property have no need to do such things. When I need them done, I can hire — a mercenary.’ He looked around. ‘You are a pack of fools if you think that your little squadron of horse will last a minute against the force of Macedon. Men like you have no business fighting — your business is business. Achilles was a fool, and Odysseus not much better. Grow up. Accept the coming changes. Let this city grow and prosper as it is meant to, regardless of who claims to rule it. And leave fighting to mercenaries.’
He gave Kineas half a smile. ‘Although when I hire one, I’ll try to find one with less arrogance, less pretension, and superior skill at fighting — not a wine-sack blow-hard who was dismissed by Alexander.’
He sat down, and the room erupted. Men were watching Kineas. He was acutely aware of how deeply Cleomenes’ speech had cut him — both in his own pride and in the eyes of some of his most prominent supporters.
But despite the instant rise of rage in his heart, and the double grip of fear and anger in his gut, Kineas was a veteran of many years of Athenian politics — in his father’s house, and in the hippeis. He refilled his cup, spilled a libation with a prayer to Athena, and rose again, outwardly calm — inwardly both enraged, and hurt, even saddened. His stomach seemed to rise to fill his throat. In some ways, it was worse than a fight — in a fight, the daemon came to hold you up, to stiffen your sinews, but in debate, a man who was a friend, or at least sometimes an ally, suddenly turned on you and spoke insults.
Face to face. Like battle.
Kineas took a breath to steady himself. ‘I’m sure Cleomenes speaks with the best of intentions,’ he said. His mild sarcasm, so at odds with what the room expected from him, silenced the babble. ‘Cleomenes, am I the wine- sack blow-hard to whom you refer?’
Cleomenes glared at him like Medusa, but Kineas pinned him with his own gaze.
‘Come, we’re all friends here — you must have had someone in mind.’ Kineas’s raillery was still light.
Cleomenes wasn’t fooled. He wriggled on his couch like a bug on a pin.
Kineas raised an eyebrow. ‘So, you don’t mean me?’ He took a step forward, and Cleomenes wriggled again. ‘Perhaps you mean Memnon? Or perhaps Licurgus? Perhaps my friend Diodorus? Or perhaps young Ajax, Isokles son of Tomis — is that who you mean?’
Kineas took another step towards the man. He had the feeling that Cleomenes would make a bad enemy — but that enmity was already there. He was not going to win the man to his side — so he had to be defeated. ‘Except none of them served Alexander. Only I.’ He stepped closer. ‘Or were you speaking generally, of wine-sacks and blow-hards you’ve known in your wide experience of the world?’
Cleomenes stood up. ‘You know who I meant!’ he said, his face red.
Kineas shrugged. ‘I’m a poor mercenary, slow of intellect. Tell me.’
Cleomenes spat, ‘Figure it out.’
Kineas spread his hands. ‘I am a simple soldier. I admire those men to whom you referred — Achilles and Odysseus. They may not have been good men of business — but they were not afraid to speak their minds.’
Cleomenes rolled off his couch, his face purple. ‘Damn you, you insolent-’
Cleitus rushed to intervene — both men had their hands balled into fists. ‘Gentlemen — I think we have left reasoned debate and good feeling at the bottom of the last wine bowl. This is mere argument — there is bad feeling. Cleomenes did not mean the insult he implied, I’m sure — and neither would Kineas mean to call Cleomenes a coward, would you, Kineas?’
Kineas nodded — and let his next words drawl out with all the Athenian arrogance he could muster — which was considerable. ‘I didn’t say that Cleomenes was a coward,’ he said with a mocking smile. ‘Indeed, I spoke generally, about the long-haired Argives who fought for Helen on the windy plains of Illios.’
Several guests applauded. Kineas’s rhetorical tricks had the elegance of an Athenian gentleman’s education. Cleomenes looked rude by comparison, and he’d lost his temper entirely. Without another word, he picked up a scroll bag he had brought and walked to the door. ‘You will all rue the day you brought this man into our city,’ he said, and left.
