Storm of arrows

19

Srayanka’s absence was like a black storm cloud, threatening to swallow Kineas and sweep him away. He couldn’t think of anything but the void she left, and twice on the first evening in the Assagatje camp he wept without cause.

Even in his despair, he could tell that Parshtaevalt needed him. The war leader was out of his depth as Srayanka’s tanist, and he hovered near Kineas and spoke twice — haltingly — of summoning the council of chiefs, until Kineas nodded to be rid of him.

Spitamenes’ betrayal was not the only news waiting in the camp of the Assagatje. When Parshtaevalt summoned the clan leaders to council, and all were seated in the fire circle before Srayanka’s wagon, Kineas saw a stranger dressed in silk. He beckoned to Parshtaevalt. ‘Who is that?’ he asked.

Parshtaevalt had the look of a drowning man who has been offered an oar to grab. ‘That is Qares, one of Zarina’s lords from the east. He came expecting to lead us to the muster.’

Kineas rubbed his beard. His eyes felt full and sore, and he didn’t want to trouble himself with the leadership of the Assagatje. Indeed, for a day he had shunned his own men.

Parshtaevalt threw his hands in the air. ‘What could I do? I am not the lord of the Assagatje!’ he said. ‘Kineax! Take this burden from me. I can command a raid. But where are we to winter? Shall we ride to this muster? How can we rescue our lady?’ He was distraught, his arms raised to heaven as if imploring the gods. ‘I am not a king!’ he said.

Kineas shook his head despondently. ‘Nor am I,’ he said. ‘But you summoned the council for me when you chose not to do it yourself.’

The Sakje chief scratched his head and sighed. ‘I am a war leader,’ he said. ‘Peace councils leave me confused. I was — waiting. And look, you came!’

‘I am not the king of the Assagatje,’ Kineas said.

‘You are her consort,’ Parshtaevalt said. ‘That is enough.’

And so it proved. The council made it clear from their respectful silence that they wished Kineas to take command. Kineas had enough experience with Sakje to listen to what they left unsaid. He rose, angered at their hesitation and their silent insistence.

‘I am not your king. Why do you sit awaiting my orders?’ he asked.

None of the chiefs said anything. Several of them glanced at Parshtaevalt, as if waiting for him to speak. Finally, Bain, the most aggressive of the war leaders, rose. ‘Lord, you are the Lady’s consort, and you led us all through the campaigns last year. Even if Srayanka were here, she would share her authority with you. Lead us!’

Kineas took a deep breath. ‘I want to rescue Srayanka,’ he said. ‘Is it even possible? We need to know what has happened in the world. I have heard rumour of betrayal, and I have heard that she is a hostage.’ Even as he spoke the words, he felt a tide of despair rise in his heart. For a moment the pain was so intense that he stopped speaking and stood in the midst of the Assagatje, head hanging.

Kineas had been following Srayanka for months, and here, in the middle of the sea of grass, he had lost her again. It was too much.

A strong hand clenched his shoulder, warm in the chill of evening. ‘Courage, brother,’ Philokles said. ‘We’ll find her.’ The Spartan was sober, which he rarely was in the evening since the storming of the citadel. ‘Come on, Athenian. Head up. These people are depending on you.’

Kineas swallowed. His chin came up. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s hear from those who know something of what has passed.’

Despite Alexander’s best efforts, there was a constant exchange of men and information between the tribesmen serving Spitamenes and their cousins serving the Macedonian king, so that rumours crossed the lines in a matter of days and each side knew what the other intended and what each had done, and the camp of the Assagatje had a dozen warriors who knew what passed on the Oxus and in the valley of the Jaxartes that summer. One by one they rose in council or were sent for by their chiefs.

There were three armies. Spitamenes laid siege to Marakanda, fabled city of the trade route, and his army was the last Persian army in the field against Alexander, with veteran Iranian cavalrymen and hardbitten Sogdian noblemen, exiles in their own land, who had been fighting Alexander for three and sometimes four years. Alexander had a garrison in Marakanda, fighting carefully and looking east towards the king’s army for relief. It was in the east that Alexander had his field army, still bent on rescuing the seven garrisons he had left on the Jaxartes and on keeping the third army under observation. The third army was the Scythian horde, led by the queen of the Massagetae. Her force was small, just a few thousand riders, but she had sent out the call for the full muster, and the very grass itself seemed to be moving across the steppe towards the appointed rendezvous.

