Tyrant

12

The sun shone on the first blades of spring grass that waved in the north wind, so that they rocked back and forth like a thousand beckoning fingers. Kineas pulled on his reins and looked back over the column toiling up the ridge that lined the riverbank, following it with his eye down the steep road, past the last files of the column and past the two baggage carts and the donkeys to fields by the city walls, where the whole force of the city’s hoplites could be seen marching. Memnon’s black cloak was a speck in the front rank. Beyond the fields and the mass of men stood the city on the river. The spring sun was warm and the clear yellow light gilded the marble of the temple of Apollo and lit the gold dolphins at the edge of the port with fire. From here, the archon’s citadel stood clear of the walls like an island in a pond.

At the boundary ditch, Kineas halted the column and waved to Niceas, who raised a trumpet to his lips. The shrill notes rang clear in the wind, and the long column bunched, heaved, and then formed itself into a compact rhomboid, with Kineas at the tip.

Kineas didn’t hide his grin of satisfaction.

Kineas trotted the formation across fields that belonged to Nicomedes and then ordered an abrupt change of direction, and the formation obliged — the turn was sloppy, but the rhomboid reformed quickly because, despite confusion, every man knew his place. Kineas raised his hand and Niceas blew the halt.

Kineas gave his warhorse a hard pressure with his knees and heels, and the big animal surged out of the formation. Under gentler pressure, the horse turned in a long curve as he accelerated to the gallop, so that Kineas was riding out to the left of his rhomboid and around it, looking for confusion, for error, for fatal weakness.

He rode all the way around, and then halted facing them. ‘Sound: Form Line by Troop!’ he called.

Many men were moving before Niceas could raise the heavy trumpet to his lips. It was a bad habit — something that needed to be worked on — but the performance of the manoeuvre was adequate. The four troops, each separated by an interval the width of four riders, formed along the edge of the road running north.

Again, Kineas didn’t disguise his pleasure. He rode to Diodorus, sitting at the head of his troop, and clasped his hand. ‘Well done,’ he said loudly.

Diodorus wasn’t much given to broad grins, but he looked as if his lips might split.

While the hoplites marched solidly up the ridge and began to deploy from column into their deep phalanx along the road, Kineas rode along the ranks of the hippeis as if inspecting, but his ride was more a long string of congratulations — troop commanders, hyperetes, individual troopers who had either shown great improvement or had natural skill. The third troop had most of Niceas’s new recruits from Heraclea, and Kineas saluted them as he went by — only six men, but their combined experience had already shown its effect.

Then he rode back to the centre of the line and knelt on his stallion’s back — a boy’s trick, but useful when you needed to address troops. The hoplites took the heavy shields off their shoulders and set the rims on the ground, planted the spikes of their spears and leaned on them for comfort.

‘Gentlemen of Olbia!’ he called.

Horses moved and made sounds, and a few pulled at their reins to be allowed to crop grass, but the men of the city were silent and still. The wind blew warm from the south, drying the ground, and the sun sparkled on bronze and silver and gilt along the ranks.

The quiet grew. It wrapped itself around them, a palpable thing, as if they sat in the midst of a bubble of eternity. It was one of those moments men recall by their firesides in old age — the whole scene seemed to be set in crystal.

Suddenly, nothing in Kineas’s prepared rhetoric was sufficient to the day. They were magnificent — the hoplites and the hippeis together. He said a prayer to Athena in his heart, and raised his hand, pointing at Olbia.

‘There is your city. Here beside you are your fellow citizens, hoplites and hippeis together. Here are your comrades. Look at them! Look to the left, to the right. These are your brothers.’ The words came to him from the air, and his voice carried in the unnatural calm.

‘War is coming,’ he said. He looked across the plain to the west, as if Zopryon’s army would appear on cue. ‘The fate of the city is in the hands of the gods. But it is also in your hands — in the hands of every man here.’

He looked up and down the ranks, and found that he didn’t have control of his voice. His throat was sore, and his eyes burned, and the image before him wavered and flowed, so that great gaps appeared in the lines of men where they blurred to his tear-filled eyes. He sat quietly, waiting for the moment to pass.

‘Zopryon believes that he will have a quick campaign — an easy conquest. I believe that with the help of the gods, we will stop him on the plain of grass and send him back to Macedon. That is why you have given your winter to training. That is why you are standing here rather than tilling your fields.’

The silence was still there, and the stillness. It was daunting. The wind from the plain of grass ruffled his horse’s mane, and he could hear the hairs move against each other.

