Funeral Games

2

S atyrus ran downstream until he came to where the big oak trees overhung the road. He climbed down into the road. He could hear the rhythm of Coenus’s gallop. He stood in the middle of the road.

‘Coenus!’ he shouted.

If Philokles and Theron were big men, Coenus was bigger, and middle age had not diminished his size. A life of constant exercise kept him fit. He was clutching his left side, and blood flowed freely down his belly.

‘What are you doing here, boy?’ he croaked. ‘By the light of my goddess’s eyes!’ He was holding his horse with his knees, despite the wound in his side.

Satyrus had his knife on a cord over his shoulder. He pulled it over his head, opened the brooch that held the shoulder of his chiton and stepped out of the garment. ‘Bandage your side,’ he said, tossing him the garment. ‘What happened?’

‘We’re attacked!’ Coenus said. He turned his head at the sound of hoof beats.

‘They’re well behind you,’ Satyrus said. He was suddenly afraid. ‘Attacked?’

‘Sauromatae,’ Coenus said. He used Satyrus’s chiton as a pad to staunch the blood, and Satyrus stood on tiptoes to help him tie it as tightly as possible. Satyrus found that his hands were trembling and his senses heightened, so that he could hear his sister calling out and Philokles answering.

‘Quick, boy,’ Coenus said. ‘Who is with you?’

‘Philokles, my sister and Theron,’ he answered. ‘The new athletics coach.’

Coenus looked over his shoulder. The rise of the bluff on their left blocked any sight of his pursuers. ‘We have to get to town,’ he said. He grabbed Satyrus’s hand. ‘Thanks, boy,’ he said gruffly.

Satyrus grinned, despite his nerves.

The hoof beats were getting closer.

‘Ares and Aphrodite,’ Coenus muttered. ‘They’re on us.’ He turned his horse and drew his sword one-handed, a crook-bladed kopis.

Two men on ponies cantered around the bend in the road. They were barbarians and their horses were painted red. One raised a bow and shot, despite the range. His arrow fell short. They pressed their horses into a gallop and both loosed arrows together.

Satyrus ran off the road into the trees. He was unarmed and nothing but a target, and he was scared. Coenus sat still in the middle of the road. He looked tired and angry. He glanced once at Satyrus, and then put his knees to his horse and she responded with a leap into a canter.

The next two arrows flew over his head.

Behind the screen of trees, Satyrus could see his sister on Bion, the Sakje horse flying along the broken ground at the edge of the water and then leaping the stream like a deer.

Philokles emerged from the cover of the oaks with their horses in his fist. ‘Satyrus!’ he called.

Satyrus ran out on to the road and sprinted for his tutor.

Coenus’s horse took an arrow and gave a shrill cry and then plunged into one of his attackers, and Coenus’s arm went up in the classic overarm cut and came down like an axe cutting wood, and the unarmoured man was literally cut from the saddle, the blade ripping from the curve of his neck all the way into his breast, but the blow was too strong and the horses were moving too fast and Coenus lost his blade. He tried to turn his horse, but the mare was spent from a long gallop and wounded, and she didn’t want to turn.

Coenus’s other assailant had troubles of his own, as he’d kept his bow to hand too long and had dropped an arrow in the road. He froze in indecision as Coenus flashed past him, and he never saw the arrow that took him in the belly.

Satyrus ignored Philokles and vaulted on to Thalassa’s back. His tutor was screaming at him to run. He ignored the Spartan and turned his horse down the road to where Coenus’s horse was in the process of collapse, exhaustion and wounds having done her in. His sister’s arrow had saved Coenus, and the Sauromatae warrior sat his horse in the middle of the road, both hands wrapped around the shaft of the arrow, screaming in agony and yet still mounted.

More Sauromatae came around the curve at the far end of the valley, drawn by the screams.

‘Satyrus, run!’ Philokles shouted again.

Satyrus had a secure seat. Thalassa moved under him, and he reached down and secured his gorytos and tied the girdle around his waist as he rode. He tried to ignore the shaking of his hands. He couldn’t hear anything but the beat of his horse’s hooves like the thudding of his heart, and he had a lump of bronze at the base of his throat. He was afraid.

Melitta was not afraid. She was on the road, fitting an arrow to her bow. She shot, and the men on the road moved, most of them pushing their horses to the verge or even in among the trees.

Satyrus didn’t draw his bow. Instead, he used his knees to line Thalassa up with Coenus, who was kneeling in the road.

‘Coenus!’ he yelled. His voice was shrill but it carried, and his father’s friend looked up. Then his face changed as if he was making a hard decision – and he stood up, clutching his side.

