Storm of arrows

21

‘ That went as well as could be expected,’ Diodorus said that night, when they were gathered around a fire of tamarisk. They were passing a Spartan cup of water, because that was all they had.

Kineas was busy sewing at the straps on his breastplate, punching holes with Niceas’s awl and thinking of the man, while Srayanka slept with her head on his lap. Their children slept in a hastily woven basket that was near enough the fire to keep them warm. ‘Which part of my plan did you like best?’ Kineas asked.

Philokles was lying on his cloak. He intercepted the cup. ‘I liked how few of us died,’ he said.

Indeed, if it hadn’t been for the loss of Bain and half a dozen Sakje when they pressed too close to the unbeaten Macedonians, the action might have cost them nothing. Even with the attack of the Persians and Bain’s error, the ambush had emptied very few saddles.

‘Someday I intend to plan a battle and have it work,’ Kineas said.

Philokles nodded. ‘That’s when you’ll realize you are in the Elysian Fields,’ he answered. ‘Pah, there’s nothing in this cup but water!’

Eumenes took the cup, sipped the water and raised an eyebrow. ‘Polytimeros?’ he said, rolling the water gently in the cup. ‘Day before yesterday? Nice silt, muddy aftertaste-’

He had to duck as Leon swung his water skin. The two young men smiled at each other.

As Philokles vanished into the dark, Urvara came up beside Eumenes, took the cup, finished the contents and raised two heavy eyebrows. ‘Aren’t you Greeks tired enough? By all the gods! Go to sleep!’

Kineas could have sworn she was addressing Eumenes.

‘After a battle, Greek men like to gather and tell each other that they’re alive,’ Diodorus said. He turned to Ataelus, who sat back to back with his wife. Both of them were sewing, he making a repair to a bridle while his wife repaired her moccasins. Diodorus asked, ‘What do the Sakje do after battle?’

Ataelus narrowed his eyes so that they sparkled with reflected firelight. ‘For lying about how many enemies killed,’ he said.

Urvara sat on the ground as if her knees had betrayed her. ‘How is Srayanka?’

Kineas grinned. He couldn’t help it — the grins seemed to roll out of him despite the fatigue. He never wanted to go to sleep — he wanted to stay like this for ever, triumphant, exhausted, drunk on joy, with her head across his lap. ‘She’s asleep. Tough as a ten-year-old sandal.’

Urvara looked at the children. ‘I thought we would die,’ she said. ‘Hah! I’m alive!’

Eumenes, usually so silent, gave her an approving grin. ‘I think you’ve got it exactly,’ he said.

She crossed her legs and put her hand on her chin. ‘Not the battle, fool of a Greek. Any idiot can survive a battle. You did.’

Diodorus glanced around with a why me expression.

‘The capture! Always, Srayanka is for saying that we should ride free and leave her, and always we are for telling her that we will stay by her. But I think in my head “I must ride or die!” And Hirene

…’ and here she looked into the fire for a moment.

Samahe spoke. ‘Hirene died a warrior death. She was a spear-maiden. ’

Urvara acknowledged Samahe’s statement with a nod. ‘But still for dead, yes? But Hirene says “Go, Urvara! The Bronze One lusts to hurt you!” And I feared him, and I feared for Srayanka.’ She shrugged. ‘I cannot tell it. Much of it was women’s fear and no interest to men — Srayanka’s belly, the Bronze One’s lusts, no exercise, and for treating us like grass priestesses.’

Eumenes, who hung on her every word, asked, ‘What is a grass priestess? ’ When Urvara raised her eyes and shrugged, Eumenes went on, ‘My nurse used to talk about them as if they were — hmm — prostitutes.’

Urvara watched him. ‘What is prostitute?’ she asked.

‘A man or woman who takes money for fucking,’ Eumenes said in Sakje, using the coarsest of Sakje words for the act. Even in firelight, he could be seen to be blushing.

Kineas finished his armour strap. He really needed a new breastplate, but the strap would hold for another action. He was laughing quietly at his young cavalry commander’s confusion.

Urvara laughed aloud. ‘Grass priestess is girl who worships grass with her back,’ she laughed. ‘Not for taking money. For taking nothing!’ When she saw that they weren’t laughing, she shrugged. ‘Macedonians treat us as if we are for fucking.’ She shook her head. ‘Never for seeing us for warriors.’

Kineas found that his free hand was stroking Srayanka’s neck. Urvara was not telling her whole story — she was making light of something that pained her deeply, and Kineas, who knew both warriors and Sakje, could read her anger and her pain. But he couldn’t think of anything to say, and the moment passed. Urvara wiped a hand across her eyes and departed the circle.

Within seconds, Philokles emerged from the dark. ‘Admit it, I’m the best man in this army,’ he said, and produced a skin of wine. The resulting cheer might have been heard in Marakanda. After the first cup had been poured into the thirsty sand for the gods, Philokles filled the cup and passed it.

Leon sat, and Sitalkes, and Darius, and then the others, and they drank together. And Nihmu appeared by Kineas. She looked down at him, her eyes dancing. She bent and kissed Srayanka’s sleeping brow, and then she touched his cheek. ‘This is how they’ll remember you,’ she said.

