Satyrus grinned, despite his nerves.
The hoof beats were getting closer.
‘Ares and Aphrodite,’ Coenus muttered. ‘They’re on us.’ He turned his horse and drew his sword one-handed, a crook-bladed kopis.
Two men on ponies cantered around the bend in the road. They were barbarians and their horses were painted red. One raised a bow and shot, despite the range. His arrow fell short. They pressed their horses into a gallop and both loosed arrows together.
Satyrus ran off the road into the trees. He was unarmed and nothing but a target, and he was scared. Coenus sat still in the middle of the road. He looked tired and angry. He glanced once at Satyrus, and then put his knees to his horse and she responded with a leap into a canter.
The next two arrows flew over his head.
Behind the screen of trees, Satyrus could see his sister on Bion, the Sakje horse flying along the broken ground at the edge of the water and then leaping the stream like a deer.
Philokles emerged from the cover of the oaks with their horses in his fist. ‘Satyrus!’ he called.
Satyrus ran out on to the road and sprinted for his tutor.
Coenus’s horse took an arrow and gave a shrill cry and then plunged into one of his attackers, and Coenus’s arm went up in the classic overarm cut and came down like an axe cutting wood, and the unarmoured man was literally cut from the saddle, the blade ripping from the curve of his neck all the way into his breast, but the blow was too strong and the horses were moving too fast and Coenus lost his blade. He tried to turn his horse, but the mare was spent from a long gallop and wounded, and she didn’t want to turn.
Coenus’s other assailant had troubles of his own, as he’d kept his bow to hand too long and had dropped an arrow in the road. He froze in indecision as Coenus flashed past him, and he never saw the arrow that took him in the belly.
Satyrus ignored Philokles and vaulted on to Thalassa’s back. His tutor was screaming at him to run. He ignored the Spartan and turned his horse down the road to where Coenus’s horse was in the process of collapse, exhaustion and wounds having done her in. His sister’s arrow had saved Coenus, and the Sauromatae warrior sat his horse in the middle of the road, both hands wrapped around the shaft of the arrow, screaming in agony and yet still mounted.
More Sauromatae came around the curve at the far end of the valley, drawn by the screams.
‘Satyrus, run!’ Philokles shouted again.
Satyrus had a secure seat. Thalassa moved under him, and he reached down and secured his gorytos and tied the girdle around his waist as he rode. He tried to ignore the shaking of his hands. He couldn’t hear anything but the beat of his horse’s hooves like the thudding of his heart, and he had a lump of bronze at the base of his throat. He was afraid.
Melitta was not afraid. She was on the road, fitting an arrow to her bow. She shot, and the men on the road moved, most of them pushing their horses to the verge or even in among the trees.
Satyrus didn’t draw his bow. Instead, he used his knees to line Thalassa up with Coenus, who was kneeling in the road.
‘Coenus!’ he yelled. His voice was shrill but it carried, and his father’s friend looked up. Then his face changed as if he was making a hard decision – and he stood up, clutching his side.
Melitta shot again. She had a light bow, and now that the surprise of her having a bow at all was lost, the Sauromatae were shooting back – strong men with men’s bows. She backed her horse down the road. She shot again, arching her back as she shot to get the most from her bow.
Satyrus reached down and held an arm out to Coenus. The pain showed like a scar on the big man’s face, and his lips were more white than red, and it was close – no matter how heroic, a twelve-year-old cannot haul a warrior on to the back of a charger. But Coenus found the strength from somewhere and got a leg over, almost tumbling his saviour on to the road, and then Thalassa sensed some change of weight and she was turning, moving away.
Philokles was up on Hermes, with the coach behind him. As soon as he saw his students in retreat, he turned his own horse and pressed him to a gallop, and they were away down the road.
The five of them galloped back along the river road for two stades without slowing, until Bion picked up a stone in his hoof and Melitta had to pick it clear as the men watched the road behind them. Thalassa never flagged, nor did her head go down at the halt. Instead, she looked around, as if aware that fighting was next. Then she raised her head higher, straining at the reins, and gave a cry.
