Kineas shook his head and said slowly, ‘This means a great deal to you, Spartan. Is this why you came? To make an alliance against Macedon?’
‘I came to see the world. I am an exile and a philosopher.’
‘Bastard! You are an agent of the kings and Ephors, and a spy.’
‘You lie!’ Philokles snapped up his cloak. ‘Rot in hell, Athenian. You have it in your power to do good, to hold the line and save something — bah. Like an Athenian — save your skin and let the others rot. No wonder the Macedonians own us.’ He pushed out through the flap, bruising snow off the roof and leaving a gap where an icy wind crept in. The fire began to smoke.
Kineas climbed out from underneath his furs and made his way to the door. It wasn’t as bad as he had feared — just cold. He tugged at the heavy felt flap until it fell into place across the door, and he pushed on a stick sewn into the felt until it closed just right — sealing the door. An inner curtain fell over the whole. He was warmer immediately. He found dried meat and apple cider by his bed and tore into them — the meat was softly seasoned, almost tart, and the cider smelled of Ectabana. He drank it all.
Then he had to piss. He was naked in his tent, and there was nothing like a jar or a chamber pot.
He wondered what had led him to accuse Philokles and he shook his head at the hypocrisy of his accusation. He had to piss and he needed someone to help him. That revealed to him how foolish he had been to antagonize the Spartan — and for what? He was suspicious of the Spartan’s motives — he always had been.
‘Who cares?’ he asked the tent flap. He had no clothes and it would be cold as hell outside, and he needed to piss. ‘Who gives a shit?’ which under the circumstances, seemed funny.
The flap rustled and Philokles’s head appeared.
Kineas smiled in relief. ‘I apologize.’
‘Me, too.’ Philokles came in. ‘I antagonized a very sick man. What are you doing out of your blankets?’
‘I have to piss like a warhorse.’
Philokles wrapped him in two Thracian cloaks and led him out in the snow. His feet hurt from the cold, but the relief of emptying his bladder trumped the pain of his feet and in seconds he was back in the furs.
Philokles watched him intently. ‘You are better.’
Kineas nodded. ‘I am.’
‘Good. I have found someone more persuasive to make my argument. Lady Srayanka will be here when the hunt ends. She will make the case herself.’
Kineas cast about the tent again. ‘Where are my clothes?’
‘Don’t be a fool. This is not a mating ritual — I imagine the lady is well wed. This is diplomacy and you have the advantage of illness. Sit and look pale. Besides, you’ve seldom been lovelier. Eumenes pines for you when he isn’t pining for Ajax.’
Kineas glanced at him and realized that he was being teased. ‘Cut my beard.’
‘An hour ago I was a coward and a liar.’
‘No, a spy. You said liar.’
The possibility of real enmity hung in the air between them, just a few words away from the raillery. Kineas made a sign of aversion in the air, a peasant sign from the hills of Attica. ‘I have apologized, and I will again.’
‘No need. I’m a touchy bastard.’ Philokles looked away. ‘I am a bastard, Kineas. Do you know what that means in Sparta?’
Kineas shook his head. He knew what it meant in Athens.
‘It means you are never a Spartiate. Win at games, triumph in lessons and still no mess group will welcome you. I thought that I had escaped from the weight of the shame — but apparently I brought it here with me.’
Kineas thought for a moment, sipping more cider. And then he said, ‘You are not a bastard here. I’m sorry for the word. I use it too often. It is easy — I’m well born, whatever I am now. But I say again — you are no bastard here, or in Olbia. Or in Tomis, for that matter. Please forgive me.’
Philokles smiled. It was a rare kind of smile for him, free of sarcasm or doubt — just a smile. ‘The Philosopher forgave you when I walked out the tent.’ He laughed. ‘The Spartan needed a little more combat.’
Kineas rubbed his face. ‘Now trim my beard and comb my hair.’
And Philokles said, ‘You bastard.’
It was long after dark when she came. Kineas and Philokles had spent the afternoon talking, first in a gush and then comfortably, by topics, with silences. Twice, Kineas went to sleep and awoke to find him still there.
The snow had finally ceased. Eumenes said so when he came back with an antelope he’d knocked over with his own spear, proud as a boy reciting his first lines of Homer, ‘These barbarians can ride! My father calls them bandits, but they are like centaurs. I’d only seen them drunk in the town — and my nurse, of course. Not like they are here at all!’
Philokles smiled. ‘I fancy you are seeing a different type of Sakje altogether.’
‘Noble ones. I know. The lady — she rides like Artemis herself.’
Kineas started before he realized the boy must mean the goddess. He made the avert sign — women who rivalled Artemis seldom came to a good end. But his Artemis had been a fine rider, in many different ways. He smiled to himself. He was becoming an old fool.
Eumenes continued. ‘She killed twice, once with a bow and once with her spear. A woman, sirs, imagine? And the men — so courteous. They found my buck. I was nervous — what if I failed my throw right there, surrounded by barbarians?’
Kineas laughed aloud. ‘I know that feeling, young man.’
Eumenes looked hurt. ‘You sir? I saw you throw in the hippodrome, sir. But anyway — I’ll never let my father call them bandits again.’ Philokles ushered him out.
‘I gather Lady Srayanka has gone to dinner.’
Kineas was disappointed. He was shaved and under the furs he had a good linen tunic, now somewhat creased from being napped in. But he smiled. ‘You are good company, sir.’
Philokles flushed like a young man. ‘You please me.’
‘Socrates said there was no higher compliment. Or maybe Xenophon. One of them anyway. For a soldier — but why hector you about what soldiers think? Have you made a campaign? Is it not something about which you will speak? I mean no insult.’
‘I made a campaign with the men of Molyvos against Mytilene. It was my first, for all my training.’
‘Why did you leave?’
Philokles looked into the fire. ‘Many reasons,’ he began, and there was a stir at the door cloth.
Lady Srayanka entered alone and without fuss, sweeping the door aside and closing it with a single sweep of her arm. Having entered, she walked around the fire, brushed her long doeskin coat under her knees and sat in one fluid motion. She flashed a brief smile at Philokles. ‘Greetings, Greek men. May the gods look favourably upon you.’
It was delivered so well, so fluently, that only later did Kineas realize it was a practised phrase learned off by heart.
Philokles nodded gravely, as if to a Greek matron in a well-ordered house. ‘Greetings, Despoina.’
Kineas couldn’t help but smile. The head was the same, although the face was less severe. Still the same clear blue eyes and her ludicrous, heavy brows that nearly met in the middle of her face. He was being rude, staring into her eyes — and she was looking back at him. The corner of her mouth curled.
‘Greetings, lady,’ he said. It didn’t sound as stumbling as he had feared.
‘I desire — to send — for Ataelax. Yes?’ Her voice was low, but very much a woman’s.
‘Ataelax?’ asked Kineas.
‘Ataelus. His name as it is said here, I gather,’ Philokles explained as he opened the flap and called.
Ataelus came in so quickly it was obvious he had been waiting nearby. The moment he entered, something changed. Until then, her eyes were mostly on Kineas. Once he was through the flap, they were everywhere else.
‘For speaking,’ he said.
Kineas decided that he would pay some teacher in Olbia to improve on the cases of the Scyth’s nouns as soon as possible.
Lady Srayanka spoke softly and at length. Ataelus waited until she was completely finished and then asked her several questions, then she asked him a question. Finally, he turned to Kineas. ‘She says many fine things for
