King of the Bosphorus

14

Melitta's first debate, first council and first absolute commands as lady of the Assagatje involved sending her allies home to their yurts. The irony was not lost on her.

The presence of Parshtaevalt and Urvara had exactly the effect she had anticipated. They treated her like a particularly wise child – they spoke carefully, they laid out their plans and expected her immediate approval. They, and their people, camped a few stades from the field of the Ford of the River God, and tribesmen began to join them. Just as Ataelus, Urvara and Parshtaevalt wanted. By their very inaction, they were gathering an army.

On the third day after the sacrifices, Melitta arose from her pallet of furs determined to take command of her own people – and her destiny. She dressed carefully and went to Nihmu, who now openly shared a lodge with Coenus. She brushed new snow from the flap and opened it, holding the stick carefully so that it did not dump more snow on the carpets inside.

'I desire to summon all of the leaders in camp,' she said.

Coenus was boiling water in a small bronze pot balanced on a tripod. He was naked from the waist up, the grey hair of his abdomen criss-crossed with scars. She had seldom seen a body so scarred.

He was unembarrassed. 'Lady,' he said. He inclined his head. He, at least, treated her as an adult – and as his commander.

Nihmu was wearing only a wool shirt. She came and knelt by Melitta and gave her a cup of warm cider from the fire. 'Lady?' she said. 'I am neither a commander nor your baqca.' She shrugged. 'How would I summon your council?'

'Stand outside and yell?' Melitta asked. 'I don't know. But if you won't summon them, I'll stand in the snow and yell. Yesterday's council was summoned by Ataelus. I was invited. Today, I'll do the inviting.'

Coenus nodded. 'I'll do it, lady,' he said. 'I am friends with all, and yet your man. I will go from yurt to yurt and invite them to come – where?'

'To my yurt,' Melitta said. 'Now. I want Ataelus and Samahe, Urvara and Eumenes, Tameax, and Parshtaevalt – and his tanist, if he has one. That handsome boy he had at his tail yesterday? His son?'

Nihmu shook her head. 'Sister's son,' she said. 'Gaweint, by name.' She smiled. 'He is handsome,' she said, more to Coenus than to Melitta.

Coenus shrugged. 'If you say so, my beauty.'

Melitta was – outraged was too strong, but surprised, even shocked, that they should flirt openly in front of her. 'Nihmu!' she said, before her political mind could stop her. 'You have a husband!'

Nihmu smiled a cat's smile. 'So I do. He is a prisoner with the enemy, and I bend my efforts to his rescue.'

Melitta flicked a glance at Coenus, who was equally unperturbed at this almost open accusation of adultery. 'If she thinks ill of us-' Coenus began.

'Ill?' Melitta asked.

There was silence in the tent.

'I wish Sappho were here,' Coenus said.

Melitta looked at both of them. They looked back at her. Melitta knew enough about emotion and body language to know that they were neither embarrassed nor defensive – an attitude which enraged her.

'Very well,' she said. 'Summon my leaders.' She turned on her heel and then scrambled to get out of the tent flap with dignity. What are they doing? Their actions will reflect on me! she thought, and then decided that was unfair. Most Sakje didn't know anything about Nihmu's husband – and fewer would care. Sakje women did as they pleased. Sex was seldom the driving force among the nomads that it was in the cities.

She went back to her yurt and sat, waiting for them to come. The time stretched on and on – in some ways, the longest wait of her life. Early on, she began to wonder what she would do if they did not come.

But a yurt's walls are thin, and even as she fed her anger with thoughts of their disobedience, her ears told her that they were coming – Parshtaevalt shouted for his clean fur tunic, and sent another rider to find Gaweint, who was hunting.

And then they came, all together, which led her to believe that they had met somewhere else. Urvara entered first. She bowed – a rare gesture – and when bid, seated herself at the fire. One by one, the other senior chiefs entered and sat.

Melitta smiled and offered them wine. Coenus slipped in – Coenus, the Megaran aristocrat – and he served them each in horn cups that held the heat. Nihmu came and sat at the fire, and Melitta allowed her, although she was not sure what Nihmu's role was, nor what her arrival presaged.

