Tyrant

11

There were bruises on his ribs in the morning, and a long red welt on his left leg where skin had been ripped away, and the joints in his fingers were swollen and prickly. He couldn’t remember how some of the injuries had happened.

Sitalkes tended them with oil and herbs and got him dressed and armoured while Philokles and Diodorus argued.

‘We’re not leaving,’ he said. ‘Get it through your heads. He’s a tyrant. Tyrants fear every man’s hand. I lived. Let’s move on.’

‘He’ll kill you. He’ll kill us.’ Diodorus stood with his hands on his hips. ‘Macedon is coming, and we can’t trust our employer. Get us out.’

Philokles shook his head. ‘He’ll trust Kineas now.’

Diodorus raised his hands in frustration, as if invoking the gods. ‘He doesn’t trust anyone. He’s a tyrant! And it doesn’t matter, because we can’t trust him. Get us out!’

Kineas got to his feet slowly, and took the weight of his armour on his shoulders. The shoulder straps were resting on last night’s bruises. ‘The king of the Assagatje is waiting at Gade’s Farm. Two hundred gentlemen of the city will be mustering in an hour. A hint of any of this will be like sparks on tinder. Let me be clear. We are staying. We are going to prepare this city to fight. If you can’t stomach it, you have my leave to depart.’

Diodorus let his hands fall by his sides. ‘You know I won’t leave you,’ he said. He sounded as tired as Kineas felt. He took a deep breath, and said, ‘Kineas, can you tell me why? Why you are hazarding our lives to fight Macedon?’

Philokles stood very still. Quietly, he said, ‘That is the question, isn’t it? A few days ago, you told the king that we should not fight. What changed your mind?’

Kineas picked his Sakje whip off the oak table and rubbed his thumb across the gold decoration. ‘Last night, while I argued with the archon, it came to me, as if a god had spoken in my ear. Friends, I cannot explain better than that. In one moment, my mind was set. It is not so much a matter for rational argument as a — a revelation.’ He tucked the whip into the sash he wore over his breastplate. ‘My mind is clear. I intend to do this thing.’

Diodorus sighed. ‘The men will not be happy.’

Kineas nodded. ‘Any who wish to leave will be allowed to go.’

Diodorus shook his head. ‘None of them will leave. But they will not be happy.’

Kineas nodded again. ‘That is in the hands of the gods. For now, we have a great deal of work to do. Philokles, you will take Sitalkes and ride to the king, telling him we will attend him with all of the gentlemen of the city in the second hour after noon. Diodorus, the rest of us shall spend the morning throwing javelins and practising the cavalry at riding in formation. After noon, we will ride in a column out to the king and fetch him to the archon in style.’

Philokles said, ‘Someone had best warn the archon. And don’t forget that you were to speak with Memnon.’

‘Send Crax to the palace and ask Cyrus the steward if the archon will be available at the second hour after noon. Send a slave to Memnon to ask him if he can attend me here. Explain the need.’

Diodorus saluted. ‘Yes, Hipparch.’ He smiled.

Kineas smiled back. ‘Despite everything, I like the sound of that.’

The muster started well. There were more men missing — making their last trading trips of the year, or home sick, or making excuses. On the other hand, there were far more men mounted and armed. Niceas, Ajax and Leucon had them in their ranks in a few minutes. The rolls were called and the absent noted.

Kineas rode to the head of the troop. There were almost two hundred men mounted. They filled the east side of the hippodrome in four sloppy ranks. Horses moved back and forth, or shifted, and in the second rank, a stallion nipped a mare.

‘Welcome, gentlemen of Olbia!’ Kineas called across the turmoil. He sat straight, trying to ignore the fatigue of the last day’s ride, the scars of the fight by the wine shop. ‘I thank you for the honour you have done me in granting me this office, and further in making me a citizen of this city. I will not waste further words when none can express my feelings.’ He looked back and forth under his helmet. ‘This morning we will have our first drill. Every man will present himself, his horse, and his armour to my hyperetes, Niceas, who will advise you on how to better them. As soon as a man passes Niceas, he will join Diodorus in practising the throwing of javelins, and from there pass to Ajax, who will instruct on remounting in combat. At noon, we will take some bread and oil while we hold our mounts, like cavalrymen should. Then we will practise various formations. This afternoon, the full troop of the city will do its first duty in many years — we will ride to escort the king of the Sakje.’ A buzz of talk from the ranks. ‘Silence, please, gentlemen. During the whole of a muster, you are no longer free to chatter. Do the citizens who serve on foot chatter in the phalanx? No. They listen for orders. So you must. Any questions?’

