Crax, magic is a story to scare slaves and children.’
Crax nodded. ‘Sure.’ He looked around. ‘They have men…’ He paused, clearly uncertain about what to say. ‘They are horrible. Everyone says so. The Getae are just thieves.’ He looked at Kineas. ‘Am I really free?’
Kineas said, ‘Yes.’
Crax said, ‘I will fight for you. For ever.’
They made camp by the river before the sun had slanted far down the sky. The tents went up quickly after Kineas and Niceas had made the reason plain to everyone, and Crax disappeared with the Getae boy while the Scythians were busy with their own camp. Ataelus didn’t go with them. He picketed his horses with the Greeks and squatted down by the first fire to be lit. Kineas sat by him.
‘Who is she?’ he asked, pointing to the eastern horizon for emphasis.
‘Young, for angry woman?’ Ataelus shrugged. ‘Noble.’ He used a word that usually meant ‘virtuous’ in Greek. Kineas puzzled it out.
‘She’s well born? A queen?’
‘No. Small force. Big tribe. Assagatje. Tens of tens of tens of riders they can put on the plains and still have many for camp, again. They for Ghan — Ghan like king for them. Yes? Ghan of Assagatje big, big man. Has nobles, yes? Three tens of tens, nobles. All Assagatje.’
Kineas took a deep breath. ‘The king of these Assagatje has thousands of warriors and this is just a small band under a noble?’
Ataelus nodded.
‘And she is young and angry and maybe eager to make a name for herself, and she took her troopers and went after the Getae, who are four days ride away?’
‘Getae feel fire tomorrow,’ Ataelus said.
The flatness of his answer gave Kineas a chill. ‘ Tomorrow? That ride took us three days.’
‘Assagatje are Sakje. Sakje ride over grass like north wind for blow, fast and fast and never for rest.’ Ataelus thumped his chest. ‘Me Sakje.’ He thumped his chest. ‘Ride for day. Ride for night. Ride for day again. Sleep for horse. More horse for fight — like Captain, yes?’
Niceas cut in from across the fire. ‘Ares’ balls — so she’s going to hit the Getae tomorrow and come back?’
Ataelus nodded vigorously. He pounded his right fist in his open left hand, making a noise like a sword hitting a body. ‘Hit — yes.’
Kineas and Niceas exchanged a long glance. Kineas said, ‘Right. Up in the last watch, move as soon as there is light in the sky. Everyone not on watch get in your cloak.’
Kineas curled up next to Diodorus, who was not asleep. ‘What are we afraid of? You paid the tax — with our horses, I’ll hasten to add.’
Kineas considered feigning sleep and not replying, sure that every man in the tent was attending to a question only Diodorus could ask him. Finally he said, ‘I don’t know. She was pleasant. Straighter than many an oligarch. But when she saw those damned brooches — I am afraid we’ve started something. And I want to get to Olbia ahead of whatever it is.’
Diodorus whistled softly. ‘You’re the captain,’ he said.
Too right, thought Kineas, and went to sleep.
Artemis, naked, her broad back and narrow waist he so well remembered. He came up behind her, his prick stiff as a board, like something an actor would wear, and she turned and smiled at him over her shoulder, but as she turned she was the Assagatje noblewoman, the gold gorget hiding her breasts, and she spoke words in anger, words that sounded like a snarl, and in each hand she held one of the brooches, and she slammed the pins into her eyes…
He awoke with Diodorus’s hand over his mouth. ‘You were screaming, ’ Diodorus said.
Kineas lay and shook. He knew he had stronger dreams than other men, and he knew the gods sent them, but they often disturbed him nonetheless.
When the fit passed, he rose, took his own silver cup from a bag and poured wine into it from his own flagon, walked well down the beach and poured the whole cup into the sea as a libation, and he prayed.
6
Olbia stood out from the low shoreline of the Euxine like a painted statue in a dusty marketplace. From where Kineas sat on a low bluff across the great Borasthenes River, he could see a long peninsula projecting from the far shore. A pall of smoke from thousands of fires coated the town like dust, or soot, but the temple of Apollo rose in pristine splendour atop a steep hill at the base of the peninsula and the town filled the tip, with solid walls as high as three men — the highest walls Kineas had seen since the siege of Tyre. The walls seemed out of place, out of proportion to the size of the place and the position of the town. And the town spilled over the walls, small houses and mud buildings filling the ground from the base of the walls to the temple hill, an ill-defended suburb that would have to be sacrificed in the event of a siege. Olbia had two harbours, one on either side of her peninsula, and dolphins, the symbol of the town, sported in the water below him and gleamed gold on distant marble pillars at the town gates.
The golden dolphins reassured him. Almost at his feet was a proper polis: gymnasia, agora, a theatre — and a hippodrome. Kineas was glad to see that he had not led his men into a howling wilderness for nothing. But the tall walls and the slovely suburb were at odds — either the city needed to defend itself, or it did not.
Niceas coughed and a cloud of breath formed in front of his mouth. It was cold. The summer was long gone. ‘We’ll need-’ He coughed again, this time too long. ‘We’ll need a ferry. Hermes, I’ll be happy to be in a bed with some straw.’
Kineas spotted what had to be the ferry crossing, more than a mile from the mouth of the river, well clear of the traffic in the harbour. ‘Let’s get you indoors.’ Niceas wasn’t the only sick man.
Only Ataelus was immune to the cold. He had a fur-lined hood, taken at a dice game with the other Scyths, and a longer cloak. The hard, clear air didn’t give him sniffles or a cough and he still slept outside with his reins in his hand. The other Sakje had ridden away two days before, returning to their woman leader wherever she was once they had taken Kineas to the mouth of the Borasthenes. They had been good guests, good hosts and everyone had dined on their hunting skills night after night. Most of the men had picked up a few words of their language and the deep grunt — uuh-aah — they made when they won at dice.
As they rode down to the ford, the horses picking their way through long grass silvered with late morning frost, Kineas trotted over to Ataelus. ‘We all owe you a debt of thanks. You are a fine scout.’
Ataelus smiled, then shrugged. ‘It is for good for with you.’ He looked at his riding whip as if finding some flaw to cover his embarrassment. ‘Good with you. Me, I stay, you give a more horse. Yes?’
Kineas had not expected this. It made his morning. ‘You want to stay with us? And you want me to give you another horse?’
Ataelus held up his hand. ‘More horse, and more horse. You chief, yes? Bigger chief in city, yes? I get more horse when you get more horse.’ Ataelus shrugged as if this was the most obvious thing in the world. ‘Diodorus more horse. Antigonus more horse. Even Crax more horse. Why else fight for city? Yes?’
Kineas reached out and they clasped hands. In this respect, the Scythians and Greeks were brothers — they clasped hands to show friendship and agreement. ‘I’m very glad you wish to stay.’
Ataelus nodded, smiled again almost flirtatiously. ‘Good. Let’s go drink wine.’
But it wasn’t that simple. Their arrival at the ferry caused a commotion — a dozen obviously armed men with no trade goods and a Scythian. It took all of Kineas’s various skills as a leader and as a bully to get the ferryman to load his men, and when they arrived on the other side with thirty very cold, wet horses, soldiers met them.
‘Please state your business,’ said the officer. He was a big man with long dark hair, a dark complexion like a Levanter or an African, a huge beard and expensive armour under a voluminous black cloak. And his men were well armed and well disciplined. The officer wasn’t rude, but he was direct. ‘You have scared a number of people.’
Kineas was ready with his letter, and he held it out. ‘I was hired to come here and command the Hippeis. Here is my letter from the archon.’ The letter was a little the worse for having travelled from this spot to Athens by
