Tyrant (26 page)
Authors: Christian Cameron
None of them rebelled. None of them went to the fire. They started to get wood - pitiful, snowy branches at first, but Ajax and Philokles led them and suddenly it was a contest, a feat worthy of Achlles, and they fought to get more of the stuff, driftwood from the river beach, downed branches from the stand of woods that filled the bend in the river. Even Kineas, who could not entirely control his body, felt drawn to participate.
Soon he was drinking from a hot bronze beaker that burned his hands even as the mulled wine burned away the pain in his throat. His hands were bright red. The others were standing around a huge fire, a fire that was itself as big as a house, and the heat blasted their clothes dry.
And then he was in a tent, and coughing.
He is hot, and the spirits of the dead gather around him with tongues of fire - Aristophanes, who died screaming with an arrow in his belly on the Euphrates, bellows fire so that a cloud of it billows around his head like a shroud of flame. A Persian - suddenly he’s sure it is a man he killed himself - has no face, just bone, but his hands make precise signals, and then . . .
He is cold, and the bodies of the dead are frozen. Amyntas has ice in his beard on his cheeks and when he smiles, his cheeks develop little fissures like the crows’ feet at the edge of a matron’s eyes.
‘I didn’t think you were dead.’
Amyntas has no eyes, no voice and no response.
Artemis’s hands are cold as clay and wet with something, and his manhood shivels away from her touch, and her eyes glitter - there is frost on her lashes and a dagger in her neck, and he flinches away
The moon rises like an accusing goddess over the battlefield at Guagemela, and he walks alone among the dead. Mostly Persians, they lie in sad little heaps where the Macedonians reaped them when they broke, or windrows where they were cut if they stood. And he thinks,
This is real
, because he was there in that moonlight, but then the dead begin to stir, rising like cold men who have had a hard sleep on the ground, one patting about him for something lost (his intestines, at his feet), another holding his back and groaning - but no sounds come, only a stream of black bile.
This is real
, because he was there in that moonlight, but then the dead begin to stir, rising like cold men who have had a hard sleep on the ground, one patting about him for something lost (his intestines, at his feet), another holding his back and groaning - but no sounds come, only a stream of black bile.
Artemis takes his hand and he is on the bank of the Euphrates with her, or perhaps the Pinarus - perhaps both at once. The cold moon gives no real light. And he looks at Artemis.
‘I didn’t think you were dead.’
‘Am I dead?’ She raises her hand, beautiful as it always was, even when red from work, the hand of Aphrodite, and points across the river at the cloud of dust raised by the Persian cavalry - or the snow. He can’t remember what made the cloud. It smells like smoke - like burning rope, or pine needles. He can’t remember his own name, although he knows hers.
He longs for her, longs to take the slim dagger from her neck. He even knows the dagger, but he can’t put a name to it. Somewhere, a strong voice is singing, but if there are words, they mean nothing. It is not the voice of a man or a woman.
He stumbles down the gravel bank to the river because he is so thirsty, and tries to drink. She smells - not of rot - earthy. Unwashed. She has smelled this way before, in the field. Her hair is full of dirt.
Perhaps he could wash it for her.
The singing is very attractive. Was there ever anything to be seen on the other side of the river? He can’t remember - now there is nothing, but he is sure that he had fought his way there once, and lived. Surely that is true. Was there smoke?
He needs a horse. He is dismounted and needs a horse. And Artemis is gone, but he doesn’t care, so great is the urgency to find a horse - he is dead if he doesn’t find one and get mounted and he rises through the water and pushes with his legs, but the water must have been deeper than he expected, there is nothing under him and his armour is dragging at him, dragging him down, and he will sink, and it is dark and cold, so cold he cannot move, and only seeks to sleep . . .
The urge to find a horse survives and he pushes up on the water, but it is more like dust and his mouth is full of the stuff, and he coughs, and coughs.
