and reasons to stay. Every man of you can settle to a farm and a wife. And I am too fond of you to force you to come. Indeed…’ His voice choked a little and he faltered. He drank some wine to cover his confusion, and then said, ‘Indeed, I don’t expect to return. And I do not wish that to be your fate.’
They looked at him with questions, their eyes brimming with misgiving, and he saw the hesitation he sought. He had considered the matter for days, and decided he would do his best to make the ones he loved most stay in Olbia.
But Philokles made a mocking noise with his lips and then laughed. ‘Your life or death is with the gods,’ he said. ‘And the same can be said for every man among us.’
Kineas shot his friend a look, but Philokles ignored him, as he often did.
‘Our fearless leader believes that he goes to his death in the east,’ Philokles said in a mocking tone. ‘Of course, he was equally certain that the recent action on the Borysthenes would be his death. It would appear that the dreams sent to him by the gods were mistaken.’
All the men laughed, because there was no mockery more precious to them than the rare moments when Philokles turned his tongue, sharp as bronze, on Kineas. It was precisely because Kineas was their leader — in many ways, the best man among them, and every one of them conscious of his advantages — that they enjoyed it the more when he was the butt of humour.
Kineas pointed to the Spartan. ‘You mock sacred things,’ he said.
Philokles grinned. ‘No, my lad, I mock you. Unless, like the tiresome boy king, you have appointed yourself a god?’
Kineas narrowed his eyes, red tingeing his vision as rage threatened him. He rose from his couch and began to stalk towards his friend. ‘I do not want to drag my friends to their deaths!’ he bellowed.
Philokles drew himself up to his not inconsiderable height, as if to remind Kineas that his rage might accomplish nothing — and laughed again. ‘Your friends will follow you to the ends of the earth,’ he said, ‘if only to see what you do next.’
The party cheered him, and Kineas deflated, pleased that so many of them clamoured to go, and touched — and bemused — by Philokles’ tone. ‘And I call you my friend,’ he said.
‘You get too much worship and insufficient straight talk,’ Philokles said in a low voice, his tone covered by the laughter. ‘You need us. And I’m damned if I’ll let you go off and find a way to die.’ Then he turned to the others.
‘Hear me, men of Olbia. Kineas of Athens marches east, not to open a road for trade, but to make war on Alexander, king of Macedon. He makes this war not for his own profit, but on behalf of every man in Greece. If there was a lion loose in a nearby town, would you not pick up your spear and go to kill it? So, then — take up your spear and go with us, for the monster is loose on the sea of grass.’
And then they rose from their couches and crowded around, and Kineas embraced them amidst a storm of affection, and was humbled.
In the dawn of the next day, while the guests of the symposium slept in drunken fitfulness, Demosthenes awakened at a loud noise. He shouted until his slaves were awake, and he made their lives more unbearable than usual seeking explanations for the dead frog in his water cup. He scared them sufficiently that it was several hours before any of them dared to tell him that he had a long mark in red ochre drawn on his throat like a giant grinning mouth.
He fainted.
He did not appear when invited for dinner at the barracks, and his excuses were sketchy.
Later, Kineas spoke to the survivors of the symposium in the barracks. They were quieter from the results of the night’s debauch.
‘This will be the largest expedition of its kind since Darius crossed the plains,’ he said, tapping a copy of Herodotus — Isokles’ copy, in fact. ‘The difference is that we’ll have the cooperation of most of the tribes, or at least we won’t have their outright enmity. But the major issue will not be hostile action. It will be food.’
He gestured to Leon, who sat with Niceas. ‘We have worked out a logistikon based on a thousand men and two thousand animals,’ he said. ‘All of you served enough with the Sakje last summer to know how they live on the plain. With our own scouts and the Sauromatae, we should never lack for grass or meat.’
The cavalry professionals all nodded.
‘But we will lack grain for the chargers and bread for the troops. Greek soldiers eat bread. Opson is all very nice, but it is grain that we need. And it is easier to buy it as we go than to try to carry it with us.’
