horse transports to catch Eumeles at sea. I had to do it – but a thousand professional cavalry would be the balance of this battle.'
Melitta had to smile at her brother. 'People and spirit,' she said. 'With or without Diodorus, what will win tomorrow is spirit. So let us talk to every man and every woman, even if we get no sleep.'
At Ataelus's fire, Ataelus was awake, with his son by his side. The little man embraced Satyrus. 'You look for your father,' he said, enigmatically.
Satyrus nodded. 'I look like him?' he asked.
'For him,' Ataelus said. 'You have looks for him.'
Melitta introduced her brother to Tameax as her baqca, and to Thyrsis, and to all the nomads with whom she had lived in the weeks before she'd made her bid for kingship.
And while they stood on the low hill, Urvara came with Eumenes of Olbia and many of their people, all carrying torches. Nihmu came, and Coenus, and Lykeles and Lycurgus from the Olbians. All the old people, the ones who had gone east with Kineas and Srayanka twenty years before.
They surprised Satyrus by singing. First the Sakje sang, and they clapped while they sang, and Melitta joined them, her low voice merging seamlessly with the tribesmen and women around her. They sang about Srayanka and her horse, and how her eyes were the blue of winter rivers in the sun. And then they sang about Samahe, and how she had nursed infants, and how many men she had killed in battle, and how she had killed a snow leopard in the high mountains north of Sogdiana. And another song about how she and Ataelus had hunted something monstrous in the east, and lived.
Then Coenus and Eumenes rose and sang, and many of Eumenes' young men took parts. Abraham appeared with Panther and Demostrate, Diokles, Neiron – dozens of the sailors and marines from the camp on the beach. They all knew the Greek songs. Satyrus walked from his place by his sister to stand with the new archon of Olbia. They sang a song from the Iliad, and another about Penelope, and a third song about Athena, the warrior goddess, that men said was by Hesiod, or perhaps Homer himself. They sang well, for men who didn't sing together, and when they were finished, Ataelus stepped into the firelight.
'Sometimes, a Sakje is lost,' he said. His voice was tired with weeping, and he didn't attempt Greek, so that Eumenes, who had so often interpreted for Ataelus, did the office once again. 'Sometimes, a rider vanishes in the snow, or on a scout, and we never find his body. So my beloved was lost, although she fell in full view of a thousand of the people.'
He walked to Melitta, and then led her to Satyrus. 'Our spirit is back with us,' he said. He pointed at the sword Satyrus wore. 'T hat is the sword of Kineax, that has returned. The stories of this spring will live for ever. You, every one of you, are in the songs now. You are in the songs.' He nodded. 'Samahe was in the songs from her youth. If we lose tomorrow, all these songs will be forgotten. If we win, she will live for ever.'
He let go of the hands of the twins.
And then the Sakje passed wine around, and drank.
'My father does not expect to live through the battle,' Thyrsis said to Melitta.
Satyrus shook his head. 'I hear that too often,' he said. Satyrus felt as if he had never been to sleep – and he had had a straw bed and two heavy cloaks, and Helios to massage the muscles of his arm.
'Nikephoros has asked for another parley,' Helios reported.
Melitta had insisted on sleeping with Ataelus's people, and Satyrus wasn't sure whether to go to her or send for her – but that was just foolishness, and he pulled a chiton over his head, arranged the folds, clasped his cloak. 'Boots, Helios. I'll probably ride. Panther – will our sailors serve as peltasts?'
Panther was drinking wine at Satyrus's fire. He had a wound – all of them had wounds. But he smiled. 'Satyrus, I have done more fighting in the last ten days than in the last ten years – and you are asking me for another fight. I'll arm them and hold the camp. If we get bold, we might harry a flank. Think of the rowing these men gave you yesterday.'
Satyrus nodded. 'Too true, and I will not offend the gods by asking more. Care to come to the parley?'
Panther nodded. 'Yes. I may tip the scales.'
Together they made their way across the camps in the first light. Satyrus was stiff in both shoulders, but the massage helped. 'Helios? I need a new shield.'
'I'm on it, lord,' Helios answered.
Melitta was up and drinking wine – Satyrus never drank wine so early, and he was worried to see his sister drink down two cups of unwatered wine for her breakfast.
'Parley?' Satyrus asked, and she gathered her war leaders. Eumenes and Memnon joined them, and they all clasped hands and embraced, one by one, with Parshtaevalt and Ataelus, Coenus and even Graethe.
'Like old times,' Graethe said.
'We need Diodorus to be complete,' Eumenes said. He suddenly appeared older, taller, in a white chiton and a purple-edged white cloak. He had a chaplet of gold oak leaves in his hair.
'You're out-dressing me,' Satyrus said, and smiled, because when you are a king, men mistake humour for assault.
Eumenes grinned, suddenly the young man they'd grown up with. 'I knew I'd be in brilliant company,' he said.
They poured a libation from an old cup that Eumenes had.
'This was Kineas's,' he said. 'Every time we fought, we poured wine from this cup, and then we all drank from it. To all the gods,' he said, and one by one they drank.
When it came to Satyrus, he saw that it was a plain clay soldier's cup. But he drained it, and in the bottom he saw his father's name in the old letters, and tears came to his eyes.
He looked around. His hand reached out and he took his sister's hand. 'This is my father's dream,' he said. 'And my mother's. A kingdom on the Tanais, where free men and women can make their lives without fear. Upazan and Eumeles decided to destroy that dream.'
Melitta spoke up, as if they had planned the speech together. 'Today we reverse fifteen years of their evil,' she said. 'Many of you have fought for days already. This will end it. And when we look at the kurgan by the river, we will remember Kineas and Srayanka as the founders, not as the defeated.'
Panther spoke up. 'Is there anything that you would accept from this parley?' he asked. 'I am the closest thing to a neutral party here, as a man of Rhodos.'
Satyrus and Melitta looked at each other.
'Let's hear what they have to say,' Satyrus said. But they shared a different message. 'We would confirm you in your kingdom,' Eumeles said. His voice was reasonable. He had Upazan behind him, and Nikephoros, and his advisor, Idomenes, and a dozen other officers, Sauromatae and Greek. 'You will have restored to you all the kingdom that your mother held, and we will recognize your sister as the lady of the Assagatje on the sea of grass. And my friend Upazan will go back to his land, keeping only the high ground between the Tanais and the Rha.'
Melitta watched Eumeles the way a farmer watches a snake while he repairs a fence. The farmer knows that if he goes too close, the snake will bite, but from a distance, the snake is merely – fascinating. She looked at her brother. He looked back, and they shared a thought as clearly as if it had been spoken aloud.
And he left it to her to speak.
She stepped forward. Eumeles bowed – Eumeles, who had murdered her mother. She let herself look at him, and in her mind, she allowed Smell of Death to take her face from Melitta, so that her face settled into a mask, and the scar was her face to the world.
'No,' she said. She spoke in a calm, low voice, more like a mother soothing a child than the voice of doom. 'No,' she said again, even more quietly, so that Upazan leaned forward to listen.
Eumeles shrugged. 'Tell us what you want,' he said.
'Your head on my spear,' she said, and looked him full in the eyes, so that he could see the hate, feel it come across the gap of air and go down his spine.
And it did.
'No peace, killer of my mother. No peace, killer of my father. You are dead men. Go from here and be dead.'
Even Upazan flinched.
'We will have peace when Upazan and Eumeles lie in their blood and rot,' she said, her voice still quiet and calm. 'If the rest of you wish to give them to us, so be it. We will then arrange a peace. Otherwise,' she smiled for
