The elephant-keeper stood from his cross-legged squat with a foreign elegance and walked over. ‘Master?’ he asked.
‘Are they intelligent?’ Satyrus asked.
‘Yes,’ the man said, with an odd sing-song inflection to his Greek. ‘Very smart. Smarter than horse or cow or dog. Smart like person.’ He patted a big cow-elephant on the shoulder. ‘Like person, they don’t make war until man teach them.’ He shrugged. ‘Even then, they won’t fight unless they have men on their backs.’
Hesitantly, Satyrus patted the heavy skin of the animal’s shoulder. It was criss-crossed with scars. ‘She has been in battle?’ he asked.
‘Since she was five years. Now she has fifteen years. Ten big fights and ten more.’ The mahout beamed with pride – a sad pride, Satyrus thought. He spoke to her in another language – liquid and rather like a paean, Satyrus thought. She raised her head.
‘I tell her – battle comes.’ The India-man shrugged expressively. ‘Men teach them war – but when they make war so much?’ He shrugged again and smiled. ‘Like a drunk man with wine? So is an elephant trained to war, and a battle.’
‘War has the same effect on some men,’ Philokles said.
‘Yes!’ the India-man said. ‘Like elephants, man can be taught to love anything – even murder.’
‘You’re a strange one, for a soldier,’ Crax said. He grinned at Philokles. ‘Long-lost brother of yours?’
The India-man had a name, which proved to be something like Tavi, so Tavi was what they called him. They spent most of the afternoon roaming the elephant camp, meeting the beasts. None of them seemed very warlike, despite their size.
‘Let them smell you,’ Tavi said. ‘Let them see you. Then they know you on the day of battle.’
Satyrus submitted to being smelled, and in some cases prodded, by elephants. He fed them nuts and grass, delighted by the manipulations of their trunks and the play of intelligence in their beady little eyes. ‘I want to be a mahout,’ he exclaimed with twelve-year-old enthusiasm.
Tavi put him up on the older cow, and he rode on the beast’s neck with the India-man behind him. He was allowed to carry the goad, and he tapped the old girl, called Grisna, on her shoulder and she turned obediently.
‘This is power,’ he said to Philokles and Crax when he had jumped down from the beast’s neck.
‘More proof, if any were needed, that war is the ultimate tyrant,’ Philokles said. ‘These beasts are as intelligent as men.’ He shook his head. ‘More intelligent, in that Tavi says they won’t make war without men.’
Crax bit his lip. ‘Always you say war is so wrong,’ he said. ‘Why? How do you stop an invader? How do you keep your freedom? By talk?’
Philokles made a clicking noise with his tongue and nodded to the Getae. ‘That’s the root of the matter, isn’t it, Crax? You must train every man in the world out of his love for war at the same time – if you leave just one, he’ll drag the rest of us back to Ares’ bloody altar.’
Crax glanced around, as if looking for another speaker. ‘So I’m right?’ he asked.
Philokles looked at the elephants. ‘Too right.’ He turned away.
Dinner was a subdued affair, punctuated by Satyrus’s excited descriptions of the elephants and of Tavi, the mahout, who had made a lasting impression on him and on Philokles. But Sappho was attentive to her husband, and Diodorus was far away. He would listen with a smile on his face to an elephant story and then his eyes would drift off the speaker and he would eat absently.
‘Is it upon us?’ Sappho asked, as the roast kid was cleared away.
‘I’m sorry,’ Diodorus said. ‘I’m not happy with the arrangements for my wing. Excuse me for a moment.’
He rolled off his couch and went to the door of the tent and called one of his officers. They could all hear him speaking, and the brief replies, and then he was back. ‘That’s better,’ Diodorus said when he returned.
‘Will we fight tomorrow?’ Philokles asked.
‘Yes,’ Diodorus said. ‘Crax pulled in a dozen prisoners today, and Andronicus brought in as many yesterday. They all say the same thing. Antigonus will form his line of battle in the morning.’
Sappho bit her lip. But when she spoke, her voice was light. ‘Then we must get you to sleep early, my dear. You’ll be up in the dark.’