When her force had been described by one of Bain’s horsemen, Qares rose, and when he was recognized, he stepped forward into the council. ‘I am Qares, of the Iron Hills Massagetae,’ he said, and his voice had the sing-song quality that Ataelus had when he spoke. ‘I come from Queen Zarina to your queen. I see a good force here, a force that the Massagetae need and greater than we had dared hope.’ His voice was strong. His hair was in a dozen braids, each tied with a gold bell, and he was a handsome man. ‘I, too, mourn the loss of your queen. But all the Sakje must ride together to face Iskander. Queen Zarina has a fair host, and she will have more with every week. But when Iskander relieves Marakanda and defeats Spitamenes, for whom we have no trust, then he will turn east. We must be ready. Make haste!’

Kineas nodded and the man fell silent.

‘Lord Qares,’ Kineas raised his whip. ‘How far is it from here to the camp of your queen?’

‘Twenty days’ riding without haste,’ Qares replied.

‘Is there water?’ Parshtaevalt asked.

Qares shrugged. ‘More now than there will be in a month,’ he said.

The council came to no decision that night, and Kineas was bitter when he drank wine with his own officers. ‘If I had wanted to be archon, I could have stayed in Olbia,’ Kineas said.

Philokles was deep in his cups. The Assagatje had a store of Persian wine and Philokles had determined to get to the bottom of it. ‘Be a man,’ he said, slurring his words. ‘These people need you.’

‘Go to bed,’ Kineas said.

‘He’s drunk,’ Diodorus said. But when Temerix and Sappho had taken Philokles away, Diodorus said, ‘He’s right. These people need you.’

Kineas took a deep breath. He thought of saying that all he wanted was Srayanka, and he thought of cursing, but he thought better of it and released the breath unused.

Kineas was silent in the morning, having slept in her wagon and having wakened to her smell on the blankets. He lay awake in the dawn watching the heavy felt dragons, gryphons and running deer on her wall hangings move gently in the morning breeze. And when he couldn’t lie there any longer, he rose and took Thalassa and rode away on the plains. He rode alone, galloping out on to the long grass until Thalassa was as tired as he was. Then he slipped from her back and wove her a garland of late roses while she breathed heavily and then cropped the green grass that still lay under the summer-scorched grass that stood in golden waves on the plain. Her silver-grey coat was streaked with sweat in black patterns. He rubbed the sweat off her neck.

He placed the garland on her head and she sidled at the prickles, but then steadied, and he sang a hymn to Poseidon. He stood alone under the bowl of the sky and watched, and finally a lone bird rose from the east on his right and turned long circles in the sky. It was an eagle, and after the sun moved towards the west, a second eagle joined it and the two danced in the sky above him and then flew away to the west.

Kineas mounted Thalassa and rode slowly across the plains towards their camp.

That night, he summoned the council in his own name, and a third of all the people came, so that the night was filled with the murmur of their voices. The Sakje sat in a circle with the Olbians, as they had the year before. Kineas rose.

‘Will you have me as your leader until Srayanka is returned to us?’ Kineas asked.

Parshtaevalt shot to his feet. ‘We will!’ he said.

‘Very well,’ said Kineas. He looked around. He invited all the chiefs to speak, and one by one they rose to demand Srayanka’s rescue, and to speak about fodder and grass, about infractions of the law, about the dangers of wintering on the sea of grass.

Then Kineas rose with the whip that Srayanka had given him in his fist. First, he sketched with words what he knew of the great war in the south. Then, as best he could, he described how Srayanka must have been betrayed. He stressed that Alexander had no reason to harm any of the hostages — neither Srayanka of the Cruel Hands, nor her young friend Urvara of the Grass Cats, nor Hirene her trumpeter.

Young men and women who had ridden abroad rose to tell of what they had heard at the great camp at Marakanda and from traders on the trade road. They spoke too long, as the young often do, but despite this, the excitement of the circle grew.

