Manes roared with pain and stumbled back.
Satyrus had moments – only moments – before the tide of pain from his arm killed his ability to fight. He changed feet, lunging forward with his right leg and cutting down, so that his blade severed Manes’ right hand at the wrist.
‘ArrGGH!’ the beast screamed, and suddenly they were down on the sand together, and Manes’ blood was everywhere, and the man was kicking, hammering his mangled right arm and his uninjured left at Satyrus – his own wounded arm as loud in his head as the pirate’s rage, even as his helmeted head was snapped back by a blow from the blunt end of Manes’ maimed limb and his helmet filled with Manes’ blood.
Satyrus had not fought pankration for eight years without learning to channel pain – and to grapple, even injured, even covered in blood and badly hurt. He dropped his sword, got his thighs locked on the other man’s waist and rose over him, even as that right arm clubbed him again – but his helmet held the blow and he was on Manes like a rider on an unbroken stallion. Even a flailing blow into his arm didn’t end his bid – his body was running through the winning moves of a domination hold without him, and he seemed to be watching from a distance as his thighs clamped the bleeding pirate’s body, pinning him so that he could do less harm. Then Satyrus’s swordless right hand slammed down, breaking his adversary’s nose and slamming the broken bone into his head – and
still
Manes fought him, his spasming arms somehow inflicting pain.
Then Satyrus felt Philokles, the Spartan, take control of his hand in the forbidden strikes that the Spartans taught and that were forbidden in the games. His strong right hand reversed and he drove his thumb into Manes’ left eye, the soft matter exploding outward.
Satyrus never quite lost consciousness. He rose shakily, with no sense of how much time might have passed since Manes’ body ceased moving. His shield slipped off his right arm, which was bent at a bad angle, and rang as it hit a stone.
Theron was there. He put a hand on Satyrus’s shoulder.
‘I killed him three times,’ Satyrus breathed.
Theron didn’t answer. In a quick motion, he wrenched the arm – putting it back in its socket – and Satyrus was gone.
When he came to, he was on the sand.
‘He’s still dead,’ Theron said, following Satyrus’s eyes.
‘Zeus Soter,’ Satyrus said. ‘I’ll never fear a man that much again. I killed him three times.’
‘Your men were watching,’ Theron said. ‘That was a fight they will long remember.’
‘Get me up,’ Satyrus said. ‘And – get Manes’ head.’
‘His head?’ Theron asked.
‘I’ll do it,’ Abraham said. ‘By all that is holy, sir, that was the most – amazing – fight.’ His voice was hoarse.
Sir. Abraham called me sir.
Satyrus wanted to laugh, but lacked the ability. ‘Get me up,’ he said.
He heard the meaty sound as Abraham’s sword bit into Manes’ neck, and he had to watch – worried, at some animal level, that the man would yet rise up and fight him.
He did not.
Satyrus got to his feet. He picked up his father’s sword and cleaned it on Manes’ tunic, wiping carefully. Then he took Manes’ head from Abraham and held it by the perfumed hair as he raised his eyes and looked around the circle.
‘Tomorrow, everyone will drill at sea. Manes’ ships are mine. See to it that their crews are dispersed among my squadron. All of his officers who care to swear faith to me may do so. The others may walk home.’ He had no trouble keeping his voice steady, although he was talking too fast. He had done it. In his head, he thought,
I wonder if I’ll ever be afraid again?
The circle was silent.
Satyrus bowed to Demostrate. ‘I apologize for my poor temper. Tomorrow, as we row, your men will drill.’
Demostrate smiled. ‘Very well.’
Behind Satyrus, he heard the sound of dozens of swords and knives slipping back into sheaths.
‘Listen!’ he shouted. He looked around. The wind – the precious wind that blew straight for his target, that he was about to misuse – blew hard enough to make torches snap and hiss. He raised his voice. ‘Listen! Eumeles has more ships, bigger ships, and he’s had a winter to drill them. We have better marines and better captains – better men.’
