Antigonus, himself a barbarian born, raised a fist at the Scyth. ‘First share!’ he rumbled. Other men took up the cry.
Ataelus looked around as if making sure he was being chosen. He grinned from ear to ear. Then he went to the string of captured horses and leaped astride the tallest, a pale bay mare with a small head and some Persian blood in her. He gave a loud yip yip! and then dismounted to release her from the string.
It didn’t surprise Kineas that the Scyth took a horse, but it pleased the men, who wanted the ready cash in the form of silver and coins. The tradition of a first share to the man judged most worthy was often a two-edged sword, causing resentment as easily as it rewarded military virtue. But Ataelus’s choice made him popular, or perhaps more popular.
The rest of the division was by strict seniority. Niceas chose second, and whatever grief he might feel for Graccus, he chose carefully from the pile, a heavy silver torc with a chain attached that was worth a month’s pay. Ill armoured as the Getae had been, they wore good jewellery and carried coins.
The other men each took a share in turn, and there were plenty of items left after the first share had passed. Ajax did not join in the sharing, but Philokles did and no one complained — the Spartan was already accepted.
Kineas allowed them to circle around again, so that most men had at least a dozen owls worth of silver and some had more. What was left on the tunic after the second sharing was mostly bronze, with a few small silver rings.
‘Slaves,’ Kineas said. He pointed at the tunic. Ajax’s slave came forward willingly — he had become the head slave by age and experience and he didn’t hesitate, but took the largest silver ring and put it on his hand. Then he winked at Crax.
Crax’s face in the firelight showed the tracks of tears like rivulets on a hillside after a storm. Nonetheless, he reached down and took another silver ring. Then they divided the bronze coins between them. No one noticed this last division, because they were examining the horses, bickering over their small size and complaining that the Scyth had taken the only good one. The sun slipped under the hills to the west while they divided the horses.
Ataelus came up to Kineas. ‘Me look?’ he asked, pointing at the two heavy brooches in Kineas’s hand.’
Kineas handed them over. The Scyth looked at them in the last light, the red sun colouring the gold so that it looked like new minted copper. He nodded. ‘Make for my people,’ he said. He pointed to the horse and stag motif that ran through both. They were very fine for barbarian work, the haunches of the horse well worked, the head of the stag noble and fine.
While Ataelus looked at the brooches, Kineas glanced at Ajax twice, but the young man showed nothing but weary resignation at the evils of an older generation. Ataelus handed the brooches back and returned to gloating over his horse. Kineas shrugged, took his cloak and rolled in it on the ground. He didn’t think of Artemis, and then it was morning.
5
Dawn patrol brought no surprises. The girths were well attached, the baggage loaded, and Ajax’s slave whistled while he scraped the cauldron. Ataelus had curried both of his horses until their coats shone. His example got others to currying, which pleased Kineas who liked men to look their best every day.
Kineas rode off apart to have a moment to himself. He watched them working, watched the last items roped down to the packhorses — plenty of them, now, and lighter loads for each, which meant they’d move faster.
Ajax’s slave waited patiently by his knee. When Kineas noticed him, the slave bowed his head. ‘Par’n me, sir.’
Kineas felt that the man’s whistling had helped to set the tone of the morning, that sharing the booty with the slaves had somehow pleased the gods. ‘I don’t know your name.’
The slave bowed his head again. ‘Arni.’
Kineas chewed the barbarian name a little. ‘What is it, Arni?’
‘Par’n me fur askin. I wunnert if we — if’n there’d be more fight’n.’ He looked eager. ‘I cin fight. If’n you were to want it. Could take a swort or a knife. Plenty left a’ yesterday.’
Arming slaves was always a dangerous business. Crossing the plains, however, was the immediate problem. ‘Only until we reach a town. And Crax?’
The slave smiled. ‘Give ’im a few days. Aye. E’ll come round.’
Kineas nodded. ‘Watch he doesn’t take your weapon and kill us all before he does so.’
Arni smiled, shook his head and withdrew.
Horses shining, richer and with a score of remounts, the column rode across the plains.
Three days of uneventful travel brought them to the scatter of Greek homesteads surrounding Antiphilous. Antiphilous was a settlement so small it could barely be thought of as a colony — indeed, it was the colony of a colony, guarding the southern flank of the more prosperous towns of Tyras and Nikanou, both centres of the grain trade with the interior because they controlled access to a bay so deep it was like a small sea. Kineas had never seen any of them, but he’d heard enough to have a sense of the area. He gave an inward sigh of relief when his horse’s hoofs were on the gravelled dirt of a Greek road.
Their arrival made an instant stir in Antiphilous. It was easy to see that not many caravans crossed the sea of grass, because householders stood on their porticoes to watch the column pass, slaves gaped, and the men of the town hurried for their spears and stood in the sun of the small agora, ready to repel invasion. When they discovered that Kineas had no ill intent, they hurried to wring every possible profit from him, asking a grim price for their grain — the cheapest grain in the world, right at the source, at Athenian famine prices.
A scuffle in an ugly wine shop caught Kineas’s attention. He motioned to Niceas. ‘Get a day’s grain for the horses. Don’t budge an obol on our campaign price. I’ll be back.’ He raised his legs over the horse’s back and slid off, checked his sword and pushed through the curtain of wooden beads that masked the entrance of the wine shop. Inside, Lykeles and Philokles had swords in their hands. Coenus had a man down and was tickling his throat with his sword.
‘He tried to cheat us on the measure,’ Lykeles said defensively. He knew that Kineas hated any kind of incident with ‘citizens’. Lykeles considered himself a gentleman, although he wasn’t as well born as Coenus or Laertes.
‘So you hit him and drew your swords? Get outside, all of you.’ Kineas’s hands didn’t leave his belt, but his voice was cold.
Philokles stood up straight and drank off the measure of wine in his hand. He seemed disposed to argue the point.
‘Now!’ said Kineas.
Philokles met his eye. His eyes shone with ferocity, like an animal, and he gave Kineas a slight nod, as if to say that he would obey this time. He looked like a different man entirely. But he went.
Outside, Kineas could see that the shopkeeper was, in fact, a slave. A grimmer looking specimen he had seldom seen. He threw him some bronze coins. The slave swore and demanded more, lies frothing from him like spit bubbles. Kineas stood his ground until the slave was silent and then went back outside. Niceas was still dickering with a grain factor and a crowd of men had started to gather in the agora, many with their spears — again.
Diodorus pushed forward through the horses of the column. ‘The ferry’s closed. Some nonsense. They want to gouge us for the price. If you want my guess…’
Kineas nodded.
‘I’d say they didn’t like us. Trade with the Getae? The gods only know. And they don’t like Ataelus.’
Kineas nodded again, his eyes flicking up and down the column. ‘Mount up,’ he said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
They were out of Antiphilous as quickly as they had entered. And they weren’t going to be crossing the ferry to Nikanou, which meant that they were about to ride for days into the heartland of more barbarians in order to go around the bay. Kineas thought he might have just made a hurried and foolish decision, but there had been something rotten about Antiphilous, and some god had whispered to him that it was time to move, a whispering he never ignored.
