Storm of arrows

5

His first official meeting of the morning was with the Athenian captains. He unfolded the ivory stool and took it outside to the sands of the hippodrome so that he could watch the morning drills while he heard the captains, and Niceas and Philokles stood on either side of him. The admiral of the allied fleet, Demostrate, stood to hand. He was a native of Pantecapaeum, a wealthy merchant, a former pirate and a pillar of the alliance that had defeated Macedon. And like Kineas, he knew that the war was not over.

The Athenian captains were cautious and deeply respectful, which made him smile.

‘Archon,’ their spokesman, Cleander, began, ‘the blessings of all the gods upon your city and your house.’ Cleander knew Kineas of old — they had shared a tutor during early boyhood. But he seemed to feign ignorance, either from respect or fear.

Kineas inclined his head, feeling like an imposter or a play-actor. ‘Welcome to Olbia, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘May Apollo and Athena and all the gods bless your venture here and your journey home.’

They exchanged platitudes, religious and otherwise, for several minutes before Cleander got down to business.

‘We know how hard the war has been on your city,’ he said carefully.

Kineas fingered his jaw. ‘Yes,’ he said.

Cleander glanced at his companions. They were powerful men, the captains of Athens’s grain ships, with large investments in their cargoes, even though none of them was an owner.

‘We ask — respectfully — whether sufficient cargoes to fill our ships will be gathered before the end of the sailing season.’ Cleander flicked a glance at the citadel, which loomed behind Kineas. Do you have enough grain to feed Athens? That was the real question.

Kineas nodded. ‘The war has slowed the flow of grain from the sea of grass,’ he said. ‘Many of the farmers had to leave their farms when the Macedonians advanced. And the allies needed grain to feed their army and to feed the horses of the Sakje.’ This oblique hint — just the lightest suggestion of an alliance between the Euxine cities and the Sakje — caused a rustle among the Athenian captains. ‘Despite this, I am confident that we will raise enough grain to fill your holds. The main harvest will not be in for a month. Your eyes must have told you that the war never came here — that our fields are full of grain, as are the fields on both banks of the river as far north as a boat will float. The grain coming to market now is last fall’s grain, whose sale was interrupted by early storms and the rumour of war. It will trickle in, but the trickle will become a rush after the feast of Demeter.’

Demostrate cleared his throat, and then smiled when he had their attention. ‘All the grain from the Borysthenes will come here to Olbia,’ he said. ‘And my city, Pantecapaeum, will have all the grain from the north that is brought down the Tanais river into the Bay of the Salmon. We are gathering our cargoes even now.’

Cleander smiled, as did the other captains. ‘That is good news indeed. But a month is a long time for our ships to sit idle at wharves. Can you arrange for the grain to come more quickly? In past years, we have filled our ships before the feast of Demeter.’ His tone carried the conviction that for the grain fleet of Athens, no favour was too small.

Kineas locked eyes with Cleander. ‘No,’ he said. ‘There is not enough grain to fill your holds now.’

Cleander spread his hands. ‘Archon, we are not fools. Even now, your market sells grain to the barbarians who camp north of the market — allies from the war. And you buy grain yourself. Send them home, and let us buy the grain. Athens needs the grain — right now.’

Now Kineas smiled. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, Cleander, but I think I know more about what Athens needs than you. Athens needs a steady, strong ally on the Euxine, and she needs Alexander kept in his place — not looming over the sea of grass and all the eastern trade. My army needs to eat.’

‘But our ships sit idle,’ Cleander said. ‘Perhaps,’ and he smiled like a man of the world, ‘perhaps you would prefer to sell us some of your private store of grain? You’ve been purchasing it for weeks.’

Kineas appeared to consider this for a moment. ‘That is the city’s grain, not my own. Or rather, the army’s grain, purchased from the sale of the army’s share of the loot of our victory.’

‘Which you could now sell to us at a profit,’ Cleander said.

‘Except that I need that grain to feed the army,’ Kineas countered.

‘The army is home,’ Cleander said. ‘The need for grain is past.’

