There’s no time to waste if we’re going to get all this sorted out.’
Once she’d gone, taking the boy along with her, I tried to concentrate on the
job before us, but it was hard going. Instead of focusing on what I was going to
say or the possible excuses they might come up with, I found my mind slipping
back to this strange image of my wife Theano and my friend Tyrsenius...
None of which had anything much to do with the present situation. Yes, I knew
that. But once you start thinking about that it’s really difficult to stop, and
the more you try the harder it gets. By the time the party was ready to leave
I’d become all quiet and preoccupied, which must have been quite impressive. At
least it took my mind off the desperate nature of the crisis we were facing...
Theano. And Tyrsenius. Tyrsenius, my so-called friend... I snapped myself out of
it. ‘Right,’ I said, ‘listen to me. When we get there nobody — and I mean that,
nobody — says a word unless and until I ask him a question, all right? You can
say what you like before and you can say what you like after. While we’re there,
keep it shut and don’t pull faces.’
He nodded. ‘Absolutely right,’ he said (and I thought, You bastard. Bloody fine
friend you turned out to be.) ‘You can rely on us,
Euxenus. We won’t let you down.’
I sighed. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Let’s go and get this sorted out, once and for
all.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I t was agony getting on the horse, and worse getting off again. My ankle had
stiffened up, the way they do, and there was no way I could put any weight on
it; I hung from the shoulders of two of the Illyrian soldiers like a drunk being
helped along by his friends. How I was going to get back into the saddle to go
home I really didn’t know. I had visions of swaying home slung over the horse’s
back like a sack of onions; this particular mental picture competed fiercely
with the Theano/Tyrsenius image, with the result that I was in a foul mood by
the time we got there, and in no mood to take any crap from anybody.
As we hobbled into the village, the people stared at us as if we were harpies or
the demon warriors who sprang out of the ground when Cadmus sowed the dragon’s
teeth, then scuttled back into their houses and slammed the doors. If my old
acquaintance Anabruzas, the former City archer, had turned up ten minutes or so
later than he did, we may well have given up and gone home.
But he showed up, with ten or so venerable-looking whitebeards and a bunch of
scared-looking men with bows. Anabruzas himself didn’t look too happy, either.
‘There you are,’ I snapped (the hanging about hadn’t helped my temper). ‘Right,
you know why we’re here.’
Anabruzas nodded. ‘I’ve got a pretty fair idea,’ he said. ‘You want to hear our
side of it?’
‘Not really,’ I replied. ‘Your people killed some of my people. They tried to
kill me. Now, it may be that your lot has some legitimate grievance against our
city, but whatever it was, it doesn’t justify murder. So here’s the deal. You
hand over the murderers to us, no fuss, no rhetoric. In return; first, I’ll do
what I can to keep my friends from coming over here with torches and setting
fire to your village —and that’s going to take some doing, but I promise I’ll do
my best. Second, if you want to file a formal complaint about anything you say
we ye done, I’ll listen and I’ll try to make them listen too. Otherwise —well,
it’ll be out of my hands.’
Anabruzas was quiet for some time. ‘I’m not authorised to make deals like that,’
he said. ‘I can’t order anybody to do anything, that’s not the way we do things.
It’s up to the head of each household—’
I shook my head. ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I’m not interested. Some day, when I’m
writing a book about Scythian laws and customs, I’ll come back and you can tell
me all about it. Right now, I’m holding you personally responsible, because I
know your name and you can speak Greek. Unless you personally want a war, you
personally do something about it.’
He gave me a look of pure fear and hatred, roughly half and half. ‘I can’t,’ he
said.
‘Pity,’ I replied. ‘Because my friend here — his name’s Tyrsenius, I think you
know him —my friend here can make himself understood in your pathetic excuse for
a language, and in a minute he’s going to announce in a very loud voice that
Anabruzas has refused our demands and we have no alternative but to declare war.
I think you might find life a bit interesting after that.’
Anabruzas’ expression didn’t change. ‘I’ll do my best,’ he said. ‘How does that
sound?’
‘We’re getting there,’ I said. ‘Bear with me a moment, will you?’
I got my two supporters to take me back a yard or so, then called Tyrsenius
over.
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Can you really talk their language?’
‘Yes,’ Theano put in, before he could open his mouth. ‘Not too well, but well
enough.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘And does he really know any of these people?’
She nodded. ‘The head man, for one.’
‘You mean him? Anabruzas?’
She nodded again. ‘For what it’s worth,’ she added, ‘he’s telling the truth
about not being able to order the heads of house to give those men up. He just
hasn’t got the authority.’
I shrugged; difficult, when both your arms are round the shoulders of tall men.
