Tyrant

8

They left as the dawn reddened the frosted glass north of the city, under a cold blue sky. The seven young men were well mounted and each of them had a slave; the two eldest each had two slaves and half a dozen horses. They were well turned out, with good armour and heavy cloaks. And they were all eager to go.

Their eagerness made the situation easier to bear. Hostages or not, they were city cavalry and his men, and Kineas found himself enjoying their company as they followed the narrow track out of the city and up the bluffs beyond to the plain. For stades, the track wound along the stone walls that edged grain fields, now a blasted desert of stubble and broken stalks where the harvesters had cut the crops. Heavy stone farmhouses dotted the landscape and as the morning went on they began to pass farmers making their way into town, most on foot with small carts, a few more prosperous on horseback. Their breath left plumes in the cold air, and the farmers didn’t seem happy to see so many soldiers.

The young men chatted, pointed out farms that belonged to their families, discussed hunting in this or that copse of woods and rehearsed their views on philosophy with Philokles — until Kineas began to ask them questions.

‘How would you ride up to that farmhouse,’ Kineas indicated a distant stone building with his hand, ‘leading twenty men, so as not to be seen in your approach?’

They took him seriously and they talked about it, waving their hands excitedly. Finally the leader, Eumenes — his leadership was obvious to Kineas, less to his friends — pointed. ‘Around the woods and up that little gully, there.’

Kineas nodded. It was interesting to see the change in Eumenes from the timid boy of the night before. Among his own, he seemed quite mature. ‘Good eye,’ Kineas said.

Eumenes flushed at the praise. ‘Thank you, sir. But — if you don’t mind my asking — isn’t cavalry warfare more of, well, fighting man to man? It’s for the psiloi to sneak around — as I understand it. Don’t we cover the flank of the hoplites and fight it out with the enemy cavalry?’

Kineas said, ‘War is about having an advantage. If you can gain an advantage over the enemy cavalry by sneaking, you should do it, don’t you think?’

Another youth, Cliomenedes, Petrocolus’s son stuttered, ‘Is that — is it — is it — I say, can it be, I mean, right? Right to take an advantage? Did Achilles do such things?’

Kineas was now riding easily in the midst of them. Ajax had stayed on his right hand, Philokles had dropped back with an amused look that suggested that mundane matters such as war were beneath his notice, and Ataelus had already galloped off ahead — lost in the morning glare.

‘Are you Achilles?’ Kineas asked.

‘I should like to be,’ said another boy, Sophokles. ‘My tutor says he is the model for a gentleman.’

‘Are you so good a man of arms that I can expect you to cut down any number of enemies?’ Kineas asked.

The boy looked down. Another boy — Kyros — cuffed him.

‘Real war is to the death. And dead, you lose everything — liberty, love, possessions, all lost. To preserve them, a few tricks are required. Especially when your enemies are numerous and better trained than you are.’ He said all the words that old soldiers say to young ones, and was greeted with the same respectful disbelief that he had offered his father’s friends who had fought at Chaeronea.

They dismounted for lunch and the slaves set out a magnificent meal fit for a party of princes on a hunting trip. Kineas didn’t complain — the supplies would be gone soon enough and then they’d by eating the rations that Kineas had on two mules under Arni’s supervision. Philokles ate enough for two and turned the conversation back to philosophy.

‘Why do you think there are rules in war?’ he asked.

Eumenes rubbed his bare chin.

Philokles motioned at Kineas. ‘Kineas says that you must be prepared to use subterfuge. Should you use spies?’

Eumenes shrugged. ‘Everyone uses spies,’ he said with the cynicism of the young.

‘Agamemnon sent Odysseus to spy on Troy,’ Sophokles said. He made a face, as if to indicate that he might say such things, but put no faith in them.

‘If you take a prisoner, can you torture him for information?’ Philokles asked.

The boys wriggled, and Eumenes paid too much attention to his food.

Kineas kicked Philokles in the knee without getting up. ‘Odysseus tortures a prisoner,’ he said. ‘It’s in the Iliad. I remember it.’

‘Would you?’ Philokles asked.

