Tyrant: Force of Kings (20 page)

Achilles was already mounted. ‘I’m going down across Asopus, and cross country to Thebes,’ he said. ‘Then north to Delphi. I expect to make it there in two days unless we have to hide.’

Memnon gave a rough salute, his dark skin glinting in the fitful torchlight like polished iron. ‘I’ll find you.’

Then they were away, down the hill, picking their way carefully along the road in moonless darkness. The stars were like distant lamps on the clear night, and the sound of insects was only drowned by the gurgle of the river as they rode to the bridge.

Achilles leaned over and handed Satyrus a spear. ‘I don’t see anyone on the bridge,’ he said, ‘but fuck, there could be twenty men behind that house and I wouldn’t see them.’

He rode forward first, and Satyrus followed him, feeling freer with a good cavalry spear in his fist. The feeling lasted until their horses’ unshod hooves were ringing on the stone bridge, and then Achilles stopped his horse and cursed, filling the narrow bridge, and Satyrus glanced back to find that there were at least a dozen horsemen closing in behind him.

He couldn’t see past Achilles, but even over the sound of water he could hear the sounds of a troop of horse – sounds familiar from childhood.

‘Boss …’ Achilles turned in his saddle. He had a sword in his hand, but it wasn’t pointed at Satyrus. ‘I think we’ve fucked away your talents of silver, I’m sorry to say.’ He shrugged. ‘We’re surrounded. Demetrios’s men, I’d say.’

Satyrus looked back again. ‘Damn.’

Achilles shrugged. ‘To be honest, it’s probably our fault, but I’d rather not die for it. Will you surrender?’

Satyrus patted the blade at his side. He balanced the spear in his hand. The horsemen behind him were sitting – not calm, either. ‘Probably not,’ he said.

Achilles nodded. ‘Try talking to the officer. Look, lord, he probably has a
hundred men
and they’ve been all around us since afternoon.’

‘Satyrus of Tanais?’ called an officer. He was tall and blond. Satyrus could remember him from Demetrios’s staff. His armour was worth the value of the farm on the hill, or more.

Satyrus nodded. ‘Here I am. I have a truce with your master. Why are you here?’

The officer’s grin showed obvious relief. ‘Lord, I’m so damned glad to find you I could burst. Lord, we’re here to
protect
you. Thanks to all the gods you’re alive.’

Satyrus looked around. ‘This is not what I expected,’ he said to Achilles. He looked at the sell-sword. ‘You didn’t sell me yourself ?’ he asked quietly.

Achilles frowned. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Bad for my reputation, something like that.’

‘Would you four ride with me? If I went with them?’ Satyrus pointed at the Aegema. ‘My offer is still good.’

‘Escort?’ Achilles asked.

‘If he agrees to it, and leaves us all armed, I learn something,’ Satyrus said. ‘To be honest, if you and he can’t agree to that – I might as well fall on my sword. I’m not going to be taken again. And for whatever reason, I trust you.’

Achilles nodded.

Satyrus called down the bridge, ‘I’ll come with you if I can take my escort – armed and mounted – with me. I keep my weapons, and he keeps his.’

The officer – Philip? Amyntas? All the Macedonians had the same set of names – nodded eagerly. ‘Yes, yes. Anything you like, lord, only come to Corinth with me.’

Achilles shrugged. ‘Memnon’s sharp enough. He’ll figure out we was took, and come, or not.’

‘We’re coming in, then,’ Satyrus called. He loosened his sword in the sheath, and rode down the bridge behind Achilles.

No one grabbed his bridle or made other aggressive motions, which was a good sign. Satyrus rode right up to the officer. ‘I’m Satyrus of Tanais,’ he said. ‘This is my bodyguard, Achilles. He’ll be wanting to knock at the ferryman’s door, here. You won’t stop him, will you?’

‘Amyntas son of Philip,’ the man said, pulling his helmet off and hanging it from a web of equipment behind his saddle with the ease of long practice. ‘You’ve just earned me a promotion, lord, and no mistake. Rumour is men are trying to kill you – Demetrios addressed us himself, offered a reward to find you.’

Achilles dismounted at the old ferry house, where the ferry had been before Alexander ordered the bridge built. The old man who lived there was wide awake and terrified – every peasant in the village, if not all of Plataea, had to know that the countryside was full of cavalrymen that night. But he accepted Achilles’ message, promised that his eldest would take the news up to the Middle Hill Farm in the morning, and that he’d send another son up the mountain. Satyrus gave him a silver owl, and the man managed a smile.

And then they were away, into the dark.

