Samahe’s horse sidestepped some obstruction in the meadow grass, and on her next rise she shot, her arrow licking across the flowers and the sweet grass to drop one of the few bandits to get mounted. Her second arrow was in the air.
The Sauromatae girls weren’t shooting. They were screaming with all the gusto of the young warrior, screaming away their terror and their exhilaration, and they bore straight at the bandits by the river.
Kineas went through the camp without touching his reins. No one opposed him and he rode past the huddle of bandits at the riverbank and then up a short rise to a clearing in the riverbank woods, where there was an abandoned farmstead and the bandit horse herd. There were ten men in the clearing and despite the screams from the riverside, they seemed surprised when he appeared in their midst, and two of them were down before any got weapons to hand.
Kineas wheeled his horse and extended his arm, using the momentum of the move to twirl the shaft in his fingers so that he changed grips in a single stride of his mount, and a circle of blood drops flew from the point of his rotating javelin.
He felt like a god, at least for a moment.
One of the men had a bow and shot his horse, who crashed to the ground in another stride, and he fell, getting a leg under him and then rolling, javelin lost. He came up against a tree and he rolled to put the bole between him and the archer.
The archer laughed. ‘Try this!’ he called, in Persian. He shot. The arrow hit the tree and shattered, and the man laughed again. He had a black beard and kohl-rimmed eyes like a Bactrian nobleman.
Down by the river, men were dying. Blackbeard drew another arrow. ‘Get horses,’ he called over his shoulder, and two boys sprang to do his bidding.
Kineas pulled his cloak off and whirled it around his arm, moving to his right to a larger tree.
‘Try this, Greek!’ Blackbeard shot again, and his arrow hit the new tree.
Kineas jumped out and retrieved his javelin, avoiding the slashing hooves of his dying Getae mount and leaping behind another tree just as a third arrow skipped along the bark and slapped into the rolled cloak on his arm.
‘Try this, harlot!’ Kineas yelled, and threw his javelin. Then he charged, leaping a downed tree as he ran, heedless of the odds. It was better than letting a master archer take his time, and something had gone wrong in the fight by the river.
His javelin hit the man by the archer’s side, knocking him flat like the deer. The archer turned and ran, and Kineas ran after him. There were men in the clearing and they set themselves to stop him, but none put the archer’s life higher than his own, and Kineas ran through them, downing one with a sword cut as he ran by.
The two boys had grabbed a pair of horses apiece, and Blackbeard took the first he came to, tossed the boy clear of the saddlecloth and vaulted astride, pulling the horse’s head around. At the other side of the clearing, Samahe appeared, shooting as she came, and the other boy went down with an arrow in his guts, screaming. Kineas found himself crossing blades with yet another Persian — another nobleman, from the rags of purple on his cloak. The man had a good sword, and he was aggressive.
Blackbeard pulled his horse around and shot. So did Samahe. Neither hit. Both were moving fast, flat to their horse’s backs, and then Kineas had no attention to spare.
The Persian leaped in and cut hard at his head. Kineas parried and the blades rang together, and the Persian kicked at his shin under the locked iron. Kineas pushed his hooked blade up and over his opponent’s guard and then slipped a foot behind the man’s ankle and pushed, hoping for a throw, and the Persian jumped back, cutting high.
He was a swordsman.
Kineas parried and cut back, a short chop at his opponent’s hand, but the Persian had seen such a move before, and he made a hand-high parry that turned into an overhand cut to the head — and Kineas just managed a parry, taking a blow that was not quite a cut to the shoulder. His left hand closed on his Sakje whip in the sash at his back, and he pulled it clear and changed his stance to lead with his left foot, the whip out as a shield.
The Persian had a knife in his left hand and he stamped forward, leading with the knife.
Kineas backed away, kicked pine needles and risked a glance over his shoulder. Ataelus was shooting behind him — shooting back the way he had come. Something was wrong.
