sooner or later, that fat parasite Gabines will know we did it.’
‘Fucking public service,’ Lucius said. ‘The sheer number of street thugs who died last night has got to make this city a better place to live.’ He laughed.
Iphicrates shook his head. ‘We should have had them last night. And Diodorus and fucking Leon into the bargain.’
‘They were on to us from the start of the evening, gentlemen,’ Stratokles said. ‘I don’t like losing a contest any more than the next man, but it is a pleasure to be up against men of worth. You’ll have to be on your toes, Iphicrates. Golden Lotus is the toughest ship in these waters, or so I’m told.’
The scarred Athenian mercenary stretched and shook his head. ‘I’ve been fighting at sea since I was twelve, Stratokles. And I’ve taken a few Rhodians in my time, and they are never easy. But if I have a clean chance, I’ll take ’em. The new engines will give me an edge they can’t be ready for.’
‘Engines?’ Lucius asked. He had quite a bit of intellect, but most of it was reserved for war.
‘Like big bows, with ratchets to hold ’em cocked. Shoot a bolt the size of a sarissa. Goes right through a trireme’s hull.’
‘Despite which,’ Stratokles added, ‘your first duty to me is information. I need to know what One-Eye is up to on the coast of Syria – and Cyprus. And what Rhodos is doing. Golden Lotus is bound for Rhodos. Need I say more?’
‘No, sir,’ Iphicrates said.
‘Go get them then,’ Stratokles said, and slapped the mercenary on the back. ‘I’ll take care of business here. I’ve fomented a fair amount of treason,’ he said. ‘Macedonians are the most perfidious race on the face of Gaia. And they call Greeks treacherous.’ He laughed. Then he turned back to Iphicrates and put a hand on his arm. ‘Don’t loiter out there. I know you have piracy in your blood, but I need your reports – and I need to know I have a way out of here. When Gabines starts to follow up on the tags I’ve left – I can’t help it! He’s going to be after me like a pig on slops. And Leon will strike back after last night – count on it.’
‘Hurry out, take the Lotus, check Rhodos and Syria, hurry back. Anything else?’ Iphicrates shook his head. ‘Tall order and no mistake.’
‘That’s why I’m sending the best,’ Stratokles said.
17
T wo hundred miles north-north-east of Alexandria, and the helmsman, Peleus, had made a perfect landfall at Salamis of Cyprus, the island’s beaches just a heat shimmer while the headland temple to Aphrodite Lophos shone in the sun.
‘Peleus, you are the very prince of navigators,’ Satyrus said. He had the steering oar under his arm.
Peleus was not looking ahead at all, but watching the wake. The Golden Lotus was a triemiolia, a three-and- a-half-er that carried an extra half bank of oars and a permanent sail deck and the crew to manage her sails even in a fight. Pirates loved the smaller version, the hemiolia and so did the Rhodians, the best sailors in the world. Golden Lotus was Rhodian-built, and Peleus was Rhodian-born, a seaman from the age of six. His current age was unknown, but his beard was white and every sailor in Alexandria treated him with respect.
‘When you talk, there’s a notch in the wake,’ the helmsman said.
With the grim determination of youth, Satyrus gripped the steering oar.
‘Never had a boy your age train to be a helmsman,’ Peleus said. But he had half a smile when he said it, and the curl of his lips suggested that maybe – just maybe – Satyrus was the exception. ‘If I tell you to steer north by east, what’s the first headland you’ll see?’
Satyrus looked back at the wake. ‘Open sea until we see Mount Olympus of Cyprus rising on the port oar bank,’ he said.
Peleus nodded. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘It’s the right answer. But what’s wrong with the order?’
Satyrus hated questions like this. He stared out at the blinding white of the distant temple. ‘I don’t know,’ he said after a gut-wrenching interval.
