Tyrant: King of the Bosporus (30 page)

‘Do you befriend your officers?’ Satyrus asked.

Memnon laughed. ‘Not as often as I’d like. It can be lonely on a long voyage – as you well know. I’m not used to a twenty-year-old trierarch. Anyway, I like to be friends with my helmsman, but it isn’t always that way.’

‘Ever try too hard?’ Satyrus asked.

Memnon laughed. ‘Maybe you should be talking to my wife – or a priest. Certainly, Satyrus, I have tried too hard. When you are my age, though, it all seems less important. I have my friends – I am who I am. Some men like me and others cross the street to avoid me, and that’s as it is.’ Memnon shrugged. ‘I care less and less as I grow older.’

Satyrus shook his head ruefully. ‘I seek humility, not further advice towards insularity.’

‘Or arrogance?’ Memnon asked. He laughed. He was a man who laughed easily, even at himself. ‘You aren’t arrogant. You are just used to being obeyed. It’s a good thing in an officer. Perhaps a little difficult in a friend, eh?’ He sat back, made his move and drank some wine. ‘So, you really stared Manes down and called him a coward?’

Satyrus nodded. ‘I did.’

Silence lay between them, and then Satyrus made his move. He was going to lose – and knowledge that he had lost made him play better, so that his ivory fleet might minimize its losses.

‘Most boys – men – your age would have quite a tale to tell,’ Memnon said.

Aspasia entered with his dose. She mixed the poppy and the almond juice by his bed, and Satyrus felt the craving rise in him as he smelled it.

Satyrus tried to push the desire down, wondering at the same time how he would ever stop using the stuff. He thought about his dose
twenty times a day. More. ‘I arranged an ambush, and it didn’t go as well as I had expected. This happens to me – I make plans, and they never carry quite as well as I expect.’ He shrugged. ‘I tried to make him fight me. In effect, he ran away. That made him the victor and me the defeated. I was not . . . careful enough.’

Memnon smiled into his wine cup. ‘You would have taken Manes all by yourself?’ he asked.

Satyrus nodded. ‘To get what I want from the pirates, I will have to kill Manes,’ he said. ‘All by myself. Or die trying.’

Memnon smiled at that and poured a libation. ‘To Apollo, and all the gods. Here’s to living to tell our stories, even if we add a little to them with the passage of years.’

‘If you will pour libations on my new floor, you can fetch a slave to clean it up,’ Aspasia said. But she smiled at her husband. He smiled back, and Satyrus was – jealous? Not jealous, precisely. He felt that they had something that he was missing. Something he really only shared with his sister. He took his dose and drifted off, thinking of Melitta.

The next day, Timaeus and Panther came with Neiron. Memnon came in, too, although Satyrus knew he had a ship in lading. They crowded around Satyrus’s bed while cold winter rain lashed the pebbles of the beach outside.

Timaeus took a cup of wine from a slave, saluted his hostess and nodded to Satyrus. ‘Only the man who called Manes a coward could get me out on a day like this, lad,’ he said.

Panther went straight to the point. ‘Neiron here says that you have a proposition for us.’

Satyrus gave his helmsman a brief look. He couldn’t imagine Neiron approaching the Rhodians. The man didn’t have that much initiative – unless Satyrus had badly misjudged him.

Neiron shrugged. ‘If I was out of line, I beg your forgiveness, lord. But these men have your trust, and they asked a hundred questions about Byzantium. It seemed easiest just to tell them.’

Satyrus nodded. ‘No apology required. Timaeus, I have come in hopes that Rhodos will loan me a powerful squadron – in exchange for my clearing the Bosporus and the Propontis of pirates.’

Panther leaned forward. ‘And how,
exactly
, will you do that?’

Satyrus met Panther’s eye. ‘I’ll lead them into the Euxine and use them against Eumeles of Pantecapaeum.’

Timaeus laughed. He was heavily bearded, and men said that he was the avatar of Poseidon, and today, with rain in his curly hair and the summer tan gone from his skin, he looked the part. He laughed like a god as well – a heavy laugh that shook the rafters. ‘You are bold!’ he said.

Satyrus laughed with him. ‘Laugh all you like,’ he said when they were done. ‘My way will not fail. If I win, the pirates are gone – employed by me. If I lose, they are still gone – to the bottom of the Euxine.’

