Destroyer of Cities

3

Melitta sat on a stool covered in furs, wearing her best silvered-bronze scale and her favourite white caribou-hide boots and her mother’s caribou coat over her armour. Despite the stool, she sat with her back straight. Her right hand was supported by her mother’s sword, which, according to Assagetae tradition, had been taken as spoils from Cyrus the Great after a battle in the distant past.

Behind her stood — or sat — her bodyguard, twenty young knights of her own household led by her lover, Scopasis, who stood at her side like a heavily muscled statue.

Arrayed in front of her were ten days of heavy work — the men and women of the Assagetae who had brought their cases to her to plead. It was the spring gathering of the Assagetae in their ‘city’ of dykes and temporary walls, hidden in the upper reaches of the Borysthenes River where most Greeks had never travelled.

Merchants had been arriving for days. Hundreds of them: swordsmiths and goldsmiths and fine potters and leatherworkers from as far away as Athens and Alexandria, lured by the promise of rich profits and a sense of adventure. The Tanja of the Assagetae was like a combination of law court, agora and religious festival, with a trade fair thrown in for entertainment. There were twenty thousand tribesmen and women in the dykes, their great herds penned, tribe by tribe, with two hundred thousand horses and twice as many sheep spread over hundreds of stades. Cattle wandered from encampment to encampment, lowing loudly, eating whatever grass was already available, watched by children whose attention was more on the wonder of the Aegyptian priest and his wagon than on their charges. Horses trumpeted to each other — uncut stallions roared with irritation at the smell of so many other strange stallions, and mares rolled their lips back in scent-inspired appreciation of all the possibilities. Adolescent warriors of both sexes did approximately the same as their horses.

Melitta could remember coming to the Tanja with her mother: the adulation of the adults, the praise for her six-year-old accomplishments, the wonder of the trade fair, the fine horses and the beautiful clothes. But mostly she could remember her mother’s disgust that her people could behave so often like fools, and her annoyance at dealing with their failings in the giving of law. Adultery, drunkenness, child abandonment, horse-thieving, witchcraft, murder — she heard them all.

Are you children? her mother would often ask of the men and women brought before her.

Her attention snapped down to a pair of her own tribesmen — Cruel Hands — veterans of her summer campaigns of three years before, and men who had ridden to raid the Sauromatae these last two years. Impatient with a grain trader, they had killed him and taken his mules and his goods.

‘He was trying to cheat us!’ the shorter one said, as if this made it all right.

‘You murdered a foreign merchant in cold blood,’ answered Kairax. He was their immediate lord and was acting for the merchants.

‘Wasn’t cold blood!’ shouted the bigger of the two. ‘I was mad as fuck!’

‘Are you two children?’ Melitta snapped. For a moment she paused because she heard her mother’s voice emerge from her own lips. ‘He made you angry, so you killed him?’

‘He was cheating us,’ the smaller man said again.

Melitta took a deep breath. She looked at Kairax. ‘What do the merchants want?’

‘Restitution,’ Kairax said. ‘Fifty horses for the life of the man, twenty more for his goods.’

‘By the Heavenly Archer!’ the smaller man said.

‘That fuck wasn’t worth no fifty horses,’ said the bigger man.

Melitta’s eyes strayed around the enclosure. Carpets — fine carpets — hung on three sides of her, blocking the chill spring wind, separating her deliberations from the riot of the market on the far side of the barrier, although all Sakje were welcome and several hundred of them crowded around, more than a few on horseback.

Her wandering eyes crossed with Scopasis’, and she smiled at him — an automatic smile, as she was beginning to doubt the wisdom of taking him as a lover. He was brave — loyal — and deeply in love with her.

She sighed inwardly, and thought about how easy it would be to be a bad queen; to ignore these petty cases, give quick judgements and be free to roam the booths, spending her riches on golden cones to hang tinkling at the edge of her caribou coat, or fine saddles-

Drakas. That was the short one’s name. He’d been with her in the last charge at Tanais River when all the tribes became intermixed. But she could remember his ugly nose under his helmet, and his grin.

‘Drakas,’ she said.

He stiffened. ‘Lady?’

‘Drakas, how many horses do you own?’ She leaned forward and pointed her mother’s sword at him. ‘How many?’

