‘She say — where your stallion, Kineax?’
‘Tell her my stallion is too sad to be ridden. In despair — can you say “in despair”?’ Kineas was at a heavy disadvantage in translation.
Ataelus shook his head. ‘What’s despair? Something bad?’
‘So sad you can’t eat,’ Kineas said.
‘Ah. Lovesick!’ Ataelus laughed, and then spoke quickly before Kineas could stop him.
The Sakje tittered again, and a big black-haired man behind Kineas leaned out and slapped his shoulder.
Srayanka turned and brushed a hand against Kineas’s face. The motion took him by surprise — she was that fast — and he squirmed and almost missed her touch.
Ataelus laughed with the rest of the Sakje, and then said, ‘She say — not worry. She say,’ and he broke off a while to laugh again, ‘she say — maybe mare in heat again — in about two weeks.’
Kineas felt his face grow hot. He grinned at her, and she grinned at him. The look went on too long. Kineas decided it was time to change the subject. ‘Ask her if the king is ready to make war,’ he said.
The laughter from the Sakje stopped. She replied in a few words. Her face changed, returning to the hard look she had worn while she shot her bow.
‘She say — not for her to speak for king. She come to guide. She say — speak not for war until we come for king.’ Ataelus had a look on his face that pleaded for understanding.
Kineas nodded. But he continued, ‘I have heard of Zopryon’s army. It is very great, and ready to march.’ It was infuriating to have to listen to Ataelus’s halting translation and her reply.
Ataelus turned back to him. ‘She say the king is for having many things for talk. Much talk. Not for her to take the words for the king.’
‘Tell her I understand.’ Kineas pantomimed understanding to her. She spoke directly to him. He understood Getae and Zopryon and the verb for riding.
‘She say the grass already knocked down with hooves of the Getae. She say she know Zopryon ready to ride.’ Ataelus wiped his forehead with his sleeve. ‘I say for talking — that talking is hard work.’ He laughed grimly.
Kineas took the hint and rode back to his own men.
The column moved fast, and the land became flat, the endless grass greener with each warm day, extending to the horizon on the left, and the river coiling like a snake. Sometimes it was at their feet, and sometimes it passed far away to their right in long, last curves. Those curves were the only marker of their progress, otherwise they might have been standing still for all the variation in the landscape. When the river passed out of sight, the plain of grass and the solid blue of the sky spread unchanged in every direction, like a blue bowl inverted over a green bowl. The immensity of it made the Greeks uncomfortable. Time seemed to stand still.
Yet by the second day the whole life of the column was routine — rising in pre-dawn cold, the welcome warmth of the horse at first mounting, a hasty meal with the first rays of the new sun, and then hours walking and trotting through the grass, the trampled line of their passage straight as the flight of an arrow behind them and the virgin grass before them as far as the eye could see.
Evening was different. Srayanka’s scouts chose the halting place each night, always close to water and often shaded by trees at the river’s edge, and fires were lit against the cold. The product of the day’s hunt roasted on iron spits, and the warriors told stories or pushed each other to vicious competitions. Horse races, wrestling, archery, contests of strength and memory, wit and skill filled the evening from the last halt to the dying of the fires.
At first the Olbians hung back, but on the second night Niceas wrestled Parshtaevalt, the black-haired Scyth who had shown interest in everything Greek. Then Eumenes raced his best pony against Srayanka’s trumpeter and lost the race and the pony.
The third evening became an equine Olympics, with mounted races, a dozen wrestling matches, and new events — boxing and foot races. The Sakje were as poor on foot as they were gifted on horseback. Their notion of boxing was even stranger. The Sakje had a contest that appeared similar, where two champions would stand toe to toe and hit each other by turns until the weaker man fell or declared himself beaten. Leucon, a passable boxer, thought that he was seeing the Greek sport and proceeded to block blows, to the consternation of his opponent and half the audience, and Kineas had to explain boxing to Srayanka through Eumenes and Ataelus, and then he and Leucon gave a demonstration.
