Force of Kings

18

Unconsciousness lasted only a few hours, and Satyrus regretted it because the next few days were amongst the most painful he’d ever experienced. He was in a fever, and he came and went from full consciousness, and he was hot and miserable, and despite all that, Apollodorus had taken command and was moving them — fast — across the valleys of western Asia, going due east on the Zeugma road.

A lifetime of riding left Satyrus capable of staying in the saddle even when fevered. But the experience was horrible — he had delusions, his wound was inflamed and jarred by every fourth step of the horse, and when they trotted, his leg felt as if it was being broken with every bump.

And the constant ministrations of his friends wore on him, day after day. He felt a burden. He was a burden.

But on the fourth day the fever broke, and he lay in his own sweat and was irritated by insects, and the fact that he could be irritated by insects was itself a source of joy.

Anaxagoras crouched by him with an oil lamp. He moved very quietly.

Satyrus sighed. ‘I’m awake,’ he said.

‘Ah!’ Anaxagoras said. ‘Fever?’

‘Not so much,’ Satyrus said. ‘Ares, I feel like horse dung.’

‘Philos, you look like horse dung, as well.’ Anaxagoras brought him a clay cup. ‘Eat all of this if you can get it down.’

‘Was I poisoned?’ Satyrus asked.

Anaxagoras shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I’m not a doctor, but you can’t attend a Temple of Apollo without getting some basic training in healing. Unfortunately, while I’ve watched doctors smell wounds and prescribe herbs for poisons I have no idea how to do either.’ He sat down. ‘The arrow smelled like shit … pardon me. Apollodorus says it might have been smeared in pig dung — that’s apparently a potent poison.’

‘Did I hear my name?’ Apollodorus asked.

‘Satyrus is better,’ Anaxagoras said.

Apollodorus grunted. ‘Then everyone should be allowed to sleep,’ he said.

The next day, Satyrus rode more easily, although trots were still brutal and the wound in his thigh gushed blood and pus when Anaxagoras pushed at it. ‘Not done yet,’ he said, shaking his head. He poured wine and honey into the wound.

That night, Apollodorus bought a heavy boar’s bristle brush from a farmer in the hills north of Zeugma who offered them shelter in his fine stone house. ‘Satyrus, we’re all worried by the pus in your wound.’

The fever was returning, and Satyrus nodded heavily.

‘I know a trick. A soldier’s trick.’ He was speaking slowly and clearly.

‘And?’ Satyrus asked.

Apollodorus held up the brush. ‘It’s going to hurt like Hades,’ he said.

Satyrus nodded. ‘Try,’ he said. He had little idea what they were doing.

Anaxagoras unwrapped the bandage, and the wound was red like Tyrian linen, with tendrils of infection running up almost to his groin and down his leg towards his knee.

‘We should take it off,’ Anaxagoras said. ‘But I don’t know how.’

Jubal rubbed his short beard. ‘He’ll die,’ he said. ‘Men need to be strong to lose a leg.’

Satyrus was scared by his leg. It didn’t look like part of him. It looked as if it had taken on an evil life of its own.

‘Let me try,’ said Apollodorus. ‘This is going to hurt like … well, give the king something to bite down on. Pour this bowl full of wine.’ He washed the brush in the wine, and then — remorselessly — he began to scrub the wound. He flayed the pus sores open, and scrubbed them, and the brush went right into the mouth of the wound and Satyrus vomited from the pain. Anaxagoras held his head.

Then he blacked out.

Then he resurfaced, to more pain. The bowl was black with crud from the wound — the smell of the pus was everywhere in the little farmhouse. Satyrus could see the farmer’s face — the ‘O’ of his shocked mouth.

‘Don’t scream,’ the god said. ‘Don’t scream. Heroes do not scream.’

Satyrus tried to smile at Herakles, whose body filled the bank of the stream. ‘Lord,’ he said. He wondered why he only saw his god when he was in pain.

‘The ability to withstand pain,’ Herakles said, ‘is a path.’

Satyrus could hear a lyre playing, the notes cascading like water down a waterfall.

‘Oh,’ said Herakles. ‘The musician. Well, he’s fair enough as a healer. Do well, boy. Be excellent.’

Satyrus saw that Anaxagoras was playing for him, as he had when Satyrus had marsh fever on Rhodes. But the music seemed to have colour and texture — the notes flowed across the room, dancing like butterflies on the late-spring air and often coming to light on his fresh-bandaged wound.

Anaxagoras’s face was anguished. Just like the man to blame himself.

Satyrus wished that he could see Miriam with the clarity he saw Anaxagoras. He wondered if he was dying. He didn’t feel like he was dying, and that alone worried him. He was sleepy, and his leg didn’t hurt. In fact, he couldn’t feel it.

