Tyrant

5

Dawn patrol brought no surprises. The girths were well attached, the baggage loaded, and Ajax’s slave whistled while he scraped the cauldron. Ataelus had curried both of his horses until their coats shone. His example got others to currying, which pleased Kineas who liked men to look their best every day.

Kineas rode off apart to have a moment to himself. He watched them working, watched the last items roped down to the packhorses — plenty of them, now, and lighter loads for each, which meant they’d move faster.

Ajax’s slave waited patiently by his knee. When Kineas noticed him, the slave bowed his head. ‘Par’n me, sir.’

Kineas felt that the man’s whistling had helped to set the tone of the morning, that sharing the booty with the slaves had somehow pleased the gods. ‘I don’t know your name.’

The slave bowed his head again. ‘Arni.’

Kineas chewed the barbarian name a little. ‘What is it, Arni?’

‘Par’n me fur askin. I wunnert if we — if’n there’d be more fight’n.’ He looked eager. ‘I cin fight. If’n you were to want it. Could take a swort or a knife. Plenty left a’ yesterday.’

Arming slaves was always a dangerous business. Crossing the plains, however, was the immediate problem. ‘Only until we reach a town. And Crax?’

The slave smiled. ‘Give ’im a few days. Aye. E’ll come round.’

Kineas nodded. ‘Watch he doesn’t take your weapon and kill us all before he does so.’

Arni smiled, shook his head and withdrew.

Horses shining, richer and with a score of remounts, the column rode across the plains.

Three days of uneventful travel brought them to the scatter of Greek homesteads surrounding Antiphilous. Antiphilous was a settlement so small it could barely be thought of as a colony — indeed, it was the colony of a colony, guarding the southern flank of the more prosperous towns of Tyras and Nikanou, both centres of the grain trade with the interior because they controlled access to a bay so deep it was like a small sea. Kineas had never seen any of them, but he’d heard enough to have a sense of the area. He gave an inward sigh of relief when his horse’s hoofs were on the gravelled dirt of a Greek road.

Their arrival made an instant stir in Antiphilous. It was easy to see that not many caravans crossed the sea of grass, because householders stood on their porticoes to watch the column pass, slaves gaped, and the men of the town hurried for their spears and stood in the sun of the small agora, ready to repel invasion. When they discovered that Kineas had no ill intent, they hurried to wring every possible profit from him, asking a grim price for their grain — the cheapest grain in the world, right at the source, at Athenian famine prices.

A scuffle in an ugly wine shop caught Kineas’s attention. He motioned to Niceas. ‘Get a day’s grain for the horses. Don’t budge an obol on our campaign price. I’ll be back.’ He raised his legs over the horse’s back and slid off, checked his sword and pushed through the curtain of wooden beads that masked the entrance of the wine shop. Inside, Lykeles and Philokles had swords in their hands. Coenus had a man down and was tickling his throat with his sword.

‘He tried to cheat us on the measure,’ Lykeles said defensively. He knew that Kineas hated any kind of incident with ‘citizens’. Lykeles considered himself a gentleman, although he wasn’t as well born as Coenus or Laertes.

‘So you hit him and drew your swords? Get outside, all of you.’ Kineas’s hands didn’t leave his belt, but his voice was cold.

Philokles stood up straight and drank off the measure of wine in his hand. He seemed disposed to argue the point.

‘Now!’ said Kineas.

Philokles met his eye. His eyes shone with ferocity, like an animal, and he gave Kineas a slight nod, as if to say that he would obey this time. He looked like a different man entirely. But he went.

Outside, Kineas could see that the shopkeeper was, in fact, a slave. A grimmer looking specimen he had seldom seen. He threw him some bronze coins. The slave swore and demanded more, lies frothing from him like spit bubbles. Kineas stood his ground until the slave was silent and then went back outside. Niceas was still dickering with a grain factor and a crowd of men had started to gather in the agora, many with their spears — again.

Diodorus pushed forward through the horses of the column. ‘The ferry’s closed. Some nonsense. They want to gouge us for the price. If you want my guess…’

Kineas nodded.

‘I’d say they didn’t like us. Trade with the Getae? The gods only know. And they don’t like Ataelus.’

Kineas nodded again, his eyes flicking up and down the column. ‘Mount up,’ he said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

They were out of Antiphilous as quickly as they had entered. And they weren’t going to be crossing the ferry to Nikanou, which meant that they were about to ride for days into the heartland of more barbarians in order to go around the bay. Kineas thought he might have just made a hurried and foolish decision, but there had been something rotten about Antiphilous, and some god had whispered to him that it was time to move, a whispering he never ignored.