His head comes clear of the water-dust, and the horse above him is huge - so tall that its legs rise above him like the pillars of a temple, but desperation drives him, terror - he takes hold of the hair at its hocks, and it drags him from the river and there is singing, barbarian singing all around him, and the smell of unwashed hair in his nose, and smoke everywhere, something is burning. He is on the sand in the desert - no, he is on the snow, and Darius is dead - begging in the agora - he is on the horse, his first, and he cannot control it and it canters and then gallops and he cannot get off, the horse ownshimandhecannotridecannotridecannotride.
The singing is loud and he is on the horse, riding at night on the open plain, but the plain is dark and sparks fly when the horse’s feet touch the ground, which is seldom. He is flying. And he is flying down a mountain, or up - there are flashes of lightning but they linger, so that each overlays the last until the sky is white with a single Levin bolt in Zeus’s hand - the mountain and the light around the mountain, and the singing - nasal, dull, barbaric - smell of unwashed hair - water in his mouth - arms around his waist. Artemis is holding him on the horse, and she is hot - her touch is like fire, and not for the first time - he smiles, but the light is everywhere now and the only darkness is like a tunnel ahead of him, and at the end of it waits a Persian in full armour, on an armoured horse, and he has no spear of his own, no sword, and he does not trust this barbarian horse between his knees - her hands - the dagger - the light - the rhythm of the horse - singing - water - warmth - fur against his head and warm light around him and the smell of fire . . .
‘Kineas?’
Kineas could see him, but he had no place in the world with the horse and Artemis and all the dead. And then he smiled, or tried to. He had fur under his head. ‘Philokles?’ he said.
‘Gods be praised.’ Philokles held a cup of water to his mouth. The air tasted of smoke and something barbaric.
He slept.
He woke, and a barbarian loomed over him with a woman’s voice and a man’s stubble on his cheek, singing. The singing seemed familiar. He slept again.
He woke, and the barbarian was still singing, her voice soft, and she played with a man’s hands on a drum, and Philokles sat across the fire - a fire in a tent. Taste of water - taste of wine. He slept.
He woke, and Ajax stood in the door, and a great gust of wind came in, snow against his face, never penetrating the pile of skins atop him. Ajax gave him soup - good soup - and cleaned him where he had fouled himself, so that he was ashamed, and Ajax laughed. ‘You will recover and humiliate me again,’ he said. ‘No, no - I didn’t mean you to take that so harshly, Kineas. Rest easy. We are all well. We are with the Sakje.’
And he dreamed, and words tumbled in his dreams, because Philokles was speaking them, hearing them, from the man who was a woman -
amavaithyå
,
gaêthanãm, mîzhdem
- Philokles repeated them, over and over when the woman said them, and the drum beat. He was awake, but they didn’t know it, and the language was like Persian, which he knew a little, and then it wasn’t - the woman was called Kam, or perhaps Baqca.
amavaithyå
,
gaêthanãm, mîzhdem
- Philokles repeated them, over and over when the woman said them, and the drum beat. He was awake, but they didn’t know it, and the language was like Persian, which he knew a little, and then it wasn’t - the woman was called Kam, or perhaps Baqca.
And then he was awake, and the thin layer through which he had watched the world was stripped away and he was himself. He struggled to sit up, and Philokles came and the whole embarrassing business of stripping him and washing him happened - but he knew it for what it was.
‘Who is that?’ he asked quietly, pointing at the woman. He could see her more clearly now, and she was clearly a man - but he had known her voice so long that her gender remained with the voice.
‘That is Kam Baqca, who cured you.’ Philokles had some message in his words - he was always like that, but Kineas’s grasp on the world, while strong, was still not clear.
‘She - he? Is Sakje?’ Kineas croaked out the words, regretting them - so much else he’d like to ask. Where were the men - the boys, really? Was anyone else sick?
‘She is very much Sakje. And everyone is well, or well enough. I would have gone back to the city, but the snow is high and the Sakje themselves are staying in their camp. Are you still with me?’
‘Very much so,’ Kineas managed a laugh. He was very happy. He was alive.
