Storm of arrows

6

After grief, the hardest part was arranging who would go and who would stay. Many citizens — most of the hippeis — had little interest in further campaigning. For rich men, they had seen more war than they ever expected. Like most veterans, few of them had any inclination for more. Among the officers, all were either men of consequence or young men likely to rise as a result of their military service. The campaign against Alexander would do nothing to add to their civic laurels and their fathers were not eager to see them march. Indeed, it was only as a tribute to Kineas’s service to the city that the assembly voted to allow the expedition at all — and more than a few men rose to speak against it, led by Alcaeus, who bore Kineas ill will for his discipline during the campaign. For the first time in months, Kineas was referred to as an adventurer and a mercenary — charges that he met by rising and publicly renouncing the archonship. The city demanded that the army be sent ‘to open trade routes in the east’. But the men who were going called it what it was.

‘We’re going to fight Alexander,’ they said in the agora.

In the end, the expedition received the grudging sanction of the city, and later that of Pantecapaeum, Olbia’s sister city to the east.

Among the younger sons, there were quite a few who were willing to follow Kineas anywhere, and all of Kineas’s professional soldiers were content to go — soldiering was what they knew, and there was not likely to be another conflict around Olbia in the near future. Rumours from the plains came down the river with the grain, suggesting that Marthax no longer had any force in the field, and that every chieftain had gone home to see to his farmers and his grain as Philokles had predicted. It was also said that Macedon had a war against Sparta to prosecute, and no men to spare to avenge Zopryon.

Best of all, in the eyes of the assembly, Kineas proposed to take the Keltoi with him. That they yet lived was a sore subject to the more democratic elements in the city, as they had been the tyrant’s tool of oppression for five years and more. Many felt that they should have been massacred with the Macedonian garrison. Their presence in the hippodrome was more fodder for Alcaeus and his new allies. They were big men, Gauls and even Germans among them, and they scared the Greeks and the Sindi.

Memnon’s original three hundred, the first mercenaries the tyrant had hired, were all citizens now — but citizens without a trade. Memnon remained the commander of the phalanx, and he had told Kineas privately that he intended to stay behind, but that he had no hesitation in allowing his lieutenant Lycurgus or any of his men to sign on for the expedition to the east. The mercenaries had been hired to oppress the population, and later kept on to stiffen the raw men of the town. But the men of the town were all veterans now, and the mercenaries had little to do and no one to oppress.

And of course, some of the poorer citizens, or men just on the edge of poverty, saw the expedition as a chance for regular pay and a life they’d grown accustomed to in the summer.

Kineas had seen it all before, all his life. War begat war, and men with a taste of victory and plunder took to the life of the soldier eager for more easy gold, casually forgetting the nights in the rain and the pain of wounds and the constant fear.

In the end, he mustered three hundred ‘Greek’ horse under Diodorus, well mounted and well led, a better force than any squadron of mercenaries under the circle of the heavens, with the Keltoi in the ranks and all of Heron’s exiles. He had another three hundred infantry — all hoplites — under Lycurgus, with Philokles refusing rank but accepting some nebulous role. The loot of Macedon allowed Kineas to mount them all on mules, and the riches of Nicomedes allowed him to imagine that he could keep them all fed.

He also had fifty Sindi, the survivors of the company that Temerix had formed and still led. They were psiloi, armed with Sakje bows and heavy axes, tattooed men who feared nothing and looked for death and served as skirmishers for the phalanx.

Then there was Prince Lot and the Sauromatae, two hundred knights in the heaviest armour on the plains.

All told, with the inevitable tail any army carried, he had almost a thousand mouths to feed and more than two thousand animals to move. Only an Athenian grain fleet had the capacity to carry so many and the food to supply them, even for a week. Luckily, he had one to hand. He still worried about food and fodder for the march, and despite some chests of gold and a great deal of silver, he knew that eventually he would be forced to seize food to continue — a prospect that frightened him.

He had already sent Ataelus with his scouts and a dozen Sauromatae in a galley to locate camps on the shore of the Bay of Salmon and to pick a route inland. Before the assembly met, he sent Eumenes with Arni and a dozen Keltoi troopers to visit Pantecapaeum, Gorgippia on the east coast of the Euxine and even Dioskurias to the south by ship, with orders to buy cattle and get them driven to the Bay of Salmon. Eumenes needed to be out of the city anyway — the political factions were out for his blood because of his father’s treason, or so they said. Every day there hurt him more, and his presence was being used against Kineas politically. Someone was aiming at Kineas.

Already.

Some days he wondered why he was going, and why he was leading a thousand men to the same fate. He was rich, and powerful — in the way that Greeks accounted power. He could be tyrant. He could be king.

And his death awaited him in the east.

