‘Is this some misbegotten Athenian plot? Don’t be a fool.’ Ptolemy pressed close. ‘Let me use this god-given opportunity. Listen! We knew somebody was beating up our pickets. Ever since early summer, we’ve had reports of mercenary Greek horse on the Oxus. Now that I’ve found you, come with me! Whatever Spitamenes is paying you, the king will beat it!’
Around the fire, Kineas’s friends laughed.
‘Spitamenes has no friends here,’ Srayanka said. Her Greek was excellent now.
‘You’re the Amazon!’ Ptolemy said. He was typical of Macedonians — Kineas could see that, having ascertained that she was a woman, and a suckling woman, he had dismissed her as being of less importance than the saddle blanket on which he sat. ‘The pregnant Amazon!’ He looked from her to Kineas and back. ‘Your girl?’
‘My wife, the Lady Srayanka, Queen of the Assagatje.’ Kineas gestured towards her.
She chuckled, even as she adjusted her son on her nipple and put a hand under her breast to support him.
Ptolemy looked at her more carefully. Then he looked at Kineas, as if seeing him for the first time. ‘If you killed Kontos, then you defeated Zopryon, didn’t you?’
Kineas smiled slowly and wickedly. ‘I didn’t do it by myself,’ he said.
Ptolemy was pale, even in the ruddy firelight. ‘So…’ he said. All friendliness was gone from his voice. ‘Fucking ingrate. Alexander made you.’
Kineas felt the blood in his face. Nonetheless, he struggled to remain calm — if only because his calm would infuriate the Macedonian all the more. ‘I am an Athenian.’
‘You are a fucking Hellene fighting for barbarians.’ Ptolemy was livid and, like most fighting men, heedless of consequence.
Kineas had no trouble meeting his gaze, even when the Macedonian stumbled to his feet, fists closed and twitching.
‘You are a barbarian, fighting for barbarians,’ Kineas said. He sat up from his reclining position. ‘I owe Alexander nothing. I was dismissed by him — and exiled for serving him. My city has commanded my service against him.’
‘Athens has sent an army into this haunted desert?’ Ptolemy slumped. ‘That’s not possible!’
‘My city is Olbia,’ Kineas said with pride. ‘I am the hipparch of Olbia. Every man at this fire is a citizen of Olbia. The cities of the Euxine united with the Sakje — the Assagatje — to destroy Zopryon. He would have enslaved every man and woman on the Euxine, Ptolemy. He wanted it all.’ Kineas stood up, handing his daughter to Darius, and spat in the fire. ‘We lost hundreds of riders. Not one Macedonian boy lived to see his mother on a farm near Pella. Not one horse trotted across the grass to his pasture in the high hills.’
Srayanka’s voice was angry and arrogant. She didn’t rise. ‘Tell your king that if he comes on to the plains, we will give him the same. The sea of grass is not for Macedon. My father died teaching Philip that lesson — and none of us are afraid to school the son.’
‘Olbia?’ Ptolemy asked. His anger was quenched. ‘Where the fuck is Olbia?’
That made all the veterans around the fire laugh, because just two years before, most of them would have said the same.
Kineas gave half a grin. ‘The richest city of the Euxine.’ Even as he spoke, he could see the city as if he stood on the bluff by the Borysthenes, looking down at the Temple of Apollo and the golden dolphins. ‘With Pantecapaeum, richer than all the cities of Greece combined.’
Ptolemy controlled his anger, aware that he was one captured Macedonian. ‘That’s not saying much,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen Persepolis and Ecbatana. Greece is poor. ’
‘Rich enough, with their Sakje allies, to stop Macedon for ever. ’ Kineas sat again.
Ptolemy’s long and thoughtful face took on an intense look. ‘You may speak your sophistry as you will — the king will never forgive you. We aren’t even allowed to mention Zopryon’s name. The survivors of the fight on the Polytimeros were threatened with decimation — one in ten to be executed. He actually carried out half a dozen before he ordered them stopped. Did you know that? And we were sworn to eternal silence on the defeat.’
Philokles nodded. ‘He guards his myth of invulnerability,’ he said. And then, looking closely at the Macedonian’s face, he said, ‘You hate him.’
Stung, Ptolemy stumbled away from Philokles. Antigonus, arriving out of the darkness with a skin of captured wine, caught his shoulders and steadied him. ‘Careful, laddy,’ Antigonus said in his heavily accented Greek.
Ptolemy looked around and slumped again. He sighed. ‘We all love him and we hate him. He is half god and half monster.’ He raised his head. ‘Like many men, I would like to go home. I would like to stop playing the endless game of betrayal and politics and advantage for power and influence in the army. I would like to build something. Something real.’
Philokles raised an eyebrow, frowned and nodded. ‘So stop?’
Ptolemy shook his head. ‘I can’t.’
‘Why not?’ Philokles asked.
‘Because if Ptolemy stops playing, somebody under him will have him killed and move up,’ Kineas said, and Diodorus nodded agreement. ‘We never played the Macedonian game — we’re just Greeks. But we watched.’ Kineas looked at Ptolemy’s face and thought about how often Philokles had asked him questions like this with the same intensity. It was interesting to see him do it to another man, to see the effect, the confusion, the sudden self-doubt.
‘Best join us,’ Diodorus said. ‘We’ve Numidians and Kelts and Megarans and Spartans. There’s a Babylonian Jew in second troop — or so he claims. We’ve a couple of Persians. Why not a Macedonian?’
Ptolemy laughed. ‘You are-’ He looked around the firelight. ‘Hah!’ he laughed, shaking his head. ‘You will actually let me go?’
Kineas nodded. ‘Be my guest.’
Ptolemy stood at attention. ‘I am honour-bound to report everything I have seen and heard,’ he said.
Philokles spoke up again. ‘But will you?’ he asked.
Ptolemy suddenly looked younger and more vulnerable than he had throughout his time by the fire. ‘I–I must,’ he said.
Philokles shrugged. ‘Except that if you tell the king everything, you will never see home. First, because tyrants always blame the messenger. Is that not true, Kineas?’
‘Are you asking me because I know so many tyrants, or because I have been one?’ Kineas asked. ‘But yes.’
‘Which you well know, yes?’ Philokles, in his turn, rose to his feet. ‘And because if you tell Alexander all you know, you will change his campaign. His Amazon — his prize! — is right here. And so is the man who defeated Zopryon.’ Philokles had never looked more like a philosopher, despite his stained tunic and dirty legs, than at that moment, gleaming and golden in the firelight, leaning forward like a statue of an orator. ‘If you tell him, he will drop everything to fight us — out on the grass. And you will never see home.’ Philokles’ eyes were sparkling. ‘And you know it.’
Diodorus, still reclining, said, ‘There is a god at your shoulder, Philokles.’
The others were silent. Some slurping and gurgling from Lita broke the solemnity of the moment.
Ptolemy was gone in the morning with the other prisoners. Philokles rode with him to the south, accompanied by Ataelus, and returned alone at midday, when the whole column was so far out on the sea of grass that the trees of the Polytimeros valley were lost in the haze. Only the mountains to the east marred the perfect bowl of the earth.
It was not until evening that the desert nature of the ground began to take its toll. The scouts had found waterholes, and their camps were based on those, but no single place gave sufficient water for eight hundred horses. Kineas had to fragment his command into four groups, based more on horse strength than on manpower. Srayanka and the Sakje were at another waterhole. He lay awake listening to the restless, under-watered horses. He was unused to sleeping alone, already missing his children. He awoke with a dry mouth. He drank water from the spring after the horses were clear, and there was more silt than refreshment.