The only tributes arriving in Mycenae today were those from smaller villages: pack ponies laden with grain, or dried grapes, and flocks of bleating sheep or goats. The kings themselves would present the grander tributes from the larger villages and towns in person: incense, and myrtle oil, jasmine essence, amphorae of dyes, bags of garnets and turquoise, bars of gold or silver, to be worked by Mycenaean craftsmen, as well as the bales of wool and balls of flax that Mycenae needed to support its trading empire.
It was almost midday by the time Nikko had finished his morning practice, and strolled down through the Lion Gate. He had thought to pick up a new mat to warm his feet when he got out of bed, to replace one that he’d spilled food on. All the goods of the worksheds were free for those who had the High King’s favour.
But somehow, once outside the walls, the wind seemed to call him. It smelled of sea and mountains, scents of freedom, pushing away the stale stench of wet hides and the wool vats of urine used to soak away the lanolin.
He wanted to be out there, away from the odours of the city. Suddenly he realised how much he missed the adventure of an embassy this year. Two years without a break from city life…
Impossible to go far, not when the King might call them to dance at any time. But at least this afternoon he could ride away from the city. For a moment he felt a pang of guilt. Thetis would never be allowed to ride. Whatever she got up to, peering out of the shadows of Mycenae, she would never have even the limited freedom to ride away for an afternoon.
Once, years before, he thought he had seen a small form creeping across the palace roof. When he looked again it had gone.
He never asked Thetis if it had been her.
The horse pens were far down the hill, well past the collection of businesses that either took up too much room or stank too much to be housed inside the city walls. Nikko jogged quickly past the wool sheds, with their bales of sheep and goat fleece, the barrels of flax leaves and nettles soaking till the greenery rotted off, leaving the thick fibres to be spun into thread, and woven into the finest cloth around the Circle Seas.
Inside the sheds the women carded wool, or spun or wove it into cloth, the youngest glancing hopefully at the young man outside, who might take a fancy to them, and give them freedom from their work.
Thetis might have been in there, he thought grimly. It was a relief to pass the wool sheds and get to the perfume-makers’ quarters and their piles of petals rotting in the sun, their scent stolen for the perfume flasks of the city. At least none of the perfume workers stared at him with desperation; you needed both skill and talent to be a perfume blender, and the profession was usually passed down from father to son.
The sculptors’ quarters were next: hard-trodden ground thick with stone dust; and the sheds of the bronze casters, red with glowing forges, the men in leathers to keep off the sparks. Finally, beyond the sheds, were the pens for sheep, goats and oxen to feed the palace and its city, and the big cages made of supple branches bent to stop the sparrows, pheasants, quail and other birds flying free, before they too were plucked and skewered for the city’s tables.
Nikko instinctively avoided the cages. The birds beat their wings against the bars as they gazed at the sky above.
The air grew fresher by the time he reached the horse paddocks with their brushwood fences and the small pack ponies grazing well apart from the big long-legged horses. The houses here were stone, not wood, well kept and comfortable, as befitted the men who cared for the High King’s horses.
The ground trembled as Nikko knocked on the horsemaster’s door, so slightly he wasn’t even sure he’d felt it. There’d been more earth tremors lately, though none strong enough to knock a pot from a shelf. The horses whinnied in their yards. Had they felt it too? Thetis would know, he thought.
The horsemaster came out to greet him, chewing. He held a hunk of bread wrapped around meat and watercress. Nikko must have interupted the man’s meal. ‘Master acrobat! After a horse to ride? Lord Aramae rode Big Red out hunting yesterday, but Dapples is fresh.’
Nikko nodded. ‘I prefer her, anyway.’ Dapples was just the name for a sweet, quiet horse, and she’d appeared to be exactly that the first few times he had ridden her. But one day when, like now, the wind had sung of snow up on the mountains, of storms and waves far beyond the sameness of the city walls, he had urged her on, faster and faster as though they might ride with the wind themselves.
