The intelligence arrived on a grey morning, carried by a Phoenician trader who had slipped through the strait before dawn.
Ampelos brought the message to the war room himself, his face tight with something Lysander rarely saw on the old diplomat: fear. The tablet was small, the markings in Mycenaean code, but Ampelos had already deciphered it.
"They've set a date," Ampelos said. "Agamemnon has called for the fleet to assemble at Aulis. The rendezvous is in three weeks."
Lysander took the tablet and read it. The message was from one of Ampelos's contacts in the Corinthian network, a man who had been reliable for years. It listed troop numbers, ship counts, supply estimates. The coalition was larger than they had feared. A thousand ships. Fifty thousand men. Every kingdom in the Peloponnese had answered the call.
But the date was what mattered. Three weeks.
"That's faster than we expected," Lysander said.
