punching Kineas in the side of the head before he was ready. Pain exploded in Kineas’s head and he stumbled, hit the wall of the brothel and bounced back, almost into the foreigner’s arms.
Guided by the gods.
The man wasn’t ready for him and as Kineas jostled him, his right hand closed — of its own accord — on the man’s knife. The man shoved him, annoyed now, and Kineas stumbled back with the knife in his hand.
‘Put that down or I’ll rip the flesh off your face,’ the man said.
Graccus was no fool, he was screaming for the watch, running back to the agora because the watch didn’t come down here.
A stone hit the man in the head. It was well thrown, a jagged bit of mortar from the ill-kept tenements, and it made the sound of a dropped melon when it hit. The man’s eyes flicked to Diodorus.
‘You’re dead,’ he said, without changing facial expression. He stepped forward, intent on Kineas.
The boy — the older boy — had one of his legs. The man tripped, stumbled and Kineas blocked a piece of his blow with his left arm and thrust hard with the knife, the whole weight of his stocky body behind the blow. But he struck too high and the knife caught the man’s breastbone and skidded up, cutting sinew, slashing all the way across to the point of the shoulder.
The man shrieked and punched, left-right-left, and one of the blows caught Kineas and flung him back, his jaw broken and blood pouring from his nose. Tears burst from his eyes.
He didn’t drop the knife or lose sight of his opponent. That much of Phocion’s training stuck. He was conscious that this was a fight to the death, and that to lose control to the pain would be the end. But beyond that, his body seemed to be in the fight by itself, with his brain unable to affect the outcome.
And above it, Kineas the dreamer already knew the outcome. And the pain.
The street was filling with people and many were calling for the watch while others wagered on the outcome.
Kineas set himself in his sword stance, left leg forward, left arm out like a shield, knife close to his body. Blood and tears and mucus were running down his face and his whole head hurt.
The foreigner was also hurt. He took the respite to step on the boy lying under him, breaking his ribs with an audible popping sound. The boy screamed in rage, fear, helpless pain.
The man stepped over him and pointed at Diodorus. ‘Run,’ he said. ‘Or I’ll kill you next.’
Diodorus hit him with a paving stone. He half-missed his throw, because it was too heavy, and so instead of hitting the man’s head, it fell short on the man’s right foot.
The man screamed in pain, his right leg collapsing. But even from one knee, he managed to stumble at Diodorus, landing a heavy blow that knocked the red-haired boy unconscious.
Kineas made himself attack. He stepped forward, limbs leaden with fear, and made a half-hearted cut. The man took it on his arm and moved to punch Kineas, but he couldn’t put weight on his shattered foot and he fell.
Kineas was on him without thought of chivalry. He fell on the man’s back and plunged the dagger into the man’s kidneys — not once, but three or four times.
The man flipped him off, rolling and pinning him in one move. He reached back, his fingers searching for Kineas’s eyes, for his throat. Kineas stabbed wildly, squirmed, landed a feeble cut that nonetheless invoked the man’s flinch reflex and then he was on his feet, slick with the man’s blood.
The man was gushing blood. He half rose to his feet. ‘Ares,’ he complained, as if in a conversation. ‘Spear- wielder, I’m being killed by a pair of whores in an alley!’
‘I’m no whore, mercenary!’ Kineas hissed through split lips and blood and a broken jaw. He felt the balance shift. He was going to win. He stood taller.
The foreigner sat, suddenly. ‘You’ve killed me,’ he said, as if in wonder. ‘Not a whore, you say?’ He tilted his head to one side, like a dog watching a man. ‘Got the guts to put me down, boy? Or are you going to stand there and let me bleed out?’
‘I’m Kineas, Cleanus’s son, a citizen of Athens.’ Kineas held the man’s glittering eyes, stepped in close despite those arms and plunged his dagger into the man’s throat as if he were hitting the paint on the practice stake behind Phocion’s house.
And then the watch came, and Diodorus’s father, and then his own father. He was wrapped in blankets, in attention and love, even in admiration. There were too many witnesses to the man’s brutality — and the brothel keeper was dead. Only later would parents ask why three boys had been standing outside a brothel.
Kineas insisted that his father’s slave carry the broken boy — the whore — home. A doctor set his ribs and Kineas sat by him, night after night, day after day. Diodorus came and took his turn, and Graccus. The boy lay still, so still Kineas often thought he was dead, and Kineas would lean across his body to hear him breathe, but gradually the dark stains like bruises faded from under the short boy’s eyes, and one day, they opened.
Months later, Kineas asked him one day while the four of them were climbing a crag on one of Kineas’s father’s farms, looking for bird’s eggs. ‘Why were you a whore?’
‘Not much fucking choice,’ Niceas answered. He fingered an amulet at his neck. ‘Only good thing I’ve got — I’m free. Not a fucking slave.’ He rubbed his nose in thought. ‘Being a free man doesn’t feed you.’
‘Is it better — being my groom?’ Kineas asked.
Niceas shrugged. ‘Stupid fucking question,’ he said. And then he aimed a mock blow at Kineas, who ducked and… awoke.
The next day Niceas responded to Kineas with grunts. He never swore. If he didn’t want things, he simply turned his head away like a child. The night before they were due to take ship to Hyrkania, he suddenly turned to Kineas.
‘I don’t want to die like this,’ he said.
Kineas hadn’t heard so much in his voice in a week. He stopped pouring wine. ‘You aren’t dying,’ he said.
Niceas shrugged, head down, shoulders sagged. ‘I am. You can’t see it, but I am.’
Further prodding revealed nothing and promises of a physician led only to the turned head.
And then he forgot those worries as they prepared to sail on the Kaspian Sea, and a new set of worries descended on him.
12
A hard winter sun cast the last of its cold light over the icy beach as the pentekonter hove to in the appointed bay in Hyrkania, the anchor stone cast while the rowers backed water against the growing wind, and at last came to rest — a fitful rest, as Poseidon rocked them.
The Land of Wolves lay under a blanket of snow when Kineas finally waded ashore in the bleak twilight, bare- legged and cursing the cold water, wolves howling in the distance. Crax and Sitalkes clambered over the side of the pentekonter carrying Niceas in a litter while Coenus pushed the horses over the rail and into the water to swim ashore on their own. They’d lost one at sea — a slow death of terror for Coenus’s favourite mare, a painful, terrible event — and the big man was subdued, but when they were all on the beach he led them in a prayer of thanks to Poseidon and then they sang the hymn to Apollo in the last light of the sun.
The merchants’ stalls at the top of the gravel beach were either closed tight or lined in drifted snow. There was no welcoming party. So they rubbed their horses down as best they could, drying them with straw from a mouldering stack Crax found and then headed inland on the only visible track. Kineas sent Crax and Sitalkes out as scouts, made sure that all his men were armed and went back to the beach to pay the last coins of his passage to the captain, a piratical Persian called Cyrus.
‘How far to the camp?’ he asked as the Persian counted the coins and tested the silver ones with his teeth.
‘Three stades. Less.’ The man smiled, showing too many teeth. ‘Before the waters went down, the town was on the beach.’ He shrugged. ‘It must be as the gods will it, eh?’
Kineas agreed that it was so.
‘You’re going to fight Iskander, yes?’ the Persian asked. And not for the first time. He had a gold toothpick
