it was. I won’t say gods — I won’t say it weren’t.’ He took Kineas’s cup and refilled it.
Philokles spread his cloak and fell on it with a thud. ‘Private conversation? ’ he asked when it was too late for them to evict him.
‘No,’ said Kineas. Curious how little of his authority seemed to carry over to the campfire. ‘That is to say, yes, but you’re as welcome as my other friends to be critical of my love life.’
A look passed between the Spartan and the older man. They both smiled.
Kineas looked from one to the other and got to his feet. ‘Aphrodite take you both,’ he growled. ‘I’m for bed.’
Philokles indicated his cloak with an expansive wave. ‘I’m in mine.’
Kineas rolled his cloak out, and slept between them by the fire. No more was said, but he lay awake for a long time.
There was an owl, and he was determined to catch it, though he couldn’t think why. He rode his horse — a great rough beast that he didn’t want to look at — across the endless rolling plain of ash. The ash was everywhere, and devoured all the colour, so that he felt as if he was riding in a dark summer twilight, with all the colours robbed by the loom of night. And still the horse — if horse it was — galloped on across the plain.
When he saw the river in the distance, he felt fear, as sharp and total as the first fear he’d ever felt. The beast between his legs cared nothing for his fears, and it ran on, straight for the sandy ford at the base of the slope.
He lifted his head and saw the sea glimmering darkly, and knew that he was again on the field of Issus. There were bodies all around the ford, men and horses mixed, and the men had been mutilated.
His beast’s hooves rattled on the gravel of the slope toward the river — still black water that reflected no stars.
He had been chasing an owl. Where was the owl? He turned and looked to the right, where the second taxeis should have broken through the wall of mercenaries, but there were only corpses and ash and the smell of smoke, and then he saw a winged shape rising against the high ground. He pulled at the beast’s reins, sawing them back and forth, increasingly desperate as the thing crashed into the ford.
‘Do not cross the river,’ said Kam Baqca. The voice was clear and calm, and the beast turned, splashing along the margins of the river, and the black drops rose slowly through the air and burned like ice when they touched the skin, and then he was galloping free of the water — if water it was — over the field of the dead, and the owl spiralled down towards him as if stooping on prey.
His beast shied — the first time it had missed a step in its mad career — and he looked down past its hideous hide to the ground, where Alexander’s body lay broken, his face covered with a smiling golden mask. Around him lay the bodies of his companions.
That’s not what happened, complained some rational part of his mind. But the thought slipped away.
The owl swooped out of the air. He saw it in the periphery of his vision and turned his head to see the claws sink into his face, through his face, the owl melting into his flesh like a sword thrust sinking home. He screamed… and he was flying. He was the owl, the owl was him. The beast was gone — or the beast, too, was one with the bird and the man. The great brown wings beat, and he watched the earth below and knew where his prey lived, saw every mortal movement on the plain of ash. He rose with the world’s wind under his wings, and then beat strongly, without fatigue, over the low hills that had lined the battlefield of Issus until he was clear of the plain of ash and flew over the world of men, and still he rose, until he could see the curve of the sea from Alexandria to Tyre, and then he fell with the long curve of an arrow past Tyre and Chios and Lesvos, past the ruins of Troy, past the Hellespont, until he slowed his descent and hovered over the sea of grass, and in the distance he saw the tree growing to shade the whole world, and yet it seemed to grow from a single tent on the plain. He soared to the tree and as his talons bit into the rich comfort of its bark…
He awoke, missing the warmth of his hyperetes against his right side. He could hear Niceas berating someone, and young voices raised in laughter, and he thought, Time to get up. And then the enormity of the dream hit him, and he lay there, trying to see it all again. Terrified all over again at the alienness of his own thoughts. He shivered with more than just the cold of the morning, pushed himself to the fire, and one of Eumenes’ young men brought him a cup of hot wine. ‘Agathon,’ he said, remembering the lad’s name.
The boy beamed. ‘Can I get you anything else? We slept in the open like real soldiers — I wasn’t even cold!’
Kineas couldn’t handle too much adolescent enthusiasm so early in the morning. He drank off the rest of the hot wine and rolled his cloak tight. In the time it took the sun to get his ball of fire fully over the horizon, they were mounted, their breath streaming away like pale plumes in the cold spring air, and the dream with all of its bonds to the other was again banished by a counter spell of work.
Kineas waved for Ataelus to join him. With the exception of his abortive attempts to learn the Sakje tongue over the winter, Kineas hadn’t seen much of the Scyth. He gave the man a smile.
Ataelus looked tense. Kineas couldn’t remember seeing the man look so reserved. ‘Will we find the Sakje camp today?’ he asked the scout.
Ataelus made a face. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Second hour after the sun is high, unless they were for moving.’ He didn’t look as if he relished the prospect.
Kineas rubbed his new beard. ‘Well, then. Lead on.’
Ataelus looked back at him gravely. ‘The lady — for waiting two weeks of you.’ He sighed heavily.
‘Do you mean she may have left?’ Kineas said in alarm. Ataelus’s Greek had improved considerably over the winter. His vocabulary was much bigger — his grammar was about the same. He could still be difficult to understand.
‘Not for leaving,’ Ataelus said heavily. ‘For waiting.’ He shook his reins and touched his riding whip to his pony’s flanks, and he was gone over the grass, leaving Kineas to worry.
Philokles joined Kineas as the column started forward. ‘What was that about?’
Kineas waved dismissively. ‘Our Scyth is in a state because we’re late.’
‘Hmm,’ said the Spartan. ‘We are late. And the lady doesn’t strike me as the sort of commander who likes to wait.’
Kineas rode out of the column, signalled to Leucon to join him, and barked out a string of commands that set the whole troop into an open skirmish line two stades wide. When the rough line was moving well, he rode back to Philokles, who as usual took no part in the manoeuvres.
‘She’ll understand that I was delayed,’ Kineas said. ‘So will the king.’
The Spartan pursed his lips. ‘Listen, Hipparch. If you were waiting for her, and you’d sat for two weeks while she drilled her cavalry…’ He raised an eyebrow.
Kineas was watching the skirmish line, which was sticking together pretty well. ‘I don’t-’
‘You don’t think of her as another commander. You think of her as a Greek girl with some equine skills. Better get over that, brother. She’s had to put up with two weeks of ribbing from her troopers about waiting like a mare in heat for her stallion — that’s my guess. Look how well you handle our teasing.’
The left half of the skirmish line was bunching up as the young troopers chatted while they rode. Riding with a horse length between each file pair took practice, and the line was starting to fall apart.
‘Sound HALT,’ Kineas bellowed. To Philokles, he said, ‘She may not even want me.’
The Spartan didn’t blink. ‘That’s a whole different problem — but if she didn’t want you, chances are Ataelus wouldn’t be looking so worried.’
Kineas watched the outer arms of his skirmish line galloping to the centre to form on their commander. ‘As always, I’d treasure your advice.’
Philokles nodded. ‘Make the same apologies to her that you’d make to a man.’
Kineas scratched his beard. ‘Kick me when I go wrong.’ He cantered for the command group to discuss the skirmish line.
They saw the first scouts by mid-morning — dark centaurs on the horizon who vanished between hoof beats. They found the camp in the afternoon, as Ataelus had predicted. Kineas’s stomach turned over at the sight of the wagons, and he clenched the barrel of his horse between his knees until the animal began to curvet and fidget. There were a few riders at the edge of the camp, and a mounted group was gathered at the edge of the river.
The riders came to them at a gallop — two young men resplendent in red leather and gold ornament flashing in the sun, who raced by the head of the column, waved, and raced off again yipping like dogs. They ran their
