Tyrant: Destroyer of Cities (2 page)

‘Your father is about to crown himself
king
,’ Stratokles said with unfeigned distaste – distaste for kings, and distaste for his mistress’s obvious jealousy.

‘Melitta is Queen of the Assagetae in her own right,’ he said. ‘Your princely Satyrus needs her.’

Amastris snapped her fingers and another maid brought her a wrap, a costly piece of work imported from India. ‘I need him to need me,’ she said with a sweet smile. ‘And if my uncle wants to be a king, why must you sound so sour about it?’

Stratokles, whatever his faults, and he admitted that he had a phalanx of them, nonetheless saw himself as a true democrat in a world of aristocratic despots. ‘As
King
of Heraklea, he expects to marry you a little better than the
King
of Hyperborea.’

‘Satyrus is the King of the Bosporus,’ Amastis said with asperity. ‘He is as much a king as my father. And Stratokles – why is it that when you say the word “king” you render it like an insult?’

‘Despoina, if you don’t know by now, it is too late for me to teach you. I loathe tyrants.’ He shrugged.

‘And yet you serve me,’ she said.

‘You need me, Despoina. And Athens needs this city and her grain, and my eyes on the north. I have never pretended to love your uncle’s tyranny, nor your lover’s kingship.’ He rolled his shoulders, flexing his fighting muscles and wondering, in the way of middle-aged men, if he didn’t need to spend more time in the gymnasium.

‘You might give pretence some consideration, or Nestor will have your head.’ Nestor was the captain of the Tyrant’s bodyguard, and no friend of the Athenian’s.

Stratokles chose to ignore her. ‘Satyrus won’t just be an ally if he weds you,’ Stratokles said.
I’ll be out of a job
, he thought. ‘He’ll be master here. He has a fleet, an army and a core of professionals that we can’t really match. With Pantecapaeaum and Olbia behind him, surely you can see that we’re next.’

‘Hmm. I look forward to his being my
master
,’ Amastris said, and licked her lips. She laughed at his discomfiture. ‘Don’t be a prude. Satyrus isn’t half as bright as I am. Who’ll run whom, do you think? Heraklea won’t be the loser. Melitta might be, though,’ she said with a smile.

‘Your uncle is not interested in ruling through your womb,’ Stratokles said. ‘And you will need Melitta’s good will as much as Satyrus does, if you come to be his wife.’

‘Now that’s the sort of thing I employ you to say,’ Amastris nodded. ‘He’s old, though – my uncle, I mean.’

‘Don’t be rushing him to his grave, Despoina. Please read the dispatch from Byzantium.’ Stratokles wasn’t always perfectly pleased with his charge. She was past the first innocence of youth and she was becoming headstrong, just when he felt she most needed a rein. And with Demetrios in Athens … The world was changing. Stratokles was beginning to wonder if he had lingered too long in Heraklea. Although he had other ideas—

She flipped through the scroll tubes. ‘Demostrate is dead?’ she asked.

‘Got it in one!’ Stratokles pounced like a cat taking a rat off a post.

‘By Aphrodite, lady of ladies!’ Amastris said, and shook her head. ‘The old pirate is
dead
? Who killed him?’

‘Who cares? The point is that a new man has Demostrate’s fleet – if he can hold it. They are pirates. And now Antigonus One-Eye will have a clear run at allying with them – the pirates – a fair shot at buying all of them.’ Stratokles swirled the wine in his cup.

‘But we’re no allies of old One-Eye. My uncle broke that chain.’ She drank off the last of her milk.

Stratokles swirled his wine again. ‘There are never just two sides in politics, my dear. Antigonus would like to be master here. So would Lysimachos and so would your Satyrus. By naming himself “king”, your uncle puts himself on the same level as all of them. He can only maintain that level by ceaseless vigilance and a willingness to play one against the other.’

‘And my beloved has just lost his guarantee of passing the straits unmolested,’ Amastris said. ‘Perhaps he’ll come here and stay awhile.’ She smiled.