But so did Srayanka. And the sniping in the assembly was already getting to him.

The Battle of the Ford of the River God was only two months past, and already the assembly had returned to its traditional bickering, the unanimity of the early summer vanished with the threat of Macedon. Because Kineas had already relinquished the title of archon and the possibility of being tyrant, smaller fish began to circle the ivory stool, looking for power. Kineas said as much to Philokles.

‘Fish, you say,’ Philokles responded. They were seated together in the assembly, which had gathered in the hippodrome because of the seating — and because the balance of power of the city had shifted away from the citadel. ‘Vultures, more like.’

Demosthenes, Nicomedes’ nephew, had performed the political acrobatics of converting himself, overnight, from an aristocratic snob who used his power to avoid military service, to a full-blown democrat bent on restoring complete power to the assembly. The fact that the man had avoided service with the hippeis and had seen no action over the summer sat ill with many of the assembly, but political memory was short and Demosthenes promised action on a number of fronts that would please the voters — the men in the phalanx. And when Alcaeus denounced Kineas for his anti-democratic harbouring of the Keltoi and ‘Cleomenes’ traitor son’, it was Demosthenes who rose to his feet amidst the hissing to support him.

One of his first proposals was that Kineas’s expedition to the east be held back until Kineas had cleared his accounts with the city. This proposal was met with another chorus of hissing when he first proposed it, but by the third meeting of the assembly, enough wine had passed enough lips for the idea to appear to have some merit.

Kineas sat and writhed like an unhappy child through the rest of the day. The resolution to call for his accounts failed by a good margin — but it had not been hooted down.

‘Ares and Aphrodite!’ Kineas said as he threw his cloak at his bed. ‘Accounts? What accounts?’

Philokles smiled, rubbing his beard. ‘I imagine that the honoured Demosthenes knows full well that we kept no accounts.’

Diodorus came in with his hetaira, who called herself Sappho, on his arm. She was an elegant woman of thirty, with good bones, a long nose and an imperious air that belied both humour and real learning. Diodorus had purchased her contract with his loot from the battle, and seemed satisfied with the exchange. ‘Bad day in the assembly?’ Diodorus asked. His freckles burned as he grinned.

‘Why don’t they ask at the citadel for accounts?’ Kineas said, his voice as close to a whine as his men had ever heard.

Diodorus shrugged. ‘Demosthenes doesn’t want to see the accounts. He wants to hold you and your expedition hostage until you give him something.’

Kineas poured wine from a ewer and drank it off, glaring at all of them.

‘His uncle’s inheritance, perhaps?’ Sappho asked. Her plucked eyebrows lifted. ‘Would someone pour me a cup of wine?’

‘Well, I am an idiot,’ Kineas said, brought up short. ‘Of course that’s what this is about.’

Philokles looked at him as if he had two heads. Diodorus cocked his head to one side as if he was a dog examining a particularly good bone.

Kineas shook his head. ‘No, I didn’t get it.’

Diodorus shook his head. ‘Sometimes, I think it’s good for all of us that you chose not to be tyrant.’

Kineas felt the chagrin of a man who had failed to see a fairly simple stratagem. ‘I’ve had a great deal on my mind these last two weeks.’ It sounded weak, even to him. ‘Can he carry the assembly?’

Diodorus snorted and Philokles echoed the sound. ‘If you continue walking around with your head in the clouds, looking hurt and being silent, then yes, I suspect he will eventually carry the assembly. On the other hand, if we lay out a few silver owls on wine for the voters and start reminding them that Demosthenes is a coward and a pompous ass, he’ll probably fade away. Hell, they all served with Alcaeus. They’ll remember that he was an idiot without much prompting.’

Philokles shook his head. ‘Demosthenes won’t simply fade away. He’s already got his claws into the traitor Cleomenes’ political patronage — and he inherited a great many of Nicomedes’ clients, even if he didn’t get the money.’ He paused. ‘Not that I’m against what our fox here suggests. When Odysseus says to make fire-hardened sticks, mere mortals don’t refuse to build a fire.’

Sappho drank her wine, watching them. Kineas barely knew her — Diodorus had introduced her, and she sometimes sat in a chair during their symposia and sang or played on the kithara, but he only guessed at her intelligence. She was another Theban — sold into slavery by Alexander. She was quiet, and her flows of good humour could be interrupted by sudden moments of deep unhappiness. But something in the way she looked at them across her wine cup suggested wisdom.

‘You have a suggestion, Despoina?’ Kineas asked.

She shook her head. ‘It is not my place,’ she said carefully.

Diodorus came up and took her elbow. ‘Sappho is as wise as any woman I have met — before she was enslaved, she was the daughter of a boeotarch of Thebes and the sister of another.’