‘But you want a squadron from us,’ Panther said.

‘I will not win without a disciplined core,’ Satyrus said. ‘The pirates have thirty or forty ships that can stand in the line of battle, but they are not a fleet. I will have a few ships of my own, and I hope to add a few more from Lysimachos. None of my ships – except perhaps the
Lotus
– is as good as a Rhodian.’

‘We have steered well clear of helping any of the Diadochoi,’ Timaeus said. ‘Why would we help you?’

‘Because I will reopen trade into the Euxine – a grain trade that Rhodos needs and Athens needs. Lysimachos needs it and so does Cassander. Because I will get rid of more pirates in the spring than your whole fleet in a year’s campaign – just by taking them away.’

‘Yes, lad – but why would we serve with you? You’ll take them away whether we come along for the ride or not.’ Timaeus laughed again. ‘And personal feeling aside – if you plan to take them to fight Eumeles, perhaps we should prefer that he then triumph over you? Then the pirates are dead, and we haven’t lifted a finger.’

Satyrus nodded. ‘Two points, Lord Navarch. First, one of morality. Some of the pirates are vicious men – look at Manes. But more of them are merely displaced. Alexander built fleets and now all the Diadochoi follow suit – they use them and then discard them.’

‘Hence our distaste for them, lad,’ Timaeus said.

‘But the pirates themselves – many of them – are scarcely to blame.’ Satyrus could see that this point was of no interest whatsoever to his audience, so he waved negation. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘Second point. The day is coming when your neutrality will be tantamount to declaring a side. Already, twice, Antigonus and his son have blockaded you.
If they’d had the siege machines, they’d have attacked. If Antigonus ever tries for Aegypt again, he must have your alliance or your submission.’

‘True,’ Panther said.

‘And I am
not
one of the Diadochoi. I am Leon’s nephew, and when I am king of the Bosporus, I can guarantee you a friendly fleet and a constant grain supply. When Antigonus makes his move and Rhodos is besieged, you will need me.’ Satyrus sat back and crossed his arms.

Now Panther stroked his beard.

Timaeus shook his head. ‘Pirates!’ he said.

‘Mercenaries,’ Satyrus shot back. ‘Daedalus is an exile from Halicarnassus, and Demostrate is an exile from Pantecapaeum. Why is one a mercenary and the other a pirate?’

‘You might yet have a career as a sophist,’ Timaeus answered. ‘A pirate is a pirate. You may call sheepdogs the same as wolves, but when the real wolves come, everyone knows what they smell like.’

‘The ally we need is Lysimachos,’ Panther said. ‘And he hates Demostrate as much as we do.’

‘If I can show you an alliance with Lysimachos?’ Satyrus asked. ‘I have asked him. Eumeles has attacked his Thracian possessions in the Euxine – only raids now, but he will land to stay in time. As long as Demostrate holds the Bosporus, Lysimachos cannot reinforce his garrisons. But if I take Demostrate away, instantly Lysimachos is master of his own shores.’

Panther looked at his co-navarch. ‘I see this,’ he said.

Timaeus shook his head. ‘It is complex.’

Memnon, silent until now, leaned forward. ‘I’m sorry to betray a confidence, Satyrus, but I’m a Rhodian first. You said yourself that your plans are often too complex.’ He shrugged. ‘Can you carry this off?’

Neiron shook his head. ‘His plans are excellent. No man – not even the gods – can plan for everything.’ The Cardian looked around. ‘He planned the ambush of Manes, and failed. But none of your captains brought the Terror to heel. This man will.’

Satyrus looked at his helmsman, vowing to give the man anything he asked. Neiron spoke out better in this foreign council than even Diokles might have – Diokles would have been handicapped by
service to Rhodos. ‘I do make complex plans,’ he admitted. ‘I am one man, trying to restore my kingdom. If Olbia had a straight road from Alexandria, I wouldn’t trouble you – or Demostrate.’

Timaeus nodded. ‘Fair enough. You’ve given us something to consider. When do you sail?’

Satyrus managed a smile. ‘I sail when Aspasia says I sail.’

Timaeus and Panther exchanged a long look. ‘Alexandria?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Satyrus answered.

‘Perhaps you could pick us up a cargo? And we’d meet again in a month,’ Timaeus suggested.