A plaintive voice from the fourth ranks called, ‘I have an appointment to buy linen seed in the afternoon.’

Kineas smiled under the cold cheek pieces of his helmet. ‘You will miss it.’

‘I didn’t bring food,’ said another.

‘When I dismiss you, you may send your slaves for food. Next time you will know better — a muster is for the whole day.’

‘Are we all to have blue cloaks?’ asked another.

‘Niceas will inform you. Anything else?’ He looked at them.

They sat on their horses in silence. As a group, they were better disciplined than their Athenian counterparts, but they looked like what they were — rich men playing soldier. Kineas sighed.

‘Hippeis!’ He called. He glanced around. Niceas, Ajax and Leucon were all together by the stadium seats, with horses hard by and equipment laid out on blankets as examples. Diodorus and the two Gauls had paced out a run for javelin practice, and Antigonus was propping a heavy shield against a pair of spears as a target. As ready as they were likely to be. ‘Dismissed to your posts!’ he said.

The whole mass surged into motion. A quarter of them rode straight to him with complaints, demands and suggestions. He’d expected as much. They weren’t soldiers — they were rich men, and Greeks.

Kineas knew how to make short work of them. Lykeles helped him — another veteran of the Athenian hippeis musters. Lykeles rode among them, hearing their complaints and dealing with the easiest himself. Kineas was patient but firm with the rest. Half an hour sufficed to see every one of them off to one of the stations.

Against the tiered seats, Niceas could be heard urging the purchase of cornell-wood javelins. He had done his research, and already knew which merchants in the town could get the wood from Persia and which smiths made the best heads. He and Leucon, ably supported by Coenus, reviewed the quality and training of the men’s horses.

Coenus walked across the sand to Kineas and waited to speak. When Kineas glanced at him, he said, ‘We have a horse problem.’

Kineas grunted and pushed his helmet back on his head. ‘Mares and stallions?’

Coenus nodded. ‘Horses are cheap here. We should have a standard sex. Otherwise, when the mares come into season, we’ll have chaos.’

Kineas tugged at his beard. ‘What would Xenophon say?’

Coenus smiled. ‘Geldings.’

Kineas felt as if he had to sleep or die. He leaned down. ‘Geldings it is, then. Exempt the hyperetes and the officers.’ Having said so, he rode off to watch the first group of riders tackle the javelin throwing. They were all the young men who had ridden to the Sakje, and they made a creditable showing. Watching them gave him an idea — that he should form troops of fifty within the hippeis. All of the best men would just make one company of fifty.

Kyros galloped down the sand, his bay horse stretching to the task, hooves flashing. His throw was hard and true, and the shield fell with a crack like thunder.

‘That boy throws like the hand of Zeus,’ Philokles said at Kineas’s shoulder. ‘The king sends his regards. He will be waiting for you at the second hour.’

The boys were competent, but the rest of them were not. Nicomedes set the standard by falling during his first remount and missing the shield every time he rode by it. He affected an air of humorous disdain, but he hid his irritation poorly. Kineas guessed he was unused to failing at anything.

Like every other gentleman on the sand.

Ajax rode up alongside the city’s fashion leader and twirled a javelin in his fist. He shouted — Kineas couldn’t hear the words, but it was a tease — and rode at the target, scattering slaves who had intended to help their master. Nicomedes cursed, pulled himself up with a fist in his horse’s mane, and followed, and Ajax threw true. Nicomedes’ throw was wide by a hand’s breadth. His curses flowed across the arena.

‘The old men ride like sacks of goat shit and the middle-aged men are so afraid to get themselves dirty they remind me of fucking priestesses,’ said Niceas. ‘And that’s before we try riding in formations.’

Kineas tried not to smile. ‘The boys aren’t bad. I want to put all the best men in one company of fifty. Make me a list. Let it be known, so that men will struggle to be in that company.’

