‘You spend a great deal of time here,’ Kineas said, several weeks after the queen’s visit to the camp.
Embarrassed, the young Persian shrugged. He smelled of perfume. ‘I like to hear Persian spoken sometimes,’ he said. ‘They are not unlike my people,’ he went on in the tone of outraged adolescence. Despite his upright carriage, he had the whine of the young to him when he replied, and it annoyed Kineas still more.
‘You are on the duty roster today,’ Kineas said.
‘Only for the reserve,’ Darius said. He shrugged. ‘They won’t be called out. What, is Alexander coming through the snow?’
Kineas tried to decide whether what he felt was jealousy at the smell of her perfume or annoyance at the tone of bratty innocence and justification. ‘Why don’t you make your way down to camp and take a spell on the walls while you consider the difference between insolence and disobedience?’ Kineas said.
Darius was not a fool. He saluted and left. Later inquiry showed that he had spent the entire shift on the walls. Kineas dismissed the incident.
Four days later, Darius was in the citadel again on his duty day, and Kineas barely restrained his temper. He felt that his orders were being flouted — worse, he suspected that he was himself being unjust. He visited the citadel, and he was the commander, the most responsible man of all. A poor example.
However, despite his own transgressions — perhaps because of them — Kineas lost his temper. ‘March your arse down to the duty office and wait there!’ Kineas barked.
Later that evening, Kineas found Darius sitting in his megaron ‘You are banned from the citadel until further notice,’ Kineas said.
‘Oh, that’s fair,’ Darius said with fluent sarcasm.
‘One more word and you can shovel snow for the rest of the winter,’ Kineas said.
Darius looked as if he wanted to say more — a great deal more. When the Persian marched out, his silence made Kineas feel like a bully, the more so as Darius cast such a look of supplication at Philokles, who was just coming in, that Philokles put his arm around the young man’s shoulders and stepped out into the snow to talk to him. When Philokles came back in, he was shaking his head.
‘ You go to the palace, Strategos!’ Philokles said.
‘I am the commander, and responsible for our relations with the queen.’ Kineas offered the Spartan a cup of wine.
‘Ares and Aphrodite, and you call me a sophist?’ Philokles grinned. Then he stopped smiling. ‘Listen, I’m here for something serious. Have you watched Leon and Eumenes? Together?’
Kineas made a face and shook his head. ‘Should I? What, are they lovers?’
‘Ares, you’re blind as a bat. No, much the opposite. They’re facing each other like armed camps on a plain.’ Philokles drained his wine. ‘You need to keep them apart.’
‘What’s it about?’ Kineas asked.
Philokles narrowed his eyes and frowned. ‘I may spy for you from time to time, or for my homeland. I don’t carry tales about my comrades. ’ He turned the cup upside down and stomped out.
Alerted, Kineas couldn’t miss the growing competition between Eumenes and Leon. Kineas didn’t know where it had started or what it was about, but it was out of hand. The incident that brought their misdeeds to light for Kineas was a torch-lit horse race on the snow, where the riders competed to bring fire to the altar of Demeter at the spring equinox, a tradition that Olbia shared with Athens. The competitors raced around the circuit of the camp and finished at a gallop down the main street, riding flat out for the building that served as a temple for all their gods. Eumenes lost when his horse, tearing around the corner of one of the soldiers’ cabins, slipped and fell. The young man broke a rib and walked with a limp for two weeks, and his horse slid on the ice, limbs flailing, and ended up injuring a dozen bystanders. Kineas saw the turn and saw the rough play between Leon and Eumenes in the moments before the fall.
When Kineas inquired, he received the kind of knowing looks that told him that most of his commanders already knew that something lay between the young men, and weren’t going to inform on them. When Kineas confronted the two combatants, they glared at each other like a pair of fighting cocks. When he upbraided them in private, they wore looks of humiliation and apology.
It was a week later, when he saw Leon talking to Lot’s surviving daughter, Mosva, that Kineas began to see how the winter wind blew. Because even as he watched Leon, who lost all of his courtly polish in her presence and had the body language of a young dog, shifting, shrugging, rolling and hanging his head, he also saw Eumenes watching the two of them, his face a thundercloud.
Aha! he thought. But it didn’t resolve the issue.
It was about the same time that Kineas went up the hill to see Banugul about a matter of logistics and found she was not available to receive him. Darius’s pale roan horse was in the citadel stables. Kineas rode back down the hill in a foul temper. He called for Diodorus.
‘Have the fucking Persian dismissed. He has disobeyed me for the last time.’ Kineas was so angry he spilled wine.
Philokles came in through the multiple blankets that now made the doorway. ‘Problems?’
Kineas was silent. Diodorus raised an eyebrow. ‘Kineas’s Persian boy has become a little too popular in the palace,’ Diodorus said. He made a face.
‘Fuck you,’ Kineas said. ‘I gave him a direct order and he disobeyed. I am ordering him dismissed.’
‘You’re over-reacting,’ Diodorus said. ‘He’s an excellent horseman and a top-notch fighter. You’ve said yourself he’s a better swordsman than you, and you’re the best I know. I’m ready to put him up for phylarch.’
‘Dismiss him,’ Kineas said, voice hard.
‘Don’t be an ass,’ Diodorus said.
Philokles shook his head. ‘Probably better if you dismiss him,’ he said after a moment.
Diodorus looked hurt. ‘The strategos is thinking with his little head,’ he said.
Philokles raised an eyebrow. ‘I say that it is for the best.’
‘Fine!’ Diodorus said. ‘I’ll obey. I think you’re both idiots, though.’
Kineas didn’t see the Persian again, but the rumour mill said that the young man had immediately taken service in the citadel, with the queen’s guard.
Kineas felt like an idiot, but it didn’t cause him to apologize. Winter was taking its toll. And despite his best efforts, he wasn’t able to stop his own visits to the citadel. Kineas tried to limit them to matters of business, but he was aware that he stretched those boundaries to fit his needs. As winter howled outside his megaron he admitted to himself that, like a wine-bibber denied his tipple, four days of snow had denied him his addiction and he was growing fractious. He decided to punish himself for the dismissal of Darius by avoiding the citadel. He snapped at Philokles on the fifth day of imposed abstinence from Banugul’s charms and the Spartan grinned.
‘I can find you a nice clean Hyrkanian girl who’ll reduce that swelling in no time,’ he quipped.
‘Keep a civil tongue,’ Kineas barked.
‘“The situation swells to greater tension. Something will explode soon,”’ Philokles quoted, laughing. ‘Aristophanes covers almost every sexual situation, I find.’
‘Go fuck yourself, Spartan,’ Kineas said.
‘The same might be suggested to you, Strategos.’ Philokles ducked a blow and slipped out of the door.
Two days later, Leosthenes the Athenian paid another visit and Kineas felt himself excused to climb the hill. It was early evening by the time he was admitted and Banugul was reclining on a couch, alone, with a dozen guests on couches eating a banquet. Darius was nowhere to be seen.
‘Dear Kineas,’ she said. ‘I would have invited you, but I feared your rejection. Please join us.’