Melitta shot again. She had a light bow, and now that the surprise of her having a bow at all was lost, the Sauromatae were shooting back – strong men with men’s bows. She backed her horse down the road. She shot again, arching her back as she shot to get the most from her bow.

Satyrus reached down and held an arm out to Coenus. The pain showed like a scar on the big man’s face, and his lips were more white than red, and it was close – no matter how heroic, a twelve-year-old cannot haul a warrior on to the back of a charger. But Coenus found the strength from somewhere and got a leg over, almost tumbling his saviour on to the road, and then Thalassa sensed some change of weight and she was turning, moving away.

Philokles was up on Hermes, with the coach behind him. As soon as he saw his students in retreat, he turned his own horse and pressed him to a gallop, and they were away down the road.

The five of them galloped back along the river road for two stades without slowing, until Bion picked up a stone in his hoof and Melitta had to pick it clear as the men watched the road behind them. Thalassa never flagged, nor did her head go down at the halt. Instead, she looked around, as if aware that fighting was next. Then she raised her head higher, straining at the reins, and gave a cry.

Satyrus had a pounding head and the weight of a grown man who was in pain on his back, and Thalassa’s fidgets were nothing but increased complication until he realized what she was seeing.

‘By the Father of the Gods,’ he said, pointing.

Coenus, slumped in agony, raised his head. ‘Oh, Gods,’ he said, and his head went down again.

Philokles held up a hand. ‘Hoof beats!’ he said.

Melitta vaulted on to Bion’s back. She had her bow in her hand in a moment.

There was a column of smoke rising to the west – from the town. Melitta watched it the way a child watches the death of a loved one – unable to take her eyes away.

Satyrus felt the strength of the fight – the daimon, some men called it – leave his limbs, and he felt as weak as he had when Theron hit him in the palaestra. ‘Perhaps it is just a house fire,’ he said, but he didn’t believe his own words.

Melitta’s voice broke as she spoke, but no tears came. ‘Raiders,’ she said. ‘The ships I saw!’

Philokles didn’t sound drunk when he spoke. ‘We must get across the river,’ he said.

There were Sauromatae riders coming around the last bend. They were approaching carefully this time, and there were a dozen of them.

‘We should take refuge in the shrine,’ Melitta said.

Philokles was watching the riders. ‘This – this was planned.’ He shook his head. ‘There will be no refuge in temples, children. All these men have come to kill you.’

Satyrus sucked in a breath.

Melitta sat straighter. ‘Well,’ she said, and her eyes were bright with unshed tears, ‘we will have to give them a surprise then.’

Satyrus wished that he’d said such a thing.

‘That’s the spirit,’ Philokles said. He got down from his horse and stood bare-handed on the ground. ‘Can you children shoot one of the riders as close to me as possible? I need a spear.’

Theron looked around at them. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

The riders were nocking arrows.

‘Walk away,’ Philokles said to Theron, who remained on the horse they had shared. ‘Leave us and live.’

Theron shook his head. ‘You three are going to fight all those horsemen? ’ He grinned. He looked from one to another, his grin growing, and he slid from his horse. ‘I’m in.’

Satyrus had to smile at the athlete’s declaration. He drew his own bow and struggled to string it with the weight of Coenus hanging on his back.

Theron reached up and took the wounded man. He set him gently on the ground.

Philokles went down on both knees in the road, picked up a handful of dust and rubbed it in his hair. He raised his arms. ‘Furies!’ he cried. ‘Those who guard the most sacred of oaths! I must break my vow.’

Theron looked at Satyrus. ‘What vow?’ he asked.

Melitta was watching the horsemen. ‘Mother says he vowed never to draw the blood of another man,’ she said. ‘Watch out!’

Satyrus got his bow strung and fitted an arrow as the first dozen came from their foes. There were too many arrows to avoid, and his heart almost stopped in terror as the flight came in. Time stretched as the arrows fell, and then they were past.

None of the arrows hit a target. Now he was down low on Thalassa’s neck and Melitta was with him, the two horses kicking up dust as they sped right at the Sauromatae, and again he could hear nothing but Thalassa’s hoof beats. This was a sport the children knew, although they had never played it for real. They left their tutor kneeling in the road, looking like a fool or a mime in a play.

The Sauromatae were not good archers. They had slim bows of wood and not the recurved bows backed in sinew and horn that the Sakje used, and they relied too much on their spears and armour up close, or so Satyrus’s mother said. All her comments floated through his brain as Thalassa’s hooves pounded along the grass at the verge of the road, a slow rhythm that marked out what might be the last moments of his life.

Melitta, the better archer of the twins, loosed her first arrow and turned away, guiding Bion with her knees as the big gelding curved away to the right.

