I don’t want this war at all.’ He sighed. ‘But it is coming here, and I’ll fight it.’
Kineas drank some of the cider. He loved the stuff. ‘Where does this come from?’ he asked. ‘Apples won’t grow for two seasons.’
The king shrugged. ‘Cold has its advantages. We make cider in the fall and freeze it in blocks for the winter.’ He beckoned to the other people that Kineas had come to think of as the war council. To Kineas, he said, ‘Drink up — spring is here, and soon all the cider will go bad.’
Kam Baqca sat next to Kineas in a rustle of silk. Kineas had seen silk before, but seldom worn so often and by so many. Most of the Sakje had a silk garment, even if worn to tatters. Kam Baqca had a robe, pale yellow, covered in pink flowers and curling griffons. It was so magnificent that Kineas kept looking at it despite himself.
‘We have wrangled for days,’ Kam Baqca said. ‘Marthax says that you are ready. Tell us your plan.’
Kineas hesitated, his cup of cider to his lips.
Kam Baqca regarded him calmly, her large eyes relaxed, almost sleepy. ‘You have a plan, Kineas of Athens. The king has an army, but he does not yet have a plan.’ She nodded. ‘The two fit together like a man and,’ she smiled, ‘a woman.’ The shaman’s eyes flicked to Srayanka, who joined the circle, also wearing a silk robe, and back to Kineas. Kam Baqca put a hand on Kineas’s arm and said, ‘You must come and visit my tent. You must face the tree.’
Kineas nodded politely, with no intention of passing under her hand again. The last two dreams of the tree had left marks on his mind, ruts into which the wheels of his thoughts fell and along which they travelled too often and too unpredictably.
As if reading his mind, Kam Baqca leaned close, so that he could smell the spice and resin of her magic. ‘Without the tree, you will never win her,’ she said.
Srayanka’s robe was dark blue, and reached from her neck to her ankles, and under it she wore trousers of a rich red. She looked more like a woman — Kineas’s native idea of a woman — than he had seen before. Kineas found it disconcerting. And distracting.
For two days he had fought her, tooth and nail, on the conduct of the war. No Greek woman would have faced him down, shouted him down, when he counselled caution. Of course, he thought with further heartache, no Greek woman would have been at a war council.
Aware of his regard, she turned her head away from him and sat, exchanging greetings with the king and with Marthax.
As she sat, other men and women gathered to them — Leucon and Eumenes and Niceas, Marthax and Ataelus and a dozen Sakje nobles. They sat in a circle. Some reclined. Srayanka lay on her stomach, kicking her slippered heels in the air, a posture that no Greek woman would ever have adopted out of her bedroom. Kineas felt like a besotted fool. But he couldn’t take his eyes away.
They fell silent after a momentary babble of greetings.
‘I, too, think it is time to speak of the whole plan,’ said the king. He looked at Kineas.
‘I am a mercenary,’ Kineas said to the group. ‘I have never commanded more than three hundred horse in action.’ He pointed at Marthax. ‘As the king’s war leader, shouldn’t Marthax present the plan?’
Behind him, Eumenes translated as quickly as he could into Sakje. Kineas was no longer surprised by how much the young man understood.
The king made a gesture with his hand. ‘This is not a Greek council, and I am not a Greek king. I have translated for you for two days — I know the plan. But we all wish to hear it in its finished form.’
Kineas nodded, looked around the circle. ‘Very well. The plan is simple. We never fight a battle.’
Niceas whistled. ‘I like it already,’ he said.
Marthax waited for the translation and then nodded. ‘Exactly,’ he said, in Greek.
Srayanka raised an eyebrow. She rolled over and sat up.
He looked at her too long. Again.
The king held out his cup for more cider. ‘How?’
Kineas tore his eyes from the lady. ‘It’s a matter of timing and logistics. ’
Marthax spoke in Sakje, and Eumenes translated. ‘That’s why you’re the expert.’
