Storm of arrows

1

The sun shone on the Borysthenes river, the rain swell moving like a horse herd and glittering like the rain-wet grass in the sun. The Sakje camp was crisp and clean after days of rain, much of the horse dung vanished into the the general mud that filled every street, the felt yurts and the wagons bright as if new-made. Kineas had taken the sun as a sign and risen from his bed, despite the fresh pain of his wounds and the recent fear of death.

‘You should find the stone,’ the girl said. She was eleven or twelve years old, dressed in caribou hide, with a red cloak blowing in the wind. Kineas had seen her before around the camp, a slight figure with red-brown hair and a silver-grey horse from the royal herd.

Kineas crouched down, wincing at the intense pain that shot from his hip, down his leg and through his groin. Everything hurt and most actions made him dizzy. ‘What stone?’ he asked. She had big eyes, deep blue eyes with a black rim that made her appear possessed, or mad.

‘It is a baqca thing, is it not? To find the stone?’ She shrugged, put her hands behind her and rocked her hips back and forth, back and forth, so that her hair swayed around her face. She was dirty and smelled of horse.

His Sakje didn’t run to endearments for children. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand.’

She favoured him with the look that children save for adults too slow to understand them. ‘The stone,’ she said. ‘For the king’s barrow.’ Seeing his incomprehension, she pointed at an old barrow, the kurgan of some ancient horse-lord that rose by the great bend. ‘At the peak of every barrow, the baqca places a stone. You should go and find it. My father says so.’

Kineas grinned, as much from pain as from understanding. ‘And who is your father, child?’ he asked, although even as he said the words, he knew where he had seen that long-nosed profile and the fine bones of her hands.

‘Kam Baqca was my father,’ she said, and ran away, laughing.

He knew as soon as she spoke that he had seen the stone in dreams — seen it and dismissed it. He feared his dreams now, and denied them if he could.

But he gathered a dozen of his Sindi retainers and a few Greeks: Diodorus and Niceas because they were friends, and Anarxes, a gentleman of Olbia, because Eumenes was wounded and Anarxes had the duty. Together, they rode down the river a dozen stades.

‘What are we looking for?’ Diodorus asked. He, too, was recovering from a wound, and his red hair gleamed where it emerged from a bandage that swathed his whole head, under a Sakje cap of fox fur and red wool. Temerix, the Sindi smith, rode over.

‘We’re looking for a stone,’ Kineas said.

‘For kurgan,’ Temerix said, as if this was the most natural thing in the world. ‘Lord Kineas sees it in dreams. We come find it.’

Young Anarxes’ eyes were as wide as funeral coins at this open talk of his hipparch’s godlike powers.

Diodorus raised an eyebrow and nodded slowly. He reached into his cloak and produced a clay flask, from which he took a long pull. He offered it around. ‘Did it ever occur to you that life was simpler when we were just mercenaries?’ he asked.

Kineas and Niceas exchanged a look.

Diodorus pointed with the fist that held the flask. ‘Look. Kineas is wearing a Thracian cloak. Anarxes here, as fine a wrestler as we’ve ever seen — an Olympian, by Apollo — is wearing Sakje trousers as if that were the most natural thing in the world. All our men wear their caps.’ Diodorus touched his bandages and the Sakje cap perched atop them. ‘Are we even Greeks any more?’ he asked. He took another drink of wine from his flask and handed it to Kineas.

Kineas shrugged. ‘We’re still Greeks. Did travel to Persia make you Persian?’

Diodorus was serious. ‘It made me a lot more Persian than I was before I went there. Remember Ecbatana? I’ll never think of Greece the same way again.’›

‘What are you saying?’ Kineas asked.

‘There’s a rumour that you and Srayanka aim to take us all the way east to fight Alexander,’ Diodorus said. ‘I’ve heard you talk around it. You mean it, don’t you?’

Kineas shook his head. ‘Lot is insistent and Srayanka wants to support him. The queen of the Massagetae has sent messengers to the Assagatje. They had another yesterday.’ He drank.

