abject.
'You're an idiot,' she said, and touched his cheek. 'You saved my life. Twice. Ten times.' She looked around – Gaweint was there, and she didn't see anyone missing. 'I'm alive. You're all alive. That was Upazan.'
'Upazan!' Gaweint said, turning in the saddle. 'Uh! I am cursed! Upazan unhorsed, and we missed him?'
'Hush,' Agreint said. 'He cannot be killed by sword or spear. It is prophesied!'
A dozen young men competed to tell each other that they feared no prophecy.
'Well, he can't be killed by a thrown helmet,' Melitta said. 'I tried that.' An hour later, Upazan tried to rush their retreat with a sudden charge across the last fields of the sea of grass. Instead of turning to fight, Ataelus's rearguard – Buirtevaert's men – made for the forest edge. Then a sudden shower of Sindi arrows fell like deadly hail on Upazan's knights, reaping their unarmoured horses. Ten went down in tumbling heaps and the charge swerved and became a flight.
Ataelus grinned like the very image of death, but he forbade any warrior from a counter-charge.
He turned to Melitta and Scopasis. They were the last three mounted warriors on the road. All around them, Temerix's Sindi were shooting from cover. Melitta could see Upazan in the setting sun, his helmet flaming gold – but he was falling back. He had only a thousand warriors – more joined him every second. He'd hoped to surprise Ataelus with a sudden charge, and instead, he'd been galled.
'We could have had him,' Scopasis spat.
Ataelus smiled and shook his head. 'Upazan is not for you,' he said without looking at the former outlaw. 'Many men, and not a few women, claim the right to kill him.' Ataelus watched the Sauromatae king retire with undisguised glee. He rode out on to the grass, and the last light of the sun turned his armour to fire.
'Hah! Upazan, I feel your hate from here, and I laugh at you!' Ataelus called. 'You fight like a fool! Your women have more sense!'
Arrows began to fall near Ataelus.
Upazan sat alone, out of range, his golden helmet like a beacon, and he said nothing.
'Or are all your women dead?' Ataelus yelled. 'Go home, usurper, or we will water the grass with your blood.'
A man – a man in good armour, well mounted – reacted. He set his horse to a gallop and rode at Ataelus, his voice a scream of rage. He had a long-handled axe over his head, and his face, as he came close, was a mask of grief and rage.
Temerix stepped out of the woods and shot him. It was a long shot, and a man less desperate would have seen the flight of the shaft.
'That makes me happy,' Temerix's grim voice said.
'This is not a war of revenge,' Melitta said.
Temerix looked up at her. 'Yes,' he said. 'Yes it is. Revenge. They burned us, and we will bury them. Anything else is foolishness.'
Ataelus rode his horse back under the trees. He shook his head. 'Not for revenge?' he asked. 'I heard that you swore an oath that made the hills ring. I heard it on the sea of grass. So it must have been quite an oath.'
Melitta hung her head. 'I did. So did my brother.'
'Lady, Upazan hunted us like animals. Our women and our children and our animals have been prey for his lance for many years.' Ataelus's eyes seemed to glow in the last light.
'We killed their children,' Melitta said.
'Yes!' Ataelus said. 'And now their hate will be a pure thing – a blind thing. Only blind with hate could Upazan be so foolish as to follow us down the Tanais.'
Melitta took time to sleep. And when the images of the day came back again and again, she rose, collected a wineskin and drank it. She was scarcely the only warrior to behave so, and soon enough, she was asleep.
PART IV
21
Eumeles looked out over the morning waves and spat contemplatively into the dark waters.
'Where did my little nemesis get so many ships?' he asked.
None of the officers on the stern chose to answer him. Idomenes took a deep breath and said what was on his mind.
'I warned you,' he said. Go ahead and kill me, you Cretan, Idomenes thought. I said it. I feel better. I hate him, Idomenes realized with a start.
'Yes,' Eumeles said, looking at the rows of masts on the horizon. 'Yes, you did. Why is he keeping his ships in column?'
Aulus, his admiral, bowed his head. 'He hides his strength. Until he deploys, we cannot count his ships. We're in formation – he can count ours.'
'Then why are we in formation?' Eumeles asked with the impatient tone of the superior mind who must do all the thinking.
Aulus kept his eyes on the deck. 'His rowers must be better trained, lord. I cannot trust mine to deploy so fast. You saw, lord.' The man was aggrieved. 'It took us an hour to form this line.'
Eumeles continued to watch the oncoming fleet. 'I suppose it is fruitless for me to ask where he got these ships with their trained oarsmen. Ptolemy must have given him the whole fleet of Aegypt. I have been used as bait.' He shook his head. 'Never mind. If I survive, I'll work this out. What can we do? Half our ships are inside the Bay of Salmon, covering Nikephoros. Advise me.'
The officers all looked at each other.
Idomenes was in the remarkable position of actually having an answer – and yet, in his head, he'd changed sides. Murdering bastard wants to enslave his own farmers? Too dumb to live, Idomenes thought, but at the same time, he spoke good advice. Perhaps he was so used to being ignored, he didn't think his advice would be followed. He thought that it was strange how his head could be so divided.
'Run,' Idomenes said.
The naval officers all breathed together – relief, because he had stated what they all feared to say.
Eumeles turned his head slowly, until his mad eyes rested on Idomenes. 'Go on,' he said.
'Run to Nikephoros, combine the fleet and fight with the beach and our new fort at your back. With Nikephoros's men aboard as marines, you'll have an advantage.' Idomenes was shocked at his own temerity, but he kept right on. 'You may lose Pantecapaeum – for a week or a month.'
Eumeles' pursed lips jerked as if he'd been struck. 'Pantecapaeum may already be lost,' he said. 'My not quite namesake and those treacherous curs from Olbia…'
Idomenes shrugged. 'I doubt that the Olbians can take the city, lord. But I don't doubt that Nemesis can. Either way, when you combine your fleet, you can beat him. And then take it all back.'
It occurred to Idomenes that he was giving bad counsel. The people of Pantecapaeum loathed Eumeles. He would never recover the city once it was lost. Even if he won a naval victory, he'd become a species of pirate.
I could kill him, Idomenes thought, but he was not a killer.
'Foolishness,' said old Gaius, one of their Italiot mercenaries. 'Fight now. Once you run, his men will be heartened. Fights like this are all heart, lord. None of it is skill. The harpists lie. Once his men have a taste of our fear, we're done.'
And Idomenes could see that there was truth in that argument, too.
'Even now, my ally Upazan must be in the vale of the Tanais, reaping the peasants like wheat and sowing
