It was the Hungry Crow, Tuarn, who broke the silence. ‘We can’t fail to act,’ he said. When no one commented, he shrugged. ‘This is how the fighting with the Sauromatae started, back when Marthax was king. The rest of you are probably too young to remember, and the lady wasn’t among us. The Sauromatae were once strong allies, eh? But Upazan came to be their lord, and his young men pounded away at our eastern valleys. And we did too little.’
‘That is not the way my people tell the tale,’ Thyrsis said. ‘Among Ataelus’ people, we say that we fought, and no one came to our aid.’
Tuarn refused to be offended. ‘Young man, is that any different from what I just said? I did not mean that some of the Assagetae didn’t fight. I mean we didn’t act together. And later, we paid.’
‘Of course, some of us paid more dearly than others,’ Listra said. She was standing with Parshevaelt and Sindispharnax – all three veterans of campaigns with Melitta. The positions in which they were standing – closer to Scopasis, her bodyguard – said a great deal.
‘And some of you
profited
a great deal more than some of us,’ old Kontarus added.
‘Those who fought were rewarded.’ Melitta was tired of this foolishness. ‘Those who did not fight were not so rewarded. That is the way of the people.’
Saida shrugged. ‘Perhaps it is time we found our own way,’ she said.
‘That is a discussion for another time,’ Melitta said. She schooled her face carefully. ‘Or not. If you decided to ride the Sea of Grass, none of us could stop you, or would. It is the right of any of the people – to ride away. In the meantime, let us keep to the issue at hand.’
Scopasis nodded. ‘I agree with the lord of the Hungry Crows,’ he said.
Melitta glared at him. He was a former outlaw and the captain of her knights, not one of her lords. But among Sakje, a warrior included in a council always felt he had the right to speak, and she was in danger of thinking like a Greek.
Thyrsis laughed. ‘At last we find something on which to agree, outlaw!’ he said.
‘Arrows on the wind,’ agreed Scopasis. The Sakje had a saying: if you shot a hundred arrows into the wind, at least two would fly together.
Listra looked around. ‘We have had too much war,’ she said.
Every one of the clan leaders nodded at that. The population of the Sakje – even with the addition of new people from the east – was down. In three generations they had fought four great campaigns, and the results were obvious in every camp.
‘We don’t even know who these people are,’ Melitta said. ‘I have a mind to go myself. To see them.’
That shocked them, but Melitta saw something on Saida’s face that she didn’t like. She glanced at the red-haired woman, but her face had closed again, and Melitta went on:
‘My thought is to ask every clan for fifty warriors – your best, with five horses each. Together, we would ride east, as quickly as the wind blows in the grass, and find these Parni. To talk – or to kill.’
‘No.’ Saida shook her head. ‘No. The Silent Wolves will send no warriors.’
‘No,’ Thyrsis said, mocking her voice. ‘The Silent Wolves are a clan of children, and have no warriors to send. We never do—’
‘Thyrsis!’ Melitta said, though in truth she appreciated his comment.
Saida stared at the other horse lords. ‘Pah. War and more war – that’s all this one wants. We will be out on the grass.’ She turned to leave, but Scopasis had caught Melitta’s glance and he blocked the entrance of the tent.
‘You have not been dismissed,’ Melitta said. ‘Saida, you seem to crave my ill will. Listen, then. We have not yet chosen a path. Every leader – aye, and every tanist – can speak her mind in council. But if we choose to send riders, and you refuse – then you may indeed go to the Sea of Grass. And don’t come back. Please understand: that will mean you will have no share of the grain and gold that the Dirt People earn for us, and you will hold no land from the Assagetae. You can go north, or east, and fight for grazing as our people did in the old times. Is that plain?’
Saida looked at Kontarus, and he shook his head. ‘As if you would – or could – push us off our lands.’
Melitta was suddenly tired; tired of their childishness. This was an old and insular man who was speaking from ignorance because he had
not
ridden to the fight at Tanais River: he had no idea of how much power she and her brother had.
Scopasis spoke from behind him. ‘The lady has the power of all the clans, and her brother has fifty ships and five thousand soldiers. And you two represent one small clan that behaves as if you were all the people.’