‘More than a hundred,’ he admitted.

‘And this lout?’ she asked. She didn’t really know his companion.

The big man shrugged. ‘A dozen,’ he admitted.

She shook her head. Drakas had enough horses to be treated as a nobleman, but his friend did not. She suspected that this apparent inequality had something to do with the killing — and she further suspected that Drakas’ success as a hunter and raider had something to do with the fact that Kairax was willing to see him punished. Rivalry? Jealousy?

You’re like children.

‘Who struck the killing blow?’ she asked.

Drakas shrugged. ‘I did,’ he admitted, pursing his lips. He spat. Among Sakje, that wasn’t a gesture of disrespect — she needed to remember that. Among Sakje, he was being contemplative and polite.

‘What was the actual value of the man’s goods?’ she asked Kairax.

Kairax shrugged. ‘They say twenty horses,’ he said, and shook his head. He and Drakas exchanged a glance that suggested their relationship was even more complicated than she had guessed.

‘Bring me a merchant who knew this man,’ she said. She raised her head to Scopasis. ‘Who’s next?’

He raised an eyebrow — an expression she loved. ‘Astis daughter of Laxan of the eastern Dirt People.’ He made a face. ‘Her father and brothers were murdered.’

‘Sauromatae?’ Melitta asked, suddenly interested.

‘Perhaps,’ Scopasis said. ‘A matter for your attention, anyway. I have heard her story and believe it.’

‘Have her brought,’ Melitta said.

An eddy in the crowd announced the arrival of a pair of long-robed merchants — Syrians. They bowed to her.

‘They ask if we will use their interpreter,’ Kairax asked. He grinned.

‘Tell them I would be happy to use their interpreter,’ Melitta said. She grinned too.

Their interpreter stepped forward. He looked sheepish, and they spoke among themselves for a moment.

‘How big was the dead man’s family?’ Melitta asked in Sakje, and the translator put the question to the two merchants in Greek.

‘No doubt she’ll use the size of his family to assess the total value of the judgement,’ muttered one merchant. Greek was not his first language, either.

‘So make it big. Eight children,’ said the other merchant.

‘Lady, the merchant says eight children,’ the interpreter said. ‘That’s what he told me to say, lady,’ the man added.

‘Ask him if he knows the family well,’ Melitta said.

‘Now what do I say?’ asked the second merchant. His Greek was better. ‘If I say I don’t know them-’

Melitta leaned forward and pointed her sword at the second merchant. ‘You could just tell the truth,’ she said in Greek.

Gaweint, one of her knights, and the one whose Greek was best, translated this sally for the audience, who roared with appreciative laughter.

The merchants glared around.

‘Come forward. Talk to me,’ Melitta said. ‘How many children did the man have?’

‘I don’t know,’ admitted the merchant. ‘He only worked for me this one trip.’

‘And if I give you horses, will any of them go to his wife and children? Where was he from?’

‘Far, my lady, by the great salt-’

‘Spare me, Syrian. I grew up in Alexandria and I’ve ridden a black-hulled ship into every port on the Syrian coast.’ She laughed at their discomfiture. ‘You people need to do more research before you come to the Sea of Grass. Now, no horse shit — do you even know where he’s from?’

‘No,’ admitted the Aramaic merchant. He shrugged expressively. ‘No. But that shouldn’t mean your man gets off free.’

‘How much merchandise did the man lose? Really lose?’ Melitta asked.

‘About ten good horses’ worth,’ the merchants admitted, after a whispered discussion.

Melitta nodded. ‘Kairax, step forward. Here is my judgement. Each of these two,’ she pointed at the two Cruel Hands tribesmen, ‘will give five good horses to these merchants. Yes?’

Both men nodded, although the bigger man — the poorer — grew pale.

‘Drakas will pay ten horses each to me and to Kairax for his breach of the lady’s peace.’ She looked at Drakas.

He jumped forward. ‘Where is the fairness in that, lady? Alkaix here did the same as me-’

‘You struck the killing blow and you, the nobleman, led him into this crime. Did you not?’ she asked.

Drakas mumbled something.

‘Twenty horses will not break you, Drakas. But it ought to remind you to keep your temper in check.’ She motioned him forward. He came to her side, and she gestured for him to kneel so that she could speak into his ear.

