Kineas said, ‘Can we trust this dream?’ He thought of the details — the hobbled horses, the pickets, the circles of fire. But his mind could supply all of those.
The king stared at Kineas. ‘Kam Baqca sees nothing — she is closing her mind to the visions, as they show her nothing but her own death. So I must rely on yours. As much as any dream. I will send scouts. Then we will know.’
‘If it is a true dream,’ Kineas said, and his voice trembled. He wanted it to be a false dream. He wanted the scouts to place Zopryon another two hundred stades to the west, because that would mean that he dreamed falsely, that these barbarians, how ever much he loved them, were superstitious like all barbarians, and he was not fated to die in a few short weeks at the crossing of a river. He took a breath and released it. ‘If this is a true dream, then it is almost time to begin harrying his army.’
One of the king’s companions came up with a cup of tea, and the king took it eagerly. ‘Our hooves are hard. The horses are conditioned.’ He nodded. ‘If the scouts confirm your dream, then yes. We will begin.’
The king sent twenty riders, one of whom was Ataelus. Three days later, when they were a short morning’s march from the camp at Great Bend, they returned in a group. The king summoned all of the chiefs and officers.
It had been a true dream.
To the Greeks, Ataelus said, ‘Zopryon’s army is not for big so rumour make. Has many, many, many hands of men, not so many of horses.’ Ataelus grinned his horrible grin. ‘Send Getae — no Getae come back. Oops.’
Kineas’s stomach twisted and turned, and his blood ran riot in his veins. He had, at most, two weeks to live.
Srayanka spoke in Sakje. ‘Now we harry him,’ she said, and the look in her eyes was disturbingly like the look in her eyes when he had come up behind her, the night of the victory over the Getae. Or when she spoke of how they might rule together. Like lust.
Satrax spoke carefully. ‘Tonight I ride for the camp. Marthax will bring in the column. The rest of you — Sakje and Olbians — must be ready to ride with me. We will see what clans have come in, and what the rumour of our victory has done for numbers. We will see if the Sauromatae have come. And the rest of the Greeks.’ He looked around. ‘And then, we will let Zopryon feel the weight of our hooves.’
The party with the king comprised most of the officers and nobles of the allied army — twenty clan leaders, the king’s bodyguard of nobles’ sons, Kineas, Nicomedes, Leucon and Niceas. They rode through the soft summer evening, without herds, without wagons, and they rode fast.
Kineas rode by the king, but they exchanged few words, and Kineas felt that there was still a barrier between them. Whether the barrier was of his own construction or of the king’s was the sort of question Philokles might have answered, but Kineas couldn’t see the answer himself.
Just as full darkness rolled over the plains, they saw the great bend of the river in the east, a greater darkness and a hint of moist air, and then a thousand points of fire burning on the far side of the ford. The camp had doubled or tripled in size. The smell of burning wood carried almost as far as the sight of so many fires.
All of the horses gave voice, and the herds responded.
The king paused, turning his head from the last glow of ruddy light in the west behind him to the sparkle of campfires beyond the great river. ‘When I was a boy,’ he said to Kineas, ‘I loved boats. Every spring, I would go and ride the boats of the merchants going down the river to Olbia. I remember how one of the wisest of them, an old Sindi called Bion, would judge the spring rush of waters, stopping frequently, because, as he said, when the river swelled past a certain point, then no effort of man could beach a boat, and that boat would either rush down the river to its destination, or would be swept up on a rock or a log and utterly destroyed.’ The king pointed at the camp, oblivious to the crowd of nobles pressing around them.
Kineas nodded. ‘It is much the same at sea, Lord. You can feel your way along a coast to a certain point, but when Poseidon wills it, you must chance to the wine-dark sea and ride the waves or perish.’
In the last light, the king’s smile was grim. ‘My meaning was a little different, Kineas. On the river, Bion would stop. He would stop to rest, stop to prove that he still could stop, to delay that moment when he committed to everything to that last rush to success or destruction.’ He shrugged, the motion almost lost in the darkness. ‘In an hour, I will give the order, and my people will fall on Zopryon. And from that moment, I am on the river, and it is in full spate.’
Kineas kneed his horse closer to the king’s, and put his hand on the other man’s. ‘And you wish to stop?’ he asked.
The king put his whip hand over Kineas’s hand. ‘You, too, are a commander. You, too, know the terror — the weight of other men’s hopes, and other men’s fears. I wish to stop — or to have it done.’
‘I know it,’ said Kineas, voicing his own fears.
They sat together for a few more seconds, watching the fall of darkness out to the west. And for that night at least, they were friends.
‘Come,’ said the king. ‘Let’s board the boat.’
Philokles and Diodorus were waiting with a group of strangers at the edge of the camp. The king had already appointed the place and time for the meeting of his council — the hour after dawn, in his wagon laager. Kineas, Nicomedes, Leucon and Niceas rode along the river to the encampment of the Greeks, now full of tents and wagons stretching off into the darkness.
‘Congratulations are in order?’ Diodorus said, clasping Kineas’s hand as soon as he slid from his horse.
Niceas laughed, touched his amulet as if to avoid hubris, and said, ‘You missed some good fighting.’ He grinned. ‘As good as anything against the Medes. The Getae don’t even know our tricks — it was grand.’
Philokles stood a little apart, although he greeted each of the commanders warmly enough. Kineas clasped his hand. ‘I missed you,’ he said.
Philokles’ look of reserve melted away. ‘And I you,’ he said. Then, after casting a glance toward the Olbian officers, he said, ‘I have news, most of it bad.’
Kineas took a deep breath. ‘Tell me.’
‘It should be told in private,’ Philokles said. ‘It isn’t known in camp.’
‘Are the hoplites here?’ Kineas asked.
‘Two or three days away, and marching hard. The Pantecapaeum horse is in camp, and the Sauromatae.’
‘That will please the king,’ Kineas said. ‘What’s so bad?’
Other men were coming up from the darkness. Antigonus cast his arms around Kineas and they embraced. ‘We heard you were close,’ he said. ‘And that you won.’
Niceas was already regaling a crowd of the older hands with war stories. Wineskins appeared, with strong country wine that tasted of goat and pine pitch. Kineas stood with Leucon and Nicomedes and told the basic story of the campaign while most of the men in the Greek camp came up to listen.
‘So the Getae are smashed,’ Philokles said.
‘The king thought they had been destroyed for a generation — perhaps longer,’ Leucon said.
Philokles winced, his eyes flicking to Sitalkes, who was laughing with the men of his troop. Kineas took him by the elbow and led him a little apart. ‘You are behaving like a fury at a feast,’ he said.
Philokles glanced around the crowd and lowered his voice. ‘I have a man in my tent,’ he said. ‘Pelagius, a man of Pantecapaeum. He came north in a boat from the fleet, and he reported things in Olbia from just five days back.’
Kineas nodded.
‘According to Pelagius, Demostrate found the Macedonian squadron thirty days back, caught it on the beach and burned two ships. Then he dispatched messengers to tell us the job was done and went south to the Bosporus to prey on Macedonian shipping.’
Kineas nodded. ‘That’s what he said all along,’ he said.
‘Pelagius arrived in Olbia in a small boat with a handful of crewmen. He intended to find the archon and tell him of developments at sea, but what he saw caused him to take his boat upriver instead.’
‘What did he see?’ Kineas asked.
‘A Macedonian garrison in the citadel,’ Philokles said. ‘That was five days ago. He arrived today and I sat on him.’
Kineas shook his head. ‘Hades. Hades! We’re fucked.’ Kineas felt as if he had been kicked by a stallion — he
