‘Gentlemen,’ he said, and they murmured their greetings.
‘We’re ready,’ Abraham said.
Satyrus shook his head. ‘I’ve called you together to prevent just such a misunderstanding,’ Satyrus said. ‘I expect no trouble from the boule. But they may act against me — indeed, they may arrest me. They may even feel that they have to arrest me, against their own desires.’ Satyrus raised his arms and indicated his finery. ‘I’m trying to dress to remind them who I am — but I may fail. If they take me, gentlemen, you are to submit absolutely to their instructions.’
That got a reaction. Idomeneus spat. ‘Like fuck!’ the Cretan said.
‘Listen, friends,’ Satyrus said. ‘We’re here to do a job. I’ve said this from the start — I’m King of the Bosporus, not King of Rhodes. If you quarrel with these men, the town will fall. We win — as a team — when Demetrios sails away from these walls, and our grain warehouses and all the merchants who deal with us are safe. We win if we beat Demetrios here, because by winning here, we assure he will never come to our homes in the Euxine. Arrest me, put me on trial — if you continue to fight on, if Jubal springs his lovely trap-’
‘Jubal has a trap?’ Neiron asked.
‘I’ve avoided talking about it until Nicanor was. . put down.’ Satyrus shrugged. ‘Obey me, friends. Just this once — no heroics, no running amok.’
Idomeneus was the first to embrace him. ‘I’ll obey,’ he said, ‘but what you’re really saying is that the stupid wide-arses intend to arrest you!’
Satyrus was mobbed by his friends, which he enjoyed thoroughly. It helped wipe some of the blood from his hands. ‘Yes,’ he said ruefully.
Neiron embraced him last. ‘We’ve had our differences,’ he said.
Satyrus had to smile. ‘Better to say, “there have been times we’ve agreed”.’
‘But you were right to kill him. You’re a tyrannicide, not a tyrant. And many here feel as I do.’ There were tears in the man’s eyes.
Beyond Neiron was Abraham. ‘They’re fools,’ he said. He and Satyrus embraced.
And outside the courtyard was Miriam, hollow-eyed with fatigue.
Satyrus’ heart rose when he saw her. She didn’t shirk meeting his eye, and he felt that he had to say something.
‘I had to do it,’ he said. It sounded lame, put like that.
She stepped up to him and kissed him, causing her brother to go white with shock. ‘Someone had to do it,’ she said. ‘As usual, you did it yourself.’
‘You are the very mistress of ambiguity,’ he said. Her chaste kiss felt like a new bruise. He wanted to lick his lips. Or hers.
She smiled from under her eyelashes, and then he was walking away, as if nothing had happened.
The boule did not arrest him, or order him to trial, or to be executed.
They appointed him polemarch, the war commander of the city.
28
DAY SIXTY AND FOLLOWING
The seventy-fifth day of the siege, Diokles slipped out of a long line of storm clouds with four captured Athenian grain ships — great ships, the height of four men — and ran them into the outer harbour before any of Demetrios’ ships dared leave the beach. Diokles’ former helmsmen had time to embrace him once, wave at the soldiers piling ashore and laugh.
‘We’re killing Demetrios at sea,’ he said. ‘And Leon snapped up a whole Athenian relief squadron. Do you need us to get you out of here?’
Satyrus shook his head. ‘I’m the commander,’ he said.
Diokles laughed. ‘I should have known. If there’s smoke, there you are, fanning it. Leon says to tell Panther to send all the rest of their fleet to sea — we have Syme and two other ports, and we’re getting ready to challenge the bugger before winter sets in. We’ve got six thousand Aegyptians ready to land, and your impetuous sister is up at Timaea with Nikephorus and Coenus and all your mercenaries.’
Satyrus nodded. ‘Superb — but only if you can keep us fed.’
‘You must need more men!’ Diokles said.
Satyrus nodded. ‘I need men. I need archers — every archer is worth ten men. But food is the sticking point, and soon, very soon, Apollo will start to shoot his poisoned shafts into the town. There’s people in the Neodamodeis camp who look. . well, like sick people.’
Diokles winced. ‘I’ll tell Leon. You tell Panther.’
‘Panther’s dead,’ Satyrus said.
‘Poseidon!’ Diokles said. ‘Hades. I loved that man.’ He looked around. ‘This place looks as if it has been crushed under Zeus’ heel. Can you hold another month?’
Satyrus nodded. ‘We hold this town one day at a time,’ he said.
The disease started in the slave camps. Too many of them had not been freed — at least, in Satyrus’ opinion. The ones left enslaved were prey to despair. And poor diet and despair were the breeding grounds of disease. Satyrus was a pious man, but he had no trouble noting that hungry men got sick faster than full men.
Women were next. And when they were sick, their men got sick.
Three weeks after his confident assertion that he had all the men he needed, Satyrus was guarding the walls with fewer than a thousand men. Apollo was stalking his own city, and his poisoned shafts were reaping a rich harvest.
Satyrus fought off a probing assault on the latest south curtain wall with his own marines and the ephebes. The rest of the garrison was sick. Or dead. Apollodorus’ marines were curiously immune. Charmides, who was by then madly in love with Aspasia’s daughter Nike, went from sick bed to sick bed, reckless of the disease, and it never touched him.
Miriam did the same, and Satyrus got a hint of the fear he might cause in those who loved him — she went from sick tent to sick tent, and he shuddered for her. Had Miriam not been a Jew, the town would have offered to make her Aspasia’s deputy priestess — she went everywhere that the older woman went, to rich and poor, and neither of them had sickened.
So far.
On the eighty-eighth day of the siege, with the first breath of autumn weather off the harbour, heavy mist rising from the warm water on a brisk morning, Diokles appeared with a pair of ships — Tanais merchant ships, loaded to the gunwales with grain, wine, oil and archers.
Sakje archers.
Bundles of arrows — long, heavy cedar shafts for the Cretans. Cane arrows and stiff pine shafts for the Sakje.
The Sakje came off the ships in a mob, and the sound of their rough voices and the smell of their coats made him smile. He smiled even more when he saw men he knew — and women, too. Scopasis, and Thyrsis, both carrying heavy woolsacks.
‘No horses here!’ Satyrus quipped at Scopasis.
The former bandit with the scarred face squinted, and his scars made a smile that made most men blanch. ‘Lady says come. We come.’ He clasped hands with Satyrus.
‘How is she?’ Satyrus asked. ‘Gods, I miss her!’
‘Good!’ Melitta said. She was wearing a pale caribou-hide coat worked in blue — their mother’s, he thought. She was. . stronger-looking than ever. She looked like an intelligent hawk — small, fierce and ready to eat anything she didn’t like. She had a line of white in her blue-black hair. ‘I missed you too. And since you couldn’t be bothered to come home and rule your own kingdom, I’ve come here to fetch you back.’
She hugged him, and he hugged her.
They walked up through the town, hand in hand.
‘Smells like death,’ she said.
‘That’s your war name, not mine,’ he said.
‘This town smells like death. Like shit.’ She shook her head. ‘Why are you here?’
Satyrus stopped. ‘They need me. And this is our grain centre.’
Melitta grinned. ‘Save it for people who don’t know you.’