Tyrant: Storm of Arrows (18 page)

Over Diodorus’s shoulder, Sappho smiled. She was mounted on a cavalry charger, a bigger horse than most women could handle. She rode well.

‘Lucky bastard,’ Diodorus said. After a pause he said, ‘Let me come, too.’

Kineas considered it a moment. He’d like few things better than to have his last two Athenians riding by his side, two of the three men in the world that he loved most. But he shook his head, looking at the column. ‘They need you,’ he said.

Diodorus grimaced. ‘Truer words were never spoke,’ he said ruefully. He shrugged. ‘They need you, too.’

Sappho pulled her horse up by them. ‘“Reason, my lord, may dwell within a man,”’ she said, quoting Sophokles.

‘“And yet abandon him when troubles come,”’ Diodorus said, capping her quote with relish. Their eyes met, and they shared a smile that touched the faint lines at the corners of her eyes.

Kineas looked at both of them. ‘I take it that means I have your permission to ride on?’ he asked.

Diodorus nodded, laughing.

They rode along the river for half a day, and Kineas said nothing beyond comments on the fields and the weather. Finally, as they crested a long ridge to see another in the distance and rising ground all around them, Kineas turned to Niceas. ‘Do you ever think on the evil acts you’ve done?’ he asked.

Niceas looked out over the river. ‘All the time,’ he said.

‘And?’ Kineas asked.

Niceas looked at him and frowned. ‘And what? They’re done. I can’t undo them. I can only try not to commit them again.’

Kineas rubbed his beard. ‘If we ever return to Athens, I’m going to set you up as a philosopher.’

Niceas raised an eyebrow. ‘If we ever return to Athens,’ he said, ‘you are going to set me up as a brothel keeper. Perhaps I’ll teach the boys and girls some philosophy.’

Kineas grinned at the picture and rode on, keeping his thoughts to himself. After dinner, they curled in their cloaks, the fire crackling away, and for the first time in weeks sleep evaded Kineas.

‘I missed this,’ he said.

Niceas snorted. ‘What, four weeks in Olbia and you missed lying on the ground?’

Kineas rolled on his back and stared up at the wheel of heaven. ‘Longer than that. Remember the ferryman when we crossed the Tanais?’

‘Who thought we’d all be dead when the Getae came? I’ll never forget that night. Why?’

Kineas said, ‘That night I thought a dozen men and a pair of slaves was a weight of responsibility on my shoulders. I was thinking it was funny that I could forget how much of a burden it was to lead.’

Niceas grunted.

‘You?’ Kineas asked. ‘Why do you remember it?’

Niceas rustled - he was changing position while trying to keep the warmth trapped under his cloak. ‘It was the last time I slept by Graccus,’ he said. Niceas and Graccus had been friends and lovers for years, and Graccus, of course, had died the next day.

‘I’m an idiot,’ Kineas said.

Niceas snuggled against his back. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Now go to sleep.’

When they mounted their horses the next morning, they could see that the ground rose on either side of them, and the river ran fast through a narrow channel, so that there was no longer any possibility of a ford or a crossing. Kineas killed another buck from horseback, a mounted throw that earned him a grin from Niceas.

‘Show-off !’ Niceas shook his head. ‘You could have lost your best spear!’

Kineas grinned back and they divided the meat and then bathed in the swift-flowing water to wash off the blood. It felt like ice.

That night was the coldest yet. Kineas was again feeling the weight of his responsibilities, and wondering if he could afford to ride off and leave them, and again he lay awake - still fearing his dreams, with the additional complication that he was sated with sleep. Niceas was already snoring beside him, and it was too cold to get out of his cloak and the heavy wool blanket that covered both of them. As it grew colder, he pushed in closer to Niceas, and then he worried about his army. Most of the hoplites in the vanguard wouldn’t have a spare blanket. He thought of Xenophon’s soldiers in the
Anabasis
, and he worried, and worrying, he fell asleep.

