‘Heraklea,’ Philokles said.
That was a quarter of the way around the Euxine. ‘That will take weeks!’ Melitta said.
Philokles stumbled to a stop. ‘Look, girl,’ he said. ‘Yesterday, we were attacked by Upazan. Galleys out of Pantecapaeum sacked the town. What does that tell you?’
‘Pantecapaeum is an ally!’ Melitta cried. Her brother raised his head.
‘Mother was going to Pantecapaeum,’ he said. ‘To renew the treaty with Eumeles.’
‘And now you will be hunted,’ Philokles said. ‘Upazan and Eumeles have made a deal.’ He shook his head, utter weariness getting the better of his good sense. ‘All we can do is run.’
Melitta’s nails bit into the palms of her hands. ‘What of mama?’ she demanded. ‘She’s not dead? She’s not dead!’ She grabbed her brother’s hand, and he gripped it as if she was a sword.
‘She’s not dead!’ the boy shouted.
Philokles and Theron kept walking, and Coenus raised his head, shook it and looked away.
‘Maybe not,’ the old soldier said.
None of them spoke for a long time. After a while the sun tried to rise on a grey day, and then it began to rain.
Coenus’s head came up. ‘Rain,’ he said. ‘Cover our tracks – cover our scent.’ He looked at Philokles and drew a deep breath, although they could see that it hurt him. ‘Now you have a chance.’
Philokles stood on the road in the rain for as long as it takes a good smith to shoe a horse. Then he said, ‘We need to get off the road.’
Coenus nodded. ‘Cross-country until you have to cross the river,’ he agreed.
Theron shook his head. ‘We must be ahead of the news – no one else could have swum the river.’
Coenus’s eyes came up. He was having trouble breathing and his eyes were dull, but he got his head up and he pointed his walking staff at Theron. ‘Listen, boy,’ he said. ‘Eumeles needs these children dead. His whole fucking attack on our town is for nothing if the children live. He’ll be across this morning, if he has to swim himself. He’ll flood this side of the river with soldiers – men he trusts.’
Theron swished his walking staff in irritation. ‘This is not the sort of expedition I signed on for.’
But then he saw something in Philokles that changed his mind. Melitta saw him start. He doesn’t want to end up like the farmer. She’d never seen Philokles the tutor – Philokles the drunk – like this.
He was scary.
He looked them over and gave a smile – a half-smile, almost of contempt. ‘Cross-country it is. Follow me.’
They walked all day, leading their horses. The rain continued, and they crossed muddy fields and walked through dripping woods. Melitta was tired in an hour, and exhausted before they sat under an oak and ate more garlic sausage. Coenus could barely walk. Her brother met her eye and shook his head, but they were too tired to talk. After they had eaten the sausage, they walked again. As darkness began to settle, Philokles and Theron began to take turns carrying Coenus, and then they stopped in a stand of ash and cut poles and made a stretcher out of his chlamys and walked on again, carrying him between them. None of the horses was fit to ride.
In the evening, they came to a village. Theron went in alone, and came out dejected. ‘Men were here this morning,’ he said. ‘They took all the horses and killed some men.’ He shrugged. ‘I took this,’ he said, and held out a clay pot the size of his hand. ‘I tried to pay, but everyone ran off.’
They made a camp above the town. None of them had a fire kit, and everything was wet through, and Theron couldn’t get a fire started. He looked at Philokles. ‘You’re the old soldier,’ he said.
‘I get fire started by telling a slave to light one,’ Philokles shot back.
‘Fine pair of bandits you two will make,’ Coenus muttered. He sat in the dark, shredding bark between his fingers for a long time – so long that Melitta fell asleep, and she awoke to the warm kiss of golden fire on her face.
‘He did it with a stick!’ Satyrus said with delight. They gazed at the fire for a while, listening to their bellies rumble, and then they were asleep.
In the morning, they cut north again at Coenus’s urging, into wilder country farther from the river and the shore of the Euxine. Bion had recovered and Philokles and Theron got Coenus up on her, and they made better time. Theron ran down a rabbit and they stopped in the hollow of a hilltop and made fire – quickly, because Coenus had shown them how to wrap coals and embers in wet leaves to carry with them. Rabbit soup in Theron’s clay pot – nothing to eat it with, so that Melitta burned her lips drinking it straight from the pot – and roast rabbit cooked on a green branch used as a spit. Melitta grew used to taking direction from Coenus as he lay on a pile of cut boughs, protected from the rain only by their one spare cloak, which had belonged to one of the dead Sauromatae.
After the meal they were all better, even Coenus. They slept a little, collected embers and walked on. That night they slept in deep woods, soaked to the skin but warmed by a big fire. In the morning, Coenus was well enough to look over the horses and frown.
‘The two steppe ponies are well enough. And Bion is healthy. But we’re killing the other two – they’re too well bred for this life. We should kill them for meat or trade them to a farmer.’
‘For meat!’ Satyrus asked, his eyes wide. ‘Our horses? Hermes!’
Coenus grunted and sat, suddenly and without ceremony. ‘Son, there are no rules now. We can’t get attached to anything. Including each other.’ He looked at Philokles. ‘I’m slowing you, brother.’
Philokles shrugged. ‘Yes, you are. On the other hand, without your knowledge of hunting and living rough, the children might already be dead – or I’d be driven to taking chances.’ He looked down the hill. ‘As it is, we’ve made time. We’re only a day or so from the ford at Thatis.’
Coenus smiled grimly. ‘I’ll try and stay useful, then.’
Philokles grunted. ‘See that you do. Otherwise – well, I suppose you’d make a good roast.’
Theron turned away from Philokles’ laughter and Coenus’s grunts. ‘You Spartan bastard!’ Coenus spat. ‘You make it all hurt more!’
‘They’re joking,’ Satyrus said.
Theron shook his head. ‘They’re – not like anyone I’ve ever known,’ he said. ‘I thought that I was tough.’
3
The plain of Thatis was an endless succession of rich brown streams, swollen with the rain. Maeotae farmers tilled the mud in silence, and only a handful even raised their eyes to watch them if they were forced to come into a village. It was all so dull that they were almost captured owing to simple inattention. They were walking along the wooded edge of a field of wheat when Coenus raised his head.
‘I smell horses,’ he said.
‘Ares!’ Philokles whispered.
Just across the hedge, in the next field, were a dozen horsemen, led by a tall man in a red cloak with a livid scar on his face. Two dismounted soldiers were beating a peasant. Scar-face watched with an impatience that carried over a stade of broken ground.
Melitta’s heart went from a dead stop to a gallop.
‘Just keep walking,’ Philokles said.
Theron didn’t know much about horses, and he walked off, but Satyrus jumped in front of Coenus’s mount and got his hands on Bion’s nose. ‘There, honey,’ he said in Sakje. ‘There, there, my darling.’ He looked up at Coenus, who gave him a nod.
They walked along the edge of the field until they came to a path going off up the ridge, deeper into the woods.
‘What were they doing?’ Melitta asked.
‘Nothing good,’ Philokles spat. ‘Keep moving.’ He grunted. ‘Thank the gods they missed us.’
They climbed the ridge, apparently without being spotted, but when they reached the open meadow at the top, they could see horsemen across the meadow, working the field carefully despite the pouring rain. Another group of horsemen was in the trees below them – they saw the second group as soon as they stopped.
‘Think they’ve seen us?’ Philokles asked.