‘Let’s go and find Srayanka,’ he said. His heart was higher than it had been in a month.
‘And Alexander,’ Diodorus said.
PART IV
TREE OF LIFE
17
‘Your majesty?’ Eumenes the Cardian was careful entering the inner sanctum, where the Iliad sat in its golden casket and where the panoplies of Alexander’s foes decorated the walls. Alexander was becoming more withdrawn, more alien, with every campaign. Crossing the mountains, he had shown one of his bursts of superhuman activity, even of empathy, rescuing snow-blind soldiers and speaking extempore to every knot of pikemen coming down the pass. But now the godlike energy had passed and what was left was a sullen tyrant sitting amidst his favourite treasures.
He looked up, his mismatched eyes listless. ‘What, Eumenes?’
‘Spitamenes has delivered Amazons, your majesty.’ Eumenes kept his head slightly bowed. ‘And Barsine’s sister Banugul is here from Hyrkania.’
‘Hell to pay in the harem when her sister hears she’s with me.’ Alexander gave a smile. ‘I can’t say I’m altogether sorry she’s here, but you’ll have to hide her from Hephaestion,’ Alexander said. ‘Why is she here?’
‘Her tale is complex, lord. She blames her father, but also some Greek mercenary. Indeed, she hadn’t expected to find us here - she came over the mountains from Hyrkania, intending to find us at Kandahar.’
‘Greek mercenaries are never to be trusted. I thought she had more wisdom than that. Very well, make a note that I will see her. Keep her from Hephaestion. Anything else?’ Alexander was petulant.
‘As you say, Barsine will be angry when she hears.’ Barsine, like the rest of the women, had been left in Kandahar.
‘Barsine means less to me than the lowest whore carrying a bag of millet for the army. Banugul is at least intelligent.’ Alexander rubbed his head. ‘I’m distempered, Eumenes. Ignore the womanish spite.’
Eumenes shrugged. ‘She has a tale of an army, lord, coming from the Euxine.’
Alexander glared at him and the Cardian subsided. ‘The Euxine? Foolishness. The Scythians would eat their livers. Now - the Amazons. Let me see them. Are they handsome?’
‘Not really, lord.’
‘Ares, do they stink?’ Alexander rose to his feet, stripped off the Persian tunic he had on and summoned a slave with a better chiton, which he slipped over his head. Eumenes could see that he was thinner, the muscles corded like old rope. The mountains had stolen a little more of the king’s youth, just as they had killed the older veterans and aged the rest. The march over the mountains had taken the initiative from the rebels and brought Spitamenes, the most dangerous of the enemy leaders, to the table, but it had killed more Macedonians than any of the king’s victories.
Eumenes shrugged. ‘They smell like horses, majesty.’
Alexander laughed. ‘So do we,’ he said. He ran fingers through his hair and shrugged off his slaves. ‘Come,’ he said imperiously.
Eumenes followed him out of the inner tents to his receiving tent. As he entered, Hephaestion, sensing that something important might happen without him, came through the main door at a rush. To one side, a pair of messengers waited for the king’s attention, while to the other side of the main door, three barbarian women in tunics of silk and leather breeches looked about themselves curiously under the eyes of a pair of the king’s Companions.
‘What news, Achilles?’ asked Hephaestion.
Alexander, for once not in the mood to be flattered, shrugged. ‘Spitamenes’ Amazons,’ he said. ‘Send for Kleisthenes.’
Hephaestion sent a slave, and then grinned at the huddle of leather-clad women. ‘Stinking barbarian women? You plan to send them to brothels, I assume?’
Alexander looked at his friend with something akin to amazement. ‘These are free plains-women, Hephaestion. If I mistreat them, the Massagetae and the Sakje and the Dahae will come to know of it, and they will make trouble. What I desire is that they submit, as they did to the Persians. Do you understand?’
Hephaestion, unused to being corrected in public, flushed.
The eldest of the Amazons was heavily pregnant but quite beautiful. She had heavy black brows, the perfect skin of an ivory temple statue and a sense of humour. She gave Alexander half a smile.
‘The Massagetae never submitted to the Persae, and they will never submit to you.’ She bowed slightly. ‘Lord.’
Alexander seated himself on his ivory stool and shook his head. ‘You speak Greek!’ he said.
