The Great King

‘Are you dense?’ he spat, in a very unslave-like way. ‘Demaratus!’

I presented myself to the former King of Sparta in an olive grove six stades south of the city. His helot had taken me out of the palace grounds to a brothel. I chose a girl — none of your business — and was escorted to a room, from which I was then escorted out through another door to a waiting donkey, and we rode out through one of the military gates past the great bridge. That’s all I remember of the route.

Demaratus, contrary to the propaganda of the last few years, was a handsome, older man, did not have a hunchback or a limp, and looked like what he was — one of the greatest aristocrats in the world. He was richly dressed, even in an olive grove. Brasidas sat under a tree, with a scroll, looking for all the world like an Athenian gentleman reading philosophy.

I didn’t bow. He wasn’t my king. But I did present my wax tablet. ‘From Gorgo,’ I said. ‘Wife of-’

Demaratus laughed. ‘I know whose wife Gorgo is,’ he said. ‘Are you ready to see the Great King?’

I believe I shrugged.

‘I have spent a week flattering him into letting the two fool Spartiates live,’ he said. ‘The murder of his father’s envoys was an incredible insult at the time. Even today, it is widely remembered.’

‘And Aristides?’ I asked.

‘Athens is doomed,’ the former King of Sparta said. ‘Everyone in this city lost someone on that beach. Athens will be destroyed. All the omens foretell it. But I would see Sparta saved.’

I frowned. ‘Aristides will be killed?’ I asked.

Demaratus looked at Brasidas reading. ‘If I have my way with the Great King, all of you will be loaded with presents and sent home,’ he said. ‘He is. . mercurial. Curiously not in control of himself, for a man with such power. Oddly in need of the good opinions of others.’ Demaratus shook his head. ‘He is not Darius, but then, almost no one is.’

I must have looked surprised. He raised his eyebrows.

‘Not what you expected, Plataean?’ He shrugged. ‘I can never go back to Sparta. I was treated worse than a helot. But I will not be an agent of my city’s destruction.’ He waved the tablet at me. ‘With your permission, sir?’

I stood back and watched him turn away. He went to Brasidas, and they talked for a moment — there was a loud snap — and then both of them were looking at something. The former king nodded.

‘I broke your tablet — foolish of me. I’ll send a new one with you. For Gorgo, you understand.’ He nodded.

I nodded in turn. It’s not always good to tell people everything you have guessed.

‘May I ask one more question?’ I asked.

He laughed. ‘Plataean, I am retired — an old man. I have nothing but time.’

‘Is there anything we can do to induce the Great King to make peace?’ I asked.

He didn’t hesitate. ‘No,’ he said. ‘The coin is tossed. The soldiers are ordered and the fleets are gathered. Your arrival at this time is viewed as a piece of foolish effrontery. A year or two ago — perhaps. Now — if it were not for me, you’d have been refused, seized as enemies, and crucified.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps not you. Artapherenes got you a safe conduct by name. That means something here.’

As always, Artapherenes saved my life.

I nodded. ‘I never thought we could make peace,’ I said. ‘But it seemed worth a try.’

Demaratus scratched his beard. ‘I truly doubt that Xerxes can move an army from here to Corinth and then seize Corinth — much less reach Lacedaemon,’ he said. ‘But Athens will fall. Sparta. . can hold.’

‘I hope you are an ill prophet,’ I said.

‘Everything has come about as I told that fool Cleomenes when he first started to challenge Persia.’ He shrugged. ‘I was a King of Sparta. War is my business. Without the direct intervention of the gods, Greece cannot stand against Persia.’ He shook his head. ‘Aristides has made himself very popular with the magi. His knowledge of Greek and Aegyptian philosophy will probably save his head. The magi are very powerful here.’

Brasidas got up. ‘I’ll go back with him,’ he said.

The former King of Sparta smiled. ‘It has been good to see you.’

They did not embrace. I had decided that Brasidas was his son, or perhaps his lover — I revised that.

We went back to another gate, led by the helot, who took me into the kitchen of the brothel, where I emerged into the common room to be heckled by a pair of Babylonian Jews for riding the best girl for three hours. I bought them wine and we were friends.

Brasidas watched it all with interest. On the way back to the palace compound, he shook his head. ‘So now I’ve been in a brothel,’ he said.

This from a man of thirty-five.

The Great King summoned us.

We dressed carefully.

The summons was to me, as the ‘Ambassador of the Greeks’.

Aristides as my mage.

The Spartans, as ‘heralds of the Spartans’.

These titles were settled by the court chamberlain, and I read into them that Aristides was not to be killed — because his being Athenian would never make the court calendar. In fact, despite being in every way the senior member of our party, he was being dismissed as a functionary.

But there is my name, in good Avestan — Airyaman Navazhar, of Palatay in Jawan. Noble-minded light-bringer — that’s me.

It was Mayu who appeared to lead us to the Great King. He shook his head at our naked legs and offered me his own trousers.

The king’s hall was roughly on the same layout as the palace in Babylon. We entered through a magnificent cloister of pillars — arcade after arcade, like the great trunks of an old forest of marble. We processed through the entry hall with censors and the major-domo, and we were with twenty other foreign guests to make the auspicious number of twenty-four. We were the least important and came last, after a delegation of noble Saka, who looked about them with thinly veiled contempt.

Or perhaps they were merely the nomadic version of Spartans, and gave nothing away. We passed up a short set of very broad, very deep steps. I’m guessing that the architect did that on purpose to make me feel small, but everything was on such a scale as to make me feel small.

We passed from court to court — through the first court, where the law was pronounced, to the second court, where sometimes the king’s mother held her own divan, and into the third court, where military matters were settled. Each one of them was as big as the temple of Artemis at Brauron. Everything was hung in Tyrian purple and decorated with pure gold, and after a while the eye simply declined to take it all in, although the frescoes — which were, as far as I could see, fired clay with permanent tints, done as tiles and assembled like a meta-mosaic — were superb — as good as anything in Hellas.

And then we processed back through the second hall to the first, just in case we were not sufficiently impressed.

Altogether, the whole was the size of the Athenian Acropolis. All gold, and purple and tiles.

And then we entered the throne room.

It was not so much a room as a corridor, with cross-corridors, like a huge iota or a tau. So from the entrance, you couldn’t see the men standing in the wings — the functionaries and soldiers and judges and scribes waiting for orders. You could only see him.

The Great King.

He wore cloth of gold and purple, of course, and on his head was a tiara of pure gold. He was a handsome man — but I didn’t know that at the time, because of the golden throne with the winged lions.

Much like Babylon. I think, had I not seen Babylon first, all this would have stolen my senses. Now it all seemed. . extreme. Affected. And a little like the Persians aping the manners of the Babylonians, right down to the winged lions. I have no idea who had winged lions first. Having faced the more prosaic variety in tall grass, I had no wish to face one with wings.

Xerxes received each group of guests — accepted their gifts and promises of men and material for his war against Jawan. That was us. And we were waiting until last.

And it went on and on.

All told, we must have stood for four hours. I was delighted that I wore a linen chiton, and so, I can tell you, was Aristides. Our bare legs stood us in good stead. With the crowd of functionaries and the torches, it was as hot as any place I’ve ever been.

And as we drew closer to the throne, it seemed to me more and more likely that Demaratus was wrong. And we were going to die.

We were certainly being humiliated. All the other delegations were brought wine, beer and water. We were not. All the other delegations were offered dates and sweetmeats and honey — we were not.

No one would look at me, or meet my eye.

Slowly, inch by inch, we moved down that long, dark cavern of a hall towards the gold-lit man in the robes. He sat six feet off the floor, and his feet rested on a table.

