Davos’s command tent couldn’t accommodate the more than forty men, so he had his guard captain, Martius, lead thirty guardsmen (the detail had also been expanded) to clear an open space in front of it. They cordoned off the area to prevent outsiders from spying and lit torches all around, casting the assembly in a flickering, dramatic light.

Davos’s gaze swept over each man’s face, taking stock of his command.

First Heavy Infantry Cohort Commander—the steady and magnanimous Capus.

Second Heavy Infantry Cohort Commander—Antonios, a shrewd judge of character who knew how to seize the perfect moment in battle.

Third Heavy Infantry Cohort Commander—the valiant Amyntas.

Fourth Heavy Infantry Cohort Commander—Alexis, a thoughtful and strategic planner.

Fifth Heavy Infantry Cohort Commander—his loyal confidant, Hylos.

First Light Infantry Cohort Commander—Epitenes, a man of strong tactical ability.

Second Light Infantry Cohort Commander—Tspites, whose deep piety led him to worship Davos as a divinely chosen figure.

Then there were the staff officers: Mersis, the quartermaster; Herpos, the medical officer; Axistes, the herald; and Laedes, the cavalry captain. Although his unit had few horses left, Davos had kept the formation intact, valuing the hard-won experience his men had gained as cavalry. Finally, there were the twenty-eight platoon commanders, all seasoned and talented officers. They, along with the fourteen hundred veteran soldiers who had survived the long march, were the foundation upon which he would build his future in this world.

Tonight, he had to persuade them, after a year of brutal campaigning, to follow him once more into a foreign land thousands of miles away. He was not entirely confident he could succeed. He cleared his throat.

“Brothers,” he began, “the little farce you all put on in Byzantium today was brilliantly done! Cleander immediately expressed his ‘sympathy’ for our plight and agreed to provide us with some grain. That is all thanks to your efforts!”

The men erupted in laughter.

Olivas boomed, “General, that wasn’t a farce, it was a comedy! You should have seen the looks on those Byzantines’ faces! Some of them looked like they were about to faint!”

Another wave of laughter rolled through the crowd. Only Matonis, his conscience still pricking him, managed just a furtive chuckle, his head bowed.

“Yes, a comedy,” Davos echoed, his voice softening into a sigh. “But how long can a comedy like this last? We are trapped here, unable and unwilling to go anywhere else. I have reliable intelligence that Sparta is preparing for war with Persia. The Spartan general Thibron is already in Ephesus, recruiting soldiers. Do you really think he will overlook a band of veterans with our experience fighting Persians? Before long, we could be fighting on Persian soil once again!”

“Is this true? I’m sick of fighting Persians! I don’t want to go back!”

“How can this be?! I was planning to buy a plot of land in Crete, find a wife…”

The officers immediately erupted into a nervous clamor, their unease palpable.

Davos let the commotion swell before dropping another bombshell. “And what’s more, the relatively kind-hearted Cleander is about to be relieved of his post. His replacement is the Spartan, Aristarchus[1]!”

Someone gasped.

Davos glanced in the direction of the sound. “Some of you have heard of him, some have not,” he said, his voice turning cold as ice. “Let me tell you. This Spartan became famous in the war against Athens. Not for his bravery, but for this—” Davos’s expression grew grim, and he enunciated each word with heavy, deliberate force. “On two separate occasions, he sold defeated Greeks into slavery!”

His words hit the assembly like a bucket of cold water on a grease fire. The place exploded.

“He’s going to sell us?!”

“If he tries, I’ll kill him myself!”

“We are freemen, not Sparta’s enemies! They have no right! It goes against all Greek tradition!”

“Sparta has always been arrogant and tyrannical! Now that they are the masters of Greece, they do whatever they please!”

Davos watched the panic spread among his men, then raised his voice, his words now saturated with emotion. “We are free Greeks! We fight, we struggle, we endure just to survive! But in the eyes of the Spartans, in the eyes of the citizens of the great city-states, we are nothing but landless rabble, thieves and bandits who threaten their stability! That is why Anaxibius can lie to us without consequence, luring us here with false promises of pay only to abandon us! That is why Cleander can trick us, drive us out of the city, shut the gates, deny us food, and leave us to face the Thracian hordes alone! Sparta is all-powerful. Can we dare to resist?! Our choices are to be sold as slaves, to work starved and half-clothed until we collapse and die in a field or a mine, our bodies left to rot in the wilderness! Or, we can follow Sparta into battle, suffering new wounds every day until we are killed on some nameless, barren plain! Or perhaps, if we are lucky, we return to our homes. And then what?! As landless freemen, we are outsiders in every city, denied all rights, met with scorn, until we die in obscurity…”

The officers fell silent, listening. In the sudden quiet, the sound of a man’s stifled sobs could be heard.

Davos’s own eyes were now filled with tears. “Is this the reward we earned after a year of bleeding in Persia, after fighting so desperately to return to our homeland?! Are we to be denied even the right to a peaceful and stable life?! Is there truly no place in this world for poor freemen like us to live in peace?!!”

Davos’s roar, torn from the very depths of his soul, shook every man present. They clenched their fists, their jaws tight, their eyes burning with a mixture of fury and anguish.

Hylos rose to his feet, his hands trembling as he reached them out. “General Davos! Our leader! Hades’ Favored One of Hades! Tell us what to do! What must we do to escape this fate?!”

“Yes, General Davos, we need your oracle!” Hylos’s words sparked a fire, and soon Capus, Antonios, and the others were all on their feet, pleading with him.

As every eye in the assembly fixed upon him, Davos’s expression became one of supreme solemnity. “Last night,” he began, his voice dropping to a reverent hush, “a being entered my dreams. He was cloaked in a golden light so brilliant I could not see his face. He pulled me from my bed, and we passed through the wall of my tent and flew high into the air. I looked down in fear, and the Mediterranean Sea was laid out beneath me like a detailed map. The Peloponnesian peninsula was a great hammer thrust into the sea, and next to it, to the west, Italy was shaped like a boot. Further west, I saw the Pillars of Heracles[2], standing like a gateway between the sea and the great ocean. The coast of Egypt was a long, green carpet that stretched all the way to Africa…”

Davos’s dreamlike narration captivated them. They compared his description to their own knowledge of the world, realizing how it all fit together, and their belief in his words deepened.

“Then, the man of golden light spoke one sentence to me.”

“What did he say?” they asked in unison.

“He said, ‘Davos, the destiny of you and your soldiers lies in the west of the Mediterranean!’ And with that, he pushed me from the sky. I woke up just as I was about to hit the ground,” Davos finished, his voice still holding a trace of fear, as if he were still lost in the dream.

“The west of the Mediterranean… where is that?”

“Sicily?”

“It could be Italy.”

“Iberia[3] is also possible.”

“Why not Numidia[4]?”

“Who was the man of golden light? Was it Hades?”

“How could Hades be surrounded by golden light? It must have been Athena!”

As the men debated fervently, Davos let out a silent sigh of relief. Since becoming general, he had intentionally avoided leaning on his “Hades’ Favored One” reputation, choosing instead to win his men’s trust through his abilities. But the stakes of this decision were too high. He had no choice but to once again call upon the gods of Greece for aid. He had deliberately made the oracle ambiguous, for that was the nature of all true oracles. He remembered the story of the king of Lydia, who, before going to war with Persia, paid a fortune for a prophecy from Apollo’s oracle at Delphi. The oracle declared: A great empire will be destroyed. The king went to war overjoyed, only to see his own Lydian kingdom annihilated. When questioned, the priests of Apollo simply explained that the Lydian Kingdom was, after all, a great empire in Asia Minor.