‘I have served Macedon,’ he said at last. ‘In Macedon they say that Greece is done. That we love beauty more than war. That we are soft. That our only place is in their empire.’ He raised his voice. ‘But I say, what is more beautiful than this — to serve with your comrades, to stand beside them when the shields ring?’ And quoting the Poet, he said, ‘“My friends, Argives one and all — good, bad and indifferent, for there was never a fight yet, in which all were of equal prowess — there is now work enough, as you very well know, for all of you. See that you none of you turn in flight, daunted by the shouting of the foe, but press forward and keep one another in heart, if it may so be that Olympian Zeus the lord of lightning will grant us to repel our foes, and drive them away from our city.”’

The sound of the familiar words, Ajax’s famous speech that schoolboys learned by heart, drew a response, and they cheered — first the hoplites, and then all of them, so that the hoplites banged their shields with their spears and the horsemen’s swords rang against their breastplates — an ominous sound, the cheer of Ares.

Kineas wasn’t used to being cheered. He felt the daimon that infected him in combat, so that his chest was full and he felt more alive and he wondered if this was the feeling Alexander had every day.

Then he turned his head, embarrassed, and called to Niceas who trotted out of the ranks to him. ‘Sound: All Captains.’

Niceas blew the trumpet. The troop commanders and their hyperetes trotted out of the cheering ranks and halted in a neat line.

‘Gentlemen,’ Kineas began. He pulled his helmet off and wiped his eyes. Several of the officers did the same.

Nicomedes looked around him dry-eyed and said, ‘No wonder they call Greeks emotional.’

Memnon walked up in his big black cloak. ‘Good speech. Fucking good speech. Let’s go kill something.’

Kineas cleared his throat while the other men chuckled. ‘I’m off for the sea of grass. Memnon has the command while I’m away — Diodorus has the command of the hippeis.’ He looked them over. ‘Listen to me, gentlemen. The archon is now a desperate man — he fears this war just about as much as he fears you. I ask you to be careful in what you say or do in the assembly. I ask you not to provoke him in my absence — indeed, I ask you not to provoke him until we’ve seen the back of Zopryon.’

Memnon spat. Cleitus nodded. Nicomedes made a face. He shrugged and said, ‘But that’s my hobby!’

Kineas met his gaze and stared him down. ‘Make the command of your troop your hobby.’ He collected their eyes and went on. ‘Don’t fool yourselves that because we have a competent troop of horse and some good hoplites we have an army. Zopryon has an army. We have a tithe of his strength. Only if the Sakje agree to our plan will we have the power to face Zopryon. Even with the Sakje — even if the king sends all his strength — we will be hard pressed to save our city.’

Ajax coloured, but his voice carried conviction. ‘I felt a god at my shoulder while you spoke,’ he said.

Kineas shrugged. ‘I cannot speak of gods, though I revere them. But I can say that I have known a handful of good men to shatter an army of multitudes. Your men look good. Make them better. Don’t let them forget what is coming — neither make them fear it so that they take a ship and sail away. That is what I had planned to say this morning but other words were set in my throat.’ He didn’t say that the small army had been Macedonian, and the multitudes had been the Medes.

Kineas turned to Diodorus. ‘I’ll take the first troop, as we discussed. Will you continue without us?’

‘I have a long day planned,’ Diodorus said with a wicked smile. ‘I’m sure that most of them will wish they were crossing the sea of grass with you by the time the sun is setting. Travel well!’

They told each other to go with the gods, and they clasped hands. And then Kineas and all of the first troop changed from their warhorses to their lighter mounts, formed a column, and rode off on the track north to the waiting grass.

Kineas had all the younger men, with Leucon in command and a sober Eumenes as his hyperetes. Cleomenes had taken ship and deserted, leaving his son an empty house and a ruined reputation. Eumenes bore it. In fact, he seemed happier — or freer.

Kineas told them that they would live rough, and he meant it. They had just ten slaves for fifty men. Kineas had arranged that all the slaves were mounted.

Like the first trip to find the Sakje, he kept them busy from the moment they left Diodorus, sending parties of scouts out into the grass, making mock attacks on empty sheep folds, skirmishing against a bank of earth that rose from the plain, the soil visible as a black line, until the dirt was full of javelins and Eumenes made the required joke about sewing dragon’s teeth and reaping spears.

Kineas was eager to go forward to the great bend, eager to meet Srayanka, and yet hesitant, as all his doubts of the winter flooded him. Would the city hold behind him? Would the archon stay steady? Would the citizens desert?

Had his anticipations of meeting the Lady Srayanka exceeded the reality?

Fifty young men with a hundred times as many questions did a great deal to distract him, as did Memnon, whose questions rivalled the whole multitude of the rest. By the end of the first day, Kineas felt like a boxer who had spent a whole day parrying blows.