Satyrus had a pounding head and the weight of a grown man who was in pain on his back, and Thalassa’s fidgets were nothing but increased complication until he realized what she was seeing.
‘By the Father of the Gods,’ he said, pointing.
Coenus, slumped in agony, raised his head. ‘Oh, Gods,’ he said, and his head went down again.
Philokles held up a hand. ‘Hoof beats!’ he said.
Melitta vaulted on to Bion’s back. She had her bow in her hand in a moment.
There was a column of smoke rising to the west – from the town. Melitta watched it the way a child watches the death of a loved one – unable to take her eyes away.
Satyrus felt the strength of the fight – the daimon, some men called it – leave his limbs, and he felt as weak as he had when Theron hit him in the palaestra. ‘Perhaps it is just a house fire,’ he said, but he didn’t believe his own words.
Melitta’s voice broke as she spoke, but no tears came. ‘Raiders,’ she said. ‘The ships I saw!’
Philokles didn’t sound drunk when he spoke. ‘We must get across the river,’ he said.
There were Sauromatae riders coming around the last bend. They were approaching carefully this time, and there were a dozen of them.
‘We should take refuge in the shrine,’ Melitta said.
Philokles was watching the riders. ‘This – this was planned.’ He shook his head. ‘There will be no refuge in temples, children. All these men have come to kill you.’
Satyrus sucked in a breath.
Melitta sat straighter. ‘Well,’ she said, and her eyes were bright with unshed tears, ‘we will have to give them a surprise then.’
Satyrus wished that he’d said such a thing.
‘That’s the spirit,’ Philokles said. He got down from his horse and stood bare-handed on the ground. ‘Can you children shoot one of the riders as close to me as possible? I need a spear.’
Theron looked around at them. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
The riders were nocking arrows.
‘Walk away,’ Philokles said to Theron, who remained on the horse they had shared. ‘Leave us and live.’
Theron shook his head. ‘You three are going to fight all those horsemen? ’ He grinned. He looked from one to another, his grin growing, and he slid from his horse. ‘I’m in.’
Satyrus had to smile at the athlete’s declaration. He drew his own bow and struggled to string it with the weight of Coenus hanging on his back.
Theron reached up and took the wounded man. He set him gently on the ground.
Philokles went down on both knees in the road, picked up a handful of dust and rubbed it in his hair. He raised his arms. ‘Furies!’ he cried. ‘Those who guard the most sacred of oaths! I must break my vow.’
Theron looked at Satyrus. ‘What vow?’ he asked.
Melitta was watching the horsemen. ‘Mother says he vowed never to draw the blood of another man,’ she said. ‘Watch out!’
Satyrus got his bow strung and fitted an arrow as the first dozen came from their foes. There were too many arrows to avoid, and his heart almost stopped in terror as the flight came in. Time stretched as the arrows fell, and then they were past.
None of the arrows hit a target. Now he was down low on Thalassa’s neck and Melitta was with him, the two horses kicking up dust as they sped right at the Sauromatae, and again he could hear nothing but Thalassa’s hoof beats. This was a sport the children knew, although they ha
d never played it for real. They left their tutor kneeling in the road, looking like a fool or a mime in a play.
The Sauromatae were not good archers. They had slim bows of wood and not the recurved bows backed in sinew and horn that the Sakje used, and they relied too much on their spears and armour up close, or so Satyrus’s mother said. All her comments floated through his brain as Thalassa’s hooves pounded along the grass at the verge of the road, a slow rhythm that marked out what might be the last moments of his life.
Melitta, the better archer of the twins, loosed her first arrow and turned away, guiding Bion with her knees as the big gelding curved away to the right.
Satyrus held his course until he saw the Sauromatae raise their bows, and then he loosed – a clumsy shot, wrecked by speed and fear, so that the arrow went high and was lost. But he was close enough that his shot had the same effect on some of the Sauromatae.
Not all, though. Thalassa lost the flow of her gallop as he turned her, and the rhythm of her run changed. When he looked back, she had an arrow in her rump.
