Destroyer of Cities

5

Fifteen days’ travel over the steppes, and her war party emerged from the Sea of Grass into the high ground north of Tanais, with its stands of trees, high hills and beautiful, fertile valleys. It was more her brother’s ground than hers, but they had yet to quarrel about such things. They ruled together, two lords of the different peoples who occupied the same land.

Thyrsis rode up, his golden bow case throwing brilliant ripples of reflected light in the early-morning sunlight. ‘Riders,’ he said. ‘Scouts say more than fifty men with a hundred horses, moving slowly on the river road.’

Melitta was troubled. ‘They shouldn’t be my brother’s men,’ she said. ‘I’ve only been gone three weeks, and there was no-’ she trailed off. ‘Look them over and make contact,’ she said, pointing downriver with her riding whip.

Scopasis pressed his horse closer to hers. ‘Now what?’ he asked.

She shrugged. ‘If I’ve heard about raids in the east, Satyrus probably has as well. Let’s ride.’

She was delighted to find Coenus, although less enthusiastic to find Nikephorus, a man whose talent she admired and of whose motivations she remained suspicious. But the two of them were riding together. They had a strong troop of farmers’ sons on ponies and two dozen of Nikephorus’ men, armed as cavalry and mounted on steppe horses.

‘Well met, Coenus son of Xenophon!’ she called, as she got her best charger up the far bank of the Tanais. It was still chilly enough that swimming the river, even this far north, was a damp and uncomfortable business.

Coenus came forward to embrace her. His men had already set their camp, and had fires started, and he led her to one of them while Scopasis dealt with settling the rest of her little army. But the Sakje knew every pasture and every natural meadow in the Tanais high ground — Melitta had fought a war here, and Coenus had lived here for ten years.

‘You look happy,’ he said.

‘How’s my son?’ she asked. ‘Your grandson,’ she put in.

‘Happy and healthy when I saw him, less than a week ago,’ he replied. ‘The image of his mother — and his father.’ Coenus didn’t flinch to say it, although the boy’s father was his son Xeno, dead at Gaza. Her first lover. She flinched more at the memory than Coenus did. He looked at her. ‘Shouldn’t you be dispensing law to the clans, away west?’

She shrugged. ‘It was a slow winter for crime, Coenus,’ she said. ‘I have reports of raiding in the east. I felt that I should look into them. And I have some restless clan leaders, and I thought I should take them for a ride.’

‘That’s my girl,’ Coenus allowed. He scooped up a horn cup full of warm wine and passed it to her, and she inhaled the fragrance deeply before drinking it off. ‘We’re looking at land for settling our veterans,’ he said. ‘But I’ve five reports of these raiders — all from last autumn.’

‘I have a survivor in my train,’ Melitta said. ‘Taken two autumns ago. So the first raids were a year after the battle.’

Coenus nodded. ‘I think I — that is, we,’ he looked at Nikephorus, ‘would like to interview her.’

‘What do your reports say?’ Melitta asked.

‘Not Sauromatae and not Assagetae,’ Coenus said.

‘My victim says they are a people called Parni.’ Melitta shrugged. ‘It’s a Sakje-sounding name, but I’ve never heard it.’

Coenus made a face. ‘Sounds damned familiar,’ he said. ‘Why do I know that name?’ He shook his head. ‘No matter — that’s quite a little army you have there. You planning on a raid?’

Melitta was happy to have Coenus around. He was level-headed and good at giving her advice. When she was a girl, she’d called him ‘uncle’. Now, as he was the father of the father of her child, he had status among the Assagetae as a sort of stepfather for her.

‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘I’m going east, to Hyrkania. That’s where my survivor says the Parni wintered. I may find them and talk. I may raid their wagons. It depends on what they have to say for themselves’ She looked pensive. ‘Most of my clan leaders felt that we needed to be strong and act decisively to prevent. . another Upazan.’

Coenus nodded and drank some of the warm wine. The last of the Sakje wagons had crossed the river down at the ford, and they were being drawn up in a loose circle, the horses picketed, the sentries set.

Coenus had trained Scopasis, and he watched the former outlaw with something like parental pride. ‘Still sleeping with him?’ Coenus asked. There was some judgement in his tone, and it made her angry, even as she realised that he was probably judging her just as she judged herself.

‘No,’ she said.

He nodded. ‘Sorry, honeybee. You’re not fifteen any more.’ He stretched. ‘And I’m not forty any more. Zeus Sator, do you know Antigonus is nearly eighty? I don’t want to be riding and killing when I’m eighty. I’m feeling tired and old now.’

She shook her head. ‘You’re not old!’ she said.

Coenus grinned. ‘The blessing of Artemis upon you, lass.’

‘Will you come east with me, Coenus?’ she asked.

