Funeral Games Read online

  Satyrus was her son, and Melitta her daughter. They walked through their town, hand in hand, to the stables built in their father’s name, in the hippodrome where their father’s friend Coenus still drilled the remainder of the men who had followed their father east in his fabled war with Alexander. Most of them were away in the south with Diodorus, on campaign, as mercenaries.

  ‘How’s your head now?’ Melitta asked.

  Satyrus blinked. ‘For some reason,’ he said slowly, ‘it’s worse in the sun.’

  They entered the hippodrome - a building that was new and well-built and out of all proportion to the number of cavalrymen that the town actually supported. Satyrus gritted his teeth against the ache in his head as they crossed the sand, and squeezed his sister’s hand until she grunted in pain.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  They passed the line of columns at the edge of the stables - wooden columns, but carefully painted to look like marble - and the smell of horses enveloped them.

  Pelton, an old freed slave of Leon’s, greeted them. ‘The gods prosper you, twins,’ he said. ‘Master Philokles took a mule. That new feller - too big for a mule - he took a horse.’

  Twins was something like a title in Tanais. Melitta nodded. ‘I’ll take Bion,’ she said. Bion was a Sakje charger, bigger than a Greek pony, like a warhorse scaled for a tall girl. She called the beast ‘Bion’ because the gelding was her life. Happy or sad, angry or elated, she dealt with the rigours of life by riding. Twice now, she had gone with her mother to the summer pasture of the Assagatje, riding with the maidens while her brother learned philosophy and law in faraway Athens. Her horse was her answer to most things.

  Satyrus walked down the line of stalls until he reached the end, where his father’s charger cropped barley straw with the contentment of a retired warhorse. ‘Care to go for a ride?’ he asked the giant. Thalassa was a mare - but a mare of heroic proportions. She raised her head and nuzzled him for a treat until he produced a carrot. Then she chewed the delicacy with a finicky patience, tossing her head.

  ‘You want to go?’ he asked again. ‘I think the answer is yes.’

  The former slave laughed. ‘When has the answer ever been no? Eh? Tell me that!’ He stepped in and put a bridle on the old mare in a single motion, his lower hand putting the bit into her mouth without so much as a jingle of the bronze against her teeth.

  Melitta put her palms flat on her horse’s back and sprang on to her in one go. ‘Pelton, do you ever wonder why you were a slave?’ she asked.

  Pelton looked at her for the time it took an insect to cross a leaf. ‘Nope,’ he said. ‘Will of the gods, mostly, I expect.’ He plucked a piece of grass and put it in his mouth.

  ‘Could happen to anyone, couldn’t it?’

  ‘Sister!’ Satyrus didn’t always appreciate his sister’s approach to the world - a blunt approach, to say the least.

  She looked down at him from her horse. ‘Well, Leon owned him. And Leon was a slave. So Leon should know better.’

  ‘Better than what?’ Satyrus asked. He liked to think that he was already a man - a man who understood things. One of the things he understood was that you didn’t tease slaves about their slavery.

  ‘Better than to own people,’ she said.

  Satyrus rolled his eyes. He led Thalassa out of the stable, her heavy hooves ringing on the cobblestone floor and sending pings of echo off the whitewashed walls to penetrate his brain and increase his headache. He led her around to the mounting step and climbed on to her, sitting well back, as a boy can on a big horse. He adjusted his gorytos and then leaned over to his sister. He could see Philokles down by the gate, arguing with Theron. ‘It’s not nice to talk to slaves about slavery.’

  ‘Why not?’ Melitta asked. ‘Pelton was a slave. Who else would I ask? You?’>

  Satyrus made the sound that brothers make all over the world, and tapped Thalassa’s sides with his bare heels, and the mare surged into motion. Satyrus could feel her power - even at the age of seventeen, she was a big animal with power and spirit, the veteran of a dozen battles. When he was on her back, he could imagine that he was his father at the Jaxartes River, about to crush Alexander.

  Pelton emerged from the stable with a scruffy straw hat clutched in his fist. ‘This’ll help, male twin.’ Satyrus wheeled the mare in a neat curve and snatched the hat and pulled it on. The shade of the broad brim was like a healing balm.

