm was being called, and a squad of marines pounded down the sand at his back. Satyrus relaxed.

  Helios uncurled at his feet. ‘Lord?’ he asked.

  ‘A cup of water, if you would be so kind,’ Satyrus said.

  Apollodorus appeared at his shoulder, still — or already — in armour.

  ‘Fisherman came into the outer picket post down the bay. Says there’s three triremes laying across the channel on the Asian shore.’ Apollodorus shrugged. ‘Could be Panther or Leon, lord. But it could be the fucking pirates. And they’ll be gone with the sun.’

  Satyrus stood there, his shoulder aching, the promise of the fatigues of middle age already very real in his young body. His hands hurt. He rubbed his jaw and felt the stickiness of three days without washing, without oil, without-

  ‘Let’s do the thing,’ he said. One of his father’s expressions. It made Apollodorus smile in the fitful torchlight.

  Helios rose as gracefully as a temple dancer, fresh and handsome the moment he awoke. You lay down in your armour, lord!’ he said.

  ‘It seemed the quickest way to get some sleep,’ Satyrus said with a rueful smile.

  Someone put a hot cup of wine into his hands and he drank it down, followed by a full canteen of water, and then he put his shoulder against the sternpost and helped get Black Falcon off the beach and into the hissing surf. His feet were wet, and then his legs, and then the hull was afloat and alive. He wondered if he could find the strength to drag himself aboard.

  But he found the power to turn and sprint down the beach to where Diokles had his ship ready to launch. Satyrus stood under the stern in the blood-warm water.

  ‘Diokles!’

  ‘Here, lord.’ The navarch was at his own steering oar.

  ‘Let me decide if they are friend or foe. If I go in to the beach we all go, fast as thought. Land everyone. The Tanais way,’ he finished, with a smile.

  ‘I hear you. War cry?’ Diokles asked.

  ‘Tanais,’ Satyrus said. ‘If I’ve got it wrong and they’re friendly, Tanais ought to clear the whole thing up. Otherwise, I want prisoners.’

  Diokles was invisible even an arm’s length away — just a bearded shadow — but Satyrus had the impression of a frown. ‘We’ll try,’ Diokles said.

  ‘Stay under my stern until I make my move,’ Satyrus said. He slapped the hull of Oinoe, Diokles’ ship, and ran off down the beach to his own vessel.

  ‘King’s aboard,’ Neiron called as soon as Satyrus had his feet on the deck, and the sailors pushed the ship’s stern off the beach and the oar master sang the first words of the paean to start the men all together, and they were away.

  Fires were scattered across the beach like fallen embers from a fire pot. Too many fires — there were five hulls, not three, and the camp was too chaotic to be Leon’s.

  Easy to make the decision, but once he’d ordered the marines forward and the rowers armed, he had lots of time to worry that he’d been wrong and was launching a desperate attack against over-heavy odds, or attacking his uncle, and friends would be killed in the dark.

  He walked back to the helmsman’s bench, where Neiron had the oars himself.

  ‘Five ships,’ Satyrus said.

  Neiron spat. ‘Scum,’ he said. ‘They ran when they had us at long odds. They’ll panic now.’

  Satyrus was oddly reassured. ‘You think I am doing the right thing?’

  Neiron made an odd sound in the dark, which it took Satyrus a long and disorientating moment to discover was laughter, not choking. ‘How would I know?’ Neiron coughed out, and he laughed again. ‘You’re the king.’

  So much for reassurance. Satyrus went forward. Black Falcon had neither tower nor was she fully decked, and Satyrus crouched against the familiar bulk of the marine box over the bow. His left pauldron was badly padded and the bronze was cutting his skin where his aspis sat too heavily on it — and his left arm was too damned tired to hold the shield so that it wouldn’t cut his shoulder. And he could just have left the bastards to get away into the dawn.

  He pulled his cloak tighter and smelled the whiff of wet cat — and his heart raced, his eyes opened, his arms filled with power.

  The bow cut into the sand — softly. Neiron had put them ashore at a walking pace.

  Satyrus stood up. ‘Follow me,’ he said to the marines, and went over the side into the water — water only to his ankles, and he ran up the shingle in the dark. There were shouts from the fires. Satyrus was a quarter-stade from one of the enemy triremes, a beautiful shape silhouetted against the enemy campfires, long and low like a lethal snake: a Phoenician design, or perhaps Sicilian — but nothing from his own scratch fleet.

  ‘Praise to you, Lord Herakles,’ he said aloud. And ran up the sand.

  There were still men asleep. Satyrus disdained to kill them, but he left Charmides and Helios to watch a dozen, and led Apollodorus and Diokles’ marines across the beach. Twice they fell into knots of men in the dark — and Satyrus’ arm was warm from the spilled blood — but cutting down running men is no battle, and after the second group begged for mercy — for slavery, no pirate could expect aught else — the fight was over. Fear, surprise and daring had done all the fighting for them.

