Tyrant: Destroyer of Cities (32 page)

Arete
had to row into the wind to get back to the coast of Africa, and since the heat was so vicious, Satyrus ordered that they row soft and slow, creeping upwind with steerage way and no more.

Late afternoon, and the lookout sighted something in the water ahead, and an hour’s rowing took them to a capsized trireme, floating upside down just at the surface of the water. Gulls were picking at corpses.

‘Not one of ours,’ Charmides said from the bow with the ruthlessness of a veteran. He limped back to the sternward edge of the marine tower. ‘Just happened – there’s sharks still feeding.’

On and on, into the blazing sun and dead into the wind. Satyrus had sweated through his lightest chiton during his turn at the steering oars. He couldn’t imagine what the thranites were going through, so he descended into the choking depths of his ship.

The air was so close and hot in the bottom range that it was like coriander soup – except that it smelled much worse. Sweat and urine and faeces and old cheese.

‘Everyone here still alive?’ Satyrus asked.

‘Neh, we’s all dead men!’ called one old sweat.

‘Wish we’s dead,’ said another.

‘Is we there yet,
Pater
?’ called a third.

Satyrus had to smile despite the stench. If the thranites were in such spirits, then he was in good shape.

An hour later, and the clouds over Africa were unmistakable. Neiron pointed them out to Satyrus, who was standing with Idomeneus, the archer-captain. The Cretan didn’t know it, but he was slated as the next prize master. Satyrus was testing him on his navigation.

‘And Cyprus to Rhodes?’ Satyrus asked.

‘I’m from Gortyn!’ Idomeneus said with a rich chuckle. ‘I was at sea when I was born. Cyprus to Asia and due west along the coast – west by south to weather the cape at Cos, and then across the strait to Rhodes. A child could do it.’

‘If we take any more ships, Charmides will have a command,’ Satyrus said. ‘And that’s as close to a child as this ship holds.’

Neiron pointed at the bronze sky to the south. ‘Wind’s growing stronger,’ he said. ‘Just like before.’

‘We should get on the beach,’ Jubal said.

The edge of darkness, and they saw fires to the west along the coast, and Satyrus breathed a sigh of relief when he recognised
Wasp
and
Ramses
beached stern first. And Diokles was waiting – the whole squadron had already fed, and he lined them up on the beach, got ropes aboard the
Arete
in the rising surf and pulled the big ship right up the beach until the heavy bronze bow was on dry sand. Every ship in the squadron rested on the sand.

‘I count twelve,’ Satyrus said, when he had his back against a chest and a golden cup of wine in his fist.

‘Sank two, took one,’ Diokles said. ‘Ugliest action you ever saw – if you like to see a plan. But our ships kept coming up, and finally we swamped them. Your young Dionysus did very well – his men backed water almost like real oarsmen.’

‘Shut your gob, wide-arse,’ said Dionysus in mock sailor talk. ‘We’s as good as any man – better than some, aye.’ He growled low in his throat.

Satyrus laughed with the others. ‘He’s not my Dionysus. It’s my sister’s breasts he wrote the poems to, after all.’

Apollodorus laughed. ‘I’d wager he’s never touched a breast in his life.’

Dionysus narrowed his eyes. ‘Better than raping corpses for a sex life, Corinthian.’

Satyrus stepped in. ‘Are we pirates now, friends? This is pirate talk.’

Diokles nodded. ‘Lads are excited. It was a good day. Let me tell it – and let’s not hear any more asides.’

Apollodorus raised an eyebrow. ‘I apologise, Dionysus. I meant my comments as raillery – nothing more.’

Dionysus grinned and lisped. ‘Apologies accepted, O Gift of Apollo. And returned. I’m sure some of your rape victims are alive.’

Apollodorus didn’t explode. He smiled. ‘I might find the time to convince you otherwise, Child of the Wine God.’

Satyrus put a kingly elbow into Dionysus’ ribs with all the energy of the gymnasium, and Dionysus spewed wine across the fire. ‘Apollodorus, you must forgive him. He’s always been like this – I think the technical term is
insufferable prick
. And you two will not fight. Save it for Demetrios.’

Dionysus was laughing uncontrollably. ‘I miss this,’ he admitted, rubbing his ribs.

Apollodorus gave the fop a hand to his feet. ‘Let the man tell his story.’