‘Think of that yourself, did you?’ Niceas said with a hard smile. The six Athenian companies of horse were rivals in every kind of procession and game. He pointed with his chin at Eumenes’ father, Cleomenes, who sat quietly with a group of his friends. They were not participating. ‘Not quite mutiny,’ he said. ‘But he’s half the problem.’

‘I’ll see to it,’ Kineas answered, turning his horse.

An older man threw a leg over his horse and fell straight off the far side. ‘You intend to fight Macedon with this lot?’ Niceas asked.

‘You too?’

‘Me first. I’m told that the gods themselves have told you to fight Macedon. Did they send you that whip, too?’ Niceas pointed at the heavy whip in Kineas’s sash. ‘A troop of companions would scatter these like dandruff at the first charge. Leave ’em for the peltasts to clean up. Half of them will fall off and stay down until their throats are slit. Tell me if I lie.’

Kineas wheeled his horse. ‘Sounds like you have a lot of work to do, then.’

Niceas’s ferret face wrinkled in a rueful smile. ‘That’s what I knew you’d say.’

Kineas rode over to where Cleomenes and his twenty friends and allies sat. ‘Which station would you prefer to go to first, sir?’ he asked.

Cleomenes ignored him. One of his friends laughed. ‘We’re gentlemen, not soldiers. Don’t include us in this farce.’

Kineas looked at the man who had spoken. ‘You lack a breastplate. Your horse is too small. Please report to my hyperetes.’

The man shrugged. ‘And if I say no?’ he said.

Kineas didn’t raise his voice. ‘I might fine you,’ he said. ‘I might report you to the archon.’

The man grinned, as if that was not a threat he feared.

‘I might beat you to a bloody pulp right here on the sand,’ Kineas added. ‘Any of the three are within my legal right as hipparch.’

The man flinched.

Kineas turned to Cleomenes. ‘I am a gentleman of Athens,’ he said. ‘I hold no grudge that you voted against me as a citizen and again as hipparch. That is how democracy functions. But if you fail to do your duty, we will very soon come to a test that cannot benefit anyone.’

Cleomenes never met his eye. He was looking at someone else — probably Nicomedes, his principal rival in the city. ‘Very well,’ he said tersely. ‘I feel a sudden need to throw a javelin.’

It was a curiously empty victory. Cleomenes walked over to the butts, mounted his horse, and threw — competently — and then sat down again.

Kineas tried a different tack. He waved at Coenus to join him, and indicated Cleomenes. ‘There sits one of the city’s principal gentlemen. He dislikes me. He’s behaving like an arrogant fool and I can’t figure him out. Befriend him.’

Coenus chuckled. ‘As one arrogant fool to another, you mean?’

‘Something like that,’ Kineas agreed.

The close order drill was terrible. The first attempt to form the rhomboid formation that Kineas preferred was hampered by the size of the hippodrome and the numbers involved, but it would have been horrible nonetheless. It took them half an hour to get every man to see his place in the formation, and they couldn’t ride ten strides without becoming a mob.

Kineas sighed and gave it up. Instead, he formed them in a column of fours and rode them in circles until most of them learned to keep their intervals — a full hour.

He was hoarse from shouting. All the professionals were hoarse, and so were some of the boys who had ridden the plains. He shook his head and rode over to Cleitus. ‘I’m losing my voice. Would you order them to disperse and take their lunch?’

‘With pleasure,’ Cleitus said. And when he had fetched his own bread, he returned and said, ‘I knew you were the right man for the job. Look at them!’

Kineas took some sausage from Sitalkes. ‘Why? They look like dog shit.’

Cleitus frowned. ‘No, they don’t. They look like they are trying. If they stop trying, we lose. So far, we’re winning. Get them through three of these, and they’ll feel the difference. Could set quite a fashion. Can I have some of that sausage? The garlic is making my stomach rumble.’

Kineas handed over a chunk of sausage. Cleitus cut off a piece with a knife and tossed it to his son, who was eating with Ajax and Kyros. They were sitting on their horses to eat, like Sakje. In fact, all the young men who had gone with Kineas were sitting mounted to eat.

Cleitus offered a skin of wine to Kineas. ‘Rotten stuff. Perfect for soldiers. So — we’re fighting Macedon?’

‘News travels around here.’ Kineas took a pull at the wineskin. They were going to be late fetching the king.

