King of the Bosphorus

18

Melitta put her little army in motion while the steppe was still frozen. The winter wind continued to blow, although it was becoming warmer every day and the sun shone longer, and the shadows along the riverbanks grew shorter and smaller. Deer began to move. It was a matter of a week or two until the ground became a sea of mud.

It was her second great gamble, and her second demand that her captains trust her. This time, after one brief speech, they obeyed. It was that easy.

The Grass Cats and the Cruel Hands came in by the hundred, led by the best armoured knights, the richest clan warriors, some owning three or four hundred animals, and their wagons rolled along at the tail of their columns. Young women, bundled in furs to the eyes, rode on the flanks, eyes alert for wolves, because the horses were thin and slow after a long winter on the sea of grass – now the sea of snow.

'There will be grain aplenty in the valley of the Tanais,' Melitta said. 'And when Upazan's riders come, we'll meet them horse to horse.'

Eumenes shook his head. 'I can possibly have the Olbians together to march before the feast of Athena,' he said. 'Even then, I'd be taking farmers away from their planting.'

Melitta nodded. 'I wish I knew where my brother was,' she said. 'And what he planned. But in this, my heart tells me that speed is everything.' She tried not to admit, even to herself, that she held Gardan and Methene in her heart – and all the farmers.

Coenus, at least, was solidly behind her. 'With your permission,' he said, 'I'll take a few of Ataelus's scouts and ride ahead. I fancy that I can find Temerix. And I think we need him.'

Ataelus nodded. 'Better I go too,' he said. He shrugged. 'Temerix and I for friends – for fighting Upazan, many years. Eh?'

Coenus grinned. 'Like old times.'

'Raise your hoplites in the spring, when the seed is in the ground,' Melitta said.

'The campaign may be over by then,' Eumenes said.

Urvara hugged him. 'You are still a young man in your heart, my love. Listen – if we go east, fast as the wind, we will still have to fight Upazan – and then Eumeles. Yes?'

Eumenes nodded.

Coenus rubbed his chin. 'Eumenes – how powerful is Olbia these days?'

Eumenes spread his hands. 'I've been archon for a winter,' he said. 'I imagine we can marshal three thousand hoplites and as many psiloi.'

'And for ships?' Coenus asked.

'Eumeles has forbidden us to have a fleet,' Eumenes said. 'So – nothing but a dozen merchant triremes that could be refitted for war.'

Coenus nodded. 'Let me put an idea in your ear,' he said. 'We both know that Satyrus will not sit idle. He'll raise a fleet.'

Nihmu agreed. 'He loves the sea.'

Parshtaevalt made a motion of disgust. 'But it is true,' he said. 'My daughter and her war party found him far down the Bay of Trout, with a ship.' He smiled. 'He made a spear-girl pregnant.'

Melitta blushed for her brother. 'Yes, he loves the sea,' she said. 'Coenus, what is on your mind?'

Coenus laughed. 'Listen to me, the great strategos. Nonetheless – as soon as Eumeles hears of Satyrus's fleet, he'll have to go and face it.'

Urvara nodded. 'Fleets are like armies that way,' she said.

Coenus shrugged. 'So you take every man in Olbia and make a grab for Pantecapaeum,' he said.

Urvara gasped at the boldness, and Eumenes clasped his former phylarch's hand. 'You are a great man, and when Melitta makes you the strategos of all her armies, I hope you remember the little people.' He laughed. 'The risk would be immense,' he said. 'But the gain…'

'By all the gods,' Ataelus said in Greek. He laughed. 'Imagine Eumeles for waking up – for finding no kingdom he is having?' The Sakje chief roared. 'Maybe I'm for staying here, sailing on a ship for Pantecapaeum.' His face grew still. In Sakje, he said. 'But no – I will go where I may find the man himself.'

'Eumeles?' Melitta asked.

'I will kill him,' Ataelus said. 'I was there when he betrayed your mother.'

'I know,' Melitta said. 'But your arrow will have to race mine.' The first two days away from the Borysthenes were the worst, because the weather away from the great river was colder and harsher, and the animals suffered. After the second night, she rode out with Scopasis in the morning and saw rows of dead horses, older beasts who had perished at their pickets in the freezing rain, and others too sluggish to move with them.

The people were pragmatists. They butchered the dying horses and carried the meat, steaming, on the rumps of their horses. Then they moved on, at times riding with their heads down, directly into the ferocious winds of the central plains.

'Fucking wind comes from Hyrkania!' Parshtaevalt yelled.

'Bactria!' Nihmu called back.

Melitta felt dwarfed by the size of her responsibilities – and by the stature of her 'subjects'. Every one of her chiefs had served her mother and father – had ridden east to fight Iskander, had ridden at the Ford of the River God. And she – half their age, veteran of one great battle – was expected to lead them.

On the third day, Marthax's war leaders joined them. She had left them at his camp, with a promise of future obedience, but she had never expected them to come so swiftly. Graethe, now chief of the Standing Horses, rode to her and made the sign of submission, and she took his hands between hers – warm hands – and he swore by the three great Sakje gods to be her man.

'The baqca says that you ride straight to war,' he said. His beard was full of snow, but under the snow there was as much white as black. She could remember him as Marthax's emissary to her mother – a loud young man, capable of violence.

'The baqca is correct,' she said. 'I go to drive Upazan from the Tanais.'

'Good!' Graethe said. 'You promised Marthax a kurgan.'

'We will build to the skies,' she promised. 'When Upazan is driven from the mouth of the Tanais.'

