Christian Cameron: Force of Kings

Stratokles managed a smile, despite the circumstances. ‘The blood and gold I’ve wasted on them — Herakles holds them in the palm of his hand.’ He shook his head. ‘Satyrus is quite likeable.’

‘There remains an enormous price on his head,’ the doctor said.

‘Surely not? Eumeles is dead and rotted. At Satyrus’s hand, I believe.’ Stratokles was trying to calculate — did the doctor mean to kill him? This was a curiously long conversation, and even he would hesitate to kill him inside the sacred precincts.

‘Eumeles is not the customer. He was, but the contract now is far larger. I wondered if you would join me in taking it up.’ The doctor bowed his head, one peer to another. ‘You have resources that I lack. People will deal with you who will not deal with me.’

‘That’s a sad comment on one of us, doctor,’ Stratokles said. ‘I don’t suppose you’d like to give me time to consider?’

The doctor glanced at the wedding. ‘No,’ he said.

Stratokles nodded, more to himself than to the doctor. ‘Does your contract include young Lucius here?’ he asked.

Sophokles nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’

Lucius looked around. ‘I’m right here, and I’m pretty sure I can do the lot of these rabble.’

The doctor looked at Stratokles. ‘I’d really rather not have a demonstration either way.’

Stratokles had made some terrible errors in the last weeks — he must have missed a thousand clues of the coming betrayal — but just at that moment he didn’t care. A life of dissimulation had brought him to this — death on the steps of a temple, at the hand of a former ally, at the behest of his own master.

He shrugged, and mostly he was tired. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I’d like to save Lucius. He’s been very loyal, and he is no part of our little ways — he’s a Latin. Let him go.’

The doctor looked him over. ‘I’m proposing that we let you both go, and you join us,’ he said.

Stratokles shook his head. It was impulsive, but by all the furies, he was done with that kind of life. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to kill young Satyrus for money.’

The doctor nodded. ‘I could see you heading there,’ he said, ‘but I wouldn’t have believed it. You’ve lost your edge.’

‘So much so that I will stand here and let you kill me,’ Stratokles said, with a smile that he hoped was noble. ‘I’ll even walk down and cross over the boundary into those trees, without a struggle — if you let Lucius go. No impiety for you. No religious impurity over your heads.’

The doctor looked him over. ‘You are a surprising man,’ he said. He glanced at Lucius. ‘Go,’ he said. ‘He has bought your life. Don’t indulge in some petty fake nobility. Run.’

Lucius’s only farewell to his master of ten years was a raised eyebrow. Then he turned and walked away.

Stratokles didn’t know what he felt. Relief, at having accomplished something good? Or complete failure — he was to die. Die. Right now. It made his knees tremble, and he forced himself to think of all the other times he’d cheated death. Really, for a man of his profession, he’d done rather well. He squared his shoulders. ‘Let’s take a walk, doctor,’ he said.

They strolled together, down the steps and across the open ground where all two hundred of the visiting dignitaries could watch them. The sight caused many different reactions that Stratokles couldn’t see — Phiale smiled in a way that made her ugly, and Amastris turned her face away, the joy of her day of triumph clouded, and a number of men Stratokles had made felt the churn of the stomach that tells a man he has done very, very wrong. But no one stirred a foot to save him.

He crossed the boundary wall, and vanished.

Miriam pulled the cloak tighter around her shoulders and raised an eyebrow at her brother. ‘Where in God’s name are we?’ she asked.

They were looking out through a ruined rower’s port in the side of a damaged penteres that was moving slowly. They’d been put in a locked cabin, almost like a cage, too small for them to stand or sit, in the stern of the lowest rowing deck — really just a set of heavy boards nailed across the tiny space, sometimes called the aft-tabernacle. The helmsman’s feet were just over their heads.

Abraham put his eye to the small opening again. ‘Asia, I’m sure of it. I don’t know the headland, but we’re close to Cos, or I’m a gentile — don’t ask me how I know, dear sister. I know.’

Miriam was afraid — terrified, really — but she had long practice in not showing terror. ‘Are we to be sold as slaves?’ she asked.

Abraham put an arm around her. ‘I don’t think so, Miriam. We’re citizens of Rhodes — and hostages. Killing us would be … well, it would be insane.’

At the end of the siege of Rhodos, Demetrios had insisted on a hundred hostages, and he had chosen them from among Satyrus’s closest friends. He had demanded the payment of a tribute and, most importantly, the hostages were to guarantee that neither Rhodes nor the Euxine cities took an active role against him in the field or at sea.

The two of them had been ‘held’ in a very pleasant captivity at Athens — in the house of a Jewish metic, Belshazzar, until just two weeks before, when they had been hurried aboard a heavy warship. Even then, they’d been used with dignity, even deference — until the night before last, when they’d been imprisoned in this box by marines in full armour.

There were other ships out there — merchantmen all, as far as he could see. Some were very large, and others quite small — a convoy. His angle of vision was limited, but a suspicion began to form in his mind — he pushed so hard against the view-hole that he ground his ocular bone against the wood.

Just at the edge of his vision, a heavy warship was approaching fast from behind them — he was pretty sure the warship was coming from the north. A triemiola — a Rhodian, then, or-

The heavy bronze lock on their small cage grated, and a marine appeared in full armour. He put his spear to Miriam’s throat.

Stratokles climbed up the precinct wall, took a last look at the world, and jumped down into the olive grove on the far side like a small boy on an olive raid, intent on eating his fill. He’d be dead in heartbeats, now. Even the air tasted wonderful. The olive grove was the most beautiful he’d ever seen.

I expected more of a farewell from Lucius, I guess.

He looked back to where Sophokles was jumping down from the precinct walls. Then he walked deeper into the grove. The doctor’s retinue of killers followed him, oddly ill-assorted types in finery that they weren’t used to wearing.

The doctor caught up with him and they walked side by side in silence until they were midway into the grove, well hidden from the temple.

‘Care to close your eyes?’ the doctor asked.

Stratokles shook his head. ‘Not particularly,’ he said.

‘I really would like you to reconsider. What is this Satyrus to you?’ The doctor cocked his head a little, like a curious cat.

Stratokles managed a smile. ‘Nothing. I’m not fond of him, and he’s not fond of me. But I’m done, Sophokles. I don’t want to play. I don’t want to hide, I don’t want to run about. I liked serving Amastris. This city is the better for my hand at the tiller, and men eat grain in Athens because I tended these fields.’ He shrugged. ‘After that, killing for money — well, it has very little appeal.’

Sophokles nodded. ‘You are not my first victim to refuse an offer. Nor my first brave victim.’ He drew his sword, a particularly fine Chalkidian blade, a xiphos with a heavy central ridge.

‘Throat or guts?’ he asked.

One of the doctor’s thugs grunted. ‘Just fucking do it!’ he said.