He sent the squadrons off, one each day, while he continued to wrangle with the hipparch of Pantecapaeum and wrote detailed orders for the city allies. Leucon took the elite first troop on the day after the festival. They were ready, still hard from the visit to the Sakje, and eager for it. Kineas sent Niceas to keep an eye on them - and to make sure that their camp was well sited and well built. On the second day, when Diodorus’s squadron was clear of the gates, six light triremes arrived from their fellow city, the first concrete sign that the assembly of Pantecapaeum intended to honour its pledge. Kineas went down to see them and to discuss strategy with their navarch, Demostrate, a short, fat man with a nose like a pig. Despite his looks - ugly as Hephaestes - he was cheerful, even comic, and his ships were in good order, from the lustiness of their rowers, citizens all, to their sails, painted with a seated Athena twice as tall as a man, floating over the black-hulled ships like banners to the goddess. Demostrate immediately agreed to hunt down the Macedonian triremes.
