Satyrus counter-cut at the wrist on the eleventh attack, timing to catch the instant after the launching of the feint.
Memnon pulled his feint, stepped sideways, and Satyrus turned to face him again, feeling a new twinge from his ribs.
Memnon gave a small smile, and launched a whole new attack — a left-right combination that started with his rolled chlamys arm thrusting hard, a straight punch to Satyrus’s chlamys, and then the black man stepped in — hard — and raised his sword. Suddenly the attack was the same attack he’d feinted so many times — and when Satyrus went to parry, his ribs screamed in sudden pain — and Memnon scored on him, touching him on the head cleanly right over his feeble counter-cut.
Satyrus stepped back, clutching his ribs. ‘Good hit,’ he spat.
Achilles shook his head. ‘Memnon is no gentleman,’ he said. ‘But he saw you favouring your ribs, and he went for you there. And you let him.’
Memnon took his sword while Satyrus sat heavily. ‘There’s no “fair” in a sword fight,’ he said. ‘But I din’t mean to hurt ye so bad.’
Satyrus took a deep breath — the pain was already better. ‘What you did was well done,’ he said.
Memnon grinned. ‘’Twas!’ he said. ‘Y’er a fine swordsman. Had to beat you fancy.’ He spat. ‘Cup o’ wine, lord?’
Satyrus drank wine with them, trying to suss them out. Achilles had tried to fight him in a palaestra fight — careful, scholarly. Memnon had ignored such conventions. He wondered what that said about them, since both were sell-swords, hired killers, mercenaries. Which was the more honest? Which was the real swordsman?
Satyrus wasn’t sure. But he knew his ribs hurt, and he knew that both men were good company, and that he’d rather have them at his back than across a shield wall.
‘How much to hire the four of you?’ Satyrus asked. ‘For, hmm, a year?’
Memnon laughed. Achilles glanced at him from under his heavy brow and raised an eyebrow. ‘Serious?’ he asked. ‘What’s the job?’
‘Bodyguards. For me.’ Satyrus shrugged. ‘I assume you’re trustworthy. For cash, paid down.’ He smiled.
Achilles smiled back. ‘A year? We work by the day — most of the time.’
Memnon dipped a piece of hard bread in olive oil. ‘When we’re broke, we rent out of Demetrios or Cassander for soldier’s wages,’ he said. ‘How much are we talking, here?’
Satyrus raised an eyebrow. ‘I don’t know. I’m not Croesus. What’s your daily rate?’
‘Jason gives us ten drachma a day, and expenses if we need equipment or horses,’ he said. ‘Double what a hoplite is paid, if he brings his own gear.’
Satyrus nodded. ‘And a bonus?’
Achilles shook his head. ‘Often, but not always. Sometimes the job comes with its own bonus. Kill a rich man …’ he said, and left the rest of the thought to tail away.
‘How long have the four of you been together?’ Satyrus asked.
Memnon looked away.
Achilles shook his head. ‘Not all that long, eh? Memnon only joined up, what, before the feast of Demeter, eh? It were just me an’ Odysseus — time out of mind. Years, anyway. Longer than we’ve any right to be alive. Ajax … well, we met him fighting against him, a few years back. Memnon here’s the latest recruit.’
‘He’ll raise an army in a hundred years or so,’ Memnon added. He laughed cautiously, the way he fought.
‘Well?’ Satyrus said. ‘If I pay your daily rate for a year, half in advance, for all four of you?’
Achilles raised an eyebrow again, an expression that made him look like a philosopher and not a warrior at all. ‘Have to ask the others.’ He nodded. ‘How dangerous?’
Satyrus shrugged. ‘I’ve been in six ship fights in four years,’ he said.
‘So … fucking dangerous,’ Achilles said. ‘Well, fair enough — at least you tell the truth.’ The man glanced at him. ‘Spear fightin’ is more real than sword. Just sayin’.’
Satyrus’s whole face hurt when he smiled, but he managed one. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But people get hurt-just playing with spear poles.’
Achilles nodded. ‘Try me tomorrow,’ he said.
Satyrus could see the man’s pride as a soldier had been hurt. After his experience with Polycrates, he was more sensitive to another man’s feelings. ‘I’ll try spears,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow.’ He yawned, cursed the pain in his cheek, and then tried again.
‘How long’s your contract with Jason?’ he asked. They picked up the swords and shields and started back to the house.
Achilles shrugged. ‘Haven’t seen any money yet,’ he admitted. ‘I assumed it was until Jason came to collect you. I don’t really want to linger too long here — folks saw you arrive. But I need to hear word from Odysseus before we move again.’
Satyrus chewed on that as he climbed the stairs of the old tower. He had time — too much time — to think, and he worried about the people in the village, and watched them walk about from the top of the tower — watched the steady flow of traffic up the flank of Kithaeron, and back down the valley of the Asopus — men and women with donkeys or just walking alone or in groups. Plataea wasn’t on the main trade route from Attika to Boeotia — that was the road from Thebes to Athens, over Parnassus — but this was the second most-travelled road, and Satyrus saw a potential spy in every traveller.
He also had time to worry about Abraham and Miriam. If Demetrios had tried to take him, he must not intend to release the other hostages. Satyrus spent a day with a borrowed wax tablet and a stylus, trying to work out what he knew of the attack on him and what it might mean.
If Demetrios had attacked him, on purpose, he should have used Polycrates as his tool, and done it at Polycrates’ house. Where Satyrus had been headed. The more Satyrus turned this logic over in his head, the less it seemed possible that any set of murderers could possibly have been hired so ineptly that they murdered a major ally of Demetrios — casually — as part of the seizure of a political opponent. The more so as a botched attempt — and it had been close — would have resulted in immediate military consequences. And perhaps it already had; Satyrus hadn’t considered it before, but the more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed that Apollodorus and his sister would have taken action by now.
On the other hand, if Demetrios’s lieutenants had botched their instructions — and such things happened all too frequently — then the other Rhodian hostages were either dead or under renewed threats, as the only hope Demetrios would have to keep Rhodes in check.
Satyrus drank cup after cup of the excellent well-water in the sweltering heat, watched the roads about the old house, and tried to work through all the different possibilities.
One that he couldn’t discount was that the attack had been sponsored by Cassander. He played with the idea, idly making dots with his stylus in the soft wax of his tablet. It was warm, and he was sleepy, and it was too easy to daydream instead about the length of Miriam’s body stretched against his …
Satyrus wondered if there was another man in the world as powerful as he who spent more time pining for women rather than simply mounting them. The slaves Achilles kept were clearly for the very purpose, and some had offered themselves in one way or another. The only one he fancied was Tegara, a free woman, who had something about her he admired, but she had not made herself available — far from it. Satyrus recognised that there was something to that — the unattainable was always to be preferred, he supposed.
He went up on the roof as the sun began to decline. He took a lyre he’d found in the main hall and tuned it, the old gut strings holding despite years of neglect, and he tried his scales and found them waiting for him. He played a simple tune — the opening lines of the Iliad, the way the rhapsodes played them. Thought about Anaxagoras.
Really, it was time he stopped being a prisoner of the attack, and took action himself. The obvious course was simple — woo Achilles, buy his services, and get to the Chersonese, where Melitta would be.