Tyrant: Storm of Arrows

by Christian Cameron

A junior lord of the Standing Horses stood to speak - the same man who had shouted at Srayanka. Marthax bowed to him and went to sit, and the young warrior, his arm in a sling, came to the centre of the circle.

  ‘I am Graethe of the Standing Horse,’ he said. He had the accent of his clan, which Kineas had come to know as the northern Sakje accent. But he spoke slowly, as was the custom in council, and Kineas could understand him well enough. ‘My lord has taken our warriors out on the sea of grass to pass the summer on the wind, and to watch our Sindi. If he were here, he would say that Zopryon was not the only wolf to threaten our herds, but only the strongest. The Standing Horses will not cross the sea of grass to go to the eastern gate. Let the Massagetae see to themselves.’

  Kineas’s eyes were drawn to a young woman, or perhaps a child, who sat behind Marthax, playing with a bow. Children were everywhere among the Sakje - they were allowed unlimited freedom. But this was the girl who had called herself Kam Baqca’s child.

  Instead of shooting toy arrows, she had wrapped the bowstring around an arrow, and she was using it to twirl the arrow faster and faster. Kineas had seen a jeweller in Athens using a bow-drill, and he wondered if the girl had devised the tool herself. She was using it to bore holes in Marthax’s great shield of rawhide and wooden slats, the bronze arrowhead cutting at the bronze binding and rawhide strings until the whole structure was about to give way.

  Kineas reached out a hand to stop her, and her eyes met his. They were old eyes for such a young face, deep and blue like cold water, and he stopped the movement of his arm as if he had been stung by an insect.

  She smiled. She was a child on the edge of womanhood, and her smile was equal parts mischief and wickedness.

  The Standing Horse droned on in the same vein. Marthax watched him with drooping eyelids. Srayanka, on the other hand, watched the young man as if she might leap at him. When he drew breath for another foray, she stood up and put out the hand with the sword to forestall him.

  ‘Great is the wisdom of the Standing Horse,’ she said. ‘We understand that they took their place in battle, and that they will not go east to the support of the keepers of the eastern gate. Have you more to add?’

  The young man bowed his head and said nothing, but he glared.

  ‘We welcome your words, Graethe.’ She pressed a strong hand on the young man’s shoulder, and he sat. One of Srayanka’s young leaders, Bain, laughed and gave a wolf call, and Graethe flushed.

  Srayanka turned and glared at Bain. ‘Silence,’ she said.

  Bain’s face burned with adolescent wickedness. But he subsided when Urvara rose to her feet. Daughter of Varô, the lord of the Grass Cats who had died in the great battle, Urvara had her own scars - she was a bow-maiden, and Kineas could remember her rallying her people to support his final charge. She was just sixteen or seventeen, with heavy brows and full lips and arm muscles like the cords on a siege engine. Bain loved her.

  ‘The Grass Cats look to the rising sun,’ she said, pointing her riding whip out to the east. Her voice was deep and calm for such a young girl, and Kineas had to admit that Srayanka was no fluke - the Sakje formed remarkable women. Amazons, he thought.

  ‘We will go east to the rising sun and lend our aid to the keepers of the eastern gate,’ she said simply.

  ‘Your clan lands are to the east,’ Marthax said without rising. ‘Your homes are on the way.’ His tone was dismissive.

  ‘We came here,’ she said simply. ‘My father died for the king of the Assagatje. I know what you think, Marthax. I care not.’ She sat.

  Srayanka’s eyes turned to Kineas, and he rose. Most of the men around Marthax made growls in their throats.

  Before he uttered a word, Marthax rose as well. He was almost a foot taller than Kineas. ‘You have no place speaking here,’ he said.

  Kineas caught his eye and held it. ‘My “clan” is the largest here,’ he said. He looked around the tent. Some eyes were openly hostile - Graethe’s, for instance. Others were friendly - Parshtaevalt of the Cruel Hands nodded, as if to make him speak.

