Christian Cameron: Force of Kings

Anaxagoras raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m sure that the Antigonid navarch knew that in his intellect, my friend, but I suspect that your line of battle made his arse pucker nonetheless. Give the poor man his due. He was polite, and so were you, and now we’re done.’

Satyrus shifted his seat on the deck. The weather was already hot, humid as only the surface of the sea can be humid, and the salt in the air burned in every minute laceration on his shoulders and back from practising in armour. He was thoroughly dissatisfied.

‘I want to be away for Athens,’ he said.

Anaxagoras laughed. ‘I want to be back in Tanais, or perhaps Pantecapaeaum.’

Now Satyrus had to laugh. ‘She won’t be in either. She’s off to the high plains — she was away from her people three-quarters of a year and she needs to be seen.’ He was speaking of his sister, who was, by birth and inclination, Queen of the Assagetae, the western clans of the Sakje, the Scythian tribes of the Western Door of the Sea of Grass.

Anaxagoras nodded. ‘I should be riding with her.’

Satyrus smiled. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You should be right here with me. Selling grain like merchants, playing our lyres, having adventures. Tonight we can beach on the south of Chios. I know an islet that can take the whole fleet. Besides, you can barely ride.’

Anaxagoras bowed his head to acknowledge the truth of that. ‘If only I’d known as a child that my future happiness depended on my ability to ride,’ he said.

‘You can be such a sophist,’ Satyrus said.

‘I was only speaking the truth,’ Anaxagoras returned.

‘No, you are implying that riding is a worthless accomplishment,’ Satyrus said.

‘No more than you imply to me every day that playing the lyre is the action of a dilettante and not a proper gentleman,’ Anaxagoras said. ‘You will not tame the lyre by force, brother.’

Silence reigned for as long as it took the oarsmen to pull ten times.

‘When you take that superior tone, you sound just exactly like Philokles, minus the Lacedaemonian accent.’ Satyrus clambered to his feet.

‘I shall take that as a compliment, since I know you loved him. Perhaps he, too, used logic to debate you, instead of raw emotions from the gut?’ Anaxagoras raised an eyebrow.

‘Sometimes he simply hit me,’ Satyrus agreed. ‘Which had its own logic. I do not enjoy being as bad at anything as I am at playing the lyre.’

‘I can’t imagine you were born to your skills at pankration?’ Anaxagoras asked wickedly.

‘Xenophon says all men are born natural swordsmen. Old Socrates used to say that men are born to natural wisdom.’ Satyrus grinned. ‘But no. Your point is fair and well taken. I came to my skill in pankration down a long, hard road. And as you saw in Pantecapaeaum, I’m still hard-pressed to tumble Theron, even when he’s past forty and I’m in my prime.’

Anaxagoras nodded. ‘That was something to see. I could have watched all day — every man present felt the same. Like watching lions fight.’

Satyrus stuck out a discoloured shin. ‘My bruises haven’t healed yet.’ He looked up at the masthead, and back at his helmsman, Thrassos, a red-haired barbarian and now a citizen of Rhodos. ‘Wind is backing, Thrassos,’ Satyrus said.

‘Aye,’ the Keltoi said. He wasn’t a big man, but his tattoos, the scars around his eyes and his red hair made him a fearsome sight, and despite holding citizenship in three cities, no one would ever have mistaken him for a Greek.

‘Planning to do anything about it?’ Satyrus asked.

‘Ain’t steady yet,’ Thrassos said.

As if to prove his weather-sense, a gust from the west tossed the bow and almost cost the rowers their stroke.

Satyrus shook his head. ‘I feel as if the god tried to tell me something this morning and I ignored it,’ he said. ‘But for my life, I’ve no idea what. Did I commit impiety? Oh, forgive me, Anaxagoras. I’m in a foul mood.’

His friend used the mast to push to his feet. ‘No apology required between friends, philos. You’ll feel better when we’re clear of Rhodes and headed towards Athens and Miriam.’

Rhodes was not the same as he had left it, just four months earlier. The Rhodians were pouring treasure into the restoration of their city, and the whole north end of the port, pounded nearly flat by siege engines, had begun to grow roofs and walls like a particularly colourful crop of forest mushrooms; new whitewashed houses with red and brown tiled roofs, and here and there a daring man had a yellow roof or a blue one, made from the new coloured ceramic tiles that were all the rage from Sicily to Asia.

The temple of Poseidon was almost fully restored, all his columns standing tall, and the new roof almost half complete — a better roof than it had had before the siege, with the tiles and beams of solid marble, like the Parthenon on the Acropolis in Athens. The harbour was clear of hulks, and forty warships lay, warped alongside a pair of stone piers, ready for sea in a few moments, while another twenty were in ship-sheds up the beach — all new construction that included a rebuilt harbour wall with a dozen strong towers.

Satyrus took in the harbour in a single glance, and smiled despite the remnants of yesterday’s foul mood. Rhodes had survived the mightiest siege since the Achaeans went to Troy. And he’d done his part to see them victorious.

When his ship dropped its anchor stone off the beach, the pilot tried to insist that as a hero of the town, Satyrus could lie alongside the stone piers, but Satyrus didn’t need the space, and he waited while his oar master and his helmsman made the ship fast and then watched as his grain ships — those designated for Rhodes — came into the inner harbour and made for the great pier, one after another.

Menedemos, the serving archon, came down from his offices in the harbour tower to greet him when he waded ashore.

‘A great man like you could keep his feet dry,’ he said.

‘Not if it would slow the unloading by a heartbeat,’ Satyrus laughed. ‘I’m away on the wind for Athens with the balance of my grain.’

Menedemos raised an eyebrow.

Satyrus shrugged. ‘All right, I admit I’ll be lucky to be out of here in two days, and even then I’ll leave rowers in your brothels.’

Menedemos laughed and clasped his hand. ‘It is good to have you back. You’ll have no trouble getting lodgings — in fact, I’d be delighted to host you.’

‘I promised Abraham I’d see how his house was coming along,’ Satyrus said.

‘I assumed as much, but the offer is there. Any problems on the way?’ Menedemos asked.

‘None. I’m assuming that, as a signatory to the truce, I’m safe — besides, having guaranteed half my grain to Athens, it is rather in Demetrios’s best interest for me to be well treated. We came across one of his penteres off Chios, sailing on the wind, bound for Ephesus. The navarch was perfectly polite.’

‘Pirates?’ asked Menedemos.

‘Menedemos, we must have killed half the pirates on the ocean, this last year.’ Satyrus laughed. ‘There’s not a pirate in the Bosporus, nor the Pontus. Word in the Pontus is that the survivors went west, to Sicily and Corsica.’ He looked around. ‘But Demetrios’s fleet is in the Pontus — charging tolls and hemming Lysimachos out of Asia.’

‘That’s news. How bad are the tolls?’ Menedemos asked.

Satyrus made a face. ‘Since half my grain was for Athens, I was excused. Which was probably best for everyone concerned. But watch out for your own, Menedemos. Demetrios can squeeze you without breaking the truce.’

‘He can squeeze,’ Menedemos said, ‘but he needs to sell his products from Asia, too. He needs us. Hades, if Antigonus would see sense, he’d see that he needs Alexandria, too. We could all make money — no need for this endless squabble.’