Satyrus held his course until he saw the Sauromatae raise their bows, and then he loosed – a clumsy shot, wrecked by speed and fear, so that the arrow went high and was lost. But he was close enough that his shot had the same effect on some of the Sauromatae.

Not all, though. Thalassa lost the flow of her gallop as he turned her, and the rhythm of her run changed. When he looked back, she had an arrow in her rump.

He turned her back, head on to their enemies and now, suddenly, close. He had an arrow on the string, the horn nock sliding home between his fingers, fear a few yards behind him but catching up – they were big men, and the closest one had a ferocious grin. He had dropped his bow in favour of a long spear.

‘Artemis!’ the boy shouted, more a shriek of fear than a war cry, and loosed. He couldn’t breathe, almost couldn’t keep his knees tight on Thalassa’s broad back. He was so afraid.

His arrow knew no fear. The man with the grin took the arrow in the middle of his torso, right through his rawhide armour. He went down over his horse’s rump, and Satyrus could breathe. He leaned hard to the left and Thalassa was still there for him, skimming the ground in great strides and yet managing to turn away from the barbarians. The man he’d hit screamed soundlessly, his mouth round and red and his rotting teeth black, and all Satyrus could hear were hoof beats.

Satyrus reached across his body for an arrow, half drew one and dropped it. He felt for another. One more, he thought. I’ll shoot one more and that will be enough. He got the fletching of another arrow in his fingers and pulled the arrow clear. He leaned back, got the arrow on the bow and the nock on the string and put his charger’s head back at the enemy.

Another one was down, and a third man was clutching an arrow in his bicep and screaming – rage and fear and pain all together as a pair of children flayed his raiding party. But the flow of the fight had carried the Sauromatae up the road, almost to where Coenus lay in the grass and Philokles knelt. The Sauromatae ignored them.

Thalassa missed another stride and almost went down. She slowed sharply.

I’m dead, Satyrus thought. He rose on his knees and shot the way Ataelus the Sakje taught, from the top of his mount’s rhythm. His arrow went deep into the gut of a young Sauromatae. He drew another arrow as they turned towards him. He had started on a better horse, but she was tired and old and had carried a heavy burden for several stades, and despite her heart she couldn’t keep the pace for ever.

Lita shot again. They were ignoring her, and she shot the horse of a man near Coenus so that the man was thrown right over his horse’s head. He rolled once in the road and tried to get up.

Satyrus shot at a man in red with a golden helmet, and the arrow glanced off the man’s scale cuirass of bronze.

Philokles rose from his knees. He stepped up to the man who had just been thrown by his wounded horse. Philokles killed him with a vicious kick to the neck. The man’s spine snapped and the sound carried across the vale. Then Philokles bent and picked up the man’s long spear.

The action on the road and the snap of their comrade’s spine drew attention away from Satyrus. The second of hesitation saved his life, and Thalassa powered through a gap in the circle closing around him and he shot one man from so close that he could see every detail of the shock of pain that hit him, could see the spray of sweat from the man’s hair as his head whipped around and the burgeoning fountain of blood emerging from the man’s throat where the arrow had gone in.

Tyche. The best shot of his life. He turned Thalassa again, ready for her heart to give out in the next stride, but while she was moving he was alive. He made for the road, because the flow of the battle had left it the emptiest part of the battlefield.

Melitta shot again, and missed, but he watched them dart away from the point of her aim, gaining him another few strides.

Thalassa crossed the road close to Philokles. Dust and sweat streaked the Spartan’s face like an actor’s mask of tragedy. Satyrus twisted in his seat and shot straight back and missed the man behind him, even though the range was just a few horse-lengths. But in his peripheral vision he saw the man duck, and then saw Philokles rip him from his horse with a spear point through the face, gaffing his jaw the way Maeotae farmers took the big salmon.

Philokles’ kill broke the Sauromatae. It was not just that they were taking heavy casualties – it was the manner in which Philokles’ victim died, his head almost ripped from his body. The other Sauromatae flinched away, abandoning their wounded, and galloped off down the road.

In heartbeats, the drone of the spring insects and the calls of a raven were the only sounds to be heard over the panting of men and beasts and the murmuring of a wounded Sauromatae boy with an arrow in his guts, calling for his mother. Satyrus thought that it would have been nice not to understand his thick Sakje. It might have been nice to think that the boy, just a few summers older than Lita, might live, but no one lived with an arrow in the guts.

I did that, he thought.

‘We have to get across the river,’ Philokles said, as if nothing had happened.

‘Please motherohpleaseohhhhh,’ said the boy in the tall grass.

It wasn’t a boy. Satyrus was close enough to know that his target was a maiden archer, one of their young women. ‘Please! Ohmotherohhh-’ she said.