'Let me speak to the point,' Melitta said when they were seated. 'It was never my desire to gather an army. You are gathering an army. Send them home.'

Ataelus nodded. 'We do it for you.'

Melitta kept her voice even. 'Send them home.'

Urvara smiled. 'Melitta, we understand that-'

Melitta cut her off ruthlessly. 'I care nothing for your understanding. Send them home, or I will ride away and you can rot in the snow. Either I am to be the lady of the Assagatje or I am not. My name draws these riders. My name alone will bind the Assagatje.' She looked around, pushed down her nerves and her quickened heartbeat and forced herself to sound calm. 'I do not intend to be saskar – a tyrant. But in this first thing, I will be obeyed, or we will part our ways.'

Ataelus shook his head. 'Marthax will not bow his head to a girl.'

Melitta shrugged. 'Then I will kill him in combat, one to one.'

'Why should he agree to such a combat?' Urvara asked.

'Is he a fool?' Melitta asked. 'Really? This camp – in winter, in the open – proves that my name will gather an army. His name will not. He knows this as well as I. Let us give him dignity – to acknowledge me if he will, or to die under my knife if he will not.'

Parshtaevalt stood up. 'Lady, he was – and remains – the deadliest lance on the plains. Marthax will kill you – and that is the end of our hopes.'

Melitta shrugged. 'No,' she said. 'He will not kill me.'

Nihmu leaned forward. 'All here love you, honey bee. You must listen-'

'No,' Melitta said. 'No. I will not listen any more. Each of you may keep twenty-five knights. That is all. We will ride for Marthax's camp in the morning, and if I am not obeyed, I will ride for the coast.'

One by one, they shuffled out – anger written on every face. Who likes to be given orders by a younger woman? she thought. But she kept her face impassive.

When they were all gone, Coenus cleaned her wine-heating pot with a coarse linen rag. He looked at her, waiting for her to speak. When she did not, he finally put the pot on the pile of her dishes and stood up.

'It had to be done,' he said.

'Are you the only one truly my man?' she asked.

Coenus smiled. 'Far from it, lady. I have known you every day of your life – they know you only from afar. So they will worship you, where I already know what you will do. As does Nihmu. And none of us offers you anything but respect.' He gave her his lopsided grin. 'But – it had to be done. Even parents must eventually relinquish control of children.'

She smiled back. 'Is this, too, something about which your Xenophon wrote?'

He shook his head. 'He never wrote on the magic of command,' Coenus said. 'I learned those lessons from your father, and I have little to teach you. Why are you so certain that you can put Marthax down? Is it the prophecy?'

Melitta sat on her furs. 'Yes and no. I know it.'

Coenus came and sat next to her. 'They don't know it.'

'They must trust me,' Melitta said.

Coenus stared at the coals of her fire. 'Lady, they know that in a trial of arms, their faction – your faction – will triumph. Any other method has elements of risk. Their logic is almost Greek – their way will not fail.'

'Listen to me, Coenus,' Melitta said, in Greek. She spoke fast, the way Philokles taught when making an argument. 'That logic is false. In a trial of arms, we would win for a day. Marthax would lose a battle, or refuse it, and ride away to the north, unbeaten, to gather tribesmen and be a thorn in my side. And my people and his people would fight for a generation – perhaps more – while the Sauromatae creep into our eastern door and the Cruel Hands and the Grass Cats settle in the rich river valleys and become Sindi. His people and my people – raid and counter-raid – and never would we be one people as we were in Satrax's day. But if I succeed, in a month, I am queen of the Assagatje. And when the ground is hard, all our horses will go east against the Sauromatae.'

'Your mother followed the very strategy that you say Marthax would adopt,' Coenus said. 'She rode away and formed her own alliances.'

'I know it,' she answered. 'I grew up with it. I have thought about it all my adult life. I think that she did what she did for my father. For him it was right. For the war against Alexander, it was right. But – for the Assagatje, it was wrong. And I will remedy that.'

Coenus got up. 'You think deeply. I don't know which party has the right of it, but I will help to see that they obey you – if only because that is the way it must be, or your role has no meaning.' He reached out, and they clasped hands.

