In the morning they rode on, into the north. It snowed twice, the first a matter of little moment, the second putting a fresh layer on the grass as deep as the hocks of a horse. None of the horses were struggling yet, but a few more inches on top of what had already fallen and travel would begin to become dangerous.
Ataelus went out with scouts as soon as the sky was grey. His riders and Samahe’s came in all day, reporting on the distance to Marthax’s
camp. At noon, when the sun was a pale silver disk in the sky, Ataelus came in himself.
‘Marthax awaits us on the Great Field,’ he said. ‘I saw him, and he saluted me. We did not speak. He and all his knights are armed.’
‘How many?’ Urvara asked.
‘All of his three hundred,’ Ataelus said, with a significant look at Melitta.
‘We have fewer than a single hundred,’ Parshtaevalt said.
‘We won’t need them,’ Melitta said, and hoped that her voice carried sufficient authority. ‘Ride on.’ She motioned to Ataelus to stay at her side. ‘What is this Great Field?’ she asked.
Ataelus laughed. ‘Here in the north is the city of the Sakje, yes? You know it? Not a city at all – some temples, mostly built by Greek craftsmen, and the houses of the big traders. And walls, and corrals – pasturage for ten thousand animals in time of war, all closed in walls. The Sindi dug it for us. And outside the main gate is the Great Field, where all the people gather sometimes.’
‘To name a king?’ Melitta asked. Her stomach was turning over, and she felt the same ice in her spine that she’d felt in her first fight – and the first time she made love to Xenophon.
Ataelus shook his head. ‘To talk. To trade. Sometimes to fight.’ He shrugged. ‘I am from the east, lady. We have different ways. Your people inherit the rulership – mother to daughter, father to sister’s son. Mine fight for it.’
‘We are not so different,’ Melitta said. Her hands were cold.
The sun had gone well down the sky when their column arrived in the Great Field. Immediately, her clan leaders formed their knights. She was in the centre, with hers, and she put Ataelus on the far right, Urvara on the right and Parshtaevalt on the left. They formed their line a stade apart, and Marthax’s riders watched them. Most of them weren’t even mounted – they stood by their horses, blowing on their hands. Melitta slipped off her riding horse and climbed up on to Gryphon.
‘We should all change to our chargers,’ Coenus said.
‘No,’ Melitta said. ‘They’re not mounted on chargers. Only Marthax. And me.’
Coenus grunted. ‘Would it be so wrong if we had some advantage? They outnumber us three to one.’
‘Yes,’ Melitta said. She was cold right through, and her hands were shaking. It all came down to this, and suddenly she was robbed of her certainty. All these people – people she loved, for all she quarrelled with them – had followed her to this field, with the icy north wind blowing horse-tails of snow. What if she was wrong?
‘I wish I had a trumpeter,’ she said, and rode forward alone. After two paces, she pulled up and turned. ‘No one is to follow me!’ she called, her young voice carrying on the wind.
Coenus made a noise, and Parshtaevalt’s horse fidgeted, demonstrating his rider’s feelings. Somewhere in the line, a horse farted and Melitta smiled. Then she turned and gave her horse a nudge, and she was walking, alone, across the field.
Gryphon was as calm as if they were riding in Ataelus’s camp, although his ears were up and he was looking at the opposing line. He was a tried warhorse – he knew what combat was.
Melitta wished she had grander clothes. She wore a good wolf-skin cloak worked in caribou hair, and her mother’s helmet, the aventail sparkling with gold and silver scales and a row of blue enamel scales where the aventail met the bronze bowl. She had her mother’s gorytos of gold – but her boots were shabby and her trousers were plain hide. And her gauntlets were those of Gryphon’s last owner – magnificent, but dirty with a month’s riding and camp work.
Marthax – the man she assumed was Marthax – was on a big grey in the middle of the line. He had a helmet of gold, a gold-washed scale shirt and a heavy scarlet and fur coat, Persian style, across his shoulders. His beard was heavy and rolled over his breastplate, and it was so shot with grey that it appeared white at a distance. His boots were red, and his trousers were red with gold plaques.
