Tyrant (64 page)

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Authors: Christian Cameron

BOOK: Tyrant
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The worm was close, the mandibles of its mouth chewing away at everything in its path, and his gorge rose as it ate Leucon’s face off his skull . . .
 
‘Ataelus!’ Kineas cried. He pushed her away. He wondered if he was going mad.
 
She grabbed his hand and he resisted, but she was strong, and she pulled him, pushed him, and suddenly he was falling - it was wet, and he was slumped at the wheel hub. She jumped down on the wet grass beside him.
 
‘You are easy for the smoke,’ she said. She admonished him with a finger. ‘Breathe deep. Go under wagon and breathe.’
 
‘Stay with me,’ he said, but she shook her head.
 
‘Too much, too fast. You breathe. I find Ataelax. He with Samahe. Do what we should do, but for Sastar Baqca and the king.’ And she was gone.
 
His head was clear when she came back, with Ataelus behind her like a spare horse.
 
Kineas didn’t feel like a commander and he knew he didn’t look like one, but he pulled Ataelus close. ‘I sent Heron - the hipparch from Pantecapaeum - downriver this morning to scout for fords.’
 
‘No ford downriver,’ Ataelus answered. There was another man with him - no, a woman. She had her arms crossed over her chest and anger dripped off her with the rainwater. ‘This Samahe - wife for me.’ He grinned. ‘Twenty horse wife!’
 
Kineas shook his hand, which was inane. ‘I need to know where Heron is and what he found.’
 
Ataelus frowned and looked at Kineas from under his brows. ‘You ask me to ride off in the rain - now? For this Heron?’
 
Kineas said, ‘Yes.’
 
Ataelus took a deep breath. ‘For you?’ he asked.
 
‘For me,’ Kineas said. He lacked the language to explain just why he was so worried, suddenly, about his missing hipparch - but he was.
 
When he was gone, Samahe protesting volubly after him, Kineas sat on the dry ground under her wagon. Srayanka sat against his back. They were silent for a long time. Finally, she said, ‘If we win - when we win. You bring me twenty of horses?’
 
‘Is that your price?’ he asked.
 
She laughed - a low, rich laugh. ‘I am beyond price,’ she said in Sakje, leaning around to look at him. ‘I want you like a mare in heat wants a stallion, and I would go with you for a handful of grass, like a priestess. That is one woman I am.’ She threw back her head, and her profile was strong against the light of the nearest fire. ‘But I am Ghân of the Cruel Hands, and there is no bride price to buy me.’ She shrugged. ‘The king would make me queen - and that would make Cruel Hands rich. I am woman, and I am
Ghân
.’ She looked into his eyes. Hers were picked out with reflected campfires. ‘But if we win this battle,’ she said again. ‘If we are free of the Sastar Baqca - will you ask me to wife?’
 
Kineas pushed his back into hers. ‘If we live - I will ask you to wife.’ He kissed her, felt the movement of her eyelashes against his cheeks. ‘I know Baqca. What is
Sastar
?’
 
She wriggled slightly in his arms. ‘What is the thing - the word you say when man rule over other men and will not hear them? Rule alone? No voice but that man?’
 
‘Tyrant,’ Kineas answered, after a moment.
 
‘
Tyrant
’ she echoed. ‘Sastar is like tyrant. Sastar Baqca - the baqca that allows no other voice.’ She turned and put her arms behind his head. ‘No more Greek and Sakje.’
 
‘No,’ said Kineas. Death seemed far away, and everything seemed possible. ‘I will marry you.’ He kissed her again.
 
She grinned even through the kiss, pulled away and looked at him. ‘Truly?’ she asked. She smiled, kissed him and then pushed him away. ‘Bring me Zopryon’s head as my price, then.’ She leaped to her feet.
 
Kineas got to his, still holding her hand. Their eyes were locked. She gave his hand a gentle pressure - and then she was stepping away.
 
The rain sobered him, and in moments it all came rushing back - the battle, plans, worries.
Where in Hades is Heron?
And the plain fact -
this is foolishness - I’ll be dead.
But he forced a laugh and said, ‘It’s a high price.’
 
