‘How’s my son?’ she asked. ‘Your grandson,’ she put in.
‘Happy and healthy when I saw him, less than a week ago,’ he replied. ‘The image of his mother – and his father.’ Coenus didn’t flinch to say it, although the boy’s father was his son Xeno, dead at Gaza. Her first lover. She flinched more at the memory than Coenus did. He looked at her. ‘Shouldn’t you be dispensing law to the clans, away west?’
She shrugged. ‘It was a slow winter for crime, Coenus,’ she said. ‘I have reports of raiding in the east. I felt that I should look into them. And I have some restless clan leaders, and I thought I should take them for a ride.’
‘That’s my girl,’ Coenus allowed. He scooped up a horn cup full of warm wine and passed it to her, and she inhaled the fragrance deeply before drinking it off. ‘We’re looking at land for settling our veterans,’ he said. ‘But I’ve five reports of these raiders – all from last autumn.’
‘I have a survivor in my train,’ Melitta said. ‘Taken two autumns ago. So the first raids were a year after the battle.’
Coenus nodded. ‘I think I – that is, we,’ he looked at Nikephorus, ‘would like to interview her.’
‘What do your reports say?’ Melitta asked.
‘Not Sauromatae and not Assagetae,’ Coenus said.
‘My victim says they are a people called
Parni
.’ Melitta shrugged. ‘It’s a Sakje-sounding name, but I’ve never heard it.’
Coenus made a face. ‘Sounds damned familiar,’ he said. ‘Why do I know that name?’ He shook his head. ‘No matter – that’s quite a little army you have there. You planning on a raid?’
Melitta was happy to have Coenus around. He was level-headed and good at giving her advice. When she was a girl, she’d called him ‘uncle’. Now, as he was the father of the father of her child, he had status among the Assagetae as a sort of stepfather for her.
‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘I’m going east, to Hyrkania. That’s where my survivor says the Parni wintered. I may find them and talk. I may raid their wagons. It depends on what they have to say for themselves’ She looked pensive. ‘Most of my clan leaders felt that we needed to be strong and act decisively to prevent … another Upazan.’
Coenus nodded and drank some of the warm wine. The last of the Sakje wagons had crossed the river down at the ford, and they were being drawn up in a loose circle, the horses picketed, the sentries set.
Coenus had trained Scopasis, and he watched the former outlaw with something like parental pride. ‘Still sleeping with him?’ Coenus asked. There was some judgement in his tone, and it made her angry, even as she realised that he was probably judging her just as she judged herself.
‘No,’ she said.
He nodded. ‘Sorry, honeybee. You’re not fifteen any more.’ He stretched. ‘And I’m not forty any more. Zeus Sator, do you know Antigonus is nearly
eighty
? I don’t want to be riding and killing when I’m eighty. I’m feeling tired and old
now.
’
She shook her head. ‘You’re not old!’ she said.
Coenus grinned. ‘The blessing of Artemis upon you, lass.’
‘Will you come east with me, Coenus?’ she asked.
‘I was afraid you’d ask that,’ Coenus said. He motioned to Nikephorus, who was lying with his head propped on an aspis, looking up at the sky, allowing them their privacy with the ease of a man who’d spent his entire adult life in the field.
The mercenary officer rose, pulled his chlamys tight around himself and came over. ‘Lady,’ he said with a nod to Melitta. She’d bested him in a skirmish, and she wasn’t sure he’d forgiven her for it. But Coenus obviously liked him. She was prepared to deal with him to make Coenus happy.
‘Lady is going east, looking for our raiders,’ Coenus said. ‘She has reason to believe they’re from east of the Hyrkanian Sea. I’d like to go with her. How do you feel about it?’
Nikephorus looked at her, and then glanced up the hill at the wagon fort. ‘With our boys?’ he asked.
Melitta nodded.
‘Lady, will you let my men settle these valleys?’ Nikephorus asked.
Melitta shook her head. ‘I’m not going to hand you blanket control of the Tanais high ground,’ she said. ‘On the one hand, it’s all under the hooves of Thyrsis, Lord of Ataelus’ people. On the other hand, it is very much part of my brother’s kingdom.’ She raised her hand. ‘But I could see us negotiating one parcel of land at a time, as required. This, right here—’
Coenus shook his head. ‘They’d like the ground north and west of the Temple of Artemis.’
That was fifty stades downstream. ‘That’s good land,’ she said. ‘What does Gardan say?’