Finally, the Saka threw themselves full length in front of him and mumbled something. They began their own ritual — gifts, which looked to me like braided halters but turned out to be horses. And promises of ten thousand horsemen to ride against Jawan.

The Great King spoke platitudes, and they echoed from the ceiling. He sounded like a god.

I thought his architect had been heavy handed.

I also thought that, had I been taken directly into the sacred presence of the Great King, all this might have struck me harder, but four hours of waiting wilted even fear. From time to time, when the line moved, my heart would race. I was ready to die. But then, I’d grow bored.

Even summary execution can seem dull.

I also occupied my time translating what I could hear and understand for Aristides and the Spartans. Early on, I was told to be quiet by a chamberlain, whom I ignored. Later, Cyrus emerged from the crowd to tell me not to speak.

‘You translate, then,’ I said.

Cyrus winced. ‘It is the custom of the King’s Presence not to speak,’ he said.

‘You are speaking,’ I said.

He smiled. ‘I am a full Persian.’

I went on translating aloud, and in fact I began to raise my voice slightly.

Aristides spoke under me, twice — once to agree with the Spartans that if they took us to kill us, we would die with dignity and not struggle. The other time, to agree that we would bow, but not perform the proskynesis.

And eventually, the Grand Chamberlain motioned me forward.

We had no gifts.

I happened to have gifts, in fact, and several functionaries had offered us gifts to give. Just to make the ceremony work.

But Bulis insisted that we were not offering any form of submission, and Aristides agreed, and now, in that moment, it was my time to explain this to the Great King.

First, I bowed.

There are many forms of bow, in Persia. You can incline your head — equal to equal. You can bow at the waist. You can bow so deeply that your right hand brushes the ground.

You can throw yourself on your face.

I had observed — in four hours — that the Persian nobles bowed with one hand touching the floor, and all the ambassadors, who were after all making or renewing formal submission, performed the full proskynesis and threw themselves on the floor. Some crawled forward and kissed the table on which the Great King’s feet rested.

I decided on my course and I went forward with the Grand Chamberlain, and when he brought his arm down on my shoulder, I slipped it — he wasn’t a fighter — and I bowed at the waist and placed my right hand fully on the floor.

Like a great nobleman.

Or a friend of mighty Artapherenes.

The silence wrapped me like a shroud.

What I didn’t know was that behind me, neither Aristides nor the two Spartans so much as twitched. They didn’t even incline their heads.

Oh well. I’d been a slave among Persians, and I couldn’t make myself be that rude. I rather admire the Spartans in retrospect, but at the time I made my choice, and they made theirs.

One of the chamberlains grabbed at Bulis, and attempted to force his head to the floor, and Bulis threw him — softly, over his hip — and then laid him quite gently on the floor.

The Great King laughed.

‘I see you are my jesters, today,’ he said. ‘That was a fine throw, although Nasha is hardly our finest wrestler.’ He leaned forward. I was so close to the throne that I could hear the gold cloth rustle. ‘Why do you not bow?’ he asked. He pointed at the Anûšiya, who were ready, spears raised, to kill us.

Bulis spoke — although we’d all agreed I’d do the talking.

‘We only bow to gods,’ he said. ‘You, Great King, are after all but a man.’

Bulis said the words — in Greek.

I got to translate them.

Xerxes looked away. He was, in fact, looking at someone I couldn’t see, in an alcove by the throne. Demaratus, I’d lay any wager.

He smiled. ‘What curious men you must be.’ He shook his head. ‘You are Spartans?’ he asked.

‘We are heralds of the kings,’ Bulis said, through me.

‘And although you have kings, you do not bow?’ he asked.

We all nodded.

He shook his head and frowned like a man who mislikes a bitter taste.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Speak your piece, men of Lacedaemon.’ He said the last very well — he’d practised it.

Bulis nodded to me.

I said, ‘O King of the Medes! the Lacedaemonians have sent these men to your court, in the place of those heralds of thine who were slain in Sparta, to make atonement to thee on their account.’

Xerxes nodded. And tugged his beard and looked again to his right — and then to the left. I could not see who stood on the left.

He straightened himself and leaned forward. ‘I do not concern myself with the impieties of the foreigners,’ he said. ‘It is not for me — Great King, King over Kings — to act like the Lacedaemonians, who, by killing the heralds, have broken the only laws which all men hold in common. As I hold you in contempt for such barbarism, so I will never be guilty of it myself.’ He leaned forward more. ‘I will make war on you, and wipe you from the face of the world, and I will not, by killing you, allow the gods to let you escape from the consequences of your outrageous impiety.’

I confess I still think it was a noble answer — for all that it was composed by Demaratus, as a slap at the policies of Cleomenes. That is how it was — four thousand stades from Athens, we saw Spartan diplomacy play out in the throne room of Darius.

Xerxes motioned at the Spartans — dismissal. He wasn’t angry. But he ignored them, and when a pair of guards motioned for them to leave — they turned, and left. Both were in shock. They were prepared to die with dignity, but ill prepared, I think, to be treated as contemptuous wrongdoers.

They were evicted.

The Great King turned his liquid brown eyes on me for the first time.

‘And you,’ he said. ‘You were a slave?’ he asked.

I smiled. ‘I was,’ I agreed.

‘And you have saved my friend Artapherenes from death — and saved the entire delegation of noble Persians travelling to Tyre in Libya.’ He waved. ‘Why have you brought me no gift?’ He meant — I seemed to have more sense.

I bowed again. ‘My lord, I am not rich enough to give you any more of a gift than I gave when I saved your envoys.’

He looked away, and smiled, and looked back. ‘You sound more like the other Greeks I know — a ready answer for everything. Will you serve me?’

I shook my head. ‘As a man — in any way my lord commands. As a Greek? Never.’

Cyrus — just at the edge of my peripheral vision — gave a nod, and I knew I’d made a good answer.

Xerxes smiled — he was charming, for a tyrant — and nodded. ‘Strong words — the better to negotiate. Isn’t that the Greek way?’

He looked off to his left, and I saw a man — I’d seen him at a distance in the Foreigners’ Courtyard, surrounded by soldiers. Mardonius — the king’s most trusted counsellor and the most open advocate for war with Greece.

Now, at a signal from the king, he came forward to stand beneath the throne. He bowed low — but did not quite throw himself on the floor. He wore long robes of white and red, with red trousers. He was heavily muscled, like an athlete, and yet I found him faintly ridiculous in his trousers — some habits of thought are difficult to overcome.

‘What level of power or wealth will buy you, Greek?’ he asked. His Persian was different from the king’s. He spoke a northern dialect of Persian. He was one of the few courtiers to wear a sword.

The guardsmen were still standing with their spears in both hands, points aimed at me, like men hunting wild boar on the flanks of Kitharon. But I truly doubted that Xerxes would kill an accredited ambassador, more especially one with a safe conduct.

I bowed again. ‘Great King, I am neither a wealthy nor a powerful man — so there is no point in offering me such things.’

Behind me, Aristides snorted.

Xerxes had to know that Aristides was the true ambassador — the man of wealth and power. Yet he ignored him. I suspect that Xerxes’ hatred of Athens blinded him as effectively as my notions of men in trousers blinded me.

Aristides leaned forward and very quietly, in Greek, whispered, ‘Mardonius is going to seek to trick us into something — an impiety, or an outrage.’

I could feel that, as well.

By one of those ironies so dear to the gods, Mardonius was in the same position that Cleomenes had been with the Persian ambassadors. He wanted war — and if he could arrange to kill me, he’d have put the Great King in a position from which he could not withdraw. I saw this — a little too late, but better late than never — as Aristides spoke.

Mardonius bowed — again — to the king. ‘May I question this Greek, Great King?’ he asked.

Xerxes smiled at me. ‘Be my guest.’ He sat back and a slave put a cup in his hand.

