12

A hard winter sun cast the last of its cold light over the icy beach as the pentekonter hove to in the appointed bay in Hyrkania, the anchor stone cast while the rowers backed water against the growing wind, and at last came to rest — a fitful rest, as Poseidon rocked them.

The Land of Wolves lay under a blanket of snow when Kineas finally waded ashore in the bleak twilight, bare-legged and cursing the cold water, wolves howling in the distance. Crax and Sitalkes clambered over the side of the pentekonter carrying Niceas in a litter while Coenus pushed the horses over the rail and into the water to swim ashore on their own. They’d lost one at sea — a slow death of terror for Coenus’s favourite mare, a painful, terrible event — and the big man was subdued, but when they were all on the beach he led them in a prayer of thanks to Poseidon and then they sang the hymn to Apollo in the last light of the sun.

The merchants’ stalls at the top of the gravel beach were either closed tight or lined in drifted snow. There was no welcoming party. So they rubbed their horses down as best they could, drying them with straw from a mouldering stack Crax found and then headed inland on the only visible track. Kineas sent Crax and Sitalkes out as scouts, made sure that all his men were armed and went back to the beach to pay the last coins of his passage to the captain, a piratical Persian called Cyrus.

‘How far to the camp?’ he asked as the Persian counted the coins and tested the silver ones with his teeth.

‘Three stades. Less.’ The man smiled, showing too many teeth. ‘Before the waters went down, the town was on the beach.’ He shrugged. ‘It must be as the gods will it, eh?’

Kineas agreed that it was so.

‘You’re going to fight Iskander, yes?’ the Persian asked. And not for the first time. He had a gold toothpick which flashed around his lips as he talked.

‘Yes.’

Cyrus extended a hand. ‘Good luck. They say he is a god.’

Kineas nodded. ‘He says he’s a god.’

‘Excellent argument,’ the pirate said. ‘They say you might throw a garrison into the fort you built at Errymi.’

‘I might,’ said Kineas, anxious to be gone but unwilling to be rude.

‘Good for business. Might get a piece of the grain trade.’ Cyrus winked. ‘Boats like mine would pay a fee to have a real harbour in the north.’

‘I’ll think on it,’ Kineas said, and they clasped arms again.

The camp was less than three stades inland, east of the beach and south of the town itself, as the scarred man had said, and as they approached, they saw a pair of towers built of wood and rubble, and closer up, earth walls and neat rows of huts. Outside the walls there was a sprawl of cruder huts and leather tents. And emerging from the gate between the two timber towers came a troop of well-mounted Greek cavalry led by Diodorus and Philokles.

The snow in the air accented the smell of burning oak from the hearth fires, and closer to the market they smelled olive oil, something none of them had seen in a month. Niceas raised his head at Kineas’s side. ‘Smells like home,’ he said.

‘I think we are home,’ Kineas answered.

It took Kineas days to stop marvelling at the quality of the camp — and his praise was appreciated at first and later resented a little because it suggested he hadn’t expected as much of them. In fact, Diodorus had plenty of experience in building fortified camps and Philokles had chosen the site well: on a clear running stream, with a broad meadow stretching away to the north for exercise. The town of Namastopolis sat well above them, three more stades to the south, surrounded by tiny subsistence farms. It wasn’t a rich place, more like a robber-baron’s holding than a town, and the citadel was an ugly fortress of crude stone atop the acropolis, although rumour had it that the inside was as opulent as the outside was prosaic.

Lower down, many of the town’s least reputable elements had picked up and moved to sit at the gate of the military camp, because the soldiers brought money, and the town had the means to take it away. The sprawl at the gate featured a market — almost an agora — where the soldiers bought food and oil for their messes. There were legitimate merchants there, with wine and olive oil, weapons and armour. There were a dozen wine shops, from a newly built tavern with solid walls, its own hearth and prostitutes hanging over the balcony of the exedra, to hide tents with a board over a pair of wooden horses and a few amphorae of wine stuck base down in the snow. Followers abounded, from prostitutes of both sexes in the market, to new wives in the snug huts that lined the streets inside the walls with military precision. Kineas’s little army numbered almost twelve hundred men and women, at least half the population of the town and citadel above them.

The town and the citadel had its own soldiers, a mix of Greek mercenaries released from Alexander’s armies, deserters and survivors of various Persian armies. They put on airs and swaggered, but the Olbians didn’t think much of them, and Lot’s Sauromatae had killed a couple in brawls — rather to make a point, Diodorus said.

Kineas heard Diodorus’s report after he had eaten, slept, steamed and run. He listened to his officers report in turn, rubbing his beard as Leon gave them a report on the army’s treasury (a report that made the strategos very thoughtful indeed) and Eumenes spoke on the state of the horses after their long march and short sail (a report that depressed every cavalryman present).

Lycurgus gave a hard smile. ‘You’ll all be hoplites before more snow falls,’ he said.

‘We need a lot of fresh horses,’ Niceas growled, one of his rare contributions.

‘Let’s save the ones we have first,’ Kineas said. ‘Coenus, what shall we do?’

Coenus was reading from a scroll. ‘You’d think Xenophon, who fought his whole life from horseback, would have mentioned this problem.’ He shook his head. ‘Buy more grain. Feed them as if we were fattening them for sacrifice. I’ll ride out and find a good winter pasture with some rock under their feet — they’re wet to the fetlocks all the time, the poor things.’ He looked around. ‘We’ll need to buy more horses,’ he said apologetically.