‘Haven’t asked him yet, or Satyrus, either,’ Nikephorus said. ‘I understand that it’s complicated. Some of those farms were recently burned. There may be survivors. But it’s good land, and my men could help hold it. For everyone.’
‘We’re talking about a fort above the temple,’ Coenus said.
‘We should include Thyrsis in this,’ Melitta said. ‘But it doesn’t sound too outlandish to me.’
Nikephorus flashed her a smile. ‘Thanks, lady,’ he said. To Coenus, he raised an eyebrow. ‘So?’
‘I hate leaving Theron with everything.’ Coenus looked at Melitta. ‘A lot of things went to shit after you left. Demostrate’s dead.’
Melitta understood immediately. ‘The grain fleet!’ she said.
Coenus nodded. ‘Your brother has gone to sea with the fleet. He’s going to try something fairly risky. I don’t think any of us imagined that both of you would be at risk this summer.’
Melitta nodded. ‘I understand – but I have to do this. How big is the threat to the grain fleet?’ All she could think of was that the grain income – the gold generated by what was, in effect, her direct tax on merchants buying the grain of her Dirt People – was ultimately what gave her power over the clans. There was sentiment and loyalty, but the money mattered. Loss of that income would limit her ability to deal with the likes of Kontarus and Saida.
It was all so complicated.
It was all as simple as breathing, if only people would behave like horses.
She laughed aloud, and realised that Scopasis was sharing wine with Coenus, like friends. On the other hand, Nikephorus was watching her as if she were a dangerous animal. ‘I don’t bite,’ she said.
Nikephorus raised both hands in mock surrender. ‘I think you just say that,’ he replied.
Coenus laughed at something Scopasis had said, and slapped the younger man on the back. ‘Well, we should have plenty of time to work it out,’ he said.
Melitta smiled. ‘So you’ll come?’
Coenus nodded. ‘One more campaign,’ he said. ‘Who knows – perhaps just a good ride over the spring grass and a nice negotiation at the end.’
Melitta nodded. ‘I’d rather it was like that.’
Nikephorus pulled his cloak tighter. ‘We’ll need wagons and grain and some more ponies,’ he said. ‘You folks will move fast, no doubt.’
‘Two to three hundred stades a day,’ Coenus said, his eyes on the high ground rising away to the west. ‘I haven’t been this way in … twenty-five years. Niceas died out here. Kineas, too, for that matter.’ Coenus pointed west. ‘Thousands of stades west. But it wakes memories. Last time I lay in this camp, it was with Niceas – he’d been wounded – and some Sauromatae girls.’ Coenus shook his head. ‘And I swore I’d build a temple to Artemis if Niceas lived.’ He smiled into the distance. ‘I lived here when my wife was still alive. Xeno was born here.’
They were all silent. Out in the darkness, a thousand horses cropped the new grass, farted and whickered to each other. Closer in, one of the mercenaries played an aulos flute, and a couple of other soldiers danced and a dozen Sakje watched them, smiling.
Melitta felt tears come to her eyes, as they often did when her father was mentioned.
‘Who was Niceas?’ Scopasis asked.
Coenus spread his cloak on the ground and patted it for the Queen of the Assagetae to join him. ‘Settle down,’ he said, ‘and I’ll tell you a story. You all know that the Queen’s father was Kineas? He was a Greek mercenary …’
H
eraklea. One of the strongest cities on the Euxine Sea, with high walls and a servile populace of peasants conquered by Greeks and made into serfs, like the Spartan helots. Dionysus of Heraklea was tyrant.
Satyrus’ grain fleet anchored without asking permission – twenty warships and more than forty grain ships that rose and fell on the late spring swell.
‘And we’re buggered if a storm comes up.’ Diokles shook his head. ‘Why not take the ships inside the mole?’
‘First, because Dionysus will be worried enough already,’ Satyrus said. ‘Second, because everyone is a spy, and I don’t want any of our sailors talking.’
The arrival of the grain fleet was hardly a surprise to Stratokles, who had advised both Amastris and her uncle to keep their own merchants and warships home until it came. ‘Satyrus will come like the wind when he hears Demostrate is dead,’ Stratokles had predicted, and here was the fleet, making him look like exactly what he was – a first-rate intelligencer. It had sat off the entrance to the harbour for a full day.
