Kineas shrugged. ‘When Srayanka is ready, we ride east.’ He frowned. ‘The Sakje are in much the same state as our Olbians, but they have nowhere to go. And they have come all this way. We have all come. What’s one more desert to cross?’
Diodorus looked up, his head to one side like an alert puppy. ‘It’s not the desert. It’s the battle afterwards,’ he said. ‘And then the road home. Some of our wounded won’t recover in time for another action. Some of the troopers are getting - what can I call it? If we had more wine, Philokles wouldn’t be the only one drinking all day.’
Philokles looked at Diodorus in surprise. ‘I drink no more than any other man,’ he said.
Diodorus shrugged. ‘Whatever you say, Spartan. So - the desert, the battle and afterwards. What’s the story?’
‘It is my problem,’ Kineas said. He sighed. ‘And my doom awaits me in the east.’
Philokles rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, really!’ he barked. ‘Are you some superstitious barbarian or a man of Athens? Doom, my arse. You are what you are, and I accuse you of making your dreams an excuse to follow Alexander to the end of the world.’
Kineas snapped to attention, stung by this rebuke. ‘Like Hades, Spartan!’ he spat. ‘You’ve wanted this war against Alexander from the first. It suits Sparta. It suits Athens. And now you want to call it off? Here, in the middle of the sea of grass? Very much in the Panhellenic spirit - we’ll just ride home.’
Philokles pointed both hands unsteadily at Kineas. ‘Keep us out here for your own glory if you must. Ask us to fight to avenge Hirene - she was well liked, for all her fish-eating ways. But spare us your doom. You are a Greek, not some taboo-ridden savage. Their slavish respect goes to your head - Baqca.’
Kineas found himself facing the Spartan with his hands sealed into fists. ‘I know my dreams. I do not lie about them.’
Philokles leaned in close, threateningly close. ‘When I met you, you were the sort of man to laugh at such dreams. Now, you are ruled by them.’ The Spartan was breathing hard. ‘Are you a barbarian, or a man?’
Kineas stood his ground. He could smell Philokles’ breath and feel his spittle when he shouted. ‘Fuck you!’ he said. ‘Since when is Moira not Greek? What price your precious Panhellenism now, Spartan?’
‘Brilliantly reasoned, Athenian!’ Philokles spat back. ‘Is that the best your schools can produce? Any Spartan can do as well—’
‘You are going to wake the babies,’ Srayanka said. She emerged from her wagon with a shawl around her. ‘Are you two going to fight? Many Sakje will pay good wagers to watch - I will fetch them. But move away from the wagons and do not wake my children.’
Kineas felt himself straightening up. Philokles gave a drunken smile and waved his open hands.
‘Oh,’ Srayanka said, with mock disappointment. ‘So you only ...’ she was at a loss for the word and she did a credible imitation of a stallion rearing, ‘like horses, eh? But not fight.’ She smiled a half-smile, and then her humour turned to anger and she was livid. ‘Listen to me, King of the Sakje and Spartan. The Sakje go to the muster on the Jaxartes. Greeks are free. No man of Olbia owes me service,’ and here she glared at Kineas, ‘but my people will go to the muster because we said we would be there. Six moons we ride the sea of grass and still we will be there.’
Then she deflated like a tent with the poles removed. ‘And you are right, Spartan,’ she said. ‘We have nowhere else to go.’
Kineas took her shoulders. Rather than spurning him, as he feared, she leaned back into his embrace. ‘They only called me king while you were missing,’ he said.
She whirled out of his arms and her eyes searched his face as if she’d just discovered a hidden flaw in a pot. ‘No. You are king. Nihmu’s horses and my womb make you king. And yet you owe us nothing.’ She frowned. ‘Satrax warned me of this moment. I am barbarian and you are Greek.’
Diodorus had gone back to staring at the ground between his sandals, but now he looked up again. ‘Be fair, Srayanka. The Sakje have had their fair share from this army.’
‘We are barbarians to you,’ she said. ‘Just like we are to Alexander.’ She spat. In accurate mockery, imitating Diodorus, she said, ‘We’ll all be Sakje in a few years at this rate.’ She hugged her belly. ‘No fate could be more cruel,’ she mocked.
Diodorus winced. ‘Listen, lady,’ he said with his hands on his hips. ‘I’ve been at war for years. I’m tired of it. I want to settle somewhere and have a wife and a future. The Sakje are like brothers to me - but I crave the world of the palaestra and the agora. How happy would you be if we made you live away from the grass?’