'We have brought him,' Graethe said. He pointed at a travois, dragged by two tired horses.

She looked at the frozen blood on the hides, but there was nothing to be seen of the dead king except a corpse-shaped bundle of furs.

They rode east, across the rising ground, and back to the coast at Hygreis, the first town of Srayanka's eastern kingdom that had been.

The Maeotae greeted them with open arms. Her outriders paid hard gold for grain and she camped for two days. The weather was milder on the shores of the Bay of Salmon.

'The world will be mud in ten days. Or less,' Urvara said.

Melitta nodded, sitting her horse on the high dunes north of the town. 'I know, lady. But from here, we could ride the dunes and the hard sand all the way home.'

Urvara laughed. 'Too easily, I forget that you grew up here. With your foreign words and your face, I forget that you really are one of us. Ride the dunes! The sea road. Inland clans like mine forget these things.'

'I am not the first lord of ten thousand horses to launch an early campaign,' Melitta said.

Parshtaevalt laughed. 'No, you are not. In fact, Satrax did the same to the Getae, with your father holding his hand – after the Getae did the same to us. Oh, how they burned us! We fought that whole war before the grain came in.'

Melitta nodded. 'Four days to Tanais.'

Urvara's horse began to shy at the smell on the wind – roast pork. 'Then?'

Parshtaevalt shook his head at Urvara. 'What do you think? Then we fight.'

Melitta shook her head. 'I don't think so. It will take another ten days of sunshine to make the grass dry enough to ride – maybe twenty. We will build a kurgan for Marthax – next to my father's. And a fortified camp – a base. Food, grain, shelter.'

Graethe laughed. 'The Sakje don't need a shelter,' he said. 'We have four thousand riders. Twenty thousand horses. In less than a month our horses will be fat.'

Melitta shook her head. 'This will not be a war like any other the Sakje have fought,' she said. 'I am young, but I remember that in my youth, my mother alone could lead five thousand riders into the field. Now the whole fighting strength of the royal Sakje – the keepers of the western gate – is ten thousand horsemen. How many Sauromatae are there?'

'Too many,' Urvara said. 'I already miss Ataelus.'

'He'll meet us at Tanais,' Melitta said.

Urvara said nothing. Tanais had stood on a bluff above the river. In her youth, Melitta remembered the hippodrome and the temples – a beautiful marble temple in the Ionian style, dedicated to Athena Nike by her father's friends and Uncle Leon, who had paid for most of it. She remembered the buildings laid out in a neat grid, new and clean, and a statue of her father mounted on a horse, cast in bronze, his sword pointing east at the lands where they had fought Iskander.

It was all gone. The pedestal of the statue – a big marble plinth with scenes from the battles in the east carved around the base – still sat alone at the top of the bluff, but mud and snow covered the scars of burning, and the statue itself was now armour and arrowheads and a thousand other bronze implements.

She sat on Gryphon, his feet planted in the midst of the ruin of her childhood, and all the dreams her parents had shared, and she wept. In some complex way, she hadn't quite believed that Tanais was destroyed until she saw it. She realized that she had awakened that morning, eager to ride, expecting – what? Expecting to find the old freedman in the hippodrome? Bion waiting in his stall?

In a way, it made her job easier. She didn't hesitate to order the top of the bluff scraped clean. The plinth from her father's statue went into the wall that her Sakje constructed, aided by the farmers of the surrounding country. They came in with their grain within hours. She had them build her a granary in the Sindi way – they burned a huge fire to thaw the ground, and then dug the dirt out, digging down many times the height of a man and lining the pit with stones. Then they covered it with a thatch roof, supported by beams floated down the river.

As the Sindi and the Maeotae worked, the Sakje built another great fire on the shore. When the embers began to cool, they dug a tomb chamber deep into the dry dirt, and more logs went into a wooden house in the dirt. They laid Marthax in the house and killed a hundred horses in the trench outside. Every man and woman brought a square of turf, and many of the Sindi and the Maeotae came as well, and the kurgan went up and up.

They had been ten days at Tanais when Ataelus rode in with a hundred riders at his back, and four hundred grim-faced men on ponies with bows and axes. They had Sauromatae ponies and Sauromatae coats of hide, and they sang as they came.

The Maeotae farmers came out to line the roads to greet them. The roads were swampy, and women cursed the cold mud on their legs, but they cheered as Ataelus rode by.

Ataelus dismounted by Melitta and embraced her. 'You remember Temerix?' he asked.

Temerix was the same – a figure of menace. He was older but no smaller. He had a new scar on his face. 'I hear you cut a path to us,' the smith said. 'I was behind you two days – they were too thick, and I had to ride away.' He laughed, and it was a fell sound. 'But I raised the northern valleys,' he said. He pointed at the men behind him. 'Upazan's tax collectors won't be riding home.'

'And – Lu?' Melitta asked. Lu was another fixture from her childhood – her nurse, her confidante. Temerix's wife from far to the east.

'Lu sends her love,' Temerix said. 'Love' sounded odd in his mouth. But he smiled, and years fled from his face. 'By all the gods, Srayanka's daughter, we will have good times now.'

Melitta hugged Ataelus again. 'I worried you were gone so long,' she said.

'Upazan's men were already in the high ground when I found the smith,' he said. 'They thought that we had fled! Hah! The ground is strewn with corpses.' He looked to the side. 'Coenus is wounded.'

'That is hard news. He is – the captain of my guard.' She almost said the man I trust the most.

