Tyrant t-1, page 33
part #1 of Tyrant Series
‘He is more stable with you and Memnon than he was last year. I fear that when you are gone — I fear many things.’
Kineas rubbed his beard. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Leave my squadron here.’ Nicomedes shrugged. ‘I can watch the archon. And I can deal with Cleomenes.’ His voice hardened.
Kineas shook his head. ‘Ah, Nicomedes — you have worked yourself too hard. Yours is the best of the four squadrons. On the day of battle, I need you.’
Nicomedes shrugged. ‘I thought you’d say that. Very well, then — leave Cleitus here.’
Kineas rubbed his cheeks thoughtfully. ‘The older men — the worst riders, but on the best horses and with the best equipment.’
Nicomedes leaned across the space between the couches, handing Kineas back his sword, hilt first. ‘Most of them are old for a real campaign — but young enough to wear armour and stare down a tyrant.’
‘You and Cleitus are rivals,’ Kineas said carefully.
Nicomedes got up from his couch and walked to the table where a dozen scrolls were open. ‘Not in this. I’d rather it was me — Cleitus has a lingering respect for the archon, and he’s clay in Cleomenes’s hands — but he’ll hold the line.’
‘All the more reason for it to be him. The archon remains my employer. He is autocratic, but as far as I can tell, he has acted within the laws of the city. You empowered him. He’s your monster.’ Kineas rubbed his beard. ‘And I fear that you and Cleomenes — that it’s too personal.’
Nicomedes looked bitter. ‘It is. I’ll kill him when I can.’
Kineas stood up. ‘When the Athenian assembly voted for war with Macedon, many were against it, and some of them lie dead at Chaeronea. That’s democracy.’
Nicomedes came and walked Kineas to his door. ‘You’ll do it, though — leave Cleitus’s squadron?’
Kineas nodded sharply. ‘Yes.’
Nicomedes smiled, and Kineas wondered if he’d just been outmanoeuvred. ‘Good. It would kill Ajax to stay. And I’ve never seen war on land. It looks very safe compared to war at sea.’
Kineas didn’t know whether this was humour or not. It was always hard to tell with Nicomedes. So he clasped the man’s hand in his doorway, amidst a crowd of hangers-on, and went back to the barracks.
The third day, Nicomedes’ squadron rode forth with more baggage and more slaves then the other two combined — but his squadron had the best discipline of the four. Kineas watched them go with a heavy heart — he wanted to go, but he had to finish his work with the allies.
Philokles, Memnon and Cleitus stood with him until the last spare horse and the last mule cart passed through the gates.
Memnon continued to appear a foot taller. He turned to Kineas and saluted — without a trace of sarcasm — and said, ‘I’ll just take my lads out for an hour, with your permission?’
Kineas returned his salute, hand on chest. ‘Memnon, you do not need my permission to drill the hoplites.’
Memnon grinned. ‘I know that. God help you if you thought otherwise. ’ He pointed at the waiting men, formed in long files in the streets of the town. ‘But it’s a good game for them.’
Philokles agreed. ‘Those who obey will be obeyed,’ he said.
Memnon pointed at him. ‘Right! Just what I mean. Socrates?’
Philokles shook his head. ‘Lykeurgos of Sparta.’
Memnon walked off, still laughing.
Memnon found much to admire in the hoplites of Pantecapeum — their phalanx he accounted very good, and their elite young men, two hundred athletes in top shape — the epilektoi — made him grin. ‘Of course, their officers are a bunch of pompous twits,’ he said through his snaggle teeth.
The hipparch of Pantecapaeum was about the same. He was a tall, thin, very young man with a dour face and a large forehead — usually a sign of immense intelligence.
‘My troops will remain exclusively under my command,’ he said. ‘You may communicate your orders to me, and if I feel that they are appropriate, I will pass them to my men. We are gentlemen, not mercenaries. I have heard a great many things about you — that you force the gentlemen of Olbia to curry their own horses, for instance. None of that foolishness will apply to my men.’
Kineas had expected as much from their exchange of letters. ‘I will discuss all of these points with you, of course. In the meantime, may I inspect your men?’
