Tyrant (11 page)
Authors: Christian Cameron
He compromised - always an added danger - and ordered that the last watch at dawn be doubled, and put himself on it. Then he summoned Crax and ordered him to put his blankets down next to Kineas’s own, placed Antigonus on the other side, and dismissed the subject. They ate quickly, set their watches and lingered - too early in the campaign to go to sleep automatically. Instead, they sat up with their last amphorae of wine from Tomis, telling each other stories of their own exploits, reliving and laughing. Ajax sat and watched, silent and polite, his eyes wide as if he were sitting with Jason and the Argonauts.
Agis recited lines from the Poet
“But come now, change thy theme, and sing of the building of the horse of wood, which Epeius made with Athena’s help, the horse which once Odysseus led up into the citadel as a thing of guile, when he had filled it with the men who sacked Ilios. If thou dost indeed tell me this tale aright, I will declare to all mankind that the god has of a ready heart granted thee the gift of divine song.” So he spoke, and the minstrel, moved by the god, began, and let his song be heard, taking up the tale where the Argives had embarked on their benched ships and were sailing away, after casting fire on their huts, while those others led by glorious Odysseus were now sitting in the place of assembly of the Trojans, hidden in the horse; for the Trojans had themselves dragged it to the citadel. So there it stood, while the people talked long as they sat about it, and could form no resolve. Nay, in three ways did counsel find favour in their minds: either to cleave the hollow timber with the pitiless bronze, or to drag it to the height and cast it down the rocks, or to let it stand as a great offering to propitiate the gods, even as in the end it was to be brought to pass; for it was their fate to perish when their city should enclose the great horse of wood, wherein were sitting all the best of the Argives, bearing to the Trojans death and fate. And he sang how the sons of the Achaeans poured forth from the horse and, leaving their hollow ambush, sacked the city. Of the others he sang how in divers ways they wasted the lofty city, but of Odysseus, how he went like Ares to the house of Deiphobus together with godlike Menelaus. There it was, he said, that Odysseus braved the most terrible fight and in the end conquered by the aid of great-hearted Athena.’
They cheered his performance, as the veterans always had, and made jokes comparing red-haired Diodorus to wily Odysseus. The first watch was done before any of them were in their blankets except Philokles, who all but fell from the saddle straight into bed.
Kineas caught Ajax as he rolled in his cloak. ‘You’ll want this,’ he said, and nudged Ajax with a sword.
Ajax took it, hefted in his hand and tried to look at it.
Kineas said, ‘Sleep with it under your head or in your hand.’ He smiled invisibly in the dark. ‘You get used to it after a few nights.’
Kineas was asleep as soon as he was under his cloak. It was like being home. He had a dream of Artemis - neither long nor precise, and certainly not one of those dreams that Aphrodite sends to men, but a happy dream none the less, and he awoke when the watch changed and men shifted in the tent, alert as soon as his eyes opened and then relaxing, remembering the dream and wondering if some hint of her was in his cloak. He smiled and went to sleep again and awoke with a start when something heavy fell across his legs. He remembered a loud noise - he had his heavy sword in his hand and he was on his feet before he was awake, the sword clear of the scabbard.
Antigonus spoke softly at his ear. ‘It’s nothing - Kineas - nothing. Your slave boy tried to run and I knocked him cold. He’ll be sore in the morning.’
The weight that had landed at his feet was Crax; the boy was deeply unconscious. And other sleepers were now awake, pushing him from where he had fallen. They wrestled him into his own blankets.
‘Where was he headed?’
‘I didn’t wait to see. When I saw him get up, I knocked him flat with my butt-spike.’
Kineas winced. ‘I hope he isn’t dead. Wake me for next watch.’
‘Never fear. You can have rosy-fingered dawn all to yourself.’
Kineas fell asleep thinking that Antigonus, who couldn’t read or write, probably hadn’t ever read the
Iliad
. He was awakened the third time to throw water on his face and hands. His hands swelled at night, and his joints ached when he woke, and waking up seemed harder every year. Campaign aged a man too quickly.
