Authors: Christian Cameron
Tyrant (47 page)
Memnon continued to watch him warily. ‘I am not one for gods and dreams,’ he said. ‘You are a strange man. You puzzle me.’ He stuck his thumbs in his sash. ‘But you are not a liar, I think. Do we win this battle?’
Kineas feared to say too much - feared that by saying something, he might change it. ‘I - think so.’
Memnon stepped closer. ‘You dreamed of it, but you only
think
you know the result? How can this be?’
think
you know the result? How can this be?’
Kineas let out his breath and shook his head. ‘Ask me no more. I don’t want to discuss it. I only wanted to say that, for all the archon’s prevarications, we will fight. When midsummer comes, we will not submit.’ Kineas glanced over his shoulder. ‘Where did the new Persian come from?’
Memnon smiled briefly, showing his teeth, two of which were broken, and then he spat on the paving stones of the courtyard. ‘Cleomenes gave him to the archon - a fully trained Persian steward. This one was born a slave. He will become very dangerous,’ Memnon said, flicking his eyes towards the citadel. Then he gave Kineas a hard grin. ‘As will the archon, if he finds that he’s not actually at the helm.’
Kineas shrugged. ‘I think that events will take the decisions out of his hands.’
‘I want a battle. I don’t much care how we come to it. All this skirmishing on the grass is well enough for the horse boys, but my lads need a flat field and a long day. We won’t be raiding camps.’
Kineas nodded. ‘Your men are the heart of the city’s citizens. Every week we keep them in the field is a week in which Olbia has no blacksmiths and no farmers. I think,’ Kineas hesitated, wondering for the hundredth time how accurate his numbers were, ‘I think that you can wait a month to follow me. Ten days to march to the camp - you should still be there twenty days ahead of Zopryon.’
Memnon fingered his beard. ‘Twenty days, plus a ten day march - that’s a good amount of time. Enough to harden them, train every day - not so much that they’ll be worn down.’ He nodded. ‘What if Zopryon doesn’t keep your timetable?’
Kineas started to walk to the gate. He didn’t want all of his thoughts reported back to the archon - although he doubted the Kelts knew much Greek. ‘He hasn’t much choice. An army his size, horse and foot - you know as well as I how slowly he’ll move. If he bides his time then he won’t get here in time to even
threaten
a siege. If he rushes, men will starve.’
threaten
a siege. If he rushes, men will starve.’
Memnon walked with him, out through the citadel gate and down the walls to the town. ‘Your reasoning sounds excellent.’ He laughed mirthlessly. ‘Alexander would take his time coming and to Hades with the consequences. He’d assume that he could take this city - even in late autumn - and that he could use it to feed his troops even if he had to put the people to the sword.’
Kineas nodded as he walked. ‘Yes.’
Memnon stopped in the agora and turned to face Kineas. ‘So why won’t Zopryon do the same?’
Kineas pursed his lips, rubbed his beard. ‘Perhaps he will,’ he said. ‘Perhaps that’s why we’ll fight a battle.’
Memnon shook his head. ‘You sound like a priest. I have no fondness for priests. Dream or no dream - this will be a hard campaign. Mark my words - I’m an oracle of war.’ He laughed. ‘Thus speaks Memnon the oracle - Zopryon will do something we haven’t considered, and all your timetables will be buggered.’
Kineas was stung - Memnon’s dismissal of his calculations annoyed him - but he had to admit the truth of the man’s assertions. ‘Perhaps,’ he growled.
‘Perhaps nothing. You’re a professional soldier - you know it as well as I. Plan all you like - Zopryon will win or lose at the point of the spear.’ Memnon seemed to grow in size as he spoke. He was passionate. ‘And all the horse boys in the world can’t stop a Macedonian
taxeis.
When push comes to shove, it’s my hoplites and those from Pantecapaeum who will stand or not stand.’ The thought seemed to delight him. ‘I’ll need to arrange a muster for the Pantecapaeum troops - meet their commander, plan some drills, and see if they have some iron in their bellies.’
taxeis.
When push comes to shove, it’s my hoplites and those from Pantecapaeum who will stand or not stand.’ The thought seemed to delight him. ‘I’ll need to arrange a muster for the Pantecapaeum troops - meet their commander, plan some drills, and see if they have some iron in their bellies.’
Kineas was pleased that Memnon was engaged. He slapped the man on the shoulder. ‘You’re a good man, Memnon.’
Memnon nodded. ‘Hah! I am. They made me a citizen - can you believe it? I may yet die in a bed.’
For a few moments Kineas the commander had forgotten the imminence of his own mortality. Memnon’s words brought it straight back. He sobered. ‘I hope you do,’ he said.
‘Bah! I’m a spear child. Ares rules me, if there are any gods and if any of them care an obol for men - which I doubt. Why die in bed?’ He chuckled, waved, and walked off into the market.
Pantecapaeum was very much in Kineas’s thoughts the next few days. He sent a letter with Niceas as the herald, addressed to the hipparch of the city, requesting that the man meet him to plan the campaign and suggesting a tentative schedule of marches. He told Niceas to bring him a report on the city’s preparedness.
Niceas returned the same day that the three ships sailed. Kineas was on the walls, watching Memnon drill the hoplites in opening gaps in their ranks to permit the passage of Diodorus with the horse.
Philokles came up behind him. ‘Athens will be pleased to get the last of the winter wheat.’
Kineas grunted. ‘Zopryon will be pleased to get a spy report from here outlining every aspect of our plans.’
