The two Gauls, now both men of property, shared a couch. Andronicus, the larger of the pair, had blond hair and blue eyes, while Antigonus had dark hair and green eyes and tattoos just visible at the neck of his tunic. Both of them had practised for a year to attend a symposium, with Philokles and Diodorus as the drillmasters, and they could hold both wine and discourse, although Antigonus’s more limited command of Greek tended to leave him smiling genially rather than conversing.
Leon lay just by them, and completed the circle of couches by lying close to Kineas and Philokles as well. Crax shared his couch. The Bastarnae had also begun his life with Kineas as a slave, and he, too, was now free and richer by a string of horses and a shelf full of gold cups made in Macedon. Crax had taken many blows in the great battle, but none had broken his skin, and he was the healthiest of all of them. Every other veteran present bore wounds, and they lay on their couches in comfort that verged on somnolence. Alone of all of them, Lot sat in a chair, uncomfortable with Greek dining but happy with a cup at his elbow and men he liked all about him. He raised the first toast, offered libation to his own gods and thanked his host.
‘Who is closer to me than my battle brothers?’ he said. ‘Who could be closer than men who will follow me east to fight Iskander?’
Lot’s bold assertion silenced them for a while, and when talk restarted, it was light and seldom dwelled long on any subject, and only the efforts of Sappho at one side of the circle and Coenus at the other end - both, in their own way, masters of social intercourse - kept the gathering from silence.
The dinner itself was superb, the product of Kineas’s kitchens and Leon’s cooks - or vice versa. They had not divided their fortune, and so far owned Nicomedes’ property together. Neither seemed in any hurry to divide the estate, as such a division would only serve to make lawsuits easier.
The dinner featured more opson than Kineas liked - fish followed fish, oysters in sauce, lobster in more sauce, bits of bread that looked more like decorations than the main course - but there were no Athenian moralists there to decry the decadence, and given the way they’d all eaten during the summer, no one could really accuse them of wanton luxury. Every man ate to surfeit. Lot spilled lobster on his fine silk robe and laughed, and Philokles, already a little drunk, tripped with a ewer of wine and spattered half the room. By the time the last mutton went round and the last flatbread to wipe up the last of the fish sauce, they were all a little greasy.
As the meal went on, they discussed matters of the city, such as lawsuits and politics, and listened politely to Sappho as she played on her instrument and sang. When the main courses were done, they pulled their couches closer and drank together, the wounded men more quickly flushed, but soon they were all redder of face and louder, and Sappho smiled and withdrew.
Diodorus tried to restrain her, holding her hand. ‘Stay!’ he said. ‘You are no Greek matron, to be shocked at what men say with wine in them.’
She shook her head, and her smile warned him that he had wounded her. ‘I am a hetaira,’ she said with grim courtesy, ‘not a flute girl.’
When she was gone, Diodorus looked ruefully at Kineas. ‘Who knows?’ he asked.
Kineas knew, but he rubbed his beard and made a mental note to explain to Diodorus sometime what was plain enough to him - that in her mind, Sappho was still a matron of Thebes. Ill usage, slavery and worse had not broken her notions of proper behaviour. He honoured her for it.
When Sappho was gone, the talk grew louder, the jokes a little wilder, but every speaker seemed to be waiting for something, and the party lacked focus until Kineas rose to his feet. Kineas waited for a pause in the noise and raised his cup, and they all raised theirs, as if they had been waiting all evening for this moment.
‘I want to talk about the expedition to the east,’ he said. He gave them a grin. ‘Against Alexander!’
They sighed together, as if relieved. Lot gave a shrill yip like a Sauromatae war cry.
‘Are we allowed to say that aloud?’ Philokles asked.
Kineas was sober and serious. ‘I am going east because I need to be out of this city, and because my destiny is there. Moira awaits me in the east. I cannot be plainer with you than that.’
Around him, the men who knew of the power of his dreams nodded, all gaiety gone, while others looked puzzled. Memnon laughed.
Kineas ignored him. ‘I must go. That is not true of you. Many of you - all of you, now - have property here and reasons to stay. Every man of you can settle to a farm and a wife. And I am too fond of you to force you to come. Indeed ...’ His voice choked a little and he faltered. He drank some wine to cover his confusion, and then said, ‘Indeed, I don’t expect to return. And I do not wish that to be your fate.’