Satyrus looked away, afraid of what the girl in the grass meant about life and death, afraid of himself. Thalassa trembled between his thighs. He raised his eyes and met Philokles’ look.

‘Please! ’ the girl begged.

‘War is glorious,’ Philokles said. ‘Do you want me to kill her? Another death will hardly add to the stain on my soul.’ His voice was without tone – the voice of a god, or a madman.

Satyrus looked at his sister. She was retching in the grass, her head down. Bion was wrinkling his lips in equine distaste.

‘They’re forming up for another try,’ Theron observed. He was looting the downed Sauromatae. He had a sword, a back-curved Greek kopis.

Satyrus drew an arrow from his quiver and rode over to the girl. She was rocking back and forth, arms crossed over the blood. Her face was white and her hair was full of sweat and dust. She had some gold plaques on her clothes. Somebody’s daughter. This close, she didn’t look any older than he was. Take her quickly, huntress, he thought.

He was curiously far away, watching himself prepare to kill a helpless girl his own age, and his hands didn’t tremble much. The range was close.

He shot her.

He meant the arrow to go into her brain, but the shaking of his hands or the flexing of the shaft put it in her mouth. She shuddered, and made a choking sound, and then vomited blood like the fish.

Like the fish.

Her whole body spasmed again, and then she lay still. He watched her soul leave her body, watched her eyes become the eyes of a corpse.

It was like being hit in the head by Theron. He couldn’t see much. He sat on his horse, and he heard the Sauromatae charge, and he heard his name called, but he couldn’t control his limbs. So he sat and watched the dead girl.

Time was an odd thing, because this time yesterday she had been alive, but she would never be alive again.

Philokles shouted his name.

Lita shouted his name.

And then there was just the grass in the breeze, and the sound of the insects, and the ravens calling.

‘You with us, boy?’ Philokles asked. He poured a mouthful of wine into his mouth.

Satyrus spluttered and shook and swallowed some the wine the wrong way.

They were still in the fields by the road, and Satyrus was lying on the ground. His head hurt, but he didn’t have a wound on him. ‘What happened?’

Theron’s face appeared. ‘You killed the girl. Then you fainted.’ Theron’s sword arm was red to the elbow.

For the second time that day, Satyrus tried to get to his feet and threw up instead. He lay back and Theron gave him another mouthful of Philokles’ wine, while the Spartan collected horses and gear with Melitta.

‘Can you ride?’ he asked when he came back.

‘I’m sorry,’ Satyrus said. He was deeply ashamed.

‘Never mind sorry, boy. Can you ride?’ Philokles held his shoulders.

Satyrus nodded and sat up slowly.

Thalassa was bareback now. The arrow was gone from her rump.

‘We have a lot of horses now,’ Philokles said.

‘Ares,’ Satyrus said. ‘You killed them all?’

‘No,’ Philokles said. ‘Everyone helped.’

Theron grinned, and then put his smile away as no one else seemed to think that winning the fight was something to be happy about.

‘There’ll be more, almost immediately. We have to get across the river,’ Philokles said. ‘All these people – they’re Upazan’s people. The man in the gold helmet had his badge, the antlers.’ He shook his head, clearly leaving some thought unspoken. ‘Get mounted.’

Satyrus had never heard Philokles sound like this. He knew that it was because he had shown fear, had fainted. He got on to a dead man’s horse and hung his head, hot tears burning in his eyes.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry too, boy,’ Philokles said. ‘We’ll have to swim the river. Thalassa probably won’t make it.’

Coenus gave a groan. He was tied roughly to a Sauromatae pony, and the red war paint was staining his chiton. ‘Leave me,’ he said.

‘Fuck that, you big Megaran snob,’ Philokles said. He put a gentle hand on Coenus’s shoulder.

They were all mounted, and Philokles led them straight across the fields to the point. At the edge of the water, they could see all the way up the bluff to the town. Flames licked from above the wall, and there was fire in the gate like the mouth of a giant forge. There were men in armour up the hill, several stades away.

More horsemen were coming.

‘Now or never,’ Philokles said. ‘Theron, can you swim?’

Theron laughed and rode his steed recklessly into the river, which was four stades wide at its narrowest point. It was spring, and the current raced by them, as they were on the outward edge of the curve beneath the town where the river ran fastest.

Satyrus might have hesitated, more afraid now of showing fear than of being afraid, but his horse followed its herd-leader and leaped into the muddy water. The animal bearing Coenus went in next, and in the time it took an eagle to catch a salmon, they were a line of heads swimming for their lives.

