mates on just how the ground lay between their commander and the Lady Srayanka. Kineas whirled on them, savage, and a great many punishments were handed out.
It was ruinous for morale. By the time Memnon’s spears marched into sight on the east bank of the river, those who remained, Sakje and Greek alike, were waiting to hear the news like men waiting for a bolt of lightning.
Memnon arrived at the head of the phalanx of Pantecapaeum, with the phalanx of Olbia a few stades behind. Kineas rode out to him as soon as the glitter of his spears was identified. It was obvious from their first exchange that Memnon’s news of the city was out of date — he had left a city dedicated to the war.
Kineas took Memnon aside as soon as he could, pressed a cup of wine into his hands, and sat him on a stool. ‘We have reason to believe that the archon sold the city to Macedon a day or two after you went out the gates,’ he said.
Memnon took a gulp of wine, spat it in the fire, and then drank some. ‘Bastard. Whoreson. Dickless catamite.’ He drank off the wine. ‘We’re fucked. They’ll all go home.’
Kineas shook his head. ‘Let them hear the news tonight. Tomorrow, all the men of Olbia will gather in assembly.’
‘Ares, it’ll be chaos, Kineas. And there’ll be desertions. I hate to say it — I love the whoresons, but I know them.’ Memnon shook his head. ‘Bastard — boyfucker. He just waited for us to march out, and then he handed the citadel to Zopryon.’
Kineas raised an eyebrow. ‘Did you expect anything else? I didn’t. Now we’ll see what we’ve made.’
Memnon shook his head. ‘Listen, comrade. We’re old soldiers — mercenaries, masterless men, exiles. We know that the loss of your city is a bitter pill, but in the end — nothing. A city is a city. Yes? They don’t know. They will feel as if their gods have died. And they’ll crawl back to the archon and swear whatever he requires to have their city back.’
Kineas looked at the marching column. ‘They look good,’ he said.
‘They are good, fuck your mother!’ Memnon spoke with angry pride. ‘They trained all winter and they marched here like — like Spartiates. They’ve trowelled off a lot of weight and they like it. Most of them are middle- aged men who just won themselves a last summer of youth. They’ll fight like heroes,’ he said glumly, ‘if they choose to fight.’
Kineas slapped the dark man’s shoulder. ‘Isn’t that the way it ought to be?’ he said. ‘Men ought to fight only if they vote it.’
‘You spend too much time with that fucking Spartan,’ Memnon grumbled. ‘If somebody pays me to fight, I fight. I don’t ask a lot of questions.’
Kineas met his eye. ‘That’s how we both came to work for the archon,’ he said. ‘From now on, I think I’ll ask more questions.’
In the night, Leon the slave of Nicomedes came into camp, having run day and night from the city. He brought news.
Kineas, summoned from a dream full of smoke and monsters, was muddled when he made his way to Nicomedes’ tent. Leon looked like a literal man of clay — he was coated in pale river mud, and he stank of it.
Nicomedes handed Kineas and Philokles a cup of wine. ‘It’s bad,’ he said. ‘Tell him, Leon.’
Leon drank from his own wine cup. ‘Cleomenes had Cleitus murdered by the Kelts day before yesterday,’ he said. He rubbed his face with his hands as a man does when he tries to stay awake, and flakes of mud came away from his face, as if he was literally falling to pieces. ‘He has seized command of the rest of the hippeis.’
Kineas pounded his right fist into his left hand. ‘Zeus! Of all the base acts…’ He drained his wine. ‘What of the archon?’ Thoughts and images boiled in his mind. The archon’s treason came as a shock, for all of his preparation.
Leon shook his head. Nicomedes swirled some more wine — unwatered — in his cup. ‘It’s always worse than you think. No one has seen the archon. Cleomenes has seized power and turned the citadel over to a garrison from Thrace.’