Srayanka hung her head.
Kineas cut in, ‘Srayanka, they can go home if they want - but they won’t. They’ll posture and get drunk.’ He glared at Philokles. ‘But . . .’ He looked down into her eyes, their startling blue almost black in the firelight. ‘But you do have other choices. You can go back, and when this is over . . .’ The bit in his teeth, he went on, ‘The high ground between the Tanais and the Rha - whose tribal land is that?’
Srayanka used a hand to pull her hair back from her face. ‘Maeotae land, and no man’s land these last ten years and more.’
Kineas nodded. ‘Leave the farmers to their own,’ he said. ‘The high ground is wolf land - worse than Hyrkania. We cleared the road and made some peace - drove the worst of the wolves off. There’s rich pasture there - enough for ten thousand horses. And as soon as you were there to protect it, the Maeotae farmers and the Sindi would return to their farms on the lower Rha.’
Diodorus pursed his lips and looked at Kineas with a different kind of respect. ‘You’re smarter than you look,’ he said.
Philokles raised an eyebrow and looked like a comic satyr. ‘So you have been thinking of other endings,’ he said.
Kineas nodded. ‘I had all winter to listen to what was said in Hyrkania - and to Leon’s views on eastern trade,’ he said. ‘Many of the Olbians will go home - but if we declared that we were founding a city, many would stay.’
Philokles beamed. ‘You have said nothing of this!’ he proclaimed. ‘This is brilliant!’
Diodorus grinned too. ‘A city of mercenaries and Sakje,’ he said. ‘I imagine we’ll have a fair number of curious travellers.’
Srayanka’s eyes went from one to another. ‘The Sakje go east to the muster of the tribes,’ she said. ‘King or no king.’ But her look at Kineas was happier. ‘But the high ground between the Rha and the Tanais is a good dream, and a dream can keep the people alive.’ She shrugged, a curiously Greek gesture on her. ‘Who knows? Perhaps it will even come to pass.’
Kineas looked down at her. ‘Perhaps we should be married?’ he asked her.
‘Husband, we have been married since first we played stallion and mare,’ she said. ‘Sakje people do not worry about the fanfare when we can grasp the trumpet. But,’ she smirked, ‘I like a good party. And all our men and women need something to hold in their minds that is not fear and death.’
In the wagon, there was a stirring, a distant thump and a hearty wail.
‘Oh goddess,’ Srayanka swore, and she raced Kineas for the wagon bed.
22
By Kineas’s calculations, the feast to mark their wedding and their victory would fall on the Panathenaia, a festival that celebrated both Athena and Eros. He calculated the date with an eye to the grass on the plains and the speed with which his wife - and his wounded - could recover.
‘Nothing could be more fitting,’ said Diodorus, with a twinkle in his eye. He and Philokles could be seen plotting in all corners of the camp.
Coenus’s arrival made the celebrations possible. Scouts foretold him, and then Samahe located him and brought his column into their camp, cheered by Sakje and Sauromatae and Olbians alike.
Coenus’s column arrived with twenty fresh troopers to replace losses, a hundred heavy chargers from the plains of southern Hyrkania, forty talents of gold, his new bride Artemesia and news.
And wine.
Wine flowed for a week as if they were sitting on the plains of Arcadia and not those of Sogdiana. Olbians paid Sauromatae maidens to weave garlands of the shiny leaves that looked most like laurel, and they celebrated the mid-summer feast of Aphrodite a few days late, and no man or woman was altogether sober.
Coenus’s lady sat with Sappho, modestly dressed. The two of them had been sewing and embroidering for two days without cease, washing their hands frequently, and hiding their work from all comers.
‘You’ve shared the plan with the gentlemen, I take it?’ Coenus asked.
Kineas nodded, chewing on some unleavened bread made from proper wheat. ‘I proposed it to Srayanka and Diodorus as well.’
Philokles waved his bread at them. ‘Me, too,’ he said with his mouth full.
Coenus waved his arms at the west. ‘It’s becoming a reality already,’ he said. ‘Heron put a hundred men into the fort on the Rha under Crax and then sent his troop of horse to clear my way. Crax is the lord of all the Rha’s mouth, and he has recruited men in your name.’ Coenus gave a wry smile. ‘I also recruited some men in Olbia and Pantecapaeum, and I added mine to his rather than ship them across the Kaspian. Many of them had already guessed how much bullion I had.’ He shrugged.
