Satyrus had had no idea that Abraham had a friend. He put his head in his hands as soon as she was gone. 'Oh, gods,' he said.
Theron said nothing.
After a while, Satyrus looked up. 'We need an allied port on the Euxine,' he said.
Theron sighed, and said nothing.
After a while, Satyrus went to bed.
10
When she awoke, she had lost years of her life, and she was a child in her mother's felt yurt, camping on the sea of grass. Gryphons and eagles warred with stags and leopards on the worked felt hangings, and pine resin scented the air. A brazier of worked bronze hung from the central poles over the hearth, and the air was warm, like summer. She was wrapped in fur. The woman by the brazier, in her white deerskin coat, was her mother.
In one great rush, all her life came back to her, a single cascade of memory, so that her mother died and she gave birth in a single instant, and she wept for her distant son and her dead mother with the same tears.
'So,' Nihmu said. She was sitting on her knees, wearing a robe of white deerskin worked in red and blue patterns with dyed hair, with rows of golden plaques at the seams and golden cones with dyed deer-hair tufts tinkling as she raised her arm to feed hot wine to Melitta. 'So – you are back to us.'
Melitta drank the wine, smiled at Nihmu and was gone again. When next she awoke, Nihmu was kneeling by her, arranging crisp wool blankets and a clean fur. 'Hush, child,' she said.
Melitta sat up so suddenly that her head spun, and she lay back on her side. 'I'm awake!' she said.
'Yes,' Nihmu said. She was speaking Sakje. They both were. Melitta got her head up again. 'I almost died, didn't I?'
'Some of the people think that you did die.' Nihmu frowned. 'I find the people – different. But it is I who am different.'
'You seem the same to me,' Melitta said.
Her appetite returned like her memories, and she ate and ate. It was two days before her fingers explored the stiffness of her face. She felt a chill despite the fur robe that wrapped her.
'Aunt Nihmu?' she asked. 'How bad is my face?'
'Were you planning to be a Greek matron?' Nihmu asked. 'If so, I suspect you'd have some difficulty.'
Coenus pushed through the flap of the yurt. 'I will go and sacrifice – something. By Hermes and all the gods, Melitta – I'm sorry to have lost you. It must have been brutal!'
'Brutal?' Melitta was fingering her cheek. 'That's exactly what it was,' she said. She sat up. 'I felt that I was being tested,' she said.
'Perhaps you were,' Nihmu agreed. 'She's worried about the scar.'
Coenus kissed her. 'No man worthy of the name will think less of you for the scar,' he said.
Melitta frowned. 'That bad?' she asked. She could see in their eyes that it was bad. 'May I have a mirror?' she asked.
'How did you get it?' Nihmu asked her. She took a mirror out of her sleeve, as if she'd been waiting for this moment.
'Did my good horse make it? The one with the gryphon brand?' Melitta asked.
Coenus nodded. 'Yes,' he said. 'Quite a horse.'
'I killed the last owner. He was trying to put an arrow on his bow when I jumped him.' She looked away. 'His arrow scratched me.'
'It was poisoned,' Nihmu said.
'I think it saved me,' Melitta admitted. 'I was in a haze – almost living in the spirit land. I might not have made it in this world.'
Coenus made the face he always made at barbarian notions of reality. 'It almost killed you, girl.' His protestation sounded odd, and Melitta realized that he too was speaking in Sakje.
Samahe came in through the tent flap. 'Now we shall rejoice,' she said. She came and folded herself into the space between Nihmu and the bed of furs. She took both of Melitta's hands in hers, and Melitta had another moment of memory, because Samahe's hands were the same rough and smooth that her mother's had been, ridges of callus and muscle and the backs as soft as any woman's. She saw the mirror and shrugged. 'You look like a woman who is ready to be a war queen,' Samahe said. 'Not like some soft Greek girl. Take the mirror and look. Then put it away. There is much to do.'
Melitta picked up the mirror – a Greek one, with a bronze and ivory handle and a silver reflector. The image was true, even in the firelight of the yurt. The same slightly upturned nose, the same black hair. And on the left side of her face, a black line like a tattoo, jagged like a lightning bolt, from the corner of her left eye to her chin.
No person with great beauty ever fully values it, the sheer attraction, the pleasure of it, until it is lost. Only then did Melitta admit to herself that she had been beautiful. The kind of girl for which fashionable Alexandria boys wrote poems.
'I have a feeling that my future as a valuable hetaira has taken a death-blow,' she said, to mask her inner scream. She looked like something that had been dead.
'How many men did you kill?' a new voice asked, and a small man pushed into the lodge. Everyone shuffled to make room around the fire and the brazier as Ataelus sat cross-legged, his fierce face unusually happy. 'You came back to us!' he said.
Melitta took his hands and kissed him on the cheek. 'Ah! Now I think I will live. My mother's best warrior.'
'You are like your mother born again,' Samahe said.
'Six,' Melitta said. 'At least six. I tried to let one live, but the gods took his life anyway.'
'Aiyee!' Ataelus shouted. 'Six Sauromatae!' He leaned back and laughed so hard that he had to cross his hands on his stomach. 'Six, and took their horses and arms and brought them here! I have singers already singing it, lady.' He leaned close. 'I ask you – I have to ask you. You are here to raise the tribes?'
Melitta thought of her new face. 'Yes,' she said.
'Good,' Ataelus said. 'My name is not enough. You – and Nihmu, and even Coenus, back from the time of Kineax – together, we will raise the tribes. You must grow well, so that we can ride. We will ride far.'
Samahe nodded. 'Too long, we have been outlaws on our own grass.'
'This winter, we take it all back,' Ataelus said. 'Upazan killed your father. Somehow he must die, despite the prophecy. Perhaps you will kill him.'
'Prophecy?' Melitta asked.
Nihmu looked at the ground. 'Upazan may not die by a man's blade,' she said.
Melitta was going to say something derisive about superstition, but she knew that this was the wrong place. These are my people now, she thought.
'We start with Marthax,' Melitta said.
All the heads in the lodge turned to her. Ataelus shook his head. 'I hear the voice of the Lady Srayanka – but I had thought to win over Parshtaevalt of the Cruel Hands first, and then the Grass Cats. Urvara is close to Olbia. She will be your friend.'
Melitta sat up straight. She looked at Nihmu. 'The eagles are flown, Ataelus. When Marthax submits, all the tribes will come over, and we will not have civil war.' She used the Greek word for internal strife, because Sakje lacked a way to express it. 'It is the prophecy – which many should know. And should be in your song.'
Ataelus nodded and scratched his chin. 'I will not treat you like a girl in council again. Marthax? He is old. His sons are all dead.' Ataelus rocked back and forth. 'Perhaps it could be done.'
Nihmu spoke up. 'When I was a prophet, I sang it,' she said. 'But Melitta, I didn't say that it had to be Marthax first.'
'Melitta,' Ataelus said, and shook his head. 'Such a kindly name.'
'Srayanka chose that name,' Samahe said, with a dark look at her husband.
'The people have chosen another. Just as Srayanka was "Cruel Hands" at war.' Ataelus shrugged. 'The people make names. I have one. You have one. She is a warrior – she came in with her kills and her spoil, and she was named.'