Ajax came up behind him. He was flushed. ‘I wondered — it was like no fight you described.’
Kineas put an arm around Ajax. ‘That was the animal,’ he said to the young man, and gave him a squeeze. ‘You did well.’
‘Kineas dreams of death,’ Philokles said into a moment of silence, and then shut his mouth with a snap.
Diodorus went on. ‘Did we surprise them? Did they surprise us? I don’t even know who won — what?’ He looked at Philokles, and then at Kineas. ‘You have dreamed your own death?’
Kineas fumbled with the sash he wore around his breastplate. ‘Philokles is drunk.’
Diodorus took the Spartan cup from Philokles’ hand and drained it. ‘Good plan. Death dreams are all pigswill — I should know. I always dream my death before an action. I dreamed of death last night and doubtless I’ll dream of it again tonight.’
Philokles gazed at his now-empty cup. ‘Will it be tomorrow?’ he asked quietly. He didn’t seem so drunk, of a sudden.
Kineas got his sash untied and managed to open his breast and back plate. ‘Maybe. I don’t know.’ He looked around the campfires. ‘Where’s Heron?’
Niceas appeared from the rain with Arni, Ajax’s slave. Arni pulled the wet tunic over Kineas’s head and pulled a drier one down over him.
Niceas shook his head. ‘Heron isn’t back. Neither are his men.’
‘Crap,’ Kineas said. ‘Where’s Ataelus?’
Niceas shrugged. ‘He got a couple of horses at the end of the fight,’ he said. ‘I think he’s wooing a girl of the Cruel Hands.’
Kineas pulled his wet cloak over his almost-dry tunic. ‘I’ll find him.’ He hated to leave them — they were in the glow that comes after successful action, and he was headed for black depression. But something nagged him. Heron.
Kineas crossed the hill to the Cruel Hands, and his back was slapped many times. Sakje offered him wine, or mare’s milk, or spiced tea in deep mugs, and he drank some of each as he passed from fire to fire, asking after Ataelus.
He found Srayanka’s wagon first. He heard her laughter, and he rested his hand on the wheel, wondering — he had never sought her out since the night by the river, and now he felt foolish, like a suitor waiting in the rain.
More laughter carried through the felt of the tent on the wagon bed. Kineas heard Parshtaevalt’s deeper laugh, and he pulled himself up on the step and called ‘hello!’ in Greek.
Parshtaevalt’s hand opened the flap. The tent was lit by a brazier and dense with smoke from the seeds and the stems — the pine-pitch scent flowed past him into the night.
‘Hah!’ called Parshtaevalt. He put a hand on Kineas’s neck and hugged him, then pulled him through the door to the bench that ran the length of the wagon — seat by day, bed by night. The wagon was full of people, stifling with wet wool and smoke. Hands reached out and pushed him — prodded him — until he sank into a warm space between two bodies. One of them was Srayanka, and before he was on the bench, one of her hands had snaked into his tunic and her mouth closed over his. He kissed her so deeply that he breathed from her lungs, and she from his, and the fire in his skin burned his tunic dry as she curled around him on the bench. It was dark in the wagon — the red coals in the brazier threw no real light — and despite his knowledge that Hirene was under his left hand, he felt as if they were alone, and every breath of the air intensified his desire.
‘You came,’ she said around his kiss, as if she didn’t believe it.
He had come looking for something. His hand was under her tunic, tracing the line where the soft ivory of her breast met the lusher skin of her nipple, and she sank her teeth into his arm, and he gasped, taking a deeper breath of the smoke off the brazier…
The worm was close, the mandibles of its mouth chewing away at everything in its path, and his gorge rose as it ate Leucon’s face off his skull…
‘Ataelus!’ Kineas cried. He pushed her away. He wondered if he was going mad.
She grabbed his hand and he resisted, but she was strong, and she pulled him, pushed him, and suddenly he was falling — it was wet, and he was slumped at the wheel hub. She jumped down on the wet grass beside him.
‘You are easy for the smoke,’ she said. She admonished him with a finger. ‘Breathe deep. Go under wagon and breathe.’
‘Stay with me,’ he said, but she shook her head.
‘Too much, too fast. You breathe. I find Ataelax. He with Samahe. Do what we should do, but for Sastar Baqca and the king.’ And she was gone.
His head was clear when she came back, with Ataelus behind her like a spare horse.
Kineas didn’t feel like a commander and he knew he didn’t look like one, but he pulled Ataelus close. ‘I sent Heron — the hipparch from Pantecapaeum — downriver this morning to scout for fords.’
‘No ford downriver,’ Ataelus answered. There was another man with him — no, a woman. She had her arms crossed over her chest and anger dripped off her with the rainwater. ‘This Samahe — wife for me.’ He grinned. ‘Twenty horse wife!’
Kineas shook his hand, which was inane. ‘I need to know where Heron is and what he found.’
Ataelus frowned and looked at Kineas from under his brows. ‘You ask me to ride off in the rain — now? For this Heron?’
Kineas said, ‘Yes.’
Ataelus took a deep breath. ‘For you?’ he asked.
‘For me,’ Kineas said. He lacked the language to explain just why he was so worried, suddenly, about his missing hipparch — but he was.
When he was gone, Samahe protesting volubly after him, Kineas sat on the dry ground under her wagon. Srayanka sat against his back. They were silent for a long time. Finally, she said, ‘If we win — when we win. You bring me twenty of horses?’
‘Is that your price?’ he asked.
She laughed — a low, rich laugh. ‘I am beyond price,’ she said in Sakje, leaning around to look at him. ‘I want you like a mare in heat wants a stallion, and I would go with you for a handful of grass, like a priestess. That is one woman I am.’ She threw back her head, and her profile was strong against the light of the nearest fire. ‘But I am Ghan of the Cruel Hands, and there is no bride price to buy me.’ She shrugged. ‘The king would make me queen — and that would make Cruel Hands rich. I am woman, and I am Ghan.’ She looked into his eyes. Hers were picked out with reflected campfires. ‘But if we win this battle,’ she said again. ‘If we are free of the Sastar Baqca — will you ask me to wife?’
Kineas pushed his back into hers. ‘If we live — I will ask you to wife.’ He kissed her, felt the movement of her eyelashes against his cheeks. ‘I know Baqca. What is Sastar?’
She wriggled slightly in his arms. ‘What is the thing — the word you say when man rule over other men and will not hear them? Rule alone? No voice but that man?’
‘Tyrant,’ Kineas answered, after a moment.
‘ Tyrant ’ she echoed. ‘Sastar is like tyrant. Sastar Baqca — the baqca that allows no other voice.’ She turned and put her arms behind his head. ‘No more Greek and Sakje.’
‘No,’ said Kineas. Death seemed far away, and everything seemed possible. ‘I will marry you.’ He kissed her again.
She grinned even through the kiss, pulled away and looked at him. ‘Truly?’ she asked. She smiled, kissed him and then pushed him away. ‘Bring me Zopryon’s head as my price, then.’ She leaped to her feet.
Kineas got to his, still holding her hand. Their eyes were locked. She gave his hand a gentle pressure — and then she was stepping away.
The rain sobered him, and in moments it all came rushing back — the battle, plans, worries. Where in Hades is Heron? And the plain fact — this is foolishness — I’ll be dead. But he forced a laugh and said, ‘It’s a high price.’
She slipped out from under the wagon and turned. ‘It will make a good song,’ she said with a smile. ‘You know — they already sing of us?’
Kineas didn’t know. ‘Really?’ he called after her.
She paused in the rain on the step up to the wagon. ‘We may live for ever, in a song.’