Theron shook his head. ‘Lad, you are about to try to kill a monster to avoid having to make love to beautiful women. I don’t have to be Philokles to point out the fallacy of your position.’
Satyrus didn’t turn his head. ‘I will not be mocked about this.’
Theron shrugged. ‘We go to dice with Moira,’ Theron said. ‘I won’t offend you more.’
Satyrus nodded. ‘Good. Are we ready?’
‘We’re ready. You are sure he will attack us?’ Theron asked. He closed the last clasp on his breastplate.
‘Short of leading him on a rope, I’ve done all I can to provoke his attack. His minion spent the last minutes of the symposium reminding him that he was going to kill me in the morning, and there was no need to risk himself in the night. It must be now. We’ve all but advertised our sailing time.’ Satyrus shook his head.
‘Who are you reassuring?’ Theron asked.
‘Myself,’ Satyrus said. ‘He terrifies me. But this must be done.’
‘Would it make you feel better if I said you were like a force of nature yourself?’ Theron asked.
Satyrus nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, and smiled.
Satyrus need not have worried. They were two streets from the beach when he saw the two-wheeled cart pushed across the narrow street and men with torches began to fill the space around his column of sailors.
Satyrus was at the head of the column, with Theron and Neiron. He stopped. He was in full armour and had an aspis on his shoulder. His helmet was already closed over his face.
‘Satyrus!’ Manes roared. He stepped out from a side street. ‘Throw down your weapons. Or I’ll kill all your men.’
Indeed, the whole crew of his four ships could be seen, every man of them carrying a torch and a club or a sword. They outnumbered the crew of the
Falcon
by two to one or more.
‘I doubt that you could,’ Satyrus said. He raised his aspis, expecting an arrow from the dark. ‘Why don’t you fight me, man to man?’
Manes laughed again. ‘In the dark? Anything can happen in a fight in the dark. That’s what you want, isn’t it? I want something different.’ He laughed again. ‘Last chance. Throw down that toy shield and be a slave. The way you should have been from the moment you arrived.’
Satyrus didn’t lower his aspis. ‘Last chance, Manes. Walk away.’ In a loud, clear voice, he bellowed, ‘Kill his archers!’
Even inside his helmet, he heard the arrows coming. Several struck
his shield, driving him back a step, and one rang off his helmet, and another stung him along the back of his knee. Behind him, a man screamed.
That was not according to plan.
Then, a little late, his own archers rose up from ambush in the darkness and shot – mostly at a range of a few feet. Manes’ men screamed as they died.
Manes froze, a snarl on his face. He was a beast – but a cunning beast.
‘So,’ he spat.
Satyrus’s shield arm hurt. He had a lot of poppy in him to keep himself steady, and he needed to get this over with. But even through the drug, Manes scared him.
‘Sword to sword, Manes. Right now.’ Satyrus stepped forward, swinging his aspis into line despite the pain in his arm.
Manes backed away in the flickering light. ‘Just so your archers can shoot me in the back?’ he said. ‘No chance. Your day will come, little fucker. And then I’ll do you. Maybe I’ll use you for a while before I kill you – how’s that?’
Satyrus pressed forward and raised his voice. ‘Sounds like a lot of talk from a man who won’t stand and fight.’
Manes’ eyes were everywhere, and his paramour caught his sword hand and pulled him back, back again, into the wary circle of his men.
‘Fuck you, boy!’ he shouted at Satyrus.
Satyrus shouted back, ‘Twice you’ve backed down, cur! Dog! Coward!’ He laughed. ‘And the other scum are afraid of
you
?’
But Manes’ crews were backing away in the street, a strong shield wall facing Satyrus and another facing to where the crew of the
Falcon
had appeared on their flank.
‘Do it,’ Neiron said at his side.
‘No,’ Abraham said. His armour was so well polished that it reflected every pinpoint of light in the street. He looked like something superhuman. ‘No. If you start a battle here, we’ll lose men, and Manes will escape anyway. And the pirates will hate you. You have to get him to fight.’
