The fifth day of the retreat, and the process of breaking camp had become routine. Behind a screen of mounted men and an interior screen of formed infantry, the slaves and lower-class infantrymen struck the tents and the rude shelters that the poorer men built from whatever was to hand. The Thracians built huts — and burned them when they sauntered away.
Scopasis strolled up to Satyrus while he watched a dozen slaves — all his, at a remove — striking his small pavilion that his new butler had purchased — or had made — and loading his gear on a train of donkeys. The man was very good at his job, and freedom made him even better. Phoibos was his name — Apollo had sent him.
He’d paid cash for Satyrus’s baggage animals. They got the best. Most of the soldiers had simply taken the animals they needed.
‘Lord of the Marching Men,’ Scopasis began formally.
Satyrus grinned. The scarred Sakje was a former lover of his sister’s, a former outlaw, and one of the hardest men Satyrus had known — as hard as Apollodorus, or worse — and yet, his courtesy was somehow cautious and reticent. ‘Scopasis, how are you this morning?’
Scopasis bowed. ‘I wish to ask a favour, lord.’
Satyrus had seen that coming. It was written in every line of the man’s stance. ‘Ask away.’
‘I want to take my best — my own men — and leave the column.’ He took a breath. ‘For a few … days.’
Satyrus also took a deep breath, held it, counted to ten, and let it go. ‘Whatever for?’ he asked.
‘Horses,’ Scopasis said with a shrug. ‘Antigonus’s men have them. We need them. To be honest, lord, if we do not mount my people, some of them will walk back to the ships.’ He shrugged again. ‘We do not like to walk.’
Satyrus winced. But he knew that Scopasis wasn’t making this up.
‘What’s your plan?’ he asked.
Scopasis laughed.
Satyrus woke to hear the patter of rain on the roof of his tent. Most of Nikephorus’s pikemen would have no shelter but the Aeolian coast of Asia was not a damp climate, and he didn’t expect the rain to last. He turned over on his bed of fleeces and went back to sleep.
He awoke again to waves of rain — the slashes of water hit his pavilion roof like blows from a stick.
Charmides came in, his light wool chlamys wet through. ‘Zeus Hospites. Lord, Lysimachos says we must march.’
Satyrus rubbed his eyes. It was raining so hard that when a gust hit the roof of the pavilion, a fine haze of water appeared inside the tent. ‘I’m surprised the pegs didn’t pull,’ he said.
Charmides smiled. ‘There’s a dozen slaves standing in the rain holding your lines,’ he said.
Satyrus sighed. ‘Better the slave of a bad master,’ he quoted. ‘Need a dry chlamys?’
Charmides shook his head. ‘No point.’
‘Like that, is it?’ Satyrus asked.
An hour later, he was soaked to the skin, head down under a straw hat, riding like a farmer with his seat well back on his horse’s rump and his feet dangling. The water wasn’t cold, but it was wet. Shoots and falls of water decorated the steep hills on either side of the pass they were marching though, and the rocks were shining in the watery sun, and the sky was a pile of dark clouds, stacked one on another as thunderheads came in off the sea and raced inland.
That night, Phoibos shook his head. ‘It is not dry in there, lord,’ he said. He gestured at the pavilion, the lines taut as hawsers between fighting ships, the roof stretched tight. Sheets of rain flowed off it in waves of water. Inside, Phoibos had a smaller tent — almost certainly his own — set up. The inner tent protected Satyrus’s bedding.
‘I have some deer meat and a cup of wine, lord.’ He bowed his head.
‘Splendid,’ Satyrus said. ‘You are a miracle worker. Invite Charmides and Anaxagoras.’
They marvelled at the inner tent, drank their wine, ate skewers of meat, and complained about the weather. Satyrus sent a slave for Nikephorus and Stratokles, and he brought Herakles, all of them soaking wet and muddy to the hip, and Phoibos had them wiped clean in the outer tent.
The inner tent was packed with his friends, all praising Phoibos. The man glowed with the unaccustomed praise.
‘We may be merrily dry in here,’ Satyrus said, ‘but the phalangites are soaked and cold.’
Nikephorus grunted. ‘I was soaked and cold myself until you sent a pais.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s unnatural. Never seen rain like this.’
Satyrus nodded. ‘We have to march anyway. For all we know, three valleys over, there’s no rain.’
Anaxagoras nodded as if this was the wisest thing he’d ever heard. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I had never considered this.’
‘How many fires are going?’ Satyrus asked young Herakles. Charmides leaned forward to speak, and Satyrus shushed him.
‘I don’t know,’ Herakles said. He was just recovering from the misery of being wet through and colder than he could remember being.
‘Five? Fifty?’ Satyrus asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Herakles repeated.
‘Go and find out,’ Satyrus said. ‘If the men have no fires, they’ll be too cold to sleep and too wet to move in the morning, and we’ll have desertion. By tomorrow, men will start to die. They are your men.’
Herakles shook his head. ‘So what? If they die, we’ll hire more.’
Satyrus’s eyes seemed to sparkle in the lamplight. ‘Out you go, young Herakles. That’s an order.’
‘It’s not fair,’ Herakles said. But he got to his feet. Stratokles rose to follow him. Satyrus restrained him.
‘Let him learn to be a king,’ he said. ‘Or at least to be a phylarch.’
Herakles made a thorough job. He came back an hour later. ‘Our men have fifty-four fires,’ he said. ‘More are being lit now. The wood is coming up the pass from the farms below us.’
Satyrus clapped him on the back.
‘Well done,’ he said, and gave him a cup of wine.
In the morning, the rain was less, but it was still raining, and there were head colds and sneezes throughout the camp. Lysimachos’s men had had a worse night, being further from the wood, and they were slow to start. Satyrus’s men stood in the rain waiting. Many of them had straw hats and straw cloaks, and Nikephorus’s men marched armed and armoured, only their sarissas in the carts. Most of Lysimachos’s men marched in their chitons, and they were cold.
‘If they have their arms, they have something to sell if they desert,’ Lysimachos said. ‘Besides, with so many Thracians, I know I won’t be surprised.’ He had thousands of the barbarians, and they moved like waves, covering the distant ridges and the rocky valley floor. Even in the rain, they glittered with armour and gold.
Satyrus saw no reason to argue. ‘When we crest that ridge,’ he said pointing north and east, ‘we’ll see the sea. Then we need to press for Sardis.’
Lysimachos nodded. ‘We need to take some time to forage,’ he said.
Satyrus grunted. ‘You mean, to buy food from farmers? Or just take what you want?’
‘This is Antigonus’s satrapy,’ Lysimachos said. ‘We’ll take whatever we want.’
‘Not that they were ever offered a choice. Why not pay? We’ll get better intelligence and leave a friendly populace behind.’ Satyrus tipped his hat and watched the water run off it.
Lysimachos looked at him as if he had two heads. ‘No one has that kind of money,’ he said. ‘If we had to buy our supplies, there’d be no war.’
Satyrus just looked at him. Melitta was sounding smarter and smarter.
The eighth day, and Stratokles took Lucius and went ahead to Sardis with a picked troop as an escort. The rain hadn’t ended, and Lysimachos’s men were deserting. Nikephorus had lost a dozen.
‘We need a siege train,’ Satyrus mentioned to Jubal. The Nubian grinned. He hadn’t played any role in the campaign so far — just ridden quietly with the escort. He was a natural horseman.
‘I’ll be happy to be at building it,’ he said. ‘But I’ll need a few things: wood, iron, bronze. Some skilled artisans.’
‘Sardis,’ Satyrus said.