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last thing we needed was a pack of runaway slaves giving away our positions.
    My three Persians got their lord over the side and carried him between two spears to the fire that Sekla had already lit on the beach, and in an hour we had mutton cooking. Any plan to keep our presence secret was wrecked when a pair of cautious shepherds approached and offered to sell us sheep.
    By the time the moon was high in the sky, we had the local headman at our fire, and he knew we were Greeks.
    I would love to say that I lay with Briseis that night. I desired her – I watched her at the fire the women had, and I sent her a joint of meat after I made the sacrifices to Poseidon and poured libations to all the gods for our safe arrival at land, and she sent me back a cup of sweet wine. But my feelings of the sacred – of what was owed to Artapherenes – kept me from her side. Instead, I introduced my Persian friends – the friends of my earliest youth – to the friends of my recent slavery.
    Brasidas, as a Spartiate, took to the Persians immediately. They value most of the same things – indeed, Spartans and Persians have a great deal in common.
    But Sekla had no love of the Persians, and they in turn treated him much like a slave – at least in part because the only black men they knew were slaves, I suspect. And the Persians, for their part, were amazed to hear that Megakles was from Gaul – still more amazed that Leukas was from Hyperborea.
    ‘He looks just like any other man!’ Darius laughed. ‘Well – except for the odd eyes and the dead white skin.’
    ‘And the size of his nose,’ Aryanam said, but Leukas couldn’t be offended, as it was all said in Persian. Still, they handed wine around to the others, and after an hour, even Sekla was less prickly.
    I remember that I looked at the moon – Artemis’s sign – and wondered again at the risk I was running. ‘Cyrus – you are bound to Carthage to get allies there against the Greeks. Am I right?’
    Cyrus narrowed his eyes. ‘In effect – yes.’ He shrugged. ‘Really, it is far more complicated than that,’ he continued.
    ‘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