They’d cut it off, after all.

He tried to sit up, to look. Amazing how difficult it could be to see your own leg. Surely, if they had cut it off, there’d be a sign.

Or it would hurt.

He rolled his hips back and forth, and there it was: a piercing pain from the wound. Satisfied, he rolled back, just as Apollodorus came and pinned his shoulders. ‘Rest,’ he said.

Satyrus was afraid that if he gave in to the sleep, he would die. He tried to see Miriam — he wished that they had made love. Yearned for her, and wished to tell her so, and no words would come out of his mouth.

Odd, to die like this in a cottage in Syria. Of all places.

And then he was gone.

Coenus cut his beard, chose his horses, packed his saddlebags, and took his two best spears off the wall where he’d been happy to leave them since his last hunt. His servant, Boras, fussed over food and his own mount, and then they rode to the shrine of Artemis on the hills above the Tanais River and offered sacrifice.

‘I’m pretty sure I won’t make it back,’ Coenus told his servant. In the morning, the arthritis was bad enough that he had to work on his hands to get them to open and close, and sleeping on the ground no longer held any attraction at all. He was sixty-four years old.

He stepped up to the altar with a young fawn he’d caught wandering in the woods after he killed the mother with a spear, and he slashed the animal’s throat on the altar. He was the priest, here.

And as the blood flowed away, Coenus prayed for his friends.

Most of them were shades in the underworld. Niceas and Philokles, Kineas … friends of his youth and middle age. Lovers — where was Nihmu, now, he wondered? On the earth, or under it? Leon? Remember beautiful young Ajax? Remember Nicomedes? Good men, who died in valour.

‘If this is my last time,’ Coenus prayed, ‘Lady, let me be as good a man as they.’

Then he rode down the Tanais towards the city. There were changes on both banks — more farmers, Greek and Sindi and Maeoti, and more Sarmatians on the high ground — Sarmatians who had come to stay, whether they won or lost their battles with the Sakje. When they won, they pushed in, and when they lost, the survivors simply joined the Sakje clans in the old way of the steppe.

At the fork, where the road crossed the last ford over the river, there were a hundred horsemen waiting — Sakje of the old school, in red coats, with horsehair ropes at their saddles, most with a pair of gorytoi, each with its own bow and arrows, and a string of horses.

Ataelus sat on his best horse, a tall Persian in storm grey. Beside him sat his sons. Ataelus was older than Coenus, and they were the lords of this land, and they embraced gravely.

‘Not for going,’ Ataelus said.

Coenus was taken aback. ‘But …’

Ataelus pointed at his sons. ‘They go. For being old, friend. Too fucking old to fight in fucking desert.’ Ataelus pointed out over the Tanais high ground, towards the distant Caucus mountains, towards Asia. ‘Stay and drink wine for me, Coenus, Greek brother. Let young men fight for Satyrus. Old men for the fireside.’

Coenus grinned. ‘No. No, my friend. This is the last fight, and I’ll go. I wouldn’t miss it.’

Ataelus grunted. ‘No fucking last fight, Greek brother. Never “last fight”.’ The Sakje lord pounded his fist against his chest. ‘I for fighting sixty times — never beaten. Lost wife for Satyrus and Melitta — lost sons. Lost horses.’ He looked out over the steppe. ‘Lost my heart for Kineas. Twice I’ve been dead. Eh? Now stay home, guard flocks.’ He sat straight. ‘Go, Greek brother. Ataelus will die in bed.’

Thyrsis saluted his father. He turned to Coenus. ‘Temerix is home in his forge. They decided together … to stay home.’

Coenus saw Maeton, Temerix’s lieutenant in the wars with the Sarmatians. He rode over. ‘Temerix is staying at home?’ he asked.

Maeton shrugged. He had more than a hundred men on ponies, men with heavy bows and axes. ‘Temerix says, I was Kineas’s man, and I am old. Let the young men ride to war.’

Coenus looked at Maeton and Thyrsis. ‘Who will I talk to?’ he said. But he rode to Ataelus’s side, and they embraced for a long time. Ataelus said something in his ear — something about Kineas.

Coenus could only picture the drunken barbarian riding back into their camp.

Kineas turned and looked over his shoulder. A lone horseman was trotting to the paddock. Coenus laughed.

‘Ataelus!’ bellowed Kineas.

The Scyth raised a dusty hand in greeting and swung his legs over the side of the horse so that he slipped in one lithe movement to the ground. He touched the flank of the horse with a little riding whip and she turned and walked through the gate into the paddock.

