An hour later, they were riding across the plains between the oak woods and the river. They passed farms and Maeotae farmers, paler than the Sindi but wearing the same colourful clothes. They were prosperous, and the women wore gold, even when they worked with hoes in their gardens or brought in the harvest. Twice, the mounted pair passed groups of Maeotae in their hundreds reaping a field of wheat. There was grain in every basket and more coming in every apron. Stone barns and turf barns dotted the landscape along the river, each with a small dock and every one bursting with wheat.
Kineas shook his head. ‘The golden fleece,’ he said.
Niceas nodded. ‘Alexander is wasting his time on Persia,’ he said. ‘These are the richest farms I’ve ever seen.’
When the sun stood at the top of the sky, Kineas stopped where a group of Maeotae sat in the shade of a great oak tree, eating bread and cheese. He dismounted. The men watched him warily.
‘Do any of you speak Greek?’ he asked.
The oldest of the farmers stood and approached, but he shook his head.
‘Sakje?’ Kineas asked.
The farmer smiled, showing more teeth than gaps. They were a handsome people, with hair as golden as their crops in autumn and the stature of those who ate well all through the year. ‘Some,’ he said.
‘You know Olbia?’ Kineas asked.
The farmer nodded.
‘We are from Olbia. An army is coming this way, up the Tanais. My army. We’ll pay for grain.’ Kineas found that Sakje forced him to be succinct.
The farmer nodded. ‘Soldiers come. Horsemen come,’ he said. ‘Say same. Pay gold for grain.’ He nodded.
Kineas held up a silver owl. ‘I’d buy bread and cheese, if I could,’ he said.
The farmer shrugged. He went to his wife and returned with a basket full of bread and cheese. ‘For nothing,’ he said with evident pride. ‘For friend.’
Niceas nodded. ‘Any farmer would do the same. These are good folk.’ He went to his horse and removed a cut of the buck and carried it to the farmer. ‘For nothing,’ he said in Sakje, and the farmer grinned at him.
They rode on, eating as they went. ‘March discipline must be good,’ Niceas said, ‘or those folk would be pissing themselves at the sight of soldiers.’
‘This is Grass Cat land,’ Kineas said.
‘I don’t think those Maeotae would agree,’ Niceas said. ‘This is no man’s land.’ He looked at Kineas under his brows. ‘You could build something here,’ he said.
Kineas looked at him. ‘Build something?’ he asked.
Niceas grunted, and they rode on.
They stayed the night in a heavy stone house. Kineas got a bed by the hearth — the nights had developed a bite — and he was asleep as soon as his head was on the furs.
The two young eagles were above him again, and they were noisy. He smiled at them and they regarded him with curiosity, and then he began to climb to them. He got one leg well up to a knot in the bole of the great tree and pressed himself close to keep his balance, and wrapped his arms around the trunk…
Around her waist, and she made to push him away, just the palm of her hand and not very hard. He pushed her chiton up with his free hand until he could feel the warm vellum of her hip under his fingers, and his erection took on a life of its own.
‘No, my lord,’ she said, but without much force. More weariness than refusal, really. She was pretty, with heavy breasts and a slim waist, and all the young men wanted her. She had smiled at him many times, and today when she came into the stable with two buckets of water he had kissed her, and now he had her under him in the straw.
He ran his hand under the thin wool, over the mound of her belly and on to her breast. The garment bunched around her hips and she moved them in discomfort. ‘Stop!’ she said, with a little more emphasis. ‘Please?’ she asked.
He ran his hand over her nipple and it sprang to life under his hand and she moaned. ‘No, master. Lord. No,’ she said. He kissed her and she responded, slowly at first and then more, until she was tugging at him and he was in her, spending as quickly as he entered her. Then she rose and dusted off the straw and pulled her chiton into shape, wiped her thighs a little and went back to watering horses.
She never smiled at me again, Kineas thought. I raped her. She was a slave and she could no more refuse me than refuse to eat, but let’s call an action by its proper name. It was rape.
‘Yes,’ said Kam Baqca. She was mounted on her great charger, and she towered above him. ‘It was not meant with anger, but it was ill done. When a lord forces a slave, where is the crime?’
Kineas thought the question was rhetorical, but the dream lingered, as did the question, and…
He awoke with the question on his mind, and the sure knowledge that his body thought that Srayanka was too far away.
He rose and drank a honey drink that he enjoyed and ate fresh bread. The farmer spoke to him at length, discoursing about the harvest, apparently, and hoping for the dry spell to continue. Kineas understood one word in five, but he knew that the man meant well.
They rode on in the morning, poorer by a silver owl and their horses loaded with food. The rafters of the house had been packed with produce — drying herbs, cheese, dried meats — and the family had owned four goblets of gold.
‘These people are rich!’ Niceas said. ‘But no slaves!’
Kineas rubbed his beard and rode on. ‘A form of riches all its own,’ he said, thinking of his dreams.
Niceas nodded thoughtfully. ‘What was he on about, there at the end?’
Kineas rubbed his beard again. ‘Weather and crops. And something else. I think he was warning me about bandits, although it might just as well have been an admonition against being bandits.’
Niceas grunted. ‘You saw the scorch marks on the stone?’ he said.
Kineas had seen them. ‘Recent,’ he said, and Niceas nodded.
That afternoon they caught up with Diodorus’s rearguard. Coenus was surprised to see Kineas, but his men kept good watch, and he was saluted and greeted and cosseted as he and Niceas rode the length of the column. They halted for the night with the cavalry and shared a buck that Coenus killed, intending to ride on in the morning, despite Diodorus’s protests.
That night Kineas had another dream of his youth that left him quiet when he woke, a dream in which he and some boys tormented a dog. It had happened. He had forgotten it.
As he mounted after breakfast, Diodorus came up on horseback with Sappho and several of his own staff.
‘The strategos should not be haring about alone,’ Diodorus said. ‘Local people say there are bandits in the hills.’
Niceas grunted.
Kineas raised an eyebrow. ‘Should I be afraid?’ he asked.
Diodorus shrugged. ‘You know what I mean,’ he said.
‘Ataelus will have scouted the country,’ Kineas said.
‘This valley is broad enough that Ataelus could put one of his bare-breasted scouts every stade and not cover it,’ Diodorus mocked. ‘You just want to have adventures.’
‘Yes,’ Kineas said. Anything he added would only encourage more teasing.
Over Diodorus’s shoulder, Sappho smiled. She was mounted on a cavalry charger, a bigger horse than most women could handle. She rode well.
‘Lucky bastard,’ Diodorus said. After a pause he said, ‘Let me come, too.’
Kineas considered it a moment. He’d like few things better than to have his last two Athenians riding by his side, two of the three men in the world that he loved most. But he shook his head, looking at the column. ‘They need you,’ he said.
Diodorus grimaced. ‘Truer words were never spoke,’ he said ruefully. He shrugged. ‘They need you, too.’
Sappho pulled her horse up by them. ‘“Reason, my lord, may dwell within a man,”’ she said, quoting Sophokles.
