‘I’ll get started,’ Satyrus said. ‘All my people are close behind, and I can’t avoid the Macedonian ambassador for ever.’
Helios allowed a grim chuckle to escape his lips.
Satyrus stripped his chiton over his head so that he was almost naked, tossed the garment to Helios and clucked to the oxen.
They were well trained, and very strong. As soon as he made the noise, they started forward, and the blade – the
hynis
of the new plough – bit immediately, penetrating the winter sod and cutting deep, more than a handspan deep. After a single furrow, less than a stade, Satyrus could feel the strain in his wrists and lower back. He clucked again and the beasts snorted and rumbled to a stop, and he leaned over the handles of the plough to examine his furrow. Straight enough. And deep. The black soil was turned in neat mounds on either side of the furrow. The sexual imagery of ploughing was obvious; even the smell—
The king shook himself. Sex was very much on his mind, and he forced himself back to the matter at hand. He clucked again, and his two beasts pushed forward against their yokes – the
zygotes
that gave the hoplite class their name.
Up and down, and up and down. After three full furrows, Satyrus understood all over again why farming was the best training for war. He motioned to Helios, had a drink of wine from his flask and ignored the arrival of the Macedonian delegation and got back to work.
He lost himself in it for a while. Ploughing – which he had only begun to practise the autumn before – required his full concentration, body and mind. The management of the oxen, the depth of the plough blade, the shifting of the machine under his hands and the pain in the small of his back—
The oxen shambled to a stop, the offside beast shying at a fly. Satyrus considered that there was something poetic, even oracular about a beast the weight of three horses shying from the furrow because of a fly the weight of a grain of wheat. While he indulged in this bit of petty philosophy, he had to use the full breadth of his shoulders to keep the plough on course.
The erring ox stopped, flicked its tail and lowered its head.
Satyrus let the handles of the plough down, easing the weight of the machine onto the turned soil. Then he rolled his shoulders, stretched his back and stood straight for the first time in five long furrows.
Satyrus the Second, King of the Bosporus, was naked like a slave – or a farmer – toiling in the hot spring sun of the Euxine. He stood a full six feet, with shoulders that seemed as wide as he was tall. Men likened him to Herakles, which made him laugh. He was twenty-four years old, and he had been king for three years, and those three years seemed to him to have aged him more than all the years before, as if time were not a constant, whatever Aristotle and Heraklitus might have to say on the subject.
Helios came running from the trees with a chlamys, a strigil and a linen towel – and the canteen of wine. Satyrus took the wine first, drinking a long draught of thrice-watered red before he used the strigil, wiped himself down with the towel and pulled the purple-edged white chlamys over his head. Satyrus gave the younger man a smile and walked across the field towards the foreigners.
‘You don’t have to see them until tonight,’ Helios muttered.
‘I’m all right now,’ Satyrus said.
Many of the Macedonians were mounted, and there wasn’t much to tell them apart. They had the same dun-coloured cloaks and the same look of arrogance. Satyrus laughed because the thought came, unbidden, that Lekthes might have been the Macedonian ambassador’s brother.
Satyrus walked across the furrows to greet the ambassadors of the world’s most powerful man, Antigonus One-Eye, naked except for his short cloak. He paused, just short of the range at which men begin social interaction, to note the workmanlike nature of his furrows with pleasure.
‘Crax?’ he called.
‘My lord?’ Crax responded, pushing through the crowd of sycophants and courtiers. Crax was Satyrus’ Master of the Household. He was tall and red-bearded, and his voice still had a hint of the Bastarnae brogue that he had been born to – before slavery, freedom and war made him a powerful officer in the Kingdom of the Bosporus.
‘The new plough is a fine machine. Order ten for our farms, and suggest to Gardan that a meeting of the farmers be held on one of our farms so that they can see the benefits.’ As he spoke, he noted Coenus – one of his father’s most trusted men – standing at his ease, surrounded by soldiers of the bodyguard. He winked, and Coenus responded with a wry smile. Satyrus turned to Helios. ‘Make a note for me. Meet with Gardan. He’s been requesting it.’
Helios wrote some notes on a wax tablet. Crax wrote something as well, on his own tablet. The sight of a tattooed Bastarnae writing on a wax tablet might well have been mocked, in other company.
‘And these gentlemen?’ Satyrus asked with elaborate unconcern. As if the last day hadn’t been spent preparing to receive them.
