Ten stades south of the town, when he was questioning his decision and trying to ignore the sullen silence of the company, they came across a lone Greek homestead whose farmer was busy trying to unbury a plough with two young slaves and a horse. Before the sun had slipped another finger towards the west, they had struck a bargain and were camped amidst the man’s olive trees, and the whole string of horses were gorging on grain at a price that pleased everyone so much that most of the men stripped off their tunics and threw themselves at the recalcitrant plough, pushing and calling and laughing until the blade pulled free, and then running down to the sandy shore of the bay and flinging themselves in the water with the noise of a cavalry charge — Artemis, Artemis! Kineas accepted a proffered cup of wine from the farmer, Alexander, and sat with his legs crossed on a finely carved stool in the farm’s courtyard, enjoying the shade of the one and only tree.
‘No one much comes this way except the grain ships looking for a load,’ the farmer said. ‘Can’t remember the last time I saw a party going around the bay the long way.’ He nodded to the west. ‘I see you have a Scyth with you — that’s good thinking. They’re everywhere west of here another twenty stades. You’ll be intercepted every day by a band.’
Kineas sat listening with his chin on his hand. ‘Are they trouble?’
Alexander shook his head. ‘None to me, and don’t let some fools tell you otherwise. I give ’em a cup of wine when they ride by and I’m civil and that’s all it takes. For barbarians, they’re a good lot — they are hellions when they drink hard, and they are mean when crossed. So don’t cross ’em, says I. My wife’s afraid of ’em — she’s Sindi, so stands to reason, don’t it?’
Kineas thought that the man was starved for conversation. ‘Sindi?’ he asked.
The farmer jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the coast. ‘Scythians is no more native here than you an’ me. The Sindi was here first, or so they say. They do the farming — the Scyths just tax the grain they grow. And then the Greeks tax it again at the towns, but for all that, it’s cheap.
‘Not for us. We tried to buy grain in town. They wanted Athens prices.’
Alexander laughed. ‘They figured you had no other choice. Riding across the plains! You’re either damn smart or a born fool. I see you tangled with the Getae.’
Kineas nodded.
‘Nice ponies. I’d be happy to buy a couple.’
Kineas sipped his wine. ‘They are the property of my men. You’d have to bargain with them.’
‘Easier if I bargain with you. I’ll give you fifty measures of grain and two silver owls per pony.’
Kineas reckoned quickly. ‘With bags?’
‘Baskets. No bags. I’m short on cloth as it is, but they’re good baskets. ’
‘Done. I can sell four.’ Kineas was calculating what price to give the grain so that the men made a profit on their ponies. Easy money.
If you lived.
The next day dawned bleak and rainy, with heavy clouds in the west and waves rolling across the bay.
‘Better by night, but you’ll be soaked by then,’ said Alexander. ‘You should stay. Those nags of yours could use a day to eat. We could bake you all some fish. Come on, Kineas. Stay a day.’
Kineas had forgotten what it was like to feel welcome. So few men would welcome a troop of mercenaries — but that sort of trouble had never happened here. Alexander had taken a few precautions; his gates were locked at night and although he had daughters, Kineas had not laid eyes on them. They were probably locked in a basement or restricted to the upper rooms of the farm’s exedra.
Sons were a different matter. Alexander had half a dozen sons, ranging from the quiet, hard-working eldest, a tall, modest man of twenty-five with a young beard, to Ictinus, whom they all called ‘Echo’. Echo could be heard at all hours, trailing the soldiers, repeating anything they said, trying to help. He was fifteen and tried to sport a beard. All six sons appeared together to build a fire on the beach in the afternoon when the sky, as predicted, showed signs of clearing. The clearing had happened to fast that the sky was blue and clear and the tents were dry before the afternoon began to wane. All the men looked forward to eating fish. Barley and meat were good enough, but hard food to have to face every day.
When their gear was clean and repaired, all the men gathered wood for Graccus’s pyre. Alexander, the farmer, was kind enough to allow them to take wood from his orchards, and there was driftwood on the beach. They built him a pyre as tall as two men, and laid his body atop it in the old way. He already stank of death, but they washed his body and arranged his limbs anyway. Graccus had been quite popular.
