Storm of arrows

29

They emerged from the dry grass into the valley of the lake of the Jaxartes on the second day after the prodromoi found water. They had topped a ridge so shallow that they hadn’t been aware they had climbed it, and looked down to see, not desert, but stades of water stretching away towards the mountains that now rose to the south. Horses had died, and more horses were ruined, most of them in the last rush to water and the brutal melee that followed — but not a man or woman or child had died. The horses had suffered, and their exhausted riders had to fight them, man and woman against horse, to drag them from the water before they killed themselves drinking.

Lot’s people helped, having experienced the same just a week before. They had waited at the first water, hoping that Srayanka’s people would catch up with them. Lot’s wife was gone into the high country with all their herds and the young and old, and Lot appeared older. The loss of his daughters and the desert had put white in his hair, but it had not robbed him of courtesy.

‘I apologize-’ he said to Srayanka, but she cut him off with a quick embrace and a kiss on the cheek.

‘Are we Greeks? You saw to your people and I saw to mine — and here we are.’

Lot smiled, but his smile faded as he regarded Kineas, who lay rolled in his saddle blanket, alert but mute.

‘He was kicked,’ Philokles said.

‘He seems to hear everything we say,’ Srayanka said.

Lot nodded. ‘We had several in a bad way — always the ones who took the least water.’ His tone left something out.

Kineas lay with an untouched Spartan cup of water in his right hand.

‘Did yours recover?’ Srayanka asked, as if the question were of little consequence.

‘One did,’ Lot replied.

‘Of how many?’ Philokles asked, and then repeated his question in Sakje.

‘Out of four,’ Lot said. He shrugged. ‘I apologize again. But for Upazan, the king would have had Iskander at the Oxus. It is a heavy weight I carry.’

‘Heavier than the loss of a daughter?’ Kineas said, his head coming up. ‘I have seen her, by the tree.’

All the commanders, Greek and Sakje and Sauromatae, stopped talking.

Tears rolled down Lot’s face. ‘No, lord. Not heavier than Mosva’s loss.’

Kineas’s eyes went over Lot’s head, off into the blue sky. ‘Death is not as you think,’ he said. And then his head went down, and the light in his eyes dwindled, and he slept.

He was aware of the passage of time, although his awareness was flawed and he knew it, the way a man with a fever is aware that time does not pass for him as it does for his wife bathing his brow and cleaning the bed. He heard the reassuring voices of those he loved best, friends and wife, the babble and scream of his children, and he felt such passion for them that it was like physical pain, like a javelin piercing his chest straight to his heart.

He knew that a stranger had come, speaking a strange dialect, like Sakje, with many of the same words, but in a different tone with more music. He listened, but he didn’t open his eyes for a long time.

When he did, he felt better and he could breathe without wheezing. He tried to sit up and gave a cry, curling into a ball, and Srayanka was there.

‘Hush, Kineas.’

‘I’m better,’ he croaked. ‘Oh, the ill luck of it! Right where the spear hit me.’

Srayanka stroked his hand. ‘I have news,’ she said.

‘I heard a stranger,’ Kineas said.

‘A messenger from the queen of the Massagetae, bidding us hurry to the muster. My husband is a famous warrior, I find. His fame carries even to the queen of the Massagetae.’

Kineas smiled and fell asleep.

For a day, he was aware of food, aware of wine, aware of Srayanka’s caress at his cheek. He would hold his children and feel the piercing spear of love. He saw it all through the veil of dreams, and none of it had the immediacy of his thoughts, which raced and raced like a herd of deer run by dogs. It was not unlike his childhood experience of high fever.

One night he woke and Srayanka was weeping with the children in her arms. She looked at him and hissed, ‘I am not a fucking Greek!’ Then she lowered her voice still further. ‘Come back to me! Better that you had died than that I have this walking corpse!’

And Kineas noted that what she said was true, in its way, but not important. I am dead, he thought. What did you expect?

Another sun, and another day in the saddle, his hips rolling easily with the gait of his charger, his mind far beyond the clouds. Around him they all chattered — so much talk! About him, about the weather, about the Massagetae and the Dahae and the tribes gathered in a great horde ahead of them, about Alexander’s army across the river. And then it was dark, and he dreamed of the assembly of Athens and listened to Demosthenes and Phocion debate further support to Alexander, reliving the moment when he was summoned by the council to lead the richest youth of the city to support Alexander. The dream was as clear as the first experience.

He began to weep, because he had never thought to see Athens again, and because he missed it so much. How had he forgotten that the Parthenon shone so in the moonlight?

‘What is death, brother?’ asked a voice at his elbow.

He was weeping, and he could only just remember why. But the question was an excellent one. It engaged his mind so that his tears were choked off. He looked at the heavens and finally he said, ‘The cessation of the body.’

‘And truth? What is truth?’

Kineas took a deep breath. Again he was riding, and his hips moved with a life of their own. ‘Damned if I know,’ he said, and his ribs hurt like fresh bruises when he laughed. And in saying, he became aware from the tips of his hair to the aches in his wounds. He was sitting on his Getae hack, legs clamped to its narrow back, and around him were thousands of horses, cropping the grass of the Jaxartes valley, and he was Kineas.

