She turned to him, and suddenly she was very close indeed, and he was unsure which of them had bridged the last handspan but now, without touching, he was close enough to feel the heat of her hip and her breasts and her face—
‘Good morning, lord,’ Korus said from the doorway. ‘Despoina, good morning.’
‘I have work to do,’ Miriam said. She didn’t whirl away, which Satyrus rather admired – he had flinched when Korus spoke. Instead, she looked up into his face and smiled. ‘Heal fast,’ she said. And then she smiled at Korus, who was as surprised as anyone, and left the room at her usual dignified pace.
‘I hear you went out last night and tried to fight,’ Korus said. Satyrus nodded.
‘You fucked in the head? Die like that, I’m still a fucking slave. You fight when
I
say.’ Korus shook his head. ‘Apollodorus says you were an athlete. That true?’
Satyrus shook his head. ‘I never competed anywhere. But I had a trainer, and I fought
pankration
.’
Korus grunted.
‘Something wrong with
pankration
, trainer?’ Satyrus asked. He was lifting the jumping weights already – Korus didn’t say anything unless he executed a movement incorrectly.
‘Fought in the game myself.’ Korus nodded. ‘Time to give you heavier weights.’ He pulled open a bag and took out two iron bars. ‘Let’s go down to the garden, lord. Time you let the sun kiss your skin.’
An hour later, Satyrus was all sweat.
‘You know you’ll never be the same, lord,’ Korus said. He had the grace to sound sad.
‘I wondered, yes,’ Satyrus admitted, and what he felt in his heart was something like grief. Like the loss of a good horse, or a friend. His body – his physique – kept him alive in battle. And caused men to follow him, to look at him as something special.
‘You spent your whole life building that body,’ Korus said, handing him a rock as effortlessly as he handed over leather straps. ‘It’s gone, and now I have a few weeks to rebuild it. It won’t be the same, lord. And when we start fighting – and that’s soon – you need to learn to fight differently. I’m going to wager you was one of the strong ones – kicked the shit out of weaker men by hammering the sword home until it kills. Now you need to fight smart.’
Satyrus nodded. ‘I think you may be surprised,’ he said. ‘But I take your point.’ The rock – about four
mythemnoi
in weight – fell to the ground by his hip, crunching the gravel.
‘Herakles,’ Satyrus said. The muscles in his left arm had simply stopped working.
‘Don’t let that happen again, lord. When you reach the point of failure you must
stop
. Understand? Tell me, and I’ll take the fucking rock.’
Satyrus nodded, extended a hand and Korus pulled him to his feet. ‘Get a rub-down and a nap, lord. I’ll send you up a meal. This afternoon, we go again.’
Satyrus could barely stand his muscles were so tired, but he was as hungry as a horse – the first time he could remember in months that he’d been burning to eat.
‘I could eat a lion,’ he said.
Korus gave a fraction of a smile. ‘About time.’
Afternoon, and he ran – up and down the street. Every citizen he saw was in armour, and while many laughed to see his emaciated figure running, more called out greetings. When he stopped to lean on his thighs and pant, a dozen men with Memnon, Aspasia’s husband, came up, shook his hand and thanked him.
‘Your man, Apollodorus, he saved the town. We all know who to thank – he told us you warned him. Zeus, lord, we have few enough soldiers in this town.’ The speaker was an older man, with grey in his hair but big and well proportioned, like an athlete.
‘Damophilus,’ Memnon said. ‘I don’t think you two have met. One of our best trierarchs.’
‘A pleasure, sir,’ Satyrus said, shaking the man’s hand again. ‘As far as I can say, every man in this town and most of the metics are well-armed, well-trained soldiers. I know that my friend Abraham the Jew has served – quite gallantly – at Gaza, and elsewhere. With me.’
Damophilus nodded. ‘Abraham we know. And yes – we’ve all seen service, Satyrus. But few of us have commanded in battle on land, or even seen a siege. I suspect that every man in this city has now read Aeneas Tacticus – but what’s written down—’
‘What’s written down is better than no advice at all. And it will be some time before I can stand in a breach and fight.’ Satyrus shook his head. ‘But I am a citizen here, even if only an honorary one – and I will serve. I’ll help in any way I can.’
‘Good man,’ Damophilus said. ‘So, what’s next?’
Satyrus was as confused as if Damophilus had struck him. ‘Next?’ he panted. Korus was leaning in a doorway, watching – his disapproval obvious.
