‘Come and lie by me,’ she said lightly, as if it were a matter of no importance. She patted her couch.
‘I think not,’ he said, hating the sound of weak prudery in his voice.
‘Who says you rise to a challenge? Then make your report and go back to your barracks.’ She sat up.
‘I am sorry. I mean only-’
‘Don’t be weak.’ She smiled dismissively.
‘I find you…’ he began, hoping to excuse his refusal.
‘Now you will make me angry, Kineas. Do as thou wilt, and only as thou wilt. That is the law of kings and queens. If thou wilt not, then so be it — it is not my fault that you have chosen so.’ She slipped between formal Persian and Greek in every sentence.
Stung, Kineas sat back down on his own couch. ‘There is more to virtue and vice than doing as I will,’ he said.
She smiled at him. ‘No,’ she said. ‘All your philosophy is merely to cover the weakness of those who cannot attain all the things they desire, or master them once attained. Your virtue is merely abstinence, and the avoidance of your vice is merely the cowardice of fear of consequence.’
‘Fear of consequence?’ he asked. She was angry. And she was no longer all things to all men.
‘Alexander has found the philosophy of kings. I learned it from him. Perhaps he learned it from your Aristotle? There is no law. That is the only law.’ She was serious.
‘You will not debate me into your arms,’ Kineas said, standing up.
‘Will I not? I get more response from you like this than with honey.’ She stood too, and walked straight to him.
‘Your philosophy-’
‘To Hades with philosophy, Kineas.’ She came up close, and he could see her, backlit by the torchlight from the room’s north wall from knee to shoulder through the thin stuff of her chiton. ‘I need you to protect my little kingdom in the spring.’ She came closer and raised her face, where flecks of gold sparkled in her mascara. Her voice was low, husky and tired, but she smelled like spring. ‘In the autumn I was willing to pay the price. Now I am eager to pay it.’
Somewhere beyond her in the torchlight, a slave dropped a heavy silver platter with a noise like a man beating a metal drum, or like a goddess clearing her throat. Kineas stepped back and kissed her hand, his resolve steadied.
‘Coward,’ she said. ‘I can feel your desire. And I am no painted harlot.’
He took a breath, and all he breathed was her. ‘I am a coward,’ he said. He couldn’t pull his eyes away from hers. ‘You are no painted harlot.’
She shrugged and moved away. ‘Go,’ she commanded.
Riding down the hill, he felt nothing but shame at his own indecision.
Kineas vowed not to return.
Again.
Because his horses were thin and he needed remounts, because Coenus was due with the bullion, because the passes had been closed by snow and they were all worried by the lack of news — and because the queen had abandoned modesty, Kineas felt the urge to act. So when he saw flowers coming through the snow, Kineas summoned his friends. He served the last of his good Chian wine.
‘I want to be ready to march,’ he said. He looked around.
Every man met his eye, and the grunts of agreement were clear. At his elbow, Philokles nodded. Niceas, who had grown a bushy beard, scratched at it.
‘Fodder,’ Niceas said.
Kineas agreed. ‘That’s the problem. We need fodder. The fodder has to come in from the queen’s peasants. They hate her, for starters, and she’s none too fond of us right now, because we’re marching away and leaving her to Parmenion’s vultures.’
‘That’s one reason,’ said Philokles, who missed nothing, when he was sober.
Diodorus rubbed his eyes. Smoke from the hearth was stinging them all, and every eye in camp was constantly red-rimmed. ‘Her own mercenaries are ready to sell her to Artabazus. That citadel won’t last a feast cycle when we march away. Everyone has their money on Parmenion.’
Kineas motioned to Nicanor, who signed to a slave, who poured wine in Kineas’s cup. Kineas stood. ‘She’s intelligent and resourceful and dangerous as a wolf. I want the guard led by someone in this room until we march. I want to set a date and publicize it. Then we’ll march two days early, in combat formation. And I want the prodromoi out as soon as Ataelus is willing to go, covering the route east all the way to the edge of the desert.’
No one disputed his ideas.
Diodorus held out his cup for wine. ‘We should be drilling the combat formation for marching. We should do it by sections, so that it’s not obvious to anyone watching.’