Ten stades south of the town, when he was questioning his decision and trying to ignore the sullen silence of the company, they came across a lone Greek homestead whose farmer was busy trying to unbury a plough with two young slaves and a horse. Before the sun had slipped another finger towards the west, they had struck a bargain and were camped amidst the man’s olive trees, and the whole string of horses were gorging on grain at a price that pleased everyone so much that most of the men stripped off their tunics and threw themselves at the recalcitrant plough, pushing and calling and laughing until the blade pulled free, and then running down to the sandy shore of the bay and flinging themselves in the water with the noise of a cavalry charge — Artemis, Artemis! Kineas accepted a proffered cup of wine from the farmer, Alexander, and sat with his legs crossed on a finely carved stool in the farm’s courtyard, enjoying the shade of the one and only tree.

‘No one much comes this way except the grain ships looking for a load,’ the farmer said. ‘Can’t remember the last time I saw a party going around the bay the long way.’ He nodded to the west. ‘I see you have a Scyth with you — that’s good thinking. They’re everywhere west of here another twenty stades. You’ll be intercepted every day by a band.’

Kineas sat listening with his chin on his hand. ‘Are they trouble?’

Alexander shook his head. ‘None to me, and don’t let some fools tell you otherwise. I give ’em a cup of wine when they ride by and I’m civil and that’s all it takes. For barbarians, they’re a good lot — they are hellions when they drink hard, and they are mean when crossed. So don’t cross ’em, says I. My wife’s afraid of ’em — she’s Sindi, so stands to reason, don’t it?’

Kineas thought that the man was starved for conversation. ‘Sindi?’ he asked.

The farmer jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the coast. ‘Scythians is no more native here than you an’ me. The Sindi was here first, or so they say. They do the farming — the Scyths just tax the grain they grow. And then the Greeks tax it again at the towns, but for all that, it’s cheap.

‘Not for us. We tried to buy grain in town. They wanted Athens prices.’

Alexander laughed. ‘They figured you had no other choice. Riding across the plains! You’re either damn smart or a born fool. I see you tangled with the Getae.’

Kineas nodded.

‘Nice ponies. I’d be happy to buy a couple.’

Kineas sipped his wine. ‘They are the property of my men. You’d have to bargain with them.’

‘Easier if I bargain with you. I’ll give you fifty measures of grain and two silver owls per pony.’

Kineas reckoned quickly. ‘With bags?’

‘Baskets. No bags. I’m short on cloth as it is, but they’re good baskets. ’

‘Done. I can sell four.’ Kineas was calculating what price to give the grain so that the men made a profit on their ponies. Easy money.

If you lived.

The next day dawned bleak and rainy, with heavy clouds in the west and waves rolling across the bay.

‘Better by night, but you’ll be soaked by then,’ said Alexander. ‘You should stay. Those nags of yours could use a day to eat. We could bake you all some fish. Come on, Kineas. Stay a day.’

Kineas had forgotten what it was like to feel welcome. So few men would welcome a troop of mercenaries — but that sort of trouble had never happened here. Alexander had taken a few precautions; his gates were locked at night and although he had daughters, Kineas had not laid eyes on them. They were probably locked in a basement or restricted to the upper rooms of the farm’s exedra.

Sons were a different matter. Alexander had half a dozen sons, ranging from the quiet, hard-working eldest, a tall, modest man of twenty-five with a young beard, to Ictinus, whom they all called ‘Echo’. Echo could be heard at all hours, trailing the soldiers, repeating anything they said, trying to help. He was fifteen and tried to sport a beard. All six sons appeared together to build a fire on the beach in the afternoon when the sky, as predicted, showed signs of clearing. The clearing had happened to fast that the sky was blue and clear and the tents were dry before the afternoon began to wane. All the men looked forward to eating fish. Barley and meat were good enough, but hard food to have to face every day.

When their gear was clean and repaired, all the men gathered wood for Graccus’s pyre. Alexander, the farmer, was kind enough to allow them to take wood from his orchards, and there was driftwood on the beach. They built him a pyre as tall as two men, and laid his body atop it in the old way. He already stank of death, but they washed his body and arranged his limbs anyway. Graccus had been quite popular.

The sons prepared the fish with their mother in a remarkable way. First, they had one single, enormous fish acquired in late morning from a passing log boat. They layered the whole fish in clay, built a fire pit in the sand, burned a bonfire over the pit as soon as the rain ceased and then buried the clay-coated fish in hot coals with iron shovels. Kineas spent most of the day pushing his men to cleaning and oiling their tack, currying horses and mending. The farmer was remarkably forthcoming with the requirements of mending, from flax thread and oil to bits of leather.

His hospitality made Kineas suspicious. He disliked having to be suspicious of such favour, but he was. He posted a sentry on the horses. He arranged the sale of four of the Getae ponies and transferred them to their new owner, watching with satisfaction as basket-woven panniers full of grain were arranged for the other ponies. He would leave the farm with more grain than he had started the expedition.

Returning from reviewing the proceeds of the sale, he lay down on his cloak inside his tent to discover that his light throwing-javelin had been polished, the head gleaming like a mirror, the wood shaft carefully oiled so that the grain of the wood swam like fish in a stream. His heavy javelin lay beside it, equally well cared for.