Iliad
. He was awakened the third time to throw water on his face and hands. His hands swelled at night, and his joints ached when he woke, and waking up seemed harder every year. Campaign aged a man too quickly.
He took the heavy javelin from Antigonus’s hand. Ajax was up, too - Kineas had decreed a double watch for dawn and Niceas had put Kineas on with the least experienced man, and the most expendable - decisions, decisions.
‘Before you turn in, find him a javelin,’ Kineas said to Antigonus, who burrowed in the equipment and came out with one. He handed it to Ajax, who looked quite self-conscious with it in the first grey light of morning, as if he were wearing the wrong costume for a party. He also looked absurdly young, pretty, and well-slept, and Kineas thought, I’ll bet his joints don’t swell.
‘Anything to report?’ Kineas asked.
Antigonus peered off to the north. ‘I heard something - distant, could have been a wolf taking a buck, but it was heavy movement. It was an hour back.’ He gestured at a dim shape by the tree. ‘Don’t trip over our barbarian. He’s asleep with his horse.’
Kineas nodded and pushed the other man towards his sleeping spot. It was light enough to crawl into the tent without waking everyone else and Antigonus was snoring before Kineas had walked the perimeter of the little camp. Ajax followed him, clearly at a loss as to what to do.
Kineas took him around the camp again, showed him the two slight rises which would give a sentry a few stades more view, stopped with him to smile at the sight of Ataelus asleep with the reins of his horse in his hand, ready for instant action. Then Kineas told Ajax to build up the fires. ‘When that’s done, curry the horses.’
Ajax gave Kineas the first look of displeasure Kineas had ever seen him wear. ‘Curry the horses? I’ll wake my slave.’
Kineas shook his head. ‘Build up the fires and then curry the horses. Yourself. Do a good job. Then you and I will take a little ride before we wake the others. And Ajax - don’t imagine you can discuss orders.’
Ajax hung his head, but he said, ‘Other men do.’
Kineas laughed and swatted him. ‘When you’ve killed a dozen men and stood sentry a thousand nights, you can debate with me.’
He liked being on watch and he stood under the tree, immobile, and watched the grey horizon to the north-west. He listened to the rising birds, watched a rabbit move across the light grass where the ferry had landed and then watched a falcon stooping out over the estuary of the Danube. He felt they were safe - in wild places, it was usually easy to feel the approach of an enemy.
For an hour, he watched Ajax bring up the horses one at a time, curry them and then hobble them again. The lad was thorough, although he had a rebellious set to his back that Kineas hadn’t seen before. But he checked hooves, rubbed each horse with straw, looked in their eyes and their mouths. He knew what he was about. Kineas went back to watching the horizon, and he was surprised when Ajax started walking towards him with a pair of horses - the time had flown by. But his hands were back to normal, his neck felt less strained and he was ready for a ride. Once mounted, he walked his horse to the near tent and tapped the poll with the butt of his javelin. Niceas put his head out.
‘We’re riding a dawn patrol. Have the slaves start the food. We’ll ride in an hour.’
Niceas buried a yawn with one of his big hands. ‘I’m on it.’
Kineas turned his horse and rode out with Ajax at his side. He rode straight north along the river, staying in low ground when he could and showing Ajax what he was doing at every step - keeping the rising sun from silhouetting him and his mount, using the brush along the river for cover and background, coming to a dead stop when he had to cross a rise. They made their way along the bank and then Kineas led them inland, almost due north, until they reached some high ground that he had seen while he was standing watch. They were almost a stade from the camp, and he slid to the ground, tossed his reins to Ajax and crawled to the crest on his hands and knees. He was showing off for the boy, but the cause was good - the boy needed to see how to do a dawn patrol correctly.
