Tyrant

2

The two old men who kept the harbour light at Tomis saw the pentekonter well out in the offing.

‘He’s lost his mast,’ said one. ‘Ought to have ’er stepped in this wind.’

‘Rowers is done in, too. He’ll have a job of it making the mole ’fore dark,’ said the other.

They sat and shared their contempt for a sailor so foolish as to have lost his mast.

‘Gods on Olympus, look at her side!’ said the first as the sun crossed the horizon. The pentekonter was well in with the land, her bow only a dozen lengths from the mole. Her side was fothered with a length of linen and roughly painted in tar, a pitiful sight. ‘Them’s lucky to be alive.’

His companion had a pull at the nearly empty wineskin they shared, gave his cousin a black look, and wiped his mouth. ‘Pity the poor sailors, mate.’

‘Truer words never spoke,’ said his cousin.

The pentekonter pushed her bow in past the mole before full dark, her deck silent as a warship’s except for the call of the oar beat. The strokes were short and weak, and discerning eyes all over the port could see he’d pulled long past the ability of his oarsmen to look sharp or keep up speed. The pentekonter passed the long wharf where the traders usually berthed and ran her bow well up the pebble beach that fringed the river’s mouth. Only then did the crew give a cheer, a sound that told the town all they needed to know about the last four days.

Tomis was a large town by the standards of the Euxine, but the number of her citizens was small and news travelled fast. By the time Kineas had his baggage over the side, the only man he knew in the town was standing with a torchbearer on the pebbles under the bow and calling his name.

‘Calchus, by the gods,’ he shouted, and dropped on to the shingle to give the man an embrace.

Calchus gripped him back, first hugging him, then grasping for a wrestling hold so that both men were grappling, down on the gravel in the beat of a seagull’s wing, Calchus reaching around Kineas’s knees to bring him down, Kineas grappling the bigger man’s neck like a farmer wrestles a calf. And then they were both standing, laughing, Calchus adjusting his tunic over his muscled chest and Kineas rubbing the sand off his hands.

‘Ten years,’ said Calchus.

‘Exile seems to suit you,’ responded Kineas.

‘It does, too. I wouldn’t go back.’ Calchus’s tone implied that he would go back if he could, but that he was too proud to say it.

‘You got my letter.’ Kineas hated demanding hospitality, the lot of every exile.

‘Don’t be an idiot. Of course I had your letter. I have your letter, a string of your horses, and your hyperetes and his little gang of louts. I’ve fed them for a month. Something tells me you don’t have a pot to piss in.’

Kineas bridled. ‘I will repay you…’ he began.

‘Of course you will. Kineas — I’ve been where you are.’ He indicated Kineas’s baggage with a negligent hand to his torchbearer, who lifted the bag with a heavy grunt and a long sigh. ‘Don’t get proud, Kineas. Your father kept mine alive. We were sorry to hear that he died — and you exiled, of course. Athens is a city ruled by ingrates. But we haven’t forgotten you. Besides, the helmsman says you helped save the ship — that’s my cargo. I probably owe you.’ He looked past Kineas in the dim torchlight as another man leaped over the side to the beach.

The Spartan bent, his locks swinging to hide his face and loudly kissed the rocks of the beach. Then he came up behind Kineas and stood hesitantly at his shoulder.

Kineas gestured to him. ‘Philokles, a gentleman of — Mytilene.’ His pause was deliberate; he could see the confusion — even the anger — on Calchus’s face.

‘He’s a Spartan.’

Kineas shrugged.

‘I’m an exile,’ said Philokles. ‘I find that exile has this virtue; that no exile can be held responsible for the actions of his city.’

‘He’s with you?’ Calchus asked. His sense of hospitality and etiquette had eroded in the Euxine, Kineas could see. Calchus was used to being in charge.

‘The Athenian gentleman saved my life, pulling me from the sea when my last strength was nigh spent.’ The Spartan was plump. Kineas had never seen a plump Spartan before, hadn’t remarked it when they were at sea, but here in the torchlight it was obvious.

