unmilitary tunic and sandals, he met Diodorus in the central hall.
‘Now we show ourselves to be gentlemen,’ Kineas said.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Diodorus.
Coenus gave a sneer. ‘I’d rather the locals proved themselves to be gentlemen. So far, they look like hicks.’
While waiting for the others, Kineas sent a slave to the gymnasium to request permission to use it with his men. As mercenaries, they had some status, but they were not citizens. It was best to be sure.
Lykeles came in rubbing his head. ‘I have a good mind to buy a slave to curry my horse,’ he said. ‘The stink!’
The town slave returned with a handful of clay discs. ‘These are for your honours’ use. They mark you as guests.’
Kineas gave the boy an obol. ‘Shall we take some exercise?’ he said to his gentleman troopers.
Olbia’s gymnasium was a finer building than that in Tomis, if gaudier. Bronze dolphins adorned the stone steps and the facade was stone as well. The building had heated floors and warm baths, and a heavy gilt-bronze plaque in the portico declared that Archon Leucon son of Satyrus had built it as a gift to the city.
Kineas read the plaque, amused to see that here, at least, the archon used his name.
Town slaves took their cloaks and sandals. They walked through a short passageway to the changing room and stripped in the chill air, leaving their tunics in wooden cubbyholes. Two other men stopped their conversation and watched them strip, silently. They began a hushed exchange as soon as the five soldiers left the changing room for the exercise floor.
The silence was repeated there. At least a dozen citizens stood about the sanded floor, a few exercising with weights, one man using his strigil on another, but their conversation died when Kineas entered.
Diodorus looked about him. Then he shrugged. ‘Care to wrestle a fall, Kineas?’
It was too chilly, even with the heated floor, to pause for long. Kineas squared off against Diodorus, while Coenus and Lykeles began to exercise, carefully working their cold muscles. Laertes set to lifting weights.
Diodorus feinted a grab at Kineas’s legs, caught an arm and threw him, but Kineas got hold of his head on the way down and they fell in a tangle of limbs. In a second they were both on their feet again. In the second engagement, Diodorus was more careful, but he couldn’t get Kineas to overcommit and it was Kineas who trapped one of Diodorus’s hands and went for a throw. Diodorus struck Kineas a sharp blow to the ribs, but Kineas got a foot behind Diodorus’s leg and tripped him. Diodorus rolled out of the fall and they were both on their feet again, now warm and breathing harder.
Kineas raised his hands, palms out, in a high guard. Diodorus kept his low, close to his body. They circled. Out of the corner of his eye, Kineas saw that they were being watched by most of the men in the room. He grabbed at Diodorus’s head with both hands. Diodorus’s hands shot out, parted Kineas’s hands and hit him, open handed, on the forehead, rocking him back. In a second, Diodorus was on him, his left leg between Kineas’s legs and Kineas was down, this time with the weight of his friend solidly atop him. The sand on the floor was none too deep and the fall bruised his hip. Diodorus got to his feet and Kineas stood, dripping with sweat and rubbing his hip.
‘Well struck,’ he said ruefully.
‘I certainly thought so. You make me work harder and harder, Kineas. You may make a passable wrestler yet.’
They wrestled three more falls, two of them by Diodorus, and then Lykeles and Coenus began boxing. Neither of them was as fast as Kineas or as athletic as Ajax, but they were competent and a little showy.
None of the other men in the room offered a contest or even a wager, and none of them approached Kineas’s men. They stood silently by the gymnasium’s fountain, watching in a group.
Kineas crossed the floor to them. He was reminded of the efforts he had made, fruitless efforts as time proved, to be social with the Macedonian officers in Alexander’s army. Despite his doubts, he approached the oldest of the men, a lean, athletic old man with a beard nearly white.
‘Good morning, sir,’ Kineas said. ‘I am only a guest here and I desire to run. Where do I go to run?’
The older man shrugged. ‘I run on my estate outside the city. I imagine that’s what any gentleman does.’
