Kineas nodded. ‘I’ve sent Eumenes to arrange it — I hope. Merchants cross the high ground between the Euxine and the Kaspian — what some men call the Hyrkanian Sea — by following the course of great rivers and then arranging passage on the Hyrkanian Sea when they arrive. If I can, I’ll take the whole army along the Tanais river and across the high ground to the river that the Sakje call the Rha. If we go hard, we’ll make the mouth of the Rha before the snows come.’ He drew on the wall with the charcoal, indicating the position of Lake Maeotis and the Bay of Salmon, the course of the Tanais and the course of the Rha and the distant salt sea with flicks of his stylus.
Diodorus whistled. ‘We’re leaving the world we know,’ he said.
Looking around, Kineas could see the same thought reflected in every man. He nodded. ‘When some of you chose to follow me to Olbia, we left our world behind,’ he said. He rubbed his beard and sipped wine. ‘When we marched out on to the sea of grass in the spring, we left the world behind. This is farther and farther yet — but the world continues. Petrocolus and Leon and other grain merchants know the Tanais and the Rha well enough, and their factors attest that there is a route across to the Hyrkanian Sea — a route that many men have travelled.’ Kineas turned to his sketch on the wall and then turned back. ‘Prince Lot has made the journey several times, as has Ataelus.’
Niceas raised a hand. ‘And then we cross this Hyrkanian Sea one boatload of horses at a time?’
Kineas made a sign that indicated that it was with the gods. ‘Twenty boats at a time. They move caravans, Niceas. They can move us.’
Niceas shook his head. ‘Caravans have a hundred horsemen and two hundred horses,’ he said. ‘And what little kingdom will receive our army without feeling that they have to massacre us?’
Kineas rubbed his beard. ‘Yes,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘Nicomedes traded with a kingdom on the Kaspian Sea.’
Philokles laughed. ‘Yes, you’ve got it taken care of? Or yes, it’s a good point?’
Kineas raised an eyebrow, feeling the opportunity to make back some of the ground he had lost the night before. ‘It seems to me,’ he said with all the effort of a good rhetorician, ‘that our company has a fine man, gifted by the gods with the power of making fine speeches, with a tongue that drips honey and a talent for philosophy — the very man to go from here to the far side of the Kaspian Sea with the summer caravans and arrange for a proper welcome and a winter camp in the barbarous country of Hyrkania.’
Philokles glared at him, but the other men laughed.
Niceas grinned. ‘If we’re sending Philokles,’ he said, ‘then I’m confident we’ll be massacred.’
‘Unless he kills them all before we arrive,’ Diodorus said.
Kineas looked around. ‘Humour aside, that’s my intention,’ he said. ‘Across the high ground and the sea before winter falls, and a winter camp in the thousand kingdoms — that’s what it is called.’
‘Enchanting,’ Philokles said. ‘I’ll wager it’s called the thousand kingdoms because there are a hundred thousand bandits all fighting among themselves.’
‘Yes,’ said Leon. He smiled. ‘Namastae is the most vicious of the lot. That’s where we’re going.’
They all looked at him. He shrugged. ‘We have a factor there,’ he said. ‘After we lost half a dozen merchants, my master — that is, Nicomedes — sent a mercenary.’
‘And?’ asked Philokles.
‘Now there are a thousand and one kingdoms,’ Leon said. ‘And Namastae trades with us. Hyrkania has riches.’
Philokles leaned forward, interested despite himself. ‘And Hyrkania means…?’
Leon grinned. ‘The land of the wolves,’ he said.
Niceas stretched and rubbed his nose. ‘Food?’ he asked.
Kineas looked at Leon, and Leon rose to his feet. His voice was shaky as he began — he was not used to speaking to groups of men — and as he went on he spoke faster, and his voice became shrill. ‘We’ll march with a herd of bullocks and ten days’ grain,’ he said. ‘The Tanais is farmed by the Maeotae and the Sindi as far north as the great lakes, and we will not travel so far on the river.’
Kineas interrupted because he could sense the ignorance of the audience, and because Leon wasn’t doing credit to himself. ‘Much of the grain traded through this port and through Pantecapaeum comes from the Tanais,’ he said.
The soldiers nodded. Leon, emboldened, glanced at Kineas and then continued. ‘At the portage we’ll leave the Tanais and cross the high ground to the Rha. Merchants do it every year in the summer and autumn.’ His voice was getting quieter and his words came more slowly as his confidence improved.
Lycurgus, Memnon’s former lieutenant and now their commander of infantry, raised a hand. ‘Son,’ he said with authority, and he was obviously old enough to be Leon’s father, ‘are you trying to tell us that we can get grain as we march?’
Leon gave a shaky grin, glanced down at his scrolls, and frowned. ‘Yes, sir.’
Lycurgus motioned to a slave for water. ‘Then just say so, son.’