‘Is it different in Athens? The way I heard it, you killed a squad of murderous Persian assassins — or perhaps they were Kelts — and then thrashed the archon with your big whip and told him to behave, and then your eyes rolled back in your head and you prophesied that we would defeat Antipater.’ Cleitus’s light tone didn’t cover the anxiety on his face.

Kineas handed back the wineskin. ‘That’s pretty much how it was,’ he said.

‘My first rhetoric tutor told me that my facetious ways would get me in trouble, and look, he was right. Kineas, I proposed you for citizenship. My friends made you hipparch. Don’t get us all killed.’ Cleitus grimaced and took more sausage.

Kineas pulled off his helmet and scratched his head vigorously. Then he met Cleitus’s eyes. ‘I don’t have a place to invite gentlemen to dinner. Will you host for me? I’ll explain to your guests why I think we have to fight, and what they stand to lose if we don’t.’

Cleitus grunted. ‘I was hoping you’d just say the rumour was wrong,’ he said.

‘Macedon is coming here,’ Kineas said.

The king was waiting. He and his men sat like gold-armoured centaurs. The column of city cavalry rode up and halted, more like a mob than Kineas liked, and Petrocolus and Cleomenes rushing to embrace their sons ruined any pretence to military discipline.

The Sakje didn’t seem to mind. The king pushed through the throng of Greek horsemen to reach Kineas. ‘You’re late!’ he said, smiling.

‘I offer profound apology, O King. The archon awaits us.’ Kineas motioned with his whip at Niceas, who raised his voice, and the city troop began to reform.

Satrax shook his head. ‘I’m teasing you. What is time to us? But it seems to mean so much to you Greeks — the second hour after noon!’ The young king laughed. ‘Try getting the Sakje to assemble within a single moon!’

‘Yet you would fight Macedon,’ Kineas said.

‘Oh, it’s easier to assemble them for war,’ Satrax said. He narrowed his eyes. ‘You’ve changed your mind. I can see it on your face.’

‘I have, too,’ Kineas said. He shrugged. ‘The gods spoke to me.’ The king shrugged. ‘Kam Baqca assured me that this would happen. I am not surprised she is right. She is nearly always right.’

Kineas watched both hyperetes pushing the column into some form of order. He had a few minutes. ‘I have spoken to the archon.’ Satrax nodded. ‘I think he will support the war,’ Kineas said. ‘At least, for now.’

‘This, too, is as Kam Baqca said it would be.’ The king smiled, showing his even teeth and the full lips that hid under his moustache and beard. ‘So — I will lead my clans to war against Macedon.’ He didn’t sound excited. More resigned.

Kineas nodded. The day’s muster had taken the eagerness out of him. He was going to lead these enthusiastic amateurs against the veterans of fifty years of war. ‘Gods send us victory,’ he said.

‘The gods send victories to those who earn them,’ said the king.

Kineas attended the meeting between the archon and the king on the porch of the temple of Apollo, but he didn’t speak. The archon was a different man — direct, sober, blunt — a commander of men. He changed faster than an actor who took multiple roles in the theatre. Kineas had seen it done in Oedipus — the king was also the messenger. In Olbia, the drunken tyrant could also be the philosopher king.

Cyrus stood at his right hand and wrote the terms of the treaty. The king and the archon drafted it in an hour and clasped hands, each swearing by Apollo and by their own gods to support the other in war, should Macedon march in the spring. They did not pledge eternal friendship. The king did not agree that Olbians were free to travel the plains without hindrance, but he did agree to forbear taxing them for as long as the treaty was in effect.

After they clasped hands, the archon mounted a horse and escorted the king to the walls of the city, and the two men chatted as they rode. Kineas, directly behind the archon, heard more silence than chatter. In the arch of the gate, the archon drew rein.

‘We will need to meet in the spring to discuss strategy,’ he said.

The king looked out over the city’s fields and nodded. ‘I will need time — and space — to muster my people.’

The archon was an excellent rider. Kineas hadn’t had an opportunity to note it before. He surprised Kineas by backing his horse a few steps and catching Kineas’s bridle. ‘My hipparch pressed me to make this war, O King. So I’ll send him to you in the spring.’

Satrax nodded. ‘I will look forward to that,’ he said.