Mardonius nodded affably at me. ‘Is it true you were born a slave?’ he asked.

I shook my head. ‘No.’

Someone had given him the wrong information.

‘You were a slave to Artapherenes,’ he said.

I bowed — again. ‘No, my lord. My lord is misinformed.’

I thought he’d explode. His tanned skin flushed with blood so fast I suspected it would burst from his eyes.

‘You have been a pirate?’ he began again.

I ignored him. ‘Great King, King over Kings, I am here as a representative of the peoples of Plataea and other places in Greece, to speak of matters of peace and war. I am not here to discuss my personal life with your servants, however charming.’

All throughout the hall, there was a rush of muttering like the first gust of wind in leaves.

But the Persians are brave men, and they detest cowardice as everyone does. Cultures are different, and my feeling, since youth, has been that they mistake our Greek love of talk for a form of fear — they think that our negotiation and our business dealings and tendency towards both argument and compromise are signs of weakness.

And we, in turn, think they are a nation of slaves, heedlessly obedient to the whim of one tyrant.

I doubt we, either of us, see the other clearly, but one thing I knew from having served Artapherenes, and that was that the Persians prized straight talk, bluntness and boldness.

At any rate, the mumbling went on, and Xerxes raised three fingers, and the hush that fell was absolute.

‘Yet,’ Xerxes observed — genuinely curious, I think — ‘yet you have been a slave. You admitted it to me.’

I nodded. ‘Great King, out beyond the rule of laws that makes your empire great, there is a wide world with no law. If a man is to sail the seas and trade, he must needs run the risk of slavery and death. I have been a slave twice.’

‘No man born a slave can speak in this assembly, and to do so invites a charge of impiety and sacrilege in the king’s sacred presence.’ Mardonius was a hothead, I could see.

I thought of Heraklitus and his views on slavery. I managed a smile, even though I was growing afraid that Aristides and I were to be the sacrifices at this feast. ‘My lord, I was not born a slave, nor am I one now as I address your king. Yet to us, lord, you are but a slave. You do what your king orders you — every one of you. You have no assembly in which to vote and not one of you plays a part in the creation of your laws. To a Greek. .’ I shrugged, knowing from the rumbles that I had offended nearly everyone present. But the voice of Heraklitus in my head pressed on, and I said his words. ‘And — taken another way — what man here present is anything but a slave — to time, to the gods, to his own appetites and desires?’

Aristides put a hand on my shoulder.

I braced for the spear point. But I’d rather be slaughtered as a lion than a lamb, and I had a feeling that Xerxes was a man for a big gesture.

Xerxes sat back — and smiled. ‘Artapherenes chooses his friends well,’ he said. ‘Go back to Greece and tell them to submit and I will be merciful. But my armies are formed, and my will is set. I will march.’

I bowed, but I stood my ground. ‘Merciful, Great King? To Sparta — and Athens?’

He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘For them, nothing but salt and ash. I vow — before the gods, and may my crown be taken from my head-’

An older man emerged from the right of the throne. ‘Stop! Great King, I beg you not to swear.’

The Great King glared at his counsellor. I didn’t know who the man was, but he was beautifully dressed.

Mardonius looked at the man as if a heap of dung had materialised at his feet. ‘How dare you interrupt the king?’ he hissed.

‘An oath to the gods is not like a statement of policy, my lord,’ the old man said. ‘It has effects that ripple through all of the universe. I beg you not to push the king into such an oath.’

Mardonius put a hand to his chest like a bad actor. ‘The king but reacts to the arrogance of the Greek ambassador! I have nothing to do with this sort of manipulation.’

For less than a single beat of a desperate man’s heart, Xerxes’ eye caught mine. A hint of amusement — and fear. It was not all pomegranate juice and slave girls, being the Great King.

I watched them — and managed to glance to my right and left, to see the courtiers around me, the palace officers, the soldiers. In a single sweep of my gaze, I saw the depth of the central division in this court. I had no idea what had caused it, what factions existed, but I could see approval and disapproval, anger and fear and outrage and hope, writ all about me. There was a war party and a peace party — that much was clear.

If I had five years and a million darics to spend, I suspect I could have exploited it. But I had neither.

The Great King sat back and raised his hand for silence. ‘Very well, old friend. I will not swear to the gods. I will merely state the obvious — my armies are ready to march, my ships have been summoned to their duty, and there are stockpiles of food throughout my realm. Let Athens and Sparta shake with fear, for my hand is not light. My spear is long, and I will take my bow in my hand and my chariot wheels will roll over their armies as a farmer threshes wheat.’

It seemed to me a dismissal, and I stood straight — waiting for the blow, or the motion of his hand — whatever it might be.

But as the silence lengthened, I realised that they were all waiting for me to speak in reply.

I had in my hand the caduceus — the bronze staff of a herald.

I did not bow.

‘Great King!’ I said. ‘I have come seeking peace, and been promised war. So be it. My land is poor and yours is rich, and your reach is long. You have a thousand thousand slaves and fertile land that stretches away with uncountable riches, and my land is girt by the sea and has little to offer but rock and stone.’

I held my staff over my head. ‘But before the immortal gods, Great King, Greece is far, the world is wide, and we, too, have spears.’

I threw my staff on to the marble. It rang like the hammer of Hephaestos on the anvil of the gods.

Then I turned on my heel and strode from the hall. Aristides walked by my side. We expected to be cut down at every step, and no one would meet our eyes, but behind us, the king was silent.

We didn’t make it out of the second hall. We were moving swiftly when a dozen guards — fully cloaked and with their faces covered by the tails of their headscarves — surrounded us with spears. They didn’t even speak.

My knees grew weak. Why not? My friends, I was unarmed, and these men were in armour, and I knew I was going to be executed in some back hallway.

I was terrified, but I knew I had to do something or die, so even as they moved in around us and directed us toward a side corridor, I began to look at them with professional desperation. I was looking for an ill-hung sword, any available weapons — a spear I could seize.

I jostled Aristides with my hip and our eyes met.

We were taken into another, even smaller corridor, and I was lost — I think we were in a servants’ area, but there were no frescoes.

I heard the sound of running footsteps, and the guard nearest me — not a royal guardsman, unless he was wearing a disguise — turned to look.

I hit him in the ear with the palm of my hand — very hard — grappled close, and grabbed his spear. Without stopping, I turned the shaft to kill the man behind him, but the man had also started to turn to see who was running up behind, and my spear’s metal butt caught him in the head and laid him out.

Two down and ten to go.

Aristides got the second man’s spear before his body hit the floor.

The guardsman closest to me was very good — he dropped his spear and drew a short akinakes from his belt — he was inside my spear — and cut at my head. Aristides saved my life by covering me with his spear shaft.

But that one attack wrecked any hope we had of escape, and we were two men surrounded by ten.

‘Stop!’ ordered a voice. ‘Stop!’

It took me a whole ten heartbeats to realise that he was shouting in Greek, and it was Cyrus.

He appeared around the last bend in the corridor, and his eyes took in the scene.

‘Hold!’ he roared in Persian. ‘Stop! Put your weapons down!’ he then said in Greek. He knelt by the two men I’d felled and put a hand to their throats.

‘No one is dead. No one needs to die.’ He looked back and forth. ‘These are the Queen Mother’s men, and they have orders to protect you.’ Cyrus turned to the man with the drawn sword. ‘He speaks Persian — why did you not speak to him?’

The man looked at me with undisguised hatred. ‘It never occurred to me that he and his companion were so uncivilised as to use violence in the Royal Palace.’

Cyrus looked at me.

‘I thought we were about to be murdered,’ he said.

Aristides laughed. ‘As did I, Lord Cyrus. Come — if we are all friends, here is my spear.’