‘You ask too many questions,’ Kineas growled at the Spartan.

‘You know, you are not the first man to say as much,’ Philokles said with a laugh. ‘But I’m doing you a service, and you should thank me.’

‘Bah — service.’ Kineas watched his scouts moving a few stades in advance of the column — a passable skirmish line.

‘If it weren’t for me, you’d do nothing but moon for your amazon.’ Philokles laughed. ‘Not bad — I hadn’t even intended the pun.’

Kineas was watching the scouts. Beyond them, there was a flash of red — Ataelus’s cap? He summoned Leucon and ordered him to pull the column together — the boys had a natural tendency to straggle. Then he turned back to Philokles. ‘Did you say something?’

The big man shook his head. ‘Only the best joke I’ve made in… never mind.’

Kineas reined in and looked out under his hand. It was Ataelus for sure. ‘Tell me again?’

Philokles pursed his lips and shook his head. ‘You know, some things have to be taken on the bound or not at all.’

Kineas narrowed his eyes. ‘What are you talking about? Hunting?’

Philokles raised his hands, as if demanding the intercession of the gods, and then turned his horse and went back to the column.

They camped in the open, where a small brook had cut a deep gully across the plain. The miniature valley was full of small trees and bigger game, and Eumenes led three of his friends in cutting down a big doe. Like gentlemen, they made sure she was barren before they killed her — killing a gravid doe in spring would be a bad omen, or worse, an offence. The doe didn’t feed seventy men, but the fresh meat served to season their rations. The evening had more the air of a festival than a training camp.

‘Too many fucking slaves, and the boys are already up too late,’ Niceas said. His recruiting trip to Heraklea hadn’t mellowed him.

‘I have known you to stay up too late and drink too much, the first night of a campaign.’ Kineas passed a cup of wine to his hyperetes.

‘I’m a veteran,’ said the older man. He reached up and pinched the muscles where his neck met his shoulders. ‘An old veteran. Hades, the straps on my breastplate cut like knives.’ He was watching Eumenes, who was regaling the younger men with the tale of their winter ride together. ‘I doubt he even notices.’

‘You aren’t smitten, are you?’ Kineas asked. He meant the comment in jest and cursed inwardly when he saw that it had hit home. ‘Of all the old… Niceas, he’s young enough to be your son.’

Niceas shrugged and said, ‘No fool like an old fool.’ He looked at the fire, but soon his gaze was back on Eumenes, still posturing to his friends. Like Ajax, he was beautiful — graceful, manly, brave.

‘Keep your thoughts on the war,’ Kineas said. He tried to make the comment light.

Niceas gave a lopsided grin. ‘Fine talk from you. You’ll see your filly tomorrow, and then you won’t notice the rest of us exist for — I don’t know, until we’re all dead.’

Kineas stiffened. ‘I’ll try to spare some time for other thoughts,’ he said, still trying for a light tone.

Niceas shook his head. ‘Don’t be a prick. I don’t mean to offend — not much, anyway. But some of the boys think we’re in this fucking war so that you can mount this girl, and for all that the Poet is full of such stuff, it’s thin enough if we’re all dead.’ The lopsided grin was back. ‘I liked your speech today. Hades, I felt the touch — whatever it was. I won’t say gods — I won’t say it weren’t.’ He took Kineas’s cup and refilled it.

Philokles spread his cloak and fell on it with a thud. ‘Private conversation? ’ he asked when it was too late for them to evict him.

‘No,’ said Kineas. Curious how little of his authority seemed to carry over to the campfire. ‘That is to say, yes, but you’re as welcome as my other friends to be critical of my love life.’

A look passed between the Spartan and the older man. They both smiled.

Kineas looked from one to the other and got to his feet. ‘Aphrodite take you both,’ he growled. ‘I’m for bed.’

Philokles indicated his cloak with an expansive wave. ‘I’m in mine.’

Kineas rolled his cloak out, and slept between them by the fire. No more was said, but he lay awake for a long time.

There was an owl, and he was determined to catch it, though he couldn’t think why. He rode his horse — a great rough beast that he didn’t want to look at — across the endless rolling plain of ash. The ash was everywhere, and devoured all the colour, so that he felt as if he was riding in a dark summer twilight, with all the colours robbed by the loom of night. And still the horse — if horse it was — galloped on across the plain.

When he saw the river in the distance, he felt fear, as sharp and total as the first fear he’d ever felt. The beast between his legs cared nothing for his fears, and it ran on, straight for the sandy ford at the base of the slope.