‘You desire to be treated as a nobleman, do you not?’ she asked.

Drakas nodded. ‘I have-’

‘Spare me. What do you have for armour?’

Drakas shrugged. ‘A good helmet.’

‘Noble status cuts both ways. Arm five men as knights, mount them yourself and bring them to me, and I will see to it that Kairax grants you your due. See to it that one of them is your friend here. Otherwise shut up and obey your betters.’

‘Yes, lady!’ he said.

‘Anything further?’ she asked of the assembly when Drakas had backed away.

Silence reigned.

‘I have spoken my will. Will you see it carried out?’ she asked the assembly.

Men — and women — nodded. Many voices were raised in assent. Kairax gave her a nod. Scopasis gazed at her with adoration.

She felt a certain satisfaction. Giving justice well was a good job.

‘Next,’ she said.

Scopasis stepped up. ‘Astis daughter of Laxan the farmer requests that the lady and Lord Thyrsis help her achieve revenge.’

Astis was a strong-looking woman with a square face and blond-brown hair. Her nose had been recently broken and her eyes had the look that hunted animals and damaged people hold. But she stood erect in front of the assembly of the people in a good Parsi coat of blue wool and deerskin trousers.

‘Who speaks with her?’ Scopasis asked.

Thyrsis stepped forward. Melitta thought of Thyrsis as the Achilles of the Assagetae. His father, Ataelus, had been her father’s right hand on the plains, his chief scout and a hero of every battle he’d ever fought. After her father’s death, Ataelus had served her mother. When she was murdered, he’d held the high plains to the east against the Sauromatae in a six-year campaign of raid and counter-raid. In the process he’d built a mighty clan out of broken men and outlaws from both sides of the Assagetae-Sauromatae divide. Thyrsis was already a famous warrior — handsome, tall and utterly honest; loyal, strong in battle, clever in council. Too good to be true, really.

Both of his parents had died preserving her kingdom; his mother in the battle, his father shortly after, and he had a special call on her attention. Many Assagetae felt that she should marry him.

He and Scopasis hated each other, but both adored her.

They glared at each other for a long moment.

Melitta laughed. ‘Hey, stallions!’ Melitta called. ‘The mare is waiting.’

That got a roar of approval from the crowd.

Thyrsis stepped forward. ‘Lady, this woman is the daughter of Laxan, who served with the archers at the Battle of the Tanais. I have this word from the smith, Temerix, on her behalf. Her people settled the upper Tanais high ground, east of the Temple of the Hunting Goddess, and her father’s father held land by Crax’s fort.’

Melitta nodded to the woman. ‘You are welcome, and doubly welcome for the service of your father.’

‘Thank you, lady. Temerix and Thyrsis both say you are the Lady of the Dirt People as well as the Sky People, and I pray this is true.’ Her eyes were slightly mad, and there was something flawed in her voice, as if she was afraid to talk and afraid to be silent.

‘I am here,’ Temerix said. He was a giant of a man, his shoulders as broad as the full length of a child, his arms heavy with muscle like the roots of a strong oak. He was a master smith, and his best work could rival that of the Aegyptian smith-priests or the best ironsmiths of Chaldike or Heraklea. He was another fixture of Melitta’s childhood, having served her father.

This no-account Dirt People woman had two powerful advocates. That was interesting.

‘Speak, daughter of Laxan.’ Melitta smiled at her, trying to disarm the tension in her shoulders and the fear in her face.

‘Lady, raiders came to our farm and killed my family.’ She laughed — a terrible sound. ‘They took me and my sisters. I lived with them — almost a year.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Last autumn I took a horse and rode away. I would not be one of them. I ask that you. . ride against them.’

The broken nose and the odd motions of her face told that this was a woman who had been beaten — many times. ‘Who are they?’ Melitta asked.

‘Sauromatae?’ asked Scopasis. The Sauromatae had become the enemies of the Assagetae, but it had been three years since their defeat and now many of the beaten tribesmen had simply moved into the tribes of the victorious — as was always the way on the plains. Many of the men and women gathered around the assembly were Sauromatae, but they were no longer the ‘people of Upazan’, the leader who had ridden to defeat and death. Now they were her own people. Scopasis’ failure to understand these things was one of the reasons he could never be her consort.

