Tyrant

13

The next day, he was stiff and cold when he awoke, and his hands ached, every joint swollen. His right shoulder burned when he reached up to fasten his cloak, the trophy of last night’s throw. He summoned Eumenes and Ataelus.

‘I want to work on my Sakje as we ride,’ he said.

Both of them looked away, smiling. But when they were all mounted, Eumenes and Ataelus joined him, and began to point around them — mare, stallion, sky and grass — and give him the words in Sakje. The roots of the words lurked at the edge of familiarity, like Persian, some like older Greek forms in the Poet, but the declensions were different and the end sounds were barbaric.

Kineas had started the process in the winter, but the press of politics and training had drowned his attempts at language lessons. Now, with the object of his lessons at hand and nothing to do but ride and watch Leucon handle his men, Kineas worked like a boy with a tutor.

Parshtaevalt joined them at the midday halt. He was a tall man, for a Sakje, with pale golden hair and a deep tan. Kineas had gathered that he was some relation to Srayanka, but the relationship was hard to define — a matrilineal cousin. He was also a successful war leader with the hair of a dozen enemies on his saddlecloth. He had a keen intelligence, and he took to the language lessons easily. He seemed to enjoy and admire Greek things.

He rode away after an hour and returned with Srayanka, who rode with them the rest of the day, naming things in Greek as Kineas named them in Sakje. She continued to command the column while she practised her Greek, and Kineas had an opportunity to observe her at work.

She was a fine commander. He watched her separate two men who were fighting over a haunch of venison, her eyes blazing in contrast to her calm, level voice. They shrank down as if struck. She moved around the column, she knew the state of every horse in her considerable herd and her scouts were always alert. In the evening, she spoke to her people when they won contests and when they lost them. That much he gleaned just from watching her. But he learned more from watching her warriors — the respect, almost awe, with which they treated her could be seen in every interaction. She never shied from a contest, and although she didn’t win them all, it was a matter for boasting for the victor when she lost any of them. She was first in the saddle at the start of the day and last in the saddle when the column halted. She had a different face and a different voice for every warrior in her band, man or woman — to some, she explained using her hands to emphasize a point, whereas to others she simply directed.

And all her people loved her.

He talked to Parshtaevalt through Eumenes on the sixth day, when she had ridden away from the language lessons to question a scout. Parshtaevalt now rode with Niceas and Eumenes most of the time, asking questions of the younger man as quickly as he could think of them. When Parshtaevalt mentioned a raid he had been on the year before, Kineas asked, ‘Did Srayanka lead the raid? Against the Getae?’

Ataelus passed the question and then rolled his eyes at the answer. ‘He say — fucking Getae. They burning towns — three towns. For killing every man they found.’

Kineas nodded to indicate he understood. ‘How many actions has she fought?’ he asked, pointing at Srayanka. ‘Raids? Battles?’

Eumenes phrased the question. His Sakje was better every day.

The black-haired man looked down at his reins and then up at the sun, as if looking for inspiration. ‘As many as the days of the moon,’ he said, through Eumenes.

‘Thirty?’ Kineas said aloud. ‘Thirty actions!’

Philokles, who always rode to the sound of a good conversation, appeared from the Sakje part of the column. ‘More than Leonidas,’ he said.

‘More than me,’ said Kineas.

‘More than me,’ said Niceas. He gave Kineas a grin. ‘I’ll be more respectful.’

On the seventh day, the scouts found a herd of deer, and a mixed group of hunters, Sakje and Olbian, rode away to procure fresh meat. They returned with six big carcasses, and Kineas stood beside Srayanka as they ordered the division of the meat. The youngest warriors of the Sakje were skinning the animals, and the Olbian’s slaves were breaking the joints and butchering.

Srayanka watched two young women skinning the biggest buck. Kineas watched her. He could see her desire to say something, or perhaps take the chore herself, although he couldn’t see that they were making any error.

A trio of Olbian cavalrymen, younger ones with no immediate duty, had gravitated to the sight because the two Sakje women had stripped naked to do the bloody work.

Srayanka glanced up from her own concerns when one of the Olbian men said ‘barbarian’ a little too aggressively. She turned to Kineas and raised an eyebrow.

Who needs language? he thought. He walked over to the knot of hippeis. ‘If you gentlemen don’t have anything better to do, I expect I could teach you to do some basic butchering.’

The mouthy one — Alcaeus — shook his head. ‘That’s slave’s work,’ he said. ‘We’re just watching the amazons bathe in blood.’

‘They’re skinning the buck to get the skin, not to impress you with their charms. Move along, or I’ll put you to butchering.’ Kineas kept his voice low. He didn’t want to advertise the poor behaviour of his men. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Srayanka’s trumpeter and a half-dozen other Sakje, watching and flicking their riding whips.