He found the slave, Arni, sitting with the other slaves playing knuckle-bones. They all got to their feet sheepishly, Crax avoiding his eye and the new boy, the Getae whose life he had spared, wincing as he rose.

‘I usually care for my own weapons, Arni. But I thank you for the care you lavished on them.’ Kineas offered him a bronze obol.

Arni shook his head and smiled, showing a number of gaps in his teeth. ‘Warn’t me. Soldiers’ weapons is their tools, I tell ’em. Not our work. Boy wouldn’t listen though.’ Arni looked at Crax fondly.

Crax looked Kineas in the eye. ‘I cleaned them. The throwing javelin was damaged in the fight. I cut the shaft a few fingers and reset the head. One of the farm boys drove the rivets.’

So you’ve decided to grow up, Kineas thought. He tossed the younger slave the obol. ‘You did a beautiful job, Crax. You remember what I told you? Good job, you’d be a free man.’

‘Yes sir.’ He was very serious.

‘I meant it. Same for your new little brother there. I don’t need slaves. I need men who can ride and fight. And I need to know which you both plan to be by the time we ride into Olbia. Ten days — two weeks at the outside. Understand?’

Crax said, ‘Yes, sir.’

The new boy looked terrified. Crax nudged him and said something barbarian, and the new boy coughed and mumbled something that might have been ‘yes, sir’ in what might have passed for Greek.

Kineas left the slaves to their share of the day of rest and walked back to the beach, where couches of straw had been prepared for twenty. He could smell the fish baking through the embers in the ground. He wondered if the clay would turn to pottery around the fish. It did.

As the Charioteer prepared to drive the sun under the world, they sat down to feast on the fish, with proper sauces and some wine — heavy red wine, a little past its best days but heady stuff. Alexander toasted and drank and so did his sons, as did every man of Kineas’s troop, until the last light was gone from the sky and the bones of the giant fish were picked clean.

Diodorus, on the next couch of straw, gave a yawn and stretched, his hair a halo of fire in the last of the sun. ‘Better day than I expected when we was in that rotten little town. Thanks to you, Alexander, and the blessing of the gods on you and yours for your hospitality.’

Kineas poured a libation on the ground and raised his kylix high. ‘Hear me, Athena, protector of soldiers! This man has been our friend and given us sacred hospitality. Bring him good fortune.’

One by one, other soldiers added their benisons. Some spoke with simple piety, others with aristocratic rhetoric. When the cup returned to Kineas, he again poured a libation. ‘This is the best we’ll come to a funeral feast for Graccus. So I drink to him and may his shade go down to Hades and dwell with heroes, or whatever fate he might best enjoy.’ Unlike Kineas, Graccus had been a devotee of Demeter. Kineas was not an initiate and had no wish to know what fate such men imagined in the afterlife, but he wished the man’s shade well.

Niceas begged the host’s indulgence, and then told a few tales of Graccus’s courage and a comic one of his boastfulness and all the men laughed, the eyes of the farmer’s younger sons shining like silver owls in the firelight. And then they were all telling tales of Graccus and other men who had fallen in the last few years.

Coenus rose and stood with one hand on his hip, and told the story of the fight on the fords of the Euphrates, when twenty of them on a scout caught the tail of Darius’s army in the moonlight. ‘Graccus was the first to take a life,’ he said in the phrasing of the Poet, ‘and a Mede splashed into the river at his feet when he plunged his spear into the man’s neck.’

Laertes told of how Graccus fought a duel with one of the Macedonian officers — on horseback, with javelins. It had made him famous and notorious in a day, and what Kineas best remembered was the time he’d spent averting King Alexander’s wrath. But it made a good story.

Alexander the farmer listened politely and mixed the wine with lots of water like a man who was being well entertained, and his sons sat and drank it all in. The eldest listened like a man being visited by men from another world, but Echo listened like a hungry man watching food.

Finally Agis, the closest they had to a priest, rose and spilled wine on the sand. ‘Some say it is a bitter thing when the bronze bites home, and the darkness falls over your eyes. Some say that death is the end of life, and some say it is the start of something new.’ He raised his cup. ‘But I say that Graccus was courteous and brave; that he feared the gods and died with a spear in his hand. Hard death is the lot of every man and woman born, and Graccus went to his with a song on his lips.’ Agis took a brand from the fire — pitch-filled pine that flared in the wind — and every man there, even the farmer’s sons, took more, and they walked along the beach to the funeral pyre. They sang the hymn to Demeter, and they sang the Paean, and then they flung their torches into the pile. It burst into flame as if a bolt from Zeus had struck it — a good omen.

They watched it burn until the heat drove them back, as well as the smell of roast meat. Then they drank again. Later, they rose from the straw and bowed, the better-born soldiers offering well-turned compliments to the host, and went off to sleep on the straw pallets in their tents. Kineas walked back with Niceas, who had tears running down his face. He had cried quietly for an hour, but the tears were drying now. ‘I can’t remember a symposium I liked so much.’