Kineas frowned. It was deliberate — he meant to intimidate, and he did. All the Athenian captains stepped back.

‘You are in danger of telling me my business, Cleander,’ Kineas said. ‘I need that grain. And…’ he paused for effect, ‘I need your ships.’

Cleander choked.

Kineas smiled and stood up. ‘Cleander. Don’t be a fool. I was born and bred in Athens and I would never harm her or her grain fleet.’

Cleander gave a sly smile. ‘I knew who you were before I left Athens,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘Your Athenian birth might serve only to make you a worse tyrant. Think of Alcibiades.’ He reached into his cloak and produced a scroll. ‘I have a letter for you.’

Kineas frowned. ‘From Lycurgus?’ he asked. It was his faction, and Demosthenes’, that had exiled him and arranged for his service to Olbia.

Cleander shook his head. ‘From Phocion,’ he said. Phocion was Athens’s greatest living soldier. As a general, he had defeated Philip of Macedon, Thebes, Sparta — he was one of the finest soldiers in the world. And he was a friend of Alexander. Kineas had learned his swordsmanship at Phocion’s hands.

He took the letter with something close to reverence.

Cleander laughed. ‘Your father and Phocion were the leaders of the faction that favoured Alexander,’ he said. ‘Imagine! And now you’ve destroyed a Macedonian army!’

Kineas shrugged. ‘Phocion fought Philip, and they were guest friends,’ Kineas said.

Cleander gave a wry smile. ‘What would Polyeuctas say?’

Kineas grinned. Their tutor Polyeuctas, a pupil of Plato, had never ceased to harp on the evils of unfettered Macedonian power — and on the treason of Alcibiades. Despite being a venal man who took too many bribes, he had been a good teacher and an able politician. ‘I think about him all the time,’ Kineas said.

‘And then we heard you were dead,’ Cleander said.

‘Pah! Not so dead,’ Kineas said, and they embraced. ‘Now that I seem less the foreign tyrant, perhaps you would care to lease your ships to me for a month,’ he said. ‘I have a great deal of Macedonian gold at my disposal.’

He outlined his proposition and the Athenian captains began to haggle — he was offering them good money for their time and adding to the value of their cargoes as well, but they saw further margin for profit, and the risk to their ships was real.

Cleander attempted to demand a reduced tax on grain at the dock, but Kineas wouldn’t budge. The grain tax was the city’s greatest revenue, but the possibility of loading large cargoes of the purest Euxine fish sauce fresh from the Bay of Salmon and the guarantee of escort from the navarch of Pantecapaeum sealed the deal. Cleander offered his hand, and they all shook.

‘I hate transporting horses,’ Cleander said, and the other captains agreed.

‘I’m worried about the depth of water at the entrance to Lake Maeotis,’ said another.

‘Gentlemen,’ Kineas said, rising from his ivory chair, ‘those are professional problems, and I expect you to resolve them. We are agreed?’

Cleander shrugged. ‘You drive a hard bargain — like an Athenian.’

Kineas laughed and they retired. Kineas grinned at Diodorus, who grinned back.

‘You win the benevolent despot award,’ Diodorus said. ‘Played to perfection. I’ll get you a mask and you can play all the tyrant roles in the theatre.’

‘I’ll settle for a cup of wine,’ Kineas said.

His second official meeting of the morning was with Leon, Nicomedes’ former slave. Leon waited for him in the portico of the barracks, leaning against one of the carved wooden columns and watching while the Athenian captains haggled. Indeed, he had gone inside and tasted the soup that simmered on the hearth, added a spice and brushed Kineas’s cloak before arranging it neatly over the armour stand while he waited. Kineas caught his eye several times in an attempt to apologize, but Leon smiled wryly each time and found himself another small chore.

When Diodorus had brought Kineas a cup of wine and departed to see to some horse training, Leon finally stepped forward. ‘Archon,’ he said. ‘I greet you.’

Kineas rose from the ivory stool and grasped his hand. ‘Free man Leon,’ he said. ‘Citizen, if I understand yesterday’s assembly!’ The assembly had moved to make all two hundred of the army’s freed slaves into citizens, less a patriotic gift than an acknowledgement that the holes in the phalanx and the economic life of the city needed to be closed up immediately.