‘We don’t have as much money as I would have wished,’ Kineas said. ‘Even as it is, we’ll need to send a convoy back to the Bay of Salmon and get more money. Leon and I will have to sell estates. Ares and Aphrodite, but we spend money like water!’

Philokles pretended to be looking through the cabin’s log walls at the citadel. ‘I know where there’s money,’ he said.

‘Is this another Spartan solution?’ Kineas asked.

‘She’s a harlot and a brutal ruler. The peasants hate her. She squeezes them for cash and flaunts it.’

There was a knock at the door. Darius, now a section leader in second troop, bowed from the waist. ‘There is a messenger from the palace. I held him at the gate as per Niceas’s standing orders.’

Niceas nodded. ‘Escort him to the guardhouse and get his message. He comes no farther than the guardhouse.’

Kineas shook his head. ‘Why are you so adversarial with the palace?’ he asked his officers.

Sappho came in through the door and pushed the linen chlamys she wore as a wimple back from her face.

‘Have you already had trouble with the queen?’ Kineas asked.

His receiving room was larger than all the space he’d had in the barracks at Olbia. Diodorus and Philokles sat in barbarian chairs, Niceas lay on a couch, Coenus reclined with a bucket of scrolls, while Eumenes, Darius and Leon sat at the desk doing accounts. Ataelus sat quietly on another barbarian chair, speaking with Prince Lot and Samahe. Sappho sat in a chair that had obviously been set aside for her.

Kineas wondered why she was present. ‘I’m glad you have all made yourself comfortable in my absence,’ he said.

Darius returned, a drift of cold entering with him. ‘The strategos is invited to attend the queen,’ he said in a neutral voice.

Kineas looked around the room, a hint of annoyance in his tone as no one was answering his questions. ‘You dislike her? Philokles, has she given you trouble?’

Philokles raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m not the sort of man who would have trouble with the queen,’ he said. He laughed. ‘No, she’s given no trouble.’

Eumenes blushed and kept his head down.

‘What’s all this costing us?’ Kineas asked.

‘Actually, we’re getting a few minae a month profit. We’re defending her over the winter, aren’t we?’ Diodorus gave a wry smile. ‘I hadn’t realized that salesmanship was part of my duties.’

Kineas nodded. ‘Well done.’

‘Not all crap. Every one of these petty kingdoms in Hyrkania is out to eat every other one. Our arrival here guaranteed her farmers an uncontested harvest — that’s worth a few acres of land for one winter.’ Diodorus looked around the room. ‘Our troops have put a lot of silver into the locals — one way or another.’ He gave his words the intonation of an actor — a comic actor. Diodorus had a new scar on his brow from the fighting in the autumn. It made him look older. There was grey in his red hair that Kineas hadn’t noticed before — the price, no doubt, of command. He steepled his hands. ‘There’ll be Hades to pay in the spring,’ he said.

Other men were nodding their heads.

Kineas swirled the wine in his cup and waited.

‘She thinks we’ll fall into her arms and conquer her neighbours for her,’ Diodorus said. He and Sappho exchanged a glance, and Sappho raised a plucked eyebrow before her eyes went back to her scroll.

Leon looked up from his numbers, drew breath for speech and then thought better of it.

Kineas had to smile, despite his best resolve. ‘She’s a harlot?’ he asked.

‘She’s no harlot,’ Philokles said. ‘You’ll want to see for yourself.’ He paused. ‘She has wit.’

Diodorus leaned forward. ‘She calls herself Banugul. It’s a Zoroastrian saint’s name. The peasants call her Asalazar. That means the demon of honey.’ He gave a lopsided sneer. ‘It’s not meant as a compliment.’

Heron, silent until then, spoke up. ‘They say she’s Artabazus’s bastard daughter — Barsine’s sister. Barsine is still with Alexander. They’re rivals in every way. They say she’s the lovelier of the pair — and that Alexander preferred her, but needed the satrap’s alliance.’

Kineas shook his head. ‘So she’s been fobbed off with a piece of Hyrkania? She can’t be that beautiful, or she’d have got something better. Cappadocia, perhaps?’

They all laughed. Hyrkania was all rock — the farmers among the soldiers couldn’t stop commenting on the uselessness of the soil.

‘I think you’ve all been away from civilization too long, and begging Sappho’s pardon, you sound like characters in Lysistrata. You may all love her more than you love the gods — but when the ground is hard and our horses have their hooves hard and their summer coats, we’re riding for Marakanda,’ he said. ‘Srayanka is waiting, and Alexander’s army is growing.’

Diodorus nodded. ‘I’d rather be fighting Alexander right now.’ Again he and Sappho exchanged glances.

‘I must meet this goddess,’ Kineas said.

Diodorus cut in, ‘She’s trying to use us against her father. And she’s dangerous.’

Kineas nodded, his mind already moving on to the new logistikon that Leon was compiling. ‘Is there enough fodder and grain in this petty kingdom to get us moving in the spring?’

Leon cleared his throat. ‘Yes,’ he said. Under his dark skin, he was flushed. ‘But it will require some work to collect it. There are not enough wagons for us to buy. We’ll need more oxen to drag the wagons and some for beef on the hoof.’

Kineas glanced back at Diodorus. ‘Why would we fight her father?’