‘And Lykeles?’ Kineas asked.
‘Not a complete fool,’ Coenus said fondly. ‘He had no idea of how he was being used. I set him straight. But mark my words - there will be war in the cities before next summer. Heraclea, the strongest city on the Euxine, is making noise of grabbing at the east-coast cities, and neither Olbia nor Pantecapaeum are ready.’
‘Heron?’
‘Heron is slowly gathering and training an army of the trash of Hyrkania, with Leosthenes as his captain and Lycurgus as the governor of Namastopolis.’ Coenus smiled. ‘He’s not hurting anyone, and his gold is keeping the best men for us. The rest have already gone south over the mountains to Parthia. The knives are out there, and everywhere that Alexander’s writ runs. He’s a fool to stay in the east. His western lands are going to desert him.’ Coenus shook his head. ‘And on top of all that, he’s recruiting Greeks himself.’
Kineas shook his head. ‘I’m not one of Alexander’s worshippers,’ he said, ‘but a year ago, the tyrant of Olbia was telling me that Parmenion would bury him. Now Parmenion is dead. Alexander may be mad, he may leak hubris as most men bleed, but he is canny when it comes to ruling men.’ He paused. ‘He needs those Greeks. He’s bled a lot of men.’
Diodorus gave a hard smile. ‘We helped.’
Coenus nodded. ‘I won’t argue with you. Antipater walks in fear. Olympias is a force to be reckoned with, or so they say.’ He drank wine. ‘Ares, but that all seems so distant here.’
Diodorus gave a foxy grin. ‘The politics may be distant, but the God-King himself is just a thousand stades that way.’ He motioned to the east. ‘Probably less.’
Coenus sat up as if stung by a wasp. ‘That’s less than the distance from Athens to Sparta!’
‘Just so.’ Diodorus reached past his friend and poured wine into his cup. ‘His patrols and ours are already on the same ground. If he weren’t so focused on Spitamenes, he’d be after us already.’
‘So Crax is in the fort at Errymi,’ Kineas interrupted.
Coenus rubbed his beard. ‘He’s a good lord, and the Maeotae like him. His patrols keep them safe. There are already new farms on the Rha. I rode over the divide to the Tanais - there and back, if you know what I mean. I talked to the farmers on the Tanais. They know we cleared the bandits. Unless we over-tax them, they’ll be satisfied to have a lord - and a town.’
Kineas shook his head again. ‘I haven’t sworn to it yet.’
Coenus drank off the dregs of his wine. ‘Nonsense. The thing is as good as done.’
Sappho smiled, and so did Artemesia, and Srayanka laughed, all three of them watching the two babies.
Philokles slapped Kineas on the back. ‘Will you be a king?’ he asked.
Kineas was still laughing when Upazan rode by and something in the set of the man’s shoulders killed his laughter. ‘I would rather found a city with an assembly.’
Srayanka shrugged. ‘We have assemblies, too. But we have lords for war. If we do this thing, I think we should have a king.’
Nihmu reached into the circle of adults and took a warm round of bread. ‘The time of kings is coming,’ she said. She smiled apologetically, either for her words or for her theft of bread. ‘The time of assemblies is almost past.’ She smiled timidly. ‘That is what the priests said in Olbia.’
Philokles looked at her and frowned. He was bleary with wine. ‘Why must it be a time of kings, child? Sparta has kings, and this is scarcely her finest hour,’ he said. ‘And why must you play the barbarian seeress all the time?’
Sappho shook her head. ‘The girl speaks only the truth, Philokles. And wasn’t Cassandra a Greek woman, and no barbarian?’
Kineas nodded. ‘Nihmu, your priests are aristocrats to a man and they desire a time of kings. Bad prophets predict futures that they desire. Good prophets speak only what the gods send.’
‘Oh, aristocrats are at fault, are they?’ Philokles asked.
‘Go to bed,’ Sappho said. ‘You are arguing, not debating.’ She sent Nihmu away with a whisper, and Kineas knew that she had sent the girl for Temerix.
Philokles resented her tone. He drew himself up. ‘I’m sorry if my wit is not up to your standards, madam,’ he said, and walked off into the night.