Melitta swam like a Nereid, and Bion, though tired, kicked along beneath her. But Coenus struggled just to keep his head above water and his horse wasn’t much better. Without really thinking about the risks, Satyrus released his horse to make its own way and swam across the flow to Coenus, but he mistook the current, spun around and got kicked in the gut. In a heartbeat he was under the muddy brown water, sinking away from the noise, still exhaling. He got a fist tangled in something – hair – and suddenly his whole body jerked as he was towed forward. His eyes saw light and he pulled harder and his head came out of the water and he breathed – ahhh – and he was moving fast, his right hand wrapped in Thalassa’s mane. Her head was up, and despite her wounds and his weight she was powering through the water. He breathed again, choked and sprayed water and snot from his nose.

Thalassa was turning, ignoring his struggles as she swam closer to Coenus. Coenus was coughing, his face out of the water but his horse sinking away under him.

There were arrows falling from the sky. It took Satyrus a few heartbeats to realize that they were being shot at from the bank. He could hear a man shouting in the Sauromatae dialect for volunteers to go into the water and finish them off. He didn’t turn his head to look. His whole concentration was on Coenus. He was close – closer – he reached out a hand and tried to pull the man up, but he was twelve and Coenus was the biggest man he knew.

Then Philokles was up with him, and Theron, swimming alone without a horse, and they cut Coenus free before he drowned himself and his horse. Theron pushed the Megaran’s head and shoulders into Satyrus’s arms and he pulled hard, eliciting a low scream of pain from the big man. And then they were swimming.

Satyrus looked up and found that they were halfway across. But the current had moved them, and they were no longer at the narrows. He set his shoulders and concentrated on keeping Coenus alive.

Time passed slowly. His shoulder hurt, and every other moment he thought that the dying man might drag him into the water. He was afraid for Thalassa, who made harsh noises though her mouth and nostrils, coughs and hacks almost as if the horse was attempting to curse.

There were leaves and logs in the river, deadwood floated away by the spring rains in the high ground to the east, and once a dead sheep, bloated and stinking, passed them as they swam on. The point was so far behind them that even from his perpsective just above the surface, Satyrus could see the Bay of Salmon widening away. They were almost as far from the other shore as they had been when they slipped into the water. Even with the powerful aide of the horse swimming beneath him, even with his arms wrapped around her neck, Satyrus was tired.

Coenus was a dead weight. Satyrus thought that the man’s cold body still had life in it, and he passed several minutes trying to find a sign of breath. He wasn’t sure. When he looked up, the stone farmhouse that marked the end of the Maeotae territory was in sight.

He looked around for Melitta, and she was right there at his side, holding on to Bion with one hand and pushing against Coenus with the other, swimming strongly but with lines on her face like an adult. Their eyes met. She gave a push, probably all she had strength for, and Coenus went a finger-breadth higher on Thalassa’s proud back.

‘Poseidon, Lord of Horses,’ Satyrus said.

She swam more strongly, and Satyrus tried to sing the hymn, and Melitta joined in, two thin voices singing, whole words left out as the singers struggled to breathe, but Thalassa seemed to relish it, and her ears went up, and she moved faster. The stone house on the shore was closer.

‘I think – he’s – dead,’ Lita panted.

Satyrus thought of the dead girl. He shook his head.

Thalassa’s legs kicked hard. They were half a stade from shore, but suddenly she rose out of the water, stumbled, scrambled and pushed, and she was walking. Satyrus could see the drowned meadow beneath her hooves, the mud billowing away from her steps in brown-black clouds. She managed a few long strides and then she slipped and fell and they all went down in a splash, Coenus and Satyrus underneath, but Satyrus had his toes wrapped in her saddlecloth and when she came up in deeper water he was still clinging to her and he had Coenus wedged with desperate strength against her side.

Theron was there, and Philokles, pushing against his sides, and Melitta with an arm around Coenus’s neck, holding his head clear of the water. He wasn’t dead yet, because he was spluttering.

The marshy bank was just a few long strides away. Melitta let go of Coenus and she and Bion were first up on to the bank, followed by two unridden horses. Then Thalassa pushed herself up, one giant lunge to plant her hind feet on the mud and a struggling leap almost straight up, with the weight of a boy and a big man, and she was up, front feet scrambling over the edge. Satyrus lost his seat and slid free to fall on grass, and Coenus fell on top of him in a tangle and moaned.

Philokles and Theron climbed the bank under their own power. Satyrus had been kicked at the end and he lay, just breathing, with waves of pain running from his right thigh to his brain. Theron lay breathing beside him. Philokles dragged himself to his feet. He went to Hermes, the big gelding, and pulled the Sauromatae spear from the horse’s saddlecloth where he had bundled it with the gear of the other men they had killed.

