Funeral Games t-3

by Christian Cameron

  ‘Hama?’

  ‘Shush, lord,’ was his reply. ‘Listen for the trumpet!’

  Melitta could see the length of the main avenue of the camp, and there were Saka coming in her direction. She hesitated as long as it took to push her bow deep in her gorytos, and then she was riding towards them at a smart trot, her male burden bouncing like a sack of potatoes.

  ‘This is embarrassing,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t talk,’ she replied. ‘Look terrified.’

  She rode right at the lead group of Saka – four men and a deeply tanned elder. She raised her whip and called one word in Saka.

  ‘Mine!’ she said, pointing at the boy across her lap. The elder smiled.

  She rode past them without a challenge – she rode the length of the street without so much as a question. At the far end, the avenue was plugged with a roiling mass of Saka who couldn’t decide what to loot first. She pushed forward, her boots rubbing against their boots.

  ‘The red and yellow tent!!’ she called. ‘Gold and silver!’ Her Sakje had the western accent, but that didn’t bother anyone. She turned and pointed her whip. ‘All the way through the market, cousins!’

  ‘Thanks, little bride!’ shouted a warrior with tattoos of dragons twined up his arms. Sauromatae warrior maidens were often called ‘little brides’ because in war they earned the right to choose their husbands. Voices laughed, but again no one raised a hand against her – much the opposite. Men moved their horses to let her pass, and she left the crush with nothing bruised but her feet. Once free of the press, she urged Bion to a trot and then a canter, and when she was beyond the rows of cook fires, dangerous pits in the murk, she gave the big gelding his head and his legs opened into a long gallop that ate the ground.

  ‘It’s like flying!’ the boy at her back said. ‘Are you really a Saka?’

  ‘I’m Assagatje. My mother is the queen of the Assagatje. Of course, she’s not really a queen. Sakje really don’t…’ She was babbling. She cut herself off. He was very warm, pressed against her back, and calm, in a way she liked. Solid, like her brother. ‘My mother is Srayanka,’ she said.

  ‘I’m Herakles,’ he said. ‘My mother is Banugul, and my father was a god.’

  ‘Banugul?’ she said. ‘That’s good. It’s nice to know I rescued the right boy. Try to move your hips – it’s easier on the horse.’

  The gully was just beyond the bluff on her left – she could see the loom of the bluff passing her shoulder, and she began to swing the horse wide to the right to avoid the inevitable calamity. The ground changed and she slowed Bion and pulled his head ever further to the west as she felt the horse’s weight change. She was riding right along the edge of the gully.

  She was just picking her way south again when she was challenged.

  ‘Who are you?’ called a voice with more fear than authority.

  She could see riders, and carts. ‘Melitta of Tanais,’ she called. ‘With Herakles.’

  Women gathered around her.

  ‘What the fuck?’ Crax croaked. The dust was not subsiding. They’d been an hour in one place, just a stade from where they’d shredded the enemy phalanx. For no reason that they understood, they were waiting near their starting position in the battle line of the early morning. Diodorus had ordered the halt and told men to dismount and other men to get out and scout, and then he’d left Crax in charge and ridden off with Hama. Stragglers wandered in, both their own and other mercenary cavalrymen who’d been in Diodorus’s command, or Philip’s, when the day began.

  Dismounted men prowled the ground around them stripping the enemy dead of loot – and water. Other parties searched the salt flats for their dead, and buried them. A young trooper from Olbia went down with heat sickness and suddenly the phylarchs were everywhere, demanding that men empty their canteens.

  Andronicus spoke up to Crax. ‘The horses won’t last much longer,’ he said.

  Satyrus wondered what his eyes looked like. All the men around him had the eyes of mourners – red-rimmed, red-creased, with red blood in the corners. The salt was vicious. He wiped his eyes on his arm again and felt the burn on his eyelids and his hands and winced.

  ‘Did we win?’ he asked the man next to him.

  ‘We won, son. That doesn’t mean the whole army won,’ the man cackled. ‘Got any water?’

  ‘No,’ Satyrus admitted.

  ‘I do,’ he said. ‘Cleitus,’ he said, extending an arm.

  ‘Satyrus,’ he answered, clasping the man’s hand. He felt like a grown man.