Diokles spread his hands. ‘So Dionysus found two of them, and he went right at them. Then he backed away – took a light ram, got his oars in. And
Amon Ra
and
Wasp
came up and they all chased each other in circles—’

Apollodorus laughed. ‘It was pitiful. My rowers made mistakes, I gave the wrong order—’

Dionysus laughed. ‘I ordered my men to reverse benches, and only about a third of them did it, so that we turned broadside on to one of the enemy ships—’

Satyrus winced.

Diokles shook his head. ‘So I came up in
Oinoe
and it looks like a seaborne circus, with ships in what appears to be a circle, chasing their tails like kittens. And then the biggest enemy ship turns out of its circle to ram
Ramses
—’

‘And my lads all pull their arses out of the air and suddenly we’re like a ship – I put my ram into their ram,’ Dionysus said. ‘We aren’t moving as fast as an old man walks—’

‘And this big trireme
impales
himself on
Ramses
,’ Diokles said. ‘His bow must have either been rotten, or wormed, or the gods blessed Dionysus. But that ship just
sank
.’

‘And just like that, the other two lost all their spirit and we had them as fast as I can say it,’ Apollodorus said.

‘And my lads, who’ve been rowing in that infernal heat like heroes to save these fools, are left as the cheering section. By which time we could see the storm clouds over Africa and we ran for the beach.’ Diokles looked over his shoulder at the grey wall – almost black – shot through with lightning. ‘I pity any man at sea tonight. Friend or foe.’

‘You must have taken prisoners,’ Satyrus said.

Apollodorus nodded. ‘Plenty. It’s not all wine and cheese for Demetrios. Half his fleet is here, and half is strung out between Cyprus and Alexandria. He set one rendezvous and Plistias, his admiral, set another. Antigonus needs food, right now – his men crossed the Sinai at midsummer and they need
everything
. That’s what they were saying five days ago at Tyre, anyway. That’s where these two rode out the last storm.’

Neiron came and stood by his king. ‘You’re plotting in there,’ he said.

A gust of wind scattered cinders and coals across the beach, and several stung Satyrus. ‘I’m always plotting. I’ll turn into Stratokles, eventually.’

‘Perish the thought,’ Diokles said.

‘Last storm blew three days,’ Satyrus said.

Neiron nodded.

‘If we put to sea the moment the sand dies away—’ Satyrus said, and Neiron interrupted him.

‘You’ll be launching into the biggest seas of the summer.’ Neiron shook his head. ‘Day three was better, but only by comparison.’

Satyrus shook his head. ‘It all depends,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘Ask me in a day or two.’

Two days of sandstorm, lightning and rain.

Mid-morning on the first day of the storm, and Satyrus was lying on his pile of skins, watching the sail over his head move and flap and wondering if it would tear its pegs out of the sand when Anaxagoras ducked under the heavy rugs blocking the open end of the tent and stepped in, streaming sand from his red chlamys.

‘Time for a music lesson,’ he said.

Satyrus sat up with a laugh, boredom vanquished, and spent a difficult hour trying to make his calloused hands match the gestures of his master on the strings of the kithara – ten strings, all running from a fine ebony rod at the tips of the instrument’s hollow wooden horns, down across the belly of the instrument to lie across the sound box. Anaxagoras’ kithara was a beauty, as befitted a professional musician, all lemonwood and ebony inlaid with ivory.

‘Pluck the strings with the
right
,’ Anaxagoras said for the eighth or ninth time. ‘Calm them with the left hand.’

Satyrus had no trouble using the plectrum to strum the strings with his right hand – it felt quite natural – but his teacher’s constant demand that he dampen the sound of some strings while allowing others to ring true puzzled him.

‘But you say you have studied the mathematics of Pythagoras,’ Anaxagoras said, clearly flustered and perhaps growing angry with a very stubborn student.

Satyrus sighed. ‘When I see a ship running diagonally across my course, I
see
the mathematics of Pythagoras,’ he said. ‘You can tell me about the lengths of a chord until you are blue in the face, and it does nothing for me.’

Anaxagoras took a deep breath and forced a smile – a very false smile. ‘I believe that you were ordered by the god to learn to play?’ Anaxagoras said.

Satyrus was about to tell Anaxagoras exactly what he and the god could do with a kithara when there were shouts from outside.

