all seems normal to me.' He turned to Melitta. 'Three days?'
Melitta nodded.
Nikephoros stood still.
'Three days' truce,' Coenus intoned. 'You may land up to fifty men at a time, and you may use the beach north of the old town to cook and eat.'
'We want our camp!' Nikephoros shot back.
Coenus shook his head. 'No, Nikephoros. There is no question of that. Nor will we allow you to fortify a new place.'
Nikephoros shook his head. 'No truce, then.' He turned on his heel and walked away.
Coenus held up his hand for silence. Then he turned to Melitta. 'You know what this means!' he said quietly.
Melitta nodded. 'Listen, Coenus. There are boats in the fort. Take one and a crew of Sindi – follow his ships out of the Bay of Salmon and run down for Heraklea. Tell my brother how it lies and we'll have Leon back in no time.' She looked around at her chiefs. 'Satyrus must have a fleet.'
'And here?' Urvara asked. 'What about us?'
Melitta nodded. 'I think we went about this wrong,' she said. 'We're Sakje. We leave the farmers to hold the fort – they know we'll come back. We scatter into war bands, across the whole of the east country, and we make war our way, preying on the Sauromatae wherever we find them, acting as our own pickets for either invasion – Upazan or Eumeles. We harry whichever comes first. We concentrate if we can defeat a detachment, and otherwise we are like snowflakes on an eastern wind. Let them strike at the snow.' She waved her whip at Nikephoros, who now stood still, half a stade along the beach, looking out to sea. 'The farmers can protect their grain until my brother comes, surely.'
Urvara started to speak, but Coenus cut her off with an exclamation. 'By the gods – the grain! Nikephoros is here for the grain! He must be poor.'
Melitta spat at the notion of a king who would steal grain from his own subjects.
Urvara's eyes shone, reflecting the fire. 'That is proper war,' she said. 'That is the war the people know.'
'One day's rest,' Melitta said. 'And then we ride.' She turned to Coenus. 'Will you go for my brother?' she asked.
'You can live without me?' Coenus asked. His tone held mockery – whether of her or of himself she couldn't reckon.
She chose to take his question at face value. 'I need you,' she said. 'But no one is irreplaceable. Not even me. So go. Who will command my guard?'
'Scopasis,' Coenus said without hesitation. 'He has a keen eye and a loyal heart. Don't take his advice on military matters – he seeks glory.'
Melitta swatted her dearest advisor. 'I know that!' she said. She had tears in her eyes. She took Coenus's hand and Nihmu's. 'Come back to me.'
Nihmu was looking out at the enemy fleet. 'I can't believe I am going to sea again,' she said. 'Bah.' But she smiled. 'We'll come back,' she said.
But Melitta was chilled to see that Nihmu would not meet her eye. 'What have you seen?' Melitta demanded.
'Seen?' Nihmu asked. She shook her head, still refusing to meet Melitta's eye. 'I no longer see. The spirit world is closed to me.'
Melitta put her hand on the woman's shoulders. 'No!' she said. 'I don't believe it. What did you see?'
'Nikephoros is coming back,' Coenus said. 'Look like a queen.'
Nikephoros stopped a horse-length away and tucked his thumbs in his sash. 'T hree days,' he said. He shrugged.
Melitta drew herself up against the weight of the armour on her shoulders. 'T hree days,' she said, as graciously as she could manage.
The Boeotian nodded. He turned to Coenus. 'Your men will know where mine are lying,' he said.
Coenus handed his wine cup to his queen. 'I'm at your service, Strategos. Shall we get to it?'
Nikephoros didn't smile. His face was closed and hard, and Melitta wondered what inner struggle had just transpired. She could feel his anger across the fire. She thought that she might have scored on him with her speech – but not in a way that would help her cause. And she could see that he loved his men.
She stood on the beach, in a light rain, watching as other Greeks came ashore. She continued to stand there as they gathered wood, as the first parties brought corpses down to the beach. She stood with Urvara as they watched a party bring a man who yet lived down the rocky path to the beach, and rowed him swiftly out to the boats.
And that night, Coenus and Nihmu sailed away on a triakonter, unmolested through the enemy fleet.
With the dawn, her army vanished into the spring fields and the new grass, searching for Upazan's raiders, for ships full of enemies coming from the sea. Herself, she took her bodyguard, now swelled to twenty warriors with a hundred horses, and rode for the Hypanis. To see to Gardan's family. And to raise the georgoi to defend themselves, because war was coming to her whole country.
19
Satyrus lay that night in the house that had been Kinon's, and the old slave – Servilius – served him a superior breakfast of lentils cooked in wine and jugged hare. Then he sent another slave to his ship, to bring his men ashore.
He was still wiping the hare out of his moustache when the old slave came back to his elbow. 'Your man,' he said. Helios was there, dripping wet and nearly blue with cold.
'You swam ashore,' Satyrus said. He shook his head. 'If you die, I freed you for nothing.' He turned to the house slave. 'Servilius, can you get him warm?'
The older man nodded. 'Freed you, eh?' he said. 'Lucky man.' His tone suggested that if he were freed, he wouldn't squander his freedom by jumping into the water and swimming a stade to shore for his master. He managed this in one tilt of the head and a flat tone that no master could have found rebellious. 'And there's a visitor,' he tossed over his shoulder, as he led Helios away into the house.
'Clearly Dionysius took all the good slaves,' Satyrus muttered, walking out into the courtyard. The last time he'd been here, it had been covered in blood – dead slaves who had been his friends, and dead men who'd tried to kill him. The day he found out why men thought Philokles the Spartan was the avatar of Ares on earth.
At the gate he found a Persian mounted on a tall horse. He looked up at the man – who wore a long Persian coat against the cold, and was on one of the most beautiful horses he'd ever seen. 'Yes?' he asked.
The Persian slipped down from his charger's back like a Sakje. He was handsome, even by Persian standards, and his smile filled his face. 'No need to tell me your name, son of Kineas,' he said.
'You have the advantage of me,' Satyrus answered. Then it struck him that this must be Diodorus's messenger. 'Do I know you?' he asked.
'I hope that you've heard my name once or twice,' the Persian said. 'I was your father's friend.'
'You are Darius?' Satyrus said. 'Leon speaks of you often!'
Darius embraced him. He wore scent, like most Persians, and his coat was made of a wool so soft that it was like rabbit fur. 'It is about Leon I have come,' he said. Satyrus sat on a couch while Darius prowled the room, looking at the furnishings and cursing the worthlessness of slaves. 'Mine are no better.' Darius laughed. 'The moment I'm away from my home, nothing is done. The horses don't even foal when I leave.'
'You've been serving with Diodorus?' Satyrus asked.
Darius nodded. 'All summer. No great battles, Son of Kineas, but a great deal of scouting, patrolling and some routing out of bandits. We earned our keep. Babylon is secure, and now Seleucus is laying siege to one of Demetrios's forts in Syria. Diodorus finished his contract and left with Seleucus's full permission. Indeed, I believe our troops will be fed as far as Phrygia.'
