Tyrant

18

They crossed the plains from west to east at speed. The Sakje set their usual pace, and the Olbians, with remounts provided, kept up. They made a hundred stades a day, by Kineas’s estimation, watering at rivers that crossed the plain at measured intervals, camping in established spots with fresh green grass for fodder and a few trees for firewood.

The level of organization was staggering, for barbarians. But Kineas no longer thought of them as barbarians.

Kineas had never seen an army of five thousand move so fast. If Zopryon pressed his men as hard as Alexander himself, he might make sixty stades, although patrols would go farther. And Kineas suspected he had not seen the fastest march of which the Sakje were capable.

Most of the campsites were shadowed by tall hills of turf that grew out of the plain, often the highest point for many hours riding. On the fourth evening, his muscles sore but his body clean, Kineas sat with his back against Niceas’s, rubbing tallow into his bridle leather and then working carefully at the headstall where it had begun to burst its stitches, making minute alterations in the fit as he went. The new horse had a big head.

Srayanka came with Parshtaevalt, and Hirene, her trumpeter. She had become less shy about seeking him out.

‘Come walk, Kineax,’ she said.

Kineas used the awl in his palm to punch two new holes, working carefully with the old leather. He needed the headstall to last until they were back at the camp at Great Bend, and no longer.

‘Soon,’ he said.

She sat down by him and pointed at his work to Hirene, who frowned. Niceas was cutting a Getae cloak to make a saddle blanket.

Hirene spoke quickly in Sakje. Her lip curled, whether in sneer or smile Kineas couldn’t tell. Srayanka laughed, a lovely sound, and sat gracefully on Kineas’s blanket.

‘Hirene say — you have uses, after all,’ Srayanka said. ‘The great war leader sews leather!’

Kineas ran a stitch back through the last hole, and then again, and then a third time, and then bit the linen thread as close as he could to the leather. Kineas buffed the headstall with the palm of his hand and then laid it carefully atop the pile of his tack. Parshtaevalt knelt by the pile and began to examine the bit.

‘Not good ours,’ he said. ‘But good.’ His Greek, like their Sakje, was improving by the day.

Niceas tossed his blanket on his own tack and waved across the fire for Ataelus to translate. To Parshtaevalt, he said, ‘You just show me, mate.’ He gave Kineas a friendly wink.

Hirene looked torn — she wanted to follow her mistress, but Srayanka shook her head. Turning to Kineas, she said, ‘Bring your sword.’

Kineas thought that he had the oddest courtship since Alexandros met Helen. But he fetched the Egyptian blade from his blanket, where the precious thing was rolled at the centre.

She took his hand, and they walked off into the red evening. By the camp, the turf was even and the grass bright green and short, but she led him out into the sea of grass, where hummocks made walking treacherous. They laughed together when their mutual refusal to relinquish the other’s hand cost them their balance.

Kineas looked back over his shoulder to find that they were in full view of the camp, stretching out to the north and south along the stream, and that many heads were turned, watching them.

Reading his thoughts, she said, ‘Let them watch. This hill is grave to the father of me. Here, we kill two hundred horses, send him to Ghanam. I baqca here.’

They came to the base of the mound. Closer up, it was clearer that the hill was made by the hands of men. Turfs were set like steps running up the barrow, and a deep trench, invisible from a stade away, ran clear around the base with a barrier of stone around the outside.

Srayanka led him around a quarter of the boundary ditch, and then they entered at a gate flanked by wild roses and began to climb the mound. She began to sing tonelessly.

The ball of the setting sun came to rest on the far horizon, bathing the green grass of the turf with red and orange and gold light, so that the hill appeared to be an amalgam of grass and gold and blood. Her singing increased in volume and tone.

‘Hurry!’ she said. She pulled at his hand, and they ran the last few steps to the top, where a stone sat in a slight depression. From the stone rose a bar of rusted iron. Closer up it proved to be the remnants of a sword, with the gold of the hilt still standing proud above the decay of the blade.

