Philopoemen got up the first serious slope of the long ridge towards Petra and turned his charger, looking back. Alexanor rode to join him. When he turned, there were Knossian dust clouds all around the village. From their new position above the valley’s flanks, the setting sun shone bright on their road. But down in the valley, the light was blocked, and swirls of dust spiralled in the murk and gloom, fattened by the Aetolians and the Knossian light troops.
‘When …?’ Alexanor turned his horse. ‘Where is Dinaeos?’
Philopoemen shrugged. ‘Twenty stades away, I hope.’
The Knossian professionals had now blocked all three valley entrances.
‘That man is capable,’ Philopoemen said. ‘A little cautious, but he’s made sure he cannot be ambushed again.’ He smiled, slapped Alexanor on the back, and turned his horse. ‘Let’s go. We won’t know anything for hours.’
‘I don’t know anything now,’ Alexanor said, and rode behind the commander.
Dawn.
The magnificent wheel of the sun crept up over the distant rim of the world. From the very top of the rock of Petra, Alexanor greeted the sun with a prayer. Beneath his feet, the various taxeis of the Cretan League were forming across the sheepfolds and barley fields of the ridge top. To the south, they could see the smoke of breakfast fires from Gortyna, and, far away, at the edge of darkness, a glimmer of the sea. To the west, the rising sun lit the mountain tops of central Crete, running like waves on a windy day away and away. And to the east, the valley floors were gradually catching the orange light; the wheat and barley in the fields seemed to glow.
Alexanor sang the invocation to Helios.
At his feet, the men of Gortyna were arrayed by Antiphatas. The army was forming in a rough crescent, with the Lyttians at the far right and the new Achaean cavalry still exercising on the left, almost six stades away. The ridge was too small for the whole League force.
The rising sun gradually lit the hillsides to the north, over towards Basileus, and then, a little at a time, the empty valley floor.
There was no enemy army facing them in the long valley to the north.
‘Someone’s going to be very disappointed,’ Lykortas said.
Indeed, the discontent of the phalanx could be heard all the way down the ridge.
Dinaeos laughed. ‘Only an amateur is sorry to miss a battle,’ he said.
‘You’re back,’ Alexanor said.
‘So I am. Thodor is still out there. I just brought the news.’ Dinaeos yawned.
‘Which is?’ Alexanor asked, impatient. ‘Men have been strangled for less.’
‘I’ll help.’ Lykortas pinned Dinaeos’ arms as the man laughed.
Philopoemen rode up. ‘Do you need rescuing?’
‘They want to know all your secrets,’ Dinaeos said.
Philopoemen gave them his odd, lopsided smile. The one that meant he knew something.
‘Come and listen to my speech,’ he said.
Fifteen minutes later, Philopoemen sat on his magnificent Thessalian charger, his armour glowing in the rising sun, in front of the Gortynian phalanx.
‘I hate to disappoint you, gentlemen,’ he called out, ‘but our friends in Knossos have declined to meet us. It’s a little like being left alone at a symposium. We had a very small fight yesterday – a small affray, a few cavalrymen ambushed.’ He paused. ‘All theirs.’
Men laughed.
‘So we’ll wait here for a day or two. I’ve a mind to march down the valley and perhaps burn the standing crops. But they won’t come out this year. The oligarchs are going to cower behind the towers of Knossos. Their army is half again as large as ours, and they will not face us.’
Philopoemen’s horse flinched at the cheers, and he turned it in a tight circle.
He motioned to Arkas behind him, and the man led a pair of donkeys forward.
‘On a more positive note,’ he said, ‘we did capture most of their baggage train. Including a great deal of newly minted coin. I wonder what they’re using to pay their mercenaries tonight!’
‘So no battle?’ Alexanor said quietly to Dinaeos.
‘Not this year,’ Dinaeos said with evident satisfaction.
Winter, and Alexanor had made the trip over the mountain to see Phila and enjoy the company of his friends. There were fewer than a dozen pilgrims at the sanctuary. Once again, he lay on the kline, this time with Phila. Philopoemen lay with Cyrena, and Lykortas with his latest conquest, a local girl close to his own age named Andromache. Dinaeos shared his couch with Dadas, the Thracian, who could not take his eyes off Cyrena.