Diodorus grunted. ‘Hey! Hey, that’s my wine!’ He seized the flask. ‘We have unfinished business before we go riding off to fight the boy king. The tyrant, for instance.’ He looked out at the horizon. On their right, the Borysthenes flowed down to the Euxine Sea. On the left, the sea of grass rippled in the wind as far as the eye could see, and then another forty thousand stades, or so Herodotus claimed. ‘I don’t want to fight Alexander. I don’t want to see more fascinating barbarians. I’d like to retire to Olbia and be rich.’

Kineas rode along, hips moving with his mount. He hurt, and despite weeks in a cot in Srayanka’s wagon, or because of them, he felt sore in every muscle. ‘Things change,’ Kineas said.

Diodorus nodded. ‘Too true. The peace faction took over in Athens while we were winning this campaign.’

Kineas laughed, which also hurt. ‘Athens seems very far away.’

Diodorus nodded. He handed his flask to the silent Temerix. ‘That’s what I mean. When I left Athens with you, I thought my heart would break. When we were cracking Darius’s empire, I used to dream of the Parthenon. Then we fought this campaign. Now Athens is too far away to remember and I’m a gentlemen of Olbia. Now I dream of finding a wife and buying a farm on the Euxine.’ He paused. ‘I’m afraid that I’ll end up in a yurt on the sea of grass.’

Kineas had stopped his horse unconsciously. He was looking straight at the stone he’d seen in his dream, and the day seemed colder. ‘Hera,’ Kineas said. He spoke aloud a prayer for divine protection.

Diodorus was looking at him.

‘It’s just as I dreamed it.’ Kineas’s voice was hushed. ‘The stone is broader at the top. When we dig it up, the bottom will be shaped like a horse’s head. We’ll flip it over and the horse head will mark Satrax’s grave.’

Diodorus shook his head, but as the Sindi dug away at the deep soil around the stone, he became thoughtful, and when the shape of the stone’s hidden base was revealed, he rubbed his beard in annoyance.

‘Remember when we were just mercenaries?’ Diodorus said, again.

They buried the king in the old way. It was the last act of the army that had won the battle at the Ford of the River God, and even as the men cut turf in the rain, Kineas could feel the spirit that had animated them flowing away like the rising river at their back carrying the rainwater to the sea.

The Greeks did their part. Diodorus, Niceas, Philokles and Kineas cut turfs side by side, their cloaks soaked through and the rich loam under the grass turning to sticky slime on their hands and feet. Around them, for stades, Sakje and Greek worked together, every warrior cutting enough turfs to cover a man and his horse. Then the cutters carried the turf to the builders, almost all of them Sindi tribesmen from the farms up the river — earth people, the Sakje called them — or dirt people. They dug out the chambers of the barrow and reinforced them with heavy timbers floated down the river from the forests in the north.

Once, Satrax had stood at this ford and asked Kineas if he would like to go north to see the forests.

And now the king was dead. Kineas shook his head at the ways of the gods, at Moira and Tyche, fate and chance. He straightened and rubbed his hip, which hurt like fire with every trip he made back to his own pile of turf. He could only carry one block of earth and grass at a time — his right shoulder was better, but the long cuts on his bridle arm and his left leg still gave him trouble.

Diodorus and Niceas and Philokles had wounds too, and they were working by his side. Kineas was determined to do his part without complaint, but on his next trip his left forearm hurt so much he had to put his turf on the ground and sit in the rain. ‘I want a bridle gauntlet,’ he said. ‘Parmenion had one.’

Philokles nodded. ‘I suppose Temerix could make you one,’ he said. His tone expressed his view that too much armour was effeminate.

‘Look at that,’ Niceas said, pointing at the new kurgan.

At the mound, Marthax, the old king’s warlord, and Srayanka, the old king’s niece, were bickering, their fists raised and their voices audible across half a stade.

The two had shared the burden of design and construction, but they could agree on nothing. They quarrelled about the kurgan’s size and shape, about the location of the internal chambers, about the orientation of the door and their own roles in the final rites. When Kineas saw Srayanka, whether in fleeting assignations or carefully arranged chance meetings, she smelled of loam and spoke only of Marthax’s perfidy. She tried to hide her anger, but out on the plain, the warriors knew too much of the quarrels of their leaders. They cut the turf, and mourned, and worried about the future.