At the tent door, she stopped him. 'You have never held a major command,' she said. 'And yet my father loved you, and you are the best of warriors.'

'I dislike ordering men to do things I do not do myself,' Coenus said.

Melitta raised an eyebrow. 'You are an aristocrat. You give orders with every breath.'

'I will order a cup of wine from a slave. I will not order the slave to face a cavalry charge.' Coenus smiled. 'I'm not even a good phylarch. I end up pitching the tents and cooking the food – myself.'

'I would give you a command,' she said. 'I would form a group of my own knights, and have you as my commander.'

Coenus nodded. 'For a time,' he said. 'For this summer, I would be honoured. But when you are victorious, I will take my horses and go and rebuild my shrine to Artemis. I will tend my wife's grave, hunt animals and die content. I am tired of war.'

She smiled. 'I must be content, too. From the warriors now in the camp, find me a trumpeter and five knights – just five.'

Coenus nodded. 'As you command, lady.'

She frowned. 'And Nihmu?' she asked.

'Nihmu struggles,' Coenus said.

Melitta crossed her arms. 'I was not asking about her… spirit.'

Coenus shook his head. 'If you are asking about our sleeping arrange ments, I can only suggest that it is none of your business. Lady.' He held her eye effortlessly. 'And it is not your business.'

Melitta actually shook with the repressed urge to stomp her foot. 'Very well,' she said archly. 'You are dismissed.'

'Have a care, lady,' Coenus cautioned. 'Sakje rulers do not "dismiss". That is for Greek tyrants and Medes.'

Melitta slumped. 'Point taken.'

Coenus nodded. 'Good.' He slipped through the flap, and was gone. Just after the golden rim of the sun crossed the horizon the next morning, they left the camp. Hundreds of tribesmen still milled about. More than a few mounted and rode alongside the column, but Melitta could see that they were not packed to travel, so she ignored them except to accept their good wishes. Urvara and Parshtaevalt had twenty-five knights each, and a few more riders as heralds and outriders – strictly speaking, neither had exactly obeyed.

Ataelus had twenty-five riders, precisely, and he grinned at her and invited her to count. Instead, she embraced him on horseback.

Coenus led six knights of his own choosing. The only one she knew was Scopasis, who wore a new scale shirt, a little big, but a beautiful piece, and a bronze Boeotian helmet that he hadn't had the day before. All six of her knights could be identified by the crown of fir tree wrapped around their helmets, which gave them a curiously organic appearance – but made them appear as a unit. They fell in around her and rode at her side.

'Introduce me,' Melitta said to Coenus.

Coenus nodded. 'My phylarch is Scopasis. He is an outlaw, and has no other loyalty. He is your man. Besides,' Coenus flashed a smile at the small man, 'I like him.'

Scopasis spoke up from under his new helmet. 'I will follow you to death, lady.'

Melitta grinned. 'That's not exactly my plan. But I, too, like Scopasis. And the others?'

'Laen here is actually your cousin – the son of Srayanka's half-sister Daan.' Coenus pointed Laen out. He was a tall young man with a gilded-bronze muscle cuirass and an ancient, and beautiful, Attic helmet with silver mounts. 'Nihmu chose him – they're related. I could have had fifty men if you'd wanted so many. There was a disturbance!' Coenus laughed. 'Nearly a melee. I wish I could have held games. This young troublemaker with the blond moustache is Darax, and the one whose nose scrapes the sky is Bareint. The two hiding in Bareint's mighty shadow are brothers from the Standing Horse tribe – Sindispharnax and Lanthespharnax, or so I understand their names. Sindi and Lanthe, to me. The lanky one with the extravagant moustache is Agreint.'

Melitta's head whirled at so many new names. 'Sindispharnax?

' 'Lady?' the warrior asked. He pushed his horse forward.

'Hardly a Sakje name?' she asked.

'My mother was a Persian captive,' he said proudly. 'She sits still with the elder matrons, and she gave us Parsae names.' He leaned forward. 'My father served yours on the Great Raid east, lady.'

She nodded. To Coenus, she said, 'So, how did you choose them?'