‘We got in behind their rearguard when they all pushed forward to storm Basileus,’ Dinaeos said. ‘I admit there was a good deal of luck involved.’
‘Luck my arse.’ Plator, the Illyrian chieftain, downed a whole bowl of watered wine.
His partner was Berenike, a local hetaera, tall, with a heavy, beautiful face. Alone of the women, she had come in revealing clothes and make-up, as if she’d expected a very different kind of party, but Alexanor noted that Phila was as welcoming to her as to the other women.
The Illyrian was dishevelled, to say the least, his tunic rumpled up to show his heavily tattooed thighs, his bare arms showing gold and dark ink together.
‘We made a good plan and it worked,’ the Illyrian said. He raised the empty cup in salute to Philopoemen. ‘When I came down that hillside and saw all them donkeys, I thought, fuck, Philopoemen had that right!’
Penelope smiled automatically. She kept looking about, a little like a trapped animal, trying to decide what role the women in the room played.
Dinaeos shook his head. ‘Still luck. Luck that their rearguard pushed forward and left all the beasts huddled on the road.’
‘Good luck comes with careful planning,’ Lykortas said.
‘Make that up yourself?’ Dadas asked.
‘No,’ Lykortas admitted.
‘In the spring the citizens of Gortyna will demand another battle,’ Alexanor said.
‘Maybe not,’ Philopoemen said. ‘We covered a lot of bills with the gold we took. The farmers won’t feel overtaxed in the spring, all of our mercenaries are paid. We have paid for more armour for the phalanx and more for the archers. And there’s money left to pay for road improvements.’
Phila shook her head. ‘If Philip is as hard-pressed as I hear,’ she said, ‘we’ll be pushed to fight, but this time from above.’
‘We could double the League’s archer corps and then send half of it to Philip,’ Philopoemen said.
‘We could just fight,’ Dinaeos said. ‘You fooled us. You never meant to fight.’
‘It’s not a game,’ Philopoemen said. ‘I would have fought, if Nabis had been more of a fool – if he had pushed forward and camped below us at Petra, or better yet, tried to storm our positions.’
‘In other words, if he was an idiot and you could have an easy win,’ Lykortas said.
Philopoemen didn’t take offence. ‘Exactly. This is not a game. I am not actually Achilles. Instead of a bloody meeting, we took their money and left them unable to prosecute a war. Their farmers must be ready to revolt, and we didn’t lose a single man. We bought time. Our phalanx is better trained now, our cavalry is better horsed.’
‘And you keep your emergency powers,’ Phila said. ‘I’m sorry, dear, but that’s what they’ll say.’
Philopoemen shrugged. ‘I could resign. But what’s the point? I know what I’m doing.’
Phila turned on him. ‘I’m sure you do, but your very cockiness is going to tell against you. And all the changes—’
‘Changes you supported,’ Philopoemen said, stung.
‘Of course I supported them! But every change creates dissent, and there will be more of it when we widen the franchise to include the new thētes class.’ She looked around. ‘Your “reforms” are increasingly revolutionary.’
‘The laws protecting prostitutes passed easily enough,’ Lykortas said.
‘Gortyna has always
been fairly liberal that way,’ Telemnastos said. ‘Our old law code has the same stuff. You can read it in the stadium.’
Philopoemen’s jaw was set. ‘I won’t fight a battle unless I have to,’ he said. ‘They’re fools if they want to fight when we can just sit tight, steal their cattle, and wait for them to surrender.’
‘You are ruining war,’ Thodor said.
‘You love cattle raiding,’ Philopoemen said.
‘I love riding on a moonlit night, fooling my foe, taking his cows, and slipping away leaving some throats cut,’ the Thracian said. ‘Your way is like stealing a baby goat from a little child. They—’
Suddenly Philopoemen got up, leaving Cyrena, and walked out.
After a moment of stunned silence, Alexanor got up and followed him.
The hipparchos stood in the alley behind Phila’s house. He was looking at the stars. There was snow on the hillsides, bright in the moonlight.
