stupid Greeks.’
Kineas hugged the little Sakje, and pressed Samahe’s hand, and embraced the little red-haired princess, who clung to him and wept until he was embarrassed, and then for a good time beyond, so that he stared into the gathering darkness and patted her hair, thinking bleak thoughts about the quality of right and wrong, good and evil, and about how far he was from being a man of virtue when he couldn’t comfort a bereft sister. But eventually she felt his awkwardness and drew back with an apology, and then he punished himself and went to help the Persian bury his cousin. Later, he sat by the fire making barley soup for Niceas, who was deeply unconscious.
‘I came to find you,’ Nihmu said, kneeling by him. ‘I didn’t like it when they killed the prisoners. It made me afraid.’
‘Killing prisoners is never good. Sometimes it must be done — when they are wounded, and you can’t help them. Sometimes it — happens.’ He shrugged, the image of the Getae man he had killed a year before rising in his mind, so that he gave a little shiver of revulsion.
‘It is time. Are you climbing the tree yet?’ she asked.
Kineas nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘I saw you in the dream world — three nights ago, I think it must have been. You are an eagle.’
Kineas shuddered again with a different disgust. Speaking of the dream world this way was like discussing sex — he knew men who did it, but he didn’t himself. Speaking of the dream world with this — this child — was almost impossible. ‘Yes,’ he said, repressing his feelings as well as he might.
She flicked a smile at him and put some herbs into the barley soup. ‘He won’t die,’ she said, as if Niceas’s continued existence were obvious to anyone.
Kineas looked at Niceas and felt tears come to his eyes. His throat threatened to close, and he couldn’t speak. He knew that Niceas might die — in any skirmish, on any day — but the reality of his unmoving body was deeply painful.
‘You need a horse,’ the girl said.
Kineas took a deep breath to deny it and then slumped. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘I have a horse for you,’ the girl said. ‘A magnificent beast, who will carry you from now to the day you fall.’
Kineas smiled. ‘The way I ride, I may fall later today.’
Nihmu looked back at him with a child’s intensity and a child’s impatience for adult humour. ‘You know what I mean. Take the horse.’
And Kineas agreed.
11
The Persian’s name was Darius — every first-born son in his generation was Darius, it seemed. He was tired of war, which had been his life since he was seventeen. He was twenty-three.
He related the tales of his life as he sat beside a small fire, heating water to clean Niceas, who was still unconscious and had no control of his bodily functions. ‘I left home six years ago to fight the Great King,’ he said. He gave a wry smile. ‘The usurper, that is. Darius.’ He shrugged. ‘Real Persians — the true Persians of the great plain — he was never our king.’ He looked into the fire, rolled over to get more firewood and winced as the cut on his hip pained him.
Kineas nodded.
‘And your Alexander rode right into our rebellion. He defeated us in the west — were you there?’
Kineas nodded. ‘Pinarus river. I was with the Allied Cavalry.’
Darius shook his head. ‘I was still a rebel. Then, after Alexander won, it was clear to most noblemen — clear enough to my father — that if we continued to rebel, we were handing our empire to the foreigner. So we marched to the so-called Great King at Ecbatana, and followed him to Gaugamela.’ He shrugged. ‘You were there?’
Kineas nodded. ‘On our left.’
Darius looked surprised. ‘Our right? I was there!’ He winced again. ‘By fire, you cut me deep.’
Kineas began trying to feed soup to Niceas. Beyond the fire, the Sauromatae and the Sakje were mourning the dead woman, singing her songs to her pyre. The smell of horse meat was strong.
‘It might have been deeper,’ he said.
The Persian nodded. ‘So it might. I was at Gaugamela, and we almost broke you.’
‘But you didn’t,’ Kineas said with satisfaction. He might not serve Macedon any more — indeed, he was probably an enemy of Macedon, when sides were counted — but Gaugamela had been the last fight of the Hellenes against the Persians, and he was proud of his role there. He had won the laurel for valour, because his unsung Allied Cavalry had held the line when the Persian cavalry threatened to break Parmenion’s flank and bury the taxeis under an avalanche of Persians.
‘It was the longest fight I can remember. I lost two horses — and lived.’
Kineas nodded in agreement. In his experience, most field battles were decided fairly quickly, and the other side took the punishment when they broke. At Gaugamela, the decision hung in the balance for an hour, and both sides died.
‘After the battle, my father was dead and my household dispersed. My cousin claimed the lordship — he was older and…’ the Persian gave an expressive shrug. ‘We never got home. We moved north into Hyrkania, but there were too many wolves there already and we kept going until we came here. We thought to carve out a kingdom, far from the Hellenes.’ He gave a self-deprecating smile, the same smile he’d worn when he lost his sword in the fight. ‘We ended up as bandits.’
‘This might make a good kingdom,’ Kineas said. He pointed at Niceas’s form. ‘He thinks so.’ They sat in companionable silence for some time. Eventually, Kineas asked, ‘Are you worth a ransom?’
‘Somewhere, if my mother lives, I have some small riches,’ the man admitted. He shrugged again — he shrugged a lot. ‘I doubt it. You Greeks have everything around Ecbatana now, and most of our eastern holdings, too. We had a tower in Bactria — I doubt it even tried to hold your mad king.’
‘Not my mad king,’ Kineas began. It was his turn, and the young Persian with the perpetual shrugs was a good companion. Kineas intended to win him as a friend and put him in a troop — he was a good sword, too good to waste. But Niceas chose that moment to sputter around a spoonful of soup. His body gave a spasm and he sprayed soup out of his mouth.
His eyes were open.
‘What the fuck?’ he said.
Kineas felt his eyes fill with tears. ‘You stupid cocksucker,’ he said with tones of those born to the agora in Athens. ‘You fell off your horse!’
Niceas smiled. ‘More soup,’ he said.
The next day, Diodorus caught up with them. His part of the army camped above them on the heights where the road turned east and went down into the country of the Rha. Diodorus came down the ridge with a dozen troopers, including Coenus and Eumenes.
Diodorus went straight to Niceas, as did Coenus. Afterwards, Diodorus ordered a tent put up for the strategos, and Eumenes went to fetch it. ‘I heard the old man was dead,’ Diodorus said. His face was still red and blotched from emotion — perhaps from weeping. ‘He’s saved my life more times than my nanny paddled my behind. I came as fast as I could.’
Kineas nodded. He’d slept through the night once Niceas’s sleep had given way to healthy snores, and he felt ten years younger. ‘I thought he was gone,’ Kineas admitted.
Coenus was feeding the hyperetes more barley soup. ‘He still looks like shit,’ he said.
Niceas croaked something about feeling better.
Kineas shook his head. ‘He took an arrow in the side. We weren’t in armour. Bad decision on my part. And the bandits were good — damned good. Tough fight.’
Coenus thrust his chin at the Persian who was tending the soup. ‘Prisoner?’
Kineas nodded. ‘And recruit. When Eumenes gets back, put him in his troop. He’s a swordsman — as good as me. I assume he can ride.’
