Tyrant (16 page)

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Authors: Christian Cameron

BOOK: Tyrant
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‘There’s another of these little streams in a few stades,’ added Laertes.
 
‘Hades! We lose time every time and the horses scarcely get a drink worth a mention. Straight through. How many stades to this river?’
 
‘Twenty. I had a hard ride.’
 
‘A morning gallop over the sand!’
 
‘Fair enough, Captain.’ Laertes grinned his characteristic grin and pushed his big straw hat back on his head. ‘You’ll be there by late afternoon at this rate.’
 
‘Then we’ll camp there.’
 
Ajax caught his attention, waving his hat from the ridge. Lykeles rode for them flat out, his seat far back on his horse’s rump as she descended the ridge.
 
‘Company coming,’ Kineas said. His men were at the base of a steep ridge, with the sea at their backs, on jaded horses that needed water. ‘Armour and chargers. Now!’
 
He swung down from his riding horse and got his helmet and breastplate from bags on a packhorse. Other men and horses nudged him, bumped him - the column was in chaos. He hoped that it would sort itself out.
 
Lykeles shouted from his left. Kineas had his breast and back plates fastened and was wrestling with the leather cords that padded the crown of his helmet. It was already growing warm from the sun, promising to bake his head in a few minutes.
 
‘Scythians!’ Lykeles called. ‘Hundreds of them!’
 
Kineas used his heavy javelin to lever himself up on to his charger. ‘Where’s Ataelus?’
 
‘No sign of him.’
 
Kineas got his seat, always difficult in armour, and managed to gain control of both of his reins. Crax appeared out of the dust and picked up his javelins and handed them up.
 
Kineas pointed to the baggage horse with more javelins. ‘You want to be free?’ he asked. Crax nodded. ‘Take my riding horse, mount it, and take a pair of javelins and form on me. You are now a free man.’
 
Crax was gone into the dust before he was done speaking.
 
‘Two ranks on me! Form up!’ Kineas yelled. The beach sand was kicking up with all the activity and he couldn’t see. The damned helmet didn’t help. He folded the cheek pieces back and tipped it up on his head. Lykeles had fallen in and Niceas next to him, and now others were coming up at speed. Crax pulled in behind him, clumsy at keeping in formation like any new man, but a born rider.
 
Lykeles hadn’t bothered with his helmet. He turned to Crax. ‘Welcome to the Hippeis, boy!’ and to Kineas, ‘You freed him?’
 
Kineas felt a particular joy on him and the whisper of the god was clear; freeing the boy had been the right act. ‘He made a lousy slave,’ Kineas barked, and all the men laughed.
 
Ajax finished a headlong flight down the ridge and pulled up on the left of the line. At the top of the ridge there was a rustle of movement and the laughing stopped. Then, in the blink of an eye, the ridge was full of horses and riders, the flash of coloured harnesses and the unmistakable gleam of gold repeated again and again so that the whole host of them glittered in the sun, which also flashed off iron armour and bronze and spear points.
 
‘Blessed Athena stand with us now in the hour of our need,’ intoned Lykeles at his side.
 
Niceas cursed, profane and long.
 
Kineas felt their appearance like a blow. They were more splendid than any Persian cavalry he had ever seen, and better mounted. They made his fourteen riders look poor and cheap.
 
Too bad, he thought. Better to have died on the boy king’s campaign.
 
Nonetheless. ‘Silence. Sit at attention. Don’t twitch. Be Greeks!’ Persians had always been impressed by displays of discipline, especially when facing odds. Kineas slammed his helmet down on the crown of his head and the cheek pieces bounced against his cheeks.
 
Two riders separated themselves from the mass at the top of the hill and began to ride down. A deep-throated trumpet sounded three times and the rest of the mass began to descend the hill at a sedate pace, two horns growing from the flanks and cutting off the beach to north and south while the main body halted well within bowshot.
 
Kineas thought that it was an impressive manoeuver, especially for barbarians. But he was breathing again, because one of the approaching riders was clearly Ataelus, and the other was almost certainly a woman.
 
As they crossed the line of the beach, they slowed. Kineas could see that Ataelus’s companion was slim, straight shouldered and wore a pale leather coat with a blue lined design. She also wore a gold neck plate that covered her from her throat to the middle of her chest. Her hair was tied back in two heavy braids. Closer yet and he could see she had dark blue eyes like the sea and heavy black brows that had never been plucked and which gave her a serious look. And she was young.
 
Kineas turned. ‘Sit here like statues. I think we’re going to live to tell this tale. Niceas, on me.’
 
Kineas and Niceas rode out on to the soft sand and met the approaching Scythians.
 
Ataelus raised his hand in greeting and said something to the woman. She was silent. Then she said a few words, like a gentle reminder, it seemed to Kineas.
 
‘Greetings, Ataelus. These are your people?’ Kineas tried to sound commanding and confident. The woman was looking attentively past him at his little company.
 
‘No, no. But like for my people. Yes? and
she
says, “Not for liking not for seeing face. Yes?”’ Ataelus spread his hands wide as if unable to explain the ways of women, or commanders.
 
Kineas handed his spears to Niceas and took off his helmet. ‘Greetings, mistress,’ he called.
 
She smiled and nodded her head. She half turned her horse and motioned to the main line of horses. Another rider left the line and approached. While watching the approaching man - woman, Kineas saw now - she spoke softly to Ataelus. It wasn’t a short speech.
 
Ataelus nodded. Halfway through the flow of words something surprised him and he remonstrated, and in a second the two of them were spitting at each other in the barbarian tongue.
 
Hermes of travellers! thought Kineas. Whatever she wants, Ataelus!
 