‘You guessed that they would try an escalade,’ Damophilus said.
Satyrus stood up straight. ‘Anyone could have guessed that. But you have to ask yourself – what’s the weakest point in the circuit of the walls?’
Memnon nodded – the whole group nodded. ‘The curtain by the great tower on the landward side,’ they all chorused, although in different ways.
Satyrus scratched his chin. ‘I don’t agree,’ he said.
They all looked at him as if he was mad. Memnon raised an eyebrow. ‘Flat ground, almost no ditch—’
‘And a great tower full of artillery and Cretan archers within bow-shot – a tower that renders the curtain almost superfluous.’ Satyrus shrugged. ‘I’ve been sick, gentlemen, but I do look out from my bedroom and see things. My window’s right there,’ he raised his hand. ‘I can see out over the harbour. From the second floor. Because,’ he said dramatically, ‘the sea wall is unfinished. A man can climb it in a dozen places that I can see from my window.’
‘Nicanor is an
idiote
,’ Memnon said. ‘He’s blocking the inner council from spending any money on the sea wall. He says we need the money for grain.’
Satyrus laughed. ‘You have to be alive to eat,’ he said. ‘Look to the sea wall.’
The men all shook his hand again. It raised Satyrus’ spirits, to be accepted as one of them. To see that they were ready to resist; to be able to contribute.
‘Some people will do anything to avoid their workout,’ Korus said.
‘You live here too,’ Satyrus said.
‘I’m a slave,’ Korus said. ‘When I’m free, it may seem different. Right now, it’s all the same to me whether the town falls or not.’
Satyrus looked at the man. ‘Korus, I understand, and better than you can imagine, coming from a king to a slave. But you are wrong. If this city falls, you’ll die. No man escapes the sack of a city like this. Slave or free.’
‘Maybe I’ll just slip over the wall,’ Korus said.
Satyrus knew immediately that anger was not the right response. He ran another sprint, came back and spat. ‘Trading one kind of slavery for another,’ he said.
‘What’s that?’ Korus asked.
‘Slipping over the wall. And you’ll be building siege machines and digging trenches for Demetrios until you die, or until he takes the city. And then you’ll be sold.’
Korus smiled. It was the first smile Satyrus had seen on the man, and it wasn’t a pleasant smile. ‘You think I’m stupid,’ the man said.
‘No—’ Satyrus began, but the trainer interrupted him.
‘You think I’m stupid. You think I don’t know that Demetrios is no better – maybe worse? Fuck you,
lord
. I know. But when you’re a man like me, and they’ve made you a slave, you get to the point where any change is better – and when maybe seeing all the fucks who made you a slave die, in a sack, seems like a reward in itself. Lord.’ Korus stopped, and had the grace to look frightened for a moment – frightened that he had said so much.
Satyrus was too tired to argue. ‘They made you a slave? Here? What were you before – a pirate?’
Satyrus looked at the man. ‘You were a pirate, Korus? Oarsman? Marine?’
Korus spat. ‘Maybe,’ he grunted.
Korus glowered at him from under his heavy brows. ‘I’m a trainer. I was took off Sicily. I thought it was better to pull a fucking oar than to die.’ He shrugged. ‘It wasn’t a bad life.’ He shrugged again. ‘But the high-and-mighty Rhodians took us, and we was all sold as slaves.’
Satyrus felt as if his thighs and shoulders were about to refuse to support his bones. ‘And in a few weeks, you’ll be free. I need a trainer. Why not take what the gods offer? I can make you free – and comfortable. I’m a good friend to those who stand by me.’
Korus laughed. ‘Is that what they tell you?’ he said. ‘What I hear is that everyone who stands close to you dies.’
DAY TWO
W
hen Satyrus awoke, every muscle in his body hurt. But for the first time in months, he awoke to the sun on his own time, without interruption, and he felt like rising. He threw off his blankets and rose, stretched, rubbed his shoulders and walked across to the windows that gave on to the harbour.
He could see right down the coast to the south. He could see fires flickering in the distance, towards Afandhi, and there were columns of smoke across the horizon. Satyrus walked out onto his balcony to have a better view, and then, thinking better of it, he climbed the ladder – not without pain – to the roof of his room, from which he had a panoramic view of the city.