Kineas rubbed his beard and looked at his food — much like Eumenes. Then he raised his head. ‘No. Not without some compelling reason, and even then — that’s filthy. Not for men.’

Sophokles glanced up from his bread. ‘Are you saying that rules are foolish?’

Philokles shook his head. ‘I’m not saying anything. I’m asking questions, and you are answering them.’

‘The captain says that war is to the death. So why have rules?’ Sophokles glanced at Kineas, looking for approval. ‘Anything that wins is good. Isn’t it?’

Philokles leaned forward. ‘So — would you attack an enemy during a truce? Perhaps while he is collecting his dead?’

Sophokles sat back, and his face displayed outrage, but with the tenacity of the young, he stuck to his argument. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, if it would give me victory.’

Philokles looked at Kineas and Kineas shook his head. ‘Never,’ he said.

Sophokles’ cheeks developed two bright red spots, and his throat blotched, and he hung his head.

Kineas fingered his beard again, rubbing in the oil from his lunch. ‘Rules in war have purpose,’ he said. ‘Every broken rule deepens the hate between the enemies. Every rule preserved keeps hate at bay. If two cities fight, and both abide by their oaths, follow the rules, and fear the gods — then when they have settled the dispute, they can return to trade. But if one side violates a truce, or murders women, or tortures a prisoner — then hatred rules the day, and war becomes a way of life.’

Philokles nodded. And he added, ‘War is the greatest of tyrants, once fully unleashed. Men make rules to keep the tyrant bound, just as they use the assembly to keep the over-powerful citizens from dominating other men. Fools speak of “getting serious”, or of making “real” war. They are invariably amateurs and cowards, who have never stood in the line with a spear in their hands. In the phalanx, where you smell the breath of your enemy and feel the wind when he farts — war is always real. Real enough, when death awaits every misstep. But when the tyrant is fully unleashed — when cities fight to the death, as Athens and Sparta did a hundred years ago — when all the rules are forgotten, and every man seeks only the destruction of his enemy, then reason is fled, and we become mad beasts. And then there is neither honour nor victory.’

The boys nodded solemnly, and Kineas was left with the feeling that he and Philokles could as easily have proclaimed the utility of torture and rapine and convinced them.

After lunch, Kineas had them throw javelins at a tree on foot, and he watched them mount their horses and commented on how that could be improved. While they threw, he said to Philokles, ‘That was quite a speech. You are against war?’

Philokles frowned. ‘I am Spartan,’ he said, as if that answered Kineas. ‘That Kyros has a good arm.’

Kineas let the subject drop.

‘In combat, you’ll be unhorsed,’ Kineas said. ‘It’ll happen several times. Every time you are on foot in a cavalry fight, you are very nearly a dead man. Being able to remount is the most important skill you can master. Practise mounting your own horse, if you can, practise mounting other men’s horses — because the usual reason for finding yourself on foot is because some bastard has killed your horse.’

When they were all riding into the afternoon, passing the very last walled field and the last deep ditch and dyke that marked the very edge of the town’s property, he said, ‘In wrestling, were you taught first how to fall?’

Ajax smiled, because he’d heard this speech so many times already.

‘Practise coming off your horse, recovering, and getting back on. Practise it at a walk, at a trot, even at a canter. Ajax, here, was barely able to ride a few weeks ago.’ Kineas spared him a good-natured glance. ‘Now he can come off at a canter and remount in a flash.’

Ajax did it on cue, without warning, taking his horse a few steps away into a field, rolling from the saddle and landing on his side. He looked winded, but he bounced to his feet and his horse had already stopped. He ran to her and vaulted into the saddle, his back straight and his leg thrown clear of her back. He looked like an athlete.

Several of the young men thought he looked more like a god. Then they all had to do it, their fine cloaks and armour getting an array of dirt and dents as they threw themselves to the ground and remounted. Several of them lost their horses entirely — Eumenes, a competent young man, rolled out of the saddle and his horse bolted, and had to be run down by Kineas himself. After that, Kineas curtailed their enthusiasm. ‘We have miles to ride today,’ he said.

Ajax rubbed his hip. ‘That hurt.’

Kineas smiled at him. ‘You did it very well.’