Suddenly Dapples had surged ahead as Nikko crouched above her neck, exhilarated by her turn of speed. When at last he’d reined her in she’d trotted back, a tame, safe horse, plodding to the stable and her bale of hay.
Their flights of speed were, he was pretty sure, a secret between them. He stroked her nose as the horsemaster led her out of her paddock. ‘Sorry, old girl, no bread for you this time. I didn’t know I was coming to see you till just now.’
She whickered at him, pushing her nose against his hand while the horsemaster saddled her up, then held his hands out for Nikko to mount.
Nikko could have leaped onto the horse from a metre away, but the horsemaster was showing him a courtesy, so he took it, and stepped up onto the saddle blanket over her back like a gentleman.
They galloped down the plain toward the far-off sea. The road was clear and smooth, and there were no holes where Dapples might stumble and break a leg. She flew joyously along the road, her mane and tail streaming back like freshly dyed cloth drying in the wind.
It was so good to be outside, away from the enclosed smells of the city—the perfumed oils, the honey bread. All good smells, but still the scents of captivity.
Nikko pulled Dapples up without thinking what he was doing. She stopped, turning her head sideways to him curiously.
Captivity? What had he been thinking of? He was no slave. Could a slave ride like this, unwatched, unpunished, coming back whenever he felt like it? Or when his horse tired. He was free at least until their next performance for the High King.
He had lost something of the will to ride now. He pressed his leg into Dapples’s side, and she began to canter more quietly along the road from Mycenae. The autumn grass was gold in the sunlight; the ripe olives dusty. A few farm urchins stared at him, with his burnished kilt, silver belt and armlet, and oiled and plaited hair. He waved back, reassured somehow by their admiration.
He and Thetis served His Majesty. They couldn’t be slaves…
A line of ponies plodded toward him with muddy hocks from what looked like a long journey. They could have been the ponies that had brought him and Thetis to Mycenae six years before, though none of the guards looked familiar. He pulled off the road to let them pass. Six ponies, with oil jars strapped to their sides, and panniers of grain. He started to urge Dapples to head off again, then stopped.
The last pony held two figures, a tribute man with his kilt and jerkin, sword and knife strapped to his leg. Astride the front of his saddle was a girl, bound with rope—so much rope, thought Nikko, to hold one girl—and her mouth was gagged with a strip of rag.
He stared. Why bind the girl so strongly? Why bring her at all?
The High King’s tributes sometimes included slaves, of course—children of extreme beauty, or men with some special skill. The others—the women slaves in the wool and flax sheds, the servants in the palace, even most of the dancing girls—were Mycenae-bred, their mothers slaves as well, their fathers mostly unknown, for unskilled male slaves were usually sold off to be rowers, or kept to labour in the quarries. Why keep a bull, the Mycenaeans said, when there was a stud to hand already?
This girl looked nothing special: his age, perhaps, long black hair twisted into a rough bun atop her head, with strands drooping and dirty about her grubby face. Trousers—cloth, not goatskin, but so filthy it was hard to tell their pattern. A red shirt, the sort that could be opened to show her breasts, was laced closed now. A well-shaped face, with strong cheekbones and a wide mouth, her lips clenched together. A look in her big brown eyes of hatred, and desperation.
Nikko remembered his own journey into Mycenae, fear battling weariness, Thetis stumbling at the end of the long walk. But this girl looked more angry than afraid.
Nikko tore his eyes away from her, and saluted the captain of the soldiers. ‘What have you trussed up there? A tiger cat?’
The man laughed. He was grey, his hair probably balding under his leather head guard. ‘Near enough. Comes from up north in Aetolia, in centaur country, but some men from a village near Orchomenos caught her in a cattle raid, and offered her for part of their tributes.’
‘Why take her, if she’s savage?’
The girl made a growling mutter from behind her bonds.
‘A horse dancer, that’s what she’s supposed to be. The local headman persuaded me she’d make a better present for the High King than the ten pots of oil his village owes. But she tried to stab Metrophanes here the first night on the road.’ The captain shrugged. ‘We should have guessed she was wild when we saw they had her bound back at the village. But we thought they just didn’t want her running off before we got there.’
