Destroyer of Cities

22

Melitta sat on her riding horse, watching the smooth steppe roll away to the east broken only by tall clumps of thistle and lappa. She was munching an apple so dry it was almost inedible. Her horse’s breath rose in clouds of steam.

‘Well?’ she said to Coenus.

‘Wait for the scouts,’ Coenus advised her.

‘We’ve waited three days,’ Melitta said. She finished the apple and tossed the wrinkled core on the snow.

‘Thyrsis and Scopasis are not likely to fail,’ Coenus said.

Melitta didn’t want to admit that it was failure she feared — failure, and her own roil of emotions when it came to that pair. Scopasis, the former outlaw and her long-standing bedmate. Thyrsis, the Achilles of the Sakje.

‘They could be dead, now, or captives,’ she said pettishly. ‘Why on earth did we do this?’

This constituted a twelve-hundred-parasang journey into the east. The Tanais high ground lay far behind — they had ridden north around the bird-filled marshes at the north end of the Kaspian Sea where their horses shied at storks and geese, and then south again along the eastern shore, where they’d hunted the abundant game; they ate saiga every night for three weeks and left the entrails for the birds and dried the extra meat under their saddles; killed endless numbers of bustards, and ate them every conceivable way. Despite good hunting, they took the time to purchase supplies in Hyrkania. Twice they’d fought bandits, and twice they’d spent a fortnight with other Sakje or Sauromatae tribesmen, trading for fresh horses and food, and once they’d lain two days under hides, horses pulled tight against them, while a tide of locusts rolled over the plains — and then they’d eaten all they could catch, in fresh honey.

Everyone east of Hyrkania had been raided by the Parni — the new tribe, fresh from the deserts beneath the high walls of the Qu’in. Distant cousins of the Parsi and the Parthi, or so men said. But no one seemed to know where they were.

Until, after thirty weeks of riding, they had crossed the salt lake and camped on the outskirts of Marakanda, where Alexander had camped and where her father had fought. And there they’d met rumours of the Parni, and how they were moving into the lands of Bactria, lands emptied by a generation of war by Alexander and his satraps. Alexander had not conquered Bactria cleanly — but none of the Bactrians who had resisted him had lived to tell the tale, and their forts were as empty as the beds of their wives.

And the Parni had ridden south from the steppe to occupy some of the richest grazing land in all the known world.

Sitting in the agora — the souq — of Marakanda, Coenus had tried to convince his charge to turn back.

‘If the Parni have moved into Bactria,’ he said, ‘they’re no business of ours. They’ll never trouble us again. They came west, all the way to Hyrkania. Now they’ve turned south. You’ve shown your power — you’ve ridden across the steppe the way your mother did, and shown that the Assagetae still have a long arm. Let us ride home. There are other predators besides the Parni.’

Melitta shook her head. ‘I will show the length of my arm with my arm,’ she said.

And so, fifteen days later, east along the Polytimeros, and then south with the first break in the weather, losing horses to climb the high passes of eastern Sogdiana — the same passes that Leon and Ataelus and Temerix had crossed twenty years before. Now their knowledge, transferred through their sons and daughters and friends, was more precious than gold, and the Assagetae and their Tanais cavalry allies descended into northern Bactria through the back door of the Dushanbe Valley, where they bought musty grain and warm food. And information.

The people of Bactria had no great love for their new overlords.

Melitta had sent her best to find the right target. And then she had tried to sit back and relax and stay warm. In Bactria, it was still winter — high, howling winter, and the passage of the Sogdian Mountains seemed impossibly rash in retrospect.

‘Why did we do this?’ she asked again. But she could tell that Coenus was avoiding telling her the truth — that she’d made every choice that had brought them here.

An hour later a snow squall hit from the south, the snow blowing in their faces, and Melitta retreated to her warm felt tent, where the other leaders might look at her and where she had to wear the armoured mask of impassive command.

But when the snow squall cleared, Scopasis pushed into the lodge, brushing snow from his long leather coat, grinning like a boy with his first horse. Behind him was Thyrsis. They didn’t look like rivals for her love — they looked like brothers.

‘Lady,’ Scopasis said, and when she waved, he sat. Coenus brought him a cup of wine, and another for Thyrsis. Nikephorus made room at the brazier for the two men, and Listra grinned at Thyrsis.

Melitta writhed at that grin. Jealousy was not an acceptable trait among the Sakje — and showing jealousy to a peer over a man you don’t bed yourself was not just unacceptable but beyond the imagining of the Sakje. So Melitta had watched her beautiful Thyrsis grow closer and closer to the Grass Cats leader all summer. Now they openly shared their furs — Melitta had lain awake, listening to them quietly make love.

There is no privacy in a winter yurt. And Melitta was alone.

I will not go back to Scopasis, she thought. So she slept next to Coenus, curled in his arms, or alone in extra furs as her mood took her.