Ajax beamed. If he still held an opinion on Kineas’s actions in the fight with the Getae, it had been dulled by time and the routine of the unit. Kineas felt some awkwardness in having Ajax as his second in command with all these raw youths, but Ajax took to it immediately, tacitly appointing Eumenes his own second man. Only when Kineas and Philokles had spoken about war had there been something in Ajax’s look — some hesitation perhaps, or disagreement.

The sun was slipping down in the west when Ataelus, his red hood brilliant in the dying sun, came back. Kineas had his cloak tight around him, the bulk of his horse warming his lower half and the icy wind cutting through his helmet.

‘Well?’ asked Kineas.

‘Easy,’ said Ataelus. ‘For me, yes? Tracks and hooves, tracks and hooves. For me I find it. Tomorrow night, we for they camp. Yes? They camp?’ He gestured.

‘You saw their camp, and we’ll be there tomorrow night?’ asked Kineas.

‘See? No. See with eyes? Not for me. See with this!’ and the Scyth pointed at his head. ‘Tracks and hooves — for knowing where, not for seeing where, yes?’

Kineas lost the thread of this, especially as the Scyth tried to introduce details — and barbarian words. ‘So you went out, saw tracks — and we’ll be there tomorrow night?’

‘Yes!’ The Scyth was happy to be understood. ‘Tomorrow, maybe night. Yes. Food?’

Kineas offered him a loaf of bread from lunch and a clay flagon of wine — good wine. The Scyth rode away chuckling.

They continued until near dark with the river flowing dark and cold on their right. On a deep, sandy curve they stopped, and the slaves made camp. The boys were amateurs and insisted on having their own tents, their own bedding, and consequently were too cold to sleep. Kineas slept in a huddle with Philokles, Arni and Ajax, while Ataelus, more private or perhaps more practised still, pulled his horse down and slept against it.

In the morning the boys were drawn. They stood and shivered, waiting for their horses, waiting for the food to be prepared. Kineas set them to throwing javelins. His throat hurt, and he rubbed at it. Arni brought him a tisane and he drank it with honey. It helped for a while.

The sun was a bright orange ball against a dark sky. Arni came over to Kineas with a cloth in his hand, rubbing Kineas’s silver wine cup clean. ‘That’s heavy weather,’ he said, pointing his chin at the sun. Kineas nodded absently.

The boys warmed up quickly and in a few minutes they were again abuzz with questions, most of which was directed at Ajax, who handled them well enough. All of the boys were curious about the Scyth and most wondered aloud if he was some sort of privileged slave. If Ataelus understood any of it before he rode away, he gave no sign and left Ajax to explain his status.

It took more than two hours to get all of the boys packed and mounted — their slaves, while patient and capable, were not used to moving quickly and none of them was used to any discipline beyond the rods of their tutors. Ajax had to raise his voice, and Kineas enjoyed the spectacle of Ajax shouting down an embarrassed Eumenes when the boy wanted the fire to stay lit.

‘But I’m cold!’ said the boy. He sounded horrified that anyone could fail to see this as a crisis.

‘So am I. So are the slaves. Get mounted.’ Ajax sounded so much like Niceas that Kineas turned away to smile.

That second day they played at being a patrol. Kineas didn’t insist on any real degree of skill, but he sent the boys out to scout and report and he went out a few times with them, listened with patience to their reports of deer or cattle tracks, dead sheep, marshland to the west. He instructed. He kept them busy. By noon, he had started to cough in earnest. He didn’t feel bad — in fact, he was enjoying himself — but the coughs got longer. They ate in the saddle when the sun was high, because the boys were tired and Ataelus had returned to report that there were groups of Sakje ahead of them and they could expect to meet a hunting party any time. Kineas had long since admitted to himself that he liked what he had seen of the Sakje, barbarians that they were, and he didn’t expect any hostility from them — but professional caution and a certain desire to impress made him unwilling to be caught with a fire at a meal by one of their patrols. Besides, the sky was dark and it had grown curiously warm. Kineas didn’t know the plains, but he knew the sea. Weather was coming. From the saddle he said a prayer and poured a libation.