Leucon was a sturdy man, powerfully built and well trained, but he lacked the speed and grace of Ajax — or Kineas. Kineas drew the match out, both for Leucon’s vanity and for the benefit of the audience, but when he parried Leucon’s best punch and responded with a flurry of blows too fast to be counted in the dwindling light, the crowd, Sakje and Greek alike, roared approval. Leucon fell.
Then, by torchlight, Philokles and a score of other men threw stones from the river. They threw for distance and argued the rules — did a bounce count? until Kineas feared violence would ensue, and ordered the Olbians to bed.
The fourth day passed like the others — the Olbian horse drilled and skirmished, formed and reformed, and the Sakje watched and hooted, or hunted, or rode in speculative silence. A week in the saddle, and all of Leucon’s troopers were already hardened to the life — eating in the saddle, riding all day. Kineas reined in next to the young commander in the late afternoon. Leucon had a hard head from the boxing, but he kept his temper like a gentleman and everyone respected him the more.
‘Your men are very good,’ Kineas said. ‘You’re a good commander.’
Leucon smiled ruefully at the praise. ‘Good thing,’ he said. ‘As my Olympic boxing career seems to be over.’ Then he said, ‘But thanks. I’m so proud of them I feel like I might burst, or start singing.’
Kineas rubbed his jaw, where his new beard was now prominent. It barely itched any more. ‘I know what you mean.’ He glanced at Niceas. ‘They’re good, aren’t they, old man?’
Niceas had Eumenes by his side in the column, and he glanced at the younger hyperetes before responding. ‘Better than I expected,’ he said. Then he broke into a smile. ‘Of course, we’ll see what they’re really made of when we have to fight.’
‘Don’t stop drilling,’ said Kineas. ‘After achieving excellence comes keeping it.’
On the fourth evening, Kineas found himself throwing javelins against Niceas and Kyros and one of the more promising boys. The Sakje watched curiously as the men rode through the course, throwing to the right and left. Kineas was done, having struck all his targets, and was watching the boy intently when he saw that Srayanka had mounted her mare and was starting the course behind the boy. She had a bow, and shot twice for every javelin he had launched, and rode past the last target, flushed with triumph, to the cheers of her band.
Kineas rode back to the lists and retrieved all of his javelins, determined to answer her challenge. He took two more javelins from Niceas. His hyperetes shot him a look through the failing light at the crowd of Sakje. ‘This is a good idea?’ he asked.
‘Ask me after I ride,’ Kineas responded.
He halted his horse at the start line and cleared his mind. Srayanka was still receiving the applause of her warriors. He watched her for a moment, and then pressed his horse into motion.
The stallion hadn’t been ridden all day, except for his first pass, and he was full of energy. Kineas threw his first javelin from well out — a difficult shot, but well placed, and the heavy dart sank into the rawhide of the target, a Sakje shield. He threw his second just before he passed the target and heard the thunk as the head bit home. Without looking at the result, he took his third javelin from his rein hand and threw for distance. It was one of Niceas’s — lighter than his own — and it flew high, catching the top of the second target and knocking it flat. At a gallop, too fast to think, he took his fourth javelin and sent his horse over the shield rather than past it, raised the second javelin high as he gathered the horse to jump, and plunged it down with the whole weight of his arm. He heard a reaction from the crowd but he was already throwing his fifth, his whole being concentrated on the last target and his last javelin. He was a stride behind — he fumbled the grip change for a heartbeat — and the shield was past. He turned — if she could do it, he could — and threw side-armed at the last target. He felt a muscle pop in his neck as he released and felt the pain as he turned back to the course, but the sudden burst of sound from a hundred throats told him that the pain was well won.
He trotted his charger back to Niceas. Niceas was holding the second shield over his head and shouting his approval. His leaping throw had punched right through the rawhide and through the wood, so that the black spike of the head protruded the length of an arm from the back.
Parshtaevalt, Srayanka’s second in command, reached up and embraced him, shouting in Sakje, and then Srayanka, still mounted, put her arms around his neck and pressed him close. The crowd shrieked approval. Then