  The other man offered his water and Satyrus took a swig, and then another before he could stop himself. He handed it back. There was wine in the man’s water – it tasted divine, as if Dionysus had blessed it himself.

  ‘We’ve found most of our dead, and buried them,’ he said. ‘We didn’t need to ask for a truce to do it, either. In my book, that’s a victory.’

  ‘We plundered their dead, too,’ another man said.

  ‘Here comes the strategos,’ Crax called. ‘Stand by your mount!’

  Diodorus came up in a new cloud of salt. ‘Call in the scouts, hyperetai. Satyrus, on me. Everyone not actually doing anything, get the fuck off your mount now.’ He turned to Crax. ‘Report!’

  ‘Most of second troop is in, but not Eumenes,’ Crax said. ‘He vanished in the first melee. Otherwise, we’ve buried our dead.’

  Diodorus shook his head. ‘He’s been with us since we started,’ he said. ‘Well, almost.’ He looked around. ‘Not finding his body is hard.’

  Crax nodded. ‘Since the first winter in Olbia,’ he said. ‘Maybe he’ll turn up. Anyway, otherwise second is down seventeen. We’re down nine, and first is down thirteen. Third is nowhere to be found, and I swept all the way back to where we hit the Medes in the first hour.’ The Getae officer looked around. The hyperetai of all three troops were shepherding the dismounted men into a column, every man leading his horse. Beyond them, the phalanx was seething as if it was still in combat, and the settling salt dust revealed an angry agitation.

  Crax pointed at the activity. ‘This looks bad,’ he said. ‘How bad is it? Did we lose?’

  ‘Rally point,’ Diodorus said tersely. ‘And we walk to save the horses. It’s bad.’

  Crax looked back again. Men in the phalanx were shaking their fists and cursing at each other. ‘How bad?’ he asked.

  ‘The Macedonian fucks just handed Eumenes to One-Eye. Alive,’ Diodorus said bitterly. ‘I was too late to stop them, the treasonous cunts.’

  There were shouts from the phalanx behind them, and then more shouts, and an ugly murmur.

  ‘Just keep moving, boys,’ Diodorus said. ‘March!’

  Crax shook his head. ‘How can such men make their peace with the gods?’ he asked.

  Diodorus shook his head. ‘Antigonus took our camp,’ he said. ‘The Argyraspids traded Eumenes for their loot from years past. Can you imagine?’ He went on, ‘If they’d stood their ground, we could have had it back at spear point in the morning. That army was beaten. Listen – every man in our phalanx knows that they’ve been robbed.’

  Crax swore expressively in Getae.

  Diodorus walked silently, and Satyrus kept his head down to avoid being sent away.

  The column of troops set off. They were short of men, missing or dead, but they had also collected several dozen cavalry stragglers and Crax formed them into a fourth troop. Many of them protested against walking in the salt dust, and a few mounted their horses and rode away in disgust, refusing to accept discipline that they felt was foolish. The rest obeyed, obviously glad to have someone to follow, another lesson that was not lost on Satyrus, although he was now so tired that he couldn’t remember what he had done or the order in which it had happened or whether he had been brave or cowardly, but only that he was alive.

  Word of the betrayal of Eumenes the Cardian by his own officers began to filter down the column, so that men shook their heads or cursed.

  The sun was well down in the sky,
and Satyrus couldn’t account for all the hours of the day.

  Next to Satyrus, his uncle gathered his officers and issued orders as he walked.

  ‘When we get to the gully, water the horses by troop, fast as you can. Crax, you cover us while we water. Then we retire past the gully in column till we find the girls, and camp. Every man grooms his mount before he sleeps – we’ll fight again tomorrow. And we’ve lost all our remounts. This is what we have.’

  ‘Lost our remounts!’ Antigonus said. ‘Zeus Soter, strategos. That’s bad.’

  ‘Worse than you think, brother,’ Diodorus spat. ‘Don’t let anyone stop. Don’t let anyone fall out. Use force if you have to – we can’t spare a man, even the lost sheep back there. Understand?’

  The hyperetai and the troop commanders all nodded, saluted and walked back to their places in the column, and a litany of ‘Close up!’ and ‘Move your arse!’ started to roll up and down the small column.

  ‘Uncle Diodorus?’ Satyrus asked quietly.

  The strategos turned his head and raised one salt-crusted eyebrow.