Kineas nodded. ‘It was kindly done.’

Niceas said, ‘I’ll give him my booty horse in the morning. Let it be from Graccus, for his feast. And thank you, sir, for thinking of him. I was afraid you had forgotten.’

Kineas shook his head. He punched his hyperetes in the shoulder and then embraced him. Other men came and embraced Niceas. Even, hesitantly, Ajax.

In the morning the pyre still smouldered, and the sun rose in splendour, casting a pink and yellow glow across everything before he was halfway over the rim of the world. Kineas heard the phrase ‘rosy-fingered dawn’ a dozen times before he had his horse bridled.

Niceas arranged with young Echo to fetch the hot bones from the pyre when they cooled, and then bury them in the family graveyard.

The column formed quickly and neatly, every packhorse bulging like a pregnant donkey with baskets of grain. Everyone knew their place by now and things happened more quickly — the tent came down fast, cloaks were rolled and stowed, horses fetched in from hobbles. Neither Kineas nor Niceas had to oversee the process. So, rosy fingered dawn had not yet given way to full day before Kineas, mounted, was saluting Alexander in his yard. Niceas had already given him a horse.

It was a pleasure to leave a place with friends left behind.

Niceas looked back as they rode over the first hill. ‘That boy will tend his grave as if he was one of the heroes,’ he said. Tears were running down his cheeks.

‘Better burial than any of us have a right to expect,’ Kineas said, and Niceas made the peasant sign to avert an evil fate.

A stade later, Philokles rode up beside him. ‘Think you’ll ever be that man?’

Kineas grunted. ‘A farmer? Wife? Sons?’

Philokles laughed. ‘Daughters!’

Kineas shook his head. ‘I don’t think I could go back.’

Philokles raised his eyebrows. ‘Why not? Calchus and Isokles would have you in a flash.’

Kineas shook his head. ‘You ask the damnedest questions. Does some god whisper in your ear “go and torment Kineas?”’

Philokles shook his head. ‘You interest me. The Captain. The soldier of renown.’

Kineas sat back on his horse, his ass high on the horse’s rump, and crossed his legs. It gave his thighs a rest at the cost of his behind. ‘Oh, come on. You’re a Spartan. You must have had a great deal of opportunity to plumb the thoughts of soldiers of renown.’

Philokles nodded curtly. ‘Yes.’

Kineas said, ‘So I command what — twelve men? Why me? Soldier of renown. Flatterer. May your words go to Zeus.’

‘But my Spartans would all claim they pined for a farm. So many would say it that it has become the norm to say it — perhaps even to think it. Perhaps I ask you because you are not a Spartan.’

‘Here’s my answer, then. Once, I wanted a farm and a wife. Now, I think I’d die of boredom.’

‘You love war?’

‘Pshaw. I love not-war. I love the preparation and the riding and the scouting and the planning — camaraderie, shared success, all that. The killing part is the price you pay for the not-quite-war part.’

‘Farmers have to plan as well. At least, good farmers do.’

‘Really?’ Kineas raised both his eyebrows in a parody of a tragedian’s look of surprise.

Philokles went on as if Kineas had spoken with genuine surprise. ‘Really. Good farmers plan carefully. Good farmers prepare and scout, their whole farm is like a file of hoplites, all trained to work together. But that’s not for you?’

Kineas shrugged. ‘No.’

Philokles nodded as if to himself, his eyes on the distant hills. ‘Perhaps it is something else.’

Kineas shook his head. ‘Spartan, do you ever talk about the weather? Or about music, athletic events, poetry, women you’ve bedded — any of those things?’

Philokles considered a moment. ‘Not often.’

Kineas laughed. ‘Why exactly are you with us?’ he asked again.

Philokles had begun to fall back along the column. He waved. ‘To learn!’ he shouted.

Kineas cursed and looked around for Ataelus. The Scyth had avoided the beachside symposium, but he was otherwise now comfortable with most of the men, especially Antigonus and Coenus — a former slave and a former nobleman. He had ridden off at the first blush of dawn to scout. Kineas wanted him back. It was time to begin to worry.

Kineas realized that he hadn’t worried about anything in a day, and he thanked the gods for Alexander the farmer again, calling down blessings on the man. And he thought about being a farmer, and he thought of the man’s instant friendliness, and wondered if he should have asked…

Ataelus appeared on the crest of a hill, well to the front, sitting confidently on his Getae horse and waiting for the column to reach him. Already Kineas could recognize him at a distance, just from his posture on the horse, so un-Greek, so relaxed. He might have been asleep.

Closer up, it became plain that he was.

Kineas rode up to him, cantering up the last rise. Ataelus was awake before he reached him, a hand waved in greeting.

‘Have a nice nap?’ Kineas asked.

‘Long ride. Many things. Yes?’

Kineas nodded. ‘What did you see?’