Kineas held up his hand. ‘Last year, I rode from Tomis to Olbia by the same route that Zopryon must use. It took me thirty days. It will take his army fifty. If he marches tomorrow, the best he can do is to reach Olbia at midsummer.’ He paused to let Eumenes’ translation catch up. ‘If we destroy the ferry at Antiphilous, we add at least two weeks to his journey. If the men of Pantecapaeum stand with us, and their fleet will serve our need — then we will strip his triremes off his army, and slow his march still further. He intends to build forts as he marches — he is wise enough to know that his road home needs protection — which will slow him longer.’ Again he waited for Eumenes to catch him up. ‘We will then be past the new year — past the month of games, past the summer festival, and we will not yet have shown our hand.’ Kineas looked around the circle. ‘You know why he is coming here?’
Srayanka answered, ‘To conquer us.’
Satrax shook his head. ‘In the long run, the result would be the same. But he seeks our submission to prove his worth. As a feat of arms.’
Srayanka’s face at the translation of the word ‘submission’ had a look that Kineas hoped was never directed at him.
Kineas took a deep breath. ‘When he is sixty days from home and not yet at the Borasthenes River, we have a choice.’ He tried not to look at Srayanka. ‘The simplest choice would be to offer submission.’ He shrugged. ‘He won’t have time to press the siege of Olbia by that point. He won’t have the time to march here, and it would be suicide to march to this place leaving Olbia in his rear, astride his road home. If we offer him the tokens of submission…’ He paused again, and sighed, still avoiding Srayanka’s eye.
Satrax nodded. ‘You think like a king.’
Kineas glanced at Philokles, who gave a slight nod of recognition. Srayanka was boring holes in his head with her eyes. She sprang to her feet. ‘This must be your Greek discipline! ’ She glared around the council. ‘What are we — a nation of slaves?’ she asked in Greek. To the king she said, ‘Will we beat our warriors into submission for this Macedonian beast? Are we so afraid?’
Kineas dropped his eyes. He had hoped… it no longer mattered what he hoped.
Marthax spoke. ‘The other choice?’ said Ataelus.
Kineas breathed in again. ‘We strike his march columns every day over the last hundred and fifty stades to the great river. The Sakje — who won’t have shown themselves yet, except in handfuls, groups of scouts — appear as if by magic. They kill the stragglers and the foragers. A handful of warriors strike their camps at night.’
Marthax spoke again, as did most of the Sakje. Out of the babble, Ataelus translated. ‘Marthax says that more for liking him.’
There was a brief silence, and Philokles leaned forward into it and said, ‘But of course, each of those attacks will work just once.’
Kineas nodded.
Satrax leaned forward into the circle, pulling at his beard. ‘Yesterday you sounded as if you could pick his army to pieces like a flock of vultures. Today you say every trick will work only once. Why will the attacks work only once?’
Kineas glanced at Philokles, but Philokles shook his head, declining to take up the argument. Kineas looked at Srayanka, who continued to avoid his eye. He determined not to look at her again. ‘Macedon has good officers and excellent discipline. After we hit their column once, there won’t be any stragglers the next day. After we kill their foragers, the next day they will forage by regiments, with the whole army standing to arms.’ He looked around the circle, avoiding her but willing her to listen. ‘With discipline, they can minimize our advantages of speed and stealth.’ He gave a hard grin. ‘Of course, every measure they take to minimize our advantages will slow them.’ He finished the cider in his cup. ‘And we will not take heavy losses to do it. The cost in money to Macedon will be staggering. And Zopryon will never have a chance to try again. He will be disgraced.’
Kam Baqca nodded slowly, and then shook her head. ‘But of course, Lord Zopryon will know all this.’
Kineas nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘So that, as soon as the raids start, he will immediately recognize our strategy and he will react like a desperate, wounded animal.’ She looked, not at Kineas, but at Philokles. And then at Srayanka.
Philokles met her eyes. ‘Yes. It will perhaps take him a few days to pass his desperation to his officers. But
