‘I can’t be everywhere,’ Alexander repeated. ‘And Macedon cannot afford to appear weak. These Scythians must be punished. Their victory over Zopryon must be made to look the stroke of ill-fortune that it was. When Bessus is brought to heel, we should spend a season crushing the Massagetae.’
Callisthenes sensed the dismay of the other men. ‘Alexander,’ he began carefully, ‘the Massagetae live far to the north and east, beyond the Kush. And they live on the sea of grass, which Herodotus says runs for fifty thousand stades. We will not crush them in one season.’
Alexander looked up and smiled. It was a happy smile, and it removed years of tension, war and drink from his face. ‘I can only spare them a season,’ Alexander said. ‘They’re just barbarians. Besides, I want an Amazon.’
Hephaestion struck the king playfully, and they ended up wrestling on the floor.
PART I
1
The sun shone on the Borysthenes river, the rain swell moving like a horse herd and glittering like the rain- wet grass in the sun. The Sakje camp was crisp and clean after days of rain, much of the horse dung vanished into the the general mud that filled every street, the felt yurts and the wagons bright as if new-made. Kineas had taken the sun as a sign and risen from his bed, despite the fresh pain of his wounds and the recent fear of death.
‘You should find the stone,’ the girl said. She was eleven or twelve years old, dressed in caribou hide, with a red cloak blowing in the wind. Kineas had seen her before around the camp, a slight figure with red-brown hair and a silver-grey horse from the royal herd.
Kineas crouched down, wincing at the intense pain that shot from his hip, down his leg and through his groin. Everything hurt and most actions made him dizzy. ‘What stone?’ he asked. She had big eyes, deep blue eyes with a black rim that made her appear possessed, or mad.
‘It is a baqca thing, is it not? To find the stone?’ She shrugged, put her hands behind her and rocked her hips back and forth, back and forth, so that her hair swayed around her face. She was dirty and smelled of horse.
His Sakje didn’t run to endearments for children. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand.’
She favoured him with the look that children save for adults too slow to understand them. ‘The stone,’ she said. ‘For the king’s barrow.’ Seeing his incomprehension, she pointed at an old barrow, the kurgan of some ancient horse-lord that rose by the great bend. ‘At the peak of every barrow, the baqca places a stone. You should go and find it. My father says so.’
Kineas grinned, as much from pain as from understanding. ‘And who is your father, child?’ he asked, although even as he said the words, he knew where he had seen that long-nosed profile and the fine bones of her hands.
‘Kam Baqca was my father,’ she said, and ran away, laughing.
He knew as soon as she spoke that he had seen the stone in dreams — seen it and dismissed it. He feared his dreams now, and denied them if he could.
But he gathered a dozen of his Sindi retainers and a few Greeks: Diodorus and Niceas because they were friends, and Anarxes, a gentleman of Olbia, because Eumenes was wounded and Anarxes had the duty. Together, they rode down the river a dozen stades.
‘What are we looking for?’ Diodorus asked. He, too, was recovering from a wound, and his red hair gleamed where it emerged from a bandage that swathed his whole head, under a Sakje cap of fox fur and red wool. Temerix, the Sindi smith, rode over.
‘We’re looking for a stone,’ Kineas said.
‘For kurgan,’ Temerix said, as if this was the most natural thing in the world. ‘Lord Kineas sees it in dreams. We come find it.’
Young Anarxes’ eyes were as wide as funeral coins at this open talk of his hipparch’s godlike powers.
Diodorus raised an eyebrow and nodded slowly. He reached into his cloak and produced a clay flask, from which he took a long pull. He offered it around. ‘Did it ever occur to you that life was simpler when we were just mercenaries?’ he asked.
Kineas and Niceas exchanged a look.
Diodorus pointed with the fist that held the flask. ‘Look. Kineas is wearing a Thracian cloak. Anarxes here, as fine a wrestler as we’ve ever seen — an Olympian, by Apollo — is wearing Sakje trousers as if that were the most natural thing in the world. All our men wear their caps.’ Diodorus touched his bandages and the Sakje cap perched atop them. ‘Are we even Greeks any more?’ he asked. He took another drink of wine from his flask and handed it to Kineas.
Kineas shrugged. ‘We’re still Greeks. Did travel to Persia make you Persian?’
Diodorus was serious. ‘It made me a lot more Persian than I was before I went there. Remember Ecbatana? I’ll never think of Greece the same way again.’›
‘What are you saying?’ Kineas asked.
‘There’s a rumour that you and Srayanka aim to take us all the way east to fight Alexander,’ Diodorus said. ‘I’ve heard you talk around it. You mean it, don’t you?’
Kineas shook his head. ‘Lot is insistent and Srayanka wants to support him. The queen of the Massagetae has sent messengers to the Assagatje. They had another yesterday.’ He drank.
Diodorus grunted. ‘Hey! Hey, that’s my wine!’ He seized the flask. ‘We have unfinished business before we go riding off to fight the boy king. The tyrant, for instance.’ He looked out at the horizon. On their right, the Borysthenes flowed down to the Euxine Sea. On the left, the sea of grass rippled in the wind as far as the eye could see, and then another forty thousand stades, or so Herodotus claimed. ‘I don’t want to fight Alexander. I don’t want to see more fascinating barbarians. I’d like to retire to Olbia and be rich.’
Kineas rode along, hips moving with his mount. He hurt, and despite weeks in a cot in Srayanka’s wagon, or because of them, he felt sore in every muscle. ‘Things change,’ Kineas said.
Diodorus nodded. ‘Too true. The peace faction took over in Athens while we were winning this campaign.’
Kineas laughed, which also hurt. ‘Athens seems very far away.’
Diodorus nodded. He handed his flask to the silent Temerix. ‘That’s what I mean. When I left Athens with you, I thought my heart would break. When we were cracking Darius’s empire, I used to dream of the Parthenon. Then we fought this campaign. Now Athens is too far away to remember and I’m a gentlemen of Olbia. Now I dream of finding a wife and buying a farm on the Euxine.’ He paused. ‘I’m afraid that I’ll end up in a yurt on the sea of grass.’
Kineas had stopped his horse unconsciously. He was looking straight at the stone he’d seen in his dream, and the day seemed colder. ‘Hera,’ Kineas said. He spoke aloud a prayer for divine protection.
Diodorus was looking at him.
‘It’s just as I dreamed it.’ Kineas’s voice was hushed. ‘The stone is broader at the top. When we dig it up, the bottom will be shaped like a horse’s head. We’ll flip it over and the horse head will mark Satrax’s grave.’
Diodorus shook his head, but as the Sindi dug away at the deep soil around the stone, he became thoughtful, and when the shape of the stone’s hidden base was revealed, he rubbed his beard in annoyance.
‘Remember when we were just mercenaries?’ Diodorus said, again.
They buried the king in the old way. It was the last act of the army that had won the battle at the Ford of the River God, and even as the men cut turf in the rain, Kineas could feel the spirit that had animated them flowing away like the rising river at their back carrying the rainwater to the sea.
The Greeks did their part. Diodorus, Niceas, Philokles and Kineas cut turfs side by side, their cloaks soaked through and the rich loam under the grass turning to sticky slime on their hands and feet. Around them, for stades,