‘For me? I see many things, grass and hills. Also tracks of horses, many running horses. My people. No stinking fuck themselves Getae.’

Kineas felt a frisson of fear. ‘Your people? How recent? When were they here?’

‘Yesterday. Maybe yesterday. Two days if not for rain.’ The Scyth had a poor command of Greek’s complexities with nouns, and he tended to stick to the form he liked, the dative. ‘For rain?’ he said again, as a question.

‘Did it rain? Not yesterday.’ Kineas looked back at the column breasting the slope. ‘Your people — will they harm us?’

Ataelus slapped his chest. ‘Not for me.’ He grinned. ‘To go find them?’

Kineas pointed. ‘You are going to find them? And come back? Back to us?’

Ataelus nodded. ‘Find for them, come back for you.’

Kineas nodded. ‘I want to keep moving.’ He gestured at the column. ‘Keep moving?’

‘Come back for you,’ said Ataelus, still grinning. He waved at the column, turned his horse and rode off, heading north.

Kineas pulled his horse’s head back towards the column and ambled over to Niceas, who was watching the Scyth ride.

‘He’s found some of his own, and he’s going to meet them. Then he’ll come back. At least, that’s what I think he’s saying.’

Niceas swatted a fly with his hand. ‘More like Ataelus? All in a band? That’ll be exciting. Ares wept — mutter a prayer we don’t annoy them. Look at the fucking tracks!’

Kineas’s eyes followed Niceas’s pointing hand. They were riding over the ground that Ataelus must have spotted, a low trough between two hills that had the prints of hundreds of horses, all moving together. He realized that he was holding his breath.

‘Two hundred horses, easy.’ Niceas swatted at the fly pestering his horse’s neck, caught it and crushed it between his fingers, then flung the corpse of the thing from him in disgust. ‘Better hope they’re friendly, Captain.’

They rode the rest of the day without incident, it was a sunny, pleasant day on the plains. Water was sparser than Kineas had expected and with Ataelus gone, he had to use Lykeles as a scout for a camp. He came back late, near dusk.

‘Nothing but the beach,’ he said. ‘There’s a trickle of water coming in — enough to water us and the horses if we don’t foul it. It’s not much. I’ve been fifteen stades.’

Kineas nodded. ‘See any tracks?’

Lykeles nodded. ‘We’re following them, like as not. Next ridge over — it’s like the path to a horse fair.’

It was near dark by the time they dismounted. The tents bloomed immediately; the horses were hobbled close in. Antigonus and Laertes took first watch immediately and stayed mounted.

The slaves collected driftwood on the beach for a fire while Kineas debated with himself. A fire was a clear signal for many miles, especially on the shore of the bay. On the other hand, Ataelus seemed confident that his people were no threat. And yet — Ataelus was a barbarian, for all his qualities.

Nonetheless, Kineas gave Arni the nod and watched him use a steel to raise sparks on charred linen for the fire. On balance, two hundred horses’ worth of bow-wielding Scythians would obliterate them if it came to that, a force so strong compared with his own that it really wasn’t worth worrying about.

As the flames rose, however, he watched them and worried anyway.

Niceas had put him on watch with Ajax at dawn. Ajax didn’t avoid him any more, but he was distant, careful, different from the eager youth of the first mornings. On the other hand, he knew his business now, and he posted himself on a low ridge above the beach without the exchange of a word. Kineas curried the horses. There were twenty-eight of them, a good string for twelve men and three slaves. He curried his charger first and then his riding horse, then Niceas’s horses, and then all the other chargers. Diodorus was up by then. He woke the slaves and roused the fire and then lent a hand to the horses. They were all up, the work done, their cloaks rolled and the baggage loaded before the sun’s chariot was full over the rim of the world. The beach stretched away in a curve for a dozen stades, and Niceas elected to follow it. He wanted to cross a decent stream and get water for the horses. Water was his current worry. He waved to Ajax on the ridge above them, who waved back. Lykeles left the column and rode to join the young man and the pair of them flanked the column as they rode along the beach.

They crossed two tiny rivulets in the sand, too easily fouled by the first horses to reach them. By the third, he was more careful, sending dismounted men to lead their mounts one at a time to drink, digging a pit in the sand for flow and letting it fill. It still wasn’t a good drink. He sent Laertes riding up the beach for water. It felt odd to be so worried when the hillsides were damp between tufts of grass and their flank was covered by the sea, but the smaller horses were already flagging.

Laertes returned at noon. ‘Decent sized river at the bottom of the bay. Plenty of water, fresh as fresh. Lots of hoof marks, too.’

‘Good job.’ Kineas rode back along the column. ‘Right, no lunch, gentlemen. We’ll push through.’

‘There’s another of these little streams in a few stades,’ added Laertes.

‘Hades! We lose time every time and the horses scarcely get a drink worth a mention. Straight through. How many stades to this river?’

‘Twenty. I had a hard ride.’