Kineas frowned. ‘That’s excellent. Draw up the plan and let’s give it to every officer by tomorrow. Nicanor, can you scribe for Diodorus?’
Nicanor nodded.
Heron had grown up again during the winter. Now he spoke out. ‘Two things, sir. First, do we need an operational plan in case we need to gather the forage ourselves? And second, if we leave,’ he coloured, ‘I hesitate to use the term hostile, but if the queen is not our friend when we march away, what becomes of Coenus and the bullion?’
Kineas, who had spent all winter worrying about Coenus, took a deep breath and released it. ‘We send a message to the fort at the top of the Kaspian, telling Coenus not to land here, and send guides to help him follow us.’
Heron jutted out his jaw insistently. ‘Easier to seize a town on the coast and hold it for him,’ he said. ‘With a garrison that can become his escort.’
That silenced the room. Kineas glanced at Philokles. ‘I had thought of leaving the infantry behind, or sending them home,’ he said.
Lycurgus, who had heard this idea all winter, shook his head. ‘We can keep up, if it comes to that. But Hades, Strategos, the boy’s plan isn’t a bad one. March up the coast and seize one of the wolf towns. It’d take us three or four days — there’s nothing up there to stop three hundred hoplites.’
Diodorus cut in. ‘I could go beyond that. Leosthenes says Hyrkania is full of Hellenes — deserters from one side or another. I’ve seen them — there are two groups of men who’ve sniffed around our camp, looking to be recruited. We could buy them.’
Kineas shook his head. ‘My goal is to strike a blow against Alexander with Srayanka. I’m not interested in the conquest of Hyrkania — which, let me tell you, would be a harder nut than you two seem to think.’
Leon shook his head. ‘Can’t we keep the queen sweet?’ Like Heron, Leon had grown over the winter. In his case, he was not just older but also more confident of his status as a free man. He frowned at Kineas. ‘I have money tied into this place, now. So do you. If the queen repudiates all the contracts I’ve made, I’ve wasted the winter.’
Kineas groaned.
‘Listen to me, Kineas,’ Leon insisted. ‘There’s more to the world than Herodotus thought. For two years I’ve heard rumours — Nicomedes heard them — of a great empire in the east, beyond the sea of grass. The place from which silk comes.’ He looked around at all of them, his eyes hot, and Kineas smiled inwardly, because Leon was no longer a slave. ‘It’s called Kwin, or Qu’in,’ he said, voice husky with passion. ‘I mean to go there!’
‘Good for you, lad,’ Niceas said with a smile.
The black man grinned. ‘I’m getting carried away. But I’m telling you, if we could open this route — if we could manage even a tithe of the trade across the old trade road — we’d be richer than Croesus.’
Eumenes frowned. ‘I think we need to discuss war, not trade. Trade is for merchants.’
Leon raised his chin. ‘Your father was a merchant.’
‘Shut your mouth!’ Eumenes said. He rose to his feet.
‘And a traitor,’ Leon said, conversationally.
Diodorus didn’t need a glance from Kineas to deal with adolescents. He put a hand on each combatant’s shoulder. ‘You are both rude and your comments have no place in a command conference. Apologize or suffer the consequence,’ he said. His words were spoken quietly,
but they carried over every whispered side conversation and the room fell silent.
‘I apologize,’ Leon said. He was blushing so hard that his dark skin seemed to be engorged with blood.
‘I apologize for Leon’s bad manners as well as my own,’ Eumenes said. ‘He spent too much time as a slave and can’t help himself.’ Eumenes spoke rapidly, still enraged, and then looked stricken when he thought about what he had said aloud.
Kineas raised an eyebrow. ‘You may go to your quarters, Eumenes. Do not communicate with any other person. I will come and pay you a visit.’ He waited a moment, as the stunned young man stood frozen. ‘Now, Eumenes.’
Eumenes walked from the smoky hall in a daze.
When he was gone, Kineas found himself stroking his beard and made his fingers stop. He sipped his wine — excellent stuff, with a smell like wild berries, dark as ox blood — and nodded. ‘We’re not here to open a trade route,’ he said. He raised an eyebrow at Heron. ‘We’re not here to give you a base against Pantecapaeum, either. But if you lads can accomplish your dreams while obeying the orders of this council, I’m not against it.’