  Kineas stepped up to Marthax. ‘We died for you,’ he said. ‘We stood at the ford and held Zopryon until you came. My people died. My friends died.’ He raised an arm that was covered in scars from his part in the fighting and looked around the tent. ‘My city is still held by the tyrant and his garrison of Macedonians, and I must see to it, or my “clan” will be living among you for ever.’ He shrugged and turned his back on Marthax, which made the skin between his shoulder blades itch as he faced the crowd, and he thought, When did I cease to trust the warlord? ‘We must be allowed to go and reclaim our city before the citizens despair and take a rash action.’ He whirled on Marthax. ‘And you cannot pretend to give me orders and then silence me in council. You were Satrax’s warlord. Who are you now?’

  Marthax had not expected Kineas to attack him. Nor had Srayanka, who had the worried look of a woman who doubts her man’s wisdom. Marthax stepped back as if stung, and his face became as red as his jacket.

  ‘Who am I?’ Marthax asked. ‘I am the king of the Sakje!’ he bellowed.

  Pandemonium. The clan leaders all rose to their feet, some denouncing, others cheering or shouting to be heard.

  Marthax seized the moment. ‘I am the cousin of Satrax, and I was his warlord. I have commanded all the tribes in battle, and emerged victorious in every contest. I led the expedition against the Getae, when we slaughtered them in battle.’ He reached behind him and brandished his shield. ‘I am the strong shield of the Sakje!’ he roared.

  It dropped to pieces in his hand, and silence fell on the tent - the silence of terror and omens.

  A high voice came from behind Marthax, like a man’s falsetto, or the voice of a young child.

  ‘You may be king until the monster is dead, and the eagles fly,’ it said.

  Marthax threw the shards of his shield to the ground and reached for the girl, but she rolled under the edge of the tent and was gone.

  2

  ‘You are beautiful,’ Srayanka said. She was stretched by his side in a welter of furs. Rain made a seashore sound on the roof of her wagon, and her calloused hand stroked him with lazy familiarity.

  The language barrier kept him from responding in kind. He could tell her that she was beautiful; he could say that her breasts were beautiful, her legs were beautiful, a catalogue of physical attributes; but none of them would catch his meaning. In Greek, he would say that her beauty amazed him every time he saw it unveiled, that he would never tire of watching the complex curves where her hard stomach met the rise of her hips, that the lush velvet of her skin and its contrast with the fighting leather of the palms of her hands excited him as no other woman ever could - but her Greek was still limited to fifty verbs and a few hundred nouns, and the sort of subtlety that made compliments accurate and personal was as far beyond her as the comedy of Aristophanes - so far.

  Their lovemaking was occasional, often hurried and always secretive. That they were partners was suspected - and resented - throughout the dwindling camp. And especially tonight.

  The Sakje were riding away. The council had ended in division and anger before Srayanka had been formally recognized to speak so that she could lay her own claim to kingship, but the sides were drawn.

  All of them together - the Sakje and the Olbians - had fought a great battle, the greatest battle any of them could remember. Ten stades north of the wagon-yurt where Kineas lay entwined with Srayanka, the field of the Ford of the River God was still an unquiet grave three full weeks after Zopryon’s army had died on it. More than twenty thousand Macedonians and their auxiliaries and allies had perished - and almost a third that number of Sakje, and a thousand Euxine Greeks. The dead outnumbered the living, and the rain that fell like the tears of repentant gods rotted the corpses so fast that men feared to touch or lift them. Carrion creatures still thronged the field, feasting on the Macedonian dead who lay defenceless, their armour stripped off.

  Men said the field was
cursed.

  Kineas felt it like an open wound, because the unburied dead haunted his dreams, demanding burial. It was beyond his experience, that one army might be exterminated and unable to bury its dead. It frightened him. As did the voices of the many dead.

  ‘What are you thinking, Airyanãm?’ Srayanka asked. She propped herself on an elbow. She was naked in the damp heat, and not so much shameless as unconscious that anyone would wear clothes on such a hot night. Inside her wagon, she disdained clothing as long as the damp and the heat prevailed.

  Kineas forced himself away from the battlefield in his mind and back into the wagon with her marvellous, god-given body and her ambitions and her caprice. But he was honest. ‘I’m thinking of the unburied dead,’ he said.

  ‘Food for crows,’ she said with a shrug. She made a gesture to avert unwelcome attention from the creatures of the underworld. ‘Naming calls, Kineax.’ She put a finger to his lips. ‘Don’t speak of the dead so lightly. They were enemies. Now they have passed beyond. The field is cursed, and the Sindi will avoid it for a generation. And then the grass will grow greener for the blood, and then the grain will grow. That is the way. And the Mother will take their unquiet spirits down to her breasts, and in time, all will be healed.’