Leon stuttered for a moment and then began again. ‘It will be harvest time when we march from the Bay of Salmon, or close enough. By the time we run out of our rations, the harvest will be in and we’ll have access to the cheapest grain in the circle of the world.’
Kineas stood again. ‘I will pay for the grain — at least for this winter. ’
Lycurgus grunted. ‘That will convince the shirkers,’ he said. ‘At least until spring.’
Kineas smiled. ‘And then it’ll be too late to change their minds,’ he said.
Memnon laughed. ‘It worked for Xenophon,’ he said. ‘You almost tempt me to come along.’
‘What’s in it for us?’ Lycurgus asked. ‘I’m in, however you put it — I followed you this summer and I like the idea. But for the boys in the ranks, what’s in it for them?’
‘Whatever loot we can get,’ Kineas said. ‘Was anyone dissatisfied with the booty from the Macedonian camp?’
Diodorus snorted, but Coenus cut him off. ‘Are you seriously suggesting that we’ll get to loot Alexander’s camp?’ he asked. ‘I’m not sure, but I’d bet that counts as hubris.’
Kineas spread his hands, acknowledging the point. ‘I can’t say because we’re talking about a march of ten thousand stades — at least ten thousand stades. Four hundred parasangs and maybe more. I will say that I expect some pay from the Massagetae.’ He tilted his head to give Philokles a private look, and then said, ‘If you know your Herodotus, we’re marching right into the land of the eastern Sakje — the land of gryphons and gold.’
Lycurgus nodded. ‘I can sell that,’ he said. ‘Especially if they can leave their loot from this campaign here, safe, and march knowing that you’ll pay to fill their bellies.’
‘Until we run out of money,’ Niceas said.
‘Then we’ll just start taking what we need,’ Diodorus said. Some of the younger men looked at him. He met their glances and shrugged. ‘Sure, it gets ugly. But that’s what armies do.’
‘Out on the sea of grass, there’s no one to plunder,’ Leon said. ‘And after the grass, there’s desert.’ He looked around. ‘But chances are any army that you march out there will be the toughest proposition in Hyrkania. There’ll be contracts in plenty, if we want to spend the spring fighting for their petty tyrants. I can arrange one before we arrive, if that’s what you want.’
Lycurgus shrugged. ‘Cross that desert when we come to it,’ he said, and they laughed.
After listening to Kineas and Leon and wrangling over half-made plans, they were all tired. Arguments had begun to have a personal edge and the fumes of last night’s wine were like poison. It was then that Sappho entered, and Arni, and a dozen of the barracks slaves, with ewers of water and flagons of wine and loaves of bread.
‘Best of women!’ Diodorus said, and got a real smile from his companion.
Kineas bit into the bread — crusty and excellent — and savoured the olive oil with it. ‘Sappho, you are a paragon.’
She lowered her eyes and smiled. ‘I crave a boon, Kineas.’
Kineas mopped his beard with his bread. ‘Anything,’ he said, expecting humour.
‘Allow me to accompany the army,’ she said.
Kineas flicked a look at Diodorus, but he appeared as surprised as if a bolt from Zeus had fallen among them.
Sappho took his hesitation for an opportunity. ‘Every army has followers, ’ she said. ‘I can manage them. I can ride a horse. I am as hard as a rock.’
Kineas, whose hands could remember the muscles in Srayanka’s legs, doubted that Sappho was as hard as she thought, but he couldn’t ignore the fact that she was correct. Every army had followers. Often, their fortunes affected the morale of the army. Generals and strategoi often ordered them to be abandoned, as if the men who served in the ranks had no feelings for the bodies that warmed their beds or the voices that shared their campfires. They were wrong.
Kineas looked at Diodorus — she was, at least temporarily, his property in many ways. Diodorus smiled his devious smile, and Kineas wondered if the man hadn’t known of her request all along. Kineas disliked being managed as much as most men, but he liked Sappho well enough, and he liked the idea of having an ‘officer’ to deal with the followers.
‘You agree to obey my orders?’ he asked. ‘And if I order you home, you’ll go as meek as a lamb?’
She raised her eyes. ‘I am always as meek as a lamb, Strategos,’ she said.
No one had referred to him as strategos before. He felt himself blushing. Nonetheless, he hardened his tone. ‘That is not an answer,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I will agree to obey you — in all things.’
She raised her eyes just a little on the last word, so that he caught a flash of their colour. The glance affected him. He turned his head away and tried to ignore the pulse that shot from his head to his groin. And met Diodorus’s eyes — and his raised eyebrow. Kineas looked away in confusion, made an excuse to walk out to relieve himself, counted to a hundred in Sakje. Then he rejoined his company, made jokes and laughed at them, and fell back into the tide of masculine camaraderie.
After they had shared bread and wine, Kineas rose and carried his wine cup to the centre of the room.