‘What do you say?’ Srayanka asked, riding up, her face lit with hope.

‘I love you,’ Kineas said. He reached for her and winced at the wave of pain.

She gave a little shriek like the one she sometimes uttered in passion. ‘You have returned!’

‘I was never very far away,’ he said. He grinned and rubbed his beard.

‘You climbed the tree?’ Nihmu asked, full of excitement. It was night, and they were eating dinner in a camp at the edge of the Jaxartes valley.

‘Be gone, bird of ill omen. Be gone with your barbarian notions of life.’ Philokles made to shoo the tanned girl away from Kineas, like a farmer moving poultry in his yard.

‘Shush, brother,’ Kineas said. He smiled at Philokles. To Nihmu, he said, ‘I climbed the tree. Now the tree is behind me.’ He shrugged. ‘I do not think that my tree and yours are the same.’

‘Your death?’ Nihmu asked.

‘Is my business, girl,’ Kineas snapped.

‘And Iskander?’ Leon asked.

‘Is a very capable commander, with a fine army.’ Kineas smiled. ‘I have dreamed of him and I have thought about his army.’ He shrugged. ‘But he’s across the river, as I understand.’

Philokles was polishing his helmet, using tallow and fine grit on a pad of linen tow. ‘We’ve had brushes with his pickets every day since you went down, brother. I threw my best spear at Upazan just yesterday.’ Philokles gave a mirthless grin. ‘I find that all my wine-induced desires for peace vanish when I have a chance to kill.’ He put the helmet down on the ground and put a felt cap on his head, then donned the helmet, transforming from philosopher to spirit of Ares in a few heartbeats. ‘What is the point, Kineas? What is the point of all this marching, all this striving, all this killing? Did your precious tree tell you?’ He pulled his helmet off, obviously dissatisfied with the fit. He stared at the lacings.

Kineas often found himself at a loss when debating with Philokles, but today the answers flowed into his mind like the Jaxartes in spate across the plains. ‘Come, brother, you know the answer.’ He laughed to see his brilliant and philosophical friend look at him so. He reached out and embraced Philokles. ‘What would Achilles say to you, Spartan? What would Socrates say?’

Philokles drank water from a skin. He was blushing. ‘They would say that the point was virtue,’ he said.

Kineas nodded. ‘Just so.’ He took a deep breath like a man who loved the taste of air. ‘Sometimes we kill because we are men of virtue and sometimes we abstain from killing for the same reason. Sometimes a man may choose to drink wine and another time he may choose to abstain. The doing of things is what earns the glory. We should need neither reward nor praise.’

Nihmu stared from one to the other. ‘What are you talking about?’ she asked with the annoyance of a young woman who thinks that her ignorance is being mocked. ‘Is this a Greek thing?’

Kineas smiled and shook his head. ‘Perhaps, and perhaps not, child.’

Philokles nodded. ‘It is the Greek thing, child. The struggle for virtue.’

Kineas took the helmet from Philokles. ‘You are the last man on earth to wear the Corinthian helmet, brother. What’s wrong with it?’

‘The lining is all worn out.’

Kineas nodded. ‘Nothing for it but to pull the leather and sew a new one.’

Philokles nodded. ‘I was being lazy.’ He took his belt knife and cut the threads, and in one motion ripped the liner clear. ‘Ares help me if we are attacked now,’ he said.

Nihmu shook her head. ‘I don’t even know what you’re talking about,’ she said, and stalked off.

When she was gone, Diodorus joined them, with Leon and Srayanka. Ataelus sat heavily on the ground. He looked thin.

‘Queen Zarina,’ Ataelus said. ‘For asking you.’ He waved at the eastern horizon. ‘For much messengers.’

Diodorus nodded. ‘When will we reach her?’

Srayanka stretched. ‘Two more days and we will reach the muster. Even going slowly. The horses are getting their coats back.’

Kineas nodded. ‘I want to talk to Spitamenes first,’ he said. ‘He must be close.’

‘Gods, is this some baqca thing?’ Diodorus asked.

Kineas rubbed his chin and pulled his beard, enjoying his friend’s discomfort. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s ten years in the saddle. Think of it, friend. When we were on the Oxus, Spitamenes was a hundred stades south of us. He never caught us on the Polytimeros. No one has said that Alexander caught him. We were all going to the same place. He can’t be far.’

Philokles laughed. ‘And we call Diodorus a fox. Well reasoned, Kineas!’

Ataelus grunted. ‘Could have asked me. Fuck-their-mothers Persae at the second water today. Garait said this.’ He shrugged.

Kineas turned to kiss Srayanka. ‘I want to talk to the old bandit first. Then we ride to the muster.’

‘The old bandit sold me to Iskander,’ she said.

‘I want to settle that before we ride into an alien camp,’ Kineas said.

Srayanka rolled her eyes.