He handed it to the captain of the guard, who glared at him — and took the spear.

‘The queen will not thank you for mistreating them,’ Cyrus said, but we were prodded — almost beaten. Our guards were angry and afraid, and men were left to look after the two men we’d put down. I took a number of knees and fists in the dark corridors, and then we emerged into the light, and I was blind. Cyrus walked between us, a hand on his sword.

‘This is not going well,’ he admitted.

The guards took us across a courtyard I didn’t know and into another palace. A dozen more soldiers surrounded us, and then we were put into a windowless room — quite forcibly. My shoulder was hurt — two men took my arms, and I tried to struggle and failed.

And then we were alone, in the dark. And Cyrus was locked in with us.

‘This is not what was supposed to happen,’ Cyrus said. ‘The Queen Mother wants you to go home alive. Because she does not want Xerxes to be guilty of any more impieties, and because she is an old friend and ally of my master.’ He sat against a wall and fingered his beard by the light that came in around the door. Once our eyes adjusted, it was not so very dark.

‘And those were the Queen Mother’s guards?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. This is not. . I have not been here in a long time. Things were not done this way in the time of Great Darius. He was master in his own house.’

We sat in the dark for a long time.

Eventually, Aristides put a hand on my shoulder. ‘You spoke well,’ he said. ‘I particularly liked your piece on slavery.’

‘I don’t think Mardonius liked it,’ I said.

And later, when it had begun to get darker outside, Cyrus told us a great deal about the inner workings of the court.

‘When Lord Xerxes took power,’ he said, ‘he had to make many agreements to win over some of the Persian and Mede vassals. He offended some of Darius’s best officers by promoting younger men. It is almost always the way — so my father tells me. But Xerxes — it is not that he is weak, rather that he is changeable. Today’s alliance may be tomorrow’s enmity. Men say that the only council that he trusts is the last council to reach him.’ He shrugged. ‘This prevarication is not the normal way of a Great King. Mardonius and Atosa the Queen Mother and his brother Haxāmaniš all seek to dominate, him or at least influence him.’

‘And Artapherenes?’ I asked.

Cyrus shook his head. ‘My master is too wise to play these games. He is a loyal man and he rules his provinces, levies taxes, raises troops — and stays away from all this. We thought. . perhaps you would help us to stop this war.’ He frowned at me. ‘Why make such inflammatory answers?’

But Aristides leapt to my defence. ‘What else could he say? We hoped for some private talks with the king or his people. None were offered.’

‘Mardonius had had you followed night and day — you, and me, and every one of my men. One of my men was killed in a brawl that has no obvious cause — when I was attempting to send him to the Queen Mother.’ He shrugged. ‘Mardonius will stop at nothing to provoke this war. He is to be Satrap of Europe. The war is his reward for service and his stepping stone to empire.’ He frowned at me. ‘Some of us think he covets the empire for himself.’

‘By Hermes!’ I said. ‘Why am I only finding this out now?’

Aristides frowned. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘It is late to have the politics of this court revealed. A week ago we might have done something. Or prepared different speeches.’

Cyrus shook his head. ‘Meeting the Queen Mother was to fix everything. Now — I’m sorry — I think we have been sold to Mardonius. I don’t know why. I regret that my death will lead to open conflict within the empire, but my father will not leave me unavenged. I have sons.’ He smiled. ‘I cannot regret having been your friend, Arimnestos.’

The door opened.

I prepared myself to die.

But the world is never that simple, and instead of executioners, there were three slaves. They had clothes — fine clothes, all Persian. And food.

We ate.

After some discussion, we changed into Persian dress. We were dressed as guardsmen, in the hideous trousers and the long jackets. I felt like some sort of effeminate, and Aristides was worse — his long legs were too long for his trousers.

The lead slave wrapped our heads in coverings and pulled the ends over our faces, and we were out the door. There were spears leaning there and we took them and followed the slaves across the courtyard we’d crossed earlier.

At the last moment, there was a shout, and the slaves froze. Two soldiers — Immortals — ran up, swords drawn.

‘Don’t you know that all movement is forbidden?’ one growled.

The slaves flinched. ‘My mistress. .’ the lead slave whimpered.

‘Dog of a Mede!’ I snapped. I used Mardonius’s northern Persian accent. It sounded barbarous. But I knew the Immortal was not a Persian. ‘Be about your business, or let us go to Lord Mardonius and see who has the right to give orders.’

The two Immortals looked at each other.

‘Move!’ I said to the slaves, and pointed my spear imperiously.

They let us go. They didn’t love us, or even — quite — believe me, but we moved quickly and they didn’t choose to arrest us.

And then we were in the women’s palace. I knew what it must be as soon as we were in the doors — women smell different from men, and I don’t mean perfume. It was a different reek — laundry and kohl instead of sweat and leather.

We were taken down a short corridor and up two narrow flights of stairs where our spears were very inconvenient, and then into a room where we were in the presence of a dozen masked guardsmen. The room was lit by a hundred oil lamps and the walls were frescoed with pictures of bulls.

The guard parted to reveal Atosa, the Queen Mother.

I bowed to the floor, complete with my hand touching the stone.

She smiled, and her face was beautiful. She must have been only slightly older than forty, with access to every refinement, and she was lithe and smooth skinned. She wore long robes of silk, in layers, and her face was bare. She wore a silk tiara edged in gold and silk trousers that disguised very little of the shape of her legs, and behind her, on pillows, were a dozen of her ladies, each prettier than the last, with arched eyebrows and straight noses and sparkling eyes — I doubt that in fifty years of sailing the bowl of the earth I’ve seen so many beautiful women in one place.

Despite which, my eyes were only for the Queen Mother.

She stood looking at me. She gave me a small smile and the most fractional inclination of her head, and then she turned to Aristides.

‘You are the great lord of Athens, whom my son has chosen to ignore?’ she asked.

Aristides bowed. ‘My lady, I am an exile.’

She nodded. ‘I lack the time to play this kind of game, Athenian lord. My son is on the edge of a great error, and he is badly counselled.’

Aristides was not at his best with women. He was on edge — but he rallied. ‘My lady, I cannot pretend to negotiate for Athens,’ he began.

She snapped her fingers. ‘I do not care a fig for Athens,’ she said. ‘It may endure my son’s wrath or it may go on to future greatness, and it is all one to me, if only my son does not fritter away our birthright and our empire on overextending his power.’ She looked at me. ‘Mardonius intends to take you and murder you — tonight. His people and mine are playing a deadly game of hide and seek even now.’ She smiled. ‘My two unfortunate men are both making good recoveries. May I say that — despite any consequences — had you killed them, I’d have fed you to the dogs.’

I nodded. ‘I think your dogs would have found me stringy,’ I said.

‘I’m a little past my prime, myself,’ Aristides said — you can tell the depth of his discomfort by the fact that he actually managed a witticism.

She waved our attempts at lightness away. ‘I will not allow Mardonius any more power over my son.’

I had to try. ‘O Queen of Persia, is there any way in which we can — by explanation or discussion — prevent this war?’

She pursed her lips. ‘I do not want my son to commit an act that might damn him with our gods,’ she said. ‘And I would do much to help Artapherenes, who stood by my husband at all times. But please do not imagine that I wish to see anything but the destruction of Athens. Let every stone be torn from every other stone. Let her temples be destroyed as ours of Sardis were destroyed.’

So much for peace.

Only then — in the Queen Mother’s apartments in Susa — did I fully understand that we’d never had a chance. The Ionian Revolt, the burning of Sardis, the destruction of Euboea and the Battle of Marathon were like stepping stones across a raging torrent — and each step took us closer to the moment when the Great King’s armies marched.

‘I will save your lives,’ she said. ‘But I will applaud when I hear that the Acropolis is afire.’

