‘“And yet abandon him when troubles come,”’ Diodorus said, capping her quote with relish. Their eyes met, and they shared a smile that touched the faint lines at the corners of her eyes.
Kineas looked at both of them. ‘I take it that means I have your permission to ride on?’ he asked.
Diodorus nodded, laughing.
They rode along the river for half a day, and Kineas said nothing beyond comments on the fields and the weather. Finally, as they crested a long ridge to see another in the distance and rising ground all around them, Kineas turned to Niceas. ‘Do you ever think on the evil acts you’ve done?’ he asked.
Niceas looked out over the river. ‘All the time,’ he said.
‘And?’ Kineas asked.
Niceas looked at him and frowned. ‘And what? They’re done. I can’t undo them. I can only try not to commit them again.’
Kineas rubbed his beard. ‘If we ever return to Athens, I’m going to set you up as a philosopher.’
Niceas raised an eyebrow. ‘If we ever return to Athens,’ he said, ‘you are going to set me up as a brothel keeper. Perhaps I’ll teach the boys and girls some philosophy.’
Kineas grinned at the picture and rode on, keeping his thoughts to himself. After dinner, they curled in their cloaks, the fire crackling away, and for the first time in weeks sleep evaded Kineas.
‘I missed this,’ he said.
Niceas snorted. ‘What, four weeks in Olbia and you missed lying on the ground?’
Kineas rolled on his back and stared up at the wheel of heaven. ‘Longer than that. Remember the ferryman when we crossed the Tanais?’
‘Who thought we’d all be dead when the Getae came? I’ll never forget that night. Why?’
Kineas said, ‘That night I thought a dozen men and a pair of slaves was a weight of responsibility on my shoulders. I was thinking it was funny that I could forget how much of a burden it was to lead.’
Niceas grunted.
‘You?’ Kineas asked. ‘Why do you remember it?’
Niceas rustled — he was changing position while trying to keep the warmth trapped under his cloak. ‘It was the last time I slept by Graccus,’ he said. Niceas and Graccus had been friends and lovers for years, and Graccus, of course, had died the next day.
‘I’m an idiot,’ Kineas said.
Niceas snuggled against his back. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Now go to sleep.’
When they mounted their horses the next morning, they could see that the ground rose on either side of them, and the river ran fast through a narrow channel, so that there was no longer any possibility of a ford or a crossing. Kineas killed another buck from horseback, a mounted throw that earned him a grin from Niceas.
‘Show-off!’ Niceas shook his head. ‘You could have lost your best spear!’
Kineas grinned back and they divided the meat and then bathed in the swift-flowing water to wash off the blood. It felt like ice.
That night was the coldest yet. Kineas was again feeling the weight of his responsibilities, and wondering if he could afford to ride off and leave them, and again he lay awake — still fearing his dreams, with the additional complication that he was sated with sleep. Niceas was already snoring beside him, and it was too cold to get out of his cloak and the heavy wool blanket that covered both of them. As it grew colder, he pushed in closer to Niceas, and then he worried about his army. Most of the hoplites in the vanguard wouldn’t have a spare blanket. He thought of Xenophon’s soldiers in the Anabasis, and he worried, and worrying, he fell asleep.
Ajax pushed him quickly to the tree, and his dead friends were fewer. Kleisthenes was gone. Kineas felt like a coward as he scrambled on to the tree and began to climb. It was easy to climb as high as he had gone before, and then…
Running through the fields north of his father’s farms, legs afire. Rabbit-hunting.
He was among the last men in the field, all the older men and the keener hunters stretched ahead in a long arc after the dogs. He could hear the dogs, their gross baying, their animal eagerness to kill, and it sickened him, and his legs slowed, unwillingness to see the result coinciding with his own fatigue. He fell further behind, so that even the slowest boys passed him.
The cry of the hounds changed, and their baying became a chorus of growls and then a ferocious roar that scared him. It always scared him. He slowed down further, hoping to avoid the end, but he could already smell it — the rich earth-and-copper smell of an animal wrenched apart by a dozen sets of jaws.
‘You are an embarrassment,’ his father said. ‘What did I tell you?’
Kineas cringed. ‘You said that I must not be last,’ Kineas said. ‘I tried!’ he whined.
His father’s fist caught him on the side of the head and knocked him flat. He could smell the dead rabbit and the sweat on his father and the other men. ‘Try harder,’ his father said…
He awoke exhausted, his bladder bursting. It was too early for the new light of day, and the cold was so deep that it was an effort of will to rise from the warmth of Niceas. The fire had sunk to mere embers, throwing little warmth and no light, and he tripped on their javelins before he found a place in the dark to relieve himself. A lifetime of camp discipline forced him to put the last of the wood on the fire but he couldn’t find the woodpile and he stumbled around, cursing the cold.
‘Piss for me, while you’re up,’ Niceas said.
Kineas found the firewood by tripping over it. He gathered it up, blind, and as he found the last decent stick he heard a horse. He put the firewood near the embers and felt for a javelin. He could barely stand with the fatigue of his dream.
‘You hear that?’ he asked.
‘Horse,’ Niceas said.
He heard Niceas dropping the blankets as he rose. It was that quiet. Kineas reached into the still-warm blankets and retrieved his sword. He put the baldric over his shoulder and felt for his sandals. He wasn’t sure he was awake — he could barely focus his attention.
Niceas bumped into him. ‘Two horses,’ he whispered, his mouth close.
Alert and ready, the two men crouched back to back. After a few minutes they retrieved their cloaks and donned them.
The sky began to show light — the first touch of the wolf’s tail.
‘If they’re coming, they’ll come now,’ Kineas said.
They didn’t.
When the sun was up, they found hoof prints in the stream bed that ran around the base of their hillside camp. A little further west, Niceas found the print of a shod horse, with a heavy toe iron like a Macedonian horse. He shook his head.
‘Could be anything,’ he said. ‘Might have been one of ours from yesterday. Ataelus, perhaps.’
Kineas couldn’t get over the notion that he was being watched. High ridges rose on either side of the river, and anything might be moving in the trees up there.
‘As soon as we ride out of the stream bed, we’re visible,’ he said.
‘So?’ asked Niceas.
‘Fair enough. Let’s get out of here.’ Kineas went back to their camp and finished the tea, then retied his cloak behind him.
They rode along the stream bed until it rejoined the road (such as it was) a couple of stades downstream, and then they rode quickly along the road, alternating trotting with short canters.
The Tanais was entering a great curve, and the valley broadened and deepened. The river was flowing almost due north. As the ground rose, Kineas watched for the path to fork east.
‘There’s a sight for sore eyes,’ said Niceas.
Kineas, intent on the trail, looked up to find a bare-chested Sauromatae girl sitting on a pony just half a stade away.
Ataelus met them at the top of the pass where the eastern road crossed the ridge before continuing east to the Rha and the Kaspian. He had half a dozen riders with him. Two of them were wounded.
‘For making happy!’ Ataelus proclaimed, and grasped his arm.
Kineas embraced the Sakje man. Then he pointed at one of the Sauromatae girls who was boiling a human skull in a pot. ‘What in Hades is that?’