‘They were not Sauromatae,’ Astis said. She gave her curious laugh again. ‘In the year of the War, Sauromatae came and burned our farm and my father took us and led us into the woods. I killed a Sauromatae. I know what a Sauromatae looks like. I know a Sauromatae horse from an Assagetae horse, although I am a farmer.’

That provoked a growl from the assembly.

‘What clan would dare to breach the peace and kill your father?’ Melitta asked. This is bad, she thought, and inwardly she cursed Scopasis for not bringing her this in private — and Thyrsis for not bringing the matter to her attention before the assembly. If one of the clans had done this. . so much for her pleasant spring progress.

‘No clan of Assagetae,’ Astis said.

Now she had silence. Every ear was turned to her. Melitta found herself leaning forward.

‘They call themselves Parni,’ she said. ‘Big men with yellow hair from the east. What they speak is like Sakje, but not Sakje. I heard them say that after they take Hyrkania, they will come here.’ She looked around. ‘I went with them, east of the Kaspian Sea. Twenty days east of the salt water.’ She raised her mad eyes and Melitta looked into them — into a year of horror, slavery, beatings and rapes, degradation. ‘I ask for revenge — for my father and brothers, for my sisters who died under them.’

Melitta rose. ‘Astis, you have suffered, and we will discuss your revenge, but this is not a matter for the assembly. I cannot offer a single judgement on this, the way I might on the murder of one man by another. If we are to punish these Parni, it would require the agreement of a dozen clan leaders. But when we meet, I will ask you to speak.’

A hundred heartbeats later, in the relative privacy of her own tent, she turned on Scopasis.

‘Why was I not warned?’ she asked. ‘This is a matter for all the Assagetae!’

Scopasis shrugged. ‘A woman was taken in a raid,’ he said. ‘These things happen.’

‘Artemis! Gentle lady, deadly archer — Scopasis, are you a fool? This is not a simple abduction. That woman has been used — brutally. And not by some tribal youngling with a delusion of power — this is some clan about which we know nothing, attacking our high-plains farmers!’

Thyrsis pushed into the tent behind Scopasis. Melitta’s main tent space was big enough for four men on horseback. She waved her hand automatically, inviting him to sit. ‘Wine for my guests,’ she said to her servants. She and her brother had outlawed slavery in the city of Tanais — but the Assagetae had paid no attention at all. They had slaves, especially after a successful war.

‘Pardon me, lady,’ Thyrsis said.

‘And you!’ she turned on him. ‘If he’s a fool, you’re two fools — once for not warning me in advance, and again for not sending her to Tanais.’

Scopasis was angry, she could see that. No man enjoys being called a fool in front of a rival. But Thyrsis bore her anger easily.

‘Lady, this woman presented herself to me just yesterday, when I came into the camp. She travelled far to the north, and came among us with the Standing Horses, even though she is one of ours. And she is from far to the east, lady — I’m not even sure that she can claim to be one of our people, except that her father served with Temerix — and I did not even know that until she brought the smith to me this morning. Then this one,’ Thyrsis pointed at Scopasis, ‘told me that it was a matter of little moment, and that you would deal with it in due time.’

Melitta turned on Scopasis. He shrugged. ‘I was wrong, it appears. I cannot always be correct.’

Melitta drew breath to speak her mind — and all but bit her tongue. The Lady of the Assagetae was not the same person as Melitta, lover of Scopasis, nor yet again the same person as the warrior Smells Like Death. In Assagetae terms, these were different people who shared her body — a belief that would have angered Aristotle, she thought. Regardless, if she unleashed her rage on Scopasis-

‘We will talk of this later,’ she said. ‘In the meantime, you can best serve me by summoning the clan leaders.’

The Tanja was the largest in years — so most of her clan leaders were readily available. Parshevaelt of the Cruel Hands, with Kairax, were close by, and came to her tent before the wine was poured. Urvara’s daughter Listra Red-Hand was just sixteen — but Urvara had inherited the Grass Cats from her father at a young age, and Listra had already killed men in battle, led the great hunts for which her people were famous and was undisputed lady of the clan.