Aristides bowed. ‘O Queen,’ he said, ‘Athens has done nothing but defend herself and her people from your husband and now your son. I am sorry for the wreck of Sardis. It was ill done. I was there, and I would have prevented it if I could have. Your own sometime subjects, the Ionians, were the guilty parties. And I stood on the plains of Marathon and did my best to stop Datis and his army from sacking Athens — after seeing how he destroyed the cities of Euboea and sold her citizens into slavery.’

She cut him off with a wave of her hand. ‘Please. Save your breath. I care nothing for your arguments, nor am I here to negotiate. I had you brought here because Mardonius would never dare search my apartments. Now you can escort me to my summer palace, and I will, I hope, never have to see you again.’

Cyrus bowed. ‘Great Lady, what of my men, and the other Greeks?’

She smiled. I suspected she would make a terrible enemy. ‘I have them all safe,’ she said. ‘The Spartans were taken on the very steps of the throne room. Your men, their horses and all their kit await you in the mountains.’

Aristides nodded. ‘Then, Great Queen, what can we do but offer our thanks — as enemies?’

Her eyebrows raised. ‘Ah! Nicely said. Let us go. I have been pining for the mountains.’

We moved fast, and I have very little to relate beyond a tale of fatigue and near-complete disorientation. We filed down the main stairs and formed the escort around her litter, and she was carried in state across four courtyards to the royal stable block, where, to my astonishment, she mounted a horse.

She rode as well as Gorgo, or better. She rode astride, and she seemed one with her horse — and all of her decorative ladies mounted as well, a cavalcade of beautiful centaurs. Horses were brought for each of us, and Aristides proved an excellent horseman — no surprise.

‘Put the Greeks in the middle,’ the queen said. ‘They do not ride like us.’

Well — I suppose it is true. There was something. . organic about the way Persians rode. We were stiffer. But then, I’ve never loved horses. Aristides did, and even in the torchlight he looked more like a Persian than I did.

Some things cause me more fear than others. I’ve never been great at public speaking — although I can manage a good thing on occasion — and this sort of escape probably caused me more fear than all the battles I’ve ever seen. We were stopped four times by soldiers — but on each occasion, a single glimpse of Atosa was enough to render the guards impotent, and our little caravan wound down the hill, through the streets, and out the northern gate. We rode in the moonlight along the river, and when the sun rose, we were already in rockier terrain, and there were hills rising on our left.

We rode all day until we reached an extensive horse farm. We changed horses in a stable attached to a fine estate, where Cyrus found his entire cavalry detachment, and I found the Spartan envoys, as well as Brasidas, Nikeas and Hector.

There was a great deal of back-slapping. I’m not sure, until we found each other in a barn north of Susa, that any of us expected to make it out alive.

Cyrus joined us where we were gathered. He drew me aside.

‘Atosa is leaving in half an hour. She intends to ride north into the hills. I would like to leave her here and go north and west across the Masabadan — the land of the Medes. By staying in the hills, we can avoid most of their searches and slip up the Euphrates to Dura.’ He waved at his men. ‘With twenty of the best, we’ll be fine — especially as Atosa has offered me sixty horses. A rich gift indeed.’

He watched me for moment. ‘You hesitate?’ he asked.

‘I had hoped to return via Babylon,’ I said.

‘Arwia’s palace will be watched — indeed, it was watched before you ever arrived. She is a snake, that one. She, not her husband, should have been given over to the sword.’ Cyrus shrugged. ‘I would not advise you to pass Babylon. Or rather — I will not go there, and I’m willing to compel you to come with me. I promised Artapherenes.’

I shrugged.

‘I promised Briseis, as well,’ Cyrus said.

‘Let me talk to my friends,’ I said.

I walked back to Brasidas, Aristides, Bulis and Sparthius. The two Spartan heralds were not good riders, but they’d had almost two months to harden, and they were better than they had been.

I laid out the choices for all of them.

Sparthius pointed at my trousers and laughed. ‘It really is hard to take you seriously that way,’ he said.

I pointed at his.

Aristides frowned. ‘Gentlemen, we are not schoolboys. Arimnestos, our duty is to return with what we have learned.’

I shrugged. ‘I confess I might be self-interested, but my thought was that Greece might be saved in Babylon.’

Brasidas nodded. ‘I think the same. Babylon is smoking like a pile of sticks just before they ignite.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘I think I know how to provide the spark.’

I suspect I looked jealous. ‘You?’ I asked.

He laughed. ‘I have a message for a certain lady of Babylon from a former King of Sparta. Not all plots concern you, Plataean.’

Neither of the other two Spartans looked surprised.

But Aristides took me by the shoulder. ‘Brasidas knows his way around this plot,’ he said.

I looked at him, and he smiled. ‘I do, at that,’ he said. ‘I’ll go to Babylon. You go home and make the Greeks move.’

I suppose I might have protested more — but to be honest, I had had enough of the East. Babylon was a lush memory, but it was not a place for me.

Aristides — the least underhanded of men — nonetheless was the one to point out the flaw in our plan. ‘Cyrus will not want us to send aid to Babylon. He may be willing to help us, and happy to do Mardonius a disservice, but he’s still a loyal Persian officer.’

Brasidas cursed.

We all stood there under the sun, tired, dispirited despite our escape, in alien territory, heads down.

Very, very quietly, Hector spoke up. ‘You could. . just say. . you are going. . er. . back to Demaratus at Susa.’ Hector flushed. ‘I’m sorry, lords. But Cyrus knows that Brasidas. . knows the Spartan king.’

Brasidas brightened. He smiled again, and Bulis tousled the boy’s hair.

‘Odysseus born again.’ He looked at Brasidas. ‘How will you get to Babylon? You don’t speak any language but Greek.’

‘It won’t work,’ I said. ‘You’ll never get there from here.’ I stared at them. ‘We have to go somewhere near Babylon — remember how far across the plain you can see it? Then Brasidas slips away and we cover for him by dressing Niceas here as a gentleman. We only need to give Brasidas a day’s head start.’ It occurred to me in a single breath — that I could slip away in the same way — and that I’d be missed much sooner than the taciturn Brasidas.

At parting, the queen sent me a guest-gift. Her chamberlain delivered it.

‘My mistress sends you this, a treasure of our house, that no Greek will be able to return to his people empty handed from the court of the Great King. She says — go, return to your homeland, and tell them of all you have seen, and the glory of the Great King, and tell them to give their earth and water and become loyal subjects.’ He bowed deeply — as if I were a great noble — and handed me a cedar box inlaid in silver.

I handed it to Niceas without looking at it.

The chamberlain sneered. ‘It will be the handsomest treasure in Greece. And you are too foreign to look at it? Or are you Greeks merely dead to beauty?’

Aristides vaulted into his saddle like a man twenty years younger. ‘We have beautiful things in Greece,’ he said. ‘Hills, valleys, waterfalls, the sea, and women.’ He shrugged. ‘We’re not much for treasures.’

Bulis laughed. ‘We’re too poor!’ he called.

And we rode away, leaving the chamberlain to his contempt. Myself, I think it was one of Aristides’ prettiest speeches.

So in the end, we all rode together, dressed as Medes — up into the high country west of Susa, up the valley of the Eualaeus, past the walls of Hulwan, and then down into the plains at Me-Turnat, a journey of almost fifteen days — some days so slow that at the end of the day we could see the previous day’s campsite in the clear air, and always short on water. We slept on the ground and hunted every day, and I was astounded to watch the facility with which the Persians shot from horseback.

Me-Turnat to Babylon is five hundred stades, and the roads were well marked. Indeed, we saw a column of spearmen, and when I spoke to their officer, he described his travels and in the process told us exactly how to reach the great city in the middle of the plain.