He lifted his head and saw the sea glimmering darkly, and knew that he was again on the field of Issus. There were bodies all around the ford, men and horses mixed, and the men had been mutilated.

His beast’s hooves rattled on the gravel of the slope toward the river — still black water that reflected no stars.

He had been chasing an owl. Where was the owl? He turned and looked to the right, where the second taxeis should have broken through the wall of mercenaries, but there were only corpses and ash and the smell of smoke, and then he saw a winged shape rising against the high ground. He pulled at the beast’s reins, sawing them back and forth, increasingly desperate as the thing crashed into the ford.

‘Do not cross the river,’ said Kam Baqca. The voice was clear and calm, and the beast turned, splashing along the margins of the river, and the black drops rose slowly through the air and burned like ice when they touched the skin, and then he was galloping free of the water — if water it was — over the field of the dead, and the owl spiralled down towards him as if stooping on prey.

His beast shied — the first time it had missed a step in its mad career — and he looked down past its hideous hide to the ground, where Alexander’s body lay broken, his face covered with a smiling golden mask. Around him lay the bodies of his companions.

That’s not what happened, complained some rational part of his mind. But the thought slipped away.

The owl swooped out of the air. He saw it in the periphery of his vision and turned his head to see the claws sink into his face, through his face, the owl melting into his flesh like a sword thrust sinking home. He screamed… and he was flying. He was the owl, the owl was him. The beast was gone — or the beast, too, was one with the bird and the man. The great brown wings beat, and he watched the earth below and knew where his prey lived, saw every mortal movement on the plain of ash. He rose with the world’s wind under his wings, and then beat strongly, without fatigue, over the low hills that had lined the battlefield of Issus until he was clear of the plain of ash and flew over the world of men, and still he rose, until he could see the curve of the sea from Alexandria to Tyre, and then he fell with the long curve of an arrow past Tyre and Chios and Lesvos, past the ruins of Troy, past the Hellespont, until he slowed his descent and hovered over the sea of grass, and in the distance he saw the tree growing to shade the whole world, and yet it seemed to grow from a single tent on the plain. He soared to the tree and as his talons bit into the rich comfort of its bark…

He awoke, missing the warmth of his hyperetes against his right side. He could hear Niceas berating someone, and young voices raised in laughter, and he thought, Time to get up. And then the enormity of the dream hit him, and he lay there, trying to see it all again. Terrified all over again at the alienness of his own thoughts. He shivered with more than just the cold of the morning, pushed himself to the fire, and one of Eumenes’ young men brought him a cup of hot wine. ‘Agathon,’ he said, remembering the lad’s name.

The boy beamed. ‘Can I get you anything else? We slept in the open like real soldiers — I wasn’t even cold!’

Kineas couldn’t handle too much adolescent enthusiasm so early in the morning. He drank off the rest of the hot wine and rolled his cloak tight. In the time it took the sun to get his ball of fire fully over the horizon, they were mounted, their breath streaming away like pale plumes in the cold spring air, and the dream with all of its bonds to the other was again banished by a counter spell of work.

Kineas waved for Ataelus to join him. With the exception of his abortive attempts to learn the Sakje tongue over the winter, Kineas hadn’t seen much of the Scyth. He gave the man a smile.

Ataelus looked tense. Kineas couldn’t remember seeing the man look so reserved. ‘Will we find the Sakje camp today?’ he asked the scout.

Ataelus made a face. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Second hour after the sun is high, unless they were for moving.’ He didn’t look as if he relished the prospect.

Kineas rubbed his new beard. ‘Well, then. Lead on.’

Ataelus looked back at him gravely. ‘The lady — for waiting two weeks of you.’ He sighed heavily.

‘Do you mean she may have left?’ Kineas said in alarm. Ataelus’s Greek had improved considerably over the winter. His vocabulary was much bigger — his grammar was about the same. He could still be difficult to understand.

‘Not for leaving,’ Ataelus said heavily. ‘For waiting.’ He shook his reins and touched his riding whip to his pony’s flanks, and he was gone over the grass, leaving Kineas to worry.

Philokles joined Kineas as the column started forward. ‘What was that about?’

Kineas waved dismissively. ‘Our Scyth is in a state because we’re late.’

‘Hmm,’ said the Spartan. ‘We are late. And the lady doesn’t strike me as the sort of commander who likes to wait.’

Kineas rode out of the column, signalled to Leucon to join him, and barked out a string of commands that set the whole troop into an open skirmish line two stades wide. When the rough line was moving well, he rode back to Philokles, who as usual took no part in the manoeuvres.

‘She’ll understand that I was delayed,’ Kineas said. ‘So will the king.’

