Destroyer of Cities t-5 Read online

  The erring ox stopped, flicked its tail and lowered its head.

  Satyrus let the handles of the plough down, easing the weight of the machine onto the turned soil. Then he rolled his shoulders, stretched his back and stood straight for the first time in five long furrows.

  Satyrus the Second, King of the Bosporus, was naked like a slave — or a farmer — toiling in the hot spring sun of the Euxine. He stood a full six feet, with shoulders that seemed as wide as he was tall. Men likened him to Herakles, which made him laugh. He was twenty-four years old, and he had been king for three years, and those three years seemed to him to have aged him more than all the years before, as if time were not a constant, whatever Aristotle and Heraklitus might have to say on the subject.

  Helios came running from the trees with a chlamys, a strigil and a linen towel — and the canteen of wine. Satyrus took the wine first, drinking a long draught of thrice-watered red before he used the strigil, wiped himself down with the towel and pulled the purple-edged white chlamys over his head. Satyrus gave the younger man a smile and walked across the field towards the foreigners.

  ‘You don’t have to see them until tonight,’ Helios muttered.

  ‘I’m all right now,’ Satyrus said.

  Many of the Macedonians were mounted, and there wasn’t much to tell them apart. They had the same dun-coloured cloaks and the same look of arrogance. Satyrus laughed because the thought came, unbidden, that Lekthes might have been the Macedonian ambassador’s brother.

  Satyrus walked across the furrows to greet the ambassadors of the world’s most powerful man, Antigonus One-Eye, naked except for his short cloak. He paused, just short of the range at which men begin social interaction, to note the workmanlike nature of his furrows with pleasure.

  ‘Crax?’ he called.

  ‘My lord?’ Crax responded, pushing through the crowd of sycophants and courtiers. Crax was Satyrus’ Master of the Household. He was tall and red-bearded, and his voice still had a hint of the Bastarnae brogue that he had been born to — before slavery, freedom and war made him a powerful officer in the Kingdom of the Bosporus.

  ‘The new plough is a fine machine. Order ten for our farms, and suggest to Gardan that a meeting of the farmers be held on one of our farms so that they can see the benefits.’ As he spoke, he noted Coenus — one of his father’s most trusted men — standing at his ease, surrounded by soldiers of the bodyguard. He winked, and Coenus responded with a wry smile. Satyrus turned to Helios. ‘Make a note for me. Meet with Gardan. He’s been requesting it.’

  Helios wrote some notes on a wax tablet. Crax wrote something as well, on his own tablet. The sight of a tattooed Bastarnae writing on a wax tablet might well have been mocked, in other company.

  ‘And these gentlemen?’ Satyrus asked with elaborate unconcern. As if the last day hadn’t been spent preparing to receive them.

  ‘An ambassador, my lord,’ Crax said. ‘Niocles son of Laertes of Macedon from Antigonus, Regent of Macedon,’ Crax said, indicating a middle-aged man — strong, of middling height, who looked more used to wearing armour than the long robes of officialdom.

  The man so named came forward, his white chiton held carefully out of the newly turned furrows by a pair of slaves. ‘My lord,’ he said. His voice was gruff, and his face said that he was none too pleased with the morning’s proceedings.

  ‘A pleasure to receive you,’ Satyrus said. He clasped hands with the older Macedonian, and if he was discomfited to be greeted by a nearly naked Herakles, he didn’t show it.

  ‘A pleasure to meet such a famous soldier,’ the Macedonian said.

  ‘Welcome to the Kingdom of the Bosporus,’ Satyrus said. ‘I expect that you have come wanting something?’

  Niocles might have made a face, but he was made of sterner stuff. ‘Aye, lord. It pleases you to receive us in a muddy field — and to go straight to the point.’

  ‘I’m busy,’ Satyrus said. ‘It’s ploughing season.’

  ‘As if a king needs to plough his own land,’ commented a man in the delegation. The sneer was almost audible.

  ‘I’m sure you came here with business to transact,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘I have come on behalf of Lord Antigonus, who men call “One-Eye”, Niocles said. ‘To demand reparations.’

