Playing the injured merchant, Sarpax cursed. 'You're the only pirate I see here!'
The other man laughed. 'Pay up, little cock.' Melitta heard his feet moving. 'We're looking for a man – twenty to twenty-five years old, tall, dark-haired. Goes by the name of Satyrus. Seen him?'
Sarpax laughed. 'What, walking on the sea?'
The other man did not laugh. 'Satyrus of Alexandria. Know the name?'
'Of course I do. What of it?'
'Seen him?' the other man pressed.
His tone had changed. Melitta felt something stir in her chest, something as profound as the urges of her body. They were looking for her brother. That meant they didn't have him!
'Last year at Rhodos. Listen, Trierarch – I'm a poor man with my way to make. Here's your tax. Can we go?'
Melitta could hear his booted feet on the narrow plank that ran between the oar benches. 'Where's this cargo? Gods, this is a smelly scow you have here.'
'Wine's in the ballast. Copper pigs are the ballast.' Sarpax sounded too confident, as far as Melitta was concerned.
'What's in the bow, then?' the other man asked, and Melitta could hear his steps coming closer.
'Barley and cheese for the lads,' Sarpax said.
'And whatever you put aboard for your private trade, you sly-minded Tyrian. A little purple dye? Some ostrich eggs?' He laughed. 'Open it!'
Melitta put an arrow on her bow. By the light of the scuttle, she saw Nihmu do the same.
'I'd rather not,' Sarpax said. 'It won't be good for you, either.'
'Was that a threat, you dirty fucker? Get it open, right now, and I won't put my boot up your arse.' The other man put his hand on the hatch. Melitta could see it move.
'I'm just so worried about an – attack!' Sarpax said, and the door opened.
Melitta shot the boarder from the length of her forearm, and her shaft went in under his arm where he'd pushed on the hatch. Nihmu's slipped into his right eye.
Before she had her second arrow on the string, all the marines were dead or pushed over the side, and Idomeneus was up on the rail, shooting down into the Wasp's cockpit, the command centre of the enemy ship. Unlike Auntie Nihmu, Melitta had been in a sea fight and she knew Idomeneus. She ran along the deck, avoided slipping in all the blood and stepped past the rowers – the benches were clearing as they all surged up, swords and javelins ready for action, over the rail. Tunny lay lower in the water than her opponent, but the difference wasn't enough to deter boarding.
'Just like old times!' Idomeneus said. He shot again.
Melitta couldn't pick a target – the enemy deck was full of men, and most of them were bare-backed oarsmen – her own.
'We're done here,' Idomeneus agreed. He looked at Nihmu, who drew to her ear and lofted a long shot at a man on the stern – an enemy archer. He fell into the sea.
'Nice shot!' Idomeneus said.
It was the last blow of the action. The enemy rowers were paid men – perhaps pressed, perhaps slaves – and they didn't rise from their benches. The Tunny's men cleared the cockpit in no time.
Coenus came back aboard, his sword dry, but a big smile on his face. 'Master Sarpax, you are now owner of that trireme.'
Sarpax was standing on the rail next to Melitta. 'What the fuck do we do with him?' he asked. 'I'm a fucking Rhodian – I can't bear to kill the rowers and sink him.'
Melitta felt the milk starting. As the daimon of combat fled her body, she felt all the irritations flood back, but she still had room for a smile. 'I have an idea,' she said. Inside her head, she was rejoicing, because Satyrus was alive. Two days later, a military trireme slipped on to the beach south of Gorgippia near the Temple of Herakles. It caused a certain consternation at the temple until Melitta jumped over the side and ran all the way up the beach and up the steps. The same old priestess greeted her with open arms. The cataracts in her eyes showed her to be quite blind, but she smiled and embraced Melitta tightly. 'The god told me you would come,' she said. 'Eumeles hunts your brother everywhere since the battle.'
Melitta laughed. 'Eumeles' days are numbered,' she said.
Down on the beach, Nihmu clambered over the side and walked up the shingle until she had dirt and leaves underfoot. She waved her bow at Melitta and Melitta waved back. Then the Sakje woman fell on her knees and kissed the ground, and let forth a war cry that echoed off the ship and the walls of the temple.
'A Sakje!' the old woman said. 'Once, they used to come here. It has been many years.' She ran a hand over Melitta's face. 'You are a mother!' she said. 'Where is your child? A boy?'
Melitta smiled. 'Back in Alexandria,' she said. 'The milk still runs. But I had to save my brother.'
'Let us go in and see the will of the god,' the old seeress said. 'Your brother is in his care – one hero to another. But it is good you came.' She leaned on Melitta's shoulder and gestured to an attendant, a pretty young girl. 'Lissa can get a tisane for the milk in your breasts. What else do you need? I look forward to playing my part in repaying Eumeles. He has been a hard master to the people here.'
'Horses,' said Nihmu, who had quickly made her way up from the beach. She smiled as she said it. 'The smell here is the smell of home! I can smell the grass! Horses, reverend lady, and we will be gone.'
The old priestess sniffed. 'You took all my best horses last time,' she said. Then she shook her head. 'Oh, the demands of the young – and the gods. I'll have horses fetched.'
A day later, they were mounted, in Sakje clothes, their gorytoi by their sides, riding across the first blades of the sea of grass. Behind them, Coenus pulled in his stallion to wave at Sarpax, who paused in his stream of orders to unmoor the Wasp to wave back.
'I may never go to sea again,' Nihmu said with a laugh. 'Oh, I pray that Leon is well – but I am happy to be back on the grass!'
'Where to, Nihmu?' Coenus asked. They were at the top of a long ridge that ran east into the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains. North and east, the plains rolled away beneath their feet to the river, and again beyond the ferry. A cold wind blew from the north, rippling the grass and making them shiver.
Melitta pulled her fur cap down over her ears. 'North?'
Nihmu shook her head. 'North and east – to the high ground between the Tanais and the Rha.'
'That's where the bandits live!' Melitta said.
'That's where we will find Ataelus,' Nihmu said. 'He is the bandit now.'
7
The countryside was empty – not a man moved, no one picked the ripe apples or trampled the grapes. Word of the atrocity at Penelope's farm must have spread quickly.
Satyrus moved warily from hayrick to byre. Twice he found other men hiding – both times he moved on with a nod. There was smoke on the air and he stayed away from the road after he saw a column of two dozen men in armour. His mind closed to thought, he slipped along the coast, south, until he crossed a rocky headland and was able to look down into the harbour. Three triremes on the beach and the Lotus anchored in twenty feet of water, moored fore and aft to the breakwater. He lay there for an hour, watching it all, and watching the soldiers in the town, his gut roiling. Then he began the trek back up the coast.
Near nightfall, he heard dogs. He climbed over a low headland near the cursed farm and down into the icy water, and then swam around the point and on down the beach as far as he could stand before muscle spasms and chills drove him ashore. When he landed, the baying of the dogs was far behind. He set to gathering driftwood. He got together a bundle, wrapped it in his girdle and carried it with him as he walked in the surf up the beach, going north in the last light as fast as he could manage. He ran when he was cold and walked when he was tired, thankful for the stew he'd had the night before – stew he'd eaten with people now dead because of him. Like Xenophon and