‘I was afraid you’d ask that,’ Coenus said. He motioned to Nikephorus, who was lying with his head propped on an aspis, looking up at the sky, allowing them their privacy with the ease of a man who’d spent his entire adult life in the field.

The mercenary officer rose, pulled his chlamys tight around himself and came over. ‘Lady,’ he said with a nod to Melitta. She’d bested him in a skirmish, and she wasn’t sure he’d forgiven her for it. But Coenus obviously liked him. She was prepared to deal with him to make Coenus happy.

‘Lady is going east, looking for our raiders,’ Coenus said. ‘She has reason to believe they’re from east of the Hyrkanian Sea. I’d like to go with her. How do you feel about it?’

Nikephorus looked at her, and then glanced up the hill at the wagon fort. ‘With our boys?’ he asked.

Melitta nodded.

‘Lady, will you let my men settle these valleys?’ Nikephorus asked.

Melitta shook her head. ‘I’m not going to hand you blanket control of the Tanais high ground,’ she said. ‘On the one hand, it’s all under the hooves of Thyrsis, Lord of Ataelus’ people. On the other hand, it is very much part of my brother’s kingdom.’ She raised her hand. ‘But I could see us negotiating one parcel of land at a time, as required. This, right here-’

Coenus shook his head. ‘They’d like the ground north and west of the Temple of Artemis.’

That was fifty stades downstream. ‘That’s good land,’ she said. ‘What does Gardan say?’

‘Haven’t asked him yet, or Satyrus, either,’ Nikephorus said. ‘I understand that it’s complicated. Some of those farms were recently burned. There may be survivors. But it’s good land, and my men could help hold it. For everyone.’

‘We’re talking about a fort above the temple,’ Coenus said.

‘We should include Thyrsis in this,’ Melitta said. ‘But it doesn’t sound too outlandish to me.’

Nikephorus flashed her a smile. ‘Thanks, lady,’ he said. To Coenus, he raised an eyebrow. ‘So?’

‘I hate leaving Theron with everything.’ Coenus looked at Melitta. ‘A lot of things went to shit after you left. Demostrate’s dead.’

Melitta understood immediately. ‘The grain fleet!’ she said.

Coenus nodded. ‘Your brother has gone to sea with the fleet. He’s going to try something fairly risky. I don’t think any of us imagined that both of you would be at risk this summer.’

Melitta nodded. ‘I understand — but I have to do this. How big is the threat to the grain fleet?’ All she could think of was that the grain income — the gold generated by what was, in effect, her direct tax on merchants buying the grain of her Dirt People — was ultimately what gave her power over the clans. There was sentiment and loyalty, but the money mattered. Loss of that income would limit her ability to deal with the likes of Kontarus and Saida.

It was all so complicated.

It was all as simple as breathing, if only people would behave like horses.

She laughed aloud, and realised that Scopasis was sharing wine with Coenus, like friends. On the other hand, Nikephorus was watching her as if she were a dangerous animal. ‘I don’t bite,’ she said.

Nikephorus raised both hands in mock surrender. ‘I think you just say that,’ he replied.

Coenus laughed at something Scopasis had said, and slapped the younger man on the back. ‘Well, we should have plenty of time to work it out,’ he said.

Melitta smiled. ‘So you’ll come?’

Coenus nodded. ‘One more campaign,’ he said. ‘Who knows — perhaps just a good ride over the spring grass and a nice negotiation at the end.’

Melitta nodded. ‘I’d rather it was like that.’

Nikephorus pulled his cloak tighter. ‘We’ll need wagons and grain and some more ponies,’ he said. ‘You folks will move fast, no doubt.’

‘Two to three hundred stades a day,’ Coenus said, his eyes on the high ground rising away to the west. ‘I haven’t been this way in. . twenty-five years. Niceas died out here. Kineas, too, for that matter.’ Coenus pointed west. ‘Thousands of stades west. But it wakes memories. Last time I lay in this camp, it was with Niceas — he’d been wounded — and some Sauromatae girls.’ Coenus shook his head. ‘And I swore I’d build a temple to Artemis if Niceas lived.’ He smiled into the distance. ‘I lived here when my wife was still alive. Xeno was born here.’

They were all silent. Out in the darkness, a thousand horses cropped the new grass, farted and whickered to each other. Closer in, one of the mercenaries played an aulos flute, and a couple of other soldiers danced and a dozen Sakje watched them, smiling.

Melitta felt tears come to her eyes, as they often did when her father was mentioned.

‘Who was Niceas?’ Scopasis asked.

Coenus spread his cloak on the ground and patted it for the Queen of the Assagetae to join him. ‘Settle down,’ he said, ‘and I’ll tell you a story. You all know that the Queen’s father was Kineas? He was a Greek mercenary. .’