Philokles smiled. ‘I am from Sparta, where women speak their minds and men listen,’ he said.

Sappho held her head up, thanking Philokles with a small smile. ‘Well, then — Demosthenes has help. And money. Deeper pockets than yours, lord, even with the money that Nicomedes left and with your share of the spoils. And he seeks to prevent the expedition because someone behind him wants it stopped.’ She regarded Kineas, and the weight of her eyes reminded him of Scythian women. He couldn’t remember a Greek woman holding his eye in such a way. ‘I have reason to hate Alexander, and I will do my all to see that he goes down choking on blood and cursing the gods. If I can be of aid against a slug like Demosthenes, pray command me.’

Kineas stroked his chin. ‘So if we spend money on buying votes, he’ll outspend us.’

Sappho shrugged. ‘I think he’s a deeper player than you think — or his master is. I think that he seeks to provoke you. He doesn’t expect to win this round, although he’d like to. He probably wants you to go on this expedition — while you remain, he’ll never have any power here. But it will be enough for him to start a story to your discredit, which he can use against Petrocolus and his son Clio when you leave.’ She raised a plucked eyebrow. ‘Am I not correct in assuming that you intend Petrocolus and his son to hold power here in your absence?’

Diodorus nodded. Kineas noted that although Sappho looked as if she had more to say, Diodorus cut her off without a second thought. Kineas saw the cloud pass over Sappho’s features even as Diodorus began.

‘Yes!’ he said. ‘Whatever Sappho thinks — and I’m sure she knows a great deal — Demosthenes is the sort that Pericles called an “idiot”. Out for himself and only himself. He seeks to discredit you so that, when you are gone, he can work to reclaim the inheritance — and perhaps use the case as a stepping stone to fill Petrocolus’s sandals.’ He turned to Sappho. ‘Who is the man’s master? Surely not Alcaeus?’

Sappho shook her head. ‘I do not know. But Alcaeus’s wife is Penelope, and she inclines — how may I say? — to the company of women. Through her I have learned what I have said. If I learn more, I will see to it that you gentlemen are informed.’

Diodorus gazed at her with unfeigned admiration. ‘I have always fancied political women,’ he said. ‘The company of women, indeed.’

Kineas rubbed his beard and looked at Philokles.

Philokles shrugged. ‘Spartan solution,’ he said.

Kineas looked a question.

‘Kill him,’ Philokles said.

Everyone in the room breathed in sharply, except Philokles, who poured himself more wine and chuckled. ‘A few days ago you held ultimate power in this town. In point of fact, you still do. Don’t play Athenian games with the wanker. Summon him for military service, and if he refuses, get the assembly to vote a punishment.’

They all spoke together. Diodorus shuddered at Philokles’ high-handed measures, and said so. ‘Anti-democratic!’ he shouted.

Niceas had just come in from drilling in the fields north of town. He listened to them, drank wine and grinned, a look that made him appear to be a demon or a monster. ‘Just threaten him,’ Niceas said into a lull.

Diodorus spoke dismissively. ‘In politics, never threaten. Only act.’

Niceas shrugged and held Diodorus’s eye until the other man’s air of superiority melted away. They were old friends — and sparring partners — and Niceas was reminding the other Athenian that for all his aristocratic airs, he didn’t have a grasp of assembly politics. And he managed it all with a raise of the eyebrow and a sneer.

‘Demosthenes is a fucking coward who ducked military service this summer. He’s afraid of his own shadow. I don’t mean an empty, blustering threat. I mean a little fucking terror and the promise of more.’ He looked right at Diodorus. ‘Let me arrange it.’

Kineas ran fingers through his beard — a habit he meant to break — and promised himself a shave and a trim. He finished his wine and grinned at them.

‘I think you are all right. I have to tell you what a pleasure it is to have such friends, and such advice.’

‘Beats moping and suffering in silence, doesn’t it?’ Philokles quipped.

Kineas ignored him. ‘Philokles, get some cash from Leon and put it out on the street. Niceas — give Demosthenes some idea of my unhappiness with his actions. Don’t get caught.’

‘Tonight?’ Niceas asked.

‘Can you arrange it?’ Kineas asked.

‘Give me another day,’ Niceas said. ‘And Temerix.’

Kineas nodded. ‘And Diodorus, perhaps you would invite the man himself to pay us a visit — perhaps the day after tomorrow.’

Diodorus fingered his red beard. ‘I don’t like it. If Niceas is caught, we’re giving him what he wants.’ He shrugged, glanced at Niceas and smiled. ‘If only Kineas was tyrant.’

Philokles snorted again. ‘If he was tyrant, we’d be doing this every day, putting the screws to every man in the city.’

Sappho laughed. ‘That must be why it is called democracy,’ she said.