In addition to turf, each warrior was expected to bring a gift to the king’s barrow. Around the base of the square of earth, more Sindi dug a trench. A long row of tethered horses — most of them chargers, all brilliantly accoutred — waited to be slaughtered for the burial.

The battle had cost the allies thousands of men, but the campaign as a whole had bound them together, Sakje and Sauromatae and Euxine Greeks. Today, they all laboured together, almost without orders, to build a mighty grave for the dead king of the Sakje. The turf bricks rose from a wall to a block and then to a squat pyramid of grass as ten thousand men and women made their offerings of earth and gold. And as the afternoon dripped into the evening, the clouds began to break and the weeks of drizzle gave way to a soft evening. The last courses of turf went up to the truncated top and torches were lit, then Kineas and a dozen of the lesser baqcas of the various clans hoisted the stone he had chosen and dragged it up to the top of the kurgan and positioned it carefully. None of the baqcas questioned his choice or his right to be there, and they were a silent and worshipful coven as they did their work.

By the time the stone was in place and a song had been sung over it, darkness had fallen, and more torches were brought forward. Even as Kineas walked on a pair of trees laid as a bridge, the horses in the trench below began to shy and call. They were afraid. They were right to be afraid.

Marthax and Srayanka took turns pulling the chargers down, first grabbing the headstall and then giving the killing blow with a short sword, slashing the beasts across the neck where the muscle was soft and the artery close to the skin. They shared the task as cousins and priests, but Kineas could see the iron in Srayanka’s spine and the careful set of her shoulders, and a season in the saddle shared with Marthax allowed Kineas to recognize the same tension in the big Sakje warlord.

Each was resolved to be seen to be worthy… of kingship. The competition had started. Kineas wished they could settle it quickly. The Euxine Greeks had other concerns, and they needed a steady hand out here on the plains.

Kineas wished that he was sure that Srayanka was the queen the Sakje needed. Or even that Marthax was fit to be a king. He wished that the boy, for all his failings and his desire to take Srayanka for himself, had lived.

He wished that many men had lived — Nicomedes and Ajax, priestly Agis, Cleitus and his son Leucon, Varo of the Grass Cats, and countless others, many of them friends and companions. Laertes, whom he had known from boyhood, who had followed him across the world and back. But of all of them, Satrax the king was the one whose death affected every man in the army. Satrax was the man who bound the army together, and his death signalled an end.

The torches flared and spat in the last of the rain. To the west, stars were appearing in the sky. The ground stank of horse blood, and the light of the torches glared fitfully on gold and iron and wool.

Marthax wore red, as was his right as the commander of the dead king’s bodyguard. He had the king’s sword across his arms, and with it he climbed the pyramid of earth and grass until he stood on the top.

Srayanka, dressed from head to foot in white skins decorated in blue hair and gold cones, climbed behind him, carrying the king’s helm. This she placed with reverence at the very apex of the pyramid. Then she took the sword from Marthax. She raised it into the darkness.

Thunder rumbled in the distance, and the crowd of warriors made a noise like the sigh of the wind over the plain of grass.

‘Victor in two great battles, hammer of the Getae, lord of ten thousand horses,’ she called. Kineas understood her slow Sakje well enough. He had heard her practise this chant for ten nights.

Again, the warriors seemed to sigh.

‘Young like a god, swift in battle, terrible to his foes, life-taker, lord of ten thousand horses,’ she called, and again they sighed.

Marthax stood behind her, his arms crossed.

‘Wise like a god, gold-giver, great in peace and council, lord of ten thousand horses,’ she said, the sword in her hand unmoving. She had arms like bundles of iron rods, as Kineas now had reason to know.

Satrax had helped to unite them, but he had also been a reckless adolescent intent on taking Srayanka for himself. Kineas was not altogether sorry he was gone.

‘He was the king of the Sakje!’ she shouted, her voice suddenly deep and wild. And at the last word, she reversed the blade and plunged it into the grass.

