Whereas her marriage to Satyrus would mean that he would have to start all over again.
BOOK ONE
1
TANAIS, EUXINE SEA, SPRING 306 BC
Late winter, or perhaps early spring on the shores of the Euxine. The first crocus buds were peeping out of the earth, and the lambs were coming, and the horses were foaling, and in just a few weeks there would be fresh green on the Sea of Grass.
Two archers stood on the city’s Field of Ares, shooting arrows into a distant target made of linen canvas stuffed tight with rags and straw. Shooting with a precision that bored the onlookers, who mostly sat on the dead winter grass enjoying the first day of sunshine. Until both archers started shouting.
Melitta touched the corner of her mouth with the fletchings at the peak of her draw, and loosed her arrow at the target.
It struck home with a satisfying thwack as the barbed head cut the taut canvas. ‘When is she going to marry you, if she loves you so much?’ she asked her brother.
Satyrus pulled an arrow from the gorytos at his waist and nocked the arrow. He drew a breath, raised the bow and shot — a continuous motion that sent the arrow into the target with the same flat thwack. ‘When her uncle is done traipsing about pretending to be one of Alexander’s men,’ Satyrus said. He didn’t hide the disappointment in his voice. Every spring brought a new delay in his wedding plans. He was twenty-four, and Amastris was older.
Melitta nocked, drew and shot. Thwack. ‘You have a slave in your bed,’ she said, accusingly.
Satyrus nocked, drew and loosed. His arrow flew over the top of the target. ‘By the Lord of the Silver Bow, sister, is that any of your business?’ he asked pettishly.
‘We swore to Mater that we would not lie with slaves,’ she said. ‘You missed, by the way. The horse is mine.’
Satyrus struggled with his temper for as long as it took his heart to beat three times. ‘Yes,’ he said after the third heartbeat.
‘Yes, you are sleeping with a slave? Or yes, the horse is mine?’ Melitta asked. Just for emphasis, she drew, nocked and shot again — and her arrow struck dead in the centre of the mark.
‘Yes, I think it’s time you got moving on your spring progress,’ Satyrus said. He didn’t do a very good job of keeping the anger out of his voice.
‘Splendid!’ Melitta said. ‘What a very good job you are making of living up to Mater’s desires. And Philokles’! And Leon’s! We said we would not have slaves. How are you doing with that, brother? I seem to see more agricultural slaves arrive every day.’
‘Some of them on Leon’s ships!’ he shot back. ‘This is the real world, sister! You go and ride the plains and pretend to be a nomad princess. I have a kingdom to manage. We need agricultural labour.”
‘In our beds? Get me one, brother. A nice one with a big cock.’ She rolled her hips. ‘How’s that!’
‘Ares! You are the limit! It is not your business who’s in my bed!’ The King of the Bosporus realised that he had shouted the last, and that even on the Field of Ares outside the city people were watching them.
Melitta shrugged. ‘Handsome boy like you ought to be doing better than agricultural labour,’ she said.
‘Perhaps I could sleep with the captain of my bodyguard?’ Satyrus asked his sister.
‘Shut your mouth!’ she hissed.
‘Of course, he’s twice my age — but surely Coenus is still a good-looking man,’ Satyrus finished, satisfied that he’d punched through his sister’s air of superiority. He had long suspected that she slept with her guard captain, Scopasis, a former outlaw.
They stood and glared at each other for ten heartbeats.
‘At least he’s not a slave,’ she said — and she meant to hurt.
‘That’s all right,’ he shot back. ‘Go out on the plains and leave your son with me to raise.’
In fact, she wasn’t the most devoted mother, and that shot hit its target squarely so that she turned bright crimson from the roots of her black hair to the tops of her breasts, just visible under her slightly open Persian coat.
‘You owe me a horse,’ she said, and walked away. She walked ten steps and turned, unable to stop herself. ‘You need to stop pretending that Amastris will marry you. Find yourself a girl. Fuck her and make some children, and then you can talk to me-’ She was choking up, getting angry, threatened with tears and hating herself for it. ‘Then you can talk to me about children.’ She walked to her horse, leaped into the saddle and dashed away.
‘That is the king?’ asked a foreign voice. The man sounded puzzled.
‘The king’s not available just now.’ Satyrus turned his head, anger still pounding away in his bloodstream and saw his hypaspist, Helios, standing with a powerfully built man — Satyrus had seen him arrive — Antigonus’ ambassador Niocles, son of Laertes of Macedon. Or so his morning report had said.
Helios hurried to his side, and Satyrus handed him his bow and gorytos to carry. ‘What’s next?’ he asked, walking to his horse.
‘The new plough, lord,’ Helios said.
‘I’ll skip that,’ Satyrus said. Anger was still heavy inside him, so big that it seemed to fill his breast and choke him. How dare she tax him with his slave-girl. He took a deep breath. How disgusting it was of him to hit back at her motherhood.
The problem of being twins was that you were born able to hurt the person you loved the most.
‘Lord, you said you had to see the plough today or it would be too late-’ Helios sounded contrite, but he knew his master and he knew his duty.
‘Then I shall.’ Satyrus cut short a lecture on duty by jumping onto his charger’s back and putting his heels to the animal’s sides, and he was gone as fast as his sister.
Satyrus owned a number of farms around the perimeter of Tanais, the city that he made his capital. It was the city founded by his father — posthumously, it is true. The bronze statue of his father still loomed over the agora, although other statues were joining it.
Thinking about his father — heroised, and almost deified — didn’t help him dismiss his bad behaviour. Nor, as he rode along the escarpment and looked down into the valley of the Tanais River, did thoughts of Philokles, his tutor, with whom he had often galloped these same stades.
He rode down the near cliff at a reckless pace and his horse carried him in great bounds, his four feet seeming to skim the earth. Satyrus kept his seat at the base of the ridge only by leaning well back and clamping his knees like the vice in a bootmaker’s shop. And when he felt his charger’s pace ease, he righted himself, leaned low over the stallion’s neck and galloped along the road — the road where he’d killed his first man.
And his first woman.
Right here, he’d shot her. She’d been lying wounded, and he’d leaned over and put an arrow in her and watched her die. Just his age, at the time; thirteen or fourteen. He still saw the look on her face. He still wondered where she went when she left her body — and what awaited him.
He flew along the road, past the stream where the salmon went to breed and up the next hill to where he kept his own farm. It was a wealthy farm, with stone barns and a good house, and he rode into the yard, his stallion throwing clods of earth from the wet road.
He’d left his attendants far behind, except for Helios who was hard on his heels. His farm manager, Lekthes, was waiting by the ox shed.
‘You came, lord!’ he laughed.
‘Am I so unreliable?’ Satyrus asked.
‘Reckon there ain’t many kings in the circle of the world who till their own fields,’ Lekthes said. He spat. ‘Plough’s hitched. How do your courtiers say it? He awaits your pleasure.’ Lekthes was a freedman, a former slave who’d been purchased by Leon to run farms and train new farmers. He didn’t have the habits of a slave, though. In some ways, he was the most arrogant man Satyrus had ever met. He had the arrogance of a craftsman.