Tyrant: Force of Kings (38 page)

‘It’s the Sakje,’ Satyrus said. ‘Stratokles has a plan.’

The sun was well up when Antigonus’s cavalry raid – late, but determined – overran the pickets and came flooding up the valley. The Sakje were caught flat-footed. There were only a handful of them, the rest asleep or elsewhere, and the enemy Aegema poured up the banks of the river, killed a handful of light infantrymen and some slaves still bathing in the river, and continued towards the infantry rearguard. A dozen Sakje fled before them, shooting from their saddles.

The enemy wanted them badly. So badly that they pursued them over a low ridge to the left and straight into the Getae camp, where they scattered the Getae herd, killed several men’s wives, and burned the Getae tents.

Then
the Sakje counter-attacked, pushing the Macedonian cavalry back through the Getae camp again, back to the river, shooting as they went. They saved fifty Getae women and most of the children, and in the pursuit, they picked up most of the Getae herd.

The next morning, without orders, the Getae raided the Antigonid camp.

Stratokles was disgustingly smug. So was Scopasis.

And still they marched north, and still Antigonus pursued them.

At the forks in the Royal Road, Satyrus sent Charmides north with a message: to send the fleet east to Kios, covering the flank. Then he led the army down the east fork, towards Miletopolis and Apollonis and the Greek cities of the northern Troad.

‘We’re at the edge of Bithynia,’ he said to Stratokles.

‘I’m on it,’ Stratokles said. He winked at Herakles.

Lysimachos shook his head. ‘If the Bithynians put an army across our path,’ he muttered, ‘we’re done.’

In fact, Scopasis had already located the nucleus of a local army – six hundred cavalry and some peltasts – forming on the banks of the great lake to the east, near the town Eumenes had founded at Niceas, just three hundred stades away.

‘I’m on it, I said,’ Stratokles insisted.

The army marched east, right into the Bithynian trap.

Mithridates the elder, uncle of the younger man who Demetrios had captured and lost, sat on a camp stool, listening to his scouts report on the army of Lysimachos, who was marching straight into his hands. Not that that was altogether good – his own small army would have the fight of its life, even in the constricted terrain on the banks of the lake with the mountains towering above them, and he’d pay dearly.

Could Antigonus be trusted to make it worth his while?

He sat and wondered why Lysimachos hadn’t at least made him an offer.

So he was unsurprised when his guards told him that there was a messenger from Lysimachos. With a woman.

That was more like it.

They were brought in; the messenger had been roughly handled, and stripped of weapons. He was bleeding from his mouth, and his eyes – he had the eyes of a killer, and just for a moment, Mithridates wasn’t amused.

‘You’re no herald,’ he said.

‘If I was,’ the man said, ‘you’d be guilty of impiety.’

‘Heralds,’ Mithridates said. ‘Do I look like a fucking Greek? Anyway, you have no staff. I can order you killed. I should.’

The man shrugged. ‘I’d like to live,’ he said through his split lip. ‘I’m here to tell you that Satyrus of Tanais is behind you with four thousand Sakje, and to offer you terms.’

No commander likes to have his subordinates hear about failure – especially one whose hold on power was as poor as Mithridates III of Bithynia. ‘Clear the tent,’ he said, glancing at his most dangerous rivals – the Lord of Niceas and the Lord of Apollonis, former mercenaries under Alexander, now petty tyrants in Asia. ‘Hold your tongue,’ he said to the man with the split lip.

He kept two guards and four slaves.

‘Now tell your story,’ he said. He’d had a moment to think about it, and while Satyrus might have got by him – by ship to Heraklea – Mithridates couldn’t see how he’d got four thousand Sakje. It didn’t hold water.

The man shrugged. ‘I’m here to offer you terms.’

‘You have a curious accent,’ Mithridates said. ‘Why the woman?’ he asked. He turned to look at her, and got a dagger point in the eye.

Lucius breathed out, a long exhalation like a sigh of despair. Both of the guards were dead, and the slaves had fled, and Mithridates IV was sitting on the stool. ‘That was not my best work,’ he admitted.

The young man on the ivory stool raised an eyebrow and rocked his head back and forth slightly, more like a handsome philosopher than a warlord. ‘Luckily, he was a fool,’ he said.

‘Should we be worried about the rest of the nobles?’ Lucius asked.

Mithridates sighed. ‘If we’re not dead in fifty heartbeats, I’ll be king for a while,’ he said.

