Kineas raised his head and realized that he could scarcely see the head of his horse. His helmet sat on his brow like a block of ice. His brain began to function again. ‘Ataelus!’
The Scyth appeared out of the swirling snow. ‘Here I am!’ he shouted.
‘Go fetch in the two boys who are out. We’ll stay right here.’ He coughed again. ‘Hermes, protect us.’
Ataelus vanished into the snow. The horses crowded together, which suited their riders. Greek gentlemen rode in tunics and boots, armour if the occasion demanded, but fashionable gentlemen did not wear trousers. All of the boys were in their best tunics and their armour, to awe the barbarians. Now they were very cold indeed.
‘Philokles? Pick your way along the river and find us some trees. Better yet, find a house.’
‘Or a tavern?’
‘You understand. Don’t go far and don’t risk getting lost. We won’t move until Ataelus comes back, and then we’ll ride upstream. Take Clio.’
Philokles collected the boy and trotted off into the white curtain. Kineas thought the stuff was letting up; man and boy remained visible to him several horse lengths away.
Eumenes pressed his horse against Kineas’s mare. ‘Are we — lost?’ he asked. Are we in real trouble?
‘This’ll pass soon enough,’ said Kineas, and coughed again. ‘I’m going to get us together and then find some cover. We may be cold.. ’ He lost the ability to speak, coughed and coughed, then felt better. He spat some phlegm and was relieved to see there was no blood in it. I made my sacrifice to You, lord of contagion. I helped a horse race for your glory, Lord Apollo. But, he remembered he had not offered a sacrifice, being busy with his own affairs. A white lamb on your altar when I return, he vowed. And coughed again.
Eumenes watched him, his clear brow furrowed with worry under the bronze brim of his helmet. Kineas got himself erect in the saddle. ‘How do you keep a company moving in heavy weather?’ he asked.
‘Uh,’ murmured Eumenes. Kineas looked around. The snow was lighter, but the boys were huddled together and their faces were pale, their mouths thin. They were on the edge of panic.
‘You find a mark you can see and move to it. Then you find another mark and you move to that. It’s slow, but it beats getting lost. If you can’t see far enough to find a mark, you stop and wait for the weather to clear.’
Kyros, the one who threw the best javelin, said, ‘I’m cold.’ He said it softly, but his words carried real conviction and his cheeks had bright red spots.
Kineas knew that he was on the edge of real difficulty, but he had already made a hard choice — to stay put until the Scyth returned. He stuck to it. ‘Push in closer to Ajax. By Ares, young gentlemen, you should all learn to love one another a little more. Ajax is a particularly elegant specimen — no one should mind cuddling with him.’ Several of the youths glanced at Ajax and most of them chuckled, and he seized on this slight thaw in the tension. ‘How many of you were cold last night? Everyone? Learn to be comrades! Tonight, you are going to have mess groups — you’ll eat and sleep in sections, like Spartans. It works. Don’t blush, Kyros. No one is threatening your virtue. It’s too cold.’ He was holding back a cough, trying to get them in hand before he made a spectacle of himself, but the urge to cough overpowered him. The snow in the air seemed to trigger the coughing. He tried to keep his back straight and cough into his hands. It was shorter, but the coughs seemed deeper in his chest, harsher. His hands were shaking.
Ataelus’s red hood appeared over Eumenes’s shoulder. ‘They here for me!’ called the Scyth. ‘Good boys, off horse, wait. No problem for me, yes!’
‘Well-’ Hack, hack, cough, cough. ‘Well done.’ Ataelus’s success gave him hope. In fact, it turned the situation around. He wished his head were clearer. ‘North along the river bank. Look for Philokles. Understand?’
‘Sure. No problem. Heya, Kineax — you for Baqcas?’ Ataelus asked.
‘What?’ asked Kineas. The Scyth seemed to be using more and more barbarian words, as if getting closer to his people freed his tongue from the fetters of Greek. ‘What is a baxstak?’
Ataelus shook his head. ‘Bacqca soon!’ he called, and waved. Then he led the way. The two boys he’d been speaking with followed him and Kineas encouraged them. They were taking their role as scouts seriously. He liked that. He didn’t like that he was beginning to feel distant from the situation. He had a fever — he’d had one before, at the siege of Gaza, and he knew the signs. The distance would serve him for an hour or so, but then he would be useless to command.
