King of the Bosphorus t-4 Page 3

  Satyrus leaped on to the rail. 'Clear the deck,' he called, his voice breaking, but then he was over the rail of the Herakles and his javelin took an enemy marine in the side of the head, knocking him unconscious inside his helmet. Satyrus went straight into the next man, shield up, so that the rim of his own aspis crashed into the man's armoured jaw and he smelled the sweat on his enemy as the man tried to turn and got a spear in his teeth from a sailor. Satyrus bore him down and pushed on into the flank of the enemy boarding force, into the unarmoured sailors who didn't have shields and died like sacrificial animals under his borrowed blade. And when they broke, he kept killing them, cutting them down as they fled into the bow, killing them even as they jumped over the side, as if by killing these men who served his enemy he could regain his lost kingdom.

  Theron was by the mast, his back against it. He was covered in blood and wounded several times – his left thigh was lacerated with shallow wounds so that blood ran down his legs like lava from a new volcano. He held up a hand, the same way he would when he'd been fighting the pankration on the sands of the palaestra in Alexandria and he took a fall. He managed a smile. 'Still in the fight, eh?' he said.

  Satyrus took his hand and hauled him to his feet. He looked fore and aft along the deck. The marines from the heavy green quadrireme were rallying in the bows of their own ship, and a shower of arrows swept the decks of Herakles.

  'We could board him,' Satyrus said.

  'If you want to die gloriously, that would be your path,' Abraham said by his elbow. He was wrapping his shield arm in linen stripped from a corpse. 'Look!'

  The two golden-hulled triremes from Pantecapaeum were almost aboard them, rowing hard – but their speed had fallen off, because they'd started their sprint too early and their crews were under-trained. In the press of ships, they couldn't see what was friend and what was foe. Behind them were a dozen more triremes.

  'We could take him,' Satyrus said.

  'You are possessed by a bad spirit,' Abraham said. 'Do not succumb to these blandishments.' He leaned in. 'You must live, or all this is for nothing. Get your head out of your arse and think like a commander.'

  Satyrus felt the heat in his own face – felt rage boiling up in his limbs. But he also saw the faces of the men around him. He saw Theron's nod of agreement. The marines' studied blankness.

  'Very well,' he said, more harshly than he wanted. He looked across to the Falcon. 'Abraham, keep us from getting boarded again. When I have Herakles clear of that green bastard, take command and row clear. Understand? Theron – someone get Theron looked after. No, better – sling him across to Falcon.'

  His head was clear – tired, but clear. It was like waking from a fever. Now he could see, and what he saw was the last few moments of a disaster. As soon as the pair of golden triremes figured out which side was which, he'd be dead.

  He leaped for his own ship and landed with a clash of bronze on the deck. 'Diokles!' he roared.

  'Aye!' his helmsman called. The arrow was gone from his thigh and a loop of wool was tied in its place.

  'Port-side oars! Pole off! Pole off the Herakles!' Satyrus ran to Neiron, who was lying at the foot of his mast, mouthing orders to Thron, one of the Aegyptian boys who served the sailors. The boy shrilled the orders down into the rowing decks.

  'Still with me?' Satyrus asked Neiron, who raised an eyebrow.

  'Must be nice… young.' He croaked. 'Poseidon, I hurt. Hermes who watches the sailormen, watch over me. Arggh!' he shouted, and his back arched.

  Along the deck, a handful of deck-crewmen pulled Theron aboard and dropped him unceremoniously to the deck so that they could return to using pikes to pole off the Herakles. Satyrus loosed the ties on Neiron's cuirass and then, without warning, pulled the arrowhead from the wound. It had gone in only the depth of a finger end, or even less – enough to bleed like a spring, but not necessarily mortal.

  Satyrus stood in his place. 'Port side, push!' he shouted. Rowers used the blades of their oars to push against the hull of the Herakles. 'Push!'

  'We're away!' Diokles called from the stern. The gap between the two ships was growing. Falcon was light – fifty strong men could pole him off very quickly.

  Quick glance aft – the golden hulls were changing direction, the early sun catching the bronze of their rams and turning them to fire. He wasn't going to make it.

  He wasn't going to stop trying, either.