She stopped spitting and went back to the gentle voice. Ataelus began to nod again. The second woman approached at a trot - the trumpeter. Very Persian. Except that Kineas had heard it whispered . . .
 
Ataelus turned back to him. ‘She says “pay tax for riding over my land”.’ He paused. ‘She say “two horses taken from Getae bastards” and she say “half a talent of gold”. And I say “we have nothing for half-talent of gold”. Yes? So she say “for me, gold?” and I say “Kineas for gold”. So give her gold. And two horses. And we friends and make feast and ride in peace.’
 
So much for the company treasury
. ‘Arni? Get the black leather bag from my pack horse and bring it here.’ He pointed at the baggage horses. ‘Ask her if she would like to choose her horses,’ he said.
 
Ataelus translated. She spoke.
 
‘She say you choose,’ Ataelus shrugged again.
 
Kineas rode back to the baggage, took the black bag from Arni and picked the two finest of the Getae horses - Lykeles’ and Andronicus’s. They would have to be refunded from whatever was left in the common store. He led them back on short reins and handed them to the woman, who took them. She put her hand over his for a moment. Her hand was very small compared with his, fine fingered but with heavy joints - from work, he thought. Her hands were rough. She had a heavy gold ring on her thumb and a green stone ring on another finger. Up close, he could see that the blue linear decoration on her leather coat was worked in fine blue hair. The gold cones full of coloured hair that dangled from the seams of her coat made music when she moved. She was wearing a month’s pay for a full company of cavalry. Her horse was excellent - as good as Kineas’s own and that horse had been the charger of a Persian nobleman.
 
He smiled at her, as one professional to another, as if they shared a joke. She returned it in kind.
 
He opened the company treasury bag and handed it to her. ‘Tell her that is what we have. Tell her to take what is fair - I am not hiding anything.’
 
She exclaimed. In fact, it didn’t take any understanding of her barbarian tongue to understand that she was cursing like Niceas. She held up one of the gold brooches and her trumpeter barked something. Ataelus spoke briefly and pointed at Kineas. The Scythian commander looked at him. She took the two brooches and handed him the bag. She spoke directly to him, her eyes on his.
 
‘She say, “These for us. These stolen. You kill for Getae - good. And more than you owe for tax these two. So come and eat and I give you gift for these.” And she angry, Captain. Angry hard. But not for us. Yes?’ Ataelus sat on his horse, nodding.
 
Kineas blessed the moment in which some god had sent him the Scyth. Hermes - almost certainly the god of travellers and thieves had sent him the Scyth as a guide, because without him this woman would have killed them all. He could feel it. He could feel the anger rolling off her, making her ugly and hard.
 
She had a golden whip on her saddle and she waved it at him and spoke again, just a few words, and then whirled and galloped back to her main body with her trumpeter on her heels.
 
Ataelus shook his head. ‘Pity for Getae bastards,’ he said. ‘Did something fucking stupid. Killed someone - I not knowing for whom. But fucked up, going to die.’
 
Kineas took a deep breath. ‘You
did
tell her that we killed the man who was wearing these and scattered his riders?’
 
‘She not care. Angry and young. Hey! You owe me, Captain!’ Ataelus looked happy.
 
‘No shit,’ said Niceas, his first words in ten minutes. ‘We all owe you.’
 
Atelus grinned, showing some bad teeth. He liked being the centre of approbation. ‘Where you camp?’
 
‘We’re going to camp at the river.’ Kineas pointed down the beach towards the site Lykeles had located.
 
Other Scyths from the main body were riding down on them. They didn’t seem threatening. In fact, they seemed curious. Two of them rode right up until their ponies were nose to nose with the two Greeks. One of them pointed at Kineas with his whip and called to Ataelus.
 
‘He say - good horse!’ Ataelus said. Ataelus looked around, turned his horse and looked up the hill. He seemed upset.
 
Kineas had other things to occupy him. In a few moments the company was surrounded by Scythians riding around their formation, pointing at things. One whooped and suddenly they were all whooping. They galloped off down the beach a stade and came to a halt.
 
Ataelus rode back over. ‘Gone,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘She say camp and eat but she gone.’ He shook his head. ‘Getae bastards for trouble are.
’
 
‘You think she’s going against the Getae right now? Just like that?’ Kineas had his eyes on the other Scythians, about twenty of them, who were waiting down the beach. He looked back at his men and the horses, and he caught a glimpse of his captive, the Getae boy, and an ugly thought came to him. ‘Niceas, get the men moving. In armour. Now. Gentlemen, right along the beach. Ignore the barbarians. I have to bet they won’t make trouble. Hermes, send they do not make trouble.’ The company moved off in double file.
 
Kineas pulled his charger over to Crax, who was riding his mare. He had to hold the charger hard; his stallion liked the smell of the mare, wrinkled his lips and snorted. ‘Crax, the moment we make camp - I mean it - you get the Getae boy into a tent and stay there. These barbarians . . .’ He realized that there wasn’t much he could say. The barbarians were after the Getae. He’d just fought them himself. The distinction was likely to be lost on Crax.
 
But Crax understood. He nodded. ‘The amazon wants blood.’ Just like that.
 
‘Amazon?’ Kineas asked, astonished at the former slave’s erudition.
 
‘Amazon. Women who fight.’ Crax looked back at the Getae boy. ‘I’ll protect him.’
 
‘Don’t make trouble, boy.’ Kineas wished he had time to explain, wished he understood
anything
about the politics of the plains or where those thrice-damned brooches had originated from. The column was moving. The Scyths were keeping their distance. ‘You are Getae?’ he asked.
 
Crax glanced at him sideways and spat. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Bastarnae.’

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