That got a grumble of appreciation.
‘Better men work harder. So we’ll row for a few days to harden our muscles, and every officer can take his turn rowing. We’ll practise the manoeuvres – we’ll make the Bull, we’ll form two lines, we’ll practise diekplous until we can do it asleep. There won’t be a second chance at this!’ He wanted to yell at them, tell them what children they were, how they’d squandered their time at Heraklea instead of practising,
listening to a fool like Manes when they could have a kingdom, but there was no point. None at all. ‘Work now, and you’ll find winning the battle
easy
. Easy means fewer dead. Or – squabble among yourselves, and die.’
He caught the eye of Manes’ senior captain, standing behind Ganymede, who was weeping. The man flinched.
‘Understand?’ Satyrus asked. He looked around. He’d shocked them silent, and the silence had quite another quality. Satyrus dropped Manes’ head in Ganymede’s lap and dusted his hands together, the universal sign of a craftsman satisfied with his work. ‘Excellent. We will row away at dawn. Watch for the shield.’
He turned and walked up the beach.
Four days of rowing along the coast and they had begun to resemble a fleet. He rowed all day, regardless of the wind, and the men were too tired to quarrel in the evening. He practised the formations even as they travelled, so that they often made less than thirty stades an hour, sometimes as little as six or seven. They emptied his store ships, one after another, all the way up the coast.
The day of his appointed meeting off Pantecapaeum came and went. There was nothing he could do about it. Until his fleet was ready to fight, there was no point in trying – none at all. At first he felt like blaming his officers for not telling him how bad they all were – but then it came to him that it was his failure. He was in command. They trusted him. The pirates expected to win by numbers and courage and luck. The Rhodians, Satyrus guessed, had never expected to win at all. They were here to see that the pirates didn’t survive.
He rowed through a day of south wind and rain, and another that was cold enough to count as winter. Five days saw them off Phasis, where the fleet formed the Bull to his satisfaction in a time that was not too humiliating. The Bull was his favourite formation, because it allowed his elite vessels to form on the flanks where they could actually manoeuvre, while his heavier units and all the pirates formed the loins in the centre, two deep, where their heavier crews and boarding tactics stood the best chance of success.
They sailed north for an hour in the battle formation. That did not go so well.
Satyrus sighed, and they landed for the night. Helios got men
together from every ship and went over the signals again. Panther stood and declaimed about diekplous to a circle of pirate captains and Diokles gave prizes to rowers nominated by their captains – prizes of a gold daric each, twenty days’ pay.
Satyrus roamed among the fires, eating garlic sausage and listening to the men. Most were quite happy. He shook his head. Into the darkness, to Herakles, or perhaps to the shade of his father, he said, ‘I have so much to learn.’
The night was silent.
Another day and they made Dioskurias, where he bought every head of cattle in the market and emptied the grain warehouses to feed his fleet – and laughed to hear that his sister was operating on the Hypanis River with an army. And Eumeles was at sea with his fleet, lying off Olbia.
An Olbian merchant told him that Eumeles had heard that the army of Olbia had marched, and had put all his troops on shipboard to seize the rival city while she was denuded of troops.
‘Our Eumenes has marched on Pantecapaeum,’ the man said. ‘Eumeles is in for a rude awakening.’
‘Two days,’ Satyrus said. His heart was nearly bursting. His sister was still holding out, and his delays had not ruined them, and Eumeles was off Olbia. ‘Two days, and we’ll have him.’
But merchants are not always right. The next morning, Satyrus had been less than an hour at sea when his lookouts spotted the lead ships. After he’d heard twenty counted, Satyrus felt his fingers turn cold and his stomach began to flip.
Eumeles wasn’t at Olbia. Eumeles and his fleet were right there, waiting at Gorgippia.
M
elitta had saddle sores because her legs were always wet. Her body ached all day and she slept badly at night, and she wondered if she was really fit to lead the Sakje. None of her riders ever complained.