Leon smiled. He was dressed in an elegant tunic, a fine piece of wool with a narrow green stripe at the bottom edge. It was a valuable garment, but it was also one he had owned when he was a slave. ‘Nicomedes left me half his fortune,’ he said without preamble.

Kineas put his hand on the big African’s shoulder. ‘Welcome to the hippeis!’ he said. ‘Can you ride?’

Leon met his eye. ‘He left you the other half,’ he said. ‘In the event that Ajax died.’

‘Oh,’ said Kineas. ‘Oh.’

Leon handed him a scroll. ‘We are to divide his goods between us.’ Leon looked away and then back. ‘I am eligible for the hippeis. That is — very good. And yes, I can ride.’ Despite his serious news, he smiled. ‘In fact, all Nubians can ride.’ His smile faded and became a frown. ‘I cannot manage his business. He did business based on his own web of friends — men who owed him favours, men who wanted his patronage. I inherit his money, but not his power.’

Kineas was still struggling with the shock of sudden wealth. ‘You must be very rich.’

Leon shot him a look, even as he began to polish a helmet that had been left on a bench. ‘ We are very rich.’

‘He must have loved you,’ Kineas said.

Leon rolled his shoulders as if shrugging off an uncomfortable cloak. ‘I might say the same of you.’

‘He loved Ajax,’ Kineas said.

Outside, Diodorus and Niceas were shouting at each other about horses. Philokles pushed past them. Wearing a simple linen chiton and cloak, with a broad straw hat and a satchel of scrolls over his shoulder, he looked like a philosopher. Only the width of his shoulders and the exaggerated muscle lines on his arms suggested the monster he became in combat.

‘He made me slave,’ Leon said, and his voice quavered for the first time. ‘And now he has made me rich.’

Philokles crossed the floor of the barracks to the heavy pitcher that was always filled with cheap wine and poured himself a cup. Then he poured a second and brought it out to Leon on the sand of the hippodrome. ‘You look like you need this,’ he said. ‘I heard about your good fortune in the agora. Both of you. There’s a certain amount of… ill feeling.’ He shrugged. ‘But it is not universal.’

‘I want to leave Olbia,’ Leon said. ‘I am sorry to intrude on you, Archon.’ He drank the wine, flicked his eyes over Philokles and back to Kineas. ‘I had to inform you, sir.’

Philokles dragged over a stool and forced Leon to sit. ‘Drink your wine. The archon can spare you some time. You are, after all, one of his men.’

Kineas was still wrestling with the riches he had suddenly inherited. Leon’s internal crisis was almost easier to bear. ‘He says he can ride,’ he said, and realized how inconsequential that was to Leon’s revelation.

‘I want to leave,’ Leon said. ‘I can’t remain here, in his house, with his patrons and his relations.’ He shrugged. ‘It is not the life I want.’

‘What do you want?’ Philokles asked. He pulled up a stool and sat.

Kineas was staring at a wall-hanging, trying to estimate the value of Nicomedes’ wealth and wondering what he would do with it. Leon’s reaction was understandable — no man wants to be a slave, and Leon was clearly not slave-born — but Kineas found it difficult to understand the man’s lack of feeling. He had never worn mourning, never appeared downcast, and Nicomedes had been a very popular man.

‘I want to come east with you — with the army,’ Leon said. ‘In return, I will help to support the costs.’ To Kineas, he said, ‘Before I was taken as a slave, I was a warrior.’ He gave a hesitant smile. ‘And perhaps in the east I can make trade contacts of my own.’ His face shut down, as if at a bad memory. ‘Or find — a life.’

Kineas poured himself a cup of wine and drained it. ‘Leon, you helped to save my army. You will always have my — obligation. Why ask me? Of course you can accompany the army — you are among the hippeis, now. You probably own more warhorses than a Sakje.’ He shrugged.

Leon’s mouth trembled. His eyes were full of tears and Kineas turned away to spare the man embarrassment.