Alcaeus put his hands on his hips. ‘I’m not on duty.’ He tossed his head arrogantly. ‘I can watch the barbarians show their tits if I want.’

His companions both moved away from him as if he had the plague. Kineas glanced around for Niceas or Eumenes — he would have preferred that this obvious indiscipline be dealt with by someone else. But they were both busy.

Still keeping his voice low, Kineas said, ‘No, you can’t. Don’t be a fool. Go to your horse and curry him. Then join the sentries until I order you in.’

The man looked affronted rather than sheepish. ‘I take my orders from Leucon,’ he said. ‘And besides-’

‘Silence!’ Kineas said in his battlefield voice. ‘Not another word.’

Alcaeus shifted his gaze to look past Kineas at the two women. He glanced at his two companions with all the arrogance of an adolescent assuring himself of an audience. He smirked. ‘You’re blocking my view,’ he said lazily.

Kineas lost his temper. It happened in a moment — he felt the flood of anger and then he had knocked the stupid boy unconscious with a single blow. It hurt his shoulder and split a knuckle. He turned on one of the man’s companions. ‘Roll him in his cloak and put him by his horse. Both of you stay with him until he wakes, and then help him curry his horse, mount it, and the three of you go on sentry until I recall you. Do you understand?

They all nodded, their eyes as round as Athenian owls.

When he returned to Srayanka and Ataelus, she shook her head. ‘For what you hit the man?’ she asked in passable Greek.

Kineas turned to Ataelus. ‘How do you say disobey?’

Ataelus shook his head. ‘What is disobey?’

Kineas breathed out slowly. He was angry — too angry. ‘When I give an order, I expect the man to obey. If he won’t, he disobeys.’

Srayanka turned her head back and forth between them. Then she asked a short question in rapid Sakje. Kineas caught his own name and nothing more.

Ataelus shook his head, glanced at Kineas, and spoke at length, making gestures of riding and sleeping. To Kineas, he said. ‘She ask me, for how long am I with you? And I tell her. And she ask how often you hit men, and I say not so much.’

Srayanka’s eyes locked with his. They were like the blue of the Aegean when the sun returns after a squall. He was taller than she by half a head. She was standing quite close to him. She spoke directly to him, speaking slow, careful Sakje.

He didn’t understand a word.

Ataelus said, ‘She say — if I hit one man for hurt — if I hit one, I kill. Or he ride away or make for enemy.’ He stopped, looked back and forth, like a trapped animal. Finally he said, ‘Then she say — man watch girls. Men all fools when women show tits. So what? Why hit?’

Kineas was not used to having his judgement questioned in matters of command. He was not used to being questioned in public, through an interpreter, or by a woman.

Like a man, Philokles had said. But she could have had a man flayed to ribbons with a riding whip and he wouldn’t have questioned her authority.

He could feel the red in his face, feel his temper, rarely unleashed, building. He could feel his mind in revolt against the unfairness of it, against the censure in her eyes. He breathed in and out several times. He counted to ten in Sakje. Then he gave her a nod. ‘I will explain,’ he said in Greek, ‘when I am less angry.’

‘Good,’ she said, and walked away.

That night he related the incident to Leucon, Eumenes, Niceas and Philokles. They sat by a small fire, distant from the Sakje, who were quiet and kept to themselves.

‘He’s got a dick instead of a brain,’ Niceas said. He glanced at Leucon. ‘Sorry. I know he’s your friend, but he’s a fool. He had it coming.’

Leucon looked miserable. ‘He’s been my companion since we were boys. He always gets what he wants — hard to change that now.’

Niceas gave a nasty grin. ‘Not that hard,’ he said.

Leucon put his head in his hands. ‘I feel that I’ve failed you, Hipparch. But also — I have to say this — I feel that… that you didn’t need to hit him. He’s a gentleman. No one has hit him since his first tutor.’

Kineas bridled, trying not to react.

Philokles spoke. ‘In Sparta, he could have been killed. On the spot.’

Leucon sat back on his stool, clearly shocked. ‘For a little back-talk? ’

Philokles shrugged. ‘Indiscipline is poison.’

Leucon looked at Eumenes. Eumenes didn’t meet his eye. ‘He’s the kind of bully who would draw a knife in a wine-shop brawl. I’ve seen him do it.’ He looked at Niceas and then back at Leucon. ‘I don’t like him.’

