The Persian had a knife in his left hand and he stamped forward, leading with the knife.
Kineas backed away, kicked pine needles and risked a glance over his shoulder. Ataelus was shooting behind him - shooting back the way he had come. Something was wrong.
The Persian was smiling. He flicked with the knife - a feint with just enough power to draw blood. Kineas retreated a step and the Persian’s smile grew wider. He suddenly changed tempo, pivoting on his front foot and thrusting with his sword and then trying to trap Kineas’s sword against his own with the dagger.
Kineas just barely evaded the trap, twisting his body, pulling a muscle in his neck, inwardly cursing. Again he backed away, aware that this fight was taking too much time. Ataelus called out in Sakje - something about a wound.
Kineas made a high attack with his sword, scoring just a touch of a cut against his opponent’s forearm and drawing the same high counterattack - but this time, Kineas gave the man’s sword hand the full weight of the lash of his riding whip and then cut low with his blade, catching the Persian just on the hip bone and cutting him deeply. The man fell back. He wasn’t grinning, but he had the grace to salute with his dagger hand.
Kineas leaped forward, cut hard at the Persian’s sabre and knocked it right out of the man’s hand - the lash had hurt, as Kineas could see.
‘Yield,’ he said in Persian.
The Persian glanced over his shoulder, where Samahe had an arrow pointed at his back. He nodded three times, as if some point of philosophy had just come to him, and tossed his dagger on the ground. ‘I yield,’ he said.
Kineas raised his own blade, stepped well back and looked for Ataelus and Niceas. Ataelus was at the horse herd, calling orders. Niceas was nowhere to be seen.
The swordsman was the only prisoner. His cousin - Blackbeard - hadn’t survived the archery duel with both Samahe and Ataelus, and the rest of their troop had been cut down or had fled. Kineas was a little surprised at the savagery of the Sakje - but only a little. He was more worried about Niceas.
Niceas lay out on the meadow of flowers with an arrow in his ribs. He wasn’t dead, but he was deeply unconscious from the fall, and the arrow had skidded up his ribs and ripped open his shoulder as well.
‘Shit,’ Kineas said.
‘I’ll save him,’ said Nihmu.
Kineas whirled. He hadn’t seen her approach, hadn’t seen her horse. She had a strung bow over her shoulder and her quiver was empty. She turned and ran across the meadow towards the bandit camp, and Kineas was left to make his comrade as comfortable as possible. He rolled Niceas’s cloak and put it under his head and cut the remnants of his tunic free from his body.
Nihmu came back with a copper beaker of water, still steaming hot from the bandits’ fire. ‘It looks worse than it is,’ she said with the confidence of an adult. Then, more quietly, ‘Sirven died.’
‘Sirven?’ Kineas asked.
‘Lot’s daughter older. The blonde girl.’ Nihmu shrugged. ‘I told her she would die if she fought here. But when she went down, they all fought over her body. Ataelus took a cut.’ She pointed at a red-haired girl of fourteen weeping. ‘Her sister lost a finger and took an arrow in the leg. They are all angry.’ She sounded like the child she was - and like an upset child, at that.
Kineas felt his post-battle fatigue come on him, as the daimon that animated him to fight left his body empty of feelings except sorrow.
Nihmu was washing the wound with hot water, her dark hair hanging in uncombed tangles over her face so that he couldn’t see her. ‘They are all angry.’ She repeated. ‘So they killed all the bandits.’
‘All?’ Kineas asked, turning to look for his prisoner.
‘You should stay by him. He will do you a good turn one day, that one. If Ataelus doesn’t take his hair.’
Kineas turned and trotted off into the dusk to find his Persian.
The man was burying Blackbeard. Kineas listened to the Sauromatae mourning Sirven and her sister. Mosva, he thought. She’s called Mosva. Kineas left his Persian prisoner working and walked down to the river to find Ataelus.
‘Stupid girl,’ Ataelus said bitterly. ‘Stupid Sauromatae barbarian girl.’ He had tears in his eyes and a quaver in his voice. ‘Fight like wild things, sword to sword with grown men - hard men. And me for fool! Too long fighting stupid Greeks.’