Diodorus shrugged. ‘For money?’

Sappho raised her eyes and then lowered them — again.

‘I think you’re all barking at shadows,’ Kineas said.

After a minute of silence, he turned on his heel and walked back into his sleeping quarters to change for his audience.

A slave brought Kineas wine while he rummaged through his baggage. He tried to read a new piece — new to him — by Aristotle. Its release had apparently enraged Alexander, but so far he could make nothing of it. He had just located his best sandals in the leather bag under the bed when he heard a noise behind him. He looked up when the curtain that guarded his sleeping quarters rustled, and he shot to his feet when he saw that it was Sappho.

She smiled enigmatically as she entered. ‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘it is almost worth three years of forced sex and the loss of my husband and children to be free to enter a man’s quarters and speak my own mind.’

Kineas started to reply, but his mind was grappling with what she had said, and all that came out of his mouth was ‘I’m sorry.’

She nodded. ‘As am I. And pleased to have your full attention.’

Kineas nodded. ‘Wine?’ he asked to cover his confusion.

She shook her head. ‘No, I’ve had enough. Listen, Strategos. You are a man like my brothers and my father. Like Diodorus. A man who does things — worthy things. I know your type.’ Her kohl-rimmed eyes were large and green, and very close to his.

Kineas sat back. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, again.

She choked a little. ‘I don’t think you should meet her alone. I speak for Srayanka, who is not here.’

Kineas narrowed his eyes. ‘I like a challenge,’ he said.

‘That is why you will fall,’ Sappho said. ‘Your own courage and your sense of challenge will betray you, and you will fall.’ She stood again. ‘Look at you — and you are only dealing with me. You look into my eyes, you measure my body, you hear that I have been abused — I could have you kissing me just by moving closer and putting my hand like this.’ She suited action to the word, fitting her body alongside his and putting one raised hand to the back of his head, and Kineas flinched away, stepping back to hide the immediacy of his arousal and the truth of her assertion.

She laughed.

‘Enough,’ Kineas said, turning away, disgusted at his weakness and her accuracy. He nodded sharply. ‘I appreciate now that you all take this seriously, and I can tell from what you say — and what you don’t say — that this woman has caused tensions.’ He backed away and selected a chiton, at a loss how to proceed, trying to cover his confusion and his sudden arousal. ‘I’m sure you all have my best interests at heart.’ He was growing angrier by the moment — angry at them, angry at himself. ‘But I dislike that you see me as an overgrown child.’

‘You control yourself so much that you are like clay for someone who can control you in turn,’ she said. ‘Please — call it whatever you like. Make sacrifice to the Foam-born and stay home tonight.’ She smiled gently. ‘Admit it — you, too, are like a man in Lysistrata.’

Kineas shook his head. ‘Bah,’ he said. ‘I am a commander, not a schoolboy.’

Sappho shook her head. ‘Athena, I tried,’ she said, and retreated through the curtain. Before she withdrew her head she said, ‘Philokles volunteered to try to speak to you first. But confronting you before you met her was my idea.’

Kineas nodded dismissively. ‘I appreciate your vote of confidence, madam,’ he said. Just at that moment, he hated her — her feminine superiority, the ease with which her physicality had taken him in. Then he sat on his bed, considering how far short of his own notions of good conduct he had just fallen.

After a few hundred heartbeats, he dressed quickly.

Antigonus sat on his charger with ten of his Keltoi in their best kit mounted behind him in the street by the gate. Sitalkes handed Kineas the reins of Thalassa, and Kineas swung his leg over the mare’s broad back, briefly remembering back to his first attempts to mount a tall horse in the middle of the Pinarus while Persians rained blows on his breast- and back-plate.

His hesitation caused him to push the mare through half a circle before he got his leg up, bringing him to face Coenus, who was standing in the snow with a bag of scrolls over his shoulder like a giant schoolboy on his way to the agora.

‘You too?’ Kineas asked.

Coenus shrugged. ‘Me too what?’ he asked. ‘Need a hand up?’

Kineas snapped. ‘No!’ he shot out, and then followed the charger through another half-rotation without getting his leg over.

Coenus was laughing. The escort were doing their best not to laugh. When Kineas’s pursuit of the horse went around again, Coenus grabbed her headstall. ‘Need a hand up?’ he asked again.

‘Fuck off,’ Kineas said. He made a face. ‘Yes.’

Coenus held her bridle while Leon made a step. Kineas sprang on to the mare’s back and pulled his cloak around him.

‘They aren’t fools,’ Coenus said, pointing at the open door of the commander’s building. ‘They all love you, and every one of them wants what is best for you. Damn it — this is what Niceas does.’ Coenus gave a lopsided smile. Even on foot, he came up to the middle of Kineas’s chest while mounted. ‘I’m a pompous aristocrat, not a rhetorician. If Niceas were himself, he’d swear a lot and you’d take it. The queen is dangerous. She writes letters to Alexander. Beware.’

Kineas found he could smile. ‘I had gathered that,’ he said.

Coenus raised an eyebrow. ‘Have a splendid evening at the palace, then.’ He gave a salute.

Kineas gave a shake of his head, backed Thalassa a few steps and whirled her around. ‘Let’s go,’ he said to Andronicus, who exchanged an amused glance with Coenus, barked an order and surged into motion.