'I asked any man who wanted to join your escort to meet me at my yurt with his best horse,' he said. 'I simply inspected the horses. I chose the six best. Their riders came along for the ride, so to speak.'

She curled her mouth and made a face. 'Perhaps we should be more attentive to men?'

Coenus leaned close. 'Am I the commander of your knights, lady?'

'You are,' she replied. And nodded. 'Point taken. And my trumpeter?' she asked.

'Unless you take Urvara's, there's not a trumpet in the camp.' Coenus flicked a Greek salute. 'Take Marthax's.'

She nodded. 'Good thought.' That night they made a cold camp, and Melitta regretted that she hadn't a sleeping companion to keep her warm. She piled every fur and blanket she owned on a cleared place in the snow, and eventually, after walking until her feet were warm, she got to sleep.

In the morning they rode on, into the north. It snowed twice, the first a matter of little moment, the second putting a fresh layer on the grass as deep as the hocks of a horse. None of the horses were struggling yet, but a few more inches on top of what had already fallen and travel would begin to become dangerous.

Ataelus went out with scouts as soon as the sky was grey. His riders and Samahe's came in all day, reporting on the distance to Marthax's camp. At noon, when the sun was a pale silver disk in the sky, Ataelus came in himself.

'Marthax awaits us on the Great Field,' he said. 'I saw him, and he saluted me. We did not speak. He and all his knights are armed.'

'How many?' Urvara asked.

'All of his three hundred,' Ataelus said, with a significant look at Melitta.

'We have fewer than a single hundred,' Parshtaevalt said.

'We won't need them,' Melitta said, and hoped that her voice carried sufficient authority. 'Ride on.' She motioned to Ataelus to stay at her side. 'What is this Great Field?' she asked.

Ataelus laughed. 'Here in the north is the city of the Sakje, yes? You know it? Not a city at all – some temples, mostly built by Greek craftsmen, and the houses of the big traders. And walls, and corrals – pasturage for ten thousand animals in time of war, all closed in walls. The Sindi dug it for us. And outside the main gate is the Great Field, where all the people gather sometimes.'

'To name a king?' Melitta asked. Her stomach was turning over, and she felt the same ice in her spine that she'd felt in her first fight – and the first time she made love to Xenophon.

Ataelus shook his head. 'To talk. To trade. Sometimes to fight.' He shrugged. 'I am from the east, lady. We have different ways. Your people inherit the rulership – mother to daughter, father to sister's son. Mine fight for it.'

'We are not so different,' Melitta said. Her hands were cold. The sun had gone well down the sky when their column arrived in the Great Field. Immediately, her clan leaders formed their knights. She was in the centre, with hers, and she put Ataelus on the far right, Urvara on the right and Parshtaevalt on the left. They formed their line a stade apart, and Marthax's riders watched them. Most of them weren't even mounted – they stood by their horses, blowing on their hands. Melitta slipped off her riding horse and climbed up on to Gryphon.

'We should all change to our chargers,' Coenus said.

'No,' Melitta said. 'They're not mounted on chargers. Only Marthax. And me.'

Coenus grunted. 'Would it be so wrong if we had some advantage? They outnumber us three to one.'

'Yes,' Melitta said. She was cold right through, and her hands were shaking. It all came down to this, and suddenly she was robbed of her certainty. All these people – people she loved, for all she quarrelled with them – had followed her to this field, with the icy north wind blowing horse-tails of snow. What if she was wrong?

'I wish I had a trumpeter,' she said, and rode forward alone. After two paces, she pulled up and turned. 'No one is to follow me!' she called, her young voice carrying on the wind.

Coenus made a noise, and Parshtaevalt's horse fidgeted, demonstrating his rider's feelings. Somewhere in the line, a horse farted and Melitta smiled. Then she turned and gave her horse a nudge, and she was walking, alone, across the field.

Gryphon was as calm as if they were riding in Ataelus's camp, although his ears were up and he was looking at the opposing line. He was a tried warhorse – he knew what combat was.

