Kineas shrugged. ‘When Srayanka is ready, we ride east.’ He frowned. ‘The Sakje are in much the same state as our Olbians, but they have nowhere to go. And they have come all this way. We have all come. What’s one more desert to cross?’
Diodorus looked up, his head to one side like an alert puppy. ‘It’s not the desert. It’s the battle afterwards,’ he said. ‘And then the road home. Some of our wounded won’t recover in time for another action. Some of the troopers are getting — what can I call it? If we had more wine, Philokles wouldn’t be the only one drinking all day.’
Philokles looked at Diodorus in surprise. ‘I drink no more than any other man,’ he said.
Diodorus shrugged. ‘Whatever you say, Spartan. So — the desert, the battle and afterwards. What’s the story?’
‘It is my problem,’ Kineas said. He sighed. ‘And my doom awaits me in the east.’
Philokles rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, really!’ he barked. ‘Are you some superstitious barbarian or a man of Athens? Doom, my arse. You are what you are, and I accuse you of making your dreams an excuse to follow Alexander to the end of the world.’
Kineas snapped to attention, stung by this rebuke. ‘Like Hades, Spartan!’ he spat. ‘You’ve wanted this war against Alexander from the first. It suits Sparta. It suits Athens. And now you want to call it off? Here, in the middle of the sea of grass? Very much in the Panhellenic spirit — we’ll just ride home.’
Philokles pointed both hands unsteadily at Kineas. ‘Keep us out here for your own glory if you must. Ask us to fight to avenge Hirene — she was well liked, for all her fish-eating ways. But spare us your doom. You are a Greek, not some taboo-ridden savage. Their slavish respect goes to your head — Baqca. ’
Kineas found himself facing the Spartan with his hands sealed into fists. ‘I know my dreams. I do not lie about them.’
Philokles leaned in close, threateningly close. ‘When I met you, you were the sort of man to laugh at such dreams. Now, you are ruled by them.’ The Spartan was breathing hard. ‘Are you a barbarian, or a man?’
Kineas stood his ground. He could smell Philokles’ breath and feel his spittle when he shouted. ‘Fuck you!’ he said. ‘Since when is Moira not Greek? What price your precious Panhellenism now, Spartan?’
‘Brilliantly reasoned, Athenian!’ Philokles spat back. ‘Is that the best your schools can produce? Any Spartan can do as well-’
‘You are going to wake the babies,’ Srayanka said. She emerged from her wagon with a shawl around her. ‘Are you two going to fight? Many Sakje will pay good wagers to watch — I will fetch them. But move away from the wagons and do not wake my children.’
Kineas felt himself straightening up. Philokles gave a drunken smile and waved his open hands.
‘Oh,’ Srayanka said, with mock disappointment. ‘So you only…’ she was at a loss for the word and she did a credible imitation of a stallion rearing, ‘like horses, eh? But not fight.’ She smiled a half-smile, and then her humour turned to anger and she was livid. ‘Listen to me, King of the Sakje and Spartan. The Sakje go to the muster on the Jaxartes. Greeks are free. No man of Olbia owes me service,’ and here she glared at Kineas, ‘but my people will go to the muster because we said we would be there. Six moons we ride the sea of grass and still we will be there. ’
Then she deflated like a tent with the poles removed. ‘And you are right, Spartan,’ she said. ‘We have nowhere else to go.’
Kineas took her shoulders. Rather than spurning him, as he feared, she leaned back into his embrace. ‘They only called me king while you were missing,’ he said.
She whirled out of his arms and her eyes searched his face as if she’d just discovered a hidden flaw in a pot. ‘No. You are king. Nihmu’s horses and my womb make you king. And yet you owe us nothing.’ She frowned. ‘Satrax warned me of this moment. I am barbarian and you are Greek. ’
Diodorus had gone back to staring at the ground between his sandals, but now he looked up again. ‘Be fair, Srayanka. The Sakje have had their fair share from this army.’
‘We are barbarians to you,’ she said. ‘Just like we are to Alexander.’ She spat. In accurate mockery, imitating Diodorus, she said, ‘We’ll all be Sakje in a few years at this rate.’ She hugged her belly. ‘ No fate could be more cruel,’ she mocked.
Diodorus winced. ‘Listen, lady,’ he said with his hands on his hips. ‘I’ve been at war for years. I’m tired of it. I want to settle somewhere and have a wife and a future. The Sakje are like brothers to me — but I crave the world of the palaestra and the agora. How happy would you be if we made you live away from the grass?’
Srayanka hung her head.
Kineas cut in, ‘Srayanka, they can go home if they want — but they won’t. They’ll posture and get drunk.’ He glared at Philokles. ‘But..’ He looked down into her eyes, their startling blue almost black in the firelight. ‘But you do have other choices. You can go back, and when this is over…’ The bit in his teeth, he went on, ‘The high ground between the Tanais and the Rha — whose tribal land is that?’
Srayanka used a hand to pull her hair back from her face. ‘Maeotae land, and no man’s land these last ten years and more.’
Kineas nodded. ‘Leave the farmers to their own,’ he said. ‘The high ground is wolf land — worse than Hyrkania. We cleared the road and made some peace — drove the worst of the wolves off. There’s rich pasture there — enough for ten thousand horses. And as soon as you were there to protect it, the Maeotae farmers and the Sindi would return to their farms on the lower Rha.’
Diodorus pursed his lips and looked at Kineas with a different kind of respect. ‘You’re smarter than you look,’ he said.
Philokles raised an eyebrow and looked like a comic satyr. ‘So you have been thinking of other endings,’ he said.
Kineas nodded. ‘I had all winter to listen to what was said in Hyrkania — and to Leon’s views on eastern trade,’ he said. ‘Many of the Olbians will go home — but if we declared that we were founding a city, many would stay.’
Philokles beamed. ‘You have said nothing of this!’ he proclaimed. ‘This is brilliant!’
Diodorus grinned too. ‘A city of mercenaries and Sakje,’ he said. ‘I imagine we’ll have a fair number of curious travellers.’
Srayanka’s eyes went from one to another. ‘The Sakje go east to the muster of the tribes,’ she said. ‘King or no king.’ But her look at Kineas was happier. ‘But the high ground between the Rha and the Tanais is a good dream, and a dream can keep the people alive.’ She shrugged, a curiously Greek gesture on her. ‘Who knows? Perhaps it will even come to pass.’
Kineas looked down at her. ‘Perhaps we should be married?’ he asked her.
‘Husband, we have been married since first we played stallion and mare,’ she said. ‘Sakje people do not worry about the fanfare when we can grasp the trumpet. But,’ she smirked, ‘I like a good party. And all our men and women need something to hold in their minds that is not fear and death.’
In the wagon, there was a stirring, a distant thump and a hearty wail.
‘Oh goddess,’ Srayanka swore, and she raced Kineas for the wagon bed.
22
By Kineas’s calculations, the feast to mark their wedding and their victory would fall on the Panathenaia, a festival that celebrated both Athena and Eros. He calculated the date with an eye to the grass on the plains and the speed with which his wife — and his wounded — could recover.
‘Nothing could be more fitting,’ said Diodorus, with a twinkle in his eye. He and Philokles could be seen plotting in all corners of the camp.
Coenus’s arrival made the celebrations possible. Scouts foretold him, and then Samahe located him and brought his column into their camp, cheered by Sakje and Sauromatae and Olbians alike.
Coenus’s column arrived with twenty fresh troopers to replace losses, a hundred heavy chargers from the plains of southern Hyrkania, forty talents of gold, his new bride Artemesia and news.