“Let him go,” I said, facing the others.
Grasping Alcaeus, I forced him to walk with me, muttering to him, seeing Thasos, dropping his stones with a guilty grin.
I wanted to forget the faces but I knew most of the men: young, bearded faces, most of them friends of Alcaeus, some of them his soldiers.
“Don’t lead me,” Alcaeus protested.
“You need to be led.”
“You came at the wrong time.”
“What’s to become of you?”
“Let me go,” he said.
“I’ll see you home. Here, Thasos, take his arm. Thasos, were you mad?”
“We should have stoned him.”