He touched his stallion’s sides and came to meet her.
He had a hand on his hip and held himself erect, and he
looked like a king
. In fact, his dignity was palpable. She wanted to hate him – her mother’s original enemy, although not the man who had killed her. But he had helped – or he had stood aloof. And yet, at ten horse-lengths’ distance, he looked too noble to be an enemy.
Will my brother ever attain that sort of dignity?
she asked herself.
Will
I?
Her hands would not get warm, and they shook – and her shoulders shook with cold and nerves.
She thrust her chest out and straightened her shoulders, and met his eyes – both of their faces hidden in the depths of helmets. His were bloodshot and blue. Close up, his dignity was unimpaired, but his strength was less.
‘You came,’ he said, when they were three horse-lengths apart. His breath rose like the steam from the blood of the sacrifices. His horse’s breath rose with it.
‘As did you,’ Melitta said. ‘I ask you to name me your heir.’ Just like that. The Sakje way – no Persian meddling with wine and small talk.
Marthax pulled his helmet off. Under it, he wore a small arming cap of linen and wool. He scratched his head. ‘No,’ he said. He sounded genuinely regretful. ‘No. I can’t.’
She took her helmet off as well, and her hair fell from under her cap. A sigh arose from both lines as it became obvious that they were going to talk and not fight. ‘I would never humiliate you,’ she said. ‘But the whole people must ride to war in the east, to face the Sauromatae.’
‘Listen, girl,’ he said, and his horse did a curvet, and pain showed in his face. ‘Listen while I talk. I have an
agreement
with Upazan of the Sauromatae. You do not. I can never go to war with him and not be an oath-breaker. I will keep my oath. Will you fight me hand to hand instead?’
‘You acknowledge my right?’ she asked.
‘Bah! Of course. I have no other heir.’ For the first time, his impatience showed, and Melitta wondered why he was impatient. He pushed his horse forward and she flinched, fearing treachery, but he pushed his face close to hers. His breath was foul. He was, in fact, a sick man. A sick, old man. ‘Listen,
girl
. I made a mistake with Upazan. You will make mistakes, too. But I bought the people time, and now I will fight you for the kingship.
Do you understand?
’ he asked.
Melitta straightened her back. ‘I understand, O King.’
That made him smile. ‘I’m sorry about your mother, lass. I didn’t understand how easy it is to share, and how foolish it is to crave power.’ He was looking at the setting sun. ‘I have but one request.’
Melitta nodded.
‘Build me a good kurgan. Do it in spring, when you rally your
army, and no man will say you are not the queen. Any ills will be healed.’ He looked around. ‘I hated being king, but by all the gods, I love life. Don’t fuck up, girl.’ His voice choked a little.
He put his helmet on his head. ‘Can you fight?’ he asked. ‘I hear that you can.’
She piled her hair on to her head again, and pulled her fox-skin hat over it. ‘I can,’ she said.
He nodded. ‘I’ll ride back to my own lines. You do the same. When I raise my sword, we charge.’
Melitta nodded. Then she turned her horse and rode slowly back across the snow-covered ground to her own lines, where all the chiefs had gathered around her knights.
‘We fight,’ Melitta said.
Parshtaevalt shook his head. ‘Let me fight him,’ he said. ‘It is allowed.’
But Urvara had been watching. ‘You
will
win,’ she said. ‘I see it now. At the last, Marthax is, in fact, a good king.’
And Melitta nodded. There were tears in her eyes. ‘My mother said that he was a great man, before he turned on her.’ She shrugged. ‘I suspected that man was still there.’
Urvara nodded. ‘I should have seen sooner, lady.’
Melitta thought of saying something . . . authoritative. About trusting her the next time. But she decided that nothing needed to be said. Instead, she took her best spear from Coenus.
‘He is ready,’ Urvara said. She had been watching over Melitta’s shoulder.
‘As am I,’ Melitta said. She settled her helmet, clenched and unclenched her hands, and raised her spear.