‘Ares – that’s your plan?’ Lucius asked. He ran his thumb idly down his sword’s edge.

The Lord of Niceas pushed his head into the tent. His eyes widened – once at the blood, and again to see the young man on the stool. The Lord of Niceas was grey-haired, Greco-Persian, tall and hawk-nosed.

‘Come in, my lord, and swear fealty,’ Mithridates said.

‘Lord?’ the man said. Then he stepped in. He seemed unsure of himself. A dozen more local warlords came in behind him – too many for Lucius to kill all of them.

‘We are now allies of Lysimachos and Satyrus of Tanais,’ Mithridates said. ‘I will be receiving a small subsidy in gold. You will all receive a share.’ The handsome young man smiled.

They all smiled back. No one likes a battle, when the alternative is a subsidy.

They began to kneel and swear.

Lucius found that he felt light-headed.
I need to get out of this business
, he thought.

Antigonus found his enemies waiting on the shores of Lake Askania, and it became clear that his shaved knucklebone, the Bithynians, had betrayed him.

He sat on his horse and watched the enemy form opposite him. Their three big phalanxes filled the shores of the lake, and they had plenty of cavalry. He outnumbered them two to one, but they had started entrenching the narrow slice of farmland between the hills and the water.

‘Fucking Bithynians,’ he spat.

His numbers were still great enough to push through. He was sure his Macedonian veterans could rout whatever levies they used. But things happened in battles, and suddenly he was in hostile country, and if he lost here … well, he could forget conquering the world. He would be lucky to get buried.

Antigonus had been fighting wars since he was fifteen, and he was eighty-one. He had not arrived at this age by making rash decisions. So he halted his army on the banks of the lake and ordered his engineers forward. And he ordered his cavalry to start rounding up the population of the countryside. If their leaders chose to oppose him, the people would serve as slaves.

Besides, his son was ferrying his army over from Europe, in Lysimachos’s rear. He didn’t
need
to fight here.

Unless he could win. And one thing the fucking
Bithynians
wouldn’t do well was sit and wait while he raped their land.

Satyrus watched as the Antigonids began to lay out a fortified camp behind the heavy screen of cavalry and light infantry – thousands of men. Behind them, two full taxeis – almost as many pikemen as all of Lysimachos’s army – stood to, their pikes upright in the sun.

Anaxagoras, Stratokles and Mithridates watched with him. Slightly to the rear, Lucius and Herakles and Charmides played at dice. Herakles had begun to adopt Charmides as his role model – or his erastes. It was early days yet. Satyrus watched them with a reserve he hadn’t had on earlier campaigns. His sister was right. The joy was gone from the thing. No longer did he watch with fascination as war cemented the bonds of honour and friendship between warriors. Now he watched from a distance, expecting the best of them to die.

‘Why so glum?’ Anaxagoras asked. ‘He’s doing exactly what you said he would do.’

Satyrus shrugged. ‘That doesn’t make it any better. He can bleed us white, once his access to food and water is secure.’

Mithridates rubbed his beard. ‘You Greeks are the barbarians. He’s enslaving virtually the whole population of northern Mysia to build that camp.’

Anaxagoras barked a laugh. ‘Mithridates, you will be a great king but you are a poor historian. The Assyrians did the same, and the Babylonians, and the Persians, your ancestors. No people have a monopoly on barbarism. It is a human trait. All humans share it.’

Mithridates sighed. ‘I believe that is a cold comfort for my people over there.’ He looked at Satyrus, who was chewing an apple – a new apple, too green for eating, but the taste was delicious. ‘Can we do anything?’

Satyrus nodded. ‘We need wood and iron and bronze for war machines. Jubal is gathering them with the cavalry. When that is done, I will send my little band around the lake. Antigonus will do it as well. It would be best if you sent some of your noble cavalry and their retainers as far as you can – all the way into Mysia, if possible – to harry his patrols and his efforts at collecting wood. And slaves.’

Mithridates shook his head. ‘If I release my nobles, they will never come back,’ he said. ‘Most of them are already prepared to change sides, for certain assurances.’

Satyrus nodded once, briskly. ‘As I expected. Very well. Let’s find Lysimachos.’

Stratokles looked interested. ‘Why? I mean, from fear? Or because they already hate you?’

Mithridates laughed. ‘They hate anyone greater than themselves. It is our way. And they say – with some justice – that Antigonus has done nothing to them but enslave some peasants.’

Stratokles nodded. ‘Who would you say was your most dangerous nobleman? The one most likely to desert?’