‘Ares, I tried,’ Satyrus said.
Abraham laughed. ‘We heard. He’ll be a long time living this down. Hurry back.’
Satyrus frowned. ‘He’ll try for you,’ he said.
Abraham hugged him. ‘I can ride the lion,’ he said. ‘Go and do what you have to do. And give my regards to my father.’
T
he wind flowed over the plains from the north, carrying the floating feathers of snow that so impressed Herodotus and cutting through any garment a Sakje could wear, so that warriors wore their armour over their fur jackets just to cut the wind.
Melitta wore a new armour shirt: a pair of sheepskins, the inner quilted with wool, the outer covered in alternating bronze and iron scales that winked dully in the winter light. She wore the scale shirt over her fox-fur jacket and sheepskin trousers tucked into sheepskin boots, and her shapeless fur hat covered her whole head, and still she was cold. Between her legs, her temple hack, borrowed what seemed like a lifetime ago on the east coast of the Euxine, plodded tirelessly into the wind. Her opinion of the horse had risen during her flight north – nothing much to look at, and worthless in a fight, the stoop-backed horse had an indomitable spirit. She had come to trust him, and so he had a name – Turtle. The name made the other tribesmen laugh, but by now, two snowstorms into their trek across the sea of grass, they knew his merits. Slow, but sure.
Behind her walked six Sakje ponies, most of them carrying her spare tack, her war gear, a small tent and all the goods she needed to make a camp. Samahe and Ataelus had outfitted her well, by Sakje standards, although many of her items were the plunder of the men she had killed, a palpable reminder – for her and for the others – of her skills. And at the back of her string of remounts walked Gryphon, one of the tallest warhorses among the Sakje.
Ataelus interrupted her thoughts about her horses when he appeared from the snow and waved his whip. ‘Time to camp!’ he said with his usual ruthless cheerfulness. ‘Snow’s getting worse.’
It took two hours to get the camp built. The biggest issue was wood for warmth and cooking. While one group of Sakje tramped the snow flat and raised yurts, another trudged north and south along the river bank, searching for trees that had succumbed to the spring floods and not yet been pillaged by other travellers.
Melitta found a big tree toppled by what appeared to be the hand of the gods – the great ball of its roots still attached, so that the ground under them appeared to be a cave. Melitta walked along the trunk with her light bronze axe in her hand, tapping the wood as she went, but it was all sound, and the trunk rang when she tapped it as if it too was made of bronze.
The big oak had grown at a bend in the river and its companions still stood – including a middle-aged willow that had been struck by lightning when young and had grown with a deep double trunk. Melitta set to breaking smaller branches in the willow, hauling the heavier wood to the breaking cleft and throwing her whole weight against each branch.
After she had built a considerable pile, Ataelus rode up. With him was the youngest of his warriors, a Standing Horse exile called Scopasis. He was young and sullen and bore a scar that ran across the bridge of his nose, which he was continually touching. He had been cast out of his clan for a murder, and Ataelus had sunk far enough to take him in, but never let him out of his sight.
Ataelus descended on the great tree with all his usual energy and a heavy iron axe, product of a Sindi smith. Scopasis sat on his horse and watched.
Melitta kept working as Ataelus brought her branches already trimmed, but eventually she had a considerable pile of branches too big for her to break.
She waved at the hunched figure of the young man. ‘I need your strength,’ she said.
He grunted and rolled off his horse.
‘Help me break those,’ she said.
‘Uh,’ he said. Moving with deliberate slowness, he picked up the smallest branch and broke it. Then he stopped and looked at her.
Sighing at men everywhere and this one in particular, Melitta collected a heavier branch from the pile. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I don’t bite.’
Ataelus chuckled and kept cutting with the axe.
Scopasis came and joined her. He pushed sharply against the butt and it didn’t break. He stumbled back.
‘Fuck!’ he said.
‘Push with me,’ Melitta said. ‘Come on.’
‘Fuck that,’ the boy said, and turned away.