Calchus turned on his heel — a rude gesture at the best of times, a calculated insult now — and waved up the beach. ‘Fine. He can stay with me, too. It’s late to be out, Kineas. I’ll save all my “whatever happened to so-and-so” questions for the new day.’

If the Spartan was offended, he didn’t show it. ‘Very kind, sir.’

Despite days of physical labour and several restless nights, Kineas woke with the last of the night and walked outdoors to find the first sleepy slaves carrying water from a well into the kitchen. Philokles had spent the night on the porch, like a servant, but it didn’t seem to have affected him much, since he was still asleep, snoring loudly. Kineas watched the dawn, and when there was light enough to see, he walked down the lane behind the house to the paddock. The pasture beyond had two dozen horses, most of which he was pleased to see were his own. He walked along the paddock until he saw what he had expected to find, a small fire burning in the distance and a man standing near it with a short spear in his hand. Kineas walked over the broken ground until the sentry recognized him, and then all the men were awake, nine men with heavy beards and equally bandy legs.

Kineas greeted each in turn. They were professional soldiers, cavalrymen with dozens of years of war and accumulated scars and none of them had the money or the friends to aspire to the status of the cavalry class in a city — Antigonus, the Gaul, was more likely to be enslaved than made a citizen in any city, and he, like his friend Andronicus, had started with some other mercenaries sent out by Syracuse. The rest of them had once been men of property in cities that either no longer wanted them or no longer existed. Lykeles was from Thebes, which Alexander had destroyed. Coenus was Corinthian, a lover of literature, an educated man with a secret past — a rich man apparently unable to return home. Agis was Megaran and Athenian, a well-born pauper who knew no other life but war. Graccus, Diodorus and Laertes were the last of the Athenian citizens — the last of the men who had followed Kineas to Asia. They were penniless exiles.

Niceas, his hyperetes for six years, came up last and they embraced. Niceas was the oldest of them, at forty-some years. He had grey in his thick black hair and a scar across his face from a Persian sword. He’d been born to a slave in an Athenian brothel.

‘All the lads who are left. And all the horses.’

Kineas nodded, spotting his favourite pale grey charger out in the paddock. ‘All the best of both. You all know where we’re going?’

Most of them were still half asleep. Antigonus was already stretching his calf muscles like an athlete. They all shook their heads with little interest.

‘The Archon of Olbia has offered me a fortune to raise and train his hippeis — his cavalry bodyguard. If he is satisfied with us, we’ll be made citizens.’ Kineas smiled.

If he expected them to be moved, he was disappointed. Coenus waved a hand and spoke with the contempt of the true aristocrat. ‘Citizens of the most barbaric city in the Euxine? At the whim of some petty tyrant? I’ll just have mine in silver owls.’

Kineas shrugged. ‘We’re not getting younger, friends,’ he said. ‘Don’t spurn the citizenship until you see the city.’

‘Who’s the enemy, then?’ asked Niceas, absently fingering the amulet around his neck. He’d never been a citizen anywhere — the whole idea was a fantasy to him.

‘I don’t know — yet. His own people, I think. Not much up here to fight.’

‘Macedon, maybe.’ Diodorus spoke quietly, but with great authority.

Diodorus knew more about politics than the others. Kineas turned to him. ‘You know something?’

‘Just rumour. The boy king is off conquering Asia and Antipater is thinking of conquering the Euxine. We heard it in the Bosporus.’ He grinned. ‘Remember Phillip Kontos? He’s commanding Antipater’s Companions, now. We saw him. He tried to hire us.’

The other man nodded. Kineas thought for a minute, his head down on one fist as he did when something puzzled him, and then spoke. ‘I’ll get you the wherewithal from the house. Write a couple of your famous letters and get me some information. In Ectabana and in Athens, no one ever mentioned that Antipater would march.’ Diodorus nodded curtly. Kineas looked them over. ‘We lived,’ he said suddenly. There had been times when it seemed pretty certain that none of them would.

Niceas shook his head. ‘Just barely.’ He had a cup of wine in his hand, and he hurried to slop a libation on the ground for his apparent ingratitude to the gods. ‘Here’s to the shades of them that didn’t.’