‘You are the best soldier’s wife in this army,’ Diodorus said fondly.
‘Faint praise indeed,’ she returned. ‘Considering that I’m the only wife around.’
‘What of the children?’ Philokles asked.
Diodorus shook his head. ‘They’ll stay in camp, of course. I expect that we’ll fight on the plain to the north. They’ll be safe enough here. Shall I find you a corslet, Philokles?’
‘No, thanks. I’ve never accustomed myself to the idea of fighting on horseback, and I don’t care to stand among strangers – Asiatic strangers, at that. I’ll stay in camp with the children.’
Theron nodded. ‘As will I, Strategos. Without offence, this is not my fight, and I have equipment only as a hoplite.’
Diodorus looked at the two of them and smiled. ‘I could base one hell of a taxeis on you two,’ he said. ‘Theron, you’re like a second Philokles. I’ll bet you’re a terror in the scrum.’
Theron shook his head. ‘I’ve never done it,’ he said. ‘I’ve drilled with the ephebes, and I’ve fought men, but I’ve never stood my ground like my father at Chaeronea.’
Philokles smiled grimly. ‘You haven’t missed a thing,’ he said.
Sappho’s steward came in and bowed deeply. ‘Master, there are more and more men waiting outside, asking for the strategos.’
Diodorus wiped his mouth. ‘Excellent meal, my love. I must go and listen to Eumenes’ fears and worries.’
‘I remember him as a first-rate commander,’ Philokles said.
‘He is. But the Macedonians hate him for not being Macedonian. One of the reasons he hired me is to have a Greek officer on whom he can rely – but even that has made trouble. The Macedonians dislike me – all of us, really.’ ‘They haven’t changed much, have they?’ Philokles asked.
He and Diodorus both smiled, sharing some memory. Satyrus thought that it was like dining with the gods, to hear such things. They discussed the great Eumenes the Cardian as if he were just someone they knew, like a playmate!
Theron sat up on his couch. ‘I heard some things I didn’t much like today,’ he said. ‘About Greeks. About Eumenes.’
Diodorus looked around and lowered his voice. ‘You notice that I came back to my own regiment to eat and sleep – that we have our own guards, and we’re a little separated from the rest of the army? It’s that bad, friends. If we lose tomorrow – if we even look as if we’re losing, this army will disintegrate. The idiots in the Argyraspids would rather kill Eumenes because he’s a Greek, than beat Antigonus who hates them.’
Sappho drank wine carefully, held her cup out to a slave to have it refilled and spoke slowly. ‘You have never spoken so directly, husband,’ she said. ‘Should I make preparations?’
Diodorus rubbed his beard. ‘It’s never been so bad. I suspect that One-Eye is putting bribes into the Argyraspids but I can’t figure out how he does it. I keep telling Eumenes to parade Banugul and her brat to quieten the hard-liners-’
‘That’s Banugul who claims to have been Alexander’s mistress, and Herakles her son,’ Sappho said, with a significant look at her husband. ‘He’s just your age, or a little younger, and the very image of Alexander.’ She smiled, but her eyes did not smile. ‘She herself is unchanged.’ To the twins, she said, ‘Banugul is the inveterate enemy of Olympias. Her son Herakles threatens everything Olympias aims at.’ She shrugged. ‘She should be your ally.’
Diodorus spoke over his wife as if she hadn’t made a sound. ‘But he won’t. Says that he’s not going to run his army through a child. Yes, Sappho. There’s going to be trouble. In fact, I’m pushing us into a battle to see if we can beat One-Eye before the Macedonians assassinate my employer.’ He shrugged. ‘All in a day’s work.’
Sappho summoned her steward. ‘Eleutherius? Collect a string of horses and pack animals and have us packed and ready to move by first light. Leave the tents standing and all their contents. Just pack the clothes and bedding and what we’d need to live, eat and move fast.’
Diodorus got off his couch, leaned over his wife and kissed her. It was embarrassing for the other men in the room, because it was a lustful kiss, and it went on for too long. When he broke off, she slapped him lightly. ‘I’m not a flute girl,’ she said.