‘Thank you,’ Kineas said. ‘For delivering the children.’

She smiled. ‘I have been trained,’ she said.

‘You did well. You are growing up.’ He took one of Srayanka’s golden plaques from her dress — she had a dozen of them around the neck — and Kineas cut one away carefully and gave it to Nihmu.

She beamed at his praise. ‘Thank you, lord.’ She took the plaque, gave him a shy grin from under lowered eyes and slipped away.

Eumenes drank from the cup and chatted with Philokles, then left the circle in his turn. He returned a little later with Urvara in tow, and they shared the wine cup, hands lingering. Kineas watched them with a smile, but he didn’t smile as Philokles methodically finished the wine skin, silently drinking for oblivion.

The Olbians, Lot’s Sauromatae and the Sakje made camp together at a great bend in the Oxus after moving fast for a thousand stades to avoid retribution from Alexander. They went to a site Lot knew on the northern Oxus where the river ran deep along the inner bank and shallow on the outside of the curve, and there was grazing for ten thousand horses in the belly of the bow — grazing already used by other passing tribes, but not nibbled flat. A thousand lodges, yurts and wagons were set up along the deepest water, and parties went to get firewood and red deer as far as twenty stades away. In this site they were closer to Coenus, when he came, and ready to cross the river and head east to the rendezvous on the Jaxartes when their wounded had recovered.

Eumenes and Urvara took a party of mixed Olbians and Sakje back to the site of the ambush. They returned with more plunder and Hirene’s corpse as well as Bain’s. The two of them were given a kurgan on the outer bank of the Oxus. Srayanka declined to officiate, and Kineas, urged by Nihmu, took the part of both king and priest. Diodorus laughed at him and called him a superstitious peasant, and there was a barb to his words, but they all brought their squares of turf and the ceremony and the feast helped to settle something intangible.

‘We’ll all be Sakje in a few years, at this rate,’ Diodorus said, like a man scratching a scar.

‘Kineas likes being a Sakje,’ Philokles said.

Kineas started to react angrily, but he bit down on his first reply and thought for a moment instead.

‘I like their freedom,’ Kineas said.

Philokles nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And the way they worship you like a god.’

‘What are we doing?’ Diodorus asked. ‘I’ve bitten my tongue long enough. You’re a brilliant strategos, Kineas — I, for one, would follow you anywhere. That last was your best work. We routed twice our weight — in Macedonians — and slipped away from another army. By Ares! I love to follow you.’ He looked at the ground between his feet, and then slowly raised his head again. ‘But there’s too much, Kineas. Most of our troopers have fought four heavy actions in two summers. You need to tell them when they can go home.’

Philokles nodded. ‘It’s true, my friend. We saved Srayanka and we struck a blow against Macedon. As far as most of your Olbians are concerned, the war is over and it is time to ride home and tell a lot of lies. These aren’t Spartans. They aren’t even Macedonian peasants to whom we’ve promised the world. These are men with lives, and they’d like to go home.’

Kineas sighed. ‘I know. I see the same fatigue in the Keltoi that I see in Eumenes.’

Diodorus went back to watching the ground between his sandals. ‘What’s next?’

Kineas shrugged. ‘When Srayanka is ready, we ride east.’ He frowned. ‘The Sakje are in much the same state as our Olbians, but they have nowhere to go. And they have come all this way. We have all come. What’s one more desert to cross?’

Diodorus looked up, his head to one side like an alert puppy. ‘It’s not the desert. It’s the battle afterwards,’ he said. ‘And then the road home. Some of our wounded won’t recover in time for another action. Some of the troopers are getting — what can I call it? If we had more wine, Philokles wouldn’t be the only one drinking all day.’

Philokles looked at Diodorus in surprise. ‘I drink no more than any other man,’ he said.

Diodorus shrugged. ‘Whatever you say, Spartan. So — the desert, the battle and afterwards. What’s the story?’

‘It is my problem,’ Kineas said. He sighed. ‘And my doom awaits me in the east.’

Philokles rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, really!’ he barked. ‘Are you some superstitious barbarian or a man of Athens? Doom, my arse. You are what you are, and I accuse you of making your dreams an excuse to follow Alexander to the end of the world.’

Kineas snapped to attention, stung by this rebuke. ‘Like Hades, Spartan!’ he spat. ‘You’ve wanted this war against Alexander from the first. It suits Sparta. It suits Athens. And now you want to call it off? Here, in the middle of the sea of grass? Very much in the Panhellenic spirit — we’ll just ride home.’

Philokles pointed both hands unsteadily at Kineas. ‘Keep us out here for your own glory if you must. Ask us to fight to avenge Hirene — she was well liked, for all her fish-eating ways. But spare us your doom. You are a Greek, not some taboo-ridden savage. Their slavish respect goes to your head — Baqca. ’

Kineas found himself facing the Spartan with his hands sealed into fists. ‘I know my dreams. I do not lie about them.’

