She put on a light thorax of iron scales on heavy deer hide; no yoke, in the Sakje way, and a light helmet that allowed her free vision. Today she wore her gorytos openly.
Nikephorus was armed in bronze from head to toe. So were Coenus and Theron. Diokles wore a bronze thorax and a leather Boeotian cap.
They shared a kylix of wine, poured libations to Poseidon and Herakles and all the gods, and went to their ships.
The sun was well above the horizon when they rowed carefully up to Kynossema and lowered their main masts, prepared to fight.
On the other side of the point, around the difficult corner where fleets had waited since the siege of Troy, Plistias’s ships manoeuvred into their fighting formations – two lines of heavy ships and a third of lighter ships, well over to the European shore, backs to their beach. It was a surprisingly cautious formation. For one thing, it allowed Melitta’s fleet to turn the corner in the channel at Kynossema without opposition.
The Bosporons had twenty-eight ships and they formed two lines, with fifteen in the first line and only thirteen in the second, and then the lines passed the point one at a time, wheeling in unison on the barbed rocks on the European shore like so many hoplites drilling in the agora.
‘That was well done,’ Diokles commented.
‘Because we’re past?’ Melitta asked.
‘Because Plistias just got to see how good we are. See the centre ships in his line still jockeying for position? He has some very green crews.’ Diokles nodded.
‘See how he waits with his back to the camp?’ Coenus said. ‘He doesn’t want to fight.’
The Bosporon fleet moved slowly down the Hellespont, keeping a crisp formation, until it faced the Antigonid fleet.
A little late, but not unduly so, the first division of Apollodorus’s squadrons appeared from the south, headed up the Hellespont.
Diokles grinned.
Apollodorus had twenty-one warships, almost half of them penteres of the new designs –
Glory of Demeter
and
Nile Lilly
and
Oinoe
and all the rest of the ships that had gone to Athens a few weeks before.
‘He’s raising his boat masts,’ Diokles said. ‘You going to let him run downstream, or kill him now?’
Melitta looked at Coenus.
Coenus raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m not the king,’ he said.
Melitta looked at Theron. Theron winked.
‘Let him go,’ she said.
‘Good girl,’ Coenus breathed, a little too loudly.
That night, the combined squadrons camped on the same beach where Plistias of Cos had camped the night before. It was a strategic spot. Melitta liked it for its history: in one walk along the muddy beach, she’d found a Sakje arrowhead – a style more than a hundred years old – and an Athenian obol older yet.
Leon and Apollodorus had Stratokles the Informer with them. She had to think about that. The man had been her adversary too often to let him inside her guard – but she could see his utility in this instance, and the Euxine was afire with reports of Amastris’s betrayal of him at her wedding to Lysimachos.
Unless the bastard had done it on purpose, spread the reports to gain their confidence.
She shook her head, the way she’d shake it if she had taken a blow in combat. Thinking like this never ended well, in her experience. She turned back towards her camp, eyes still on the beach.
Head clear, she walked up to the circle of men awaiting her.
‘So,’ she said. ‘Is our message sent?’
Stratokles nodded. ‘And well sent, despoina. You can close the Hellespont. Demetrios will have to take notice.’
Leon nodded. ‘I worry about Ptolemy,’ he admitted. ‘To the suspicious mind, we are equivocating. Or even changing sides.’
Apollodorus shook his head. ‘If we had ejected Lysimachos, Ptolemy might think as much. But Leon, we have ejected Plistias.’
Leon shook his head. ‘We have changed the playing board, and that will threaten everyone.’
Stratokles nodded. ‘I think you
must
threaten everyone. I don’t think that we have enough information to guess who took him. It might
seem
that Demetrios has him, but that would suit Lysimachos or Cassander, too.’
Melitta glared at him. ‘You make my head hurt, Athenian. And who is this boy? I remember him – Hyrkania.’
‘This is my ward, Herakles.’ Stratokles stood back to allow the younger man his place in the ring of commanders.
Old Draco, now captain of marines on the
Atlantae
, did a double-take. ‘Herakles of who?’
Melitta nodded at Stratokles. ‘Son of Alexander, I think.’
Stratokles nodded.
Draco whistled. ‘A pleasure to meet you, my lord. I served your father.’