‘Someone’s got to,’ I replied. ‘Tyrsenius, I need to ask for a couple of
hostages. Who do you suggest we ask for?’
Tyrsenius thought for a moment. ‘Anabruzas’ wife and daughter,’ he replied.
‘Sorry, I don’t know their names. But I know they exist, because he had me get
them each a Phoenician mirror — you know, the ivory ones with the carved backs—’
‘Sounds good to me,’ I said. ‘Right, you two, take me back over there.’
I told Anabruzas that I wanted his wife and daughter as hostages until the
murderers were handed over. At first I thought he was going to lose control
altogether and attack me, but he calmed down — I could almost see him
suppressing the anger, it was like watching a piece of iron cool down from
bright red to cool grey — and eventually agreed.
‘Wait there,’ he said.
The ten or so minutes that followed, after Anabruzas had gone stomping off,
leaving us alone with a bunch of scowling elders and utterly expressionless
guards, were thoroughly awkward and embarrassing. I had the distinct feeling
that I’d overplayed my hand and set rather more store on the threat of war with
us than was actually merited, and if Anabruzas had come back with a war-band, I
wouldn’t have been in the least surprised. But when he returned, he had with him
a short, sullen-looking woman of about his own age, and a fourteen-year-old girl
who walked with a limp.
‘Is that them?’ I asked. Tyrsenius nodded.
Anabruzas tried to shoo them in our direction, as if he was herding goats across
a fast river. The girl didn’t seem to mind too much, but the woman was swearing
&nb
sp; at him and waving her hands furiously in the air.
‘The girl’s a bit simple,’ Tyrsenius whispered. ‘The limp’s because she fell off
a horse and bust her leg, and the bones didn’t set straight. You want to watch
yourself around the wife, though. She’ll have all the skin off your bones.’
We went home after that. An awful lot of people came to stare at the hostages,
and it was comical to watch them standing in the doorway of the barn we put them
in; the older woman ranting and shaking her fists, the girl solemnly waving and
smiling. Together they served the useful purpose of beguiling the colonists into
forgetting just what it was that had caused them to be there; they were a freak
show of the highest quality, and nothing calms down an over-excited bunch of
people than high-class entertainment.
A day or so later I was at home, trying to mend a broken mattock handle with
newly boiled rawhide and glue, when someone came and told me there was a
deputation from the Scythian village waiting to see me. I quickly washed the
glue off my hands and went to see what they wanted.
It was Anabruzas. With him were a couple of the silent old men and a boy. I
recognised the boy; I’d have known his face even if he’d been able to walk.
The wound from the arrow I’d shot into him had gone badly septic, and they’d had
to amputate the leg four inches above the knee. Gods know why he hadn’t died, of
the amputation as much as the wound itself. Clearly the Scythians knew a thing
or two about medicine. He looked thoroughly wretched, as was only to be
expected. They’d carried him in on a stretcher, and he just lay there and stared
up at the sky.
‘All right,’ I said, trying to look stern and uncompromising, ‘that’s one of
them. Where’s the others?’
Anabruzas gave me a filthy look. ‘That’s all you’re getting,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’
‘That’s not good enough.’
‘Tough.’ He gave me a smile that had nothing to do with friendliness. I told
you, I can’t give orders to my people, I’m not a king or a magistrate or
anything like that. The only people who can give orders are the heads of
households.’
‘Really,’ I said. ‘So what’s he doing here?’
Anabruzas looked at me for a moment. ‘I can order him,’ he said. ‘He’s my son.’
There was a long and awkward silence, filled with all the unfortunate history
we’d somehow contrived to share over the years.
‘I see,’ I said.
‘Well?’
‘Well what?’
‘Well, do I get my wife and daughter back now?’
I frowned. ‘That’s the deal, is it? You trade me your son for your wife and
daughter. What charming people you are.’
Once again, I could see him visibly not getting angry. ‘It’s common sense,’ he
said. ‘His life is ruined anyway, they’re both reasonably healthy, fit for work.
All right, the girl’s a liability, but she can still card wool.’
I nodded slowly. ‘That’s how you see people, is it? Strictly
‘Sorry, I don’t understand long words,’ Anabruzas said. ‘I’m trying to prevent a
war, and this is the best I can do. I can’t think of anything else I can offer.
If you’ve got any suggestions, I’m listening.’
Suddenly I felt tired and not terribly nice to know. ‘Take your wife and
daughter and go to the crows,’ I sighed. ‘I’ll do the best I can. No promises.
He smiled again. ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t trust them if you made
any.’
