‘Wedding present!’ Ataelus said, and laughed, slapping his knee with a calloused hand. He was so pleased with his retort that he translated it into Sakje and repeated it. All of his prodromoi howled.
Kineas shook his head. ‘Wedding present?’ he asked.
‘Sauromatae girl for needing to kill man before wedding,’ Ataelus said. ‘Clean skull for stinking less, yes?’ He grinned.
‘Who did she kill?’ Kineas asked.
‘Bandits,’ Ataelus said. ‘For finding bandits in hills. Farmers say “bandits kill us steal our grain” and I say “for finding bandits.”’
Niceas twisted his mouth and made a noise. ‘Macedonian-shod?’ he asked.
Ataelus looked at him without comprehending. Ataelus’s Greek was good enough, but it never seemed to get better than ‘good enough’ no matter how much time he spent with them.
Niceas got down and lifted a hoof of his Macedonian charger. He showed the shoe.
Ataelus nodded enthusiastically. ‘And Persian. And Sakje.’ He pointed to two small ponies with iron-grey hides and bloodstains.
‘What about Philokles?’ Kineas asked.
Ataelus shrugged. ‘Eight days ahead. More? For riding hard.’ Ataelus waved east.
Kineas nodded. ‘And Nihmu?’ he asked.
‘For child?’ Ataelus asked. ‘Nihmu yatavu child? For being somewhere! For being under the foot of my pony when I fight, or for dropping rocks on bandits. Who knows where the child is for going?’ He grinned. ‘Her horses I am for having.’ Sure enough, the dozen royal chargers towered over the scout’s remounts like a separate genus.
Niceas explained that Diodorus was a day or two behind, and Lot a week behind him.
Ataelus watched the ridges behind them while Niceas spoke. When Niceas finished, Ataelus pulled at his nose and drooped an eyelid. ‘Time to find bandits,’ he said. ‘For taking their horses, bring them fire. When Diodorus for coming, bandits scatter.’ He pointed down the other side of the ridge, towards the Kaspian and Hyrkania. ‘Bandits thick as rain, for fighting. Out on the high plains. All way to Rha. Lost two men getting Spartan to coast.’
Kineas rubbed his beard. ‘How many bandits, Ataelus?’
‘Many and many,’ Ataelus replied. ‘Kill bandits here, for making others feel fear. Yes?’
Kineas could see that Ataelus already had a plan. So he nodded.
Ataelus grinned. He motioned to one of the Sauromatae girls. She slipped off her mare, pulled her saddle blanket off her horse’s back and threw a double armful of dew-wet bracken on the fire. Thick grey-blue smoke pulsed into the sky. The Sauromatae girl put her blanket over the fire in one smooth motion, so that the smoke was cut off. Then she whipped it clear and another pulse of smoke shot upward.
She repeated this three times.
Ataelus grunted in satisfaction.
‘Neat trick,’ Kineas said.
‘Have we ever seen them do that before?’ Niceas asked.
‘No,’ Kineas answered.
Already there was a picket galloping up the ridge from the eastern road. He pulled on his reins in the camp and Samahe, Ataelus’s wife from the Cruel Hands, barked orders at him. He grinned, dismounted, cut another pony out of the herd, remounted and galloped away.
A pair of Sauromatae girls galloped in from another direction. Before the sun rose three fingers more, there were a dozen riders gathered, and they were riding hard along one of the many stream beds that criss-crossed the wooded ridges. A trickle of water flowed over rocks under their horse’s hooves, but the banks were clear of leaves or brush on either side up to the height of their horse’s withers, indicating how full these little valleys ran when the rains fell.
Ataelus seemed to know just where he was riding. Kineas was content to ride along.
The shadows stretched away when they stopped. All the Sakje and the Sauromatae dismounted and relieved themselves without letting go of their reins. Kineas and Niceas imitated them.
There was a hint of smoke on the cold wind over the strong smell of urine. A clear-eyed blonde woman handed him a gourd of water and he raised it in acknowledgement before he drank. She looked to be fourteen or perhaps fifteen. She had two skulls on the ornate saddle of her horse.
Kineas grinned at her and she returned the grin.
‘We for hitting them at dark,’ Ataelus said. ‘Understand for hitting?’ he smacked his right fist into his left hand.
‘I understand,’ Kineas said.
‘For watching two days, since girls get in fight and Samahe for finding camp.’ Ataelus shrugged.
There was something untold, some story that made Samahe wrinkle her nose and made one of the girls blush and wriggle in her saddle. A story he’d never know, Kineas thought.
‘You knew we were coming?’ Kineas said, suddenly making the connection.
‘Nihmu says for coming, says “protect him king”.’ Ataelus shrugged. ‘Not for needing child for telling for protecting.’
‘You watched us last night?’ Niceas asked.
‘No. For today since sun rose this way.’ Ataelus closed one eye and raised a hand, palm flat, just over the horizon.
Niceas shook his head. ‘They were on us last night. If they watched us meet…’
Kineas took a deep breath, suddenly eager to have it over with. ‘If they intended to ambush us, they’ve had all day to do it.’
The shadows lengthened across the meadows below them, and the air grew frostier as the sun’s rays fell further away. Niceas and Kineas had to work to curb the impatience of their horses. Kineas’s Getae horse was the worst, fretting constantly and jerking his head at any motion, so that Kineas had to dismount and hold his head.
The blonde woman gave him a glance of pity — pity that his horse was so ill-trained.
Twice they heard voices, both times Persian speakers getting water from the Tanais below them. Then, while the sun was just visible, they saw a pair of riders come out of the meadow and ride a short distance up the ridge, from where they had a good view of the eastern road at their feet.
Ataelus grunted in disgust, because by chance or purpose, the new pickets had a much better chance of warning the camp below of his approach than the pair they replaced. He clucked his tongue in his cheek as he watched them, and after a few minutes, he summoned one of the Standing Horse warriors in his band and the two of them rode off down the back of the ridge. Samahe dismounted and lay in the leaf mould, her hand shading her eyes.
Time dragged by. The Sauromatae women were as nervous as kittens, but their horses were calm, munching quietly on anything in reach and otherwise immobile. Niceas drew and resheathed his sword a dozen times. Kineas was busy keeping his under-trained horse from mischief.
He was amazed at their discipline. All over again. He couldn’t have kept a dozen Greek troopers so quiet without the hope of massive gain.
Even as he thought it, he wondered if he was making a poor assumption. Perhaps the Greeks could do as well. Perhaps with training, some rides out with Sakje patrols…
Samahe rose to a crouch and Kineas snapped from his reverie to watch the ground below him. The two mounted pickets were almost invisible, even from above, but little movements in the trees betrayed their position to a careful watcher. But unlike Samahe, Kineas couldn’t see Ataelus or his partner, so the first he knew of their movement was a pair of arrows appearing from the rocks to the right and falling silently on the pickets.
‘Now!’ Samahe said in Sakje, and she vaulted on to her mare and set off down the hillside at a speed that terrified Kineas, who was right behind her and couldn’t, for the sake of honour, go any slower. He reached the valley floor at a gallop, already past his fear because the ride had been so bad in itself, and he readied a javelin as the pair of them raced across the meadow. He could see the camp now, and it seemed to be full of men and horses — dozens of them. A few had bows. One raised his and loosed, but the arrow flew well over Kineas, who ducked down on his horse’s mane and galloped on, straight at the heart of the bandit camp.