One of the captured triremes
had blown over
and the sides splintered as the ship rolled on her beam ends. The sea rose until Satyrus feared that
Wasp
would be pulled out into the water, and they got the men out in the lashing, sandy rain to pull the little ship higher on the beach – and then they endured two more hours of it to pull
Oinoe
and
Arete
higher up as well.

‘You bastards
sailed
through this?’ Dionysus asked on the evening of the second day. ‘It scares me on the beach.’

Apollodorus and the Alexandrian had reached some sort of understanding.

Apollodorus shot the younger man a smile. ‘I won’t say this storm isn’t worse, m’dear. But yes – we sailed in this for three days and three nights.’

Dawn of the third day, and Satyrus rallied all his men – over two thousand, rowers and oarsmen and marines all told – on the beach. But the wind off Africa hadn’t blown out, and the sun didn’t come out from the clouds until noon.

‘Too late in the day,’ Satyrus said, as the wind began to fall away and the mosquitoes from the swamps to the east rose from their enforced rest to find a rich source of blood waiting on the beach. They made it the worst night of the three, their high-pitched whine eventually forming a terrible sound, like the distant breathing of a malignant insect god. They didn’t relent with full dark, and it was hot and airless.

Satyrus launched his ships in the dawn on a sea that seemed to have been blown absolutely flat; but a stiff shore breeze sprang up, banished the evil insects and sent the squadron winging north over a sea so calm it looked like wet faience in the new sun.

‘Three days’ full rations,’ Jubal reported, and spat through his teeth. ‘That’s after dividing everything we took out of the captures.’

Satyrus nodded. ‘Mainsail up. Head for Cyprus.’ He shook his head. ‘Let’s see if we can make some trouble.’

Their first capture was two hours later – a swift message boat that had been dismasted in the last of the storm and lay helpless under their bow, snapped up almost in passing and then sunk to prevent recapture. The captive oarsmen reported that the storm had damaged Antigonus’ resupply badly, but that he’d sent to Cyprus for his son and all the ships of the victorious squadrons there.

Satyrus spent the day in the lookout basket forward, shielding his eyes from the sparkling sun, watching the north and then a long line of dark clouds piling up on the western horizon. Storms from the west were all but unknown in the Cyprian Sea, but so were sandstorms out of Africa.

‘I may have made a poor throw,’ Satyrus said back on the deck, talking to his officers and miming a cast of the knucklebones. ‘We’ve got no beach under our lee, and that storm … is coming.’

‘So we sail until the wind rises,’ Neiron said. ‘And then we row. You’re too nice to the rowers, lord. They can do it.’

Satyrus went to sleep worried, and awoke with the first of the thunder and then it was morning, a grey-white morning, hot and airless. The rowers groaned and set to, a cruising stroke, and Satyrus put his little fleet into two columns of six ships, headed due north.

The sun was high in the sky and past noon when the first gusts of wind from the west hit them. By the third gust they could see a squall line coming, and Neiron ordered all the sails struck down, the masts lowered and stowed and the ship rigged for heavy weather.

‘Where do you place us, Old Man of the Sea?’ Satyrus asked Neiron.

Neiron made a sign to avert evil. ‘A hundred stades south of Cyprus, give or take a hundred. Hard to tell how much northing we made in the dark last night. Eh?’

Jubal spat between his teeth. ‘More
thouth
than that,’ he said confidently. ‘Not enough wind for a fart latht night, lord.’

Satyrus walked forward with Anaxagoras.

‘Teach me,’ he said.

‘Only if you will learn,’ Anaxagoras said.

Satyrus sighed. He called for stools, and sat down in the shade of the forward tower. So that he was the closest officer when the lookout shouted.

16

‘S
ails! Sails to the east! Ten square … fifty triangles!’ The man sounded as if panic had taken the lower registers of his voice.

Satyrus sprang up the steps into the marine tower without feeling a twinge in his back. Away to the north and east was a great fleet – all their sails up, running east and south on the wild west wind.

Running for the coast of Asia.

Satyrus kept himself still for several long breaths, counting sails. The closest squadron was hull up – big ships, and in a crisp formation, and he guessed that these were the squadron of penteres that had faced down Menelaeus. Beyond were two more squadrons of triangles, hull down, and perhaps another further. And at least twenty merchant ships – and more away to the north.