Satyrus had no idea which way the fight was oriented now, and he’d lost Lucius when he fell. He ripped his sopping chlamys over his head and rolled it on his left arm, shoulder burning — and took a pair of blows on his back, but neither was hard and he got to his feet, head swinging like a hawk’s, looking for the Italian, terror stealing his breath.
And then he saw the Italian — the man had the officer he’d knocked down in his first rush by the heels, was dragging him clear.
Satyrus pushed forward and found himself facing an enormous man with a spear that hit as hard as an axe, and Satyrus was forced to one knee to parry the spear with his cloak. He couldn’t take another such blow, so he powered forward, like a man tackling a goat, and cut behind the man’s knees as the man’s spear-butt crashed on his helmet — he smelled blood, saw a bright light and continued forward and the man fell back, cursing, fell to the ground, his hamstring cut, and Satyrus pinned his shield to his chest and thrust his sword point through the man’s eye-
As he realised that he had just killed Nestor, the captain of his lover’s guard. His friend, from childhood. Guest friend, sworn friend-
Satyrus screamed into the god-filled night, a cry of pain and rage as loud as his lord Herakles had ever bellowed, a cry so loud that it carried over the roar of the storm.
Men flinched from that scream. Something died in Satyrus with that scream, which tore from him whatever shreds of youth still clung to him, so that the sound leaving his throat might have taken something of his soul with it out of the trap of his teeth and into the hateful night.
Draco’s head snapped around — because a man who has just lost a friend of forty years knows exactly what is contained in that scream — and the Macedonian fought his way to Satyrus’ side and pulled him to his feet, heedless of the enemy, who had mostly fallen back to cower against the wall.
Satyrus looked at the enemy, eyes blank with hate — not hate for the men who faced him, either.
‘Amastris!’ he roared at the night. Aphrodite’s Laughter, he thought. I hate the gods.
Draco plunged back into the cold inferno of the fight. Satyrus stumbled back, watching his life burn before his eyes as surely as if a lightning bolt had hit him.
Amastris was helping Demetrios. With her best. And Satyrus had just faced Stratokles, and Lucius, and. . Nestor.
He wrenched his helmet off his head, wiped the streaming water from his eyes and pulled the helmet back on.
The storm was less severe, now, and men were pouring over the makeshift wall at the south end of the mole — Apollodorus and his marines.
Satyrus watched a boat pull away from the mole into the teeth of the storm — three times its pair of oarsmen tried to leave, only to be smashed alongside, but the boat didn’t capsize and the oarsmen kept their nerve and then the boat was away, climbing a breaker into the storm.
Lucius and Stratokles, of course.
Satyrus’ face worked like that of a horrified child, and he ran to the edge of the mole, roared ‘Amastris’ at the storm and hurled his sword at them. It arched up into the storm and vanished into the huge waters.
The boat slipped over the height of the wave and vanished into the darkness.
And Satyrus began, like an adult, to work on controlling his fear, his anguish and his horror.
Behind him, in between the flashes of lightning in the dwindling storm, columns of fire rose to the heavens. Even in driving rain, pitch-painted ships burn well.
26
DAYS THIRTY AND FOLLOWING
Panther was dead. He had died in the lightning, killed by an unlucky spear thrust from an enemy marine as he led his boarders into the engine-ships. His ram had broken the boom, flashing out of the storm like a bolt of black lightning to strike the boom with the full force of the wind and sea, and it had smashed in the whole bow of his own ship. His men had followed him over the bows into Demetrios’ ships, taking a penteres and a trireme in exchange and bringing them safely through the shattered boom.
Satyrus’ men cleared the mole, and before they had finished, they were so satiated with killing that they had two hundred prisoners, who included many of Amastris’ guardsmen. Satyrus sent them back to his former lover in exchange for Panther’s body — two hundred men for a corpse. No one in Rhodes questioned him.
He walked out of the town with the dawn, the second day after the assault on the mole. His eyes were dry and his mind clear.
He walked a stade from the town, as agreed by heralds, accompanied only by his hetairoi. He had Anaxagoras and Charmides, Neiron and Jubal, Helios, Apollodorus, Draco, Leosthenes the priest, Abraham and twenty others, all wearing their best armour. Ten marines carried Nestor on a bier made of his men’s shields.
Demetrios met them on horseback — a magnificent golden horse with a saddlecloth of leopard skin, his own armour a yellow gold that caught the rising sun and made him glow like a god.
Surely, thought Satyrus, the intended effect.
Satyrus wore his best — his bronze armour, his silvered helmet. And when he approached the mounted man, he had the satisfaction of seeing the golden man’s blue eyes widen.
Demetrios raised a leg over the saddlecloth and slipped from his horse as elegantly as a Sakje maiden.
‘Satyrus!’ he said.
‘Demetrios,’ Satyrus said, and saluted, as one priest salutes another.
Demetrios, rarely brought up short, was breathless. ‘You — we understood that you were dead.’
Satyrus looked away. ‘I live,’ he said.
Demetrios embraced him. It was one of the strangest moments of his life to have this man, this implacable enemy, embrace him. ‘You give me life, brother!’ Demetrios said in his ear. ‘I am not held at bay by a council of old men, after all. I am in a contest with a worthy foe.’
Satyrus started as if an adder had appeared between Demetrios’ lips. ‘This is no contest,’ he said.
Demetrios’ grin might have split the heavens. ‘This is the contest of my life!’ he said. ‘Who could ask for more? We are not men, Satyrus! We are gods! And we contest for worthy things — glory, and honour! Not puny things like cities and women. This is the siege of Troy born again, and you, my love, are my Hektor.’
Satyrus met his eyes. Sadly, they were not mad. Madness might have been some excuse. He spat, in contempt.
‘I am not Hektor,’ Satyrus said. ‘I return the corpse of a great man — a hero, who died for his queen when lesser men fled. I offer it free — although if she was worth an obol, she’d have craved his body as we craved that of Panther.’ Satyrus waved at the two hundred prisoners who were marching out of the city. ‘And these — I return. Where is the body of my friend?’
‘He’s just an old man!’ Demetrios said, as if something about the scene made no sense.
‘God or not, Demetrios, when you lack the sense to honour your own heroes, your men will leave you,’ Satyrus said. He knew it was foolish to offer advice to the enemy, but he couldn’t resist.
‘You return two hundred warriors for a dead man?’ asked one of Demetrios’ staff officers. ‘He is a fool, Lord King.’
Demetrios turned and struck the man so hard that he fell on his back. ‘You are a fool, Phillip.’ He turned back to Satyrus. ‘You are winning, aren’t you?’
Satyrus permitted himself to smile. ‘I am winning by so much that I can give you two hundred living men — good spearmen — for the corpse of a friend.’
A movement passed through Demetrios’ staff like a wind through a stand of trees on a still day.
‘I will take this city,’ Demetrios said.
‘No,’ Satyrus said. He turned, and put his hand to Panther’s bier.