Christian Cameron: The Great King

‘Why?’ Brasidas asked. He rarely asked questions. It was fascinating to see how animated the Persians made him.

Cyrus made the Persian hand sign for ‘a little of this, a little of that’, rocking his hand back and forth. ‘It is not that the Great King needs their ships, or their men,’ he said. ‘But there is a rumour at Sardis that Gelon of Syracusa might lead his fleet against the Great King.’ He frowned. ‘You might know more of that than I, eh? Arimnestos?’

I smiled grimly. ‘I might,’ I allowed.

Brasidas laughed when the silence lengthened. ‘Perhaps you could become a Spartan,’ he said.

Cyrus nodded. ‘You don’t wish to tell us what you know?’

I looked around the circle of firelight. The Persians had all taken one side of the fire, at least in part so that they could tend to their lord, who lay close to the fire, wrapped in three cloaks. On my side of the fire were Sekla and Brasidas — Ka stood alone by the wine, almost asleep, and Leukas was already gone, wrapped in his chiton. Megakles sat quietly, wrapping rope-ends in linen, and showing Hector — patiently — how to do it.

‘Are we to have a war, then?’ I asked. ‘I have been gone from the world of Medes and Greeks for five years.’

Cyrus looked away, and Arayanam frowned, and Darius met my eye and smiled. ‘Aye, little brother, it’s war,’ he said. ‘And I’ll guess you’ve been at this Syracusa about which we hear so much these days.’

I nodded. Persians are great ones for telling the truth, and truth-telling can be habit-forming. Yet even then, I was calculating some lies. I’m a Greek.

‘I was a slave, not a trierarch,’ I said. ‘And pardon me, brothers, but I think that I have captured you, and not the other way around. It is my hospitality you enjoy here, and in this situation I may choose not to answer every question.’

Cyrus nodded. ‘I, too, may decline to answer.’

I bowed slightly, in the Persian way. ‘Elder brother, I respect your right to be silent. But I beg you to see this from my point of view — I am a Greek. I fought Datis at Marathon.’

All three of the Persians laughed. ‘Ah, Datis,’ they said.

We all knew Datis as an ambitious and somewhat power-mad man.

‘I thought Marathon was the end of the Great King’s ambitions in Greece,’ I said.

‘Ambitions!’ Cyrus said, truly stung, I think. ‘My lord is the rightful ruler of all that is under heaven, and the resistance of a few petty states of pirates and terrorists on the fringes of the world will scarcely constitute the end of ambition. Athens encourages the Ionian rebels. Athenian ships prey on our shipping and disrupt our trade. Athenian soldiers burned the temple of Cybele in Sardis. Even last year, Athenians aided rebels against the Great King’s authority in Aegypt. Greek mercenaries are serving against the Great King at Babylon! It is not my lord’s ambition, but the foolish and militant posturing of the Greeks! A culture of hate and war, where no man respects his neighbour! Much less a lawful ruler!’

Brasidas chuckled. ‘In Sparta, we say many of the same things about Athens,’ he said.

Cyrus wasn’t done. ‘Sparta! A nest of godless vipers who executed one of the king’s sacred messengers!’ He leaned in to the fire. ‘When I was a boy, no one in Persia had ever heard of these two cities — Athens and Sparta. But now the Great King knows both of these names, and he will erase them as if they had never been.’

I shook my head. ‘Cyrus — Cyrus. You are letting unaccustomed anger cloud your thoughts. The Great King lacks the reach to take Athens — or Sparta. You have no idea how big the world is.’

I had been outside the pillars of Herakles. I had been to Alba in the Western Ocean, and my idea of the size of the world was profoundly affected. The world was immense.

Cyrus shrugged. ‘In truth, the intransigence of Athens makes me angry, which is foolish.’ He frowned, looked away, and smiled. ‘And a poor return on your hospitality. But yes — the world is wide, and we should be conquering it together — Greeks and Persians side by side — not squandering our strength on each other.’

I poured a libation to the King of the Gods, Zeus. ‘Cyrus — it pains me to say this, but if we stand at the edge of a great war of Greeks and Medes, perhaps it is not the wisest course for me to take you to Carthage.’

Darius sighed. ‘And yet we are an embassy, and embassies are sacred to all the gods,’ he said.

Brasidas nodded. ‘So they are. I come from a family of heralds — I recognise the sign of the god upon you. And surely — leaving aside the differences in our opinions — surely this war is not so imminent?’

Darius looked at Cyrus. Arayanam simply drank another cup of wine, as was his wont. He seldom spoke, unless he had something vital to say, and might have been welcomed in any Lacedaemonian mess group.

Cyrus shrugged. ‘The Great King has ordered a canal dug across the isthmus of Mount Athos,’ he said. ‘He gathers a fleet. Now that the revolt in Aegypt is broken, Athens will not take so long.’

‘How long?’ I asked.

‘Two years?’ he said. ‘A year to defeat Babylon, anyway. See, I am honest.’

I laughed, my mood restored. ‘Two years?’ I said. ‘By Poseidon, Cyrus, I imagined you were speaking of weeks or months. Two years? Pardon me, but in two years storms may wreck a fleet, the Great King may die — a year of famine might cripple your army, or the will of the gods might make itself manifest in a hundred ways.’

Cyrus spread his hands. ‘Perhaps. But Athens can count its days.’ He looked at me. ‘What do you care? You are not an Athenian or a Spartan. You could be one of us. Your former master, Archilogos, is one of the Great King’s most trusted officers. You could be the same, or even greater.’

I frowned. ‘Cyrus, my elder brother,’ I said. ‘I no longer know what I want from life.’ I looked across the fire to the women’s fire, but Briseis’ slim, deep-breasted figure was gone. ‘But I know that service to the Great King is not what I want. And my city is Athens’ closest friend.’

Cyrus shrugged. ‘Athens is doomed,’ he said.

In the morning, we bought every scrap of wood that the Berbers could bring us — herdsmen and villagers from a fishing port a few stades farther west. In the end, after two days attempting to effect repairs with too little wood, I gave up on the Phoenician ship and broke it up. It seemed like a defeat, and a waste, but there simply wasn’t enough good wood to repair the two great gashes in its side. And then there were the rowers. They were mutinous, and the more I fed them, and the more they recovered their strength, the more mutinous I found them. So after two days, I ordered the Phoenician broken up, and her good timbers were immediately pressed into the repairs of my lovely Lydia . With the worked pine and cedar of the other ship, we had our own repaired in a day, and we had enough pitch in our own ballast to caulk her tight.

My rowers were all free men, and professionals — a mixture of the very best of all the fishermen, herdsmen and freed slave rowers I’d had for the last few years. Every man of them had arms, and I lined them up on the soft sand and formed them four deep, like a small phalanx, with my marines on the right and my archers on the left, and I took them to the other rowers before they could consider flight or resistance. We had weapons and training and numbers. They had nothing but sullen ferocity.

Men who are ill used become evil men themselves. Ill use is like a disease that robs men of their worth and leaves them broken, empty vessels capable of filling with ire and hate and inflicting only harm. They stood like a sullen pack, and I eyed them with something like loathing.