The archon nodded. ‘I thought you might. We’ll know for sure about what Antipater plans when the Athenian grain fleet comes in the spring.’

The king’s horse was restive. He calmed it with a hand on its neck and some words in Sakje, and then he reached for Kineas’s hand. ‘In the spring, when the ground sets hard and the grass is green, I will send you an escort.’

The streets were crowded, and the gate was almost surrounded by the people of the town and the suburb. The king waved in farewell, and then he made his horse rear and leap, so that it almost seemed that the two would gallop across the sky, instead of merely riding along the road.

At his side, the archon said, ‘You enjoyed your time among these barbarians?’

And Kineas, who could dissemble when need required, said, ‘I befriended one of their war leaders. I had this whip as a guest gift.’

The archon nodded slowly. ‘Your friendship with these bandits may be more of a boon than I thought, Athenian. They like you.’ He nodded again. ‘Their king is not a simple man. He has education.’ He gave a nasty grin. ‘He is young and arrogant.’

‘He was a hostage in Pantecapaeum,’ Kineas said.

‘Why did I never meet him?’ the archon asked. He shrugged. ‘Or perhaps I did. They breed like maggots. And their women are so unchaste — hard to know which little bastard is the get of which sire. Still, they’ll make good fodder if we must fight this war.’ Kineas stiffened but said nothing. ‘Which I will now work like a slave to prevent.’ The archon turned his horse. ‘Back to the palace!’

Cleitus gave a dinner in his honour on the night when Athens honoured her dead and her heroes, and he drank too deep of too much wine. He drank too much wine because he was called to speak in public. At Cleitus’s urging, and with help from Diodorus and Philokles, he prepared an oration, and after dinner, when urged by Cleitus and all the guests, he rose from his couch and went to the centre of the room like the politicians who had attended his father’s dinners in Athens. He had never thought to use such tactics himself, and his hands shook so that he had to thrust them into his tunic.

‘Gentlemen of Olbia,’ he began formally. But that wasn’t the tone he wanted at all, especially with the quaver in his voice and he smiled, shrugged, rubbed his beard. ‘Friends and sponsors.’ Better. ‘It has been said — indeed, it’s being said right now, somewhere not far from here — that having been sponsored as a citizen and then raised to hipparch, I have repaid your kindness by plunging you into desperate war.’

They looked interested, but no more. The younger men — Eumenes, for instance — had no idea what a war would mean. They were excited by it. The older men had the means to board their ships and vanish around the coast, to Heraclea or Tomis or even to Athens.

Kineas took a deep breath. ‘The war is none of our making. Alexander — the boy king who I served — is now a man. More than a man, he has declared himself a god. He marches to conquer, not just the Medes, but the whole world.’ Kineas spread his arms like an actor. Funny how these things came back to you. Kineas hadn’t practised rhetoric in ten years, at least.

‘But,’ he continued, ‘one of the ways we can tell that Alexander is not so much of a god as he would like to be, is that his wars still require men, and money. The gods, I think, could conquer the world with their own power. Alexander does it with the treasury of Persopolis and the manpower of the whole Greek world. And this hunger for treasure to fight his wars has cost Macedon dearly. None of the gold of Persopolis went home. None of the spoil of Babylon waits in chests of cedar in Phillip’s treasury. Olympia does not bathe in the pearls of the Nile. Alexander burns gold as other men burn wood.’ He took watered wine from a servant and sipped. ‘Antipater needs money. He needs to put his boot on the necks of the cities of Attica and the Peloponnese. He needs our grain and our gold, and he needs a war to toughen his levies before he sends them to his master, the god.’

He paused a moment to let that sink in. Then he began to pace around the circle of couches, speaking directly to them, first one and then another. ‘This will not be a simple war between cities, where hoplites clash and the winner dictates the terms to the loser or burns his fields. If Antipater takes this city, he will keep it. He will appoint a satrap to rule — one of his own men from Macedon.’ Kineas said the last directly to Nicomedes. It was done as if by chance, and Nicomedes’ smooth face didn’t betray whether the shot went home or not.

