Philopoemen weighed the purse in his hand.
‘I have forty minae of silver here,’ he said. ‘The weight of one of your heavy stones.’ He glanced at his ships. ‘How many men?’
‘I have a hundred and sixty here, and another hundred at Phaistos.’
‘Can you sell me Phaistos too?’ Philopoemen asked.
‘No, worse luck. Most of the garrison is Aetolian. Some Illyrians.’
The mercenary shrugged. It was getting darker, and his face was hidden in shadow.
‘How long do you serve me for forty minae?’ Philopoemen asked.
The Boeotian looked thoughtful. ‘We’re owed that in back wages, and more.’
‘Unfortunately, I’m not the one who owes you wages. Also, you might as well know, I’m not very tolerant about indiscipline. No looting. At all.’
‘So you are going to fight.’ The man rubbed his beard. ‘Forty for the towers and my men here. We’ll serve you until the Pyanepsia in Athens. You know it?’
Alexanor, who, as a priest, memorised all the festival calendars, calculated on his fingers.
‘Almost seventy days.’
‘A generous offer.’ Philopoemen handed over the purse. ‘You are now in the service of the Achaean League.’
Periander bowed. ‘And not for the first time, Strategos.’
An hour later, there was a knock at the gate to the courtyard of the high priest’s residence. A slave came and ordered whoever was knocking to be gone. There were some shouts, and then the slave was knocked unconscious from behind.
The Thracians opened the courtyard gate, and Alexanor walked in. He was dressed head to foot in white. He wore white sandals and he carried no weapon. Leon was with him, wearing identical robes.
Periander’s men moved into the courtyard. They were thureophoroi in the truest sense, with Celtic-style shields and short spears. Only the officers had armour, but they had the expensive new chain-mail shirts, also a Celtic innovation. Their drill wasn’t very good, but they were willing enough, especially in storming the high priest’s house.
All of Philopoemen’s officers were present. They were there to prevent a massacre, or any looting.
The force went through the house – the palace, really. There was an outer yard and an inner colonnade with a fountain; two sets of elaborate bedrooms, kitchens, offices, a private bath.
Alexanor walked through the columns into the inner garden just as a scuffle announced the seizure of the high priest. He immediately began to scream, convinced that he was being robbed.
Periander dragged the fat man into the garden, one arm locked painfully behind his back. He dropped the man in front of Alexanor.
The high priest raised his head. There were two torch bearers behind Alexanor, and his white robes seemed to glow in the dark garden.
‘Whose house is this, Pausanias?’ Alexanor asked.
‘Mine!’ the priest spat. ‘Who the fuck are you?’
‘Priests of Asklepios live in barracks, Pausanias. Whose house is this?’ Alexanor’s voice was like stone.
‘Mine!’ screamed the man.
He wasn’t terrified. He was angry – the anger of a pampered man who always got his way.
Alexanor turned to Periander and Syrmas, who stood close.
‘You may loot the house to the walls. No rape – no slave to be touched.’
Periander smiled. The Thracian chief grinned. Out in the yard, a Greek voice said, ‘That’s the fucking way, mates! We get the loot!’
‘That’s the way! That’s more like it!’
The officers dispersed, mostly to prevent theft from becoming murder.
The priest got up. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.
Alexanor pointed his staff at the man. It was a plain staff of cornel wood; indeed, he had cut it on the hillside that afternoon. He’d cut it, trimmed it with a sharp knife he wore around his neck, and stripped the bark.
Only high priests carried a staff.
‘I am your master,’ Alexanor said. ‘Do you remember your oath?’
‘I’ll have you beaten by slaves, you whore!’ the priest bellowed. ‘Master my arse. You are the stupid merchant!’
‘I am the man your priests refused to serve,’ Alexanor said with a certain cold satisfaction, ‘until I had paid an exorbitant fee. A fee far beyond that permitted by the rules of our order. I say it again, priest of Apollo and Asklepios. Do you remember your oath? Because you have done harm, and you will atone.’