‘Horse good,’ he said. He reached out a hand for the flagon.

Coenus handed it to him without a moment’s hesitation. The Scyth took a deep drink, rubbed his mouth with his hand. Then Coenus caught the Scyth in a bear hug. ‘I think I like you, Barbarian!’ he said.

He hugged the Sakje harder, and then he raised his hand.

‘Ready to march?’ he asked.

Eumenes, archon of Olbia, gathered his hippeis in the hippodrome that Kineas had ordered built when Leucon was archon. They made a fine show, but only fifty of them were good enough to go to war. He’d already chosen them.

And he would lead them himself, because Melitta had asked in person.

They’d hollowed out a pair of triremes captured from Macedon in Kineas’s day. They took eighty chargers, the fine Olbian breed that Ataelus and Niceas had started thirty years before, heavy geldings resulting from cross-breeding the Sakje plains horses with the biggest Persian mares.

When Eumenes stood on the beach, watching his hippeis load, he felt as if Kineas was all around him — from the hero statue in the agora to the very horses his men rode, Kineas had been the architect.

He was a fair man, and he owed Kineas one more ride. Even if it would take him past Troy.

He kissed his wife, and gave his will to his son, who he was not taking. He gave the ivory stool to Lykaeus. He had held the archonship for Kineas, and now, as an old man, he could keep the seat warm for Eumenes.

Melitta reined in her horse. She was, almost literally, covered in gold — from the tip of her helmet to the base of her long, caribou-hide coat, she shimmered with gold plates, gold signs, gold sigils, gold scales. Her gorytos cover was beaten gold, showing the gods dining on Olympus, and her shield had Artemis — a mounted Artemis — worked in gold.

Her reins were gold. Her high-backed war saddle was worked in gold. Every handspan of her tack had a gold plate. Her horse towered over other horses — a Royal horse, his coat the colour of steel.

She touched her heels to his sides, and put pressure on his bit, and he reared — as he would in battle — and his hooves lashed the air, and the Assagetae screamed their approval.

Behind her, the best of her knights — Scopasis, Sindispharnax, and the rest — formed a neat wedge.

The Assagetae filled the plain south and east of Tanais — their tents went on for stades, and if there were more Sarmatian-style yurts than ever, it was a fair representation of the changes coming to the Sea of Grass. The lord of the Western Sarmatians now rode freely over the ridges of the Tanais without hindrance. His people came to council on the Euxine.

The queen of the Assagetae rode at the head of her golden knights, along six stades of tribal warriors — Stalking Wolves, Standing Horses, Grass Cats, Cruel Hands. At the southern end of the line, Nikephorus stood with a token force of pikemen and Eumenes and Coenus waited with two hundred Greek cavalry and Maeton with his scouts and Thyrsis with his. Nikephorus’s taxeis had already sailed to Heraklea — the Apobatai hadn’t even left the city after the fall campaign.

Coenus saluted her, and she raised her war-axe to her helmet.

‘Ataelus stayed at home,’ he said.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’m the queen. People tell me things.’ She pushed her Attic helmet back on her head, and Coenus thought that she had never looked so much like Athena.

‘I tried to change his mind,’ Coenus said.

‘Why?’ Melitta asked. ‘He’s the wise one. My brother’s the fool. This is not our war.’

‘That’s why we’re all going?’ Coenus asked.

‘I know,’ Melitta said, raising her axe to salute Maeton. ‘Philokles would tell me that if I go, I’m as responsible as Satyrus. And I am. But my heart tells me that we should sit home and prepare to trounce the winner.’

‘Hence you take a tithe of your strength,’ Coenus said.

‘A tithe would be too much. I take a token of our strength, and that is too much to lose.’ She shrugged. In armour, it scarcely showed. ‘All told, I’ll take a thousand warriors, and I’ll leave half of them at Heraklea. And Parshevaelt — he’s staying. I need someone here I can trust.’ She smiled. ‘On the other hand, I’ve invited all the Sarmatian chiefs to accompany me.’ She laughed. ‘All our friends want to come. But as queen, they’re just the ones I want to stay home. All our foes desire that we fail. So naturally, they’re the ones I want where I can see them.’

Coenus looked at her knights. ‘These men alone could turn a battle.’

Melitta nodded, and her face was the face of Smells like Death. ‘That’s why I keep them around. Let’s ride.’

Coenus fell in with Scopasis, and behind them, the chosen men and women of the Assagetae, the Keepers of the Western Door, the Royal Scythians, and their remounts and slaves and wagons joined the column, and the rest of the Assagetae cheered them until their dust cloud rolled out of sight. And then they went back to the grass.