Heron’s family had provided generations of tyrants to Pantecapaeum, and he was currently in exile. Heron made no secret of his ambitions to be tyrant there — perhaps king of the Bosporus, as well. He gave a careful smile. ‘I appreciate your help. When I’m king-’
Niceas laughed. ‘Heron the first?’
Philokles laughed. ‘Eumeles, I suspect. The melodious one. Won’t that be your reigning name?’
Heron gave a wry smile. ‘You learn every secret.’
Philokles shook his head. ‘Not much of a secret. So we’re to be richer than Croesus?’
Niceas laughed. ‘Richer than Croesus is good,’ he said, giving Leon a smile. He winked at Heron. ‘Your parents actually called you Eumeles?’
‘They hadn’t heard my voice yet,’ Heron replied in his usual croak.
Diodorus leaned forward, cutting back to the matter at hand. ‘You really think we can live without the infantry?’ he asked. His face was burning — he was in the grip of a grand idea.
Kineas answered, ‘Yes.’ He tried to sound cautious.
Diodorus turned to the rest of them. ‘We leave Lycurgus. He starts recruiting tomorrow. He can keep the quality high, get a thousand hoplites and train them to our standard. The queen is saved — no force in Hyrkania can evict a thousand hoplites from this fort and the citadel. We’re saved — we have a secure town in our rear. Coenus can come here. Our contracts are safe.’
‘Until Artabazus sends the whole levy of the satrapy.’ Kineas glanced around and shrugged. ‘It’s not bad. Lycurgus?’
The old mercenary shrugged. ‘Big command. You’d have to leave me another officer.’ He shrugged. ‘I came out here to follow Kineas, not to garrison some barbarian hill town.’ He shrugged again. ‘But I obey orders.’ He grinned. ‘Make her pay through the nose.’
Heron stood. ‘I’ll stay,’ he said. It was clear to all the gentlemen present that Heron saw the town as a springboard to recruit mercenaries and go back to seize Pantecapaeum, just as Kineas had said. But being Heron, he didn’t hide his motivations. He just bulled towards them regardless of consequences. Kineas suspected that he shared Banugul’s philosophy. Do as you will. A suitable virtue for a tyrant.
Kineas was not slow to realize that many of them were not as keen to march away to fight Alexander as he was. They’d had a winter to hear tales of the eastern deserts and the impassable mountains that ran to the edge of the world.
But Diodorus’s plan was sound.
‘I’ll think on it,’ Kineas said.
‘Don’t forget the fodder,’ Niceas said, and coughed. Red sprayed his fist. He tried to hide it, and Diodorus and Kineas exchanged a look of shared concern.
The next day, the sun came up and stayed, and no rain fell on the fields of mud beyond the town and the citadel.
Diodorus, Leon and Nicanor were hard at work behind him, scratching out rows of Greek characters to represent every man in the line of march and to give the officers a manual on which to drill their men. Across the drill square, by the gate, Lycurgus was recruiting and drilling men that he had turned away all winter, wolfish Greeks and nondescript Persians. Beside him, Temerix the smith stood bundled in sheepskins, also recruiting from the brigands who came to the gate as soon as they heard that Kineas was paying silver for service.
He didn’t want to go to the palace. They had nothing to say to each other, except as a mercenary and his employer. He glanced around the smoky hall, looking for a man he could send in his stead.
Diodorus was busy, and besides, Sappho would not forgive him for sending her man.
Eumenes was under house arrest, and Kineas meant to let him stew.
Leon might do. Except that he was busy, and sending him would expose Kineas’s unwillingness to do what needed to be done.
Do the thing. Men said it when they asked for death, or when they sealed a deal in the Acropolis. He was evading responsibility. Facing the queen was his job.
He knew with the finality of oracular prophesy that if he climbed the hill again, he would fall into her arms, vulgarity or none. She would think that his offer of service by his infantry was a concession to her charms. And he was not made of wood, or stone.
Cowardice.
A gust of wind picked up dust and dry snow from under the eaves of the huts and brushed it across the parade ground in a long swirl of dirty white, and when it was gone, Nihmu’s slight figure could be seen riding across the drill field.
‘Do you never appear as other people do?’ Kineas asked, by way of greeting.