And then Diodorus stood. His Sakje wasn’t good, and he called on Eumenes to translate for him. ‘They don’t know us here,’ he said. He turned to Qares. ‘The Massagetae do not spurn Spitamenes for his treachery, because they do not know Srayanka and how far she has come.’ He turned to Darius. ‘Spitamenes does not know the campaign we waged last year.’ Finally he turned to Kineas. ‘Alexander does not know us.’ He looked at the circle — Sakje faces, ruddy with firelight, their hair sparkling with gold ornaments, and Greek faces, their beards long and often shot with grey, and Keltoi with their bronze and gold beards. Kineas watched them all — even without Srayanka, he felt as if he had returned home. These were the comrades of his last campaign, and here among them he might have been a few stades from Olbia on a different arm of the sea of grass.

Diodorus paused, and allowed the pause to lengthen. ‘It is too bad they do not know us, because if they did, none of them would have allowed this to come about.’ He waited for Eumenes to finish his translation. ‘A year ago, I heard Satrax say this when Macedon drew near.’ He paused again, and in good Sakje, he said, ‘Let them feel the weight of our hooves.’

Around the fire, Olbian and Sindi and Sakje shrilled their war cries together. Diodorus turned to Kineas. ‘Lead us against the foe,’ he said.

Kineas rose. ‘I propose that we rescue Srayanka,’ he said. Forty voices bellowed agreement. Kineas raised his hands for silence. ‘It will require patience and discipline, like the campaign against the Getae, and luck, like all war.’

The circle of forty bellowed approval.

Kineas turned to Qares, the queen of the Massagetae’s messenger. ‘We will come to the muster. Srayanka has given oath to it, as has Prince Lot of the Sauromatae. But first we must do what we can to rescue our lady.’

Qares shook his head. ‘You may be too late, and come only to see the crows feast.’

Kineas nodded. ‘It may be as you say. But without Srayanka, we would never have come east. Tell your queen that we come, and the Sauromatae come — after we have tried our best to rescue Srayanka.’

Qares looked around the circle and chose to be silent.

‘I want to send scouts south,’ Kineas said. He pointed to Ataelus. ‘Ataelus will go east to the Massagetae with Qares.’ He nodded to Philokles with his chin. ‘Philokles will take a patrol south to Alexander,’ he said, and their eyes met. In his friend’s face, Kineas read distaste — and acceptance. With his Spartan education and his looks, Philokles could walk right into any mercenary unit in Alexander’s army and be accepted.

‘And I will ask Darius to ride to Spitamenes,’ he said.

Darius raised his eyes and looked first at Philokles and then at Kineas. He nodded, but his nod was hesitant.

Kineas’s eyes went back to the circle. ‘We will move south into the valley of the Oxus, staying concealed from everyone except the Sauromatae to the best of our ability. Ataelus assures me that this can be done. There we will await the reports of our scouts. One of the three will get us news of Srayanka. Only then will we act. Until then, there will be no raids, no private acts of revenge.’ His eyes left the Greeks and went to Parshtaevalt and the Sakje clan leaders. Young Bain, the wildest of the chiefs, met his eye.

‘I mean you, Bain,’ Kineas said. ‘If you raid without permission, you will be cast out.’

Bain glared. ‘Will we have revenge?’ he asked.

Kineas nodded. ‘I promise it,’ he said.

Bain rose to his feet. ‘I, Bain, the Bow of the West, swear not to raise my hand until the scouts return.’

The other chiefs, men and women, nodded approval.

The next morning, Ataelus, Philokles and Darius all rode forth from the riverside camp with retinues of tribesmen, guides and strings of horses. Kineas was left to sit beside the river, drilling his cavalry and gnawing his cheek with worry by day and dreaming of war and disaster and death by night.

After a week, Lot’s outriders came into camp and the two groups merged. The grass was too far gone where the Sakje had camped and both tribes moved north and west along the river. Their scouts found swathes of trampled grass and the passage of thousands of hooves on the main trade road, which crossed the Oxus just north of the Polytimeros.

The Sakje were moving east.

Kineas pressed on east for five days and then rested his Sakje and his Olbians, with Lot a day’s march away, closer to the bank of the Oxus. Their horse herds were too large to allow them to camp together easily when the grass was sparse, although there was a constant traffic both ways, a traffic in which Leon and Mosva played a role. The war and the trek had made for intermarriage and friendship bonds, and Kineas had seen that the tribes were not so much racial as customary, and when a family preferred one chief over another, they moved their horses to his herd and joined it.

