Tyrant (45 page)
Authors: Christian Cameron
‘A hilt that balances the blade,’ Kineas said.
‘How much can you pay?’ asked the man, eyeing the blade with professional interest. He put it on a scale and weighed it, made notes on a wax tablet. ‘Point heavy? Show me where you want the balance. Close enough.’ He set some weights on the balance and then wrote the result, drew a line on the blade with a wax stylus.
Kineas looked around the shop. Parshtaevalt was admiring a gorytos cover - solid gold, with magnificent depictions of Olympus - surrounded by a score of Assagatje nobles. ‘Not as much as they can pay,’ he said. ‘Two minae of silver?’ he said. He’d have to borrow it - the sword had returned him to penury.
The goldsmith tilted his head. ‘I suppose I could make it from lead,’ he said.
Parshtaevalt leaned over. ‘Listen - you big man. King pay for you, yes yes.’
‘I don’t want the king to pay,’ Kineas said.
‘Let me build you something as fine as the blade,’ said the Athenian smith. ‘You’re the hipparch of Olbia - I’ve heard of you. Your credit is good with me.’
Kineas relinquished the blade with some hesitation.
Dikarxes, the king’s friend, pushed past Philokles. The shop was growing crowded with Sakje nobles - almost every man and woman from the council. Parshtaevalt growled a greeting and Dikarxes replied at length. Ataelus translated. ‘Trust you to find out all our secrets! Our own Athenian goldsmith!’ Parshtaevalt slapped his back.
Dikarxes spoke again, and Ataelus said, ‘Of course the king for pay. He for show favour you. He ask everyone what gift to give. What better gift than sword?’
Dikarxes interrupted to introduce the other nobles. ‘Kaliax of the Standing Horse,’ he said through Ataelus. And went on, ‘Gaomavañt of the Patient Wolves. They are the most loyal - the core of the king’s army - with the Cruel Hands, of course.’ He grinned at Parshtaevalt. ‘It is a very good sign that they are already come in, with most of their strength.’
Kineas clasped hands with each in turn.
Gaomavañt gave him a tight hug and spoke while slapping his back. Ataelus choked, and Eumenes translated, his face red as a flame. ‘He says - you are the one that Srayanka fancies. It is good you are so tough, or she will swallow you.’
Dikarxes said a few words, and the others roared, and again Gaomavañt slapped his back.
Ataelus wiped his eyes. ‘Lord Dikarxes say - good for everyone if she mate you - you Greek, and no clan suffer from the alliance. If Cruel Hands join Patient Wolves, blood on the grass - yes? Cruel Hands mate with king - king too powerful. But Cruel Hands—’
‘Cruel Hands?’ Kineas asked. ‘Is that Srayanka’s clan?’
Ataelus nodded. ‘And lady’s war name, too. Cruel Hands.’
Philokles patted his shoulder. ‘Nice name. Perfect little Greek wife.’
Kineas made himself laugh, but for the rest of the afternoon he heard Ataelus’s voice in his head -
Cruel Hands mate with king.
Cruel Hands mate with king.
Kineas tried to avoid Kam Baqca because the woman scared him. She was the personification of the dreams that troubled him, and in her presence, the dreams of the tree and the plain seemed more imminent - almost real. But on his fifth day in the city of the Sakje, Kam Baqca found him in the great hall and seized his arm in hers - strong as an iron blade - and walked him to a curtained alcove like a tent. She threw a handful of seeds on a brazier and a cloud of heavy smoke rose around them. The smoke smelled like cut grass. It made him cough.
‘You dreamed the tree,’ she said.
He nodded.
‘You dreamed the tree twice. You touched the tree, and you are paying the price. But you waited for me to climb it, so you are not altogether a fool.’
Kineas bit his lips. There was a drug in the incense - he could feel it. ‘I am a Greek man,’ he said. ‘Your tree is not for me.’
She seemed to move in the smoke like a snake, coiling, flowing easily from one place to another. ‘You are a baqca born,’ she said. ‘You dream like a baqca. Are you ready for the tree? I must take you now, while I have you. Soon you will be gone, and the maw of war will devour you. It is a war I will not survive - and then there will be no one to take you to the tree. And without the tree, you will neither survive, nor win the lady.’ She was telling him too many things too fast.
‘You will die?’
She was beside him. ‘Listen to me.’ She held his arm in a grip of iron. ‘Listen. The first thing the tree shows you is the moment of your death. Are you ready for that?’
Kineas wasn’t ready for any of it. ‘I am a Greek man,’ he said again, although it sounded like a poor excuse. Especially as the tree itself was growing before his eyes, rising from the smoke-dense tent, straight out of the charcoal of the brazier, its heavy branches just over his head and rising into the heavens above him.
‘Take a branch and climb,’ she said.
He reached up and took the first soft-backed branch over his head, threw a leg over it clumsily and pulled himself up. His arms were as full of the drug as his head. He found that he had closed his eyes and he opened them.
He was sitting on a horse in the middle of a river - a shallow river, with rocks under his horse’s feet and pink water flowing over and around the rocks. The ford - it was a ford - was full of bodies. Men and horses, all dead, and the white water burbling over the rocks was stained with blood, the froth of the water pink in the sun.
The river was vast.
Not Issus, then,
some part of his mind said. He lifted his head and saw the far bank, and he rode towards it. There were other men behind him, all around him, and they were singing. He was astride a strange horse, tall and dark, and he felt the weight of strange armour.
Not Issus, then,
some part of his mind said. He lifted his head and saw the far bank, and he rode towards it. There were other men behind him, all around him, and they were singing. He was astride a strange horse, tall and dark, and he felt the weight of strange armour.
He felt the power of a god.
He knew that feeling - the feeling of a battle won.