Kineas leaned forward. ‘That’s not at issue. Like or dislike — a commander is above them. I don’t dislike the boy — I hit him because he was disobedient. In my experience disobedience is a plague that starts slowly but spreads rapidly.’ He spread his hands to catch more warmth from the fire, leaned forward so that his elbows could rest on his thighs. He was cold, his knuckle and his shoulder both hurt, and he didn’t want to think of what damage he’d done to relations with Srayanka — or the Sakje. ‘He was offending the Sakje. He offended me. And he disobeyed a direct order.’ Kineas rubbed his beard. ‘I am a hard man. A mercenary. Perhaps your men needed to remember that.’ And then he sighed. ‘I let myself grow angry.’

Leucon looked more bewildered than informed. ‘What will I tell his father?’ he asked, before he walked off into the dark.

Philokles watched him go. ‘I take it Lady Srayanka was unimpressed.’ Kineas nodded. Philokles shook his head. ‘You did the right thing. What else could you do?’

Kineas rubbed his hands together. ‘You’re the philosopher. You tell me!’

Philokles shook his head. ‘I’m a Spartan first and a philosopher second, I suppose. I might have killed him.’

Kineas nodded wearily. ‘Odd. That’s what Srayanka said. She said if she had to hit a man, she’d kill him. Rather than leave an enemy at her back — or at least, that’s what I got from the whole thing.’

Eumenes said, ‘They don’t even strike their children.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m serious. I had a Sakje nanny. In war, or in a contest — no holds barred. But not for discipline.’ He thought for as long as it took Niceas to put an armload of wood on the fire, and then said, ‘I don’t think they even have a word for discipline.’

‘Now that is interesting,’ Philokles said.

Kineas left them to it. He sent Niceas to recall the three sentries before he went to roll in his cloak. Then he lay awake for a long time, thinking about women — his mother, his sisters, Artemis and Srayanka. He didn’t reach any conclusion at all. Artemis and Srayanka were like a different sex from his mother and sisters. It was not that he thought that Artemis and Srayanka were really so alike. Artemis used her sex as a tool to get what she wanted from men. Srayanka was a commander. And yet there was some basic similarity.

He thought of Philokles, telling him to treat Srayanka as if she were a man. The thought made him frown, and he fell asleep.

They didn’t ride together the next day. Kineas rode with his men, practising words with Ataelus as the grass vanished under their hooves. It wasn’t that everything was the same, nor that anything was different.

The same could be said in the Olbian section of the column. Kineas couldn’t define the problem, but something had changed. It confounded him — he had the ability to read his troops, and he knew that they agreed with him that Alcaeus deserved his punishment. In fact, from his demeanor, it appeared that Alcaeus himself felt he merited the blow. He looked sheepish now, rather than angry. And yet — something was different in the column, as if by demonstrating the force that underlay the discipline, Kineas had forfeited some of their goodwill.

Niceas added a barb to the situation when they were alone. ‘The idiot was ogling the Sakje girls, right? And you spend all your waking hours with one. You know what soldiers say when one man has something the others can’t have.’

Kineas had to admit the fairness of the point — at least, through the eyes of soldiers. He stroked his beard and blew on his cold hands. ‘You know, if all these pampered gentlemen soldiers have to complain about is my love life, they’re doing pretty well.’ He looked off at the horizon. ‘She won’t speak to me today.’

Niceas gave him a half-grin in return. ‘Exactly.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘You worry too much, Hipparch.’ He glanced at the sky, where a line of heavy dark clouds came at them like a phalanx. One corner of his mouth curled. ‘The rich boys’ll sing a different tune soon enough.’

After three days of rain everyone in the column had plenty to complain about.

The three days were miserable for the Greeks, who spent them learning to live like soldiers, rather than like rich men on an extended hunt. Their cloaks were wet through — some men found that the blue dye in their cloaks ran, staining their skins — and their fires were fitful and smoky. The nights were cold and wet, and the troopers from Olbia finally learned to huddle together for warmth. It wasn’t really like sleeping — the best most men could manage was a troubled half-sleep as the pile of bodies moved, every man searching for warmth at the centre. By day they had their horses for warmth, and by the third day, most of them could sleep on horseback.

Kineas was just as miserable, because while he drilled his men and taught them to live in the rain, Srayanka eluded him. Worse, he sometimes caught her watching him, her face serious, her brows a single line across her face. She was judging him.

On the fourth day the sun shone, and towards evening they found the king.

The ‘city’ of the Sakje stretched for miles, and when he first saw the extent of the walls the size of it took Kineas’s breath away. A temple stood on a high bluff over the river, and around it lay an acropolis of large log structures, brightly coloured, and smaller buildings built of hewn timber and earth. The acropolis itself was small enough, but the walls that surrounded it ran off to join earthworks three men tall that ran off almost to the horizon.

