Isokles drank wine, forced sex on his slaves, and waited for spring, like a hideous spider waiting in a nearly invisible web.
Diodorus lay on a couch in the heat of Babylon. Sappho, his wife, lay on a separate couch. It was that hot.
‘Will Seleucus go?’ Sappho asked.
It was the question on the lips of every informed man and woman in the city. Lysimachos had requested that Seleucus come north and west with his army. It was an open secret that Lysimachos had almost been destroyed in the autumn, that Cassander was a wreck, that Ptolemy had retired to Aegypt in disgust.
It was said that Antigonus had two hundred elephants and eighty thousand men.
Diodorus was sixty years old. It lay lightly on him — his chest was still as well muscled as his breastplate, and his arms were like the arms of a statue of Ares. But his hair was entirely white. He sat up, and a slave fanned him harder, mistaking his motion for a demand for a cool breeze.
Diodorus looked at the woman he loved and shook his head. ‘Want to go back to winters?’ he asked. ‘I can’t go back to Alexandria. And I think I’m getting too old for this. Time to retire.’
‘Tanais?’ she asked.
‘We own about a third of it, you and I,’ he said.
‘So?’ she asked.
‘So Seleucus has summoned me for the second hour after the sun is at its peak to speak to him about Satyrus of Tanais,’ Diodorus said. ‘He has no love for Lysimachos.’
‘I could go home,’ Sappho said.
‘Home?’ Diodorus asked.
‘Olbia, where my life changed. Or Tanais.’ She smiled, and rose from her couch. ‘Babylon is too hot,’ she said. ‘And the bugs are oppressive, and the locals are too subservient. The only people to talk to here are the Jews and the Medes.’ She laughed. ‘Listen to me. I was a slave for six years, and now I talk like a Macedonian.’
Diodorus bent and kissed her. ‘May I make a confession?’ he said.
‘You made love to my new washerwoman? In that case, you can wash your own fighting clothes.’ She hit him with her fan.
‘The one with the squint, or the one with the strange skin disease? No. I wish to confess that I want to take the Exiles north and fight. If Seleucus goes, this will be the end. One way or another. The last cast of the dice.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s my curse.’
‘Damn that Kineas. He had to tell you that he left you all his battles.’ Sappho had heard the story a hundred times.
‘If he was alive, he would be there.’ Diodorus waved a slave towards him.
‘If he was alive …’ Sappho said, and smiled. ‘I hear Satyrus made a brilliant campaign.’
‘He changed the war,’ Diodorus said with satisfaction.
‘He is like his father,’ Sappho said.
Diodorus shrugged. ‘Yes and no. Kineas was a mercenary with the heart of a king. Satyrus is a king with the heart of a mercenary.’
Sappho shook her head. ‘No. I know him better than you. He is a man of worth. Like my brothers. Like you, my dear.’
Diodorus raised an eyebrow. ‘That is my yearly compliment — I had better treasure it. I hope he is a man of worth, my dear, because he has become the linchpin of this year’s campaign. I’d best be going.’
‘Give Seleucus and his paramour my deepest obeisance,’ Sappho said.
‘With or without the sarcasm?’ Diodorus asked, but the question was apparently rhetorical, as he didn’t wait for an answer.
Sappho called for her body servant, and asked for a stylus and a tablet.
Leon sat back on his kline and read Sappho’s letter for the third time. By his side, Nihmu lay with her head on the armrest, her eyes out to sea.
‘You will go again,’ she said.
‘You could come with me,’ he said.
‘To Tanais?’ she asked. ‘To the Sea of Grass?’ Her breath caught.
Leon shook his head. ‘We’ll rally the fleets at Rhodes,’ he said. ‘I expect that the fight, when it happens, will be in Asia — probably far from the sea. Plistias is at Miletus. Demetrios holds the mouth of the Propontus.’ Leon shrugged heavily. ‘All my ships, all Ptolemy’s and what Rhodes has left — all together, two hundred hulls. Demetrios and Plistias built all winter — no idea what they’ll have. But I’ll be surprised if they have fewer than two hundred hulls.’ Leon shook his head. ‘Everyone has their eyes on the armies and the elephants. A fleet of two hundred hulls has as many men as an army of fifty thousand.’
Nihmu sighed. ‘Yes, dear.’
Leon passed a hand down her back. ‘This is the end. Or at least, all of us will try to make it the end.’ He looked at the letter. ‘Diodorus and Crax and Sappho are coming up from Babylon with Seleucus.’
Nihmu looked out over the sea. ‘All of Kineas’s people, one last time.’
Leon looked at her, and she was crying.
‘Did he know what was to come?’ she asked. ‘I never saw this.’
Leon smiled. ‘Why cry? We will see all of our friends.’
Nihmu managed a small smile. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And then we will die.’
Leon smiled. His wife had been a prophetess, and she was wont to say such things. Sometimes they had meaning, and sometimes they didn’t, and sometimes the meaning was subtle. So he smiled, kissed her, and got to his feet. ‘The children of men are born to die,’ he said.
Nihmu nodded. ‘I should practise my archery,’ she allowed.
Antigonus sat on a leopard skin thrown over a stool, and watched two oarsmen wrestling for a prize.
Demetrios sat beside him, and the boy’s presence made him … whole. Happy. Even if the young fool wanted to be a god. That was a young man’s fantasy. Antigonus One-Eye had eighty-two years’ worth of pain, wounds, and age. He no longer wanted to live for ever, but he was damned if he was going down easily.
‘I have the best army I’ve had since the king died,’ Antigonus said.
‘You mean Alexander,’ Demetrios said. ‘You and I are kings, now.’
‘I mean the king. He was king. We … are fighting in the ruins of his temple.’ Antigonus watched the sun setting over the sea. ‘Bring me your whole army — everything. Leave fucking Cassander holding his limp dick and come over to Asia. Let’s do it — one throw for everything. I’m tired, and I’ve been this close ten times, and I want to win.’
A slow smile spread over Demetrios’s face. ‘You and me … together? One army? Nothing will defeat us.’
Antigonus nodded. ‘Nothing ever has,’ he said. ‘Mind you, buy every fucking hoplite in Greece before you come. Buy everyone. Bloat yourself. Buy them even if it is just to deny them to fucking Cassander. Buy all the Thessalians you can find.’
‘You have cash?’ Demetrios asked.
‘You own Athens, son. Don’t expect cash from me.’ Antigonus grunted. ‘I met your Satyrus,’ he noted.
‘You liked him!’ Demetrios said.
‘He’s worth fifty of Lysimachos. Not a bad little strategos — fell for an old chestnut in the mountains, then put one over on me.’ Antigonus chuckled. ‘Wish you could buy him. Since you can’t, I’ve paid to have him poisoned.’
‘Poisoned! Pater, he’s a hero!’ Demetrios shook his head. ‘That’s womanish.’
‘My child, I’m eighty-two years old. I can be as womanish as I want.’ The old man smiled, though. ‘You know why we’ll win?’
‘Because I’m going to be a god?’ Demetrios asked.
‘No. Not by a long chalk.’ Antigonus drank some wine. That part of life remained good. He still liked good wine. And strong bread with a crust. And the sight of a field he’d won.
‘Because we have Athens and Tyre and all the money?’ Demetrios said.