‘Hit him just aft of the bow. He can’t manoeuvre — look at the size of the bitch. Want me to take the oars?’
Leonidas looked at him steadily. ‘We’re going to die, aren’t we?’ he asked.
Diokles nodded. Quietly, he said, ‘Yes.’
‘Then let me go to Hades my own way.’ Leonidas stood straight. ‘Know who colonised Tarentum, Diokles?’
‘Sparta. You’ve told me about fifty times.’ Diokles thought they had perhaps a hundred heartbeats, if the enemy engines didn’t rip his bow off first.
He watched one of Jubal’s repeating engines sinking away in the water behind him. One thing off his mind.
Another crash forward. Satyrus had all the archers. He had nothing with which to reply except his ram.
The enemy trireme was now clear of the penteres — they weren’t going to foul each other. It had been close — the trierarchs were still screaming at each other from their command decks.
It had never been that good a chance, anyway.
The penteres was coming for him.
‘Let’s get the trireme,’ Leonidas said. ‘We can’t miss — he’s still turning.’
‘And the penteres gets us,’ Diokles said.
Leonidas nodded.
Diokles nodded.
The Tarentine leaned on the oars and they turned, the sea foaming at their bow. Diokles saw a bolt vanish into the water, a clear miss — the turn had bought them that, if nothing else.
And then they hit. The ram caught just a few feet behind the cathead and smashed the oar-box in an explosion of splinters, and men screamed. The impact was so strong, and Atlantae was going so fast that she pushed the stricken ship down and back, water foaming over her stern as she sank. Her stern ran aboard the next trireme’s bow, and down his oars — more oarsmen screaming, dislocated shoulders, men flayed by splinters.
The penteres had them, of course. But Diokles had twenty heartbeats, and he used them. ‘Throw the fire pots!’ he ordered. Then he roared, ‘Over the side! Swim for it!’
Men jumped immediately — they’d been waiting for it. The marines had stripped their armour, and the rowers had left their oars as soon as they struck the enemy trireme.
Leonidas stepped up on the rail. ‘You coming?’ he asked. The lead enemy trireme was afire, and her consort’s bow had caught.
‘After you,’ Diokles joked, and then an enemy marine’s javelin caught him in the back, just above his kidneys, punched right through him so that he had a brief glimpse of the shiny point emerging from his gut. And then he fell forward into Poseidon’s embrace.
15
Achilles was dour after the fight in the pass. He hadn’t stayed at Satyrus’s shoulder, and he’d missed the fight, and after that he was a shadow at Satyrus’s shoulder, night and day.
Anaxagoras behaved much the same way, although with plenty of self-mockery.
Satyrus just nodded. ‘I roam up and down the column, seeking to put heart into men,’ he said. ‘I have a horse and I go where I please. You two don’t have to be with me every moment.’
Achilles looked at him. ‘We have a contract,’ he said.
Satyrus nodded again. ‘We do, at that. So far, I have no reason to complain.’
Achilles shook his head. ‘I should have been there.’
Over the last ridge of the Pelekos Mountains, and down — precipitously down — to the plains by the Mekestos river — with the mountains towering on either hand. The two armies were beginning to blend — men shared fires and food, and when the three phalanxes and their auxiliaries paraded, the third day on the Mekestos, they looked like an army. It was the first time in a thousand stades that there had been room to form up.
Lysimachos nodded to the north. ‘We’re about halfway,’ he said.
Scopasis twirled his moustache. ‘So is One-Eye,’ he said. ‘His cavalry will be hard on us now.’
Lysimachos nodded. ‘You and my Getae will have to keep them away, then,’ he said.
Scopasis looked at the Getae chiefs, and spat.
The feeling was mutual.
But the sun shone for three straight days. The forage was better, the horses’ coats began to shine again, and the thrush in the hooves began to smell better. Or less bad.
Scopasis led a raid on one of Antigonus’s outposts and rode it down in the dark, returning with fifty horses and twenty captives, all members of the elite Aegema. Satyrus sent them with a herald, and received back the wounded Apobatai and four Cretan archers from the fight in the pass — a good trade as far as he was concerned.
But the sun made Antigonus’s horsemen bolder, and there was fighting in the rearguard every day. Satyrus felt that the Getae hung back and watched the Sakje die. After the third time that Scopasis’s three hundred fought unsupported, he rode up to the lead Getae chief — a man who wore so much gold he glittered like Demetrios in the sun.
‘Are your tribesmen women?’ he asked. He grinned. ‘Not women — my sister has killed more enemies than these children.’
The old Getae just smiled, showing his scars. ‘Anything you say, lord,’ he grunted.
Satyrus nodded. ‘I say that the Getae are all children — any man’s brats. You — pais — get me water,’ he said to a bearded warrior. The man flushed.
Satyrus took him by the throat — mounted — and boxed his ears swiftly, as if the man was a slave. ‘Water, boy.’
The Getae man roared ‘I am no boy, Greek fucker!’
Satyrus smiled. ‘Really? You can’t fight. So fetch water.’
The chief nodded. ‘You could get hurt, foreign king.’
Achilles’ blade appeared along the barbarian’s throat. ‘Lots of people could get hurt,’ he said, pleasantly.
‘Sakje so noble,’ the Getae spat. ‘Let them show us how great they are.’
‘It’s true,’ Satyrus said. His Getae wasn’t great, but he knew a few words. ‘Men with penises are generally better fighters then men with no penis.’ He turned his back and rode down the hill towards the column.
The next morning, Lysimachos joined Satyrus and Stratokles for a crust of bread and a cup of wine. ‘My Getae hate you,’ he said.
‘They’ll hate me worse later today,’ Satyrus said. ‘They don’t plan to fight, and they’re none too fond of you, either.’
Lysimachos nodded. ‘I think they’re negotiating with Antigonus,’ he admitted. ‘It’s the rain,’ he added.
‘It’s the Sakje,’ Satyrus said. ‘Stratokles has a plan.’
The sun was well up when Antigonus’s cavalry raid — late, but determined — overran the pickets and came flooding up the valley. The Sakje were caught flat-footed. There were only a handful of them, the rest asleep or elsewhere, and the enemy Aegema poured up the banks of the river, killed a handful of light infantrymen and some slaves still bathing in the river, and continued towards the infantry rearguard. A dozen Sakje fled before them, shooting from their saddles.
The enemy wanted them badly. So badly that they pursued them over a low ridge to the left and straight into the Getae camp, where they scattered the Getae herd, killed several men’s wives, and burned the Getae tents.
Then the Sakje counter-attacked, pushing the Macedonian cavalry back through the Getae camp again, back to the river, shooting as they went. They saved fifty Getae women and most of the children, and in the pursuit, they picked up most of the Getae herd.
The next morning, without orders, the Getae raided the Antigonid camp.
Stratokles was disgustingly smug. So was Scopasis.
And still they marched north, and still Antigonus pursued them.
At the forks in the Royal Road, Satyrus sent Charmides north with a message: to send the fleet east to Kios, covering the flank. Then he led the army down the east fork, towards Miletopolis and Apollonis and the Greek cities of the northern Troad.
‘We’re at the edge of Bithynia,’ he said to Stratokles.
‘I’m on it,’ Stratokles said. He winked at Herakles.