The ride up the hill was cold and longer than Kineas had expected. He kept his mind carefully blank. The citadel was a grim reminder of what Hyrkania really was. The fortifications were high and strong, old stone courses at the bottom and new stone facing, with a double gate and towers every half a stade. Kineas whistled with professional appreciation as he rode under the gates.

‘Tough nut,’ he said to Andronicus, who shrugged.

‘We could have it in an afternoon. Garrison is crap,’ Andronicus said. He spat. ‘Walls are no better than the bronze behind them.’

As if to make the Kelt’s point, a pair of lazy sentries in green-spotted bronze breastplates greeted them under the inner gate.

‘What do you want, sir?’ asked the older sentry.

‘Invitation from the queen,’ Andronicus said.

The man nodded and straightened slightly — not exactly attention, but a better slouch. He held out his hand and Andronicus dropped a coin in it.

‘Nice that all these fucking foreigners are so ready with their cash,’ the sentry said in Persian to his mate. He was contemptuous.

Andronicus grinned and nodded like a stupid barbarian. He’d served four years in Persia. He refused to let the palace grooms take their horses. Instead, he told off four of his troopers to take the horses to the stables. The other men followed Kineas inside, where slaves took their cloaks and sandals and washed their feet.

The floors were tiled and heated. The interior of the citadel bore no more relation to the outside than the citadel-palace in Olbia. But the tyrant of Olbia hadn’t run to heated floors and mosaics. And slaves. Kineas had seldom seen so many slaves devoted to personal service. Most of them were women, and all were pretty, and naked, or next to it. The mosaics were not subtle.

Like a gymnasium, the palace grew warmer as one got further in, and the decorations more costly, more colourful, from beige and white tiles in the outer receiving rooms and barracks to red and purple and glitteringly erotic mosaics in the heart of the castle, a throne room warmer than blood with naked men and women glistening with oil waiting on a dozen courtiers and the queen herself.

She was not naked. She was dressed like a Persian matron, her hair dressed with ropes of pearls and lapis, her limbs and breasts well covered. Amidst a plethora of sensual and aesthetic possibilities, hers was the body that called out to be watched, to be caressed with the eye. Even fully clothed, modest, apparently unadorned, she was beautiful. Her proportions were worthy of a statue — from her delicately arched feet to her intelligent eyes and straight Greek nose.

‘Welcome, Kineas of Athens,’ she said. ‘I am Banugul.’

She had an appraising look, as if he was a horse and she was a Sakje. She crossed her legs and her Median trousers of silk rode up one leg, revealing an ankle and a bangle. ‘Your men worship you as a god,’ she said. Her intonation suggested that such worship was probably misplaced.

Kineas grinned, although it was the kind of grin he wore when he was fighting. ‘They only worship me from afar. In person, there’s a great deal of dispute.’

She was smaller than he had thought at first impression. She leaned her chin on a small fist, a man’s gesture that suited her. ‘Your men give the impression of excellent discipline. What do they dispute?’

‘My godhood. We are Greeks, my lady. We worship with a great deal of argument.’ He looked around, suggesting with body language that she might offer him a seat.

She sat up straight. Her shoulders were square and her bearing had dignity. ‘I know Alexander,’ she said. She smiled, and one manicured eyebrow rose a fraction. Her choice of Greek words was perfect, and her facial expression said, I slept with Alexander and I mean you to know it, but I am not crude — and I was not impressed. It was an enormous burden of communication for a fractionally raised eyebrow and two Greek words. She handled it easily.

Kineas’s opinion of her intellect rose considerably. ‘He says he is a god,’ Kineas noted with a certain reservation.

‘Hmm,’ she answered. ‘He never claimed to me to be a god. He claimed gods in his ancestors, but we all have gods among our ancestors, do we not?’

Kineas nodded.

‘You are not impressed with Alexander?’ she asked.

‘I served him for some years,’ Kineas responded. ‘He is the best general I have ever seen — and yet, a headstrong man capable of error and vice.’

‘You rebuke me like a philosopher,’ she said. ‘And like a sophist, you have not answered my question.’

‘Yes,’ Kineas said. ‘I was impressed.’ He paused, and thought, Why not? ‘I loved him,’ Kineas said.

‘But he spurned you, did he not?’ Banugul smiled, and the smile informed her face — her smile said that happiness was not the normal state of her being, from her green eyes to her pointed chin. Her smile took the sting from her words — she meant no insult, nor was she drawing a comparison. She, too, had been spurned. ‘I understand that he sent all his Greeks away.’

‘You are well informed,’ Kineas said.

‘And now you will make war on him?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ Kineas answered.

She nodded. ‘Would you care to sit down?’ she asked. ‘I thought you might be the ordinary kind of soldier, who boasts and ogles my girls. I apologize for my poor hospitality.’ She waved a hand and a pair of slaves brought a chair.

Kineas sat.

‘What could I offer you to fight my father in the spring instead of Alexander?’ she asked. She motioned at a slave, a small hand with almond nails, and a silver cup of wine appeared at Kineas’s elbow. He sipped it. It was excellent.

‘Nothing, my lady, will sway me from my plans for the spring,’ Kineas said. ‘When the ground is hard, we’ll march.’

She nodded.

‘What did Alexander give you when he sent you away?’ she asked.

‘Gold,’ Kineas said.

‘You had the better bargain,’ she said. ‘I got a small piece of the Land of Wolves, and no dogs of my own to protect it. What do you think of my guards?’

