Kineas read the letter, and the enclosed letter from Demosthenes of Athens, or one of his faction, with growing alarm. He handed them both on to Philokles, who had been questioning Nicanor. The former slave was reduced to tears already.
‘You were very brave, crossing the Kaspian Sea at this time of year,’ Kineas said. He flicked a glance at the Spartan, as if to say ‘Look what you’ve done!’
Nicanor shook his head, eyes on the ground. ‘I had to come,’ he said. ‘Master Lykeles said — that I had to reach you — and — and I did.’
Philokles finished the letters and handed them to Diodorus.
‘They’re not up to ruling the city,’ Nicanor said. He was still looking at the ground. ‘That’s what I came to say. I served Nicomedes for ten years as his chief factor. I know how business is done. Lykeles wants to use direct action — he paid for a killing. I know — I found the money and I paid the killers.’
Kineas nodded. He had seen this coming; he suspected that he already knew. ‘Alcaeus?’ he asked.
Nicanor started, and his hands twitched. ‘You knew? Did you order it?’
Kineas shook his head.
‘He will make himself a tyrant. He cannot bargain. And Petrocolus is weak — kind, well-intentioned, but weak. He is lost without my master — that is, Nicomedes — and his friend Cleitus. He vacillates. His allies leave him.’
Kineas took a deep breath. ‘This is not good.’
The megaron was filling up with his closest officers. Rumour spread fast in the camp, and they were a small community. Heron was out on patrol and Lot seldom showed interest in the politics of the Greeks, but the rest were there very quickly, slipping in past the blankets over the door.
Leon nodded. ‘We need money. Without it, we’re going to be in trouble for remounts in the spring. I’m already worried about making the next payment to the hoplites.’ He had an arm around Nicanor’s shoulders. ‘I can’t understand why there isn’t enough money,’ he said uneasily. ‘I’m making deals here — I expect my credit here to be backed in Olbia and in Pantecapaeum. If it isn’t, we’ll have angry creditors when spring comes — and my new business prospects will vanish.’
‘Lykeles is trying to bring us back,’ Diodorus said. ‘I hate to be the one to say it, but someone has got to him. He’s trying to withhold your money to get you back.’
‘Athens?’ Philokles asked.
‘Macedon?’ asked Sappho. ‘It is an open secret that you go to fight Alexander. That woman in the palace still serves him. I’d wager my life on it.’
‘Odd, how their interests coincide,’ said Philokles. He looked thoughtful. ‘If you were to return to Olbia, the army would remain here for the spring, would it not?’ He glanced around. ‘What do you say, Kineas?’
Kineas sighed. ‘If I go back, I’ll never leave again. I can feel it in my bones.’
Diodorus shrugged. ‘Have you settled with the queen on a spring campaign?’ He shrugged. ‘Sorry for asking, but it is related. If we’re making a spring campaign, we have time to send someone back.’
‘She wants a great deal more than just a spring campaign,’ Kineas said, unintentionally setting them all to smirks.
Niceas spoke out, his voice rough. ‘Let Diodorus fight the spring campaign. You’ll have the time to ride there, whip everyone into line and come back. We’ll be moving by high summer.’
Diodorus grinned. ‘I admit, I want to be in command again.’ He looked at Niceas. ‘I don’t think it’ll be that easy for Kineas, though. If this is what I think it is, the powers behind the recall will have various devices — all perfectly legal — to hold Kineas at Olbia.’
Kineas nodded and looked at Philokles. The Spartan put his chin on his hand. ‘There’s sense in what Diodorus says. You might restore order in a matter of days.’ He sat up. ‘Or not. You might get embroiled in months of debate — a year of accusations.’
Diodorus spoke up again. ‘And the cream of the army — the votes that will always back you — will be here.’
Philokles took a deep breath. ‘And they might well have you killed.’
Eumenes’ voice could be heard like an undercurrent, explaining the politics of the situation to Darius, whose Persian youth left him with no experience of the fickleness of a Greek assembly.
‘Yes,’ said Coenus. ‘Fox, you’re right for a change. Lykeles is in over his head, that’s for sure.’ Coenus grinned. ‘I guarantee he’s not crooked — Diodorus, you know better than that. He’s been with us for ever. But he can be a fool.’ Diodorus nodded, acknowledging the truth of both statements. Coenus went on, ‘But he’s one of my oldest friends. Send me. Not that it’s how I want to spend the winter.’ Coenus’s chosen method of spending the winter was Artemesia, the most beautiful of Banugul’s ladies. He shrugged. ‘If you go, Kineas, they’ll mire you in crap, like Odysseus there claims. If you send me, no one will waste a daric on killing me, but I can sort out Lykeles, get some cash from him and move it by ship. I probably won’t be back until late spring — until Lake Maeotis is open to navigation, anyway. But no one will hold me. And,’ he shrugged, ‘I have a certain name. No one is likely to fuck with me.’
Diodorus glanced at Sappho. ‘He’s right. I rather fancied the part where I commanded the spring campaign, but he’s right.’
Philokles nodded agreement. ‘He spent the fall hunting the high passes on the Tanais. He knows the ground — he’ll go the fastest.’
Kineas hated giving up any of his closest friends. He glanced at Leon, at Eumenes, but both were associated with city factions and neither could do what needed to be done. ‘You’re ready for troop command,’ Kineas said. ‘Do this for me, Coenus, and you’ll have it.’
‘Bah,’ said the aristocrat, ‘I don’t need a bribe to make the trip. If I don’t go, Lykeles will make an ass of himself and we’ll all lose by it. Besides, I’m a citizen of Olbia now. It’s my duty to the city, don’t you know.’ He looked around at the command council. ‘Swear to me that you’ll all stay out of Artemesia’s bed. I may wed her.’
Laughing, they all swore.
Coenus sailed north with the ten men he’d led all fall. He sailed on a gentle winter’s day with a fair wind for the north. Nicanor stayed to run Kineas’s household. He said that he’d rather conquer Asia than cross the Kaspian in winter again. It took him a day to purchase four slaves, and Kineas didn’t have to pour his own wine.
Two days later, their third snowstorm came, with the flakes falling like the white feathers of some monstrous bird, just as Herodotus described, and gathering in drifts driven by the north wind.
‘Coenus is safe at the mouth of the Rha, drinking hot wine in our old fort,’ Philokles said.
Kineas said a prayer to Poseidon and sacrificed a lamb the next day with his own hands. At the citadel, he continued to refuse to fight a spring campaign a day after the spring feast of Persephone, despite the blandishments and the gold that the queen flung at him.
They heard that Antipater, the ruler of Macedon in Alexander’s absence, had defeated Sparta decisively.
They heard that Alexander had vanished off the eastern edge of the world — or that he was in Bactria, or perhaps Sogdiana.
They heard a rumour that Parmenion was lining up the satraps of the west to destroy Alexander if he returned. Leosthenes had told them that Artabazus was Parmenion’s man, and that their employer, Queen Banugul, was Alexander’s, and doomed to fall. And that Athens was prepared to throw off the yoke and go to war with Antipater.