Xanthippus hid his irritation.

‘You go first then. I can sleep anywhere. We’ll make camp, but without a fire. I have a little meat and bread in the pack, enough to tide us over. We should reach the Spartan wall around noon tomorrow. After that, it will be their rations.’

The prospect didn’t delight any of them. Xanthippus saw the young man was licking his lips, as if they were sore. He had heard rumours Cimon drank more than any three men, without much effect. Xanthippus shook his head. It was not his concern, though he wondered how much a hold it had on him.

As they crested a hill and looked down into a shallow valley, their spirits rose at a stream running through the land below. There were some fields and a tiny home there, though the fences lay flat in places, clearly broken. That was not a good sign. Xanthippus grimaced as they guided the horses down. Persian scouts had come through there, looking for anything they could take. There was no law at such times. Some men revealed a noble spirit. Others became little better than wolves.

With Relas and Onesimos keeping an eye out for ambush, Xanthippus and Cimon reined in and dismounted. Xanthippus gestured silently, drawing his sword. To his irritation, Cimon left his in the scabbard and just shrugged, looking around.

They stood in the yard of what had once been a smallholding, a family farm scratching a living out of the dry earth. Xanthippus saw the door hung open on one leather hinge. He had barely ducked under the lintel before the smell told him all he needed to know. Three bodies lay inside, close to the door, each torn and broken in different ways. There was no second floor or second room, just a simple hearth and a curtain where the father and mother must have slept in happier times. Flies crawled everywhere and the smell was so thick it seemed to cling to his skin. It brought back every battlefield he had known, as well as a memory of his childhood, when he had discovered a rotting badger under a barn, a reek he associated with death ever after.

‘No one alive in there,’ Xanthippus called back to the others.

He wondered if he should bury them. As soon as he had the thought he regretted it, but they were his people, after all. Xanthippus cursed under his breath. When he turned, it was to see Cimon staring at a lone chicken, scratching in the yard. The fate of a young family had not concerned him at all, but this had his full concentration. Whoever had murdered the farmer had missed it, one single brown fowl.