'You'll have the deck with Master Satyrus,' Diokles said. 'Can you handle it?'
Thrassos smiled. 'Nah,' he said. 'Nah. Serve good, eh?' His Greek had a guttural edge to it. Slaves washed up as free men at Rhodos, because their little fleet took so many pirates and freed their slaves. Thrassos was clearly a Dacae, or even more of a stranger, a German like Carlus in the Exiles.
Satyrus clasped hands with him anyway. 'Keep me alive,' he said.
Thrassos smiled. 'Me, too.'
*
Two weeks in Tomis and the weather broke, with two days of sun drying the hulls and more promised in Satyrus's broken bone. His hip was almost healed, and he found himself trapped in endless erotic dreams, as if, having come near death, he needed to mate. It made him feel as if he was still a boy, and at Calchus's symposia he struggled to hide his instant reaction to the man's slave girls and their admittedly pitiful dances. Satyrus's opinion of the man went down again at the sight of these girls – bruised, stone-faced and too young. His mother's commands about sex with slaves seemed perfectly tailored to them, despite the urges of his sleeping mind and Calchus's broadest urgings. 'Take one? Take two – they're small!' Every night, the same joke.
'I need to get going,' Satyrus said to Theron. 'Help me! I'm too damned weak to get it done.'
Theron clasped his shoulder softly and moved around, giving the necessary orders and placating Calchus with promises of future visits.
On the beach, with a fair north wind blowing as cold as Tartarus, Satyrus embraced his host. 'T hanks for your hospitality,' he said. 'Aren't you worried about Eumeles? He'll need a reprisal.'
'Not before spring,' Calchus said. 'And we're Lysimachos's men, here. We'll get him to send us a garrison. It may even mean war.'
'How will you send him word?' Satyrus asked, chilled to the bone already.
Calchus looked uncomfortable. 'Fishing smack to Amphipolis, perhaps,' he said. 'Or a rider overland.'
'We'll take the news,' Satyrus said. Theron raised an eyebrow. Satyrus looked at his former coach. 'Actions have consequences,' he said, thinking of Penelope lying dead in a pool of her own blood, all her courage snuffed out by violence.
Clown-voice killed Penelope, and I kill him to settle the score, and Eumeles sends a fleet to Tomis to settle that score. Or perhaps I sail to attack Eumeles, and he forces me to flee, and clown-voice pursues me, and thus kills Penelope – on and on, to the first principle of causality. Satyrus was lost in thought until Theron nudged him.
'We'll pass the news to Lysimachos,' Satyrus said.
'You have our eternal thanks already, benefactor!' Calchus said. 'Your father was the best of men and you follow him.'
Satyrus was tempted to say that the best of men would not have caused Penelope's death, nor Teax's. But he held his opinions close.
'Goodbye, guest-friend,' Satyrus said. He waved to the other towns-men on the beach – a thin crowd, because many of the freemen's ranks were empty.
They ran the ships into the surf and got under way quickly, fearing a turn in the weather. The weather held for three days, and they sailed south and east without touching an oar. But just before beaching on the third evening, Theron's ship suddenly turned into the wind, the signal for trouble, and Satyrus got the Lotus alongside as fast as he could. Apollodorus led the marines aboard at a run, and then ran down the central deck, scattering mutineers. Ten men were killed, and Theron shook his head.
'I tried to reason with them,' he said thickly. 'They knocked me on the head.'
Kleitos had put the ship into the wind and held the stern for several long minutes, alone.
Satyrus clasped his hand. 'Well done!'
The man looked stunned. 'Didn't even know what I was doing!' he muttered. 'One against so many.'
Apollodorus came back with a dozen oarsmen under guard. 'Taken in arms,' he said. 'No question. Kill 'em?'
Satyrus shook his head. 'Exchange them for a dozen of our rowers in the Lotus.'
They made a poor job of landing the ships for dinner, and the officers gathered in a worried knot by a fire.