Satyrus rolled over, ignoring the pain, determined not to be afraid this time. He looked for his other horse, and she was gone – lost in the river. So much for dry bowstrings. He pulled his bow out of his gorytos, which was still full of water. All his arrows were soaked and his bow felt odd, whipping in his hand, the bindings wet through.

Strapped to the outside of his gorytos was the short, sharp steel akinakes that Ataelus had given him. He drew it. It was no longer than his forearm, a pitiful weapon against a grown Sauromatae warrior coming up the bank. He stumbled to the edge.

There were four riders in the water, and they had had as hard a swim as he had. They were not armoured. Most had cast their helmets aside and only their heads and the heads of their horses came above the water. The Sauromatae didn’t even seem to know where they were. They let their horses swim them to shore, and the first horse touched the mud at the same spot where Thalassa had touched, scrambled in the shallows and then swam the last few lengths to the bank.

Philokles leaned over the edge and killed the lead man while his horse gathered itself for the scramble up the bank – a single punch of his spear.

The other Sauromatae milled around a few horse-lengths from shore, calling to one and other.

‘Come and die,’ Philokles yelled. ‘Did Upazan send you?’

The barbarian warriors swam their horses back to the drowned meadow and got their legs under them. Then the one with gold in his hair shouted back. ‘Let us ashore and we swear not to harm you!’

They were only a few horse-lengths apart. It was an easy bow shot – but no one had a bow that would function. Satyrus, exhausted, managed a laugh.

‘Did Upazan send you?’ Philokles called again.

‘Yes!’ the barbarian returned.

‘Then you can swim back to him,’ Philokles called. He stepped away from the edge. He sank on his haunches and looked at the children and Theron. ‘We can’t let them up the bank,’ he said. ‘I can’t go on much longer.’

Theron looked around. ‘I can,’ he said. ‘Who has a javelin?’ The water was drying from his body. He looked like a god.

Philokles went to Hermes, moving like an old man, and took a javelin out of the kit strapped to the gelding. He walked with an unaccustomed heaviness.

Theron looked them all over. ‘We won’t get far,’ he said. ‘That house will have to shelter us.’

‘We can only stay a few hours,’ Philokles said. ‘Sooner or later they’ll send a ship.’ He gave the athlete the javelin.

Theron unbound his hair and took the leather thong, wrapped it twice around the spear and made a loop. Then he tied the loop off. He appeared unhurried. He walked to the bank, measuring off his strides, right out to the edge and then back. After three times, he hefted the javelin, well out of sight of the barbarians. ‘I assume that if I kill one, the other two will charge us,’ he said.

Philokles was silent. He took a deep breath and stood, the big spear in his fists. ‘Do the thing,’ he said.

Theron ran three steps, skipped once and threw the javelin. It flew like a thunderbolt and hit one of the barbarians so hard that it went a third of its length through his body before he fell into the water.

‘Nice throw,’ Philokles said.

The other two came forward. They were brave, and they knew they had no choice, so they urged their horses forward across the last stretch and up the muddy bank. The first man came up just where Thalassa had come up and died there, spitted on Philokles’ spear. The second man’s horse took him further upstream to an easier climb, and he made it up the bank. His horse had spirit, and he turned the animal and went straight for Philokles. He got his own spear out and up and parried Philokles’ butt-spike – the Spartan was just getting the weapon clear of his kill.

He might have had Philokles then, except that Melitta got under his horse with her knife and ripped at his booted leg, slashing what she could reach, desperate to save the Spartan.

Satyrus didn’t feel as if he was in control of his own body, because he didn’t recall pushing his body into panicked attack, but he was suddenly cutting at the rider with his akinakes, the blade locked against the other man’s long iron sword. Satyrus saw his blade skip over the bigger weapon and cut the man’s tattooed bicep, and then Theron was there, cutting with his kopis in big, overhand cuts like a slave hewing wood, and they swarmed the man until he was dead.

When he was down, his cries stilled, they looked at each other, covered in blood. Theron made a sound like a fox’s cry, choked grief or rage, and they all looked away at once.

Satyrus saw movement in the corner of his eye and he turned to see Thalassa give a little skip, almost rearing. She tossed her hooves at the heavens, and then she toppled and fell.

Philokles walked over to her, a hand stretched before him in supplication. He put a hand on her withers, and then on her head. He shook his head.

‘Her heart went,’ he said.

‘Poseidon, Lord of Horses, take her to you,’ Satyrus said, and burst into sobs, heavy, wrenching sobs of a kind he hadn’t cried for people. And Melitta fell across him crying. They went to the horse, patting her head ineffectually and weeping.

