King of the Bosphorus

'Stand outside and yell?' Melitta asked. 'I don't know. But if you won't summon them, I'll stand in the snow and yell. Yesterday's council was summoned by Ataelus. I was invited. Today, I'll do the inviting.'

Coenus nodded. 'I'll do it, lady,' he said. 'I am friends with all, and yet your man. I will go from yurt to yurt and invite them to come – where?'

'To my yurt,' Melitta said. 'Now. I want Ataelus and Samahe, Urvara and Eumenes, Tameax, and Parshtaevalt – and his tanist, if he has one. That handsome boy he had at his tail yesterday? His son?'

Nihmu shook her head. 'Sister's son,' she said. 'Gaweint, by name.' She smiled. 'He is handsome,' she said, more to Coenus than to Melitta.

Coenus shrugged. 'If you say so, my beauty.'

Melitta was – outraged was too strong, but surprised, even shocked, that they should flirt openly in front of her. 'Nihmu!' she said, before her political mind could stop her. 'You have a husband!'

Nihmu smiled a cat's smile. 'So I do. He is a prisoner with the enemy, and I bend my efforts to his rescue.'

Melitta flicked a glance at Coenus, who was equally unperturbed at this almost open accusation of adultery. 'If she thinks ill of us-' Coenus began.

'Ill?' Melitta asked.

There was silence in the tent.

'I wish Sappho were here,' Coenus said.

Melitta looked at both of them. They looked back at her. Melitta knew enough about emotion and body language to know that they were neither embarrassed nor defensive – an attitude which enraged her.

'Very well,' she said. 'Summon my leaders.' She turned on her heel and then scrambled to get out of the tent flap with dignity. What are they doing? Their actions will reflect on me! she thought, and then decided that was unfair. Most Sakje didn't know anything about Nihmu's husband – and fewer would care. Sakje women did as they pleased. Sex was seldom the driving force among the nomads that it was in the cities.

She went back to her yurt and sat, waiting for them to come. The time stretched on and on – in some ways, the longest wait of her life. Early on, she began to wonder what she would do if they did not come.

But a yurt's walls are thin, and even as she fed her anger with thoughts of their disobedience, her ears told her that they were coming – Parshtaevalt shouted for his clean fur tunic, and sent another rider to find Gaweint, who was hunting.

And then they came, all together, which led her to believe that they had met somewhere else. Urvara entered first. She bowed – a rare gesture – and when bid, seated herself at the fire. One by one, the other senior chiefs entered and sat.

Melitta smiled and offered them wine. Coenus slipped in – Coenus, the Megaran aristocrat – and he served them each in horn cups that held the heat. Nihmu came and sat at the fire, and Melitta allowed her, although she was not sure what Nihmu's role was, nor what her arrival presaged.

'Let me speak to the point,' Melitta said when they were seated. 'It was never my desire to gather an army. You are gathering an army. Send them home.'

Ataelus nodded. 'We do it for you.'

Melitta kept her voice even. 'Send them home.'

Urvara smiled. 'Melitta, we understand that-'

Melitta cut her off ruthlessly. 'I care nothing for your understanding. Send them home, or I will ride away and you can rot in the snow. Either I am to be the lady of the Assagatje or I am not. My name draws these riders. My name alone will bind the Assagatje.' She looked around, pushed down her nerves and her quickened heartbeat and forced herself to sound calm. 'I do not intend to be saskar – a tyrant. But in this first thing, I will be obeyed, or we will part our ways.'

Ataelus shook his head. 'Marthax will not bow his head to a girl.'

Melitta shrugged. 'Then I will kill him in combat, one to one.'

'Why should he agree to such a combat?' Urvara asked.

'Is he a fool?' Melitta asked. 'Really? This camp – in winter, in the open – proves that my name will gather an army. His name will not. He knows this as well as I. Let us give him dignity – to acknowledge me if he will, or to die under my knife if he will not.'

Parshtaevalt stood up. 'Lady, he was – and remains – the deadliest lance on the plains. Marthax will kill you – and that is the end of our hopes.'

Melitta shrugged. 'No,' she said. 'He will not kill me.'

Nihmu leaned forward. 'All here love you, honey bee. You must listen-'

'No,' Melitta said. 'No. I will not listen any more. Each of you may keep twenty-five knights. That is all. We will ride for Marthax's camp in the morning, and if I am not obeyed, I will ride for the coast.'

One by one, they shuffled out – anger written on every face. Who likes to be given orders by a younger woman? she thought. But she kept her face impassive.

When they were all gone, Coenus cleaned her wine-heating pot with a coarse linen rag. He looked at her, waiting for her to speak. When she did not, he finally put the pot on the pile of her dishes and stood up.

'It had to be done,' he said.

'Are you the only one truly my man?' she asked.

Coenus smiled. 'Far from it, lady. I have known you every day of your life – they know you only from afar. So they will worship you, where I already know what you will do. As does Nihmu. And none of us offers you anything but respect.' He gave her his lopsided grin. 'But – it had to be done. Even parents must eventually relinquish control of children.'

She smiled back. 'Is this, too, something about which your Xenophon wrote?'

He shook his head. 'He never wrote on the magic of command,' Coenus said. 'I learned those lessons from your father, and I have little to teach you. Why are you so certain that you can put Marthax down? Is it the prophecy?'

Melitta sat on her furs. 'Yes and no. I know it.'

Coenus came and sat next to her. 'They don't know it.'

'They must trust me,' Melitta said.

Coenus stared at the coals of her fire. 'Lady, they know that in a trial of arms, their faction – your faction – will triumph. Any other method has elements of risk. Their logic is almost Greek – their way will not fail.'

'Listen to me, Coenus,' Melitta said, in Greek. She spoke fast, the way Philokles taught when making an argument. 'That logic is false. In a trial of arms, we would win for a day. Marthax would lose a battle, or refuse it, and ride away to the north, unbeaten, to gather tribesmen and be a thorn in my side. And my people and his people would fight for a generation – perhaps more – while the Sauromatae creep into our eastern door and the Cruel Hands and the Grass Cats settle in the rich river valleys and become Sindi. His people and my people – raid and counter-raid – and never would we be one people as we were in Satrax's day. But if I succeed, in a month, I am queen of the Assagatje. And when the ground is hard, all our horses will go east against the Sauromatae.'

'Your mother followed the very strategy that you say Marthax would adopt,' Coenus said. 'She rode away and formed her own alliances.'

'I know it,' she answered. 'I grew up with it. I have thought about it all my adult life. I think that she did what she did for my father. For him it was right. For the war against Alexander, it was right. But – for the Assagatje, it was wrong. And I will remedy that.'

Coenus got up. 'You think deeply. I don't know which party has the right of it, but I will help to see that they obey you – if only because that is the way it must be, or your role has no meaning.' He reached out, and they clasped hands.

At the tent door, she stopped him. 'You have never held a major command,' she said. 'And yet my father loved you, and you are the best of warriors.'

'I dislike ordering men to do things I do not do myself,' Coenus said.

Melitta raised an eyebrow. 'You are an aristocrat. You give orders with every breath.'