They all nodded.

‘Good to see you all again. We’ll ride together from here. No more ships for me.’ They all walked out to the horses, except Diodorus, who stayed as sentry. It was one of their invariable rules — they always had a sentry. Learned the hard way. Justified too many times.

The horses were in good shape, their hooves hard from the rock and sand in the soil, their coats shiny. They had fifteen heavy horses and six light, as well as several pack animals — a former charger past his best years but still willing, two mules they’d captured raiding Thracians with the boy king and never quite lost. To Kineas, every horse had a story; most were Persian chargers from the spoils of the fight at the Issus River, but there was a bay he’d bought in the army market after the fall of Tyre, and the metal-grey charger, the biggest mare he’d ever seen, had been left wandering riderless after a skirmish at a ford on the Euphrates. The big horse reminded him of the other grey — the stallion he’d taken at Issus, long dead of cold and poor food. War was unkind to horses. And men. Kineas found himself moved by how few of them were left. But his chest was tight with the joy of seeing them.

‘Well done, all. I need a day or two — we’re not due in Olbia until the Kharisteria, so we have time. Let me get my legs under me, and then we’ll ride.’

Niceas waved his arms at them. ‘Leaving in a day? Lots to do, gentlemen. Tack, armour, weapons.’ He began to issue suggestions very like orders, and the other men, most of them born to wealth and power, obeyed him, although he had been born in a brothel.

Kineas put his hand on his hyperetes’ shoulder. ‘I’ll bring my kit down and join you this afternoon.’ Another habit — every man cleaned his own kit, like hoplites. ‘Send Diodorus to me. I’m going to the gymnasium.’

Niceas nodded and led the rest of them to work.

In what passed for the city, they had three things built of stone: the wharfs, the warehouses and the gymnasium. Kineas went to the gymnasium with Diodorus. Philokles joined them as they left, and Calchus insisted on acting as their guide and sponsor.

If the size of his establishment hadn’t immediately given away his wealth, his reception in the agora and the gymnasium was ample evidence. In the agora, he was greeted with respectful nods and several men solicited his favour as he walked through. At the gymnasium, the other three men were immediately admitted free of charge at Calchus’s insistence.

‘I built this,’ Calchus said with pride. He proceeded to catalogue the building’s merits. Kineas, perhaps closer in his mind to Athens, thought it was satisfactory yet provincial. Calchus’s boasting grated on him. Nonetheless, the gymnasium offered him the best opportunity to exercise that he’d had in months. He stripped, dropping his borrowed garment on top of his sandals.

Calchus guffawed. ‘Too long in the saddle!’ he laughed.

Kineas stiffened with resentment. His legs were a trifle over muscled at the top, and his lower legs had never been much to look at. To his fellow Hellenes, who worshipped the male form, his legs were less than perfect, although he had to go to a gymnasium to be reminded of it.

He began to warm up. Calchus, by contrast, had a hard body, carefully maintained, although he had the beginning of a roll of fat at his waist. And he had long legs. He began to wrestle with a much younger man on the sand of the courtyard. Spectators made ribald comments. The young man was apparently a regular.

Kineas gestured to Diodorus. ‘Fancy a couple of falls?’

‘At your pleasure.’ Diodorus was tall, bony and ascetic looking. He was not any Hellene’s idea of beauty either.

Kineas circled, waiting until the taller man stepped towards him to attack and pushed in to meet him and get inside the man’s long reach. Diodorus took the momentum of the attack into his arms and threw it over his hip, and Kineas crashed his length in the sand.

He got up slowly. ‘Was that necessary?’

Diodorus was embarrassed. ‘No.’

Kineas gave a bitter smile. ‘If you’re trying to tell me that your wrestling is of a different order than mine, I already knew that.’

Diodorus raised his hand. ‘How often do I get a chance to use that move? You walked into it. I couldn’t help myself.’ He was smiling, and Kineas rubbed the sore spot on his back and stepped forward for another hold. He felt a tiny twist of fear — the niggling fear that he carried into every contest, every fight.

