was having trouble breathing. ‘Hades, Philokles — is he sure?’
‘Sure enough to come pelting upriver to us without putting in.’
‘If Demostrate burned the Macedonian triremes, how in Hades did it happen?’ Kineas smacked a fist into his palm. All his plans were rising away, like the smoke of an altar fire in a breeze.
‘I can only speculate. A merchantman with a hold crammed with soldiers? And the archon in it to the hilt?’ Philokles shook his head angrily. ‘I don’t know.’
Kineas hung his head. ‘Ares’ balls. Our asses are going to be in the air. We need to know what’s happening.’ He looked back at the crowd by the fire. Men were watching him. ‘We can’t hide this. Better if I put it to the officers immediately.’
Philokles pulled on his beard. ‘You know what this may mean? Your men — all your men — may go home. Can you hold them if the archon orders them home?’
‘Is the archon the voice of the city?’ Kineas asked.
Philokles crossed his arms. ‘Memnon is two days away with the hoplites.’
Kineas nodded. ‘So we have the assembly here.’
Philokles took his arm. ‘You expected this.’
Kineas was looking out into the dark, thinking of the king and his image of a boat swept down the river. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I expected betrayal from the archon.’ He made a motion as if throwing a handful of dice on the ground. ‘The game is well underway, my friend. Too late to walk away and save our cloaks.’
Philokles laughed bitterly. ‘It seems to me that in one throw, the archon has already triumphed,’ he said. ‘He has the city.’
Nicomedes obviously felt the same when he was told an hour later. His ruddy face went white in the firelight. Leucon was similar, except that he cried out, ‘My father!’ Eumenes became silent, his jaw set. All of the Olbians were moved. Some wept.
Kineas stood on the tongue of a wagon. He had taken the time to go to Philokles’ camp and hear the sailor speak. The man was a gentleman, a citizen of Pantecapaeum, a veteran trader who knew the coast and knew the politics. His account was reliable. When Kineas left the man he ordered Niceas to gather all the men of Olbia in the camp. And he sent Philokles to tell the king.
Nicomedes shook his head. He stood just below Kineas and when he spoke, his voice carried. ‘We left men as a precaution against something like this. Is there any news?’ His voice cracked from emotion. ‘Has the archon ordered us home?’
Kineas spoke loudly into the crowd of men around his wagon. ‘This war was voted by the assembly of the citizens of Olbia,’ he said. ‘The archon and his — extraordinary powers were voted by the assembly of the citizens of Olbia.’ He paused, and received silence, the best accolade of any assembly of Greek men. ‘In two days, the hoplites will be here. I propose that we then hold an assembly of the city — here in camp. Perhaps we will choose to agree with the action that the archon has taken. Or perhaps,’ he made his voice loud, and hard, a trick of rhetoric and one of command, ‘perhaps we will find that the archon has betrayed the city.’
‘The archon holds the city,’ Leucon said. His voice was flat.
Kineas had no response to that. He dismissed them to go to bed. They moved off, grumbling.
Philokles stood by his shoulder when they were gone. ‘You are a surprising man, Kineas. I think perhaps you would have been a dangerous opponent in the law courts, if you had not taken to the cavalry. You will argue that the army, and not the archon, is the voice of Olbia?’
‘I will,’ Kineas said. ‘I would lie if I said that I expected this, but by Zeus, I feared it, and I thought about it. And now all I can do is to ask them — they are men — let them act like men.’
Philokles shrugged. ‘Sparta has no walls,’ he said.
In the morning, the men were calm and obedient, which was as much as Kineas had hoped for. He attended the king’s council with his own officers. When called on, he rose and addressed them.
‘King Satrax, noble Sakje, men of Pantecapaeum. I wish to speak before rumour exaggerates. It appears to us from a report that the archon of Olbia has allowed a garrison of Macedon into the city’s citadel — or perhaps it has been taken by surprise.’
A murmur rose, first from the officers of the Pantecapaeum horse, and then from the Sakje. Kineas raised his voice and continued.