They looked at him with questions, their eyes brimming with misgiving, and he saw the hesitation he sought. He had considered the matter for days, and decided he would do his best to make the ones he loved most stay in Olbia.
But Philokles made a mocking noise with his lips and then laughed. ‘Your life or death is with the gods,’ he said. ‘And the same can be said for every man among us.’
Kineas shot his friend a look, but Philokles ignored him, as he often did.
‘Our fearless leader believes that he goes to his death in the east,’ Philokles said in a mocking tone. ‘Of course, he was equally certain that the recent action on the Borysthenes would be his death. It would appear that the dreams sent to him by the gods were mistaken.’
All the men laughed, because there was no mockery more precious to them than the rare moments when Philokles turned his tongue, sharp as bronze, on Kineas. It was precisely because Kineas was their leader - in many ways, the best man among them, and every one of them conscious of his advantages - that they enjoyed it the more when he was the butt of humour.
Kineas pointed to the Spartan. ‘You mock sacred things,’ he said.
Philokles grinned. ‘No, my lad, I mock you. Unless, like the tiresome boy king, you have appointed yourself a god?’
Kineas narrowed his eyes, red tingeing his vision as rage threatened him. He rose from his couch and began to stalk towards his friend. ‘I do not want to drag my friends to their deaths!’ he bellowed.
Philokles drew himself up to his not inconsiderable height, as if to remind Kineas that his rage might accomplish nothing - and laughed again. ‘Your friends will follow you to the ends of the earth,’ he said, ‘if only to see what you do next.’
The party cheered him, and Kineas deflated, pleased that so many of them clamoured to go, and touched - and bemused - by Philokles’ tone. ‘And I call you my friend,’ he said.
‘You get too much worship and insufficient straight talk,’ Philokles said in a low voice, his tone covered by the laughter. ‘You need us. And I’m damned if I’ll let you go off and find a way to die.’ Then he turned to the others.
‘Hear me, men of Olbia. Kineas of Athens marches east, not to open a road for trade, but to make war on Alexander, king of Macedon. He makes this war not for his own profit, but on behalf of every man in Greece. If there was a lion loose in a nearby town, would you not pick up your spear and go to kill it? So, then - take up your spear and go with us, for the monster is loose on the sea of grass.’
And then they rose from their couches and crowded around, and Kineas embraced them amidst a storm of affection, and was humbled.
In the dawn of the next day, while the guests of the symposium slept in drunken fitfulness, Demosthenes awakened at a loud noise. He shouted until his slaves were awake, and he made their lives more unbearable than usual seeking explanations for the dead frog in his water cup. He scared them sufficiently that it was several hours before any of them dared to tell him that he had a long mark in red ochre drawn on his throat like a giant grinning mouth.
He fainted.
He did not appear when invited for dinner at the barracks, and his excuses were sketchy.
Later, Kineas spoke to the survivors of the symposium in the barrack
s. They were quieter from the results of the night’s debauch.
‘This will be the largest expedition of its kind since Darius crossed the plains,’ he said, tapping a copy of Herodotus - Isokles’ copy, in fact. ‘The difference is that we’ll have the cooperation of most of the tribes, or at least we won’t have their outright enmity. But the major issue will not be hostile action. It will be food.’
He gestured to Leon, who sat with Niceas. ‘We have worked out a logistikon based on a thousand men and two thousand animals,’ he said. ‘All of you served enough with the Sakje last summer to know how they live on the plain. With our own scouts and the Sauromatae, we should never lack for grass or meat.’
The cavalry professionals all nodded.
‘But we will lack grain for the chargers and bread for the troops. Greek soldiers eat bread. Opson is all very nice, but it is grain that we need. And it is easier to buy it as we go than to try to carry it with us.’
Philokles raised his hand. ‘Grain is so cheap here,’ he said. Other men nodded in agreement. Olbia was the capital of the grain trade. The stuff flowed around them like the waters of the Borysthenes river, even in a summer beset by flooding and war.