Philokles put his arm around the former slave. ‘Say your piece, Leon.’

Leon stood taller and shook his head. ‘No. I am no weakling.’

Philokles drank off his wine. ‘How old are you?’ he asked.

Leon shook his head. ‘Perhaps twenty,’ he said.

‘There is no shame in asking for protection. Kineas, pay attention. Leon needs your help, and he’s too proud to ask.’

‘Like some Spartans I have known,’ Kineas said.

‘It’s an epidemic among Greeks, I find,’ Philokles agreed. ‘A pity it has spread to Africa.’ He pushed the younger man forward. ‘Speak your piece, boy.’

Leon took a deep breath. ‘Nicomedes’ lawyer wants me to divide the estate. I think he means to cheat me. As a former slave, I have no friends — slave or free. You are a fair man.’ He glanced at Philokles. ‘As are your friends.’ He paused. ‘I have thought this through. I want to go east. But I want my fortune to stay here, and not vanish. I want to be a citizen when I return. If we hold things in common — your name and mine together — no man will steal from you. And they will think twice before they murder me.’

Kineas had never been a fan of slavery in any form, but Leon’s description — understated as it was — that, left alone, he would lose the fortune and perhaps his life — brought home just how effective slavery was at robbing men of their dignity and rights. ‘Murder you?’ he asked, surprised. ‘Slaves are freed and become rich all the time.’

Philokles snorted like a warhorse. ‘No, my gullible Athenian friend. People talk about slaves being freed and becoming rich all the time. Such slaves are the supposed cause of bad politics and the butt of comedians — but have you ever met one?’

‘Thais was a slave, before she became a hetaira,’ Kineas said. He shook his head. ‘Point taken.’ He looked at Leon. ‘I knew I disliked slavery. Very well — are they really proposing to murder him?’

‘Nicomedes’ nephew, Demothenes, was just discussing it in the agora,’ Philokles said. He gave Kineas a serious look, which Kineas interpreted correctly.

‘Very well,’ Kineas repeated. He felt a vague anger, the sort of feeling he had when he was cheated in the agora, lied to about the quality of wine or the age of some fish. He rose and took Leon’s hand. ‘Philokles has been a lawyer. Let him draw up a document of alliance. I seem to remember that you have some skills at mathematics?’

Leon inclined his head. ‘I do. And hard won they were.’

‘Help me compose a logistikon for this little army,’ he said. ‘And then you can help me spend some of our money.’ He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘Welcome to my staff.’

His third meeting was the hardest in every way — harder still for being so unexpected. Leon had his head down over a scroll of numbers and Philokles had gone to shelve the works he had purchased in the market when Sitalkes, still hobbling from his wound, leaned in the door of Kineas’s private office, where the archon sat with his own bag of scrolls.

‘There is a gentleman to see you,’ he said. He was afraid, or deeply moved.

Kineas could see Arni, another former slave, past Sitalkes’ shoulder. He rose, but he was unprepared for the man who entered.

‘Isokles!’ he said. Isokles was the father of Ajax. Ajax, who was dead, his body wrapped in linen, embalmed. Who had died serving Kineas, fighting for Olbia, a hero.

The man’s face was red from grief, his eyes haggard. ‘Kineas.’ He stood silently in the door. ‘My son is dead.’ The words tailed off, and the man stepped forward and put his arms around Kineas, and wept.

Niceas, who had also loved Ajax, took the father away and left Kineas in peace, so that he could read the letter from his boyhood hero. Phocion of Athens to Kineas, son of Nicocles, greeting, Fate, which cast you as a soldier of Macedon and then as an exile, now has raised you high. We hear the reports of your generalship for Olbia, and of your defeat of forces sent by Antipater to conquer the Euxine cities. Fools here prate of war with Macedon. The notion that Athens is a power in the world dies hard, and men, whether old or young, will deceive themselves about the power of their city, even when I offer them the example of Thebes. I write to you not as a supplicant, nor as a friend of Macedon, although either role might suit me. Instead, I write as the man who taught you to use a sword. The anti-Macedon party claims you as if you were their possession, their slave, and claims all of your actions as their own. They will ask you to gather your army and march into Thrace against Antipater. When they exiled you, and then sent you to Olbia, you were a tool — a sword. But now that you are a commander, you are the man who holds the sword. Beware what you cut. Please send my greetings to young Graccus, and to Laertes, son of Thallus, and Diodorus, son of Glaucus, and Coenus the Nisaean.