  He watched her, sitting like a statue of Aphrodite, ticking off her points about the dead on one hand as if she was a scholar in the agora. ‘You should be queen,’ he said. ‘You have the head for it.’ He rubbed his untrimmed beard and scratched his head. ‘I should not have spoken today. I spoke out of turn and I fear—’

  ‘Hush,’ she said. She shook her head, her unbound hair swaying. ‘Marthax is stronger than I, Kineas.’ She watched him for a moment in the light of the single oil lamp. ‘I will not lead my people to war against each other. Marthax will not be a bad king - you know him. He does as he thinks he must.’ She sighed. ‘I worked hard to prepare the people to accept you as my consort.’ She shrugged, and her heavy breasts rose and fell, and the sheath of muscle moved from her hips to her neck, and he wanted her. But he was a disciplined man and he kept his hands to himself.

  She turned to face him. ‘Instead, they fear you.’

  ‘Because I am foreign?’ he asked, tracing a finger along her flanks.

  ‘And because you are baqca, and because you love me. You are like a creature from a song of heroes, and you bring change.’ She kissed him. ‘Because you could rule them with a rod of iron, and they fear that.’

  He shook his head. ‘I have no desire to rule,’ he said.

  ‘But you would, if you thought it was for the good of all.’ She rattled off the phrase ‘good of all’ in his own intonation.

  He shrugged. ‘Listen, my love. Together, we could force the will of the army. Make it your army.’ There, it was said. His own officers wanted to be gone, but he had to offer - to support her claim.

  She took his head in her hands and kissed him. ‘No, Airyanãm. I thank you, but no. It was Satrax’s army - and he is dead.’ She made a motion with her hand indicating the unknowable will of the gods. ‘If he had lived another year, I would have been his heir - we would have been.’ She shrugged again. ‘I will not pit Greek soldiers against clansmen.’

  Kineas sat up with her. ‘What will you do?’ he asked. ‘What will we do?’

  She was silent for a long time, and they could hear thousands of horses cropping grass - the ever-present sound of the Sakje camp. Somewhere, men shouted by a fire.

  ‘I will go east,’ she said. ‘Many of the younger warriors are still willing - even eager - to fight the monster in the east. I will tell Marthax that I will lead them, and he will accept, because that path avoids war.’

  Kineas had felt the decision coming. He had known from the first that Srayanka favoured sending an expedition east to support the Massagetae. He hadn’t imagined that she would go herself.

  ‘But ...’ he said. And stopped himself. But what of us? was too selfish for him, or for them. Her choice was clear, and she had made it like the hero she was. Could he do less?

  ‘I must seize Olbia from the tyrant,’ he said. ‘Then I can join you.’ Just like that - and the future was set. Join you echoed in his head - echoed in the world of dreams, like prophecy, and suddenly he was cold.

  She shook her head. ‘No. That is - what is the Greek word? Folly? Madness? You Greeks have so many words for stupid thinking. You can be the tyrant of Olbia - you can be king. They worship you like a god. You have made their city something, and your army is now a strong one. The grain will make you rich, your hoplites will make you secure and your alliance with the Sakje will make you great.’

  Kineas knelt and took her hands. ‘I don’t want to be rich,’ he said, and even as he said the words, he knew that they were as true as they were trite. The image of a long trek east to fight Alexander at her side stretched away like a dream, and beside it, the day-to-day world of patronage and politics seemed like a nightmare. ‘I don’t want to be tyrant,or king. I want you.’ He grinned like a boy. ‘I have had a dream that I will defeat Alexander.’

  She smiled then, and he feared her a little, because it was not the smile of love, but the smile of triumph. ‘Then you shall have me, Airyanãm. And we will go far,’ she said, and put her lips on his. ‘Even to the mountains of the east, and Alexander.’

  When they had made love again, she wrapped herself around him despite the damp heat and their sweat, and together they fell asleep. And no sooner had he acknowledged the pleasure of such sleep, her smooth, hard leg pinned between his, than instead he was ... astride the tree, a branch clenched between his legs. Farther along the branch, two eagles demanded food from a nest between Srayanka’s thighs. Their screaming demands drowned out her words. When he reached out to her, the larger chick nipped him, and he fell ...