He awoke exhausted, his bladder bursting. It was too early for the new light of day, and the cold was so deep that it was an effort of will to rise from the warmth of Niceas. The fire had sunk to mere embers, throwing little warmth and no light, and he tripped on their javelins before he found a place in the dark to relieve himself. A lifetime of camp discipline forced him to put the last of the wood on the fire but he couldn’t find the woodpile and he stumbled around, cursing the cold.

‘Piss for me, while you’re up,’ Niceas said.

Kineas found the firewood by tripping over it. He gathered it up, blind, and as he found the last decent stick he heard a horse. He put the firewood near the embers and felt for a javelin. He could barely stand with the fatigue of his dream.

‘You hear that?’ he asked.

‘Horse,’ Niceas said.

He heard Niceas dropping the blankets as he rose. It was that quiet. Kineas reached into the still-warm blankets and retrieved his sword. He put the baldric over his shoulder and felt for his sandals. He wasn’t sure he was awake - he could barely focus his attention.

Niceas bumped into him. ‘Two horses,’ he whispered, his mouth close.

Alert and ready, the two men crouched back to back. After a few minutes they retrieved their cloaks and donned them.

The sky began to show light - the first touch of the wolf’s tail.

‘If they’re coming, they’ll come now,’ Kineas said.

They didn’t.

When the sun was up, they found hoof prints in the stream bed that ran around the base of their hillside camp. A little further west, Niceas found the print of a shod horse, with a heavy toe iron like a Macedonian horse. He shook his head.

‘Could be anything,’ he said. ‘Might have been one of ours from yesterday. Ataelus, perhaps.’

Kineas couldn’t get over the notion that he was being watched. High ridges rose on either side of the river, and anything might be moving in the trees up there.

‘As soon as we ride out of the stream bed, we’re visible,’ he said.

‘So?’ asked Niceas.

‘Fair enough. Let’s get out of here.’ Kineas went back to their camp and finished the tea, then retied his cloak behind him.

They rode along the stream bed until it rejoined the road (such as it was) a couple of stades downstream, and then they rode quickly along the road, alternating trotting with short canters.

The Tanais was entering a great curve, and the valley broadened and deepened. The river was flowing almost due north. As the ground rose, Kineas watched for the path to fork east.

‘There’s a sight for sore eyes,’ said Niceas.

Kineas, intent on the trail, looked up to find a bare-chested Sauromatae girl sitting on a pony just half a stade away.

Ataelus met them at the top of the pass where the eastern road crossed the ridge before continuing east to the Rha and the Kaspian. He had half a dozen riders with him. Two of them were wounded.

‘For making happy!’ Ataelus proclaimed, and grasped his arm.

Kineas embraced the Sakje man. Then he pointed at one of the Sauromatae girls who was boiling a human skull in a pot. ‘What in Hades is that?’

‘Wedding present!’ Ataelus said, and laughed, slapping his knee with a calloused hand. He was so pleased with his retort that he translated it into Sakje and repeated it. All of his prodromoi howled.

Kineas shook his head. ‘Wedding present?’ he asked.

‘Sauromatae girl for needing to kill man before wedding,’ Ataelus said. ‘Clean skull for stinking less, yes?’ He grinned.

‘Who did she kill?’ Kineas asked.

‘Bandits,’ Ataelus said. ‘For finding bandits in hills. Farmers say “bandits kill us steal our grain” and I say “for finding bandits.”’

Niceas twisted his mouth and made a noise. ‘Macedonian-shod?’ he asked.

Ataelus looked at him without comprehending. Ataelus’s Greek was good enough, but it never seemed to get better than ‘good enough’ no matter how much time he spent with them.

Niceas got down and lifted a hoof of his Macedonian charger. He showed the shoe.

Ataelus nodded enthusiastically. ‘And Persian. And Sakje.’ He pointed to two small ponies with iron-grey hides and bloodstains.