Nikko looked down at the girl again. She met his glance, black hatred in her eyes.
‘Ah well,’ said Nikko peaceably, ‘perhaps she’ll calm down when she’s been given a bath and—’
There was a sudden scream as the guard on the girl’s pony was thrown onto the ground by a swift backward butt of the captive’s head. Suddenly her pony was galloping back the way they had come. The other ponies stirred and whinnied. Dapples tossed her head, and pawed the ground.
Nikko stared. How did she not only guide the pony with just her legs, but stay on, bound and unbalanced by the ropes? Centaur, he thought, half horse half human. Though she had looked girl enough.
‘Catch her!’
‘What?’
The captain gestured at him impatiently. ‘Our ponies can’t reach her now, not laden like this. But your horse is twice the size of that pony, and fresher to boot!’
‘But I’m…’ I’m an acrobat, not a soldier, Nikko had been going to say. It wasn’t his job to go catching wild horse-girls. But he had to make some show of trying, or there’d be mutterings that he had let the High King’s property get away.
He pushed his knees into Dapples’s sides, and she wheeled around, keen to chase the galloping pony.
Down the road, horse and pony hoofs thudding in the dust; workers gathering olives under the trees staring; far-off yelling from the men at the tannery, who’d glimpsed the race. The big horse was gaining on the pony now.
Nikko found himself laughing with the sheer joy of the chase. Even Dapples seemed excited, her head down as he crouched along her neck.
Suddenly the pony swerved away from the road, through the lines of olive trees. The girl lurched, but miraculously stayed on.
Was she guiding the horse or was it racing out of control? Did she hope to lose him among the trees? Nikko grinned. An acrobat could dodge and weave. And so could Dapples.
Dapples had turned before Nikko’s nudge. The silver-green of olive branches brushed him on either side. These were young trees, not yet bearing. Ahead were the giant trees, their branches gnarled and trunks as thick as a man.
He was almost on her now. But how could he stop her? Keep going till either horse or pony flagged from exhaustion? Somehow he knew both animals would obey until their hearts and legs failed.
Jump from Dapples onto the pony? He could manage it. He could also kill them both, if the pony collapsed under his extra weight.
And then he had it. He would have laughed aloud, if he’d had the breath. He nudged Dapples to one side, to the avenue of trees next to the one the pony was galloping through. Faster, and faster still. Now he was ahead of the pony, could hear its breath labouring, a choked mutter from the girl behind her gag, urging the pony on…
He almost had her now! He nudged Dapples again, till he was a javelin’s throw ahead of the girl.
The big trees were above them now. He reached up, and grabbed a branch with his left hand, as Dapples cantered off without him.
It was too late for the pony to stop. It galloped underneath, and he reached down with his right hand and grabbed the bonds that held the girl.
He had her! For a moment he thought his arm would be wrenched off. His shoulder shrieked with pain—dimly he thought about cold water, and about changing the dance routine to favour the other arm. And then he dropped onto the leaf-strewn ground, the girl below him.
He gave a cry of triumph, then strengthened his hold on the girl’s ropes. She struggled, trying to kick. She’d bite me, if she wasn’t gagged, thought Nikko, half in pain and half in admiration. But he was larger than her, and heavier. He managed to stand, still grasping her bonds, and dragged her over to a tree. One of the strands of rope had come loose. He used it to tie her to the trunk, then stood back, panting, and checking his shoulder to see how badly he’d been hurt. At least it still seemed the right shape.
He looked at her now closely for the first time as he caught his breath…and his triumph fled. She looked like he had felt in his nightmares, when he first came to Mycenae: as though all security had vanished. The world was her enemy. Even he had hunted her down.
All at once he felt ashamed. But he had done his duty to the King. He could have done no less.
The girl stared at him over her gag.
‘Are you hurt?’
She glared, neither nodding nor shaking her head.
