Tyrant (7 page)

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Authors: Christian Cameron

BOOK: Tyrant
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‘Don’t believe it. They can’t hold wine, can’t speak, can’t really walk. Scarcely human. I’ve never seen one sober.’
 
Calchus walked on and Kineas followed him, albeit unwillingly. He wanted a better look, but Calchus was uninterested. Kineas looked back, and saw that the drunk was rising unsteadily to his feet. Then he toppled again, and Kineas followed Calchus around a corner and lost sight of the Scyth.
 
He heard a lot about Scyths at the symposium because he was the senior guest and he introduced the topic. The wine flowed; the inevitable flute girls and fish courses folllowed each other in the approved manner, and then the older men settled in to talk, moving their couches together so that the younger men could relish the more amorous of the flute girls with a degree of privacy. Eyeing a black-eyed girl, Kineas had a brief pang that he was now considered old enough to make conversation, but he pulled his couch to the side, and when he was asked, he suggested that they all tell him about the Scyths on the plains to the north.
 
Isokles took the pitcher of wine from a slave and looked at Kineas. ‘You’re not proposing we drink in the Scythian fashion? Unwatered wine?’
 
The young men yelled for it, but the older men held the day, and the wine was mixed at a sedate two waters to each measure of wine. While Calchus mixed the wine, Isokles looked thoughtful.
 
‘They’re barbarians, of course. Very hardy - they live on their horses. Herodotus has a lot to say about them. I have a copy at my house if you’d care to read it.’
 
‘Honoured,’ said Kineas. ‘We read Herodotus when we were boys, but I had no idea I’d end up here.’
 
‘The thing about them is that they fear nothing. They say they are the only free people on the earth, and that all the rest of us are slaves.’
 
Calchus snorted derisively. ‘As if anyone could mistake us for slaves.’
 
Isokles, one of the few men who seemed willing to risk Calchus’s displeasure, shrugged. ‘Deny it if you will. Anarchises - does that name mean something to you?’
 
Kineas felt as though he was back in school, sitting in the shade of a tree and getting interrogated on his reading. ‘Friend of Solon - a philosopher,’ he said.
 
‘A Scythian philosopher.’ Philokles spoke up from the end of the room. ‘A very
plain
-spoken man.’
 
A whisper of laughter honoured his pun.
 
‘Just the one.’ Isokles nodded at Philokles. ‘He told Solon that the Athenians were slaves to their city - slaves to the walls of the Acropolis.’
 
‘Nonsense,’ said Calchus. He started passing cups of wine around the circle of couches.
 
‘Oh, no, not nonsense, if I may.’ Philokles was leaning on his elbows, his long hair framing his face. ‘He meant that Greeks are slaves to their notions of safety - that our incessant need to protect ourselves robs us of the very freedom we so often prate about.’
 
Isokles nodded. ‘Well put.’
 
Calchus shook his head vehemently. ‘Crap. Pure crap. Slaves can’t even carry arms - they have nothing to defend, nor can they defend anything.’
 
Philokles waved to the butler who had brought the wine service. ‘You there,’ he said. ‘How much do you have in savings?’
 
The slave was middle-aged. He froze at being singled out.
 
‘Answer him,’ said Isokles. He was smiling.
 
In fact, Kineas realized that not only did Isokles not mind twisting Calchus’s tail, he positively relished it.
 
The slave looked down. ‘I don’t exactly know. A hundred owls? Sirs?’
 
Philokles dismissed him with a wave. ‘Just my point. I have just lost all of my possessions to Poseidon. I do not have a single owl, and this bowl of wine, the gift of my esteemed host, will, once in my gullet, be the sum total of my treasure.’ He drank it. ‘I am now as rich as I’ll be for some time. I do not have a hundred owls of silver. This slave does. May I take it from him?’
 
Calchus ground his teeth. As the slave’s owner, he probably held the man’s cash. ‘No.’
 
Philokles raised his empty cup. ‘No. In fact, you would prevent me from taking it. So, it appears that this slave holds property and can defend it. And so would Anarchises say of us. In fact, he would say that we are slaves to the very act of holding our property.’
 
Isokles applauded with a trace of mockery. ‘You should be a lawyer.’
 
Philokles, apparently immune to the mockery, replied, ‘I have been.’
 
Kineas sipped his wine. ‘Why are the Scythians so free, then?’
 
Isokles wiped his mouth. ‘Horses, and endless plains. They don’t so much defend their territory as wander it. When the Great King tried to make war against them, they melted before him. They never offered him battle. They refused to defend anything, because they had nothing to defend. In the end, he was utterly defeated.’
 
Kineas raised his cup. ‘That I remember from Herodotus.’ He swirled the wine in his cup thoughtfully. ‘But the man in the street today . . .’ He paused.
 
‘Ataelus,’ Isokles put in. ‘The drunk Scyth? His name is Ataelus.’
 
‘Had a fortune in gold on his clothes. So they have something worth defending.’
 
The conversation grew much duller as the merchants present squab-bled over the source of the Scythian gold. After another cup of wine, that gave way to a mock-scholarly debate on the reality or fiction of the tale of the Argonauts. Most of the men present insisted that the golden fleece was real, and debated which river feeding the Euxine had the gold. Philokles insisted that the entire tale was an allegory about grain. No one listened to him.
 
No one told Kineas anything useful about the Scythians, either. He drank four cups of watered wine, felt his internal balance change, and passed on the next cup.
 
‘You didn’t use to be such a woman about wine,’ Calchus laughed.
 
Kineas didn’t think he had done anything to react, but Calchus flinched from the look on his face and the room fell silent.
 
In a soldier’s camp, that would have been an insult demanding blood. Calchus didn’t mean it as such, Kineas could see, although he could also see that the habit of power had robbed Calchus of his social conscience.
 
