‘Go to him, then,’ he said. ‘Take your slaves and go.’
‘You were right,’ she said, her voice dead.
‘Right?’ he asked. What did he expect her to say?
‘My garrison wasn’t worth a crap,’ she said coldly. ‘I wish you had joined me.’
He shook his head. ‘Get you gone before I change my mind,’ he said.
In an hour, she was gone. And he was master of a citadel full of corpses.
16
Niceas’s funeral games lasted three days, after two weeks of preparations. Slaves and freedmen and farmers cleaned the citadel, and Kineas declared that all taxes and tribute would be remitted in exchange for a tithe on spring fodder and wagons. Nor did he offer any other choice — his soldiers collected the tithe with drawn weapons. It was ugly, like everything about Hyrkania in the aftermath of the escalade.
Eumenes and Leon seemed reconciled by their shared roles as heroes, but their reconciliation lasted only until they wrestled for the prize of the funeral games on the third day, with Mosva watching them. The bout became ugly and all their wounds were ripped open in a single word when Leon said something while his opponent had his head down in a hold, and then they were fighting like dogs.
Leon won.
Ataelus had returned with the rest of the prodromoi on the third day of games, in time to join all the old hands in throwing torches on to Niceas’s pyre. He wept with them, and threw his best gold-hilted dagger on to the roaring blaze.
Philokles had barely spoken since the storming. He sat in silence and was drunk most of the time. Only Kineas and Diodorus and Sappho knew that he had tried to kill himself with his sword. Sappho had caught him at it and they had all wrestled the blade away from him, Sappho cut and bleeding, until Philokles screamed, ‘Can I do nothing but injure and kill! Let me go!’ and subsided into weeping. That was in the first few days after the action, and Philokles wasn’t the only man in despair.
At the games, he was silent. He stood alone, and when men went to embrace him, he turned away. Kineas failed to move him. It was Ataelus who pushed past his rudeness. He placed himself in front of the Spartan, hands on hips, weeping unabashedly in the Scythian manner. When he had the silent man’s attention, he demanded, ‘Niceas for killing enemies?’
Philokles’s face was streaked with tears in the firelight. ‘Yes.’
‘How many in last fight?’ Ataelus asked. He didn’t seem to know, or care, what Philokles was suffering.
Philokles flinched. ‘Two,’ he said.
Ataelus nodded. ‘Two is good,’ he said. ‘And you?’ He looked at the Spartan curiously. ‘For revenge? You were killing?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Philokles bitterly. ‘I killed quite a few. Six or seven in combat — perhaps twice that in cowering, defenceless men. At least one woman. I am very proud. ’
Ataelus, immune to his tone, nodded. ‘Good. Twenty men — good. And you, Kineax?’
Kineas shrugged. ‘The same.’
Ataelus shook his head. ‘For thinking my friend goes to hell alone! Long faces and tears! Dies like airyanam! Kills two, even for being wounded! And friends who love him kill forty mens to serve him in death? For what crying?’
Kineas took his arm. ‘We behaved like beasts,’ he said. He didn’t know how to explain it to the Sakje.
But Ataelus shrugged him off. He looked around the ruddy faces lit by the pyre. ‘War is for making all men beasts,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘Hunt men, kill men, act like beast, hunt like beast. Yes?’ He shook his head. ‘All war bad. All not-war good. But when for making war, then for fighting like beast. Yes?’ He shrugged. ‘Love Niceas,’ he said, and struck his chest. Then he embraced Philokles, who tried to avoid the embrace and was then trapped by the smaller man.
And one by one, all the old hands, the men who had ridden north from Tomis almost two years before and the men who had followed Alexander from Granicus to Ecbatana and the newer men who had stopped Zopryon on the plains, embraced like brothers, and they all embraced Philokles.
That night, for the first time in months, Kineas dreamed of the tree. And Niceas stood among the tangled roots with Ajax, and both of them offered him hands full of sand. He wept when he awoke, but he began to understand. It scared him.
Carlus survived, as did Darius. They each took the better part of the next month to recover, and Kineas had so many wounded from the storming that he couldn’t start his little force in motion. As it turned out, the weather, which had promised an early spring, then deteriorated, and it wasn’t until a week after Niceas’s funeral that they had another sight of the sun. The ground began to dry.
Kineas left Heron and Lycurgus in charge, just as Diodorus had originally planned, with orders to forward some of the bullion and use the rest to pay their garrison and cover Leon’s investments. The storming of the citadel had gained them all the queen’s treasures — not the richest hoard in the east, but enough to satisfy an army of a thousand men for some months and buy them as many remounts as they could find.
‘Are we founding an empire?’ Diodorus asked. ‘First the settlement on the Rha and now a town on the Kaspian.’
Kineas just looked at him. ‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘The fort on the Rha is Sakje territory, and this is in the satrapy of Hyrkania. We won’t hold either for any time. Just long enough to secure our retreat.’
Diodorus rubbed his beard. They all had them now. Winter had eliminated the last clean-shaven men. ‘Another hundred mercenaries came in today,’ he said. ‘Mostly Greeks.’
Kineas grunted.
‘Heron is trying to hire your Leosthenes to command a thousand hoplites,’ he said. ‘Leosthenes is ready to leave the satrap. Man’s doomed.’
‘As long as Heron pays with his own money, I told him he was welcome to try for Pantecapaeum,’ Kineas said. ‘We have no friends there. They exiled Demostrate, too.’
Diodorus whistled. ‘Heron will make a dangerous tyrant,’ he said.
Nicanor came into the megaron. ‘Prince Lot is ready to ride,’ he said.
Kineas already had his armour on. He went out into the weak spring sun, mounted Thalassa and rode to the head of the parade, where all of the Sauromatae waited, their goods loaded on pack mules and six heavy wagons. Lady Bahareh nodded to him as he rode past and Gwair Blackhorse raised his lance and gave a ypp! of exultation.
Lot rode out to the head of his column. ‘I’m glad to be free of this place,’ he confessed, in Sakje.
Kineas wrapped his arms around the other man and they embraced, breastplate to scale shirt. ‘Stay safe. Pick us a good camp.’
‘Hurry along, Kineas. Don’t dawdle!’ The Sauromatae prince reared his horse for show and then they were off, riding through the gates of the camp.
‘I wish we were riding with them,’ Diodorus said at Kineas’s side.
Kineas shrugged. ‘Me, too,’ he said. ‘Time to do the rotten job.’
Diodorus turned his horse and fell in beside him. ‘Leon?’
Kineas nodded. ‘Fetch him for me, will you?’
When the young Numidian arrived, Kineas let him wait on the porch of the megaron while he completed the day’s reports and a letter to Lykeles at Olbia. Then he had Nicanor bring the young man.
‘You have become a very important officer,’ he said coldly. ‘But your behaviour at the funeral of Niceas was that of a slave. Let me be clear. When a gentleman competes at funeral games, he does so in the memory of the dead man, and for no personal gain or glory. You dishonoured Niceas with your behaviour.’
Leon’s knees trembled, and he stood, blank-faced. He didn’t weep. He took his rebuke as a slave takes it, showing as little as he could.
The lack of reaction enraged Kineas.
‘Don’t you care? Niceas was always kind to you — Niceas, who was a whore in the agora before he was a man — who would understand you and your life better than Niceas? And you dishonour him at his games?’
Nothing. Leon’s body betrayed his emotion, but his face gave nothing away at all.