She slipped out from under the wagon and turned. ‘It will make a good song,’ she said with a smile. ‘You know - they already sing of us?’
 
Kineas didn’t know. ‘Really?’ he called after her.
 
She paused in the rain on the step up to the wagon. ‘We may live for ever, in a song.’
 
He stopped at the king’s laager to report, then walked, drenched, down the hill to issue his last orders at the campfires. The night was half spent when he pushed through the curtain into his wagon. He had the energy to strip his tunic, to hang his sodden cloak from the ridgepole, and then he lay down on the bed. He lay awake for a time, and again he wondered if the gods had sent madness to him. He didn’t want to close his eyes. And then he did.
 
The worm was moving, a thousand legs pushing its obscene bulk across the wet grass to the river, a dozen obscene mouths chewing at anything that came under their jaws - dead horses, dead men, grass.
 
He circled above the worm, seeing it with two visions - as the worm was, the monster, and as the men and horses and wagons that composed the worm, like reading a scroll and understanding the whole of it at the same time, or like seeing every stone in a mosaic and seeing the whole design.
 
He pushed against the dream, and the owl turned away from the worm and flew south - the first time he had been in control in a dream. The owl beat its wings, and the stades flew by - grey and indistinct in the constant rain - but he saw horsemen moving on the west bank of the river, a dozen parties pushing south.
 
Then he let his dream self have its head and turn north, back to the worm on the sea of grass. It was horrible, but the horror had a familiarity to it - because he himself had been the legs of the worm, and the mouth. He knew the smell.
 
His dream self turned east, over the river, which had a dull glow in the dream rain, and then he was descending, and there was the tree - no longer a tower of green-black majesty. The tree was dying. The cedar bark was hard under his talons, the leaves and needles fallen away in swathes like sick animal loses hair, exposing bare wood and rotten bark, and the top had already cracked and fallen away. He landed, grasping a solid branch, and it, too, cracked, and he was falling . . . from his horse, an arrow in his throat, choking on the hard pain and the rush of blood - bitter copper and salt in his mouth, in his nose, and in his last moments of life he tried to see, tried to remember if the battle was won, but it all went away beyond his eyes leaving only her voice singing, and he couldn’t remember her name - he listened to her . . .
 
‘Dawn, somewhere above the rain,’ said a voice. A hand, pulling at his shoulder. ‘Good news for you. Get up.’
 
‘Huh?’ he asked. He felt as if he’d been beaten like bread dough.
 
‘Dawn. Eumenes is ready to ride. Your orders - are you awake?’ asked Philokles. He was naked, and wet. ‘Laertes is here, with a prisoner.’
 
Kineas sat up. The tunic he had stripped off before sleep was as wet now as it had been when he put his head down. So was his cloak. He threw the cloak over his shoulders and swung down from the wagon, stifled in the smell of wet wool. Philokles swung down behind him.
 
‘It’s not cold,’ he said.
 
‘We’re not all Spartans,’ Kineas said. In fact, he was, as always, hesitant to show his body naked. Even on the edge of battle. He smiled at his own vanity.
 
Ataelus was sitting at his fire with Laertes, Crax, Sitalkes and another warrior - a man lay at Laertes’ feet, with curly blond hair and bare legs, covered by a dark red cloak - the prisoner, unless he was already a corpse. The rest of them were passing around a horn cup that steamed. Kineas intercepted it. ‘Morning,’ he said. The meaning of Ataelus’ presence hit him through the last of his sleep. He put a hand on Crax’s shoulder. ‘Where is Heron?’ he asked. And then he pointed at the stranger in the cloak. ‘Who’s he?’
 
Crax grinned. ‘He’s a fool. I caught him.’ He prodded the recumbent form with his boot. ‘Sitalkes hit him too hard.’
 
Kineas began to stretch his muscles. ‘I think I need the whole story.’
 
Laertes grinned and snatched the cup back. ‘Heron’s thorough, Hipparch. Give him that. We went sixty - maybe even eighty stades, and we pushed our spears into every bank on the damn river.’
 