‘We need to eat,’ Philokles said. His voice had a dead quality to it, as if he wasn’t letting himself think about his words. ‘There’ll be another pursuit as soon as they find a way to cross the river.’

Melitta shuddered. ‘I thought we were safe,’ she said, and immediately sensed the illogic in her words.

‘You’ll never be safe again,’ Philokles said. ‘Get your packs and follow me.’

All they had was their fishing kit, and they had it on their shoulders quickly. Satyrus stood looking at Thalassa in the grass. ‘We should burn her or bury her,’ he said.

‘We should, but we can’t. I’m heading for that house.’ The Spartan pointed at a distant stone house – a Maeotae farmhouse, perhaps the farthest along the shore.

The yard was empty and the man didn’t want to raise the bar on his door. Philokles threatened him from the yard until he complied, and the twins were afraid of Philokles’ rage. Melitta and her brother had exchanged looks of horror. Yesterday, they had had the love of these farmers. Now they couldn’t trust the man whose roof gave them shelter.

‘Hey!’ the man called, scared, as Theron scooped sausage from the rafters.

‘We need to eat,’ Theron said.

‘We have fish!’ Satyrus said, and Theron managed a smile.

‘We do, at that,’ he said. He and Satyrus each had a fish in their soaking leather bags, and the fish were no worse for their swim in the Tanais. Theron broiled them on the hearth and shared the fish with the farmer. It didn’t make him love them any more, but he shared some sour wine, and they were quickly asleep.

Theron woke them at the edge of dawn, a heavy hand on their heads, and pulled them stumbling into the cold spring morning past the terrified farmer.

‘Boat on the water,’ he said. ‘Time to go.’

Out on the swollen river, they could just see the flash of oars as a pentekonter rowed steadily against the current. The boat wasn’t making much headway, but it was coming. The first rays of the sun were pink and red.

Their horses were all lame, the riders equally spent despite ten hours of sleep, and they had to walk slowly away from the stone house. Theron had a bag of sausages and he handed everyone a link – heavy garlic and spice, overpowering in the morning.

Or so we thought. Melitta pondered her brother’s sullen silence. He seemed ashamed, when he should be proud. He had fought well.

I put two in the grass myself, she thought. My mother will be proud, and I will not go to Hades without slaves. Then she thought of her father’s horse – a tangible link to the man she knew only through her mother and Philokles and Coenus’s stories. Dead. She frowned away a new bout of tears.

As they crossed the farmyard to fetch the horses, she saw a rough bundle on the manure pile. She had to turn her head away, and her eyes met Philokles’. ‘Is that…’ She paused, ‘Coenus?’ she asked quietly, so that her brother wouldn’t hear.

‘You think I’d leave Coenus on a manure heap?’ Philokles asked, and didn’t meet her eye. He wasn’t sober – she could tell – and there was something wrong with him.

Melitta made bright small talk to hide the corpse from her brother. She knew who was on the manure pile. The farmer wasn’t going to betray them, because Theron or Philokles had killed him.

Coenus, on the other hand, had lived through the night. He was stiff, but his wounds had stopped bleeding, and he had the farmer’s whole store of linen wrapped around his torso. He was in better shape than Philokles, who could barely walk.

They made less than ten stades in the first hour, and if it hadn’t been for Theron’s muscles, they might have done worse.

Melitta watched her tutor sink into the same kind of sullenness that affected her brother, and finally she spoke up. ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

‘Heraklea,’ Philokles said.

That was a quarter of the way around the Euxine. ‘That will take weeks!’ Melitta said.

Philokles stumbled to a stop. ‘Look, girl,’ he said. ‘Yesterday, we were attacked by Upazan. Galleys out of Pantecapaeum sacked the town. What does that tell you?’

‘Pantecapaeum is an ally!’ Melitta cried. Her brother raised his head.

‘Mother was going to Pantecapaeum,’ he said. ‘To renew the treaty with Eumeles.’

‘And now you will be hunted,’ Philokles said. ‘Upazan and Eumeles have made a deal.’ He shook his head, utter weariness getting the better of his good sense. ‘All we can do is run.’

Melitta’s nails bit into the palms of her hands. ‘What of mama?’ she demanded. ‘She’s not dead? She’s not dead!’ She grabbed her brother’s hand, and he gripped it as if she was a sword.

‘She’s not dead!’ the boy shouted.

Philokles and Theron kept walking, and Coenus raised his head, shook it and looked away.

‘Maybe not,’ the old soldier said.

None of them spoke for a long time. After a while the sun tried to rise on a grey day, and then it began to rain.

Coenus’s head came up. ‘Rain,’ he said. ‘Cover our tracks – cover our scent.’ He looked at Philokles and drew a deep breath, although they could see that it hurt him. ‘Now you have a chance.’

