Tyrant (56 page)
Authors: Christian Cameron
Kineas walked around the stallion, admiring his haunches. He had a short head, without the purity of line the Persian had, but he was big and the colour was either ugly or magnificent. It was certainly rare. ‘Thank you, Lord. This is a kingly gift.’
The king grinned, embarrassed and looking very young indeed. ‘He is, isn’t he?’ Satrax smiled, showing his essential good humour. ‘There’s the advantage of owning ten thousand horses,’ he said after a moment.
‘I am sorry,’ Kineas said. He couldn’t think of anything else to say.
The king grimaced. ‘Kings have to think hard thoughts. If you are her husband, you will be a man of great power among my people. A baqca who was also a man with a wife who commanded a clan. A great soldier with Greek allies. You may be my rival.’ He looked at the horse. ‘As Marthax is.’ He stared over the plain. ‘Or is this just my jealousy speaking?’
‘You are blunt,’ Kineas said. ‘You think like a king.’
‘I have to.’ The king gestured at the horse. ‘Give him a try,’ he said.
Kineas caught the mane of the stallion in one hand and vaulted on to the beast’s tall back. He almost missed his seat - this monster was a hand taller than the Persian - and he was thankful that the animal waited patiently while his feet scrambled.
Satrax restrained his laughter with difficulty, pleased to see the Greek discomfited by the horse. Kineas made a clucking sound, and the big animal flowed into a curve. ‘What a gait!’ Kineas crowed. The beast’s easy flow of hooves was strangely familiar. He tried his knees alone, his hands free, and brought the stallion alongside the king’s mount easily. The two horses sniffed at each other like stable mates - which they probably were. They were the same colour.
‘Same dam?’ he said.
Satrax grinned. ‘Same dam and sire,’ he said. ‘Brothers.’
Kineas inclined his head. ‘I am honoured.’ He patted the horse’s shoulder, thinking of his conversation with Philokles. ‘I swear to you that no action of mine will harm your kingship. Nor will I wed Srayanka, or ask for her, without your permission.’ He slapped the horse. ‘This is a wonderful gift,’ he repeated.
‘Good,’ said the king. He nodded, obviously relieved and just as obviously still troubled. And jealous. ‘Good. Let’s get the army moving.’
It was later in the day when Kineas, who was becoming more enamoured of his new horse by the hour, realized why his gait seemed so familiar.
The silver horse was the stallion from the dream of his death.
18
T
hey crossed the plains from west to east at speed. The Sakje set their usual pace, and the Olbians, with remounts provided, kept up. They made a hundred stades a day, by Kineas’s estimation, watering at rivers that crossed the plain at measured intervals, camping in established spots with fresh green grass for fodder and a few trees for firewood.
hey crossed the plains from west to east at speed. The Sakje set their usual pace, and the Olbians, with remounts provided, kept up. They made a hundred stades a day, by Kineas’s estimation, watering at rivers that crossed the plain at measured intervals, camping in established spots with fresh green grass for fodder and a few trees for firewood.
The level of organization was staggering, for barbarians. But Kineas no longer thought of them as barbarians.
Kineas had never seen an army of five thousand move so fast. If Zopryon pressed his men as hard as Alexander himself, he might make sixty stades, although patrols would go farther. And Kineas suspected he had not seen the fastest march of which the Sakje were capable.
Most of the campsites were shadowed by tall hills of turf that grew out of the plain, often the highest point for many hours riding. On the fourth evening, his muscles sore but his body clean, Kineas sat with his back against Niceas’s, rubbing tallow into his bridle leather and then working carefully at the headstall where it had begun to burst its stitches, making minute alterations in the fit as he went. The new horse had a big head.
Srayanka came with Parshtaevalt, and Hirene, her trumpeter. She had become less shy about seeking him out.
‘Come walk, Kineax,’ she said.
