At first the Olbians hung back, but on the second night Niceas wrestled Parshtaevalt, the black-haired Scyth who had shown interest in everything Greek. Then Eumenes raced his best pony against Srayanka’s trumpeter and lost the race and the pony.
The third evening became an equine Olympics, with mounted races, a dozen wrestling matches, and new events — boxing and foot races. The Sakje were as poor on foot as they were gifted on horseback. Their notion of boxing was even stranger. The Sakje had a contest that appeared similar, where two champions would stand toe to toe and hit each other by turns until the weaker man fell or declared himself beaten. Leucon, a passable boxer, thought that he was seeing the Greek sport and proceeded to block blows, to the consternation of his opponent and half the audience, and Kineas had to explain boxing to Srayanka through Eumenes and Ataelus, and then he and Leucon gave a demonstration.
Leucon was a sturdy man, powerfully built and well trained, but he lacked the speed and grace of Ajax — or Kineas. Kineas drew the match out, both for Leucon’s vanity and for the benefit of the audience, but when he parried Leucon’s best punch and responded with a flurry of blows too fast to be counted in the dwindling light, the crowd, Sakje and Greek alike, roared approval. Leucon fell.
Then, by torchlight, Philokles and a score of other men threw stones from the river. They threw for distance and argued the rules — did a bounce count? until Kineas feared violence would ensue, and ordered the Olbians to bed.
The fourth day passed like the others — the Olbian horse drilled and skirmished, formed and reformed, and the Sakje watched and hooted, or hunted, or rode in speculative silence. A week in the saddle, and all of Leucon’s troopers were already hardened to the life — eating in the saddle, riding all day. Kineas reined in next to the young commander in the late afternoon. Leucon had a hard head from the boxing, but he kept his temper like a gentleman and everyone respected him the more.
‘Your men are very good,’ Kineas said. ‘You’re a good commander.’
Leucon smiled ruefully at the praise. ‘Good thing,’ he said. ‘As my Olympic boxing career seems to be over.’ Then he said, ‘But thanks. I’m so proud of them I feel like I might burst, or start singing.’
Kineas rubbed his jaw, where his new beard was now prominent. It barely itched any more. ‘I know what you mean.’ He glanced at Niceas. ‘They’re good, aren’t they, old man?’
Niceas had Eumenes by his side in the column, and he glanced at the younger hyperetes before responding. ‘Better than I expected,’ he said. Then he broke into a smile. ‘Of course, we’ll see what they’re really made of when we have to fight.’
‘Don’t stop drilling,’ said Kineas. ‘After achieving excellence comes keeping it.’
On the fourth evening, Kineas found himself throwing javelins against Niceas and Kyros and one of the more promising boys. The Sakje watched curiously as the men rode through the course, throwing to the right and left. Kineas was done, having struck all his targets, and was watching the boy intently when he saw that Srayanka had mounted her mare and was starting the course behind the boy. She had a bow, and shot twice for every javelin he had launched, and rode past the last target, flushed with triumph, to the cheers of her band.
Kineas rode back to the lists and retrieved all of his javelins, determined to answer her challenge. He took two more javelins from Niceas. His hyperetes shot him a look through the failing light at the crowd of Sakje. ‘This is a good idea?’ he asked.
‘Ask me after I ride,’ Kineas responded.
He halted his horse at the start line and cleared his mind. Srayanka was still receiving the applause of her warriors. He watched her for a moment, and then pressed his horse into motion.
The stallion hadn’t been ridden all day, except for his first pass, and he was full of energy. Kineas threw his first javelin from well out — a difficult shot, but well placed, and the heavy dart sank into the rawhide of the target, a Sakje shield. He threw his second just before he passed the target and heard the thunk as the head bit home. Without looking at the result, he took his third javelin from his rein hand and threw for distance. It was one of Niceas’s — lighter than his own — and it flew high, catching the top of the second target and knocking it flat. At a gallop, too fast to think, he took his fourth javelin and sent his horse over the shield rather than past it, raised the second javelin high as he gathered the horse to jump, and plunged it down with the whole weight of his arm. He heard a reaction from the crowd but he was already throwing his fifth, his whole being concentrated on the last target and his last javelin. He was a stride behind — he fumbled the grip change for a heartbeat — and the shield was past. He turned — if she could do it, he could — and threw side-armed at the last target. He felt a muscle pop in his neck as he released and felt the pain as he turned back to the course, but the sudden burst of sound from a hundred throats told him that the pain was well won.
He trotted his charger back to Niceas. Niceas was holding the second shield over his head and shouting his approval. His leaping throw had punched right through the rawhide and through the wood, so that the black spike of the head protruded the length of an arm from the back.
Parshtaevalt, Srayanka’s second in command, reached up and embraced him, shouting in Sakje, and then Srayanka, still mounted, put her arms around his neck and pressed him close. The crowd shrieked approval. Then Eumenes was pushing a cup of wine into his hands. Unseen hands made wreaths, and Kineas found himself reclining on a carpet wearing his, while Srayanka sat with her back to a rolled cloak, wearing hers with her hair loose and looking like a muscular nymph.
They watched the rest of the competitions together. At some point he took her hand, and she turned to him and her eyes were wide, her pupils huge, and she moved her thumb across his palm. Despite the crowd around them, she continued to stroke his hand, turning it back and forth as she would, and he began to join her at the game — stroking the back of her hand, comparing the calluses on her palm to the warm softness on the back, daring to touch the inside of her wrist as if it were a much more private place.
It was the closest they had been to privacy. Neither said a word. Time passed, and then the competitions died away into drinking, and then the pressure of the wine on Kineas’s bladder made him rise, much against his will. He looked down, aware that he was grinning like a fool or a love-struck boy with his first serving girl. They didn’t even speak a common language.
She met his eyes and then looked down. She laughed.
‘Srayanka,’ he said.
‘Kineax,’ she said.
And that was the fourth night.
13
The next day, he was stiff and cold when he awoke, and his hands ached, every joint swollen. His right shoulder burned when he reached up to fasten his cloak, the trophy of last night’s throw. He summoned Eumenes and Ataelus.
‘I want to work on my Sakje as we ride,’ he said.
Both of them looked away, smiling. But when they were all mounted, Eumenes and Ataelus joined him, and began to point around them — mare, stallion, sky and grass — and give him the words in Sakje. The roots of the words lurked at the edge of familiarity, like Persian, some like older Greek forms in the Poet, but the declensions were different and the end sounds were barbaric.
Kineas had started the process in the winter, but the press of politics and training had drowned his attempts at language lessons. Now, with the object of his lessons at hand and nothing to do but ride and watch Leucon handle his men, Kineas worked like a boy with a tutor.
Parshtaevalt joined them at the midday halt. He was a tall man, for a Sakje, with pale golden hair and a deep tan. Kineas had gathered that he was some relation to Srayanka, but the relationship was hard to define — a matrilineal cousin. He was also a successful war leader with the hair of a dozen enemies on his saddlecloth. He had a keen intelligence, and he took to the language lessons easily. He seemed to enjoy and admire Greek things.