He rubbed his face to clear his head. The inside of his mouth felt gummy, as if he’d eaten resin. ‘I dreamed,’ he said in Greek.
She put a hand on his face. ‘I must sit in the,’ she paused, seeking words, ‘smoke tent — even here, under the Guryama of the father of me.’ She rubbed his face affectionately. ‘You dream free.’
He was still in the grip of the dream, and she took his hand and led him down the hill.
Halfway down, he began to recover. ‘My sword!’ he said.
She smiled, used her position higher on the turf hill to lean to him, eye to eye, and kiss him.
It was a long kiss, and he found that his hand quite naturally went to her right breast, and she bit his tongue and stepped back, laughing. ‘Sword right here,’ she said, slapping at his groin with a hard hand. Then she relented. ‘Climb for sword with dawn. Baqca thing, yes?’
Kineas spoke hesitantly. ‘You are putting the power of your father’s sword into my sword?”
She considered him for a moment, with the look a mother gives when a child has asked a difficult question, or a question whose answer may itself cause harm. ‘You marry me?’ she asked.
Kineas’s breath caught in his throat. But he didn’t hesitate. ‘Yes.’
She nodded, as if the answer was just as she expected. ‘So we ride together, yes? And perhaps…’ She wore an open look, like a priestess at worship, a look that scared him to his bones and marrow. ‘Perhaps we rule together?’
Kineas took a step back. ‘The king rules,’ he said.
Srayanka shrugged. ‘Kings die.’
Kineas thought, You’re backing the wrong horse, my love. I’m the one fated to die. He reached out his arms to her, and she came into them. When her head was against his shoulder, he said, ‘Srayanka, I-’
She put a hand on his mouth. ‘Shhh,’ she said. ‘Say nothing. Spirits walk. Say nothing.’
Kineas embraced her — almost a chaste embrace, and she stood with her head on his shoulder, her arms around his waist, for a long time, and then they walked back down the hill. Without discussion, they began to separate at the edge of the short grass, she to her camp and he to his, but their hands stayed together too long, and they almost fell again.
They laughed, and walked away.
She came for him in the morning, dressed in white skins with gold plaques and gold embroidery, crowned with a headdress of gold that towered above her. The king was with her, and Marthax, and twenty other chiefs and warriors. Kineas waved to Leucon and Nicomedes to attend him, and the group repeated the journey, climbing through the last of the dark to the hollow at the summit. All the Sakje began to sing, even the king.
The first ray of the sun licked over the dark line of the world’s edge like a flame rising from a new fire. The sun picked out the gorgon’s head — Medea’s head, Srayanka’s head — on the hilt of his machaira, so that it seemed to draw colour from the rising run, and the line of flame crept down the blade, faster and faster, so that in a few heartbeats, the sword seemed to have drawn the sun down into the stone.
All the Sakje shouted, and Srayanka’s hand took the hilt and she sang a high, pure note, and motioned with her other hand at Kineas. Kineas took the sword hilt in his right hand, and just for an instant it seemed to pull him down.
Srayanka released the hilt, and Kineas’s hand shot aloft, pulling the sword clear of the stone.
Kineas had been so drawn into the effect of the ceremony that for a moment he expected something — a tide of energy, perhaps, or the words of a god. Instead, he saw the look on the king’s face — jealousy and envy naked to his glance. When their eyes met, the king flinched.
Marthax frowned and then slapped him on the back. ‘Good sword,’ he said. And they all walked down the hill.
‘What was that about?’ Nicomedes asked. ‘Beautiful light effect.’
Kineas shrugged. ‘Srayanka’s father’s barrow,’ he said quietly, and Leucon and Nicomedes both nodded.
After they reached the short grass, Marthax began to bellow orders. Kineas took the king by the elbow. ‘I dreamed up on the barrow.’
The king pulled away. ‘That is as it should be,’ he said after a moment.
‘I saw the army of Zopryon — camped in good order. Perhaps two hundred stades south of here — perhaps more.’
Satrax rubbed his beard and made a face. ‘He makes good time.’
Kineas said, ‘Can we trust this dream?’ He thought of the details — the hobbled horses, the pickets, the circles of fire. But his mind could supply all of those.
The king stared at Kineas. ‘Kam Baqca sees nothing — she is closing her mind to the visions, as they show her nothing but her own death. So I must rely on yours. As much as any dream. I will send scouts. Then we will know.’
‘If it is a true dream,’ Kineas said, and his voice trembled. He wanted it to be a false dream. He wanted the scouts to place Zopryon another two hundred stades to the west, because that would mean that he dreamed falsely, that these barbarians, how ever much he loved them, were superstitious like all barbarians, and he was not fated to die in a few short weeks at the crossing of a river. He took a breath and released it. ‘If this is a true dream, then it is almost time to begin harrying his army.’
One of the king’s companions came up with a cup of tea, and the king took it eagerly. ‘Our hooves are hard. The horses are conditioned.’ He nodded. ‘If the scouts confirm your dream, then yes. We will begin.’
The king sent twenty riders, one of whom was Ataelus. Three days later, when they were a short morning’s march from the camp at Great Bend, they returned in a group. The king summoned all of the chiefs and officers.
It had been a true dream.
To the Greeks, Ataelus said, ‘Zopryon’s army is not for big so rumour make. Has many, many, many hands of men, not so many of horses.’ Ataelus grinned his horrible grin. ‘Send Getae — no Getae come back. Oops.’
Kineas’s stomach twisted and turned, and his blood ran riot in his veins. He had, at most, two weeks to live.
Srayanka spoke in Sakje. ‘Now we harry him,’ she said, and the look in her eyes was disturbingly like the look in her eyes when he had come up behind her, the night of the victory over the Getae. Or when she spoke of how they might rule together. Like lust.
Satrax spoke carefully. ‘Tonight I ride for the camp. Marthax will bring in the column. The rest of you — Sakje and Olbians — must be ready to ride with me. We will see what clans have come in, and what the rumour of our victory has done for numbers. We will see if the Sauromatae have come. And the rest of the Greeks.’ He looked around. ‘And then, we will let Zopryon feel the weight of our hooves.’
The party with the king comprised most of the officers and nobles of the allied army — twenty clan leaders, the king’s bodyguard of nobles’ sons, Kineas, Nicomedes, Leucon and Niceas. They rode through the soft summer evening, without herds, without wagons, and they rode fast.
Kineas rode by the king, but they exchanged few words, and Kineas felt that there was still a barrier between them. Whether the barrier was of his own construction or of the king’s was the sort of question Philokles might have answered, but Kineas couldn’t see the answer himself.
Just as full darkness rolled over the plains, they saw the great bend of the river in the east, a greater darkness and a hint of moist air, and then a thousand points of fire burning on the far side of the ford. The camp had doubled or tripled in size. The smell of burning wood carried almost as far as the sight of so many fires.
All of the horses gave voice, and the herds responded.
The king paused, turning his head from the last glow of ruddy light in the west behind him to the sparkle of campfires beyond the great river. ‘When I was a boy,’ he said to Kineas, ‘I loved boats. Every spring, I would go and ride the boats of the merchants going down the river to Olbia. I remember how one of the wisest of them, an old Sindi called Bion, would judge the spring rush of waters, stopping frequently, because, as he said, when the river swelled past a certain point, then no effort of man could beach a boat, and that boat would either rush down the river to its destination, or would be swept up on a rock or a log and utterly destroyed.’ The king pointed at the camp, oblivious to the crowd of nobles pressing around them.