Kineas shrugged, still looking across the river. ‘I didn’t know what I wanted,’ he said.
‘Fair enough,’ Niceas answered. He speared the deer meat carefully, putting three of the springy sticks into each steak and then putting the sticks deep into the loam around their fire. In the fire pit, he pushed the coals from Kineas’s earlier blaze into deep piles, one each under the lattices supporting the meat. The meat began to sizzle almost immediately and Kineas’s stomach made a wet noise. They both chuckled.
‘It’s hot,’ Niceas said. He’d boiled water in a copper mess pot and added the herbs he’d learned from the Sakje and some honey. It was a good drink in the morning, and it saved the wine.
Kineas took the cup from his outstretched hand and drank. He smiled. ‘We’re going to end up becoming Sakje,’ he said. ‘What’s the herb?’
‘Something the Sakje call “ garella ”,’ he said. ‘I found some growing here when we made camp.’
‘Bitter,’ Kineas said. ‘Good with honey.’
Niceas shrugged. ‘It’s warm and wet. Srayanka — your Medea — likes the stuff. That’s how I learned about it.’
Kineas nodded and drank more. It tasted better. Or was that his imagination?
‘We could go back to Athens,’ Niceas said.
Kineas stepped back from the fire as if he had been burned. ‘What?’ he asked.
‘We could go back to Athens. Your exile is lifted — all your estates restored. Right?’
Kineas looked at the other man. ‘Where is this coming from?’
Niceas shrugged, pulled the sticks from the ground and flipped one of the pieces of meat. It smelled delicious, and it had very little fat. ‘The plains aren’t good for you. All these dreams. And war. We’ve had enough war, haven’t we?’
Kineas looked at his hyperetes as if seeing him for the first time. ‘Have you had enough war?’
‘The first time I saw it, that was enough,’ Niceas said. ‘But like Memnon, it’s the only life I’ve ever known. I keep waiting — waiting for you to retire, so that I can retire, too.’
Kineas was watching his friend’s face. ‘I will not be going back to Athens, old friend.’
Niceas shook his head. ‘Of course not. Silly of me to mention it, only — only I don’t see an end. We ride east. Then what? You find Medea and live happily ever after. What about the rest of the boys? Do we just pick a Sakje bride and settle down, or what? Do we fight Alexander? Do we just go on fighting Alexander? Maybe keep moving east? Come back here and make war on Marthax?’ Niceas was growing angrier as he spoke. ‘It won’t ever end, Kineas. You’ll become fucking Alexander, at this rate. What’s it for?’
Kineas rubbed his beard, stung. ‘I promised Srayanka.’
Niceas nodded. ‘You promised her. Did you promise her Eumenes? Diodorus? Antigonus? Coenus? Me?’ At each name, his voice rose. ‘We’ll leave our fucking skulls out east in some Tartarus of wilderness beyond the world, won’t we?’
Kineas drained the garella and sat. He pulled his legs up close and put his arms around them. ‘Why didn’t you say all this back in Olbia?’
Niceas shrugged. ‘It didn’t really come to me until I saw what this campaign was doing to you. And when I saw the ships sail off. That hurt.’
Kineas turned his face away. ‘I have to do this. You don’t. I told you all that in Olbia.’
Niceas’s voice was gentle instead of angry. ‘That’s horse shit, Hipparch. We’ll all follow wherever you choose to go. You have trained us to be that way, and now we are. Diodorus won’t leave you, I won’t leave you. Now Eumenes won’t leave you. It’s almost funny, because every one of us has our own little following — the damned following the damned following Kineas.’
Kineas thought of the other boys hissing their catcalls after the fleeing philosopher. Instead of an angry retort, he nodded. ‘Would it help if I promised that this was the last time?’ he asked.
Niceas shook his head. ‘No. Because being who you are, it won’t be the last time. But it’d help those of us who follow you if you put some planning into the trip home, instead of just the trip out.’
Kineas met his friend’s eyes. ‘I won’t be coming home,’ he said.
Niceas met his glance. ‘If you say so. Maybe the rest of us will, though.’
Kineas nodded. ‘I understand.’
‘Good,’ said Niceas. ‘Because the meat’s done.’
An hour later, they were riding across the plains between the oak woods and the river. They passed farms and Maeotae farmers, paler than the Sindi but wearing the same colourful clothes. They were prosperous, and the women wore gold, even when they worked with hoes in their gardens or brought in the harvest. Twice, the mounted pair passed groups of Maeotae in their hundreds reaping a field of wheat. There was grain in every basket and more coming in every apron. Stone barns and turf barns dotted the landscape along the river, each with a small dock and every one bursting with wheat.
Kineas shook his head. ‘The golden fleece,’ he said.
Niceas nodded. ‘Alexander is wasting his time on Persia,’ he said. ‘These are the richest farms I’ve ever seen.’
When the sun stood at the top of the sky, Kineas stopped where a group of Maeotae sat in the shade of a great oak tree, eating bread and cheese. He dismounted. The men watched him warily.
‘Do any of you speak Greek?’ he asked.
The oldest of the farmers stood and approached, but he shook his head.
‘Sakje?’ Kineas asked.
The farmer smiled, showing more teeth than gaps. They were a handsome people, with hair as golden as their crops in autumn and the stature of those who ate well all through the year. ‘Some,’ he said.
‘You know Olbia?’ Kineas asked.
The farmer nodded.
‘We are from Olbia. An army is coming this way, up the Tanais. My army. We’ll pay for grain.’ Kineas found that Sakje forced him to be succinct.
The farmer nodded. ‘Soldiers come. Horsemen come,’ he said. ‘Say same. Pay gold for grain.’ He nodded.
Kineas held up a silver owl. ‘I’d buy bread and cheese, if I could,’ he said.
The farmer shrugged. He went to his wife and returned with a basket full of bread and cheese. ‘For nothing,’ he said with evident pride. ‘For friend.’
Niceas nodded. ‘Any farmer would do the same. These are good folk.’ He went to his horse and removed a cut of the buck and carried it to the farmer. ‘For nothing,’ he said in Sakje, and the farmer grinned at him.
They rode on, eating as they went. ‘March discipline must be good,’ Niceas said, ‘or those folk would be pissing themselves at the sight of soldiers.’
‘This is Grass Cat land,’ Kineas said.
‘I don’t think those Maeotae would agree,’ Niceas said. ‘This is no man’s land.’ He looked at Kineas under his brows. ‘You could build something here,’ he said.
Kineas looked at him. ‘Build something?’ he asked.
Niceas grunted, and they rode on.
They stayed the night in a heavy stone house. Kineas got a bed by the hearth — the nights had developed a bite — and he was asleep as soon as his head was on the furs.
The two young eagles were above him again, and they were noisy. He smiled at them and they regarded him with curiosity, and then he began to climb to them. He got one leg well up to a knot in the bole of the great tree and pressed himself close to keep his balance, and wrapped his arms around the trunk…
Around her waist, and she made to push him away, just the palm of her hand and not very hard. He pushed her chiton up with his free hand until he could feel the warm vellum of her hip under his fingers, and his erection took on a life of its own.
‘No, my lord,’ she said, but without much force. More weariness than refusal, really. She was pretty, with heavy breasts and a slim waist, and all the young men wanted her. She had smiled at him many times, and today when she came into the stable with two buckets of water he had kissed her, and now he had her under him in the straw.
He ran his hand under the thin wool, over the mound of her belly and on to her breast. The garment bunched around her hips and she moved them in discomfort. ‘Stop!’ she said, with a little more emphasis. ‘Please?’ she asked.