The allied hipparch — Heron — gave a thin smile. ‘If you wish to view them, you may. Only I inspect them. Only I speak to them. I hope I’ve made myself clear.’ Kineas knew him instantly — a man for whom intelligence replaced sense, and whose fear of failure made him distant and arrogant. All too common in small armies. Kineas had known from the first how lucky he was with Nicomedes and Cleitus — and Heron was the proof.
Kineas nodded. His mind was refreshingly clear of anger — and long years with the arrogance of Macedonian officers had accustomed him to this sort of thing. Instead of a reaction, he turned his horse and began to walk it down the front rank of the hippeis of Pantecapaeum.
The hippeis of Pantecapaeum were fifty years out of date in their equipment. Like the hoplites of Olbia, they were wearing equipment that their grandfathers would have used — light linen armour or no armour, small horses, light javelins. Most of the riders were overweight, and at least a dozen were sitting back on their horse’s haunches — what Athenians called ‘chair seat’, a posture that was easier on untrained riders but hard on the horse. Kineas noted that they had no cloaks at their saddlecloths, and that the squadron, just seventy men, had a surprising mix of horses.
He smiled, because he suspected that if he had seen the hippeis of Olbia a year ago, the few who turned out might have looked like this. He reined up and turned to Heron.
‘We’ll train you. You’ll have to work on your equipment. I’ll treat you as one of my troop commanders for as long as you deserve it.’ He rode up close to the man. ‘I’ve seen years and years of mounted warfare, and this is going to be a hard campaign. Obey me, and you’ll keep most of your men alive. Go your own way, and you are of no use to me.’
Heron stared to the front for a few seconds. ‘I will consult with my men,’ he said stiffly.
Kineas nodded. ‘Be quick, then.’
Kineas sent a slave for Cleitus, and spent an ugly half hour on the sand with an angry troop of allied horsemen. He gave them orders and they were sullen, or simply ignorant. Their hyperetes — Dion — seemed willing enough. Heron retreated — first to the far edge of the sand and then to the gate.
Cleitus appeared at the head of his squadron, it being an appointed drill day for the cavalry left in the city. They filed into the hippodrome, making it look empty compared to full muster days, but the fifty of them made a superb contrast to the men of Pantecapaeum.
‘Thank the gods,’ Kineas said. He was somewhere between frustration and rage. He had Niceas to do this kind of work, and always had. Kineas pointed at the allied horse. ‘Can you train them for me? Two weeks?’
‘Surely you can train them faster — and better — in camp.’ Cleitus looked around. ‘Where’s Heron? Did you kill him?’
‘No. He’s brave enough — just pig-ignorant.’
Cleitus shook his head. ‘He’s the son of an old rival of mine. He grew up soft. Too soft.’
Kineas shrugged. ‘So did I. Listen — they need armour, and they need the same big geldings we have. You can do all that here — I can’t. I’ll get them remounts at the camp, but the armour has to come from here.’
Cleitus scratched his chin. ‘Who’s paying?’
Kineas grinned. ‘Let me guess. The thin kid — Heron — is rich?’
Cleitus laughed. ‘Rich as Croseus.’
Kineas shook his head. ‘I wish all my problems had such easy answers. Tell him I’ll keep him as hipparch — even apologize — if he pays. Otherwise, send him home and pick a new one. Dias looks competent. ’
Cleitus nodded. ‘Dion. Dias is the trumpeter. He is. He’s just dishonest. ’ He waved to his friend Petrocolus, who trotted up, looking a decade younger.
‘What’s up?’
Cleitus pointed at the men of Pantecapaeum. ‘I knew we were getting off too easily when we were left as the garrison. Now we get to train them.’
Petrocolus eyed them with the disdain of the veteran for the amateur. The sight made Kineas smile. ‘I’ll do my best,’ he said.
Kineas saw the archon one more time before he left. The archon refused to be serious, mocking Macedon and Kineas by turns. He was drunk. He accused Kineas of wanting to take the city and made him swear he’d defend it. And then he demanded Kineas’s oath that he would not try to overthrow him.
Kineas swore and was eventually dismissed.
‘You can be so naive,’ Philokles said, when he heard the whole story. They were finally riding out, just the two of them with Ataelus for a scout.
‘He was pitiful,’ Kineas said.
Philokles shook his head. ‘Note how he put you on the defensive. He made you swear a vow. He swore none.’