‘Indeed,’ she answered.
‘The Massagetae submitted to Cyrus and to Darius,’ Alexander said with royal finality.
‘You have been misinformed,’ the woman said. ‘The Massagetae killed Cyrus and avoided Darius.’
Alexander raised an eyebrow.
‘That does agree with what Herodotus says, sire,’ Kleisthenes, the Greek philosopher, cut in.
‘Well!’ Alexander looked about him. ‘I like that story much better. When I conquer them, I will be first!’
The woman laughed aloud and translated for her companions. They chattered in their barbaric tongue and then laughed with her.
Alexander got up and walked over to them. He put a finger under the pregnant woman’s face to lift it and she slapped it away with the swiftness of a lioness.
‘You have the face of a goddess. But you are gravid. Whose child is it?’ Alexander asked.
‘Mine,’ she answered. ‘And my husband’s.’
‘A Massagetae warrior?’ Alexander asked, examining the youngest of the Amazons - pretty, but muscled like a man.
‘Do I look like a Massagetae?’ she asked. She laughed again.
‘All barbarians look alike to me,’ Alexander said.
‘I am the Lady Srayanka of the Cruel Hand Sakje. We ride the grass where we please, but our farmers turn the dirt in the valleys north of Olbia.’
Alexander looked at Kleisthenes and then back at the woman. ‘Is this true? You have ridden all the way here from the Euxine?’ This recalled the Cardian’s gossip, but he didn’t want to speak of it in front of Hephaestion. ‘So the sea of grass does run all the way from the Jaxartes to the Tanais!’
She nodded.
Hephaestion came up next to him. ‘We have wasted too much time on these barbarians,’ he said. He turned his back on the Amazons. ‘Pregnant Amazons! Some horse trooper’s local trull, I’d say. She couldn’t fight a child.’
The pregnant woman narrowed her eyes. ‘Give me a sword and I’ll cut you, boy.’
Alexander waved at Kleisthenes. ‘Read me the bit in the little Iliad - about Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons,’ he said.
Kleisthenes shook his head, but went back into the main tent looking for the scroll.
Hephaestion, annoyed and used to getting his way, leaned past Alexander and shot a fist at the pregnant woman’s face. Heavy as she was, she moved with the blow, taking a piece of it on the crown of her head and then she was under his reach, inside his arms. He grunted and stepped back. She had his sword. He was purple with rage.
‘You will never conquer even the Massagetae with soldiers like this,’ she said. She held the sword in an easy stance despite her bulk. ‘Release us, O King. We have done you no harm, and the traitor Spitamenes kidnapped us from the sea of grass. He is your enemy as well as mine and if you release me, my clans will hunt him like a dog.’
Alexander glanced at his swordless companion with grave disappointment and then turned back to Srayanka. ‘When your children are born, they will make excellent hostages,’ he said. ‘You will live comfortably with my women and when I march into your land in a few years, you can help me.’ He turned to Kleisthenes, ignoring Hephaestion. ‘The sea of grass is real! We can march to Thrace!’
Kleisthenes was watching Hephaestion. ‘She does seem to be a real Amazon, majesty.’
Hephaestion calmed himself. ‘I want the young one for myself,’ he said.
Srayanka still held the sword. ‘She is the la
dy of the Grass Cats, a war leader and mistress of a thousand horses.’
Hephaestion’s humour was restored by Srayanka’s reaction. ‘She can spread her legs for me as well as any woman,’ he said, and a few of the soldiers in the tent laughed. ‘Give me back my sword before someone gets hurt,’ he said in the voice he used to reason with women and animals.
Srayanka nodded, as if thinking. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said to Alexander, and she cut Hephaestion across the unarmoured top of his thighs so that blood flowed like water - not a deep cut, but a painful one. Then she tossed the sword on the ground at Alexander’s feet as his guards grabbed her. ‘I don’t imagine you’ll spread a lot of legs anytime soon,’ she said into the pandemonium.
Alexander regarded her with a mixture of horror and pleasure. ‘I shall call you Medea!’ he said.
Srayanka shrugged. ‘Many men do,’ she said. ‘Release me, or you will suffer by it.’