Kineas smiled. ‘I’m from Athens. Our estates are generally too far from our houses to visit for exercise. Many times I have run around the theatre, for instance, or early in the agora.’
The old man cocked his head, examining Kineas as if he were a ram for sale at auction. ‘Really? You have an estate? Frankly, young man, that surprises me. I imagined you were a freebooter.’
Kineas began stretching. He looked up at the old man — and his crowd. ‘Before he died, my father was among the largest landholders in Athens. Eumenes — you must have heard of him. Our ships traded here.’ And as he switched sides to stretch the other leg, he said very deliberately, ‘My friend Calchus still sends ships here, I believe.’
Another man, thinner, but with a paunch that suggested a serious lack of exercise, leaned forward. ‘I trade with Calchus. You know him?’
Kineas brushed sand off his thigh and said, ‘We grew up together. So you don’t run in the city?’
The best looking man in the group, younger and harder, said, ‘Sometimes I run around the gymnasium. It wasn’t built on the best site — well it wasn’t! I’m not attacking the architect or the archon! The new gymnasium doesn’t have room for a running event, is all.’
Other men edged away from him as if he had a disease.
Kineas extended a hand to the man. ‘I’d like some company. Care to run with me?’
The man looked around at the rest of the group, but none of them met his gaze and he shrugged. ‘Certainly. Let me stretch a moment. I’m Nicomedes.’
They ran longer than Kineas might have wished. Nicomedes was an accomplished distance runner and he was interested in going faster and farther than Kineas had planned, leaving little wind for talk. But it was companionable enough, if cold, and when they had run as far as Kineas could manage without collapsing in public, they returned to the gymnasium and the baths, and Nicomedes invited Kineas to dinner — his first invitation in the city.
Luxuriating in the first decent bath he’d had in a month, Kineas asked, ‘Are you in the Hippeis, Nicomedes?’
‘I certainly qualify by property, if that’s what you mean. I have a horse, but I’ve never served. My people have always served on foot.’ Close up, Kineas could see that Nicomedes was a bit of a fop — he had the remains of make-up on his eyes and the cheeks of a heavy drinker. He was older than he had first appeared, and very fit, and his preening indicated that he knew how good his body was — but he was a pleasant companion for all that.
Kineas chose his words carefully. ‘A word to the wise, Nicomedes. The archon has given me a full list to muster the town’s cavalry and he seems to expect compliance.’
Nicomedes’ shoulders came out of the water so fast the drops flew. ‘That’s not fair — we’ve always served as hoplites.’ And then: ‘How fucking typical.’ And after another pause: ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’
Kineas shrugged and scrubbed. ‘You might pass the word.’
Nicomedes said, ‘Have you met the hipparch, Cleitus?’
Kineas thought, I’m the hipparch. And then he thought back to the archon’s hesitation on the subject. Ahh, now I begin to see. ‘I have not. I’d like to — we will have to work together to accomplish anything.’
Other men were coming into the baths and busy slaves were filling the other wooden tubs. The rooms began to fill with steam. It lent a comforting anonymity. The chatter grew louder. Kineas could hear Lykeles flattering somebody’s physique, Diodorus asking questions and Coenus quoting Xenophon’s views on horsemanship.
Nicomedes said, ‘He sometimes shares a cargo with me, and we are occasionally allies in the assembly — when the archon lets us have an assembly, that is. Hmm, shouldn’t have said that. Anyway, I could ask him to dinner — give the two of you a chance to meet. We were only told that the archon was hiring a mercenary.’
Kineas motioned for a slave to rub his shoulders. ‘I can imagine,’ he said.
Clean, dressed and pleasantly tired, Kineas led his men back to the barracks. His damp beard seemed to freeze as soon as they went outside and his cloak would not get him warm. ‘That went well,’ said Kineas.
‘They expected us to be monsters,’ said Lykeles. ‘Makes me wonder about Memnon and his lot.’
‘It’ll take more than a couple of dinners and some visits to the gymnasium to settle them,’ said Kineas, rubbing his beard.