The sun was huge, a quarter gone beneath the curve of the world.

‘Draw your sword,’ she ordered.

Kineas drew his sword. She reached out and took the rusted sword reverentially by the hilt and drew it from the stone. She seized Kineas’s sword from him, and as the last rays of the sun turned its hilt to fire, she plunged it straight into the stone — deeper, if anything, than the other sword had been.

As the sun vanished, leaving the sky like a dye shop, with vivid reds and pale pink contrasting to the growing purple and dark blue veil of night, she stopped singing. She knelt facing the stone.

Kineas stood by her, embarrassed at his own ignorance of her ways, equally embarrassed by the extent of her barbarism — but she was a priestess, and it was not the Greek way to ridicule any people’s gods, so he knelt by her in the damp hollow. He could smell the moss on the stone, and the oil on his Egyptian blade, and the woodsmoke in her hair.

They knelt there until his knees burned and his back was a column of stone against his muscles. Darkness fell, complete, so that the plain beyond the hollow vanished, and there was only the sky and the stone, the smells of the hollow, and then the cry of an owl, and… he was flying over the plain of grass, looking for prey, the pinprick glow of uncountable stars sufficient light for him to see.

He rose higher over the plain, in lazy circles, and when he saw a circle of fires — a dozen circles of fire, a hundred circles of fire — then he descended again, watching the camp as he came down in spirals

…

As suddenly as she had knelt, Srayanka rose, took a pouch of seeds from her waist and scattered them in the hollow and on the stone.

Kineas got to his feet with considerable difficulty. One of his feet was asleep. But his mind was clear, part of it still high in the dark sky.

‘You are baqca,’ she said. ‘You dream strong dream?’

He rubbed his face to clear his head. The inside of his mouth felt gummy, as if he’d eaten resin. ‘I dreamed,’ he said in Greek.

She put a hand on his face. ‘I must sit in the,’ she paused, seeking words, ‘smoke tent — even here, under the Guryama of the father of me.’ She rubbed his face affectionately. ‘You dream free.’

He was still in the grip of the dream, and she took his hand and led him down the hill.

Halfway down, he began to recover. ‘My sword!’ he said.

She smiled, used her position higher on the turf hill to lean to him, eye to eye, and kiss him.

It was a long kiss, and he found that his hand quite naturally went to her right breast, and she bit his tongue and stepped back, laughing. ‘Sword right here,’ she said, slapping at his groin with a hard hand. Then she relented. ‘Climb for sword with dawn. Baqca thing, yes?’

Kineas spoke hesitantly. ‘You are putting the power of your father’s sword into my sword?”

She considered him for a moment, with the look a mother gives when a child has asked a difficult question, or a question whose answer may itself cause harm. ‘You marry me?’ she asked.

Kineas’s breath caught in his throat. But he didn’t hesitate. ‘Yes.’

She nodded, as if the answer was just as she expected. ‘So we ride together, yes? And perhaps…’ She wore an open look, like a priestess at worship, a look that scared him to his bones and marrow. ‘Perhaps we rule together?’

Kineas took a step back. ‘The king rules,’ he said.

Srayanka shrugged. ‘Kings die.’

Kineas thought, You’re backing the wrong horse, my love. I’m the one fated to die. He reached out his arms to her, and she came into them. When her head was against his shoulder, he said, ‘Srayanka, I-’

She put a hand on his mouth. ‘Shhh,’ she said. ‘Say nothing. Spirits walk. Say nothing.’

Kineas embraced her — almost a chaste embrace, and she stood with her head on his shoulder, her arms around his waist, for a long time, and then they walked back down the hill. Without discussion, they began to separate at the edge of the short grass, she to her camp and he to his, but their hands stayed together too long, and they almost fell again.

They laughed, and walked away.