The next night, the whole force was united on the banks of the Oxus. Where their horse herds mingled, brown water flowed in a watercourse three times as wide as the early summer stream, which divided and then reunited in twenty channels, creating thousands of islands, some covered in grass, others in trees. The smell of honeysuckle and briar rose flooded the senses, and the sound of ten thousand horses cropping the rich grass of the riverside meadows drowned out all other noise. At night, tamarisk fires smelled like cedar of Lebanon. All the water tasted of mud.

He used his new-found authority with the Sakje to select the best warriors from among all the clans and tribes that had followed Srayanka. He placed them together in a company of two hundred under Bain. Bain was a superb warrior and that made him a Sakje leader. Kineas would rather have had Parshtaevalt to command the picked men, but he was the chosen leader of the Cruel Hands and Kineas needed him there.

Bain did not take naturally to drill, but he did take to command, and Diodorus, who had worked with both adolescents and barbarians, quickly let the young knight know that his position of command rested on his ability to keep his riders interested in the Greek drills.

‘They’ll never be very pretty,’ Andronicus said. He was working into Niceas’s role as the command hyperetes. Every time Kineas heard his Gaulish Greek at his elbow, he missed Niceas, but Andronicus had the skills to do the job. ‘But they already use the wedge, and they can rally on the trumpet call, and those two skills will win battles.’

Diodorus had grander plans, as he showed Kineas the next afternoon. Two troops of the Olbians formed up with Bain’s Sakje in line behind them. At a trumpet signal, the Sakje began to fire arrows over the Olbians, who lunged forward into a charge, supported by the volleys of arrows coming over their heads.

Diodorus rode back to Kineas and pulled off his helmet. ‘What do you think?’ he asked. ‘Like the hippotoxotai in our father’s time.’

Kineas had noted that Barzes, a Hyrkanian they had picked up at Namastopolis, had lost his horse to a friendly arrow. He pointed this out. ‘If the Sakje get a surprise — if you slam into an unexpected obstacle, or your charge falls short — you get to eat a lot of your own arrows.’

‘Don’t be a stick,’ Diodorus said. ‘It’ll change cavalry warfare.’

Kineas shrugged. ‘You’re wily Odysseus,’ he said. Then he grinned. ‘Looks good to me.’

Diodorus smiled. ‘If I’m Odysseus,’ he said, ‘I suppose you’re Agamemnon.’

Kineas made a face. ‘Ouch,’ he said.

With Lot’s picked men and his own cavalry, he had almost eight hundred veterans of last year’s campaign. He drilled them, amusing the Sakje and boring the Sauromatae, teaching them a few simple trumpet commands, wedge and rhomboid, how to charge and how to rally quickly, until they were all on the verge of revolt, and then he gave them two days of feast and squandered the remaining grain on feeding the chargers.

Samahe came in with word that Lot’s western scouts had made contact with Coenus. He was far away beyond the Salt Hills, but he was across the desert and he already had an escort of Sauromatae. Word of his approach did more for the Olbians than a hundred speeches, because he brought gold for their pay and wine, as well as news of home.

Samahe was covered with dust and the smell of horse sweat preceded her into Srayanka’s wagon by several heartbeats. Kineas gave her a cup of wine, which she consumed with the satisfaction of a connoisseur.

‘Summer on the plains,’ she said. ‘Stink-fucking desert.’ She tossed off the rest of the wine. ‘Not like home, where grass stays for summer. High grass is gone.’

‘Ataelus will be back soon,’ Kineas said, and she smiled.

‘I stink like dog,’ she said. ‘Bath in roses for him!’

Her pleasure at the imminence of her mate made Kineas feel as if his heart was opening inside his chest. He smiled at her, but his mind called out Srayanka!

He worked to prepare to rescue her. But he didn’t believe in it.

Kineas sacrificed to the gods and prayed, and on the eighth day he was standing in the brutal sun, wearing a straw hat as wide as his shoulders and grooming his horse with a Sakje brush, a marvellous tool woven like rope from horse tail with bristles of a mysterious animal that apparently lived in the far north. He had groomed four horses for thousands of stades and the brush remained as stiff and fresh as the day Urvara had given it to him, in the hours before the great battle at the ford. He treasured it. Now he was thinking of her and Srayanka when he heard voices calling from the main camp. He saw a rider coming out of the sun, with pickets calling for him on either hand, and he ran up the riverbank to his camp, still holding his brush.