Alexander grinned - his first spontaneous grin since his ragtag army had fought its way through the drifts of snow from Kandahar. ‘I will never release you, lady,’ he said. Behind him, guardsmen and slaves were seeing to Hephaestion.
Srayanka drew herself up, and her pregnancy only added to her dignity. ‘We will see,’ she said. She flicked a glance at Hephaestion, who was rising with the aid of two other men.
‘You will be raped by dogs and the corpses of your unborn children ripped from your womb and fed to them,’ Hephaestion shouted. ‘I will have you tortured until you have no skin, until—’
Alexander slapped him and he subsided, but his eyes watched Srayanka with feverish hate.
‘We will see,’ she said.
18
Luck, good fortune, careful planning and the will of the gods got Kineas’s force across the desert in the full bloom of spring, with water at every major depression and flowers blossoming among the desolate rocks. Fifteen days after they marched, on the feast of Plynteria in Athens, the army was reunited at the edge of the endless grass that rolled away to every horizon but the one behind them, heat mirage and dust devils and a line of purple mountains in the sunset as the last token of Hyrkania.
‘You make good time,’ Lot said, clasping Kineas’s forearm. ‘You have truly become Sakje.’
Kineas flushed at the praise. ‘We had perfect weather and water in every hole.’
Lot grinned. In Sakje, he said, ‘That’s why you cross a desert in the spring. Come - I have a little bad wine and Samahe is reporting on Ataelus’s adventures in the east.’
‘You seem happy,’ Kineas said.
‘I’m home!’ Prince Lot said. ‘I think I never expected to live to get here. And here we are! My messengers are out on the grass, riding for our yurts and our people. We’ll make rendezvous in the Salt Hills, and then we will have such a feast!’
Kineas nodded. ‘How far to the Salt Hills?’
Lot led on to his ‘tent’, merely a square of tough linen staked over a pair of lances. Mosva poured them wine in gold cups. ‘The cups are better than the wine,’ he said. ‘Ten days and we’ll be in the hills. Ten hard days, and then you’ll have all the fodder you need until you reach Srayanka.’ The Sauromatae prince sniffed the air, which was heavy with dust and pollen, like an open bazaar. ‘That is the smell of home!’
‘Will you leave us?’ Kineas asked.
‘Never!’ Lot said. ‘Now you are in my land! I will keep you as safe as you have kept me.’ He drank his cup and Kineas finished his. ‘Ten days’ hard riding and then we feast.’
Kineas turned to Mosva. In a way she was a woman, and then in another way she was just one of his troopers. ‘Do you fancy either Leon or Eumenes?’ he asked.
She gave the grin of a young woman just discovering her powers. ‘Both,’ she said, and laughed.
Lot nodded. ‘They are both fine young men.’ He shrugged. ‘Among my people, women choose their own mates. Both are rich, well-connected, brave and foreign.’ He grinned again. ‘My sister’s son inherits my tribes, no matter what road my daughter takes.’
‘Your sister’s son?’ Kineas asked.
‘Upazan,’ Lot answered, and he frowned, as if the name left a bad taste.
‘Ten days’ hard riding’ was repeated throughout the army as they rode east. The desert vanished behind them and they rode over downs of new grass, green as Persephone’s robe, but watercourses were rare and only rain saved them from serious consequences until they came to a great river flowing across their path, burbling brown with spring run-off across rocks.
Kineas was on his Getae hack and he led the horse down to the water, careful not to let the beast over-drink. Diodorus and Leon were doing the same. ‘Surely this isn’t the Oxus?’ Diodorus asked.
Kineas shook his head. ‘We must still be twenty days from the Oxus,’ he said. He rubbed his beard. ‘Or more. Lot!’ he shouted.
Prince Lot circled his horse through the drinking animals and splashed up.
‘What is this river called?’ Kineas asked.
Lot shrugged. ‘In Sakje, it is Tanais.’
Leon was pulling his gelding clear of the water, because the horse wanted to keep drinking and Leon had no intention of letting him. From the far bank, he shouted, ‘They’re all called Tanais! It means “river”.’
Lot shrugged. ‘No Greek name that I know,’ he said.
Leon, who interrogated every merchant and traveller they met, went to his pack and withdrew a scroll whereon he made a few marks. ‘This must be the Sarnios,’ he said. ‘At least, that’s what the horse-dealer called it.’