Philokles raised his hand. ‘Grain is so cheap here,’ he said. Other men nodded in agreement. Olbia was the capital of the grain trade. The stuff flowed around them like the waters of the Borysthenes river, even in a summer beset by flooding and war.
Kineas nodded. ‘I thought so too,’ he said, ‘and so I learned a new lesson of war. Listen.’ He picked up Leon’s scroll. ‘Assume that every soldier eats a measure of grain a day, and every horse eats two measures,’ he quoted. The old soldiers nodded agreement at the figures. ‘That means that our little army will consume five thousand measures of grain a day.’ He looked up from the scroll. ‘Every man can carry ten measures of grain in addition to his equipment. Each horse can carry twenty measures of grain in addition to its equipment. So the army can sally forth with ten days’ food.’ His eyes raked them. ‘It is at least ten thousand stades to the roof of the world where the Massagetae await us. At best, if we never slow, we will take sixty days to cross the sea of grass. The Sakje themselves allow fifty days for their fastest men, and ninety days for tribes.’
He began to make marks on the wall of the barracks with a piece of charcoal from the hearth. ‘None of us has traversed the land to the east except Prince Lot and, of course, Ataelus. I have only his report, and the contributions of the more adventurous merchants from here and Pantecapaeum. If we go north to follow Srayanka, we risk tangling with Marthax — even if his forces are disbanded. And we’ll have to cross great marshes as we go east. Srayanka will follow the great road of the Sakje — the high grassland that runs east into Sogdiana and Bactria and the land of the Massagetae.’
‘We’ll have to wait for spring,’ Coenus said with a happy shrug.
Niceas sneered at him. ‘I take it we have another option?’ he asked Kineas with the raise of an eyebrow.
Kineas nodded. ‘I’ve sent Eumenes to arrange it — I hope. Merchants cross the high ground between the Euxine and the Kaspian — what some men call the Hyrkanian Sea — by following the course of great rivers and then arranging passage on the Hyrkanian Sea when they arrive. If I can, I’ll take the whole army along the Tanais river and across the high ground to the river that the Sakje call the Rha. If we go hard, we’ll make the mouth of the Rha before the snows come.’ He drew on the wall with the charcoal, indicating the position of Lake Maeotis and the Bay of Salmon, the course of the Tanais and the course of the Rha and the distant salt sea with flicks of his stylus.
Diodorus whistled. ‘We’re leaving the world we know,’ he said.
Looking around, Kineas could see the same thought reflected in every man. He nodded. ‘When some of you chose to follow me to Olbia, we left our world behind,’ he said. He rubbed his beard and sipped wine. ‘When we marched out on to the sea of grass in the spring, we left the world behind. This is farther and farther yet — but the world continues. Petrocolus and Leon and other grain merchants know the Tanais and the Rha well enough, and their factors attest that there is a route across to the Hyrkanian Sea — a route that many men have travelled.’ Kineas turned to his sketch on the wall and then turned back. ‘Prince Lot has made the journey several times, as has Ataelus.’
Niceas raised a hand. ‘And then we cross this Hyrkanian Sea one boatload of horses at a time?’
Kineas made a sign that indicated that it was with the gods. ‘Twenty boats at a time. They move caravans, Niceas. They can move us.’
Niceas shook his head. ‘Caravans have a hundred horsemen and two hundred horses,’ he said. ‘And what little kingdom will receive our army without feeling that they have to massacre us?’
Kineas rubbed his beard. ‘Yes,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘Nicomedes traded with a kingdom on the Kaspian Sea.’
Philokles laughed. ‘Yes, you’ve got it taken care of? Or yes, it’s a good point?’
Kineas raised an eyebrow, feeling the opportunity to make back some of the ground he had lost the night before. ‘It seems to me,’ he said with all the effort of a good rhetorician, ‘that our company has a fine man, gifted by the gods with the power of making fine speeches, with a tongue that drips honey and a talent for philosophy — the very man to go from here to the far side of the Kaspian Sea with the summer caravans and arrange for a proper
