Stratokles nodded. ‘Who would you say was your most dangerous nobleman? The one most likely to desert?’
Mithridates laughed again. ‘I really would be hard put to choose one among all of them,’ he said. ‘But Darius Thrakes, as we call him, is the worst of the lot, and he leads almost a thousand riders. I can’t touch him.’
Stratokles saw the look that passed between Satyrus and Lucius.
‘You can do this one yourself, boss,’ Lucius said.
Stratokles sighed.
Lysimachos, when they found him, was watching Jubal build war engines. He had sixty men — his own men, many former sailors and some former slave artificers — all laying out machines together, and he had another three hundred Bithynian workmen with adzes and axes.
‘That is a dangerous man,’ Lysimachos said. ‘Would you sell him to me?’
‘He’s not mine to sell,’ Satyrus said. ‘Try asking him.’
Jubal was standing, his chiton pulled down to his hips, showing a young smith the patterns for corner plates for a torsion engine — demonstrating how to form the plates, cut them, and bend them to shape with the minimum of work.
‘We need a cavalry raid,’ Satyrus said.
Lysimachos nodded. ‘Of course.’
‘Mithridates says his men will desert if allowed out of our lines,’ Satyrus said.
‘Aphrodite’s tits!’ Lysimachos exclaimed. ‘So you want my Getae?’
‘And all of my Sakje. Yes.’ Satyrus shrugged.
‘They hate each other. Your Scopasis and my Sakarnus — they are not friends.’ Lysimachos shook his head. ‘And if we lose them … Ares, Tanais, if we lose them, we can’t cover our retreat.’
If he calls me Tanais, should I call him Thrace? Satyrus thought. Lysimachos was a curious blend of old campaigner and parvenu king. ‘If we don’t try, we might as well retreat right now,’ he said.
Lysimachos shook his head. ‘We have a few days.’
Satyrus was still mounted, and he used his height and his voice to show his discontent. ‘I don’t agree,’ he said. ‘We do not have a few days. Antigonus will have his cavalry on the south shore by tomorrow.’
Lysimachos grinned at his own staff, all waiting a few horse lengths away. ‘This from your years of experience as a strategos, eh?’
Satyrus raised an eyebrow. ‘Your scouting is poor at best. Antigonus owned your flanks at Magnesia and again when I found you because you won’t send your best troops out into harm’s way to find and eliminate the enemy scouts.’
‘How nice! Lessons in hoplomachia from a Greek stripling.’ Lysimachos shook his head. ‘Listen, Tanais, don’t turn red on me like a maiden with her first dick. I’ve fought Antigonus and his son for as long as most of you have been alive. Scouting — listen. I can see his camp. He can see mine. If he wants to ride around and kill barbarians, let him.’
Satyrus nodded. ‘You fought for Alexander, right?’ he said. ‘So you really should know better.’ I should keep my mouth shut and ride away.
Lysimachos swung up onto the back of a pretty Nisean mare, the kind of warhorse men killed for. He was unruffled. ‘I remember what it is like to be young,’ he said. ‘I forgive you. You are a good ally, Satyrus of Tanais, and I don’t need a quarrel. So I’ll give you fifty Getae — no more.’
Several of his staff officers — Macedonians all — laughed. Lysimachos whirled on them. ‘Keep it to yourselves, gentlemen. Remember where we’d be without these men.’
Satyrus took a deep breath, held it, counted, and listened to the inaudible sounds of a lyre scale. When he was done, his eyes were clear and his smile was genuine.
‘Send me the cavalrymen at nightfall,’ he said. ‘And thank you.’
He and Lysimachos clasped hands.
As he rode away, Stratokles came up beside him. ‘I’m going,’ he said. ‘And I want Mithridates to send his goat-boy — Darius what’s-his-name. With fifty men.’
‘I’m commanding myself,’ Satyrus said.
‘All the better,’ Stratokles said.