She came for him in the morning, dressed in white skins with gold plaques and gold embroidery, crowned with a headdress of gold that towered above her. The king was with her, and Marthax, and twenty other chiefs and warriors. Kineas waved to Leucon and Nicomedes to attend him, and the group repeated the journey, climbing through the last of the dark to the hollow at the summit. All the Sakje began to sing, even the king.

The first ray of the sun licked over the dark line of the world’s edge like a flame rising from a new fire. The sun picked out the gorgon’s head — Medea’s head, Srayanka’s head — on the hilt of his machaira, so that it seemed to draw colour from the rising run, and the line of flame crept down the blade, faster and faster, so that in a few heartbeats, the sword seemed to have drawn the sun down into the stone.

All the Sakje shouted, and Srayanka’s hand took the hilt and she sang a high, pure note, and motioned with her other hand at Kineas. Kineas took the sword hilt in his right hand, and just for an instant it seemed to pull him down.

Srayanka released the hilt, and Kineas’s hand shot aloft, pulling the sword clear of the stone.

Kineas had been so drawn into the effect of the ceremony that for a moment he expected something — a tide of energy, perhaps, or the words of a god. Instead, he saw the look on the king’s face — jealousy and envy naked to his glance. When their eyes met, the king flinched.

Marthax frowned and then slapped him on the back. ‘Good sword,’ he said. And they all walked down the hill.

‘What was that about?’ Nicomedes asked. ‘Beautiful light effect.’

Kineas shrugged. ‘Srayanka’s father’s barrow,’ he said quietly, and Leucon and Nicomedes both nodded.

After they reached the short grass, Marthax began to bellow orders. Kineas took the king by the elbow. ‘I dreamed up on the barrow.’

The king pulled away. ‘That is as it should be,’ he said after a moment.

‘I saw the army of Zopryon — camped in good order. Perhaps two hundred stades south of here — perhaps more.’

Satrax rubbed his beard and made a face. ‘He makes good time.’

Kineas said, ‘Can we trust this dream?’ He thought of the details — the hobbled horses, the pickets, the circles of fire. But his mind could supply all of those.

The king stared at Kineas. ‘Kam Baqca sees nothing — she is closing her mind to the visions, as they show her nothing but her own death. So I must rely on yours. As much as any dream. I will send scouts. Then we will know.’

‘If it is a true dream,’ Kineas said, and his voice trembled. He wanted it to be a false dream. He wanted the scouts to place Zopryon another two hundred stades to the west, because that would mean that he dreamed falsely, that these barbarians, how ever much he loved them, were superstitious like all barbarians, and he was not fated to die in a few short weeks at the crossing of a river. He took a breath and released it. ‘If this is a true dream, then it is almost time to begin harrying his army.’

One of the king’s companions came up with a cup of tea, and the king took it eagerly. ‘Our hooves are hard. The horses are conditioned.’ He nodded. ‘If the scouts confirm your dream, then yes. We will begin.’

The king sent twenty riders, one of whom was Ataelus. Three days later, when they were a short morning’s march from the camp at Great Bend, they returned in a group. The king summoned all of the chiefs and officers.

It had been a true dream.

To the Greeks, Ataelus said, ‘Zopryon’s army is not for big so rumour make. Has many, many, many hands of men, not so many of horses.’ Ataelus grinned his horrible grin. ‘Send Getae — no Getae come back. Oops.’

Kineas’s stomach twisted and turned, and his blood ran riot in his veins. He had, at most, two weeks to live.

Srayanka spoke in Sakje. ‘Now we harry him,’ she said, and the look in her eyes was disturbingly like the look in her eyes when he had come up behind her, the night of the victory over the Getae. Or when she spoke of how they might rule together. Like lust.

Satrax spoke carefully. ‘Tonight I ride for the camp. Marthax will bring in the column. The rest of you — Sakje and Olbians — must be ready to ride with me. We will see what clans have come in, and what the rumour of our victory has done for numbers. We will see if the Sauromatae have come. And the rest of the Greeks.’ He looked around. ‘And then, we will let Zopryon feel the weight of our hooves.’