Nihmu rode out of the sun. She was exhausted, her eyes set deep in her head with dark smudges under them as if she’d been struck. She was as thin as a stick of tamarisk, and when she dismounted by Kineas she drank all the water he could give her. The water seemed to make her grow a little, and suddenly she grinned like the sun bursting forth from a sky of clouds. ‘Ready your horses, King! Ataelus says, and Philokles says, that they have found a way to rescue the lady.’

Kineas felt his heart begin to pound in his chest, its pressure so great that it might not have beaten for days or even weeks before that moment. ‘How?’ he asked, seizing her hands.

Nihmu flicked the hair from her eyes. Her braids had decayed in hard riding and she had a halo of bronze hair around her face. She gave a weary shake of her head. ‘Not for telling me. Gods, I sound like Ataelus.’ She smiled. ‘Haven’t thought in Greek for many days, lord. I was told that you should bring the people along as quickly as you can to the forks of the Polytimeros. That’s all I know. And I am to tell you that Iskander is in the field, that Craterus is on the Polytimeros, that Spitamenes lays siege to Marakanda.’ She repeated these last in her sing-song voice of rote memorization.

‘Go to bed, girl,’ Kineas ordered. He turned to Diodorus. ‘Send Eumenes to Lot with the news. Tell him we’ll ride in the morning.’

Diodorus nodded. ‘Where exactly are the forks of the Polytimeros?’ he asked quietly.

Kineas rubbed his chin. ‘Best get some guides from Lot, too.’

Then he lay down in his cloak, out under the stars instead of in her wagon, and he waited for the veil of sleep to come over him.

He laughed, because no spray of colour, no cacophony of unreal sounds, no bestiary of dream monsters, could move him as his dreams had once moved him. In fact, he was angry.

Kam Baqca settled on the branch opposite him, her skeletal back nestled against the bark of the tree’s main trunk. ‘You are almost there,’ she said.

Kineas sat with his legs dangling down. Above him, a pair of eagles flew in growing circles around his head and cried. Kineas shouted, ‘You — the gods — have made me into an arrow and shot me from your bow. Any day now I will strike the target and shatter, and my day is over. For you, the arrow will have done its work. For me, there is only Srayanka and life. The honeysuckle is sweet. The briar rose smells like love and the Sakje women roll in the petals and sweet grass to prepare themselves for love, and I will be dead without seeing her again.’

Kam Baqca raised her head, so that he could see that most of the skin had flaked away from her face, leaving the skull. She was hideous, yet somehow comforting. Another part of his mind wondered why Ajax looked uncorrupted by death, while Kam Baqca, who died the same day, had rotted. ‘Are you a boy, to whine to me of how unfair it all is?’ she asked with arch contempt. ‘I am already dead. No lover will take me in his arms.’ She looked at her own arms — bone and withered sinew. ‘How lovely I am! If I roll in rose petals, will it cover the stink of corruption?’

He glared at her. ‘You chose your path.’

She smiled, her jaws hideous. ‘You chose your path too, King. Archon. Hipparch. You came east. Now finish your task like a craftsman. Go and fight the monster…’

He awoke to the sound of ten thousand strong jaws cropping grass. He lay in the grass and despair rose around him like early morning mist, and settled on him until he choked and wept. But when he fell asleep again, he… passed his dead friends and jumped into the tree again and climbed without much interest. He saw the top above him and marvelled at how far he had come. He looked down and saw a plain below him, stretching away to mountains that rose like a wall and went on for ever, and he knew awe. And then he stretched forth his hand to climb…

‘If you can’t control yourself better than that,’ Phocion said, ‘I will not bother to teach you any more.’

Kineas was standing in the sand of the practice ring, his arm numb and his eyes stinging with tears. ‘It’s not fair!’ he whimpered.

Phocion’s wooden sword slapped him on the side of the head. ‘Beasts fight with rage,’ he said. ‘Greeks fight with science. Any barbarian can out-rage you, boy.’

‘I am not a boy!’ Kineas bellowed. He meant it as a bellow. It came out as more of a squeak. The other young men waiting their turns tittered and giggled, or stood in embarrassed silence.