'He is forming the men of the upper Tanais into a militia,' Ataelus said in Sakje. 'The wound is not so bad.'

Melitta chewed on her hair. 'We have a secure base, and grain,' she said. 'As soon as the ground is dry, let us ride up the valley and see what Upazan has.' In private, she worried that Ataelus, Temerix and Coenus had shown her power to Upazan too early. Ten days of spring breezes. Ten days of watching farmers scratch their heads, of watching the more daring lead their oxen into the fields and all but vanish in the rich, black mud, the great beasts scarcely able to walk for the clods adhering like melted cheese to their hooves.

Even when many of the farmers began to plough in earnest, breaking the new soil once, and then again, and a third and even a fourth time before planting their seed, still she waited, because Ataelus was tireless, and Samahe rode the hills with her maidens, and spring came slowly there.

In the valleys, girls danced the spring dances under the trees, and seeds were planted that needed no dirt to grow, and laughter filled the air as the first green shoots leaped from the ground as an answer to Demeter's prayer and Persephone's return. Melitta, who had not thought about sex in five months, felt the pangs of interest, first in one boy, then in another, until the urge of spring was so powerful that she took refuge in being the queen. She began to dress the part, and she put her bodyguard and Urvara, who was in most ways her first minister, between her yearnings and her body.

Even with the knights of her bodyguard, she was short and direct, and she did not encourage discussion.

And then came a day, when the first roses were budding, when the Athenaea had been celebrated, that Ataelus and Samahe pronounced that the ground was hard. Melitta rose to her feet and flicked her riding whip. 'Send for my horses,' she said.

The army was away that day.

They rode with spare horses to hand, a vanguard commanded by Temerix well in advance against ambush and a rearguard trailing well behind the main body against disaster. They took no wagons, and they rode two hundred stades a day or more – even over the high ground.

Melitta made time to ride with the maidens – young women, all painfully younger than she was herself, and she was angered at the loss of youth and freedom. At first they were quiet and foolishly respectful, and then they were boastful and foolishly loud, bragging of the men they would kill and the others they would bed, or playing at sex among themselves, and she resented them.

She also resented Nihmu, who since Coenus's absence had withdrawn more and more into the spirit world, taking smoke every day or more, and speaking of her dreams as if they were the premonitions of her youth. Her assumption of the mantle of a baqca angered some and pleased others, as the tides of tribal politics ran, but Tameax avoided her and refused to lend her a drum or speak her rituals with her.

She confronted Nihmu in the fake privacy of her smoke tent, forcing herself through the deep, rich fumes to speak her mind. 'I need you as a counsellor,' Melitta said. 'I have a baqca.'

Nihmu gave a dreamy smile. 'I will never again lie with a man,' she said, 'and then I will recover all my powers.'

Melitta wriggled out of the tent, enraged, as if the smoke had fed her anger as wood feeds a fire.

Ataelus was gone from dawn until dark, hunting the high ridges. Samahe rode with him. Coenus was still ahead, training farmers in his beloved valley – where he had built the temple to Artemis. Urvara, Parshtaevalt and Graethe each had their own clans and their own factions.

Melitta stopped wanting to weep. She stopped wanting to cry, to fuck, to have friends. In a matter of days, in the same way that she had made herself hard in order to survive, she made herself into the queen – silent, careful and exact. She became the woman she remembered standing silently by her bed in the firelight of the hall – hair wrapped in gold braid-cases, body hidden by the white doeskin jacket with its gold plates and careful caribou-hair embroidery.

Sometimes, while holding her, her mother had wept. Those tears had always puzzled Melitta when she felt them on her cheeks when she was six years old. But now, standing alone, her hair in the same gold braid-cases and her breasts held in the same caribou coat, she felt the same emptiness – she knew it was the same.

'I miss my son,' she said to the wind.

'Where is Satyrus?' she asked the newborn sun.

'Is this all there is?' she asked the new flowers. And the army moved north. At the Temple of Artemis, she allowed herself the luxury of hugging Coenus.

'My apologies, lady,' he said with a deep bow. His left arm was in a sling. 'I took a wound in the first fighting and I thought I might as well recuperate here.'

Melitta had to admit, despite her annoyance with him, that his farmers looked dangerous. They were the only armoured infantry of her whole army, five hundred men in scale armour or heavy leather, with bows and spears and crescent-shaped shields like Thracians. 'You are making them into Greeks,' she accused.

'I'd kill for half a hundred hoplites,' Coenus allowed.

'You are the captain of my guard,' she said, pointedly.

'I am,' he allowed. 'I apologize, lady.'

'Very well,' she said. 'You have trained them. Now let us march. And you can return to your duties.'

He nodded brusquely and took his place, and his men joined the column, kissing their wives, embracing their children and marching away to the north. And that night she pounced on him in the relative privacy of her tent.

'Have you seen Nihmu?' she asked.

'She no longer… has need of me,' Coenus said. He narrowed his eyes. 'Not that you have done anything to help her.'

'I?' Melitta asked. 'I can't even get her to talk. The moment the army halts, she is off her horse, taking smoke. She all but lives in the spirit world.'

Coenus shook his head. 'That is her choice. She wants back the powers that – that I'm unsure she ever had. I can't stomach it. I rode away to leave her.' He raised his head, and Melitta could see the tears. 'I'm sorry, Melitta. I can't watch her kill herself. Send me away again.'