The lords of the Silent Wolves and the Hungry Crows were harder to find, and were less her men. Their clans had come late to the great fight at Tanais River — perhaps due to some treachery, and perhaps not. Her decision to give them only small shares of the spoils had been popular with her other clans — but not with them.

And in truth, clans came and went from the great tribes such as the Assagetae in the same way that warriors came and went from clans. The People of Ataelus now numbered more Sauromatae than Assagetae — while the Grass Cats had absorbed many of the former Standing Horses, and the current Standing Horse clan was a pale shadow of its former numbers although its new lord, Sindispharnax, was rebuilding. He had so few warriors that he might not have warranted a place in her council but he was a member of her household, one of her own knights, and he was already present. Besides, she wanted him to succeed in rebuilding what had once been the greatest of clans, after the Cruel Hands.

To foreigners, the Horse People — the Sky People, as they called themselves — were a mass of faceless nomads with an alien, impenetrable, unchanging society. The Greek called them the Royal Scythians. But Melitta knew that they were as changeable as the sea, as different, tribe by tribe, as Athenians and Spartans.

Tuarn of the Hungry Crows was next — small, dark-haired and bearing an uncanny resemblance to his totem animal, from his stooped shoulders to his beak of a nose. He took his wine with a good grace and his eyes twinkled.

‘I gather we have a border problem,’ he said.

Scopasis stood stiffly by his side. ‘I explained,’ he said, like a man who fears that anything he does will prove to be wrong.

Kontarus was last, lord of the Silent Wolves. He was old and bent, and his tanist, a tall, thin woman with remarkably red hair, stood at his arm, supporting him. He glanced around, refused the wine and grunted. ‘Saida,’ he said, pointing at the red-haired woman. His tone suggested that he was not pleased to be summoned.

Melitta couldn’t decide whether Saida was haughty or merely nervous. She’d never been introduced. Melitta crossed the carpet to her and offered her hand to clasp. ‘Saida, I’m Melitta,’ she said with deliberate informality.

‘Yes,’ Saida said. ‘I know.’ She took the hand clasp as lightly as possible, as though Melitta’s touch held some disease.

Melitta refused to act like a boy. ‘You are the daughter of Kontarus?’ she asked.

‘No relation at all,’ the woman replied with cold finality. ‘Not really your business.’

Melitta wanted to roll her eyes. Rudeness like this was not acceptable. It had political overtones. ‘My dear,’ she said, switching to a Greek approach, ‘if you are not a relation of the lord of the Silent Wolves, then you can’t expect us to play twenty questions until we discover how he came to name you his heir. And it is, in fact, my business, as I am your lady — the lady of your clan and all the clans.’

Saida didn’t quite meet her eyes. ‘As you say,’ she pronounced. ‘My relations are my business. I’m his heir. No one need know any more than that — lady.’

Melitta shrugged and marked the woman for a later conversation. This sort of thing she knew how to handle. Uppity girls — no problem.

‘Lords of the horses, we have a problem,’ Melitta began. As quickly as possible, she outlined the story as told by the woman Astis, and then she sent for the woman to tell her own story.

When she had told her story and gone again, leaning on the strong arm of Temerix the smith, Melitta looked around.

‘I would value your thoughts,’ she said, and was greeted by silence.

Oh, how I miss Ataelus and Urvara, she thought. The two older leaders had supported her — and taught her a great deal. Even Geraint — the former lord of the Standing Horses, dead at Tanais River like his former rivals — had taught her, sometimes merely by the way he opposed her. Her new horse lords were as young as she was and, in some ways, even less trained.

It was the Hungry Crow, Tuarn, who broke the silence. ‘We can’t fail to act,’ he said. When no one commented, he shrugged. ‘This is how the fighting with the Sauromatae started, back when Marthax was king. The rest of you are probably too young to remember, and the lady wasn’t among us. The Sauromatae were once strong allies, eh? But Upazan came to be their lord, and his young men pounded away at our eastern valleys. And we did too little.’

‘That is not the way my people tell the tale,’ Thyrsis said. ‘Among Ataelus’ people, we say that we fought, and no one came to our aid.’

Tuarn refused to be offended. ‘Young man, is that any different from what I just said? I did not mean that some of the Assagetae didn’t fight. I mean we didn’t act together. And later, we paid.’

