Christian Cameron: Tyrant

The other man nodded. Kineas thought for a minute, his head down on one fist as he did when something puzzled him, and then spoke. ‘I’ll get you the wherewithal from the house. Write a couple of your famous letters and get me some information. In Ectabana and in Athens, no one ever mentioned that Antipater would march.’ Diodorus nodded curtly. Kineas looked them over. ‘We lived,’ he said suddenly. There had been times when it seemed pretty certain that none of them would.

Niceas shook his head. ‘Just barely.’ He had a cup of wine in his hand, and he hurried to slop a libation on the ground for his apparent ingratitude to the gods. ‘Here’s to the shades of them that didn’t.’

They all nodded.

‘Good to see you all again. We’ll ride together from here. No more ships for me.’ They all walked out to the horses, except Diodorus, who stayed as sentry. It was one of their invariable rules — they always had a sentry. Learned the hard way. Justified too many times.

The horses were in good shape, their hooves hard from the rock and sand in the soil, their coats shiny. They had fifteen heavy horses and six light, as well as several pack animals — a former charger past his best years but still willing, two mules they’d captured raiding Thracians with the boy king and never quite lost. To Kineas, every horse had a story; most were Persian chargers from the spoils of the fight at the Issus River, but there was a bay he’d bought in the army market after the fall of Tyre, and the metal-grey charger, the biggest mare he’d ever seen, had been left wandering riderless after a skirmish at a ford on the Euphrates. The big horse reminded him of the other grey — the stallion he’d taken at Issus, long dead of cold and poor food. War was unkind to horses. And men. Kineas found himself moved by how few of them were left. But his chest was tight with the joy of seeing them.

‘Well done, all. I need a day or two — we’re not due in Olbia until the Kharisteria, so we have time. Let me get my legs under me, and then we’ll ride.’

Niceas waved his arms at them. ‘Leaving in a day? Lots to do, gentlemen. Tack, armour, weapons.’ He began to issue suggestions very like orders, and the other men, most of them born to wealth and power, obeyed him, although he had been born in a brothel.

Kineas put his hand on his hyperetes’ shoulder. ‘I’ll bring my kit down and join you this afternoon.’ Another habit — every man cleaned his own kit, like hoplites. ‘Send Diodorus to me. I’m going to the gymnasium.’

Niceas nodded and led the rest of them to work.

In what passed for the city, they had three things built of stone: the wharfs, the warehouses and the gymnasium. Kineas went to the gymnasium with Diodorus. Philokles joined them as they left, and Calchus insisted on acting as their guide and sponsor.

If the size of his establishment hadn’t immediately given away his wealth, his reception in the agora and the gymnasium was ample evidence. In the agora, he was greeted with respectful nods and several men solicited his favour as he walked through. At the gymnasium, the other three men were immediately admitted free of charge at Calchus’s insistence.

‘I built this,’ Calchus said with pride. He proceeded to catalogue the building’s merits. Kineas, perhaps closer in his mind to Athens, thought it was satisfactory yet provincial. Calchus’s boasting grated on him. Nonetheless, the gymnasium offered him the best opportunity to exercise that he’d had in months. He stripped, dropping his borrowed garment on top of his sandals.

Calchus guffawed. ‘Too long in the saddle!’ he laughed.

Kineas stiffened with resentment. His legs were a trifle over muscled at the top, and his lower legs had never been much to look at. To his fellow Hellenes, who worshipped the male form, his legs were less than perfect, although he had to go to a gymnasium to be reminded of it.

He began to warm up. Calchus, by contrast, had a hard body, carefully maintained, although he had the beginning of a roll of fat at his waist. And he had long legs. He began to wrestle with a much younger man on the sand of the courtyard. Spectators made ribald comments. The young man was apparently a regular.

Kineas gestured to Diodorus. ‘Fancy a couple of falls?’

‘At your pleasure.’ Diodorus was tall, bony and ascetic looking. He was not any Hellene’s idea of beauty either.

Kineas circled, waiting until the taller man stepped towards him to attack and pushed in to meet him and get inside the man’s long reach. Diodorus took the momentum of the attack into his arms and threw it over his hip, and Kineas crashed his length in the sand.

He got up slowly. ‘Was that necessary?’

Diodorus was embarrassed. ‘No.’

Kineas gave a bitter smile. ‘If you’re trying to tell me that your wrestling is of a different order than mine, I already knew that.’

Diodorus raised his hand. ‘How often do I get a chance to use that move? You walked into it. I couldn’t help myself.’ He was smiling, and Kineas rubbed the sore spot on his back and stepped forward for another hold. He felt a tiny twist of fear — the niggling fear that he carried into every contest, every fight.

He went for a low hold, got a piece of it, and he and Diodorus ended up in an ugly mess on the ground, neither man able to pin the other and both coated in sand and grit. By unspoken mutual consent, they both left off their holds and helped each other up.

Outside, Calchus had pinned the young man he was wrestling. He didn’t seem in a hurry to let him up, and there was a great deal of laughter from the other citizens. Kineas faced Diodorus again and this time they circled and feinted and closed and recovered at a more normal tempo. It was almost dance, and Diodorus stayed to the movements of his gymnasium lessons, which kept Kineas comfortable. He even gained a fall.

Diodorus rubbed his hip and smiled. Kineas had fallen atop him, a perfectly legitimate approach to the game but one inevitably painful to the victim. ‘Even?’

‘Even.’ Kineas gave him a hand up.

Calchus was standing with the young man and some other citizens. He called out, ‘Come and wrestle with me, Kineas.’

Kineas frowned and turned his head, uncomfortable with all these strangers, the twinge of fear strong because Calchus was bigger, a better wrestler and as a boy in Athens had liked to use his advantages to inflict a little pain. Kineas disliked pain. Ten years of war had not accustomed him to dealing with sprains and bruises and deep cuts that took weeks to heal; if anything, ten years of watching men live or die at the whim of the gods had made him more afraid.

He shrugged. Calchus was his host, a fine wrestler and looking to demonstrate his superiority. Kineas gritted his teeth and obliged him, losing the first fall in some carefully fought grappling, taking the second fall by a matter of split-second timing that was more luck than skill, and which surprised both men. Calchus surprised him again by rising from the fall graciously, nothing but praise on his lips, and going on without rancour. Ten years ago, the adolescent Calchus would have come on for blood. The third fall was like the first; careful, at times more like dance than combat, and when Kineas was eventually pinned, the action caused the spectators to whistle in appreciation.

Calchus was breathing hard, and his arm circled Kineas’s waist as he helped him to his feet. ‘You give a good match. Did you all see him?’ he called to the others. ‘He used to be an easy mark for a fall.’

Men hurried forward to compliment Calchus on his victory — and to tell Kineas how well he had done. It was all a trifle sickening — a remarkable amount of praise lavished for so small a thing, but Kineas bore it in the knowledge that he had given a better guest gift than money, a memorable fight that left his host looking well.