Tyrant: Force of Kings (22 page)

‘While he married my Amastris,’ Satyrus said, with more bitterness than he had known he felt.

‘More an act of statecraft than lust, I suspect,’ Demetrios said. ‘But you understand, his possession of Heraklea – and he has possessed it, just as fully as he has no doubt possessed Amastris’s welcoming body – and your sister’s expulsion of my ships from the Pontus have placed me in an impossible position, as Lysimachos has moved almost half of his army across the Euxine into Asia, to the great discomfort of my father.’ Demetrios rose to his feet, resplendent in armour of gold. Behind his chair, the sun was ready to rise – Dawn was coming out of her bed over the ocean. ‘We have an assault to make. And afterwards – after we have swung our swords together – I hope that we can sit together as friends, and I can convince you that my side is the side of arete.’ He accepted a purple cloak from a slave and slung it around his shoulders.

Neron leaned over. ‘But Cassander insisted, and in the end Lysimachos accepted your death in exchange for naval support from Cassander, which he has not received, and a free hand in the Euxine, where he intends to be king after you. These, lord, are your allies.’

Satyrus raised an eyebrow. ‘You have given me much to think about while I kill men who have done nothing to offend me,’ he said. ‘Despite your protestations and those of the king, you’ll pardon me if I don’t automatically accept that my allies are hot to betray me.’

Neron bowed. ‘You would be both naive and inhuman if you thought otherwise,’ Neron said. ‘But I have told you the truth as I know it.’

Satyrus slung his sword over his shoulder and picked up the shield he’d chosen – not a real aspis, but a smaller Macedonian shield, a circle three spans and a little in diameter, with the star of Macedon in gold.

He and Demetrios walked out from the tent lines, crossing the horse pickets and walking past thousands of waiting men, slaves bringing water, men currying horses, women washing. The hypaspists closed around them when the crowds were thick, but otherwise Demetrios appeared to stroll through his army with the freedom of a philosopher walking through the Athenian agora. No man approached him – there appeared to be some sort of rule – but he would stop to address soldiers, even slaves, and their obedience was as immediate as their bows were profound.

It was all very un-Greek.

‘He’s very comfortable with slaves,’ Achilles murmured, at his shoulder.

Satyrus thought that it was a very astute observation.

Two long bowshots from the walls, the ramp to the outworks of the suburbs began. A battery of siege engines squatted behind elaborate mounds of earth, gravel, stone, and wood. Enormous wicker baskets, filled with loose stones and sand or earth, covered the batteries. Trenches were dug both in front of the walls and behind them. Newer works were narrow and low – older works were deep, with high walls and carefully terraced interiors reinforced with heavy wooden beams.

Thousands – possibly tens of thousands – of slaves laboured like ants on the works. Men dug earth, women carried baskets of earth on their heads, children wove baskets to carry more earth or to act as forms for engineering. Everywhere that Satyrus looked – everywhere – the siege was prosecuted with a massive labour force.

Demetrios smiled. ‘Have you ever seen the like?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Satyrus said. ‘At Rhodes. Or had you forgotten?’

Demetrios was clearly put out. ‘Fine, then. But it’s different when you are the prime mover. Who could prosecute a siege like this and not feel like a god? I snap my fingers, and this happens. I could order the very mountain reduced – and it would be done.’

‘Hmm,’ Satyrus said. He had been given a long spear, a heavy dory, and he didn’t like it – liked it less and less as he carried it. Still, Demetrios had one, and he supposed it was the rule. On ship, he carried a pair of longche, heavy javelins.

The ramp stretched away in front of him, filling his vision, and his usual nerves had finally begun. His hands began to shake.

‘You are not impressed by my slave army?’ Demetrios asked.

Satyrus rammed the saurauter of his spear into the earth, took a handful of sand, rubbed his hands to get the sweat off, and drew his sword.

‘I thank you for the sword. It is excellent,’ Satyrus said.

Demetrios beamed. ‘Ahh! I can please you, then. Why do you like it?’

Satyrus shrugged, caught himself grinning at the weapon. ‘It is superb,’ he said. ‘Beautiful to look at, perfectly balanced, and not too gaudy.’

‘It was made for me,’ Demetrios said. ‘Brought by an embassage, I think. Wear it in health. Are you ready?’