  The oarsmen and marines cheered him on the beach like a god.

  Diokles embraced him, and Neiron helped him drop his shield to the
sand.

  ‘Don’t forget it,’ Neiron said. ‘It won’t always be the same, but when you win like this, men don’t forget. It’s the feeling of invincibility that they remember until they are old.’

  Satyrus had to hug him again, and then he ran into the sea to wash as the sun came up. Bathed in salt, he made sacrifice in the new dawn of three lambs, and Helios brought him his best chiton and sandals as if he were going to the temple to pray.

  ‘It’s a special day,’ Helios insisted.

  He could feel the exhaustion just at the edge of his awareness but he held it off, and he walked among his men, handing out portions of meat from the sacrifice and awarding anything he could think of to award. There was good plunder: twenty gold cups, themselves almost a sign from Poseidon for the one he’d thrown overboard off Chios. There was some silver in bars, and more in scrap, and a little gold. Satyrus distributed it all, on the spot — two months’ wages for the oarsmen and double that for the marines. The ship and marine officers — sixteen men, all told — received a gold cup each, and most of them were men who’d never so much as drunk from a gold cup. Apollodorus laughed, richer by a farm. Thrasos, the red-haired Kelt who had become Diokles’ helmsman, made so bold as to hug his king, and Stesagoras, Satyrus’ sailing master, filled his cup with wine from a captured skin, and then walked about filling all the cups.

  ‘We must all give a thanks-libation together,’ he said.

  Philaeus, the oar master from Arete, just kept smiling at everyone in the rosy light.

  They poured libations in captured wine to all the gods of Olympia and a few more — Asian gods of the sea and coast, a nymph or two and Nike, over and over. Finally, Satyrus insisted that they drink to Kineas, his father.

  Apollodorus shocked him by displaying an amulet. ‘I worship your father every day,’ the marine said. ‘Kineas, Protector of Soldiers.’

  So Apollodorus led the libation.

  When the frenetic quality of victory was calming, and they were drinking wine rather than pouring it on the sand, Diokles put his arm around Satyrus and pointed with his nose and jaw at four long lines of men kneeling on the beach.

  ‘Now what?’ Diokles asked, slurring his words. ‘All those shit-eating prisoners.’

  Helios, a patient shadow at his shoulder, pushed in. ‘Lord, there are things that you should hear. Charmides and I-’

  Diokles laughed. ‘We have the prettiest marines on the ocean sea, lord. Perhaps that’s why the gods love you so much. Look at the fine down on his jaw. And yet his hand is red — no light hand, your boy. A killer.’ Diokles laughed again.

  Helios tried to ignore Diokles. ‘Lord, you need to hear what these men have to say.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘Bring them.’

  Charmides prodded two pirates up to the officers. ‘Tell the king what you told us,’ he said.

  One of the pirates had pissed himself, and he stank. The other simply sank to the sand in the kind of abject exhaustion that Satyrus could understand all too well.

  Satyrus stood straight and walked over to the two of them. ‘I swear before the gods that both of you shall live and go free. Speak and know no fear.’

  The exhausted man nodded. ‘Poseidon’s blessing on you. You’d be King Satyrus, then.’

  Satyrus nodded.

  ‘Your marines want us to tell you that Dekas is dead, lord. Our captain, Spartes, killed him last night for being a fuckwit. No one made any protest, lord.’ The man shrugged. ‘And now it appears that Spartes was no better, eh?’

  ‘Tell the king the other thing,’ Charmides prompted.

  ‘Spartes told us all last night to make for Cyprus,’ the man said. He shrugged. ‘I am — was — a helmsman. Thus he told us.’

  Satyrus looked at Diokles. ‘Cyprus — to join Antigonus One-Eye.’

  The man shrugged. ‘Name I heard was Plistias of Cos.’

  Neiron spoke up. ‘Demetrios’ admiral.’

  Charmides prodded the man with his spear point, hard enough to start a trickle of blood on the man’s naked hip. ‘And the rest.’

  The man looked at his filthy companion. ‘Poke him. I’ve said everything.’

  The other man wept. ‘They’ll kill us,’ he said.

  Satyrus shrugged. ‘I could kill you right now.’

  The man sobbed. ‘There’s six more ships in the harbour at Duria, and more down the coast — a fisherman told us last night.’

  Neiron groaned. ‘You can’t. We can’t.’

  Satyrus forced his shoulders back, feeling the weight of every scale on his breastplate. ‘We must. Ten more ships — even scum like this — could be the end of Menelaeus. We have to make for Cyprus.’

  Diokles looked up the beach at the prisoners. ‘And them?’ he asked. ‘Not the slaves — we can free them, or even use them to make up for our dead. I mean, the wide-arsed pirates.’