Kineas sipped wine. ‘They are adequate,’ he said. He glanced at her captain of the guard, a Thessalian she had not bothered to introduce.

‘I have seldom heard anyone damned with such faint praise,’ she said, and laughed, her chin tilted back and her throat dancing in the torchlight. ‘Do you read?’ she asked.

Kineas was startled. ‘Yes,’ he answered. He was determined to stop speaking in monosyllables, but she was robbing him of his wits. He felt as if he was wrestling with a master, missing every hold. ‘I’m reading the new Aristotle now.’ He winced inwardly at the boyishness of the boast.

She leaned forward, a wolf ready to spring. ‘You have the new Aristotle?’ she asked.

‘I had a copy scribed before I left Olbia. It came out on the Athenian grain ships.’ He grinned at her eagerness. ‘If you have a scribe, I can lend it to you for copying.’

‘Hah!’ she laughed. ‘No work on my taxes this winter!’ Her eyes gleamed. ‘Do you like singing?’ she asked.

‘I like conversation that is not all interrogation,’ he said carefully.

Her chin went back on her hand. ‘I do apologize, but we’re a little short of polite company here in Hyrkania. You’re from Athens! You’re only the tenth Athenian I’ve ever met.’ She shrugged. ‘Men expect women to ask all the questions and carry the conversation. Especially beautiful women.’

Kineas smiled. ‘I like singing. I enjoy reading. I’m an excellent soldier and I will not fight a spring campaign on your behalf.’ He rolled his shoulders. ‘I will see that your fiefdom is protected all winter, and perhaps we can negotiate a garrison or a few officers to help your levies.’

She nodded. ‘Strictly business. Very well.’ She sat up. ‘You are used to dealing with women, aren’t you?’ she asked. ‘Alexander isn’t.’

Kineas shrugged. ‘My mother wasn’t Olympias,’ he said. Alexander’s mother was a byword in Greece for cruelty and manipulation. He rose to his feet.

She rose gracefully, despite having taken two cups of wine in less than an hour. ‘I look forward to hosting you again. I burn for your copy of Aristotle.’

That made him grin. ‘If you want it, you will have to wait while I finish it,’ he said, and bowed.

She nodded her head and motioned at a slave to escort him. ‘Winter in Hyrkania is long and arduous,’ she said. ‘You’ll have time to read it many times. I hope that I can provide you with some equally worthy amusements.’

The next afternoon, Kineas was sitting with Leon and Eumenes in the smoky tunnel of his wooden megaron, reading scrolls by the light of twenty profligate oil lamps, with Niceas reclining, cursing the smoke and muttering advice.

A gentle tapping against the logs of the hall heralded Lycurgus, who came in through the layers of woollen blankets that covered the door. Greek military architecture wasn’t ready for the cold of highland Hyrkania.

‘Patrols just picked up a soldier,’ he said. ‘Ten local horsemen as guards. An Athenian gentleman. I expected that you’d want to see him.’

Kineas leaned back so far that his stool creaked. ‘Anything to free me from paperwork,’ he said. He went over to the hearth, waving a hand in front of his face and trying not to breathe. He started rebuilding the fire, trying to find the combination of wood and draught that would stop the incessant smoke.

‘Leosthenes of Athens,’ Lycurgus announced, returning.

Kineas had an actual flame going. He brushed off Leon’s attempts to take over — the boy reverted to being a house slave too easily — and coaxed the flame, adding twigs. What he wanted was the tube from his campaign kit, but he didn’t have it. He leaned forward to blow on the fire. Leon blew on it from the other direction. Then both men started coughing and had to turn away to the cold air beyond the fire. Kineas took a lungful of clean air and snatched a hollow quill from the table. He leaned close enough to the embers to scorch his eyebrows and breathed out. The embers began to make the noise — the low moan of wood on the edge of ignition. Both men redoubled their efforts and suddenly the whole pit sprang into flame, as if by magic. Light drove the winter shadows into the corners of the hall, and a rush of heat forced Kineas to take a step back.

‘You don’t look as if you eat babies,’ said a voice in aristocratic Attic Greek.

‘Hard to eat them if you can’t cook them,’ Niceas said.

Leosthenes and Kineas gripped forearms. Kineas smiled, and the other Athenian beamed. Leosthenes was of middle height, well proportioned, with curly black hair and green eyes like a cat. He sat on a corner of the table without invitation. ‘The famous Kineas of Athens,’ he said dramatically.

Kineas rubbed his beard, discovered that he had singed it and winced. He shrugged. ‘Where in Hades did you come from, child?’

‘Three years’ service in Alexander’s army and you call me a child? But suit yourself — I have to deal with all those years of hero worship.’ He turned to the other men. ‘Kineas was Phocion’s star pupil — the best swordsman, the best officer. We all loved him. But he went off to serve Alexander.’ Leosthenes grinned. ‘When I was old enough, I followed you.’

‘By all the gods, it is good to see you, Leo.’ Kineas couldn’t get the grin off his face. ‘Have you been home?’

‘Home?’ Leosthenes asked. He shook his head, and flushed. ‘I haven’t been home. I’ve been to Parthia and back.’

‘Are you rich, then?’ Kineas asked.