‘I feel like I’m talking to children,’ Philopoemen said.
‘I’m sorry you think we’re like children,’ Alexanor said. ‘In fact, I think we’re all telling you the same thing we told you the last time we were together. You have to pay attention to what men want. It is not entirely rational. And Phila is right – Philip will demand that we finish Knossos.’
‘Knossos is richer and more powerful than we are, especially with Rhodes and Sparta paying the bills.’ Philopoemen continued to stare into the darkness. ‘Do you remember what Aratos said? His goal was that we should form a Cretan League and create a stable ally for the Achaean League.’
‘My memory is that all he wanted was to appear to support Philip.’ Alexanor shrugged. ‘But I know what you’re saying.’
‘Yes, well, in three years we’ve accomplished it all. In the fullness of time, Knossos will fall, from inside, when their farmers topple the oligarchs, and we will be prosperous and free. Without a battle. The odds were impossibly long, and it’s all but finished, and all of you want a battle.’
‘I do not particularly want a battle, brother,’ Alexanor said with a smile.
‘Philip hasn’t even covered the cost of the mercenaries the last year.’ Philopoemen sounded plaintive. ‘Why should I care what he wants?’
Alexanor said nothing.
‘I’ve built the best rough-terrain fighters in the Greek world, and we have, effectively, made it impossible for our opponents to leave their walls. We don’t even need to lay siege to their city. We’ll never cut off the head of the Hydra, but we can bleed it with a thousand tiny, controlled cuts.’
Alexanor shrugged. ‘I am here to tell you that we all trust you, and Phila is on your side. You don’t need to walk away.’
Philopoemen nodded, and then turned and threw his arms around his friend.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I thought … I felt …’ He let go. ‘Never mind. Damn, it’s easier to walk out than to walk back in.’
‘I know,’ Alexanor said.
Later that night, Phila turned to him.
‘I’m leaving,’ she said.
‘Leaving me?’ Alexanor said. He’d known it was coming.
‘Leaving Crete. Philopoemen is right about most things. The war here is done. The laws are passed. The Cretan League is built.’ She sighed and stroked his neck. ‘I thought Philopoemen might be the man to change the world, but I think he plans to make a life here on Crete, settle down, and play the big fish in a very small pool. I’ve played the great woman here. I’m going back to Athens.’
‘Why?’
She smiled. ‘The bigger war is not over. Change is coming. Crete is only the beginning.’
‘Am I, too, only a means to an end?’ he asked. It hurt far more than he’d expected.
She grinned. ‘You, my dear sir, are my winter’s entertainment.’ She smiled. ‘Seriously – you encourage me to monogamy. I have had no other lover in quite some time. Maybe I’m growing old.’ She drank a little wine and shook her head. ‘I’m not a wife. I enjoyed playing house, especially with a man who was away on the other side of a mountain most of the time. But in the spring I’ll go back to Athens. Why don’t you rescue your lady-love?’
‘Rescue her? She’s married …’ He didn’t want to discuss Aspasia. He wanted Phila. In that moment, he realised, too late, that he loved her.
‘So what?’ Phila smiled lazily. ‘You live openly with a notorious woman, my friend. Living with someone else’s wife will hardly wreck your reputation. And you’re a priest. You have no political career to ruin, do you?’
‘My lover is giving me advice on my next lover,’ Alexanor said. He knew enough to keep the tone light, although his body was as tense as it would be before combat. He made himself relax. ‘Besides, I will have enough trouble being confirmed as high priest without adding “seduction of a rich man’s wife” to the crimes of “revolutionary” and “Stoic”.’
‘Goodness, my dear, I’ve counselled men about choosing brides, this is nothing.’ She shrugged. ‘She deserves a life.’
‘Would you marry me?’ Alexanor asked suddenly.
She rolled over atop him, planted herself on his chest, and kissed him, long and deep.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I would if I were Aspasia, but not as Phila.’
‘Why not?’
She shrugged. ‘We can spend tonight arguing. Or we can do other things.’
‘Never?’ he asked.
‘Never,’ she said.