‘A morning gallop over the sand!’

‘Fair enough, Captain.’ Laertes grinned his characteristic grin and pushed his big straw hat back on his head. ‘You’ll be there by late afternoon at this rate.’

‘Then we’ll camp there.’

Ajax caught his attention, waving his hat from the ridge. Lykeles rode for them flat out, his seat far back on his horse’s rump as she descended the ridge.

‘Company coming,’ Kineas said. His men were at the base of a steep ridge, with the sea at their backs, on jaded horses that needed water. ‘Armour and chargers. Now!’

He swung down from his riding horse and got his helmet and breastplate from bags on a packhorse. Other men and horses nudged him, bumped him — the column was in chaos. He hoped that it would sort itself out.

Lykeles shouted from his left. Kineas had his breast and back plates fastened and was wrestling with the leather cords that padded the crown of his helmet. It was already growing warm from the sun, promising to bake his head in a few minutes.

‘Scythians!’ Lykeles called. ‘Hundreds of them!’

Kineas used his heavy javelin to lever himself up on to his charger. ‘Where’s Ataelus?’

‘No sign of him.’

Kineas got his seat, always difficult in armour, and managed to gain control of both of his reins. Crax appeared out of the dust and picked up his javelins and handed them up.

Kineas pointed to the baggage horse with more javelins. ‘You want to be free?’ he asked. Crax nodded. ‘Take my riding horse, mount it, and take a pair of javelins and form on me. You are now a free man.’

Crax was gone into the dust before he was done speaking.

‘Two ranks on me! Form up!’ Kineas yelled. The beach sand was kicking up with all the activity and he couldn’t see. The damned helmet didn’t help. He folded the cheek pieces back and tipped it up on his head. Lykeles had fallen in and Niceas next to him, and now others were coming up at speed. Crax pulled in behind him, clumsy at keeping in formation like any new man, but a born rider.

Lykeles hadn’t bothered with his helmet. He turned to Crax. ‘Welcome to the Hippeis, boy!’ and to Kineas, ‘You freed him?’

Kineas felt a particular joy on him and the whisper of the god was clear; freeing the boy had been the right act. ‘He made a lousy slave,’ Kineas barked, and all the men laughed.

Ajax finished a headlong flight down the ridge and pulled up on the left of the line. At the top of the ridge there was a rustle of movement and the laughing stopped. Then, in the blink of an eye, the ridge was full of horses and riders, the flash of coloured harnesses and the unmistakable gleam of gold repeated again and again so that the whole host of them glittered in the sun, which also flashed off iron armour and bronze and spear points.

‘Blessed Athena stand with us now in the hour of our need,’ intoned Lykeles at his side.

Niceas cursed, profane and long.

Kineas felt their appearance like a blow. They were more splendid than any Persian cavalry he had ever seen, and better mounted. They made his fourteen riders look poor and cheap.

Too bad, he thought. Better to have died on the boy king’s campaign.

Nonetheless. ‘Silence. Sit at attention. Don’t twitch. Be Greeks!’ Persians had always been impressed by displays of discipline, especially when facing odds. Kineas slammed his helmet down on the crown of his head and the cheek pieces bounced against his cheeks.

Two riders separated themselves from the mass at the top of the hill and began to ride down. A deep-throated trumpet sounded three times and the rest of the mass began to descend the hill at a sedate pace, two horns growing from the flanks and cutting off the beach to north and south while the main body halted well within bowshot.

Kineas thought that it was an impressive manoeuver, especially for barbarians. But he was breathing again, because one of the approaching riders was clearly Ataelus, and the other was almost certainly a woman.

As they crossed the line of the beach, they slowed. Kineas could see that Ataelus’s companion was slim, straight shouldered and wore a pale leather coat with a blue lined design. She also wore a gold neck plate that covered her from her throat to the middle of her chest. Her hair was tied back in two heavy braids. Closer yet and he could see she had dark blue eyes like the sea and heavy black brows that had never been plucked and which gave her a serious look. And she was young.

Kineas turned. ‘Sit here like statues. I think we’re going to live to tell this tale. Niceas, on me.’

Kineas and Niceas rode out on to the soft sand and met the approaching Scythians.

Ataelus raised his hand in greeting and said something to the woman. She was silent. Then she said a few words, like a gentle reminder, it seemed to Kineas.

‘Greetings, Ataelus. These are your people?’ Kineas tried to sound commanding and confident. The woman was looking attentively past him at his little company.

‘No, no. But like for my people. Yes? and she says, “Not for liking not for seeing face. Yes?”’ Ataelus spread his hands wide as if unable to explain the ways of women, or commanders.

Kineas handed his spears to Niceas and took off his helmet. ‘Greetings, mistress,’ he called.

She smiled and nodded her head. She half turned her horse and motioned to the main line of horses. Another rider left the line and approached. While watching the approaching man — woman, Kineas saw now — she spoke softly to Ataelus. It wasn’t a short speech.

