Niceas, who had also loved Ajax, took the father away and left Kineas in peace, so that he could read the letter from his boyhood hero. Phocion of Athens to Kineas, son of Nicocles, greeting, Fate, which cast you as a soldier of Macedon and then as an exile, now has raised you high. We hear the reports of your generalship for Olbia, and of your defeat of forces sent by Antipater to conquer the Euxine cities. Fools here prate of war with Macedon. The notion that Athens is a power in the world dies hard, and men, whether old or young, will deceive themselves about the power of their city, even when I offer them the example of Thebes. I write to you not as a supplicant, nor as a friend of Macedon, although either role might suit me. Instead, I write as the man who taught you to use a sword. The anti-Macedon party claims you as if you were their possession, their slave, and claims all of your actions as their own. They will ask you to gather your army and march into Thrace against Antipater. When they exiled you, and then sent you to Olbia, you were a tool — a sword. But now that you are a commander, you are the man who holds the sword. Beware what you cut. Please send my greetings to young Graccus, and to Laertes, son of Thallus, and Diodorus, son of Glaucus, and Coenus the Nisaean.
Kineas read Phocion’s letter with pleasure, because he could hear the man’s growl as he said the words aloud, and he could see on the scroll where words had been scraped out and others added with care. Phocion was the greatest Athenian soldier of his generation, perhaps of all time, and one of his father’s closest friends and political allies.
The second scroll was from Lycurgus, or rather from a scribe in his service. It had no greeting, and no salutation. Your exile will be lifted immediately. Consider the restoration of Amphipolis your next task, and Athens will again be great.
Amphipolis was an Athenian colony in Thrace, long since taken by Macedon. The recovery of Amphipolis — an old ambition of the Athenian assembly — would require the complete overthrow of Macedon as a power. Kineas made a face.
Diodorus came in from the exercise field fingering a bruise on his arm. ‘Ares is my witness, I need more time to heal. Little Clio just pounded me on the palaestra floor.’
‘The summer has put muscle on the boy, and you are getting old,’ Kineas said.
Diodorus winced.
‘Here is something that will lift the sting,’ Kineas said, holding out the letter from Phocion. Diodorus read it while drinking wine, then sat and drank again. ‘He can’t have known of the battle yet,’ he said.
Kineas handed over the other message. ‘It is not a long journey from the battlefield to this city by river. Nor to Athens, by sea, for a swift ship.’
Diodorus shook his head. He began to read.
Kineas rubbed his beard. ‘Something going on here that is beyond me,’ he said. ‘Amphipolis? Are they insane?’
Diodorus put down the second scroll. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I fear that Demosthenes and Lycurgus are so desperate to restore their party that they will dare anything. And we cost them nothing. They can cast us as dice and pay no political cost.’ He looked at the scroll. ‘Did they lift all of our exiles, or just yours?’
‘All of us,’ Kineas said. ‘Poor Laertes.’
‘He’d have done anything to win praise from old Phocion,’ Diodorus said, and then he grinned. ‘So would I.’
Kineas nodded. ‘I thought it would make you feel better.’
‘You won’t take us to war in Thrace?’ Diodorus asked.
Kineas shook his head. ‘I’m going east,’ he said. ‘And if I can find the money and the men, I’ll take an army.’
Diodorus picked up the letter from Phocion and pointed it at Kineas. ‘Against Alexander?’
Kineas narrowed his eyes, squinting against an invisible sun. ‘Against Alexander,’ he said. And then, because he and Diodorus were closer than most brothers, he grinned and said, ‘To Hades with Alexander. I want Srayanka, and to keep her, I’ll war down invincible Macedon. I swear that I would storm Olympus.’
Diodorus grinned, and put a hand on his knee. ‘We all know,’ he said, and then avoided Kineas’s blow.
Isokles’ enduring grief did not pass in a day. Kineas sent the prodromoi out to find the best landings on the Bay of Salmon, and still the man grieved. Kineas began the complex problem of moving men and horses by ship, sending grain and cash to the selected landing sites, and still Isokles grieved. He moved listlessly around the barracks until Leon moved him to Nicomedes’ house — Kineas’s house, now. He came to the barracks every day and sat with the veterans to hear tales of his son — tales every man had to tell. Ajax and his relentless heroism were part of the tradition of the company. The boy had been reared on the heady wine of the Poet and the feats of Achilles had fired his blood. He had left a trail of single combats and brilliant exploits across that bloody summer, and his father heard them all, embellished by the passage of time, until Ajax seemed ready to take his place with the heroes of the Iliad — a place accorded to him by every trooper in the hippeis.
But after three days of hearing his son praised and drinking wine, Isokles pushed his way into where Kineas was surrounded by his staff, reading lists of goods to be shipped with his little army, and exploded like a nest of wasps hurled on to the floor.
‘He didn’t need to be a hero!’ Isokles shouted without preamble.
Diodorus sprang to his feet — Isokles had the gait and the look of a madman, his eyes were wild and he had a sword.
Kineas put a hand on his friend’s sword arm. ‘It is grief,’ he said.
Isokles was yelling, the sword almost forgotten as he shouldered his way towards Kineas. ‘He was handsome and young! He was well loved, smart enough at business! I sent him to you for a single summer, to knock the foolishness from his head, and he is dead. Dead for ever! Dead in a war that was nothing to him!’ Niceas grabbed him from behind, pinning his arms, but Isokles thrashed, nearly breaking Niceas’s grip — not an easy thing to do. Philokles tackled him around the waist and Isokles hammered his elbow into the Spartan’s face, breaking his nose in a fountain of blood.
‘You killed him! All of you, with your talk of glory and honour!’ Isokles spat the words glory and honour like poison.
Kineas considered reason. He had warned Isokles that his son might die, a year or more ago at a pleasant symposium in Tomis. But Isokles was beyond reason. And although Kineas had a lifetime of practice at watching those he loved die, and moving on, the death of the golden Ajax had cut at him too, so that he could seldom pass the room where the man’s body lay wrapped in linen without touching it or shedding a tear.
‘We all loved him,’ Kineas said quietly.
‘If you loved him he wouldn’t be dead. ’ Isokles came to a stop in the middle of the room, with Niceas pinning his arms and Philokles, his face a mask of blood, hanging gamely around his waist. ‘You used him for his heroism like other men use a prostitute for her sex.’ He wept bitterly.
That was a charge that bit deeply. Ajax’s relentless heroism had been a foundation of the daimon of the hippeis.
Kineas was silent. He didn’t have an answer for Isokles’ grief, and he felt the justice of the man’s charges. He had never wanted to take Ajax, but he had wanted the boy’s youth and enthusiasm for his company and for his own morale.
Isokles had stopped struggling now. He stood in the middle of the barracks floor, weeping. ‘All of you have stories of his heroism. He might have died in any of them. You revelled in it — you stood back and watched as he threw himself at death.’
Niceas was right at Isokles’ ear — he had the man’s arms from behind. ‘Your son was a great man,’ he said. ‘But you’re a fucking idiot.’ He took a deep breath. Isokles sagged in his grasp. ‘We told your son every day to keep his head down and stop pushing himself at the gods.’ Niceas’s voice broke, and he, too, began to weep. ‘How many times?’ he cried, as he shook the father. ‘How many times did I tell him to watch his own back and mind his place in line?’