‘You know how Alexander uses mercenaries!’ Leosthenes said bitterly. ‘Second-line troops. Garrisons. And the fool never really conquers anywhere, so he always leaves it to the garrisons to do all the nasty bits.’ The younger man shrugged and Kineas could see that in fact most of his youth was gone. There was a set to his shoulders and hollows in his eyes that Kineas hadn’t seen at a glance. ‘You remember Arbela?’

Kineas nodded.

‘Of course you do!’ The younger man turned to the other officers. ‘You were a hero, leading the Greek horse. I was with the hoplites in the second line. We never engaged. Then I spent six months chasing tribesman with Parmenion.’

‘How’d you get here?’ Niceas asked.

‘I was in the garrison at Ecbatana,’ Leo said. ‘Shit’s coming down there. I gathered a few like-minded friends and we ran.’

Kineas looked thoughtful. ‘Deserted,’ he said flatly.

‘It’s going to be war between Parmenion and Alexander,’ Leo said. ‘Not battlefield war — stab-in-the-back war. Parmenion sent me with a message to the king, and I thought I was going to be executed. So — yes. I deserted. With some friends. We took service with one of the Hyrkanian kings — these hills and the lowlands to the south are full of men from Alexander’s armies.’

Kineas caught himself rubbing his beard. ‘Is this a social visit, Leo?’ he asked.

Leosthenes had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘No,’ he said.

Niceas gave a snort.

Kineas turned to Eumenes. ‘Go and get Philokles and Diodorus. Ask Sitalkes to bring us wine.’ He turned to Niceas. ‘I need to buy a slave,’ he said, with irritation. Slaves annoyed him, but he was just too busy to fetch his own wine and get the fire burning.

‘Have you met your employer?’ Leosthenes asked.

He had to notice the intake of breath throughout the room.

‘I get it — you’ve all met her.’ He laughed.

‘Don’t be crude, Leo.’ Kineas smiled, but his voice was hard. ‘I like her.’

Diodorus pushed through the curtains, followed by Philokles, toting a sack of scrolls. ‘We’ve all met her,’ he said wryly. ‘Oh, my. Look who it is! The nursery must be emptying into the phalanx.’

Kineas rose. ‘Leosthenes, son of Craterus of Athens. An old friend.’ Kineas was grinning, which wasn’t his normal look these days. ‘More of an old student, really,’ he said with a glint in his eye.

Leosthenes grinned back. ‘I can take you, sword to sword. Any time, old man.’

Kineas shook his head. ‘I’ve a Persian — Darius — you have to best first. He’s probably better than me.’ He grinned. ‘In fact, I’d like to see it.’

Philokles poured himself wine, and then poured wine for the others and distributed it. The local potters made good cups that fitted the hand, shaped like a woman’s breast with a nipple instead of a base. The joke was that you couldn’t put the cup down — you had to drink your wine. Or at least, that was one of the jokes.

Sitalkes pushed in through the blankets.

‘Would you be kind enough to mull us some hot wine, lad?’ Kineas asked.

The Getae boy went to work without complaint. It was a matter of months since he’d been freed, and he was still happy to serve — if asked politely.

‘So — you’ve met her,’ Leosthenes asked again.

‘Yes,’ said Kineas, into a silence as thick as the smoke had been.

‘And?’ the Athenian persisted.

Kineas shrugged. ‘She’s beautiful. Intelligent. Educated.’

‘Evil incarnate,’ Leosthenes said in a gentle voice.

Kineas shrugged again. He looked around the room. The smoke had mostly cleared.

‘You didn’t fuck her, did you?’ said Niceas. ‘I listened to all that griping and you didn’t fall for her.’

Kineas shook his head wearily. ‘My private life is mine. I am not about to endanger this expedition to satisfy my own lusts.’

Philokles made a face, rose to his feet and bowed. ‘I salute you, philosopher! And apologize. I, for one, thought that you would fall straight into her toils.’

‘Apology accepted,’ Kineas said. ‘Yes, I’ve met her. I wasn’t shown any particular sensuality, but I was made to appreciate her intelligence. She wants us to fight a campaign in the spring. She can pay very well. I’m tempted.’

‘My employer is the target,’ Leosthenes said. ‘I’m here to buy you off.’

Kineas stopped himself from rubbing his beard. ‘What?’

‘She wants southern Hyrkania. Her recent and much-lamented husband held all the land as far as Parthia — she lost a lot of it when she murdered her husband and stayed loyal to Alexander.’ Leosthenes shrugged. ‘I serve Artabazus — Barsine’s father. Alexander’s satrap, not that his writ runs here. He’s a canny old fox. All he has to do is survive until Parmenion kills off Alexander and he’ll be king.’

Kineas nodded, aware that Artabazus had been named as the target of the spring campaign and unwilling to give that much away.

‘And he’s told us a lot about her. She’s not Greek. She’s more like one of the Persian demons — some kind of monster.’ Leosthenes leaned forward, pressing his point.

Kineas sat back. ‘Child, you put me in mind of the tale of the fox and the grapes.’

Leosthenes laughed aloud, his head back. ‘I think you have it right, at that.’ He went on laughing. ‘Persians never read Aesop. They ought to!’ He had to clutch his hands over his stomach.

Kineas stood. ‘Stay for dinner, child. But don’t press me on this. I keep my bargains, and I wouldn’t sit here and banter with your Persian fox were I ten times more a mercenary.’ He nodded, glanced at Niceas. ‘If it weren’t you, I’d be tempted to crucify the messenger to make my point.’