‘Ajax!’ he called, a pure order. Ajax trotted to his side — or rather, his horse tried to trot, snow billowing from her hooves. Already, the stuff was a hand deep on the ground.
‘Sir!’ Ajax actually saluted. If this boy lives, he’ll be a fine soldier.
Kineas leaned over. ‘I’m sick,’ he said quietly. His voice rasped in his throat, and his nose was full. ‘Sick and gedding sicker. If I can’d command, you keep dese lads moving until you meed Philokles or you meed the Sakje. Understaaad me?’ Hermes, he sounded like he was seventy years old.
‘Yes, sir.’ Ajax nodded.
Kineas pushed his horse into a canter, and she flailed her way back to the head of the boys. Behind him, Ajax called out, ‘Two files! We’re not on a hunting party!’
Kineas wanted to smile, but things were getting farther and farther away.
An hour later, he was still in command of himself and the group, but only just. Twice he had snapped to — not asleep, perhaps, but drifting. Both times he’d recovered to see the Scyth’s red cap bouncing along ahead of him.
The snow almost stopped, and then came on full force again, and Kineas began to fear that they might pass Philokles and the boy Clio in the snow. He became sleepy, and he knew that wasn’t good. Behind him, Ajax continued to heckle his charges, demanding that they sit straight, stop wiping their noses, an endless litany of little faults that, under other circumstances, would have seemed ridiculous.
The coughing grew worse, which, at each bout, didn’t seem possible — until the next. And then Philokles was there with him, and the boy Clio. He sat up straight.
‘Cleared the ground under the trees,’ said Philokles. His nose was as red as wine.
‘I started a fire!’ said Clio. ‘Myself!’
‘Well done, boy. Right.’ Cough. ‘How far?’
‘Half a stade. Ataelus has the two boys at the fire.’
‘Go. Ged these boys under cover.’ He blew his nose in his hand and coughed. ‘Two tents — slaves in one, cavalry in the other. Get the slaves on food. Hot drink — you know?’
‘I’m a fucking Spartan!’ said Philokles. ‘I’ve been out in a storm before. You look like Apollo put an arrow in you. Hermes send we get you to the fire. Hades, you’re burning up.’
The sight of Philokles eased Kineas more than medicine. He felt better — he brushed the snow off the plume in his helmet and led the way to camp. When they followed the tracks down to the fire, he halted them and made them wheel their horses into line.
‘Listen to me! You behaved like soldiers. That was dangerous and we did it.’ He blew his nose on his fingers again and wiped it off on his thigh, coughed, and straightened. ‘We’re not done yet. Every man gathers wood. I want a pile of wood as big as a house. Don’t leave it to the slaves — it’s your life as well as theirs. Horses curried and blankets on.’ He coughed again. They sat like statues — either inured to discipline in one day or too miserable to twitch. ‘Arni — slaves to boil water and make food. Let them get warm first. Masters — to work.’
None of them rebelled. None of them went to the fire. They started to get wood — pitiful, snowy branches at first, but Ajax and Philokles led them and suddenly it was a contest, a feat worthy of Achlles, and they fought to get more of the stuff, driftwood from the river beach, downed branches from the stand of woods that filled the bend in the river. Even Kineas, who could not entirely control his body, felt drawn to participate.
Soon he was drinking from a hot bronze beaker that burned his hands even as the mulled wine burned away the pain in his throat. His hands were bright red. The others were standing around a huge fire, a fire that was itself as big as a house, and the heat blasted their clothes dry.
And then he was in a tent, and coughing.
He is hot, and the spirits of the dead gather around him with tongues of fire — Aristophanes, who died screaming with an arrow in his belly on the Euphrates, bellows fire so that a cloud of it billows around his head like a shroud of flame. A Persian — suddenly he’s sure it is a man he killed himself — has no face, just bone, but his hands make precise signals, and then…
He is cold, and the bodies of the dead are frozen. Amyntas has ice in his beard on his cheeks and when he smiles, his cheeks develop little fissures like the crows’ feet at the edge of a matron’s eyes.
‘I didn’t think you were dead.’