From the crest he could see an enormous arc of ground, all of it empty. Of course, every fold of it could contain a Scythian horde, but Kineas knew from experience how hard it was to keep men and animals in ambush without motion and dust for any length of time. He slid back down to Ajax. ‘Hobble your mount and keep watch up there until I come for you. I’ll have your slave bring you something to eat. If you see movement, run like the furies were on you.’
Ajax nodded, very serious. ‘Am I - in trouble?’
‘Certainly not. This is what we do on the dawn patrol. I have work to do - you already did yours. So you can loaf up here, watch the whole horizon, and wait for the men to have breakfast. It’d be the same if I had Diodorus here.’
Ajax let a smile break through. ‘Oh. Good. I’ll watch, then.’
Kineas rode back to camp by a different route, still keeping his silhouette away from prying eyes. He ate a bowl of reheated soup from the night’s dinner, re-curried his own charger and then put her into the remounts, choosing a smaller, lighter horse for his day’s work. He told Diodorus, Lykeles and Graccus to be prepared to hunt. They were eager for it.
Crax was working on the baggage animals under the careful eye of Niceas. He didn’t seem the worse for his misadventure, but when Kineas checked the baggage, he found that every girth the boy had done was loose or sabotaged. Kineas summoned the boy with a wave and knocked him flat on his back with a single blow of his fist.
‘I don’t like to hit a slave,’ Kineas said evenly. He paused to lick some blood where he had split the skin over a knuckle. ‘You tried to run last night. Fair enough. If I were a slave, I’d run for home, too. Then you rigged the baggage to slip - lost work and a late start for us. Bad job both times. If you try something like this again, I’ll just kill you - you didn’t cost me a copper obol and I don’t need a slave. Understand?’
The boy looked dazed - probably was, after two heavy blows.
‘But I do need more cavalrymen. Show me you can do the job and take the crap, and I’ll put you up as a groom in Olbia and free you in the
gamelia
. Or die. I hate to waste manpower, but I don’t like sloppy knots.’ Kineas turned away and rolled heavily on to the back of his light horse. He didn’t feel like vaulting, and his split knuckle hurt like fire.
gamelia
. Or die. I hate to waste manpower, but I don’t like sloppy knots.’ Kineas turned away and rolled heavily on to the back of his light horse. He didn’t feel like vaulting, and his split knuckle hurt like fire.
He sent Ataelus to bring Ajax in, and then they were off across the plains of the Getae.
They made good time after they started, although Crax remained dazed and he had to be tied over a horse. By noon they were clear of the marsh to the east and riding on a board, flat grass plain dominated by a line of low rocky hills to the west. Lines of wind moved the tips of the grasses in waves. The sea of green rolled on and on over hummocks and low hills, all the way out to the horizon. It was terrain built for horses by the gods, and Kineas stopped at the top of the first low ridge and looked out under his hand while the sun crept up a finger’s breadth.
The magnitude of the view kept them silent, and then Ataelus dismounted, knelt, and kissed the ground, before giving a screech that vanished in the vastness of the sky.
‘Someone’s home,’ said Coenus with a grin.
When they found some tracks Ataelus rode all the way to the base of the hills and came back with a heavy black arrow that he handed to Kineas without comment.
‘Getae?’ Kineas asked.
Ataelus shrugged expressively and rode out ahead.
In early afternoon they flushed a small herd of roebuck in a deep gully cut by a small stream, and the three hunters rode ahead of them, cut out a big buck and brought him down with javelins. It was a pleasure to watch, and the aristocrat in Kineas appreciated how professional cavalrymen had mastered the mounted hunt in a way that few aristocrats would ever see, much less learn. He rode on, thinking of Xenophon, whose works on horses and hunting he had read in his youth. Coenus - an educated man, and often out of place in a company of mercenaries - doted on Xenophon, and could quote great swathes of his works. Seeing the returning hunters, he rode up next to Kineas, pointed, and said, ‘“Therefore I charge the young not to despise hunting or any other schooling. For these are the means by which men become good in war and in all things out of which must come excellence in thought and word and deed.”’
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