‘Of course, some of us paid more dearly than others,’ Listra said. She was standing with Parshevaelt and Sindispharnax — all three veterans of campaigns with Melitta. The positions in which they were standing — closer to Scopasis, her bodyguard — said a great deal.

‘And some of you profited a great deal more than some of us,’ old Kontarus added.

‘Those who fought were rewarded.’ Melitta was tired of this foolishness. ‘Those who did not fight were not so rewarded. That is the way of the people.’

Saida shrugged. ‘Perhaps it is time we found our own way,’ she said.

‘That is a discussion for another time,’ Melitta said. She schooled her face carefully. ‘Or not. If you decided to ride the Sea of Grass, none of us could stop you, or would. It is the right of any of the people — to ride away. In the meantime, let us keep to the issue at hand.’

Scopasis nodded. ‘I agree with the lord of the Hungry Crows,’ he said.

Melitta glared at him. He was a former outlaw and the captain of her knights, not one of her lords. But among Sakje, a warrior included in a council always felt he had the right to speak, and she was in danger of thinking like a Greek.

Thyrsis laughed. ‘At last we find something on which to agree, outlaw!’ he said.

‘Arrows on the wind,’ agreed Scopasis. The Sakje had a saying: if you shot a hundred arrows into the wind, at least two would fly together.

Listra looked around. ‘We have had too much war,’ she said.

Every one of the clan leaders nodded at that. The population of the Sakje — even with the addition of new people from the east — was down. In three generations they had fought four great campaigns, and the results were obvious in every camp.

‘We don’t even know who these people are,’ Melitta said. ‘I have a mind to go myself. To see them.’

That shocked them, but Melitta saw something on Saida’s face that she didn’t like. She glanced at the red-haired woman, but her face had closed again, and Melitta went on:

‘My thought is to ask every clan for fifty warriors — your best, with five horses each. Together, we would ride east, as quickly as the wind blows in the grass, and find these Parni. To talk — or to kill.’

‘No.’ Saida shook her head. ‘No. The Silent Wolves will send no warriors.’

‘No,’ Thyrsis said, mocking her voice. ‘The Silent Wolves are a clan of children, and have no warriors to send. We never do-’

‘Thyrsis!’ Melitta said, though in truth she appreciated his comment.

Saida stared at the other horse lords. ‘Pah. War and more war — that’s all this one wants. We will be out on the grass.’ She turned to leave, but Scopasis had caught Melitta’s glance and he blocked the entrance of the tent.

‘You have not been dismissed,’ Melitta said. ‘Saida, you seem to crave my ill will. Listen, then. We have not yet chosen a path. Every leader — aye, and every tanist — can speak her mind in council. But if we choose to send riders, and you refuse — then you may indeed go to the Sea of Grass. And don’t come back. Please understand: that will mean you will have no share of the grain and gold that the Dirt People earn for us, and you will hold no land from the Assagetae. You can go north, or east, and fight for grazing as our people did in the old times. Is that plain?’

Saida looked at Kontarus, and he shook his head. ‘As if you would — or could — push us off our lands.’

Melitta was suddenly tired; tired of their childishness. This was an old and insular man who was speaking from ignorance because he had not ridden to the fight at Tanais River: he had no idea of how much power she and her brother had.

Scopasis spoke from behind him. ‘The lady has the power of all the clans, and her brother has fifty ships and five thousand soldiers. And you two represent one small clan that behaves as if you were all the people.’

‘You may go,’ Melitta said. ‘I mean what I have said. If you refuse to serve — begone. If you try to choose a middle path, I will eliminate you. And frankly,’ she said, her temper getting the better of her, ‘I’m tempted to be rid of the pair of you now, as your actions suggest that neither of you is fit to lead one of my clans.’

Scopasis drew his akinake. ‘Say the word, lady,’ he said.

Kontarus glared around. ‘Kill an old man and a woman — murder in council! Bah. Empty threats. We are the greatest of the Assagetae clans — why will you not treat us with the respect we deserve? We have more wagons, more lodges, more horses-’

‘-and no warriors,’ Listra said. ‘The lady is right. Go — or stay. Your own warriors mutter against you because you shirked the fight at Tanais. Try to face us, and see what you get.’