The Persian was smiling. He flicked with the knife — a feint with just enough power to draw blood. Kineas retreated a step and the Persian’s smile grew wider. He suddenly changed tempo, pivoting on his front foot and thrusting with his sword and then trying to trap Kineas’s sword against his own with the dagger.
Kineas just barely evaded the trap, twisting his body, pulling a muscle in his neck, inwardly cursing. Again he backed away, aware that this fight was taking too much time. Ataelus called out in Sakje — something about a wound.
Kineas made a high attack with his sword, scoring just a touch of a cut against his opponent’s forearm and drawing the same high counterattack — but this time, Kineas gave the man’s sword hand the full weight of the lash of his riding whip and then cut low with his blade, catching the Persian just on the hip bone and cutting him deeply. The man fell back. He wasn’t grinning, but he had the grace to salute with his dagger hand.
Kineas leaped forward, cut hard at the Persian’s sabre and knocked it right out of the man’s hand — the lash had hurt, as Kineas could see.
‘Yield,’ he said in Persian.
The Persian glanced over his shoulder, where Samahe had an arrow pointed at his back. He nodded three times, as if some point of philosophy had just come to him, and tossed his dagger on the ground. ‘I yield,’ he said.
Kineas raised his own blade, stepped well back and looked for Ataelus and Niceas. Ataelus was at the horse herd, calling orders. Niceas was nowhere to be seen.
The swordsman was the only prisoner. His cousin — Blackbeard — hadn’t survived the archery duel with both Samahe and Ataelus, and the rest of their troop had been cut down or had fled. Kineas was a little surprised at the savagery of the Sakje — but only a little. He was more worried about Niceas.
Niceas lay out on the meadow of flowers with an arrow in his ribs. He wasn’t dead, but he was deeply unconscious from the fall, and the arrow had skidded up his ribs and ripped open his shoulder as well.
‘Shit,’ Kineas said.
‘I’ll save him,’ said Nihmu.
Kineas whirled. He hadn’t seen her approach, hadn’t seen her horse. She had a strung bow over her shoulder and her quiver was empty. She turned and ran across the meadow towards the bandit camp, and Kineas was left to make his comrade as comfortable as possible. He rolled Niceas’s cloak and put it under his head and cut the remnants of his tunic free from his body.
Nihmu came back with a copper beaker of water, still steaming hot from the bandits’ fire. ‘It looks worse than it is,’ she said with the confidence of an adult. Then, more quietly, ‘Sirven died.’
‘Sirven?’ Kineas asked.
‘Lot’s daughter older. The blonde girl.’ Nihmu shrugged. ‘I told her she would die if she fought here. But when she went down, they all fought over her body. Ataelus took a cut.’ She pointed at a red-haired girl of fourteen weeping. ‘Her sister lost a finger and took an arrow in the leg. They are all angry.’ She sounded like the child she was — and like an upset child, at that.
Kineas felt his post-battle fatigue come on him, as the daimon that animated him to fight left his body empty of feelings except sorrow.
Nihmu was washing the wound with hot water, her dark hair hanging in uncombed tangles over her face so that he couldn’t see her. ‘They are all angry.’ She repeated. ‘So they killed all the bandits.’
‘All?’ Kineas asked, turning to look for his prisoner.
‘You should stay by him. He will do you a good turn one day, that one. If Ataelus doesn’t take his hair.’
Kineas turned and trotted off into the dusk to find his Persian.
The man was burying Blackbeard. Kineas listened to the Sauromatae mourning Sirven and her sister. Mosva, he thought. She’s called Mosva. Kineas left his Persian prisoner working and walked down to the river to find Ataelus.
‘Stupid girl,’ Ataelus said bitterly. ‘Stupid Sauromatae barbarian girl.’ He had tears in his eyes and a quaver in his voice. ‘Fight like wild things, sword to sword with grown men — hard men. And me for fool! Too long fighting
