It was almost comic. Two months before, Stratokles would have bought this man’s loyalty on the spot — for Lysimachos. You fool, he thought. But he hadn’t suspected how rotten the inside of Antigonus’s system really was.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘If the mercenaries are all in Mytilene, I guess that’s where I’m bound.’
Mytilene was the same small city he remembered — a pleasant town with beautiful women, handsome men, and good wine. Superb olives. ‘I could retire here,’ Stratokles said.
‘You’ll retire with two feet of steel in your thorax,’ Lucius said.
‘Hah! Too true,’ Stratokles said. ‘But until then, I can daydream.’
Herakles looked at Mytilene as if he’d arrived in paradise. Miletus had been too big for a man who’d grown to adulthood in a town with four thousand inhabitants including slaves. But Mytilene was ideal.
Besides, Stratokles was allowing him to ride abroad, well dressed. If they were going to make this work, it was going to start here.
They brought horses across — always a good investment, taking horses to Lesbos, especially big, well-bred warhorses from Persia. So they rode up from the port, looking like a prince and his retinue.
Herakles was in his element, and he positively sparkled — like his mother — when it became clear to all of them that the mercenaries could see a resemblance. Heads turned, all the way from the beach.
Stratokles arranged lodgings with a guest friend — the Athenian proxenos, in fact. But before he could try the wine or the olives, much less the women, he received a summons, from a source he chose not to ignore.
‘So,’ Apollodorus said. ‘Are you a raven come to pick the bones, or an ally?’
Stratokles rolled the wine around in his cup. ‘We’ve been adversaries more times than allies,’ he said.
Apollodorus nodded. ‘True enough.’
Stratokles took a deep breath. ‘I came to hire men for another purpose,’ he said. ‘But …’
‘But you could be tempted to help me?’ Apollodorus said.
‘If you’ll help me,’ Stratokles answered. ‘And I have to warn you that Leon and I have never been friends.’
The Numidian came in from behind a tapestry. ‘Well shot, snake. I told him as much. But I’m the one who sent to bring you here.’
‘Sent?’ Stratokles asked. ‘Where?’
‘Why, Heraklea, of course. Although I wondered at first if you had done this yourself.’ Leon shook his head. His hair was almost all white. It made Stratokles feel old.
Stratokles shook his head. ‘Amastris-’
Leon smiled. ‘Cut you loose.’
‘Tried to have me killed, actually.’ He shrugged.
Leon smiled again. ‘I understand the feeling,’ he said.
‘She failed. I went east for a while.’ He raised an eyebrow.
Leon took a deep breath. ‘You mean you are not here at my invitation?’ he asked.
Stratokles shook his head. ‘I gather that’s the wrong answer,’ he said. ‘Too bad, because I think I’m willing to help.’ He looked around. ‘Surely the Lady Melitta is here, as well?’
‘She’s got the rest of the fleet,’ Leon said. Apollodorus was shaking his head. Leon drank some wine, leaned forward, and said, ‘I think he can help. So do you. Why not tell him?’
‘Because everything we say to him will go straight to Demetrios,’ Apollodorus said. ‘Now that he’s sitting here, I remember how much I hate the bastard.’
Stratokles laid both of his hands on the table. ‘Apollodorus, if Leon and I can do business, I don’t think you have any right to pretend your rivalry is older and deeper. I don’t think we’ve even crossed blades. In fact, I think we’ve been comrades — at Tanais.’
‘I almost gutted you at Rhodos,’ Apollodorus said.
‘Bah — we’re all professionals. Leon, tell me what you want from me. I swear to you — by any gods you wish — that I have no employer just now and that I won’t sell what you tell me for one month from today.’ He stood up.
Leon took him at his word. ‘Bring the image of Herakles,’ he said. ‘Swear on Lord Herakles and the heroic dead of Marathon, where Athens proved her greatness, may their shades come to haunt you if you break your oath, that you will keep anything we tell you here to yourself for one full lunar month from today.’
Stratokles met Leon’s eye. ‘I swear on Lord Herakles and the heroic dead of Marathon, where Athens proved her greatness, may their shades come to haunt me if I break my oath, that I will keep anything you tell me here to myself and my lieutenant Lucius, who will be bound by the same oath, for one full lunar month from today.’
Apollodorus leapt from his chair. ‘You heard him change the oath!’ he said.
Leon nodded. ‘He meant us to hear that he’s a truthful man. If he helps us, he has to explain to his henchmen.’ He nodded.
Stratokles thought it was unfair how handsome Leon remained. It lent him a dignity that Stratokles was never likely to have.
‘So?’ he said. ‘I’ve sworn.’
Leon passed him a cup of wine. ‘Here. It’s a long story.’
Later, the two men shocked each other by clasping hands.
That night, Stratokles wrote a long letter to Hyrkania, and sent two of Herakles’ Macedonians and six recently hired mercenaries to carry it over land. And then he sat down to a symposium with Lucius and all of Satyrus’s captains and, odd as it felt, he enjoyed himself.
Part II
5
‘Plistias of Cos,’ Diokles said, peering into the sun under both hands. ‘See the funny little break above the beak of his penteres? That’s for ripping oars. He had it cast for his flagship.’
‘Anyone could cast one,’ Melitta muttered, also shading her eyes with her hands.
Diokles just shrugged. It was an eloquent shrug — it suggested that while anyone could, only one man would.
It was a hazy summer day in the Dardanelles, and Diokles’ flagship led a line of twenty-four warships. Down the channel, mostly hidden by the Point of Winds, lay the northern fleet of Demetrios and Antigonus, sixty warships.
Diokles turned to his helmsman, an older Italiote, Leonidas of Tarentum. ‘Steady. I want to come within easy hail of him.’
‘Easy hail it is,’ Leonidas answered.
Melitta turned back to her navarch. ‘Should we be getting into armour?’ she asked.
Diokles pursed his lips. ‘Despoina, I don’t know. That’s for you to answer. It’s all about what signal you want you want to send. Peace? War?’
Melitta admired his calm. ‘We will fight if he does not move,’ she said.
Diokles nodded. ‘I know.’
She nodded, twisted her mouth — very like her brother, really.
She vanished under the tent-like awning she’d installed amidships — like having a Sakje yurt on a ship — and re-emerged wearing a coat of pale caribou with blue elk-hair work and golden plaques and bells. She pulled it on and belted it, hung her akinakes from her hip, and went to the stern.
Diokles smiled, but he didn’t do it where the Lady of the Assagetae could see him.
Plistias stood his ground, his ship well out in the current with two triremes on station behind him, well warned that there was another squadron in the channel.
Diokles had not matched his force — he came forward alone, confident that the high state of training and the superior construction of his ship would see him clear if Plistias behaved badly.
He chewed the ends of his moustache. Confident wasn’t the right word. His crew and his ship would give him a chance-
‘How did it come to this?’ Melitta asked. ‘I hate not knowing.’
Diokles shrugged. ‘If Demetrios really has taken your brother or killed him, he is counting on the “not knowing” to slow us.’