She laughed and lifted a leg over her horse’s head and slid to the ground all in one elastic motion. ‘The world is about to change,’ she said, her face suddenly serious. ‘I rode to tell you.’
Kineas nodded.
‘The woman in the palace — the sorceress. She is very dangerous to you — today and tomorrow and tomorrow again after that. Be on your guard.’ Nihmu’s odd eyes met his square on.
Kineas nodded again. ‘I was just thinking the very same thing as you rode up.’
Sometimes, when dealing with Nihmu, it was possible to forget that she was a child. At other times, it was painfully obvious. ‘I have not had as much time for you this winter as I ought.’
Nihmu nodded. ‘You are often at the palace. All the Sakje fear me. I long to talk to you. And my father orders it.’ She looked around. ‘I like your Nicanor. He is funny, and he makes good cakes.’
‘I’m sure that Nicanor doesn’t make cakes himself.’ Kineas couldn’t imagine the pompous and rather staid Nicanor amusing a child.
Nihmu made a face. ‘Fat lot you know, Strategos.’ She laughed.
Behind her in the drill square, Lycurgus dismissed the twenty files he was drilling and they broke up into knots of men talking and shouting. Another group, mostly Olbians, were heading out to the brothels of the agora, and they were shouting at a third party that was returning. The noise level swelled.
Suddenly all the voices in the drill square shaped themselves into one voice. ‘ Your blindness will kill as effectively as your sword, ’ it said in the tone of a god.
Kineas fell back a pace. Nihmu’s eyes were wide and her face was contorted, not the face of a child but that of a priestess. And then she grabbed at the bridle of her horse and ran away, crying.
He sent for Ataelus when he gathered the tangled skein of his thoughts. Ataelus rode up looking at the sky. ‘Sun again tomorrow,’ he said. ‘For drying earth.’
Kineas nodded. ‘I need you and the prodromoi to start making a fodder inventory,’ he said.
Ataelus shrugged. ‘Huh?’ he asked.
Kineas started again. ‘I need you and the scouts to go out every day and give me a report on the farms within a day’s ride — the number of wagons, the amount of fodder they have in their barns and stores.’
Ataelus grinned. ‘For counting wagons and for scouting
trail to east. Anything else for scouts?’
Kineas spread his hands.
Ataelus leaned down from his horse. ‘Temerix for counting barns and wagons. Ataelus for scouting east.’
Ataelus never cut corners and he never feared to argue with his leader, which was welcome, even when the news was bad.
‘You are right.’
Ataelus nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘If sun is for shining, scouts ride tomorrow. Back when moon is full.’ He shrugged. ‘Unless for dead. Always unless.’
Kineas pointed at the throng of would-be warriors at the gate. ‘Anyone worth recruiting for the prodromoi?’
Ataelus didn’t turn his head. ‘No,’ he said.
Having dismissed centuries of Hyrkanian horsemanship in one word, Ataelus grinned. ‘Anything else, Strategos?’ It was a word Ataelus relished — he trotted it out too often.
‘You taking the girl — Lot’s daughter? Mosva?’
‘When for riding east? No. Stay with father. Last child. Not for scouting.’
Kineas rubbed his beard and then snatched his fingers away. ‘I’d rather she went,’ he said.
‘Oho!’ said the Scyth. He nodded and gave a big grin. ‘Good. I for talking Lot.’
‘Go with the gods, Ataelus.’
‘Go with horses. For coming back with gods.’ Ataelus grinned. Then he wheeled his horse and rode away.
Kineas went to finish some discipline.
He slipped through two layers of hanging cloaks and blankets to enter the hut that Eumenes shared with Andronicus and six other gentlemen-troopers. The hearth was cold and so was the room, and the whitewashed walls served only to make it colder. There was no table and no chairs and no couches, only a rack of beds made by local craftsmen and covered with piles of blankets and furs and sheepskins. At the far end of the dark hut, one of the troopers — a Kelt called Hama — was ploughing a local girl, moving slowly and rhythmically under a tent of blankets. They whispered to each other, moaned and giggled together. Eumenes sat in misery, trying to pretend he was not there.
‘Let’s walk,’ Kineas said to Eumenes.
Eumenes took his cloak from the doorway and followed Kineas into the sunshine.
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