They camped in a bend of the Sarnios. Kineas sacrificed a young calf born on the march to the river goddess and ordered a few of their cattle slaughtered so that all the troops got a ration of meat with their grain. Later, well fed and greasy, they sat under the sky, wrapped in their cloaks against the cold night air, and watched the stars spread above them, backlit by the glow of Temerix’s forge in the bed of his wagon. Antigonus and Kineas worked on tack, repairing headstalls. Kineas saw that the charm Kam Baqca had given him so long ago in the winter camp on the Little Borysthenes was fraying, and he sewed it down tight. Antigonus had acquired a bronze chamfron, a piece of horse armour, but he couldn’t get it to fit his horse without troubling the animal. Every night it seemed he was making adjustments.
‘Wish she could talk,’ Antigonus joked. ‘Tell me if the cursed thing fits.’
Kineas finished his much smaller project and watched Darius attaching nocks to arrow shafts in the firelight. It was finicky work. ‘Wouldn’t you do better waiting for daylight?’ Kineas asked.
The Persian had all his arrow-making kit spread on a pale blanket. ‘Yes,’ he said. He swore as his hand slipped and a finished nock went sailing off into the darkness. ‘But Temerix bought charcoal from a trader. He has enough to melt bronze and he’s casting the heads tonight.’
Kineas grinned. ‘You could still put the nocks on in daylight,’ he said.
Darius nodded. ‘There’s never time.’ He flicked a glance at Kineas. ‘The Sauromatae saw deer tracks today. I won’t be caught unprepared!’
Kineas laughed. ‘You had all winter to make arrows.’
Darius ignored his commander and concentrated on his task.
‘Uuggh!’ said Philokles, arriving with a bowl and a slab of meat. ‘What’s that smell?’
‘Glue,’ Darius said. He had another nock ready and was fitting it on a neat dovetail into the butt of the arrow’s shaft, where the string would catch it. He rolled the nock in glue and slid it home, wiping the excess with his thumb. Then he took three carefully prepared fletchings, all cut from heron feathers, and glued them in place on the shaft. He set the arrow point-first in the ground and went on to the next shaft, methodically placing and gluing the nock.
‘Hmm,’ said Philokles, interested despite himself. ‘Why not set the feathers straight on? What purpose do they serve?’
Darius dropped a fletching in the grass by the fire and swore again. By the time he recovered it, there
was glue on the feather itself and Darius threw it in the fire in disgust and began to cut another.
‘It looks like a great deal more work than my spear,’ Philokles said.
Kineas didn’t want to speak. It was the first time Philokles had shown interest in anything - much less humour.
Darius fitted a new fletching and put the shaft into the ground with the other six he’d made. ‘Hunting arrows are the hardest,’ he said.
‘Why?’ Kineas asked, to keep him talking, and to keep Philokles interested.
Darius shrugged the shrug of the young. ‘War arrows you never get back,’ he said. ‘I don’t even put nocks on them - I just cut a notch into the shaft and wrap a little cord around the base of the notch. But hunting arrows - you hope to get them back. And you shoot them farther, at harder targets. They need to be well made. My father always told us to make our own and not trust other men’s arrows.’
Philokles nodded. ‘Why the feathers, though?’
Darius shook his head. ‘You Greeks always ask why,’ he said. ‘Ask a real fletcher. I just do as my father taught me.’
Kineas laughed. Philokles looked at him and raised an eyebrow. Kineas shook his head. ‘There’s something profound there,’ he said. ‘But I’m too full of beef to get my tongue around it.’
Philokles laughed and punched his shoulder.
Across the Sarnios, flowers bloomed, and the Sauromatae girls made themselves wreaths and wore them as they rode, Mosva looking like Artemis. The hunters shot deer in the folds of the hills, and men, when they had water, sang songs to Demeter and her swift-footed daughter returned from exile. Darius shot a deer on the first day of hunting and was insufferably proud.
Despite Lot’s prediction, it took them a further ten days from the Sarnios, and it was one of those happy times that soldiers remember when they are old - seldom the boredom or the cold or the heat, but the beautiful spring on the plains and the Sauromatae girls riding along the flanks in fields of flowers. Meat was plentiful and horses that had been near death suddenly grew strong.
Tyrant: Storm of Arrows Page 26