Melitta wished she had grander clothes. She wore a good wolf-skin cloak worked in caribou hair, and her mother's helmet, the aventail sparkling with gold and silver scales and a row of blue enamel scales where the aventail met the bronze bowl. She had her mother's gorytos of gold – but her boots were shabby and her trousers were plain hide. And her gauntlets were those of Gryphon's last owner – magnificent, but dirty with a month's riding and camp work.

Marthax – the man she assumed was Marthax – was on a big grey in the middle of the line. He had a helmet of gold, a gold-washed scale shirt and a heavy scarlet and fur coat, Persian style, across his shoulders. His beard was heavy and rolled over his breastplate, and it was so shot with grey that it appeared white at a distance. His boots were red, and his trousers were red with gold plaques.

He touched his stallion's sides and came to meet her.

He had a hand on his hip and held himself erect, and he looked like a king. In fact, his dignity was palpable. She wanted to hate him – her mother's original enemy, although not the man who had killed her. But he had helped – or he had stood aloof. And yet, at ten horse-lengths' distance, he looked too noble to be an enemy.

Will my brother ever attain that sort of dignity? she asked herself. Will I? Her hands would not get warm, and they shook – and her shoulders shook with cold and nerves.

She thrust her chest out and straightened her shoulders, and met his eyes – both of their faces hidden in the depths of helmets. His were bloodshot and blue. Close up, his dignity was unimpaired, but his strength was less.

'You came,' he said, when they were three horse-lengths apart. His breath rose like the steam from the blood of the sacrifices. His horse's breath rose with it.

'As did you,' Melitta said. 'I ask you to name me your heir.' Just like that. The Sakje way – no Persian meddling with wine and small talk.

Marthax pulled his helmet off. Under it, he wore a small arming cap of linen and wool. He scratched his head. 'No,' he said. He sounded genuinely regretful. 'No. I can't.'

She took her helmet off as well, and her hair fell from under her cap. A sigh arose from both lines as it became obvious that they were going to talk and not fight. 'I would never humiliate you,' she said. 'But the whole people must ride to war in the east, to face the Sauromatae.'

'Listen, girl,' he said, and his horse did a curvet, and pain showed in his face. 'Listen while I talk. I have an agreement with Upazan of the Sauromatae. You do not. I can never go to war with him and not be an oath-breaker. I will keep my oath. Will you fight me hand to hand instead?'

'You acknowledge my right?' she asked.

'Bah! Of course. I have no other heir.' For the first time, his impatience showed, and Melitta wondered why he was impatient. He pushed his horse forward and she flinched, fearing treachery, but he pushed his face close to hers. His breath was foul. He was, in fact, a sick man. A sick, old man. 'Listen, girl. I made a mistake with Upazan. You will make mistakes, too. But I bought the people time, and now I will fight you for the kingship. Do you understand?' he asked.

Melitta straightened her back. 'I understand, O King.'

That made him smile. 'I'm sorry about your mother, lass. I didn't understand how easy it is to share, and how foolish it is to crave power.' He was looking at the setting sun. 'I have but one request.'

Melitta nodded.

'Build me a good kurgan. Do it in spring, when you rally your army, and no man will say you are not the queen. Any ills will be healed.' He looked around. 'I hated being king, but by all the gods, I love life. Don't fuck up, girl.' His voice choked a little.

He put his helmet on his head. 'Can you fight?' he asked. 'I hear that you can.'

She piled her hair on to her head again, and pulled her fox-skin hat over it. 'I can,' she said.

He nodded. 'I'll ride back to my own lines. You do the same. When I raise my sword, we charge.'

Melitta nodded. Then she turned her horse and rode slowly back across the snow-covered ground to her own lines, where all the chiefs had gathered around her knights.

'We fight,' Melitta said.

Parshtaevalt shook his head. 'Let me fight him,' he said. 'It is allowed.'

But Urvara had been watching. 'You will win,' she said. 'I see it now. At the last, Marthax is, in fact, a good king.'

And Melitta nodded. There were tears in her eyes. 'My mother said that he was a great man, before he turned on her.' She shrugged. 'I suspected that man was still there.'

Urvara nodded. 'I should have seen sooner, lady.'

