He couldn’t think of anything useful to say. He had to say something. ‘Tell her that’s the finest shooting I’ve ever seen,’ he said. His voice came out clear and calm. He was surprised he got it out at all.
Ataelus spoke in Sakje. Kineas knew the words enough to know that his compliment was passed unadorned.
She raised an eyebrow and replied to Ataelus without taking her eyes off Kineas. ‘She say she shoot bow much when she has long wait.’ Ataelus sounded more nervous than Kineas. ‘She say she packed wagons for leaving. Saw us coming. She say, are you ready to ride, or need more rest?’
Kineas didn’t take his eyes off hers. ‘Tell her I’m very sorry we are so late.’
Ataelus spoke. This time he spoke at some length. She raised a hand and silenced him. She pressed her mare forward.
Kineas’s stallion rolled his lips back from his teeth and sniffed, his neck extended as far forwards the mare as he could manage despite Kineas’s rock hard hand at the reins.
The mare shied a step, and then, fast as thought, her head came round and she nipped Kineas’s horse on the neck with her teeth and he shied, stepped back, and Kineas had to struggle to keep his seat.
Srayanka spoke. Kineas caught words he knew — mare and stallion.
The Sakje warriors laughed. One of them laughed so hard that he fell to the ground, and pointing at him led to more laughter.
Kineas got his stallion in hand and turned to Ataelus. He could feel the heat of his face. She was laughing too. ‘What did she say?’ he asked.
Ataelus was laughing so hard that his eyes were closed and both of his hands were wrapped in his horse’s mane.
‘What did she say?’ Kineas demanded again, this time in his battlefield voice.
Ataelus wiped the grin off his face and sat straight. ‘She made for joke,’ he said after some hesitation.
The Sakje were still laughing. Worse yet, someone who had some Sakje had translated the joke to the Olbians. The older men were trying to hide their laughter, but the younger were unable to control themselves.
‘I can see that,’ Kineas snapped.
She turned away from him to her trumpeter and snapped a string of orders, and then she turned her head back to him and he caught the flash of deep blue as her eyes sought his and she smiled. Don’t be an ass, he thought to himself. But he was boiling inside, and he couldn’t manage to return her smile.
‘Tell me this joke,’ he said to Ataelus.
Ataelus was struggling to restrain laughter. He panted like a dog, slapped his horse, finally gave up the struggle and dissolved into laughter with his arms crossed over his chest.
Kineas glanced after Srayanka’s retreating back — she was gathering riders and shouting orders, and a group of younger men were harnessing oxen to the wagons. Most of the laughter had stopped among the Sakje, but it was still spreading among the Olbians as the joke was translated and passed from file to file.
Kineas trotted over to Niceas, who sat on his charger fingering his amulet with a fixed and dutiful expression that Kineas knew all too well. Kineas spoke quietly, firmly, as if nothing untoward had happened. ‘Get everyone off their warhorses and on their riding horses. Water all the animals at the river — bread and cheese in the saddle.’
Niceas nodded, as if he didn’t dare speak.
Philokles had a broad grin on his face. He pulled out of the column as Niceas began to shout orders. Leucon rode by, red-faced, avoiding Kineas’s eye. In fact, none of the men met Kineas’s eye. Eumenes was still laughing.
Ataelus reached out and touched his elbow. He was smiling. ‘She say — maybe mare…’ He began to laugh again. He managed to croak out, ‘… In heat — two weeks ago.’
Kineas had to work through the words in his mind, and then a slow smile punctured the grim mask of his face.
Before the sun had moved another hand across the sea of grass, the whole column, Sakje and Olbian, was mounted and heading north. Kineas changed horses and cantered up the column to where Srayanka rode with her trumpeter, a hard-eyed older woman with skin like leather and bright red hair like Diodorus, whom Kineas remembered from the summer before.
Srayanka smiled as he rode up — the best smile she had ever given him. She nudged her trumpeter and spoke to Ataelus. Behind him, the lead Sakje tittered.
‘She say — where your stallion, Kineax?’
‘Tell her my stallion is too sad to be ridden. In despair — can you say “in despair”?’ Kineas was at a heavy disadvantage in translation.
Ataelus shook his head. ‘What’s despair? Something bad?’
‘So sad you can’t eat,’ Kineas said.
‘Ah. Lovesick!’ Ataelus laughed, and then spoke quickly before Kineas could stop him.
The Sakje tittered again, and a big black-haired man behind Kineas leaned out and slapped his shoulder.
Srayanka turned and brushed a hand against Kineas’s face. The motion took him by surprise — she was that fast — and he squirmed and almost missed her touch.
Ataelus laughed with the rest of the Sakje, and then said, ‘She say — not worry. She say,’ and he broke off a while to laugh again, ‘she say — maybe mare in heat again — in about two weeks.’
Kineas felt his face grow hot. He grinned at her, and she grinned at him. The look went on too long. Kineas decided it was time to change the subject. ‘Ask her if the king is ready to make war,’ he said.
The laughter from the Sakje stopped. She replied in a few words. Her face changed, returning to the hard look she had worn while she shot her bow.
‘She say — not for her to speak for king. She come to guide. She say — speak not for war until we come for king.’ Ataelus had a look on his face that pleaded for understanding.
Kineas nodded. But he continued, ‘I have heard of Zopryon’s army. It is very great, and ready to march.’ It was infuriating to have to listen to Ataelus’s halting translation and her reply.
Ataelus turned back to him. ‘She say the king is for having many things for talk. Much talk. Not for her to take the words for the king.’
‘Tell her I understand.’ Kineas pantomimed understanding to her. She spoke directly to him. He understood Getae and Zopryon and the verb for riding.
‘She say the grass already knocked down with hooves of the Getae. She say she know Zopryon ready to ride.’ Ataelus wiped his forehead with his sleeve. ‘I say for talking — that talking is hard work.’ He laughed grimly.
Kineas took the hint and rode back to his own men.
The column moved fast, and the land became flat, the endless grass greener with each warm day, extending to the horizon on the left, and the river coiling like a snake. Sometimes it was at their feet, and sometimes it passed far away to their right in long, last curves. Those curves were the only marker of their progress, otherwise they might have been standing still for all the variation in the landscape. When the river passed out of sight, the plain of grass and the solid blue of the sky spread unchanged in every direction, like a blue bowl inverted over a green bowl. The immensity of it made the Greeks uncomfortable. Time seemed to stand still.
Yet by the second day the whole life of the column was routine — rising in pre-dawn cold, the welcome warmth of the horse at first mounting, a hasty meal with the first rays of the new sun, and then hours walking and trotting through the grass, the trampled line of their passage straight as the flight of an arrow behind them and the virgin grass before them as far as the eye could see.
Evening was different. Srayanka’s scouts chose the halting place each night, always close to water and often shaded by trees at the river’s edge, and fires were lit against the cold. The product of the day’s hunt roasted on iron spits, and the warriors told stories or pushed each other to vicious competitions. Horse races, wrestling, archery, contests of strength and memory, wit and skill filled the evening from the last halt to the dying of the fires.