After lunch, it began to snow. Kineas had seen snow in Persia, but not like this — big, heavy flakes like the down from a goose. He pulled his cloak around himself and started to cough again, finally leaning over in his saddle and coughing until his chest ached. He noticed that Philokles was supporting his weight in the saddle.

‘You’re scaring the boys,’ Philokles said. ‘And we can’t see the river any more.’

Kineas raised his head and realized that he could scarcely see the head of his horse. His helmet sat on his brow like a block of ice. His brain began to function again. ‘Ataelus!’

The Scyth appeared out of the swirling snow. ‘Here I am!’ he shouted.

‘Go fetch in the two boys who are out. We’ll stay right here.’ He coughed again. ‘Hermes, protect us.’

Ataelus vanished into the snow. The horses crowded together, which suited their riders. Greek gentlemen rode in tunics and boots, armour if the occasion demanded, but fashionable gentlemen did not wear trousers. All of the boys were in their best tunics and their armour, to awe the barbarians. Now they were very cold indeed.

‘Philokles? Pick your way along the river and find us some trees. Better yet, find a house.’

‘Or a tavern?’

‘You understand. Don’t go far and don’t risk getting lost. We won’t move until Ataelus comes back, and then we’ll ride upstream. Take Clio.’

Philokles collected the boy and trotted off into the white curtain. Kineas thought the stuff was letting up; man and boy remained visible to him several horse lengths away.

Eumenes pressed his horse against Kineas’s mare. ‘Are we — lost?’ he asked. Are we in real trouble?

‘This’ll pass soon enough,’ said Kineas, and coughed again. ‘I’m going to get us together and then find some cover. We may be cold.. ’ He lost the ability to speak, coughed and coughed, then felt better. He spat some phlegm and was relieved to see there was no blood in it. I made my sacrifice to You, lord of contagion. I helped a horse race for your glory, Lord Apollo. But, he remembered he had not offered a sacrifice, being busy with his own affairs. A white lamb on your altar when I return, he vowed. And coughed again.

Eumenes watched him, his clear brow furrowed with worry under the bronze brim of his helmet. Kineas got himself erect in the saddle. ‘How do you keep a company moving in heavy weather?’ he asked.

‘Uh,’ murmured Eumenes. Kineas looked around. The snow was lighter, but the boys were huddled together and their faces were pale, their mouths thin. They were on the edge of panic.

‘You find a mark you can see and move to it. Then you find another mark and you move to that. It’s slow, but it beats getting lost. If you can’t see far enough to find a mark, you stop and wait for the weather to clear.’

Kyros, the one who threw the best javelin, said, ‘I’m cold.’ He said it softly, but his words carried real conviction and his cheeks had bright red spots.

Kineas knew that he was on the edge of real difficulty, but he had already made a hard choice — to stay put until the Scyth returned. He stuck to it. ‘Push in closer to Ajax. By Ares, young gentlemen, you should all learn to love one another a little more. Ajax is a particularly elegant specimen — no one should mind cuddling with him.’ Several of the youths glanced at Ajax and most of them chuckled, and he seized on this slight thaw in the tension. ‘How many of you were cold last night? Everyone? Learn to be comrades! Tonight, you are going to have mess groups — you’ll eat and sleep in sections, like Spartans. It works. Don’t blush, Kyros. No one is threatening your virtue. It’s too cold.’ He was holding back a cough, trying to get them in hand before he made a spectacle of himself, but the urge to cough overpowered him. The snow in the air seemed to trigger the coughing. He tried to keep his back straight and cough into his hands. It was shorter, but the coughs seemed deeper in his chest, harsher. His hands were shaking.

Ataelus’s red hood appeared over Eumenes’s shoulder. ‘They here for me!’ called the Scyth. ‘Good boys, off horse, wait. No problem for me, yes!’

‘Well-’ Hack, hack, cough, cough. ‘Well done.’ Ataelus’s success gave him hope. In fact, it turned the situation around. He wished his head were clearer. ‘North along the river bank. Look for Philokles. Understand?’

‘Sure. No problem. Heya, Kineax — you for Baqcas?’ Ataelus asked.