  ‘Did we win?’ Satyrus asked.

  Diodorus shook his head. ‘I don’t think we won enough,’ he said.

  The stream at the bottom of the gully flowed clear and bright despite the events of the day, and Satyrus and his new bay drank greedily. Satyrus washed his face and hands in the crisp water and found that the burns around his eyes were far worse than he’d expected, and he poured handfuls of water over his eyes until a Keltoi trooper pulled him firmly from the stream. He collected the reins of his mare and led her up the far bank of the watercourse.

  ‘That horse looks like she has some life in her,’ Diodorus said. He had a fig in his fist and was eating it. Between bites, he gave orders. ‘Boy, take that nice horse and go and find the baggage. Should be less than a stade, over the ridge. Then double back and tell us where they are.’

  Satyrus took two tries to get himself up on the big mare’s back – his arms were too weak to vault. But he got up, and he pleased himself immensely by giving his uncle a salute. Then he pulled his broad felt petasos hat off his back where it had rested uselessly all day while his face burned raw and pulled it down over his eyes.

  The water made a difference. He set his mare at the slope and she got up it with style, her haunches pushing powerfully as they climbed. He patted her neck. ‘Good girl,’ he said.

  All her tack was mounted in silver, with silver belt ends and Saka-style buckles. The Greeks seldom used buckles, but they looked wonderful. And the leopard skin made him smile.

  As soon as he emerged from the gully end he was in the midst of a horde of camp followers, and there were more all along the trade road going south, hundreds of women, some with children, many crying and more walking in a worse silence. They shied off the road as soon as they saw an armed man, except for a few too tired or too victimized to flinch.

  A stade past the eastern end of the gully, he saw pickets – a dozen cavalrymen in three posts. He rode towards them, urging his mount into a canter. She responded easily, crossing the low scrub grass like the wind – the very wind that was dispersing the clouds of salt dust, so that for the first time in eight hours, the Plain of Gabiene was again visible.

  Satyrus rode up the ridge to see Tasda, a Tanais-Kelt he’d known all his life, greeting him from the picket.

  ‘Tasda!’ he called, and his voice cracked. He clasped hands with the man, who removed his helmet.

  ‘Your sister will rejoice,’ Tasda said soberly. ‘Keep going over the ridge. We have a laager.’

  ‘Is Antigonus here?’ Satyrus asked.

  ‘And Eumenes – our Eumenes, that is. We’re all that’s left of our cavalry,’ Tasda said soberly.

  Satyrus grinned through his fatigue. ‘Diodorus and the rest are right behind me!’ he said, and all the pickets turned their heads, and Dercorix, another childhood acquaintance, came trotting over.

  ‘The strategos lives?’ he called.

  ‘I’ll be back,’ Satyrus said, and turned his horse down the hill.

  In a quarter of an hour, they were all together. The officers strained their voices and their authority to keep men from embracing their women and their comrades, and despite the trials of the day, the hippeis got enough eudaimonia from the discovery of their missing comrades to get their horses groomed and their tack stowed before they collapsed to lie sprawled on the ground and be fed by their equally exhausted slaves and followers.

  Satyrus and Melitta embraced while Theron berated them.

  They ignored him. ‘I rescued this prince Herakles,’ Melitta said proudly, indicating a blond boy smaller than Satyrus who stood behind her. ‘The son of Iskander, no less!’

  Satyrus grinned and hugged her again. ‘I didn’t manage anything so heroic,’ he said. ‘But I got to ride in a cavalry charge!’ He looked around. ‘Where’s Philokles?’

  Theron spat. ‘Sitting with the women, basking in admiration,’ he said. ‘You are all insane.’

  Satyrus couldn’t stop smiling, although he found that he was sitting and couldn’t get up. ‘You came with us of your own free will,’ he said.

  Theron shook his head. ‘So I did,’ he said.

  Melitta tugged his arm. ‘Come and meet Herakles,’ she said. ‘I like him.’

  Just for a moment, Satyrus was jealous. He had never heard his sister like anyone with such fervour. ‘He can’t be much if you had to rescue him,’ Satyrus said.

  Melitta gave him a look that indicated that he didn’t know much. ‘He was as smart as you,’ she said. ‘He didn’t lose his head.’

  Satyrus was mollified by the comparison. He hugged his sister again. ‘Zeus, that was stupid, sister. What possessed us?’