The Spartan pursed his lips. ‘Listen, Hipparch. If you were waiting for her, and you’d sat for two weeks while she drilled her cavalry…’ He raised an eyebrow.

Kineas was watching the skirmish line, which was sticking together pretty well. ‘I don’t-’

‘You don’t think of her as another commander. You think of her as a Greek girl with some equine skills. Better get over that, brother. She’s had to put up with two weeks of ribbing from her troopers about waiting like a mare in heat for her stallion — that’s my guess. Look how well you handle our teasing.’

The left half of the skirmish line was bunching up as the young troopers chatted while they rode. Riding with a horse length between each file pair took practice, and the line was starting to fall apart.

‘Sound HALT,’ Kineas bellowed. To Philokles, he said, ‘She may not even want me.’

The Spartan didn’t blink. ‘That’s a whole different problem — but if she didn’t want you, chances are Ataelus wouldn’t be looking so worried.’

Kineas watched the outer arms of his skirmish line galloping to the centre to form on their commander. ‘As always, I’d treasure your advice.’

Philokles nodded. ‘Make the same apologies to her that you’d make to a man.’

Kineas scratched his beard. ‘Kick me when I go wrong.’ He cantered for the command group to discuss the skirmish line.

They saw the first scouts by mid-morning — dark centaurs on the horizon who vanished between hoof beats. They found the camp in the afternoon, as Ataelus had predicted. Kineas’s stomach turned over at the sight of the wagons, and he clenched the barrel of his horse between his knees until the animal began to curvet and fidget. There were a few riders at the edge of the camp, and a mounted group was gathered at the edge of the river.

The riders came to them at a gallop — two young men resplendent in red leather and gold ornament flashing in the sun, who raced by the head of the column, waved, and raced off again yipping like dogs. They ran their horses right in among the crowd at the edge of the water.

Kineas led his column through the tall grass to the edge of the camp and ordered it to halt. He sat at the head of the column, feeling foolish because he didn’t know what to do. He’d expected that she’d come out and meet him. Instead, he saw that there was some sort of archery contest going on.

‘Shooting with bows,’ Ataelus said at his side. ‘Lady shoots next. See?’

Kineas saw. How had he missed her? Srayanka was seated on a grey mare at the edge of the water with a bow in her hand, her jacket half off so that one breast was bare in the warm spring sun, the sleeve falling free, one shoulder bare to the gold gorget at her neck. Her hair was bound in two heavy braids and as she turned her head, he saw her heavy brows and the focus of her expression.

That’s what she looks like, he thought. Yes.

‘Wait here,’ he said to Niceas. He motioned to Ataelus to attend him and touched his horse with his whip — her whip — and cantered across the grass to her.

A man was shooting. As Kineas reined in, the man kneed his horse into motion, first a canter and then a gallop along the flat grass at the water’s edge. He leaned out over his horse’s neck and shot an arrow into a bundle of grass. A second arrow appeared in his fingers and he shot it point blank, leaning so far down off his pony that the head of the arrow almost brushed the target as he released, and then he was past, turning in the saddle with a third arrow nocked, and he drew and released in one smooth motion. The last shot hung in the wind for a moment, the arrow visible as a black streak, before burying itself in the ground an arm’s length beyond the target. The other Sakje hooted and cheered.

Kineas looked back to Srayanka, and she took a deep breath, her whole body focused on the target of grass the way a hunting dog would watch a wounded stag. Like a man, Philokles had said. Her visible breast and the line of her muscular shoulder to her neck were like a Phidian status of Artemis, but the Athenian sculptor would never have known a woman’s face to have such an expression — set and hard with purpose.

Kineas stayed silent.

Without another glance she tapped her heels against her mare, and the horse leaped straight from a stand into a gallop. Her first arrow was in the air with the horse’s first full stride. She had three more in the fingers of her draw hand, and she flipped one like a conjuror, drew and shot, leaned out close to the target just as the man had done, her whole body at an impossible angle to the horse, her braided hair straight out behind her head, the muscles of her arm standing out with the strain of drawing the bow, her hips and legs one with her mount.

Kineas couldn’t breathe.

She put the last arrow on her bow and turned back so fast that her body seemed to rotate free of her waist and shot again, her arrow invisible until it punched through the grass target. And then, as the horsemen began to cheer, she drew a fifth arrow from the gorytos at her waist, whirled again and loosed, her upper body straining to the heavens like a priestess offering a prayer to Apollo. The arrow lofted up and up into the blue sky and hung as if caught by the god’s hand at the top of its arc before plummeting to the earth where it transfixed the bundle of grass. Before the arrow hit, she had slowed her horse as she turned to be greeted by the roars of all the warriors and the Greeks up the ridge.