She shook herself. 'You left me because of Nihmu?' she asked sharply. 'Coenus, I am twenty years old, commanding an army of strangers in a land that is often foreign to me.'

'Could have fooled me,' Coenus said. 'They love you.'

'They have no idea who I am. I'm not sure that I know who I am. I will soon be what they make me – the virgin goddess. Artemis come to life. My mother.' She shook with fury. 'And you rode away to avoid the consequences of seducing Nihmu from her husband!'

Coenus stood up. 'I don't have to listen to this,' he said. 'And I didn't seduce her from my friend. Much the opposite.'

'Listen to me! I need you, damn it. But you – you led her astray. Admit it!' Melitta didn't like that Coenus was human – and she didn't like the look on his face now.

'I led her astray?' Coenus spat.

There was a commotion at the edge of the darkness beyond the fire. Hoof beats, and shouting.

'We will talk of this later,' Melitta said.

'Where is the lady?' a rider asked, and more hoof beats in the dark.

Melitta raised her voice. 'Here!' she shouted, and even as she called, Coenus drew his sword and stepped between her and the rider.

'You trust too easily,' Coenus said.

The rider stayed clear of the sword. 'I am your sworn man,' he said. 'Lady, the camp at Tanais is under attack – Eumeles' men are landing from ships!'

'What is this?' she asked.

'A taxeis of Eumeles' foot soldiers landed from ships,' he said. 'We surprised them on the beach and killed dozens, but they drove us back into the fort.'

Melitta shook her head to clear it. 'Get me my chiefs,' she said.

Coenus sheathed his sword. 'Artemis stand with us. They can't have enough men to take the fort – we left half a thousand farmers to hold it.'

Parshtaevalt came up first, tying his sash. 'The farmers won't hold unless they know we are coming,' he said. 'The dirt people don't expect to fight alone – and who can blame them?'

'How close are we to Upazan?' Melitta asked Ataelus when he came.

He looked at Samahe. She shrugged. 'We haven't found a single rider in the high ground,' she said.

Ataelus shrugged. 'I think it was a mistake to attack his riders at the end of winter,' he admitted. 'But they were under my hand, and I took them.'

'So Upazan has slipped away,' Melitta said.

'Back to the sea of grass north of the Hyrkanian Sea,' Coenus said. 'To raise his own army, I suspect.'

All of the tribal leaders nodded.

'And he'll return when he wants, on his own terms,' Urvara said. 'While we have to fight to defend the farmers, he'll hit us as he likes.'

'And Eumeles can play the same game with his ships. If we rush to every town he threatens, he'll sail away.' Coenus smacked his open palm with his fist.

Graethe scratched at his moustache. 'What do we do, then? You Greeks are good at this sort of war – many fields, and many foes. Me, I want to ride, to feel a foe under my iron.'

Melitta poked the fire with a stick and then recalled her pose as the unflappable queen. 'We will have to relieve the fort at Tanais,' she said. 'How many soldiers were there?' she asked the Sindi rider.

He shook his head. 'Many,' he said.

'A thousand?' Coenus asked. 'How many ships?'

'Many,' the boy said. 'I was sent to find the queen, and no one told me to count the ships.'

'Let's say he sent half his fleet – forty ships. At most, one taxeis of pikemen – perhaps with the best of the oarsmen as peltastai.' Coenus spat on the grass. 'I'm tired of being cold all the time,' he said, as if this was germane.

Parshtaevalt laughed. 'You are unchanged by the passing of years,' he said.

'How could Eumeles be on us so fast?' Urvara asked.

Melitta shook her head. 'It takes too long to move troops – and ships,' she said. 'This is some planned movement that we have interrupted.'

'What if the rest of his army is coming behind?' Graethe said.

'We must relieve the fort,' Melitta said again. 'If we fail to save these farmers, the others will never trust us again.'

And just like that, her notion carried. The chiefs walked off into the dark to ready their warriors to turn around in the morning.

'Why are you so angry?' Coenus asked. 'They obey – better than they obeyed Satrax, as I remember.'

'There is more to life than being obeyed,' she said.

She heard Scopasis laugh, close at hand. 'People laugh,' she said. 'I seldom laugh any more. My mother never laughed, and now I know why.'

'Then perhaps you know why I, an aristocrat, refuse to command,' Coenus said.

'I need you,' she admitted, looking up at him. '

I'll see what I can do with Nihmu,' he answered. The next morning, they rode back south, and the ground it had taken them seven days to cover was dryer, the mud hardened to dirt, and by the evening of the fourth day, their outriders were skirmishing with foragers from the enemy camp. The Sakje went right in among them, killing the mercenaries and driving the survivors back over the damp ground into their camp.

Melitta went with Temerix, despite the advice of her chiefs. Coenus forced her to take Scopasis as a bodyguard, and together they rode with Temerix's warband on their stout ponies. Then they took their bows, slung their axes and moved forward carefully, staying in the trees on the high ridges. Below, in the valley's fields and meadows, she could see the horsemen moving, cutting off parties of Greek soldiers and shooting them full of arrows. There were burning farmhouses throughout the Tanais Valley. The sight sickened her, as if her valley had a deadly disease that had transmitted itself to her blood.

Four hours they walked the ridges, and never saw an enemy except in the valley below, and Temerix grunted every time he saw a devastated farmstead. And while they never saw an enemy, Temerix's men found dozens of farmfolk, Sindi and Maeotae, living in small caves or dirt hollows where they'd fled the depredations of the enemy.

Melitta wanted to weep at every group of them. They reached out to touch her, and she smiled for them instead, and told them that it would be all right.