He went for a low hold, got a piece of it, and he and Diodorus ended up in an ugly mess on the ground, neither man able to pin the other and both coated in sand and grit. By unspoken mutual consent, they both left off their holds and helped each other up.

Outside, Calchus had pinned the young man he was wrestling. He didn’t seem in a hurry to let him up, and there was a great deal of laughter from the other citizens. Kineas faced Diodorus again and this time they circled and feinted and closed and recovered at a more normal tempo. It was almost dance, and Diodorus stayed to the movements of his gymnasium lessons, which kept Kineas comfortable. He even gained a fall.

Diodorus rubbed his hip and smiled. Kineas had fallen atop him, a perfectly legitimate approach to the game but one inevitably painful to the victim. ‘Even?’

‘Even.’ Kineas gave him a hand up.

Calchus was standing with the young man and some other citizens. He called out, ‘Come and wrestle with me, Kineas.’

Kineas frowned and turned his head, uncomfortable with all these strangers, the twinge of fear strong because Calchus was bigger, a better wrestler and as a boy in Athens had liked to use his advantages to inflict a little pain. Kineas disliked pain. Ten years of war had not accustomed him to dealing with sprains and bruises and deep cuts that took weeks to heal; if anything, ten years of watching men live or die at the whim of the gods had made him more afraid.

He shrugged. Calchus was his host, a fine wrestler and looking to demonstrate his superiority. Kineas gritted his teeth and obliged him, losing the first fall in some carefully fought grappling, taking the second fall by a matter of split-second timing that was more luck than skill, and which surprised both men. Calchus surprised him again by rising from the fall graciously, nothing but praise on his lips, and going on without rancour. Ten years ago, the adolescent Calchus would have come on for blood. The third fall was like the first; careful, at times more like dance than combat, and when Kineas was eventually pinned, the action caused the spectators to whistle in appreciation.

Calchus was breathing hard, and his arm circled Kineas’s waist as he helped him to his feet. ‘You give a good match. Did you all see him?’ he called to the others. ‘He used to be an easy mark for a fall.’

Men hurried forward to compliment Calchus on his victory — and to tell Kineas how well he had done. It was all a trifle sickening — a remarkable amount of praise lavished for so small a thing, but Kineas bore it in the knowledge that he had given a better guest gift than money, a memorable fight that left his host looking well.

The young man that Calchus had wrestled earlier was quite beautiful as he came up to pay respectful comments to the wrestlers. Kineas was unmoved by male beauty, but he appreciated it as much as any Hellene and he smiled at the earnest young man.

‘I’m Ajax,’ the young man said in reply to Kineas’s smile. ‘My father is Isokles. May I say how well you fought? Indeed, I…’ He hesitated, swallowed his words, and was silent.

Kineas read him easily — he was an observant youth. He was going to say that Kineas had looked the better wrestler. A smart boy. Kineas put a hand on the smooth skin of the boy’s shoulder. ‘I always imagined Ajax would be bigger.’

‘He’s heard that stupid joke his whole life,’ said the father.

‘I try to grow to fit it,’ Ajax returned. ‘And there was a smaller Ajax, too.’

‘Do you box? Care to exchange a few cuffs?’ Kineas gestured at the straps for boxers, and the boy’s face lit up. He looked at his father, who shook his head with mock indignation. ‘Don’t get too cut up, or no one will want to take you home from the symposium,’ he said. He winked at Kineas. ‘Or should I say, get cut up, so you won’t get taken home? Have kids of your own?’

Kineas shook his head. ‘Well, it’s an experience. Anyway, feel free to put a few welts on him.’

Diodorus helped them both wrap their hands, and then they began, starting as if by mutual consent with simple routines, blows and blocks, and then moving to longer exchanges and thence to sparring.

The boy was good — better than a farm boy in a Euxine backwater had any right to be. His arms were longer than they looked and he could feint, rolling his shoulders to telegraph a roundhouse that never came and then punching short with the off arm. He stretched Kineas, now fully warmed up and eager; a short blow to his cheek gave him some personal interest in the contest, and suddenly they were at it.