Kineas bowed and forced a smile. ‘Perhaps I should go sleep in the women’s quarters, then,’ he said.
 
Guffaws. Outright laughter from Isokles. Calchus’s face grew red in the light of the lamps. It was his turn to resent an insult - the suggestion that his women might enjoy a visit from Kineas, however oblique. Kineas saw no reason to apologize. He upturned his cup and slipped away.
 
3
 
T
he next morning he was up with the dawn again. He didn’t have a hard head and he didn’t like to drink too much wine, however good the company.
 
Once again, Philokles was snoring on the portico. Kineas walked past him, thinking that the man was certainly a nested set of surprises, contrasts within contrasts and he barely knew the Spartan. Fat athlete, Spartan philosopher.
 
He walked out to the paddock. One of the Gauls was standing sentry. This morning Kineas raised a hand in greeting and then went out to the paddock and got the grey stallion to come to him with a handful of dates. Then he was up on his bare back, his thighs clenched on the animal’s ample sides, and the chill air of the morning was rushing past him as he cantered the length of the paddock. He jumped over the paddock rail without much effort on the stallion’s part and headed north, off Calchus’s farm and on to the rolling hills of the plains. He walked until the sun stood clear and red above the horizon, and then he made a garland of red flowers and sang the hymn to Poseidon, which the grey stallion liked. The stallion ate the rest of the dates and spurned the grass as too coarse, and then Kineas mounted and rode back towards the town, gradually pushing the stallion to his extended gallop, until he was a god, floating on a carpet of speed. The stallion was scarcely winded when he pulled up at the edge of the market. He dismounted and led the grey along the street until he found an early stallholder with a jug of watered wine for sale by the cup. He drank deeply of the sour stuff until he came fully awake. The grey watched him, waiting for a treat.
 
‘Good fucking horse,’ the Scythian said. He was standing by the stallion’s rump. Kineas turned and saw that he was stroking him and cooing. The grey didn’t resent it.
 
‘Thanks, I think.’
 
‘Buy me for wine?’ the Scythian asked. The phrase rolled off his tongue as though he had said it a thousand times.
 
He didn’t smell so bad this morning and he fascinated Kineas. Kineas paid for more wine, handed a cup to the Scyth, who drained it.
 
‘Thanks. You ride for her? I see you ride - yes. Not bad. Yes. More wine, please.’
 
Kineas bought more wine. ‘I ride all the time.’ He was tempted to boast, but couldn’t see why. He wanted the Scyth - a drunk, a beggar, but one with the value of a farm in gold about his person - to like him.
 
‘Thanks. Rotten wine. You ride for all times? Me, too. Need for horse, me.’ He looked comical, with his pointed hat and his terrible Greek. ‘You got more horse? More?’ He patted the grey.
 
Kineas nodded gravely. ‘Yes.’
 
The Scyth patted his chest and touched his forehead - a very alien gesture, almost Persian. ‘I call Ataelus. You call?’
 
‘Kineas.’
 
‘Show horse. More horse.’
 
‘Come along, then.’ Kineas mounted with a handspring, a showy, Cavalry school mount. Before he could think about it, the Scyth was mounted behind him. Kineas had no idea how he had mounted so quickly. Now he felt ridiculous - he hadn’t intended to let the man ride with him and they doubtless looked like fools. He took a back street and kept the stallion moving, ignoring the glances of a handful of early rising citizens. Something for Calchus to twit him with when he was up.
 
They cantered up to the paddock. All of his men were awake and Niceas had the paddock open for the grey before Kineas could call out.
 
Niceas held the grey’s head as they dismounted. ‘He’s been here before. Seems harmless. Might make a good
prokusatore
.’
 
Kineas shrugged. ‘I have a hard time understanding him, but I think he wants to buy a horse and get out of here.’
 
Diodorus was stretching his legs against the paddock wall. His hair was a tangle of Medusa-like red snakes in the morning, and he kept pushing the more aggressive locks off his forehead. ‘Who can blame him? But if he’s a Scyth, he’d be a good guide.’
 
Kineas made a quick decision and went over to the Gaul. ‘Cut the white-faced bay out and bring him here.’
 
Antigonus nodded and started pushing through the horses. The Scyth walked over to the paddock wall and sat with his back against it, his leather trousers in the dirt. He didn’t seem to mind. He seemed content just to watch the horses.
 
When Antigonus brought him the bay, Kineas walked it over to the Scyth. ‘Tomorrow, we go to Olbia,’ he said slowly.
 
‘Sure,’ said the Scyth. Impossible to tell if he understood.
 
‘If you will guide us to Olbia, I’ll give you this bay.’
 
The Scyth looked at the horse. He got to his feet, ran a hand over her and leaped on to her back. In one stride, he was moving at a gallop and off, over the wall of the paddock and up the road to the plain.
 
For a group of professional soldiers, it was an embarrassment how totally he had taken them by surprise. He was gone, just a thin tail of hoof dust hanging in the morning sun, before any of them thought of mounting or getting a weapon.
 
‘Uh,’ said Kineas. ‘My fault. He seemed harmless.’
 
Niceas was still watching the dust, his hand on his amulet. ‘He didn’t exactly do us harm.’
 
‘He certainly knew how to ride.’ Coenus was watching the last of the dust under his hand. He grinned. ‘The Poet called them Centaurs, and now we know why.’
 
There wasn’t anything useful to be done about it. They didn’t know the plains and they didn’t have the time to chase a lone Scyth for days. Niceas put them all, even Kineas, to cleaning their tack and packing it tight for the next movement. They agreed that they’d leave the next morning. It wasn’t that they were a democracy - it was just that they took orders better if they had participated in shaping them.

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