  'Switch your benches!' he roared, the full stretch of his voice, as if a restraint had burst in his chest and now he could use all of his lungs.

  A thin cheer from the green quadrireme. The enemy crews were shouting for rescue – shouting to the golden ships.

  His archer-captain shot into the enemy, and an enemy archer fell – a man in robes. A Sakje. Satyrus cursed that Eumeles had suborned his own people. There were many things that he and Leon had taken for granted.

  The greens cheered again and the golden triremes turned harder, now certain of their prey.

  'Oars out! Backstroke! Give way, all!' Satyrus called as soon as the majority of his rowers had switched their benches. He considered everything he had learned of war – that men responded so much better when they understood what was needed. His teachers had insisted on it.

  He leaned down into the oar deck. 'Listen, friends. Three strokes back and switch your benches – two strokes forward – switch again. Got it? It will come fast and furious after that. Ready?'

  Hardly a cheer – but a growl of response.

  'Pull!' he called.

  'Athena and strong arms!' a veteran cried.

  'Athena and strong arms!' the whole oar deck shouted, all together, and the ship shot back his own length.

  'Athena and strong arms!' they repeated, and again Falcon moved, gliding free.

  'Switch your benches!' Satyrus called, but many men were already moving with the top of the stroke, switching benches with a fluidity he hadn't seen before.

  He ran along the deck to Diokles. He wanted to stop and pant. No time.

  The nearest golden hull was just three ship's lengths away.

  'Into the starboard bow of the green!' Satyrus shouted. 'We have to ram the green clear of Herakles.'

  Diokles turned and looked at the onrushing golden ship in the lead.

  'Yes!' Satyrus shouted. He read Diokles' thoughts just as the helmsman read his. With luck – Tyche – the lead golden hull would foul his partner.

  There were a dozen more triremes behind that pair, strung out over two stades of water.

  The rowers had switched benches. 'Pull!' he bellowed into the oar deck.

  The hull changed direction. The oars came up together, rolled over the top of their path.

  'Pull!' he roared. The hull groaned and Falcon leaped forward – already turning under steering oars alone.

  'Pull!' he called as the oars crested their movement. He waited for the splintering crash as the lead golden ship rammed their stern, but he didn't look. His eyes were fixed on his oarsmen.

  'Pull!'

  'BRACE!' yelled a sailor in the bow.

  Falcon hit the enemy quadrireme just where his marine box towered over his ram – just where men were rallying for another rush at the Herakles. It was a glancing blow, delivered from too close, but the results were spectacular. Something in the enemy bow gave with a sharp crack – some timber strained to breaking by the Herakles snapped. The marines' tower tilted sharply and the whole green hull began to roll over, filling rapidly with water.

  'Switch your benches!' Satyrus called. Now was the moment. But the Herakles was saved – he was rocking in the water like a fishing boat after pulling a shark aboard, his trapped ram released from the stricken green.

  The lead golden trireme shaved past their stern, having missed his ram by the length of a rowing boat. He was still turning and his oarsmen paid for his careless steering as they began to get tangled in the wreckage of the green as the stricken ship turtled.

  Just to the port side, beyond Herakles, the
second golden hull swooped in to beak the Herakles amidships – the second ship had been more careful, biding his time, waiting for the two damaged Alexandrian ships to commit to a reverse course.

  The oarsmen were reversed, their faces to the bow. 'Back water! Pull!' Satyrus called. Had to try.

  Had to try.

  Diokles shook his head and braced himself against the side. When the golden ship struck the Herakles, his hull might be pushed right into them.

  Abraham was shouting at his rowers, trying to get them to pull together. They had been locked in a boarding action for too long and many men had left their benches to fight. Herakles was dead in the water.

  Why was Herakles cheering? Satyrus stood on his toes, then jumped up on the rail, grabbing for a stay.

  Leon's Golden Lotus swept past the sinking stern of the green like an avenging sea monster and took the second golden hull right in the stern quarter, his bow ripping the enemy ship like a shark ripping a dolphin, spilling men into the water and goring his side so that he sank still rowing forward, gone in ten heartbeats, and Lotus swept on.

  Herakles got his rowers together. With time to breathe, Abraham rowed clear of the sinking green and turned for the open water to the east. He had only two-thirds of his oars in action, but they were together.