He turned her back, head on to their enemies and now, suddenly, close. He had an arrow on the string, the horn nock sliding home between his fingers, fear a few yards behind him but catching up – they were big men, and the closest one had a ferocious grin. He had dropped his bow in favour of a long spear.
‘Artemis!’ the boy shouted, more a shriek of fear than a war cry, and loosed. He couldn’t breathe, almost couldn’t keep his knees tight on Thalassa’s broad back. He was so afraid.
His arrow knew no fear. The man with the grin took the arrow in the middle of his torso, right through his rawhide armour. He went down over his horse’s rump, and Satyrus could breathe. He leaned hard to the left and Thalassa was still there for him, skimming the ground in great strides and yet managing to turn away from the barbarians. The man he’d hit screamed soundlessly, his mouth round and red and his rotting teeth black, and all Satyrus could hear were hoof beats.
Satyrus reached across his body for an arrow, half drew one and dropped it. He felt for another. One more, he thought. I’ll shoot one more and that will be enough. He got the fletching of another arrow in his fingers and pulled the arrow clear. He leaned back, got the arrow on the bow and the nock on the string and put his charger’s head back at the enemy.
Another one was down, and a third man was clutching an arrow in his bicep and screaming – rage and fear and pain all together as a pair of children flayed his raiding party. But the flow of the fight had carried the Sauromatae up the road, almost to where Coenus lay in the grass and Philokles knelt. The Sauromatae ignored them.
Thalassa missed another stride and almost went down. She slowed sharply.
I’m dead, Satyrus thought. He rose on his knees and shot the way Ataelus the Sakje taught, from the top of his mount’s rhythm. His arrow went deep into the gut of a young Sauromatae. He drew another arrow as they turned towards him. He had started on a better horse, but she was tired and old and had carried a heavy burden for several stades, and despite her heart she couldn’t keep the pace for ever.
Lita shot again. They were ignoring her, and she shot the horse of a man near Coenus so that the man was thrown right over his horse’s head. He rolled once in the road and tried to get up.
Satyrus shot at a man in red with a golden helmet, and the arrow glanced off the man’s scale cuirass of bronze.
Philokles rose from his knees. He stepped up to the man who had just been thrown by his wounded horse. Philokles killed him with a vicious kick to the neck. The man’s spine snapped and the sound carried across the vale. Then Philokles bent and picked up the man’s long spear.
The action on the road and the snap of their comrade’s spine drew attention away from Satyrus. The second of hesitation saved his life, and Thalassa powered through a gap in the circle closing around him and he shot one man from so close that he could see every detail of the shock of pain that hit him, could see the spray of sweat from the man’s hair as his head whipped around and the burgeoning fountain of blood emerging from the man’s throat where the arrow had gone in.
Tyche. The best shot of his life. He turned Thalassa again, ready for her heart to give out in the next stride, but while she was moving he was alive. He made for the road, because the flow of the battle had left it the emptiest part of the battlefield.
Melitta shot again, and missed, but he watched them dart away from the point of her aim, gaining him another few strides.
Thalassa crossed the road close to Philokles. Dust and sweat streaked the Spartan’s face like an actor’s mask of tragedy. Satyrus twisted in his seat and shot straight back and missed the man behind him, even though the range was just a few horse-lengths. But in his peripheral vision he saw the man duck, and then saw Philokles rip him from his horse with a spear point through the face, gaffing his jaw the way Maeotae farmers took the big salmon.
Philokles’ kill broke the Sauromatae. It was not just that they were taking heavy casualties – it was the manner in which Philokles’ victim died, his head almost ripped from his body. The other Sauromatae flinched away, abandoning their wounded, and galloped off down the road.
In heartbeats, the drone of the spring insects and the calls of a raven were the only sounds to be heard over the panting of men and beasts and the murmuring of a wounded Sauromatae boy with an arrow in his guts, calling for his mother. Satyrus thought that it would have been nice not to understand his thick Sakje. It might have been nice to think that the boy, just a few summers older than Lita, might live, but no one lived with an arrow in the guts.
