an ant, as the Aegyptians said.
Satyrus listened attentively, because the camp was buzzing with rumour about what the Spartan had planned.
‘I intend to hold an assembly of the taxeis tonight. What else should I do?’ Philokles asked.
Diodorus laughed. ‘Most of your men aren’t Greek, Philokles.’
Philokles shrugged. ‘So you say. When it comes to a desire for justice, and a desire to have each man have his say – who is not a Greek? You want me to kill these men out of hand, as an example?’
‘I do,’ Diodorus nodded. ‘That’s exactly what I want.’
Philokles shook his head. ‘You’d need a different commander for this group, then, Strategos.’
Dinner was good, because the barges were less than a stade away and there was plenty of food and plenty of fuel. Just five days into the march, the Phalanx of Aegypt was harder and more capable than they had been in the near riot of leaving the city. They could cook, and sleep, and eat, and pack, and march, without much fuss. But the assembly was a new adventure, and a dangerous one, because there was death in it.
The Hellenes knew what was expected, and so all the men gathered in a great circle in the crisp night air. Above them, the whole curtain of the heavens seemed to be on display, the stars burning with distant fire. Every man was there, even those who had the mosquito fever or the runs that seemed to come with too much Nile water – at least for Greeks.
‘Soldiers!’ Philokles’ voice was as loud as any priest’s. ‘These men have disobeyed my orders and the orders of the army. In Sparta, in Athens, in Macedon, these men would forfeit their lives. But only,’ his voice grew over the murmur of the men, ‘only if the assembly of their regiment approved it. Who will step forward and speak for the army, prosecuting these men for their crime?’
Philokles’ eyes pressed on Satyrus. Into the silence he stepped. ‘I will prosecute,’ Satyrus said.
Philokles looked around. ‘Who will speak for these men?’
The two culprits grinned around at their comrades, and were surprised to find many serious faces looking back at them. Finally Abraham stepped into the silence. ‘I will defend,’ he said.
Satyrus looked at him, surprised that his friend would oppose him, but then he shrugged, understanding that Abraham no more wanted to defend them than he wanted to speak against them. This was duty.
The evidence was brief and damning, offered as it was by the phalanx commander.
Satyrus asked a number of questions to make their guilt clear, and then shrugged. He had read every case ever pleaded in Athens – he could quote Isocrates, for instance – but this didn’t seem the place for such flights of rhetoric. ‘If we rob the peasants,’ he asked the silent men of the phalanx, ‘why should they help us? And what are we but enemies, no different from those who come to conquer?’
His words went home – he could see them, like an arrow launched from a distance that, after a delay, strikes the target. He bowed his head to Philokles and stood aside.
Abraham stood forth. ‘I am not a Greek,’ he said. ‘But in this I think that the Greeks are right – that a man should be judged according to the will of his comrades. Because his comrades are best fitted to judge the crime.’ Abraham turned so that he was addressing the Aegyptians, who filled one half of the circle. ‘I ask all of you – who has not eaten stolen meat in the last week? Who has not lifted a bottle of honey beer? Let that man vote that these miscreants be killed. For myself, I am no hypocrite. My friend has told us why we hurt our own cause when we steal, and I hear him. I will not eat another stolen goat. But until the taste of that stolen food is gone from my lips, I will not condemn another to death.’
Philokles was suppressing a smile when he stepped past the two advocates. ‘Well said by both.’ He looked around. Fifteen hundred men stood in near perfect silence.
‘Remember this moment,’ Philokles said to the assembly. ‘This is the moment that you began to be soldiers.’ He looked around with approval, and still they were silent. ‘So – you are all goat-eaters. How then should I punish them? Even their advocate did not trouble to claim them guiltless.’
Namastis stepped forward from among the Aegyptians. ‘Will you punish both alike?’ he asked.
Philokles put his hands on his hips. ‘What do you think?’ he asked. ‘Don’t anger me, priest.’
Namastis shook his head. ‘Old ways die hard,’ he said. ‘If you seek to punish both alike,’ he said, ‘let them carry pots with the peasants until it is your pleasure to return them to the ranks.’
