Tyrant: King of the Bosporus (19 page)

P
oppy juice and bone-setting got Satyrus through the days in Tomis alive, although the arm never ceased to trouble him. A gale blew against the breakwater and all hands worked to save the captured ships. Then winter closed in a sheet of rain, and then another. His arm was setting badly, but Calchus’s physician put more and more water and milk into the poppy juice, gradually weaning him from the colours and the poetry. The man was an expert, and Satyrus missed only the happiness of the dreams.

His appetite returned in a rush, and they had been ten nights in Calchus’s big house when he found himself reclining at a dinner, eating mashed lobsters and drinking too much and almost unable to follow the conversation in his urge to eat everything that the slaves brought him.

‘By all the gods, it takes me back to see you lying there, lad,’ Calchus said. He raised a cup and swigged some wine. ‘Eat up! More where that came from.’

Theron ate massively as well, and Calchus watched him consume lobster with an ill-grace. ‘You eat like an Olympic athlete,’ Calchus said.

‘I was an Olympic athlete,’ Theron answered.

Silence fell, as the other guests looked at each other and smirked.

Satyrus almost choked on his food. Calchus was his guest-friend, his father’s friend, and his benefactor, his host – and yet, a hard man to like. His childhood visits to Tanais had always been full of ceremony and self-importance, and Satyrus could remember the face his mother would make when she heard that the man was coming. And yet, in his sixties, he’d risen from his bed to lead the men of the town against the raiders – not once, but three times, taking wounds on each
occasion. He was not a straw man – but a brash one. Just the kind to have Theron in his house ten days and never trouble to learn that the man was an Olympian.

Calchus shrugged and drank more wine. ‘Satyrus, I have another problem for you,’ he said. ‘T hose pirates locked up all their rowers in our slave pens – mercenaries and hirelings and slaves. Thanks all the gods they weren’t free men like yours, and armed, or we’d all be dead!’

Satyrus tried to roll over. Without the poppy, the break in his arm ached all the time. The old infected wound was polluting it, and Satyrus missed Alexandria, where the doctors knew about such things. He had other wounds, but they weren’t so bad. But it wasn’t polite to lie flat at a party, and his left hip had a bad cut, so there was just one position that suited him.

‘I was going to order them all killed,’ Calchus said. ‘But it occurred to me that you might take them – you’d could make them row your ships as far as Rhodos, at least. And then let them go – or sell them. Or keep them – they’re hirelings.’

Theron nodded. ‘Better than killing four hundred innocent men,’ he said.

‘Innocent? Athletics doesn’t teach much in the way of ethics, I suppose,’ Calchus said.

‘Not much beyond fair play,’ Theron said.

‘They came here to rape and burn,’ Calchus said, mostly to the audience of his own clients on their couches across the room. ‘Their lives are forfeit.’

Theron raised an eyebrow at Satyrus. Satyrus nodded. ‘We’ll take them. When our wounded are recovered, we’ll take them away.’

‘That’s a load off my mind,’ Calchus said. He shrugged. ‘I’m a hard man – but four hundred? Where would we bury them all? The pirates were bad enough.’

Two hundred pirates – two hundred armoured men – all killed in a night of butchery, and their bodies lay unburied for too long, so that the charnel-house sweetness crept into everything, even through the poppy juice.

Satyrus couldn’t be gone too soon, once he was free of the poppy.

The town and the crew of the
Falcon
shared the armour and weapons of the dead men, and the
Falcon
’s crew – a little thin on the decks of the
Golden Lotus
– was probably the best-armoured crew in the
Mediterranean, although it was all stored below in leather bags under each man’s bench.

The professional rowers from the enemy ships were mustered and sent to row in their original ships, but with every man stripped and a handful of heavily armed Falcons on every deck. Satyrus, Diokles, Theron and Kalos made difficult choices, promoting men to important positions just to get the captured ships off the beach.

One of them was Kleitos. He’d failed once as an oar master – too young, and too afraid of his sudden promotion. This time, on a rain-swept beach on the Euxine, he pushed forward and asked for the job.

‘Let me try again,’ he said to Satyrus. He stood square. ‘You was right to put me back down – but I can do it. I thought and thought about it.’