Kineas nodded. ‘I thought so too,’ he said, ‘and so I learned a new lesson of war. Listen.’ He picked up Leon’s scroll. ‘Assume that every soldier eats a measure of grain a day, and every horse eats two measures,’ he quoted. The old soldiers nodded agreement at the figures. ‘That means that our little army will consume five thousand measures of grain a day.’ He looked up from the scroll. ‘Every man can carry ten measures of grain in addition to his equipment. Each horse can carry twenty measures of grain in addition to its equipment. So the army can sally forth with ten days’ food.’ His eyes raked them. ‘It is at least ten thousand stades to the roof of the world where the Massagetae await us. At best, if we never slow, we will take sixty days to cross the sea of grass. The Sakje themselves allow fifty days for their fastest men, and ninety days for tribes.’
He began to make marks on the wall of the barracks with a piece of charcoal from the hearth. ‘None of us has traversed the land to the east except Prince Lot and, of course, Ataelus. I have only his report, and the contributions of the more adventurous merchants from here and Pantecapaeum. If we go north to follow Srayanka, we risk tangling with Marthax - even if his forces are disbanded. And we’ll have to cross great marshes as we go east. Srayanka will follow the great road of the Sakje - the high grassland that runs east into Sogdiana and Bactria and the land of the Massagetae.’
‘We’ll have to wait for spring,’ Coenus said with a happy shrug.
Niceas sneered at him. ‘I take it we have another option?’ he asked Kineas with the raise of an eyebrow.
Kineas nodded. ‘I’ve sent Eumenes to arrange it - I hope. Merchants cross the high ground between the Euxine and the Kaspian - what some men call the Hyrkanian Sea - by following the course of great rivers and then arranging passage on the Hyrkanian Sea when they arrive. If I can, I’ll take the whole army along the Tanais river and across the high ground to the river that the Sakje call the Rha. If we go hard, we’ll make the mouth of the Rha before the snows come.’ He drew on the wall with the charcoal, indicating the position of Lake Maeotis and the Bay of Salmon, the course of the Tanais and the course of the Rha and the distant salt sea with flicks of his stylus.
Diodorus whistled. ‘We’re leaving the world we know,’ he said.
Looking around, Kineas could see the same thought reflected in every man. He nodded. ‘When some of you chose to follow me to Olbia, we left our world behind,’ he said. He rubbed his beard and sipped wine. ‘When we marched out on to the sea of grass in the spring, we left the world behind. This is farther and farther yet - but the world continues. Petrocolus and Leon and other grain merchants know the Tanais and the Rha well enough, and their factors attest that there is a route across to the Hyrkanian Sea - a route that many men have travelled.’ Kineas turned to his sketch on the wall and then turned back. ‘Prince Lot has made the journey several times, as has Ataelus.’
Niceas raised a hand. ‘And then we cross this Hyrkanian Sea one boatload of horses at a time?’
Kineas made a sign that indicated that it was with the gods. ‘Twenty boats at a time. They move caravans, Niceas. They can move us.’
Niceas shook his head. ‘Caravans have a hundred horsemen and two hundred horses,’ he said. ‘And what little kingdom will receive our army without feeling that they have to massacre us?’
Kineas rubbed his beard. ‘Yes,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘Nicomedes traded with a kingdom on the Kaspian Sea.’
Philokles laughed. ‘Yes, you’ve got it taken care of? Or yes, it’s a good point?’
Kineas raised an eyebrow, feeling the opportunity to make back some of the ground he had lost the night before. ‘It seems to me,’ he said with all the effort of a good rhetorician, ‘that our company has a fine man, gifted by the gods with the power of making fine speeches, with a tongue that drips honey and a talent for philosophy - the very man to go from here to the far side of the Kaspian Sea with the summer caravans and arrange for a proper welcome and a winter camp in the barbarous country of Hyrkania.’
Philokles glared at him, but the other men laughed.
Niceas grinned. ‘If we’re sending Philokles,’ he said, ‘then I’m confident we’ll be massacred.’
‘Unless he kills them all before we arrive,’ Diodorus said.
Kineas looked around. ‘Humour aside, that’s my intention,’ he said. ‘Across the high ground and the sea before winter falls, and a winter camp in the thousand kingdoms - that’s what it is called.’
‘Enchanting,’ Philokles said. ‘I’ll wager it’s called the thousand kingdoms because there are a hundred thousand bandits all fighting among themselves.’
