‘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.
Of course, Kineas took a good deal of teasing from the citizens — he’d lost them their pet Scyth, didn’t he know better than to let a Scyth up on a horse? Would he let a child play with fire? And more such. Calchus just laughed.
‘I wish someone had woken me up to see you riding with that drunk. The things I miss!’ If he held any rancour about the night’s revel, it was clearly dispelled by his guest’s embarrassment of the morning.
‘I’ll be off in the morning.’ Kineas was indeed embarrassed, and caught his fingers smoothing the hem of his tunic, an old habit.
Calchus watched the men around the paddock oiling leather. ‘I can’t make you see sense and stay?’
Kineas turned up his hands. ‘I have a contract, my friend. When it is done, and I have a talent or two in silver — why, then I’d be pleased to have this conversation again.’
Calchus smiled. It was the first really happy smile that Kineas had seen in two days from the man. ‘You’ll think about it? That’s good enough for me. I have Isokles coming tonight, and his daughter will visit to sing for us. Family evening — nothing to shock a girl. Take a look at her.’
Kineas realized that Calchus, for all his overbearing ways, was working quite hard to make Kineas welcome. ‘You, a matchmaker?’
Calchus put an arm around his shoulder. ‘I said it when you first came. Your father saved our whole family. I don’t forget. You’re fresh from the city — you think I’m a big frog in a little pond. I see it. And I am. Isokles and I — we argue about everything, but we are the men of substance here. And there’s room for more. The pond’s not that small.’
For Calchus, that was a long, emotional speech. Kineas hugged him and got a crushing squeeze in return.
Calchus went off to watch slaves being loaded for Attica. Kineas went back to working on his tack. He was sitting with his back against the outside of the paddock, using the wall for shade, with his bridle laid out in pieces and a new headstall to sew on, when young Ajax loomed above him.
‘Good day to you, sir,’ he said.
‘Your servant, Ajax. Please accept the accommodation offered by this tuft of grass.’ Kineas waved to it and passed a skin full of sour wine, which Ajax drank as if it were ambrosia.
‘My father sent this for you to look at.’ He had a bag of scrolls over his shoulder like a student in the agora. He hoisted it to the ground.
Kineas opened one, glanced at the writing — a very neat copyist — and saw that it was Herodotus.
‘It is only Book Four — the part about the Scythians. Because — well, my father says you are leaving — leaving tomorrow. For Olbia. So you won’t have time to read much.’
Kineas nodded and picked up the headstall. ‘I probably won’t have time to read the first scroll,’ he said.
Ajax nodded. He then sat in silence. Kineas resumed his work, using a fine bronze awl and the backing of a soft billet of wood to punch a neat row of holes down each side of the new headstall. He looked at Ajax from time to time from under his eyebrows — the boy was anxious, fidgeting with scraps of leather and bits of thread. But silent. Kineas liked him for his silence.
He kept working. When the holes were punched, he waxed a length of linen cord and fitted it to a needle — the needle was too large for the job, but it was the only good needle in the camp. Then he began to sew.
‘The thing is…’ Ajax began. But he lost heart and the words just hung there.
Kineas let them dangle for a bit while he finished his length of cord and threaded a new one. ‘The thing is?’ he said gently.
‘I want to see the world,’ Ajax announced.
Kineas nodded. ‘Laudable.’
‘Nothing ever happens here.’
‘Sounds good to me.’ Kineas wondered if he could live in a place where the festivals and the gymnasium were the sum of excitement. But on this day, facing the loss of a horse, an uncertain journey and the tyrant of Olbia, he felt that a life of certain boredom looked preferable.