Kineas rode in silence for a stade. Then he shook his head. ‘You’re right.’
‘I am,’ Philokles said. He grinned. ‘Nevertheless, you can’t have hurt things. Perhaps you purchased a few more weeks of trust. My people in the citadel say that he fears an assassin — Persian courts are full of them.’
Kineas rode in silence again, and then said, ‘I fear the archon and I fear for him.’
‘He’s useless and self-destructive and he will betray us. Are you ready for it?’ Philokles asked.
‘We’ll have the army. Let’s beat Zopryon. Worry about the archon later. Wasn’t that your advice?’ Kineas drank some water. He looked out at the sea of grass. Somewhere, around the curve of the Euxine, Zopryon was coming — forty to fifty days away. Imagine — every day that he kept Zopryon at bay was another day of life. It was almost funny.
‘Does Medea know?’ Philokles asked.
‘What?’ asked Kineas, startled out of his reverie.
‘The Lady Srayanka. We call her Medea. Does she know about your dream?’
Kineas shook his head. ‘I thought it was you lot. You got the goldsmith to take her as a model?’
Philokles grinned. ‘I’ll never tell.’
‘Bastards, the lot of you. No, she doesn’t know, at least from me.’ Kineas watched the horizon. He ached to ride to her — day and night, until he got to the camp. Good, mature behaviour from a commander. He reached out a hand for the water skin and said, ‘Kam Baqca and the king have forbidden us to — be together.’
Philokles turned his head away, obviously embarrassed. ‘I know.’
‘You know?’ Kineas spluttered on his water.
‘It was discussed,’ Philokles said. He made a series of fidgets and motions indicating extreme embarrassment. ‘I was consulted.’
‘Ares and Aphrodite!’ Kineas said.
Philokles hung his head. ‘You had eyes for no one else.’ Philokles looked out over the plain. ‘She refused to speak to you. The king is mad with love for her. The three of you…’ He sighed. ‘The three of you threaten the whole war with your lovesickness.’
With the clear head of a man who had forty days to live, Kineas did not succumb to rage. ‘You may be right.’
Philokles glanced at him, searched for signs of anger. ‘You see that?’
‘I suppose. Solon had a rhyme — I don’t remember it, but it was about a man who thought that he was right and every other citizen in the city was wrong.’ Kineas gave a fleeting smile. ‘You, Niceas, Kam Baqca — I doubt that you are all wrong.’ His smile brightened. ‘Even now, I consider touching my heels to this horse and riding hard to her camp. Just a stade back I was thinking of it.’
Philokles grinned. ‘Her barb’s sunk deep. I can see why — she’s more like a Spartan woman than any barbarian I’ve ever seen.’ He took the water back. ‘Is it eros, or agape? Have you lain with her?’
‘You are like some pimply boyhood friend asking after my first conquest!’
‘No — I’m a philosopher studying my current subject.’
‘The girl in the golden sandals has, indeed, smacked me with the big fat grape of love,’ Kineas said, quoting a popular song from the Athens of his youth. ‘When, exactly, can two cavalry commanders find private time to make love?’ He rubbed the hilt of his new sword with his left hand.
Philokles smiled. He looked away. ‘Spartans manage such things pretty well on campaign. Even Spartiates.’
‘Bah, you’re all men. You just pick your cloak mate.’ Kineas raised an eyebrow.
The Spartan answered it. ‘Is your amazon a woman? I mean, besides the anatomy — she’s no more a woman than Kam Baqca is a man.’
Kineas felt his face grow hot. ‘I think she is,’ he said.
‘Going to settle her down in the top floor of your house and raise babies?’ Philokles said. ‘From what I’ve seen of Sakje women, I understand Medea all the better. Bred to freedom — life as a woman in Thebes would be slavery. Cruel Hands. You know why they call her that?’
‘Clan name,’ said Kineas.
‘In her case, she used to take heads from her kills — without a mercy blow.’ Philokles slung his water skin. ‘I’m not against her. I just want you to see that she will never be a wife — a Greek wife.’
‘Do I want a Greek wife?’ Kineas said.
‘Perhaps not,’ Philokles said. ‘But if you change your mind, she will be a fearsome foe. Medea indeed.’
Kineas turned away, waved to Ataelus, and choked, somewhere between laughter and tears. ‘Luckily,’ he said finally, ‘I’ll be dead.’
