A low wail rose from the crowd when they spotted smoke rising over Athens. They knew exactly what it meant. Just the thought of returning once more to the devastation they remembered, to burned buildings and the excrement of soldiers, was enough to cause weeping, sobbing in some. Others swore and shook their fists at an enemy they could not see, calling down the wrath of the gods on Persian heads and the heads of their children.

In the crowd, one man stood up, glaring around him. Bearded and powerful of frame, he looked like a blacksmith, someone who worked with his hands. He wore a stained leather apron and his shoulders were thick with hair, otherwise bare. Agariste felt her eye drawn to him, then to the man’s wife as she sat at his feet. The woman half-rose, holding out her hands, clearly pleading with him to sit back down.

In response, the burly man stepped away from his woman and children, raising his voice to be heard.

‘The city burns again !’ he bellowed over their heads, almost to the sky above. ‘My shop, my home – everything I have is being trampled by Persians. My savings? They were taken from me on the docks by officials from the council.’ He held up a tally stick like a talisman. ‘I can redeem my losses when the emergency is over, so they said!’

He snapped it in a sudden furious gesture, tossing the pieces at his feet. As the crowd watched wide-eyed, he spat on the ground, making others who sat nearby shift away from him. More were listening as his voice grew in strength.

‘My own people robbing me to poverty, while an army of painted dogs roams Athens once again and laughs? I worked for those coins! I gave blood and sweat for them. It is too much!’

‘Sit down!’ someone else shouted.

‘Come and make me,’ he roared back, red-faced and spattering flecks of spittle. ‘Our archons and strategoi care nothing for us! What do they know of hard work? Of years of work, of a man’s savings taken from him! They’ll take our blood, though, won’t they, given meekly like good little lambs? Oh, they’ll sacrifice us on the altar of war without hesitating. While they sit in fine houses and drink wine. They must laugh, mustn’t they? We give all we have, and what do we get for it?’ He pointed over to the black smoke writhing in the distance. ‘That . That’s what we get.’