‘It’s not really a city,’ Satrax said. They were standing together on the walls of the acropolis. ‘It’s really a big stock pen.’

Kineas had spent two days discussing plans with Marthax, the king’s principal warlord, and other of his inner council — Kam Baqca, the king himself, and Srayanka. Eumenes and Ataelus were exhausted from constant translation, and even the king, the only man among them to speak Sakje and Greek with equal fluency, was showing the strain. When Kineas slept, he had dreams of languages, where Sakje dogs accosted him in broken Greek, where objects named themselves in Sakje. He was learning the language, but his brain was tired all the time.

The king ordained a break, and dragged Kineas outside to see the sun. He was less distant, less aggressive, than he had been at their winter meeting.

Srayanka, who ignored Kineas as if he didn’t exist, spent most of her time with the king. While they debated the conduct of the war, she opposed him, always seeking the rashest course. In this, he sided with the young king and caution. She didn’t seem to hold the cautious policy against the king. She focused her discontent on just one man.

That morning, however, she was off with the other fighting women and Kam Baqca. Something about religion.

Kineas was heartsick, and only the loss of Srayanka’s favour informed him fully of what she had come to mean to him over the winter. He chided himself for being a fool — he had help in this from Niceas — and tried to concentrate on the weighty matters at hand. Of course she, as the greatest magnate among the Assagatje, would favour the king, who doted on her.

Kineas realized that the king had been speaking for some time. He seemed to expect a response.

Kineas waved at the stock pens. With the exception of the acropolis, and a built-up stretch along the river where the Sindi farmers had a town and Greek merchants had their warehouses, the rest of the walls were empty.

‘Who built the walls?’ Kineas asked. ‘They go on for what — forty stades?’

‘Twice that, if you include all the tribal enclosures.’ The king gave a proud smile. ‘The Sindi did it. Many years ago, after the threat of Darius. The Sakje decided that we needed a safe place for all the herds in time of war, and the Sindi agreed to build the walls.’

‘The Sindi are your peasants?’ Kineas asked. There were Sindi farmers in Olbia, but there were also Sindi aristocrats. They were native to the Euxine, but many of them had assimilated so successfully with the Greeks that the only sign of them was their dark eyes and straight black hair. Eumenes had the hair, Kyros had the eyes, and young Clio had both.

The king shook his head. ‘The Sindi love the dirt. The Sakje love the sky.’ He shrugged. ‘When first we came, so our legend says, we had contempt for the Sindi. We destroyed their army and took their women.’ He glanced at Kineas and raised an eyebrow. ‘All sounds likely enough. But they fought back in their own ways. They shot our men from behind trees. They fouled wells and killed men in their sleep.’ The king shrugged. ‘So the legend says. Myself, I think that the wiser Sakje knew from the first that without the grain raised by Sindi farmers, there would be no gold and no Greek wine. Does it matter? We are not really two peoples any longer. We are one people with two different faces.’ He leaned out over the timber hoarding of the acropolis wall and pointed at a crowd of merchants arguing over grain prices at the base of the wall. ‘Sometimes in the villages, there is a boy or a girl. They live in the dirt, but they want the sky, and one day, when a band of Sakje ride by, the boy or girl goes to the chief and says, “Take me.” And in the same way, sometimes a rider, old or young, watches the grass grow and yearns for the earth, for something solid under his feet. Such a one goes to the chief of a village and says, “Take me.” He turned to Kineas, his handsome face lit by the rising sun. ‘I am the king of all of them. So I love the dirt and the sky.’

The wind was warmer and the grass was greener, but the north wind bit hard and Kineas pulled his cloak tight around his shoulders for warmth. He looked at the walls he could see, following them from west to east, right up to the river. Athens, Piraeus, Olbia and Tomis would fit inside those walls and still have room. But there weren’t enough people to fill a small Greek town. ‘Stock pens,’ he said as a reminder.

‘When the tribes come in for the festival, or in time of war, there is grazing for their herds — at least for a month. The walls serve to keep the animals in, and to keep raiders out.’ He grinned. ‘So we have a population higher than Athens — if you count goats.’

‘I see a great many merchants.’ Kineas could see further than usual over the plains. ‘And villages on the river. We never saw a village in two weeks travel.’

The king nodded. ‘The merchants don’t speak much about this. It’s a trade secret. This is where the grain is grown. Those warehouses are where the grain is stored. They ship it down the river in barges, spring and fall. Why tell other men?’ He looked out over the wall. ‘But neither is it a secret. I suspect most of your men could have told you.’

Kineas shook his head. ‘I feel like a fool. I thought I was going to find a field of tents.’