Their appearance outside the mole – and their inaction – had been cause enough for Stratokles to be summoned to the tyrant’s presence. The enormously fat man lay, as he usually did, on a stout couch with heavy rawhide cording under the mattress to support his bulk. His niece, Amastris, sat on the edge of the
kline
, as if her beauty could somehow help the tyrant’s ugliness. Stratokles had joked to his captain, Lucius, that he liked to work for the tyrant because the fat man made Stratokles seem handsome. Stratokles had never been graced with the looks that made men heroes – and a sword cut to his face a few years back had made it worse.
Satyrus’ mother, that had been. Stratokles sighed.
What an error her murder had been.
Not his idea, of course.
‘So.’ Dionysus had a carefully trained voice, like an actor’s. Not what you expected from such a fat carcass, but then, Dionysus of Heraklea was never what anyone expected. ‘So, Stratokles of Athens. You predicted this. Now what happens?’
Stratokles smiled at his mistress. She was without doubt the most beautiful woman he’d ever known – or at least, known well. And her beauty seemed new – or at least, subtly different – every time he saw her. She had considerable intellect, and she used a good deal of it on her looks.
‘My lord,’ Stratokles said, ‘Satyrus needs your fleet to support his own fleet. Together they will be strong enough to try to move our combined grain fleets across the Ionian to Athens.’
‘Satyrus generally sells his grain at Rhodes,’ Dionysus said.
‘I understand, my lord.’
I am, after all, somewhat famed as a spy.
‘But this year, my lord can call the tune. Satyrus cannot sail without your ships and your marines. You do
not
want to sell your grain at Rhodes, I take it?’
Stratokles was playing a dangerous game. Of course it was his duty, as an Athenian, to get as much of the Euxine grain trans-shipped to Athens as was possible. A glut was fine. A glut would mean low prices and exports. But he couldn’t force events. He could only manipulate them.
Dionysus shrugged, and his chins wobbled. ‘You know perfectly well that we sell our grain to Athens,’ he said. ‘You argued for the policy, and you pushed me to support Antigonus. Now he has all the warships. Surely my grain fleet can proceed as it would?’
Stratokles shook his head. ‘If only it were so simple,’ he began.
‘Don’t patronise me, Athenian!’ Dionysus shot back. ‘Dekas can’t really control the pirates, is what you mean. Or he may not
want
to control them. So we need young Achilles out there to help us punch through the straits.’
Stratokles nodded. ‘My lord, that is
exactly
what I mean.’
Dionysus nodded, and the nod spread over the fat of his body like ripples spreading in a pool from a thrown rock. ‘So – if that’s the situation, where is young Satyrus?’
At this question, Amastris looked up. ‘Exactly. Where is he?’
Dionysus pointed out over the mole. ‘His ships have been there all night, but the boy has yet to come ashore. And Nestor says that some of the ships have slipped away.’
Stratokles felt a touch of ice in his spine. ‘Slipped away?’ he asked. He walked to the edge of the balcony and looked out over the bay.
His self-control was excellent, but it didn’t prevent a single, sharp curse.
‘Well?’ Dionysus asked.
Stratokles didn’t need to count the ships riding at anchor in the strong spring sun. He had been guilty of seeing what he expected to see. He shook his head. ‘My lord, Satyrus has taken his warships and gone.’
‘Gone
where
?’ Amastris asked. The whine in her voice boded ill for her maids – and for her intelligencer.
Stratokles shook his head. ‘He didn’t ask for your fleet?’ he asked the tyrant.
‘Satyrus of Tanais hasn’t even been ashore,’ Nestor said from the door.
Nine hundred stades to the south and west, Satyrus’ entire war fleet, minus just two triremes away at Olbia, rode under oars in the last light of the sun, their masts struck down on deck. Behind them were all six of the gargantuan Athenian-built grain ships.
‘Well,’ Diokles said, watching the sky, ‘the weather’s with us. Any last thoughts?’
Satyrus looked around the deck of
Arête
at all of his other captains – Neiron himself, Sandakes and Akes and Gelon of Sicily. ‘Let’s sacrifice,’ Satyrus said. He went into the stern – still feeling as if he was walking across the agora, his flagship was so big – to where the altar of Poseidon was set into the rise of the stern boards that covered the head and back of the helmsman. Satyrus took the lead of a young kid, a black one, and looked into its eyes. The animal had perfect horns and bright eyes, and it looked at him—
He drew and slashed its throat in one trained movement, then stepped slightly to the side to let the blood flow past him, and the priest of Poseidon, Leosthenes, caught the blood in a bowl. Then the priest used his own knife to open the animal.