‘Lord Kineas!’ she said.
Kineas smiled. No Greek called him ‘Lord Kineas’, and it was ironic that the Sauromatae accounted for most of his discipline problems, because man for man and woman for woman, they worshipped him, a far cry from the views of the average Olbian trooper.
‘I would like to see the Lady Bahareh, if she will receive me,’ Kineas said.
Bahareh came to the door of the tent, took his hand and led him inside. She was an older warrior, with grey in her braids and a face that was more leather than flower petal. She was also one of the army’s finest lancers and her deep female voice carried over any amount of strife. She held no particular rank, but in battle, she rose to command.
Kineas accepted a cup of her tea. ‘I wish you to come and help me with the judgment of Gwair Blackhorse,’ he said.
She raised an imperious eyebrow. ‘He took that heathen girl from the slaver. Is this a crime?’
Kineas nodded. ‘The slave is like a horse - a thing of value to the brothel keeper.’
Bahareh frowned. ‘So he should buy her.’ The Sauromatae women smiled. ‘She is quite a piece.’
‘The brothel keeper wants her returned. He does not wish to sell the woman.’ That’s what I tried first, Kineas thought.
Bahareh snapped her fingers and a pair of teenaged girls helped her don her long, fur-lined coat. It weighed almost as much as armour. Unlike a man’s, it fitted her figure - a very elegant garment, even for a barbarian. Another girl put her hair up and she pulled on a Sakje cap, extinguishing her sex utterly. She looked like any other well-to-do Sakje. As she rose to her feet, she asked, ‘Is the girl pregnant?’
Kineas wanted to slap her on the back.
‘I hadn’t thought to ask,’ Kineas said. ‘Let us assume she is pregnant.’
They were walking down the street. Lady Bahareh had longer legs than Kineas and he had to hurry to match her stride. ‘Then when she gives birth, if she lives, she is a free woman of the clan. He gives her a few horses as a birth present, and the baby is part of his family. That is the law.’
Kineas grunted. ‘I see how to judge this. Listen, lady - I wish you to let it be known that tribesmen who visit the brothels must pay - every time - and that the next man who takes one of these girls to his yurt will suffer as if he stole her from another tribe. If you will do this for me,’ he stopped her in the middle of the street because her stride was so long that she was going to walk him back into the assembly before he was ready, ‘I will tell a lie and save Gwair Blackhorse.’
Bahareh was tall - almost eye to eye with him. She frowned. ‘It is not for you to punish a tribesman, Lord Kineas. That is for our prince to do.’
Kineas held her eye. ‘Lady, we will not make it through the winter as friends unless all obey. Surely it is the same in a winter camp of the Sauromatae?’
She toyed with her whip. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Fair enough. Save Gwair - he’s a fool, but most men are - and I’ll whip the men into line.’ Her whip made a sharp whisper as it cut the air. ‘Lot is right to follow you,’ she said.
Kineas spent the better part of the next hour bargaining with the brothel keeper and the town’s self-appointed archon over the value of the woman, while Therapon, balked of his fight, stalked off. Kineas used her pregnancy to prise her loose from her owner. He made the whole clan pay her inflated value, putting Gwair neatly in the wrong with his own people. The process took roughly four times the time and money it would have taken him to punish one of his own people.
‘This is going to be a long winter,’ he said to Niceas.
‘That’s not good,’ Diodorus said, pointing to the gate.
Two horsemen came up in a shower of snow, riding hard. One of their pickets. The riders pressed right through the assembly.
‘There’s a boat down at the beach,’ Sitalkes said. His breath steamed and so did the breath of his horse, whose panting was audible. ‘From the fort we built at Errymi. Someone from Olbia.’
‘That’s not good,’ Diodorus repeated.
Kineas sent a patrol with spare horses down to the water, three stades distant, with Sitalkes in command. They came back with Nicanor, a freedman who was now the head of the household that had been Nicomedes’. Kineas had the man taken into the megaron, where he stood by the hearth, soaking up the heat. ‘I thought I’d never be warm again,’ he said. ‘I’ve been on that boat for three days, cold and wet through.’ He sighed. He was fat, over-dressed and very out of place, and the whine in his tone was not something often heard in Kineas’s camp.
‘Thank you for coming so fast. You have a message for me?’ Kineas asked gently.
The man reached inside his tunic and drew out a scroll tube. Even the bone tube hadn’t resisted all of the wet, but the vellum inside was clear enough.
Lykeles to Kineas of Athens, greetings.
My friend, I received your request for funds and could not fill it. The city is near a state of war - the factions have twice attempted the murder of Petrocolus and his son. I dare not send wealth out of the city for fear that it will be stolen and used against us. I send Nicanor to you that you will see how hard-pressed I am. If you are not gone too far, please come back. And together we will crush this upstart.
I know that I have failed you in this, but I cannot see another choice.
I enclose a letter that arrived at the Maimakteria from Athens. Surely if our own city expects you to campaign against Amphipolis, your duty must recall you.
Kineas read the letter, and the enclosed letter from Demosthenes of Athens, or one of his faction, with growing alarm. He handed them both on to Philokles, who had been questioning Nicanor. The former slave was reduced to tears already.
‘You were very brave, crossing the Kaspian Sea at this time of year,’ Kineas said. He flicked a glance at the Spartan, as if to say ‘Look what you’ve done!’
Nicanor shook his head, eyes on the ground. ‘I had to come,’ he said. ‘Master Lykeles said - that I had to reach you - and - and I did.’
Philokles finished the letters and handed them to Diodorus.
‘They’re not up to ruling the city,’ Nicanor said. He was still looking at the ground. ‘That’s what I came to say. I served Nicomedes for ten years as his chief factor. I know how business is done. Lykeles wants to use direct action - he paid for a killing. I know - I found the money and I paid the killers.’
Kineas nodded. He had seen this coming; he suspected that he already knew. ‘Alcaeus?’ he asked.
Nicanor started, and his hands twitched. ‘You knew? Did you order it?’
Kineas shook his head.
‘He will make himself a tyrant. He cannot bargain. And Petrocolus is weak - kind, well-intentioned, but weak. He is lost without my master - that is, Nicomedes - and his friend Cleitus. He vacillates. His allies leave him.’
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.�
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‘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 bei
ng 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.’
Tyrant: Storm of Arrows Page 20