‘Amarayan gives the orders in the citadel,’ Leon said. ‘No one has seen the archon in ten days, since the garrison came. They came out of a big merchant ship, and by the time Cleitus had heard and mustered the hippeis, they were installed in the citadel.’
‘How many?’ asked Kineas.
‘Two hundred?’ Leon speculated. ‘Hard to know — they haven’t come down into the town. Indeed, they only hold the gates and the citadel — they don’t patrol the walls.’ He hung his head. ‘Cleitus was going to try ejecting them with his hippeis and some citizens who remained behind. That’s when Cleomenes showed his hand and had Cleitus killed.’ He looked at Nicomedes. ‘You are exiled. Kineas and Memnon have their citizenship revoked. The army of the city is recalled. All our goods have been seized.’
‘How’d you come free?’ Kineas asked. It was harsher than he meant, but he was not in a trusting mood.
Leon met his eye. ‘I’m a slave,’ he said. ‘I walked through the gates with the market crowd, took a horse from the Gamelios farm, and rode hard.’ He shrugged heavily. ‘When I saw the Macedonians, I got down in the riverbed and walked.’
Nicomedes put his hand on the seated man’s neck. ‘Now you are a free man,’ he said.
Leon glanced up — taken aback. ‘Can you afford to free me?’ he asked. ‘I’m quite valuable.’ Then he laughed, despite everything. ‘By all the gods — you mean it, sir?’
Nicomedes tossed his cloak off his shoulder and curled his beard with his fingers. ‘Why not? I used to be the richest man in Olbia. Get some sleep.’ He glanced at Kineas. ‘I thought you should know first.’
Kineas mutely held his cup out for more unwatered wine. Philokles shook his head. ‘I thought it would be the archon,’ he said blearily. ‘Or — or you, Nicomedes.’
Nicomedes shrugged with a pained look. ‘It might have been me — after we dealt with Zopryon.’
Philokles nodded. ‘We’re in deep trouble. Cleomenes — he knows exactly how to hurt us.’
Kineas nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, and rubbed his jaw like a boxer who had taken a heavy blow.
19
The next day dawned red, with a promise of heavy weather later in the day. Kineas gathered all the men of Olbia in a great half-circle, a conscious recreation of the place of assembly in the city. Kineas and Nicomedes had worked to make the assembly ground as familiar as possible.
It was an odd assembly, because, for whatever reason, all the men, hoplites and hippeis, brought their spears, and stood leaning on them, so that the assembly was a forest of bright spear points in the red morning light.
First came Helladius, a priest of Apollo, who made a sacrifice in the name of the god and declared the day favourable, just as he would have in Olbia. He was solemn, and the steam that rose from the blood of his slaughtered lamb in the red light of dawn seemed to waft the sacrifice straight to the gods.
After Helladius, Nicomedes strode to the centre of the assembly and spoke. He stood in the centre of the half-circle, holding his spear like every other man present. He didn’t look like a fop this morning.
‘Men of Olbia,’ he said. ‘Fellow citizens!’ He proceeded to tell the story of the war, from its inception to the demands made by Zopryon. He rehearsed for them every vote they had made — the grants of citizenship to the mercenaries, the subsidies of money to the archon for more men, more arms, armour, horses, more mercenaries. The treaty with the king of the Sakje, and the treaty with the city of Pantecapaeum. If it was dry, or boring, no one showed it. They stood leaning on their spears, grumbling when they didn’t like his point, or speaking up with shouts of ‘That’s right’, and ‘There’s the thing!’ when they felt that Nicomedes had the right of it.
Nicomedes took them right through to the end. When he came to the presence of the new garrison in the citadel, they groaned, and the spear points moved as if they were blades of grass in the wind. And then he spoke to them of the proclamation, and the threat of exile, and their voices rose around him until he could not make himself heard. He glanced at Kineas, shrugged, and stepped down.
Kineas motioned to Niceas, and the hyperetes drew a breath and blew a single note on his cavalry trumpet. Then he walked forward into the empty ground at the centre of the crowd.