‘He’s lost more than that, dear,’ Stratokles said. ‘He’s lost his immunity, and some of his status with the great powers. Now he’ll have to buy the pirates like the rest of us. And if Antigonus has Athens’ fleet, and the pirates,’ Stratokles shrugged, ‘well then, so much for Ptolemy.’ He leaned back and recrossed his legs. ‘Times are changing, dear.’

She looked at him from under her eyelashes. ‘You don’t love my Satyrus,’ she said.

‘I helped him achieve his kingdom,’ Stratokles said. ‘But no – he’s no friend of mine.’ He didn’t mention that in another dispatch – one he didn’t need to pass to her – he’d had news of Lysimachos. Lysimachos, the fourth contender for Alexander’s power. Lysimachos, whose Thracian wife had just died.

The perfect husband for his little princess. With Lysimachos and Amastris, Stratokles could guarantee Athens’ grain trade for fifty years, and to Hades with Satyrus of Tanais.

And why dream small? With the two of them, Stratokles could aim higher.

Whereas her marriage to Satyrus would mean that he would have to start all over again.

BOOK ONE

EUXINE

1

TANAIS, EUXINE SEA, SPRING 306 BC

L
ate winter, or perhaps early spring on the shores of the Euxine. The first crocus buds were peeping out of the earth, and the lambs were coming, and the horses were foaling, and in just a few weeks there would be fresh green on the Sea of Grass.

Two archers stood on the city’s Field of Ares, shooting arrows into a distant target made of linen canvas stuffed tight with rags and straw. Shooting with a precision that bored the onlookers, who mostly sat on the dead winter grass enjoying the first day of sunshine. Until both archers started shouting.

Melitta touched the corner of her mouth with the fletchings at the peak of her draw, and loosed her arrow at the target.

It struck home with a satisfying
thwack
as the barbed head cut the taut canvas. ‘When is she going to marry you, if she loves you so much?’ she asked her brother.

Satyrus pulled an arrow from the
gorytos
at his waist and nocked the arrow. He drew a breath, raised the bow and shot – a continuous motion that sent the arrow into the target with the same flat
thwack
. ‘When her uncle is done traipsing about pretending to be one of Alexander’s men,’ Satyrus said. He didn’t hide the disappointment in his voice. Every spring brought a new delay in his wedding plans. He was twenty-four, and Amastris was older.

Melitta nocked, drew and shot.
Thwack.
‘You have a slave in your bed,’ she said, accusingly.

Satyrus nocked, drew and loosed. His arrow flew over the top of the target. ‘By the Lord of the Silver Bow, sister, is that any of your business?’ he asked pettishly.

‘We swore to
Mater
that we would not lie with slaves,’ she said. ‘You missed, by the way. The horse is mine.’

Satyrus struggled with his temper for as long as it took his heart to beat three times. ‘Yes,’ he said after the third heartbeat.

‘Yes, you are sleeping with a slave? Or yes, the horse is mine?’ Melitta asked. Just for emphasis, she drew, nocked and shot again – and her arrow struck dead in the centre of the mark.

‘Yes, I think it’s time you got moving on your spring progress,’ Satyrus said. He didn’t do a very good job of keeping the anger out of his voice.

‘Splendid!’ Melitta said. ‘What a very good job you are making of living up to
Mater
’s desires. And Philokles’! And Leon’s! We said we would
not
have slaves. How are you doing with that,
brother
? I seem to see more agricultural slaves arrive every day.’

‘Some of them on Leon’s ships!’ he shot back. ‘This is the real world, sister! You go and ride the plains and pretend to be a nomad princess. I have a kingdom to manage. We need agricultural labour.”

‘In our beds? Get me one, brother. A nice one with a big cock.’ She rolled her hips. ‘How’s that!’

‘Ares! You are the limit! It is not your business who’s in my bed!’ The King of the Bosporus realised that he had shouted the last, and that even on the Field of Ares outside the city people were watching them.

Melitta shrugged. ‘Handsome boy like you ought to be doing better than agricultural labour,’ she said.

‘Perhaps I could sleep with the captain of my bodyguard?’ Satyrus asked his sister.

‘Shut your mouth!’ she hissed.