‘In a month, you would have. We don’t live here — except for the Sindi, the merchants, and a handful of priests.’

‘Not even for the winter?’ Kineas asked.

The king nodded. ‘I have wintered here. The hill is cold.’ He looked north. ‘I prefer to winter in the north, by the trees.’

The king began to walk back into the great hall at the top of the acropolis, opposite the temple. The great hall was a log version of a Greek megaron, with a central hearth. The fire blazed as high as a man. The warmth could be felt as soon as the two men pushed through the tapestries that covered the great door.

The tapestries were a shock of colour. They were as alien as the endless sky and the sea of grass. The pair that kept the cold at bay in the door were made from heavy felt in many layers, with figures of men and horses and fantastic beasts cut out or applied in bright colours and geometric patterns on a white ground. On the walls hung larger panels of heavy wool embroidered with griffons and horses, huge horned deer and hunting cats. The floor was deep in bright carpets such as Kineas had seen in Kam Baqca’s tent. The dominant colour was red, and the warmth was palpable.

The king waved at Marthax, standing by the fire with Kam Baqca in a magnificent robe, and Philokles.

‘What trees? How far are the trees?’ Kineas asked. He was looking for Srayanka.

‘A thousand stades, or more. I doubt it could be measured. The trees are like another world. A world of forests. The Sindi say that once, all the world was a single forest.’ He shrugged. ‘I have seen the sea, and I have seen the trees. Each is like another world.’

‘Why winter there?’ Kineas asked.

‘More wood makes bigger fires,’ Satrax said with the adolescent sneer he’d avoided all morning. He grinned. ‘It’s not complicated.’

Kineas thought of the walls, the warehouses, and the grain. ‘You don’t need Olbia as a base to feed your army,’ he said.

Satrax grinned. ‘It wouldn’t hurt to spread the cost. I don’t own all that grain. But no. I lied. Kings do that, when they must. I don’t need Olbia.’

Kineas grinned back, but then narrowed his eyes. ‘But you do have something for the Macedonians to march against. A city to lose. You can’t really just melt into the grass.’ He stopped as if struck. ‘You have to fight for your farmers.’

They joined the circle at the fire. The Sakje had little ceremony — the king came and went like any free man, and the respect accorded him was no more — or less — than that given by Greek soldiers to a commander they respected. The king took a cup of heated apple cider from the woman who was mulling it by the fire. Then he sat on a pile of carpets.

While Kineas got his own cider, the king answered. ‘Yes and no, Kineas. I could still melt into the grass. Nothing here is built in stone. That’s our law. Zopryon can burn the lot — we’ll build it back in a season. Or move.’ He waved at a group of merchants by the fire. ‘And if we all agreed to it, the Sindi would come with us.’

Kineas sat — without the grace all the Sakje showed in descending to the carpets.

The king looked into the fire. ‘But I don’t want to build it again. I don’t want the interruption in trade. In fact, I don’t want this war at all.’ He sighed. ‘But it is coming here, and I’ll fight it.’

Kineas drank some of the cider. He loved the stuff. ‘Where does this come from?’ he asked. ‘Apples won’t grow for two seasons.’

The king shrugged. ‘Cold has its advantages. We make cider in the fall and freeze it in blocks for the winter.’ He beckoned to the other people that Kineas had come to think of as the war council. To Kineas, he said, ‘Drink up — spring is here, and soon all the cider will go bad.’

Kam Baqca sat next to Kineas in a rustle of silk. Kineas had seen silk before, but seldom worn so often and by so many. Most of the Sakje had a silk garment, even if worn to tatters. Kam Baqca had a robe, pale yellow, covered in pink flowers and curling griffons. It was so magnificent that Kineas kept looking at it despite himself.

‘We have wrangled for days,’ Kam Baqca said. ‘Marthax says that you are ready. Tell us your plan.’

Kineas hesitated, his cup of cider to his lips.

Kam Baqca regarded him calmly, her large eyes relaxed, almost sleepy. ‘You have a plan, Kineas of Athens. The king has an army, but he does not yet have a plan.’ She nodded. ‘The two fit together like a man and,’ she smiled, ‘a woman.’ The shaman’s eyes flicked to Srayanka, who joined the circle, also wearing a silk robe, and back to Kineas. Kam Baqca put a hand on Kineas’s arm and said, ‘You must come and visit my tent. You must face the tree.’

Kineas nodded politely, with no intention of passing under her hand again. The last two dreams of the tree had left marks on his mind, ruts into which the wheels of his thoughts fell and along which they travelled too often and too unpredictably.

As if reading his mind, Kam Baqca leaned close, so that he could smell the spice and resin of her magic. ‘Without the tree, you will never win her,’ she said.