Saida looked around again, still blank-faced. ‘Very well,’ she said. She looked up at Scopasis. ‘Out of my way,’ she ordered.

Scopasis looked at Melitta. ‘I have said they may go,’ Melitta agreed with a nod. When they were gone, she turned to the rest of her lords.

‘Those two have to go,’ she said. ‘I hadn’t realised how bad they were.’

‘It is just ignorance,’ Tuarn pleaded. ‘I, too was late for the Tanais battle. But I saw the forces on that field. Kontarus has no idea — he lives in the days of your grandfather’s father, lady. The Silent Wolves have not ridden to battle in many years. Not under their lords.’

Melitta shrugged. ‘Let us deal with these issues one at a time. Are we all agreed in sending a force east?’

All of the clan leaders agreed, although none of them was happy about it.

‘Can the Standing Horses send me twenty-five warriors?’ she asked Sindispharnax.

He took a deep breath. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I can send fifty.’

She smiled at him. ‘I do not want fifty. I’ll ask you to provide me with twenty-five young scouts. I’ll ask Thyrsis to provide the same — people who know the country. The rest of you I ask to provide fifty knights and a leader who can speak for your people, if I find that I need to negotiate.’

Thyrsis grinned. ‘May we come ourselves?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘I hope that some of you will, and that others will stay. I will name a tanist of my own, to watch the people while I ride east.’ She forced a smile. ‘This will come between me and my son,’ she said. ‘But Tuarn speaks correctly. The last time we were threatened, we were slow to react.’

They were not Greeks, who argued everything endlessly and then voted in slow-moving assemblies. The next day, she told the whole of the people who were assembled about the Parni, and that there would be an expedition to the east.

They roared their approval. Three days later, Melitta discovered that Kontarus had ordered his people to pack and leave the Tanja, and he departed — but fewer than four hundred of them accompanied him.

This was the way that politics happened on the plains. People didn’t meet in assemblies to vote — usually. Most of the time, they ‘voted’ by moving their tents and wagons to another clan. Suddenly, the Standing Horse clan was larger than it had been in five years. The Cruel Hands had to turn new adherents away — they had no more grazing land to share.

‘I didn’t like the look of Saida,’ Melitta commented to her captain of the guard. They were both mounted, having ridden out to review the warriors that each clan were contributing to the force for the east.

‘She means to trouble you,’ he agreed. ‘Shall I follow her and kill her?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Melitta said, but only after a pause. ‘No, Scopasis. I don’t want to rule in that way.’

Scopasis hadn’t been in her bed for five nights. He turned and looked at her for a long time. ‘You are angry at me because I am who I am,’ he said. ‘What I have to say will not make you love me better.’

‘You might be surprised,’ she said.

‘You cannot be the Lady of the Assagetae and let this woman defy you,’ he said.

She shook her head. ‘I can. And I will. Do not — I repeat, do not — take action against her.’

Scopasis turned his head to watch the sun setting on the plains. The grass rolled away in waves like the sea, a carpet of fresh green that went north as far as the eye could see, and west into the setting sun, which turned the seed heads of the new grass a ruddy gold. He watched the sunset for a while.

‘Would you like me to ride away?’ he asked, after a while. ‘I would be gone, and never trouble you again.’

Yes and no both crossed in her head. ‘You must do what is best for you,’ she said carefully, hating the foolish sound of the words, and the pomposity with which she said them. In a moment, she saw what Xeno’s death had spared her. ‘Can you be my guard captain without being my lover?’ she asked — and was proud that she’d said it.

Scopasis groaned. When she turned to look at him, he was weeping.

‘Are you a child?’ she asked, suddenly angry. ‘Grow up!’

So much for mature reflection. She was glad she was riding to war in the east. She felt as if killing someone might make her feel better. She wished that Scopasis was less of a foolish man, so that she could have his long, hard body next to hers and not be lonely at night. The truth was that picking a lover was a hard task for the Lady of the Assagetae — and it would be easier to keep the one she had.

She feared he would do something stupid and dramatic.

‘I want a gallop,’ she announced to the air, and turned her horse’s head and started away across the grass.

She saw him look at her, as if tempted to follow.

But he didn’t.