‘That’s a fair-enough answer and no mistake,’ Peleus answered. ‘It’s true, boy – you don’t know, and you can’t. Here’s the answer – we’re too far in with the land to keep the sea breeze, so our lads would have to row every inch of the way.’ He was watching the land. ‘I aim to make for Thronoi for the night – the beach there is soft white sand and the villagers will bring us food for a little cash. I used to have a boy there.’ He gave a smile that creased the long scar down his face.
‘What happened?’ Satyrus asked. He was in love, and so wanted to hear about the loves of others.
‘He grew up and got married to some girl,’ Peleus said gruffly. ‘Mind your helm, boy. There’s a notch in the wake.’ He looked behind him, across the water and almost straight into the sun. ‘We have companions. ’
Satyrus looked back until he saw the dark smudges, right on the edge of the horizon and almost invisible in the sun dazzle. ‘I see them,’ he said.
Peleus grunted.
Thronoi stood well back from the sea – no unwalled village could afford to be too close to the water – and the first men to approach carried spears and javelins, but they knew Golden Lotus and they knew Peleus, and before the sun became a red ball in the west, the crew was cooking goats and lobsters on the beach, drinking local wine and discussing their chances with the navarch’s beautiful sister, who excited comment even wrapped from head to toe in a chlamys big enough for Philokles. She had pleaded to be allowed to ship as an archer, but Peleus had put his foot down, and she was merely a Greek lady of means with her maid. The oarsmen couldn’t see her as anything but a beautiful mascot. They competed for her glance, and Peleus had told Satyrus that he’d never seen such powerful rowing in all his days at sea.
‘Every ship needs a beautiful woman,’ Peleus allowed, standing at Satyrus’s elbow. Like every other man on the beach, he was watching Melitta. She was standing apart, watching some archers shoot at a mark. Satyrus knew she had her bow in her baggage, and he also knew she could outshoot most of these men. Her posture was defiant. Her maid stood behind her, muttering. Dorcus was the middle-aged free-woman Leon had sent in place of Kallista, whose sea-sickness was as legendary as her beauty. Dorcus’s beauty lay in her practical application of the back of her hand.
‘That friend of yours is going to break his face staring at her,’ Peleus said, pointing at Xeno. Coenus’s son was stripping off his cuirass, but his eyes were on Melitta.
Satyrus shook his head. ‘What do I do?’ he asked.
Peleus pursed his lips. ‘She’s Artemis’s avatar, boy,’ Peleus said with a pious glance towards the temple of Artemis’s heavenly rival, Aphrodite. ‘Nothing you can do but hope that she doesn’t tear anyone apart.’
They slept in watches. They did everything in watches, because all the major states hired pirates to pad out their navies, and piracy was the biggest business in the Aegean that summer. Satyrus slept alone, because he was the navarch, technically in command, with a tent of his own. Melitta slept on the other side of the tent with Dorcus.
He awoke with the sun, noted that his sister was absent from her bed, cursed the stiffness in his shoulders from sleeping on sand and threw himself into the ocean as the sun rose and swam down the beach and back. From the water he couldn’t see the sentries, but he could see his sister swimming on the other side of the headland.
‘I thought I saw the flash of oars,’ she called out to him.
Naked, he climbed out of the water and climbed the cool rocks of the headland to the sentry post.
Both of the sentries were sound asleep. It was understandable, as they’d had three days at sea and too much rowing, but it was unforgivable too. Dawn was the time that pirates attacked.
Satyrus looked off into the rising sun with his hand up to shade his eyes while he was still considering how to waken the two offenders. He saw the flash of low sun on oar blades to the north beyond the headland at Korkish. Twenty stades at the most.
His heart rate surged.
‘Alarm!’ he called. Melitta took up the cry and ran down the line of sleeping oarsmen, ignoring her own nudity to kick each man and shrill the alarm as she ran. ‘Alarm!’
Peleus was out of his sheepskins and bounding up the rocks like a much younger man. Satyrus watched the