Srayanka’s robe was dark blue, and reached from her neck to her ankles, and under it she wore trousers of a rich red. She looked more like a woman — Kineas’s native idea of a woman — than he had seen before. Kineas found it disconcerting. And distracting.

For two days he had fought her, tooth and nail, on the conduct of the war. No Greek woman would have faced him down, shouted him down, when he counselled caution. Of course, he thought with further heartache, no Greek woman would have been at a war council.

Aware of his regard, she turned her head away from him and sat, exchanging greetings with the king and with Marthax.

As she sat, other men and women gathered to them — Leucon and Eumenes and Niceas, Marthax and Ataelus and a dozen Sakje nobles. They sat in a circle. Some reclined. Srayanka lay on her stomach, kicking her slippered heels in the air, a posture that no Greek woman would ever have adopted out of her bedroom. Kineas felt like a besotted fool. But he couldn’t take his eyes away.

They fell silent after a momentary babble of greetings.

‘I, too, think it is time to speak of the whole plan,’ said the king. He looked at Kineas.

‘I am a mercenary,’ Kineas said to the group. ‘I have never commanded more than three hundred horse in action.’ He pointed at Marthax. ‘As the king’s war leader, shouldn’t Marthax present the plan?’

Behind him, Eumenes translated as quickly as he could into Sakje. Kineas was no longer surprised by how much the young man understood.

The king made a gesture with his hand. ‘This is not a Greek council, and I am not a Greek king. I have translated for you for two days — I know the plan. But we all wish to hear it in its finished form.’

Kineas nodded, looked around the circle. ‘Very well. The plan is simple. We never fight a battle.’

Niceas whistled. ‘I like it already,’ he said.

Marthax waited for the translation and then nodded. ‘Exactly,’ he said, in Greek.

Srayanka raised an eyebrow. She rolled over and sat up.

He looked at her too long. Again.

The king held out his cup for more cider. ‘How?’

Kineas tore his eyes from the lady. ‘It’s a matter of timing and logistics. ’

Marthax spoke in Sakje, and Eumenes translated. ‘That’s why you’re the expert.’

Kineas held up his hand. ‘Last year, I rode from Tomis to Olbia by the same route that Zopryon must use. It took me thirty days. It will take his army fifty. If he marches tomorrow, the best he can do is to reach Olbia at midsummer.’ He paused to let Eumenes’ translation catch up. ‘If we destroy the ferry at Antiphilous, we add at least two weeks to his journey. If the men of Pantecapaeum stand with us, and their fleet will serve our need — then we will strip his triremes off his army, and slow his march still further. He intends to build forts as he marches — he is wise enough to know that his road home needs protection — which will slow him longer.’ Again he waited for Eumenes to catch him up. ‘We will then be past the new year — past the month of games, past the summer festival, and we will not yet have shown our hand.’ Kineas looked around the circle. ‘You know why he is coming here?’

Srayanka answered, ‘To conquer us.’

Satrax shook his head. ‘In the long run, the result would be the same. But he seeks our submission to prove his worth. As a feat of arms.’

Srayanka’s face at the translation of the word ‘submission’ had a look that Kineas hoped was never directed at him.

Kineas took a deep breath. ‘When he is sixty days from home and not yet at the Borasthenes River, we have a choice.’ He tried not to look at Srayanka. ‘The simplest choice would be to offer submission.’ He shrugged. ‘He won’t have time to press the siege of Olbia by that point. He won’t have the time to march here, and it would be suicide to march to this place leaving Olbia in his rear, astride his road home. If we offer him the tokens of submission…’ He paused again, and sighed, still avoiding Srayanka’s eye.

Satrax nodded. ‘You think like a king.’

Kineas glanced at Philokles, who gave a slight nod of recognition. Srayanka was boring holes in his head with her eyes. She sprang to her feet. ‘This must be your Greek discipline! ’ She glared around the council. ‘What are we — a nation of slaves?’ she asked in Greek. To the king she said, ‘Will we beat our warriors into submission for this Macedonian beast? Are we so afraid?’

Kineas dropped his eyes. He had hoped… it no longer mattered what he hoped.

Marthax spoke. ‘The other choice?’ said Ataelus.

Kineas breathed in again. ‘We strike his march columns every day over the last hundred and fifty stades to the great river. The Sakje — who won’t have shown themselves yet, except in handfuls, groups of scouts — appear as if by magic. They kill the stragglers and the foragers. A handful of warriors strike their camps at night.’

Marthax spoke again, as did most of the Sakje. Out of the babble, Ataelus translated. ‘Marthax says that more for liking him.’