Kineas hugged the little Sakje, and pressed Samahe’s hand, and embraced the little red-haired princess, who clung to him and wept until he was embarrassed, and then for a good time beyond, so that he stared into the gathering darkness and patted her hair, thinking bleak thoughts about the quality of right and wrong, good and evil, and about how far he was from being a man of virtue when he couldn’t comfort a bereft sister. But eventually she felt his awkwardness and drew back with an apology, and then he punished himself and went to help the Persian bury his cousin. Later, he sat by the fire making barley soup for Niceas, who was deeply unconscious.
‘I came to find you,’ Nihmu said, kneeling by him. ‘I didn’t like it when they killed the prisoners. It made me afraid.’
‘Killing prisoners is never good. Sometimes it must be done - when they are wounded, and you can’t help them. Sometimes it - happens.’ He shrugged, the image of the Getae man he had killed a year before rising in his mind, so that he gave a little shiver of revulsion.
‘It is time. Are you climbing the tree yet?’ she asked.
Kineas nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘I saw you in the dream world - three nights ago, I think it must have been. You are an eagle.’
Kineas shuddered again with a different disgust. Speaking of the dream world this way was like discussing sex - he knew men who did it, but he didn’t himself. Speaking of the dream world with this - this child - was almost impossible. ‘Yes,’ he said, repressing his feelings as well as he might.
She flicked a smile at him and put some herbs into the barley soup. ‘He won’t die,’ she said, as if Niceas’s continued existence were obvious to anyone.
Kineas looked at Niceas and felt tears come to his eyes. His throat threatened to close, and he couldn’t speak. He knew that Niceas might die - in any skirmish, on any day - but the reality of his unmoving body was deeply painful.
‘You need a horse,’ the girl said.
Kineas took a deep breath to deny it and then slumped. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘I have a horse for you,’ the girl said. ‘A magnificent beast, who will carry you from now to the day you fall.’
Kineas smiled. ‘The way I ride, I may fall later today.’
Nihmu looked back at him with a child’s intensity and a child’s impatience for adult humour. ‘You know what I mean. Take the horse.’
And Kineas agreed.
11
The Persian’s name was Darius - every first-born son in his generation was Darius, it seemed. He was tired of war, which had been his life since he was seventeen. He was twenty-three.
He related the tales of his life as he sat beside a small fire, heating water to clean Niceas, who was still unconscious and had no control of his bodily functions. ‘I left home six years ago to fight the Great King,’ he said. He gave a wry smile. ‘The usurper, that is. Darius.’ He shrugged. ‘Real Persians - the true Persians of the great plain - he was never our king.’ He looked into the fire, rolled over to get more firewood and winced as the cut on his hip pained him.
Kineas nodded.
‘And your Alexander rode right into our rebellion. He defeated us in the west - were you there?’
Kineas nodded. ‘Pinarus river. I was with the Allied Cavalry.’
Darius shook his head. ‘I was still a rebel. Then, after Alexander won, it was clear to most noblemen - clear enough to my father - that if we continued to rebel, we were handing our empire to the foreigner. So we marched to the so-called Great King at Ecbatana, and followed him to Gaugamela.’ He shrugged. ‘You were there?’
Kineas nodded. ‘On our left.’
Darius lo
oked surprised. ‘Our right? I was there!’ He winced again. ‘By fire, you cut me deep.’
Kineas began trying to feed soup to Niceas. Beyond the fire, the Sauromatae and the Sakje were mourning the dead woman, singing her songs to her pyre. The smell of horse meat was strong.
‘It might have been deeper,’ he said.
The Persian nodded. ‘So it might. I was at Gaugamela, and we almost broke you.’
‘But you didn’t,’ Kineas said with satisfaction. He might not serve Macedon any more - indeed, he was probably an enemy of Macedon, when sides were counted - but Gaugamela had been the last fight of the Hellenes against the Persians, and he was proud of his role there. He had won the laurel for valour, because his unsung Allied Cavalry had held the line when the Persian cavalry threatened to break Parmenion’s flank and bury the taxeis under an avalanche of Persians.
‘It was the longest fight I can remember. I lost two horses - and lived.’
Kineas nodded in agreement. In his experience, most field battles were decided fairly quickly, and the other side took the punishment when they broke. At Gaugamela, the decision hung in the balance for an hour, and both sides died.