The warriors gave a great shout, a bellow of sorrow and anger and victory and loss, and then they turned away to the banquet that awaited them, a feast on the new mound, a last feast with the old king. They ate and drank and wept, and bards sang songs of the battles. And they were like brothers and sisters, all the Greeks and the Sakje and the Sauromatae.

One last time.

Ataelus, the Massagetae warrior who led Kineas’s scouts, introduced the messenger from the east with a sweep of his arm.

‘Fifty days’ ride to the east on a good horse, with five more horses for changing — beyond the Kaspian, farther than the Lake of the Sea of Grass, farther than Sauromatae — for riding fifty days, and not for resting — there is the queen of the Massagetae.’ Ataelus’s eyes roved around. The open tent was packed, and there were more Sakje all around. He stood straight, fully conscious of the importance of the occasion. ‘This man for being my cousin. Qares speaks for the queen.’ Ataelus stepped back.

The messenger of the Massagetae was shorter than Ataelus and had something of his look — black ringlets like a Spartan, a wind-burned face and a round nose like a satyr. He wore a red silk robe over silvered-bronze scale armour that winked like a hot fire in sunlight. In his hand he held a short Sakje sword with a hilt of green stone. He brandished it at the council of chiefs and Greek officers who sat in the fire circle in front of Satrax’s empty wagon.

Sakje rules of council allowed any interested person to attend, so hundreds of men and women, many armed, and dozens of children gathered on the council hill. They were never fully quiet, and the murmur of their comments and the sigh of the wind forced the speakers to shout to make themselves heard. The messenger of the Massagetae had a deep voice and it carried well.

‘Keepers of the western gate!’ he shouted, and Eumenes, still stiff from wounds, interpreted in a tired voice. ‘Queen Zarina, lady of all of the riders of the east, calls upon you to come to the muster of all the Sakje! Iskander, who the Greeks call Alexander, King of Macedon, threatens war on the sea of grass! Zarina requests the aid of the Assagatje!’ He waved the sword. ‘She sends this, the sword of Cyrus, as a token of her need. Let Iskander hear the thunder of your hooves and feel the taste of your bronze arrows.’

Srayanka stepped forward and accepted the sword. There were cheers from the crowd of onlookers, but also hisses of disapproval.

‘Let Zarina fight her own war!’ shouted a young war chief of the Standing Horse clan. He tugged at his braids in annoyance. ‘And who are you, Cruel Hands, to take the sword of Cyrus? Eh? Eh? Give it to Marthax!’

Parshtaevalt, one of Srayanka’s chiefs, clouted the Standing Horse on the shoulder. ‘Silence!’ he roared. ‘Srayanka is the king’s heir.’

Kineas listened to the dissenting opinions and wriggled on his stool.

Next to him, Philokles sharpened a twig with his belt knife. ‘They’ve just had a war,’ Philokles said quietly. ‘They don’t want another.’

Srayanka held up the sword and waited for silence. ‘I accept the sword of Cyrus for the Assagatje,’ she shouted. ‘We will not send ten thousand riders to the east. Tell Zarina we have already fought Iskander in the west.’ She turned to the crowd. ‘But will we leave our cousins alone to face the monster? Did the east not send us Lot?’

Lot shouldered forward. The Sauromatae prince was tall and blond and pale-eyed, past his first youth but still in his prime. He had a new scar that ran across his face from his right eye down to the left corner of his mouth. When he came up to Srayanka, he reached out and she handed him the sword. He raised it over his head and the crowd was quieter. When he spoke, his excitement and his thick eastern accent made him difficult to understand.

‘Just as you needed our horses,’ he called, ‘now Queen Zarina asks in her time of need. Even a tithe of your strength would help. I promised Zarina when I rode west that I would bring the Assagatje back with me. Will you make me a liar?’ He turned to Kineas. ‘And will our Euxine allies desert us? Olbia and Pantecapaeum and all the cities of the Euxine have benefited from our alliance. Will they stand by the tribes in turn?’