They surprised Satyrus by riding due west – not the straightest way to Corinth, by any means, and very quickly they picked up the Oeroe, at first merely a dry gully on their right, but soon enough a gurgle of water. They stopped once to water their horses, and again at Kreusis – a sleepy village in starlight, with four triremes lying off the beach.

‘They want you bad,’ Achilles said.

Satyrus could only nod, his mouth dry.

They left their horses with the cavalrymen, and the centarch, Amyntas, came in person. ‘No point in pleasing the king if you don’t get the reward in person,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Please come aboard with me.’

‘You’re not acting as if you’re going to kill me in the morning,’ Satyrus said.

Amyntas shook his head. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t think so,’ he said, in a voice that was not completely reassuring. But he led them up onto the trireme, and then he lay down by the oarsman’s bench and went straight to sleep.

As the sun rose over the Gulf of Corinth, it revealed the ancient city and the ongoing siege in stages, so that Satyrus saw the Acrocorinth and the defenders’ citadel first, kissed by the lips of Dawn as she ascended from her lascivious couch to brighten the day, or so some of the oarsmen were asserting in the crudest terms.

The sun caught the temple at the peak of the citadel first, and then the walls, which looked, at the distance of ten stades, as if they were utterly impregnable, towering at an unimaginable height over the plain below, and the rising sun only illuminated the besiegers’ works and camp last. But Demetrios’s camp was vast, covering the plain below Corinth, and he had not one but two siege lines surrounding the whole of the city. From the height of the stern platform, Satyrus could see that Demetrios had two squadrons – one in the Gulf of Corinth, and another blocking the Aegean beaches to the south, so that, with two military camps, twenty stades of earthen walls, and two fleets, he had the defenders completely blockaded; a difficult feat against mighty two-beached Corinth.

Achilles was as awake as he, and stood at his shoulder. ‘The king has them whenever he wants them,’ he said. ‘A strong place ain’t no guarantee, ’gainst the besieger.’

Satyrus had to disagree. ‘We had less to defend at Rhodes,’ he said. ‘And we held him.’

Achilles nodded. ‘And well done, I’m sure. But you had citizens with their lives and fortunes on the line. Prepalaus – that’s Cassander’s strategos in Corinth – he’s got mercenaries, and too many of ’em are not worth goat shit. You can fertilise a field with goat shit.’

Satyrus had to laugh. It made him feel less tense, but his side hurt, his shoulders ached, and his stomach was flipping every minute. And it hurt to laugh – hurt his ribs and his cheek.

Achilles expelled a long fart, and gave a rueful grin. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t like this.’

Satyrus shrugged. ‘Me neither. We may be about to die for a misunderstanding.’ He rolled his shoulders. ‘Waiting is worse than fighting,’ he said.

‘Any time,’ Achilles admitted.

It was half an hour before the ship was landed. The crew beached it sloppily, stern first but without much care, and an oarsman leapt over the side and ran up the beach towards the military camp, clearly the herald of Satyrus’s arrival.

Satyrus didn’t have a high opinion of the rowers or the trierarch or their care for the ship, and then he was jumping into the surf, low gurgling waves a few fingers high. The three of them walked up the beach.

‘The best sign,’ Satyrus said openly to Achilles, ‘is that they’ve left us alone with young Amyntas, who’s really quite well born. I assume that if they meant us harm, they’d have met the ship with an escort.’

The sun was well up, and Achilles caught Satyrus’s glance even as he started to speak. Amyntas whirled, intending either to protest or to threaten, but Satyrus took the sword out of his hand and Achilles had his sword at the Macedonian’s neck so smoothly that it looked as if the three of them were practising.

‘No offence intended,’ Satyrus said. ‘But I’m not eager to be executed by Demetrios.’

Amyntas was purple. ‘He’s not going to execute you!’ he said.

Satyrus nodded. He exchanged looks with Achilles. Now – a little late, perhaps – there were twenty soldiers coming down the beach from the camp, led by a man in ornate armour with a leopard skin over his shoulders.

Satyrus headed up the beach. ‘Demetrios!’ he shouted.

The king of half the world laughed. ‘Satyrus, you are the limit. But alive.’

‘Your cavalryman found me – trapped me very neatly, so no shame to him. But he’s the only bargaining counter I have right now.’ Satyrus motioned over his shoulder, where Satyrus was confident that Achilles had the other man by the throat.

‘He’s my father’s sister’s youngest,’ Demetrios admitted. ‘So I suppose that I want him back.’

Satyrus took another step forward. ‘As I say, he took me neatly enough.’