Melitta thought of saying something… authoritative. About trusting her the next time. But she decided that nothing needed to be said. Instead, she took her best spear from Coenus.

'He is ready,' Urvara said. She had been watching over Melitta's shoulder.

'As am I,' Melitta said. She settled her helmet, clenched and unclenched her hands, and raised her spear.

All the Sakje in both lines cheered and the two riders began to move.

He was big and well armoured. He had a war axe with a spike, a vicious weapon, and he was holding it out at the length of his arm, pointing the spike at her eyes. He had a small shield with a running stag in bronze over iron scales, and he was coming at a flat gallop.

There were no rules in the kingship duel, although it was said that anyone who took the kingship with a bow in their hand would fail as king. It was said.

She held her spear overhand, as if to throw it, and she pointed Gryphon's head at the middle of Marthax's horse's chest and gave him both heels. He leaped forward and the snow blurred past his feet as she seemed to ride the wind.

Marthax raised his shield against her throw a few strides away, and she twirled the staff in her fingers and brought it under her arm, the point in line all the way, so that her spear struck his shield and he was out of his saddle and she barely kept her seat, her knees locked around Gryphon's barrel, the horse himself responding to the shock of impact with long training.

She brought Gryphon around in a long circle. Stay down, she thought. Stay down and live! But another part of her said, I unhorsed Marthax, and I will be queen! Around she came, and he was up on one knee, using the axe to raise himself. There was blood flowing from under his helmet, but he was on his feet.

She reined Gryphon to a stop a few horse-lengths from him.

'Don't be a fool, girl,' he snapped.

She slipped to the ground and drew her plain-hilted akinakes, the same one she'd carried at Gaza and in every fight on the plains. She put her spear into her left hand.

He came for her without another word, trudging across the snow as fast as his wound would allow.

She threw the spear left-handed, and it hit his knee above the armour and he was down in the snow again.

And he laughed. 'Arggh!' he growled.

She circled warily, because he still had the axe and he was getting up.

'Aye, you can fight,' he said. 'A good kurgan!' he said, and he stumbled at her, his axe raised for a powerful swing.

And she stepped inside his swing, took the weakest part of the blow on her shoulder and back, faked her brother's favourite Harmodius overhand – and rammed the whole length of her sword up under his arm in a rising backhand thrust. It was a move that she had practised with Satyrus and Philokles and Theron a thousand times, and it seemed fitting that he should have it, because when well done, it granted instant death.

Her blade went in to the hilt, and the king was dead before he slumped to the ground, the weight of his fall pulling the sword from her grasp.

She bent over him to retrieve her sword, and the pain of his blow to her back sprang at her like an ambush and she almost fell. Had he changed his mind at the last? Or had he granted her a fair fight because he had her measure?

He was dead. She failed to pull the blade free on the third tug, and it snapped in her hand. She dropped the worn hilt in the snow and realized that the riders were cheering her – from both sides of the line. Just as she had foreseen.

At her feet lay an old man, his beard red with blood, his lined face freed from his helmet by her last blow. She bent down, and closed his eyes.

Coenus rode up, having collected Gryphon's reins. Behind him was Urvara and Parshtaevalt, and across the field, Marthax's commanders were surging forward as well.

'Hail, Queen of the Assagatje,' Coenus said.

'He gave it to me,' she said.

'Aye. Well, he was always one of the best,' Coenus said. 'We'd never have beaten Zopryon without him.'

Other men and women were surrounding her. She got herself up on Gryphon with as much struggle as she'd ever had in her life. 'Listen!' she shouted, and they were silent.

'Srakorlax!' Scopasis called. Other Sakje took up the name.

'Listen to me!' she shouted. Gryphon stood as steady as a rock between her legs. 'Marthax died the king of the Assagatje – the heir of Satrax. In the spring, we will build him a great kurgan on the riverbank. Every man of his knights will give a horse, and I will give a hundred more. He was the lord of ten thousand horses!'

Four hundred voices should not be able to fill the icy wastes of the sea of grass in winter, but their roar echoed joy – and relief that there was to be no bloody civil war.

'And then we will gather our might, and the Sauromatae will feel the weight of our hooves!' she called.

And again they roared.