‘An ambassador, my lord,’ Crax said. ‘Niocles son of Laertes of Macedon from Antigonus, Regent of Macedon,’ Crax said, indicating a middle-aged man – strong, of middling height, who looked more used to wearing armour than the long robes of officialdom.
The man so named came forward, his white chiton held carefully out of the newly turned furrows by a pair of slaves. ‘My lord,’ he said. His voice was gruff, and his face said that he was none too pleased with the morning’s proceedings.
‘A pleasure to receive you,’ Satyrus said. He clasped hands with the older Macedonian, and if he was discomfited to be greeted by a nearly naked Herakles, he didn’t show it.
‘A pleasure to meet such a famous soldier,’ the Macedonian said.
‘Welcome to the Kingdom of the Bosporus,’ Satyrus said. ‘I expect that you have come wanting something?’
Niocles might have made a face, but he was made of sterner stuff. ‘Aye, lord. It pleases you to receive us in a muddy field – and to go straight to the point.’
‘I’m busy,’ Satyrus said. ‘It’s ploughing season.’
‘As if a king needs to plough his own land,’ commented a man in the delegation. The sneer was almost audible.
‘I’m sure you came here with business to transact,’ Satyrus said.
‘I have come on behalf of Lord Antigonus, who men call “One-Eye”, Niocles said. ‘To demand reparations.’
‘Are you sure this isn’t your speech for Ptolemy of Aegypt?’ Satyrus asked, and many of his men laughed. The Macedonian flushed and there might have been violence, except that Coenus’ men of the bodyguard appeared as if from the grass and stood in neat array between their king and the ambassador’s men – every bodyguard in the somewhat archaic uniform of bronze breastplates, greaves, attic helmets and long, indigo-blue cloaks. They carried the heavy round aspis of old Greece and short, heavy-bladed spears.
Niocles waited, calming himself. Satyrus wished him luck.
‘We understand that you are not so close with Lord Ptolemy as might formerly have been the case?’ he asked.
Satyrus smiled. ‘Am I not?’ he asked. ‘How may I help you, and your lord?’
Niocles shrugged. ‘Why, with a treaty making us allies in war and peace, of course, lord. But for the moment, I am here to resent the behaviour of your merchants at my master’s port of Smyrna.’
Here it comes
, Satyrus thought. ‘Yes?’ he asked, all innocence.
‘My lord must know that two of your ships attacked my master’s ships in the port of Smyrna. Men were killed. We demand the captains.’ Niocles smiled, and now his tone hardened as well. ‘This is not negotiable. It might have been better for you if you had given them of your own free will.’
‘Better how?’ Satyrus asked. He stepped forward, so that he was quite close to the Macedonian. ‘Let me see … I have heard of this incident, of course. Two of my ships are riding at anchor in Smyrna, your master’s port. Hmm? And they are attacked. Yes?’
‘Men were sent to demand the taxes,’ Niocles said. He shrugged. ‘Violence only ensued when they were refused.’
‘Taxes that included the seizure of the ships?’ Satyrus asked.
‘My master may make any law he pleases within his own dominion,’ Niocles said. Now he all but purred with pleasure. ‘And unlike some lords,’ he said with a glance at Satyrus’ guards, ‘my master has the power to enforce his demands.’
‘Let me get this straight,’ Satyrus said. His hypaspist handed him a golden cup of wine, which he drank without offering any to the Macedonian beside him. ‘Your master set a ridiculous “tax” in the port of Smyrna as a pretext to allow a band of pirates to attack my ships. They were roundly defeated. Now I am to hand over my captains, and what? Pay an indemnity? For my presumption in resisting the tax?’
Niocles nodded. ‘Exactly.’
‘And our crime in this matter is …?’ Satyrus asked, and took a sip of wine.
‘Trading with Ptolemy,’ Niocles said. ‘Your ships had traded with Ptolemy.’
Satyrus laughed. ‘That’s a crime?’ he asked.
‘In Smyrna,’ Niocles said.
Satyrus nodded. ‘So,’ he said. ‘A lord has the right to make any law he pleases, if only he can enforce it?’
‘That’s right,’ Niocles said.
Satyrus handed his wine cup back to Helios. ‘Ploughing is excellent exercise for war,’ he said, ‘as my ancestors, who defeated the Persians when Macedon was an ally of Persia, could attest. The pretence’ – and here Satyrus’ voice took on a tone he had not possessed just a few years before, the sharp tone of a king dealing with a fool – ‘the pretence that your master has the power to inflict his will on me, here, on the shores of the Euxine, is sheer folly.’ Satyrus smiled. ‘But as you have yourself noted the precedent, I’ll be happy to free all the slaves that you so obviously have in your tail, there.’ At this, Satyrus began to walk across the furrows towards the Macedonian embassage.