‘What?’ asked Kineas. The Scyth seemed to be using more and more barbarian words, as if getting closer to his people freed his tongue from the fetters of Greek. ‘What is a baxstak?’

Ataelus shook his head. ‘Bacqca soon!’ he called, and waved. Then he led the way. The two boys he’d been speaking with followed him and Kineas encouraged them. They were taking their role as scouts seriously. He liked that. He didn’t like that he was beginning to feel distant from the situation. He had a fever — he’d had one before, at the siege of Gaza, and he knew the signs. The distance would serve him for an hour or so, but then he would be useless to command.

‘Ajax!’ he called, a pure order. Ajax trotted to his side — or rather, his horse tried to trot, snow billowing from her hooves. Already, the stuff was a hand deep on the ground.

‘Sir!’ Ajax actually saluted. If this boy lives, he’ll be a fine soldier.

Kineas leaned over. ‘I’m sick,’ he said quietly. His voice rasped in his throat, and his nose was full. ‘Sick and gedding sicker. If I can’d command, you keep dese lads moving until you meed Philokles or you meed the Sakje. Understaaad me?’ Hermes, he sounded like he was seventy years old.

‘Yes, sir.’ Ajax nodded.

Kineas pushed his horse into a canter, and she flailed her way back to the head of the boys. Behind him, Ajax called out, ‘Two files! We’re not on a hunting party!’

Kineas wanted to smile, but things were getting farther and farther away.

An hour later, he was still in command of himself and the group, but only just. Twice he had snapped to — not asleep, perhaps, but drifting. Both times he’d recovered to see the Scyth’s red cap bouncing along ahead of him.

The snow almost stopped, and then came on full force again, and Kineas began to fear that they might pass Philokles and the boy Clio in the snow. He became sleepy, and he knew that wasn’t good. Behind him, Ajax continued to heckle his charges, demanding that they sit straight, stop wiping their noses, an endless litany of little faults that, under other circumstances, would have seemed ridiculous.

The coughing grew worse, which, at each bout, didn’t seem possible — until the next. And then Philokles was there with him, and the boy Clio. He sat up straight.

‘Cleared the ground under the trees,’ said Philokles. His nose was as red as wine.

‘I started a fire!’ said Clio. ‘Myself!’

‘Well done, boy. Right.’ Cough. ‘How far?’

‘Half a stade. Ataelus has the two boys at the fire.’

‘Go. Ged these boys under cover.’ He blew his nose in his hand and coughed. ‘Two tents — slaves in one, cavalry in the other. Get the slaves on food. Hot drink — you know?’

‘I’m a fucking Spartan!’ said Philokles. ‘I’ve been out in a storm before. You look like Apollo put an arrow in you. Hermes send we get you to the fire. Hades, you’re burning up.’

The sight of Philokles eased Kineas more than medicine. He felt better — he brushed the snow off the plume in his helmet and led the way to camp. When they followed the tracks down to the fire, he halted them and made them wheel their horses into line.

‘Listen to me! You behaved like soldiers. That was dangerous and we did it.’ He blew his nose on his fingers again and wiped it off on his thigh, coughed, and straightened. ‘We’re not done yet. Every man gathers wood. I want a pile of wood as big as a house. Don’t leave it to the slaves — it’s your life as well as theirs. Horses curried and blankets on.’ He coughed again. They sat like statues — either inured to discipline in one day or too miserable to twitch. ‘Arni — slaves to boil water and make food. Let them get warm first. Masters — to work.’

None of them rebelled. None of them went to the fire. They started to get wood — pitiful, snowy branches at first, but Ajax and Philokles led them and suddenly it was a contest, a feat worthy of Achlles, and they fought to get more of the stuff, driftwood from the river beach, downed branches from the stand of woods that filled the bend in the river. Even Kineas, who could not entirely control his body, felt drawn to participate.

Soon he was drinking from a hot bronze beaker that burned his hands even as the mulled wine burned away the pain in his throat. His hands were bright red. The others were standing around a huge fire, a fire that was itself as big as a house, and the heat blasted their clothes dry.

And then he was in a tent, and coughing.