'My arm says we're in for a weather change,' Satyrus said. 'Nothing good there.'
'Somebody's spreading the word that we're going to have 'em all killed,' Kleitos said. He looked bashful and surprised that he'd spoken out, but he stood his ground. 'I heard it when they were getting ready to rush me. They asked me to join 'em.'
'You know them?' Satyrus asked.
Diokles laughed bitterly. 'We all know somebody over there. Professional seamen and rowers? Small world, Navarch.'
Satyrus rubbed his beard – he hadn't shaved since he took his wound. 'Seems to me we should talk to them,' he said.
Theron snorted. 'My head still hurts,' he said.
'Promise them wages and a fair landing at Rhodos,' Satyrus said.
'Rhodos is death for some of 'em,' Diokles said. He handed Satyrus a cup of warm wine and honey. 'That's why they're antsy.'
'Lysimachos could use them,' Satyrus said, considering the words even as he said them.
'That'd turn some heads,' Theron said. 'T hose men are as good as pirates. Leon is the enemy of every pirate on the seas.'
Satyrus shrugged. 'It isn't right to kill them, but it isn't right to release them where they'll serve pirates? Is that it, Master Theron? I hear Philokles in your voice, sir.'
Theron shook his head. 'My head's too thick to argue moral philosophy, lad. And I see your point.'
'I need Lysimachos,' Satyrus said. 'He's supposedly our ally – he's Ptolemy's ally, but Alexandria is far away and Lysimachos is close.'
'Lysimachos might take these men – and the ships they crew – and tell us that we're lucky to be alive.' Theron looked around at the other men in the firelight, but the sailors were quiet. Most of them were lower-class freemen, and they weren't about to intrude on a political argument between two gentlemen.
Satyrus looked pointedly at Diokles. The Tyrian nodded slowly. 'So? I mean, begging your pardon, but if he does that, he's no good ally, and we're still richer by the Golden Lotus and our lives. And frankly, gents – you can't build a fleet on these hulls. We captured a few old triremes. Only Hornet is worth a crap. There's worm in the other two.'
Theron nodded. He slapped Diokles on the shoulder. 'That'll teach me to talk about things I don't really know,' he said. 'In future, don't hold your tongue.'
The dark-haired Tyrian's earrings twinkled in the firelight. 'So?'
'So – let's muster the lot of them – our oarsmen too. We'll tell it to them straight.' Satyrus was nodding as he spoke. 'And, Apollodorus, marines, full armour. So they see the other choice.'
Apollodorus nodded. 'Just for the poets, Navarch – I'd rather you executed a couple first. That's a message the rest will understand.'
Theron looked away in distaste, but Diokles nodded. 'I agree. Kill a couple of the louts who were caught with weapons today.'
'In cold blood?' Satyrus asked.
'I wasn't planning to give 'em swords,' Apollodorus said. 'Don't worry, Navarch. I'll do it.'
'No,' Satyrus said. He swallowed, feeling trapped. Feeling as if some thing was moving on the dark beach. Furies. Curses. His oath to avenge his mother. He shook his head. He thought of Teax. Of the consequences of being a king.
'Muster the men,' he said.
It took only minutes – the captured rowers had their own fires, watched by tired oarsmen in captured armour.
'At least they're all fed,' Satyrus said to Diokles.
'Your friend did us proud,' Diokles said. He was chewing on a pork bone.
'Do these men have to die?' Satyrus asked.
'Zeus Soter, Navarch! They rose in mutiny against you, tried to kill Theron and tried to take one of our ships.' Diokles looked at Satyrus from under his black eyebrows and spat gristle in the sand. 'You plan to be a king? I'm no tutor, like your Spartan, nor an athlete, like Theron. Bless 'em both – fine men. Good men. But – if you plan to be a king, people are going to die. And you are going to kill 'em. Get me? Maybe you need to lesson yourself on it. Or maybe…' The Tyrian didn't meet Satyrus's eye. 'Maybe you oughtn't to do it. At all.'