‘I’m giving you another minute of life, ingrate. Humour me.’ The doctor gestured with his sword.
‘Remember Banugul?’ Stratokles said.
‘I’ve heard of her.’ Sophokles shrugged, looked around at some fancied noise.
‘I have her. Or rather, I know where she is, and her son. Her son by Alexander.’ He laughed.
‘This sounds like a way of buying your life, doesn’t it?’ Sophokles nodded. ‘I know this tune. You offer me something of great value. And I confess: a son of Alexander, even a bastard, is of great value.’
‘Well, he’s not for you. The management that would be required to propel that young man into the arena — to bring him to the moment where he could unseat Cassander — I don’t know if it could be done.’ Stratokles shrugged. ‘I’m not even sure that I want to do it. He and his mother live far away — off the stage, out of the game. For all I know, the boy’s dead, or deformed.’
‘He must be, what, twenty-three? Twenty-four?’ Sophokles looked over his shoulder. ‘Are you by any chance double-dealing me, Stratokles?’
Stratokles frowned. ‘I’m standing here ready to die, you’re the one talking — and you think I’m betraying you?’
‘Laertes?’ the doctor asked.
‘Dead as a fucking sacrificial lamb,’ Lucius said, emerging from the trees. His sword was red in his left hand, and he had a javelin in his right hand, cocked and ready on the throwing cord. His gaze flicked over Stratokles. ‘Thanks for saving my life. But I don’t run. I ran once — that was enough for my whole life.’
‘You killed my whole group?’ the doctor asked. ‘I’m very impressed.’
Lucius spat. ‘Don’t be. They weren’t worth sheep-shit.’
The doctor nodded. ‘They were more for colour than for muscle, anyway.’
Stratokles felt the tension draining from his shoulders.
‘Walk away, Sophokles,’ he said. The doctor was getting ready to spring; his feet were angled oddly, his limbs formed in a crouch. ‘If you come for me, we all fight. People die — most likely you and me both.’
The doctor didn’t slacken his physical stance. ‘I’m listening.’
‘We all back away. A step at a time.’ Sophokles risked a look at Lucius.
‘He has a distance weapon and I do not,’ the doctor said. ‘Distance only aids you, and taking you as a hostage is my only viable response.’
Stratokles took a deep breath. ‘You didn’t want to kill me anyway, Sophokles. I guarantee your life. You have my oath on it before the furies. Walk away, and consider this a fair return for my error of judgment in Alexandria.’
No one could call Sophokles of Athens indecisive. ‘I accept,’ he said, and stood up straight. He turned his back and walked away. He took a dozen steps, then sheathed his sword after a small flourish at Lucius, who spat again. He bowed to Stratokles. Then he turned and sprinted away.
Stratokles watched him until he was out of sight.
‘Well,’ said Stratokles. He turned away and struggled with the urge to vomit. It was all he could do to speak.
Lucius waited for him and held out a canteen of wine. ‘I thought I was too late,’ he said.
‘He didn’t want to do it. He’s a strange man.’ Stratokles shook his head.
‘You offered your life to save me,’ Lucius said. ‘I never would have expected that.’
‘I’m getting old,’ Stratokles said.
‘Where to?’ Lucius said. ‘I have a pair of horses — and we should get moving.’
Stratokles spat the sour wine. ‘Hyrkania. We can be there in ten days.’
Lucius raised an eyebrow.
Stratokles shrugged. ‘I’m going to throw another piece on the game board. If I accomplish nothing but to give fucking Cassander some bad nights — that will be enough for me.’
The blade rested, cool as a stone in her father’s cellar, against Miriam’s throat.
‘Not a word, now,’ the marine said. His voice was steady, almost apologetic. ‘Trierarch says, if you say anything, I’m to off the pair of you. Sorry, despoina. Orders.’
Abraham lay perfectly still, and Miriam lay next to him. Over the silence, they could hear gulls, the rush of feet on the catwalk of the main oar deck, and the helmsman over their heads. The steering oars creaked, and then creaked again. The navarch spoke — the decking muffled his words.
‘… right there,’ the helmsman said.
‘Like they own the whole world,’ the navarch said. ‘Wave like we’re friends.’
Miriam tried to keep from shaking — tried to keep her mind from racing off into the abyss.
‘Ten days out of Athens!’ roared the helmsman over their heads. He was shouting to another ship — that much penetrated her terror and her anger.
‘Where bound?’ carried to her from the other ship, clear as a new day. The sound of the voice went through her like hot soup on a cold day. She felt her brother’s hand close on hers like a vice, saw the marine’s eyes glitter.
‘Ephesus!’ the helmsman replied.
‘Safe voyage, then!’ called Satyrus of Tanais from his own command deck.
And helpless in their cage, Abraham and Miriam held each other and lay in silence as they were rowed further and further away.
Part I
1
‘By Herakles! This little worthless instrument will not defeat me!’ Satyrus growled.
‘Put your fingers on the strings again, and stop trying to be perfect,’ Anaxagoras insisted.
‘I promised Miriam that I would learn to play this before I saw her,’ Satyrus said. He was sitting on a folding stool just forward of the helmsman’s station, and Anaxagoras was sitting with his back to the light aft-mast that they had mounted to catch the light airs of late summer. They were an hour off their breakfast beach, cruising south of Lesbos en route to Rhodos.
‘Your promise won’t be worth the spit you put in it if you don’t allow yourself to be human,’ Anaxagoras said. He played the first measures flawlessly. ‘It comes with practice. Like fighting with the sword, or pankration.’
Satyrus’s eyes went back to the Antigonid penteres, now just a nick on the horizon.
‘I thought that they behaved oddly. Too damned cheerful. There ought to have been catcalls and curses.’
Anaxagoras nodded. ‘Perhaps. But you have thirty merchant ships and half as many warships in your tail, brother, and I dare say they were daunted by the sight.’
Satyrus laughed. ‘I’ll keep the truce — they have half my friends as hostages.’
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.