Despite the lazy smile pasted to his face, Kineas felt weak at the knees, as if he had fought a combat. He felt as if he needed more wine. When he reached the couch he shared with Philokles, the Spartan smiled at him. Other men asked a few questions, but most chose to change the subject. He drank a great deal, Cleomenes’ insults still rankling, and went to bed drunk.
The tree was bigger than the world, and its trunk was like a city wall rising from a rocky plain. The lowest branches hung to the ground. It was a cedar — no, it was a black pine from the mountains of Attica.
Closer, it seemed that it was not one tree, but all trees. And the fallen leaves and needles littered the ground, so that every step he took, he sank to his ankles, and when he looked down to watch his footing, he saw that the leaves were mixed with bones. And under the leaves and bones were corpses — strange that the bones lay over the corpses, he thought, with the clarity of dream thought.
He felt strangely in control of his dream, and he made his body turn and look away from the tree, but there was nothing to see except the branches hanging to the ground, and the near dark beyond the tree, and the leaves and bones, and all the dead.
He turned back and set his hand against the trunk, and it was warm and smooth like the back of Srayanka’s hands, and he…
Awoke. Troubled because of the dream’s clarity and because it was alien. While he dreamed the tree, he was another man. A man who didn’t think like a Hellene. And that was terrifying.
He covered his terror in work, training the hippeis, which he did despite the first serious winter storm. The sailing season closed. The threat of Antipater became known throughout the city. No one could flee, so rich and poor alike settled in for months of cold, telling each other that there would be time to flee in the spring if Antipater really did come.
In the next week, Memnon called a muster of the city’s hoplites. It was the first muster held in four years. The archon had restricted such musters because he feared the power of the hoplites all together and under arms as much as he feared everything else, but Memnon insisted and he had his way.
The city hoplites looked better than the cavalry. They wore more armour than their compatriots in Athens or Sparta. The thirty years war in Attica and the Peloponnese had taught Greeks to wear less armour and move faster, but the hoplite class of the Euxine had missed those bloody wars and they came to muster in the bronze cuirass, greaves, and heavy helmets of their fathers.
They mustered in the open fields north of the suburbs and trampled the snow and the grain stubble for three hours. Despite the four-year hiatus and the presence of a new generation who had never been trained, they looked competent. They had three hundred mercenaries to provide file-closers, and they had seasoned men in their ranks who had served in the war with Heraclea.
Kineas watched them drill with Cleitus and half a dozen city gentlemen. He was unstinting in his praise, whether to his own men or to Memnon and the city officers when they approached at the end of the drill.
Memnon stopped and leaned on his spear. He had been charging about the field, black cloak flapping behind him, correcting faults and praising virtue, and now he panted like a dog. ‘I’ve got to get them out of all that armour,’ he said. He pointed to a group of young men at drill. ‘They keep all the old traditions here — the youngest, best fighters make a select company to cover the flank. I’ll try to keep them from wearing it.’
Kineas watched the older men standing in glittering ranks. ‘Depends on what we think they’re for,’ he said.
Nicomedes stopped flirting with Ajax and pushed his horse forward. ‘Surely we all know what hoplites are for,’ he said. ‘I used to serve as one myself, you may recall. Before the hipparch forced me to serve on horseback.’
Kineas smiled. ‘I gave you the excuse to buy that beautiful blue cloak and that exciting breastplate,’ he said. Then he turned back to Memnon. ‘For dash — or to chase down Thracians — our light-armed hoplites are the thing. But here on the plain…’ Here Kineas raised his head to gaze across the snow. He didn’t even know exactly where she was, but she was somewhere out in the endless white. He caught himself. ‘Here it is cavalry country. Armour makes a man braver, and steadies him, and keeps him safe from the javelins and bows.’
Memnon rubbed his jaw, which was as black as his cloak. ‘By Zeus, Hipparch, let us never have to face the bandits out in open country. I stood against the boy king at Issus, when his horse came against us. If they’d had bows, none of us would have escaped.’
‘Armour might stop the first push of a Macedonian taxeis,’ Kineas said.