Kineas was unaware that they drew every citizen in the gymnasium. His world limited itself to his wrapped hands and those of his opponent, his eyes and torso. In one flurry, each of them jabbed ten or twelve times, parrying each blow with an upper arm, or taking one high on the chest to deliver one to the head.

The flurry ended in a round of applause that moved them apart. They eyed each other warily, still charged with the daimon of combat, but the surge of spirit soon dwindled and they became mere mortals in a provincial gymnasium again. They shook hands warmly.

‘Again?’ said the boy, and Kineas shook his head.

‘Won’t be that good again. Keep it as it is.’ Then, after a pause, ‘You’re very good.’

The boy hung his head with real modesty. ‘I was going as fast as I could. I don’t usually. You are better than anyone here.’

Kineas shrugged and called over the boy’s head to his father, proclaiming how talented his son was. It was an effective way of making friends in the gymnasium. Everyone wanted to congratulate him on his skill, on the beauty of the moment. It made him happy. But he needed a massage and a rest, and he said so, declining innumerable offers of further contests until someone said they were all going to throw javelins and he couldn’t resist. He followed them outside and felt a pang — Philokles, forgotten or ignored, was running laps outside around a big field full of sheep.

Kineas didn’t know what to do with the Spartan, who seemed to have become a dependant. Gentlemen weren’t supposed to be so bereft, but Kineas suspected that he himself wouldn’t have been much different if he had washed up on an alien shore with no belongings and no home. He waved. Philokles waved back.

A slave herded the sheep well down the field and the men started to throw. It wasn’t a formal game; older men who were disgusted by their first throw took a second or even a third until they were satisfied, whereas younger men had to suffice themselves with one throw. It would never have done at the Olympic games, but it was comfortable, as the shadows shortened, to lie on the grass (mindful of the sheep turds) and watch the whole community of men compete. Kineas was conscious of his legs and the imperfections of his body, but he’d proven himself an athlete and was one of them now, making easy conversation with Isokles about the olive harvest in Attica and the problems of shipping olive oil.

Calchus threw with a great cry, and his javelin came close enough to make one of the sheep move with unaccustomed speed. He laughed. ‘That’s the best so far. I have a mind to throw again — they’re my sheep, we could all eat mutton tonight.’

Kineas was to throw next to last and Philokles last, places of honour because they were guests. Diodorus had thrown early — a good throw, with no grunt or cry, beaten only by Calchus. Most of the other towns-men had been competent, but the youth Ajax had surprised Kineas by his poor throw. Isokles had beaten it, throwing well, if short of the final mark, and he’d teased his son.

Kineas was used to throwing from horseback, and he threw too flat, but it was still a long throw — again the sheep started as his javelin landed close to them.

Calchus winced. ‘You’ve become an athlete while I run to fat in exile,’ he said.

Philokles picked up several javelins before choosing one. He walked over to Calchus, who was talking business with another man. ‘This is scarcely sporting. I’m a Spartan.’ He said it with a smile, an overweight Spartan showing a sense of humor.

Calchus didn’t understand. He indicated with a flick of his head that he had been interrupted. ‘If you can do better than we have, let’s see it.’

Nettled, Philokles gestured at the sheep. ‘How much for the straggling ewe?’

Calchus ignored him, returning to his conversation and then jerked his head around in time to see Philokles throw, arching his body and almost leaving the ground. The javelin leaped from his hand, flew high and descended fast. It knocked the ewe to the ground, all four feet splayed, the bolt from heaven pinning her to the ground through her skull.

There was a moment of shocked silence and then Kineas began to applaud. Then they all applauded the throw and teased Calchus about his ewe, suggesting various prices for her, some obscene, until Calchus laughed. Most of the town’s social interaction seemed to revolve around keeping Calchus pleased. Kineas didn’t like to watch it.

Isokles pointed down the field. ‘Let’s have a run,’ he said. And they set the distances and were off, running for a while in a pack until the better runners grew bored and took off. They circled the field three times, a good distance, and finished in the yard of the gymnasium. Kineas was close to last and took some good-natured teasing about his legs, and then they headed for the baths.