Sitalkes spoke quickly, tripping over the Greek in his excitement and showing a scalp on his spear, but Laertes spoke over him. He pulled an arm free of his cloak to point at Ataelus. ‘Thank the gods you sent him,’ he said. ‘All the feeder streams are full - hard to cross themselves. We were lost in the dark when Ataelus found us.’ He gestured at Sitalkes. ‘We tangled with their patrols twice, but they couldn’t make it across. This idiot,’ Laertes ruffled Sitalkes’s hair, ‘killed a man with a javelin and then swam across to get his hair. Barbarian.’
 
Kineas felt the warmth of the tea spreading through his stomach. ‘So there is a crossing south of here?’
 
Laertes shrugged, exchanged a glance with Ataelus. ‘There’s a dozen crossings - if you want to swim your horse, or if you can pick your way in single file. Nothing for an army - not really even a crossing for a patrol.’
 
Kineas rubbed his eyes. ‘How’d you end up fighting these?’ he asked, indicating the prisoner.
 
‘They must have had boats,’ Laertes said. ‘Heron made us look for them, but we never found them. It took time, in the rain. And then we got lost.’ He shrugged.
 
Ataelus grinned at the other warrior with him. Kineas realized she was his wife - Samahe. The Black One. She gave her husband a wry smile. ‘I for find Greek horse,’ she said. ‘See in dark.’
 
Ataelus gave her the tea. ‘Good wife,’ he said. ‘Find Greek horse - find Crax - find enemy all same-same.’
 
‘Where is Heron?’ Kineas asked. He looked at the prisoner again. The man looked familiar - or the cloak did.
 
Laertes held the horn cup out, and one of the camp slaves came and refilled it. ‘Rolled in his cloak. He means to go north as soon as we have a rest.’
 
Kineas nodded. ‘Give him my thanks. Get some rest yourselves.’
 
They all grinned, pleased with themselves and pleased with his praise, spare as it had been. They made him feel better.
 
Philokles took the cup and drained it. ‘Eumenes is waiting,’ he said acerbically. He wiped his mouth. ‘I’m going out with him.’ He put the cup on the ground. ‘I’ll see what I can get from our prisoner when I get back.’
 
Kineas walked down the hill, thinking about Macedonian patrols south of the ford. His intuition, which had burned all night, had been right. Then he understood what he had heard. Philokles was not often an active soldier. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Why are you going out?’
 
The rain was soaking him again, and his beard was too full - it felt like an alien on his face. He wanted to shave. Too many days in the saddle.
 
Philokles shrugged. ‘It is time to fight,’ he said.
 
Eumenes was mounted at the head of Leucon’s troop. The hippeis of Pantecapaeum were mounted as well, and beyond them in the rain were half of the phalanx of Pantecapaeum. Most of them were naked, holding their shields and a single, heavy spear. Beyond them, a pair of heavy Sakje wagons.
 
Kineas walked up to Eumenes. ‘Straight across, retrieve the bodies, and get back.’
 
Eumenes had his eyes on the ford. ‘We won’t disappoint you. There will be no repeat of yesterday,’ he said in a hard voice.
 
Kineas stepped in close, where he could feel the warmth of the horse. ‘Yesterday could have happened to anyone. That’s
war
, Eumenes. Claim the bodies and get back here and no heroics.’
 
Eumenes saluted.
 
A Sindi, one of Temerix’s men, trotted up to Philokles and handed him a helmet, which he pushed on to the back of his head, then a heavy spear - hard, black, longer by a span than other men’s, and as thick as Kineas’s wrist. Philokles hung a shield on his shoulder - a plain bronze shield with no mark on it.
 
‘You’re going with him?’ Kineas asked again. He was at a loss.
 
Philokles smiled grimly. ‘Memnon made me the commander of this two hundred,’ he said. He raised an eyebrow. ‘The benefits of a Spartan education.’ Philokles turned on his heel, his old red cloak billowing behind him. With a casual shake of his head, he dropped the helmet off his brow so that the cheek pieces covered his face. From the helmet came an inhuman voice - so different from Philokles’ voice that Kineas would have said it was a different man.

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