'Makes you wonder what your father was like,' Abraham said.
'Yes,' Satyrus said. 'Yes.'
'I think I have a pretty good idea,' Abraham said. He took a breath and got up. 'Where do you think your father found these demi-gods?'
Satyrus used his friend's hand to get to his feet. 'They find you,' he said. In the morning, Diodorus asked to land the horses. 'The Exiles can ride from here,' he said. 'Our horses will be fat and happy in three days. But if we sail another day, we'll have nothing but rotting horse meat.'
All the Exiles nodded.
Satyrus shrugged. 'Can you get to Tanais?'
Diodorus scratched his head. 'I think I can puzzle it out,' he said.
Crax laughed aloud.
Diokles cut in. 'If we get under way immediately, we might yet catch him today. Wind's against us, now. Against Eumeles, too. So we row – and our rowers are better.'
'If we don't fight today, we'll raise Tanais tomorrow,' Satyrus said. 'I dislike dividing my forces.'
'Tomorrow, really?' Diodorus asked. He looked at Crax.
'Transports only slow us down,' Diokles observed. 'Leave 'em here and we'll double our chances of catching that bastard.'
'Try the Coracanda,' Leon said.
'That's it!' Satyrus said. 'I need – one of the fishermen. Darius? Are they gone?'
'Stayed for the wine. And the reward.' Darius was chewing bread, uncharacteristically human. 'I'll fetch them.'
The fishermen were delighted to receive a silver mina each for their part in the rescue.
'And the same again if you'll pilot us around the island and through the Coracanda.' He looked at them expectantly. Leon spoke to them in Maeotian, and they shrugged.
Phanagoreia island filled the north end of the strait. The main channel ran north and west, away from Tanais. Satyrus knew from childhood that there was a much narrower channel east around the island, a channel that ran all the way up to the mouth of the Hypanis. The enemy fleet knew these waters, too – or had pilots who would – but they'd taken the safe channel.
'What's the Coracanda?' Diokles asked.
The fishermen all shuffled their feet.
'It's an old channel through sandbanks. It runs east of the island and it'll cut hours off our time.' Satyrus was emphatic.
Diodorus nodded. 'It won't save you that much time,' he said, 'but it'll save us three hundred stades. We'll be at the Hypanis by tonight.' He'd marched and sailed here before.
The lead fisherman scratched his beard. 'She's shallow, lord. Many places no deeper than a man is high, or even a child. And if a ship touches, she never comes off.'
'Can you get us through? Lotus has the deepest draught.' Satyrus spoke to the fishermen, but he sent Helios for the Rhodians and the pirates.
The fishermen talked among themselves in their own tongue. By the time the leader spoke, Panther was there, and Demostrate.
Satyrus was amused to see the pirate king and the Rhodian approach together, laughing. And relieved.
He saluted both, and then the fisherman spoke. 'I can but try, lord. I can put a fisher-boat through the gullet in the dark. But these here monsters are another thing. I can't say. I don't think she's ever been done.'
Leon shook his head. 'I've done it,' he said softly, and the other men quieted for him, even Demostrate. Leon was a man who explored, who had walked and sailed everywhere he could go. 'I took a trireme up the gullet – ten years back. And again in the Olympic year.' He nodded to Satyrus. 'We can do it.'
Diokles made a face. 'Is it needful?'
Satyrus nodded. 'I need those horses. One day of bad weather and they'd be dead.'
Diokles looked at the sky and the sun, and was silent.
An hour later, the Lotus turned out of her column, heading east up a channel that seemed from a distance to be narrower than the hull of the ship. And behind them, all sixty-five ships sorted themselves into a single column with the horse transports in the lead, each one reinforced with oarsmen from the lighter ships.
Neiron shook his head. 'You put the heaviest draughts in front? They'll ground and plug the channel.'
'Then we push the horses over the side and float them,' Satyrus said. 'Leon is the greatest sailor I have ever known. Let him lead.'
Before the sun was a hand's breadth up in the sky, the line was threading its way through the channel. Satyrus looked back and there were ships as far as his eyes could see – a single line, like dancers at a festival, each ship copying the motions of the Lotus in the lead.
'This is – mad,' Neiron complained.
Satyrus felt the wind change on his cheek, a gentle breeze that ruffled his hair and breathed on their sterns.
'I don't believe it,' Neiron said.
The fisherman coughed in his hand and spat over the side for luck.
Helios came up behind his master. 'Why are they so happy?' he asked.
Satyrus grinned. 'The gods send us a wind,' he said, pouring a libation over the side. 'It is against our enemy, who must go north and west. And it is gentle, so that we can use it as we coast east.' He laughed. 'May it blow all day.'
Helios made a sign, and the fleet stood on.
22
Upazan followed them down the Tanais, and every step of his advance was contested, and men died.
Archers shot from woods and from barns. The woods were burned, the barns stormed. And men died.
By the river, in the fields, in the woods and on the high ridges, men fought – a slash of bronze or iron, a flight of arrows with deadly tips. The Sakje used poison, and the farmers never surrendered. There were skirmishes in every open space. Bands of Sakje harried bands of Sauromatae, who harried the refugees, killing the weak. Women died, and children.
Ravens feasted until they were glutted, and corpses lay on the roads and no animal mauled them, because there were so many.
This was not war the way Melitta had seen it in Aegypt. This was the war of all against all. The farmers fought to avoid annihilation, and the Sauromatae fought to exterminate them.
On the evening of the third day, Ataelus sat with Temerix and Melitta on a low hill, watching their exhausted rearguard retreat in a soft rain that favoured the enemy with every drop, rendering the strong bows of the Sakje almost useless.
Ataelus shrugged. 'We kill two or three of Upazan's for every farmer, and ten for every Sakje.'
'And yet we will run out of men first,' Temerix said.
Melitta looked back and forth between them. 'What are you telling me?' she asked.
Ataelus looked away, across the great river, where an eagle rose on an updraught. His face was blank, all the wild energy of the ambush drained from him by four days of heavy fighting and constant losses.
Temerix said, 'The men on the ships are killing us.'
Melitta nodded. She knew that the ships coming up the river to harry the farmers from the water had been an ugly surprise. Nikephoros had returned, just as Coenus had said, and established a fortified camp across the river from her fort on the bluff. Using it as a base, his men sailed up and down the river, disrupting her defences.
'If Upazan's men actually cooperated with the tyrant's soldiers, we would be the ones taking the losses,' Temerix said.
Ataelus sighed. 'It was a good plan,' he said, 'but it isn't working. Upazan is too strong – he must have had fifteen or even twenty thousand riders. And where are the other clans?' He sounded bitter.