Sappho, after a worried look, took Diodorus’s hand and led him off.
off. Srayanka put her daughter to her breast. ‘If that girl is Kam Baqca’s daughter,’ she asked, ‘who was her mother?’
Kineas drank wine and shook his head. ‘She told me. I can’t remember. Some lady with your name was her grandmother.’
‘Really?’ Srayanka asked. ‘Srayanka the archer? That would make us cousins. Why don’t I know her?’
‘No idea, my dear. I didn’t grow up here.’ Kineas stroked her hair, and then took his daughter and held her, marvelling again at the tiny hands and feet - and how it all worked. And how holding a child made him feel.
‘She frightens me,’ Srayanka said. ‘And if Kam Baqca ever lay with a woman, I would expect to know.’
Kineas raised an eyebrow. ‘I like her. Even when she’s a Cassandra.’
Srayanka took her daughter and put her back to the breast. ‘Greedy beast,’ she murmured. ‘I may be wrong, love. Kam Baqca was the oddest of beings, and he sacrificed his manhood, hmmm, seven years ago, or perhaps eight. So the thing is possible.’
Kineas could understand many things of the Sakje, but Kam Baqca’s exchange of gender made his stomach turn and he changed the subject. ‘You are ready for this wedding?’ he asked.
She switched breasts, while Samahe came and took the boy from his basket and began to change him. ‘We are already wed, husband. But it will be good for your Greek men to see the ceremony performed, and all our people want to drink wine.’ She smiled and changed the subject herself. ‘I like Lot’s wife.’
Kineas allowed his eyes to follow Upazan. ‘I wish she would bear him a son,’ he said.
Srayanka made a chucking sound with her tongue. ‘Stop thinking like a Greek. His son will not be his heir. That is not the Sauromatae way, or the Sakje way or the Massagetae way.’
‘His son might be his heir,’ Kineas said.
She nodded. ‘Less likely with the eastern clans than the western, but possible. But Upazan is his heir, and no child of Monae’s will change that. But they are young yet, and Lot is in the full flower of his warrior life. What concerns you?’
‘Upazan wants him dead. Upazan hates us, for whatever reason.’
‘No reason but the folly of youth.’ She smiled. ‘Lot should have brought him west.’
Samahe got up, her sewing rolled away in a sheet of linen. ‘That’s enough milk for any child,’ she said. She reached out and took the girl, who cried and had to be shushed by Kineas.
Kineas played with her while his son latched on to Srayanka’s nipple in moments.
‘When will we name them?’ he asked, holding his daughter.
‘We will name them at the ceremony. They will be a month old, and that is a good age.’
‘Greek names or Sakje names?’ Kineas asked, trying to sound light.
‘Both, I think,’ she answered. ‘Satyrus - Satrax - for our son. And Melissa - Melitta to Kineas - for our daughter.’
Kineas bowed. ‘Well chosen,’ he said. ‘Just as well I wasn’t involved.’ He smiled at his daughter and gently touched her cheek. ‘Little honey bee,’ he said.
The baby’s eyes snapped open, and her tiny hand grabbed his finger.
‘She has you already,’ Srayanka laughed. ‘And what would you know of choosing Sakje names?’ she asked him. But her eyes danced. They kissed.
‘Your gown is almost finished,’ Samahe said.
Srayanka laughed. She loved looking fine, and she was delighted by the idea of a silk gown. ‘I can’t wait,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to bind my breasts or they’ll leak.’
Kineas handed his daughter to Samahe. ‘Some things are better for a man not to hear,’ he said.
All the world, it seemed, attended their feast. Sauromatae and Sakje, Olbians, Persian traders and even a western Kwin, the purveyor of the silk that made Srayanka’s cream Persian gown, embroidered around the hem and all the seams with Greek and Scythian animals and designs depending on which woman had been available to put her hand to the work. She wore the heavy gold collar of her rank and the high headdress of a priestess, with the green-hilted sword of Cyrus in a gold scabbard at her side. To Kineas, she looked like one of the ancient goddesses he had seen in Ecbatana.
Kineas awoke on his feast day to find that he, too, had a magnificent gift - first, a wool tunic of the finest Sogdian work, made from a pair of matched shawls and decorated more fancifully than an Athenian gentleman would think quite right for everyday wear. His Greek friends had refurbished his red sandals and produced a gold laurel wreath for him to wear in his hair.
Tyrant: Storm of Arrows Page 33