We began to ride due west across the plain, and summer was ending. In the mountains it had been cool, but here, despite the sun, the heat was also less, and the turning of the seasons reminded me that I had another two months’ journey to reach the coast, unless we took the Royal Road, which Cyrus feared to take. Even as it was, he wanted to skirt the plain instead of crossing it, staying at the fringes of the highlands.

When we reached Dura on the Tigris, the gods took a hand in our affairs, and sent us a pair of Phrygian merchants with a convoy of goods travelling by river to Babylon. They spoke Greek.

We pooled our money and Brasidas vanished on to the docks. There was no time or place for long farewells. I was afraid — afraid I was sending him to his death, and afraid that I was sending him to my fate when I could have done his job better. But Aristides was unrelenting in his insistence that my role was to get them all back to Greece. They were my ships, and, as he pointed out, my relationship with Artapherenes.

I watched him vanish into the untimely autumn rain with mixed feelings.

Late that night, Cyrus awakened us and dragged us out into the inn’s courtyard, on to horseback, and we were away, still blinking away sleep. He himself was already wet to the skin, and we rode north, cold, wet, miserable, and wondering what had occasioned this untimely ride. As the sun began to rise in a pale grey imitation of daylight, he came back down the column to me.

‘Apologies, old friend. The Great King has not forgotten you, and there are cavalrymen on the roads. Someone talked.’ He shrugged. ‘It is hard to hide half a dozen Greek men, no matter how I dress you.’

I passed this on to the other Greeks.

Aristides said quietly, ‘It couldn’t be better, despite the lost sleep. All we need to do is pretend that we don’t know where Brasidas is, either.’

I had a hard time adjusting to Aristides the schemer — a man I’d have said was unable to tell a falsehood of any kind. As it proved, he was full of deceit for those he perceived as his enemies. The next morning, he had me tell Cyrus that we’d lost Brasidas, and there followed a certain amount of bad playacting as we worried about him.

In the end, we all decided that we could not go back. I think Cyrus felt we were a little callous about it, but we all have trouble reading foreigners, and Cyrus had trouble reading us.

Brasidas was either in Babylon or caught, by that time, and we had six thousand stades of riding ahead of us, and we tried to avoid the Royal Road.

But for most of the route over the Taurus Mountains and farther west, there is no other route. The Royal Road wanders a bit, but it goes over the only practical passes. And in places, it is only one or two horsemen wide. Ten men could hold some of those passes for days against an army.

We ended up creeping along valleys, crawling up heights, and then dashing along the road. Horses died, to Cyrus’s intense annoyance. The queen had given him magnificent horses — his gift, which he was burning up protecting us. I doubted very much that Cyrus’s head was on the line.

After ten days in the mountains, it felt as if it was the only life I’d ever known. Some days we bought a sheep or a couple of goats; some days we got warm bread from an oven, or wine. Most days, we ate grain by the handful — boiled until soft. The water boiled before it was hot when we were high in the air, and we had snow one day, all day, and sat and shivered in our summer clothes.

We arrived at Melitene on the upper Euphrates tired and saddle sore and much thinner than we’d left the plains, and the reports of merchants scared me. In effect, in ten days in the mountains, we hadn’t got any closer to Greece. But I didn’t know the terrain, and I certainly trusted Cyrus.

One of the few things I remember of that desperate trip was that I trusted Cyrus and had to convey my trust to the others, every day. Bulis, especially, was constantly on the brink of turning on our escort. And they grew increasingly tired of us — six foreigners who were the cause of all their discomfort. But they were honourable men, and true to their salt — a Persian expression, because salt for them is the sign of hospitality. However much they loathed us, they kept going.

At any rate, we made Melitene and rested for a day. We all bought heavy local cloaks and rolled wool hats, and even the Spartans made some concessions to the weather.

Cyrus sat with me and we shared a cup of wine.

‘I’m going to try the road,’ he said. ‘We have to beat winter into the high passes. Winter is close.’ He shrugged with obvious discomfort. ‘If it comes to a fight — well, there’re not many men who can beat my demons.’

Indeed, after ten days of hunting and riding with Cyrus and his men, I doubted whether there were better cavalrymen in the entire world. It was in the mountains that the quality of their horsemanship became fully evident. They could ride up — and down — slopes I would have said were too steep for a horse even without a rider. I spent a lot of time clinging to my horse’s mane in something very like terror, and at one point Cyrus laughed, slapped my back, and informed me that this was fair repayment for our time at sea.

Our fourth day out of Melitene, we descended sharply down a series of switchback trails to the Royal Road, and then we moved like the wind. With three horses to a man, we rode fast — trot, canter, walk, trot all day, a brief break every hour and then a new horse. I would guess we made almost two hundred stades the first day on the road. We passed the way station without stopping even to use the well.

The next day, we made half again as much, passing no fewer than three way stations. At the third, we stopped, and drank from the well, filled our canteens and rested our poor jaded horses. Cyrus looked grave when he emerged.

‘I didn’t fool the post-master,’ he said quietly. ‘There are still patrols out looking for you.’

He sent a pair of his best men well ahead as scouts, and the next day, at midday, he dragged us all off the road into a narrow pass somewhere in Kataonia. We saw the patrol before we heard them, far off on the road, and we stood by our horses’ heads until they were well past. Then we got back on the road and went as fast as we could.

But it wasn’t fast enough, and of course we left tracks, and the enemy had a rearguard. They must have hidden from us as successfully as we hid from them, but they warned the main body. By late evening, it was clear that we were pursued.

Cyrus cursed. ‘I don’t want to lose a man here,’ he said. ‘Nor do I want to kill men whose only fault is serving their king too well.’

We made the post house, and Bulis suggested that we could poison the well — which caused Cyrus to look at the Spartan envoy as if he were some sort of hardened criminal. ‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘would induce me to poison a well.’ He stomped off, his flat leather boot soles making a flapping sound in his irritation.

We slipped away before first light with six men covering us from the heights. The enemy patrol was hot on our heels, probably having ridden all night to close the gap, but they had to stop to water their horses and we slipped away.

But later that day, as we wound our way through the Comana valley, they struck. They charged our rearguard — not quite by surprise, but their total commitment was fearsome, and they killed two of Cyrus’s men at the first encounter — and then it was a fight. Bulis and Aritides had doubted whether, when put to it, Cyrus would fight. I never doubted it. But Persians are as given to blood feud as most men, and after the deaths of Altris and Eza, two of our younger Persian escorts, the rest turned to fight with a will.

Cyrus laughed grimly, loosening his sword in its sheath. ‘Mardonius must have offered a mighty reward for you,’ he said. ‘Nothing else would cause these men to risk everything like this.’

They came on recklessly.

For their part, Cyrus’s men waited patiently. No word was spoken for a long time, and even I wondered whether it was possible that we were betrayed — Bulis was growing restless, and Sparthius already had his sword in his hand.

And then, without a word spoken, both sides began to loose arrows, and for a moment we were in a hail of shafts. I had faced Persian archery before, but it was worse mounted — because my horse took two arrows before I had any notion that we were being hit, and she reacted by throwing me over her head.

By Apollo, by whom I seldom swear — that was a heavy fall, from a horse on to rock, and jagged rock, at that. I lay unmoving for too long, and suddenly there was a cavalry melee over my head, and I, the vaunted warrior of the Greeks, was lying on my back almost unable to rise from the pain in my hip where it had struck the rock.

I was stunned. I couldn’t get up.

Hector saved me. He stood his horse right over me, and when the enemy charge came home, he used his spear like a hero, keeping a pair of Medes at the point of his spear — one of them missed a cut with his sword and clipped his own horse’s neck, and his horse bolted — and Hector put the other down with a fine thrust. I was nothing but a spectator.

