He nodded, though, and turned his face away.
When she had mounted, she shook her head, wondering if the borders of the waking world and the sleeping world had drifted, because she felt as if she could see the dead men following at her horse's tail – quite a few dead men, for a girl her age. The shock robbed her of speech for a moment and made her neck hairs quiver. She rode back to the boy with the arrow in his chest. The ghosts were terrifying apparitions – as if they were being tormented by some mad god.
'I've changed my mind,' she said to the wounded boy. 'If you live, you live.' She put a heavy wool blanket of Greek weaving over him, and then another.
He grunted.
She watched him for a moment, and knew her sudden burst of mercy was for nothing. He coughed blood, cursed her and died. She watched as his shade dragged itself from his corpse like some slithering maggot leaving the skin of a dead thing and joined the grim troupe at her tail.
'Artemis, stand with me,' she said, and slitted her eyes to avoid seeing the apparitions. Then, ever practical, she stripped the blankets back off him, rolled them tight and rode back to her camp, mind blank. There, she made a big fire for the first time in three nights, killed the smallest horse and gorged herself on half-cooked horsemeat before falling into a dream-haunted sleep that made her moan and toss. Twice she awoke, to relieve herself and to shiver in fear at the killing and the blood and what she had so easily become. Both times, she went back to sleep, and the third time she awoke it was day, and the ghosts were gone, and no new pursuers were on her trail.
She bathed in the icy stream and washed the blood off her hands and the pus off her cheek. The water was as much of a shock as the ghosts, and she wondered how bad her fever was. Then she warmed herself by the fire and put on the fresh, dry wool shirt of one of the dead men.
Her cheek smelled bad. She couldn't get away from it – she smelled like death. Perhaps the man's arrowpoint had been poisoned. Perhaps she was already dead – that might be why she could see the dead so clearly.
She didn't remember packing up her camp or riding – only that sunset came and found her still mounted, moving directly away from it, following the shadows of the trees as they pointed north and east.
But suddenly, as if by magic, she was sitting on a bluff, looking down at an immense sheet of water – ten stades across. She laughed, because she knew this place – indeed, the last rays of the sun shone on the distant Temple of Artemis on the far bank, impossibly remote from her and yet painfully close. Coenus had built the temple of white marble with the spoils of his campaigns.
She was on the Tanais, in country she knew. She just couldn't make her mind work.
She rode east all night, on the firm high ground above the river. She rode, not so much because she feared pursuit as because she feared to get off her horse.
Finally, in the first faint grey light of not-dawn, she dismounted and squatted to piss, her back against a birch tree, her reins in her hand like some hero in a Sakje tale, and she understood, as if it was the most profound thing of her life, that she was living in a Sakje tale – as if Coenus and her father had lived in the Iliad. She saw it as clearly as she saw the salmon running in the winter river at her feet.
To no one in particular, or perhaps to the gods – perhaps to the dozens of ghosts who screamed in silent torment at the edge of her vision, she spoke. 'If I live,' she said, 'this feat of arms – this endless butchery of men and horse – will live for ever among the people.' She shrugged. Then she smiled and her face hurt. 'I smell of death,' she said suddenly, to the ghosts.
They never answered her, but they followed, and as the sun climbed the sky she saw that they came closer and closer, and she cursed them. 'Coenus must have killed a hundred men!' she said. 'Haunt him!'
And later, as she crossed a feeder stream running white and cold down the hillside above her, she addressed Nihmu. 'Why are you lying with him?' she asked, but received no answer.
She's not here, silly, she reminded herself, unsure whether that was good or bad.
That night, she made no fire and she lacked the strength to cook the horsemeat or even to unpack the animals. She pulled her riding horse down to the ground with her, drew the dead man's furs over her head against the horse and slept fitfully. She was awakened when her horse, annoyed, pushed itself to its feet, dumping her on the ground and letting in the icy air.
She tried to lie still – perhaps even to accept death. Death was very, very close; she could smell his carrion breath. The moon had set and it was utterly black. Her heart roared and pounded, and she waited for him to take her.
Her horse farted.
She laughed, and forced herself to her feet. With the patience of the survivor, she rolled the furs in a bundle and got them tied with thongs, and then slung them over her riding horse. She was unsurprised to find that all the horses were still gathered around her. She picked up the lead rein and mounted Gryphon, then rode away into the utter dark.
She slept while riding, the horses finding their own way, and awoke to pale grey light and the sound of her own horse whinnying and another horse answering from her right. She froze. Half asleep, half in the world of dreams, she raised her head and saw a figure from her childhood sitting on a shaggy pony – Samahe, 'The Black- Haired One'.
'Oh, Auntie,' she said, and then shook her head. 'Silly me.'
But the image of Samahe didn't waver. Instead, she pushed her mount forward and emerged from the grey light, a bow bent in her hand and the arrow pointed right at Melitta's breasts. 'Who are you?' her aunt asked.
'Oh,' Melitta said. 'Am I dead?'
The arrowhead lowered a fraction. The Sakje woman whistled shrilly between her teeth.
Then Melitta had time to be afraid, because suddenly she was surrounded in the dawn, the first pink light showing her a dozen riders, both men and women, all around her, their breath rising on the frozen air and their horses making the noises of real horses in the world of the sun.
'Sauromatae girl,' said a man at her shoulder. 'I have something nice and round for her!' he said, and gave a cruel laugh.
But the woman shook her head. 'I think I know her. Girl! What's your name?'
Melitta shook her head. 'I smell of death,' she said.
'That's true,' said another Sakje, a bearded man in a red jacket at her elbow. 'She's got five Sauromatae horses and her quiver is empty. How d'you get that cut on your face, girl?'
'Killing,' Melitta said.
'Her Sakje is pure enough,' the older woman said.
'Samahe?' Melitta asked. She was hesitant, because this could still be a dream.
The men and women around her fell back in wonder.
'You know me?' Samahe asked, her voice eager.
'Of course I know you. You are the wife of Ataelus, and I am the daughter of Srayanka. We are cousins.' All this seemed as natural as breathing. 'Am I dead, or do you yet live?'
As soon as she said 'Srayanka', the woman pushed her horse forward and threw her arms, bow and all, around her. And the horsemen began to shout, a long, thin scream – Aiyaiyaiyaiyai!
'Oh, my little honey bee. What – what has happened?' Samahe ran a finger down her face and shook her head.
'I killed some men, and I thought perhaps that I died.' Melitta took a breath. 'I smell like death.'
And with those words, she fell straight from Samahe's arms to the ground, and the world fled away.
PART II
