The man walked away.
The two Macedonians made a pretty good show of wagering on which of them could piss the farthest. Then they complained about how long women took, and then they argued over their wager until Philip threatened to piss on his partner.
Satyrus’s brain finally realized that they were going to fight. It hit him between breaths, and his chest grew tighter, as if the armour was still laced too hard.
He met Philokles’ eye.
‘Scared, boy?’ Philokles asked.
Satyrus chose nodding, as being better than squeaking.
‘Me too,’ Philokles said. He flashed a grin. ‘Still, I won’t kill anyone this way.’ He winced as he got his left arm into the armour he had picked up. ‘Pull it tight, boy,’ he asked.
‘That doctor is scared worse than me,’ Satyrus said.
‘Hmm,’ Philokles answered.
Satyrus got Philokles into his armour while Kallista complained about her thighs, horses and the world. Satyrus didn’t think it was an act. The doctor sat on his gelding, glaring around him as if every rock could vomit bandits.
And then Theron yelled at Melitta for being a weak-livered bitch, and she came out from behind her rock, and they were up and moving.
Satyrus could scarcely breathe. He tried to keep his right hand off his sword hilt and his left hand off his bow. The trail was steeper here and the sharp bends were so numerous that sightlines were less than a stade on each turn. There were no trees at all, just scrub and rock and summer meadow grass and more rock.
‘Any time now,’ Philip said, about one breath before an arrow hit Philokles between the shoulders.
The arrow didn’t penetrate the bronze scale, and Philokles gave a shout and pressed his gelding into rapid motion.
Behind Satyrus, the doctor’s horse panicked and he tried to turn the beast on the narrow road, blocking the track.
Satyrus looked all around him, saw an arrow coming in and flinched away, drawing his own bow. His horse leaped forward and he gave it its head, and the beast pushed right past Philokles and he was in the lead – not a position he wanted. Two arrows hit his horse – thump-crump – and the beast’s legs collapsed, spilling Satyrus on to the scree of the trail so that he rolled clear of his dying horse and fell over the edge. He fell the length of his own body and all the wind was driven from his lungs as he hit. His head rang.
Time passed as he tried to focus his eyes. He could hear shouts on the trail above him, and then a clash of iron, or bronze. And then he had control of his lungs – and then, a few seconds later, control of his limbs. He was lying on a rock shelf a little wider than his body. He got to his feet and started collecting arrow shafts, as his fall had dumped the contents of his quiver. He grabbed ten or twelve and thrust them back into his gorytos, feeling the press of the fighting above him.
Melitta shouted something and he heard the buzz of an arrow.
He went to the end of the shelf and got a foot up on a projecting boulder, his head throbbing. As soon as he could look over the trail, he saw Theron standing over Philokles. He had his cloak over his arm and his sword in his fist, and a man lay in the trail. Philokles was clutching his knee in the gravel. Draco and Philip were back to back down the trail, with a knot of men around them, and Melitta sat between them, still mounted, shooting arrows.
Satyrus didn’t think anyone had seen him. He pushed himself over the edge of the trail and stood up, just a few horse-lengths from Theron. Then he nocked an arrow, forcing himself to go slowly, to get the nock on the string. He breathed in deeply, raised his bow, only then letting himself look at the desperate fight twenty feet away.
He chose one of Theron’s opponents. The men were in armour, but Satyrus had all the time in the world to aim at the back of the man’s thigh – an easy shot at twenty feet. The man’s leg went out from under him immediately, and he rolled and fell.
They all had armour – Satyrus was just taking that in when Theron, freed from one opponent, feinted a cut and kicked his other opponent in the shield, so that the man went over backwards. Theron kicked the man between the legs and then finished him with a short thrust to his neck, already looking around.
Theron’s other opponent made the mistake of thinking that Philokles was out of action. When he stepped across the Spartan to attack Theron’s rear, Philokles’ left hand locked on his ankle like a vice and Philokles scissored his feet up and grabbed the man’s waist and pulled him down. Theron stepped back over the Spartan as if they had designed the whole move as a dance and cut the man’s throat.
Satyrus had another arrow on his string. His sister shot and missed – an archer standing on the hillside. He ducked. But he didn’t see Satyrus, and Satyrus could still see him. He shot on instinct, a little high, a little wide to the right for the breeze.
He watched his arrow fly, thrilled as it arced and vanished into the bandit’s side. Satyrus saw it all, but he didn’t see the archer who shot him. There was a blast of pain, like falling into cold water, and then he was out.
There was a slave market in Krateai, but it wasn’t much, just a red mud-walled barrack with a heavy wooden door. The town only existed because the mountain roads divided here, the northern road going down the valleys to Gordia, while the southern road went past Manteneaon and then turned through the great pass into the plains of Anatolia, roasting in heat at this time of year. A small parcel of slaves – probably taken by thieves, claimed by no lesser being than the tyrant of Heraklea, or so the Macedonian factor said – was bound for Gordia.
Satyrus had a bruise on his side as big as his head, and the centre of it was livid and leaked pus where the scale armour had deflected the arrow’s point – mostly. His ears still rang from time to time and twice he put down his heavy load to vomit, and the guards hit him with their canes and laughed at his feeble attempts to puke.
Melitta wanted to kill them – both of them. She was carrying the heaviest load of her life, a basket full of grain purchased with threats in a village lower down the pass. It was, in fact, about half the food that their little caravan had. And the water was running out. Springs were zealously guarded in these steep defiles, and the petty lords and bandit kings who ruled from their eyries charged heavily for each beaker of water.
But their new owner apparently had a soft heart. He stopped to get them water and a night’s sleep, and bought a quantity of food. Then he offered his whole parcel for sale – Satyrus and Melitta, brother and sister, right on the edge of adulthood, and both startlingly attractive, both virgins – to a pair of Greek merchants. They also offered the other girl – also a beauty, you could tell, despite her pale face and her complaining. Satyrus was naked and had a bad bruise on his side and the girls were clothed, and men in the crowd shouted for both of the girls to be stripped. One of the soldiers in the caravan’s escort used the stock of his riding whip to knock a heckler unconscious, and that was the end of the salacious catcalls.
Men bid – some bid high, for the twins – but the Greek merchants had cash and a seal from some great power down in the green valleys, and the men of the town glared lustfully at the girls – and the boy – as they were shackled and led away.
One of the two merchants was a Spartan by his way of talking. He was the worse for wine, even at the height of the sun, and he probably paid too much for the children, for his partner, a Boeotian, glared at him until their little cavalcade rode off down the south fork. No one thought to ask how the Greeks had happened to have so many horses, or why the merchant’s caravan guards went with the Greeks.
‘Was that necessary?’ Melitta asked Theron after they had cleared all possible onlookers.