were too tired to examine the gift, or question it, and the ship ran south with a fair wind and the gentle hand of Moira to guide it.
Five days out of Bata, Melitta had her first sight of Heraklea in the last full light of the sun, and the marble of the public buildings shone like coral in jewellery or well-burnished bronze, pale orange in the setting sun, and gold and bronze sparkled from statuary and adornments. Heraklea was as rich as Sinope or Pantecapaeum or Olbia. Richer than Athens. The tyrant, Dionysius, was not a friend of their mother’s, or their city. But nor was he a friend of Eumeles of Pantecapaeum. He was a friend of his own power, and Philokles said they had no other choices.
‘Tanais might have looked like that in twenty years,’ Melitta said.
‘Tanais is a blackened corpse,’ Satyrus said, his mood dark.
Melitta took his hands, and together they stood against the rail of the merchant ship as she heeled into the evening breeze and thrust her way across the waves to Heraklea. ‘You need to take life for what it is,’ she said. ‘Look!’ She waved her arm like an actor. ‘Beauty! Enjoy it!’
‘You need to stop pretending to be an all-wise priestess,’ he shot back. ‘Our mother is dead and our city is lost. Do you realize that we could be enslaved? That any man on those wharves with the strength to take us could kill us or sell us? We could be pleasuring customers in a brothel before another sun sets. Do you get that?’
She nodded. ‘I get it, brother.’ She looked at Theron and Philokles, who were rolling dice in the cover of an awning. ‘I think they will protect us, and I think the gods will see us right.’
‘The gods help those who help themselves,’ Satyrus said.
‘Then get off your arse and start helping,’ Melitta said. ‘Killing that girl is the best day’s work you ever did. Stop moping like a little boy. You are a king in exile. Start acting like one.’ She looked over the side. ‘You must follow my lead in this. I know what I’m doing.’
Satyrus watched the wharves. Melitta had assumed that the sea would cure him – the sea that he loved, where he went on his summers to sail on Uncle Leon’s ships and learn the ropes. This voyage, he hadn’t even watched the sailors rig the sail.
‘Fine,’ Satyrus said.
The angry silence that followed lasted them until the ship’s side scraped along a stone jetty, and then again until they were standing in the dust and ordure of the Heraklean waterfront.
Philokles had spent some time with the captain of the merchant ship throughout the voyage – keeping him sweet, or so Theron said. As they approached the wharves, Philokles took the man aside on the platform where the steersman conned the ship. When they were done talking, Philokles came down the gangplank with a worried look. Theron was trying to unload the horses with the help of the deck crew. They had kept the three best horses from the farmer, and Melitta’s Bion. The rest of the horses had been sold at Bata, where they had got a good price. Shipping the horses had cost more than shipping the people – but Philokles had told the twins that without horses, they were too vulnerable.
Bion hadn’t liked being swayed aboard in a sling, and now he didn’t like walking down the gangplank, resisting every step, showing his teeth and acting like a mule. Melitta had to coax him on to dry land with a hastily purchased honey and sesame confection.
‘Stupid horse,’ she said fondly.
Satyrus ignored her. He stood with his back against his own horse and his arms crossed.
Philokles tugged at his beard. ‘I have to take a risk,’ he said. He was not quite sober – in fact, he had drunk steadily once they were on board.
Theron shrugged. ‘It’s been all risk since I joined this crew,’ he said. ‘Why do you stay?’ Melitta asked. She was drawing looks from passers-by on the wharves, as a young woman of good family out in the public eye. In fact, she was a young woman of good family who was out in public wearing a short chiton with a scarlet chitoniskos over it and she was wrangling horses. She got a great deal of attention.
Theron smiled. ‘The company’s good,’ he said. ‘And I’m not bored.’ Philokles gave them all a crooked smile. ‘This is not the place to have this conversation,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’
Satyrus got on to his horse with a wriggle and a push. Melitta did her usual acrobatic vault, and every head on the street turned.
‘You have to stop doing that in public,’ Theron said. ‘Girls don’t ride. They certainly don’t ride astride. They don’t vault on to horses, and they don’t do acrobatics.’
‘Of course they do,’ Melitta said with a toss of her head. ‘I see it on Athenian plates and vases all the time.’
Theron made a choking noise that Satyrus recognized through his sullenness as ill-concealed laughter. ‘Those are flute girls and hetairai!’ he said.
Melitta shrugged. Then she turned her Artemis smile on the people around them, and some of the men smiled back.
‘Where are we going?’ Melitta asked.
‘Leon the Numidian has a factor and warehouses here,’ Philokles said.
‘Uncle Leon?’ Melitta asked. ‘Will he be there?’
‘I doubt it,’ Philokles said. ‘Gods, what a salvation that would be. Zeus Soter, let Leon be there.’
PART II
FORMING
4
316 BC
S tratokles rode up to the wall of the barn before the Macedonian mercenary could get the girl’s knees apart with his own. He had her hands pinned and he’d headbutted her to stop the screams, but she was a tough woman with a farmer’s muscles and she wasn’t giving up without a fight, as the Macedonian’s face testified.
Stratokles slid down from his horse, pivoted on his left foot and kicked the man in the head so hard that his body made a gentle thump as it hit the stone barn.
‘Who allowed this?’ he asked the ring of mercenaries who had gathered to watch. ‘You – you’re a phylarch, aren’t you?’
The man so addressed, a Sicilian from far-off Syracuse, flinched at the man with the livid red scar across his face. ‘Yes,’ he muttered.
‘Are you aware that without these people, we’ll never catch the fucking children?’ Stratokles was furious – not just from the constant pain of his face, but from the stupidity of the men he was saddled with.
‘They know where the children are!’ the Macedonian spat. He sat up and retched. ‘Fuck me.’
‘I may, at that,’ Stratokles said. He had a knife in his hand and it was pressed against the Macedonian’s temple. ‘Don’t move around too much.’
The Sicilian phylarch shook his head. ‘It’s been a hard ten days, lord. The boys need some-’
‘Some rape? I recommend that they practise on each other, then. Listen, you fuckwit. These people are Heron of Pantecapaeum’s citizens .’ Stratokles shook his head.
‘We done worse when we took that town – Tanais. You weren’t so high and mighty then.’ The phylarch knew he had the rest of the men with him.
Stratokles shrugged. ‘Sometimes men have to do evil deeds to attain an end. Tanais had to be sacked. It was a symbol – a symbol your master can’t afford. But one day of sacking a town – an event that should have sated your urges for a little longer – does not give you the right to rape your way across the countryside.’
The phylarch shrugged. ‘They all hate us anyway.’
Stratokles nodded. He sheathed his dagger, and the Macedonian breathed again. Stratokles shook his head. ‘Are you surprised?’ He picked the girl up. She had a broken nose, two black eyes and blood all down the front of her chiton, but she tried to resist him. He grabbed her wrists and threw her over his shoulder, then carried her around the barn to where other soldiers had the wife and the farmer himself penned in the house.