He is hot, and the spirits of the dead gather around him with tongues of fire — Aristophanes, who died screaming with an arrow in his belly on the Euphrates, bellows fire so that a cloud of it billows around his head like a shroud of flame. A Persian — suddenly he’s sure it is a man he killed himself — has no face, just bone, but his hands make precise signals, and then…

He is cold, and the bodies of the dead are frozen. Amyntas has ice in his beard on his cheeks and when he smiles, his cheeks develop little fissures like the crows’ feet at the edge of a matron’s eyes.

‘I didn’t think you were dead.’

Amyntas has no eyes, no voice and no response.

Artemis’s hands are cold as clay and wet with something, and his manhood shivels away from her touch, and her eyes glitter — there is frost on her lashes and a dagger in her neck, and he flinches away

The moon rises like an accusing goddess over the battlefield at Guagemela, and he walks alone among the dead. Mostly Persians, they lie in sad little heaps where the Macedonians reaped them when they broke, or windrows where they were cut if they stood. And he thinks, This is real, because he was there in that moonlight, but then the dead begin to stir, rising like cold men who have had a hard sleep on the ground, one patting about him for something lost (his intestines, at his feet), another holding his back and groaning — but no sounds come, only a stream of black bile.

Artemis takes his hand and he is on the bank of the Euphrates with her, or perhaps the Pinarus — perhaps both at once. The cold moon gives no real light. And he looks at Artemis.

‘I didn’t think you were dead.’

‘Am I dead?’ She raises her hand, beautiful as it always was, even when red from work, the hand of Aphrodite, and points across the river at the cloud of dust raised by the Persian cavalry — or the snow. He can’t remember what made the cloud. It smells like smoke — like burning rope, or pine needles. He can’t remember his own name, although he knows hers.

He longs for her, longs to take the slim dagger from her neck. He even knows the dagger, but he can’t put a name to it. Somewhere, a strong voice is singing, but if there are words, they mean nothing. It is not the voice of a man or a woman.

He stumbles down the gravel bank to the river because he is so thirsty, and tries to drink. She smells — not of rot — earthy. Unwashed. She has smelled this way before, in the field. Her hair is full of dirt.

Perhaps he could wash it for her.

The singing is very attractive. Was there ever anything to be seen on the other side of the river? He can’t remember — now there is nothing, but he is sure that he had fought his way there once, and lived. Surely that is true. Was there smoke?

He needs a horse. He is dismounted and needs a horse. And Artemis is gone, but he doesn’t care, so great is the urgency to find a horse — he is dead if he doesn’t find one and get mounted and he rises through the water and pushes with his legs, but the water must have been deeper than he expected, there is nothing under him and his armour is dragging at him, dragging him down, and he will sink, and it is dark and cold, so cold he cannot move, and only seeks to sleep..

The urge to find a horse survives and he pushes up on the water, but it is more like dust and his mouth is full of the stuff, and he coughs, and coughs.

His head comes clear of the water-dust, and the horse above him is huge — so tall that its legs rise above him like the pillars of a temple, but desperation drives him, terror — he takes hold of the hair at its hocks, and it drags him from the river and there is singing, barbarian singing all around him, and the smell of unwashed hair in his nose, and smoke everywhere, something is burning. He is on the sand in the desert — no, he is on the snow, and Darius is dead — begging in the agora — he is on the horse, his first, and he cannot control it and it canters and then gallops and he cannot get off, the horse ownshimandhecannotridecannotridecannotride.

The singing is loud and he is on the horse, riding at night on the open plain, but the plain is dark and sparks fly when the horse’s feet touch the ground, which is seldom. He is flying. And he is flying down a mountain, or up — there are flashes of lightning but they linger, so that each overlays the last until the sky is white with a single Levin bolt in Zeus’s hand — the mountain and the light around the mountain, and the singing — nasal, dull, barbaric — smell of unwashed hair — water in his mouth — arms around his waist. Artemis is holding him on the horse, and she is hot — her touch is like fire, and not for the first time — he smiles, but the light is everywhere now and the only darkness is like a tunnel ahead of him, and at the end of it waits a Persian in full armour, on an armoured horse, and he has no spear of his own, no sword, and he does not trust this barbarian horse between his knees — her hands — the dagger — the light — the rhythm of the horse — singing — water — warmth — fur against his head and warm light around him and the smell of fire…

‘Kineas?’