Demetrios had already begun to fortify his camp. He was a very active commander – Satyrus already knew that, but if he’d needed more evidence, it was provided by the fact that in the first light of dawn, Demetrios’ whole cavalry force was in the field, well forward, almost within bowshot of the city, and behind them, covered by the armoured cavalry. Bands of men were cutting down every olive grove on the north end of the island, piling the trees and sending them by sledge to the camp, where other work parties were sharpening the branches and making them into a giant abatises, a sort of bramble entanglement that would surround the camp as a first line of defence. Within the abatises, as tiny as ants, more men dug into the loose soil and the rock under it with picks, and still more men wove giant baskets to hold the sand and soil, and yet more men filled those baskets with shovels, so that a line of earthworks reinforced by baskets made of olive rose over the ditch inside the felled trees.
The pace of the work, man for man, was agonisingly slow, as the soil was virtually non-existent over the rock. But taken as a whole, the pace was staggering – Demetrios must have enslaved the entire farm population of the island overnight, and his work parties would have his ships enclosed in a wall in two or three days.
But despite the activity of the men around the camp – the thousands of men around the camp – what drew Satyrus’ professional eye was the activity on the distant beach. He looked and looked, and couldn’t decide what he was seeing.
It dawned on him that he’d been on the roof for some time, and that he’d heard something—
‘Satyrus!’ came a call from below. It struck him that someone had been calling his name for a while.
‘Up here,’ he said.
Aspasia came out onto the balcony beneath him, a long Persian robe over her shoulders and her grey hair unbound on her back. ‘You frightened me, idiot boy. I thought you’d run off again.’ She motioned. ‘Come and have your medicine. Gracious gods, boy, you are naked.’
With some chagrin, Satyrus realised that he was, indeed, naked.
‘I’ve seen it all before,’ Aspasia said. ‘Come along.’
Satyrus climbed down, now painfully aware that he was climbing a ladder in the nude. Among Greeks, showing your body was allowed – welcomed, even – but only if that body was beautiful. Satyrus still felt like a bag of sticks.
‘How are you today?’ Aspasia asked. There was something in her tone that alerted him.
‘Tired. But … solid, somehow. And I’m hungry.’ He smiled at her.
‘I’ve lowered your poppy to almost nothing,’ Aspasia said. ‘You haven’t craved it?’
Satyrus shrugged. ‘Is that why I hurt so much?’ He made a face. ‘I had thought it just fatigue – but now I remember it from before.’
‘You
are
doing well. You’re almost clear. I will resign you to Korus and go to my other patients: my husband, for one, will welcome my cold feet back into his bed. You are one of the greatest triumphs of my life as a doctor – and I will never understand just how you survived when I was certain that you had died. Do you remember it?’
‘No,’ he lied.
‘Well, it is a gift from the gods. Don’t squander it. I like to think you were sent back to deliver this city.’ She smiled. ‘At my age, I don’t have the fears other women do – if the city is falling, I can be gone from this body before the least indignity can be visited on me. But for the others – for my children, for girls like Miriam – they deserve to be saved.’
Satyrus took his medicines, emptying the clay vials one after another.
‘What are the odds, Satyrus?’ she asked.
‘Pretty bad,’ Satyrus said. He drank off the bitterest – a taste so strong he’d almost come to like it. ‘Demetrios is no fool. He’s very professional, and he can hire the best engineers and soldiers. He won’t make many mistakes.’ He made a face at the taste. ‘And I can’t save you. You can only save yourselves.’
‘Ourselves?’ Aspasia asked. ‘Does this look to you like a world women have made? Men made this – war and slavery and death as far as the eye can see.’
‘Women are no different,’ Satyrus said.
‘Women nurture. Men destroy,’ Aspasia said.
Satyrus laughed. ‘You really must meet my sister. Who I miss, and whose ungentle hand of destruction would stand this city in good stead. I don’t know if you are right or not, doctor. But I have seldom taken war to those who hadn’t already visited it on me. You want me – and men like me – to stand between you and the destruction of this town.’
‘Oh, you think I’m attacking you. And I am not, young king. It is my own husband – and many other men here – who I blame. We only reap the results of our own policies. Why make war on pirates who do not prey on us? Why support Ptolemy against Antigonus, instead of merely trading with both? So many decisions … and now, here we are.’ She shrugged.
‘It is always thus, Despoina.’ Satyrus heard Korus’ heavy tread – he had to wonder if the man thought him a lewd satyr and now made a noise every time he approached. ‘War comes when men have made mistakes – or when men are so foolish as to want it, like inviting the Tyrant to rule your city.’