And then they moved on – closer and closer to the enemy camp. By afternoon, the camp was visible, just a few stades from her mother's city on the bluff. They were camped at the foot of her father's kurgan, in a big rectangle of earth and wood stakes.

She lay with the Sindi smith, on earth still wet enough to soak through her clothes and armour, and watched the gates of the camp. There were two, and both were guarded. Parties of the enemy were coming down both roads to get in their camp as quickly as possible.

Temerix nodded. 'Now we fight,' he said.

Unlike her other chiefs, he didn't ask her permission. He spoke in Sindi, and men jumped to do his bidding. He turned to her. 'Go to kill Greeks,' he said. 'You?'

She got to her feet, adjusted her gorytos and her akinakes, and nodded. 'Me too,' she said.

Temerix's eyes flicked over to Scopasis and back to her. 'Loose five arrows and run,' he said. 'Understand?'

Scopasis nodded.

Melitta nodded. It was not her first ambush, but Temerix had no way of knowing that.

'I shoot first arrow,' Temerix said. And then he was off, running down the hillside.

The Sindi were fast on rough ground – as fast as horsemen, or even faster, at least for short bursts. And their progress was eerie – almost inhuman, as she had to watch them carefully not to lose them in the scrub and tree cover of the hillside. Their ragged cloaks and dun colours vanished against the valley's spring green.

The soldiers on the road were too fixated on the horsemen behind them. They were well formed, and they held together, but they had no flank guards and no advance party – just sixty men under a senior file-leader, moving at a jog back along the road, with another twenty light-armed men – peltastai, probably rowers from the fleet, armed only with javelins and knives.

Temerix had chosen to catch them on the same stretch of road where Melitta had had her first taste of combat, all those years before. Where her brother had saved Coenus. Where Theron had proven to be a friend. It seemed odd, to be fighting on the same ground again, as if her life was going around some sort of loop.

She put herself behind an oak so big that she and Scopasis wouldn't have been able to encircle it with their arms. She could hear the Greeks on the road.

'Give me a hand up,' she said quietly.

Scopasis frowned, but then he made a stirrup and she stepped up into his hands, on to his shoulder and up into the tree's first big joint. Her guess was that the Greeks saw nothing but the mounted Sakje pursuing them.

She got into the joint, scraping her knee and cursing the weight of her armour, which made everything harder and served no purpose in this kind of war. Then her bow was in her hand and she had an arrow on the bow and her whole focus was on the Greeks coming down the road. They were trotting, and their officer had a big plume.

'Not far, boys,' he shouted, in Macedonian-accented Greek. 'Two stades. Keep it together.'

The file-closers nearest to Melitta were middle-aged men with hard faces and grey in their beards, but the middle-rankers were children wearing helmets that were far too big for them, padded in sheepskin that showed around the edges of their high-peaked helms. Of course, they were the same age as her spear-maidens and their brothers.

Armies of children, killing each other so that adults can wield power, she thought.

Temerix's first arrow screamed as it flew, and it took the officer high on his unarmoured thigh. He went down in a clatter of bronze. Before his men could react, two dozen shafts flew, buzzing like wasps aroused by foolish children, and men fell.

Melitta shot a file-closer in the neck and felt a burst of pleasure at the fine shot.

Another file-leader waved his sword. 'At 'em, lads!' he shouted, and died, several arrows in him. But another leader got them moving, and they rushed down the road at the ambush. Now their shields were facing the right way and the next volley of arrows from the ambushers had little effect.

Melitta shot twice and had no idea whether her arrows were going home. She had the third arrow drawn, her right thumb just brushing the outward edge of her lip as her mother had taught her, when she realized that Scopasis was fighting hand-to-hand at her feet. She leaned out and shot down at a boy in leather armour. Her shaft glanced off his Thracian helmet to bury itself in his foot, and he yelled.

Scopasis was fighting with a long-handled cavalry axe, the kind that the Greeks called a sagaris, and as soon as he saw the boy stumble, he cut at him, and the axe collapsed the dome of his helmet.

Melitta drew again. This time the Greeks were looking up and had their shields ready – but they couldn't watch her and Scopasis at the same time. There were three more of them, and the biggest one had a long sword.

'On my count, boys,' he said. 'One – arrggh!' He fell as if the axe had taken him, an arrow in his back.

The other two broke. Melitta shot one, low in the back, so that he fell and kicked and screamed. The other tripped and fell on a root, and Scopasis killed him while he cowered and begged.

Melitta looked up and down the road. There were Greeks still alive – they were running at full speed for their fort.

'Jump,' Scopasis said. 'I'll catch you.'

Melitta dropped her bow into its scabbard and jumped.

He caught her with an audible grunt, and he sank to one knee with the effort, but he did catch her. The scales of her thorax caught in the scales of his for a moment, and their faces were close.

'T hank you,' she said, far more stiffly than she had meant. Scopasis had clear green eyes, like the glass the Aegyptians made. She hadn't noticed that before. Then she was out of his arms and moving.

Heartbeats later, and Temerix's horn was sounding on the ridge. She and Scopasis were the last ambushers to rejoin the smith, where he sat on a stump, sharpening his axe.

'Why do we run, when the enemy is beaten?' she asked.

