They lay quietly on their couches, listening and drinking wine. He made it clear that he was finished by sitting on his couch. He felt empty. He felt like a schoolboy who had given a speech and forgotten some part of it. He shrugged — oh, the birching that gesture would have gotten him from his rhetoric tutor. ‘That is the way I see it,’ he said, and felt the poverty of his summation.
Cleomenes rose in turn. He lay by himself — he had brought his son, but Eumenes had gone off to share the couch of Kyros. Most of the other men present either ignored him or fawned on him. Unlike Nicomedes and Cleitus, who were bitter rivals in trade and politics but appeared to enjoy each other’s company, Cleomenes was aloof, as if he didn’t want to be caught associating with his rivals.
‘The hipparch speaks well — for a mercenary.’ He looked around the room with patrician disdain. ‘Just as well might I visit another man’s city and tell him how he can, with enormous risk, win through to a little gain. But despite the fact that you, Cleitus, and you, Nicomedes, conspired to give this man the vote, I say he is a foreigner, a man with little stake in our city — surely not the same stake as I have. Why would a man of my accomplishments wish to provoke a war with Macedon? Our mercenary thinks so highly of his profession that he desires for us all to take part in it. I say that it is the business of his sort to make war. I have neither skill nor appetite for it. Men of property have no need to do such things. When I need them done, I can hire — a mercenary.’ He looked around. ‘You are a pack of fools if you think that your little squadron of horse will last a minute against the force of Macedon. Men like you have no business fighting — your business is business. Achilles was a fool, and Odysseus not much better. Grow up. Accept the coming changes. Let this city grow and prosper as it is meant to, regardless of who claims to rule it. And leave fighting to mercenaries.’
He gave Kineas half a smile. ‘Although when I hire one, I’ll try to find one with less arrogance, less pretension, and superior skill at fighting — not a wine-sack blow-hard who was dismissed by Alexander.’
He sat down, and the room erupted. Men were watching Kineas. He was acutely aware of how deeply Cleomenes’ speech had cut him — both in his own pride and in the eyes of some of his most prominent supporters.
But despite the instant rise of rage in his heart, and the double grip of fear and anger in his gut, Kineas was a veteran of many years of Athenian politics — in his father’s house, and in the hippeis. He refilled his cup, spilled a libation with a prayer to Athena, and rose again, outwardly calm — inwardly both enraged, and hurt, even saddened. His stomach seemed to rise to fill his throat. In some ways, it was worse than a fight — in a fight, the daemon came to hold you up, to stiffen your sinews, but in debate, a man who was a friend, or at least sometimes an ally, suddenly turned on you and spoke insults.
Face to face. Like battle.
Kineas took a breath to steady himself. ‘I’m sure Cleomenes speaks with the best of intentions,’ he said. His mild sarcasm, so at odds with what the room expected from him, silenced the babble. ‘Cleomenes, am I the wine-sack blow-hard to whom you refer?’
Cleomenes glared at him like Medusa, but Kineas pinned him with his own gaze.
‘Come, we’re all friends here — you must have had someone in mind.’ Kineas’s raillery was still light.
Cleomenes wasn’t fooled. He wriggled on his couch like a bug on a pin.
Kineas raised an eyebrow. ‘So, you don’t mean me?’ He took a step forward, and Cleomenes wriggled again. ‘Perhaps you mean Memnon? Or perhaps Licurgus? Perhaps my friend Diodorus? Or perhaps young Ajax, Isokles son of Tomis — is that who you mean?’
Kineas took another step towards the man. He had the feeling that Cleomenes would make a bad enemy — but that enmity was already there. He was not going to win the man to his side — so he had to be defeated. ‘Except none of them served Alexander. Only I.’ He stepped closer. ‘Or were you speaking generally, of wine-sacks and blow-hards you’ve known in your wide experience of the world?’
Cleomenes stood up. ‘You know who I meant!’ he said, his face red.
Kineas shrugged. ‘I’m a poor mercenary, slow of intellect. Tell me.’
Cleomenes spat, ‘Figure it out.’
Kineas spread his hands. ‘I am a simple soldier. I admire those men to whom you referred — Achilles and Odysseus. They may not have been good men of business — but they were not afraid to speak their minds.’
Cleomenes rolled off his couch, his face purple. ‘Damn you, you insolent-’
Cleitus rushed to intervene — both men had their hands balled into fists. ‘Gentlemen — I think we have left reasoned debate and good feeling at the bottom of the last wine bowl. This is mere argument — there is bad feeling. Cleomenes did not mean the insult he implied, I’m sure — and neither would Kineas mean to call Cleomenes a coward, would you, Kineas?’
Kineas nodded — and let his next words drawl out with all the Athenian arrogance he could muster — which was considerable. ‘I didn’t say that Cleomenes was a coward,’ he said with a mocking smile. ‘Indeed, I spoke generally, about the long-haired Argives who fought for Helen on the windy plains of Illios.’
Several guests applauded. Kineas’s rhetorical tricks had the elegance of an Athenian gentleman’s education. Cleomenes looked rude by comparison, and he’d lost his temper entirely. Without another word, he picked up a scroll bag he had brought and walked to the door. ‘You will all rue the day you brought this man into our city,’ he said, and left.
Despite the lazy smile pasted to his face, Kineas felt weak at the knees, as if he had fought a combat. He felt as if he needed more wine. When he reached the couch he shared with Philokles, the Spartan smiled at him. Other men asked a few questions, but most chose to change the subject. He drank a great deal, Cleomenes’ insults still rankling, and went to bed drunk.
The tree was bigger than the world, and its trunk was like a city wall rising from a rocky plain. The lowest branches hung to the ground. It was a cedar — no, it was a black pine from the mountains of Attica.
Closer, it seemed that it was not one tree, but all trees. And the fallen leaves and needles littered the ground, so that every step he took, he sank to his ankles, and when he looked down to watch his footing, he saw that the leaves were mixed with bones. And under the leaves and bones were corpses — strange that the bones lay over the corpses, he thought, with the clarity of dream thought.
He felt strangely in control of his dream, and he made his body turn and look away from the tree, but there was nothing to see except the branches hanging to the ground, and the near dark beyond the tree, and the leaves and bones, and all the dead.
He turned back and set his hand against the trunk, and it was warm and smooth like the back of Srayanka’s hands, and he…
Awoke. Troubled because of the dream’s clarity and because it was alien. While he dreamed the tree, he was another man. A man who didn’t think like a Hellene. And that was terrifying.
He covered his terror in work, training the hippeis, which he did despite the first serious winter storm. The sailing season closed. The threat of Antipater became known throughout the city. No one could flee, so rich and poor alike settled in for months of cold, telling each other that there would be time to flee in the spring if Antipater really did come.