‘Will I see you again?’
‘Of course!’ she said. ‘I need you and your Rhodian connections for my war on the slave trade.’
‘That’s hopeful,’ he said. ‘When does that start?’
‘I’ve already begun,’ she said.
BOOK IV
THE MAN-KILLER
CHAPTER ONE
Lentas, Crete
218 BCE
Spring. Water on the hillsides, and water threatening the foundations of the north-facing sanctuary wall. More rain than Alexanor had ever seen on Crete, and a consequent explosion of colour; flowers everywhere.
Diophanes sailed out of the east with a cargo straight from Kos: two priests and two priestesses. And a heap of scroll tubes, as if all the columns of a miniature temple had collapsed on his work table.
Among them was another letter from Aspasia.
Why am I unhappy? she concluded. I am not beaten; I have food, wine, and money. And yet, the words “your weaving is marvellous, my dear” are not the summit of my ambitions. I am considering writing a book, Antioeconomicus, a book on how a woman should train her husband to his duties. Write to me! Tell me a tale from outside my house.
His head still hard from a long night with Diophanes in which they refought every action in which they’d participated, mocked their superiors, wept over their dead and derided almost every aspect of modern politics, Alexanor sat down to write to her. At first it was difficult, but once he allowed himself to write about the near collapse of the retaining wall above the sanctuary, he soon found that he’d filled six sheets of joined papyrus with incident and scenario: the fight at Petra; his friend Philopoemen; his horror at dissection. He almost lined that section out, but in the end he did not. Instead, he closed with a summing up of his own situation.
I am master of a small temple, and I love my work. I have found an area of research too great for one man, or even one team of men, in one lifetime, but we heal people here, with the god’s help, and I find myself happy, when I allow myself to think at all. And yet, despite my peers and my little wars, sometimes empty, too.
He stared at those words, surprised. Again, he thought of scraping them clean or lining them out, but he realised they were true. And when he allowed himself the time for self-examination, which he seldom did, he realised that this emptiness was what Phila saw.
He stared at the papyrus until Leon came in.
‘Are we going to tackle all those scrolls today, or just drink more?’ Leon said. He was smiling.
Alexanor drank some water. Then he and Leon div
ed into the mound of scroll tubes, which included everything from the official notification of Leon’s elevation to the rank of senior priest to an indemnity for twenty sacrificial sheep owed as a tithe to the mother house on Kos.
Alexanor looked up. ‘What year was Antiphilus Archon Basileus in Athens?’ he asked.
Leon pursed his lips. ‘No idea,’ he admitted.
‘Most of these tithe bills are dated based on Athenian festivals,’ Alexanor said pettishly. ‘Thrasyphon? Is that even a Greek name?’
‘Thrasyphon was the Archon Basileus of Athens in the last festival cycle but one,’ said a woman’s voice. Alexanor looked up, prepared to be annoyed.
The woman was short and very muscular; his age or a little older. He rose.
She bowed. ‘Hierophant,’ she said, and knelt.
No priest had ever knelt to him. He laughed nervously.
Leon offered the woman a hand, but she rose to her feet effortlessly, and with athletic grace.
‘We aren’t much for bows here,’ Alexanor said.
‘Hmm,’ the woman sniffed.
‘I am Alexanor of Rhodes.’ He offered the woman a masculine handclasp.
She accepted it hesitantly, but her smile was solid.
‘Lysistrata, daughter of Artistion. Of Athens. I am here with the priestesses you ordered from Kos.’
‘Lysistrata.’ Alexanor smiled.
‘I have taken shit about my name all my life,’ the woman said. ‘She is an ancestress, though. High priestess of Athena.’
‘So you know the Athenian festival calendar?’ Leon asked.
‘Intimately. I was a priestess of Nike, as well, before I left for Kos. Here, let me help. On Kos, they say that Lentas is behind on its tithes – more than a decade behind.’
Alexanor leant back and steepled his hands.
‘I understand that there is some bad feeling between Kos and Epidauros. I have sent my tithes to Epidauros. It is my understanding that this place was founded from there.’
The New Achilles Page 31