Temerix shrugged. 'Because I say,' he answered with a grim smile. Then he shook his head. 'Kill – run. Always. Sometimes enemy runs too. But sometime, someday, enemy has ambush of his own – yes? Sure. My men live and not die. Yes?' He looked around and spoke in Sindi, and the men nodded and laughed. 'You fight well, and you obey,' Temerix said. 'Queen of Assagatje obey a Sindi.' He nodded. 'It is good.' He spoke again, the men around her laughed, and the nearest, a small man with tattoos around his eyes, slapped her on the back.

On the way back, they collected their refugees and sent them to strip the dead in the valley. In camp, Urvara was beside herself with worry when she saw Melitta, and she was visibly reining in her temper.

'I had to,' Melitta said.

Temerix slapped her back and headed off with his own. Urvara watched him go, and then kissed her brow. 'I guess you did, at that,' she said in Sakje. 'You know that if you die, this comes to an end.'

'No,' Melitta said. 'No, Auntie. I have a brother, and a son. If I die, they'll ride the horse.' The next morning, it rained – cold rain that seemed like a last touch of winter's icy fingers. She sat in the cold rain with Coenus on the same low ridge where Temerix had rallied them the day before, oppos ite the enemy camp. The enemy ships were drawn up on the muddy beach – twenty triremes and forty more small merchant ships and big fishing smacks, all capable of carrying forty or fifty men.

Coenus peered at them under his hand in the rising sun. 'Nikephoros,' he said. 'Good officer. Look at the camp – and the sentries.'

'You know him?' Melitta asked.

'Don't spend your life on the stage without getting to know the chorus,' Coenus said. 'There he is!' He pointed to the line of ships.

Melitta had no idea what her captain was pointing at. Coenus's eyes had always been godlike. 'Will he fight?' she asked.

Coenus saw her puzzlement. 'No,' he said. 'Whatever he came for, he's too smart to fight. He made a grab at the fort, destroyed some farms, got his fingers burned and now he's re-embarking.'

'He built that fortified camp and now he'll just leave it?' she asked.

'That's right, honey bee,' Coenus said. He rubbed his beard and then snuffled. He had a cold. Most of them did. Spring had come and the ground was drying, but the nights were still damp and cold. 'I would. Camps are easy to build. He can't afford losses. And if he lost a battle here – we'd kill every man in his force and burn his ships.'

Scopasis, normally silent, was moved to speak. 'Send us, lady. We will storm his camp now.'

Gaweint seconded him. 'Send us!' he said.

Melitta looked at Coenus, expecting a rapid negation. Instead, the Megaran scratched his beard, and then pulled his helmet off and his wool cap and scratched his head more thoroughly. 'Creatures of icy Tartarus,' he cursed. 'Lice. Lice are supposed to come with warm weather. Scopasis, you may have something – and I don't mean more lice. Lady, how many dead can you tolerate?'

Melitta felt her stomach contract. 'What are you saying?'

Coenus smiled grimly. 'Did I mention how all my life I've refused command? This is it. Scopasis is right. They've just started to load.' He crushed a bug between his nails. 'Right now, if we go for them, we'll wipe them out.' He smeared the remains of the bug on his horse's withers. 'It'll cost you a thousand warriors.'

'Unacceptable,' she said. Coenus's tone horrified her.

'It'd change the war,' Coenus said. 'In one blow, we cripple his fleet and get his best general and a third of his professional soldiers.'

Scopasis pulled his horse in front of her. 'I would be proud to lead,' he said. 'I will die here.'

Gaweint threw his sword in the air. 'Hah!' he said, and caught it.

Urvara came up with her bodyguard and Parshtaevalt followed, dickering with Graethe over the price of a horse. They fell silent as they saw the enemy camp.

Melitta looked down at the enemy ships and the files of rowers going aboard, the men on the walls looking up the hill at the Sakje and over their shoulders, already nervous that they might be abandoned.

'No,' she said. 'It is enough that they board their ships and sail away.'

'Tomorrow, they will land a hundred stades from here. They will burn the Temple of Herakles, or kill your friend – that farmer up on the Hypanis. What's his name? Gardan.' Coenus shrugged. 'Right now, we have them under our hands.' Coenus pulled his wool arming cap back on to his head. 'I don't want to order it, either. But this is what war is. And if you order it, I will lead it.'

'A thousand riders?' Urvara asked. 'Dead?' She looked at Coenus. 'This is some Greek madness. The people would never recover.'

'And Upazan would still come,' Parshtaevalt said. 'But – oh, Coenus. It is a hard thing, but even if it is my clan that dies, I see the merit in your words.'

Coenus nodded. 'Don't mistake me, friends. I don't want this battle. But mark my words – later in the summer we'll face Nikephoros on ground of his own choosing, with Eumeles and all his mercenaries and Upazan guarding his flanks.'

Melitta was sure that her answer was the right one. 'Friends,' she said, and all their heads turned. 'My friends, this is a battle I will never fight – a battle where I must expect a thousand empty saddles. Coenus – I understand. I am enough Greek that I understand, but I will find us another way.'

Coenus nodded. He tucked his helmet into the leather bag at his back and pulled out a Sakje fur hat. 'Good,' he said. 'It would have been horrible.'

Scopasis shook his head. 'Glorious,' he spat. Gaweint looked as if he might cry.

Ataelus came up last, heard the end of the debate and slapped his former outlaw on the back. 'Live a few more days,' he said. 'You may find that dying in battle is not the only joy.'

The Sindi and the Maeotae cheered like heroes as their queen rode up the bluff and entered the gates over the corpses of a dozen dead phalangites. Coenus congratulated the farmers on the spirit of their defence, and Ataelus already had two hundred riders across the river, riding the coast, trying to find out where the enemy fleet was heading.