Kineas read Phocion’s letter with pleasure, because he could hear the man’s growl as he said the words aloud, and he could see on the scroll where words had been scraped out and others added with care. Phocion was the greatest Athenian soldier of his generation, perhaps of all time, and one of his father’s closest friends and political allies.

The second scroll was from Lycurgus, or rather from a scribe in his service. It had no greeting, and no salutation. Your exile will be lifted immediately. Consider the restoration of Amphipolis your next task, and Athens will again be great.

Amphipolis was an Athenian colony in Thrace, long since taken by Macedon. The recovery of Amphipolis — an old ambition of the Athenian assembly — would require the complete overthrow of Macedon as a power. Kineas made a face.

Diodorus came in from the exercise field fingering a bruise on his arm. ‘Ares is my witness, I need more time to heal. Little Clio just pounded me on the palaestra floor.’

‘The summer has put muscle on the boy, and you are getting old,’ Kineas said.

Diodorus winced.

‘Here is something that will lift the sting,’ Kineas said, holding out the letter from Phocion. Diodorus read it while drinking wine, then sat and drank again. ‘He can’t have known of the battle yet,’ he said.

Kineas handed over the other message. ‘It is not a long journey from the battlefield to this city by river. Nor to Athens, by sea, for a swift ship.’

Diodorus shook his head. He began to read.

Kineas rubbed his beard. ‘Something going on here that is beyond me,’ he said. ‘Amphipolis? Are they insane?’

Diodorus put down the second scroll. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I fear that Demosthenes and Lycurgus are so desperate to restore their party that they will dare anything. And we cost them nothing. They can cast us as dice and pay no political cost.’ He looked at the scroll. ‘Did they lift all of our exiles, or just yours?’

‘All of us,’ Kineas said. ‘Poor Laertes.’

‘He’d have done anything to win praise from old Phocion,’ Diodorus said, and then he grinned. ‘So would I.’

Kineas nodded. ‘I thought it would make you feel better.’

‘You won’t take us to war in Thrace?’ Diodorus asked.

Kineas shook his head. ‘I’m going east,’ he said. ‘And if I can find the money and the men, I’ll take an army.’

Diodorus picked up the letter from Phocion and pointed it at Kineas. ‘Against Alexander?’

Kineas narrowed his eyes, squinting against an invisible sun. ‘Against Alexander,’ he said. And then, because he and Diodorus were closer than most brothers, he grinned and said, ‘To Hades with Alexander. I want Srayanka, and to keep her, I’ll war down invincible Macedon. I swear that I would storm Olympus.’

Diodorus grinned, and put a hand on his knee. ‘We all know,’ he said, and then avoided Kineas’s blow.

Isokles’ enduring grief did not pass in a day. Kineas sent the prodromoi out to find the best landings on the Bay of Salmon, and still the man grieved. Kineas began the complex problem of moving men and horses by ship, sending grain and cash to the selected landing sites, and still Isokles grieved. He moved listlessly around the barracks until Leon moved him to Nicomedes’ house — Kineas’s house, now. He came to the barracks every day and sat with the veterans to hear tales of his son — tales every man had to tell. Ajax and his relentless heroism were part of the tradition of the company. The boy had been reared on the heady wine of the Poet and the feats of Achilles had fired his blood. He had left a trail of single combats and brilliant exploits across that bloody summer, and his father heard them all, embellished by the passage of time, until Ajax seemed ready to take his place with the heroes of the Iliad — a place accorded to him by every trooper in the hippeis.

But after three days of hearing his son praised and drinking wine, Isokles pushed his way into where Kineas was surrounded by his staff, reading lists of goods to be shipped with his little army, and exploded like a nest of wasps hurled on to the floor.