  Falcon handled badly – light as a feather, down by the stern, tending to fall off every heading. The rowers were pulling well, and he handled like a pig.

  Satyrus was staring over the stern, where Lotus had rammed a second ship.

  His ram was stuck.

  Even as he watched, an enemy ship got his ram into Lotus, and the great ship shuddered the way a lion does when he takes the first spear in a hunt.

  Satyrus ran to the stern, as if he could run over the rail and the intervening sea to his uncle's rescue.

  'Nothing we can do,' Diokles said.

  'Ares – Poseidon. We can do this. With Herakles, we'll-'

  Diokles shook his head. 'Can't you feel it, lad? Our ram's gone. Ripped clean off when we hit the green.'

  Satyrus felt as if he'd been punched in the gut. Leon was so close.

  'He did it for you,' Diokles said. 'Let's save the ships we have and run.'

  'Herakles, Lord of Heroes,' Satyrus choked on his own prayer.

  Run, boy.

  A second ram went into Lotus. And while he contemplated suicide in the form of rushing his ship to Leon's rescue, the gap widened to two stades, then three. Then five. Now there were a dozen enemy ships around Lotus.

  'Run,' he said, hanging his head.

  'Aye,' Diokles said. 'Now get yourself into the bow and set the men to plugging the gaps in the strakes, or we're all dead men.'

  2

  ALEXANDRIA, AEGYPT, 311 BC

  Of all the places in the world for a woman to give birth, there weren't many that could better Alexandria.

  Melitta lay on the special kline that the doctors had brought her and chewed idly on the leather strap she had for labour pains. She was covered in sweat, and her bloated body was fighting with all of its not-inconsiderable strength to push the baby out, and she still had the capacity to think about her brother, out on the wine-dark sea, conquering their kingdom while she lay on a bed conquering her pregnancy. That's how she had come to think of it – a conquest. Nothing in her life – not war, not abduction, not the threat of assassination – had prepared her for the discomfort, the enforced idleness and the boredom of pregnancy.

  'Here they come again,' she muttered. Her room was full of doctors and midwives – too many people, she thought. Sappho had ignored Nihmu's advice – that Nihmu and Sappho should deliver the baby themselves.

  Wave of pain. She bit down on the leather strap, convulsed with the thing – palpable, like lying in water, except that this was inside and outside her.

  'Not long now,' the man nearest the bed said. Nearchus – Leon's personal physician.

  Nihmu had one of her hands. 'Breathe!' she said in her Sakje-accented Greek. 'He is right,' she said with a smile that Melitta could just see through the tangle of her hair. 'You are almost done.'

  'Very lucky, for such a young girl,' another voice said.

  Wave.

  As she surfaced from the latest wave, she realized that they were right, and everything that the priestesses of Hathor and the priestesses of Hera said was true – the waves came closer and faster and lasted longer. She could no longer hold an image of her brother's expedition in her head. There was no reality beyond the-

  Wave.

  This time, she became aware that something around her was wrong. Nihmu's hand was gone and there were men shouting – and blood – blood like red water flowing over her. She reached out – shouted. She could feel the next wave building already, could feel her whole groin convulsing, could feel that lovely alien presence coming – it was happening now.

  If that's my blood, I'm in trouble! she thought. Something or someone landed right on her legs, and she gave a choked scream and the next wave came-

  She fought to escape it, to see… brushed the sweaty hair out of her eyes and screamed. Shouting… the ring of bronze and iron… the scent of blood. She tried to focus… something… fighting?

  'Get him!' roared a voice by the door, and then another… clang of bronze… 'Guards!'… 'See to my lady!'-

  Wave!

  'Still there, love?' Nihmu said by her ear. People were pressed against her so tightly she couldn't breathe, and there was weight on her legs that she didn't like, and shouting – men's voices.

  'Breathe, honey bee.' Nihmu was there. 'Get her off her legs,' she said.

  The weight came off her legs even as she felt herself opening, opening-

  Wave! This one didn't stop. She rode it like a ship on the sea, and suddenly-

  'I see the head!' Nihmu shouted. 'Clear the room!'