‘After the battle, my father was dead and my household dispersed. My cousin claimed the lordship - he was older and . . .’ the Persian gave an expressive shrug. ‘We never got home. We moved north into Hyrkania, but there were too many wolves there already and we kept going until we came here. We thought to carve out a kingdom, far from the Hellenes.’ He gave a self-deprecating smile, the same smile he’d worn when he lost his sword in the fight. ‘We ended up as bandits.’
‘This might make a good kingdom,’ Kineas said. He pointed at Niceas’s form. ‘He thinks so.’ They sat in companionable silence for some time. Eventually, Kineas asked, ‘Are you worth a ransom?’
‘Somewhere, if my mother lives, I have some small riches,’ the man admitted. He shrugged again - he shrugged a lot. ‘I doubt it. You Greeks have everything around Ecbatana now, and most of our eastern holdings, too. We had a tower in Bactria - I doubt it even tried to hold your mad king.’
‘Not my mad king,’ Kineas began. It was his turn, and the young Persian with the perpetual shrugs was a good companion. Kineas intended to win him as a friend and put him in a troop - he was a good sword, too good to waste. But Niceas chose that moment to sputter around a spoonful of soup. His body gave a spasm and he sprayed soup out of his mouth.
His eyes were open.
‘What the fuck?’ he said.
Kineas felt his eyes fill with tears. ‘You stupid cocksucker,’ he said with tones of those born to the agora in Athens. ‘You fell off your horse!’
Niceas smiled. ‘More soup,’ he said.
The next day, Diodorus caught up with them. His part of the army camped above them on the heights where the road turned east and went down into the country of the Rha. Diodorus came down the ridge with a dozen troopers, including Coenus and Eumenes.
Diodorus went straight to Niceas, as did Coenus. Afterwards, Diodorus ordered a tent put up for the strategos, and Eumenes went to fetch it. ‘I heard the old man was dead,’ Diodorus said. His face was still red and blotched from emotion - perhaps from weeping. ‘He’s saved my life more times than my nanny paddled my behind. I came as fast as I could.’
Kineas nodded. He’d slept through the night once Niceas’s sleep had given way to healthy snores, and he felt ten years younger. ‘I thought he was gone,’ Kineas admitted.
Coenus was feeding the hyperetes more barley soup. ‘He still looks like shit,’ he said.
Niceas croaked something about feeling better.
Kineas shook his head. ‘He took an arrow in the side. We weren’t in armour. Bad decision on my part. And the bandits were good - damned good. Tough fight.’
Coenus thrust his chin at the Persian who was tending the soup. ‘Prisoner?’
Kineas nodded. ‘And recruit. When Eumenes gets back, put him in his troop. He’s a swordsman - as good as me. I assume he can ride.’
Coenus laughed. ‘He is a Persian.’ He coughed. ‘You and Ataelus killed all his friends . . .’
‘I get the feeling he doesn’t miss them. If he cuts all our throats, I’ll be proven wrong.’ Kineas pulled his cloak tighter. ‘I’ll stay here with Niceas.’
Coenus and Diodorus exchanged glances. ‘Nah,’ said Coenus. ‘You’re the strategos. This isn’t the only bandit band - ask Ataelus. The plains are full of them, by all accounts. You go and command. Leave me with my section and I’ll bring the old boy along when he’s ready.’
Diodorus stepped forward. ‘He’s right, Kineas.’
Kineas rubbed his beard. ‘You are both correct, of course. Very well. Coenus, I’ll send your section down the ridge. Diodorus, let’s get Ataelus and plan the next set of marches. Lot is five days behind you. Somebody gets to tell him that his daughter is dead.’
Diodorus winced as if cut.
The high plains between the Tanais and the Rha were indeed full of bandits - an endless profusion of masterless Persians and outlawed nomads and Macedonian deserters, so that there wasn’t an intact farmstead between the two rivers. Four years of war in Hyrkania and the south had filled the high plains with the human flotsam of war, and like wolves on the verge of a hard winter, they were desperate men. When forced, they fed on each other, band against band. All raided the settlements on the expanding edge of their self-made desert. Ataelus had already lost three men to them before the fight with the bandits on the Tanais, and his prodromoi were eager for revenge.