  ‘Are you sure this isn’t your speech for Ptolemy of Aegypt?’ Satyrus asked, and many of his men laughed. The Macedonian flushed and there might have been violence, except that Coenus’ men of the bodyguard appeared as if from the grass and stood in neat array between their king and the ambassador’s men — every bodyguard in the somewhat archaic uniform of bronze breastplates, greaves, attic helmets and long, indigo-blue cloaks. They carried the heavy round aspis of old Greece and short, heavy-bladed spears.

  Niocles waited, calming himself. Satyrus wished him luck.

  ‘We understand that you are not so close with Lord Ptolemy as might formerly have been the case?’ he asked.

  Satyrus smiled. ‘Am I not?’ he asked. ‘How may I help you, and your lord?’

  Niocles shrugged. ‘Why, with a treaty making us allies in war and peace, of course, lord. But for the moment, I am here to resent the behaviour of your merchants at my master’s port of Smyrna.’

  Here it comes, Satyrus thought. ‘Yes?’ he asked, all innocence.

  ‘My lord must know that two of your ships attacked my master’s ships in the port of Smyrna. Men were killed. We demand the captains.’ Niocles smiled, and now his tone hardened as well. ‘This is not negotiable. It might have been better for you if you had given them of your own free will.’

  ‘Better how?’ Satyrus asked. He stepped forward, so that he was quite close to the Macedonian. ‘Let me see. . I have heard of this incident, of course. Two of my ships are riding at anchor in Smyrna, your master’s port. Hmm? And they are attacked. Yes?’

  ‘Men were sent to demand the taxes,’ Niocles said. He shrugged. ‘Violence only ensued when they were refused.’

  ‘Taxes that included the seizure of the ships?’ Satyrus asked.

  ‘My master may make any law he pleases within his own dominion,’ Niocles said. Now he all but purred with pleasure. ‘And unlike some lords,’ he said with a glance at Satyrus’ guards, ‘my master has the power to enforce his demands.’

  ‘Let me get this straight,’ Satyrus said. His hypaspist handed him a golden cup of wine, which he drank without offering any to the Macedonian beside him. ‘Your master set a ridiculous “tax” in the port of Smyrna as a pretext to allow a band of pirates to attack my ships. They were roundly defeated. Now I am to hand over my captains, and what? Pay an indemnity? For my presumption in resisting the tax?’

  Niocles nodded. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And our crime in this matter is. .?’ Satyrus asked, and took a sip of wine.

  ‘Trading with Ptolemy,’ Niocles said. ‘Your ships had traded with Ptolemy.’

  Satyrus laughed. ‘That’s a crime?’ he asked.

  ‘In Smyrna,’ Niocles said.

  Satyrus nodded. ‘So,’ he said. ‘A lord has the right to make any law he pleases, if only he can enforce it?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Niocles said.

  Satyrus handed his wine cup back to Helios. ‘Ploughing is excellent exercise for war,’ he said, ‘as my ancestors, who defeated the Persians when Macedon was an ally of Persia, could attest. The pretence’ — and here Satyrus’ voice took on a tone he had not possessed just a few years before, the sharp tone of a king dealing with a fool — ‘the pretence that your master has the power to inflict his will on me, here, on the shores of the Euxine, is sheer folly.’ Satyrus smiled. ‘But as you have yourself noted the precedent, I’ll be happy to free all the slaves that you so obviously have in your tail, there.’ At this, Satyrus began to walk across the furrows towards the Macedonian embassage.

  ‘What — what?’ asked Niocles.

  ‘You — are you a slave? All of you who are slaves, step away from the others. Good. Yes. Coenus? See to it.’
Satyrus rounded on Niocles, who had followed him across the ploughed ground and up onto the grass. ‘Slavery is a carefully controlled institution in my kingdom,’ he said. ‘Such is my whim, and the whim of my sister. And since I have the power to enforce my will,’ he said, ‘you can go home to your master and tell him that the next time he attacks a couple of my ships, I’ll have my fleet begin to burn cities on his seaboard. I hope that’s clear enough.’ Satyrus waved. ‘Get you gone. And leave your slaves. I suspect they’ll be happier here, anyway.’

  Niocles stood his ground. ‘You are declaring war?’ he asked.

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m just playing this foolish game the way you people play it.’

  ‘What game, lord?’ Niocles asked.

