Authors: Christian Cameron
Tyrant (38 page)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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