The sons prepared the fish with their mother in a remarkable way. First, they had one single, enormous fish acquired in late morning from a passing log boat. They layered the whole fish in clay, built a fire pit in the sand, burned a bonfire over the pit as soon as the rain ceased and then buried the clay-coated fish in hot coals with iron shovels. Kineas spent most of the day pushing his men to cleaning and oiling their tack, currying horses and mending. The farmer was remarkably forthcoming with the requirements of mending, from flax thread and oil to bits of leather.
His hospitality made Kineas suspicious. He disliked having to be suspicious of such favour, but he was. He posted a sentry on the horses. He arranged the sale of four of the Getae ponies and transferred them to their new owner, watching with satisfaction as basket-woven panniers full of grain were arranged for the other ponies. He would leave the farm with more grain than he had started the expedition.
Returning from reviewing the proceeds of the sale, he lay down on his cloak inside his tent to discover that his light throwing-javelin had been polished, the head gleaming like a mirror, the wood shaft carefully oiled so that the grain of the wood swam like fish in a stream. His heavy javelin lay beside it, equally well cared for.
He found the slave, Arni, sitting with the other slaves playing knuckle-bones. They all got to their feet sheepishly, Crax avoiding his eye and the new boy, the Getae whose life he had spared, wincing as he rose.
‘I usually care for my own weapons, Arni. But I thank you for the care you lavished on them.’ Kineas offered him a bronze obol.
Arni shook his head and smiled, showing a number of gaps in his teeth. ‘Warn’t me. Soldiers’ weapons is their tools, I tell ’em. Not our work. Boy wouldn’t listen though.’ Arni looked at Crax fondly.
Crax looked Kineas in the eye. ‘I cleaned them. The throwing javelin was damaged in the fight. I cut the shaft a few fingers and reset the head. One of the farm boys drove the rivets.’
So you’ve decided to grow up, Kineas thought. He tossed the younger slave the obol. ‘You did a beautiful job, Crax. You remember what I told you? Good job, you’d be a free man.’
‘Yes sir.’ He was very serious.
‘I meant it. Same for your new little brother there. I don’t need slaves. I need men who can ride and fight. And I need to know which you both plan to be by the time we ride into Olbia. Ten days — two weeks at the outside. Understand?’
Crax said, ‘Yes, sir.’
The new boy looked terrified. Crax nudged him and said something barbarian, and the new boy coughed and mumbled something that might have been ‘yes, sir’ in what might have passed for Greek.
Kineas left the slaves to their share of the day of rest and walked back to the beach, where couches of straw had been prepared for twenty. He could smell the fish baking through the embers in the ground. He wondered if the clay would turn to pottery around the fish. It did.
As the Charioteer prepared to drive the sun under the world, they sat down to feast on the fish, with proper sauces and some wine — heavy red wine, a little past its best days but heady stuff. Alexander toasted and drank and so did his sons, as did every man of Kineas’s troop, until the last light was gone from the sky and the bones of the giant fish were picked clean.
Diodorus, on the next couch of straw, gave a yawn and stretched, his hair a halo of fire in the last of the sun. ‘Better day than I expected when we was in that rotten little town. Thanks to you, Alexander, and the blessing of the gods on you and yours for your hospitality.’
Kineas poured a libation on the ground and raised his kylix high. ‘Hear me, Athena, protector of soldiers! This man has been our friend and given us sacred hospitality. Bring him good fortune.’
One by one, other soldiers added their benisons. Some spoke with simple piety, others with aristocratic rhetoric. When the cup returned to Kineas, he again poured a libation. ‘This is the best we’ll come to a funeral feast for Graccus. So I drink to him and may his shade go down to Hades and dwell with heroes, or whatever fate he might best enjoy.’ Unlike Kineas, Graccus had been a devotee of Demeter. Kineas was not an initiate and had no wish to know what fate such men imagined in the afterlife, but he wished the man’s shade well.
