Kineas took a deep breath. ‘This is not good.’
The megaron was filling up with his closest officers. Rumour spread fast in the camp, and they were a small community. Heron was out on patrol and Lot seldom showed interest in the politics of the Greeks, but the rest were there very quickly, slipping in past the blankets over the door.
Leon nodded. ‘We need money. Without it, we’re going to be in trouble for remounts in the spring. I’m already worried about making the next payment to the hoplites.’ He had an arm around Nicanor’s shoulders. ‘I can’t understand why there isn’t enough money,’ he said uneasily. ‘I’m making deals here — I expect my credit here to be backed in Olbia and in Pantecapaeum. If it isn’t, we’ll have angry creditors when spring comes — and my new business prospects will vanish.’
‘Lykeles is trying to bring us back,’ Diodorus said. ‘I hate to be the one to say it, but someone has got to him. He’s trying to withhold your money to get you back.’
‘Athens?’ Philokles asked.
‘Macedon?’ asked Sappho. ‘It is an open secret that you go to fight Alexander. That woman in the palace still serves him. I’d wager my life on it.’
‘Odd, how their interests coincide,’ said Philokles. He looked thoughtful. ‘If you were to return to Olbia, the army would remain here for the spring, would it not?’ He glanced around. ‘What do you say, Kineas?’
Kineas sighed. ‘If I go back, I’ll never leave again. I can feel it in my bones.’
Diodorus shrugged. ‘Have you settled with the queen on a spring campaign?’ He shrugged. ‘Sorry for asking, but it is related. If we’re making a spring campaign, we have time to send someone back.’
‘She wants a great deal more than just a spring campaign,’ Kineas said, unintentionally setting them all to smirks.
Niceas spoke out, his voice rough. ‘Let Diodorus fight the spring campaign. You’ll have the time to ride there, whip everyone into line and come back. We’ll be moving by high summer.’
Diodorus grinned. ‘I admit, I want to be in command again.’ He looked at Niceas. ‘I don’t think it’ll be that easy for Kineas, though. If this is what I think it is, the powers behind the recall will have various devices — all perfectly legal — to hold Kineas at Olbia.’
Kineas nodded and looked at Philokles. The Spartan put his chin on his hand. ‘There’s sense in what Diodorus says. You might restore order in a matter of days.’ He sat up. ‘Or not. You might get embroiled in months of debate — a year of accusations.’
Diodorus spoke up again. ‘And the cream of the army — the votes that will always back you — will be here.’
Philokles took a deep breath. ‘And they might well have you killed.’
Eumenes’ voice could be heard like an undercurrent, explaining the politics of the situation to Darius, whose Persian youth left him with no experience of the fickleness of a Greek assembly.
‘Yes,’ said Coenus. ‘Fox, you’re right for a change. Lykeles is in over his head, that’s for sure.’ Coenus grinned. ‘I guarantee he’s not crooked — Diodorus, you know better than that. He’s been with us for ever. But he can be a fool.’ Diodorus nodded, acknowledging the truth of both statements. Coenus went on, ‘But he’s one of my oldest friends. Send me. Not that it’s how I want to spend the winter.’ Coenus’s chosen method of spending the winter was Artemesia, the most beautiful of Banugul’s ladies. He shrugged. ‘If you go, Kineas, they’ll mire you in crap, like Odysseus there claims. If you send me, no one will waste a daric on killing me, but I can sort out Lykeles, get some cash from him and move it by ship. I probably won’t be back until late spring — until Lake Maeotis is open to navigation, anyway. But no one will hold me. And,’ he shrugged, ‘I have a certain name. No one is likely to fuck with me.’
Diodorus glanced at Sappho. ‘He’s right. I rather fancied the part where I commanded the spring campaign, but he’s right.’
Philokles nodded agreement. ‘He spent the fall hunting the high passes on the Tanais. He knows the ground — he’ll go the fastest.’
Kineas hated giving up any of his closest friends. He glanced at Leon, at Eumenes, but both were associated with city factions and neither could do what needed to be done. ‘You’re ready for troop command,’ Kineas said. ‘Do this for me, Coenus, and you’ll have it.’
