good.’ Peleus rubbed his nose. ‘We’re cruising a sea that’s too empty by half.’ He shrugged. ‘Anyway, we’ll sleep late again and have the last of the west wind across to the shore of Asia. Then the weather will change.’ He rubbed his beard.
18
I n the morning, the worst of Satyrus’s sun-sickness was off him. He took the steering oar as they cleared the beach at Ourannia and turned the bow back to the east, into the rising sun. Kyros brought him a broad straw hat, like a cavalryman would wear. ‘You’re a hippeis,’ he quipped. ‘A girl was selling them on the beach.’
Satyrus smiled. ‘I’ll buy it from you,’ he said.
‘See how it has a good linen cord so it won’t blow off?’ Kyros said. ‘Nah, boy, that’s for you from the oarsmen. Luck is luck. All that dicking about with the oar and you landed us on the Rock of Akkamas like a whore in Piraeus lands on a sailor’s cock.’ Kyros smiled. Over his shoulder, Kalos leered. ‘Boys think you’re lucky, Navarch.’
‘And you paid the price in sun-sickness,’ Kalos said. He pointed at the hat. A tiny silver trident was pinned to the crown. ‘Deck crew threw that in – pilgrim badge.’ He smiled. ‘So you stay lucky.’
So Satyrus wore the hat.
‘What are you smiling at?’ Melitta asked, coming into the stern.
‘How smart people are, even when they seem ordinary, or slow, or just plain dumb.’ He shrugged. ‘Sometimes I wonder if I ever fool anyone.’
She nodded, and stood there, watched by a hundred eyes, as the stades flowed away under the keel.
The sun was setting and Peleus announced that their landfall was twenty stades north of Hydatos Potomai on the north coast of Syria. That night they pulled down the coast under oars until Peleus and Kyros both liked a beach and landed by moonlight, sending the marines and a dozen deckhands in the boat to land and search the sands and the hillside beyond. The Lotus waited on their word.
Satyrus had shipped as a marine and he’d done the drill for camping on a hostile beach, but he’d never done it for real, and he felt his heart pound while he watched their white corslets in the moonlight.
Melitta quietly strung her bow.
They were all poised, riding their anchor and with the top-deck rowers giving the occasional stroke to keep her steady, bow-on to the open ocean in case she needed to run. There were lookouts all along the hull and a man up the mast, watching the moonlit open ocean where the sky was still salmon pink.
A long whistle from the beach. All Peleus had to do was nod – Satyrus could land the ship himself.
‘Ready on the oars. Backstroke on my command. Give way, all.’
The Lotus slipped in, grounded her stern and the oarsmen were over the side as fast as they could, every man racing for the lines as he hit the beach, simultaneously lightening the ship and helping haul him farther up the beach until Satyrus called ‘Hold and belay’ and looked at Peleus.
‘Not bad,’ the Rhodian commented. Then, very quietly, he said, ‘There’s something wrong.’
Satyrus had assumed it was his own fears rising in his throat. ‘Yes,’ he said. He stood straighter, made himself be alert. ‘Something smells wrong,’ he said with sudden realization. He looked at Peleus in the moonlight. ‘Smell.’
‘Death,’ Peleus said. He nodded and walked to the side. ‘Karpos? I need you to scout north. Smell it? Something died.’
‘We all smell it, Peleus,’ Karpos called back. Then he was off at a run, with a pair of marines behind him. The archers went south.
Fires were lit and food cooked – cauldrons of heavy stew with yesterday’s lamb. In an hour they were wrapped in their cloaks, the marines all together in the middle and a double watch on the promontories that rose like towers at either end of the beach.
The Dog Star was high when Satyrus awoke to find Karpos kneeling in the sand next to Peleus. He got out of his cloaks and knelt next to them in the moonlight.
‘This isn’t for everyone, lad. Go ahead, Karpos – tell him what you saw.’
‘Ships. A fight.’ Karpos shook his head. ‘Breeze fooled us. The next beach south is covered in corpses, and a hull turtled in the swell, breaking up.’ He shook his head. ‘Rhodian cruiser. She took a ram amidships, but only after she wasted a Macedonian trireme. Three or four hundred corpses.’ Karpos sank on to the sand.
‘Shit,’ Satyrus said, without meaning to.
Peleus rubbed his chin. ‘Sleep while you can. So – old Panther isn’t as foolish as I thought. Some of One-Eye’s fleet is on this coast – and they attacked a Rhodian to keep that news a secret.’
‘We should sail with the first finger of dawn,’ Satyrus said.
‘That’s the truth, lad.’ Peleus lay his head back down. ‘So sleep while you can.’
Karpos got up. ‘Why not run now?’ he asked.
Peleus didn’t answer. So Satyrus did. ‘What if we have to fight?’ he said. ‘We need fresh rowers.’
Karpos nodded. ‘I won’t sleep – coming across that in the dark – fuck me.’ He turned away. ‘Ever seen a battlefield in the dark, lad?’
‘Yes, I have,’ Satyrus said.
‘Too bad for you, then,’ Karpos said. And he lay down, rolled in his chlamys and pretended to sleep.
The next Satyrus knew, Kyros was clasping his shoulder, still a little tender from the sunburn. It was dark as Tartarus, and the oar master was pulling him to his feet. ‘You’re to launch us,’ he said. ‘Master Peleus is climbing the headland.’
He swallowed some hot wine and some porridge and then he was standing in the stern and the ship was sliding down the beach into the waves. His sister was standing in the bow, a heavy cloak over her, and Satyrus knew her well enough to know that she was wearing armour under that cloak and not a chiton. He heard rumours around him in the first blush of light – that the lookouts had seen a squadron pass in the dark, that there were fires on the next headland.
The stern was free – he felt the change in weight. ‘A sea!’ he shouted and the last oarsmen and all the sailors came up the side, almost swimming, while the fore-top-deck rowers gave him enough way to keep the bow on to the waves.
‘All oars,’ he called. ‘Cruising speed. Give way, all!’ He waved at the oar master the way Peleus did, and his chant started up, and they were clear of the beach in the time it took for an early gull to circle them once and give a cry.
The light boat came off the headland before they’d pulled their oars a dozen more times, and once they were out of the surf, Satyrus had his oarsmen rest, the shafts crossed amidships, while the boat came alongside and Peleus leaped up the side. Kalos, pulling the light boat, brought it up under the stern, caught a rope and tied off before swimming aboard.
Peleus was naked. He shivered as he came into the stern, and Satyrus handed him his Thracian cloak.
‘Thanks, lad,’ he said. He shook his head and lowered his voice. ‘We should do well enough,’ he said. ‘Wind’s from the north. We’ll sail until we have to weather the big headlands. There’s a big force somewhere on this coast – Aristion’s Rose was a tough nut and she wouldn’t have stayed to fight unless she was trapped.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m shaken, boy. In Rhodos, we say we can outrun everything we can’t fight and outfight anything that we can’t outrun. But Rose’s become a turtle on that beach – you’ll see her in a little while – and young Aristion’s so much fish bait.’
‘How long ago?’
‘Two days, or three. Long enough for the corpses to rise.’ Peleus shook his head. ‘What is One-Eye doing on this coast? I thought he was going after Cassander.’
Satyrus shrugged. ‘That’s what he wanted us to think, maybe. And maybe Stratokles wanted Ptolemy to think the same.’
‘Nasty thought, lad. If that’s the case – why then, he’s going to have a go at Aegypt. Could already be over.’
‘I worried about that last night.’ Satyrus shook his head. ‘And other things.’
‘You’re a worrier, and that’s a fact. Make you a good helmsman. Except that your steering oar will be a