Satyrus wanted a fine Nisean like Lysimachos’s horse. His gelding chewed the bit constantly, and now thrust out with his head, trying to act like a stallion. Satyrus slapped his neck. ‘You have plans for Darius?’
‘I think he should give his life for his country,’ Stratokles said. ‘Can you give Herakles a command?’
Satyrus turned in his saddle and eyed the young man. ‘I had intended to raise twenty cavalrymen from the mercenaries. Can Herakles be trusted to do it?’
Stratokles nodded. ‘Let’s find out.’
Anaxagoras laid his hand on Stratokles’ reins. ‘I hate to interrupt a good plot,’ he said.
‘But?’ Satyrus smiled.
‘You know that the men now know who he is, eh?’ Anaxagoras asked.
‘Who he claims to be,’ Satyrus added.
Stratokles shrugged. ‘It was bound to happen,’ he said.
‘Draco and some of the Apobatai are … emotional about it.’ Anaxagoras shook his head. ‘If he’s Alexander’s son, should we be sending him on cavalry patrols?’
‘Let them show their worship of him by keeping him alive,’ Satyrus said. He wondered whose voice uttered those words in such a tone of hard finality.
Anaxagoras clearly wondered, too. He met Satyrus’s eyes and held them. ‘Have a care,’ he said. ‘I think a music lesson is required.’
‘After the cavalry raid. Charmides, fetch me Scopasis: my compliments, and would he meet me at my pavilion.’
Satyrus’s pavilion was another topic of contention. They all used it — Anaxagoras, Charmides, Nikephorus and Stratokles all sat and drank wine and used the stores of cedar oil that Phoibos had against mosquitoes, and the lavender soap and whetstones and … everything. The man thought of everything.
But somehow, with the red oiled-silk pavilion and the slaves — now more than fifteen — who attended it, he gave Satyrus the air of a potentate, of a king. Satyrus understood better than some of his men understood — that he had always lived like one of them on campaign, and consequently, the appearance of his pavilion set him apart in a way he had never been set apart before.
The pavilion offended Anaxagoras and Charmides and Draco, but not Nikephorus, who simply wanted one of his own, nor Scopasis, who never seemed to notice it, as long as a cup of wine was put in his hand as soon as he dismounted.
Satyrus understood their discontent, which was really about him. And the change he was experiencing — from captain to king. From leader of a few to leader of an army. He seldom had time to talk about philosophy with Charmides, to play his lyre with Anaxagoras, or even to discuss Miriam. He longed to discuss Miriam, but his sense of justice made him hold his tongue. Anaxagoras had his own troubles, and didn’t need to talk about a woman who had, in effect, left them both.
Scopasis was waiting at the pavilion, long legs stretched before him as he leaned against a tent wall, a cup of wine in his hand.
‘I greet you,’ he said, formally.
Satyrus slipped down from his gelding, passed the reins to a slave, and smiled at Scopasis. ‘I greet you, hipparch.’
Scopasis smiled at the Greek word. ‘When did you last love a horse?’ Scopasis asked.
‘I was just thinking the same,’ Satyrus said, and nodded. ‘Too long. They die. Like flies.’
Scopasis folded his legs under him and rose to his feet. ‘Let me show you something I have for you, then,’ he said.
Behind the tent was a Nisean — grey like a storm at sea, with a small, high head and a pale mane and tail.
‘Is Antigonus dead?’ Satyrus asked. ‘Where did this horse come from?’ The stallion — his status was obvious — had red leather tack decorated in bronze, and a polished bronze bit in the Persian, and thus the Sakje, style, and a high-backed saddle like the Sauromatae used.
Scopasis shrugged. ‘I found him wandering the plain to the south, a broken hobble on his fetlock,’ he said. ‘My mare wanted him.’
‘He is magnificent,’ Satyrus said. Indeed, he was the tallest horse Satyrus had ever seen, or close enough. Melitta had a pair of war-Niseans, and they were of a size. ‘You should have him.’