‘Bah,’ said the aristocrat, ‘I don’t need a bribe to make the trip. If I don’t go, Lykeles will make an ass of himself and we’ll all lose by it. Besides, I’m a citizen of Olbia now. It’s my duty to the city, don’t you know.’ He looked around at the command council. ‘Swear to me that you’ll all stay out of Artemesia’s bed. I may wed her.’
Laughing, they all swore.
Coenus sailed north with the ten men he’d led all fall. He sailed on a gentle winter’s day with a fair wind for the north. Nicanor stayed to run Kineas’s household. He said that he’d rather conquer Asia than cross the Kaspian in winter again. It took him a day to purchase four slaves, and Kineas didn’t have to pour his own wine.
Two days later, their third snowstorm came, with the flakes falling like the white feathers of some monstrous bird, just as Herodotus described, and gathering in drifts driven by the north wind.
‘Coenus is safe at the mouth of the Rha, drinking hot wine in our old fort,’ Philokles said.
Kineas said a prayer to Poseidon and sacrificed a lamb the next day with his own hands. At the citadel, he continued to refuse to fight a spring campaign a day after the spring feast of Persephone, despite the blandishments and the gold that the queen flung at him.
They heard that Antipater, the ruler of Macedon in Alexander’s absence, had defeated Sparta decisively.
They heard that Alexander had vanished off the eastern edge of the world — or that he was in Bactria, or perhaps Sogdiana.
They heard a rumour that Parmenion was lining up the satraps of the west to destroy Alexander if he returned. Leosthenes had told them that Artabazus was Parmenion’s man, and that their employer, Queen Banugul, was Alexander’s, and doomed to fall. And that Athens was prepared to throw off the yoke and go to war with Antipater.
Leon sat in the market, or in the megaron, listening to traders speak of the east — the trade road that led over the mountains and deserts and plains, to a far country they called Kwin. His eyes burned with something like lust. The Hyrkanian traders and the steppe nomads wintering in Hyrkania told Leon that Kwin was the source of silk.
All around them, east and west and south, they heard the stirrings of revolt and war, until the snow came in earnest.
And then the snow settled like soft fortress walls and all the rumours came to an end.
Until spring.
PART III
LAND OF WOLVES
14
Philotas stood easily under Alexander’s glare. ‘What exactly am I supposed to have done, your majesty?’ he asked.
‘Be respectful when you speak to the king, Philotas!’ barked Hephaestion. The king’s best friend and sometime lover was dressed simply, his bronze hair unadorned, but he seemed to have grown in stature overnight and the accusation in his tone snapped like a drover’s whip.
Philotas turned his head with exaggerated lassitude, as if looking at Hephaestion was too much work for him. ‘I am respectful,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘I’m also busy.’ His eyes went back to the king’s, and the dismissal of Hephaestion and everything about him was palpable. The two men had always disliked each other. Philotas was Parmenion’s son, and the best cavalry officer in the army. His arrogance was the kind the troopers liked — an arrogance born of accomplishment. That he was handsome and well born didn’t hurt, but he hadn’t risen on his father’s name alone. He was brave, calculating and, above all, relentlessly successful. Some of the old guard said that without him, the battle at Arbela might have ended in defeat.
Hephaestion’s place rested on his relationship with the king. Keen observers, and the military court that surrounded the king of Macedon was full of such
men, noted that whenever commands — fighting commands — were handed out, even the besotted Alexander passed over his friend for Philotas.
So despite two days of whispering throughout the camp, Philotas stood at ease in front of his king. ‘I’ve heard a lot of talk,’ Philotas said. ‘Am I accused of something, your majesty?’
‘You are accused of aiding in a plot to kill the king,’ Hephaestion said.
Alexander remained mute.
Philotas continued to look at the king. ‘Crap,’ he said. ‘I’m utterly loyal and everyone knows it.’
‘The plotters have betrayed you,’ Hephaestion said.
‘I don’t give a cunt hair for what your torturers dragged out of some peasant,’ Philotas said.
‘Why didn’t you come to me with Cebalinus’s accusation?’ Alexander asked. His voice sounded tired.