All the Sakje in both lines cheered and the two riders began to move.
He was big and well armoured. He had a war axe with a spike, a vicious weapon, and he was holding it out at the length of his arm, pointing the spike at her eyes. He had a small shield with a running stag in bronze over iron scales, and he was coming at a flat gallop.
There were no rules in the kingship duel, although it was said that anyone who took the kingship with a bow in their hand would fail as king. It was said.
She held her spear overhand, as if to throw it, and she pointed
Gryphon’s head at the middle of Marthax’s horse’s chest and gave him both heels. He leaped forward and the snow blurred past his feet as she seemed to ride the wind.
Marthax raised his shield against her throw a few strides away, and she twirled the staff in her fingers and brought it under her arm, the point in line all the way, so that her spear struck his shield and he was out of his saddle and she barely kept her seat, her knees locked around Gryphon’s barrel, the horse himself responding to the shock of impact with long training.
She brought Gryphon around in a long circle.
Stay down,
she thought.
Stay down and live!
But another part of her said,
I unhorsed Marthax, and I will be queen!
Around she came, and he was up on one knee, using the axe to raise himself. There was blood flowing from under his helmet, but he was on his feet.
She reined Gryphon to a stop a few horse-lengths from him.
‘Don’t be a fool, girl,’ he snapped.
She slipped to the ground and drew her plain-hilted akinakes, the same one she’d carried at Gaza and in every fight on the plains. She put her spear into her left hand.
He came for her without another word, trudging across the snow as fast as his wound would allow.
She threw the spear left-handed, and it hit his knee above the armour and he was down in the snow again.
And he laughed. ‘Arggh!’ he growled.
She circled warily, because he still had the axe and he was
getting up
.
‘Aye, you can fight,’ he said. ‘A good kurgan!’ he said, and he stumbled at her, his axe raised for a powerful swing.
And she stepped inside his swing, took the weakest part of the blow on her shoulder and back, faked her brother’s favourite Harmodius overhand – and rammed the whole length of her sword up under his arm in a rising backhand thrust. It was a move that she had practised with Satyrus and Philokles and Theron a thousand times, and it seemed fitting that he should have it, because when well done, it granted instant death.
Her blade went in to the hilt, and the king was dead before he slumped to the ground, the weight of his fall pulling the sword from her grasp.
She bent over him to retrieve her sword, and the pain of his blow to her back sprang at her like an ambush and she almost fell. Had he changed his mind at the last? Or had he granted her a fair fight because he had her measure?
He was dead. She failed to pull the blade free on the third tug, and it snapped in her hand. She dropped the worn hilt in the snow and realized that the riders were cheering her – from both sides of the line. Just as she had foreseen.
At her feet lay an old man, his beard red with blood, his lined face freed from his helmet by her last blow. She bent down, and closed his eyes.
Coenus rode up, having collected Gryphon’s reins. Behind him was Urvara and Parshtaevalt, and across the field, Marthax’s commanders were surging forward as well.
‘Hail, Queen of the Assagatje,’ Coenus said.
‘He gave it to me,’ she said.
‘Aye. Well, he was always one of the best,’ Coenus said. ‘We’d never have beaten Zopryon without him.’
Other men and women were surrounding her. She got herself up on Gryphon with as much struggle as she’d ever had in her life. ‘Listen!’ she shouted, and they were silent.
‘Srakorlax!’ Scopasis called. Other Sakje took up the name.
‘Listen to me!’ she shouted. Gryphon stood as steady as a rock between her legs. ‘Marthax died the king of the Assagatje – the heir of Satrax. In the spring, we will build him a great kurgan on the riverbank. Every man of his knights will give a horse, and I will give a hundred more. He was the lord of ten thousand horses!’
Four hundred voices should not be able to fill the icy wastes of the sea of grass in winter, but their roar echoed joy – and relief that there was to be no bloody civil war.
‘And then we will gather our might, and the Sauromatae will feel the weight of our hooves!’ she called.
And again they roared.