Two days later, she cut her time at the spring Tanja short, gathered her warriors and headed east. She had more than three hundred riders — she even had twenty-five of Temerix’s people on ponies, big bows on their shoulders and jars of grain in their wagons. They had fifty wagons. The grass was green and fresh, and the game was plentiful as soon as they rode clear of the circle of the Tanja where everyone had hunted everything.

Listra came along with her young cousin, Philokles of Olbia, and a dozen of his friends — Olbian gentlemen, members of the new aristocracy, part Sakje and part Greek that was the legacy of constant intermarriage. They had been at the Tanja and now they rode east, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. She was glad to have them — they were well-armoured, capable men who, despite their youth, had already made a campaign or two.

Tuarn of the Hungry Crows came in person as well, riding a black stallion of magnificent size.

She admired the horse and called out to praise him, and he rode out of his part of the column. ‘When you are lord of the Hungry Crows,’ he joked, ‘you had best ride a good black horse.’

‘Why have we not been friends before?’ she asked him.

He made a face. ‘You always speak your mind like this, lady? I thought that childhood among the Greeks would have made you. . subtle.’

‘Much the opposite,’ she said. Her eyes happened to stray across her guard — and there was Scopasis, in his place, wearing his armour — and she found that her heart gave a little leap.

‘I was Marthax’s man,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I represented him to Eumeles. I didn’t expect you to forgive me.’ She digested this.

‘You didn’t know,’ he said.

‘No,’ she allowed.

‘Shall I ride away?’ he asked.

She shook her head. ‘No. No, let’s share this little war, and be friends.’

He nodded. ‘This bluntness has its benefits, I see.’

And, of course, she had Thyrsis. He chose his warriors carefully, and offered to bring three times as many, but she shook her head. ‘Bring what I ask,’ she said. ‘I need to know that there are many warriors here, if we’re all killed. So that my son will come to avenge us, in time.’ She thought of young Kineas, left behind again. She’d left him back in Tanais with her brother — in the care of Temerix’s exotic wife, who had been her nurse once, and a circle of Sauromatae matrons. Her brother, who openly accused her of being a poor mother.

I should not have left Satyrus without making peace, she thought. I should not be riding away from my son.

She rode easily, breathing deeply of the new grass and the smells of spring — the flowers on every stream bank, the smells of the horses, the woodsmoke at their first campfire. It was hard to concentrate on her winter life as a semi-Greek woman when she was here, doing what she loved, riding the plains.

It was glorious to be young, and to be Queen, leading an army to the east. Or rather, it should have been glorious, but even while she drank from the spring, she wondered if she had made the right decision. On the word of one mistreated farm girl she was leading the flower of her people east on a war of vengeance. Was she being decisive, or merely reacting from boredom?

Scopasis rode up behind her. ‘Is the camp satisfactory?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘Beautiful,’ she said.

That made him smile.

‘Scopasis, am I doing the right thing?’ she asked, suddenly.

He sat behind her and his gelding snorted, sniffing her mare with a sort of vague interest. Her mare sidled away.

‘You ask me these things,’ he said, when they had both reined in their mounts. ‘But the truth is, I’m no king. I can’t answer. And I only sound like a fool when I try. You must ask Thyrsis or Listra. They are lords. I was an outlaw, and now I command your guard. I can make a good rabbit stew, and I will match any other man arrow for arrow, but in truth,’ and he managed a smile, ‘in truth, I’m not able to advise you.’

‘You lay out a good camp, too,’ she said.

‘I have much experience,’ he allowed.

‘You could learn to be a clan leader,’ she said. ‘As good as Sindispharnax, or better.’

He shrugged. ‘Perhaps. Yes — if I rode hard this campaign, and started speaking to the young men and the old outlaws of my youth who still live in the high ground.’ He shrugged. ‘I could be that man, I suppose. But-’ He looked around, struggling for words. ‘But that man might not be me. I don’t know.’ He looked at her. ‘If I became a clan leader, would I then be worthy of you?’

She shook her head. ‘No — or no more than you already are. I’m sorry, Scopasis. Have I treated you badly? I think I have.’

He grunted. ‘I find it hard to know what you want.’

She nodded. ‘Dinner,’ she said. And rode away, before she threw her arms around him and started all over again.