‘Do you understand my words?’ Sometimes slaves from far away had their own barbarian speech. People from the palace used more words than in the villages, too. It had taken him months to get used to them all.
This time she hesitated, then nodded.
He thought of the fall, his weight bearing her down onto the ground. She must be bruised, her bones possibly broken. He tried to speak reassuringly. ‘If I untie your gag, will you scream or try to bite me?’
She seemed to be thinking, watching him with those dark eyes. The lashes were thick as a sparrow’s feather. She shook her head.
He reached behind her, and worked on the knot. It was tight, but his fingers were strong. He had expected her hair to feel coarse, like horse’s hair, but instead it felt soft as a lynx’s pelt. He finally managed to ease the gag open.
She drew air deep into her lungs, over and over, as though she had been half starved of it. Now he was closer he could see a bruise on one cheek, and the eye above it was bruised as well. How many times, he thought, has she fought the guards to get away?
Behind him Dapples had turned and was plodding back, cropping the grass under the tree as she came. The pony too had halted. It peered at them through its shaggy mane, as though trying to work out what the humans wanted it to do now.
Nikko waited till the girl’s breathing was calmer.
‘I am Nikko.’ It didn’t seem enough, but he wasn’t the son of Giannis now. He added, ‘Acrobat to the High King.’
She spat, but not at him.
‘Did I hurt you? I’ll make sure they carry you carefully if you’re injured—’
‘I am not hurt.’ Her accent was strange, the words hesitant, but he could understand them. Her voice was low and husky.
‘Are you—’ He stopped as the captain rode up to them.
‘You caught her!’ The captain rubbed his hands. ‘Little hell-cat. We’ll tie her face down till we get her to the palace.’
He gestured to the men behind him. They pulled the girl up roughly, hoisting her between them.
He wanted to cry, ‘Stop.’ But the girl was a slave, a prisoner. Even if he’d let her go, the King’s men would have hunted her down. A runaway slave would be an insult to be avenged.
Like an acrobat who deserted, he thought, then thrust the image away. ‘Don’t throw her around like that!’
The captain stared at him.
He added. ‘She’s the High King’s property. The Chamberlain won’t thank you if she’s damaged.’
The Captain looked at him assessingly, then n
odded. He obviously knew Nikko’s reputation. One of the High King’s favourites would have influence with the Chamberlain, even with the King himself. ‘All right, men. Gentle as you can. But make sure she’s trussed secure.’
The men had caught the pony, which had been grazing quietly during this exchange. One of them led it up.
Nikko watched as one guard took the girl’s feet, while the another took her shoulders. They stared to throw her across the pony’s back, then caught Nikko’s eye and draped her instead.
‘What will happen to her?’ She was not struggling now, but was limp, her face turned to watch them, to listen perhaps to the captain’s answer.
The captain shrugged. ‘None of my affair, thank the Mother. Not much that can be done with a wildcat. Can’t risk putting her on a horse to perform, that’s for sure. She might even attack the High King.’
He checked the girl’s bonds, then stepped back. ‘We’ll take her to the dungeons for the time being. It’s up to the Chamberlain after that. Maybe sell her to a sea captain for a ship’s whore. She can’t ride away on the ocean. Or keep her for an earth sacrifice in spring. There’s spirit enough in that one to keep the earthshaker from trembling the palace for a score of years.’
The girl must have understood. But her face was expressionless and she refused to meet his eye.
He bit his lip. He longed to help her, to at least give her the dignity of sitting upright as she was carried to her fate. But the captain would never agree. And he’d be right. The girl would try to escape again, might even kill one of them to do it.
One of the soldiers began to lead the girl’s pony. Behind him he could hear Dapples, treading back toward him. He caught her reins and ran forward a few steps. ‘What’s your name?’
At least let the girl not go nameless to her death, he thought, or to whatever fate the Chamberlain decides.
For a moment he thought she wouldn’t speak. And then at last he caught the whisper:
‘Euridice.’
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