Then he rode back to the centre of the line and knelt on his stallion’s back — a boy’s trick, but useful when you needed to address troops. The hoplites took the heavy shields off their shoulders and set the rims on the ground, planted the spikes of their spears and leaned on them for comfort.
‘Gentlemen of Olbia!’ he called.
Horses moved and made sounds, and a few pulled at their reins to be allowed to crop grass, but the men of the city were silent and still. The wind blew warm from the south, drying the ground, and the sun sparkled on bronze and silver and gilt along the ranks.
The quiet grew. It wrapped itself around them, a palpable thing, as if they sat in the midst of a bubble of eternity. It was one of those moments men recall by their firesides in old age — the whole scene seemed to be set in crystal.
Suddenly, nothing in Kineas’s prepared rhetoric was sufficient to the day. They were magnificent — the hoplites and the hippeis together. He said a prayer to Athena in his heart, and raised his hand, pointing at Olbia.
‘There is your city. Here beside you are your fellow citizens, hoplites and hippeis together. Here are your comrades. Look at them! Look to the left, to the right. These are your brothers.’ The words came to him from the air, and his voice carried in the unnatural calm.
‘War is coming,’ he said. He looked across the plain to the west, as if Zopryon’s army would appear on cue. ‘The fate of the city is in the hands of the gods. But it is also in your hands — in the hands of every man here.’
He looked up and down the ranks, and found that he didn’t have control of his voice. His throat was sore, and his eyes burned, and the image before him wavered and flowed, so that great gaps appeared in the lines of men where they blurred to his tear-filled eyes. He sat quietly, waiting for the moment to pass.
‘Zopryon believes that he will have a quick campaign — an easy conquest. I believe that with the help of the gods, we will stop him on the plain of grass and send him back to Macedon. That is why you have given your winter to training. That is why you are standing here rather than tilling your fields.’
The silence was still there, and the stillness. It was daunting. The wind from the plain of grass ruffled his horse’s mane, and he could hear the hairs move against each other.
‘I have served Macedon,’ he said at last. ‘In Macedon they say that Greece is done. That we love beauty more than war. That we are soft. That our only place is in their empire.’ He raised his voice. ‘But I say, what is more beautiful than this — to serve with your comrades, to stand beside them when the shields ring?’ And quoting the Poet, he said, ‘“My friends, Argives one and all — good, bad and indifferent, for there was never a fight yet, in which all were of equal prowess — there is now work enough, as you very well know, for all of you. See that you none of you turn in flight, daunted by the shouting of the foe, but press forward and keep one another in heart, if it may so be that Olympian Zeus the lord of lightning will grant us to repel our foes, and drive them away from our city.”’
The sound of the familiar words, Ajax’s famous speech that schoolboys learned by heart, drew a response, and they cheered — first the hoplites, and then all of them, so that the hoplites banged their shields with their spears and the horsemen’s swords rang against their breastplates — an ominous sound, the cheer of Ares.
Kineas wasn’t used to being cheered. He felt the daimon that infected him in combat, so that his chest was full and he felt more alive and he wondered if this was the feeling Alexander had every day.
Then he turned his head, embarrassed, and called to Niceas who trotted out of the ranks to him. ‘Sound: All Captains.’
Niceas blew the trumpet. The troop commanders and their hyperetes trotted out of the cheering ranks and halted in a neat line.
‘Gentlemen,’ Kineas began. He pulled his helmet off and wiped his eyes. Several of the officers did the same.
Nicomedes looked around him dry-eyed and said, ‘No wonder they call Greeks emotional.’
Memnon walked up in his big black cloak. ‘Good speech. Fucking good speech. Let’s go kill something.’
Kineas cleared his throat while the other men chuckled. ‘I’m off for the sea of grass. Memnon has the command while I’m away — Diodorus has the command of the hippeis.’ He looked them over. ‘Listen to me, gentlemen. The archon is now a desperate man — he fears this war just about as much as he fears you. I ask you to be careful in what you say or do in the assembly. I ask you not to provoke him in my absence — indeed, I ask you not to provoke him until we’ve seen the back of Zopryon.’
Memnon spat. Cleitus nodded. Nicomedes made a face. He shrugged and said, ‘But that’s my hobby!’
Kineas met his gaze and stared him down. ‘Make the command of your troop your hobby.’ He collected their eyes and went on. ‘Don’t fool yourselves that because we have a competent troop of horse and some good hoplites we have an army. Zopryon has an army. We have a tithe of his strength. Only if the Sakje agree to our plan will we have the power to face Zopryon. Even with the Sakje — even if the king sends all his strength — we will be hard pressed to save our city.’
Ajax coloured, but his voice carried conviction. ‘I felt a god at my shoulder while you spoke,’ he said.
Kineas shrugged. ‘I cannot speak of gods, though I revere them. But I can say that I have known a handful of good men to shatter an army of multitudes. Your men look good. Make them better. Don’t let them forget what is coming — neither make them fear it so that they take a ship and sail away. That is what I had planned to say this morning but other words were set in my throat.’ He didn’t say that the small army had been Macedonian, and the multitudes had been the Medes.
Kineas turned to Diodorus. ‘I’ll take the first troop, as we discussed. Will you continue without us?’
‘I have a long day planned,’ Diodorus said with a wicked smile. ‘I’m sure that most of them will wish they were crossing the sea of grass with you by the time the sun is setting. Travel well!’
They told each other to go with the gods, and they clasped hands. And then Kineas and all of the first troop changed from their warhorses to their lighter mounts, formed a column, and rode off on the track north to the waiting grass.
Kineas had all the younger men, with Leucon in command and a sober Eumenes as his hyperetes. Cleomenes had taken ship and deserted, leaving his son an empty house and a ruined reputation. Eumenes bore it. In fact, he seemed happier — or freer.
Kineas told them that they would live rough, and he meant it. They had just ten slaves for fifty men. Kineas had arranged that all the slaves were mounted.
Like the first trip to find the Sakje, he kept them busy from the moment they left Diodorus, sending parties of scouts out into the grass, making mock attacks on empty sheep folds, skirmishing against a bank of earth that rose from the plain, the soil visible as a black line, until the dirt was full of javelins and Eumenes made the required joke about sewing dragon’s teeth and reaping spears.
Kineas was eager to go forward to the great bend, eager to meet Srayanka, and yet hesitant, as all his doubts of the winter flooded him. Would the city hold behind him? Would the archon stay steady? Would the citizens desert?
Had his anticipations of meeting the Lady Srayanka exceeded the reality?
Fifty young men with a hundred times as many questions did a great deal to distract him, as did Memnon, whose questions rivalled the whole multitude of the rest. By the end of the first day, Kineas felt like a boxer who had spent a whole day parrying blows.
‘You ask too many questions,’ Kineas growled at the Spartan.
‘You know, you are not the first man to say as much,’ Philokles said with a laugh. ‘But I’m doing you a service, and you should thank me.’
‘Bah — service.’ Kineas watched his scouts moving a few stades in advance of the column — a passable skirmish line.