Mithridates laughed again. ‘I really would be hard put to choose one among all of them,’ he said. ‘But Darius Thrakes, as we call him, is the worst of the lot, and he leads almost a thousand riders. I can’t touch him.’

Stratokles saw the look that passed between Satyrus and Lucius.

‘You can do this one yourself, boss,’ Lucius said.

Stratokles sighed.

Lysimachos, when they found him, was watching Jubal build war engines. He had sixty men – his own men, many former sailors and some former slave artificers – all laying out machines together, and he had another three hundred Bithynian workmen with adzes and axes.

‘That is a dangerous man,’ Lysimachos said. ‘Would you sell him to me?’

‘He’s not mine to sell,’ Satyrus said. ‘Try asking him.’

Jubal was standing, his chiton pulled down to his hips, showing a young smith the patterns for corner plates for a torsion engine – demonstrating how to form the plates, cut them, and bend them to shape with the minimum of work.

‘We need a cavalry raid,’ Satyrus said.

Lysimachos nodded. ‘Of course.’

‘Mithridates says his men will desert if allowed out of our lines,’ Satyrus said.

‘Aphrodite’s tits!’ Lysimachos exclaimed. ‘So you want my Getae?’

‘And all of my Sakje. Yes.’ Satyrus shrugged.

‘They hate each other. Your Scopasis and my Sakarnus – they are
not
friends.’ Lysimachos shook his head. ‘And if we lose them … Ares, Tanais, if we lose them, we can’t cover our retreat.’

If he calls me Tanais, should I call him Thrace?
Satyrus thought. Lysimachos was a curious blend of old campaigner and parvenu king. ‘If we don’t try, we might as well retreat right now,’ he said.

Lysimachos shook his head. ‘We have a few days.’

Satyrus was still mounted, and he used his height and his voice to show his discontent. ‘I don’t agree,’ he said. ‘We do not have a few days. Antigonus will have his cavalry on the south shore by tomorrow.’

Lysimachos grinned at his own staff, all waiting a few horse lengths away. ‘This from your years of experience as a strategos, eh?’

Satyrus raised an eyebrow. ‘Your scouting is poor at best. Antigonus owned your flanks at Magnesia and again when I found you because you won’t send your best troops out into harm’s way to find and eliminate the enemy scouts.’

‘How nice! Lessons in hoplomachia from a Greek stripling.’ Lysimachos shook his head. ‘Listen, Tanais, don’t turn red on me like a maiden with her first dick. I’ve fought Antigonus and his son for as long as most of you have been alive. Scouting – listen. I can see his camp. He can see mine. If he wants to ride around and kill barbarians, let him.’

Satyrus nodded. ‘You fought for Alexander, right?’ he said. ‘So you really should know better.’
I should keep my mouth shut and ride away
.

Lysimachos swung up onto the back of a pretty Nisean mare, the kind of warhorse men killed for. He was unruffled. ‘I remember what it is like to be young,’ he said. ‘I forgive you. You are a good ally, Satyrus of Tanais, and I don’t need a quarrel. So I’ll give you fifty Getae – no more.’

Several of his staff officers – Macedonians all – laughed. Lysimachos whirled on them. ‘Keep it to yourselves, gentlemen. Remember where we’d be without these men.’

Satyrus took a deep breath, held it, counted, and listened to the inaudible sounds of a lyre scale. When he was done, his eyes were clear and his smile was genuine.

‘Send me the cavalrymen at nightfall,’ he said. ‘And thank you.’

He and Lysimachos clasped hands.

As he rode away, Stratokles came up beside him. ‘I’m going,’ he said. ‘And I want Mithridates to send his goat-boy – Darius what’s-his-name. With fifty men.’

‘I’m commanding myself,’ Satyrus said.

‘All the better,’ Stratokles said.

Satyrus wanted a fine Nisean like Lysimachos’s horse. His gelding chewed the bit constantly, and now thrust out with his head, trying to act like a stallion. Satyrus slapped his neck. ‘You have plans for Darius?’

‘I think he should give his life for his country,’ Stratokles said. ‘Can you give Herakles a command?’

Satyrus turned in his saddle and eyed the young man. ‘I had intended to raise twenty cavalrymen from the mercenaries. Can Herakles be trusted to do it?’

Stratokles nodded. ‘Let’s find out.’

Anaxagoras laid his hand on Stratokles’ reins. ‘I hate to interrupt a good plot,’ he said.