The party with the king comprised most of the officers and nobles of the allied army — twenty clan leaders, the king’s bodyguard of nobles’ sons, Kineas, Nicomedes, Leucon and Niceas. They rode through the soft summer evening, without herds, without wagons, and they rode fast.

Kineas rode by the king, but they exchanged few words, and Kineas felt that there was still a barrier between them. Whether the barrier was of his own construction or of the king’s was the sort of question Philokles might have answered, but Kineas couldn’t see the answer himself.

Just as full darkness rolled over the plains, they saw the great bend of the river in the east, a greater darkness and a hint of moist air, and then a thousand points of fire burning on the far side of the ford. The camp had doubled or tripled in size. The smell of burning wood carried almost as far as the sight of so many fires.

All of the horses gave voice, and the herds responded.

The king paused, turning his head from the last glow of ruddy light in the west behind him to the sparkle of campfires beyond the great river. ‘When I was a boy,’ he said to Kineas, ‘I loved boats. Every spring, I would go and ride the boats of the merchants going down the river to Olbia. I remember how one of the wisest of them, an old Sindi called Bion, would judge the spring rush of waters, stopping frequently, because, as he said, when the river swelled past a certain point, then no effort of man could beach a boat, and that boat would either rush down the river to its destination, or would be swept up on a rock or a log and utterly destroyed.’ The king pointed at the camp, oblivious to the crowd of nobles pressing around them.

Kineas nodded. ‘It is much the same at sea, Lord. You can feel your way along a coast to a certain point, but when Poseidon wills it, you must chance to the wine-dark sea and ride the waves or perish.’

In the last light, the king’s smile was grim. ‘My meaning was a little different, Kineas. On the river, Bion would stop. He would stop to rest, stop to prove that he still could stop, to delay that moment when he committed to everything to that last rush to success or destruction.’ He shrugged, the motion almost lost in the darkness. ‘In an hour, I will give the order, and my people will fall on Zopryon. And from that moment, I am on the river, and it is in full spate.’

Kineas kneed his horse closer to the king’s, and put his hand on the other man’s. ‘And you wish to stop?’ he asked.

The king put his whip hand over Kineas’s hand. ‘You, too, are a commander. You, too, know the terror — the weight of other men’s hopes, and other men’s fears. I wish to stop — or to have it done.’

‘I know it,’ said Kineas, voicing his own fears.

They sat together for a few more seconds, watching the fall of darkness out to the west. And for that night at least, they were friends.

‘Come,’ said the king. ‘Let’s board the boat.’

Philokles and Diodorus were waiting with a group of strangers at the edge of the camp. The king had already appointed the place and time for the meeting of his council — the hour after dawn, in his wagon laager. Kineas, Nicomedes, Leucon and Niceas rode along the river to the encampment of the Greeks, now full of tents and wagons stretching off into the darkness.

‘Congratulations are in order?’ Diodorus said, clasping Kineas’s hand as soon as he slid from his horse.

Niceas laughed, touched his amulet as if to avoid hubris, and said, ‘You missed some good fighting.’ He grinned. ‘As good as anything against the Medes. The Getae don’t even know our tricks — it was grand.’

Philokles stood a little apart, although he greeted each of the commanders warmly enough. Kineas clasped his hand. ‘I missed you,’ he said.

Philokles’ look of reserve melted away. ‘And I you,’ he said. Then, after casting a glance toward the Olbian officers, he said, ‘I have news, most of it bad.’

Kineas took a deep breath. ‘Tell me.’

‘It should be told in private,’ Philokles said. ‘It isn’t known in camp.’

‘Are the hoplites here?’ Kineas asked.

‘Two or three days away, and marching hard. The Pantecapaeum horse is in camp, and the Sauromatae.’

‘That will please the king,’ Kineas said. ‘What’s so bad?’