Melitta smiled to herself. She’d served as an archer in the army of Ptolemy, and she’d spent quite some time studying – and aping – the ways of young men. She cut patiently at her desired breaking point with her small bronze axe, put it in the fork of the tree and pushed. There was a crack, and she pushed again – a sharp sound, and she was lying in the snow.
Scopasis laughed. Melitta laughed with him. ‘Come and lend me your strength,’ Melitta called.
Again, the boy walked over. This time he chose a bigger branch. He put it in the fork of the tree and waited for her to join him, and together they pushed. It took several tries, but they broke the branch, and then reset the shorter pieces and broke them again. Then Scopasis went and got another branch without being prompted.
Scopasis worked steadily for over an hour, until Tameax rode up and laughed. ‘You got the boy to do some work!’ he said.
Scopasis dropped the branch he was carrying, leaped on to his horse’s back and rode away without a word.
Melitta walked up to the baqca. ‘Never let it be said that you see everything in the future,’ she commented. ‘You just undid an afternoon’s work.’
Tameax shrugged. ‘Bah – if he’s so thin-skinned, he’s useless.’
‘That is why you are a baqca and not a king. Go and find him, apologize and bring him back.’ Melitta smiled. ‘Please.’
‘Why?’ Tameax asked.
Ataelus watched, his axe raised.
‘Because I ask,’ Melitta said.
Tameax narrowed his eyes, and suddenly Melitta understood what she saw there. ‘Don’t be a fool, baqca,’ she shot at him. She walked up closer. ‘I do not need to walk the spirit world to see that you are
jealous
. Jealous that I cut wood with an exiled
boy
?’ She walked up close to him, and then closer, and he stepped back. ‘You presume,
baqca. Your feelings are a presumption. Perhaps you are too small a man to be my baqca, eh?’
Tameax’s face filled with blood and a vein on his temple throbbed. ‘I cannot help my feelings,’ he said.
‘You remind me of that boy,’ Melitta said. ‘He cannot control his feelings either. The difference is that he’s been mistreated his whole life – for being the smallest, I expect. What is your excuse?’
Tameax made an effort – an effort that showed through his heavy furs in every line of his body. He stood straighter. ‘I’ll go and fetch the boy,’ he said, his face still red.
‘Good,’ Melitta allowed, and went back to breaking wood.
That night, Ataelus and Samahe’s son Thyrsis came in with a dozen more warriors – all young men and women, from a mix of tribes, although Standing Horses seemed to predominate.
Thyrsis was a handsome young man with excellent manners and the kind of physique that boys his age dreamed of. He excelled at games, he had killed Sauromatae on raids, and his brown eyes were capable of assessment and analysis – she’d watched him consider how to mend a scabbard, his careful cutting, his fine work with a sheet of scrap bronze.
In fact, his superiority in all things was obvious, and all the young warriors of both sexes accepted it apart from Scopasis. Scopasis, though younger, would accept no order from Thyrsis, nor ride with him.
Thyrsis came and sat by Melitta, who was adding scales to the shirt that Samahe had made her, putting shoulder-plates on the yoke. Her back was to Nihmu, who was sewing a soft deerskin shirt. They leaned their backs against each other for warmth and stability. On the other side of the fire, Ataelus went through his arrows, peering along their lengths, while Coenus cast lead sling balls in a stone mould and the metallic tang of the hot lead filled the yurt.
Samahe had scouted all day, well ahead of the clan, and now she was asleep in her furs and blankets.
‘Greetings, lady,’ Thyrsis said, respectfully. He was a very polite young man.
Melitta made room for him. There was something about him – perhaps his respect for her – that made her feel much older than him.
‘I brought new warriors,’ he said, looking at his father.
‘And no meat,’ Ataelus said wryly.
‘Word of your coming is spreading like flame on dry grass,’ Thyrsis said. ‘If you would ride two days to the Grass Cats’ winter town, we might raise a hundred riders – or twice that.’
Melitta smiled, coughed when a gust of wind somewhere managed to push smoke into her eyes and mouth, and shook her head. ‘And then?’ she asked.