Kineas and Diodorus had been the victims of just such an event. They knew the sting of exile — the humiliation and the endless small slights that citizens imposed on stateless men. But Heron was a prickly fellow at the best of times, and he sat in his resentment, disdaining attempts to improve his lot, and his men followed his lead. They remained with Kineas because most of them had nowhere else to go.
Finally, formed on the far left of the line of hippeis, there were Ataelus’s twenty Sakje, half of them women. They wore odd combinations of Greek and Sakje armour, rode expensive horses and were covered in gold. They were exotic and dangerous and they would march in the procession, despite the protests of certain city factions, as would the Sauromatae.
All the survivors had benefited from the battle by acquiring the very best of the Macedonian armour and the heavy Macedonian chargers. On the day of battle, the Macedonian horses had been starved and tired — but a month on the grass, even in the rain, had restored some of their spirit, and five days’ access to the granaries of the city meant that every man was mounted like a prince.
Diodorus cantered up and gave a precise salute, his fist clenched on his breastplate. Kineas returned it.
‘Rain’s stopped,’ Diodorus said. He grinned, his sharp features and freckled cheeks glowing with pleasure. He enjoyed command, and he worried less about the future than Kineas. ‘Maybe there’s hope after all,’ he added. ‘You look beautiful, I must say.’
‘Why are you so fucking cheerful?’ Kineas asked.
‘I’m tired of rain. And Coenus is better this morning. His fever broke in the dark. He ate.’ Diodorus tilted his helmet back so that his red hair showed at the brow. ‘You have to see him. It’s a gift from the gods.’
Kineas felt his mood lighten immediately. Coenus — one of his oldest friends, one of his best men, a scholar and a fellow exile — had been given up for dead.
So Kineas had a different look about him as he took his place at the head of the hippeis and led them out into the streets, through the gate and along the edge of the market to where the priests of Apollo waited with the phalanx — all the men of the city. There were gaps in the phalanx just as there were in the hippeis, but in his present mood, Kineas was glad to see that there were also men back standing in the ranks who had ridden into the city in the wagons of wounded.
Every morning another two or three of the wounded tried on their armour and either crept back to their pallets defeated, or fought their way through a fog of dizziness and weakness to attend the musters. The recoveries had peaked now. Kineas, who visited the wounded twice a day, had little hope for the men who continued to lose weight, or whose wounds were still fevered.
Sitalkes, the Getae boy, was one. Coenus had been another — with light wounds that had suddenly festered — and he had been down since the army left Marthax. If he had recovered, there was still hope for the rest.
Movement in the Sauromatae camp roused him from thought. Prince Lot was mounting a captured Macedonian mare. He waved to Kineas, and Kineas waved back. A glance over his shoulder showed him that Memnon was some minutes from having the phalanx in order. He pressed his knees against his own captured Macedonian charger and cantered painfully across the short-cropped grass, his hip burning with the rhythm of his unnamed charger’s hooves.
Lot raised a fist in greeting. ‘Rain stops!’ he said in Greek. He pointed to the sky over Kineas’s shoulder, where dark blue could be seen at the base of the sky in the east like the glaze on an expensive cup.
‘Rain stops,’ Kineas agreed. The Sauromatae had fought in every action that Kineas had led. Their superior armour and battle skills had kept many of them alive despite a battering, and most of their saddles would be full if they mustered. Their horse herd, bolstered by their share of the Macedonian and Getae spoils, numbered almost a thousand, guarded by shifts of well-armed young women, and they were eating Olbia’s farmers out of their grain, yet another problem Kineas had to face.
‘Rain stops and ground hard again,’ Lot said. ‘Hard ground makes good road east.’ The Sauromatae prince leaned close. ‘Need to ride — need to be home.’
Kineas switched to Sakje, a language where he was stilted and Lot was more fluent. ‘At least a month until we ride, cousin.’ Kineas had adopted the habit of addressing the senior tribal officers as cousins, elder or younger as age and rank dictated.
Lot had a magnificent, if barbaric, blond moustache, and his right hand parted his moustache and then twirled each end, a habit that was sometimes imitated behind his back. ‘Need to ride,’ he said in Sakje. ‘My nephew worries me.’
Kineas shrugged. ‘Nephew?’ he asked, wondering which of the many Sauromatae or even Sakje counted as his nephew.
‘My wife’s sister’s son. My heir. He worries me.’ Lot stared out over the sea of grass as if he could see the man riding in the distance. ‘Never thought to be gone so long.’ Lot looked chagrined. ‘Didn’t know the sea of grass was so big. ’
Kineas raised a hand to forestall him. Lot had done his share — far more than his share — to win the victory at the Ford of the River God. Since that day, Lot had never ceased to press the Sakje and the Greeks to follow him east, where his tribe and the others of the Massagetae confederacy — the eastern Sakje — were hard pressed by Alexander. And the five days of waiting at Olbia was making him edgy.
‘Patience,’ Kineas said. ‘Today we mourn our dead.’
Lot bowed his head. Then he waved to his own nobles, who began to file out into the column. Niceas had kept a space for them — they were aliens, but they were allies, and with Ataelus’s little troop of prodromoi, they represented the whole realm of the Sakje out on the sea of grass.
A realm that might now be an enemy of Olbia. Kineas shook his head to clear it, because this was the day of mourning, and politics would have to wait.
Helladius, now chief priest of Apollo, joined him. Helladius was an old and very conservative priest, but he had held his ground in the phalanx. Memnon had noted that the old fool had ended the battle in the front rank and done his part.
‘You will lead the procession?’ Helladius asked.
Kineas shook his head. ‘No. We will return to the ways of the city before the tyrant came. The priests of Apollo will lead, followed by the hippeis and allies and the phalanx, and then Cleitus’s body and his honour guard. I will ride with them.’
Helladius nodded. ‘The god smiles on you, Archon,’ he said. ‘I have interpreted the omens for you all summer, and I say that you are beloved of all the gods, but of Apollo and Athena most of all.’
Kineas narrowly avoided a cynical reply. Hubris was never becoming, and Helladius was not a sanctimonious fool. Or not entirely. ‘Thank you,’ he said carefully.
The funeral procession marched on time, because the army had a summer of campaigning behind it. The priests sang, and the phalanx caught the tune and sang with them, scandalizing the younger priests who had not served with the army. And then, as the procession entered the gates, Helladius began the paean, and all the soldiers took it up, thousands of throats straining to praise Apollo, the same chant that had settled their nerves in the last seconds before the Macedonian charge. Dolphins of gold rose on either side of the gate, and the temple of Apollo was visible at the end of the long street of the gods, and still the paean lifted to the heavens with its song of reverence and victory. Kineas found that he could not sing for the tears in his throat, and when he turned his horse to see the column he could see that many men were weeping openly as they sang, and yet the power of the paean waxed as if all the missing voices were there too, and for a moment the distinction between the world and… the world blurred and Kineas heard Ajax beside him, his pure voice full of pride, and Nicomedes’ harsh croak in his ear, and Agis, who so revered the god, and many others.