‘It is possible that, even now, there is an order en route to this camp from the archon, ordering this part of the army home.’ He caught Srayanka’s eye unwittingly. Her dark brows were drawn together as one.
The king flicked his whip. ‘And what will the men of Olbia do?’ he asked.
Kineas bowed. ‘We must have a few days to decide.’ He had explained in private, as soon as the king was up, and again to Srayanka, choosing his words carefully, but none of them smiled at him. The atmosphere of the council was heavy and cold. Many new men and some new women sat there now — the war leaders of the western clans, and the alien Sauromatae, handsome, tall men and women from the east with closed faces, who wore their armour to the council.
Kam Baqca spoke carefully. Her eyes were wide and her pupils enormous, as if she had received a blow to the head, or recently awakened. She seemed to have trouble focusing, and her body writhed from minute to minute, as if inhabited by a giant snake. ‘Do you think,’ she asked carefully, into a dead silence, ‘that the Sakje should allow you to ride away, if your archon intends to make war on us?’ Her head sunk suddenly to her chest and then snapped back erect, and her eyes were locked on the king. ‘I never saw this,’ she said.
Kineas spoke over the first angry response from his own officers to Kam Baqca’s threat. ‘I ask for time to deal with this crisis in our own way. Threats, promises, censure — none of them will help the men of Olbia deal with their own sense of betrayal and their own very deep fears for their city. I beg this council and the king to exercise patience, lest our alliance, already touched with victory, dissolve.’
The king made a sharp notion for Kineas to desist. Before he could speak, the best armoured of the Sauromatae rose from his seat and spoke. He spoke rapidly, in the Sakje tongue with a strong accent, and Kineas could catch little more than his anger.
The king listened attentively and then said to the council, ‘Prince Lot speaks for the Sauromatae. He says they have come far — far from their tents on the great sea of grass, and farther from the queen of the Massagetae, who also craved their lances in Bactria. He says they come to find a handful of foreign allies preparing to desert to Macedon, and he wonders aloud if I am a strong king.’
The king rose to his feet. The campaign against the Getae had hardened him. There was no adolescent rage — just a cold focus. He spoke in Sakje, and Kineas understood him well enough, and then he spoke again in Greek. ‘I am a strong king. I have crushed the Getae, who preyed on my people for ten generations of men. I won this victory with the help of the men of Olbia, and such brotherhood is not lightly set aside.’ He looked at Kineas. Kineas read a great deal from that look. The boy was putting his kingship above his desire for Srayanka — again.
He continued. ‘I give the Olbians five days to make their decision, and then we will take council again. In the meantime, I command that the harrying of the army of Macedon begin. Zopryon is two hundred stades distant. He will take at least a week to reach the bank of the great river. By then, all questions of Olbia and its archon will have been resolved.’
The king sat. He had never looked less young, or more fully a king. Srayanka smiled at him, and Kineas felt the bile in his gut. It occurred to him to wonder what, exactly, Srayanka wanted in a man. Was it power?
The thought was black with jealousy, and unworthy of her.
But the barb stuck.
Marthax’s army returned, with the rest of the Olbians, and all the other veterans of the campaign against the Getae. Srayanka’s Cruel Hands came into camp with a whoop of victory. Kineas saw them at a distance; he saw Srayanka greet Parshtaevalt, just as he saw the king welcome Marthax, and he saw the subdued celebrations among the Sakje. For the first time that summer, however, he was separate, distant, and not welcome. And as soon as they came and celebrated, they rode away again. Kineas watched Srayanka lead the Cruel Hands out of the camp on the third day after their return.
She rode up to him. He hadn’t touched her in days — hadn’t spoken to her, except at the council. She gestured with her whip at the knots of Olbian men gathered by their fires. ‘Fix this — it is between us.’
Kineas tried to grab her hand. She frowned, shook her head, turned her horse, and galloped back to the head of her column, and Kineas felt a hot jab of rejection — and rage.
Behind Kineas, there was a great deal of comment — the veterans of the Getae campaign filling in their
