the legs and then finished him with a short thrust to his neck, already looking around.
Theron’s other opponent made the mistake of thinking that Philokles was out of action. When he stepped across the Spartan to attack Theron’s rear, Philokles’ left hand locked on his ankle like a vice and Philokles scissored his feet up and grabbed the man’s waist and pulled him down. Theron stepped back over the Spartan as if they had designed the whole move as a dance and cut the man’s throat.
Satyrus had another arrow on his string. His sister shot and missed – an archer standing on the hillside. He ducked. But he didn’t see Satyrus, and Satyrus could still see him. He shot on instinct, a little high, a little wide to the right for the breeze.
He watched his arrow fly, thrilled as it arced and vanished into the bandit’s side. Satyrus saw it all, but he didn’t see the archer who shot him. There was a blast of pain, like falling into cold water, and then he was out.
There was a slave market in Krateai, but it wasn’t much, just a red mud-walled barrack with a heavy wooden door. The town only existed because the mountain roads divided here, the northern road going down the valleys to Gordia, while the southern road went past Manteneaon and then turned through the great pass into the plains of Anatolia, roasting in heat at this time of year. A small parcel of slaves – probably taken by thieves, claimed by no lesser being than the tyrant of Heraklea, or so the Macedonian factor said – was bound for Gordia.
Satyrus had a bruise on his side as big as his head, and the centre of it was livid and leaked pus where the scale armour had deflected the arrow’s point – mostly. His ears still rang from time to time and twice he put down his heavy load to vomit, and the guards hit him with their canes and laughed at his feeble attempts to puke.
Melitta wanted to kill them – both of them. She was carrying the heaviest load of her life, a basket full of grain purchased with threats in a village lower down the pass. It was, in fact, about half the food that their little caravan had. And the water was running out. Springs were zealously guarded in these steep defiles, and the petty lords and bandit kings who ruled from their eyries charged heavily for each beaker of water.
But their new owner apparently had a soft heart. He stopped to get them water and a night’s sleep, and bought a quantity of food. Then he offered his whole parcel for sale – Satyrus and Melitta, brother and sister, right on the edge of adulthood, and both startlingly attractive, both virgins – to a pair of Greek merchants. They also offered the other girl – also a beauty, you could tell, despite her pale face and her complaining. Satyrus was naked and had a bad bruise on his side and the girls were clothed, and men in the crowd shouted for both of the girls to be stripped. One of the soldiers in the caravan’s escort used the stock of his riding whip to knock a heckler unconscious, and that was the end of the salacious catcalls.
Men bid – some bid high, for the twins – but the Greek merchants had cash and a seal from some great power down in the green valleys, and the men of the town glared lustfully at the girls – and the boy – as they were shackled and led away.
One of the two merchants was a Spartan by his way of talking. He was the worse for wine, even at the height of the sun, and he probably paid too much for the children, for his partner, a Boeotian, glared at him until their little cavalcade rode off down the south fork. No one thought to ask how the Greeks had happened to have so many horses, or why the merchant’s caravan guards went with the Greeks.
‘Was that necessary?’ Melitta asked Theron after they had cleared all possible onlookers.
Theron was still calming Kallista. At some point she had gone from his enemy to his lover, and she had shared his blankets almost every night on the road since the fight with the bandits. She seemed as infatuated with him as he was with her – but even the pretence of a slave auction had driven her into a state not far from madness.
‘Theron is not listening,’ Satyrus said. His skin was burned a deep brown from days of riding and days of walking naked in a pack of slaves. His feet were harder than they’d ever been before, but the first day had been agony for him, and he still had an angry red mark on his left arm where the arrow had gone right through his bicep, and the wound in his side, while not life-threatening, hurt when he breathed heavily.
The soldiers had cooperated to make his journey as easy as possible, but the charade as slaves had been necessary to pass the town. He’d had to carry a load like a slave, and that had inflamed his side and put knots of pain deep into his back. The load had been as light as possible, but he couldn’t be empty-handed without appearing different and negating the whole disguise.
He had muscles in his shoulders that he’d never had working in the gymnasium, and his chest was broader.
‘I did not enjoy pretending to be a slave,’ Melitta said. ‘So – we’re free. Did you worry that we might not ever get free, brother?’
‘I worry about everything now,’ he said. ‘Yes, I wondered what would happen if bandits hit us again. We’d be slaves for ever.’
Philokles swayed on his horse. ‘To some extent,’ he said, ‘we’re all slaves.’
He had taken a cut in his leg in the fight and Theron had given him wine for the pain, and now he was drinking as hard or harder than before his fight with the Corinthian.
Satyrus was indignant. ‘I didn’t see you walking naked in the sun, tutor. I saw you drink wine in the shade, though!’
Their Athenian doctor laughed aloud, a nasty laugh. ‘Ditch him,’ he said. ‘He’s a drunk.’
That brought no reply, and they rode in silence while the sun sank.
There was an old Persian station house on the road just south of Geza, a tiny hamlet that had probably existed to serve the needs of the Great King’s messengers. But a Macedonian veteran and his local wife kept the station house, and they camped in the yard and the woman fed them on beans and bread.
‘We should fight,’ Theron said, after dinner. He drank some water from the well and handed the dipper to Satyrus. ‘You’re bigger and stronger.’
Satyrus shrugged. ‘Whatever,’ he said.
Theron hit him. Not hard, but hard enough to hurt. ‘That was the response of a child,’ he said. ‘I am your athletics coach. You are Satyrus of Tanais. Not a slave, and not an idiot. Act the part.’
Satyrus of Tanais sat for a moment in the mud by the well. He thought of thousands of replies – bitter, sarcastic, cutting, outrageous.
‘You’re right, of course,’ he said after a pause.
‘Good for you. Let’s go.’ They walked past some low scrub where the animal pens were, to a cropped lawn kept by goats, and stripped. Melitta followed them.
Satyrus hadn’t fought anyone since he took the wound in his arm. He took his guard carefully, and the bigger man circled him, and Satyrus found himself viewing the fight from a very different perspective than he had the first time the two of them had faced off on the sand in Tanais. Most of all, he couldn’t see it as a game any more. People could die in a fight. He knew that now.
Theron had a long reach, and he stepped in and grabbed with both hands. Satyrus blocked and kicked, and after a pair of exchanges, he was down in the grass, a recent contribution from the goats warm and liquid on his thigh, and his left side and shoulder screaming with pain.
‘Don’t be so cautious,’ Theron said. ‘Be confident.’
‘Easy for you to say,’ Satyrus grunted as he twisted around one of the Corinthian’s long legs.
Theron tipped him and put him down while he was trying to dodge all those kicks.
He got up and tried again. This time he moved in close, trying to get inside his coach’s reach. He tried to be confident and got a mouth full of grass for his efforts.
He got up and they began to circle again. He decided to go for a hold.
That ended quickly.
They went ten falls. Satyrus’s new muscles served him well, in that he could continue, and for a blow or two he could match the bigger man. But experience told every time, and weight, and reach. And pain. His shoulder wound hurt all the time.
‘Let’s just practise some holds,’ Theron said after the last fall. ‘You are tiring, and we are boring your sister.’
So they stood in a line and practised guards, and Theron moved back and forth between them, making simple attacks so that his hands and feet could be blocked. When all three of them were breathing hard, he picked up his canteen from his clothes and handed it around.
‘I never meant the two of you to remain on the road so long,’ he said. ‘But Draco was sure we were followed