There was a brief silence, and Philokles leaned forward into it and said, ‘But of course, each of those attacks will work just once.’

Kineas nodded.

Satrax leaned forward into the circle, pulling at his beard. ‘Yesterday you sounded as if you could pick his army to pieces like a flock of vultures. Today you say every trick will work only once. Why will the attacks work only once?’

Kineas glanced at Philokles, but Philokles shook his head, declining to take up the argument. Kineas looked at Srayanka, who continued to avoid his eye. He determined not to look at her again. ‘Macedon has good officers and excellent discipline. After we hit their column once, there won’t be any stragglers the next day. After we kill their foragers, the next day they will forage by regiments, with the whole army standing to arms.’ He looked around the circle, avoiding her but willing her to listen. ‘With discipline, they can minimize our advantages of speed and stealth.’ He gave a hard grin. ‘Of course, every measure they take to minimize our advantages will slow them.’ He finished the cider in his cup. ‘And we will not take heavy losses to do it. The cost in money to Macedon will be staggering. And Zopryon will never have a chance to try again. He will be disgraced.’

Kam Baqca nodded slowly, and then shook her head. ‘But of course, Lord Zopryon will know all this.’

Kineas nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘So that, as soon as the raids start, he will immediately recognize our strategy and he will react like a desperate, wounded animal.’ She looked, not at Kineas, but at Philokles. And then at Srayanka.

Philokles met her eyes. ‘Yes. It will perhaps take him a few days to pass his desperation to his officers. But yes.’

‘So he will not retreat to disgrace. He will lash out. He will, if he can, force us to battle.’ Kam Baqca sat up on her knees. ‘Even if he must take reckless gambles with his men and his supplies.’

All the Greeks nodded.

She also nodded, as if to herself. ‘It is the wounded boar who kills men. It is the boar with no hope who gores kings.’

‘Ouch,’ muttered Niceas.

Srayanka bowed her head to Kam Baqca. ‘Honoured one, we need not fear him. With our full muster-’

Kam Baqca reached out and touched her face. ‘We might still lose. Every person in this circle might lie broken under the long moon.. ’ She stopped and closed her eyes.

The king watched her closely. ‘Do you prophesy?’

She opened her eyes. ‘It is on a sword’s edge. As I have said.’

Kineas spoke with all the conviction of a man forced to speak against his will. ‘We will not win such a battle.’

Srayanka spoke — not angrily, but with great force, and the king translated for her. ‘You sound as if he is Alexander!’ he said, mimicking Srayanka’s gesture. ‘What if he makes the wrong choice? What if he retreats?’ Kineas watched her face while the king translated her words. ‘You have never seen us fight, Kineax. Do you think we are cowards?’ She clenched her fist and held it up. ‘Perhaps we lack the discipline you have, but we are strong.’

Kineas shook his head. He was not doing well at avoiding her eyes, but when he spoke, he was controlled. ‘Zopryon is no Alexander. Praise the gods, he is an average commander with no particular gifts. But the worst commander in Macedon knows how to conduct this kind of campaign. In Greece, we have books to tell us even if we don’t have veterans to tell us how to do it.’ He frowned. ‘I have never seen you fight, but I know you to be brave. But no amount of courage will break the front of a taxeis.’

The king translated his reply and then looked at both of them. ‘Kineas, my father’s sister’s daughter has more merit in her argument than you might think. You have never seen us fight. You don’t know what we can muster.’ He turned to Srayanka. ‘Yet as I first said, Kineas thinks like a king. Battle is a risk. War is a danger. Why chase fortune’s tail?’ He looked at Marthax, who nodded deeply, so that his grey and black beard rode up and down on his chest.

‘I hadn’t thought to destroy the ferry at Antiphilous,’ the king continued. ‘And I didn’t know how great Zopryon’s fleet might be. But in other respects, is this not the plan as we discussed it all winter? And you, my lady — did I not warn you that Kineas would bring even more reasons to be wary?’

Marthax drained his cup and belched. ‘Better,’ he said, and Kineas understood before Ataelus translated. He went on. ‘When he reaches some agreed point we harry him. And then, unless he retreats, we offer submission.’ He grinned. ‘Only a fool would reject us.’

Kam Baqca sat back on her heels and sipped a cup of wine. ‘He will reject us,’ she said. ‘I have seen it.’

Srayanka’s head snapped around. She spoke at length, and with the kind of vehemence that Kineas associated with reprimands to errant troopers. She spoke quickly and her voice rose in pitch, so that he couldn’t even pick out words.