They rode south and west, across the rising ridges that would eventu ally be the Caucasus. In the valleys, they visited the farms, riding up in a swirl of horses and angry cattle. Closer in to Tanais, they were seldom the first Sakje party – often they found the farmstead deserted, or found the families on the road, their belongings on their backs.
But soon enough they were the first hint that the farmers had that their world was on fire. Melitta got to know the whole routine, the whole exhausting duty that brought her as close to cynicism as anything she’d encountered. The initial hostility, the slavish courtesy, the hidden anger, the acceptance, the obedience and exaggerated reverence for her person were all stages she saw enacted, day after day, as her party cleared the southern valleys ahead of Upazan’s expected invasion.
By the time her saddle sores had festered into angry red weals with disgusting yellow-pus centres, she’d cleared the high ground as far east as her mother’s writ had ever run in the south, and she was heading down the Hypanis from the east – a neat reversal of her winter trek the other way. Gaweint, her best outrider, brought her daily news from Ataelus, who was operating one valley farther north.
Melitta had begun to worry that she was costing her farmers a season of sowing and reaping for nothing. What if Upazan didn’t come? What a fool she would look! And how her farmers would loathe her.
Being queen of the Assagatje had never been so unappealing. The more so as the old people called her ‘Srayanka’ to her face, never ‘Melitta’ or even ‘Lady’. Sometimes she could overlook it – an old woman in a highland village near the headwaters of the Hypanis was
nearly blind, and she touched Melitta’s face and called her fellowpeasants to come and see the Lady Srayanka, back from the dead. But others were not so innocent. They simply wished her to be her mother. The power of their wishes was enough to make her conform, but inside she squirmed.
As she rode west, downstream on the Hypanis, her party began to collect other parties – a war band of Grass Cats, another of Standing Horses, each of whom had completed their sweep south.
The day after they met up with Buirtevaert, a young sub-chief of the Standing Horses who greeted her by her own name and raised her spirits, she found herself at the head of a long column of Sakje as she rode around the last bend in the road to Gardan’s farm.
Outriders had warned Gardan, and he was mounted in his own farmyard with his family all on shaggy ponies behind him. He had a heavy wagon pulled by his oxen, and she could see his small forge and his anvil roped to the back of the wagon, right on the back axle. She rode up and he saluted like a Sakje.
‘Lady – we are ready to ride.’ He bowed and looked at her from under his brows, which were just as bushy as she had remembered. ‘So you came back.’
She grinned. There was something about Gardan that was hard not to like. ‘I did,’ she said.
Buirtevaert rode up and waved his whip. ‘You know this dirt man?’ he asked in Sakje.
Gardan laughed. His Sakje was better than Melitta’s. ‘Greetings, sky-rider,’ he said. ‘I am guest-friends with the lady.’
Buirtevaert was not without courtesy, even after a spring spent herding dirt people. He saluted with his whip. ‘And you are a smith – dirt man, I mean no insult. The lady’s friends are mine. Is your family ready?’
‘As you see us,’ Gardan answered. He turned to Melitta. ‘Do you remember what I told you? When I guested you?’
‘“Be sure,”’ Melitta answered. ‘I’ve never forgotten it.’
‘Be
fucking
sure,’ Gardan said. ‘We’re going to lose a whole season, lady. People will
starve
.’
‘You have your grain store?’ Melitta asked.
Gardan shrugged. ‘Every grain that I could get in the wagon.’
‘And you destroyed the rest?’ Melitta asked. She had not picked up the now-familiar smell of dry grain being burned.
Gardan’s eyes flicked away. ‘Hmm,’ he said.
She rode closer, until they were eye to eye. ‘Gardan – you ask me to be sure. This is war – I can’t be
sure
. But I’m doing my best. And I know that my duty – my first duty – is to protect my farmers. But if you leave a store of grain in the ground for Upazan, you aren’t helping me be
sure
. You think he won’t find your grain, with dogs and horses and men?’
Gardan’s wife, Methene, glared at her husband. ‘I told you,’ she said.