Kineas could see him, but he had no place in the world with the horse and Artemis and all the dead. And then he smiled, or tried to. He had fur under his head. ‘Philokles?’ he said.

‘Gods be praised.’ Philokles held a cup of water to his mouth. The air tasted of smoke and something barbaric.

He slept.

He woke, and a barbarian loomed over him with a woman’s voice and a man’s stubble on his cheek, singing. The singing seemed familiar. He slept again.

He woke, and the barbarian was still singing, her voice soft, and she played with a man’s hands on a drum, and Philokles sat across the fire — a fire in a tent. Taste of water — taste of wine. He slept.

He woke, and Ajax stood in the door, and a great gust of wind came in, snow against his face, never penetrating the pile of skins atop him. Ajax gave him soup — good soup — and cleaned him where he had fouled himself, so that he was ashamed, and Ajax laughed. ‘You will recover and humiliate me again,’ he said. ‘No, no — I didn’t mean you to take that so harshly, Kineas. Rest easy. We are all well. We are with the Sakje.’

And he dreamed, and words tumbled in his dreams, because Philokles was speaking them, hearing them, from the man who was a woman — amavaithya, gaethanam, mizhdem — Philokles repeated them, over and over when the woman said them, and the drum beat. He was awake, but they didn’t know it, and the language was like Persian, which he knew a little, and then it wasn’t — the woman was called Kam, or perhaps Baqca.

And then he was awake, and the thin layer through which he had watched the world was stripped away and he was himself. He struggled to sit up, and Philokles came and the whole embarrassing business of stripping him and washing him happened — but he knew it for what it was.

‘Who is that?’ he asked quietly, pointing at the woman. He could see her more clearly now, and she was clearly a man — but he had known her voice so long that her gender remained with the voice.

‘That is Kam Baqca, who cured you.’ Philokles had some message in his words — he was always like that, but Kineas’s grasp on the world, while strong, was still not clear.

‘She — he? Is Sakje?’ Kineas croaked out the words, regretting them — so much else he’d like to ask. Where were the men — the boys, really? Was anyone else sick?

‘She is very much Sakje. And everyone is well, or well enough. I would have gone back to the city, but the snow is high and the Sakje themselves are staying in their camp. Are you still with me?’

‘Very much so,’ Kineas managed a laugh. He was very happy. He was alive.

‘This is a small part of their nation. Three hundred or so. But an important one. Kam Baqca serves the king — the most senior king of the Sakje, I think. The Ghan. As does Srayanka. They have come to Olbia on embassy. Are you ready to hear this?’ Philokles stopped because Kineas was coughing.

It was a pale shadow of his former cough, but it still hurt his chest. His chest had exactly the feeling of having been struck repeatedly while wearing armour — the same deep pain, as if bruised under the skin. ‘Ready enough. How long?’

‘Seven days since we arrived. We carried you here from the tent camp — I thought you were dead.’

Kineas could remember snatches of his dreams. He shook his head to drive them away and didn’t comment. ‘You can talk to them?’

‘Eumenes had a Sakje nurse — he can speak. And Ataelus has never slept — without him I wonder if we would be alive. And now I have learned a little. And the Lady Srayanka speaks a very little Greek, and the king speaks a good deal, I think, although he seldom speaks to us.’

Kineas looked around him. He was in a round tent, or hut — it was open to the air at the top, where the smoke billowed out and had a central pole, but it felt solid under his hands and he reached up and touched it — felt. Thick felt. The floor was covered in closely woven reed mats and rugs and skins — the rugs were violent, colourful, and barbaric. He had seen them in Persia. A fire burned in the centre, and there were chests of wood with heavy iron corners and designs. Savage beasts lurked in the iron and the rugs and the gold of a lamp above him. He lay back, already exhausted.

Philokles said, ‘Listen. I’m tiring you, but I have to share this with someone before I burst. They will not meet me formally — they are waiting to see if you live and they gave their best to save you. But Diodorus is right. They say that Antipater is coming in the spring, with a vast army and they are here to make an alliance.’

