Tyrant by Christian Cameron Read Free Book Online Page A

with a couple of bruises and a general sense of eudaimia , well-being that inevitably came to him from the gymnasium, Kineas walked beside Calchus. Diodorus had gone off with some younger men to see the market.
     
    ‘You could do well here,’ Calchus said suddenly. ‘They like you. This fighting you do - it’s no job for a man. In defence of your city, that’s different. But - a mercenary? You squander what the gods have given you. And one day some barbarian’s sword is in your gizzard, and there you are. Stay here, buy a farm. Take a wife. Isokles has a girl - she’s pretty enough, smart, a housekeeper. I’d put you up for citizenship after the festival of Herakles. By Zeus, they’d accept you today after that boxing.’
     
    Kineas didn’t know what to say. It appealed. He’d liked the men. The citizens of Tomis were a good lot, provincial but not rustic, given to gross jokes and amateur philosophy. And all good sports. He shurgged. ‘I owe it to my men. They came here to join me.’ Kineas didn’t add that something in him looked forward to another campaign.
     
    ‘They can just as easily move on and take up service elsewhere. You are a gentleman, Kineas. You don’t owe them anything.’
     
    Kineas frowned. ‘Most of them are gentlemen, Calchus.’
     
    ‘Oh, of course.’ Calchus waved dismissively. ‘But not any more. Not really. Perhaps Diodorus? Could be a factor, or your steward. And those Gauls - they should be slaves. They’d be happier as slaves.’ Calchus spoke with authority and finality.
     
    Kineas frowned again and allowed himself to be distracted by a man lying in the street. He didn’t need to quarrel with his host. ‘A barbarian? ’ he asked, pointing.
     
    The man in the street was plainly a barbarian. He wore trousers of leather and had filthy long hair hanging in plaits, and a leather jacket covered in a riot of colourful decoration, and he wore gold. His jacket had several gold ornaments, and showed spaces where other bangles had been removed. He had an earring in his ear. And a cap on his head like a Thracian.
     
    And he stank of urine and vomit and bad sweat. They were almost on top of him. He wasn’t asleep - his eyes were open and unfocused.
     
    Calchus looked at him with deep contempt. ‘A Scyth. Disgusting people. Ugly, stinking barbarians, no one can speak their language, and they don’t even make good slaves.’
     
    ‘I thought they were dangerous.’ Kineas looked at the drunk with interest. He imagined that at Olbia there would be a lot of Scyths, born to horseback, a dangerous enemy. This one didn’t look like a warrior.
     
    ‘Don’t believe it. They can’t hold wine, can’t speak, can’t really walk. Scarcely human. I’ve never seen one sober.’
     
    Calchus walked on and Kineas followed him, albeit unwillingly. He wanted a better look, but Calchus was uninterested. Kineas looked back, and saw that the drunk was rising unsteadily to his feet. Then he toppled again, and Kineas followed Calchus around a corner and lost sight of the Scyth.
     
    He heard a lot about Scyths at the symposium because he was the senior guest and he introduced the topic. The wine flowed; the inevitable flute girls and fish courses folllowed each other in the approved manner, and then the older men settled in to talk, moving their couches together so that the younger men could relish the more amorous of the flute girls with a degree of privacy. Eyeing a black-eyed girl, Kineas had a brief pang that he was now considered old enough to make conversation, but he pulled his couch to the side, and when he was asked, he suggested that they all tell him about the Scyths on the plains to the north.
     
    Isokles took the pitcher of wine from a slave and looked at Kineas. ‘You’re not proposing we drink in the Scythian fashion? Unwatered wine?’
     
    The young men yelled for it, but the older men held the day, and the wine was mixed at a sedate two waters to each measure of wine.