Philokles leaned in close, threateningly close. ‘When I met you, you were the sort of man to laugh at such dreams. Now, you are ruled by them.’ The Spartan was breathing hard. ‘Are you a barbarian, or a man?’

Kineas stood his ground. He could smell Philokles’ breath and feel his spittle when he shouted. ‘Fuck you!’ he said. ‘Since when is Moira not Greek? What price your precious Panhellenism now, Spartan?’

‘Brilliantly reasoned, Athenian!’ Philokles spat back. ‘Is that the best your schools can produce? Any Spartan can do as well-’

‘You are going to wake the babies,’ Srayanka said. She emerged from her wagon with a shawl around her. ‘Are you two going to fight? Many Sakje will pay good wagers to watch — I will fetch them. But move away from the wagons and do not wake my children.’

Kineas felt himself straightening up. Philokles gave a drunken smile and waved his open hands.

‘Oh,’ Srayanka said, with mock disappointment. ‘So you only…’ she was at a loss for the word and she did a credible imitation of a stallion rearing, ‘like horses, eh? But not fight.’ She smiled a half-smile, and then her humour turned to anger and she was livid. ‘Listen to me, King of the Sakje and Spartan. The Sakje go to the muster on the Jaxartes. Greeks are free. No man of Olbia owes me service,’ and here she glared at Kineas, ‘but my people will go to the muster because we said we would be there. Six moons we ride the sea of grass and still we will be there. ’

Then she deflated like a tent with the poles removed. ‘And you are right, Spartan,’ she said. ‘We have nowhere else to go.’

Kineas took her shoulders. Rather than spurning him, as he feared, she leaned back into his embrace. ‘They only called me king while you were missing,’ he said.

She whirled out of his arms and her eyes searched his face as if she’d just discovered a hidden flaw in a pot. ‘No. You are king. Nihmu’s horses and my womb make you king. And yet you owe us nothing.’ She frowned. ‘Satrax warned me of this moment. I am barbarian and you are Greek. ’

Diodorus had gone back to staring at the ground between his sandals, but now he looked up again. ‘Be fair, Srayanka. The Sakje have had their fair share from this army.’

‘We are barbarians to you,’ she said. ‘Just like we are to Alexander.’ She spat. In accurate mockery, imitating Diodorus, she said, ‘We’ll all be Sakje in a few years at this rate.’ She hugged her belly. ‘ No fate could be more cruel,’ she mocked.

Diodorus winced. ‘Listen, lady,’ he said with his hands on his hips. ‘I’ve been at war for years. I’m tired of it. I want to settle somewhere and have a wife and a future. The Sakje are like brothers to me — but I crave the world of the palaestra and the agora. How happy would you be if we made you live away from the grass?’

Srayanka hung her head.

Kineas cut in, ‘Srayanka, they can go home if they want — but they won’t. They’ll posture and get drunk.’ He glared at Philokles. ‘But..’ He looked down into her eyes, their startling blue almost black in the firelight. ‘But you do have other choices. You can go back, and when this is over…’ The bit in his teeth, he went on, ‘The high ground between the Tanais and the Rha — whose tribal land is that?’

Srayanka used a hand to pull her hair back from her face. ‘Maeotae land, and no man’s land these last ten years and more.’

Kineas nodded. ‘Leave the farmers to their own,’ he said. ‘The high ground is wolf land — worse than Hyrkania. We cleared the road and made some peace — drove the worst of the wolves off. There’s rich pasture there — enough for ten thousand horses. And as soon as you were there to protect it, the Maeotae farmers and the Sindi would return to their farms on the lower Rha.’

Diodorus pursed his lips and looked at Kineas with a different kind of respect. ‘You’re smarter than you look,’ he said.

Philokles raised an eyebrow and looked like a comic satyr. ‘So you have been thinking of other endings,’ he said.

Kineas nodded. ‘I had all winter to listen to what was said in Hyrkania — and to Leon’s views on eastern trade,’ he said. ‘Many of the Olbians will go home — but if we declared that we were founding a city, many would stay.’

Philokles beamed. ‘You have said nothing of this!’ he proclaimed. ‘This is brilliant!’

Diodorus grinned too. ‘A city of mercenaries and Sakje,’ he said. ‘I imagine we’ll have a fair number of curious travellers.’

Srayanka’s eyes went from one to another. ‘The Sakje go east to the muster of the tribes,’ she said. ‘King or no king.’ But her look at Kineas was happier. ‘But the high ground between the Rha and the Tanais is a good dream, and a dream can keep the people alive.’ She shrugged, a curiously Greek gesture on her. ‘Who knows? Perhaps it will even come to pass.’

Kineas looked down at her. ‘Perhaps we should be married?’ he asked her.

‘Husband, we have been married since first we played stallion and mare,’ she said. ‘Sakje people do not worry about the fanfare when we can grasp the trumpet. But,’ she smirked, ‘I like a good party. And all our men and women need something to hold in their minds that is not fear and death.’

In the wagon, there was a stirring, a distant thump and a hearty wail.

‘Oh goddess,’ Srayanka swore, and she raced Kineas for the wagon bed.