Achilles nodded.
Satyrus called down the bridge, ‘I’ll come with you if I can take my escort — armed and mounted — with me. I keep my weapons, and he keeps his.’
The officer — Philip? Amyntas? All the Macedonians had the same set of names — nodded eagerly. ‘Yes, yes. Anything you like, lord, only come to Corinth with me.’
Achilles shrugged. ‘Memnon’s sharp enough. He’ll figure out we was took, and come, or not.’
‘We’re coming in, then,’ Satyrus called. He loosened his sword in the sheath, and rode down the bridge behind Achilles.
No one grabbed his bridle or made other aggressive motions, which was a good sign. Satyrus rode right up to the officer. ‘I’m Satyrus of Tanais,’ he said. ‘This is my bodyguard, Achilles. He’ll be wanting to knock at the ferryman’s door, here. You won’t stop him, will you?’
‘Amyntas son of Philip,’ the man said, pulling his helmet off and hanging it from a web of equipment behind his saddle with the ease of long practice. ‘You’ve just earned me a promotion, lord, and no mistake. Rumour is men are trying to kill you — Demetrios addressed us himself, offered a reward to find you.’
Achilles dismounted at the old ferry house, where the ferry had been before Alexander ordered the bridge built. The old man who lived there was wide awake and terrified — every peasant in the village, if not all of Plataea, had to know that the countryside was full of cavalrymen that night. But he accepted Achilles’ message, promised that his eldest would take the news up to the Middle Hill Farm in the morning, and that he’d send another son up the mountain. Satyrus gave him a silver owl, and the man managed a smile.
And then they were away, into the dark.
They surprised Satyrus by riding due west — not the straightest way to Corinth, by any means, and very quickly they picked up the Oeroe, at first merely a dry gully on their right, but soon enough a gurgle of water. They stopped once to water their horses, and again at Kreusis — a sleepy village in starlight, with four triremes lying off the beach.
‘They want you bad,’ Achilles said.
Satyrus could only nod, his mouth dry.
They left their horses with the cavalrymen, and the centarch, Amyntas, came in person. ‘No point in pleasing the king if you don’t get the reward in person,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Please come aboard with me.’
‘You’re not acting as if you’re going to kill me in the morning,’ Satyrus said.
Amyntas shook his head. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t think so,’ he said, in a voice that was not completely reassuring. But he led them up onto the trireme, and then he lay down by the oarsman’s bench and went straight to sleep.
As the sun rose over the Gulf of Corinth, it revealed the ancient city and the ongoing siege in stages, so that Satyrus saw the Acrocorinth and the defenders’ citadel first, kissed by the lips of Dawn as she ascended from her lascivious couch to brighten the day, or so some of the oarsmen were asserting in the crudest terms.
The sun caught the temple at the peak of the citadel first, and then the walls, which looked, at the distance of ten stades, as if they were utterly impregnable, towering at an unimaginable height over the plain below, and the rising sun only illuminated the besiegers’ works and camp last. But Demetrios’s camp was vast, covering the plain below Corinth, and he had not one but two siege lines surrounding the whole of the city. From the height of the stern platform, Satyrus could see that Demetrios had two squadrons — one in the Gulf of Corinth, and another blocking the Aegean beaches to the south, so that, with two military camps, twenty stades of earthen walls, and two fleets, he had the defenders completely blockaded; a difficult feat against mighty two-beached Corinth.
Achilles was as awake as he, and stood at his shoulder. ‘The king has them whenever he wants them,’ he said. ‘A strong place ain’t no guarantee, ’gainst the besieger.’
Satyrus had to disagree. ‘We had less to defend at Rhodes,’ he said. ‘And we held him.’
Achilles nodded. ‘And well done, I’m sure. But you had citizens with their lives and fortunes on the line. Prepalaus — that’s Cassander’s strategos in Corinth — he’s got mercenaries, and too many of ’em are not worth goat shit. You can fertilise a field with goat shit.’
Satyrus had to laugh. It made him feel less tense, but his side hurt, his shoulders ached, and his stomach was flipping every minute. And it hurt to laugh — hurt his ribs and his cheek.
Achilles expelled a long fart, and gave a rueful grin. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t like this.’
Satyrus shrugged. ‘Me neither. We may be about to die for a misunderstanding.’ He rolled his shoulders. ‘Waiting is worse than fighting,’ he said.
‘Any time,’ Achilles admitted.
It was half an hour before the ship was landed. The crew beached it sloppily, stern first but without much care, and an oarsman leapt over the side and ran up the beach towards the military camp, clearly the herald of Satyrus’s arrival.
Satyrus didn’t have a high opinion of the rowers or the trierarch or their care for the ship, and then he was jumping into the surf, low gurgling waves a few fingers high. The three of them walked up the beach.
‘The best sign,’ Satyrus said openly to Achilles, ‘is that they’ve left us alone with young Amyntas, who’s really quite well born. I assume that if they meant us harm, they’d have met the ship with an escort.’
The sun was well up, and Achilles caught Satyrus’s glance even as he started to speak. Amyntas whirled, intending either to protest or to threaten, but Satyrus took the sword out of his hand and Achilles had his sword at the Macedonian’s neck so smoothly that it looked as if the three of them were practising.
‘No offence intended,’ Satyrus said. ‘But I’m not eager to be executed by Demetrios.’
Amyntas was purple. ‘He’s not going to execute you!’ he said.
Satyrus nodded. He exchanged looks with Achilles. Now — a little late, perhaps — there were twenty soldiers coming down the beach from the camp, led by a man in ornate armour with a leopard skin over his shoulders.
Satyrus headed up the beach. ‘Demetrios!’ he shouted.
The king of half the world laughed. ‘Satyrus, you are the limit. But alive.’
‘Your cavalryman found me — trapped me very neatly, so no shame to him. But he’s the only bargaining counter I have right now.’ Satyrus motioned over his shoulder, where Satyrus was confident that Achilles had the other man by the throat.
‘He’s my father’s sister’s youngest,’ Demetrios admitted. ‘So I suppose that I want him back.’
Satyrus took another step forward. ‘As I say, he took me neatly enough.’
Demetrios nodded. ‘Good for him, then. He’s earned a reward — even if he did get himself captured on his own beach.’
Satyrus well remembered the bantering voice and the hard steel will behind it. ‘Listen, then, lord. I will hand him over with apologies as soon as you swear to me that you mean me no harm, that you take an oath to the gods that you will not harm me or cause me to be harmed, nor that you yourself have attempted such since the siege. Swear that, and all the swords will vanish.’
Demetrios smiled — an angry smile. ‘Always you seek to force me to oaths, Satyrus. An oath makes a man tributary to the gods. I seek to be with the gods.’
‘Swear by Styx, if that pleases you,’ Satyrus said.
Demetrios looked at him. ‘If I kill you right here on this beach, for the seizure of one of my officers, I could thumb my nose at your sister and her allies.’
Satyrus lifted his spear. ‘If you had a thumb left,’ he said.
Demetrios nodded curtly. ‘You are a cocky son of a bitch. Very well, I swear — by Styx, on which the gods themselves swear, on my living father and on my own dead, that I mean you no harm now, nor ever have since the end of the siege of Rhodos, nor will, unless you turn on me. And now you swear the same.’
Satyrus said, ‘I swear by Kineas my father, and Arimnestos of Plataea, and all my family back to Herakles, that I intend you no harm, unless you turn on me, or we face each other on the battlefield.’