‘Let me past, you idiots,’ Stratokles roared. He walked up the steps to the stone house and put the girl on the floor. ‘I’m sorry for what my men have done here, but her virtue is not stolen, and her nose will heal. Sooner than mine,’ he said with an attempt at humour, but it fell to its death on the iron-hard faces of the farmer and his wife. She leaped to her daughter, put her arms around her and the two began to talk – fast – in the local tongue.
‘We know you had the twins here – three days back? Perhaps four?’ Stratokles looked at the boy, cowering against the hearth. ‘I’m doing my best to restrain these animals, but it could get ugly here and I’m just one man. If you tell us what we need to know, we’ll be gone the sooner. And no one needs to get hurt.’
‘This is what Heron of Pantecapaeum stands for, is it?’ the farmer spat.
Yes, it is, Stratokles thought to himself. Politics made strange allies – and for Stratokles, a democrat of the most rabid sort, a man of principle, dedicated to the freedom of Athens, to be forced into a yoke with the tyrant of Pantecapaeum was the richest sort of irony.
‘Please,’ Stratokles said. ‘Help me to help you. When were they here?’
The farmer wilted. His eyes went to his son and daughter. Outside, the mercenaries were moving around with heavy footsteps, their very silence ominous.
‘Three days back,’ the farmer said. ‘They took our horses.’
The best of the mercenaries was an Italian named Lucius, a big man with a brain who had stood by Stratokles repeatedly during the chase. Stratokles demoted the phylarch on the spot and promoted the Italian in his place. There was a lot of ugly muttering.
Stratokles rode in among them, pushing his horse right up against the Macedonians. ‘Listen, children,’ he said. ‘I could have killed fuckwit here for mutiny and rape – but I chose to assume that his useless phylarch shared some of the blame. So you get to live.’ Stratokles grinned around at the ten of them. ‘If you annoy me enough, I’ll just start killing the ones I find most annoying – get me? I can take all ten of you – together, apart, one at a time, any way you want it. Care to start dancing? If not, shut up and soldier.’
‘You ain’t our officer,’ the ex-phylarch said – in a whine. ‘We’re paid men – mercenaries. We have our own rules.’
Stratokles’ smile widened. ‘I’m your officer now.’ He looked around at them again – a useless assortment of boys and thugs. ‘And the only rules here are mine.’
They were badly mounted, and he suspected that the children he’d been sent to kill were now better mounted, but he knew horses and they made the best time he could manage, five days across the hills and down the valleys to the Hypanis. There should have been a ferry across the swollen torrent, but instead they found an angry ferryman and a cut rope.
‘Yesterday, the thieves! The fucking catamites!’ the ferryman shouted.
He had a dozen or more customers camped around his stone house, waiting for the water to go down.
Stratokles looked at the river, and then at the horses and men he had with him. He was tempted to curse the gods, but he knew from experience that the gods give what they give.
‘We swim,’ he said.
‘Fuck you,’ the former phylarch said. ‘I ain’t swimming. They’re a day ahead – downriver, into a port and gone.’
Stratokles looked at Lucius, who shrugged. ‘I’d put it a nicer way,’ he said. ‘But the man’s got a point.’
Stratokles nodded. ‘Well, I’m swimming,’ he said. ‘Lucius, I’d appreciate it if you came. The rest of these scum aren’t worth my trouble. Ride back to Heron, tell him you failed, and see what you get.’
As it was, they rested the horses overnight, ate a hot meal in the man’s barn and the river was down in the morning. Even with that, though, the swim across the Hypanis was one of the scariest things Stratokles had ever done. Halfway across, when an underwater log thumped against the ribs of his horse and both of them rolled under for a moment, he thought he was done.
Oh, Athens, the shit I do for you.
But then he was up the far bank. He had brought a light rope from the ferryman, and he tied it to the big oak at the top of the bank, and the ferryman gave him a wave and a cheer.
‘Service restored,’ Stratokles said to Lucius, who’d also made the crossing.
‘Aren’t we going to wait for the lads?’ Lucius asked when Stratokles rubbed his gelding down and got back up on him.
Stratokles watched the ferryman and one of his sons inching across in a light boat, using the line Stratokles had carried to keep from racing away downstream. ‘It’ll be all day before he gets his hawser across,’ the Athenian said.
‘You’re the boss,’ Lucius said. ‘You think we can take six men all by ourselves?’
‘I have to try,’ Stratokles said.
‘Well, I’m with you,’ Lucius muttered. ‘I’m a fool, but I’m with you.’
They made Bata in three more days. There was a heavy trireme beached by the stern, and Heron of Pantecapaeum was just coming up the beach when they rode their tired horses down to him.
‘They got away,’ Stratokles said.
Heron nodded. ‘This morning. About five hours ago.’ He looked at Lucius, and then back at the Athenian. ‘You’re a better man than I took you for. You stuck it out all the way across the countryside.’
Stratokles shrugged. ‘I missed them, though.’
Heron nodded, his long nose seeming to mock the stub that Stratokles had. ‘The ship they’re on is a coaster bound for Heraklea,’ he said. ‘I can give you this ship and the marines on board. Go and kill them.’
Stratokles took a deep breath. ‘I have business in Heraklea, and an agent or two,’ he said. ‘On the other hand, this is getting beyond my remit. I’m not your man, Heron. I’m Cassander’s. And killing those children can’t become an end in itself. What damage can they do you?’›
Heron looked out at the ship, and shrugged. ‘Just do as you are told. Or tell Cassander and your precious Athenian tyrant that unless those children die, I’m no part of his alliance and he can whistle for the grain he wants.’ The tall man gave Stratokles a slight smile – more like a mockery of a smile. ‘I dare say he’ll find that he can spare you for a few weeks.’
Stratokles stifled the wave of resentment that threatened to escape his throat and take voice. The political daimon that ruled his thoughts – the spirit of expediency, he called his daimon – told him that Herons come and go.
The things I do for Athens, Stratokles thought. ‘Introduce me to your navarch,’ he said.
5
T he factor’s steward said that Leon was not there, and his factor, when summoned at Philokles’ insistence, was none too pleased to speak with them. He was a middle-aged Heraklean merchant named Kinon, and he viewed the four mounted travellers outside his palatial house with distress and suspicion. Kinon was as wide as he was tall, and not all with fat. He wore a fortune in jewellery on his person, with a jewelled girdle and gilt sandals. Two armed slaves stood behind him, and the heavily studded gate was only opened wide enough for the three of them to stand abreast.
Kinon spoke brusquely. ‘I do not expect Leon for some weeks. Indeed, I do not know if Heraklea is on his summer sailing itinerary at all. Good day to you.’
Philokles slipped down from his horse and stood in the gateway so that it was difficult to close the gate politely. ‘We’ll accept your hospitality anyway,’ he said.
‘I haven’t offered my hospitality,’ Kinon said.
‘Leon is my guest-friend. I need the shelter of a roof, as do these children and their trainer. Are you turning me away?’ Philokles seemed bigger and far more noble than usual.
Kinon looked at them. ‘What proof do you bring that you are the guest-friend of my employer? Get you gone before I send for the tyrant’s guard.’
Philokles shrugged. ‘I helped free your master from slavery,’ he said. ‘He was the slave to Nicomedes of Olbia. Kineas of Athens and I-’
‘Kineas? You are that Philokles, the Spartan?’ Kinon took a step forward, slapping his head. Satyrus,