‘Really?’ The man shrugged. ‘You can’t afford to have that butt-boy Periander around every day. My father will come here and crucify the lot of you. Or worse. Won’t you lot look fine with a spear rammed up your arse.’ He looked at Alexanor and he didn’t cringe. ‘Oath? Grow up. This is the world of men. If the gullible—’
Alexanor had little fear of blasphemy, but his hate rose to choke him – hate, and the latent anger at his father’s betrayal and a dozen other things … Before he thought, his staff struck – not once, but five or six blows – and the man lay at his feet, hands over his head, whimpering.
Later, Alexanor would regret the blows as unworthy of the first use of his staff of office.
But at the time, he turned and ordered Periander to take the whimpering mass to Philopoemen. Philopoemen had a brief interview with the high priest and came back to where Alexanor stood in the temple sanctuary.
‘I can take him off your hands. If his father is one of the city fathers of the new government of Gortyna, he’d make an excellent hostage.’
‘He is, for all his sins, a priest of Apollo. And Asklepios, although as far as I can ascertain, he’s never been trained as a doctor. I don’t even know how that could happen.’ Alexanor shrugged.
‘What will you do with him?’ Philopoemen asked.
‘I like the spear in the arse solution,’ Dinaeos called from the scroll table. He and Leon and Lykortas were all writing messages at Philopoemen’s dictation.
Philopoemen winced. ‘No thanks.’
‘Sends a clear message,’ Dinaeos said.
Alexanor thought that Dinaeos enjoyed shocking his friend.
‘I will send him to Epidauros, to the sanctuary. For trial.’ He shook his head. ‘Chiron and Sostratos will not thank me. I’m not even sure there’s a process to try a priest of Asklepios.’
‘Just kill him,’ Dinaeos said. ‘Save time. Effort. Money. Besides, Periander will pay to do it. I like that man. What’d the priest do to him?’
‘Took his men’s pay. But it’s personal, too. Do we need to know?’ Leon said from the table. ‘I have friends among the former garrison.’
‘From trips to the brothel.’ Alexanor tried to hide his disgust.
‘There’s a brothel?’ Dinaeos asked, sitting up like an eager cat at feeding time.
Alexanor was looking out at the first tinge of pink in the eastern sky. He forced his thoughts back to the situation before them.
‘I’m not sure … I have no instructions about this. And there’s politics – Kos, the great temple of Asklepios, and my home temple at Epidauros, are apparently at odds. But I’m quite certain that Chiron meant me to support you, so if you need his worthless carcass for a bargain, be my guest. If you send him back to his father, I’ll …’ He took a breath. ‘I’ll strip him of his priesthood.’
Philopoemen’s eyes widened; a man who was never surprised took a step back.
‘You can do that?’ he asked. ‘I mean, pardon, brother, but men and women are born to the priesthoods, surely.’
Alexanor shook his head. ‘Would you ever want that man as your healer or counsellor? Would anyone? Would the great god Apollo want this man making sacrifices at his altar? Do we not clean ourselves of ritual impurity before we make sacrifice? Today, I will order every altar washed. I will order every priest to go barefoot, and I will wash everything. If I wash the altars, will I not also wash the priests?’
Philopoemen bowed. ‘Pardon me, brother. I should not have doubted you. You are a true priest.�
��
Before the sun was over the rim of the world, the junior priests and free servitors of the temple were standing under the eyes of the Thracian cavalry in the sanctuary. Alexanor walked out to Kleostratos.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘But I don’t need a show of force.’
Kleostratos grinned. ‘Just drying off the horses, so to speak.’
He saluted with his whip and led the Thracians out of the precinct. A horse defecated on the white marble, his heavy turd falling with a plop, audible because the priests were completely silent.
Alexanor walked to the middle of the sanctuary, his white sandals slapping on the marble floor.
‘I greet you from your brothers and sisters at Epidauros and Kos,’ he said quietly. It was the opening of the speech he’d intended to give under other circumstances.
Behind him, outside the sanctuary, he could hear Periander shouting commands in Attic Greek. The thureophoroi were drilling.
The staff looked at him, most of their eyes wide with fear.
‘I come to you from a temple that serves every pilgrim,’ he said. ‘At Kos, and at Epidauros, every man or woman who comes sick to the feet of the god is sent away healed, at least, if the god so wills and to the best of our ability.’
