Lower down, many of the town’s least reputable elements had picked up and moved to sit at the gate of the military camp, because the soldiers brought money, and the town had the means to take it away. The sprawl at the gate featured a market — almost an agora — where the soldiers bought food and oil for their messes. There were legitimate merchants there, with wine and olive oil, weapons and armour. There were a dozen wine shops, from a newly built tavern with solid walls, its own hearth and prostitutes hanging over the balcony of the exedra, to hide tents with a board over a pair of wooden horses and a few amphorae of wine stuck base down in the snow. Followers abounded, from prostitutes of both sexes in the market, to new wives in the snug huts that lined the streets inside the walls with military precision. Kineas’s little army numbered almost twelve hundred men and women, at least half the population of the town and citadel above them.
The town and the citadel had its own soldiers, a mix of Greek mercenaries released from Alexander’s armies, deserters and survivors of various Persian armies. They put on airs and swaggered, but the Olbians didn’t think much of them, and Lot’s Sauromatae had killed a couple in brawls — rather to make a point, Diodorus said.
Kineas heard Diodorus’s report after he had eaten, slept, steamed and run. He listened to his officers report in turn, rubbing his beard as Leon gave them a report on the army’s treasury (a report that made the strategos very thoughtful indeed) and Eumenes spoke on the state of the horses after their long march and short sail (a report that depressed every cavalryman present).
Lycurgus gave a hard smile. ‘You’ll all be hoplites before more snow falls,’ he said.
‘We need a lot of fresh horses,’ Niceas growled, one of his rare contributions.
‘Let’s save the ones we have first,’ Kineas said. ‘Coenus, what shall we do?’
Coenus was reading from a scroll. ‘You’d think Xenophon, who fought his whole life from horseback, would have mentioned this problem.’ He shook his head. ‘Buy more grain. Feed them as if we were fattening them for sacrifice. I’ll ride out and find a good winter pasture with some rock under their feet — they’re wet to the fetlocks all the time, the poor things.’ He looked around. ‘We’ll need to buy more horses,’ he said apologetically.
‘We don’t have as much money as I would have wished,’ Kineas said. ‘Even as it is, we’ll need to send a convoy back to the Bay of Salmon and get more money. Leon and I will have to sell estates. Ares and Aphrodite, but we spend money like water!’
Philokles pretended to be looking through the cabin’s log walls at the citadel. ‘I know where there’s money,’ he said.
‘Is this another Spartan solution?’ Kineas asked.
‘She’s a harlot and a brutal ruler. The peasants hate her. She squeezes them for cash and flaunts it.’
There was a knock at the door. Darius, now a section leader in second troop, bowed from the waist. ‘There is a messenger from the palace. I held him at the gate as per Niceas’s standing orders.’
Niceas nodded. ‘Escort him to the guardhouse and get his message. He comes no farther than the guardhouse.’
Kineas shook his head. ‘Why are you so adversarial with the palace?’ he asked his officers.
Sappho came in through the door and pushed the linen chlamys she wore as a wimple back from her face.
‘Have you already had trouble with the queen?’ Kineas asked.
His receiving room was larger than all the space he’d had in the barracks at Olbia. Diodorus and Philokles sat in barbarian chairs, Niceas lay on a couch, Coenus reclined with a bucket of scrolls, while Eumenes, Darius and Leon sat at the desk doing accounts. Ataelus sat quietly on another barbarian chair, speaking with Prince Lot and Samahe. Sappho sat in a chair that had obviously been set aside for her.
Kineas wondered why she was present. ‘I’m glad you have all made yourself comfortable in my absence,’ he said.
Darius returned, a drift of cold entering with him. ‘The strategos is invited to attend the queen,’ he said in a neutral voice.
Kineas looked around the room, a hint of annoyance in his tone as no one was answering his questions. ‘You dislike her? Philokles, has she given you trouble?’
Philokles raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m not the sort of man who would have trouble with the queen,’ he said. He laughed. ‘No, she’s given no trouble.’
Eumenes blushed and kept his head down.
‘What’s all this costing us?’ Kineas asked.
‘Actually, we’re getting a few minae a month profit. We’re defending her over the winter, aren’t we?’ Diodorus gave a wry smile. ‘I hadn’t realized that salesmanship was part of my duties.’
Kineas nodded. ‘Well done.’
‘Not all crap. Every one of these petty kingdoms in Hyrkania is out to eat every other one. Our arrival here guaranteed her farmers an uncontested harvest — that’s worth a few acres of land for one winter.’ Diodorus looked around the room. ‘Our troops have put a lot of silver into the locals — one way or another.’ He gave his words the intonation of an actor — a comic actor. Diodorus had a new scar on his brow from the fighting in the autumn. It made him look older. There was grey in his red hair that Kineas hadn’t noticed before — the price, no doubt, of command. He steepled his hands. ‘There’ll be Hades to pay in the spring,’ he said.
Other men were nodding their heads.
Kineas swirled the wine in his cup and waited.
‘She thinks we’ll fall into her arms and conquer her neighbours for her,’ Diodorus said. He and Sappho exchanged a glance, and Sappho raised a plucked eyebrow before her eyes went back to her scroll.
Leon looked up from his numbers, drew breath for speech and then thought better of it.
Kineas had to smile, despite his best resolve. ‘She’s a harlot?’ he asked.
‘She’s no harlot,’ Philokles said. ‘You’ll want to see for yourself.’ He paused. ‘She has wit.’
Diodorus leaned forward. ‘She calls herself Banugul. It’s a Zoroastrian saint’s name. The peasants call her Asalazar. That means the demon of honey.’ He gave a lopsided sneer. ‘It’s not meant as a compliment.’
Heron, silent until then, spoke up. ‘They say she’s Artabazus’s bastard daughter — Barsine’s sister. Barsine is still with Alexander. They’re rivals in every way. They say she’s the lovelier of the pair — and that Alexander preferred her, but needed the satrap’s alliance.’
Kineas shook his head. ‘So she’s been fobbed off with a piece of Hyrkania? She can’t be that beautiful, or she’d have got something better. Cappadocia, perhaps?’
They all laughed. Hyrkania was all rock — the farmers among the soldiers couldn’t stop commenting on the uselessness of the soil.
‘I think you’ve all been away from civilization too long, and begging Sappho’s pardon, you sound like characters in Lysistrata. You may all love her more than you love the gods — but when the ground is hard and our horses have their hooves hard and their summer coats, we’re riding for Marakanda,’ he said. ‘Srayanka is waiting, and Alexander’s army is growing.’
Diodorus nodded. ‘I’d rather be fighting Alexander right now.’ Again he and Sappho exchanged glances.
‘I must meet this goddess,’ Kineas said.
Diodorus cut in, ‘She’s trying to use us against her father. And she’s dangerous.’
Kineas nodded, his mind already moving on to the new logistikon that Leon was compiling. ‘Is there enough fodder and grain in this petty kingdom to get us moving in the spring?’
Leon cleared his throat. ‘Yes,’ he said. Under his dark skin, he was flushed. ‘But it will require some work to collect it. There are not enough wagons for us to buy. We’ll need more oxen to drag the wagons and some for beef on the hoof.’