Kineas shook his head. ‘Fuck,’ he murmured. And went to sleep.

When he woke again, it was dark. Ataelus was sitting by the fire, playing with it, and Kineas watched him for what seemed a long time, as he collected chips of bark and wood from the carpets and fed them into the flames, absorbed by the flickers of light and the process of burning. Then he slipped out through the door and returned with an armload of small stuff, carefully broken to length. He placed it neatly atop the remnants of an older stack and built the fire up until it roared. In the new light of the high flames, Kineas could see that Kam Baqca was sitting across the fire — had been sitting the whole time. She wore a long coat of skin, covered in minute symbols carefully worked in dyed deer hair. Hundreds of small gold plates covered the sleeves and breast, so that she glittered in the new light. Her feet were clad in tight-fitting shoes and stockings of skin — the shoes were little more than socks of leather — also covered in minute decoration. Kineas could see horses and antelope and stranger animals, especially gryphons, repeated in endless variety, no two the same.

She saw that he was awake and came around the fire to him. Her face was middle-aged, handsome and dignified, with a long straight nose and high plucked brows — but the eyes were a man’s eyes, and the throat was a man’s throat. And her hands, when she lifted a cup for him to drink — the cup was solid gold — were a man’s hands, heavy with calluses and broken skin.

Ataelus was still toying with the fire. Kam Baqca spoke, her voice low, and Ataelus came and joined her.

‘Kam Baqca asks, how is it for you, this night?’ Ataelus enunciated more clearly than he usually did.

Kineas shook his head to be rid of the gold cup. ‘I’m better. Yes? Good? Can you give her my thanks? She is a doctor?’

Ataelus cocked his head to one side like a very smart dog. ‘You better? ’ he said and then repeated himself in his barbarian tongue.

‘Can you tell her “Thank you”,’ Kineas asked again. He spaced his words carefully.

Ataelus spoke more in his other language, and then turned back to Kineas. ‘I say thank you, for you. Good? Good. Speak so much Greek, for me.’ He laughed. ‘Maybe learn more Greek for me, yes?’

Kineas nodded and lay back on the pile of furs beneath his head. Just raising his head took too much effort.

Kam Baqca began to speak. The longer she spoke, the more familiar her words seemed — so like Persian. She said xshathra Ghan, the Great King — he knew that word. It wore him out, listening, so near to understanding.

Ataelus began to translate. ‘She say, for you important seek the king, soon. But sooner for you talk to her. More important, most important thing talk to her. She say, for you almost die. Then she say, yes, do you remember for almost die?’

Kineas nodded. ‘Tell yes. Yes, I remember.’

She nodded as his response and went on. Ataelus said, ‘She say, did you go into the river?’

And Kineas was afraid. She was very barbarous and her male/female role was alien, and now she was asking him a question about his dream. He didn’t answer.

She shook her head violently. A hand shot out of her cuffs and gestured at him, and when she spoke, her Greek, while Ionian, was clear enough. ‘Be not afraid! But only speak the truth. Did you go into the river?’

Kineas nodded. He could see it — could taste the dust. ‘Yes.’

She nodded. From behind her she produced a drum, covered in more little animals — mostly reindeer. She produced a small whip, like a children’s toy riding whip, except that the handle was iron and the whip was made of hair, and with the whip she began to play the drum and sing.

Kineas wanted to go. He wanted free of the alien tent and the alien he-woman and he wanted to be spoken to in proper Greek. He was very near the edge of panic. He stared at Ataelus — familiar Ataelus, his prokusatore, searching for stability.

She snapped the drum up into the air and said a long sentence. Ataelus said, ‘She says, I find you in the river, I bring you home. Only for you. Only for Baqcas. No warrior is — was — will…’ Ataelus sat and struggled with language, and suddenly smiled: ‘ Should be alive. She say, this for most important thing. Yes? You know what I say?’

Kineas turned away, unable to understand past the sheer barbarity. ‘Tell her I thank her,’ he said and pretended to fall asleep. Soon, he was.