Kineas used the awl in his palm to punch two new holes, working carefully with the old leather. He needed the headstall to last until they were back at the camp at Great Bend, and no longer.
‘Soon,’ he said.
She sat down by him and pointed at his work to Hirene, who frowned. Niceas was cutting a Getae cloak to make a saddle blanket.
Hirene spoke quickly in Sakje. Her lip curled, whether in sneer or smile Kineas couldn’t tell. Srayanka laughed, a lovely sound, and sat gracefully on Kineas’s blanket.
‘Hirene say - you have uses, after all,’ Srayanka said. ‘The great war leader sews leather!’
Kineas ran a stitch back through the last hole, and then again, and then a third time, and then bit the linen thread as close as he could to the leather. Kineas buffed the headstall with the palm of his hand and then laid it carefully atop the pile of his tack. Parshtaevalt knelt by the pile and began to examine the bit.
‘Not good ours,’ he said. ‘But good.’ His Greek, like their Sakje, was improving by the day.
Niceas tossed his blanket on his own tack and waved across the fire for Ataelus to translate. To Parshtaevalt, he said, ‘You just show me, mate.’ He gave Kineas a friendly wink.
Hirene looked torn - she wanted to follow her mistress, but Srayanka shook her head. Turning to Kineas, she said, ‘Bring your sword.’
Kineas thought that he had the oddest courtship since Alexandros met Helen. But he fetched the Egyptian blade from his blanket, where the precious thing was rolled at the centre.
She took his hand, and they walked off into the red evening. By the camp, the turf was even and the grass bright green and short, but she led him out into the sea of grass, where hummocks made walking treacherous. They laughed together when their mutual refusal to relinquish the other’s hand cost them their balance.
Kineas looked back over his shoulder to find that they were in full view of the camp, stretching out to the north and south along the stream, and that many heads were turned, watching them.
Reading his thoughts, she said, ‘Let them watch. This hill is grave to the father of me. Here, we kill two hundred horses, send him to
Ghanam
. I
baqca
here.’
Ghanam
. I
baqca
here.’
They came to the base of the mound. Closer up, it was clearer that the hill was made by the hands of men. Turfs were set like steps running up the barrow, and a deep trench, invisible from a stade away, ran clear around the base with a barrier of stone around the outside.
Srayanka led him around a quarter of the boundary ditch, and then they entered at a gate flanked by wild roses and began to climb the mound. She began to sing tonelessly.
The ball of the setting sun came to rest on the far horizon, bathing the green grass of the turf with red and orange and gold light, so that the hill appeared to be an amalgam of grass and gold and blood. Her singing increased in volume and tone.
‘Hurry!’ she said. She pulled at his hand, and they ran the last few steps to the top, where a stone sat in a slight depression. From the stone rose a bar of rusted iron. Closer up it proved to be the remnants of a sword, with the gold of the hilt still standing proud above the decay of the blade.
The sun was huge, a quarter gone beneath the curve of the world.
‘Draw your sword,’ she ordered.
Kineas drew his sword. She reached out and took the rusted sword reverentially by the hilt and drew it from the stone. She seized Kineas’s sword from him, and as the last rays of the sun turned its hilt to fire, she plunged it straight into the stone - deeper, if anything, than the other sword had been.
As the sun vanished, leaving the sky like a dye shop, with vivid reds and pale pink contrasting to the growing purple and dark blue veil of night, she stopped singing. She knelt facing the stone.
Kineas stood by her, embarrassed at his own ignorance of her ways, equally embarrassed by the extent of her barbarism - but she was a priestess, and it was not the Greek way to ridicule any people’s gods, so he knelt by her in the damp hollow. He could smell the moss on the stone, and the oil on his Egyptian blade, and the woodsmoke in her hair.