Kineas’s crime had been to state as a matter of fact that he was the best of Phocion’s pupils. Phocion had responded by disarming him — repeatedly — and beating him with soul-destroying ease, not once but ten times running. He used the same simple move over and over again, moving with lazy elegance, and Kineas’s responses grew more and more foolish with each engagement, until Kineas burst into tears.

Phocion stepped back. ‘If you are a man, then pick up that sword and use your brain.’

Kineas walked across the sand to his fallen sword and retrieved it, his mind hot with the desire for revenge. But he thought of Niceas, and Graccus, and the fight in the alley, and the pain and the blood. And how much he owed Phocion. He stood straight despite ten new bruises. He pushed his brain to consider Phocion’s attack — something subtle in the feint. He decided on a simple solution.

‘I am ready,’ he said, settling into his stance, shield forward, sword back. He moved out cautiously and Phocion danced around him, but this time Kineas didn’t offer his sword. He stayed behind his shield, accepted a light blow on his hip and a stinging cut that drew blood from his shield-side knee. Phocion made a back cut and Kineas exerted the full force of his will to avoid the response he had been taught — a cut at the opponent’s wrist. Instead, he simply stepped back and blocked with his shield. It was dull, and the weight of the shield pulled at his arm, and after some minutes Phocion feinted low and thumped him on the head and he fell. Phocion extended a hand and drew him to his feet.

‘You are a man,’ he said. He grinned. ‘I suspected as much.’

Kineas nodded. His head hurt.

Phocion smiled at him. ‘What is my new feint, Kineas?’ he asked.

Kineas rubbed his head. ‘No idea, master. It starts with a faked sloppy back cut.’ He smiled wryly. ‘It only took me ten tries to establish that.’

Phocion nodded. ‘And how do you defeat it?’ he asked.

Kineas shook his head. ‘No idea, master.’

Phocion grinned, looking much younger. ‘You may yet be the best of my students, young blowhard. Go and oil yourself and get a rub.’

Graccus shook his head. ‘I don’t understand, master,’ he said.

Phocion shrugged. ‘You will,’ he said.

Kineas smiled at Phocion. ‘I understand,’ he said.

And then he was on a branch of the tree, higher than he had ever been.

And then he dreamed that he was a god — Zeus incarnate — and that in his hand he held the thunderbolt, which gleamed with white fire and jumped in his hand, and yet seemed to be composed of men and horses..

And he awoke with the taste of hubris in his mouth.

In an hour, the whole column was moving. They rode north and west along the Oxus, with Mosva’s brothers, Hektor and Artu, as well as Gwair Blackhorse all out front guiding the column. They had ten thousand horses and the combined force was four stades long from Kineas at the front to the last Sauromatae maidens, wreathed in scarves, who rode in the dust clouds at the rear, herding the cattle.

Twice they saw distant figures on horseback. Kineas ordered the scouts not to pursue, but he put more Sauromatae out as a screen. He didn’t want every tribal chief within a thousand stades to know the make-up of his column.

Now they were at the Macedonian frontier. The Polytimeros was the edge of Alexander’s lines.

Late in the second morning since Nihmu’s return, scouts reported that the forks of the Polytimeros were ahead, and an hour later, as they ate their cold porridge while their horses cropped grass, Ataelus returned. He kissed Samahe, the two entwined like two trees on a wind-blasted island in the Aegean, and then Ataelus wrenched himself from her and turned to Kineas. He grinned.

‘Philokles say “Come now!”’ he said. ‘Luck for standing at shoulder. More stuff like Philokles for saying.’ Ataelus shrugged, grinning.

Kineas gestured at the column. ‘Here we are,’ he said.

‘Come now!’ said Ataelus.

‘I told you,’ said Nihmu. Ataelus ruffled her hair and she grinned.

‘How far?’ Kineas asked.

‘Two days, for riding like Sakje.’ Ataelus emphasized this with his fist. ‘Like Sakje.’ He grinned again. ‘Come for rescue Lady Srayanka. Strike blow against Iskander.’ His fist smacked into his open hand with a noise like a breaking gourd. ‘Hurry! Philokles says for…’ the chief of the prodromoi scrunched up his face, remembering, ‘ utmost hurry. Yes?’ He looked around at his friends. ‘Ride like Sakje!’

Kineas turned to Diodorus. ‘Water the horses. Every man to have his remount handy.’

Diodorus saluted. ‘Ride like Sakje!’ he said with relish.