Eumenes had to speak quickly to keep up with Lot, and the effort of translating the difficult dialect was exhausting the young man. Kineas put a hand on his shoulder and felt the heat of fever in the bare skin. He turned to Philokles.

‘Take this young man to his bed,’ Kineas said. ‘Shush!’ he ordered Eumenes. ‘My Sakje is good enough for this!’

Despite his claim, Kineas glanced around for Ataelus. Ataelus’s Greek wasn’t of the first order, but he could translate well enough. Ataelus pushed forward with his wife, Samahe.

‘Lord?’ he asked.

‘Help me speak,’ Kineas said.

Ataelus took a stand by Kineas’s right shoulder.

Kineas rose. ‘I am not the lord of the Euxine Greeks,’ he shouted. Ataelus translated. Kineas went on, speaking slowly, half-listening to Ataelus’s version. ‘I cannot speak for Olbia or Pantecapaeum. When the phalanx of Olbia has settled the affairs of our own city, we will be ready to listen to plans for alliance and war in the east. We are faithful allies. But we are not yet ready to talk.’

Prince Lot shook his head and this time he spoke more carefully, his accented Sakje coming out in a rhythmic cadence as if he declaimed an epic poem. Ataelus still struggled to keep up. ‘For being noble allies. For holding field — brave! Standing fast! But now, he says, no king of Sakje! No army of Sakje! No allies to go east to Massagetae, fight monster. Says he is for weeping.’

Marthax rose. He walked to the centre of the circle, but he did not ask for the sword of Cyrus. He was a big, heavy man with a ruddy blond beard and a big belly. He was the best-known war leader of the Sakje, the king’s cousin, his sword arm. And one of two possible contenders for the kingship.

‘Of course they are for going home,’ he said, with Ataelus trailing his words.

Kineas was adept enough at listening to Marthax, and he followed the Sakje directly, listening to Ataelus with half an ear to check his own translation.

‘My people are going home to bring in the harvest and ship it down the rivers,’ Marthax said. ‘Satrax dreamed of taking an army east to the Massagetae. He was a great king, but he was also a boy in his heart. He wanted a great adventure. Now he is gone.’ Marthax crossed his arms on his chest and looked at Prince Lot. ‘Things change. Seasons change. Before Zopryon came, perhaps we could have sent warriors east to the sun to help our cousins of the eastern gates. But that cycle did not come to pass. Different suns rose and sank, and now we must fill our wagons with grain and prepare to survive a winter on the plains. Perhaps next spring we could send a tithe of our young warriors east to Queen Zarina and the keepers of the eastern gate.’

A junior lord of the Standing Horses stood to speak — the same man who had shouted at Srayanka. Marthax bowed to him and went to sit, and the young warrior, his arm in a sling, came to the centre of the circle.

‘I am Graethe of the Standing Horse,’ he said. He had the accent of his clan, which Kineas had come to know as the northern Sakje accent. But he spoke slowly, as was the custom in council, and Kineas could understand him well enough. ‘My lord has taken our warriors out on the sea of grass to pass the summer on the wind, and to watch our Sindi. If he were here, he would say that Zopryon was not the only wolf to threaten our herds, but only the strongest. The Standing Horses will not cross the sea of grass to go to the eastern gate. Let the Massagetae see to themselves.’

Kineas’s eyes were drawn to a young woman, or perhaps a child, who sat behind Marthax, playing with a bow. Children were everywhere among the Sakje — they were allowed unlimited freedom. But this was the girl who had called herself Kam Baqca’s child.

Instead of shooting toy arrows, she had wrapped the bowstring around an arrow, and she was using it to twirl the arrow faster and faster. Kineas had seen a jeweller in Athens using a bow-drill, and he wondered if the girl had devised the tool herself. She was using it to bore holes in Marthax’s great shield of rawhide and wooden slats, the bronze arrowhead cutting at the bronze binding and rawhide strings until the whole structure was about to give way.

Kineas reached out a hand to stop her, and her eyes met his. They were old eyes for such a young face, deep and blue like cold water, and he stopped the movement of his arm as if he had been stung by an insect.