He looked at them. He already knew a number of them: the pudgy priest who’d declined to serve him, now looking as if his bulging eyes might burst from his head; the slim young priest with the large eyes who had never appeared in the sanctuary in four days; servitors and slaves he’d met under the guise of a greedy merchant.
‘You have been poorly led by a bad shepherd,’ he said loudly. This was not his prepared speech. It was coming from his mouth, but he felt that perhaps the god was at his shoulder, putting words in his head. ‘It remains for me to see if you yourselves have turned to evil, or whether you merely obeyed the bad shepherd. You will clean every surface inside the sanctuary – you will use clean, fresh water, hyssop and incense, and you will leave no place unpurified. To my eyes, this place looks like this.’
His staff pointed at the horse manure.
The staff tip rose and pointed at the pudgy priest.
‘You,’ he said. ‘Remove this. Now.’
The man’s face puckered and collapsed, as if he was going to cry, and he fell on his knees.
‘I will be a better priest!’ he whimpered.
‘Then the god will forgive you,’ Alexanor said, steel in his voice. ‘In the meantime, clean this floor with your own hands, priest.’
One of the slaves tittered.
Alexanor walked over to the slave.
‘You have been blameless?’ he asked quietly. ‘You have not stolen incense and sold it in the agora?’
The man blinked, suddenly too scared to speak.
‘Work!’ Alexanor roared. ‘Make this place clean, and you will cleanse yourselves. Tomorrow, we will serve pilgrims, as the god intended.’
‘Greedy merchant, spy, and acting hierophant,’ Alexanor said bitterly.
He was sitting in the high priest’s apartments inside the sanctuary. Philopoemen and Leon were writing messages for the Neoteroi in Phaistos and Gortyna.
Leon said nothing.
Philopoemen glanced at him. ‘We all play roles, brother. Right now, I’m playing the role of great commander – the very pillar of confidence. Men can trust me – my troopers can die for me.’
He smiled and went back to writing his draft in wax.
Leon’s stylus moved smoothly across the papyrus, copying the wax into a message ready to travel. Antiphatas, booted and ready for riding, was talking to Periander in the moonlight, getting instructions on contacting his phylarch among the mercenaries at Phaistos.
‘I made them afraid. It was as if I was another man. I enjoyed it!’ Alexanor said, his voice full of anger.
‘I enjoy command,’ Philopoemen said. ‘I worry that this is how tyrants are formed – it is so much simpler to command than to discuss. Ah, Antiphatas – are you ready? This is a brave thing you do.’
‘Essential,’ Antiphatas said. ‘I can be in Gortyna before dawn, and Phaistos tomorrow.’ He looked at the stars outside. ‘I wish that I knew that no one from here escaped. You did good work taking that worthless clod, Pausanias. His father, Zophanes, is the one who ordered my exile. He is one of the chiefs among the Presbyteroi and even he knew this son was worthless.’
‘No one ran,’ Philopoemen nodded. ‘Not even a shepherd. Kleostratos is the best cavalryman I’ve ever met. His people were out all night. So was Syrmas and so was Thodor.’
‘Someone from the temple might have escaped,’ Antiphatas said. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s my neck.’
Alexanor shook his head. ‘This place is decadent, but they have records. I’m not missing anyone, not even a washerwoman.’
Antiphatas bowed. ‘I’ll go then. But I won’t breathe a safe breath until I’m back here.’
Philopoemen smiled, radiating confidence. ‘See you in two days. Everything is ready.’
Antiphatas took the satchel of incriminating letters, bowed, and withdrew.
Philopoemen put his head in his hand. ‘Here we go,’ he said.
Leon looked up. ‘Surely the threads of your fate were measured when you landed on the beach,’ he said.
Philopoemen sighed. ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘But now people will start to die.’
BOOK III
THE LYTTIAN WAR
CHAPTER ONE
Lentas and Gortyna, Crete
220 BCE
Like a pebble sliding down a steep ridge, collecting sand and gravel until larger stones join the charge and the whole wave of rock becomes an avalanche, the arrival of the Achaeans at Lentas started a cascade of violence beyond the dreams of the handful of cavalrymen camping on the beach below the sanctuary.
