Phoibos served him dinner — lamb on skewers and Chian wine. Scopasis joined him, left behind by Melitta to run his escort and collect the Sakje scouts and Greek cavalry of the feint. Thyrsis was already gone away back down the road towards Sardis.
It was odd to sit in the fading sunlight and look out over a dwindling camp. There were men left behind — sick or lame, tending spare mounts, or simply in charge of the last baggage, some regretful deserters and some hopeful recruits, late for the fair.
Satyrus went to sleep for the third time in a day, considering what the remnants of an army looked like, and awoke to the stiffest legs he’d ever had. But he couldn’t hide in his tent like Achilles for ever, so he allowed Phoibos to dress him in a Tyrian red chiton and matching chlamys with gold embroidery. His best sword was either on his pack horse with Charmides and Jubal, or lost, so he took another, lighter and longer.
Mounting was no pleasure — riding was worse. Satyrus trotted a riding horse around the camp for half an hour, easing his muscles to their task, and then he mounted his warhorse; a horse he’d scarcely ridden since acquiring him on this very spot, more or less.
Phoibos and his slaves had the tent down and all the gear packed on a dozen donkeys and a wagon. Their little baggage train was already moving but Phoibos had two stools, a table, and a cup of wine waiting in the open where the pavilion had been — and one last donkey waiting to receive them.
Satyrus sat on the stools and the masseur rubbed some of the pain out of his calves and thighs, especially where he had taken the wound. The flesh had closed.
Satyrus drank the wine. ‘You are the very best of servants, Phoibos.’
‘I endeavour to give satisfaction,’ Phoibos said. ‘If I might be so bold, lord, I gather that we are at war with my former master, Demetrios?’ he asked.
Satyrus nodded. He drank the wine off. ‘Yes.’
Phoibos nodded. ‘I think it would be best if I avoided falling into his hands. He wouldn’t be forgiving.’
Satyrus smiled. ‘I’ll do my best to keep that from happening.’
‘May all the gods bless you, my lord.’ Phoibos held Satyrus’s horse while he mounted.
Satyrus had the whole day’s ride to contemplate how in two days he’d gone from starving fugitive to King of the Bosporus.
Philokles would laugh, he thought.
Satyrus had no problem catching the army. They made a little more than one hundred stades that day, but their vanguard managed to go almost twice that, coming up to Trikomia on the Hermos River, almost close enough to Dorylaeum to touch the walls.
An hour after Satyrus came into camp, Melitta was sharing his dinner in his pavilion, and Thyrsis, Eumenes of Olbia and Scopasis came in for a cup of wine — the Olbians and the Sakje had retired out of the Sardis Road and Mysia.
‘Demetrios is north of Sardis with thirty thousand men,’ Eumenes said. ‘His probes up the passes were pretty cautious yesterday. We took a couple of prisoners but they didn’t know anything. We let them go.’
Satyrus passed on a second cup of wine. ‘I’m still tired,’ he said. ‘Did you find my friends?’
Eumenes smiled. ‘They found us. Your marine — he’s some sort of hero from epic poetry — he wanted to mount a fresh horse and come with me. But the boy … Charmides? Went to sleep on his horse, and had a fall. I left them with my prodromoi.’
Satyrus shook his head. ‘When I was lost in the rain, I couldn’t imagine it would end this well.’
Before the first rays of the sun shone down the valley of the Hermos, Satyrus was up, and he’d built a small altar on a rock above the cavalry camp. He sacrificed a lamb to Hermes for protecting his friends, and another to Apollo for the healing of his wound. Then he rode down into the camp, spoke with Nikephoros and Lykaeaus who was temporarily leading all the marines. Then he mounted his bay riding horse, had a slave lead his charger, and headed east with his twenty horse marines — as the other Bosporons now called them — under Draco, who laughed at him and reminded him that they’d crossed this country together when Satyrus was a boy.
Lysimachos was with the vanguard — he had a thousand Thracian cavalry, and they were enthusiastic burners, so that the limits of their exploration could be read on every horizon. It was a brutal form of war but Satyrus, sitting with Lysimachos, had to admit that it did keep the commander informed of his men’s progress.
‘This is all enemy country,’ Lysimachos said.
Satyrus doubted that the peasantry of the hills were really allies — or friends — to any man. And the first village they rode through showed the Thracians’ savagery — dead men, dead women, and dead animals. All the roofs burned.
Melitta came up in the late afternoon with Scopasis and all her people. Her knights were stripped of their armour — it was off with their wagons, somewhere in the baggage behind them — and their adolescent men and women were armed only with a bow and a knife.
Melitta saluted Lysimachos with her whip. ‘Give your Getae a day off,’ she said. She said it so pleasantly that only Satyrus caught the violence with which she said Getae. ‘We’ll pass through them at sunset.’
Lysimachos shrugged. ‘I don’t think they need to be called in. We’re making good progress.’
Melitta slapped her leather-clad leg impatiently. ‘My people can make twice the time, and we don’t stop to rape the animals.’ Her true feelings were coming through, and the scars on her face burned red. ‘And if we’re as close to Antigonus as Prepalaus thinks, we need to keep the smoke off the horizon, eh?’
Satyrus had seldom loved his sister as much as that moment — Lysimachos accepted her suggestions with a smile. It was a condescending smile — that of a man in his prime to a mere woman — a woman play-acting a cavalry commander.
Melitta shrugged off the implied insult, accepted the part of his agreement she needed, and cantered away with her knights at her horse’s heels.
Lysimachos shook his head. ‘She actually fights, I hear,’ he said.
Satyrus looked at him and smiled, albeit for a completely different reason. ‘She actually wins,’ he said. ‘You know what the Assagetae call her?’
‘Long legs? Lovely eyes?’ Lysimachos chuckled.
‘Smells Like Death.’ Satyrus smiled at the King of Thrace. ‘Our mother was called Cruel Hands. And not for nothing. Ask your Getae.’ Then he bowed, waved to his horse marines, and cantered off in his sister’s wake. He had to ride quickly — Draco was threatening to spit on the King of Thrace.
They rode through Dorylaeum, and no one tried to hold it or the passes beyond against them. The Sakje crossed the Hermos ford at a gallop, caught an Antigonid patrol off guard and captured the lot — five troopers and a phylarch. The men had nothing worthwhile to report, but their shock at the appearance of the Sakje told its own story, and their phylarch was not so ignorant.
He claimed that there was a division of Antigonus’s army behind them — half a day’s march south, at Kotiaeio.
Satyrus heard the name and dismounted. He took his working scroll out of his saddlebag and made a mark.
‘Crax talked about Kotiaeio,’ Satyrus said. ‘Ares, that was ten days ago. Ask the phylarch where Seleucus is.’
The man shook his head in silence.
Satyrus pointed his finger at Scopasis and waved at the prisoners.
Draco dismounted and moved the little ‘x’ of Kotiaeio further west. ‘I’ve been there,’ he said.
A pair of Sakje took them under guard, headed north to Lysimachos.
Satyrus pointed at his new estimate of where Kotiaeio was located.
‘Let’s say Antigonus has discovered that we’re not north of Sardis … day before yesterday. So he marches north and east through the Mokedene. He had a garrison in the east — at the Gordian Gates — and now he’s racing to them? Or to find us? It really doesn’t matter. He’s beaten us to the crossroads at Kotiaeio, and we won’t fight through there. And we want to join up with Seleucus — who’s down here — and we want to meet Antigonus on the plains — the high plains. Where we can use our cavalry.’