Theron didn’t know the history, and raised an eyebrow. Diokles, the man who had taken over when Kleitos froze, surprised Satyrus by taking his side. ‘He’s ready now,’ Diokles said.

Satyrus nodded. ‘Very well. Give him the
Hornet
.’

‘Oar master?’ Kleitos asked.

‘Oar master, helmsman, navarch – call yourself what you will. It’s going to be you and Master Theron taking the
Hornet
all the way to Rhodos. You up to it, mister?’ Diokles raised an eyebrow.

Kleitos stood straight. ‘Aye!’

Diokles cast Satyrus a look that suggested he had his doubts, but—

‘Thrassos of Rhodos,’ Theron said, calling another man forward. He was often a boat master, and he’d been slated for command back in Alexandria.

The big, red-haired man stepped forward. He looked like a barbarian, and he was, despite his Greek name. He wore a leather chiton like a farmer and had tattoos all over his arms. ‘Aye?’

‘You’ll have the deck with Master Satyrus,’ Diokles said. ‘Can you handle it?’

Thrassos smiled. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Nah. Serve good, eh?’ His Greek had a guttural edge to it. Slaves washed up as free men at Rhodos, because their little fleet took so many pirates and freed their slaves. Thrassos was clearly a Dacae, or even more of a stranger, a German like Carlus in the Exiles.

Satyrus clasped hands with him anyway. ‘Keep me alive,’ he said.

Thrassos smiled. ‘Me, too.’

*

Two weeks in Tomis and the weather broke, with two days of sun drying the hulls and more promised in Satyrus’s broken bone. His hip was almost healed, and he found himself trapped in endless erotic dreams, as if, having come near death, he needed to mate. It made him feel as if he was still a boy, and at Calchus’s symposia he struggled to hide his instant reaction to the man’s slave girls and their admittedly pitiful dances. Satyrus’s opinion of the man went down again at the sight of these girls – bruised, stone-faced and too young. His mother’s commands about sex with slaves seemed perfectly tailored to them, despite the urges of his sleeping mind and Calchus’s broadest urgings. ‘Take one? Take two – they’re small!’ Every night, the same joke.

‘I need to get going,’ Satyrus said to Theron. ‘Help me! I’m too damned weak to get it done.’

Theron clasped his shoulder softly and moved around, giving the necessary orders and placating Calchus with promises of future visits.

On the beach, with a fair north wind blowing as cold as Tartarus, Satyrus embraced his host. ‘T hanks for your hospitality,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you worried about Eumeles? He’ll need a reprisal.’

‘Not before spring,’ Calchus said. ‘And we’re Lysimachos’s men, here. We’ll get him to send us a garrison. It may even mean war.’

‘How will you send him word?’ Satyrus asked, chilled to the bone already.

Calchus looked uncomfortable. ‘Fishing smack to Amphipolis, perhaps,’ he said. ‘Or a rider overland.’

‘We’ll take the news,’ Satyrus said. Theron raised an eyebrow. Satyrus looked at his former coach. ‘Actions have consequences,’ he said, thinking of Penelope lying dead in a pool of her own blood, all her courage snuffed out by violence.

Clown-voice killed Penelope, and I kill him to settle the score, and Eumeles sends a fleet to Tomis to settle that score. Or perhaps I sail to attack Eumeles, and he forces me to flee, and clown-voice pursues me, and thus kills Penelope – on and on, to the first principle of causality.
Satyrus was lost in thought until Theron nudged him.

‘We’ll pass the news to Lysimachos,’ Satyrus said.

‘You have our eternal thanks already, benefactor!’ Calchus said. ‘Your father was the best of men and you follow him.’

Satyrus was tempted to say that the best of men would not have
caused Penelope’s death, nor Teax’s. But he held his opinions close.

‘Goodbye, guest-friend,’ Satyrus said. He waved to the other towns-men on the beach – a thin crowd, because many of the freemen’s ranks were empty.

They ran the ships into the surf and got under way quickly, fearing a turn in the weather.