Tired and clean, with a couple of bruises and a general sense of eudaimia, well-being that inevitably came to him from the gymnasium, Kineas walked beside Calchus. Diodorus had gone off with some younger men to see the market.

‘You could do well here,’ Calchus said suddenly. ‘They like you. This fighting you do — it’s no job for a man. In defence of your city, that’s different. But — a mercenary? You squander what the gods have given you. And one day some barbarian’s sword is in your gizzard, and there you are. Stay here, buy a farm. Take a wife. Isokles has a girl — she’s pretty enough, smart, a housekeeper. I’d put you up for citizenship after the festival of Herakles. By Zeus, they’d accept you today after that boxing.’

Kineas didn’t know what to say. It appealed. He’d liked the men. The citizens of Tomis were a good lot, provincial but not rustic, given to gross jokes and amateur philosophy. And all good sports. He shurgged. ‘I owe it to my men. They came here to join me.’ Kineas didn’t add that something in him looked forward to another campaign.

‘They can just as easily move on and take up service elsewhere. You are a gentleman, Kineas. You don’t owe them anything.’

Kineas frowned. ‘Most of them are gentlemen, Calchus.’

‘Oh, of course.’ Calchus waved dismissively. ‘But not any more. Not really. Perhaps Diodorus? Could be a factor, or your steward. And those Gauls — they should be slaves. They’d be happier as slaves.’ Calchus spoke with authority and finality.

Kineas frowned again and allowed himself to be distracted by a man lying in the street. He didn’t need to quarrel with his host. ‘A barbarian? ’ he asked, pointing.

The man in the street was plainly a barbarian. He wore trousers of leather and had filthy long hair hanging in plaits, and a leather jacket covered in a riot of colourful decoration, and he wore gold. His jacket had several gold ornaments, and showed spaces where other bangles had been removed. He had an earring in his ear. And a cap on his head like a Thracian.

And he stank of urine and vomit and bad sweat. They were almost on top of him. He wasn’t asleep — his eyes were open and unfocused.

Calchus looked at him with deep contempt. ‘A Scyth. Disgusting people. Ugly, stinking barbarians, no one can speak their language, and they don’t even make good slaves.’

‘I thought they were dangerous.’ Kineas looked at the drunk with interest. He imagined that at Olbia there would be a lot of Scyths, born to horseback, a dangerous enemy. This one didn’t look like a warrior.

‘Don’t believe it. They can’t hold wine, can’t speak, can’t really walk. Scarcely human. I’ve never seen one sober.’

Calchus walked on and Kineas followed him, albeit unwillingly. He wanted a better look, but Calchus was uninterested. Kineas looked back, and saw that the drunk was rising unsteadily to his feet. Then he toppled again, and Kineas followed Calchus around a corner and lost sight of the Scyth.

He heard a lot about Scyths at the symposium because he was the senior guest and he introduced the topic. The wine flowed; the inevitable flute girls and fish courses folllowed each other in the approved manner, and then the older men settled in to talk, moving their couches together so that the younger men could relish the more amorous of the flute girls with a degree of privacy. Eyeing a black-eyed girl, Kineas had a brief pang that he was now considered old enough to make conversation, but he pulled his couch to the side, and when he was asked, he suggested that they all tell him about the Scyths on the plains to the north.

Isokles took the pitcher of wine from a slave and looked at Kineas. ‘You’re not proposing we drink in the Scythian fashion? Unwatered wine?’

The young men yelled for it, but the older men held the day, and the wine was mixed at a sedate two waters to each measure of wine. While Calchus mixed the wine, Isokles looked thoughtful.

‘They’re barbarians, of course. Very hardy — they live on their horses. Herodotus has a lot to say about them. I have a copy at my house if you’d care to read it.’

‘Honoured,’ said Kineas. ‘We read Herodotus when we were boys, but I had no idea I’d end up here.’

‘The thing about them is that they fear nothing. They say they are the only free people on the earth, and that all the rest of us are slaves.’

Calchus snorted derisively. ‘As if anyone could mistake us for slaves.’

Isokles, one of the few men who seemed willing to risk Calchus’s displeasure, shrugged. ‘Deny it if you will. Anarchises — does that name mean something to you?’

