The boy bowed his head immediately.

‘Very well.’

With that settled, the king smiled.

‘Good. The men should see you ride. When the sun sets, I will expect you at the feast for my officers. My generals and I will make plans to punish these Ionian cities who quake before us.’

Xerxes bowed once more. He had hoped for some time to himself, without his father directing every hour before sleep. Still, the rewards for his obedience would come. Though he could not imagine a world that did not have his beloved father in it, one day, the empire would be his. His command would turn the clouds back then, or dim the sun in his father’s memory. It was a good thought.

Part One

490 BC

1

Xanthippus stood very still, breathing through his nose, murmuring instructions to the slaves working around him. The three men responded with slight dips of their heads, intent on their tasks. All of them had served his wife’s family since childhood. A stray thought came to him that every Spartan had seven slaves whose task it was to ready him for war. Perhaps Athenians were more efficient. Xanthippus neither smiled, nor voiced the thought aloud. His mood was restless, impatient. He was thirty-eight years old and he knew he might die that day.

He could no longer hear the uproar in the city, though he doubted it had lessened. His wife’s home was huge, an estate with olive and fig orchards. The room where Xanthippus stood to be armed was right in the centre, far from outer walls that would not have disgraced a fortress. Columns of white stone ringed a central space around him, open to the blue sky above. There was peace there, far from the tumult and fear of war. Around that quiet heart lay a dozen rooms on two floors. Past the outer wall, the house gates opened onto the road to Eleusis, standing to the north-west of the centre of Athens.

Xanthippus had been woken by shouting in the darkness, long before the sun had risen. Runners from the house had been sent into the Agora, to the bronze statues of heroes that represented the ten tribes of Athens. The council of the Areopagus had mounted sheets of fine papyrus there, under each statue. Slaves with torches stood to lend a flickering light to anyone who needed it. Every tribe was called, every deme of the city and the lands around. All they feared had come.

Xanthippus grunted as his greaves were pressed into place. Moulded to the exact shape of his shin and knee, they needed no straps or thongs, but were held secure by the natural spring in the metal. They gleamed as if made of gold, shining with the same blessed oil that had been rubbed into his limbs.

‘Hold a moment,’ he said.

The men stood back and he dropped into a low lunge. The greaves remained in place and he nodded. As he rose again, one of the men reached around him to fasten a kilt of white linen. His thighs would remain uncovered. It was one thing to run or train naked in the heat of summer. Battle was different. Xanthippus had learned from his father how useful a bit of cloth can be, when sweat or blood is in your eyes.