‘You may go,’ Melitta said. ‘I mean what I have said. If you refuse to serve – begone. If you try to choose a middle path, I will eliminate you. And frankly,’ she said, her temper getting the better of her, ‘I’m tempted to be rid of the pair of you now, as your actions suggest that neither of you is fit to lead one of my clans.’
Scopasis drew his akinake. ‘Say the word, lady,’ he said.
Kontarus glared around. ‘Kill an old man and a woman – murder in council! Bah. Empty threats. We are the greatest of the Assagetae clans – why will you not treat us with the respect we deserve? We have more wagons, more lodges, more horses—’
‘—and no warriors,’ Listra said. ‘The lady is right. Go – or stay. Your own warriors mutter against you because you shirked the fight at Tanais. Try to face us, and see what you get.’
Saida looked around again, still blank-faced. ‘Very well,’ she said. She looked up at Scopasis. ‘Out of my way,’ she ordered.
Scopasis looked at Melitta. ‘I have said they may go,’ Melitta agreed with a nod. When they were gone, she turned to the rest of her lords.
‘Those two have to go,’ she said. ‘I hadn’t realised how bad they were.’
‘It is just ignorance,’ Tuarn pleaded. ‘I, too was late for the Tanais battle. But I saw the forces on that field. Kontarus has no idea – he lives in the days of your grandfather’s father, lady. The Silent Wolves have not ridden to battle in many years. Not under their lords.’
Melitta shrugged. ‘Let us deal with these issues one at a time. Are we all agreed in sending a force east?’
All of the clan leaders agreed, although none of them was happy about it.
‘Can the Standing Horses send me twenty-five warriors?’ she asked Sindispharnax.
He took a deep breath. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I can send fifty.’
She smiled at him. ‘I do not want fifty. I’ll ask you to provide me with twenty-five young scouts. I’ll ask Thyrsis to provide the same – people who know the country. The rest of you I ask to provide fifty knights and a leader who can speak for your people, if I find that I need to negotiate.’
Thyrsis grinned. ‘May we come ourselves?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘I hope that some of you will, and that others will stay. I will name a tanist of my own, to watch the people while I ride east.’ She forced a smile. ‘This will come between me and my son,’ she said. ‘But Tuarn speaks correctly. The last time we were threatened, we were slow to react.’
They were not Greeks, who argued everything endlessly and then voted in slow-moving assemblies. The next day, she told the whole of the people who were assembled about the Parni, and that there would be an expedition to the east.
They roared their approval. Three days later, Melitta discovered that Kontarus had ordered his people to pack and leave the Tanja, and he departed – but fewer than four hundred of them accompanied him.
This was the way that politics happened on the plains. People didn’t meet in assemblies to vote – usually. Most of the time, they ‘voted’ by moving their tents and wagons to another clan. Suddenly, the Standing Horse clan was larger than it had been in five years. The Cruel Hands had to turn new adherents away – they had no more grazing land to share.
‘I didn’t like the look of Saida,’ Melitta commented to her captain of the guard. They were both mounted, having ridden out to review the warriors that each clan were contributing to the force for the east.
‘She means to trouble you,’ he agreed. ‘Shall I follow her and kill her?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Melitta said, but only after a pause. ‘No, Scopasis. I don’t want to rule in that way.’
Scopasis hadn’t been in her bed for five nights. He turned and looked at her for a long time. ‘You are angry at me because I am who I am,’ he said. ‘What I have to say will not make you love me better.’
‘You might be surprised,’ she said.
‘You cannot be the Lady of the Assagetae and let this woman defy you,’ he said.
She shook her head. ‘I can. And I will. Do not – I repeat, do not – take action against her.’
Scopasis turned his head to watch the sun setting on the plains. The grass rolled away in waves like the sea, a carpet of fresh green that went north as far as the eye could see, and west into the setting sun, which turned the seed heads of the new grass a ruddy gold. He watched the sunset for a while.
‘Would you like me to ride away?’ he asked, after a while. ‘I would be gone, and never trouble you again.’
Yes
and
no
both crossed in her head. ‘You must do what is best for you,’ she said carefully, hating the foolish sound of the words, and the pomposity with which she said them. In a moment, she saw what Xeno’s death had spared her. ‘Can you be my guard captain without being my lover?’ she asked – and was proud that she’d said it.
