He lost track of the actions around him, not quite unconscious and not quite able to register anything, floating on a tide of pain like a beached ship refloated on the highest tide. Theron said some things to him, and he found himself explaining that in Olympic pankration, he would never have double-teamed an opponent – he was explaining this to an offical wearing a long white robe and a chaplet of olive leaves, who looked at him with weary distaste.
‘We were fighting in the dark,’ he said. ‘Not the Olympics! The man refused single combat!’
The old man shook his head, and then Theron said something about the ship.
‘What ship?’ Satyrus asked.
‘We have poppy juice,’ Calchus said clearly. ‘I’ll get him some.’
Fire all around him, and then he was walking, hands guiding him, more pain as someone handled his arm and he screamed and fell and the pain almost –
almost
– knocked him out. Satyrus gasped, gulped air and voices told him to drink, and he drank a thin, milky liquid – bitter and somehow
bright
.
Then he was cold, and then hot, and then the colour of the fire exploded around him, so that colour defined everything – war and love and missing friends, Amastris’s kisses, Philokles’ love, all had a colour – and he was swept away on a surge of these subtle shades, lifted and carried, and the pain roared its lavender disappointment and went far away.
A
gainst Coenus’s judgment, she didn’t hide her identity.
The first night, they stopped at a byre, a small stone cottage with fields that stretched away from the track. The people were Maeotae, dark-haired, cheerful, with a yard full of freckled girls in good wool smocks, and two young boys who were sword-fighting with sticks.
Dinner was mutton, served with barley soup on fine Athenian plates. And good Greek wine.
The farmer was Gardan, and his wife was Methene. They eyed the travellers with some suspicion, and spoke quietly at their own end of the great table that dominated the house’s one big room.
After dinner – delicious, and doubly so for the cold rain that blew against the door – Gardan moved to their end of the table, the end closest to the hearth, for he was a hospitable man. ‘What news, then?’ he asked. He was speaking to Coenus.
‘We come from Alexandria,’ Melitta said.
The farmer gave her a startled look, as if he hadn’t expected her to speak. But he smiled. ‘As far as that?’ he said, but he wasn’t very interested.
Coenus sipped his wine. ‘Do you care for news from the Inner Sea?’ he asked.
The farmer shook his head. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘Nothing to do with folks hereabouts.’ He glanced at their bows, stowed snugly in a hutch by the door. ‘Not so many Sakje folk on the roads any more,’ he said. And let that sit.
‘That’s what they said at the Temple of Herakles,’ Melitta said.
‘Temple has no love for the tyrant,’ the farmer said. He looked from under shaggy brows, and the comment was muttered out into the air, as if he could disclaim it, if he needed to.
‘Who is this tyrant?’ Nihmu asked.
Melitta was disturbed to realize that Nihmu’s leg was pressed close to Coenus’s under the table.
‘Eumeles of Pantecapaeum. He claims all these lands, but mostly, it’s Upazan of the Sauromatae who sends his raiders to collect what they call “tax”.’ The farmer shrugged.
‘He’s no proper tyrant,’ Methene said. ‘We used to have law.’
‘Tish, woman. Not the place.’ The farmer gave his wife a mild look and turned back to his guests.
‘You will have law again,’ Melitta said.
The farmer nodded, as if this was a commonplace, but his wife looked at Melitta and then put her weaving back on the loom. ‘Husband,’ she said, standing, ‘she’s a Twin.’
Coenus stood up. ‘We don’t want trouble.’
Gardan went to his wife. Only when he stood between her and the strangers did he turn. Their children clustered around them, aware that something dangerous had just been said.
‘Is that true?’ Gardan asked.
‘Yes,’ Melitta said, ignoring Coenus. ‘I am Srayanka’s daughter, Melitta of Tanais.’
‘By the Ploughman,’ Gardan said.
‘I knew you in the yard,’ Methene said. She shrugged. ‘But my eyes is old, and I thought again.’ She looked at the three of them, all on their feet. ‘You have nothing to worry about in this house,’ she said. ‘We’ve sheltered Temerix and his foreign lady many times, and their band, too.’
‘Temerix?’ Coenus said. ‘Temerix the smith?’