Kineas and Diodorus assigned the second troop, heavy with the Keltoi, to reinforce Ataelus. Kineas took charge of the column and Diodorus took charge of the extermination of the bandits. He didn’t catch as many as he wanted to, but the main body crossed the high plains to the valleys of the Rha without losing a single horse or man, and unknown to them, the Sindi and Maeotae farmers blessed them. Diodorus drove the larger groups across the marshes to the north, and twice he caught bands and the Keltoi and the Sauromatae wrecked them. They brought back a rich haul of horses, some very fine, and enough gold and silver to please the men who did the fighting. Casualties were gratifyingly light - as was to be expected when employing overwhelming force.
Kineas called his new horse ‘Thalassa’, after days of riding the magnificent silver charger and trying out various temporary names (‘Brute’ seemed the front runner, as the beast towered over most of the other warhorses by the width of a man’s hand). The big horse had the colour of a stormy day at sea. She was sure-footed and had an amazing quality of stillness - not lack of spirit, but something like patience - that suited a commander’s horse. And on the day that Sappho insisted that so noble an animal needed a better name than ‘Brute’, the lead elements of the army crested the last ridge of the Rha’s frontier and saw the Kaspian sparkling in the distance, the Bay of the Rha full of ships, and like Xenophon’s men seventy years before, they cried out for the sea, and the name was given.
The crossing had not been particularly arduous except for recruits and the men of second troop who’d spent a week fighting bandits, but the army’s grain supply was very low - most men had only a day’s grain in their packs, or less if they’d been improvident. The sight of fifty small boats in the bay raised everyone’s spirits, and the presence of Philokles on the gravel and mud beach drew a roar of acclaim. Kineas embraced him.
‘Does this place have a name?’ Kineas asked. Philokles smelled clean.
‘Errymi, the Maeotae call it.’ The Spartan gave a wry smile. ‘It is good to see you, Kineas.’
Kineas embraced him again for an answer. ‘Are all those for us?’ Kineas asked.
‘If we can pay,’ Philokles answered. ‘Otherwise, I suspect they’ll murder me and sail away.’
Kineas watched the mules bearing the army’s treasury coming down the last ridge, guarded by the most trustworthy men in the army. ‘And wintering over?’
‘Northern Hyrkania,’ Philokles responded. ‘Strateg
os, your kingdom awaits.’
Kineas shook his head. ‘I don’t want a kingdom.’
Philokles gave an enigmatic smile. ‘How about a woman?’ he asked.
Kineas laughed. ‘I have a woman. She’s ten thousand stades distant, but I’ll catch up.’
Philokles gave him an odd look. ‘Have you made an offering to Aphrodite, brother?’ he asked.
Kineas laughed. ‘No!’ he said.
Philokles gave a distant smile. ‘You should.’ He looked over the sea. ‘Our winter camp is in a kingdom ruled by a woman, and she - she moved me, and I have no tenderness for women. I fear for you.’
Kineas furrowed his brow, stung. ‘What reason have I ever given you to fear for my behaviour with a woman?’ he asked.
Philokles continued to watch him with the air of a man who has seen the world. ‘I would prefer you to cross the Kaspian with your eyes open. This woman desires power, and men with power fascinate her. She lay with Alexander, they say. Now she awaits us.’ He glanced around. ‘She offers a great deal of treasure for our spring campaign.’
Kineas shrugged. ‘I’m of a mind now to push on in spring. The march went well and the bandits in the hills put some gold in our coffers.’ He looked at the ships. ‘And our ally? Leon’s factor?’
‘Her late husband. She remains an ally - she paid Leon an enormous backlog of moneys owed without demur - but I doubt her. I wish you to be immune to her.’
Kineas shook his head in mock wonder. ‘I am immune,’ he said.
Nihmu laughed. ‘No man is immune to the yâtavu of Hyrkania,’ she said, ‘except those who love only men.’ She came and went from the command group, red hair like a helmet crest announcing her arrival. She sat on her great white horse amid the mud and the flotsam on the beach. ‘If you fail, Strategos, your children will not rule here.’
‘What?’ Kineas shrugged and turned his back on her. She spoke like an oracle, but she was a stripling, and he was busy. ‘Think as you will. This is a foolish conversation. To whom do we speak about paying these ships?’ he asked Philokles.
Tyrant: Storm of Arrows Page 15