‘Yes,’ said Leon. He smiled. ‘Namastae is the most vicious of the lot. That’s where we’re going.’
They all looked at him. He shrugged. ‘We have a factor there,’ he said. ‘After we lost half a dozen merchants, my master - that is, Nicomedes - sent a mercenary.’
‘And?’ asked Philokles.
‘Now there are a thousand and one kingdoms,’ Leon said. ‘And Namastae trades with us. Hyrkania has riches.’
Philokles leaned forward, interested despite himself. ‘And Hyrkania means ... ?’
Leon grinned. ‘The land of the wolves,’ he said.
Niceas stretched and rubbed his nose. ‘Food?’ he asked.
Kineas looked at Leon, and Leon rose to his feet. His voice was shaky as he began - he was not used to speaking to groups of men - and as he went on he spoke faster, and his voice became shrill. ‘We’ll march with a herd of bullocks and ten days’ grain,’ he said. ‘The Tanais is farmed by the Maeotae and the Sindi as far north as the great lakes, and we will not travel so far on the river.’
Kineas interrupted because he could sense the ignorance of the audience, and because Leon wasn’t doing credit to himself. ‘Much of the grain traded through this port and through Pantecapaeum comes from the Tanais,’ he said.
The soldiers nodded. Leon, emboldened, glanced at Kineas and then continued. ‘At the portage we’ll leave the Tanais and cross the high ground to the Rha. Merchants do it every year in the summer and autumn.’ His voice was getting quieter and his words came more slowly as his confidence improved.
Lycurgus, Memnon’s former lieutenant and now their commander of infantry, raised a hand. ‘Son,’ he said with authority, and he was obviously old enough to be Leon’s father, ‘are you trying to tell us that we can get grain as we march?’
Leon gave a shaky grin, glanced down at his scrolls, and frowned. ‘Yes, sir.’
Lycurgus motioned to a slave for water. ‘Then just say so, son.’
Leon stuttered for a moment and then began again. ‘It will be harvest time when we march from the Bay of Salmon, or close enough. By the time we run out of our rations, the harvest will be in and we’ll have access to t
he cheapest grain in the circle of the world.’
Kineas stood again. ‘I will pay for the grain - at least for this winter. ’
Lycurgus grunted. ‘That will convince the shirkers,’ he said. ‘At least until spring.’
Kineas smiled. ‘And then it’ll be too late to change their minds,’ he said.
Memnon laughed. ‘It worked for Xenophon,’ he said. ‘You almost tempt me to come along.’
‘What’s in it for us?’ Lycurgus asked. ‘I’m in, however you put it - I followed you this summer and I like the idea. But for the boys in the ranks, what’s in it for them?’
‘Whatever loot we can get,’ Kineas said. ‘Was anyone dissatisfied with the booty from the Macedonian camp?’
Diodorus snorted, but Coenus cut him off. ‘Are you seriously suggesting that we’ll get to loot Alexander’s camp?’ he asked. ‘I’m not sure, but I’d bet that counts as hubris.’
Kineas spread his hands, acknowledging the point. ‘I can’t say because we’re talking about a march of ten thousand stades - at least ten thousand stades. Four hundred parasangs and maybe more. I will say that I expect some pay from the Massagetae.’ He tilted his head to give Philokles a private look, and then said, ‘If you know your Herodotus, we’re marching right into the land of the eastern Sakje - the land of gryphons and gold.’
Lycurgus nodded. ‘I can sell that,’ he said. ‘Especially if they can leave their loot from this campaign here, safe, and march knowing that you’ll pay to fill their bellies.’
‘Until we run out of money,’ Niceas said.
‘Then we’ll just start taking what we need,’ Diodorus said. Some of the younger men looked at him. He met their glances and shrugged. ‘Sure, it gets ugly. But that’s what armies do.’
‘Out on the sea of grass, there’s no one to plunder,’ Leon said. ‘And after the grass, there’s desert.’ He looked around. ‘But chances are any army that you march out there will be the toughest proposition in Hyrkania. There’ll be contracts in plenty, if we want to spend the spring fighting for their petty tyrants. I can arrange one before we arrive, if that’s what you want.’
Tyrant: Storm of Arrows Page 10