credible imitation of a stallion rearing, ‘like horses, eh? But not fight.’ She smiled a half-smile, and then her humour turned to anger and she was livid. ‘Listen to me, King of the Sakje and Spartan. The Sakje go to the muster on the Jaxartes. Greeks are free. No man of Olbia owes me service,’ and here she glared at Kineas, ‘but my people will go to the muster because we said we would be there. Six moons we ride the sea of grass and still we will be there. ’
Then she deflated like a tent with the poles removed. ‘And you are right, Spartan,’ she said. ‘We have nowhere else to go.’
Kineas took her shoulders. Rather than spurning him, as he feared, she leaned back into his embrace. ‘They only called me king while you were missing,’ he said.
She whirled out of his arms and her eyes searched his face as if she’d just discovered a hidden flaw in a pot. ‘No. You are king. Nihmu’s horses and my womb make you king. And yet you owe us nothing.’ She frowned. ‘Satrax warned me of this moment. I am barbarian and you are Greek. ’
Diodorus had gone back to staring at the ground between his sandals, but now he looked up again. ‘Be fair, Srayanka. The Sakje have had their fair share from this army.’
‘We are barbarians to you,’ she said. ‘Just like we are to Alexander.’ She spat. In accurate mockery, imitating Diodorus, she said, ‘We’ll all be Sakje in a few years at this rate.’ She hugged her belly. ‘ No fate could be more cruel,’ she mocked.
Diodorus winced. ‘Listen, lady,’ he said with his hands on his hips. ‘I’ve been at war for years. I’m tired of it. I want to settle somewhere and have a wife and a future. The Sakje are like brothers to me — but I crave the world of the palaestra and the agora. How happy would you be if we made you live away from the grass?’
Srayanka hung her head.
Kineas cut in, ‘Srayanka, they can go home if they want — but they won’t. They’ll posture and get drunk.’ He glared at Philokles. ‘But..’ He looked down into her eyes, their startling blue almost black in the firelight. ‘But you do have other choices. You can go back, and when this is over…’ The bit in his teeth, he went on, ‘The high ground between the Tanais and the Rha — whose tribal land is that?’
Srayanka used a hand to pull her hair back from her face. ‘Maeotae land, and no man’s land these last ten years and more.’
Kineas nodded. ‘Leave the farmers to their own,’ he said. ‘The high ground is wolf land — worse than Hyrkania. We cleared the road and made some peace — drove the worst of the wolves off. There’s rich pasture there — enough for ten thousand horses. And as soon as you were there to protect it, the Maeotae farmers and the Sindi would return to their farms on the lower Rha.’
Diodorus pursed his lips and looked at Kineas with a different kind of respect. ‘You’re smarter than you look,’ he said.
Philokles raised an eyebrow and looked like a comic satyr. ‘So you have been thinking of other endings,’ he said.
Kineas nodded. ‘I had all winter to listen to what was said in Hyrkania — and to Leon’s views on eastern trade,’ he said. ‘Many of the Olbians will go home — but if we declared that we were founding a city, many would stay.’
Philokles beamed. ‘You have said nothing of this!’ he proclaimed. ‘This is brilliant!’
Diodorus grinned too. ‘A city of mercenaries and Sakje,’ he said. ‘I imagine we’ll have a fair number of curious travellers.’
Srayanka’s eyes went from one to another. ‘The Sakje go east to the muster of the tribes,’ she said. ‘King or no king.’ But her look at Kineas was happier. ‘But the high ground between the Rha and the Tanais is a good dream, and a dream can keep the people alive.’ She shrugged, a curiously Greek gesture on her. ‘Who knows? Perhaps it will even come to pass.’
Kineas looked down at her. ‘Perhaps we should be married?’ he asked her.
‘Husband, we have been married since first we played stallion and mare,’ she said. ‘Sakje people do not worry about the fanfare when we can grasp the trumpet. But,’ she smirked, ‘I like a good party. And all our men and women need something to hold in their minds that is not fear and death.’