The sound went on and on, though there were just fifty or so of them, with a high crescendo of screams — yeeyeeyee — from the women, and bass barking from the men. Several stepped forward, raising their hands in obvious congratulations, and an older woman — her trumpeter — rode up close and embraced her.

She handed the trumpeter her bow, turned and put her arm down into her sleeve and shrugged the jacket back over her naked shoulder. She walked her horse toward Kineas empty handed. He was still bellowing his appreciation like a good guest at a symposium. Behind him, the other Olbians were cheering, too.

He fell silent as she rode closer. Her eyebrows were just as he remembered, her nose long and Greek, her forehead clear and high. How could he have forgotten how large her eyes were? Or their brown flecks within the dark blue?

He couldn’t think of anything useful to say. He had to say something. ‘Tell her that’s the finest shooting I’ve ever seen,’ he said. His voice came out clear and calm. He was surprised he got it out at all.

Ataelus spoke in Sakje. Kineas knew the words enough to know that his compliment was passed unadorned.

She raised an eyebrow and replied to Ataelus without taking her eyes off Kineas. ‘She say she shoot bow much when she has long wait.’ Ataelus sounded more nervous than Kineas. ‘She say she packed wagons for leaving. Saw us coming. She say, are you ready to ride, or need more rest?’

Kineas didn’t take his eyes off hers. ‘Tell her I’m very sorry we are so late.’

Ataelus spoke. This time he spoke at some length. She raised a hand and silenced him. She pressed her mare forward.

Kineas’s stallion rolled his lips back from his teeth and sniffed, his neck extended as far forwards the mare as he could manage despite Kineas’s rock hard hand at the reins.

The mare shied a step, and then, fast as thought, her head came round and she nipped Kineas’s horse on the neck with her teeth and he shied, stepped back, and Kineas had to struggle to keep his seat.

Srayanka spoke. Kineas caught words he knew — mare and stallion.

The Sakje warriors laughed. One of them laughed so hard that he fell to the ground, and pointing at him led to more laughter.

Kineas got his stallion in hand and turned to Ataelus. He could feel the heat of his face. She was laughing too. ‘What did she say?’ he asked.

Ataelus was laughing so hard that his eyes were closed and both of his hands were wrapped in his horse’s mane.

‘What did she say?’ Kineas demanded again, this time in his battlefield voice.

Ataelus wiped the grin off his face and sat straight. ‘She made for joke,’ he said after some hesitation.

The Sakje were still laughing. Worse yet, someone who had some Sakje had translated the joke to the Olbians. The older men were trying to hide their laughter, but the younger were unable to control themselves.

‘I can see that,’ Kineas snapped.

She turned away from him to her trumpeter and snapped a string of orders, and then she turned her head back to him and he caught the flash of deep blue as her eyes sought his and she smiled. Don’t be an ass, he thought to himself. But he was boiling inside, and he couldn’t manage to return her smile.

‘Tell me this joke,’ he said to Ataelus.

Ataelus was struggling to restrain laughter. He panted like a dog, slapped his horse, finally gave up the struggle and dissolved into laughter with his arms crossed over his chest.

Kineas glanced after Srayanka’s retreating back — she was gathering riders and shouting orders, and a group of younger men were harnessing oxen to the wagons. Most of the laughter had stopped among the Sakje, but it was still spreading among the Olbians as the joke was translated and passed from file to file.

Kineas trotted over to Niceas, who sat on his charger fingering his amulet with a fixed and dutiful expression that Kineas knew all too well. Kineas spoke quietly, firmly, as if nothing untoward had happened. ‘Get everyone off their warhorses and on their riding horses. Water all the animals at the river — bread and cheese in the saddle.’

Niceas nodded, as if he didn’t dare speak.

Philokles had a broad grin on his face. He pulled out of the column as Niceas began to shout orders. Leucon rode by, red-faced, avoiding Kineas’s eye. In fact, none of the men met Kineas’s eye. Eumenes was still laughing.

Ataelus reached out and touched his elbow. He was smiling. ‘She say — maybe mare…’ He began to laugh again. He managed to croak out, ‘… In heat — two weeks ago.’

Kineas had to work through the words in his mind, and then a slow smile punctured the grim mask of his face.

Before the sun had moved another hand across the sea of grass, the whole column, Sakje and Olbian, was mounted and heading north. Kineas changed horses and cantered up the column to where Srayanka rode with her trumpeter, a hard-eyed older woman with skin like leather and bright red hair like Diodorus, whom Kineas remembered from the summer before.