Nor, to my shame, could I tell the two sides apart at first. Dust rose all around us, and every one of them had their facecloths buttoned across their faces against the biting cold and the blown grit. Sparthius had an arrow in his thigh and was out of the fight, and Bulis and Aristides were swapping swaggering sword-thrusts with a pair of Medes — Bulis, the better swordsman, was getting the worst of it because he wasn’t a good horseman, and Aristides, who had a magnificent horse, was steadily pushing his opponent back, turning him, until the man’s horse stumbled and went over the lip of a gully, never to rise again. Some of the Persians used their bows at point-blank range, instead of spears or swords. Aristides’ servant, Nikeas, took an arrow in the face and went down.

My mare, despite the two arrows in her, had tossed me and then stood stock still, within reach. How like a horse, eh? I must have twitched, because Hector — with a courage few could have emulated — dismounted to help me up. He got her reins and handed them to me and I got her head around and with a gut-wrenching wave of pain I got my left leg over her back and turned her to face the next wave of enemy, Babylonian sword in my hand, to drive Sparthius’s opponent off him. He was badly hit and barely in the fight; his strength was ebbing, desperation on his features.

I couldn’t reach his opponent, but I could reach the rump of his opponent’s horse, and I cut down into the horse’s hindquarters mercilessly and the horse gave a great shudder and fell, one leg clawing the air and the other apparently ruined by my cut. I hate to hurt a horse — but Sparthius was about to go down, and I got an arm around him and put my horse into the man fighting Bulis. By ill luck — for him — he’d just turned to deal with Aristides, and I cut him so hard in the neck I almost severed his head, but my Babylonian blade was too flexible for such a cut and it bent — but didn’t break.

He fell dead, and the blade returned to shape.

Hector speared a Lydian who was about to throw his spear into Cyrus’s unprotected back.

And the fight was over.

Horse fights with bows are deadly. Most of the enemy force were dead — or were dead a few moments later when dismounted men cut their throats. We had six dead and another three with mortal wounds — most of them from arrows.

Nikeas, blessed by the gods, had a nasty and disfiguring scar; the arrow had ploughed a furrow along his forehead and torn a length of scalp the width of my hand, so that it hung free — and knocked him unconscious. But the boy’s skull was thick and well formed and turned the point, although we were all treated to a sight of bone itself.

Aristides — Athenian gentleman of many talents — came to the fore. As Cyrus’s men killed their mortally wounded, there was a young man — too young, I thought — with an arrow lodged deep in his chest. He was incredibly brave — sitting with his back against a rock, making jokes.

I caught Cyrus looking at him, and he turned away. ‘He knows the mercy stroke is coming,’ Cyrus said, and he choked on the words.

But Aristides, who was crouched over Nikeas, looked up. ‘What?’ he asked. He left his hypaspist on the ground and went to the Persian boy. He made a measurement with his fist laid against the centre of the boy’s chest — and looked back at me.

There was a man — Amu. He was the largest of Cyrus’s men, with a big hennaed beard. I had spoken to him several times, mostly to hear the tales of his life in the East, because he came from the mountains above mystical India. He stood behind the boy with a wicked knife in his hand — and frowned.

Aristides looked right at Amu. ‘No!’ he said.

Amu spoke no Greek. Arisitides spoke no Persian.

But Cyrus was there, and he shouted ‘Hold!’ in Persian and leaped to put his hand on the big man’s arm. Amu paused. Every one of the surviving Persians looked at Arisitides.

‘I can save him,’ he said.

He opened the boy’s jacket. Without warning, he struck the arrow — hard — with the palm of his hand. The head burst out the boy’s back, and there was blood — but not too much blood, I felt.

Every head followed Aristides as he moved around the boy, holding his shoulder. He leaned the boy forward. He was chatting away in Greek — I have told a poor story if you don’t know that Aristides never chattered, but now he spoke of the weather, the trees, the boy’s bravery. .

I knelt down and translated it all. The boy watched me as if I were a priest of his god of light, and suddenly Aristides said:

‘Tell him, “Be brave. There will be a lot of pain.”’

I repeated his words. With Amu’s help, Aristides seized the arrow and cut it at the entrance wound with a tool they used for horses’ hooves, and then pulled by the head — unbarbed, by the gods — and it came out with a wet sucking noise.

He pushed honeyed wine into both ends of the wound and put pads of combed flax — which we had in abundance — on both entrance and exit wounds.

The boy’s eyes never left mine, and he never uttered a squeak. Amu sat down by him — knife carefully sheathed — and praised him.

‘It’s his son,’ Cyrus said. ‘Pactyans, from Argosia. Hard men.’ He put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Tell your Athenian I thank him. We all thank him.’

I watched Aristides, now sewing up his hypaspist’s scalp. ‘We got you into this,’ I said.

Cyrus shrugged. ‘We say co istādehi daste oftādeh gir in the north.’

It was an expression I’d often heard. ‘As long as you are standing, give a hand to those who have fallen.’

He shrugged. ‘Yes. But also, it is hard to see which comes first. Mardonius is my master’s enemy — and a man whose actions are, I believe, bad for the Great King and bad for the empire.’ He met my eye. ‘But I sense that we are soon to be foes.’

I could tell you some marvels of that trip — the monster we killed in the high passes of the Antitauros Mountains, and the spiders of the high plains of Cilicia — but that is not tonight’s tale. We rode for fifty days from Melitene, nor did we escape winter unscathed, and those shivering nights along the Paroreios come back to me on cold nights here, lying under three blankets with the wounded boy between me and Amu; hiding for a day in a highland village because Sparthius’s wound had become infected and Aristides, who’d become our doctor, wanted honey to put on it. The mountains seemed full of armed men — the reward offered for us must have been immense enough to engage the interest of every bandit in the hills.

I have never been so cold. But as the boy Araxa fevered, grew worse, and then — very slowly — began to recover, Amu grew closer to us, and then the natural bonds of a fight and shared food saved us, and by the time was saw the green fields of the upper Kogamos, we were comrades — Spartans and Athenians and Persians all together, and Sparthius’s recovery — he was emaciated but growing stronger by the day — was as much a cause for cheer to Karesna, one of the Persians, as the boy Araxa’s recovery had been.

By a quirk of fate, we were all hale — aside from some virulent head colds and a lot of coughing — as we rode down out of winter into the green valley that led to Sardis.

Two days later, I stood before Artapherenes.

He looked terrible.

He had circles under his eyes and his skin looked grey. His face was puffy, and he had a paunch, and he clearly found movement difficult. His son — also Artapherenes — waited on him — and glowered at me.

The Satrap of Lydia and Ionia returned my bow of thanks and waved his eldest son away. ‘Go and embrace Cyrus!’ he said. ‘I must talk to Arimnestos alone.’

We were served cups of hot cider by a slave who spilled some, and then we were alone.

‘I should ask you about your trip, but you are here, and that is all I need to know. Cyrus says you fought your way out. That Mardonius has put a price on your head. Unofficially, I already know this, and when the courier comes — any day — I will not be able to pretend I don’t know where you are. So you must be gone.’

‘Are my ships in Ephesus?’ I asked.

He looked pained. ‘I don’t know. If I were you, I would not go to Ephesus — Archilogos would like nothing better than to be the means of your arrest.’

He paused, winced, and I thought he looked. . old.

‘I can go to Phokaia,’ I said. Athens bought alum from Phokaia for her tanning industry. Athenian ships called there all the time.

‘In winter?’ he asked. He raised a hand, clearly tired. ‘My friend, I’m sorry. Sorry for all of it. But we are, to all intents, at war, and any hour now, I will be ordered to seize you. My son wishes you taken immediately.’

I didn’t even know his son. ‘Why?’ I asked.

