Tyrant: Destroyer of Cities Read Online Free PDF

summer?’
    Satyrus raised his cup and slopped a libation. ‘Next summer is in the hands of a different Moira ,’ he said. ‘Let us remember the Fates and Fortunes, gentlemen. This summer will be tough enough.’
    ‘You are determined to accompany the fleet?’ Coenus asked, for the fifth time.
    Satyrus shrugged.
    It was morning – a glorious spring morning. From the height of the palace towers, he could see men ploughing in their fields beyond the walls, and far off to the east, an Assagetae horse-trader riding briskly west towards the city with a string of stout ponies raising the dust behind him. Closer to hand, a gaggle of girls went to the public fountain in the middle of the agora (sixty talents for the fountain of marble and bronze, a hundred and seventy for the well, the piping and the engineer and the workmen to dig down into the rock and make a channel so that the waterworks would provide water all year round).
    Satyrus watched them draw water; watched the shape of them as they leaned out over the water to draw it, watched as one young woman drank from the pool provided for the purpose and then washed her legs.
    Why can’t I just summon her? What a fool I am – as if my sister actually cares. And who am I harming? Hyacinth takes no harm from me.
    Because I know perfectly well it’s wrong, of course. I’m not avoiding my slave-mistress to please my sister. I’m doing it because it is right.
    I think.
    ‘I don’t think I have your attention,’ Coenus said from a very great distance.
    ‘You do, of course,’ Satyrus said. He forced his eyes back over the parapet and onto his father’s friend. ‘But I do request you say that last bit again.’
    ‘I thought that you were going to take an embassage to Heraklea this spring,’ Coenus said.
    ‘And so I shall,’ said the king.
    ‘You mean, you’ll cut a more dashing figure with a war fleet than with some ambassadors,’ Coenus said. ‘Your prospective father-in-law – now, I’ll note, the “king” of Heraklea – may not see it that way.’
    Satyrus disliked having his mind read. He disliked it all the more when he felt that he was being mocked – as all of his father’s friends tended to do, all the time. His sister Melitta called it the ‘conspiracy of the old’. In fact, Coenus was exactly right. Satyrus wanted to see Amastris with twenty ships at his back and resplendent in armour – perhaps fresh from a victory or two.
    ‘Coenus, with what we spend on the fleet, we might as well get some use from it,’ Satyrus said.
    Coenus grunted. ‘You’ve got me there, lord.’
    ‘And I’m the best navarch, if it comes to a fight,’ Satyrus said. ‘You’ve said so yourself.’
    ‘If you get into a fight with Antigonus One-Eye’s fleet, all the skill in the world won’t be worth a fuck,’ Coenus said. Then he shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, lad. I’m not myself. You are the fittest navarch. I dislike the both of you gone at the same time – you at sea and your sister out on the Sea of Grass. And neither of you with an heir old enough to rule.’
    ‘If we both die,’ Satyrus said, ‘feel free to run the place yourself.’ He grinned. ‘You already do!’
    Coenus grunted. ‘This is not the retirement I had planned,’ he said.
    Three days, and Satyrus did not summon his concubine – bought in secret and enjoyed with considerable guilt even before Melitta discovered her. He and Melitta were correct with each other, and no more, and neither offered any form of apology.
    But on the fourth day, Satyrus sent the horse. It had started over the horse, a descendant of his father’s wonderful warhorse and a fine prospect for a three-year-old, with heavy haunches and a lively spirit – the same slate-grey, silvery hide, the same black mane and tail. A fine horse, and perhaps more … Thanatos had been a great horse.
    Both of them wanted this new horse, and they had wagered him on an archery contest – itself foolish, because Satyrus knew that he