‘There will be a garrison of Macedonians and heavy taxes. No assembly, and no men of property. You might ask me how I know all this, and I will say that I know because I watched it done from Granicus to the Nile. You think the archon is a tyrant?’ Kineas looked around at the little starts — that had them awake. ‘The archon is the purest democrat next to a garrison of Macedon. You think that Antipater might benefit the city? Or perhaps that you can slip away and return in a few years when the business opportunities are better?’ Kineas stopped again and pointed at Lykeles. ‘Lykeles was a gentleman of Thebes. Ask him what the occupation of Macedon meant.’

They were restless, fidgeting on their couches, the older ones refusing to meet his eye. Like most rich men, they heard him, but they doubted that his words would apply — they’d find a way to bribe their way free, they were sure. But again, his argument hit home — every man present knew that Thebes had been utterly destroyed, the walls cast down, most of the citizens sold into slavery for attacking their Macedonian garrison. And that was Thebes, a pillar of the Greek world, the city of Oedipus and Epaminondas.

Kineas sipped more wine. ‘I will not tell you that we can defeat the might of Macedon. If Alexander came here, with seven taxeis of his veterans and four regiments of companions, with all this Thessalian horse and all his psiloi and his peltasts and the guard — then I would say that, despite our alliances and our own strength, we would be broken in an hour.

‘But it is not Alexander who marches. It will probably not even be Antipater — no mean general, let me tell you. It will be one of the junior generals who stayed home from the Persian wars, and are now eager for fame — eager to make a name on a march to the sea. That general will have two taxeis of Macedonians, and one of those will be raw. He will have one regiment of companions — every troublemaker that Antipater wants out of the country. He will have Thracians, Getae and Bastarnae. And that army, gentlemen, we can defeat. Or, even if we fail to defeat it, we can keep it on the plains so long that it will have no time to lay siege to this city.’

They lay quietly on their couches, listening and drinking wine. He made it clear that he was finished by sitting on his couch. He felt empty. He felt like a schoolboy who had given a speech and forgotten some part of it. He shrugged — oh, the birching that gesture would have gotten him from his rhetoric tutor. ‘That is the way I see it,’ he said, and felt the poverty of his summation.

Cleomenes rose in turn. He lay by himself — he had brought his son, but Eumenes had gone off to share the couch of Kyros. Most of the other men present either ignored him or fawned on him. Unlike Nicomedes and Cleitus, who were bitter rivals in trade and politics but appeared to enjoy each other’s company, Cleomenes was aloof, as if he didn’t want to be caught associating with his rivals.

‘The hipparch speaks well — for a mercenary.’ He looked around the room with patrician disdain. ‘Just as well might I visit another man’s city and tell him how he can, with enormous risk, win through to a little gain. But despite the fact that you, Cleitus, and you, Nicomedes, conspired to give this man the vote, I say he is a foreigner, a man with little stake in our city — surely not the same stake as I have. Why would a man of my accomplishments wish to provoke a war with Macedon? Our mercenary thinks so highly of his profession that he desires for us all to take part in it. I say that it is the business of his sort to make war. I have neither skill nor appetite for it. Men of property have no need to do such things. When I need them done, I can hire — a mercenary.’ He looked around. ‘You are a pack of fools if you think that your little squadron of horse will last a minute against the force of Macedon. Men like you have no business fighting — your business is business. Achilles was a fool, and Odysseus not much better. Grow up. Accept the coming changes. Let this city grow and prosper as it is meant to, regardless of who claims to rule it. And leave fighting to mercenaries.’

He gave Kineas half a smile. ‘Although when I hire one, I’ll try to find one with less arrogance, less pretension, and superior skill at fighting — not a wine-sack blow-hard who was dismissed by Alexander.’

He sat down, and the room erupted. Men were watching Kineas. He was acutely aware of how deeply Cleomenes’ speech had cut him — both in his own pride and in the eyes of some of his most prominent supporters.

But despite the instant rise of rage in his heart, and the double grip of fear and anger in his gut, Kineas was a veteran of many years of Athenian politics — in his father’s house, and in the hippeis. He refilled his cup, spilled a libation with a prayer to Athena, and rose again, outwardly calm — inwardly both enraged, and hurt, even saddened. His stomach seemed to rise to fill his throat. In some ways, it was worse than a fight — in a fight, the daemon came to hold you up, to stiffen your sinews, but in debate, a man who was a friend, or at least sometimes an ally, suddenly turned on you and spoke insults.

Face to face. Like battle.