The weather held for three days, and they sailed south and east without touching an oar. But just before beaching on the third evening, Theron’s ship suddenly turned into the wind, the signal for trouble, and Satyrus got the
Lotus
alongside as fast as he could. Apollodorus led the marines aboard at a run, and then ran down the central deck, scattering mutineers. Ten men were killed, and Theron shook his head.

‘I tried to reason with them,’ he said thickly. ‘They knocked me on the head.’

Kleitos had put the ship into the wind and held the stern for several long minutes, alone.

Satyrus clasped his hand. ‘Well done!’

The man looked stunned. ‘Didn’t even know what I was doing!’ he muttered. ‘One against so many.’

Apollodorus came back with a dozen oarsmen under guard. ‘Taken in arms,’ he said. ‘No question. Kill ’em?’

Satyrus shook his head. ‘Exchange them for a dozen of our rowers in the
Lotus
.’

They made a poor job of landing the ships for dinner, and the officers gathered in a worried knot by a fire.

‘My arm says we’re in for a weather change,’ Satyrus said. ‘Nothing good there.’

‘Somebody’s spreading the word that we’re going to have ’em all killed,’ Kleitos said. He looked bashful and surprised that he’d spoken out, but he stood his ground. ‘I heard it when they were getting ready to rush me. They asked me to join ’em.’

‘You know them?’ Satyrus asked.

Diokles laughed bitterly. ‘We all know somebody over there. Professional seamen and rowers? Small world, Navarch.’

Satyrus rubbed his beard – he hadn’t shaved since he took his wound. ‘Seems to me we should talk to them,’ he said.

Theron snorted. ‘My head still hurts,’ he said.

‘Promise them wages and a fair landing at Rhodos,’ Satyrus said.

‘Rhodos is death for some of ’em,’ Diokles said. He handed Satyrus a cup of warm wine and honey. ‘That’s why they’re antsy.’

‘Lysimachos could use them,’ Satyrus said, considering the words even as he said them.

‘That’d turn some heads,’ Theron said. ‘T hose men are as good as pirates. Leon is the enemy of every pirate on the seas.’

Satyrus shrugged. ‘It isn’t
right
to kill them, but it isn’t
right
to release them where they’ll serve pirates? Is that it, Master Theron? I hear Philokles in your voice, sir.’

Theron shook his head. ‘My head’s too thick to argue moral philosophy, lad. And I see your point.’

‘I need Lysimachos,’ Satyrus said. ‘He’s supposedly our ally – he’s Ptolemy’s ally, but Alexandria is far away and Lysimachos is close.’

‘Lysimachos might take these men – and the ships they crew – and tell us that we’re lucky to be alive.’ Theron looked around at the other men in the firelight, but the sailors were quiet. Most of them were lower-class freemen, and they weren’t about to intrude on a political argument between two gentlemen.

Satyrus looked pointedly at Diokles. The Tyrian nodded slowly. ‘So? I mean, begging your pardon, but if he does that, he’s no good ally, and we’re still richer by the
Golden Lotus
and our lives. And frankly, gents – you can’t build a fleet on these hulls. We captured a few old triremes. Only
Hornet
is worth a crap. There’s worm in the other two.’

Theron nodded. He slapped Diokles on the shoulder. ‘That’ll teach me to talk about things I don’t really know,’ he said. ‘In future, don’t hold your tongue.’

The dark-haired Tyrian’s earrings twinkled in the firelight. ‘So?’

‘So – let’s muster the lot of them – our oarsmen too. We’ll tell it to them straight.’ Satyrus was nodding as he spoke. ‘And, Apollodorus, marines, full armour. So they see the other choice.’

Apollodorus nodded. ‘Just for the poets, Navarch – I’d rather you executed a couple first. That’s a message the rest will understand.’

Theron looked away in distaste, but Diokles nodded. ‘I agree. Kill a couple of the louts who were caught with weapons today.’

‘In cold blood?’ Satyrus asked.

‘I wasn’t planning to give ’em swords,’ Apollodorus said. ‘Don’t worry, Navarch. I’ll do it.’

‘No,’ Satyrus said. He swallowed, feeling trapped. Feeling as if some thing was moving on the dark beach. Furies. Curses. His oath to avenge his mother. He shook his head. He thought of Teax. Of the consequences of being a king.