'Where is my brother?' Melitta asked.

'If he is alive, he is coming,' Urvara said.

Coenus nodded.

But the enemy fleet sailed out into the bay, and Melitta suspected that perhaps an opportunity had sailed with it.

One boat returned, a pentekonter rowed by soldiers with a handsome older man in the stern. Melitta found Coenus overseeing the storage of yet more grain and pointed it out to him.

'Nikephoros,' he said. 'Must want to bury his dead. He's of the old school – quite an honourable man.'

'How can he stomach his master, then?' Melitta asked. She saw Nihmu – pale, thin and distraught. It took her a moment to realize that Nihmu was waiting on her – literally. Melitta had waited on Nihmu most of her adult life. It was odd to reverse the situation.

Coenus smiled at Nihmu and she looked elsewhere. He rolled his eyes. 'Listen, honey bee. Your father was lucky. His employer was a monster – but Kineas rose above him. Not every professional soldier can do the same.'

Melitta continued to watch the fifty-oared boat approach. 'Nihmu?' she said softly.

'Lady?' Nihmu came closer. 'Lady? I have come to crave a boon.'

Melitta tore her eyes from the approaching galley. 'Nihmu, I think you're being silly. I'm not the lady to you.'

Nihmu had tears in her eyes. 'You are, lady. Listen – I wish to leave.'

Melitta started. 'Leave?' she asked. She glanced at Coenus – whose look of Laconic concern didn't fool her for a moment. 'Why are you leaving?'

Nihmu bit her lip. 'I am going to rescue my husband,' she said. 'Coenus and I feel that it won't be long before Eumeles executes him. He must be rescued.'

Melitta felt a void in her stomach as she realized that among all her busy plots and plans, Leon had vanished into obscurity. She looked at Coenus, who wiped sweat from his brow and shook his head. 'Nihmu and I agreed that it must be her. If I go, you have no military counsel that you trust.' His voice was flat, and she realized that he was making a sacrifice, and bearing it – rather the opposite of her first assumption.

'You would rather rescue Leon?' she asked.

Coenus nodded. 'Yes,' he said. 'This morning reminded me of why I do not wish to command.'

Melitta nodded and began to walk down to the beach beneath her father's kurgan. The pentekonter was coming ashore, and the first sailors to touch the beach had branches of olive in their hands. A herald came next. He wore green and walked up the beach to Coenus, and bowed. Coenus pointed to Melitta. The herald looked puzzled, but then he inclined his head.

In abysmal Sakje, he said, 'Master of many horses Nikephoros look to ask to make not war with you.' The man's nerves were betrayed by the way he clutched his staff.

'I speak Greek,' she said.

'Ah! My pardon, despoina. My strategos requests a truce during which he might bury his dead, or take their bodies.' The herald waved his wand in the direction of the fort.

'Let him approach me himself,' Melitta said. 'I see him standing in the stern. It is right that leaders should look each other in the eye.'

The herald turned and walked away. She saw him walk back the half-stade across the sand.

'Build a fire,' Melitta said. 'Fetch wine.'

The herald went aboard, and she saw Nikephoros look her way and shrug. Then he leaped down into the cold water and trudged up the beach.

Coenus worked his magic. In moments, he had a driftwood fire going. Nihmu came to her side with a heavy amphora of wine cradled in her arms like a baby, and Urvara came down on horseback, dismounted and joined her. Temerix walked up on foot.

'Parshtaevalt, Ataelus and Graethe are already out on the grass,' Urvara said. 'I gather that's Nikephoros.'

Melitta nodded.

Nikephoros walked the half-stade towards them, apparently indifferent to his wet cloak and the icy wind. He came alone.

'Please come and be warm,' Melitta said. 'There's wine.'

'I never refuse a cup of wine,' Nikephoros said. 'Hello, Coenus the Megaran. Your presence gave me hope that I could expect the courtesies of war.'

Melitta handed him a cup of wine. 'Did you know my father?'

Nikephoros was Boeotian. He had copper-red hair – what was left of it – and fine armour. He wore a full beard like a man of a bygone era, and he didn't waste words. 'No. Or rather, only by repute.' He poured a libation. 'To all the gods, and to the shade of your father. In his name, I ask you for a truce of one day, in which to recover and bury my dead.'

Melitta nodded. 'It is odd, Nikephoros. An hour ago, I was considering the storming of your camp. Now we drink wine. Yes – and no. You may have a five-day truce to recover your dead. There will be some by the outlying farms where we killed them yesterday.'

'I need only a day,' Nikephoros said.

'Five days, during which your ships remain in the bay where I can see them.' Melitta had to look up at him. He had a pleasant face, the kind of face she trusted. Too bad, she thought.

His anger showed in his face. 'You did not beat me badly enough-' he said, and his voice was hard.

She raised her whip. 'You serve a usurper, a tyrant who ordered you here to burn his own farmers. I owe you no courtesy at all. Because Coenus told me that you are a man of honour, I agreed to meet you. But hear me, Boeotian. My father would never have served a tyrant like Eumeles. Instead, he would have overthrown him. My uncles serve Ptolemy, who builds cities, and Seleucus, who liberates them. I judge you by the company you keep. To me, you are a mercenary who serves a rebel. Take my five days, or sail away. There is no bargain to be made here.'

Nikephoros shook his head. His anger had cooled. 'So you already know,' he said.