  ‘The game of diplomacy,’ Satyrus answered. ‘Where you pretend to be powerful and I pretend to be powerful and we posture like boys around the Palaestra. I don’t want war. Understand? My little realm has had too much war. But neither will I play. At all. Your master has neither the time nor the inclination to come into the Euxine, any more than Ptolemy does. Come back when you want to speak my language.’

  Niocles made a face and then shook his head. ‘You’re more a Macedonian than most Greeks,’ he said.

  Satyrus shrugged. ‘I assume you meant that as flattery,’ he said. ‘But your flattery won’t get you your slaves back.’

  ‘When Antigonus is Great King — King over Kings — you will be sorry you indulged in this petty insubordination.’ Niocles stepped closer to Satyrus, and men among the bodyguard shifted. Hands went to spears.

  Satyrus shrugged. ‘You may judge my views on the subject,’ he said, ‘by my willingness to behave as I do.’

  Tanais was a new city, so new that the smell of linseed oil and fresh-cut pine seemed to fill every room in every house, rivalled only by the dusty-dry smell of fresh-cut marble and limestone. It was less than fifteen years since the city had been burned flat by Eumeles of Pantecapaeaum, and less than three years since serious rebuilding began.

  Once again, there was a bronze equestrian statue of Kineas, Hipparch of Olbia, in the agora. Once again there was a golden statue of Nike in a temple to Nike at the east end of the agora, and this time the temple was built of Parian marble, shipped block by block from far-off Sounion on the coast of Attica. The ‘palace’, a small citadel with six tall towers, was small but built entirely of stone, and its central hall was great enough to entertain the whole of the city’s thousand citizens, crammed tight as sardines in a barrel, on feast days when it rained.

  The loot of four campaigns and the tribute of the northern Euxine cities had rebuilt Tanais with dramatic speed. But it still had the air more of a rich colony than a real city. Many of the citizens were farmers who tilled the land themselves, and hundreds of the local Maeotae had been admitted to citizenship to balance the mercenaries who received land grants in lieu of payment for services.

  Besides Greeks and Maeotae, the Valley of the Tanais had a third group of citizens, if they might be so styled. Melitta, Satyrus’ sister, was Queen of all the Assagetae — in truth, the leader of the horse nomads from the edge of distant Hyrkania in the east to the far western lands of Thrace and the Getae. She too ruled from Tanais, when she wasn’t out on the steppes, ruling from the saddle. As it was spring and the grass was fresh, she was getting ready to escape the confinement of the city and ride free, away to the north, for the yearly gathering in of all the Assagetae when the census, such as it was, was taken. But the Assagetae were as much a part of the kingdom as the Greeks or the Maeotae.

  Satyrus left his horse in the ‘royal’ stable just inside the main gate of the city. The building of stone walls — not just stone in the socle, or foundation courses, but stone all the way to the rampart’s top, like the richest cities of the world — had been the twins’ first priority. The main gate was flanked by two recessed towers, each three storeys tall and holding three levels of heavy artillery — big torsion engines capable of firing a bolt of iron two yards long. A permanent garrison manned the engines in every tower, and the city had twenty-six towers. Standing as it did on a low bluff over the mouth of the Tanais as it flowed out into the shallow Bay of Salmon, Tanais was as impregnable as the hand of man and the expenditure of gold could make it.

  The towers alone had cost the equivalent of a year’s revenue from the whole kingdom. That’s how Satyrus had begun to see everything in his kingdom — as a price tag. The street from the main gate ran past the royal stables (seventy minas of silver, needed a tile roof) along the wide Street of Heroes with statues of Satyrus’ ancestors and some of Kineas’ friends (Philokles’ statue was due any day from Athens, bronze with silver and gilt, four talents of silver, delivered and already waiting in a pile of wood shavings, along with a statue of his most famous heroised ancestor, Arimnestos of Plataea in bronze, silver and gold), past the gates of the citadel, whose defensive artillery covered the road and gate (four hundred and seventy talents of silver, complete) to the sea gate (five hundred and ninety talents) beyond which stood the masts and standing rigging of Satyrus’ fleet, the strongest in the Euxine. Without straining himself, the young king of the Bosporus could count twenty-two trieres, or triremes, whose hulls, repair, sails, rigging, sailors’ wages, rowers and marines cost him eighteen talents of silver a year in wages. Each. With his six hemiolas, or sailing triremes (twenty-four talents a year) and his four penteres or ‘fivers’ at a little more than thirty talents a year, his docks and ship sheds to protect the hulls from Euxine winters, and the fortified mole which protected his fleet and its maintenance, his naval expenditure topped seven hundred talents a year — a noticeable amount even in the revenues of the leading grain producer in the world.

