Now or never. Easy enough to hesitate and let them go first – Diodorus or Eumenes, perhaps, or Diokles or his nameless Aegyptian file-partner. Fuck that. ‘Follow me!’ Satyrus yelled, and went for the stairs. He roared, and his fear fell away. Inside, he laughed with triumph.
There was an archer on the stairs. Satyrus got his shield up and felt the blow as the arrow went into his shield, popping through the bronze face and the papyrus leaves and the poplar wood to prick his arm. He roared again, banished the flood tide of fear and his legs powered him up. He thrust his shield into the archer and his sword under it, over it, everywhere until the blood flew and the man fell – a nameless stranger, not the Athenian doctor who he saw in nightmares but some poor mercenary, toppling off the stairs with his guts spilling free like an anchor chain. Then he turned as a knife glanced off his scale cuirass.
‘I surrender!’ said the man who had just failed to kill him.
Satyrus held his swing. The man backed away, dropping the knife. ‘I surrender!’ he said and ran back through the door.
‘Satyrus!’ Eumenes of Olbia called from the base of the steps. ‘Wait, boy!’
The man who had just surrendered fell backwards against him, pleading. ‘Please!’ he begged. ‘Help!’ he squeaked.
Phalangites and cavalrymen had used ladders to storm the exedra and were killing every man they found.
‘Stop that!’ Satyrus said. ‘Prisoners!’ he roared in his best storm-at-sea voice.
Men glanced at him, and the madness left their eyes.
Diodorus was shaking his head. ‘We have a hundred prisoners,’ he said. ‘Ares and Aphrodite. Macedonians – what in all the shades of Tartarus were they doing here?’
Philokles shook his head. ‘I can guess, brother. But we do not have the men we came for.’
Satyrus pushed the prisoner from the head of the stairs forward. ‘Gone an hour ago,’ he said. ‘Pure ill luck. And his whole fucking household and all his guards.’
‘Lord,’ the terrified mercenary said. ‘Lord, he left to – arrange – that is – to kill Lord Ptolemy!’
‘Zeus Soter!’ Diodorus said.
Theron and Eumenes began shedding their armour without comment, and Satyrus joined them. ‘Running?’ he asked, and both nodded.
‘All the athletes!’ Satyrus shouted, and the cry was taken up, and Dio came, and a dozen other young men. They stripped to their chitoniskoi, threw their sword belts over their shoulders and they were off.
They ran in a pack through the darkened streets – their own men slowed them for many blocks, as the thousands Philokles had employed hampered them, curious for news and at one post insistent that they prove themselves – good men, obeying orders, who cost them precious minutes until a hippeis officer verified them and they were off again.
They ran like sprinters up to the palace gate and found no guard there, just a pair of dead slaves.
‘Where in Hades do we go?’ Eumenes asked.
Satyrus was familiar enough with the palace. He led the whole group across the courtyard to the entry to the megaron – where a pair of cavalry Hetairoi barred the way with bare steel.
‘Stratokles seeks to murder Lord Ptolemy!’ Theron yelled. His words echoed around the rows of columns and the courtyard and the garden. The two cavalrymen faced them, clearly prepared to fight.
‘Hold, hold! I know that voice!’ shouted a Greek from within the megaron, and then Gabines came through the archway with more guards.
Eumenes, as the senior officer, stepped forward. ‘Lord,’ he said, ‘I am one of Lord Diodorus’s officers. We have just taken a hundred of the mutineers – more, I think.’
‘Praise the gods!’ Gabines said.
‘We are told that Stratokles the Athenian means to kill Lord Ptolemy,’ Eumenes said.
‘We know,’ Gabines answered wearily. ‘You are too late. He has already failed.’
‘Thank the gods,’ Satyrus said, and behind him, his companions gave a loyal cheer.
‘You may not thank the gods,’ Gabines said, looking at Satyrus. ‘Lord Ptolemy left today, in secret, disguised as a trooper. He is safe.’ Gabines shook his head. ‘But Stratokles the traitor has taken the Lady Amastris.’
PART VI
FLEXING THE BLADE
23
312 BC
S tratokles rode easily, most of his attention concentrated on controlling his craving for water. The rest of his attention fell on his captive, who rode calmly, her head up, and occasionally favoured him with a smile.
Her smiles disconcerted him.
Around him rode the best of his hired killers, Lucius at their head, and beyond, just a few stades unless he had utterly missed his mark, lay the army of Demetrios the Golden, son of Antigonus One-Eye – the youngest and handsomest of the contestants in the wars that men called ‘God-like Alexander’s Funeral Games’.
Stratokles straightened his back, trying to erase layers of fatigue and a dozen hours in the saddle, and trying to arrange his thoughts to prepare for the interview to come. He had failed (so far) to kill Ptolemy. Best not to dwell on that.
Hermes, god of spies, his mouth was dry.
‘How long did you plan my abduction?’ the princess asked. She smiled and dropped her eyes, the very model of feminine dignity.
Stratokles shrugged. ‘It was on the fly, my lady,’ he admitted. He rubbed the stump of his nose. Why, he asked himself, did I say that? Surely a more elaborate fiction would have won more prizes than that single bare fact.
‘So, having failed to kill the regent of Aegypt, you thought that I might do as second best?’ she asked as if deeply interested in the inner workings of his mind.
He straightened his back again and cursed inwardly at his own lack of discipline – his craving for her good opinion. ‘Lady, it is my intention to barter my services to Antigonus for a satrapy. Phrygia lacks a lord. You would make an effective ally – even a consort. Or so I reasoned. ’
‘My, my,’ she said. They rode in silence for more than a stade, and she began to fall behind. She pulled her shawl over her face and rode with her face covered, and he alternated thinking about that face and about his desire for water.
Then she pushed her horse to a faster walk and nudged the weary animal back to a position next to Stratokles, and he felt his heart rise with foolish happiness when she did. ‘Because my father is the tyrant of Heraklea, you mean? Or because you observed some quality in me that would make – how did you put it? – an effective ally?’
Stratokles considered answers from the offensive to the flattering, but again, despite years of practice, he found that his mouth was spitting out the truth. ‘Your father and his city, of course. Although,’ he said with a bow, ‘now that I have your measure, despoina, I know that I underestimated your qualities.’
‘Oh, fairly spoken!’ she laughed, throwing her head back – no falsity at all. ‘For a man as careful and as wily as you to admit that you underestimated me is quite a compliment.’
That made him smile. When had he ever smiled this many times in an hour? ‘You take my meaning exactly, lady.’ As they rode, he found himself telling this lady the truth, if for no other reason than that she asked, and seemed content to ask, riding by his side and talking as if he were an old and trusted advisor. It made him feel foolish. And old.
They were laughing together by the time they reached the first cavalry pickets. ‘It’s like speaking to Pericles,’ Lady Amastris said. Stratokles glowed.
‘You tried to kill old Ptolemy?’ Demetrios asked. He was sitting on a plain wood camp stool in the midst of a circle of his companions, but the simplicity ended there. His golden hair and his matching golden breastplate contrasted with the leopard skin he wore in place of a cloak, and his feet were encased in magnificent open-toed boots of tooled and gilt leather. Indeed, he looked like an image of one of the heroes – Theseus, Herakles or a burly Achilles.