Once the story got about, the sheer melodrama appealed to my people so much that
they almost forgot about our own dead, they were so entranced by it all. This
was tragedy come to life, and Anabruzas made a wonderful tragic hero. What with
that and the freak show as well, they seemed to feel, the Scythians had paid
their debt in pure entertainment. Even the families of the men who’d been
murdered admitted that they couldn’t ask a great deal more, especially once we’d
concocted a false confession in which the poor lame bastard supposedly admitted
that he’d been the driving force behind the whole raid, and the others had just
been following his orders (we made him out to be some kind of high-ranking
commander of the Scythian armed forces; a sort of Alexander to Anabruzas’
Philip).
On the day we put him to death, everybody turned out at first light and hung
around the market square for hours so as not to miss a thing. Some of them
brought garlands and offerings of flowers, bread and fruit. Quite a few of the
women were in tears, which goes to show what a soft-hearted lot we Greeks can
be. There was a moment of pure farce just before the actual business —
Marsamleptes’ men dropped the poor kid as they lifted him off the stretcher to
carry him to the chopping-block, and the stunned look on his face was highly
comical, in a sense. There was a muted cheer as the axe went down, but nobody
seemed particularly cheerful as the head was ceremoniously carried to the steps
of the market hall and hung up in the temple porch; it all seemed fairly
pointless somehow, and afterwards people drifted quietly away, much to the
disappointment of those who’d brought along wine and sausages to sell.
After three days we took down the head and sent it back with the body to the
village in a cart. They didn’t seem particularly interested —they don’t go in
for funerals to nearly the same extent as we do — and the carter told me it was
almost as if they were doing us a favour taking the bits off our hands.
We heard about what had happened at Chaeronea some ten days after this, from the
captain of an Athenian grain-freighter. Obviously, he didn’t tell me about what
had happened to my brothers; I only found that out when my friend Tyrsenius got
a letter from one of his business associates back in Athens . He turned up on my
doorstep late one evening, put the letter in my hands and walked away without
saying anything.
I was pretty much out of things for a day or so after that, and so I missed the
next development in our relationship with the Scythians. As far as I was able to
piece it together afterwards, however, it went something like this.
There was an old man in the Scythian village who had a very fine horse. The son
of an important man in the next village along saw this horse one day, found out
that its owner was too old and sick to ride it more than once or twice a month,
and asked if it was for sale. The old man said no; sure, he didn’t ride it, but
he just liked owning such a beautiful animal. That didn’t suit the young man,
who reckoned it was a waste and a crying shame. He kept increasing his offers
until he was offering a ridiculous amount for the creature, but the old man
wouldn’t have any of it. He was too old, he said, to be interested in money, he
just wanted to own a really exceptional horse, and would the young pain in the
bum please stop bothering him? The young man was starting to get obsessive about
the horse. He felt it was a personal affront, and he was going to have the horse
if it was the last thing he did. One of his father’s hangers-on smelt money, so
he crep
t out one night, stole the horse and brought it to the village.
When the young man’s father found out what had happened, he quite understandably
went berserk. Stealing horses is a very serious crime for all Scythians — I
don’t know why I’m bothering to tell you this, Phryzeutzis; you undoubtedly know
more about the nuances and implications of all this than I ever will — and the
thought that he’d been party to horse-theft, even without knowing it, was enough
to stop him sleeping at night. He immediately had the horse killed, chopped up
into small bits and burned; then he did the same with the poor fool who’d stolen
it, and sent his worthless son off to live with some cousins a couple of
villages away. He felt a bit better after that, but he still couldn’t sleep; the
theft of such a fine horse was big news, and he knew it’d only be a matter of
time before people linked the theft with his son’s excessive offers and general
bad behaviour. So he put about the story that the Greeks from the colony had
stolen the horse, as a way of getting back at the villagers for the killings.
Now, one of the men who’d taken part in the original escapade (who was still, of
course, very much at large, though extremely nervous at all times) heard of this
and decided to try to make something of it. He hated us anyway, which was why
he’d joined the raid in the first place, and after what had happened to
Anabruzas’ son he was convinced that unless he did something quickly it’d only
be a matter of time before he met with a pretty unpleasant end. He’d been trying
to nerve himself to leave the village; but that would have meant being parted
from his wife and children, because his father-in-law had made it perfectly
clear that if he left the village he’d leave it alone, and he didn’t want that.
The business with the horse (which was, for all he knew, perfectly true) seemed
to him to be a first-class opportunity for stirring up the villagers against the
Greeks and launching a proper attack that’d make us go away once and for all.
That may sound like extremely wishful thinking; but the villagers had some
pretty odd notions about us at the best of times.Try as they might, they could
never understand how anybody could willingly leave his home, the place where
Alexander at the Worlds End Tom Holt Page 36