Ataelus nodded. Halfway through the flow of words something surprised him and he remonstrated, and in a second the two of them were spitting at each other in the barbarian tongue.

Hermes of travellers! thought Kineas. Whatever she wants, Ataelus!

She stopped spitting and went back to the gentle voice. Ataelus began to nod again. The second woman approached at a trot — the trumpeter. Very Persian. Except that Kineas had heard it whispered..

Ataelus turned back to him. ‘She says “pay tax for riding over my land”.’ He paused. ‘She say “two horses taken from Getae bastards” and she say “half a talent of gold”. And I say “we have nothing for half-talent of gold”. Yes? So she say “for me, gold?” and I say “Kineas for gold”. So give her gold. And two horses. And we friends and make feast and ride in peace.’

So much for the company treasury. ‘Arni? Get the black leather bag from my pack horse and bring it here.’ He pointed at the baggage horses. ‘Ask her if she would like to choose her horses,’ he said.

Ataelus translated. She spoke.

‘She say you choose,’ Ataelus shrugged again.

Kineas rode back to the baggage, took the black bag from Arni and picked the two finest of the Getae horses — Lykeles’ and Andronicus’s. They would have to be refunded from whatever was left in the common store. He led them back on short reins and handed them to the woman, who took them. She put her hand over his for a moment. Her hand was very small compared with his, fine fingered but with heavy joints — from work, he thought. Her hands were rough. She had a heavy gold ring on her thumb and a green stone ring on another finger. Up close, he could see that the blue linear decoration on her leather coat was worked in fine blue hair. The gold cones full of coloured hair that dangled from the seams of her coat made music when she moved. She was wearing a month’s pay for a full company of cavalry. Her horse was excellent — as good as Kineas’s own and that horse had been the charger of a Persian nobleman.

He smiled at her, as one professional to another, as if they shared a joke. She returned it in kind.

He opened the company treasury bag and handed it to her. ‘Tell her that is what we have. Tell her to take what is fair — I am not hiding anything.’

She exclaimed. In fact, it didn’t take any understanding of her barbarian tongue to understand that she was cursing like Niceas. She held up one of the gold brooches and her trumpeter barked something. Ataelus spoke briefly and pointed at Kineas. The Scythian commander looked at him. She took the two brooches and handed him the bag. She spoke directly to him, her eyes on his.

‘She say, “These for us. These stolen. You kill for Getae — good. And more than you owe for tax these two. So come and eat and I give you gift for these.” And she angry, Captain. Angry hard. But not for us. Yes?’ Ataelus sat on his horse, nodding.

Kineas blessed the moment in which some god had sent him the Scyth. Hermes — almost certainly the god of travellers and thieves had sent him the Scyth as a guide, because without him this woman would have killed them all. He could feel it. He could feel the anger rolling off her, making her ugly and hard.

She had a golden whip on her saddle and she waved it at him and spoke again, just a few words, and then whirled and galloped back to her main body with her trumpeter on her heels.

Ataelus shook his head. ‘Pity for Getae bastards,’ he said. ‘Did something fucking stupid. Killed someone — I not knowing for whom. But fucked up, going to die.’

Kineas took a deep breath. ‘You did tell her that we killed the man who was wearing these and scattered his riders?’

‘She not care. Angry and young. Hey! You owe me, Captain!’ Ataelus looked happy.

‘No shit,’ said Niceas, his first words in ten minutes. ‘We all owe you.’

Atelus grinned, showing some bad teeth. He liked being the centre of approbation. ‘Where you camp?’

‘We’re going to camp at the river.’ Kineas pointed down the beach towards the site Lykeles had located.

Other Scyths from the main body were riding down on them. They didn’t seem threatening. In fact, they seemed curious. Two of them rode right up until their ponies were nose to nose with the two Greeks. One of them pointed at Kineas with his whip and called to Ataelus.

‘He say — good horse!’ Ataelus said. Ataelus looked around, turned his horse and looked up the hill. He seemed upset.

Kineas had other things to occupy him. In a few moments the company was surrounded by Scythians riding around their formation, pointing at things. One whooped and suddenly they were all whooping. They galloped off down the beach a stade and came to a halt.

Ataelus rode back over. ‘Gone,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘She say camp and eat but she gone.’ He shook his head. ‘Getae bastards for trouble are. ^’

‘You think she’s going against the Getae right now? Just like that?’ Kineas had his eyes on the other Scythians, about twenty of them, who were waiting down the beach. He looked back at his men and the horses, and he caught a glimpse of his captive, the Getae boy, and an ugly thought came to him. ‘Niceas, get the men moving. In armour. Now. Gentlemen, right along the beach. Ignore the barbarians. I have to bet they won’t make trouble. Hermes, send they do not make trouble.’ The company moved off in double file.