He gestured, and his cavalry gathered speed, crossing the ford faster. On the far bank a thin line of archers began to form and fire, but behind them was the chaos of defeat and rout - a whole army breaking into fragments.
A Macedonian army.
A half-stade from the archers, he raised his hands, his gold-hilted sword of Egyptian steel like a rainbow of death in his hand. He half turned to Niceas - it wasn’t Niceas, but a woman - the woman raised the trumpet to her lips, and the call rang like a clarion, and they charged.
The day was won. It was his last thought as the arrow knocked him from the saddle into the water. He was deep in the water, and he had been here before, and he pushed himself to his feet, but the arrow dragged him down.
He sat - alive - astride a branch of the tree, and it was as soft as a woman’s leg against his groin.
Kam Baqca spoke. ‘You have seen your death?’
Kineas was lying flat, holding someone’s hand, his death scream still raw in his throat. ‘Yes,’ he whispered.
He opened his eyes and found that he was holding Kam Baqca’s hand. Not a bad death, he thought.
Niceas had not been beside him when he fell. Had Philokles been there? Hard to tell in the chaos of a few seconds - all the men at his back had worn closed helmets, and most had been in coats of scale - Sakje armour, in fact.
Kam Baqca spoke again. ‘Do not dare to interpret what you have seen. You may be sure of what it means and you can still be surprised. You have begun to climb the tree - I have climbed it all my life. I gave my sex to the gods to help me climb faster. You do not even believe in the climb. Beware of hubris.’
‘What?’ He coughed, as if he still had water in his lungs. His mind was clear, but his body was sluggish.
‘There are no rules for Greeks,’ she replied. ‘But I think you will find it unwise to speak of it - especially in a few weeks, when you decide that I am a bent she-man who uses drugs to manipulate.’ She shrugged. ‘Perhaps I wrong you. You and Philokles - I have never met, nor seen in any dream, Greek men more open to new things.’
Kam Baqca rose on her haunches and threw another herb on the fire - this one redolent of pine. ‘That will clear your head and take death from your spirit,’ she said. She stood. ‘It is a week for hard news, Kineas the Athenian. Here is mine for you. You watch Srayanka like the stallion watches the mare. I tell you, and I speak for the king - we will not allow stallions and mares to serve in the same company, because they disturb all the horses. So with you. You will not mate until this war is over. Already Srayanka thinks more of you than of her duty. Already you fear to offend her rather than offering the king your best council.’ She put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Who cannot see that you are for each other, although you share no tongue? But not yet, and not now.’
Kineas spoke, and he couldn’t hide the anguish in his voice. ‘She hasn’t spoken to me in a week!’
‘Has she not?’ Kam Baqca seemed unperturbed by his tone. ‘You are blind, deaf, and stupid, then.’ She gave him a small smile. ‘When you grow less stupid, I ask that you have a care.’
‘It’s a care I would like to have,’ Kineas said.
Kam Baqca reached out and touched his cheek. ‘Everything -
everything
- is balanced in the blade of a sharp sword. One word, one act, and the balance tilts.’
everything
- is balanced in the blade of a sharp sword. One word, one act, and the balance tilts.’
Kineas thought less of the balance than of the fact that he was doomed to die - and soon.
15
T
hey rode like Sakje on the road home, trotting for miles, changing horses, and moving again. They had no escort this time, just Parshtaevalt and a second Cruel Hand called Gavan as guides and messengers.
hey rode like Sakje on the road home, trotting for miles, changing horses, and moving again. They had no escort this time, just Parshtaevalt and a second Cruel Hand called Gavan as guides and messengers.
Through the entire trip, Kineas felt the press of urgency on his shoulders. The ground was hard enough. Zopryon could march at any time, and the campaign, for so long in abeyance, was suddenly upon him and he felt unprepared. He worried about the archon’s treachery, and about the morale of the city, about the lives of his troops and about the alliance of the Sakje, their numbers, their quality.
And having foreseen his own death, he struggled to understand what it meant - or whether he accepted it as genuine prophecy, or merely the result of the smoke. The Sakje used a drug of smoke for many things, including recreation. He’d experienced it more than once now, when visiting Dikarxes, when sitting in the great hall while the drug was cast in braziers. He’d smelled it in Kam Baqca’s tent in the snow. It was possible that the drug was the root of all the dreams. And if the dream was real - it was a two-edged sword. No man wanted to know he had just sixty days to live. But there was comfort, too - to fall at the hour of victory had at least the virtue of predicting victory.
Of all the things he had ever wanted to discuss with Philokles, this - the dreams, the prophecy, oracular powers, dreams of death and of the future - pressed on him every time they spoke, and yet some reserve, some caution about making it more real by discussing it aloud, kept him from it.
And, of course, the Baqca had forbidden it.
On the last day, when the outriders had already seen the walls of Olbia, exchanged shouts with the sentries on the walls, and relieved Kineas’s mind of half its illogical worries by reporting all was well, Philokles rode up next to Kineas. He rode well enough now to be accounted a horseman. He required larger horses than any other man, and he tired them more quickly, but he was tireless in the saddle.
Kineas glanced at him with affection. Philokles was a big man, but he was now a tower of muscle. The fat he had worn when they first met was gone, burned away by almost a year of constant exercise. He was handsome, heavily bearded, and he smiled more often than had been his wont.
‘All is well in the city?’ he asked as he rode up.
‘That’s what the scouts say.’ Kineas was still smiling to himself.
‘You seem happier today,’ Philokles said.
Kineas raised an eyebrow.
‘You have been a silent man for six days, brother. You’re putting the troops off their feed and Niceas is so worried he put me up to this. You are a worrier, but not usually a brooder. Did your amazon play you false? I confess that I heard much speculation about her relations with the king.’
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