Gardan relaxed a little. ‘The same,’ he said.
‘I thought he was dead,’ Coenus said.
‘Not last summer, anyway,’ Gardan said. ‘You really a Twin, lady? You three going to raise the Sakje?’
‘Yes,’ Melitta said.
‘Only we ain’t seen a Sakje in four years,’ he said. ‘Word is that the Sauromatae have wiped them off the plains. Leastwise, round here.’
Melitta looked at Coenus, and then at Nihmu.
‘If you make war on the tyrant . . .’ Gardan said, and paused. ‘He’s a hard master, and no friend to the farmers,’ Gardan said. He raised his cup. ‘But we do well enough. Lady, if you plan to make a war in the Tanais, be sure. Be fucking sure. Because the farm folk will rise for
your name alone.’ He nodded, emphasizing his words. ‘Name alone. I will myself. But if you fail – by the Ploughman, he’ll make us slaves on our own farms. What he wants, the bastard. Sorry, wife.’
But Methene nodded. ‘Truth, guests. If you have some wild plan to raise us to make war – pass us by.’
Melitta went to bed in a pallet of river rushes on the floor, having refused to move the farmer and his wife off their bed. She had much to think on.
The issue of her identity arose again at the ferry over the Hypanis River the next day, where it flowed across the soggy autumn fields near the great cairn at Lahrys. Melitta could remember her first crossing here, with Upazan’s horsemen behind her.
Coenus looked at it. ‘This is what – the Hypanis?’ he asked.
She nodded.
Coenus shook his head. ‘Why do the Assagatje give the same name to every river? Tanais – or Hypanis. There’s one by Olbia.’
She shrugged. ‘And this is the Hypanis of the east. Don’t be so Greek.’ She looked around. ‘Philokles cut their rope. I hope they don’t remember!’
But they did remember. The ferryman knew her as soon as he saw her, and shook his fist at Coenus. ‘There’s new law here!’ he yelled. ‘Rope-cutters! Worse than thieves!’
Melitta pushed her horse forward. ‘I am Melitta,’ she said. ‘Queen of the Eastern Assagatje.’ It made her choke a little just to say it. ‘This is my river – my ford. You pay your taxes to my people.’
‘Not any more, barbarian!’ the ferryman shouted, pushing his boat off into the stream. ‘This is all the land of the king of the Bosporus. No barbarian rides here but the king’s man – Upazan!’ But the man was clearly afraid.
Coenus restrained her – she was about to ride into the river.
‘Forget him,’ Coenus said. ‘I wish you’d let us ride on. He’ll tell all the world.’
‘Good,’ Nihmu said. She smiled a strange, faraway smile. ‘Eumeles will spend the winter gnawing on the ends of these rumours.’
Coenus pointed at the swollen river. ‘Eumeles’ rage won’t help us cross the Hypanis.’
Nihmu shrugged. ‘Let’s stay on the south bank until she’s a little
stream in the foothills of the mountains,’ she said. ‘I was a little girl here, before the Great War. I know the paths.’
Coenus pulled his cloak tighter. Then he dismounted, opened his bedroll and donned a second cloak. ‘It must be old age,’ he said. ‘But I’m cold just thinking about the foothills of the Caucasus.’ He smiled at both of them. ‘I’d like to find Temerix.’
Nihmu nodded. ‘I, too. But he could be anywhere in these hills.’
They rode east for two days, through fields shorn of their wheat and then across scraggly fields of barley that gave way to smaller plots and bigger patches of woods between narrow villages where highland peasants raised oats and sheep. After the second night, Nihmu refused to sleep in another peasant hut – the last one had held more insects than food. But the people knew Temerix, and they were hardy folk – a bow and an axe in every hut. They disdained the valley farmers and their slavish obedience to the tyrant, but none knew where to find Temerix.
‘He comes and goes, like,’ said an old Maeotae, braver than the rest.
‘Bah, dirt people,’ Nihmu said with all the contempt of the sky people.
‘You’ve lived in a house for ten years,’ Coenus said.
‘A house with a breeze and a bath,’ Nihmu said, ‘and still I’ve wished every night for stars. Alexandria – oh, the haze in the sky. Tonight, I will feast my eyes on the whole of the sky god’s road!’