Other men were coming up from the darkness. Antigonus cast his arms around Kineas and they embraced. ‘We heard you were close,’ he said. ‘And that you won.’

Niceas was already regaling a crowd of the older hands with war stories. Wineskins appeared, with strong country wine that tasted of goat and pine pitch. Kineas stood with Leucon and Nicomedes and told the basic story of the campaign while most of the men in the Greek camp came up to listen.

‘So the Getae are smashed,’ Philokles said.

‘The king thought they had been destroyed for a generation — perhaps longer,’ Leucon said.

Philokles winced, his eyes flicking to Sitalkes, who was laughing with the men of his troop. Kineas took him by the elbow and led him a little apart. ‘You are behaving like a fury at a feast,’ he said.

Philokles glanced around the crowd and lowered his voice. ‘I have a man in my tent,’ he said. ‘Pelagius, a man of Pantecapaeum. He came north in a boat from the fleet, and he reported things in Olbia from just five days back.’

Kineas nodded.

‘According to Pelagius, Demostrate found the Macedonian squadron thirty days back, caught it on the beach and burned two ships. Then he dispatched messengers to tell us the job was done and went south to the Bosporus to prey on Macedonian shipping.’

Kineas nodded. ‘That’s what he said all along,’ he said.

‘Pelagius arrived in Olbia in a small boat with a handful of crewmen. He intended to find the archon and tell him of developments at sea, but what he saw caused him to take his boat upriver instead.’

‘What did he see?’ Kineas asked.

‘A Macedonian garrison in the citadel,’ Philokles said. ‘That was five days ago. He arrived today and I sat on him.’

Kineas shook his head. ‘Hades. Hades! We’re fucked.’ Kineas felt as if he had been kicked by a stallion — he was having trouble breathing. ‘Hades, Philokles — is he sure?’

‘Sure enough to come pelting upriver to us without putting in.’

‘If Demostrate burned the Macedonian triremes, how in Hades did it happen?’ Kineas smacked a fist into his palm. All his plans were rising away, like the smoke of an altar fire in a breeze.

‘I can only speculate. A merchantman with a hold crammed with soldiers? And the archon in it to the hilt?’ Philokles shook his head angrily. ‘I don’t know.’

Kineas hung his head. ‘Ares’ balls. Our asses are going to be in the air. We need to know what’s happening.’ He looked back at the crowd by the fire. Men were watching him. ‘We can’t hide this. Better if I put it to the officers immediately.’

Philokles pulled on his beard. ‘You know what this may mean? Your men — all your men — may go home. Can you hold them if the archon orders them home?’

‘Is the archon the voice of the city?’ Kineas asked.

Philokles crossed his arms. ‘Memnon is two days away with the hoplites.’

Kineas nodded. ‘So we have the assembly here.’

Philokles took his arm. ‘You expected this.’

Kineas was looking out into the dark, thinking of the king and his image of a boat swept down the river. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I expected betrayal from the archon.’ He made a motion as if throwing a handful of dice on the ground. ‘The game is well underway, my friend. Too late to walk away and save our cloaks.’

Philokles laughed bitterly. ‘It seems to me that in one throw, the archon has already triumphed,’ he said. ‘He has the city.’

Nicomedes obviously felt the same when he was told an hour later. His ruddy face went white in the firelight. Leucon was similar, except that he cried out, ‘My father!’ Eumenes became silent, his jaw set. All of the Olbians were moved. Some wept.

Kineas stood on the tongue of a wagon. He had taken the time to go to Philokles’ camp and hear the sailor speak. The man was a gentleman, a citizen of Pantecapaeum, a veteran trader who knew the coast and knew the politics. His account was reliable. When Kineas left the man he ordered Niceas to gather all the men of Olbia in the camp. And he sent Philokles to tell the king.

Nicomedes shook his head. He stood just below Kineas and when he spoke, his voice carried. ‘We left men as a precaution against something like this. Is there any news?’ His voice cracked from emotion. ‘Has the archon ordered us home?’