Kineas pulled his charger over to Crax, who was riding his mare. He had to hold the charger hard; his stallion liked the smell of the mare, wrinkled his lips and snorted. ‘Crax, the moment we make camp — I mean it — you get the Getae boy into a tent and stay there. These barbarians…’ He realized that there wasn’t much he could say. The barbarians were after the Getae. He’d just fought them himself. The distinction was likely to be lost on Crax.

But Crax understood. He nodded. ‘The amazon wants blood.’ Just like that.

‘Amazon?’ Kineas asked, astonished at the former slave’s erudition.

‘Amazon. Women who fight.’ Crax looked back at the Getae boy. ‘I’ll protect him.’

‘Don’t make trouble, boy.’ Kineas wished he had time to explain, wished he understood anything about the politics of the plains or where those thrice-damned brooches had originated from. The column was moving. The Scyths were keeping their distance. ‘You are Getae?’ he asked.

Crax glanced at him sideways and spat. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Bastarnae.’

Kineas had heard of the Bastarnae. ‘But you know these people?’ he asked.

Crax shook his head. ‘The Getae are thieves. The Scyths are monsters. They never take slaves, only kill and burn and go. They have magic.’

Kineas rolled his eyes. He wasn’t the only one listening and he heard some comments behind him. ‘Magic — Crax, magic is a story to scare slaves and children.’

Crax nodded. ‘Sure.’ He looked around. ‘They have men…’ He paused, clearly uncertain about what to say. ‘They are horrible. Everyone says so. The Getae are just thieves.’ He looked at Kineas. ‘Am I really free?’

Kineas said, ‘Yes.’

Crax said, ‘I will fight for you. For ever.’

They made camp by the river before the sun had slanted far down the sky. The tents went up quickly after Kineas and Niceas had made the reason plain to everyone, and Crax disappeared with the Getae boy while the Scythians were busy with their own camp. Ataelus didn’t go with them. He picketed his horses with the Greeks and squatted down by the first fire to be lit. Kineas sat by him.

‘Who is she?’ he asked, pointing to the eastern horizon for emphasis.

‘Young, for angry woman?’ Ataelus shrugged. ‘Noble.’ He used a word that usually meant ‘virtuous’ in Greek. Kineas puzzled it out.

‘She’s well born? A queen?’

‘No. Small force. Big tribe. Assagatje. Tens of tens of tens of riders they can put on the plains and still have many for camp, again. They for Ghan — Ghan like king for them. Yes? Ghan of Assagatje big, big man. Has nobles, yes? Three tens of tens, nobles. All Assagatje.’

Kineas took a deep breath. ‘The king of these Assagatje has thousands of warriors and this is just a small band under a noble?’

Ataelus nodded.

‘And she is young and angry and maybe eager to make a name for herself, and she took her troopers and went after the Getae, who are four days ride away?’

‘Getae feel fire tomorrow,’ Ataelus said.

The flatness of his answer gave Kineas a chill. ‘ Tomorrow? That ride took us three days.’

‘Assagatje are Sakje. Sakje ride over grass like north wind for blow, fast and fast and never for rest.’ Ataelus thumped his chest. ‘Me Sakje.’ He thumped his chest. ‘Ride for day. Ride for night. Ride for day again. Sleep for horse. More horse for fight — like Captain, yes?’

Niceas cut in from across the fire. ‘Ares’ balls — so she’s going to hit the Getae tomorrow and come back?’

Ataelus nodded vigorously. He pounded his right fist in his open left hand, making a noise like a sword hitting a body. ‘Hit — yes.’

Kineas and Niceas exchanged a long glance. Kineas said, ‘Right. Up in the last watch, move as soon as there is light in the sky. Everyone not on watch get in your cloak.’

Kineas curled up next to Diodorus, who was not asleep. ‘What are we afraid of? You paid the tax — with our horses, I’ll hasten to add.’

Kineas considered feigning sleep and not replying, sure that every man in the tent was attending to a question only Diodorus could ask him. Finally he said, ‘I don’t know. She was pleasant. Straighter than many an oligarch. But when she saw those damned brooches — I am afraid we’ve started something. And I want to get to Olbia ahead of whatever it is.’

Diodorus whistled softly. ‘You’re the captain,’ he said.

Too right, thought Kineas, and went to sleep.

Artemis, naked, her broad back and narrow waist he so well remembered. He came up behind her, his prick stiff as a board, like something an actor would wear, and she turned and smiled at him over her shoulder, but as she turned she was the Assagatje noblewoman, the gold gorget hiding her breasts, and she spoke words in anger, words that sounded like a snarl, and in each hand she held one of the brooches, and she slammed the pins into her eyes…

He awoke with Diodorus’s hand over his mouth. ‘You were screaming, ’ Diodorus said.

Kineas lay and shook. He knew he had stronger dreams than other men, and he knew the gods sent them, but they often disturbed him nonetheless.

When the fit passed, he rose, took his own silver cup from a bag and poured wine into it from his own flagon, walked well down the beach and poured the whole cup into the sea as a libation, and he prayed.