They knelt there until his knees burned and his back was a column of stone against his muscles. Darkness fell, complete, so that the plain beyond the hollow vanished, and there was only the sky and the stone, the smells of the hollow, and then the cry of an owl, and . . .
he was flying over the plain of grass, looking for prey, the pinprick glow of uncountable stars sufficient light for him to see.
he was flying over the plain of grass, looking for prey, the pinprick glow of uncountable stars sufficient light for him to see.
He rose higher over the plain, in lazy circles, and when he saw a circle of fires - a dozen circles of fire, a hundred circles of fire - then he descended again, watching the camp as he came down in spirals . . .
As suddenly as she had knelt, Srayanka rose, took a pouch of seeds from her waist and scattered them in the hollow and on the stone.
Kineas got to his feet with considerable difficulty. One of his feet was asleep. But his mind was clear, part of it still high in the dark sky.
‘You are
baqca
,’ she said. ‘You dream strong dream?’
baqca
,’ she said. ‘You dream strong dream?’
He rubbed his face to clear his head. The inside of his mouth felt gummy, as if he’d eaten resin. ‘I dreamed,’ he said in Greek.
She put a hand on his face. ‘I must sit in the,’ she paused, seeking words, ‘smoke tent - even here, under the
Guryama
of the father of me.’ She rubbed his face affectionately. ‘You dream free.’
Guryama
of the father of me.’ She rubbed his face affectionately. ‘You dream free.’
He was still in the grip of the dream, and she took his hand and led him down the hill.
Halfway down, he began to recover. ‘My sword!’ he said.
She smiled, used her position higher on the turf hill to lean to him, eye to eye, and kiss him.
It was a long kiss, and he found that his hand quite naturally went to her right breast, and she bit his tongue and stepped back, laughing. ‘Sword right here,’ she said, slapping at his groin with a hard hand. Then she relented. ‘Climb for sword with dawn. Baqca thing, yes?’
Kineas spoke hesitantly. ‘You are putting the power of your father’s sword into my sword?”
She considered him for a moment, with the look a mother gives when a child has asked a difficult question, or a question whose answer may itself cause harm. ‘You marry me?’ she asked.
Kineas’s breath caught in his throat. But he didn’t hesitate. ‘Yes.’
She nodded, as if the answer was just as she expected. ‘So we ride together, yes? And perhaps . . .’ She wore an open look, like a priestess at worship, a look that scared him to his bones and marrow. ‘Perhaps we rule together?’
Kineas took a step back. ‘The king rules,’ he said.
Srayanka shrugged. ‘Kings die.’
Kineas thought, You’re backing the wrong horse, my love. I’m the one fated to die. He reached out his arms to her, and she came into them. When her head was against his shoulder, he said, ‘Srayanka, I—’
She put a hand on his mouth. ‘Shhh,’ she said. ‘Say nothing. Spirits walk. Say nothing.’
Kineas embraced her - almost a chaste embrace, and she stood with her head on his shoulder, her arms around his waist, for a long time, and then they walked back down the hill. Without discussion, they began to separate at the edge of the short grass, she to her camp and he to his, but their hands stayed together too long, and they almost fell again.
They laughed, and walked away.
She came for him in the morning, dressed in white skins with gold plaques and gold embroidery, crowned with a headdress of gold that towered above her. The king was with her, and Marthax, and twenty other chiefs and warriors. Kineas waved to Leucon and Nicomedes to attend him, and the group repeated the journey, climbing through the last of the dark to the hollow at the summit. All the Sakje began to sing, even the king.
The first ray of the sun licked over the dark line of the world’s edge like a flame rising from a new fire. The sun picked out the gorgon’s head - Medea’s head, Srayanka’s head - on the hilt of his machaira, so that it seemed to draw colour from the rising run, and the line of flame crept down the blade, faster and faster, so that in a few heartbeats, the sword seemed to have drawn the sun down into the stone.
All the Sakje shouted, and Srayanka’s hand took the hilt and she sang a high, pure note, and motioned with her other hand at Kineas. Kineas took the sword hilt in his right hand, and just for an instant it seemed to pull him down.
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