that day there was snow – not enough to bury them, but enough to worry them. They kept going through it and made camp in the deep woods at the top of the biggest ridge they'd encountered so far – a quarter of the day to climb it. Now they were out of the peopled country, on the high plains where only the Sakje travelled, and Nihmu admitted to a certain dismay. There wasn't a fire sign or a track to be seen.
'Wait a few days,' Coenus said.
'The Dog Horses should have had a camp in that valley,' Nihmu said. But she shrugged and ate three-day-old venison.
That night, Melitta found that Coenus had built a shelter of brush and branches – very low, but snug and warm. He was quite proud of it, in a male way, but she had to admit that it was well contrived. He raked the fire into a heap of coals near the mouth of the shelter and they all got in. Melitta found that he'd built the shelter around their blanket rolls and that Nihmu was in the middle.
It seemed pointless to protest. Melitta was determined to think no more about it. Later, she thought that perhaps she would stay awake and see what happened. But the next thing she knew, it was the grey light of morning, and she could hear the fire crackling away outside as Coenus fed the shelter into the fire. Melitta got up, rolled the blankets and tied them in neat bundles, the habits of her youth returning quite naturally, and looked around for Nihmu.
'Swimming,' Coenus said. He shrugged. 'I know – insane. But she insisted.'
Below them, Nihmu shrieked like a woman in childbirth, and Melitta could see her splashing water in the stream. When she came up to them, her skin was bright red, but she had filled the water bottles and their one kettle. Coenus put it on the fire and they had hot herb tea with a little wine in it before they set off.
That day, they rode north and east on high ridges. It didn't snow again, and the sun came out, fresh and warm, and the horses were playful.
That night, they laughed at the fire, and sang Sakje songs to Coenus, who shook his head and told them they were both barbarians. Melitta discovered that she didn't really care if two of her favourite adults were choosing to behave badly.
'None of my concern,' she said to the darkness.
They sang more, and Coenus repaid them with parts of the Iliad, sung in a curious high voice that soothed and scared at the same time.
'That part has a curious meaning,' Coenus said when he was done telling of Thetis bringing new armour to her son by the sea.
'Hush,' Nihmu said, putting two fingers across his lips. 'How often were you told as a child that retelling spoils the story?'
Coenus grinned like a boy. 'Too true, my lady.' He sprang to his feet. 'I'll tell it to the wolves instead,' he said, and walked off into the darkness.
Melitta thought that her child's grandfather was behaving like a much younger man.
Seconds later he was back. His return took Melitta by surprise – she had just snuggled closer to Nihmu to share the other woman's warmth. Coenus sprang past them and cast the deerskin from their kill straight on to the fire. It was untanned and still wet, if a little frozen, and they smelled burning hair and roasting meat.
'Right below us,' Coenus hissed. 'Bottom of the valley. Twenty riders, all Sauromatae.'
'You saw them?' Nihmu asked, incredulous. It was quite dark.
'Heard them,' Coenus said. 'Get the horses.'
'I can just talk to them,' Nihmu said. 'The easterners would never trouble a Sakje party.'
'Never is a long time,' Coenus said. 'The sea of grass is changed, and not for the better.'
Coenus pulled the deerskin off the fire and they packed in the last of the firelight. Melitta's heart pounded. While she packed her cloaks and blankets on her horse's rump, she actually saw the fire glimmering below her in the valley.
'They must have seen ours,' Melitta said.
Coenus shook his head, a blur of motion in the dark. 'No – I put the camp in a hollow. I'm used to this sort of thing.'
Melitta was annoyed with herself on a number of different levels – for allowing Coenus to make camp in her country, for not knowing as much about stealth as the Greek man.
They heard a horse noise just over the rim of the hill.
'They're coming for us after all!' Coenus hissed. 'Leave the rest and ride!'
He was on the back of his horse and moving, and there was a hissing in the air. Melitta got her leg over her horse's haunch and wished for her dear Bion, who would have been been ten strides away by now. But she settled her seat and grabbed her bow, ready strung, from her gorytos. Even as she rode her mount in among the trees, she had an arrow on the string. Some skills are never forgotten.
Now she could hear shouts behind her – Sauromatae voices, their eastern accents and odd words carrying clearly on the cold air.
'They were right here!' a young man shouted. 'Look! Coals and ashes!'
'I shot one!' another shouted.
Melitta put her heels to her mount, dropped her bow back into its cover and her arrow into the quiver behind the bow case. There was nothing to shoot and riding through trees in the dark was hard enough.
She kept going downhill, sure that this, at least, would carry her away from her pursuers. When she arrived at the base of the next valley, after a disorienting ride whose distance could only be measured in fear, she jumped her horse over the thin, black stream and rode along the open meadow, looking up the hill behind her to the south.
She couldn't see horse or riders, but there were shapes moving on the hillside, and shouts.
She had lost Nihmu and Coenus and all the packhorses. She was alone in the dark, and there were ten or more riders pursuing her.
She allowed her horse to find its own way along the meadow to the base of the next ridge while she considered her options. She wasn't afraid – or rather, fear underlay her analysis, but didn't push it.
They had multiple horses; she had but one, and that one was average at best. That meant that a single error – a foot in a hole, a bad cut – and she would be taken. She knew a thousand tales of the people about pursuits like this – sometimes the hero ran, and sometimes he pursued. Such tales were often about the merit of horses.
There was already snow on top of each ridge, but none in the valleys. Plenty of light on the snow – none at all in the woods.
She went up the next ridge, clucking at her animal to make him go faster, taking the chance of laming him to gain the wood line and its relative concealment. She chewed on the end of her hair, and then, decision made, she rolled off her horse and led him in among the trees. Somewhere in her hasty dismount she lost arrows from her quiver and cursed, but she moved fast, tethered her gelding just over the crest of the next ridge and came back across the top with an arrow on her bow and two javelins from her saddle case tight in her cold fingers.
It felt better to be the hunter than the prey. She lay down in a hollow of grass near the ridge's summit, the frost heavy and white on her dark blue soldier's cloak. Then she waited.
She'd spent a fair amount of time waiting in her life – waiting for assassins, waiting for labour pains. She had the patience of the survivor. She lay still, colder and colder, her heart running faster or slower as the sounds of her pursuers came to her on the frosty air. The stars were different here, but childhood memory said that it was the middle of the second watch.
She bit her lips to avoid nodding off. The whole idea of ambushing her pursuers seemed foolish now – they had seemed so close behind her, but now they seemed cautious. She thought of rising to her feet, collecting her horse and fleeing again – but then there was a noise, quite close.
That option was gone.
'One of them came this way!' a young voice shouted. 'I have found an arrow!'
'Hush!' an older voice said.
They were close. Without turning her head, she could see a shadow – and a rising cloud of steam from a beast's breath. The easterners were quiet.
'I'll blow my horn!' the younger one said, in a mock whisper.
'You'll do no such thing!' his companion hissed.
Melitta's heart was pounding, and her mind, wandering free in the last seconds before action, focused on the
