Tyrant: Storm of Arrows (21 page)

Kineas discovered that it was Niceas he was hanging on for when he saw the unmistakable width of Coenus’s broad shoulders coming down the ridge from the west. Closer up, the dozen Greek troopers were obviously
not
a returning patrol, and closer still, Kineas could see Niceas, swathed in fur robes, riding a big pony.

Kineas sent a boy for his riding horse and went out to meet them, his throat tight. It remained tight while he embraced Niceas, who winced and cursed, and Coenus, and Crax and Sitalkes and Antigonus. Niceas looked twenty years older, and Coenus looked considerably thinner, but the rest of them smiled a great deal and shuffled when Kineas praised them.

Privately, Coenus was less sanguine. ‘He’s not the same,’ Coenus said. Niceas was sitting on the rim of the hearth, visibly soaking up warmth. ‘I’m not sure he’ll ever fight again. But he’s alive, and he’s as tough as a slave’s sandal.’ Coenus drank back his wine - his third cup - and swallowed a handful of olives.

‘Was it hard?’ Kineas asked.

‘Never,’ Coenus said. ‘Best hunting of my life. Like Xenophon’s notion of Elysium. After Lot came, we sent back for grain, and later the farmers came to us. It was never dull, and those are good men you gave me.’ His grin had a self-conscious air to it. ‘I loved it.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Niceas says we should carve a kingdom out of this land.’ Coenus, usually fastidious, had a bushy beard, and he rubbed it with his fingers as if embarrassed by it. ‘I want to sign up. I’ll put a shrine to Artemis in that valley - I know just the spot. I’ll hunt until I’m too old to ride, and then I’ll sit around losing my teeth and telling lies.’ Then he stopped grinning. ‘Watching him was hard,’ he said.

Niceas was grey with fatigue and went to bed too soon.

Kineas lay next to Niceas in the tent. Niceas slept more deeply than he had before his wound, and he lay still, as if in death, so that Kineas often listened to him like an anxious parent with a sick child, leaning across the older man’s body to hear his soft breathing. Tonight, Kineas had Philokles on his other side - it was a cold, damp night with a threat of freezing rain in the air, and every man in the army pushed close to his tent mates.

Kineas was tired with worry and relief, but sleep would not come, and he lay listening to the sounds made by his night guards, by two thousand horses in the dark, by a few foolish soldiers lingering late by their mess fires. They, too, were relieved to find that boats were waiting for them.

And then, as subtle as the first fall of snow, he was . . .
standing amidst the bones at the base of the tree, surrounded by the silent combat of dead friends against dead foes. He reached for a limb and drew himself up until the combat beneath him vanished and he looked up. The tree towered over him, reaching into the sky. He noticed that the tree lacked the misty quality of his first dreams - now it was as palpable and as solid as any tree outside the world of dreams.

Kineas called them
idiotai,
after Thucydides.

‘Put him down,’ Kineas said. ‘And don’t even think of harming me.’
Me
came out as a squeak, as the man dropped the boy to fall in the garbage of the street. ‘My father is—’