Tyrant t-1, page 37
part #1 of Tyrant Series
Kineas slipped into deeper water to hide the truth of their assertions, still holding her hand, and she swam after him leaving her horse. And they swam together with their people until they were clean. They dried naked in the warm evening air, on the grass, and Agis the Megaran and Ajax both sang from the Iliad while the Greek men used olive oil and strigils on their skin, to the delight and amusement of all the Sakje. Then Marthax sang with Srayanka, turn and turn again, an endless ballad of love and revenge. Kineas found that the king had joined them, and he sat with the king while men fetched dry tunics and food, and then Srayanka finished singing and sat with her back against his as if they were old war companions. Her people had brought her clothes, and she was dressed, and she had given him a tunic of pale skin covered in embroidery like her own. It was barbaric. He put it on anyway.
The king sat stiffly with them, and then turned away, clearly angered, when Kineas donned the tunic. Later, when she kissed Kineas, an absent and affectionate peck as she reached past him for wine, the king rose to his feet. He spoke to her in rapid, angry Sakje.
She tossed her drying hair, flicked her eyes at Kineas and then nodded to the king. ‘My mind knows,’ she said clearly. ‘And my mind rules my body.’
The king turned and strode off into the dark.
Srayanka’s back remained warm against his, her iron and deerskin hand supple in his, and he was, again, as happy as a man could be who had only a few weeks to live.
In the morning, the army lay in a stupor of exhaustion and wine-sickness. A handful of Getae could have wrecked them. Kineas had never seen an army behave differently after a victory, but wondered if there might be a value in keeping a guard.
The swelling in his arm was less, and the heat from it almost gone, as if the river spirit had drawn away the poison. He was one of the first up, and having drunk some Sindi tea, he donned the leather tunic that Srayanka had given him. Despite its outre appearance, it was clean. His military tunic was damp, and despite his desultory washing while he watched Srayanka, it was still filthy, and the rest of his kit had vanished in the retreat — probably left at the last camp.
The king rode up to where Kineas was eyeing the Olbian’s string of captured Getae mounts, working to select a decent riding horse. To his eye, they were all too small.
‘I think it is time we spoke as men,’ the king said, with an obvious attempt at dignity. ‘You have given me a great victory. I would not be ungenerous.’
Kineas sighed and looked up at the king. ‘I am at your service, Lord.’ He looked at the ground, unused to discussing such matters. Then he looked back. ‘Are we speaking of Srayanka?’
The king wouldn’t meet his eye. ‘After Zopryon is defeated — would you marry her?’
Kineas shrugged. ‘Of course,’ he said, because he had to say something. Of course, if I were alive.
The king leaned down. ‘Perhaps the prospect is not as enticing — she is no Greek woman, and she is fierce. But she will not settle to be your leman — she is the chief of the Cruel Hands, too great a personage to be a trull. Perhaps you cannot wed her — perhaps you are already married, or promised?’
The king had mistaken his tone entirely. ‘I would be proud to be wed to the lady,’ Kineas said, and found that he meant it.
The king straightened in his saddle. ‘Really?’ He sounded surprised. ‘She would never live in a city. It would kill her.’ Now he met Kineas’s eye. ‘I have lived in a Greek city. I know the lady. She lives as a free spear maiden, and your city would kill her.’
Fantasizing aloud, Kineas said, ‘Perhaps I could buy a farm north of Olbia — she could visit.’ He laughed even as he spoke.
The king shook his head. ‘I like you, Kineas. I liked you from the first. But you come like the doom of my happiness. You brought this war, and now you will take my cousin. I will try to speak as a man, and not an outraged youth. I wish her for myself — but she will have only you. Now I must endure not just the loss of her — a woman I have desired since I was old enough to feel a man’s desire — but to know that my best warriors speak of you as airyanam. If you wed her, you will be a potent ally — or a deadly rival. And I ask myself — is this what you desire? Will you leave your men to ride the plains? Or bring them, like a new clan?’
Kineas rubbed at his beard and felt old. ‘Lord, I will serve you. Indeed, I had not thought on any of these matters. I can see that they prey on you. But…’ Kineas struggled for words. ‘It is the lady herself that I value.’
‘How will you live?’ the king asked. ‘Can you leave Niceas, or Diodorus, to be the consort of a barbarian girl?’ He looked away over the grass. ‘Or would she leave the Cruel Hands to grind flour and weave with Greek women? I think perhaps she would — until she hated you, or went mad.’
Kineas nodded, because he had thought these thoughts, and because the sentence of death hanging over him had saved him from having to decide. Except he felt — knew, in his heart — that they would have found a way.
Or would he have ended as Jason, and she as Medea?
But what could he say? Lord, I’ll be dead, so it doesn’t matter? ‘I think we would — will find a way,’ he said carefully.
The king was still watching the grass. He drew himself taller. ‘I will try not to stand between you,’ he said. The sentence cost him. And then he added, ‘Kam Baqca says I must do this thing.’
Kineas wondered what it was like to have so much power at eighteen years. ‘It is a noble thing to do, whether Kam Baqca recommended it or not.’
Satrax shrugged. Then he straightened and sought again for dignity. ‘I hear you lost your warhorse,’ he said. ‘You lost that grey — which gives me a beautiful opportunity to show you how highly I value you.’ He extended a hand, inviting Kineas to mount behind him.
Kineas mounted with the king. ‘People will laugh,’ he said.
‘Unlikely,’ the king answered. He kicked his horse into a trot and then a canter.
They were riding through the royal herd, or rather the abbreviated version that the king had brought on the pursuit of the Getae. Kineas knew the brands.
The king spoke suddenly, ‘My other lords think you are the perfect choice — she will have a husband, and the Cruel Hands will have heirs, and you, of course, are already a war leader of repute.’ The horse continued for a few strides. ‘I am told I should pick a girl my own age, with better hips for childbearing — a Sauromatae princess is recommended.’ Kineas was pressed against the king’s back, and Satrax was stiff — angry. Angry that he had to bow to the wishes of his lords. Then he relaxed and pointed. ‘There!’ he said.
The stallion was not so much grey as silver, a dark silver the colour of polished iron, or steel. He had a heavy black line down his back — a marking Kineas had only seen among the heavy Sakje breed — and a pale mane and tale. He was tall, and self-possessed. In fact, he was twin to the king’s war mount.
‘He won’t be as well trained as your Persian,’ the king said — like all men giving a great gift, he had to decry its faults. ‘But he’s well broken to harness — my next warhorse. Yours, now. And a couple of riding horses — Marthax has them for you, but I wanted to talk.’
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
They 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.’
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 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?’
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.’
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.