Scopasis groaned. When she turned to look at him, he was weeping.
‘Are you a child?’ she asked, suddenly angry. ‘Grow up!’
So much for mature reflection. She was glad she was riding to war in the east. She felt as if killing someone might make her feel better. She wished that Scopasis was less of a foolish man, so that she could have his long, hard body next to hers and not be lonely at night. The truth was that picking a lover was a hard task for the Lady of the Assagetae –and it would be easier to keep the one she had.
She feared he would do something stupid and dramatic.
‘I want a gallop,’ she announced to the air, and turned her horse’s head and started away across the grass.
She saw him look at her, as if tempted to follow.
But he didn’t.
Two days later, she cut her time at the spring Tanja short, gathered her warriors and headed east. She had more than three hundred riders – she even had twenty-five of Temerix’s people on ponies, big bows on their shoulders and jars of grain in their wagons. They had fifty wagons. The grass was green and fresh, and the game was plentiful as soon as they rode clear of the circle of the Tanja where everyone had hunted everything.
Listra came along with her young cousin, Philokles of Olbia, and a dozen of his friends – Olbian gentlemen, members of the new aristocracy, part Sakje and part Greek that was the legacy of constant intermarriage. They had been at the Tanja and now they rode east, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. She was glad to have them – they were well-armoured, capable men who, despite their youth, had already made a campaign or two.
Tuarn of the Hungry Crows came in person as well, riding a black stallion of magnificent size.
She admired the horse and called out to praise him, and he rode out of his part of the column. ‘When you are lord of the Hungry Crows,’ he joked, ‘you had best ride a good black horse.’
‘Why have we not been friends before?’ she asked him.
He made a face. ‘You always speak your mind like this, lady? I thought that childhood among the Greeks would have made you … subtle.’
‘Much the opposite,’ she said. Her eyes happened to stray across her guard – and there was Scopasis, in his place, wearing his armour – and she found that her heart gave a little leap.
‘I was Marthax’s man,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I represented him to Eumeles. I didn’t expect you to forgive me.’ She digested this.
‘You didn’t know,’ he said.
‘No,’ she allowed.
‘Shall I ride away?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘No. No, let’s share this little war, and be friends.’
He nodded. ‘This bluntness has its benefits, I see.’
And, of course, she had Thyrsis. He chose his warriors carefully, and offered to bring three times as many, but she shook her head. ‘Bring what I ask,’ she said. ‘I need to know that there are many warriors here, if we’re all killed. So that my son will come to avenge us, in time.’ She thought of young Kineas, left behind again. She’d left him back in Tanais with her brother – in the care of Temerix’s exotic wife, who had been her nurse once, and a circle of Sauromatae matrons. Her brother, who openly accused her of being a poor mother.
I should not have left Satyrus without making peace
, she thought.
I should not be riding away from my son.
She rode easily, breathing deeply of the new grass and the smells of spring – the flowers on every stream bank, the smells of the horses, the woodsmoke at their first campfire. It was hard to concentrate on her winter life as a semi-Greek woman when she was here, doing what she loved, riding the plains.
It was glorious to be young, and to be Queen, leading an army to the east. Or rather, it should have been glorious, but even while she drank from the spring, she wondered if she had made the right decision. On the word of one mistreated farm girl she was leading the flower of her people east on a war of vengeance. Was she being decisive, or merely reacting from boredom?
Scopasis rode up behind her. ‘Is the camp satisfactory?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘Beautiful,’ she said.
That made him smile.
‘Scopasis, am I doing the right thing?’ she asked, suddenly.
He sat behind her and his gelding snorted, sniffing her mare with a sort of vague interest. Her mare sidled away.
‘You ask me these things,’ he said, when they had both reined in their mounts. ‘But the truth is, I’m no king. I can’t answer. And I only sound like a fool when I try. You must ask Thyrsis or Listra. They are lords. I was an outlaw, and now I command your guard. I can make a good rabbit stew, and I will match any other man arrow for arrow, but in truth,’ and he managed a smile, ‘in truth, I’m not able to advise you.’
‘You lay out a good camp, too,’ she said.