Kineas took a breath to steady himself. ‘I’m sure Cleomenes speaks with the best of intentions,’ he said. His mild sarcasm, so at odds with what the room expected from him, silenced the babble. ‘Cleomenes, am I the wine-sack blow-hard to whom you refer?’

Cleomenes glared at him like Medusa, but Kineas pinned him with his own gaze.

‘Come, we’re all friends here — you must have had someone in mind.’ Kineas’s raillery was still light.

Cleomenes wasn’t fooled. He wriggled on his couch like a bug on a pin.

Kineas raised an eyebrow. ‘So, you don’t mean me?’ He took a step forward, and Cleomenes wriggled again. ‘Perhaps you mean Memnon? Or perhaps Licurgus? Perhaps my friend Diodorus? Or perhaps young Ajax, Isokles son of Tomis — is that who you mean?’

Kineas took another step towards the man. He had the feeling that Cleomenes would make a bad enemy — but that enmity was already there. He was not going to win the man to his side — so he had to be defeated. ‘Except none of them served Alexander. Only I.’ He stepped closer. ‘Or were you speaking generally, of wine-sacks and blow-hards you’ve known in your wide experience of the world?’

Cleomenes stood up. ‘You know who I meant!’ he said, his face red.

Kineas shrugged. ‘I’m a poor mercenary, slow of intellect. Tell me.’

Cleomenes spat, ‘Figure it out.’

Kineas spread his hands. ‘I am a simple soldier. I admire those men to whom you referred — Achilles and Odysseus. They may not have been good men of business — but they were not afraid to speak their minds.’

Cleomenes rolled off his couch, his face purple. ‘Damn you, you insolent-’

Cleitus rushed to intervene — both men had their hands balled into fists. ‘Gentlemen — I think we have left reasoned debate and good feeling at the bottom of the last wine bowl. This is mere argument — there is bad feeling. Cleomenes did not mean the insult he implied, I’m sure — and neither would Kineas mean to call Cleomenes a coward, would you, Kineas?’

Kineas nodded — and let his next words drawl out with all the Athenian arrogance he could muster — which was considerable. ‘I didn’t say that Cleomenes was a coward,’ he said with a mocking smile. ‘Indeed, I spoke generally, about the long-haired Argives who fought for Helen on the windy plains of Illios.’

Several guests applauded. Kineas’s rhetorical tricks had the elegance of an Athenian gentleman’s education. Cleomenes looked rude by comparison, and he’d lost his temper entirely. Without another word, he picked up a scroll bag he had brought and walked to the door. ‘You will all rue the day you brought this man into our city,’ he said, and left.

Despite the lazy smile pasted to his face, Kineas felt weak at the knees, as if he had fought a combat. He felt as if he needed more wine. When he reached the couch he shared with Philokles, the Spartan smiled at him. Other men asked a few questions, but most chose to change the subject. He drank a great deal, Cleomenes’ insults still rankling, and went to bed drunk.

The tree was bigger than the world, and its trunk was like a city wall rising from a rocky plain. The lowest branches hung to the ground. It was a cedar — no, it was a black pine from the mountains of Attica.

Closer, it seemed that it was not one tree, but all trees. And the fallen leaves and needles littered the ground, so that every step he took, he sank to his ankles, and when he looked down to watch his footing, he saw that the leaves were mixed with bones. And under the leaves and bones were corpses — strange that the bones lay over the corpses, he thought, with the clarity of dream thought.

He felt strangely in control of his dream, and he made his body turn and look away from the tree, but there was nothing to see except the branches hanging to the ground, and the near dark beyond the tree, and the leaves and bones, and all the dead.

He turned back and set his hand against the trunk, and it was warm and smooth like the back of Srayanka’s hands, and he…

Awoke. Troubled because of the dream’s clarity and because it was alien. While he dreamed the tree, he was another man. A man who didn’t think like a Hellene. And that was terrifying.

He covered his terror in work, training the hippeis, which he did despite the first serious winter storm. The sailing season closed. The threat of Antipater became known throughout the city. No one could flee, so rich and poor alike settled in for months of cold, telling each other that there would be time to flee in the spring if Antipater really did come.

In the next week, Memnon called a muster of the city’s hoplites. It was the first muster held in four years. The archon had restricted such musters because he feared the power of the hoplites all together and under arms as much as he feared everything else, but Memnon insisted and he had his way.