Kineas felt as though he was back in school, sitting in the shade of a tree and getting interrogated on his reading. ‘Friend of Solon — a philosopher,’ he said.

‘A Scythian philosopher.’ Philokles spoke up from the end of the room. ‘A very plain — spoken man.’

A whisper of laughter honoured his pun.

‘Just the one.’ Isokles nodded at Philokles. ‘He told Solon that the Athenians were slaves to their city — slaves to the walls of the Acropolis.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Calchus. He started passing cups of wine around the circle of couches.

‘Oh, no, not nonsense, if I may.’ Philokles was leaning on his elbows, his long hair framing his face. ‘He meant that Greeks are slaves to their notions of safety — that our incessant need to protect ourselves robs us of the very freedom we so often prate about.’

Isokles nodded. ‘Well put.’

Calchus shook his head vehemently. ‘Crap. Pure crap. Slaves can’t even carry arms — they have nothing to defend, nor can they defend anything.’

Philokles waved to the butler who had brought the wine service. ‘You there,’ he said. ‘How much do you have in savings?’

The slave was middle-aged. He froze at being singled out.

‘Answer him,’ said Isokles. He was smiling.

In fact, Kineas realized that not only did Isokles not mind twisting Calchus’s tail, he positively relished it.

The slave looked down. ‘I don’t exactly know. A hundred owls? Sirs?’

Philokles dismissed him with a wave. ‘Just my point. I have just lost all of my possessions to Poseidon. I do not have a single owl, and this bowl of wine, the gift of my esteemed host, will, once in my gullet, be the sum total of my treasure.’ He drank it. ‘I am now as rich as I’ll be for some time. I do not have a hundred owls of silver. This slave does. May I take it from him?’

Calchus ground his teeth. As the slave’s owner, he probably held the man’s cash. ‘No.’

Philokles raised his empty cup. ‘No. In fact, you would prevent me from taking it. So, it appears that this slave holds property and can defend it. And so would Anarchises say of us. In fact, he would say that we are slaves to the very act of holding our property.’

Isokles applauded with a trace of mockery. ‘You should be a lawyer.’

Philokles, apparently immune to the mockery, replied, ‘I have been.’

Kineas sipped his wine. ‘Why are the Scythians so free, then?’

Isokles wiped his mouth. ‘Horses, and endless plains. They don’t so much defend their territory as wander it. When the Great King tried to make war against them, they melted before him. They never offered him battle. They refused to defend anything, because they had nothing to defend. In the end, he was utterly defeated.’

Kineas raised his cup. ‘That I remember from Herodotus.’ He swirled the wine in his cup thoughtfully. ‘But the man in the street today…’ He paused.

‘Ataelus,’ Isokles put in. ‘The drunk Scyth? His name is Ataelus.’

‘Had a fortune in gold on his clothes. So they have something worth defending.’

The conversation grew much duller as the merchants present squab-bled over the source of the Scythian gold. After another cup of wine, that gave way to a mock-scholarly debate on the reality or fiction of the tale of the Argonauts. Most of the men present insisted that the golden fleece was real, and debated which river feeding the Euxine had the gold. Philokles insisted that the entire tale was an allegory about grain. No one listened to him.

No one told Kineas anything useful about the Scythians, either. He drank four cups of watered wine, felt his internal balance change, and passed on the next cup.

‘You didn’t use to be such a woman about wine,’ Calchus laughed.

Kineas didn’t think he had done anything to react, but Calchus flinched from the look on his face and the room fell silent.

In a soldier’s camp, that would have been an insult demanding blood. Calchus didn’t mean it as such, Kineas could see, although he could also see that the habit of power had robbed Calchus of his social conscience.

Kineas bowed and forced a smile. ‘Perhaps I should go sleep in the women’s quarters, then,’ he said.

Guffaws. Outright laughter from Isokles. Calchus’s face grew red in the light of the lamps. It was his turn to resent an insult — the suggestion that his women might enjoy a visit from Kineas, however oblique. Kineas saw no reason to apologize. He upturned his cup and slipped away.