Herakles flushed, straightened his shoulders. ‘Despoina – I have known more than twenty-five winters, and I am no boy.’
Melitta nodded. ‘We’re of an age, are we not, Herakles?’ She looked at Leon. ‘Are this wily Athenian and this Macedonian-Hyrkanian using us, Leon?’
Leon took a deep breath. ‘By the gods, I hope not. I allowed Stratokles to convince me that the young man’s presence with us would serve as much point in threatening both Antigonus and Cassander as our seizure of the Hellespont. Word will spread.’
Melitta looked at Apollodorus. ‘And this met with your approval?’
Apollodorus looked around. ‘Satyrus gave me the command, and I used it to get his ships to here. With your permission, despoina, I’ll lay down my command now and go back to being a marine.’ He looked at Stratokles. ‘I … am more hesitant than Leon.’
Melitta nodded. ‘My thanks, Apollodorus. And my brother’s.’
‘He did a good job,’ Leon said.
‘He wants to tuck into Demetrios’s forces and kill,’ Stratokles said. ‘And he doesn’t love me. I return the feeling.’
Melitta looked around. ‘So. And so. Here we are. We have a fleet, an army, and a potential King of Macedon. What is our next step?’
Leon crossed his arms. ‘Now we wait.’
Stratokles shook his head. ‘Not I. With your permission, Anaxagoras and I … we will go to Athens. All I ask is that you allow anyone who comes to your camp to see my young scapegrace, and that you don’t let him wander off or die.’
Herakles looked, if not frightened, then at least deeply hesitant. ‘You will leave me, Stratokles?’
Stratokles was growing to like the young man, despite his temper and his uneasy sense of his own importance. And he had always found it difficult to dislike those who liked him. ‘I’ll be back,’ he said.
When the junior officers – the ship trierarchs and the centarchs from the taxeis – had returned to their duties, Melitta summoned Stratokles to her with a gesture. He thought of Banugul’s comments about her. She was more imposing than he remembered, and her eyes were darker, and a little wilder. Her muscles were impressive, too.
‘I don’t like you,’ she said.
Stratokles crossed his arms. He smiled. He always smiled when he was fighting. ‘I admire you,’ he answered.
That stopped her.
‘I don’t trust you,’ she said. ‘You killed my mother.’
He shook his head. ‘No, despoina. We’ve been over this ground before. I did not kill your mother. In fact, she gave me this cut to my nose.’
‘You helped to have her killed,’ Melitta hissed.
Stratokles glanced around for Lucius. ‘Yes,’ he said. He liked this new tactic – just tell the truth. It was easy to remember and saved a great deal of energy. ‘I acted under orders from the man who was my master at the time, and on behalf of my city.’ He shrugged.
She narrowed her eyes. ‘I can kill you,’ she said.
He had the most ridiculous impulse to smile again. ‘Despoina,’ he said, ‘you don’t relish me as an ally. But really, if I may? You risk nothing by sending me to Athens. If I am secretly in league with Demetrios, what do I gain? I leave you the most valuable hostage in the world today. And if I return with your brother, then I will expect something by way of apology.’
She watched him, the way a cat watches a mouse. It was fascinating, considering that he was a man, and eight inches taller, how very imposing she was. She allowed the slightest smile to touch her eyes, just the corners of her mouth. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You bring me my brother, and I’ll call us even.’
Stratokles cursed his fickle heart, because he was attracted to this unsheathed knife of a woman even while he could feel her hate like the warmth of a flame against his face. Now he let himself smile. ‘I will settle for even,’ he said.
She shook her head. ‘No, you won’t. You will play some game, some very clever game. And then I will kill you.’
Stratokles shook his head. ‘No games,’ he said.
Now it was her turn to smile. ‘Stratokles, do I know you better than you know yourself ?’ She nodded. ‘In truth – if you bring me back my brother, I might forgive a game or two.’
He liked this play. Melitta of Tanais was far more interesting in her way than Amastris. It occurred to him – in an oblique, revenge-bound way – that serving Melitta would be a revenge of its own. They had been friends, once, Melitta and Amastris – until Amastris’s jealousy of Melitta’s freedom parted them. Or something like that.
‘Let’s see what I bring back,’ he said mischievously.
He felt
alive
.