Kineas spoke loudly into the crowd of men around his wagon. ‘This war was voted by the assembly of the citizens of Olbia,’ he said. ‘The archon and his — extraordinary powers were voted by the assembly of the citizens of Olbia.’ He paused, and received silence, the best accolade of any assembly of Greek men. ‘In two days, the hoplites will be here. I propose that we then hold an assembly of the city — here in camp. Perhaps we will choose to agree with the action that the archon has taken. Or perhaps,’ he made his voice loud, and hard, a trick of rhetoric and one of command, ‘perhaps we will find that the archon has betrayed the city.’

‘The archon holds the city,’ Leucon said. His voice was flat.

Kineas had no response to that. He dismissed them to go to bed. They moved off, grumbling.

Philokles stood by his shoulder when they were gone. ‘You are a surprising man, Kineas. I think perhaps you would have been a dangerous opponent in the law courts, if you had not taken to the cavalry. You will argue that the army, and not the archon, is the voice of Olbia?’

‘I will,’ Kineas said. ‘I would lie if I said that I expected this, but by Zeus, I feared it, and I thought about it. And now all I can do is to ask them — they are men — let them act like men.’

Philokles shrugged. ‘Sparta has no walls,’ he said.

In the morning, the men were calm and obedient, which was as much as Kineas had hoped for. He attended the king’s council with his own officers. When called on, he rose and addressed them.

‘King Satrax, noble Sakje, men of Pantecapaeum. I wish to speak before rumour exaggerates. It appears to us from a report that the archon of Olbia has allowed a garrison of Macedon into the city’s citadel — or perhaps it has been taken by surprise.’

A murmur rose, first from the officers of the Pantecapaeum horse, and then from the Sakje. Kineas raised his voice and continued.

‘It is possible that, even now, there is an order en route to this camp from the archon, ordering this part of the army home.’ He caught Srayanka’s eye unwittingly. Her dark brows were drawn together as one.

The king flicked his whip. ‘And what will the men of Olbia do?’ he asked.

Kineas bowed. ‘We must have a few days to decide.’ He had explained in private, as soon as the king was up, and again to Srayanka, choosing his words carefully, but none of them smiled at him. The atmosphere of the council was heavy and cold. Many new men and some new women sat there now — the war leaders of the western clans, and the alien Sauromatae, handsome, tall men and women from the east with closed faces, who wore their armour to the council.

Kam Baqca spoke carefully. Her eyes were wide and her pupils enormous, as if she had received a blow to the head, or recently awakened. She seemed to have trouble focusing, and her body writhed from minute to minute, as if inhabited by a giant snake. ‘Do you think,’ she asked carefully, into a dead silence, ‘that the Sakje should allow you to ride away, if your archon intends to make war on us?’ Her head sunk suddenly to her chest and then snapped back erect, and her eyes were locked on the king. ‘I never saw this,’ she said.

Kineas spoke over the first angry response from his own officers to Kam Baqca’s threat. ‘I ask for time to deal with this crisis in our own way. Threats, promises, censure — none of them will help the men of Olbia deal with their own sense of betrayal and their own very deep fears for their city. I beg this council and the king to exercise patience, lest our alliance, already touched with victory, dissolve.’

The king made a sharp notion for Kineas to desist. Before he could speak, the best armoured of the Sauromatae rose from his seat and spoke. He spoke rapidly, in the Sakje tongue with a strong accent, and Kineas could catch little more than his anger.

The king listened attentively and then said to the council, ‘Prince Lot speaks for the Sauromatae. He says they have come far — far from their tents on the great sea of grass, and farther from the queen of the Massagetae, who also craved their lances in Bactria. He says they come to find a handful of foreign allies preparing to desert to Macedon, and he wonders aloud if I am a strong king.’