Satyrus nodded.

Demetrios motioned to the hypaspist commander. Satyrus noticed then that the commander had been in conversation with Neron – and that Neron slipped away quickly.

The hypaspist officer walked over. At a sign from Demetrios, he signalled by raising his spear, and the engines began to launch their projectiles with a
whip-crack
as their casting arms struck the retaining beams and the long slings opened. They were five-talent engines, and Satyrus watched as they cast and saw their projectiles raise puffs of powdered stone when they struck the towers at the top of the breach. He had the strangest feeling, just for a moment – the feeling that this was predestined, that he had done this before or seen it in a dream, overlaid with the feeling that he was about to assault himself – that he would find himself standing with the defenders.

‘Lord?’ the hypaspist captain asked him. ‘Will you stand to the right of the king, and your man in the rank behind you?’

‘Breeze is perfect,’ Demetrios said.

Satyrus turned to look at him. ‘Perfect how?’ he asked.

‘A little something my engineers have come up with since Rhodes. I like to fancy that if we’d had it, I’ve have taken the city.’ He turned to a slave and took what appeared to be a scarf.

The sun was just getting a rim above the edge of the sea, and it was already hot. Satyrus was perspiring inside his armour. He had no interest in a scarf.

‘Best take one,’ the king said.

Satyrus smelled smoke. He stepped out of the ranks and looked around, and there they were – thousands of bundles of green brush, the fires under them just licking at the foliage. Satyrus had taken the pile for another entrenchment.

‘The smoke will cover us all the way in,’ Demetrios said. ‘Wear a scarf.’

Satyrus took one from the slave. He noted that most of the rank and file hypaspists had them on already, making them look like a regiment of hill bandits. Most of them had magnificent Thracian-style helmets with elaborate cheek-plates fitted like faces, some with heavy beards and moustaches in black paint, enamel, or blackened silver – or even bright gold. The scarves vanished as they buckled the cheek-plates down.

Satyrus pulled down his own cheek-plates. He had a simple Attic helmet, a light thing of tinned bronze with an ordinary plume of red and white horsehair – nothing like the elaborate horsehair coifs worn by the veterans around him.

Sealed in his helmet, Satyrus’s vision was limited to a few degrees off the centreline – his peripheral vision was almost completely lost. And the damp scarf was stifling his breath. The cuirass he had chosen was slightly too small, and now it seemed like a torture device, constricting his lungs even as he tried to wrench air through the damned scarf – and the smell of smoke was everywhere.

Why am I doing this?
he asked himself. There was no easy answer.

The ramp stretched away, apparently to the edge of the heavens. It was almost a stade long, and rose ten times the height of a man. The first two-thirds were well surfaced in carefully laid turf, but the last third looked like loose dirt.

And then the breeze took the smoke and tossed it forward, and he couldn’t see anything.

Arrows were beginning to come down from the battlements on the suburbs, and bigger, more deadly projectiles came from higher on the Acrocorinth; bolts and stones from engines.

Demetrios stepped out of the ranks. ‘I am your king,’ he said, ‘and my eye is on you. Stand with me and be my brothers, or prove craven and go be less than men.’ His eyes met Satyrus’s, and he raised his spear in salute.

Satyrus returned the salute.

‘Smoke is good,’ coughed the hypaspist commander. ‘Thick.’

‘Let the engines fire again,’ Demetrios said.

Satyrus stood and sweated and shook.

‘Remind me why I said we should do this?’ Achilles muttered.

One of the hypaspists laughed. ‘This is work for men,’ he said. ‘You foreigners should probably sit this out.’

Achilles grunted. ‘Foreigner? Where were you born, Asia man?’

‘Silence in the ranks!’ a phylarch called, and Satyrus smiled to think that he was going into combat as a hoplite, not a king.

‘Ready, there!’ the commander called.

The phylarchs answered, and Satyrus realised that as he was at the head of an eight-man file, he had best answer. ‘Ready,’ he coughed, through the smoke.

‘Ever been in a fight before?’ asked the man next to him.

‘Once or twice,’ Satyrus said.

‘He fought us at Rhodes!’ said the phylarch on his left. He laughed. ‘Watch him, Philip! He’ll do his part.’