  He glanced around, and all the warriors behind him were strange, all Sakje, in magnificent armour, and he himself wore a vambrace of chased gold on the arm he could see through the slits of his helmet. He was dry, sitting tall on a horse the colour of dark metal, and the battle was won, the enemy broken, and across the river, the survivors tried to rally in the driftwood and by the single old dead tree that offered the only cover from the bronze rain of Sakje arrows, and he raised Srayanka’s whip, motioned three times and they all began to cross the river. He was ready for the arrow when it came, and he almost greeted it, he knew it so well, and then he was in the water - hands grabbing at him ...

  He was dead, and walking the battlefield, but it was another battlefield, Issus, and the dead were rising all around him like men woken early from rest. And then they began to walk, rubbing at their wounds, some stuffing the intestines into their guts. They tried to speak but failed, and many shrugged, and then, Greek and Persian, they all began to walk away from the battlefield . . . and they were joined by the dead of Gaugamela, more Persians and fewer Greeks and Macedonians, all shuffling along in a column of the wretched dead.

  A single figure emerged from the column. He had two deep wounds, one in his neck and another under his armpit, and his breastplate was gone, and his face was slack and empty of feeling, rotted and black, but Kineas could recognize Kleisthenes, a boyhood friend who had fallen in a nameless fight on the banks of the Euphrates. Kineas could feel that Kleisthenes was sad. Indeed, sadness came off him like heat from a fire. His jaw, almost naked of flesh three years after his death, was working, but no sound emerged. He reached out a hand and rested his finger bones on Kineas’s deeply scarred forearm.

  ‘What?’ Kineas demanded. ‘Speak!’

  Kleisthenes’ jaw worked again, more like a man chewing meat than a man attempting to speak. His mouth opened, and sand came forth. The rotting figure gathered the sand as it vomited from his mouth, catching it in his hands. He held it out to Kineas as if it was a payment, or an offering.

  Even in a dream, Kineas was terrified. He stumbled back.

  ‘Wake up now, or die in your sleep!’ said the voice of Kam Baqca . . .

  Noises in the dark, and
too much motion, and the wagon moving as if a man was climbing aboard. Kineas rolled off the furs and his hand was on his sword as the heavy felt that covered the wagon was ripped back and an arrow skidded along his back with a line of pain. There were torches in the dark, and the glint of weapons.

  Srayanka was just coming to her knees and he pushed her down as another arrow bit deep into the wood of the wagon bed. Kineas roared ‘The dead!’ in Greek.

  A black shape came up on to the wagon bed with a sword in each hand. Kineas was still half asleep, his mind in another world.

  The creature’s face was black. The thing hesitated - an all too human reaction - and then he swung both weapons together. The fog of the dream dropped a little more from Kineas’s eyes and he saw that his opponent was a man with charcoal on his face. Even as he realized this, he sensed that the man’s clumsy attack was a distraction, and as he ducked and parried he turned his head to see another black figure at the other end of the wagon, illuminated by the oil lamp. It was raising a bow, also hesitating, as if unsure what to shoot.

  Kineas didn’t hesitate. He cut at his first adversary, a long overhand cut with a wrist rotation at the end, so that the man’s clumsy parry failed to stop the reversed curve of the Egyptian blade from cutting into his neck. He fell without a cry, his head half severed and black ink pouring out in the light of the moon.

  Kineas leaped back and cut at the archer, and his blow severed the bow at the grip. One end of the cut bow snapped back and raked his hand, making him drop his sword with the pain, and the other end slashed across the bowman’s face. Kineas kicked him and the bowman fell back off the wagon. Another arrow whispered out of the darkness and passed between Kineas’s legs.

  ‘Alarm! Attack!’ Kineas shouted in Sakje. He could hear sounds of movement from the fires around them, and shouts in the distance, but the attackers were silent and otherworldly, and the hair on Kineas’s neck began to stand up.

  Even in the darkness, he could see the hilt of his sword gleaming against the carpets of the wagon’s floor, and he bent and seized it. The grip was slippery with blood from his wound, and he bent to wipe his hand. Srayanka rose with her naked back to him, a bow in her hand, and shot before ducking again behind the cover of the benches.