The king rose to his feet. The campaign against the Getae had hardened him. There was no adolescent rage — just a cold focus. He spoke in Sakje, and Kineas understood him well enough, and then he spoke again in Greek. ‘I am a strong king. I have crushed the Getae, who preyed on my people for ten generations of men. I won this victory with the help of the men of Olbia, and such brotherhood is not lightly set aside.’ He looked at Kineas. Kineas read a great deal from that look. The boy was putting his kingship above his desire for Srayanka — again.

He continued. ‘I give the Olbians five days to make their decision, and then we will take council again. In the meantime, I command that the harrying of the army of Macedon begin. Zopryon is two hundred stades distant. He will take at least a week to reach the bank of the great river. By then, all questions of Olbia and its archon will have been resolved.’

The king sat. He had never looked less young, or more fully a king. Srayanka smiled at him, and Kineas felt the bile in his gut. It occurred to him to wonder what, exactly, Srayanka wanted in a man. Was it power?

The thought was black with jealousy, and unworthy of her.

But the barb stuck.

Marthax’s army returned, with the rest of the Olbians, and all the other veterans of the campaign against the Getae. Srayanka’s Cruel Hands came into camp with a whoop of victory. Kineas saw them at a distance; he saw Srayanka greet Parshtaevalt, just as he saw the king welcome Marthax, and he saw the subdued celebrations among the Sakje. For the first time that summer, however, he was separate, distant, and not welcome. And as soon as they came and celebrated, they rode away again. Kineas watched Srayanka lead the Cruel Hands out of the camp on the third day after their return.

She rode up to him. He hadn’t touched her in days — hadn’t spoken to her, except at the council. She gestured with her whip at the knots of Olbian men gathered by their fires. ‘Fix this — it is between us.’

Kineas tried to grab her hand. She frowned, shook her head, turned her horse, and galloped back to the head of her column, and Kineas felt a hot jab of rejection — and rage.

Behind Kineas, there was a great deal of comment — the veterans of the Getae campaign filling in their mates on just how the ground lay between their commander and the Lady Srayanka. Kineas whirled on them, savage, and a great many punishments were handed out.

It was ruinous for morale. By the time Memnon’s spears marched into sight on the east bank of the river, those who remained, Sakje and Greek alike, were waiting to hear the news like men waiting for a bolt of lightning.

Memnon arrived at the head of the phalanx of Pantecapaeum, with the phalanx of Olbia a few stades behind. Kineas rode out to him as soon as the glitter of his spears was identified. It was obvious from their first exchange that Memnon’s news of the city was out of date — he had left a city dedicated to the war.

Kineas took Memnon aside as soon as he could, pressed a cup of wine into his hands, and sat him on a stool. ‘We have reason to believe that the archon sold the city to Macedon a day or two after you went out the gates,’ he said.

Memnon took a gulp of wine, spat it in the fire, and then drank some. ‘Bastard. Whoreson. Dickless catamite.’ He drank off the wine. ‘We’re fucked. They’ll all go home.’

Kineas shook his head. ‘Let them hear the news tonight. Tomorrow, all the men of Olbia will gather in assembly.’

‘Ares, it’ll be chaos, Kineas. And there’ll be desertions. I hate to say it — I love the whoresons, but I know them.’ Memnon shook his head. ‘Bastard — boyfucker. He just waited for us to march out, and then he handed the citadel to Zopryon.’

Kineas raised an eyebrow. ‘Did you expect anything else? I didn’t. Now we’ll see what we’ve made.’

Memnon shook his head. ‘Listen, comrade. We’re old soldiers — mercenaries, masterless men, exiles. We know that the loss of your city is a bitter pill, but in the end — nothing. A city is a city. Yes? They don’t know. They will feel as if their gods have died. And they’ll crawl back to the archon and swear whatever he requires to have their city back.’

Kineas looked at the marching column. ‘They look good,’ he said.