  'Yes, lady!' Hama answered. Even in waves of pain and the confusion of whatever had just happened, Melitta knew Hama's Celtic Greek. What on earth was he doing in her birth room?

  'Push!' Nihmu and Nearchus spoke together, sounding eerily like a god.

  She didn't really need to push any more than she already was. Her hips rose a fraction and suddenly it all came together. She tasted blood in her mouth and the muscles in her stomach and pelvis found a different purchase, almost like the first time she had mounted a horse under her own power – the triumph of the heartbeat in which all her weight shifted and she knew she would make it up Bion's back – a flood of release, a wet triumph.

  And a cry. 'Now see to Sappho!' Nihmu said.

  'A boy!' Sappho said, and her voice sounded weak.

  Melitta seemed to surface, as if she'd been swimming in murky water. The room looked as if someone had tossed buckets of blood at it – the smooth plastered walls were strangely splashed, and the floor was wet.

  'Hathor!' Melitta said. She saw her son – the blood – her son. 'Artemis!' she said. 'Ah, my beauty,' she said and reached her arms for him.

  There was blood everywhere. Sappho was lying on the floor, her head on Nearchus's lap. Nihmu stood between her legs with the baby in her arms. Even as Melitta watched, Nihmu caught the cord in her teeth and cut it with a silver knife – a Sakje tradition. The baby wailed.

  The child's grandfather – Coenus, a Megaran gentleman and now a mercenary, whose son, the newborn's father, was eight months in his grave – appeared at Nihmu's shoulder. He had a sword in his hand that dripped blood on his hand.

  'Gods!' he said, his eyes wide. 'He's splendid! Well done, little mother!' And to Nihmu, 'I have two files of men hunting him – them. What in Hades happened?'

  Melitta sank back on the kline. 'May I hold my son?' she asked.

  Nihmu placed the baby on her breast but her eyes were still on Coenus, because he looked grey. 'What happened?' he asked again. He was looking at the floor.

  'One of the doctors tried to kill Melitta,' Nihmu said. 'Sappho stopped him.'

  'That's insane!' Coenus said. 'The blood!'

  'Mi
ne,' Sappho murmured. 'And his!' She pointed at the Jewish physician who their friend Ben Zion had provided. He was lying on top of his own guts, already dead. 'He tackled the man – gods, he died for us, and he didn't even know us!' Sappho was bleeding slowly from her upper thigh – a wound that Nearchus held together with one hand while he scrambled to make a tourniquet with the other.

  'Help me!' he shot at Coenus.

  Coenus knelt by Sappho and vanished from Melitta's view.

  'Put your hand here and grab – harder! Don't be afraid of a woman's thigh – she's going to die if I don't get this closed.' Nearchus was suddenly a battlefield commander, his voice hard.

  'The curtain ties,' Nihmu said. 'Or her girdle.'

  Nearchus had the ties off the seaward window in three heartbeats, and in two more he had the rope around her thigh.

  'Hold that there. No, like this. Now I have to find it and sew it. Hippocrates, stand with me. Hermes, by my shoulder.' Murmuring prayers, Nearchus snatched a set of tools from his bag between Melitta's feet.

  Melitta couldn't watch – she had her infant on her breast and she couldn't muster the strength to rise.

  Nihmu crouched by her head and took her hand. 'Let me see him, honey bee. See? Perfect. Not a flaw. Take my hand. He's just stitching her thigh – oh, Lord of Horses, that's a big cut. I'm sorry, honey bee, I'm… she's-'

  Melitta raised her head to see Sappho's foot stomp the floor weakly.

  'Hold on, lady! I've got the vessel!' Nearchus sounded triumphant. 'Hippocrates, this stuff is hard to sew.'

  'Do it, man!' Coenus grunted.

  'One more turn! One more. Got it – let off that rope – slowly – one turn. Another turn. Aphrodite stand by this woman. Artemis, stand away – you need not take my mistress yet…' Nearchus's voice trailed on – endearments, comments.

  'Now what?' Coenus asked.

  'Now we wait,' Nearchus muttered. A day later, and Sappho was alive. Melitta was alive – in fact, she felt better already. She sat up, nursed her son and watched slaves and house servants clean the birth room with religious intensity. The servant women came and looked at her baby and complimented her, cooing at it and suggesting names.