And Listra was. . observant. And not insensitive.

Except now. Her eyes devoured him, and he all but caressed her openly.

Melitta cleared her throat.

Scopasis drank his warm wine. ‘That was brutal,’ he said. His grin didn’t belie his words. It just made him look like the tough bastard he was.

‘And?’ she asked.

‘The Parni are a big concern,’ Scopasis said. ‘Twelve thousand warriors, give or take a thousand. They’d have more, but they don’t let their women fight.’ He grinned. ‘They’ve moved in here like an avalanche falling.’

Coenus muttered, ‘Tell us something we don’t know.’

‘They have Diodorus as a prisoner,’ Scopasis said, flat as the crack of a big tree in heavy ice.

Coenus sat up. ‘That’s it!’ he said. ‘Oh, the fading mind of the old. Diodorus is here on an embassy!’

‘And now the Parni are keeping him against Seleucus’ good behaviour.’ Seleucus was another of the rivals of Antigonus One-Eye and Demetrios — a strong ally of Ptolemy of Aegypt, and he held the mercenary contracts of Kineas’ father’s friends, the Exiles. ‘And something about tribute.’ Thyrsis smiled at Listra, and then back at his queen. ‘Lady, we talked to Diodorus. He’s well. He said he could run any time he wanted.’

‘Where was all this?’ Coenus asked.

‘Down in Alexandria of Bactria,’ Scopasis said. ‘Three days’ ride. In the summer.’ He smiled a hard smile. ‘Listen: the new Khan of Bactria has his horse lines there — ten thousand horses, all his wives, a palace of yurts and buildings, too. Alexander’s old camp — Ganax of the Parni has taken it for himself.’

‘Guards? Warriors?’ Coenus asked.

Scopasis grinned, and this time it was genuine mirth.

‘The Parni are desert people,’ he pronounced.

‘So?’ Tuarn of the Hungry Crows was soft-spoken.

‘So they don’t ride in winter,’ Scopasis said. ‘And they can’t imagine anyone else doing it, either.’

Melitta’s people scouted Alexandria of Bactria four times. She herself rode through the horse herds, wearing a plain fleece coat. She saw a sentry, and heard the man complain of the misery of standing winter guard. She rode across the souq unchallenged. She counted the guards around the palace of yurts.

Listra went with Philokles of Olbia and Thyrsis. Tuarn went with Scopasis and Nikephorus and Coenus.

Then they built a model of the town in the snow outside Melitta’s yurt.

Then they slept, sharpened their arrows and their swords, and two nights later, in a snow squall, they attacked.

Melitta chose to ride with the Greeks. They had heavy armour and good discipline, and she put all the Olbians together with the men of Tanais and the mounted mercenaries under Coenus and Nikephorus. The snow squall was fortuitous, but not entirely so, and they lost their way twice in the darkness before a lucky glimpse of a watch fire put them back on course.

In fact, getting to the main gate of the complex of yurts, wagons and outbuildings was the hardest part, and the part that made her stomach turn. She prayed to her gods that no bow would shatter in the cold, the sinew or the horn giving way. Most of them rode the last hour with their bows under their legs. But when they came into the clearing before the gate, her fears fell away and her numb fingers clamped an arrow to her string.

And then there was no more time for worry, and they were riding easily over the tramped snow in front of the gate, and the sentries died without a cry.

The gate was a joke — in Alexander’s time there had been a ditch and palisade, but it hadn’t been maintained and five feet of snow made a mockery of it. Nor was the gate closed. Melitta rode over the corpse of the first sentry, his blood impossibly red on the snow, and passed under the gate into the heart of the tent palace. Philokles of Olbia took a squadron north inside the gate, and Nikephorus took another squadron south. They paused only to kindle fire in their cold hands, and then they were away — screaming. And men began to emerge from the tents, yurts, wagons and lodges — angry men — and Melitta and her warriors killed them in the streets, riding them down, shooting them with arrows at point-blank range.

The night was full of screams and fire, and her only fear now was accident — to her men or to Diodorus, who might rush into the street unwarned and perish. But such things were in the hands of the gods, and even while she chewed on the ends of her worry, she shot a beautifully dressed man in the back as he ran from her pony’s hooves, and when he attempted to rise she shot him again.

Besides, Scopasis had sworn to rescue old Diodorus. And she trusted Scopasis to do anything he said.

She gave a long whoop, and then she was in the central market, where the ring of wagons marked the Khan’s own family. And even as she rode out into the fire-lit night, her men emerged from the flanks — young Philokles, his hood down and his hair streaming behind him, and Nikephorus, considerably less dramatic but just as successful, rode out of the street to the north. They immediately began to fire the wagons.

Coenus was taking very little part. He rode behind her, watching, looking for an ambush that never appeared, keeping his own men in reserve against a crisis that she didn’t expect. In fact, his disgust was written plainly on his features. This was steppe war, not Greek war. He didn’t like it.