Gardan shrugged. ‘People will starve,’ he said. ‘Twenty years I built this farm.’ He had tears in his eyes. ‘I’d rather fight for it than leave it to the wolves,’ he said.
Melitta nodded. ‘Where’s the grain, Gardan?’
He hung his head. Accepting her authority. ‘Buried in the old well. Come.’
She shook her head. ‘No – go and burn it yourself. Hurry.’ She didn’t have to order him to hurry. As far as she knew, Upazan was still twenty days’ ride to the east. But she had ten more farms to visit, or twenty – more families to send to join the river of refugees heading north and west to Tanais.
They left to the smell she had missed, the smell of burning grain. Gardan bowed his head to hide his tears. The children looked at her as if she was a goddess – inscrutable, good and evil all at once. Protector and oppressor. It was a great deal of meaning to be carried in a child’s gaze, but she’d seen it so many times now that she didn’t need their hushed, embarrassed words to confirm their stares.
Dawn, and she made herself roll from her blankets and furs. Spring was fully upon them, and the trees had leaves, but mornings were still cold, and the ground was no mattress, no soft couch. Her hips ached, and her back hurt, and her neck had developed its own special torment that lasted all day. She had to exercise her fingers to get them to behave. She sat by the fire her knights had made and drank two cups of hot liquid before she could face the ritual of lancing the sores on her thighs, dressing them with linen that had once been clean and relieving herself – all in private.
‘I miss other girls,’ she said to the morning. Her fingers were cold right through as she sat on a downed tree, but she stuck to her task, braiding her hair. She’d have liked help, but asking any of her knights was an invitation to mischief. Every one of them was in love with her, the useless bastards. She made a face. The only warrior woman for a hundred stades? The untouchable queen? Of course they loved her. Hence, she had no one to braid her hair.
Mother, how did you deal with the worship and the love and the foolishness?
I need a trumpeter – a girl to be my companion. How do I go about finding one?
Any girl she got would have lovers and favourites and clan-friends, all of whom would involve her in a new web of obligations.
Better to braid my own hair,
she thought.
She heard the hoof beats far off down the valley, even as her thoughts continued questing for an answer to the companionship problem. She looked north and east. There was the rider – a single figure moving fast.
She got up off her log, already annoyed that one of her bandages was slipping, angry at another day of facing the minor pain in her legs.
I used to love riding
, she thought. ‘Scopasis!’ she called.
He was standing in the middle of her knights. He had grown in stature so that the tall, handsome man before her, so sure of himself, so
genuinely
sure of himself, didn’t even
look
the same as the outlaw boy she’d met four months ago. ‘Lady?’ he asked.
‘Rider coming in,’ she said. ‘Any more tea?’
He handed her his own cup, full to the brim, and then he turned and looked at the distant stand of trees where their northern vedette sat on his horse. ‘Scylax has him,’ Scopasis said.
Melitta walked over to the Standing Horses’ fire and nodded to Buirtevaert, who smiled. He had a long braid that he wore on the side of his face, wrapped in gold wire and braided with gold bells. The love-lock said that he was married. ‘What’s her name?’ Melitta asked.
‘Daen,’ he said, his face breaking into a smile that raised her opinion of him still higher.
One day, may a man light up like that at the thought of me.
So far, Buirtevaert was a competent and obedient sub-chief, one of the few men his age not made foolish by her presence.
‘I look forward to meeting her,’ Melitta said.
‘Porridge, lady?’ he asked. The Standing Horses had a huge copper cauldron in which they made all their meals. This morning’s grain had no doubt been put straight in over last night’s deer-meat stew.
When I was in Alexandria I longed for the plains. Now I long for Alexandria. Where is my son? What kind of mother am I?
‘You are sad,’ Buirtevaert said. ‘Do you have a man you miss?’ He looked away, as if just asking such a thing was outside the bounds of courtesy. ‘I am sorry, lady.’
