saddle and she barely kept her seat, her knees locked around Gryphon's barrel, the horse himself responding to the shock of impact with long training.
She brought Gryphon around in a long circle. Stay down, she thought. Stay down and live! But another part of her said, I unhorsed Marthax, and I will be queen! Around she came, and he was up on one knee, using the axe to raise himself. There was blood flowing from under his helmet, but he was on his feet.
She reined Gryphon to a stop a few horse-lengths from him.
'Don't be a fool, girl,' he snapped.
She slipped to the ground and drew her plain-hilted akinakes, the same one she'd carried at Gaza and in every fight on the plains. She put her spear into her left hand.
He came for her without another word, trudging across the snow as fast as his wound would allow.
She threw the spear left-handed, and it hit his knee above the armour and he was down in the snow again.
And he laughed. 'Arggh!' he growled.
She circled warily, because he still had the axe and he was getting up.
'Aye, you can fight,' he said. 'A good kurgan!' he said, and he stumbled at her, his axe raised for a powerful swing.
And she stepped inside his swing, took the weakest part of the blow on her shoulder and back, faked her brother's favourite Harmodius overhand – and rammed the whole length of her sword up under his arm in a rising backhand thrust. It was a move that she had practised with Satyrus and Philokles and Theron a thousand times, and it seemed fitting that he should have it, because when well done, it granted instant death.
Her blade went in to the hilt, and the king was dead before he slumped to the ground, the weight of his fall pulling the sword from her grasp.
She bent over him to retrieve her sword, and the pain of his blow to her back sprang at her like an ambush and she almost fell. Had he changed his mind at the last? Or had he granted her a fair fight because he had her measure?
He was dead. She failed to pull the blade free on the third tug, and it snapped in her hand. She dropped the worn hilt in the snow and realized that the riders were cheering her – from both sides of the line. Just as she had foreseen.
At her feet lay an old man, his beard red with blood, his lined face freed from his helmet by her last blow. She bent down, and closed his eyes.
Coenus rode up, having collected Gryphon's reins. Behind him was Urvara and Parshtaevalt, and across the field, Marthax's commanders were surging forward as well.
'Hail, Queen of the Assagatje,' Coenus said.
'He gave it to me,' she said.
'Aye. Well, he was always one of the best,' Coenus said. 'We'd never have beaten Zopryon without him.'
Other men and women were surrounding her. She got herself up on Gryphon with as much struggle as she'd ever had in her life. 'Listen!' she shouted, and they were silent.
'Srakorlax!' Scopasis called. Other Sakje took up the name.
'Listen to me!' she shouted. Gryphon stood as steady as a rock between her legs. 'Marthax died the king of the Assagatje – the heir of Satrax. In the spring, we will build him a great kurgan on the riverbank. Every man of his knights will give a horse, and I will give a hundred more. He was the lord of ten thousand horses!'
Four hundred voices should not be able to fill the icy wastes of the sea of grass in winter, but their roar echoed joy – and relief that there was to be no bloody civil war.
'And then we will gather our might, and the Sauromatae will feel the weight of our hooves!' she called.
And again they roared.
15
Herakles stood naked except for his lion skin, towering over Satyrus's supine form. At a distance, Satyrus regretted his own death, and his spirit hung over the room, watching the hero-god standing beside his body.
Thanatos entered from the floor, striding into the room as if climbing invisible steps from Hades below.
'Mine,' he said.
'No,' Herakles said.
'Mine!' Death hissed, and his voice was the voice of every creature of the underworld, and the stench of death and the flat smell of old earth accompanied him. His garments were of rotted linen, and his crown was gold so long buried as to have a patina.
Herakles stood between Death and the bed. 'No,' he said, and crossed his mighty arms.
'Ten times over!' Death hissed. 'Am I some demi-mortal, to be treated so?'
'Begone,' Herakles said.
Thanatos was no coward. 'Bah,' he spat, and sand dribbled from his mouth. 'Let me see how much of you remains mortal, little godling.'
Herakles shrugged. 'I have tried your strength, Uncle.'
Thanatos struck suddenly, with a sword shaped like a sickle, the kepesh of Aegypt. Herakles caught the wrist of the hand that held the sword and lifted the god and his sword clear of the floor and walked out of the room, on to the balcony over the sea.
'Cool your head in the kingdom of your brother, Poseidon,' Herakles said.
'I took your father in his moment of triumph, boy! And I'll do the same to you!' Thanatos said, and his dreadful eyes crossed with Satyrus's and he knew that was meant for him.
And then Herakles turned and threw the god of death over the balcony.
There was no splash.
And in the way of dreams, Herakles led him along the river many parasangs, until they came to a temple, and Herakles led him to the altar – but it was no altar, and an old man, supported by two brawny apprentices, was forging iron on an anvil, and the scene was lit in the red of the forge, and as Satyrus watched, the bent blade was quenched, and Satyrus smiled in his dream, and then he was being pulled by the hand through the tangled ways of the night market, passing whores and rag-pickers and basket-weavers, passing a baker who did his business at night for the greater profit, and a man who sold stolen goods, and a woman who claimed her mother was Moira, goddess of fate, and that she could see the future. Herakles walked past them all, and none of them saw him, except the daughter of Moira, who raised her eyes from a fraudulent fortune and drew her stole over her head in terror.
They entered a tavern, and men moved out of the way of the god of heroes without knowing that they did so, stepping aside at a movement in the corner of the eye, and Satyrus moved in his wake. He could smell the sour wine, and smell also the tang of the poppy juice that the innkeeper kept in a glass bottle – real temple glass, worth its weight in gold. He almost lost the god in his sudden flood of desire to possess that wretched stuff, to change this dream of sordid reality for the colours that spoke like gods.
He balanced between two steps, one of which would lead him, invisible and wraithlike, to the bottle, the other of which would follow his god. And then he followed Herakles through a curtain of soiled leather, and then through a wall of dry stone chinked with mud, to a filthy room that might once have been whitewashed and now stank of old wine and rotten food.
He knew the man at the table instantly. It was Sophokles, the Athenian doctor-assassin, and he had four men crouching on the dirt floor and a fifth person, a woman, standing by the door, her arms crossed over her breasts. They all turned their heads as the god stepped among them, and Sophokles stood suddenly, took a breath and looked around him.
'Something – has come,' he said. 'Damn Aegypt and her walking spirits!'
Herakles didn't speak, but pointed mutely at the woman by the door.
Satyrus knew her, and he…