Coenus's face was carefully blank.

Melitta took her cue from him. She said nothing. But suddenly hope soared in her.

Nikephoros sipped his wine. 'Listen, lady. I expect no special treatment from you, but your request is unreasonable. To wait five days is to guarantee that I'm blockaded here. So I'll offer three days, and no more.' He addressed Coenus. 'Be fair, Coenus.'

Coenus leaned forward. 'Because if we keep you here five days,' he said, 'Satyrus's fleet will be here.' His voice cracked a little at the end – he could barely keep the smile off his face.

Nikephoros shrugged. 'I can't chance it. That boy moves fast. I got word this morning he's at Heraklea with a fleet. I assume that you heard the same?'

He looked around, and his face filled with blood. This time he was angry. 'You didn't know!' he said.

'I know now,' Melitta said. 'T hree days has just become acceptable.'

Nikephoros spat. 'This is not how embassies proceed. Coenus, I expected better of you.'

Coenus shrugged. 'Neither you nor your herald has been threatened. You dickered over the days of truce. It all seems normal to me.' He turned to Melitta. 'Three days?'

Melitta nodded.

Nikephoros stood still.

'Three days' truce,' Coenus intoned. 'You may land up to fifty men at a time, and you may use the beach north of the old town to cook and eat.'

'We want our camp!' Nikephoros shot back.

Coenus shook his head. 'No, Nikephoros. There is no question of that. Nor will we allow you to fortify a new place.'

Nikephoros shook his head. 'No truce, then.' He turned on his heel and walked away.

Coenus held up his hand for silence. Then he turned to Melitta. 'You know what this means!' he said quietly.

Melitta nodded. 'Listen, Coenus. There are boats in the fort. Take one and a crew of Sindi – follow his ships out of the Bay of Salmon and run down for Heraklea. Tell my brother how it lies and we'll have Leon back in no time.' She looked around at her chiefs. 'Satyrus must have a fleet.'

'And here?' Urvara asked. 'What about us?'

Melitta nodded. 'I think we went about this wrong,' she said. 'We're Sakje. We leave the farmers to hold the fort – they know we'll come back. We scatter into war bands, across the whole of the east country, and we make war our way, preying on the Sauromatae wherever we find them, acting as our own pickets for either invasion – Upazan or Eumeles. We harry whichever comes first. We concentrate if we can defeat a detachment, and otherwise we are like snowflakes on an eastern wind. Let them strike at the snow.' She waved her whip at Nikephoros, who now stood still, half a stade along the beach, looking out to sea. 'The farmers can protect their grain until my brother comes, surely.'

Urvara started to speak, but Coenus cut her off with an exclamation. 'By the gods – the grain! Nikephoros is here for the grain! He must be poor.'

Melitta spat at the notion of a king who would steal grain from his own subjects.

Urvara's eyes shone, reflecting the fire. 'That is proper war,' she said. 'That is the war the people know.'

'One day's rest,' Melitta said. 'And then we ride.' She turned to Coenus. 'Will you go for my brother?' she asked.

'You can live without me?' Coenus asked. His tone held mockery – whether of her or of himself she couldn't reckon.

She chose to take his question at face value. 'I need you,' she said. 'But no one is irreplaceable. Not even me. So go. Who will command my guard?'

'Scopasis,' Coenus said without hesitation. 'He has a keen eye and a loyal heart. Don't take his advice on military matters – he seeks glory.'

Melitta swatted her dearest advisor. 'I know that!' she said. She had tears in her eyes. She took Coenus's hand and Nihmu's. 'Come back to me.'

Nihmu was looking out at the enemy fleet. 'I can't believe I am going to sea again,' she said. 'Bah.' But she smiled. 'We'll come back,' she said.

But Melitta was chilled to see that Nihmu would not meet her eye. 'What have you seen?' Melitta demanded.

'Seen?' Nihmu asked. She shook her head, still refusing to meet Melitta's eye. 'I no longer see. The spirit world is closed to me.'

Melitta put her hand on the woman's shoulders. 'No!' she said. 'I don't believe it. What did you see?'

'Nikephoros is coming back,' Coenus said. 'Look like a queen.'

Nikephoros stopped a horse-length away and tucked his thumbs in his sash. 'T hree days,' he said. He shrugged.

Melitta drew herself up against the weight of the armour on her shoulders. 'T hree days,' she said, as graciously as she could manage.

The Boeotian nodded. He turned to Coenus. 'Your men will know where mine are lying,' he said.

Coenus handed his wine cup to his queen. 'I'm at your service, Strategos. Shall we get to it?'

Nikephoros didn't smile. His face was closed and hard, and Melitta wondered what inner struggle had just transpired. She could feel his anger across the fire. She thought that she might have scored on him with her speech – but not in a way that would help her cause. And she could see that he loved his men.

She stood on the beach, in a light rain, watching as other Greeks came ashore. She continued to stand there as they gathered wood, as the first parties brought corpses down to the beach. She stood with Urvara as they watched a party bring a man who yet lived down the rocky path to the beach, and rowed him swiftly out to the boats.

And that night, Coenus and Nihmu sailed away on a triakonter, unmolested through the enemy fleet.

With the dawn, her army vanished into the spring fields and the new grass, searching for Upazan's raiders, for ships full of enemies coming from the sea. Herself, she took her bodyguard, now swelled to twenty warriors with a hundred horses, and rode for the Hypanis. To see to Gardan's family. And to raise the georgoi to defend themselves, because war was coming to her whole country.