Niceas tossed his blanket on his own tack and waved across the fire for Ataelus to translate. To Parshtaevalt, he said, ‘You just show me, mate.’ He gave Kineas a friendly wink.
Hirene looked torn — she wanted to follow her mistress, but Srayanka shook her head. Turning to Kineas, she said, ‘Bring your sword.’
Kineas thought that he had the oddest courtship since Alexandros met Helen. But he fetched the Egyptian blade from his blanket, where the precious thing was rolled at the centre.
She took his hand, and they walked off into the red evening. By the camp, the turf was even and the grass bright green and short, but she led him out into the sea of grass, where hummocks made walking treacherous. They laughed together when their mutual refusal to relinquish the other’s hand cost them their balance.
Kineas looked back over his shoulder to find that they were in full view of the camp, stretching out to the north and south along the stream, and that many heads were turned, watching them.
Reading his thoughts, she said, ‘Let them watch. This hill is grave to the father of me. Here, we kill two hundred horses, send him to Ghanam. I baqca here.’
They came to the base of the mound. Closer up, it was clearer that the hill was made by the hands of men. Turfs were set like steps running up the barrow, and a deep trench, invisible from a stade away, ran clear around the base with a barrier of stone around the outside.
Srayanka led him around a quarter of the boundary ditch, and then they entered at a gate flanked by wild roses and began to climb the mound. She began to sing tonelessly.
The ball of the setting sun came to rest on the far horizon, bathing the green grass of the turf with red and orange and gold light, so that the hill appeared to be an amalgam of grass and gold and blood. Her singing increased in volume and tone.
‘Hurry!’ she said. She pulled at his hand, and they ran the last few steps to the top, where a stone sat in a slight depression. From the stone rose a bar of rusted iron. Closer up it proved to be the remnants of a sword, with the gold of the hilt still standing proud above the decay of the blade.
The sun was huge, a quarter gone beneath the curve of the world.
‘Draw your sword,’ she ordered.
Kineas drew his sword. She reached out and took the rusted sword reverentially by the hilt and drew it from the stone. She seized Kineas’s sword from him, and as the last rays of the sun turned its hilt to fire, she plunged it straight into the stone — deeper, if anything, than the other sword had been.
As the sun vanished, leaving the sky like a dye shop, with vivid reds and pale pink contrasting to the growing purple and dark blue veil of night, she stopped singing. She knelt facing the stone.
Kineas stood by her, embarrassed at his own ignorance of her ways, equally embarrassed by the extent of her barbarism — but she was a priestess, and it was not the Greek way to ridicule any people’s gods, so he knelt by her in the damp hollow. He could smell the moss on the stone, and the oil on his Egyptian blade, and the woodsmoke in her hair.
They knelt there until his knees burned and his back was a column of stone against his muscles. Darkness fell, complete, so that the plain beyond the hollow vanished, and there was only the sky and the stone, the smells of the hollow, and then the cry of an owl, and… he was flying over the plain of grass, looking for prey, the pinprick glow of uncountable stars sufficient light for him to see.
He rose higher over the plain, in lazy circles, and when he saw a circle of fires — a dozen circles of fire, a hundred circles of fire — then he descended again, watching the camp as he came down in spirals
…
As suddenly as she had knelt, Srayanka rose, took a pouch of seeds from her waist and scattered them in the hollow and on the stone.
Kineas got to his feet with considerable difficulty. One of his feet was asleep. But his mind was clear, part of it still high in the dark sky.
‘You are baqca,’ she said. ‘You dream strong dream?’
He rubbed his face to clear his head. The inside of his mouth felt gummy, as if he’d eaten resin. ‘I dreamed,’ he said in Greek.
She put a hand on his face. ‘I must sit in the,’ she paused, seeking words, ‘smoke tent — even here, under the Guryama of the father of me.’ She rubbed his face affectionately. ‘You dream free.’
He was still in the grip of the dream, and she took his hand and led him down the hill.
Halfway down, he began to recover. ‘My sword!’ he said.
She smiled, used her position higher on the turf hill to lean to him, eye to eye, and kiss him.
It was a long kiss, and he found that his hand quite naturally went to her right breast, and she bit his tongue and stepped back, laughing. ‘Sword right here,’ she said, slapping at his groin with a hard hand. Then she relented. ‘Climb for sword with dawn. Baqca thing, yes?’
Kineas spoke hesitantly. ‘You are putting the power of your father’s sword into my sword?”
She considered him for a moment, with the look a mother gives when a child has asked a difficult question, or a question whose answer may itself cause harm. ‘You marry me?’ she asked.
Kineas’s breath caught in his throat. But he didn’t hesitate. ‘Yes.’
She nodded, as if the answer was just as she expected. ‘So we ride together, yes? And perhaps…’ She wore an open look, like a priestess at worship, a look that scared him to his bones and marrow. ‘Perhaps we rule together?’
Kineas took a step back. ‘The king rules,’ he said.
Srayanka shrugged. ‘Kings die.’
Kineas thought, You’re backing the wrong horse, my love. I’m the one fated to die. He reached out his arms to her, and she came into them. When her head was against his shoulder, he said, ‘Srayanka, I-’
She put a hand on his mouth. ‘Shhh,’ she said. ‘Say nothing. Spirits walk. Say nothing.’
Kineas embraced her — almost a chaste embrace, and she stood with her head on his shoulder, her arms around his waist, for a long time, and then they walked back down the hill. Without discussion, they began to separate at the edge of the short grass, she to her camp and he to his, but their hands stayed together too long, and they almost fell again.
They laughed, and walked away.
She came for him in the morning, dressed in white skins with gold plaques and gold embroidery, crowned with a headdress of gold that towered above her. The king was with her, and Marthax, and twenty other chiefs and warriors. Kineas waved to Leucon and Nicomedes to attend him, and the group repeated the journey, climbing through the last of the dark to the hollow at the summit. All the Sakje began to sing, even the king.
The first ray of the sun licked over the dark line of the world’s edge like a flame rising from a new fire. The sun picked out the gorgon’s head — Medea’s head, Srayanka’s head — on the hilt of his machaira, so that it seemed to draw colour from the rising run, and the line of flame crept down the blade, faster and faster, so that in a few heartbeats, the sword seemed to have drawn the sun down into the stone.
All the Sakje shouted, and Srayanka’s hand took the hilt and she sang a high, pure note, and motioned with her other hand at Kineas. Kineas took the sword hilt in his right hand, and just for an instant it seemed to pull him down.
Srayanka released the hilt, and Kineas’s hand shot aloft, pulling the sword clear of the stone.
Kineas had been so drawn into the effect of the ceremony that for a moment he expected something — a tide of energy, perhaps, or the words of a god. Instead, he saw the look on the king’s face — jealousy and envy naked to his glance. When their eyes met, the king flinched.
Marthax frowned and then slapped him on the back. ‘Good sword,’ he said. And they all walked down the hill.
‘What was that about?’ Nicomedes asked. ‘Beautiful light effect.’
Kineas shrugged. ‘Srayanka’s father’s barrow,’ he said quietly, and Leucon and Nicomedes both nodded.
After they reached the short grass, Marthax began to bellow orders. Kineas took the king by the elbow. ‘I dreamed up on the barrow.’
The king pulled away. ‘That is as it should be,’ he said after a moment.
‘I saw the army of Zopryon — camped in good order. Perhaps two hundred stades south of here — perhaps more.’
Satrax rubbed his beard and made a face. ‘He makes good time.’