  And that was without his magnificent new ship, the Arete. New built from stem to stern, and all to his specification. He could see the towering mainyard above the sea gate. She was cubits taller than any other ship in the harbour, and broader in the beam, with room for two men sitting on every bench — a hexeres, or ‘sixer’. He longed for his wide deck the way he longed for a girl — any girl — in his bed. The way he longed for Amastris, except that he didn’t always think of her when he wanted a woman. Amastris, whose birthday gift, a golden dolphin, had cost two talents of pure gold.

  Satyrus sighed, tried to forget the price of everything and walked towards the agora, trailing Helios and Crax and Coenus and two dozen guards. No one bowed. Men did run to him, demanding his attention concerning their lawsuits, or seeking his approval for their wares, or for merchant ventures.

  It took him the better part of the afternoon to cross the agora.

  Finally he freed himself from the last anxious citizen — a farmer complaining about the moving of his boundary stones — and walked under the gate to the citadel where he was, at last, on his own ground. And this was Tanais — next to Olbia the easiest of his cities to administrate. In Pantecapaeaum, it might have taken him all day to get across the agora and he’d have needed the soldiers at his back. There were still many men who hated him in Pantecapaeaum.

  ‘My lord?’ purred Idomenes. Idomenes was the Steward of the Household — the man who made sure that the king was fed and clothed and had a place to sit. He was also the Royal Secretary. He’d held both of these jobs for the former occupant of the throne, and Satyrus suspected he’d do the same for the next.

  ‘Dinner — just friends.’ Satyrus dropped his chlamys on the tiled floor of his own apartments. A dozen servants came forward to lay out his clothes for dinner.

  ‘Bath?’ Karlus asked, a giant German who served as Satyrus’ personal guard and often worked as his manservant, as well. The big German was getting white in his hair, and his body was criss-crossed with scars earned in thirty years of near-constant fighting.

  ‘Yes, Karlus. Thanks,’ Satyrus said. The living areas of the palace had hypocausts — heated floors — and a central furnace that kept water hot all day. Satyrus slipped into the water, swam around his little pool
for a few minutes and climbed out to be greeted by a pair of attendants with towels.

  Massaged, oiled and clean, Satyrus lay down on his couch for dinner as the sun set in red splendour over the valley of the Tanais River. Satyrus rose only to say the prayer to Artemis and pour the libation of the day, and then he led the singing of a hymn to Herakles, his ancestor, before he reclined alone.

  On the next couch, Coenus raised a wine cup. ‘You did well, lad,’ he said.

  Satyrus made a face. ‘Posturing. Philokles would laugh. I had a spat with Melitta, and took my aggression out on the Macedonians.’

  Coenus shook his head. ‘Philokles would say that it was well done. He was the very master of deceit when he needed to be, lord. You should have seen him fool the Tyrant of Olbia with spies-’

  Satyrus nodded and cut off the impending story. ‘I did see him fool Sophokles, the assassin of Athens,’ he said.

  Coenus laughed. ‘I’m getting old, lord. You did, right enough.’

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘Never say old.’

  Crax scratched his head. ‘I’m just a dumb barbarian,’ he said. ‘Why exactly do we have to do this dance?’

  Satyrus exchanged a long glance with Coenus. ‘To keep Antigonus off balance until our grain fleets are safely in Rhodes and Athens,’ Satyrus said. ‘We’re at sea in what, two weeks? Antigonus has more than two hundred hulls in the water, and he could pick our merchants off like a hawk takes doves.’

  ‘So we offended his ambassador?’ asked Hama. Hama was another barbarian — a Keltoi from the far north, who had served Satyrus’ family for twenty years as a bodyguard and war captain. ‘How does that help?’

  Coenus gave a half-grin. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘It’s not simple. We offended the ambassador to make him believe what he saw and heard here. If we’d been nice to him, he’d have wondered what was up — after all, we’ve never exactly been friends. The truce between Antigonus and Ptolemy is a dead letter, now. It’s war, across the Ionian Sea, and our people have to sail through the middle of it.’