And he thought, I served him. I loved him. And now I begin to suspect that Kam Baqca is right. He is a monster. He was confused, and the confusion fed his tone. ‘The army of Macedon is the finest in the world. If Antipater sends Zopryon here, he will bring thousands of pike men, Thracians, archers — probably fifteen thousand men on foot. And cavalry from Macedon and Thessaly, the best in the Greek world. Against that, the men of Olbia and Pantecapaeum, plus a few hundred Scythians, were every one of them Achilles come back from the Elysian Fields, would not be enough.’
The king fingered his beard again, and then played with a ring — embarrassed. ‘How many riders do you think I can put in the field, Kineas?’
Kineas was at a loss how to answer, since barbarian kings inevitably exaggerated the numbers of their men. If he flattered and guessed too high, he robbed his own argument of validity. Too low and he insulted the king.
‘I do not know, O King. I see a few hundred here. I’m sure there are more.’
The king laughed. As Kineas’s words were translated, more and more of the Sakje laughed. Even Srayanka laughed.
‘Listen, Kineas. It is winter. The grass is under the snow and there is little wood out on the plains for fires. In winter, every band from every tribe goes its own way, to find food, to get shelter and to cut wood. If we all stayed together, the horses would starve and the animals would all stay away from our bows. I have seen the cities of the Greeks — I was a hostage in Pantecapaeum. I have seen how many people you can put inside a stone wall, with slaves to till the land and slaves to cook it. We have no slaves. We have no walls. But in the spring, if my chief war leaders agree that we must fight, I can call tens of thousands of horsemen here. Perhaps three tens of thousands. Perhaps more.’
Philokles put a hand on Kineas’s knee. ‘Ataelus says this is so. I think it is true. Think before you speak.’
Kineas tried to imagine three tens of thousands of horsemen in a single army. ‘Can you feed them?’ he asked.
The king nodded. ‘For a while. And for a longer while, with the cities at my side. Let me be straight with you, Kineas. I can also simply ride away north into the plains and leave you to the Macedonians. They can march until the snow falls next year and never find me. The plains are vast — greater than all the rest of the world.’
Kineas took a deep breath, shutting out the hand on his knee and the blue eyes under the dark brows across the tent. ‘If you wish to sway the archon, you must convince him that you have such force.’ With three tens of thousands of men and women who rode like Artemis…
The king pointed the toe of his boot at the great golden bowl at his feet. ‘I cannot show him the riders on the great plain, Kineas. But I can show him an enormous amount of gold. And gold is the way to the heart of a Greek, or so I have observed. And your archon might ask himself this. If the bandit king has a mountain of gold, why should he not have thirty thousand riders?’
Kineas winced at the words ‘bandit king’, and the king laughed again. ‘Isn’t that what he calls us? Bandits? Horse thieves? Worse? I heard them all when I was a hostage.’
Kineas said, ‘Then why would you fight at all? Why not retreat into the plains?’
The king sat back until his shoulders rested against a wall hanging. He looked comfortable. ‘Your cities are our riches. We sell our grain there, and we buy goods we love. We can lose these things — we are not bound by them. But we might fight to keep them, too.’ He raised his hand and rocked it to and fro. ‘It balances like this. Fight for our treasure, or leave it?’ He smiled wryly. ‘If I decide rightly, I will be a good king. If I decide poorly, I will be a bad king.’ He stood. ‘You are tired. I will have more questions as we ride. Will you be prepared to depart tomorrow?’
Kineas stood as well, Philokles rising impatiently by his side. ‘O King, I will. By your leave, I will escort you to Olbia.’
‘Let it be so.’
The next day, Kineas still felt light-headed when he moved too fast and the effort of wearing armour was at first too much for him, but he was soon accustomed to it. The snow lay in deep drifts around the camp, tramped flat where the tracks of hunters or wood gatherers left the circle of wagons. Away to the south he could see a great black curve of the river. There was no sign of the track they had followed this far.
‘We will have to go slowly,’ Kineas said to Ajax and Eumenes. Philokles was avoiding him.
‘The Sakje will all have changes of horses.’ Eumenes pointed to where the travelling party was preparing; the king and ten mounted companions. They were all dressed like kings, heavy with gold ornaments. All of them wore red cloaks, although no two cloaks were dyed to exactly the same hue.
Kineas looked for Srayanka, but she was not there. She would not be accompanying the royal party. He wondered if she would have come had he spoken as she desired. He wondered what, exactly, she and Philokles had wanted him to say. He thought about the reception waiting for him in Olbia and a winter training rich men and their sons to be cavalrymen, and for the first time the prospect seemed empty and worthless. He thought about the proposition he had been made after being exiled, and what it might now mean.
He thought about her, and the way the king had looked at her. Royal mistress? Fiancee? Sour thoughts — the kind of jealous thoughts that first inform a man that he’s in love — were filling his mind when Philokles appeared at his elbow.
‘You look as if a dog ate your breakfast,’ Philokles said. He looked happy, fit, and ready for anything.
‘Is she actually well wed, brother?’ Kineas asked.
Philokles grinned — Kineas seldom referred to him as brother, and he enjoyed the compliment. ‘She is not. Something told me that you might enquire.’ He laughed aloud.
Kineas could feel the flush rolling down his cheeks to his neck. ‘Laugh all you want,’ he said tersely.
Philokles held up a hand. ‘My pardon,’ he said. ‘Unfair to laugh, who has so often felt the sting of Aphrodite himself. She is unwed — and, as Ataelus thought, the lord of a great tribe of these barbarians. And a famous warrior.’
Kineas rubbed his beard, watching the king and his mount and avoiding Philokles’s eyes. ‘Is she the king’s… concubine?’
Philokles put his hands on his hips. ‘Can you imagine that girl as anyone’s concubine?’ He grinned. ‘I have half a mind to tell her you asked.’ Kineas whirled around, and Philokles laughed again. ‘You have it bad!’ he said.
Kineas grunted. Then he turned away from Philokles, grabbed Eumenes by the shoulder, and strode to the king’s side.
The king was checking the hooves of his mount. He had a forefoot between his knees and a crooked knife in his teeth. ‘Good morning,’ he said around the knife.
Kineas bowed stiffly, the weight of his breastplate making him clumsy. ‘I don’t want to slow you, sir. But we have only a few remounts and we won’t be able to travel quickly.’
The king put the horse’s foot back on the ground, gave the beast a friendly pat, and began tightening the girth. Kineas still had difficulty watching a king tighten his own girth. It rendered him unable to believe that the same king might have thirty thousand horsemen.
Sure that his girth was adequate, the king waved his whip at a tall man with white-blond hair and an enormous beard, dressed from head to foot in red. At the council, he had sat at the king’s left side. ‘Marthax! I need you.’
Marthax rode over on a tall roan stallion. He was a heavy man, with a paunch that spilled over his belt, but he had arms like small trees and his legs were enormous. His red pointed hat was trimmed in white fur and he had a set of gold plaques modelled as kissing Aphrodites that ran around the top of each bicep. He and the king exchanged a few words. Kineas was sure that they said ‘horse’ and ‘snow’. Then they both looked at him. Marthax grinned widely.