represented the whole realm of the Sakje out on the sea of grass.
A realm that might now be an enemy of Olbia. Kineas shook his head to clear it, because this was the day of mourning, and politics would have to wait.
Helladius, now chief priest of Apollo, joined him. Helladius was an old and very conservative priest, but he had held his ground in the phalanx. Memnon had noted that the old fool had ended the battle in the front rank and done his part.
‘You will lead the procession?’ Helladius asked.
Kineas shook his head. ‘No. We will return to the ways of the city before the tyrant came. The priests of Apollo will lead, followed by the hippeis and allies and the phalanx, and then Cleitus’s body and his honour guard. I will ride with them.’
Helladius nodded. ‘The god smiles on you, Archon,’ he said. ‘I have interpreted the omens for you all summer, and I say that you are beloved of all the gods, but of Apollo and Athena most of all.’
Kineas narrowly avoided a cynical reply. Hubris was never becoming, and Helladius was not a sanctimonious fool. Or not entirely. ‘Thank you,’ he said carefully.
The funeral procession marched on time, because the army had a summer of campaigning behind it. The priests sang, and the phalanx caught the tune and sang with them, scandalizing the younger priests who had not served with the army. And then, as the procession entered the gates, Helladius began the paean, and all the soldiers took it up, thousands of throats straining to praise Apollo, the same chant that had settled their nerves in the last seconds before the Macedonian charge. Dolphins of gold rose on either side of the gate, and the temple of Apollo was visible at the end of the long street of the gods, and still the paean lifted to the heavens with its song of reverence and victory. Kineas found that he could not sing for the tears in his throat, and when he turned his horse to see the column he could see that many men were weeping openly as they sang, and yet the power of the paean waxed as if all the missing voices were there too, and for a moment the distinction between the world and… the world blurred and Kineas heard Ajax beside him, his pure voice full of pride, and Nicomedes’ harsh croak in his ear, and Agis, who so revered the god, and many others.
When the paean ended, so many men were weeping that it sounded as if the god was mourning, the sound of their laments echoing from the temple and across the agora, the sound magnified by the men too wounded to march but standing in orderly ranks at the foot of the temple steps, and the women, mothers and sisters and lovers and wives.
The troopers carrying Cleitus’s ashes climbed the steps and placed the ashes where Kineas and Petrocolus had placed a bronze statue of Nike from Nicomedes’ house. The priests sacrificed in the temple and blessed the people and the city, and then Helladius raised his arms and turned to Kineas.
Kineas dismounted from his Macedonian charger and walked up the steps, his thigh burning at every step and making his climb painful and slow. He stopped below the statue of Nike, so that her wings were over his head, and turned to the crowd.
‘I speak to the whole city, the citizens and the wives and the mothers and the farmers and the smiths and the Greeks and the Sindi and even the slaves,’ he said. A year of speaking in public had improved his manner, and the occasion gained him their utter silence.
‘Nothing I can say will make the dead greater in the eyes of the gods,’ he said. ‘Cleitus, who gave his life to save you from the tyrant, failed because he was one man. But all the dead, together, drove the Macedonian from the field and slaughtered him. And all together killed the tyrant and freed the city. All the dead sacrificed themselves equally for the triumph of the city.’
He looked out over the agora with the feeling that he could see many men who were dead, and perhaps even some who were not yet alive. ‘When we faced Zopryon in battle, no man flinched. The Sakje stood and the Greeks stood. The hippeis stood and the hoplites stood. The citizen and the mercenary stood together. Indeed, the slaves stood their ground, and this city has twice a hundred free men today because as slaves they did not cower.
‘Virtue — freedom and liberty — is the concern of every man, not a few politicians or a few soldiers,’ he said. ‘I will chide you, Olbia, in full view of all the gods. You allowed a few men to make your laws and paid a few men to guard your walls, and those few became your rulers. Politicians and mercenaries!’ he bellowed, and his words echoed off the walls.
‘Cleitus died to pull down the tyrant — and failed, because he was one man, murdered for his voice. We waded in blood to stop Macedon — aye, and lost hundreds of the flower of this city’s best men. But on our return, we overthrew the tyrant in an hour with a thousand willing hands helping us into the city and into the citadel. Women threw down ropes to the army. Slaves led us to the open postern of the citadel. Never let this lesson be lost on you, citizens of Olbia! Women of Olbia! Slaves of Olbia! In your hands are the keys to the city and the keys of your own chains!’
Chains chains chains echoed off the walls.
‘Had Cleitus lived, he would now be archon,’ Kineas continued. ‘He was an honest man, a powerful speaker and a trained lawmaker. But he is dead.’ Kineas paused, and then pointed at another Nike, also from Nicomedes’ house, beside him on the steps. ‘Had he lived, Nicomedes might have been archon. He desired the role with all his ambition, and he had the talents to lead the city to greatness. But he fell in the battle.’
Kineas looked out over the crowd, where men shouted ‘Lead us, then!’ as if they had been paid. He shook his head.
‘I have acted as archon for a few days — to see the dead buried, and to see good laws passed. But I will not be tyrant. And if I stay, either I will make myself your lord, or you yourselves will make me take the power. I must go east — to fight against Macedon, and to preserve the liberty you have just won. Our allies on the plains still need our help, and I will go with them. And when I return, you will be a strong state, with a free assembly, and I will vote my vote and grumble when my motion is defeated, drinking my wine in a wine shop and cursing that my side had the fewer voices.’
Then he told the story of the campaign, from the first rumour of Zopryon, to the assembly voting for war, through the campaign against the Getae and on to the last battle — a long story, so that his voice was hoarse when he reached the end. He named as many of the dead as he could — from young Kyros, who had been a great athlete, the first to fall in combat, to Satyrus One-Eye, who died in the courtyard of the tyrant’s palace. He recounted their names and their deeds, until the crowd wept again that so many had fallen. And as he spoke, the sun rose to its full height in the sky.
When he fell silent, Helladius saluted the disk of the sun, and all the people cheered, and then they sang: I begin singing of Demeter,
The goddess with shining hair,
And Persephone, her daughter, fair Slim-ankled, too. Hades took her,
Zeus gave her to his brother,
Far-seeing Lord of Thunder.
They sang the hymn to the end, and another to Apollo, as the sun rose strong on their faces. And then Kineas raised his arms for silence and summoned the assembly for the next day. He bowed to the grave markers of Cleitus and Nicomedes as if the men were standing with him and then he limped down the steps of the temple, mounted his horse and rode away.
That night, Kineas dreamed again of the column of the dead, and again a dead friend vomited sand — this time Graccus, a long-dead boyhood friend. But the tone of the dream changed, so that he was less afraid. And then a woman came to him.
‘I have come to offer you a choice,’ she said. She had the white skin of a goddess and she looked like his mother — or like someone else, someone as familiar as his mother.
He smiled at her in the dream because it was such a Greek dream, a welcome relief from the strain of the tree and the animal totems and the alienness that had infected his dreams since he came to the plains. She was dressed in a peculiar garment, a bell-shaped skirt and a tight jacket that bared her breasts. Kineas had seen such a costume on a priestess once, and on old statues.
‘State your choice, Goddess,’ Kineas said.
She laughed when he called her goddess. ‘If you remain here, you will be king. You will rule well and wisely, and your city will be the richest in the circle of the seas.’
Kineas nodded.
‘If you travel east, your life will be short-’ she said.