‘A cargo from Alexandria? In winter?’ Satyrus asked. The seas south of Cyprus were deadly in winter. ‘I’ll charge you a bonus for every mina of grain.’

Timaeus shrugged. ‘We’ll take it out of our fee for the squadron,’ he said. ‘If we agree.’

Alexandria spread before him like a basket of riches, the greatest harbour in the world surrounded by a city expanding so fast that a man could sit on the stern of his ship and watch the suburbs grow. At the end of the Pharos peninsula, a long spit of land that protruded like a caribou horn from the curve of the shore, workmen toiled with great blocks of limestone, laying the foundations of Ptolemy’s proposed lighthouse even as thousands of other labourers carried baskets of earth from the mainland to widen and firm up the ground.

Satyrus stood by Neiron and watched Pharos slip past as his oarsmen dipped, paused and dipped again, bringing his ship slowly, carefully through the mass of shipping that filled the roadstead and crowded the beaches.

‘There’s Master Leon’s house,’ the lookout in the bow called.

Satyrus had a feeling of dread wash over him. He had no reason to feel that way, and he made a peasant sign of aversion.

‘We’ll land on the beach by the house,’ he said.

Neiron nodded.

Satyrus had his rebroken arm splinted and tightly wrapped against his chest, but it hurt all the time. He watched the shore, attempting to rid himself of his mood and trying not to dwell on the pain in his arm.

Neither was particularly successful.

‘Guard ship!’ the lookout called.

‘Messus has to go,’ Satyrus said to Neiron.

‘I’ll see to it,’ Neiron said. He shrugged. ‘Messus is just as unhappy as you are.’

‘I don’t see him growing into the job,’ Satyrus said, shaking his head.

‘No,’ Neiron said. He stroked his beard, his eyes on the approaching guard ship. ‘Leon has merchant hulls – some of them quite fast. Like
Sparrow Hawk
. He could handle one of those, I think.’

Satyrus shook his head. Annoyed at always having to be the hard voice. ‘He lacks authority.’

Neiron looked as if he was going to disagree.

‘He lacks authority!’ Satyrus snapped. Then he slumped. ‘I’m becoming a bloody tyrant.’

‘You do have a certain sense of your own importance,’ Neiron said carefully.

Satyrus shook his head. ‘It just goes on and on,’ he said, but he didn’t specify what it was.

‘Oars – in!’ Messus called. His timing was poor, and the oarsmen, who liked him, tried to compensate, but a hundred and eighty oarsmen can’t all pretend that an order is properly given, and the
Golden Lotus
looked a far cry from her legendary efficiency as her wings folded in.

The guard ship coasted alongside and her trierarch stepped aboard trailing the smell of expensive oils. ‘Cargo?’ he demanded as his crimson boots hit the deck. ‘I’m Menander, captain of the customs. Please show me your sailing bills.’

‘Alum and hides,’ Satyrus said.

‘Hides for Aegypt? Leon’s nephew must have lost his mind!’ the man said. He made a note on his wax tablets.

Satyrus was growing angry again, but he knew that to lose his temper would be to act like a fool. He caught Neiron’s look. ‘I am injured, and not my best,’ he said with a bow. ‘My helmsman will handle this business.’ Satyrus withdrew to the helmsman’s bench. Neiron handed over a purse, and Menander peered into the hold, as if he could see past the lower-deck oarsmen and into the earthenware amphorae and the bales. ‘All seems to be in order here,’ he said, the purse bulging inside his chiton. He stepped back into his ship and they poled off, pulling strongly for their next victim.

‘Now that’s piracy, if you were to ask me,’ Neiron said.

‘T hanks,’ Satyrus said. ‘I’m in a mood to do harm. Something is wrong – I can feel it.’

Neiron shook his head. ‘No – it’s the poppy, Satyrus. That’s all – throws your mind off. Sometimes a wound will do it alone – but a wound and the poppy can be deadly friends. I’ve had a few wounds.’ He shrugged. ‘Took one in my scalp – siege of Tyre, when I was young. It wouldn’t heal, and the bump grew and grew. I thought I was going mad.’

‘But you didn’t,’ Satyrus said.

Neiron stared at the approaching shore. ‘Well – I did, for a bit. But that’s not what I mean.’

Satyrus had to smile. ‘This story is supposed to cheer me up?’