Srayanka smiled as he rode up — the best smile she had ever given him. She nudged her trumpeter and spoke to Ataelus. Behind him, the lead Sakje tittered.

‘She say — where your stallion, Kineax?’

‘Tell her my stallion is too sad to be ridden. In despair — can you say “in despair”?’ Kineas was at a heavy disadvantage in translation.

Ataelus shook his head. ‘What’s despair? Something bad?’

‘So sad you can’t eat,’ Kineas said.

‘Ah. Lovesick!’ Ataelus laughed, and then spoke quickly before Kineas could stop him.

The Sakje tittered again, and a big black-haired man behind Kineas leaned out and slapped his shoulder.

Srayanka turned and brushed a hand against Kineas’s face. The motion took him by surprise — she was that fast — and he squirmed and almost missed her touch.

Ataelus laughed with the rest of the Sakje, and then said, ‘She say — not worry. She say,’ and he broke off a while to laugh again, ‘she say — maybe mare in heat again — in about two weeks.’

Kineas felt his face grow hot. He grinned at her, and she grinned at him. The look went on too long. Kineas decided it was time to change the subject. ‘Ask her if the king is ready to make war,’ he said.

The laughter from the Sakje stopped. She replied in a few words. Her face changed, returning to the hard look she had worn while she shot her bow.

‘She say — not for her to speak for king. She come to guide. She say — speak not for war until we come for king.’ Ataelus had a look on his face that pleaded for understanding.

Kineas nodded. But he continued, ‘I have heard of Zopryon’s army. It is very great, and ready to march.’ It was infuriating to have to listen to Ataelus’s halting translation and her reply.

Ataelus turned back to him. ‘She say the king is for having many things for talk. Much talk. Not for her to take the words for the king.’

‘Tell her I understand.’ Kineas pantomimed understanding to her. She spoke directly to him. He understood Getae and Zopryon and the verb for riding.

‘She say the grass already knocked down with hooves of the Getae. She say she know Zopryon ready to ride.’ Ataelus wiped his forehead with his sleeve. ‘I say for talking — that talking is hard work.’ He laughed grimly.

Kineas took the hint and rode back to his own men.

The column moved fast, and the land became flat, the endless grass greener with each warm day, extending to the horizon on the left, and the river coiling like a snake. Sometimes it was at their feet, and sometimes it passed far away to their right in long, last curves. Those curves were the only marker of their progress, otherwise they might have been standing still for all the variation in the landscape. When the river passed out of sight, the plain of grass and the solid blue of the sky spread unchanged in every direction, like a blue bowl inverted over a green bowl. The immensity of it made the Greeks uncomfortable. Time seemed to stand still.

Yet by the second day the whole life of the column was routine — rising in pre-dawn cold, the welcome warmth of the horse at first mounting, a hasty meal with the first rays of the new sun, and then hours walking and trotting through the grass, the trampled line of their passage straight as the flight of an arrow behind them and the virgin grass before them as far as the eye could see.

Evening was different. Srayanka’s scouts chose the halting place each night, always close to water and often shaded by trees at the river’s edge, and fires were lit against the cold. The product of the day’s hunt roasted on iron spits, and the warriors told stories or pushed each other to vicious competitions. Horse races, wrestling, archery, contests of strength and memory, wit and skill filled the evening from the last halt to the dying of the fires.

At first the Olbians hung back, but on the second night Niceas wrestled Parshtaevalt, the black-haired Scyth who had shown interest in everything Greek. Then Eumenes raced his best pony against Srayanka’s trumpeter and lost the race and the pony.

The third evening became an equine Olympics, with mounted races, a dozen wrestling matches, and new events — boxing and foot races. The Sakje were as poor on foot as they were gifted on horseback. Their notion of boxing was even stranger. The Sakje had a contest that appeared similar, where two champions would stand toe to toe and hit each other by turns until the weaker man fell or declared himself beaten. Leucon, a passable boxer, thought that he was seeing the Greek sport and proceeded to block blows, to the consternation of his opponent and half the audience, and Kineas had to explain boxing to Srayanka through Eumenes and Ataelus, and then he and Leucon gave a demonstration.

Leucon was a sturdy man, powerfully built and well trained, but he lacked the speed and grace of Ajax — or Kineas. Kineas drew the match out, both for Leucon’s vanity and for the benefit of the audience, but when he parried Leucon’s best punch and responded with a flurry of blows too fast to be counted in the dwindling light, the crowd, Sakje and Greek alike, roared approval. Leucon fell.

Then, by torchlight, Philokles and a score of other men threw stones from the river. They threw for distance and argued the rules — did a bounce count? until Kineas feared violence would ensue, and ordered the Olbians to bed.