His first sight of the allied camp made him stop his horse and stare. Across the river, as far as he could see, from the low hill to the north of the ford in a great curve away to the south, there were herds of horses. He did as his tutor had taught him. He took a deep breath, kneed his own horse forward, and divided the vast expanse into a grid of manageable squares. He estimated the size of one square and began to count the animals in it, arrived at a reasonable answer, and multiplied by his approximate number of squares, adding the columns as he moved, until his horse was splashing across the ford and he was shaking his head at the impossibility of the figure he’d calculated.
Ataelus lead them to the king’s wagon. The king’s household, his personal clan, had their camp on the hilltop north of the ford, with fifty heavy wagons parked in a circle like a wooden fort. The king’s wagon was in the centre. At the base of the hill herds of horses, flocks of goats, and dozens of oxen milled in promiscuous confusion.
Kineas greeted Marthax, who stood within a ring of other nobles. ‘The raid?’ Kineas called out in Sakje.
Marthax waddled over with the rolling gait of a man who scarcely ever walked when he could ride. He spoke rapidly — too rapidly for Kineas to follow, although by now his Sakje was sufficient to register the raid’s success.
‘Ferry destroyed,’ Ataelus said. ‘All boats burned, and town for burning. No horse lost.’
Kineas winced. Despite the ill treatment of his column at Antiphilous the summer before, he hadn’t expected the whole town to be sacrificed to the war.
Marthax grinned. He said something, and all Kineas caught was a phrase about ‘baby shit’.
Ataelus said, ‘Lord say, I burned towns when you were baby.’
Kineas frowned at what he suspected the man had actually said, and Marthax grinned back.
Behind him, Philokles grunted. ‘The tyrant rears his head,’ he said.
Kineas looked back at him as he dismounted. ‘Tyrant?’
The Spartan also dismounted and rubbed his thighs. ‘Haven’t I said it a dozen times? War is the ultimate tyrant, and every concession you make him leads only to further demands. How many died at Antiphilous?’
Kineas sighed. ‘That’s war.’
Philokles nodded. ‘Yes. It is. And this is just the beginning.’
Kineas made the king laugh when he asked if the full muster was present.
‘A tenth of my strength, at most. I, too, have my stronger and my weaker chiefs. My Olbia and my Pantecapaeum, if you like.’
Kineas waved at the plain below the hill. ‘I counted ten thousand horses.’
Satrax nodded. ‘At least. Those are the royal herds. I am not the greatest of the Sakje kings but neither am I the least. They are also the herds of the Standing Horse, Patient Wolves, and Man Under Tree clans.’ He gazed out over the plain. ‘By midsummer we will have eaten the grass from here to the water god’s shrine upriver, and we will have to move.’ He shrugged. ‘But the grain is starting to come.’
Kineas shook his head. ‘So many horses.’
‘Kineas,’ said the king. ‘A poor Sakje, a man with no skills at the hunt and no reputation in battle, owns four horses. A poor woman has the same. A man with less than four horses isn’t welcome with his clan, because he can’t keep up with the hunt or the treks. Every man and every woman has at least four — most have ten. A rich warrior has a hundred horses. A king has a thousand horses.’
Kineas, who owned four horses himself, whistled.
The king turned to Ataelus. ‘And you? How many horses have you?’
Ataelus spoke with obvious pride. ‘I have six horses with me, and two more in the stables of Olbia. I will take more from Macedon, and then I will have a wife.’
Satrax turned to Kineas. ‘When you met him, he had no horses — am I right?’
Kineas smiled at Ataelus. ‘I take your point.’
The king said, ‘You are a good chief to him. He has horses now. Greedy chiefs keep spoils for themselves. Good ones make sure every man has his due.’
Kineas nodded. ‘It is the same with us. You know the Iliad?’
‘I’ve heard it. An odd story — I was never sure who I was supposed to like. Achilles struck me as a monster. But I take your point — the whole story is about unfair division of spoils.’
Kineas, who had been taught from childhood to see in Achilles the embodiment of every manly virtue, had to choke back an exposition on Achilles. The king could be very Greek, despite his trousers and his hood-like hats, but then, in flawless Greek, he would render an opinion that showed just how alien he was.