Philotas nodded sharply. ‘I knew this was what we were on about. Look, Alexander,’ Philotas, as a noble and a Companion, had the right to address the king familiarly, ‘you know what a bitchy fool Cebalinus can be. Like any boy-lover,’ and here Philotas smiled at Hephaestion in obvious mockery, ‘he gets all womanish and he gossips. So he heard something while he was being buggered. I heard him out. It sounded like crap. I ignored it.’
‘It wasn’t crap,’ Alexander said. ‘We have full confessions.’
‘If I was wrong,’ Philotas said, his tone conveying that he thought the whole thing a set up, ‘then I make my most profound apology. Your majesty must believe that I would never allow a plot against him to go forward. On the other hand…’ Here he paused, because he realized that his arguments were about to cross on to forbidden ground. If I reported every plot against you, we wouldn’t have an army didn’t seem like a good thing to say.
‘You seem to be comfortable with treason yourself,’ Hephaestion spat.
‘This is a lot of crap,’ Philotas said. He was losing patience. It was too stupid an accusation to be taken seriously.
‘You say in private that you saved the king at Arbela. That you and your father have won every battle — that the king is not competent to lead an army.’
For the first time, Philotas was alarmed and it showed. He raised his chin. Thinking quickly, he decided on utter honesty. ‘I may have boasted foolishly, when drunk.’ He tried to win a smile from the king. ‘It’s been known to happen with soldiers.’ When no smile was forthcoming, Philotas widened his eyes. ‘You can’t be serious. I’ll apologize to the army if you require it, your majesty — but drunken boasting is not treason.’
‘Your father has been plotting against me for years,’ Alexander said, suddenly. He sounded shrewish.
‘What?’ Philotas said. He was now alarmed. ‘No he hasn’t. Ares’ balls, Alexander, you wouldn’t even be king if it weren’t for my father!’ No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he saw that Hephaestion had played him like a lyre. He glared at the favourite. Hephaestion glared back.
‘Traitor,’ he spat.
Philotas stood tall. ‘Prove it, minion!’
Hephaestion turned to Alexander. ‘He’ll confess under torture.’
‘You can’t torture me!’ Philotas spat. ‘I’m the commander of the Companions! On the bones of Achilles, the best of the Achaeans, I swear I am no traitor! And you’ll never prove it before the assembly!’ He stood there, tall and handsome, the very image of the dashing officer.
But the assembly thought differently, two days later, when he was brought before them toothless, with much of his face gone. He looked like a traitor with his hands broken. Hephaestion said that he had confessed his own guilt, and the king said the same. No one could understand Philotas when he spoke.
They executed him.
‘Now I can clean house,’ Alexander said to Hephaestion. It was a private council, with only a few men — Eumenes and Kleisthenes and Hephaestion.
‘You have to kill Parmenion,’ Hephaestion urged. ‘When he hears-’
‘Yes, Patrocles!’ Alexander ruffled his bronze hair. ‘I know. The father must go, now that the son is proved a traitor.’
Even Kleisthenes, a sophist and a professional propagandist, was cut to the bone to hear the king call Philotas a traitor in private. The king had convinced himself — a dangerous precedent.
Eumenes the Cardian kept his face composed. ‘Spitamenes has accepted our suggestions about negotiation,’ he said. Eumenes had learned not to use words that the king might take to mean that the Macedonians were suing for peace with a rebel satrap. The truth was that Spitamenes, with the remnants of Bessus’s Persian army and the support of the Massagetae and the Dahae, was slowing up their conquest of the north to an unpalatable degree.
The king drank some more wine. ‘When Parmenion is dead, the areas to my rear will be secure,’ he said. ‘I’ll have all the time I need to conquer the rest of the world. I don’t need Spitamenes. Tell him to fuck off.’
Hephaestion laughed aloud.
Eumenes, who had laboured all winter to get negotiations on the table, took a deep breath. ‘Spitamenes is interested in religious issues, your majesty. He does not desire to be King of Kings.’ He got the bit between his teeth and spoke the truth. ‘As long as he has the Scythian tribes, he can cross the Jaxartes at will. We cannot follow him there.’
Alexander turned his head and his mad, white-rimmed eyes bored into Eumenes’ head. ‘There is nowhere my army cannot go,’ he said.