‘There is a rumour — as yet unconfirmed. .’ Artapherenes looked at me and scratched his beard. ‘Do I treat you as a friend, or a dangerous enemy? Do I — by telling you this — aid your cause and work against my own king?’

I shook my head. ‘I have no idea of what you speak,’ I said. I took his hand and kissed it, as I would have that of my own father. ‘Thank you for Cyrus and the others. Without them, I would be dead.’

He nodded. ‘Well — without you, we would all be dead. Our tale of exchanged favours goes back many years, young man. You wish to go and pay your respects to Briseis. I recommend that you be brief — and circumspect.’ His voice grew harder.

I got up from my knee. ‘I am always at your service,’ I said.

He laughed. ‘You are a fine man. Try and stay alive in what is coming — and remember that if ever you wish to bend your stiff Greek neck, I have a place for you in my house.’

‘I can certainly serve cider better than the boy you had here — I wouldn’t spill any.’ I laughed, and for the first time since I’d come in, Artapherenes smiled.

‘Oh, Ari,’ he said. ‘When this war comes, it will be the end of everything for which I worked.’

He caught my hand. In a low voice he said, ‘When I die — you must take Briseis. My son will kill her.’ He looked into my eye — not pleading, but with the resolve of the warrior. ‘Swear to me.’

‘I swear by all the gods in Olympus,’ I swore, having learned nothing, apparently, about swearing oaths.

‘And until then, do an old man the grace of keeping your hands off her,’ he said with a hard smile.

I swallowed.

He nodded. ‘Go. I may not see you again — or if I do, it will be in Greece.’

Briseis was, I think, thirty-two that year.

Motherhood had mellowed her — had filled in her stomach a little, perhaps, and made her breasts lusher. It had not changed her eyes, or her neck, or her shoulders, or the quality of her smile — that complicated instrument she wielded as I wield a spear.

She rose with her accustomed grace as I entered, and she kissed me on the lips — a brush of her lips on mine that struck me like a Persian arrow.

Nothing ever changed.

She put the back of her hand on my chest when she kissed me, as if to ensure that I didn’t crush her to me, and even that small warmth went to my heart like a Levin bolt.

‘I must go,’ I said foolishly. ‘Artapherenes asked me to. . come for you when I hear he is dead.’

‘His son wants me for his own, and hates me for my contempt.’ She shrugged. ‘It is, I think, an old story.’ She took my hand — oh, the softness of that hand, and the cool warmth of her touch — and drew me on to a kline. ‘Cyrus will not let me die so easily, nor be used so ill. Neither will any of the old guard. I am not afraid.’ She smiled. ‘But I will be happy to have you as my last husband, my dear. The Greek ambassador to the Great King! Friend of the King of Sparta and Lord of Plataea!’

‘I am not the Lord of Plataea. Plataea is the size of a large farm and has an assembly of a thousand bickering old men — older than me.’ I laughed. ‘But I served at the Olympics as a priest.’

‘Oh,’ she said, with complete seriousness. ‘You are a great man, now — not just a great sword.’

‘Will you still be my wife if I am a penniless exile in Italy?’ I asked. ‘Because if Xerxes has his way, there will be no Athens, no Sparta — and no Plataea.’

Her smile fell away. ‘Yes,’ she said. She met my eye and bit her lip, and for perhaps the first time in all our years together, I saw her hesitate. ‘Yes, Ari. Our world is coming to an end. The world of Sappho and Thales and Heraklitus — of Melitus and Ephesus and Mytilini.’ She held my eye. ‘What will come after? Imperial Persia, and the Great’s King’s winged lions on every doorstep?’

‘No,’ I said.

She smiled. ‘You truly believe — even after Lades — that Greeks can stop the Great King?’

I nodded. ‘Athens and Sparta,’ I said. ‘We are not ready for what is coming. I have seen the Great King’s preparations. I cannot count his soldiers. I’m sure his fleet will be greater than five hundred hulls.’ I was suddenly bitter. ‘I sailed to Alba — do you know that? For tin. For. . a pothos. Better that I had been here, working to build a resistance to the Great King among the Greeks. Now — it is too late. In three months, he will march.’

She bit her lip. ‘No,’ she said. She looked around — again, showing fear for the first time I could remember. ‘No, he will not march in the spring.’

I felt the blood rush to my ears as if I’d taken a blow. ‘Why?’ I asked.

She leaned closer — I thought to kiss me. ‘Babylon is in revolt,’ she said.

That was all she knew.

I tore myself from her sight, took my Spartans and my Athenians, and fled for the coast. I learned — much later in life — that the Great King’s messenger came two days later. Artapherenes was sick — and his son turned out all his father’s household troops to pursue us.

But the gods had other ideas. The gods had their own plans for Greece, and for Persia. It was like. . like living in mythology, except it was real.

We rode across the plains of Sardis and over the mountains to the coast like a storm. By then, even the Spartans were excellent riders — we’d had five months on horseback with expert teachers.

And I have to tell you, my friends, that the sight of the sea — even in winter, blue and blue, rolling away into the west — made us all weep.

Aristides pulled his riding cloak over his head to hide his face. When he had mastered himself, he said, ‘I will never come to Asia again — not willingly.’

We rode down into Phokaia about the time that Artapherenes’ household guards began searching for us in Ephesus.

And there on the beach of Phokaia was my Lydia, and when we cantered along the coast road, one of the first men I met was Leukas.

It can seem, in a tale like this, as if I was the hero — the great hero, or perhaps even, if I tell it awry, the only hero. Let me say that I was surrounded by heroes, and that many, many other men said, and did, the right things.

Megakles and Sekla and Leukas were three of them. What might have happened, if they had not used their heads? They took Lydia into Ephesus at the turn of the seasons with a cargo of white Athenian hides and Phoenician dyes, and they sailed away two days later, leaving a pair of trustworthy oarsmen and a light boat to find them if I returned. The open hostility of Archilogos — the richest shipowner in Ephesus — made the harbour there unhealthy for them. So they rowed up the coast to the port that had the friendliest relations with Athens, and rented a portion of the beach for the winter — bought a small house, sold their cargo, and settled in. They had men in every port from Samos to Lesvos, and they were collecting rumours like professional spies.

Sekla, as it proved, knew more of what was happening in Babylon than Artapherenes, the satrap. Because Phokaia had alum — most of the dyers’ alum in the world — and thus it had merchants who came from Susa and Babylon and Athens and even Syracusa. Sekla’s news of the revolt was first-hand, from an eyewitness.

I got it as our rowers pulled us out of the harbour into a cold, sunny winter day. There was rain on the northern horizon and storm heads out over the Aegean.

I chose a multitude of compromises. Megakles concurred. We put the bow due north — and sailed within sight of land, all the way around the great bow, as Greeks call it — the coast of Asia, and then the coast of Thrace, under the lee of magnificent Samothrace and then down the coast of Thessaly to Euboea and Athens. It is a very, very long way to sail and row compared to skipping from Lesvos to Skyros and then to the coast of Euboea, but it has the signal advantage that if a squall hits you, you might survive a swim to the shore. And every storm-tossed day, there’s at least the possibility of an anchorage or a beach.

With adverse winds, winter storms and fog, we were almost thirty days sailing home — and our rowers were as thin entering Athens as we had been coming down out of the hills on horseback. No fishing boats in winter means no one from whom to buy fish — no shepherds on the hillsides, no mutton on the fire.

We left Aristides on the coast of Euboea. I sent him to my house with Hector and Alexandros and a pair of marines.

We landed in Piraeus, and while Sekla sold our cargo, I rushed to Themistocles.

I think that what I remember best is that when I said Babylon was in revolt, he slammed his right fist into his left.

‘Now,’ he said. ‘Now we have a chance.’