  The words kill them actually formed in Satyrus’ gullet. He could taste them on his lips like sour wine. Half a thousand pirates — two days’ work to row across to Rhodes. Useless offal of humanity — men hardened to evil; rapists, murderers.

  He could taste the words, the ease of disposing of them — twenty minutes’ bloody work, like a big temple sacrifice, and it would be done. His men would do it — they were his this morning the way his other victories, hard fought and bloody, had not always made them his. Today he was like a god. He could order the pirates killed. And then he’d be free to sail to Cyprus. Every minute might count.

  At his side, as clear as the sun in the sky, stood Philokles. ‘Be true,’ he said, and was gone.

  Satyrus found that his hands were shaking. He spat the taste out of his mouth.

  ‘Take Oinoe to Rhodos and get some of our grain ships, empty, and any soldiers that Abraham can spare. Leave your marines as guards. And then get them back to Rhodes.’ Satyrus spat again.

  Diokles raised an eyebrow. ‘Killing them would be faster, and then we could stay together.’ He shrugged. ‘Look, I know it’s wrong. But these aren’t men. These are animals.’

  Satyrus found the energy to smile. ‘I agree. But sometimes arete makes its own demands, Diokles. If we know we’re right and our enemies are wrong-’ Suddenly he was confident in the rightness of his decision. ‘Being right means being right. We are the better men. We must behave accordingly.’

  Diokles snorted. ‘You can be a pious prick, lord.’ Then he stepped back. ‘I could get it done if you walked down the beach.’

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘You have your orders,’ he said, and his own doubts made his voice colder than he wanted it to be.

  Diokles did a sort of skip to keep his balance and threw an arm around Helios. He was drunk, even by his forgiving standards of the sea. ‘You’ll go off in one ship and die. And we love you! Kill the fucking pirates and let us stay with you.’ He looked around. ‘Go up the beach and see the captives. See the girl who’s been raped so many times she can’t talk. See the farmer who watched his whole family killed for sport. Talk to them. They’ll convince you.’

  Satyrus refused to be offended. ‘Diokles — get moving. I’ll be fine. And you have your orders.’

  But some perverse sense of duty made him walk down the sand, past the long lines of captive pirates. Charmides came with him, and Helios. He knew what he would find — he’d seen war, he’d seen cities sacked and he’d lived with pirates, when he needed them. He didn’t much like where that thought led.

  Charmides said, ‘Lord, I didn’t know there really were men like you.’

  Satyrus said, ‘Charmides, shut up.’ He wondered if Diokles were, at some level, right. But Philokles — he’d been right there.

  Still he walked towards the former captives — two hundred men and some women who had been taken as rowers or sex slaves or cooks — or all three. Satyrus stopped in the midst of them and motioned to them for silence.

  ‘I’m King Satyrus of Tanais. All of you are free. Would you rather be freed right here, or on Rhodes?’ He looked around. Many of thes
e people were broken — but not all. He saw hope and care and despair and rage in as many faces.

  No one answered him — or rather, everyone did.

  ‘Silence!’ he roared in his storm voice. ‘I must sail away before the sun is a handspan higher. There will be Rhodians here in a few hours. My marines will see that every one of you has’ — Satyrus looked at Helios and mouthed twenty drachma, and Helios shook his head slightly — ‘ten drachma to travel home. You must decide for yourselves whether you plan to go to Rhodes, or you will travel from this beach.’

  One young woman with a baby at her breast fell to her knees weeping. Other people had other reactions — joy, terror.

  Some simply stared at him blankly. One haggard woman patted his cloak in a way that scared him more than the angry men would ever have scared him. Her wits were gone, taken by the gods. Apollo, she wasn’t even old. Just broken.

  Diokles had followed him across the beach and stood at his shoulder. He pointed at the weeping girl on her knees. ‘Pirates did this. And this thing used to be a gentlewoman of Lesbos. And this man was a farmer. Just kill the fucking pirates.’

  Satyrus met his eyes. ‘By that logic I’d be best to kill her, too,’ he said. ‘And the baby — no man’s brat. What choice of life has he? But I am not a god. Neither are you. I am, however, your king. You are making this something that is between you and me. Obey me.’

  Diokles smiled, not as drunk as he had been. ‘Had to try, lord. I really think you are doing the wrong thing. But I will obey. If, on the other hand, you go and get killed away from me, I will personally come to the underworld and pour dung on your shade.’ He reached out his arms, and Satyrus embraced him.

  And then he turned back to the people on the beach. ‘Can anyone speak for the others?’ he asked.

  A man, a man with a spark in his eye and the accent of education and command, spoke up.

  ‘I was a captive, not a slave,’ he said carefully, ‘but I did what I could for some of them, and they all know me. I think — if you mean what you say — that they would like to stay together.’

  Satyrus looked around. ‘Together?’ he asked.