She smiled. She was a child on the edge of womanhood, and her smile was equal parts mischief and wickedness.

The Standing Horse droned on in the same vein. Marthax watched him with drooping eyelids. Srayanka, on the other hand, watched the young man as if she might leap at him. When he drew breath for another foray, she stood up and put out the hand with the sword to forestall him.

‘Great is the wisdom of the Standing Horse,’ she said. ‘We understand that they took their place in battle, and that they will not go east to the support of the keepers of the eastern gate. Have you more to add?’

The young man bowed his head and said nothing, but he glared.

‘We welcome your words, Graethe.’ She pressed a strong hand on the young man’s shoulder, and he sat. One of Srayanka’s young leaders, Bain, laughed and gave a wolf call, and Graethe flushed.

Srayanka turned and glared at Bain. ‘Silence,’ she said.

Bain’s face burned with adolescent wickedness. But he subsided when Urvara rose to her feet. Daughter of Varo, the lord of the Grass Cats who had died in the great battle, Urvara had her own scars — she was a bow-maiden, and Kineas could remember her rallying her people to support his final charge. She was just sixteen or seventeen, with heavy brows and full lips and arm muscles like the cords on a siege engine. Bain loved her.

‘The Grass Cats look to the rising sun,’ she said, pointing her riding whip out to the east. Her voice was deep and calm for such a young girl, and Kineas had to admit that Srayanka was no fluke — the Sakje formed remarkable women. Amazons, he thought.

‘We will go east to the rising sun and lend our aid to the keepers of the eastern gate,’ she said simply.

‘Your clan lands are to the east,’ Marthax said without rising. ‘Your homes are on the way.’ His tone was dismissive.

‘We came here,’ she said simply. ‘My father died for the king of the Assagatje. I know what you think, Marthax. I care not.’ She sat.

Srayanka’s eyes turned to Kineas, and he rose. Most of the men around Marthax made growls in their throats.

Before he uttered a word, Marthax rose as well. He was almost a foot taller than Kineas. ‘You have no place speaking here,’ he said.

Kineas caught his eye and held it. ‘My “clan” is the largest here,’ he said. He looked around the tent. Some eyes were openly hostile — Graethe’s, for instance. Others were friendly — Parshtaevalt of the Cruel Hands nodded, as if to make him speak.

Kineas stepped up to Marthax. ‘We died for you,’ he said. ‘We stood at the ford and held Zopryon until you came. My people died. My friends died.’ He raised an arm that was covered in scars from his part in the fighting and looked around the tent. ‘My city is still held by the tyrant and his garrison of Macedonians, and I must see to it, or my “clan” will be living among you for ever.’ He shrugged and turned his back on Marthax, which made the skin between his shoulder blades itch as he faced the crowd, and he thought, When did I cease to trust the warlord? ‘We must be allowed to go and reclaim our city before the citizens despair and take a rash action.’ He whirled on Marthax. ‘And you cannot pretend to give me orders and then silence me in council. You were Satrax’s warlord. Who are you now?’

Marthax had not expected Kineas to attack him. Nor had Srayanka, who had the worried look of a woman who doubts her man’s wisdom. Marthax stepped back as if stung, and his face became as red as his jacket.

‘Who am I?’ Marthax asked. ‘I am the king of the Sakje!’ he bellowed.

Pandemonium. The clan leaders all rose to their feet, some denouncing, others cheering or shouting to be heard.

Marthax seized the moment. ‘I am the cousin of Satrax, and I was his warlord. I have commanded all the tribes in battle, and emerged victorious in every contest. I led the expedition against the Getae, when we slaughtered them in battle.’ He reached behind him and brandished his shield. ‘I am the strong shield of the Sakje!’ he roared.

It dropped to pieces in his hand, and silence fell on the tent — the silence of terror and omens.

A high voice came from behind Marthax, like a man’s falsetto, or the voice of a young child.

‘ You may be king until the monster is dead, and the eagles fly,’ it said.

Marthax threw the shards of his shield to the ground and reached for the girl, but she rolled under the edge of the tent and was gone.