‘Do you know that I have a son?’ Melitta asked. ‘He’ll be eight months old in a few days.’ She shook her head. ‘My man – is dead.’
Buirtevaert shook his head. ‘I had heard that you were widowed,’ he said. ‘To be young and alone in spring . . .’ He shrugged. ‘It is like all the songs . . .’ He trailed off, embarrassed. Most of those songs were about randy widows.
She had to smile at his confusion. Her position as lady seemed to have added twenty years to her age. Young people amused her. Perhaps she was becoming her mother.
‘Lady!’
Melitta turned to see her knights mounting. Scopasis was pointing at the approaching rider. At this distance, Melitta knew her as Samahe.
‘News!’ Scopasis called. He trotted up with Melitta’s riding horse, and she made herself mount. All her sores cracked open together, and she felt the blood and pus creep into the dirty linen – already cold where the outside air crept under her coat.
Samahe came up and hugged her. She returned the embrace with interest. ‘I was just wishing for a girl,’ she said. ‘And here you are.’
Samahe smiled. ‘You need a trumpeter,’ she said laughing. ‘Maybe a lover.’
‘A girl?’ Melitta asked. In Alexandria she knew lots of girls who lay with girls. The whole idea made her laugh. She slapped her thigh and cursed at the pain.
Samahe laughed too. But then she was serious. ‘A girl in your bed means no talk and no babies,’ she said. She shrugged. ‘I’ve never done it myself.’ She rolled her eyes, suggesting that perhaps she had. ‘Listen – I am not here for bed-talk. Ataelus thinks Urvara’s seen Upazan’s advance scouts – yesterday, and far from here. North and east and east again.’
‘How old is this news?’ Melitta said, suddenly all business.
‘Three, perhaps four days.’ Samahe looked around. ‘You have a fair force. Ataelus asks you to come north to him. If you come, you must come now and ride hard.’
Melitta gestured to Scopasis and to Buirtevaert to join her. ‘We’ve cleared the valley to the ferry. Not much else to be done.’ She looked at her commanders. ‘Can we move back north and find Ataelus?’
‘With Samahe to guide us?’ Buirtevaert asked. ‘Let’s be on our way!’
Scopasis nodded. ‘I long to put my sword against this Upazan’s throat,’ he said.
Melitta nodded, feeling the new crusts of the sores on her thighs. ‘Me too,’ she said.
Five days in the saddle – five nights with a warm companion who braided her hair and talked, sometimes, of things other than how many men she might kill, or how many horses such and such a man took in such and such a raid. Of babies and harmless gossip about who had whom in her blankets.
Samahe’s greatest contribution was the salve she had for riding sores, and the discipline she brought to changes of clothes. Samahe travelled with two pairs of trousers and two coats, and every time they crossed a stream, she stopped, stripped and changed, drying the wet pair on the rump of her packhorse. Melitta learned that women
nomades
needed to take special care of themselves to avoid the sort of sores she had, and worse. She learned a great deal from travelling with Samahe, and the best of it was that Samahe taught her without comment or superiority.
They found two more of the war parties before they caught Ataelus, and when they found him, he too had been collecting the outriders, so that together they had a polyglot force from all the people of almost a thousand riders.
Melitta embraced Ataelus for almost as long as Samahe did, and before he could tell her his news, she called a council of all the leaders present, and they stood around a fire on the first warm evening while young men and women sketched their patrols in the soft black earth and bragged of their deeds. Thyrsis told his tale well, as usual, and his hair gleamed in the firelight, and Melitta thought he was the handsomest man among the Sakje. And she saw Tameax, who smiled and frowned when he saw her.
Two girls – Grass Cat girls, bent on mischief – had ridden to within sight of the old fort that Crax had once manned on the great inland sea that some called the Kaspian and others the Hyrkanian. There,
on the good grass north of the fort, they had counted four thousand riders – or more.
‘Counting so many riders is hard,’ the eldest girl admitted. ‘Always my father asks me to count the stars. Now I know why.’