In the wagon, there was a stirring, a distant thump and a hearty wail.
‘Oh goddess,’ Srayanka swore, and she raced Kineas for the wagon bed.
22
By Kineas’s calculations, the feast to mark their wedding and their victory would fall on the Panathenaia, a festival that celebrated both Athena and Eros. He calculated the date with an eye to the grass on the plains and the speed with which his wife — and his wounded — could recover.
‘Nothing could be more fitting,’ said Diodorus, with a twinkle in his eye. He and Philokles could be seen plotting in all corners of the camp.
Coenus’s arrival made the celebrations possible. Scouts foretold him, and then Samahe located him and brought his column into their camp, cheered by Sakje and Sauromatae and Olbians alike.
Coenus’s column arrived with twenty fresh troopers to replace losses, a hundred heavy chargers from the plains of southern Hyrkania, forty talents of gold, his new bride Artemesia and news.
And wine.
Wine flowed for a week as if they were sitting on the plains of Arcadia and not those of Sogdiana. Olbians paid Sauromatae maidens to weave garlands of the shiny leaves that looked most like laurel, and they celebrated the mid-summer feast of Aphrodite a few days late, and no man or woman was altogether sober.
Coenus’s lady sat with Sappho, modestly dressed. The two of them had been sewing and embroidering for two days without cease, washing their hands frequently, and hiding their work from all comers.
‘You’ve shared the plan with the gentlemen, I take it?’ Coenus asked.
Kineas nodded, chewing on some unleavened bread made from proper wheat. ‘I proposed it to Srayanka and Diodorus as well.’
Philokles waved his bread at them. ‘Me, too,’ he said with his mouth full.
Coenus waved his arms at the west. ‘It’s becoming a reality already,’ he said. ‘Heron put a hundred men into the fort on the Rha under Crax and then sent his troop of horse to clear my way. Crax is the lord of all the Rha’s mouth, and he has recruited men in your name.’ Coenus gave a wry smile. ‘I also recruited some men in Olbia and Pantecapaeum, and I added mine to his rather than ship them across the Kaspian. Many of them had already guessed how much bullion I had.’ He shrugged.
‘And Lykeles?’ Kineas asked.
‘Not a complete fool,’ Coenus said fondly. ‘He had no idea of how he was being used. I set him straight. But mark my words — there will be war in the cities before next summer. Heraclea, the strongest city on the Euxine, is making noise of grabbing at the east-coast cities, and neither Olbia nor Pantecapaeum are ready.’
‘Heron?’
‘Heron is slowly gathering and training an army of the trash of Hyrkania, with Leosthenes as his captain and Lycurgus as the governor of Namastopolis.’ Coenus smiled. ‘He’s not hurting anyone, and his gold is keeping the best men for us. The rest have already gone south over the mountains to Parthia. The knives are out there, and everywhere that Alexander’s writ runs. He’s a fool to stay in the east. His western lands are going to desert him.’ Coenus shook his head. ‘And on top of all that, he’s recruiting Greeks himself.’
Kineas shook his head. ‘I’m not one of Alexander’s worshippers,’ he said, ‘but a year ago, the tyrant of Olbia was telling me that Parmenion would bury him. Now Parmenion is dead. Alexander may be mad, he may leak hubris as most men bleed, but he is canny when it comes to ruling men.’ He paused. ‘He needs those Greeks. He’s bled a lot of men.’
Diodorus gave a hard smile. ‘We helped.’
Coenus nodded. ‘I won’t argue with you. Antipater walks in fear. Olympias is a force to be reckoned with, or so they say.’ He drank wine. ‘Ares, but that all seems so distant here.’
Diodorus gave a foxy grin. ‘The politics may be distant, but the God-King himself is just a thousand stades that way.’ He motioned to the east. ‘Probably less.’