Satyrus was oddly pleased at the compliment.

‘Up we go, then,’ said the commander.

Demetrios stepped into the middle of the front rank at the last moment, and raised his shield. The arrows were falling faster – they were walking right into the thick of them.

‘Shields up!’ yelled the commander. ‘Right up – don’t be lazy fucks!’

Satyrus wished for an aspis as he raised the smaller Macedonian bowl over his head. Arrows began to strike the surface, and something bit his shin.

The smoke was debilitating, and Satyrus was not sure, as a sometime commander, that he thought it was worth the cover. The arrows seemed to fall with wicked minds of their own, and the smoke got in his lungs and made him want to puke – he had the burning sensation in his guts that a man gets when he eats too much fat.

Up and up – his feet were still on sod, so they hadn’t gone very far yet, but Satyrus could feel the burn in his thighs, and the arrows were coming faster, and suddenly a ballista bolt swept away the phylarch next to him and the man behind, a ringing, screaming chaos of death, and the whole front bent as men fell, wounded or only struck by pieces of the corpses – the headless phylarch fell back into his file—

‘Halt!’ screamed the commander. ‘Close up!’

The smoke was thinning. The range was almost point-blank, and the enemy engines were firing
down
with more force and more accuracy, and a second direct hit cleared the rear half of another file in a wave of screams and ringing armour.

‘Are you ready to be a hero?’ Demetrios asked. The two of them were nose to nose. ‘Did I mention that the breach is only eight men wide? We go first, whatever Philip tries to do. He wants to protect me. I want to be first on the wall.’ Under his ornate cheek-plates, Satyrus could see the white rims around his eyes, the slightly mad grin.

‘I’ll be right beside you, lord,’ Satyrus said. Then he allowed himself a smile. ‘Or ahead of you, if you stumble.’

Demetrios smacked his shield face with his spear. ‘I love this moment. May it last for ever in memory.’

‘Forward!’ Philip, the hypaspist commander, sounded panicked. His losses were already more than he’d expected, and Satyrus was, frankly, surprised that they weren’t retreating. With a tenth of his men down and the breach so narrow – it looked like foolishness.

Foolishness that Demetrios was committing because he had to impress the King of the Bosporons?

Sling stones began to hit them – first a punch against his shield, and then a blow like a giant fist to the crest on his helmet. Satyrus adjusted his shield, crouched, and began to go faster. So did the new phylarch to his left.

Suddenly the ground was gone beneath his feet, and he was on loose dirt and sand, grateful for his boots. He went faster, and the sling stones were like a storm of deadly bees – zipping through the air, ringing when they hit armour, thudding when they hit flesh.

This breach is not prepared. Demetrios has made a mistake.

Self-preservation said that if he couldn’t turn tail, he could run at the breach, and Satyrus did. He was suddenly conscious of how narrow the ramp really was, and how far he still had to go. He was out of the smoke, the breach was full of men, and he was … in front. If he slipped to the right or left, he would fall – probably to his death on the rocks at the base of the ramp.

And then all the worry, all the thought, all the strategy fell away, and he was running up a steep slope at men who intended to kill him, and it no longer mattered whether Cassander had tried to kill him or was really his ally, because there was only right here and right now, and a tall man in a yellow horsehair crest who seemed to fill the breach.

Satyrus paused, perhaps ten paces from the wall – shifted his weight, slowed, and threw his dory, twice the height of a man, a long thrusting spear, not a throwing spear.

Yellow Plume took it right through his shield, gave a scream, and went down.

Satyrus drew his sword, stepped on Yellow Plume, still squirming with the spear in his side, and put his shield into the next three men, who all attempted to spear him together. He caught two of the spears and the third hammered into his helmet, caught for a moment on his crest-box and skidded away, snapping his head back painfully against his chin-strap.

He got his feet under him and stepped in, passing his right foot forward to get under the spearheads and stay there. Behind the men in front was another rank, and their spearheads thundered on his shield and one ripped his thigh, a hard overhand thrust that he never saw. Another glanced off his bronze thorax.

Then he was shield to shield with the front rank, and he stabbed at their thighs and feet, ruthlessly sweeping the razor edges of his new sword across their tendons while his aspis went high. He collected their spears and pressed in like a lover against their chests.

Men began to fall.