‘What – what?’ asked Niocles.
‘You – are you a slave? All of you who are slaves, step away from the others. Good. Yes. Coenus? See to it.’ Satyrus rounded on Niocles, who had followed him across the ploughed ground and up onto the grass. ‘Slavery is a carefully controlled institution in my kingdom,’ he said. ‘Such is my whim, and the whim of my sister. And since I have the power to enforce my will,’ he said, ‘you can go home to your master and tell him that the next time he attacks a couple of my ships, I’ll have my fleet begin to burn cities on his seaboard. I hope that’s clear enough.’ Satyrus waved. ‘Get you gone. And leave your slaves. I suspect they’ll be happier here, anyway.’
Niocles stood his ground. ‘You are declaring war?’ he asked.
Satyrus shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m just playing this foolish game the way you people play it.’
‘What game, lord?’ Niocles asked.
‘The game of diplomacy,’ Satyrus answered. ‘Where you pretend to be powerful and I pretend to be powerful and we posture like boys around the Palaestra. I don’t want war. Understand? My little realm has had too much war. But neither will I play. At all. Your master has neither the time nor the inclination to come into the Euxine, any more than Ptolemy does. Come back when you want to speak my language.’
Niocles made a face and then shook his head. ‘You’re more a Macedonian than most Greeks,’ he said.
Satyrus shrugged. ‘I assume you meant that as flattery,’ he said. ‘But your flattery won’t get you your slaves back.’
‘When Antigonus is Great King – King over Kings – you will be sorry you indulged in this petty insubordination.’ Niocles stepped closer to Satyrus, and men among the bodyguard shifted. Hands went to spears.
Satyrus shrugged. ‘You may judge my views on the subject,’ he said, ‘by my willingness to behave as I do.’
Tanais was a new city, so new that the smell of linseed oil and fresh-cut pine seemed to fill every room in every house, rivalled only by the dusty-dry smell of fresh-cut marble and limestone. It was less than fifteen years since the city had been burned flat by Eumeles of Pantecapaeaum, and less than three years since serious rebuilding began.
Once again, there was a bronze equestrian statue of Kineas, Hipparch of Olbia, in the agora. Once again there was a golden statue of Nike in a temple to Nike at the east end of the agora, and this time the temple was built of Parian marble, shipped block by block from far-off Sounion on the coast of Attica. The ‘palace’, a small citadel with six tall towers, was small but built entirely of stone, and its central hall was great enough to entertain the whole of the city’s thousand citizens, crammed tight as sardines in a barrel, on feast days when it rained.
The loot of four campaigns and the tribute of the northern Euxine cities had rebuilt Tanais with dramatic speed. But it still had the air more of a rich colony than a real city. Many of the citizens were farmers who tilled the land themselves, and hundreds of the local Maeotae had been admitted to citizenship to balance the mercenaries who received land grants in lieu of payment for services.
Besides Greeks and Maeotae, the Valley of the Tanais had a third group of citizens, if they might be so styled. Melitta, Satyrus’ sister, was Queen of all the Assagetae – in truth, the leader of the horse nomads from the edge of distant Hyrkania in the east to the far western lands of Thrace and the Getae. She too ruled from Tanais, when she wasn’t out on the steppes, ruling from the saddle. As it was spring and the grass was fresh, she was getting ready to escape the confinement of the city and ride free, away to the north, for the yearly gathering in of all the Assagetae when the census, such as it was, was taken. But the Assagetae were as much a part of the kingdom as the Greeks or the Maeotae.
Satyrus left his horse in the ‘royal’ stable just inside the main gate of the city. The building of stone walls – not just stone in the socle, or foundation courses, but stone all the way to the rampart’s top, like the richest cities of the world – had been the twins’ first priority. The main gate was flanked by two recessed towers, each three storeys tall and holding three levels of heavy artillery – big torsion engines capable of firing a bolt of iron two yards long. A permanent garrison manned the engines in every tower, and the city had twenty-six towers. Standing as it did on a low bluff over the mouth of the Tanais as it flowed out into the shallow Bay of Salmon, Tanais was as impregnable as the hand of man and the expenditure of gold could make it.