‘Of course, he’s twice my age – but surely Coenus is still a good-looking man,’ Satyrus finished, satisfied that he’d punched through his sister’s air of superiority. He had long suspected that she slept with her guard captain, Scopasis, a former outlaw.

They stood and glared at each other for ten heartbeats.

‘At least he’s not a slave,’ she said – and she meant to hurt.

‘That’s all right,’ he shot back. ‘Go out on the plains and leave your son with me to raise.’

In fact, she wasn’t the most devoted mother, and that shot hit its target squarely so that she turned bright crimson from the roots of her black hair to the tops of her breasts, just visible under her slightly open Persian coat.

‘You owe me a horse,’ she said, and walked away. She walked ten steps and turned, unable to stop herself. ‘You need to stop pretending that Amastris will marry you. Find yourself a girl. Fuck her and make some children, and then you can talk to me—’ She was choking up, getting angry, threatened with tears and hating herself for it. ‘Then you can talk to me about children.’ She walked to her horse, leaped into the saddle and dashed away.

‘That is the king?’ asked a foreign voice. The man sounded puzzled.

‘The king’s not available just now.’ Satyrus turned his head, anger still pounding away in his bloodstream and saw his hypaspist, Helios, standing with a powerfully built man – Satyrus had seen him arrive – Antigonus’ ambassador Niocles, son of Laertes of Macedon. Or so his morning report had said.

Helios hurried to his side, and Satyrus handed him his bow and
gorytos
to carry. ‘What’s next?’ he asked, walking to his horse.

‘The new plough, lord,’ Helios said.

‘I’ll skip that,’ Satyrus said. Anger was still heavy inside him, so big that it seemed to fill his breast and choke him.
How dare she tax him with his slave-girl.
He took a deep breath.
How disgusting it was of him to hit back at her motherhood.

The problem of being twins was that you were born able to hurt the person you loved the most.

‘Lord, you said you had to see the plough today or it would be too late—’ Helios sounded contrite, but he knew his master and he knew his duty.

‘Then I shall.’ Satyrus cut short a lecture on duty by jumping onto his charger’s back and putting his heels to the animal’s sides, and he was gone as fast as his sister.

Satyrus owned a number of farms around the perimeter of Tanais, the city that he made his capital. It was the city founded by his father – posthumously, it is true. The bronze statue of his father still loomed over the agora, although other statues were joining it.

Thinking about his father – heroised, and almost deified – didn’t help him dismiss his bad behaviour. Nor, as he rode along the escarpment and looked down into the valley of the Tanais River, did thoughts of Philokles, his tutor, with whom he had often galloped these same stades.

He rode down the near cliff at a reckless pace and his horse carried him in great bounds, his four feet seeming to skim the earth. Satyrus kept his seat at the base of the ridge only by leaning well back and clamping his knees like the vice in a bootmaker’s shop. And when he felt his charger’s pace ease, he righted himself, leaned low over the stallion’s neck and galloped along the road – the road where he’d killed his first man.

And his first woman.

Right here, he’d shot her. She’d been lying wounded, and he’d leaned over and put an arrow in her and watched her die. Just his age, at the time; thirteen or fourteen. He still saw the look on her face. He still wondered where she went when she left her body – and what awaited him.

He flew along the road, past the stream where the salmon went to breed and up the next hill to where he kept his own farm. It was a wealthy farm, with stone barns and a good house, and he rode into the yard, his stallion throwing clods of earth from the wet road.

He’d left his attendants far behind, except for Helios who was hard on his heels. His farm manager, Lekthes, was waiting by the ox shed.

‘You came, lord!’ he laughed.

‘Am I so unreliable?’ Satyrus asked.

‘Reckon there ain’t many kings in the circle of the world who till their own fields,’ Lekthes said. He spat. ‘Plough’s hitched. How do your courtiers say it? He
awaits your pleasure
.’ Lekthes was a freedman, a former slave who’d been purchased by Leon to run farms and train new farmers. He didn’t have the habits of a slave, though. In some ways, he was the most arrogant man Satyrus had ever met. He had the arrogance of a craftsman.