moved, most of them pushing their horses to the verge or even in among the trees.
Satyrus didn’t draw his bow. Instead, he used his knees to line Thalassa up with Coenus, who was kneeling in the road.
‘Coenus!’ he yelled. His voice was shrill but it carried, and his father’s friend looked up. Then his face changed as if he was making a hard decision – and he stood up, clutching his side.
Melitta shot again. She had a light bow, and now that the surprise of her having a bow at all was lost, the Sauromatae were shooting back – strong men with men’s bows. She backed her horse down the road. She shot again, arching her back as she shot to get the most from her bow.
Satyrus reached down and held an arm out to Coenus. The pain showed like a scar on the big man’s face, and his lips were more white than red, and it was close – no matter how heroic, a twelve-year-old cannot haul a warrior on to the back of a charger. But Coenus found the strength from somewhere and got a leg over, almost tumbling his saviour on to the road, and then Thalassa sensed some change of weight and she was turning, moving away.
Philokles was up on Hermes, with the coach behind him. As soon as he saw his students in retreat, he turned his own horse and pressed him to a gallop, and they were away down the road.
The five of them galloped back along the river road for two stades without slowing, until Bion picked up a stone in his hoof and Melitta had to pick it clear as the men watched the road behind them. Thalassa never flagged, nor did her head go down at the halt. Instead, she looked around, as if aware that fighting was next. Then she raised her head higher, straining at the reins, and gave a cry.
Satyrus had a pounding head and the weight of a grown man who was in pain on his back, and Thalassa’s fidgets were nothing but increased complication until he realized what she was seeing.
‘By the Father of the Gods,’ he said, pointing.
Coenus, slumped in agony, raised his head. ‘Oh, Gods,’ he said, and his head went down again.
Philokles held up a hand. ‘Hoof beats!’ he said.
Melitta vaulted on to Bion’s back. She had her bow in her hand in a moment.
There was a column of smoke rising to the west – from the town. Melitta watched it the way a child watches the death of a loved one – unable to take her eyes away.
Satyrus felt the strength of the fight – the daimon, some men called it – leave his limbs, and he felt as weak as he had when Theron hit him in the palaestra. ‘Perhaps it is just a house fire,’ he said, but he didn’t believe his own words.
Melitta’s voice broke as she spoke, but no tears came. ‘Raiders,’ she said. ‘The ships I saw!’
Philokles didn’t sound drunk when he spoke. ‘We must get across the river,’ he said.
There were Sauromatae riders coming around the last bend. They were approaching carefully this time, and there were a dozen of them.
‘We should take refuge in the shrine,’ Melitta said.
Philokles was watching the riders. ‘This – this was planned.’ He shook his head. ‘There will be no refuge in temples, children. All these men have come to kill you.’
Satyrus sucked in a breath.
Melitta sat straighter. ‘Well,’ she said, and her eyes were bright with unshed tears, ‘we will have to give them a surprise then.’
Satyrus wished that he’d said such a thing.
‘That’s the spirit,’ Philokles said. He got down from his horse and stood bare-handed on the ground. ‘Can you children shoot one of the riders as close to me as possible? I need a spear.’
Theron looked around at them. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
The riders were nocking arrows.
‘Walk away,’ Philokles said to Theron, who remained on the horse they had shared. ‘Leave us and live.’
Theron shook his head. ‘You three are going to fight all those horsemen? ’ He grinned. He looked from one to another, his grin growing, and he slid from his horse. ‘I’m in.’
Satyrus had to smile at the athlete’s declaration. He drew his own bow and struggled to string it with the weight of Coenus hanging on his back.
Theron reached up and took the wounded man. He set him gently on the ground.
Philokles went down on both knees in the road, picked up a handful of dust and rubbed it in his hair. He raised his arms. ‘Furies!’ he cried. ‘Those who guard the most sacred of oaths! I must break my vow.’
Theron looked at Satyrus. ‘What vow?’ he asked.
Melitta was watching the horsemen. ‘Mother says he vowed never to draw the blood of another man,’ she said. ‘Watch out!’
Satyrus got his bow strung and fitted an arrow as the first dozen came from their foes. There were too many arrows to avoid, and his heart almost stopped in terror as the flight came in. Time stretched as the arrows fell, and then they were past.
None of the arrows hit a target. Now he was down low on Thalassa’s neck and Melitta was with him, the two horses kicking up dust as they sped right at the Sauromatae, and again he could hear nothing but Thalassa’s hoof beats. This was a sport the children knew, although they had never played it for real. They left their tutor kneeling in the road, looking like a fool or a mime in a play.
The Sauromatae were not good archers. They had slim bows of wood and not the recurved bows backed in sinew and horn that the Sakje used, and they relied too much on their spears and armour up close, or so Satyrus’s mother said. All her comments floated through his brain as Thalassa’s hooves pounded along the grass at the verge of the road, a slow rhythm that marked out what might be the last moments of his life.
Melitta, the better archer of the twins, loosed her first arrow and turned away, guiding Bion with her knees as the big gelding curved away to the right.
Satyrus held his course until he saw the Sauromatae raise their bows, and then he loosed – a clumsy shot, wrecked by speed and fear, so that the arrow went high and was lost. But he was close enough that his shot had the same effect on some of the Sauromatae.
Not all, though. Thalassa lost the flow of her gallop as he turned her, and the rhythm of her run changed. When he looked back, she had an arrow in her rump.
He turned her back, head on to their enemies and now, suddenly, close. He had an arrow on the string, the horn nock sliding home between his fingers, fear a few yards behind him but catching up – they were big men, and the closest one had a ferocious grin. He had dropped his bow in favour of a long spear.
‘Artemis!’ the boy shouted, more a shriek of fear than a war cry, and loosed. He couldn’t breathe, almost couldn’t keep his knees tight on Thalassa’s broad back. He was so afraid.
His arrow knew no fear. The man with the grin took the arrow in the middle of his torso, right through his rawhide armour. He went down over his horse’s rump, and Satyrus could breathe. He leaned hard to the left and Thalassa was still there for him, skimming the ground in great strides and yet managing to turn away from the barbarians. The man he’d hit screamed soundlessly, his mouth round and red and his rotting teeth black, and all Satyrus could hear were hoof beats.
Satyrus reached across his body for an arrow, half drew one and dropped it. He felt for another. One more, he thought. I’ll shoot one more and that will be enough. He got the fletching of another arrow in his fingers and pulled the arrow clear. He leaned back, got the arrow on the bow and the nock on the string and put his charger’s head back at the enemy.
Another one was down, and a third man was clutching an arrow in his bicep and screaming – rage and fear and pain all together as a pair of children flayed his raiding party. But the flow of the fight had carried the Sauromatae up the road, almost to where Coenus lay in the grass and Philokles knelt. The Sauromatae ignored them.
Thalassa missed another stride and almost went down. She slowed sharply.
I’m dead, Satyrus thought. He rose on his knees and shot the way Ataelus the Sakje taught, from the top of his mount’s rhythm. His arrow went deep into the gut of a young Sauromatae. He drew another arrow as they turned towards him. He had started on a better horse, but she was tired and old and had carried a heavy burden for several stades, and despite her heart she couldn’t keep the pace for ever.
Lita shot again. They were ignoring her, and she shot the horse of a man near Coenus so that the man was thrown right over his horse’s head. He rolled once in the road and tried to get up.
Satyrus shot at a man in red with a golden helmet, and the arrow glanced off the man’s scale cuirass of