The fourth day passed like the others — the Olbian horse drilled and skirmished, formed and reformed, and the Sakje watched and hooted, or hunted, or rode in speculative silence. A week in the saddle, and all of Leucon’s troopers were already hardened to the life — eating in the saddle, riding all day. Kineas reined in next to the young commander in the late afternoon. Leucon had a hard head from the boxing, but he kept his temper like a gentleman and everyone respected him the more.

‘Your men are very good,’ Kineas said. ‘You’re a good commander.’

Leucon smiled ruefully at the praise. ‘Good thing,’ he said. ‘As my Olympic boxing career seems to be over.’ Then he said, ‘But thanks. I’m so proud of them I feel like I might burst, or start singing.’

Kineas rubbed his jaw, where his new beard was now prominent. It barely itched any more. ‘I know what you mean.’ He glanced at Niceas. ‘They’re good, aren’t they, old man?’

Niceas had Eumenes by his side in the column, and he glanced at the younger hyperetes before responding. ‘Better than I expected,’ he said. Then he broke into a smile. ‘Of course, we’ll see what they’re really made of when we have to fight.’

‘Don’t stop drilling,’ said Kineas. ‘After achieving excellence comes keeping it.’

On the fourth evening, Kineas found himself throwing javelins against Niceas and Kyros and one of the more promising boys. The Sakje watched curiously as the men rode through the course, throwing to the right and left. Kineas was done, having struck all his targets, and was watching the boy intently when he saw that Srayanka had mounted her mare and was starting the course behind the boy. She had a bow, and shot twice for every javelin he had launched, and rode past the last target, flushed with triumph, to the cheers of her band.

Kineas rode back to the lists and retrieved all of his javelins, determined to answer her challenge. He took two more javelins from Niceas. His hyperetes shot him a look through the failing light at the crowd of Sakje. ‘This is a good idea?’ he asked.

‘Ask me after I ride,’ Kineas responded.

He halted his horse at the start line and cleared his mind. Srayanka was still receiving the applause of her warriors. He watched her for a moment, and then pressed his horse into motion.

The stallion hadn’t been ridden all day, except for his first pass, and he was full of energy. Kineas threw his first javelin from well out — a difficult shot, but well placed, and the heavy dart sank into the rawhide of the target, a Sakje shield. He threw his second just before he passed the target and heard the thunk as the head bit home. Without looking at the result, he took his third javelin from his rein hand and threw for distance. It was one of Niceas’s — lighter than his own — and it flew high, catching the top of the second target and knocking it flat. At a gallop, too fast to think, he took his fourth javelin and sent his horse over the shield rather than past it, raised the second javelin high as he gathered the horse to jump, and plunged it down with the whole weight of his arm. He heard a reaction from the crowd but he was already throwing his fifth, his whole being concentrated on the last target and his last javelin. He was a stride behind — he fumbled the grip change for a heartbeat — and the shield was past. He turned — if she could do it, he could — and threw side-armed at the last target. He felt a muscle pop in his neck as he released and felt the pain as he turned back to the course, but the sudden burst of sound from a hundred throats told him that the pain was well won.

He trotted his charger back to Niceas. Niceas was holding the second shield over his head and shouting his approval. His leaping throw had punched right through the rawhide and through the wood, so that the black spike of the head protruded the length of an arm from the back.

Parshtaevalt, Srayanka’s second in command, reached up and embraced him, shouting in Sakje, and then Srayanka, still mounted, put her arms around his neck and pressed him close. The crowd shrieked approval. Then Eumenes was pushing a cup of wine into his hands. Unseen hands made wreaths, and Kineas found himself reclining on a carpet wearing his, while Srayanka sat with her back to a rolled cloak, wearing hers with her hair loose and looking like a muscular nymph.

They watched the rest of the competitions together. At some point he took her hand, and she turned to him and her eyes were wide, her pupils huge, and she moved her thumb across his palm. Despite the crowd around them, she continued to stroke his hand, turning it back and forth as she would, and he began to join her at the game — stroking the back of her hand, comparing the calluses on her palm to the warm softness on the back, daring to touch the inside of her wrist as if it were a much more private place.

It was the closest they had been to privacy. Neither said a word. Time passed, and then the competitions died away into drinking, and then the pressure of the wine on Kineas’s bladder made him rise, much against his will. He looked down, aware that he was grinning like a fool or a love-struck boy with his first serving girl. They didn’t even speak a common language.

She met his eyes and then looked down. She laughed.

‘Srayanka,’ he said.

‘Kineax,’ she said.

And that was the fourth night.