‘They are good, fuck your mother!’ Memnon spoke with angry pride. ‘They trained all winter and they marched here like — like Spartiates. They’ve trowelled off a lot of weight and they like it. Most of them are middle-aged men who just won themselves a last summer of youth. They’ll fight like heroes,’ he said glumly, ‘if they choose to fight.’

Kineas slapped the dark man’s shoulder. ‘Isn’t that the way it ought to be?’ he said. ‘Men ought to fight only if they vote it.’

‘You spend too much time with that fucking Spartan,’ Memnon grumbled. ‘If somebody pays me to fight, I fight. I don’t ask a lot of questions.’

Kineas met his eye. ‘That’s how we both came to work for the archon,’ he said. ‘From now on, I think I’ll ask more questions.’

In the night, Leon the slave of Nicomedes came into camp, having run day and night from the city. He brought news.

Kineas, summoned from a dream full of smoke and monsters, was muddled when he made his way to Nicomedes’ tent. Leon looked like a literal man of clay — he was coated in pale river mud, and he stank of it.

Nicomedes handed Kineas and Philokles a cup of wine. ‘It’s bad,’ he said. ‘Tell him, Leon.’

Leon drank from his own wine cup. ‘Cleomenes had Cleitus murdered by the Kelts day before yesterday,’ he said. He rubbed his face with his hands as a man does when he tries to stay awake, and flakes of mud came away from his face, as if he was literally falling to pieces. ‘He has seized command of the rest of the hippeis.’

Kineas pounded his right fist into his left hand. ‘Zeus! Of all the base acts…’ He drained his wine. ‘What of the archon?’ Thoughts and images boiled in his mind. The archon’s treason came as a shock, for all of his preparation.

Leon shook his head. Nicomedes swirled some more wine — unwatered — in his cup. ‘It’s always worse than you think. No one has seen the archon. Cleomenes has seized power and turned the citadel over to a garrison from Thrace.’

‘Amarayan gives the orders in the citadel,’ Leon said. ‘No one has seen the archon in ten days, since the garrison came. They came out of a big merchant ship, and by the time Cleitus had heard and mustered the hippeis, they were installed in the citadel.’

‘How many?’ asked Kineas.

‘Two hundred?’ Leon speculated. ‘Hard to know — they haven’t come down into the town. Indeed, they only hold the gates and the citadel — they don’t patrol the walls.’ He hung his head. ‘Cleitus was going to try ejecting them with his hippeis and some citizens who remained behind. That’s when Cleomenes showed his hand and had Cleitus killed.’ He looked at Nicomedes. ‘You are exiled. Kineas and Memnon have their citizenship revoked. The army of the city is recalled. All our goods have been seized.’

‘How’d you come free?’ Kineas asked. It was harsher than he meant, but he was not in a trusting mood.

Leon met his eye. ‘I’m a slave,’ he said. ‘I walked through the gates with the market crowd, took a horse from the Gamelios farm, and rode hard.’ He shrugged heavily. ‘When I saw the Macedonians, I got down in the riverbed and walked.’

Nicomedes put his hand on the seated man’s neck. ‘Now you are a free man,’ he said.

Leon glanced up — taken aback. ‘Can you afford to free me?’ he asked. ‘I’m quite valuable.’ Then he laughed, despite everything. ‘By all the gods — you mean it, sir?’

Nicomedes tossed his cloak off his shoulder and curled his beard with his fingers. ‘Why not? I used to be the richest man in Olbia. Get some sleep.’ He glanced at Kineas. ‘I thought you should know first.’

Kineas mutely held his cup out for more unwatered wine. Philokles shook his head. ‘I thought it would be the archon,’ he said blearily. ‘Or — or you, Nicomedes.’

Nicomedes shrugged with a pained look. ‘It might have been me — after we dealt with Zopryon.’

Philokles nodded. ‘We’re in deep trouble. Cleomenes — he knows exactly how to hurt us.’

Kineas nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, and rubbed his jaw like a boxer who had taken a heavy blow.