Philokles stood on the road in the rain for as long as it takes a good smith to shoe a horse. Then he said, ‘We need to get off the road.’

Coenus nodded. ‘Cross-country until you have to cross the river,’ he agreed.

Theron shook his head. ‘We must be ahead of the news – no one else could have swum the river.’

Coenus’s eyes came up. He was having trouble breathing and his eyes were dull, but he got his head up and he pointed his walking staff at Theron. ‘Listen, boy,’ he said. ‘Eumeles needs these children dead. His whole fucking attack on our town is for nothing if the children live. He’ll be across this morning, if he has to swim himself. He’ll flood this side of the river with soldiers – men he trusts.’

Theron swished his walking staff in irritation. ‘This is not the sort of expedition I signed on for.’

But then he saw something in Philokles that changed his mind. Melitta saw him start. He doesn’t want to end up like the farmer. She’d never seen Philokles the tutor – Philokles the drunk – like this.

He was scary.

He looked them over and gave a smile – a half-smile, almost of contempt. ‘Cross-country it is. Follow me.’

They walked all day, leading their horses. The rain continued, and they crossed muddy fields and walked through dripping woods. Melitta was tired in an hour, and exhausted before they sat under an oak and ate more garlic sausage. Coenus could barely walk. Her brother met her eye and shook his head, but they were too tired to talk. After they had eaten the sausage, they walked again. As darkness began to settle, Philokles and Theron began to take turns carrying Coenus, and then they stopped in a stand of ash and cut poles and made a stretcher out of his chlamys and walked on again, carrying him between them. None of the horses was fit to ride.

In the evening, they came to a village. Theron went in alone, and came out dejected. ‘Men were here this morning,’ he said. ‘They took all the horses and killed some men.’ He shrugged. ‘I took this,’ he said, and held out a clay pot the size of his hand. ‘I tried to pay, but everyone ran off.’

They made a camp above the town. None of them had a fire kit, and everything was wet through, and Theron couldn’t get a fire started. He looked at Philokles. ‘You’re the old soldier,’ he said.

‘I get fire started by telling a slave to light one,’ Philokles shot back.

‘Fine pair of bandits you two will make,’ Coenus muttered. He sat in the dark, shredding bark between his fingers for a long time – so long that Melitta fell asleep, and she awoke to the warm kiss of golden fire on her face.

‘He did it with a stick!’ Satyrus said with delight. They gazed at the fire for a while, listening to their bellies rumble, and then they were asleep.

In the morning, they cut north again at Coenus’s urging, into wilder country farther from the river and the shore of the Euxine. Bion had recovered and Philokles and Theron got Coenus up on her, and they made better time. Theron ran down a rabbit and they stopped in the hollow of a hilltop and made fire – quickly, because Coenus had shown them how to wrap coals and embers in wet leaves to carry with them. Rabbit soup in Theron’s clay pot – nothing to eat it with, so that Melitta burned her lips drinking it straight from the pot – and roast rabbit cooked on a green branch used as a spit. Melitta grew used to taking direction from Coenus as he lay on a pile of cut boughs, protected from the rain only by their one spare cloak, which had belonged to one of the dead Sauromatae.

After the meal they were all better, even Coenus. They slept a little, collected embers and walked on. That night they slept in deep woods, soaked to the skin but warmed by a big fire. In the morning, Coenus was well enough to look over the horses and frown.

‘The two steppe ponies are well enough. And Bion is healthy. But we’re killing the other two – they’re too well bred for this life. We should kill them for meat or trade them to a farmer.’

‘For meat!’ Satyrus asked, his eyes wide. ‘Our horses? Hermes!’

Coenus grunted and sat, suddenly and without ceremony. ‘Son, there are no rules now. We can’t get attached to anything. Including each other.’ He looked at Philokles. ‘I’m slowing you, brother.’

Philokles shrugged. ‘Yes, you are. On the other hand, without your knowledge of hunting and living rough, the children might already be dead – or I’d be driven to taking chances.’ He looked down the hill. ‘As it is, we’ve made time. We’re only a day or so from the ford at Thatis.’

Coenus smiled grimly. ‘I’ll try and stay useful, then.’

Philokles grunted. ‘See that you do. Otherwise – well, I suppose you’d make a good roast.’

Theron turned away from Philokles’ laughter and Coenus’s grunts. ‘You Spartan bastard!’ Coenus spat. ‘You make it all hurt more!’

‘They’re joking,’ Satyrus said.

Theron shook his head. ‘They’re – not like anyone I’ve ever known,’ he said. ‘I thought that I was tough.’