  ‘The oath, silly,’ she replied. ‘We swore, right? So every time we have the ability, we have to fight.’

  They came to Herakles, standing alone and self-conscious. He was a tall boy, blond like his father, but gawky, his features too sharp and his shoulders too narrow to be the child of a god. Some of the Olbian veterans were watching him, a few staring openly. He was, after all, Alexander’s son.

  ‘I hate being stared at by common people,’ Herakles said.

  Satyrus felt an immediate contrariness for this awkward boy – an unfair dislike. He succumbed to it anyway, as he was tired and beginning to lose the daimon of war and to feel the collapse that followed. ‘No common people here,’ he said. ‘That big man staring at you is Carlus. He was my father’s bodyguard when he defeated your father at the Jaxartes River.’

  ‘My father was never defeated,’ Herakles responded hotly.

  ‘Have you ever met anyone who was there?’ Satyrus asked with lazy contempt. ‘Shall we ask Diodorus? Hama?’ He put a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

  ‘My father is a god!’ Herakles said. ‘You are just a decadent Greek.’

  Something about the boy’s defiance made Satyrus smile. ‘Hey – Herakles. It’s okay. We’re alive and a lot of people aren’t. Assassins didn’t get us. Relax!’

  Herakles looked around. ‘Why won’t my mother let me in the tent?’ he asked. ‘I hate it when she does this.’

  Melitta rolled her eyes behind her new friend’s back, and Satyrus shook his head. ‘Let’s go and get some kykeon,’ he said, taking the boy by the shoulder and leading him away. Melitta shot him a look of thanks, and he shook his head.

  It was odd, having a younger boy to support, because Satyrus’s feeling of disorientation vanished when he had to lead the boy. He walked straight up to Crax, who was surrounded by soldiers, and asked where he should put his blanket roll and whether he and the boy could get some food, and Crax dealt with him as if he was any other soldier.

  ‘Do I look like a hyperetes?’ Crax said. Then he scratched his dusty blond beard and relented. ‘Your baggage and your sister’s is in first troop’s row. There’s wine and salt-fish stew at the head of every street.’ He grinned. ‘Your Aunt Sappho did well for us.’

  Satyrus walked dow
n the rows of blanket rolls and packs that littered the ‘street’ (there were no tents) of his troop. He felt like a man. He found his sister’s red wool pack and then his own, opened his leather bag and removed the carefully wrapped gold cups. He also pulled out a wooden plate and a horn spoon.

  ‘Let’s eat,’ he said, walking back towards the head of the camp.

  All around him, men were eating and then going straight to sleep in the evening sun. There was little talk and less laughter. Most men prayed, and many libations were poured in the white sand by men who had felt the hand of a god keeping them alive.

  ‘Why are they so quiet?’ Herakles asked suddenly. ‘Soldiers are usually so – boisterous.’

  Satyrus looked at the other boy and felt old. ‘They fought a battle,’ he said. ‘You did too, or so my sister says.’ He looked at Melitta, who was walking with them, being silent and a little gawky – not herself at all. ‘Nobody feels like talking after a battle. Right?’

  ‘I do,’ Herakles said. ‘I never get to talk to anybody,’ he said. ‘And I didn’t get to do anything. Your sister rescued me.’

  Melitta was starting to look uncomfortable. ‘You helped,’ she said. ‘You didn’t lose your nerve.’

  ‘My father would have killed them all and laughed,’ Herakles said miserably.

  ‘You need food,’ Satyrus said, trying to sound commanding. He scooped his wooden bowl full of kykeon, a rich porridge of soft cheese, barley meal and, in this case, wine. ‘Eat!’

  Philokles walked up to the fire, filled his bowl and sat down. ‘Good evening,’ he said formally.

  ‘Good evening,’ Satyrus replied. He was a little shy of the Spartan, aware that he was guilty of gross disobedience.

  ‘The Lady Banugul is concerned for her son,’ Philokles said. ‘Herakles, you should go to her.’

  ‘She told me to leave the tent,’ Herakles said, between spoons of porridge.

  ‘She has just been made a widow,’ Philokles said. ‘Your stepfather-’

  ‘I have no stepfather. My father is Alexander, the God. My mother should never touch another man.’ Herakles spat the phrases as if he had learned them by rote.