I did that, he thought.
‘We have to get across the river,’ Philokles said, as if nothing had happened.
‘Please motherohpleaseohhhhh,’ said the boy in the tall grass.
It wasn’t a boy. Satyrus was close enough to know that his target was a maiden archer, one of their young women. ‘Please! Ohmotherohhh-’ she said.
Satyrus looked away, afraid of what the girl in the grass meant about life and death, afraid of himself. Thalassa trembled between his thighs. He raised his eyes and met Philokles’ look.
‘Please! ’ the girl begged.
‘War is glorious,’ Philokles said. ‘Do you want me to kill her? Another death will hardly add to the stain on my soul.’ His voice was without tone – the voice of a god, or a madman.
Satyrus looked at his sister. She was retching in the grass, her head down. Bion was wrinkling his lips in equine distaste.
‘They’re forming up for another try,’ Theron observed. He was looting the downed Sauromatae. He had a sword, a back-curved Greek kopis.
Satyrus drew an arrow from his quiver and rode over to the girl. She was rocking back and forth, arms crossed over the blood. Her face was white and her hair was full of sweat and dust. She had some gold plaques on her clothes. Somebody’s daughter. This close, she didn’t look any older than he was. Take her quickly, huntress, he thought.
He was curiously far away, watching himself prepare to kill a helpless girl his own age, and his hands didn’t tremble much. The range was close.
He shot her.
He meant the arrow to go into her brain, but the shaking of his hands or the flexing of the shaft put it in her mouth. She shuddered, and made a choking sound, and then vomited blood like the fish.
Like the fish.
Her whole body spasmed again, and then she lay still. He watched her soul leave her body, watched her eyes become the eyes of a corpse.
It was like being hit in the head by Theron. He couldn’t see much. He sat on his horse, and he heard the Sauromatae charge, and he heard his name called, but he couldn’t control his limbs. So he sat and watched the dead girl.
Time was an odd thing, because this time yesterday she had been alive, but she would never be alive again.
Philokles shouted his name.
Lita shouted his name.
And then there was just the grass in the breeze, and the sound of the insects, and the ravens
calling.
‘You with us, boy?’ Philokles asked. He poured a mouthful of wine into his mouth.
Satyrus spluttered and shook and swallowed some the wine the wrong way.
They were still in the fields by the road, and Satyrus was lying on the ground. His head hurt, but he didn’t have a wound on him. ‘What happened?’
Theron’s face appeared. ‘You killed the girl. Then you fainted.’ Theron’s sword arm was red to the elbow.
For the second time that day, Satyrus tried to get to his feet and threw up instead. He lay back and Theron gave him another mouthful of Philokles’ wine, while the Spartan collected horses and gear with Melitta.
‘Can you ride?’ he asked when he came back.
‘I’m sorry,’ Satyrus said. He was deeply ashamed.
‘Never mind sorry, boy. Can you ride?’ Philokles held his shoulders.
Satyrus nodded and sat up slowly.
Thalassa was bareback now. The arrow was gone from her rump.
‘We have a lot of horses now,’ Philokles said.
‘Ares,’ Satyrus said. ‘You killed them all?’
‘No,’ Philokles said. ‘Everyone helped.’
Theron grinned, and then put his smile away as no one else seemed to think that winning the fight was something to be happy about.
‘There’ll be more, almost immediately. We have to get across the river,’ Philokles said. ‘All these people – they’re Upazan’s people. The man in the gold helmet had his badge, the antlers.’ He shook his head, clearly leaving some thought unspoken. ‘Get mounted.’
Satyrus had never heard Philokles sound like this. He knew that it was because he had shown fear, had fainted. He got on to a dead man’s horse and hung his head, hot tears burning in his eyes.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry too, boy,’ Philokles said. ‘We’ll have to swim the river. Thalassa probably won’t make it.’
Coenus gave a groan. He was tied roughly to a Sauromatae pony, and the red war paint was staining his chiton. ‘Leave me,’ he said.
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