Demetrios nodded. ‘Good for him, then. He’s earned a reward – even if he did get himself captured on his own beach.’

Satyrus well remembered the bantering voice and the hard steel will behind it. ‘Listen, then, lord. I will hand him over with apologies as soon as you swear to me that you mean me no harm, that you take an oath to the gods that you will not harm me or cause me to be harmed, nor that you yourself have attempted such since the siege. Swear that, and all the swords will vanish.’

Demetrios smiled – an angry smile. ‘Always you seek to force me to oaths, Satyrus. An oath makes a man tributary to the gods. I seek to
be
with the gods.’

‘Swear by Styx, if that pleases you,’ Satyrus said.

Demetrios looked at him. ‘If I kill you right here on this beach, for the seizure of one of my officers, I could thumb my nose at your sister and her allies.’

Satyrus lifted his spear. ‘If you had a thumb left,’ he said.

Demetrios nodded curtly. ‘You are a cocky son of a bitch. Very well, I swear – by Styx, on which the gods themselves swear, on my living father and on my own dead, that I mean you no harm now, nor ever have since the end of the siege of Rhodos, nor will, unless you turn on me. And now you swear the same.’

Satyrus said, ‘I swear by Kineas my father, and Arimnestos of Plataea, and all my family back to Herakles, that I intend you no harm, unless you turn on me, or we face each other on the battlefield.’

Demetrios nodded. ‘And I the same – that’s a clever addition, and I add it to my oath. You’re a clever man. May I have my young scapegrace back?’

Satyrus motioned to Achilles, who released the Macedonian. He glared at Satyrus. ‘I was perfectly courteous to you, my lord.’

Satyrus raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘You are Macedonian, are you not? I learned these habits from your kin.’

Demetrios nodded. ‘I hate walking on sand,’ he said. ‘My best riding boots are full of it now. But you do amuse. This siege had begun to bore me to death, and there’s months left in it. Will you join me for a meal?’

Satyrus sheathed his own sword. ‘With pleasure,’ he said.

The twenty elite hypaspists closed in around him as soon as he sheathed his sword, and for a moment he froze, but Demetrios stood at his elbow, completely relaxed.

‘I had a pair of Cretan archers on you the whole time,’ he said.

Satyrus looked up the beach and saw the two men unstringing their bows. ‘Ah,’ he said.

‘I really mean you no harm,’ he went on. ‘Your sister has bitched my spring campaign completely on your behalf, moving my third fleet out of the Pontus.’ He looked at Satyrus. ‘It was Cassander, cousin. Not me. A woman – Phiale – acting for him. My spies tell me that it was planned at the wedding of your former ally, Heraklea, to that fool Lysimachos.’

Satyrus winced.

They continued to walk up the beach. ‘Oh, I don’t think Amastris or Lysimachos had a thing to do with it,’ Demetrios said. ‘Not that I wish them anything but ill, but Amastris served me well enough against Rhodes and elsewhere. A moment,’ said the besieger, and he turned away to speak to a man in plain armour – an engineer, as it proved, who gave his report on the progress of a ramp of earth going against the walls of Corinth.

Satyrus turned to Achilles. ‘We’re not at threat.’

Achilles looked around. ‘We’ll see,’ he said. ‘But at least we’re not going to be stuck full of arrows in the dawn.’ He grinned at Satyrus. ‘So far, I don’t think much of working for you.’

Satyrus sat on a rock and cleared the sand from his sandals. A hypaspist offered him water, and he took some.

Demetrios returned. ‘Let’s eat. I’m not always fond of getting up this early, but the promise of food can lure me from my rest.’

They ate on the terrace of a farm that overlooked the Gulf of Corinth.

‘I could envy this man,’ Demetrios said as he dipped some golden honey bread in olive oil and honey.

‘The farmer?’ Satyrus asked.

Demetrios nodded. ‘This is how a man should live.’

‘But you wish to be a god?’ Satyrus asked.

Demetrios nodded, his mouth full. ‘I am a man still,’ he admitted. ‘I like the honey bread, the oil, the feel of a breast under my fingers. Hah – if the stories are to be believed, the gods like all those things themselves. But the tale of Herakles has all the clues, does it not? A man may become a god.’ He looked at Satyrus, snapped his fingers, and a slave came to refill his cup. ‘You think me mad,’ he said.

Satyrus shook his head ruefully. ‘Becoming a god has never interested me in the least,’ he admitted. ‘But I should like to be a hero.’ He surprised himself with his own temerity. But it was true.