‘What about Philokles?’ Kineas asked.

Ataelus shrugged. ‘Eight days ahead. More? For riding hard.’ Ataelus waved east.

Kineas nodded. ‘And Nihmu?’ he asked.

‘For child?’ Ataelus asked. ‘Nihmu yâtavu child? For being somewhere! For being under the foot of my pony when I fight, or for dropping rocks on bandits. Who knows where the child is for going?’ He grinned. ‘Her horses I am for having.’ Sure enough, the dozen royal chargers towered over the scout’s remounts like a separate genus.

Niceas explained that Diodorus was a day or two behind, and Lot a week behind him.

Ataelus watched the ridges behind them while Niceas spoke. When Niceas finished, Ataelus pulled at his nose and drooped an eyelid. ‘Time to find bandits,’ he said. ‘For taking their horses, bring them fire. When Diodorus for coming, bandits scatter.’ He pointed down the other side of the ridge, towards the Kaspian and Hyrkania. ‘Bandits thick as rain, for fighting. Out on the high plains. All way to Rha. Lost two men getting Spartan to coast.’

Kineas rubbed his beard. ‘How many bandits, Ataelus?’

‘Many and many,’ Ataelus replied. ‘Kill bandits here, for making others feel fear. Yes?’

Kineas could see that Ataelus already had a plan. So he nodded.

Ataelus grinned. He motioned to one of the Sauromatae girls. She slipped off her mare, pulled her saddle blanket off her horse’s back and threw a double armful of dew-wet bracken on the fire. Thick grey-blue smoke pulsed into the sky. The Sauromatae girl put her blanket over the fire in one smooth motion, so that the smoke was cut off. Then she whipped it clear and another pulse of smoke shot upward.

She repeated this three times.

Ataelus grunted in satisfaction.

‘Neat trick,’ Kineas said.

‘Have we ever seen them do that before?’ Niceas asked.

‘No,’ Kineas answered.

Already there was a picket galloping up the ridge from the eastern road. He pulled on his reins in the camp and Samahe, Ataelus’s wife from the Cruel Hands, barked orders at him. He grinned, dismounted, cut another pony out of the herd, remounted and galloped away.

A pair of Sauromatae girls galloped in from another direction. Before the sun rose three fingers more, there were a dozen riders gathered, and they were riding hard along one of the many stream beds that criss-crossed the wooded ridges. A trickle of water flowed over rocks under their horse’s hooves, but the banks were clear of leaves or brush on either side up to the height of their horse’s withers, indicating how full these little valleys ran when the rains fell.

Ataelus seemed to know just where he was riding. Kineas was content to ride along.

The shadows stretched away when they stopped. All the Sakje and the Sauromatae dismounted and relieved themselves without letting go of their reins. Kineas and Niceas imitated them.

There was a hint of smoke on the cold wind over the strong smell of urine. A clear-eyed blonde woman handed him a gourd of water and he raised it in acknowledgement before he drank. She looked to be fourteen or perhaps fifteen. She had two skulls on the ornate saddle of her horse.

Kineas grinned at her and she returned the grin.

‘We for hitting them at dark,’ Ataelus said. ‘Understand for hitting?’ he smacked his right fist into his left hand.

‘I understand,’ Kineas said.

‘For watching two days, since girls get in fight and Samahe for finding camp.’ Ataelus shrugged.

There was something untold, some story that made Samahe wrinkle her nose and made one of the girls blush and wriggle in her saddle. A story he’d never know, Kineas thought.

‘You knew we were coming?’ Kineas said, suddenly making the connection.

‘Nihmu says for coming, says “protect him king”.’ Ataelus shrugged. ‘Not for needing child for telling for protecting.’

‘You watched us last night?’ Niceas asked.

‘No. For today since sun rose this way.’ Ataelus closed one eye and raised a hand, palm flat, just over the horizon.

Niceas shook his head. ‘They were on us last night. If they watched us meet . . .’