‘This is a small part of their nation. Three hundred or so. But an important one. Kam Baqca serves the king - the most senior king of the Sakje, I think. The
Ghan
. As does Srayanka. They have come to Olbia on embassy. Are you ready to hear this?’ Philokles stopped because Kineas was coughing.
Ghan
. As does Srayanka. They have come to Olbia on embassy. Are you ready to hear this?’ Philokles stopped because Kineas was coughing.
It was a pale shadow of his former cough, but it still hurt his chest. His chest had exactly the feeling of having been struck repeatedly while wearing armour - the same deep pain, as if bruised under the skin. ‘Ready enough. How long?’
‘Seven days since we arrived. We carried you here from the tent camp - I thought you were dead.’
Kineas could remember snatches of his dreams. He shook his head to drive them away and didn’t comment. ‘You can talk to them?’
‘Eumenes had a Sakje nurse - he can speak. And Ataelus has never slept - without him I wonder if we would be alive. And now I have learned a little. And the Lady Srayanka speaks a very little Greek, and the king speaks a good deal, I think, although he seldom speaks to us.’
Kineas looked around him. He was in a round tent, or hut - it was open to the air at the top, where the smoke billowed out and had a central pole, but it felt solid under his hands and he reached up and touched it - felt. Thick felt. The floor was covered in closely woven reed mats and rugs and skins - the rugs were violent, colourful, and barbaric. He had seen them in Persia. A fire burned in the centre, and there were chests of wood with heavy iron corners and designs. Savage beasts lurked in the iron and the rugs and the gold of a lamp above him. He lay back, already exhausted.
Philokles said, ‘Listen. I’m tiring you, but I have to share this with someone before I burst. They will not meet me formally - they are waiting to see if you live and they gave their best to save you. But Diodorus is right. They say that Antipater is coming in the spring, with a vast army and they are here to make an alliance.’
Kineas shook his head. ‘Fuck,’ he murmured. And went to sleep.
When he woke again, it was dark. Ataelus was sitting by the fire, playing with it, and Kineas watched him for what seemed a long time, as he collected chips of bark and wood from the carpets and fed them into the flames, absorbed by the flickers of light and the process of burning. Then he slipped out through the door and returned with an armload of small stuff, carefully broken to length. He placed it neatly atop the remnants of an older stack and built the fire up until it roared. In the new light of the high flames, Kineas could see that Kam Baqca was sitting across the fire - had been sitting the whole time. She wore a long coat of skin, covered in minute symbols carefully worked in dyed deer hair. Hundreds of small gold plates covered the sleeves and breast, so that she glittered in the new light. Her feet were clad in tight-fitting shoes and stockings of skin - the shoes were little more than socks of leather - also covered in minute decoration. Kineas could see horses and antelope and stranger animals, especially gryphons, repeated in endless variety, no two the same.
She saw that he was awake and came around the fire to him. Her face was middle-aged, handsome and dignified, with a long straight nose and high plucked brows - but the eyes were a man’s eyes, and the throat was a man’s throat. And her hands, when she lifted a cup for him to drink - the cup was solid gold - were a man’s hands, heavy with calluses and broken skin.
Ataelus was still toying with the fire. Kam Baqca spoke, her voice low, and Ataelus came and joined her.
‘Kam Baqca asks, how is it for you, this night?’ Ataelus enunciated more clearly than he usually did.
Kineas shook his head to be rid of the gold cup. ‘I’m better. Yes? Good? Can you give her my thanks? She is a doctor?’
Ataelus cocked his head to one side like a very smart dog. ‘You better? ’ he said and then repeated himself in his barbarian tongue.
‘Can you tell her “Thank you”,’ Kineas asked again. He spaced his words carefully.
Ataelus spoke more in his other language, and then turned back to Kineas. ‘I say thank you, for you. Good? Good. Speak so much Greek, for me.’ He laughed. ‘Maybe learn more Greek for me, yes?’
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