Kineas dismounted. ‘Cyrus — tell the archon I will be with him directly. He must understand — I have been on the plains, and I rode at dawn this morning. I ask his leave to have a bath.’
Cyrus glanced up. ‘You will come?’
Kineas raised an eyebrow. ‘Of course I’ll come. What foolishness is this?’
Cyrus stepped away from the other two slaves. ‘There are rumours abroad — rumours that you intend… to take the city.’ His eyes flickered to the horsemen still milling about at the far end of the hippodrome, and rested on the one on the best horse, wearing the most expensive cloak. ‘Or that Nicomedes intends it,’ he said, meeting Kineas’s eyes.
‘You heard me dismiss them with your own ears,’ Kineas said. What in all the Stygian flood is going on here? Kineas thought, but even as he did so, a great deal was slipping into place. In fact, it was just as he had feared it might be. The tyrant feared the hippeis. The tyrant feared him. That was the root of the thing.
He sighed for the wasted time and his own fatigue. ‘I’ll come immediately. Lest your master think I’m busy plotting.’
Cyrus gave him a long look. ‘The archon prizes loyalty above all things, Hipparch. In your place, I would hurry. Or not come at all.’ He turned quickly, leaving the scent of something spicy in the wake of the swirl of his cloak.
Kineas dismounted and handed his horse to Diodorus. ‘I’ll be back soon,’ he said.
‘Don’t go,’ Diodorus said. ‘Or go in the morning with some witnesses. When the streets are full.’ He looked around as if fearing to be overheard. ‘Cleomenes voted against you in the assembly, and he thinks you left his son with the barbarians as a hostage as retribution.’
‘I heard that in his voice,’ Kineas replied. ‘I swear by Zeus, the father of all the gods, the man is a fool!’ Kineas stopped and cursed. He gave the stallion a slap on the rump. ‘That bad?’
‘Worse. Since the assembly met, the archon sees everyone as a plotter. Even Memnon.’ Diodorus grabbed Kineas by the shoulder. ‘I’m in earnest. Go in the morning. Even that perfumed Mede said as much, if you read his words the way I do.’ Diodorus looked around, and said, ‘Nicomedes has a slave — Leon. You’ve seen him?’ Kineas nodded. ‘Men attacked him. He says they were Kelts — perhaps from the archon’s bodyguard. He escaped. Nicomedes has been pressing for action ever since.’
‘Hades,’ Kineas said. ‘I’m not afraid of the archon, and there’s too much going on right now for me to wait for morning. You don’t know my news, and I haven’t time to tell it all. Macedon is marching — and they are coming here. Antipater wants to control the grain — he wants Pantecapeum and Olbia. The king of the Sakje is outside the suburbs, waiting to negotiate with the archon. He won’t wait long.’
Diodorus let go of Kineas’s shoulder. ‘The archon could kill you tonight, from pure fear.’ He pulled his helmet off, rubbed his hair, and sighed. ‘What a stew of crap.’
Kineas laughed. ‘I don’t think I’ll die tonight.’ He felt the weight of his cavalry breastplate on his shoulders. ‘I want to go to bed. But I’m better off seeing him tonight.’
‘Let me send one of the men.’ Diodorus tucked his helmet under his arm. ‘I’ll come myself.’
Kineas shook his head. ‘Thanks, but no. I don’t want to spook him. I think I have his measure, now. I’m betting that a quick display of loyalty right now will go a long way. If I’m wrong, and some god moves his hand to strike me, take the company out the gates to the Sakje, winter over with them, and go south in the spring.’
Diodorus shook his head. ‘I don’t know why he fears you so. In his place it would be Memnon I’d watch.’
Kineas pulled his cloak around his shoulders. He’d given the clasp to Srayanka, and he hadn’t replaced it. ‘That reminds me. Send a boy to Memnon and tell him I’ll speak to him in the morning.’
‘You are set on this course.’
‘I am.’ Kineas took the other man’s hand. ‘Trust the gods.’
Diodorus shook his head. ‘I don’t.’
Then, ignoring his friend’s protestations, Kineas walked off to the palace.
Kineas hurried. His confidence in his course of action, so high in the hippodrome, ebbed in the dark streets outside. Four streets from the palace, he wished he had a pair of torchbearers, or even a file of cavalry as escort. Twice he heard motion on rooftops, and a flash of bronze drew his eye in the alley that ran parallel to the main street.
He quickened his pace, hoping to catch sight of Cyrus and his torchbearers. He decided that his virtue would not be injured by running to catch the Persian. Even the main street was empty. There was not so much as a beggar under the eaves.
Speed, and his cavalry breastplate, saved his life. He saw, too late, the blur of motion at the alley corner by a closed wine shop. He planted a foot to turn and something hit him, hard, right in the side where the bronze was thickest over his belly.
There were at least two of them. One he’d seen — and the other who hit him.
He pushed through the attack, took another step, two, and threw himself against the sidewall of another wine shop. He had his arms free of his cloak and Srayanka’s whip in his hand. He flicked it as the king had taught him — straight into the eyes of one of them.
The man gave a choked scream and fell back. But the other man bore straight in like a wrestler, determined to knock him off his feet and finish him.
Kineas sidestepped. It wasn’t his first alley fight. He wanted room to shed his cloak and draw his sword. He knew he had room to his right, but he had to wonder if there were only two of them.
And then the time for thinking was past, and he was fighting for his life.
The first man landed a blow that rang his back plate like a gong. The man’s fist caught his cloak, seeking to unbalance him or choke him, and the whole heavy garment came away — no cloak pin.
Kineas flipped the riding whip from his right to left hand, catching the whip by the tail, and drew his sword. He lunged towards the man in front of him, holding the Sakje whip by the fronds of horsehair rather than by the handle.
The handle snapped up and took the barbarian in the side of the head and he fell as if his head had been severed.
His mate leaped forward with a bellow, but he had to get around the falling body. The two collided.
Kineas stepped back again, clear of the collision, and flipped the whip in his hand. He slashed it across the other man’s face. The fight was over, barring fresh attackers or the will of some god, and Kineas wanted the second man to run.
The second man didn’t run. He was tall and heavily built, and his big hand held a heavy club — clearly the weapon that had struck Kineas in the first seconds of the fight — and he swung it. It whistled in the air as Kineas retreated, his booted feet clumsy on refuse. Bad footing.
Kineas swung the whip at the man’s hands — once, twice, three times in a rhythm that put the bigger man on the defensive and drove him back into the centre of the street as he tried to protect his hands.
Kineas let him gain a step. He still believed that the man would bolt as soon as he came to his senses.
The step gave the big man time to recover. With both hands on the haft of his club, he leaped to the attack, swinging the club faster than Kineas thought possible. Kineas scrambled, ducked, and slashed with both whip and sword, but he was parried. The lash landed twice, but the big man showed no effect.
His assailant was a skilled fighter, not a thug. Big, skilled, and brave.
Kineas was driven back by a flurry of blows he could neither parry nor fully avoid without retreat. Suddenly his back foot was stopped by the stucco of the wine shop and he had no place to move to the right due to the presence of a huge urn by the door.
The big man paused. He hadn’t said a word, except to grunt when the lash went home. Both of them were breathing hard.
Kineas began to be afraid — not the normal fear of every warrior, but the fear that he might be outmatched. Might die, in the old vomit at the door to a wretched wine shop. His assailant was very skilled. Not a common hired killer.