‘A year ago in this room I asked my officers to swear an oath. If you will accompany me against Alexander, I’ll ask you to swear again.’ He raised his cup.
Niceas rose and gave him a rare grin. ‘Who’d’ve thought, a year ago, when we had a tyrant to tame and the threat of Macedon stirring, that today we’d be planning to march an army into the east?’
Diodorus, sober, raised his cup. ‘Who’d have thought that we would be officers with commands? Or rich men? Or citizens?’
Coenus raised his cup. ‘Who would have guessed which among us would have fallen, and which would live to ride again?’
Andronicus raised his wine. ‘Give us your oath, Strategos. For me, I long to ride.’
Then Kineas raised his cup. ‘Hear us, God who shakes the mountains and whose bolts cause men to fear. Hear us, Goddess of the olive who wears the aegis. Hear us, God whose horses ride the very waves, whose hand raises the storm or stills it. May all the gods hear us. We swear that we will remain loyal to each other and the company until it is dissolved by us all in council.’ Kineas spoke the words and they repeated them with gusto, no voice lacking, just as they had a year and more before, and the new voices were no softer than the old.
Despite the late afternoon hour when the meeting broke, Kineas threw on a cloak and went to the palaestra. He needed to feel the daimon of exercise. He was introspective enough to question his own motives in welcoming the Theban woman on the expedition to the east. He suspected that he would regret it even as his unexercised body fantasized about her.
He banished her green eyes on the sand of the palaestra. By the time he had loosened the muscles around his two healing wounds and freed his thighs from ten days of lassitude, the sun was low in the sky, but he was determined to run.
Other men were drawn to him, and his progress across the exercise floor attracted an entourage, and his announcement that he would run brought a chorus of approval. Philokles appeared at his side, and Diodorus as well, and Coenus.
They ran well, without a lot of conversation except some rude banter about the length of Kineas’s legs — more banter when he slowed out by Gade’s Farm, and then they had only enough air in their lungs to run. Memnon led the pack, his dark skin untouched by frost or the exertion, and he ran with his head up as if he could go all day and all night — which he probably could. Philokles stayed close to him all the way, and the two were just visible to Kineas, a dark back and a pale back in the distance.
Kineas was at the rear of the pack, a stade or more behind the leaders, and he ran on willpower and annoyance, burning off the last of his wine and bad temper and temptation, the air coming out of his mouth in gasps until he got his second wind. With the dolphin gates in sight, his head came up again, and he ran across the agora in fine shape, gaining some lost ground. Memnon was already running a strigil across Philokles in the marble portico of the palaestra, and the steam from the baths was welcome, but Kineas felt like a better man before he ran past the temple of Apollo, and he enjoyed his bath with the devotion of a man who might not see a gymnasium for sixty thousand stades — or ever again.
He was lying in the steam with a slave working carefully around the wound on his bicep when Helladius sat on the next slab.
‘It must be nice to be so young,’ said the priest. ‘I was comforted that I could run at your shoulder, but then, in sight of the gates, a god gifted you with new strength and you ran away from me as if I stood still.’
Kineas laughed and pointed at Philokles, who was waving goodbye — clean, strigilled, massaged and cloaked for the walk home. ‘You must be old indeed, to finish behind me,’ he said.
‘Memnon looks like a statue of Ares,’ said Helladius. ‘And your friend the Spartan might be Zeus.’
‘You are full of flattery today, priest,’ Kineas rolled over so that he could look the man in the eye.
‘ It is not that the dead require anything from you,’ the priest said suddenly.
Kineas felt his stomach twist as if he’d just seen a corpse.
‘ It is rather that they are trying to give you something,’ Helladius continued. His rich and melodious voice was somehow wrong for the message he was conveying. As if something else was using his voice to speak.
‘What are they trying to give me?’ Kineas asked.
‘Philokles might be Herakles, or Achilles, come to life,’ said the old priest, as if nothing of moment had been said.
‘ That is for you to learn,’ said the slave in his accented Persian-Greek. Kineas sat up suddenly and whirled on the slave.
‘What do you say?’ he demanded.
The slave looked afraid. ‘Master?’ he asked and backed a step, fearing a blow.
Kineas looked at the priest. ‘Didn’t you hear him?’ Kineas asked.
The priest looked puzzled. ‘Do you speak his barbarian tongue? I doubt he speaks much Greek.’
Kineas was slow to place himself back under the slave’s hands. ‘Didn’t you speak to me of my dreams?’ he asked, after a long silence.
Helladius summoned another slave who began to massage the older man’s legs. ‘I questioned the gods, and sought answers in augury, and none was granted me. It is a difficult question.’
Kineas felt the cold sweat of fear despite the steam and the pleasant fatigue of the run.
The fear would not leave him. And it banished all thoughts of Sappho.