Too bad for him.

She rode her pony forward across the hard crust of snow to the edge of the fire circle.

‘Come out, King Ganax!’ she shouted.

‘Don’t be a fool, girl!’ Coenus called, and the knights of her bodyguard, led by Scopasis, surged forward to surround her, but no arrows flew out of the dark.

‘Stay and burn, or come out, King Ganax!’ Melitta called.

And Ganax came. He had little choice — as the leader of a tribe, he knew his duty. He came in his armour, gleaming in the red light.

‘Who the fuck are you?’ he demanded. ‘Dogs will eat the corpses of your people.’

Melitta laughed. ‘I am Melitta, Queen of the Assagetae.’

Ganax had an axe — a big axe with a four-foot handle. He put the head of the axe in the snow and rested his weight on it. ‘Assagetae? The Royal Clan of the West? What do I have to do with you, bitch?’

Melitta grinned. She had done the right thing. She could feel it.

‘Your warriors killed some of my people, and took two women as slaves. For fifteen dead, I take a hundred of yours dead. For two women enslaved, I take you, Ganax. Let your people feel my hand. My reach goes where the grass grows and the snow falls.’

Men watched her from the wagons.

Ganax raised his axe.

‘All I hear is talk,’ he said.

Melitta rode in close. She reined in her horse just two horse lengths from him.

‘What do you offer me for your life?’ she asked.

‘Fuck you!’ he roared.

She shot him contemptuously, so that her arrow tore into his groin and he fell to the ground screaming.

‘Goodbye, Parni,’ she yelled. ‘Don’t come across my river again.’

She and the bodyguard and all the Greeks galloped away, out of the bloodstained snow and the fire-stained camp and into the darkness.

On the high ridge above the camp of the Parni, she met the other bands — Tuarn with his Crows, bundled like children in the cold air, and Listra with her warriors, and behind her, the snow was black with horses.

‘How will we ever get them all home?’ Tuarn laughed.

‘Let’s find out,’ Melitta said. ‘The Parni will not lie down and take this. In the morning, they will count their dead and find our tracks and they will be on us.’

Scopasis shook his head. ‘They will count the horse herd gone, and they will despair. And the horses will cover our tracks so that they will never know how few we are.’

A deep male voice spoke in the dark. ‘Why not take the short road home, lady?’

Diodorus rode out of the darkness, and Melitta embraced him.

Scopasis made a face behind him.

‘He’d already rescued himself,’ Scopasis said, and spat. ‘All I did was escort him.’

Diodorus shook his head. ‘No — I count this as rescue,’ he said. ‘Seleucus will love you for this, Melitta. The Parni have been a threat to him for two years — invincible. Now they won’t seem like such a tough nut.’ Diodorus shivered. ‘May I suggest you ride south? We can be out of Bactria in two days.’

‘South will put no horses on my grass,’ Melitta said.

‘Sell them to Seleucus and sail home,’ Diodorus said. ‘You’ve come five hundred parasangs. Why go home that way?’

‘He has a point,’ Coenus said.

Her tribal leaders looked troubled, but no sooner was the press of combat off her breast than she wanted to be home. Months in the saddle for a night of fire — it was time to leave.

‘How long to Persopolis?’ she asked.

‘Thirty days?’ Diodorus suggested. ‘I took fifty getting here.’

She nodded, and they rode south and west.

South and west was like riding into spring, so that after just four days of riding down the passes out of Bactria, they had grass for the horse herd and no snow. The ground was soft and muddy, and they lost the smaller horses.

The third night out of Ganax’s camp, Scopasis caught a pair of Parni scouts and killed them and left their bodies in the muddy tide left by the passage of so many horses. Every man had many horses now, and the Assagetae and the Greeks moved like the wind, riding and changing horses every hour; the likelihood of traps or pursuit began to look remote.

Tuarn rode up beside her on the fourth day.

‘This will live for ever in the memory of the people,’ he said. ‘But I do not want to ride to Persopolis. Many visits make long delays. We should come on the Kaspian Sea from the south — just ten days’ ride. We can be in the high ground of Colchis by the first moon of summer.’ He grinned. ‘And keep this horse herd. And lady — I speak not as a Ghan but as a man — when you bring these horses home, no clan will ever question you again. Do not sell them to the Seleucids. They have more value on the hoof — they show the length of your reach.’

An hour later, Scopasis rode up beside her and said nearly the very same.

So on the fiftieth day, she embraced Diodorus and sent him on his way south with a hundred horses and all the goods he had rescued and most of Nikephorus’ men — all perfectly happy to accept extra land grants to get back to civilisation all the faster. Alexander of Phokis led them, and he saluted his captain and the Lady of the Assagetae, and then they rode away into a light rain.

And Melitta turned her column north and west, towards Hyrkania, Colchis and home.