Eumenes shook his head, lost by the fluidity of her speech. Even Ataelus hesitated. The king came to their rescue. ‘She says that if Kam Baqca has already foreseen the rejection, we can save ourselves the shame of offering the submission and concentrate on proving Kineas to be a fool about the battle.’ He avoided looking at Kineas. ‘She said some other things best left between her and Kam Baqca. But I will answer her.’ He spoke briefly in Sakje, and then said, in Greek, ‘I am king. Kam Baqca is often correct, but she herself says that the future is like the wax of a candle, and the closer it gets to the flame, the more malleable it is. She has been surprised. I have been surprised.’ He turned to Srayanka and spoke in Sakje, and she put her hands to her face — a girlish gesture Kineas had never seen her use.

In Greek, the king said, ‘We will not have our full muster of strength.

Many horses we should have counted from our cousins the Massakje. Many we should have counted from our cousins the Sauromatae.’ He looked around the circle. ‘This is not for every man to discuss. Alexander is beating at the eastern gates of the grass, just as Zopryon beats at the west gate. The monster is in Bactria, chasing a rebel satrap.’ The king rolled his shoulders and looked very young. ‘Or he has always planned the campaign this way — to have armies enter the plain of grass from either end. Kam Baqca says this is not true — that it is mere happenstance. But it makes no difference to us. We will have only two thirds of our full muster. Perhaps less. The Getae are already marching east, and our easternmost clans will have to protect their farmers.’ He shrugged, spoke a long sentence in Sakje. Kineas understood several words — no horses and Macedon. In Greek, the king said, ‘Submission alone costs us nothing. There is no shame in it, because we have no intention to submit.’

Somewhere in his head, Kineas realized that nothing in Greek was indicated in Sakje by no horses. Surrender costs us no horses, the king said. Kineas nodded in satisfaction.

‘The grass is growing,’ Kam Baqca said. ‘The ground is almost hard. In a week the last of the heavy rain will pass. In two weeks, he will march.’

Kineas nodded in agreement.

The king said, ‘Where do we appoint the muster? Where do we assemble our army?’

Kineas shrugged. ‘We need to cover Olbia. If Zopryon takes Olbia you will have no choices at all. And if the archon does not feel that you are willing to protect him, he will abandon the alliance and submit — really submit.’ Privately, Kineas thought that the archon might be tempted to make such a submission anyway. ‘The closer the main army is to Olbia, the more reliable will be your alliance with the Euxine cities.’

The king nodded while Kineas’s words were translated for the Sakje. ‘So that my army threatens even as it protects.’ Satrax said. He put his chin on his hand. ‘It will be a month before I have even half my army in hand.’

Marthax spoke. The king listened and nodded. Eumenes said, ‘Marthax says that the ferry will have to be destroyed immediately — that the riders should be dispatched today.’

Kineas looked at Marthax and nodded emphatically. Then he said, ‘Our camp should be on the other bank of the great river, near a ford. If a battle must be fought, we must seize every advantage. Make Zopryon cross the river, if we come to that extremity.’

Srayanka waited for his translation and then spoke, as did several of the other Sakje nobles.

The king said, ‘All of them agree that if we need a ford and a place to camp, the best is the far side of the campsite at the Great Bend. There is water and forage for an army, and supplies can reach us easily on boats.’ He paused, and then said, ‘Let it be so. The muster is appointed for the summer solstice, at the Great Bend.’ To Kineas, he said, ‘You will bring the city troops? We have nothing like your hoplites — and few enough of our nobles have the armour of your cavalry.’

Kineas agreed. ‘I will bring the troops of the Euxine cities to the Great Bend by the solstice,’ he said. He hoped he was telling the truth.

They talked about the campaign for two more days. They planned the muster of the Sakje. Messengers were dispatched to the leading Sakje clans to appoint the muster. They drafted letters for Pantecapaeum and for Olbia. Marthax was to go with sixty warriors to destroy the ferry, a job he felt required his presence in person. Before he departed Kineas took him aside and asked him to spare the farm by the bay where Graccus was buried, and Marthax laughed.

‘Many and many the wine I swill there, Kineax,’ Ataelus translated. Marthax gave Kineas a hug, which he returned. ‘Old man feel no fire from us.’ He gave Kineas a squeeze that threatened his ribs. ‘Worry for less, Kineas. Plan good.’

Kineas extricated himself from Marthax’s hug. The trust that Marthax put in him unnerved him. ‘I am not a commander of armies,’ Kineas said.

The young king emerged from the door behind his warlord. He shrugged at Kineas. ‘Nor am I. But if I intended to make shoes, I would go to a shoemaker.’

‘Plato,’ said Kineas with a sour smile.

‘Socrates,’ said Philokles. ‘Plato would have tried to make the shoes all by himself.’