Demetrios nodded. ‘And I the same — that’s a clever addition, and I add it to my oath. You’re a clever man. May I have my young scapegrace back?’
Satyrus motioned to Achilles, who released the Macedonian. He glared at Satyrus. ‘I was perfectly courteous to you, my lord.’
Satyrus raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘You are Macedonian, are you not? I learned these habits from your kin.’
Demetrios nodded. ‘I hate walking on sand,’ he said. ‘My best riding boots are full of it now. But you do amuse. This siege had begun to bore me to death, and there’s months left in it. Will you join me for a meal?’
Satyrus sheathed his own sword. ‘With pleasure,’ he said.
The twenty elite hypaspists closed in around him as soon as he sheathed his sword, and for a moment he froze, but Demetrios stood at his elbow, completely relaxed.
‘I had a pair of Cretan archers on you the whole time,’ he said.
Satyrus looked up the beach and saw the two men unstringing their bows. ‘Ah,’ he said.
‘I really mean you no harm,’ he went on. ‘Your sister has bitched my spring campaign completely on your behalf, moving my third fleet out of the Pontus.’ He looked at Satyrus. ‘It was Cassander, cousin. Not me. A woman — Phiale — acting for him. My spies tell me that it was planned at the wedding of your former ally, Heraklea, to that fool Lysimachos.’
Satyrus winced.
They continued to walk up the beach. ‘Oh, I don’t think Amastris or Lysimachos had a thing to do with it,’ Demetrios said. ‘Not that I wish them anything but ill, but Amastris served me well enough against Rhodes and elsewhere. A moment,’ said the besieger, and he turned away to speak to a man in plain armour — an engineer, as it proved, who gave his report on the progress of a ramp of earth going against the walls of Corinth.
Satyrus turned to Achilles. ‘We’re not at threat.’
Achilles looked around. ‘We’ll see,’ he said. ‘But at least we’re not going to be stuck full of arrows in the dawn.’ He grinned at Satyrus. ‘So far, I don’t think much of working for you.’
Satyrus sat on a rock and cleared the sand from his sandals. A hypaspist offered him water, and he took some.
Demetrios returned. ‘Let’s eat. I’m not always fond of getting up this early, but the promise of food can lure me from my rest.’
They ate on the terrace of a farm that overlooked the Gulf of Corinth.
‘I could envy this man,’ Demetrios said as he dipped some golden honey bread in olive oil and honey.
‘The farmer?’ Satyrus asked.
Demetrios nodded. ‘This is how a man should live.’
‘But you wish to be a god?’ Satyrus asked.
Demetrios nodded, his mouth full. ‘I am a man still,’ he admitted. ‘I like the honey bread, the oil, the feel of a breast under my fingers. Hah — if the stories are to be believed, the gods like all those things themselves. But the tale of Herakles has all the clues, does it not? A man may become a god.’ He looked at Satyrus, snapped his fingers, and a slave came to refill his cup. ‘You think me mad,’ he said.
Satyrus shook his head ruefully. ‘Becoming a god has never interested me in the least,’ he admitted. ‘But I should like to be a hero.’ He surprised himself with his own temerity. But it was true.
‘Perhaps that is why I like you,’ Demetrios said. ‘Many men humour me — few enough meet me on my own ground. I intend to assault the suburb at dawn tomorrow. Will you come and swing your sword beside me? It would please me,’ he added, as if this was the most important thing in the world.
Satyrus shook his head. ‘Not my fight, lord. And men might say that I had changed my feathers — that I was fighting against my own allies.’
Demetrios laughed. ‘Cassander wants you dead. He’s no ally. Your ally is Farm Boy — Ptolemy of Aegypt, and he and Cassander are no friends at all. But for an accident of history, my father and Ptolemy would be allies, and then the rest of this riff-raff would whistle for a victory and never get it.’ He sipped wine. ‘I will allow you to question Neron, my spymaster. Perhaps he can satisfy you.’
Satyrus shrugged, held out his cup and got more fruit juice — delicious stuff, sweet as nectar. ‘I came to deliver a grain shipment, as I promised. And to see my friend Abraham. Let me offer this. If you release Abraham to me, I’ll stand by your side tomorrow.’
Demetrios looked pained. ‘Ah, the Rhodian hostages,’ he said uneasily. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘When your sister threatened my shipping, I sent my hostages away.’
Satyrus sat up. ‘Where?’ he demanded.
Demetrios lay back. ‘Don’t take that tone with me,’ he said. ‘They’re gone to Ephesus, where I can keep them out of plots — closer to Rhodos, closer to home. I am not a harsh man. But I wanted to let you and your sister see that they were in my power.’
‘The treaty specified Athens,’ Satyrus said, suddenly worried. The whole purpose of keeping the hostages at Athens was so that they could not be used for further bargaining. Although Demetrios was powerful in Athens, the citizens there had their own opinions and the ability to keep some neutrality. Ephesus, on the other hand, was an Antigonid possession.
‘Yes, well, the treaty didn’t allow your sister to close the Pontus against my ships, and let bloody Lysimachos take a third of his men into Asia,’ Demetrios said, suddenly angry. ‘Why do I tolerate you?’
Satyrus realised that the besieger was enraged. Challenged. ‘All I want,’ he said, ‘is for my friends to be safe and my trade uninterrupted. With Rhodes and Alexandria and Athens. I am not the one attempting to conquer others.’
Fickle as the seasons, Demetrios was suddenly playful. ‘Is that what passes for rhetoric in the Euxine?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps if I married your sister, we might be allies?’
Satyrus almost spluttered his juice.
Demetrios slapped his thigh. ‘See? I am not a dull companion. Come and storm the breach with me tomorrow, and let us see what we can arrange.’
Satyrus was on the point of blank refusal when Achilles leaned forward. Satyrus hadn’t even seen the man enter the room.
‘Do what he asks and then crave a boon,’ Achilles suggested. ‘Act as if he’s bigger than you.’ He was back in his place behind the couches in a wink.
‘Your bodyguard?’ Demetrios asked. ‘A noted ruffian.’
‘My only advisor, at the moment,’ Satyrus said. ‘Very well. I’ll go up the breach tomorrow.’
Demetrios changed — again. He seemed to grow larger, and he rose to stand, cup in hand. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is wonderful. Let us make it — memorable!’
7
An hour before dawn. The air was lighter — warmer, the promise of a deadly hot day. In armour — borrowed armour, and not particularly well-fitted — Satyrus was already hot.
‘You need to pay me more,’ Achilles commented. He swung his arms again, annoyed by the shape of the shoulders on the yoke of his borrowed cuirass. ‘This is war — a breach assault? People die like sheep when a lion gets into the pen, in an assault.’
‘Done one before?’ Satyrus asked. Demetrios had been lavish in his offerings of weapons and armour — and since it was a matter of life and death, Satyrus was taking his time picking a sword.
It’s odd, he thought, that in the inn, I took the only sword to hand and grew to like it, but offered all these beautiful blades, I’m unable to choose one, much less enjoy it. Socrates would have something to say — and Philokles, too, I imagine. He had a flash of Philokles, standing in the pre-dawn light at Gaza, silent in the face of coming battle. Satyrus had seen battles, now — on land and at sea, and a year of fighting at Rhodes that left him weary. The thrill — the simple, youthful rush of eudaimonia, a frisson of fear and lust for glory — it wasn’t there. Fine weapons and beautiful armour were expressions of his status, not tools of his trade. He smiled.