Philokles yawned. ‘Somebody here is. Two Macedonian merchants came in on the last ship - the pentekonter on the beach.’
Kineas sighed. ‘We are a sieve.’
Philokles laughed. ‘Don’t despair, brother. I took some precautions. ’
Kineas looked out over the walls. The hoplites had been too slow in opening their files, and Diodorus’s troop was caught against the face of the phalanx, dreadfully exposed. In a battle, that small error of marching would have meant disaster. Memnon and Diodorus were shouting themselves hoarse.
Kineas looked back at the Spartan. ‘Precautions?’
Philokles twitched the corners of his mouth. ‘I have allowed the archon’s new factor - another perfumed Mede - to receive some reports that you have deceived the archon - that you intend to take the army and march south with the Sakje. In fact, he was surprised to learn that Sindi farmers have been paid to prepare a battlefield along the Agathes River, digging trenches and preparing traps.’
Kineas raised an eyebrow.
Philokles shrugged. ‘Rumour - all rumour.’ He sneered. ‘Zopryon is more likely to believe a rumour his spies gleaned in the wine shops than a plan spoken before his face. It is a fault all spies share.’
Kineas wrapped his arms around the Spartan. ‘Well done!’
Philokles shrugged again. ‘It was nothing.’ He was pleased by the praise, however. A flush crept up his cheeks.
‘The Macedonian merchants - they’ll know better in a few weeks,’ Kineas said.
‘Hmm.’ Philokles nodded. ‘Too true. However, Nicomedes and Leon have them in hand. That is to say - perhaps it is best if I say no more.’
Kineas shook his head. ‘Nicomedes?’
Philokles nodded. ‘Surely, having seen the ease with which he commands his troop, you no longer believe in his pose as a useless fop?’
Kineas shook his head. ‘I think that I must, despite his obvious skills and authority. I find it difficult to take him seriously.’
Philokles nodded, as if a theory had been confirmed. ‘That is why the Nicomedes of this world are so successful in the long run. At any rate, the merchants are similarly dismissive. They sit in his home, eating his bread, sneering at his effeminate ways, and chasing his slaves and his wife.’ The Spartan looked into the distance. ‘It will be a pity when an outraged freedman kills them both.’
Kineas’s bark of shock caused the big man to look back at him.
‘It’s a rough game, Hipparch. Those men want our blood, as surely as a screaming Getae waving a spear.’
Kineas relaxed, watching the hoplites reforming for a second try at the manoeuvre. He nodded. ‘Thanks. More than thanks. I had assumed there was nothing to be done - and you have done so much.’
Philokles grinned. ‘You are unsparing with praise. Very unSpartan.’ But then his grin faded. ‘The two merchants will be the first two dead in this war. And so it begins.’
‘I know you hate war,’ Kineas said. He reached out to take Philokles’s shoulder, but Philokles moved away.
‘What makes you think that?’ he asked.
The spring festival of Apollo drew every man and woman in the city and most of the populations of the farms for stades around the walls. The streets of the city were packed with people in their best clothes, and it was warm enough to cast cloaks aside, for men to be abroad in fine linen and for women, those who chose to appear in public, to look their best.
The full force of the hippeis now filled the hippodrome - two hundred and thirty horsemen, resplendent in blue and polished bronze and brilliant gold. Kineas could see the difference among the cloaks and armour - the cloaks of the men who had gone to the Sakje had already faded by some shades from the royal blue of the first cloth, and their armour had deeper shades of red from long days in the rain. But the appearance of the whole body was magnificent.
Kineas felt oddly nervous at their head. He was wearing his best armour, mounted on his tallest charger, and he knew he looked the part. He couldn’t explain it. His skills with men came from the gods, and he seldom doubted them, but today he felt as if he was an actor assigned a role, and the adulation of the crowds along the route to the temple increased his sense of unreality. To be appointed the commander of a city’s forces - short of leading the army of his own Athens in the field, he was at the summit of any soldier’s ambition.
His imminent death and all it would mean - the loss of worldly power, friends, love - was never far from his thoughts. He found that he could spare no time for trifles, that every moment mattered, and that he wanted to take his forces out to the camp on the Great Bend as soon as possible, to live his last campaign to the fullest.
To see Srayanka. Even if he could not have her.
He thought all these things, but on this day, he rode to the temple of Apollo like a bridegroom, eager, despite himself, for the honour that the archon intended to bestow.
Philokles rode at his side. ‘You have a certain vanity, I find,’ he said between plaudits from the crowd.
Kineas waved at a group of Sindi who were pointing at him. ‘Most soldiers are vain, don’t you think?’ he asked.
Philokles smiled. ‘Your love of finery is carefully hidden. You parade your poverty and your old, tattered cloak, the better to show the contrast to your magnificence.’
‘If you say so,’ Kineas answered.
‘I do. Or are you, perhaps, afraid to show so much finery every day, for fear someone would take you for Nicodemus?’ Philokles’ last words were almost drowned by renewed cheers. He nodded to Ataelus, who rode forward. He had a linen wrapped bundle, which he passed over to Philokles.
‘We swore an oath,’ Philokles said, ‘not to give this to you until the feast of Apollo.’
Kineas unwrapped the linen. Inside the bundle was his new sword, scabbarded in red leather and hilted with gold - an elegant, sweeping hilt decorated with a pair of flying Pegasus. The pommel was cast and worked like the head of a woman.
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