‘I will have you in ten days!’ Demetrios called.
Satyrus kept walking.
At his heels, Neiron grunted. ‘Best thrust of the siege,’ he said.
‘I thought so,’ Satyrus said.
‘Why?’ Helios asked.
Apollodorus grunted. ‘Demetrios just felt a cold draught of doubt, lad.’
The loss of all his machines cost Demetrios a month. His ships had to search the Asian shore for timber, and they did not make those forays without cost.
But timber came, and Satyrus, who went every morning to the peak of Jubal’s tower to watch, saw the big machines take shape. New metal had to be forged for their parts, and new wood beams cut, in far-off Lebanon and closer in on the wooded slopes of Ida. Thirty days of labour, and Demetrios had again a battery of machines.
The city was not idle during that time. The tent city in the agora was reorganised, and men set their hands to improving their tents against late summer rains. Latrines were dug in the rubble of the former northern-harbour neighbourhoods. Makeshift taverns opened, and men looted the wine cellars of smashed homes to open a tent for one night that sold a little comfort against the hopelessness of the siege.
The second month of the siege saw a collapse of normality in the city. It started with the emancipation of a third of the slaves, made citizens with citizen rights — three thousand men and women altogether. These Neodamodeis (newly enfranchised) were formed into their own regiment, given their own living areas, and older citizens adopted many of them — some in place of lost sons and daughters, and others simply because they had been favoured slaves, or as insurance. Menedemos took command of them and formed them into a phalanx.
In their ranks marched Korus. Satyrus armed him, from top to toe, and Apollodorus provided his weapons. They invited him to serve with them — with the oarsmen, or the marines. But the trainer shook his head.
‘I’ll go with my own,’ he said. ‘They need me.’
The emancipation had bitter enemies, and Panther’s death had re-empowered the oligarchs. Nicanor had returned to power. He openly advocated surrender on the best terms possible, and lampooned Satyrus for claiming that the siege could be won. But most painful, he held Satyrus up as war-mad, like a young man with his first woman might be love-mad. He made this allusion in every speech, every meeting, so that the men of the town began to look at Satyrus as not being one of them, but as an alien with different interests, like glory.
‘He has no daughters in this town,’ Nicanor proclaimed. ‘And when we fall, his friend Demetrios will take him to his tent and feed him wine — while we are crucified.’
Satyrus admitted that there was truth to what the man said. There always was. He wasn’t evil — he was merely driven.
Nicanor railed against the emancipation of the slaves, but it was done. Carried by Menedemos’ slim majority. And the same for Satyrus’ status as a commander. By one vote, Satyrus held onto his command.
Other changes came, and they angered men so that the tensions inside the political class of the town escalated. Women — maiden daughters of citizens — were caught in the beds of young men. Indeed, Satyrus saw women going to the fountains who showed themselves quite deliberately to the ephebes. And other women flirted openly — with married men and unmarried. Nor were they the only ones to make advances.
In a city at the edge of extinction, the old rules don’t hold long.
Nor did the Demos party have much patience with the law courts of the oligarchs. A jury of rich men found a poor man guilty of cowardice in a skirmish and the man was carried away on the arms of his compatriots, and the jurors were threatened with stoning.
A pair of foreigners — Persian merchants — were killed by a mob.
Men knifed each other over clean water.
Satyrus tried to wall himself off from it. He concerned himself with the siege, day after day, drilling the Neodamodeis and raiding with his marines. Four times his men, unarmoured, crossed the open ground between the city and the enemy camp to massacre the sentries, until Demetrios had to build a wall to protect his wall.
On the fiftieth day of the siege, the boule had to cut the ration. Men received two-thirds of the grain they’d received before, and women just half. The rich had other food, and they made no protest — they made the rules, after all. But the poorer classes and the newly enfranchised had no other food, and they were angry.
Satyrus was angry, too. He walked from the boule to Abraham’s tent, sat heavily and accepted a cup of clean water from Miriam, who now did the table service. Abraham was proud that he had freed all of his slaves.
‘We cut the grain ration,’ Satyrus said. ‘Nicanor wanted it, of course.’
‘Why? Are we short of grain?’ Miriam asked.
Satyrus smiled at her. He barely saw her any more — he all but lived in Jubal’s tower, preparing the southern defences for the expected assault. Nicanor had the harbour now. He’d demanded it in an early vote and been surprised when Satyrus exchanged it for the south and west without demur.
‘No. Not yet. It will come, of course. Mostly he wants the poor to be demoralised, so that they will desert — or better yet, open another gate to the enemy.’ Satyrus drank his water. ‘Nicanor is willing to risk a sack to get the siege over.’
‘He’s mad!’ Abraham said.
‘I think so, yes,’ Satyrus agreed. ‘I think that grief and pettiness have pretty much stolen his wits. Today I actually considered killing him.’
Abraham shook his head. ‘They forget so soon!’
Satyrus made a face. ‘Not really. It’s just that after we win a fight, everyone’s confidence goes up for what — three days? And then we crash again. I can’t blame them. I can’t see the end from here — I watched Demetrios land another five or six tonnes of grain today. I spent an hour trying to imagine how to get at it. We can’t — there’s no raid we could launch that would do any good.’
Miriam smiled. ‘You need music, my lord. Come and play. Anaxagoras and I will teach you.’
Satyrus smiled curtly. ‘I would only be the third wheel on your chariot, madam,’ he said, so sharply that Miriam turned away, her face red.
Abraham shot to his feet. ‘What, exactly, did you mean by that?’
Satyrus stood. ‘I should not have come here.’ He gathered his chlamys and walked out, leaving Abraham as angry as he’d ever seen him.
So be it, thought Satyrus. He loved Abraham, but he couldn’t abide — couldn’t abide-
There were some truths even brave men hide from.
Luckily, such men often have friends.
Later, in the courtyard of Jubal’s tower, when Anaxagoras approached him, Satyrus stared at him coldly.
‘You need to relax, have a glass of wine, listen to my song about Amyntas,’ Anaxagoras said.
Draco smiled softly. ‘It is really very good, lord.’
Satyrus nodded. ‘I believe, Anaxagoras, that you are the captain of the west gate — this very moment. But here you are, with a lyre under your arm.’
‘I exchanged with Apollodorus!’ Anaxagoras said. ‘I protest, Satyrus! I did not expect to be an officer. The poetry came upon me.’
Satyrus nodded. ‘You wish to be relieved of your command?’ he asked. Anaxagoras was now a captain of twenty crack marines.
‘No!’ Anaxagoras was stung.
‘Then go to your post and stop making excuses.’
‘You are jealous.’ Anaxagoras’s blood was up. ‘My time is my own. I exchanged with Apollodorus.’
‘I may be excused for not answering you, sir. I know my duty — do you know yours?’ Satyrus drew himself up. ‘I might wish that I had time to visit certain people, but I do not. You must make your own choices.’
‘I say you are an insolent hypocrite!’ Anaxagoras said. ‘You’re afraid of her, afraid of me and afraid of yourself since Amastris betrayed you, and you seek to hide from it with work. And now you shout at me in this cold public condemnation — fuck you, sir!’