guard’s white leather thorax – would have made her smile again, except that she was too far down the dark path for that. Ataelus, she thought. Alive, and hence shooting. Save my children, Ataelus.
Then shouts. Feet pounding. The Athenian cursing, sounding like a man with a bad cold.
Cold – every part of her cold. Lying awake in her wagon on the sea of grass, naked to invite Kineas to play, but cold – and then the warmth, the reward as he came into her bed, warm and the smell of man and horse and dirty bronze that he wore like perfume.
‘Don’t blame me,’ Heron said. ‘I gave her to you. You fucked it up.’
‘She cut off my d-d-dose!’ the Athenian groaned.
‘Nonsense. Most of it is still there. I’ve sent for my healer. Now, what do you want – her head?’ Heron was impatient. She formulated her curse on him, and spat it out, syllable by syllable, like the last drops of honey dripping from a jar, as the darkness came down. And she could still hear.
‘Fuck you.’ The Athenian managed to sound as if he had a spine.
‘Any more insults and I’ll tell Lord Cassander you died in the fighting. Am I clear? Good. My healer will see to your nose and then I will attempt to rectify your mistake before it costs me more money and more time.’ Heron sounded as he always did – superior.
‘You mbissed the little Scyth and dhow his boat’s got away,’ the Athenian said. The shock of his wound was wearing off. ‘You were the fool who gave us away. Burder mbe and Cassander will come for you!’
‘If you are an example of Cassander’s might, I have just backed the wrong horse,’ Heron said. ‘Give my regards to the Lady Olympias. Remember – I am to be king of the Euxine. This was the price. Am I clear?’ A pause. ‘She was supposed to bring the brats. Where the fuck are they? I need them dead.’
‘Fuck you,’ the Athenian spat.
Srayanka was losing interest. The cold was going – she could feel his warm feet against hers, and she could smell the scent of old bronze and oil and horse – and a little male sweat.
As always, Kineas’s touch relaxed her, and she flowed away.
PART I
FORGING
1
316 BC
The sand of the palaestra was cool under his cheek, but the weight of his new trainer crushed the air from his lungs.
‘You have a good physique for a boy,’ the athlete said. He rolled off his prospective pupil and offered him a hand. ‘But any time you offer a test of strength to a man, he’ll beat you.’
The new coach had the shoulders of a bull. He stood a head taller than his twelve-year-old student, and he was wider – deep of chest, and with the sort of muscles that decorated heroic vases. His name was Theron, and he had competed for the laurel at Nemea and at Olympia and lost – narrowly – at both. He had come a long way to be the boy’s coach, and he made it clear that he wanted to see what he was getting.
What he was getting was a slim figure with the muscles of a boy – an athletic boy, but he had neither weight nor breadth. He was handsome enough, with a shock of dark brown hair and wide-spaced eyes. His body was well enough formed, his nose as yet unbroken, and he had not yet sprouted the hair of adolescence.
The boy grasped his teacher’s hand and popped to his feet. He gave a petulant smile and rubbed his hip. His shins were decorated with bruises, the brown blotches so regular that his mother said that he looked as if he was wearing Scythian trousers. ‘I’ll have you someday,’ he said. Then he relented and grinned, wondering if that was too brash.
Theron shook his head. ‘You’ve speed and talent, boy, but that chest of yours will never have the width to put my head in the sand.’
The boy bowed, a natural movement devoid of servility. ‘As you say,’ he said. He didn’t mean it, and his attitude came out clearly in his delivery. In fact, there was a tinge of mockery to the sentence. He glanced at his tutor, another big man, who reclined under the stoa of pillars.
The athlete’s resentment showed in his suddenly red face.
The boy’s sister, perched in the cool arch under the colonnade, laughed.
The new coach – the prospective coach – spun. ‘Girl!’ he said. ‘You are not allowed in the palaestra.’ He inclined his head. ‘Young mistress.’ He moved a hand to cover his privates.
The males were both naked.
The ‘young mistress’ rose from her concealment. ‘I disagree,’ she said. She was wearing a man’s chiton over her slim hips and long legs. She was also twelve years old, with the first sign of her mother’s deep breasts and with large and adult eyes of no particular colour. ‘My mother will insist, if you like. I, too, wish to learn to fight the Greek way.’
Theron, a born athlete who had travelled three thousand stades across the Euxine to take a contract that would make him a wealthy man in Corinth for the rest of his life, stood his ground. ‘It is unseemly for women to take part in athletics,’ he began.
‘Spartan women take part in all the games,’ the girl said. ‘My tutor tells me so.’ Her eyes flicked to the big man reclining under the colonnade.
‘When he’s sober,’ her brother added. He picked up a strigil and began to scrape the sand off his backside. ‘And he says women run at Nemea. You competed at Nemea, did you not, Theron?’
Theron looked from one to another, and a slow smile caught at the corners of his mouth. But while the boy was watching the smile, he reached out one hand at the end of a giant arm and grabbed the boy, rotated him and tripped him over an extended foot, pinning him in the sand. ‘In the palaestra, I am master,’ he said. ‘Your sister should not be here. When she returns from making her treaty, I will speak to your lady mother about the women’s events – I would be happy to teach a child with such long limbs to run. But not pankration. Pankration is for men. It is for killing.’
The girl nodded. It was clear from her posture that she was nodding from courtesy, not in agreement. ‘My mother has killed fifty men,’ the girl said. ‘You?’ She nodded before he could answer. ‘I’ll expect a daily lesson from you, then,’ she said to the recumbent form of her twin brother. ‘It will be good for you to teach me. You’ll have every lesson twice.’
‘Master, may I get up now?’ the boy asked.
Theron leaped to his feet and again extended his arm. ‘Of course.’ He turned his back on the girl and confronted his new pupil. ‘Does your sister watch you train?’ he asked.
The boy laughed. ‘She trains with me,’ he said. ‘Master.’
Theron shook his head. ‘Not until I have spoken to your lady mother. Young mistress, please leave the palaestra.’
The girl nodded again, a slow gesture that was identical to her brother’s nod. ‘We will speak of this again,’ she said. She rose to her feet with muscled grace, showing none of the coltishness of her age, and walked out of the arches, heading to the baths. She paused at the archway. ‘You should call us by our names,’ she said. ‘That is the policy of my mother, and it is a good one. I am not the mistress here, any more than you are master. I am Melitta. My brother there is Satyrus. We are the children of Kineas of Athens and the Lady Srayanka. Our family fought at Marathon against the Medes and on the sea of grass against Darius. My father was descended from Herakles, and my mother from Artemis.’ She bowed her head. ‘The only mistress here is my mother, and she has no master.’
Theron didn’t know many twelve-year-old girls in Corinth who could stare him down. She hadn’t blinked since she had begun to talk. ‘I understand that your father is dead,’ he said.
The girl – Melitta – gave him a long look. ‘We will speak of this again,’ she said, and went into the baths.