Leosthenes nodded soberly. ‘I made much the same point to my employer. Luckily, I am me.’

‘This time,’ Kineas said. ‘Next time, you might be mistaken for someone else.’

After Leosthenes and his ten Hyrkanian nobles had ridden for home in the dark, Kineas tugged on his cloak. Niceas and Philokles were still on their couches.

‘I’m for the palace,’ Kineas said.

‘I thought you weren’t smitten,’ Philokles said.

‘I’m not smitten. But I’ll wager that she has excellent sources in this camp, or at least in the agora outside our gate, and she’ll know in an hour what’s been offered. I want to make sure she got the right message. And double the guards. I don’t like anything about this place.’ Kineas finished the last wine in his cup and tipped it up on the sideboard. Was he smitten? He certainly had the same urges as any soldier.

Philokles nodded agreement. ‘I’d like your permission to try and place someone in the palace,’ he said.

‘Slave?’ Kineas asked.

‘Best you not know,’ Philokles said. Kineas could see how uncomfortable this conversation made his friend. He desisted with a grunt.

The ride up the hill in blowing snow and the warmth of the rooms with their hypocaust floors couldn’t have been a sharper contrast. Kineas shed his cloak and sandals in the outer rooms and passed, clad only in his tunic, to the inner sanctum, where the queen sat in state surrounded by her slaves and courtiers.

‘You had a visitor,’ she said cheerfully, as soon as he entered.

‘A very old friend,’ he said. ‘I taught him to swing a sword.’

Banugul rose, took wine from a naked woman whose pubic hair was shaved to resemble the Greek letter alpha, and brought the cup to Kineas with her own hands. The smell of her caught at his breath — the hint of a smell, somewhere in the arch of his nose. A clean, delicate smell, like mint. Her head came to his shoulder, and from his advantage of height, he could see even more of her to admire. He raised his cup to her.

‘What did he offer you to betray me?’ she asked, very close.

Kineas wondered if there was a killer standing behind him. He was weaponless and her tone belied the clean purity of her scent — she was angry, working herself up for murder. ‘I refused to hear his offer,’ Kineas said.

‘Really?’ she asked. For the first time, he had said something that took her by surprise. She returned to her throne and sat. To Kineas, her motions seemed to take a very long time.

‘Really,’ Kineas answered.

She sighed. ‘I would like to trust you,’ she said.

Kineas shook his head gently. ‘You trust no one,’ he said. He looked around. ‘May I have a chair?’

She gave him a small smile. ‘I can do better than a chair.’ She motioned, and a proper couch was brought for him. While he arranged himself on it, another was brought for her. More couches arrived and her courtiers, half a dozen men in a mix of Persian and Greek dress, settled on to them uneasily. She arranged herself on hers with her usual grace, rose on one elbow and toasted Kineas with her gold goblet.

Kineas poured a libation to the gods and then toasted her with a line from Aristophanes that made her smile.

She took a long drink of her wine and then rolled on to her stomach. ‘If I have you killed, right now, I can buy your soldiers and fight any campaign I please,’ she said.

Kineas’s stomach twisted. He was not immune to fear, and his hands betrayed him. He clenched his goblet. She was serious.

‘My soldiers would storm this citadel and put everyone in it to the sword,’ he said, with the best imitation of calm he could muster. He could hear the fear in the end of his sentence.

Her guard captain revealed himself, standing just out of his line of vision to his right, by snorting his disdain. ‘Try, fucking Greek.’

Banugul gave an enigmatic smile and indicated her guard captain with her chin. ‘This is Therapon, my strong right arm.’

Kineas took a deep breath. He didn’t turn his head, although he noted the alcove where the man was standing. ‘Every one of your men is bribable. You have little discipline — so little that even now, the towers on the citadel’s north walls are empty because the men don’t want to get that cold. No one is watching the north wall.’

‘No one can climb the north wall,’ the queen said, but her eyes flicked to the guard captain, and he looked away.

‘Like Leosthenes, Diodorus, my second, is a childhood friend from Athens. You could never bribe him, lady. Unlike this dog of a Thessalian you keep to bully your guards, my men are soldiers, fresh from a summer of victory.’ He was beginning to convince himself, and his words flowed faster. ‘If you murder me, all of you will die.’

She met his eye easily, and smiled. It wasn’t a smile of seduction, but a smile of pure calculation. She was not young. Nor was she old. She was at the turning point of age, where the lines at the corners of her eyes did not mar her looks but only added to her dignity. ‘What was Artabazus’s offer?’ she asked for the second time.

‘I refused to hear it,’ Kineas repeated.

Her eyes opened wider for a fraction of a second and then narrowed. ‘Why?’ she asked.

‘I cannot be tempted by something I haven’t heard,’ Kineas said. ‘Do you know the famous soldier Phocion?’

‘I know his name and his reputation. His honour is proverbial.’ She raised her eyebrows expectantly. She smiled, and Kineas knew that he was not going to die. He thought he had her measure.

‘He used to tell us that the best way to avoid temptation,’ Kineas felt the tension falling away from him, ‘was to avoid temptation.’

She nodded, eyebrows arched. ‘I often seek temptation out,’ she said. ‘But I am a queen.’ She looked at the grapes in the bowl next to her. ‘Every grape,’ she said, taking one, ‘has been seeded in my kitchens by slaves. That is the fate that awaits you if I discover that you have received more messengers from Artabazus. Have I made myself clear?’

