Free Tyrant: Storm of Arrows by Christian Cameron Page A

did not cower.
    ‘Virtue - freedom and liberty - is the concern of every man, not a few politicians or a few soldiers,’ he said. ‘I will chide you, Olbia, in full view of all the gods. You allowed a few men to make your laws and paid a few men to guard your walls, and those few became your rulers. Politicians and mercenaries!’ he bellowed, and his words echoed off the walls.
    ‘Cleitus died to pull down the tyrant - and failed, because he was one man, murdered for his voice. We waded in blood to stop Macedon - aye, and lost hundreds of the flower of this city’s best men. But on our return, we overthrew the tyrant in an hour with a thousand willing hands helping us into the city and into the citadel. Women threw down ropes to the army. Slaves led us to the open postern of the citadel. Never let this lesson be lost on you, citizens of Olbia! Women of Olbia! Slaves of Olbia! In your hands are the keys to the city and the keys of your own chains!’
    Chains chains chains echoed off the walls.
    ‘Had Cleitus lived, he would now be archon,’ Kineas continued. ‘He was an honest man, a powerful speaker and a trained lawmaker. But he is dead.’ Kineas paused, and then pointed at another Nike, also from Nicomedes’ house, beside him on the steps. ‘Had he lived, Nicomedes might have been archon. He desired the role with all his ambition, and he had the talents to lead the city to greatness. But he fell in the battle.’
    Kineas looked out over the crowd, where men shouted ‘Lead us, then!’ as if they had been paid. He shook his head.
    ‘I have acted as archon for a few days - to see the dead buried, and to see good laws passed. But I will not be tyrant. And if I stay, either I will make myself your lord, or you yourselves will make me take the power. I must go east - to fight against Macedon, and to preserve the liberty you have just won. Our allies on the plains still need our help, and I will go with them. And when I return, you will be a strong state, with a free assembly, and I will vote my vote and grumble when my motion is defeated, drinking my wine in a wine shop and cursing that my side had the fewer voices.’
    Then he told the story of the campaign, from the first rumour of Zopryon, to the assembly voting for war, through the campaign against the Getae and on to the last battle - a long story, so that his voice was hoarse when he reached the end. He named as many of the dead as he could - from young Kyros, who had been a great athlete, the first to fall in combat, to Satyrus One-Eye, who died in the courtyard of the tyrant’s palace. He recounted their names and their deeds, until the crowd wept again that so many had fallen. And as he spoke, the sun rose to its full height in the sky.
    When he fell silent, Helladius saluted the disk of the sun, and all the people cheered, and then they sang:
    I begin singing of Demeter,
The goddess with shining hair,
And Persephone, her daughter, fair—
Slim-ankled, too. Hades took her,
Zeus gave her to his brother,
Far-seeing Lord of Thunder.
    They sang the hymn to the end, and another to Apollo, as the sun rose strong on their faces. And then Kineas raised his arms for silence and summoned the assembly for the next day. He bowed to the grave markers of Cleitus and Nicomedes as if the men were standing with him and then he limped down the steps of the temple, mounted his horse and rode away.
    That night, Kineas dreamed again of the column of the dead, and again a dead friend vomited sand - this time Graccus, a long-dead boyhood friend. But the tone of the dream changed, so that he was less afraid. And then a woman came to him.
    ‘I have come to offer you a choice,’ she said. She had the white skin of a goddess and she looked like his mother - or like someone else, someone as familiar as his mother.
    He smiled at her in the dream because it was such a Greek dream, a welcome relief from the strain of the tree and the animal totems and the alienness that had infected