‘He didn’t need to be a hero!’ Isokles shouted without preamble.

Diodorus sprang to his feet — Isokles had the gait and the look of a madman, his eyes were wild and he had a sword.

Kineas put a hand on his friend’s sword arm. ‘It is grief,’ he said.

Isokles was yelling, the sword almost forgotten as he shouldered his way towards Kineas. ‘He was handsome and young! He was well loved, smart enough at business! I sent him to you for a single summer, to knock the foolishness from his head, and he is dead. Dead for ever! Dead in a war that was nothing to him!’ Niceas grabbed him from behind, pinning his arms, but Isokles thrashed, nearly breaking Niceas’s grip — not an easy thing to do. Philokles tackled him around the waist and Isokles hammered his elbow into the Spartan’s face, breaking his nose in a fountain of blood.

‘You killed him! All of you, with your talk of glory and honour!’ Isokles spat the words glory and honour like poison.

Kineas considered reason. He had warned Isokles that his son might die, a year or more ago at a pleasant symposium in Tomis. But Isokles was beyond reason. And although Kineas had a lifetime of practice at watching those he loved die, and moving on, the death of the golden Ajax had cut at him too, so that he could seldom pass the room where the man’s body lay wrapped in linen without touching it or shedding a tear.

‘We all loved him,’ Kineas said quietly.

‘If you loved him he wouldn’t be dead. ’ Isokles came to a stop in the middle of the room, with Niceas pinning his arms and Philokles, his face a mask of blood, hanging gamely around his waist. ‘You used him for his heroism like other men use a prostitute for her sex.’ He wept bitterly.

That was a charge that bit deeply. Ajax’s relentless heroism had been a foundation of the daimon of the hippeis.

Kineas was silent. He didn’t have an answer for Isokles’ grief, and he felt the justice of the man’s charges. He had never wanted to take Ajax, but he had wanted the boy’s youth and enthusiasm for his company and for his own morale.

Isokles had stopped struggling now. He stood in the middle of the barracks floor, weeping. ‘All of you have stories of his heroism. He might have died in any of them. You revelled in it — you stood back and watched as he threw himself at death.’

Niceas was right at Isokles’ ear — he had the man’s arms from behind. ‘Your son was a great man,’ he said. ‘But you’re a fucking idiot.’ He took a deep breath. Isokles sagged in his grasp. ‘We told your son every day to keep his head down and stop pushing himself at the gods.’ Niceas’s voice broke, and he, too, began to weep. ‘How many times?’ he cried, as he shook the father. ‘How many times did I tell him to watch his own back and mind his place in line?’

‘The night before the great battle,’ Philokles said, his nasal consonants broken like his nose, ‘Kineas told him to grow up and stop acting like an idiot.’

Leon, who had known the boy in a different way, spoke with the hesitation of a former slave. ‘My master — Nicomedes — asked him many times to take care.’

‘If Nicomedes were alive, I would kill him,’ Isokles said. ‘He bears the responsibility above all.’

Philokles, who had worn the wreath as the army’s hero himself, rose to his feet. ‘He burned very bright,’ he said. ‘He burned bright in virtue and honour and died young, and he will live for ever with the gods.’

Isokles, turned sane and grief-wracked eyes on him, the orbs white stele in the red wreck of his face. ‘Keep your philosophy, Spartan. He is dead. He might have lived and burned just as bright, growing wheat and rearing children in the sun.’

Philokles nodded. ‘Or disease might have crippled him, or accident. Or he might have drowned on a ship. He chose his way, Isokles, and despite all your sorrow, you are unjust to us who were his friends. He chose the manner of his life and death — more than most men, almost like a god. I honour him.’ Philokles shrugged. ‘He loved war. It is a terrible, stupid thing to love, and it showed its true face by destroying him.’

Isokles and Philokles stood nose to nose, the one crying tears from red eyes, the other still pouring blood from his nose so that he seemed almost to cry tears of blood.

And then Isokles fell forward into Philokles’ arms.

And they all wept together.