‘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.
The towers alone had cost the equivalent of a year’s revenue from the whole kingdom. That’s how Satyrus had begun to see everything in his kingdom — as a price tag. The street from the main gate ran past the royal stables (seventy minas of silver, needed a tile roof) along the wide Street of Heroes with statues of Satyrus’ ancestors and some of Kineas’ friends (Philokles’ statue was due any day from Athens, bronze with silver and gilt, four talents of silver, delivered and already waiting in a pile of wood shavings, along with a statue of his most famous heroised ancestor, Arimnestos of Plataea in bronze, silver and gold), past the gates of the citadel, whose defensive artillery covered the road and gate (four hundred and seventy talents of silver, complete) to the sea gate (five hundred and ninety talents) beyond which stood the masts and standing rigging of Satyrus’ fleet, the strongest in the Euxine. Without straining himself, the young king of the Bosporus could count twenty-two trieres, or triremes, whose hulls, repair, sails, rigging, sailors’ wages, rowers and marines cost him eighteen talents of silver a year in wages. Each. With his six hemiolas, or sailing triremes (twenty-four talents a year) and his four penteres or ‘fivers’ at a little more than thirty talents a year, his docks and ship sheds to protect the hulls from Euxine winters, and the fortified mole which protected his fleet and its maintenance, his naval expenditure topped seven hundred talents a year — a noticeable amount even in the revenues of the leading grain producer in the world.