me a list. Let it be known, so that men will struggle to be in that company.’
‘Think of that yourself, did you?’ Niceas said with a hard smile. The six Athenian companies of horse were rivals in every kind of procession and game. He pointed with his chin at Eumenes’ father, Cleomenes, who sat quietly with a group of his friends. They were not participating. ‘Not quite mutiny,’ he said. ‘But he’s half the problem.’
‘I’ll see to it,’ Kineas answered, turning his horse.
An older man threw a leg over his horse and fell straight off the far side. ‘You intend to fight Macedon with this lot?’ Niceas asked.
‘You too?’
‘Me first. I’m told that the gods themselves have told you to fight Macedon. Did they send you that whip, too?’ Niceas pointed at the heavy whip in Kineas’s sash. ‘A troop of companions would scatter these like dandruff at the first charge. Leave ’em for the peltasts to clean up. Half of them will fall off and stay down until their throats are slit. Tell me if I lie.’
Kineas wheeled his horse. ‘Sounds like you have a lot of work to do, then.’
Niceas’s ferret face wrinkled in a rueful smile. ‘That’s what I knew you’d say.’
Kineas rode over to where Cleomenes and his twenty friends and allies sat. ‘Which station would you prefer to go to first, sir?’ he asked.
Cleomenes ignored him. One of his friends laughed. ‘We’re gentlemen, not soldiers. Don’t include us in this farce.’
Kineas looked at the man who had spoken. ‘You lack a breastplate. Your horse is too small. Please report to my hyperetes.’
The man shrugged. ‘And if I say no?’ he said.
Kineas didn’t raise his voice. ‘I might fine you,’ he said. ‘I might report you to the archon.’
The man grinned, as if that was not a threat he feared.
‘I might beat you to a bloody pulp right here on the sand,’ Kineas added. ‘Any of the three are within my legal right as hipparch.’
The man flinched.
Kineas turned to Cleomenes. ‘I am a gentleman of Athens,’ he said. ‘I hold no grudge that you voted against me as a citizen and again as hipparch. That is how democracy functions. But if you fail to do your duty, we will very soon come to a test that cannot benefit anyone.’
Cleomenes never met his eye. He was looking at someone else — probably Nicomedes, his principal rival in the city. ‘Very well,’ he said tersely. ‘I feel a sudden need to throw a javelin.’
It was a curiously empty victory. Cleomenes walked over to the butts, mounted his horse, and threw — competently — and then sat down again.
Kineas tried a different tack. He waved at Coenus to join him, and indicated Cleomenes. ‘There sits one of the city’s principal gentlemen. He dislikes me. He’s behaving like an arrogant fool and I can’t figure him out. Befriend him.’
Coenus chuckled. ‘As one arrogant fool to another, you mean?’
‘Something like that,’ Kineas agreed.
The close order drill was terrible. The first attempt to form the rhomboid formation that Kineas preferred was hampered by the size of the hippodrome and the numbers involved, but it would have been horrible nonetheless. It took them half an hour to get every man to see his place in the formation, and they couldn’t ride ten strides without becoming a mob.
Kineas sighed and gave it up. Instead, he formed them in a column of fours and rode them in circles until most of them learned to keep their intervals — a full hour.
He was hoarse from shouting. All the professionals were hoarse, and so were some of the boys who had ridden the plains. He shook his head and rode over to Cleitus. ‘I’m losing my voice. Would you order them to disperse and take their lunch?’
‘With pleasure,’ Cleitus said. And when he had fetched his own bread, he returned and said, ‘I knew you were the right man for the job. Look at them!’
Kineas took some sausage from Sitalkes. ‘Why? They look like dog shit.’
Cleitus frowned. ‘No, they don’t. They look like they are trying. If they stop trying, we lose. So far, we’re winning. Get them through three of these, and they’ll feel the difference. Could set quite a fashion. Can I have some of that sausage? The garlic is making my stomach rumble.’
Kineas handed over a chunk of sausage. Cleitus cut off a piece with a knife and tossed it to his son, who was eating with Ajax and Kyros. They were sitting on their horses to eat, like Sakje. In fact, all the young men who had gone with Kineas were sitting mounted to eat.
Cleitus offered a skin of wine to Kineas. ‘Rotten stuff. Perfect for soldiers. So — we’re fighting Macedon?’
‘News travels around here.’ Kineas took a pull at the wineskin. They were going to be late fetching the king.
‘Is it different in Athens? The way I heard it, you killed a squad of murderous Persian assassins — or perhaps they were Kelts — and then thrashed the archon with your big whip and told him to behave, and then your eyes rolled back in your head and you prophesied that we would defeat Antipater.’ Cleitus’s light tone didn’t cover the anxiety on his face.
Kineas handed back the wineskin. ‘That’s pretty much how it was,’ he said.
‘My first rhetoric tutor told me that my facetious ways would get me in trouble, and look, he was right. Kineas, I proposed you for citizenship. My friends made you hipparch. Don’t get us all killed.’ Cleitus grimaced and took more sausage.
Kineas pulled off his helmet and scratched his head vigorously. Then he met Cleitus’s eyes. ‘I don’t have a place to invite gentlemen to dinner. Will you host for me? I’ll explain to your guests why I think we have to fight, and what they stand to lose if we don’t.’
Cleitus grunted. ‘I was hoping you’d just say the rumour was wrong,’ he said.
‘Macedon is coming here,’ Kineas said.
The king was waiting. He and his men sat like gold-armoured centaurs. The column of city cavalry rode up and halted, more like a mob than Kineas liked, and Petrocolus and Cleomenes rushing to embrace their sons ruined any pretence to military discipline.
The Sakje didn’t seem to mind. The king pushed through the throng of Greek horsemen to reach Kineas. ‘You’re late!’ he said, smiling.
‘I offer profound apology, O King. The archon awaits us.’ Kineas motioned with his whip at Niceas, who raised his voice, and the city troop began to reform.
Satrax shook his head. ‘I’m teasing you. What is time to us? But it seems to mean so much to you Greeks — the second hour after noon!’ The young king laughed. ‘Try getting the Sakje to assemble within a single moon!’
‘Yet you would fight Macedon,’ Kineas said.
‘Oh, it’s easier to assemble them for war,’ Satrax said. He narrowed his eyes. ‘You’ve changed your mind. I can see it on your face.’
‘I have, too,’ Kineas said. He shrugged. ‘The gods spoke to me.’ The king shrugged. ‘Kam Baqca assured me that this would happen. I am not surprised she is right. She is nearly always right.’
Kineas watched both hyperetes pushing the column into some form of order. He had a few minutes. ‘I have spoken to the archon.’ Satrax nodded. ‘I think he will support the war,’ Kineas said. ‘At least, for now.’
‘This, too, is as Kam Baqca said it would be.’ The king smiled, showing his even teeth and the full lips that hid under his moustache and beard. ‘So — I will lead my clans to war against Macedon.’ He didn’t sound excited. More resigned.
Kineas nodded. The day’s muster had taken the eagerness out of him. He was going to lead these enthusiastic amateurs against the veterans of fifty years of war. ‘Gods send us victory,’ he said.
‘The gods send victories to those who earn them,’ said the king.
Kineas attended the meeting between the archon and the king on the porch of the temple of Apollo, but he didn’t speak. The archon was a different man — direct, sober, blunt — a commander of men. He changed faster than an actor who took multiple roles in the theatre. Kineas had seen it done in Oedipus — the king was also the