Four days passed. Periander was drilling his Attic mercenaries on the narrow plain above the sanctuary. It was the cool of the evening; the horses were all ashore, picketed in long lines across the stubble of the summer fields along the coast. Most of the Thracian horses had already restored the lustre on their coats, but the Greek horses were responding more slowly than the hardy steppe ponies.
Alexanor had his priests and novices practising medicine on cavalrymen. Like any body of lower-class men and barbarians, they had their share of disease, abscesses, old wounds, ingrown toenails, and other ailments that reduced their good humour or fighting spirit. As most of the pilgrims had fled in Philopoemen’s ships, taken to Kos at the Achaean’s own expense, Alexanor used Philopoemen’s men as training subjects for an intensive course in the human body.
Nor was he entirely disappointed in what he saw. The fat priest was Nazistratos, from Chios; the thin, androgynous one was called Omphalion and came from the Odrysian Kingdom of Thrace. Both of them were competent, and both were working like dogs to prove themselves. Most of the young novices were local boys from aristocratic families – useless, but cheerful and hard-working so long as they were watched. Alexanor was teaching two of the boys to splint a broken finger, its owner injured in the taking of the high priest’s palace, when a third boy called out.
‘Horseman!’ he shouted.
Philopoemen, who had been watching the lesson on broken bones with every evidence of attention, leapt to his feet. Dinaeos, who had been flirting idly with one of the few pilgrims to remain, joined him.
The pilgrim, a widow from Gortyna, smiled. ‘I think I’ve been replaced,’ she said to Alexanor. ‘What will happen now?’
Later, it occurred to Alexanor that watching the horseman ride down the switchbacks of the mountain behind the town was one of the most unbearable periods of tension he had known. He found himself praying, as if the events that would be reported by the messenger hadn’t already happened. And the messenger’s horse was tired and the descent from the mountains behind them was steep; he stopped and rested his mount, and the men around Philopoemen groaned aloud.
‘It’s not Antiphatas,’ Kleostratos said. ‘I’ll wager a tetra
drachma. This one rides better.’
‘Younger, too,’ Thodor agreed.
‘Let’s parade all our people,’ Philopoemen said calmly. ‘We may have to move fast.’ He glanced at Dinaeos. ‘We’ll want kontoi.’
‘Lances? Will there be a cavalry charge?’ Dinaeos shook his head.
Philopoemen smiled. ‘Lances.’
‘The ships are gone,’ Alexanor said. He was aware that this was unnecessary; the words just fell out.
‘And our backs are to the sea.’ Philopoemen’s voice was strong. ‘Yes, if this goes badly, we’re in a tight spot.’
His men, bandaged or not, saluted and scattered.
An hour later, the messenger arrived. He was a young man on a very tired horse.
‘Telemnastos,’ he introduced himself.
He saluted Philopoemen like a soldier. The Achaean’s whole force was waiting: the cavalry all standing by their horses, the pages with remounts ready to move and a dozen of Philopoemen’s slaves with the little force’s baggage train of donkeys. The Attic mercenaries were formed close by, as if acknowledging that they would share the Achaean’s fate.
‘Strategos,’ the young Cretan said. His smile told them everything. ‘My father sent me from Phaistos.’
‘You are Antiphatas’ son?’
‘Yes, sir. Here it is, sir. There’s a lot of news. It’s as if you used magic on the whole island. At the news of your landing, the men of Lyttos marched on Knossos and defeated them, yesterday. The Aetolians wouldn’t move to support them because they were out looking for you. Then other Knossians attacked Lyttos and stormed it, or that’s what we’re hearing from the survivors.’
‘Where in Hades is Lyttos?’ Dinaeos asked.
‘About one hundred stades east of Knossos,’ Telemnastos said.
‘Sir, my father says you must move quickly. The Aetolians are trying to cover the Knossian army – the Lyttians are refugees. Everything is chaos.’
‘But Gortyna?’ Philopoemen’s voice betrayed his anxiety.
‘Is ready,’ Telemnastos said. ‘I have men ready to fight, and weapons, although I could use more. The oligarchs disarmed my friends after I went into exile.’
The New Achilles Page 24