Coenus hunched in his cloak. ‘Tonight, I’ll freeze,’ he said. The two women wore trousers and heavy coats. Coenus, the most aristocratic Hellene Melitta had ever known, was wearing a chiton and a chlamys and no trousers at all. High Thracian boots were his only concession to riding.
‘You should wear trousers,’ Nihmu said. Not for the first time.
‘When Zeus Soter comes down from Olympus and shows me how to put them on,’ Coenus answered.
‘Blasphemy!’ Melitta said, because an argument with her child’s grandfather passed the time.
Coenus shook his head. ‘It would be blasphemy if I claimed not to believe in Zeus,’ he said. ‘It would be
hubris
if I refused to obey his bidding to wear trousers. As it is, I’m secure in the knowledge that should I run across a Megaran ephor in this gods-forsaken wilderness of peasants, wolves and winter, I will still look like a civilized man.
Melitta had to laugh, because Coenus, despite his manners and his accent, was the best of hunting companions, a man with a hard-won knowledge of the plants and animals of the wilderness, a man who rode from dawn until dusk without complaint. Coenus was a good rider, even by Sakje standards.
He just wouldn’t wear trousers.
‘My mother used to say that my father wore trousers,’ Melitta said.
‘Your father was in love with your mother,’ Coenus said. ‘Love makes people do strange things.’ He shrugged, as if acknowledging that he was doing a strange thing that moment.
‘You would be more comfortable,’ Nihmu said.
Coenus laughed and rubbed at a bare thigh, red with cold. ‘That’s just it,’ he said. ‘I
wouldn’t
be more comfortable.’
They continued to ride east.
The next day, they saw a herd of deer in the distance and they killed one, riding wide of the herd and then pushing it back on Nihmu’s bow, the Sakje way. Coenus shook his head at the waste – he wanted to ride in among the deer with his javelins, but it was not to be. They needed meat, not sport.
Nihmu’s arrows did the job, and Coenus butchered the young buck and they all rode on, bloody, with fresh meat in net bags on all the mounts. That night they feasted on venison and then had to stand watches to protect the rest of the meat from wolves. In the morning they rose early, built up the fire and ate again. The villages and farms of the high ground were gone. They were in the empty space, where of old the Sakje had ridden.
‘I feel more like a Sakje every day,’ Nihmu said.
Coenus said
nothing
. He was sitting on his haunches, looking into the fire. Melitta noticed how often his eyes fell on Nihmu, and how often the Sakje woman’s eyes rested on Coenus.
‘We’ll need to hunt again in three days,’ he said. ‘And the horses will need something better than this grass if we’re going all the way to the Tanais high ground.’
Nihmu put a hand on his cheek – a very personal gesture, for her, and one that made Melitta’s spine stiffen. ‘Hush – you worry too much, Greek man.’
They laughed at each other for a moment, and Melitta was distinctly uncomfortable.
They rode east again all day, and by the evening the Hypanis looked small enough to cross – the more so as they’d soaked themselves crossing a pair of tributaries that day. There was a tiny settlement – three stone huts and a cairn. The peasants at the ford said that the cairn and kurgan – a big one, hundreds of years old – were called Tblissa.
‘I was here as a girl,’ Nihmu said. They made a fire at the foot of the kurgan, and used a fire pit that had cinders as deep as Coenus bothered to dig. ‘Tip-lis was a chieftain of the old times, when the people rode into Persia and made war on the Medes and the Great King. He guards this ford.’
Melitta was falling asleep, lulled by the sound of their horses eating grain purchased for ready cash from the peasants at the ford.
‘We should lay out our blanket rolls,’ Nihmu said.
Melitta sat up. ‘I’ll do it,’ she said.
Neither of the other two denied her, so she placed herself in the middle.
They didn’t quibble or look askance at the arrangement, and she felt guilty for her suspicions. She was warmer than she wanted to be, almost crushed with the weight of sleepers on either hand, and then she was asleep.
In the morning, they splashed through the ford, their baggage riding high to keep clear of the water, and then they were across. Coenus built a big fire and they dried everything that was damp and changed. It was too cold now to ride in wet leather or even wet wool.