Eumenes flicked his eyes to Hephaestion, hoping that the indulgent man would remember his own self-interest.
Hephaestion swirled the wine in his cup and then leaned forward. ‘If we campaign across the Jaxartes, we’ll lose a whole campaign season from India.’
He ought to have been an actor, Eumenes thought. He wiped his brow.
Alexander threw himself back on his couch. ‘Fine. Even Achilles listened when Phoenix spoke. But I want an Amazon — better yet, a dozen. Tell Spitamenes to get me a dozen Amazons.’
This was the type of demand that could unseat a negotiation in a moment, but Eumenes knew his master’s voice. He nodded.
‘Yes, majesty,’ he said.
And Kleisthenes shuddered.
15
The first flowers bloomed through the last snow in Hyrkania, and the winds coming across the Kaspian were still cold enough for Hyperboreans and strong enough to discourage even the keenest bow-men.
Kineas felt fat. He’d eaten too well and exercised too little, although they’d built a gymnasium and used it, too. He’d never been so cold in his life as in the dead of winter in Hyrkania, when the snow hit like hard-blown sand and the wolves howled every night. And too often his exercise consisted of climbing the steep hill to the citadel, where the queen entertained him with stories in Greek and Persian, the questionable antics of her slaves and the sensuous pleasure of her heated floors and luxurious baths, as well as the more intellectual pleasures of scrolls and singers and poetry.
After Therapon had presented her with too many coloured versions of Kineas’s law court, she asked with a smile to come down the hill and see one — and to see his camp. He had no way to refuse her and so the next day her cavalcade wound its way down from the citadel, a dozen local gentlemen on horseback with some of her guards in hastily polished bronze. She wore a fur-lined cloak over a richly embroidered Scythian jacket and wool trousers tucked into small boots, with a tall Median cap and a veil that covered her eyes without disguising them.
And a sword.
The ground was frozen hard and Kineas’s men put on a display on horse and foot. The Olbian cavalry threw javelins, the prodromoi shot their bows, and the hoplites marched and counter-marched and demonstrated a change of front in the Spartan fashion, to her beaming approval. They shot arrows at targets and she insisted on having a turn, shooting competently, although Kineas allowed himself to note that Srayanka would have filled the targets with arrows while riding at a gallop.
She looked into the wine shops and the brothels of the camp’s marketplace. ‘Am I supplying a
ll the women for your army, Kineas?’ she asked.
Kineas looked away. ‘We brought a few of our own,’ he said.
‘Yes, and a hetaira to manage them,’ Banugul said. She laughed. ‘So well organized. Do the men stand in line waiting their turn when they can’t get Hyrkanian farm girls? Or go without?’ Then she began to recite: Baulked in your amorous delight
How melancholy is your plight.
With sympathy your case I view;
For I am sure it’s hard on you.
What human being could sustain
This unforeseen domestic strain,
And not a single trace
Of willing women in the place!
As she spoke, she deepened her voice because it was the male chorus part in Lysistrata, and they all laughed with her.
Therapon glanced at Philokles. ‘Perhaps they have no need of women, my lady.’
‘If that were the case,’ she said with a twinkle, ‘“Then why do they hide those lances, that stick out under their tunics?”’ Her wicked paraphrase of Aristophanes made them all laugh again.
Philokles stepped closer to the queen. Looking up at her, he declaimed, ‘“She did it all, the harlot, she — with her atrocious harlotry.”’
Therapon whirled, his face red, but Banugul reached down from her horse and took the Spartan’s hand. ‘I love a man of education,’ she said. ‘You are Philokles the Sophist?’
He laughed, obviously flattered. ‘I am Philokles the Spartan, my lady. I can’t remember being called a sophist, except by Kineas here.’
She beamed. ‘If you can call me a harlot, I can call you a sophist.’
‘I will be more careful of my epigrams,’ Philokles said, clearly stung.
She blew him a kiss. ‘Why do you not come and visit my court, Spartan? All the others come — save Diodorus here, who has ceased to visit me. But you never come.’
‘Sophistry takes all my time,’ Philokles said, gravely.
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