Alkibiades felt like the volcano himself after another fight with Nikias. The Athenians had sent Nikias along with the expedition to serve as an anchor for Alkibiades. He knew it, knew it and hated it. He didn’t particularly hate Nikias himself; he just found him laughable, to say nothing of irrelevant. Nikias was twenty years older than he, and those twenty years might just as well have been a thousand.

Nikias dithered and worried and fretted. Alkibiades thrust home. Nikias gave reverence to the gods with obsessive piety, and did nothing without checking the omens first. Alkibiades laughed at the gods when he didn’t ignore them. Nikias had opposed this expedition to Sicily. It had been Alkibiades’ idea.

“We were lucky ever to take this place,” Nikias had grumbled. He kept fooling with his beard, as if he had lice. For all Alkibiades knew, he did.

“Yes, my dear,” Alkibiades had said with such patience as he could muster. “Luck favors us. We should-we had better-take advantage of it. Ask Lamakhos. He’ll tell you the same.” Lamakhos was the other leading officer in the force. Alkibiades didn’t despise him. He wasn’t worth despising. He was just…dull.

“I don’t care what Lamakhos thinks,” Nikias had said testily. “I think we ought to thank the gods we’ve come this far safely. We ought to thank them, and then go home.”

“And make Athens the laughingstock of Hellas?” And make me the laughingstock of Hellas? “Not likely!”

“We cannot do what we came to Sicily to do,” Nikias had insisted.

“You were the one who told the Assembly we needed such a great force. Now we have it, and you still aren’t happy with it?”

“I never dreamt they would be mad enough actually to send so much.”

Alkibiades hadn’t hit him then. He might have, but he’d been interrupted. A commotion outside made both men hurry out of Alkibiades’ tent. “What is it?” Alkibiades called to a man running his way. “Is the Syracusan fleet coming up to fight us?” It had stayed in the harbor when an Athenian reconnaissance squadron sailed south a couple of weeks before. Maybe the Syracusans hoped to catch the Athenian triremes beached and burn or wreck them. If they did, they would get a nasty surprise.