Satyrus awoke with all the pains of a man who has lost a fight. His head pounded, he could feel the blood matted in his hair, and when he put his right hand tenderly against the right side of his scalp, it
moved
, and the flesh squelched like a bathing sponge.
His right elbow hurt, and when he tried to roll over, his ribs … at least one was broken. A spike of agony rolled him back, and the combination of his injuries went off like a series of internal fires.
‘He’s awake,’ said Arse-Cunt.
You ought to be dead
, Satyrus thought. So damned close.
Satyrus smelled her before he saw her, and he knew immediately who had him, and why, and he was afraid.
‘My poor Satyrus,’ Phiale said. She came to the side of the box upon which he’d been laid out. She rested a light hand on his forehead. ‘Poor Satyrus.’
‘You,’ he managed.
‘Me,’ she replied. ‘How very satisfying. Money is a wonderful thing, Satyrus. I paid this man a sum, and he produced you. Very little effort.’ Satyrus assumed that she was smiling. His vision was too blurry to be sure.
She had a knife, though. He felt it when she laid it against his cheek. ‘You sent me out of Alexandria as if I was a disposable thing,’ she said, her voice thick. ‘I cannot decide which I would prefer: to cut your nose and your penis clear of your body and then send you back to your whore of a sister, or simply to execute you.’
Satyrus grunted. He wanted to say something – to tell her that she was insane, for instance. She was insane – Satyrus was confident of that much, not that it seemed very relevant from where he was, her knife cool against his cheek.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘to be honest, I’d like you in a little better shape than this, Satyrus. I’m afraid you are such a wreck that cutting you seems a waste of time.’ Her knife licked at his cheek. It was sharp; he felt the blood flow before he felt the sting of the cut.
‘See, Tenedos, he’s all but ruined. I just cut a slice out of his face and he hasn’t even cried out.’ Phiale got to her feet and he could hear her dusting her hands together as if his blood was dirty – perhaps it was, to her. ‘Sticky,’ she said, and giggled. ‘Call me when he’s better,’ she said. ‘You know where to find me.’
Arse-Cunt grunted. ‘As you say, despoina.’
‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘As I say.’
The next day, his cheek was infected where she’d opened it almost to the bone, and he was weaker – loss of blood, he expected. His whole face was hot, and he couldn’t move his shoulders much, either, and he didn’t even know why.
‘She’s mad as a tanner,’ Arse-Cunt said. ‘And she’s going to hurt you. It’s funny – I worked so hard not to kill you, back outside Piraeus. You killed quite a number of my men – worthless fucks, most of them, but Aeneas was a good man. If I’d killed you right away, I’d have done us
both
a favour.’ He laughed merrily. ‘I’d like to off you for Aeneas, but I’d be doing you a favour. See the irony?’
Arse-Cunt settled for kicking him in the ribs.
When Satyrus next approached consciousness, he was aware that he had dreamed of his father, and Herakles, and Olympus. The dream empowered him.
He determined to escape. He didn’t have a plan, or any idea where he was, but only the determination to escape, immediately. He swung to a sitting position, and his lungs pressed against his broken rib, and he fell to the floor … a wave of pain washed over him …
Do not surrender now!
He was on the floor, a floor of fire, his head had been cut from his body and floated above him, a separate thing from his headless corpse – he crawled, his hands burned by the fires rising from the floor every time he moved his arms. His elbow touched something – he kept going, the pain in his knee and the pain in his right shoulder nothing to the pain of his head, cut clear of his shoulders and burning in the golden haze over the stump of his neck.
Keep going.
His hands were in something cool. He didn’t know what it was, but he dragged his body into it. He pulled himself by his arms when his legs refused to answer. Now his hands were hot and his knees were passing though the cool thing.
He allowed himself to sink down on his stomach.
No! Now! Go now!
He raised himself onto his elbows – infinite agony – and dragged himself, one arm-reach at a time, until there was
nothing
under his hands. He wriggled, pushed with one trapped foot … and fell.
The feeling of falling was disassociated from movement, and for one long heartbeat, he was not in pain, as no part of his damaged body was pressing against the ground. And then he hit the ground.
Wake up! Almost there! Go!
He came to in the fetal position. He didn’t feel any worse – or better. He lifted his head, rolled on his stomach – efforts of will – raised himself, and crawled towards what seemed to him to be an opening, although his eyes were nearly swollen shut.