Kineas held his ground. ‘If Leosthenes the Athenian comes to my camp, I will always receive him, Despoina. And I will present myself for examination immediately afterwards.’

‘Strange man,’ she said. She looked at him for some time, eating grapes. ‘Am I a temptation?’

‘Yes,’ Kineas said.

She nodded, her face serious. ‘Yet you do not avoid me.’

Kineas rubbed his chin and chewed a grape. ‘I concede your point.’

She leaned forward, interested. ‘Men do not usually allow women victories in conversation. You concede my point. But? There is a but?’

‘You are observant, my lady. But you are my employer, and to avoid you would create misunderstanding. You are a queen, and any temptation you offer will come with enough barbs to hook a Euxine salmon.’

She raised her chin and allowed a slight smile to indicate that his point had merit. ‘I grew to womanhood at a Persian court. Both of my uncles were poisoned. My mother was murdered with a sword. My father now seeks to kill me. Do you understand?’

Kineas nodded, hands calming gradually. ‘You keep your slaves nude to know if they carry weapons.’

She pulled her legs under her and leaned towards him. ‘I disarm my enemies in any way I can,’ she said. ‘I have few enough weapons. If I were a man, I would be strong. I am a woman. What would you have me do?’

Kineas shook his head. ‘I’m a canny fish. I can see the hook and the bait and even the boat.’

She curled a lip. ‘What a very safe answer.’ She motioned past him, and a man with a lyre sat on a stool and began to sing. He was excellent and his purity commanded silence. Kineas turned his head to find that the singer was fully clothed — not a slave.

‘Persian?’ he asked after the first performance.

‘Lycian,’ she answered. ‘Or Carian.’

Kineas stroked his chin. ‘The words are strange, but the cadence is like Homer.’

Her body faced the singer, but she turned her head to him, stretching her neck and back. Her smile was as beautiful as dawn in the mountains, and as fresh. ‘Are all Athenians as well educated as you are?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he said. He put a hand over his goblet so that the wine slave backed off. ‘Where did you learn Greek?’ He looked away, towards the singer. Therapon glared at him steadily. His hate made an emotional counterpoint to Banugul’s magnetism, and Kineas steadied himself on it.

‘Darius’s chief eunuch was a Greek. And my sister and I were prisoners of Alexander for two years.’ She smiled as if they were conspirators. ‘While you still served him.’

Kineas felt like a fool for missing the obvious connection that they had shared the whole campaign. ‘Of course — you were taken with the women after Issus?’

Banugul rolled over, and Kineas was conscious of her body, even across a gap of several feet. ‘I remember them cheering your name when you won the prize,’ she said. ‘We were waiting with the dowager, wondering if you barbarians would rape us.’ She managed to make the experience sound light-hearted. ‘But you were all too busy slapping each other’s backs to mind us much. It was days before Alexander looked at us.’

Kineas had been unconscious for days after Issus, but he somehow doubted that she had heard his name being cheered. He frowned at the attempts at flattery. ‘It is odd, that we were in the same camp for so long.’

‘Hmm,’ she said, conscious that she had stepped wrong, and waved for the singer to perform. ‘Not so odd,’ she said. ‘If the gods willed it so.’

Warm for the first time in days, Kineas rode down the hill to the neat Greek military camp. A pair of sentries stood huddled in every tower and there were twenty men in the guardhouse by the gate. He inspected every one, chatting with the sentries, listening to the boredom of the Sauromatae and the complaints of the Greeks, until he was satisfied that they were alert. He was cold again, cold from a wind that seemed to blow warmth out of the top of his head. He swore that he would abandon Hellenism and get a Sakje cap before he wrapped himself in furs and blankets and shivered. He lay for a while, trying to imagine Srayanka beside him. He had a hard time seeing her face, and it tended to slide into a narrower face with blonde hair that made him shiver.

‘I need to leave here,’ he said aloud.

The transition from anxious wakefulness to sleep was so sudden that he… was taken unawares by the presence of the tree and the pair of young eagles screaming above him. They called and swung out over the endless combat of the dead, pecking at dead foes. Ajax and Graccus and Nicomedes seemed more outnumbered than ever, but he was not to be deterred. He had to find Srayanka. He reached out a hand for the branch above, swung to gather momentum and reached out a leg to hook and roll. In a moment, he was surrounded by brambles and bracken, thorny stuff that tore at his skin and pricked at his hands, his forearms, his eyes…

He was climbing a thicket, or crawling through it, blind. He had to reach Srayanka, and she was somewhere on the other side of the brambles and thorns, and he threw himself at the flexible, prickly mass and made no dent on it except to tear his arms and leave ribbons of blood on the trunk of the tree.

He strove and strove, angry, frustrated…

He awoke, his cloak wrapped in a tangle around his legs, his heavy Hyrkanian blanket pulled up between his legs, the hairy wool scraping at his flesh. He was cold.

He got up, moving carefully in the darkness, and remade his bed, adding another blanket from his pack roll on the floor. Then he lay in the new warmth of his blankets and waited to fall asleep. Whatever thought he summoned, whatever plan he touched in his mind, the image before his eyes was of Banugul, turning her head to smile at him. He eventually defeated her smile with a tally of the grain wagons his army would require in the spring, and he fell back to sleep, warm and frustrated.

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