The city hoplites looked better than the cavalry. They wore more armour than their compatriots in Athens or Sparta. The thirty years war in Attica and the Peloponnese had taught Greeks to wear less armour and move faster, but the hoplite class of the Euxine had missed those bloody wars and they came to muster in the bronze cuirass, greaves, and heavy helmets of their fathers.

They mustered in the open fields north of the suburbs and trampled the snow and the grain stubble for three hours. Despite the four-year hiatus and the presence of a new generation who had never been trained, they looked competent. They had three hundred mercenaries to provide file-closers, and they had seasoned men in their ranks who had served in the war with Heraclea.

Kineas watched them drill with Cleitus and half a dozen city gentlemen. He was unstinting in his praise, whether to his own men or to Memnon and the city officers when they approached at the end of the drill.

Memnon stopped and leaned on his spear. He had been charging about the field, black cloak flapping behind him, correcting faults and praising virtue, and now he panted like a dog. ‘I’ve got to get them out of all that armour,’ he said. He pointed to a group of young men at drill. ‘They keep all the old traditions here — the youngest, best fighters make a select company to cover the flank. I’ll try to keep them from wearing it.’

Kineas watched the older men standing in glittering ranks. ‘Depends on what we think they’re for,’ he said.

Nicomedes stopped flirting with Ajax and pushed his horse forward. ‘Surely we all know what hoplites are for,’ he said. ‘I used to serve as one myself, you may recall. Before the hipparch forced me to serve on horseback.’

Kineas smiled. ‘I gave you the excuse to buy that beautiful blue cloak and that exciting breastplate,’ he said. Then he turned back to Memnon. ‘For dash — or to chase down Thracians — our light-armed hoplites are the thing. But here on the plain…’ Here Kineas raised his head to gaze across the snow. He didn’t even know exactly where she was, but she was somewhere out in the endless white. He caught himself. ‘Here it is cavalry country. Armour makes a man braver, and steadies him, and keeps him safe from the javelins and bows.’

Memnon rubbed his jaw, which was as black as his cloak. ‘By Zeus, Hipparch, let us never have to face the bandits out in open country. I stood against the boy king at Issus, when his horse came against us. If they’d had bows, none of us would have escaped.’

‘Armour might stop the first push of a Macedonian taxeis,’ Kineas said.

Memnon curled his lip. ‘Keep my flanks secure, and I’ll stop them dead. These lads may hate the archon like fire hates water — many of them hate me, I dare say, and they’ll hate me worse before spring. But they’re good lads, and every man and boy has done his years in the gymnasium and in the field — real hoplites. Not so many of those left in Greece — most left their bones at Chaeronea. I hear you boned Cleomenes up the arse.’

Nicomedes snorted aloud. Cleitus looked away, embarrassed.

Memnon winked. ‘Cleomenes is one of the many men in this city who think they would make a good archon.’ He glared at Nicomedes. ‘But he’s more of a boil on the arse than his rivals, and no mistake.’ Memnon nodded to Kineas. ‘If you survive the winter, you’ll know ’em like I do. How’d you arrange for the assembly to make you a citizen? And hipparch?’

Kineas shook his head. ‘Cleitus did it. I was as surprised as any.’

‘The endless advantages of birth,’ Memnon spat. His face was unreadable behind the shape of his helmet. ‘Antipater is really marching here in the spring?’

Kineas nodded. ‘Yes, it is true.’

‘This isn’t some trick of the archon’s to keep us all biddable for another season? This is real? And you will fight him?’ Most of the hoplites were watching them.

‘Yes,’ Kineas said.

‘Why? You were one of the boy king’s men.’ Memnon took Kineas by the hand. His hand was hard as iron, and it held Kineas’s tight, as if to read him for truth.

‘I think a god told me to fight.’ Or a woman. Perhaps the gods spoke through her. Or Athena. Or all together. Kineas knew he had to fight Macedon as clearly as he had ever known anything in his life. Such revelations were divine.

Memnon relinquished his hand. ‘I do not honour the gods as much as I should,’ he said. ‘But I would like to fight Macedon again.’ He turned on his heel and walked away across the last blades of autumn grass where it waved above the snow.