A sound like a sigh escaped from the men gathered in the dark.
‘Whoa!’ said the guilty Hellene, a marine from the Hyacinth.
‘Silence!’ Philokles said. ‘Any dissenting opinion?’
Another murmur, like wind passing through a field of barley – but no man stepped forward.
Philokles nodded sharply. ‘Theron, pick the two best shield-bearers and swear them in to the phalanx. These men may carry their kit. If either of you desert, you will earn the punishment of death. Serve, and you may be restored.’ Philokles raised his voice. ‘Do you agree, men of Alexandria?’
They roared – a shout that filled the night.
The eighth day found them at Peleusiakos, where mountains of wheat and cisterns of fresh water awaited them with barges of firewood and tens of thousands of bales of fresh fodder for the cavalry. Twelve thousand public slaves laboured at fresh earthworks in the brutal sun, raising platforms of logs and sand and fill brought from the Sinai and even from the river. The ramparts rose four times the height of a man and the platforms carried Ares engines that could throw a spear three stades or a rock the same. To the north lay the sea, and to the south the deadly marshes, which offered no hope to an army. Even with the breeze from the sea, the stink of the swamp mud overwhelmed the smell of horse and camel and the filth of men.
Satyrus marched with the rest of his phalanx into a prebuilt camp and handed his kit to a slave to be cleaned. They had tents. Of course, the interior of the linen tent was airless, white hot and brilliantly lit, so that no man could sleep there in the daylight – but the extent of Ptolemy’s preplanning was staggering. Satyrus put his shield against his section of the wall and put his spear in a rack set for that purpose.
Later, after a dinner cooked by public slaves with enough mutton to quieten the loudest grumbles, Satyrus stood on the parapet with his uncles and their officers, Andronicus the hyperetes of the hippeis of exiles, Crax and Eumenes, all looking out over the Sinai and the road to Gaza.
‘We’re not doomed at all,’ Philokles said. ‘I’ve underestimated our Farm Boy.’
Diodorus laughed. ‘Just as you were meant to. Mind you, if the Macedonians had managed to get their mutiny together, we’d never have got here. But look at it! Every man in the army is going to look around at the walls and the camp, the tents, the spiked pits – and the stores! And every man is going to say the same thing.’
‘Ptolemy can hold this with slaves,’ Philokles said. ‘With mice.’
‘Something like that,’ Diodorus said. He had wine in a canteen, and he handed it around.
Satyrus was cowed in the face of so many veterans, but he mustered his courage. ‘So,’ he said, ‘when will we fight?’
Diodorus laughed and slapped Satyrus on the shoulder. ‘That’s the great thing, lad. We’ll never have to fight. Demetrios is a child, but he’s not a fool. He’ll take one look at this and cut a deal. Then he’ll turn around and march home.’
‘So no one wins,’ Satyrus said. ‘And Amastris remains with the traitor.’
Diodorus shook his head, but Eumenes, who was younger and perhaps understood Satyrus better, cut in. ‘That’s not true, Satyrus. First, we win. All we sought to do was defend Aegypt. We win. That’s an important concept for a soldier to understand. Second,’ he shrugged, ‘I know it’s not the stuff of Homer, but even now, I suspect that Amastris’s uncles and father and every other lord on the Euxine and quite a variety of other busybodies will be speaking for her. And when the golden boy looks at these walls and puts his tail between his legs, well…’ Eumenes looked at the other officers, and all three of the older men smiled.
‘Well – what?’ Satyrus asked, torn between annoyance at being treated like a boy and the knowledge that, to these men, he was one. ‘What, Eumenes?’
‘He’ll probably make a treaty just to get his men fed,’ Philokles said. ‘Amastris will go on the table to buy some of that grain.’
Satyrus spat in disgust.
Diodorus flexed his shoulders under his cuirass. ‘I want to get this bronze off my back. Satyrus, I share your disgust. You look very like your father when you’re annoyed.’
Philokles put an arm around his shoulders. ‘He is growing to be like his father.’
‘So’s his sister,’ Diodorus said, and they all laughed, even Satyrus.