  ‘All the gods bless you, Pelton!’ Satyrus said.

  ‘And you, twins!’ the former slave called.

  ‘My sister means no harm,’ Satyrus said.

  Pelton smiled. ‘Hope she never has to find out for herself,’ he said, before he went back into the stables.

  Theron and Philokles were arguing about the nature of the soul as Satyrus and Melitta passed the bronze equestrian statue of their father that stood at the edge of the agora, his hand raised, pointing east, as if he had just ridden from the hippodrome. There was another statue to him in Olbia, where he already had semi-divine status as a hero who had overthrown the tyrant, and the Sakje still sacrificed horses to him at the kurgan on the coast.

  In Athens, on the other hand, many men spoke ill of their father, and a year ago Satyrus had attended the legal proceedings that had finally revoked his father’s conviction for treason, making Satyrus a citizen and returning his grandfather’s fortune. Which had only served to prove what every twelve-year-old knows by heart: the world is far more complicated than it appeared when you were ten.

  ‘Surely Plato argues the point convincingly,’ Theron began, as if he’d already made this argument and was still awaiting some acknowledgement.

  Philokles had a leather bag over his shoulder. He tapped his mule into motion. Theron was mounted on a tall horse, one of the town’s cavalry chargers, and he towered over the Spartan, but he had to thump the horse’s sides to get him into motion. In a few surges of the charger’s hindquarters it was clear that the Corinthian wasn’t much of a rider.

  Melitta was looking at the eastern horizon as if following her dead father’s hand. The town sat on a bluff, and she could see a parasang, thirty full stades, or more in the early afternoon sun. ‘Is that smoke?’ she asked.

  Philokles looked under his hand, and so did Satyrus.

  ‘I expect they’re clearing new fields,’ Satyrus said. He regretted his tone almost at once - hectoring his sister with a display of knowledge when he didn’t actually know what he was talking about. I must outgrow that, he thought.

  She glanced at him and gave him half a smile, as if she could hear every word of his interior dialogue. ‘Leon’s still away,’ she said, indicating the empty wharves as they rode through the gates.

  ‘Leon the Numidian is our richest citizen,’ Philokles said to Theron, who was more interested in mastering his horse than in the town’s social life. ‘Married to a barbarian. Wonderful horseman. A well-rounded man, for all that he started life as a slave.’

  ‘Even in Corinth I’ve heard of your Leon,’ Theron said. ‘Whoa!’

  ‘It will do you no good to lose your temper at a horse,’ Melitta said. She laid a hand on Theron’s bridle and stroked his gelding’s neck and the horse calmed. ‘That’s quite a squadron for this time of year,’ she said, pointing out to sea.

  Satyrus looked. At first he saw nothing, but after a moment he could see a line of sails just nicking the edge of the world, three or four hours out in the bay. ‘Triremes,’ he said, because the sails were matching sizes. Closer in, a pentekonter raced for the beach under full oars.

  ‘Is that mama’s boat?’ Satyrus asked. He was relieved to see it.

  ‘Early for our mother,’ Melitta said. But she smiled. They both wanted her home.

  Theron glanced at her and looked away, changing weight and sitting too far back on his horse. The horse sensed his inattention and decided to be rid of him. He half-reared and then shot forward and Theron landed on the road like a sack of barley. The gelding raced away.

  ‘Oof,’
he said. Then he lay still.

  Satyrus put a hand on his borrowed straw hat and leaned forward, the change of his weight enough to push Thalassa into a gallop, and he raced across a field of new emmer wheat that rolled away to the east, broken only by boundary walls and the line of the road. He caught the gelding easily, turned Thalassa under the offending horse’s nose and caught his dangling reins. ‘Come on, Hermes,’ he said. Hermes was a gelding who missed his prick and tended to take it out on his riders. Satyrus stood up on Thalassa’s back and jumped on to the gelding, pulled the reins and began speaking a litany of nonsense to him. The gelding turned and trotted back to the group, and Thalassa followed along, riderless but obedient.

  When he was within range of her voice, Melitta called out, ‘Can you handle him?’ just to annoy her brother, who responded by prodding the gelding to a gallop and racing through the middle of them, scattering dust and almost riding his new coach down.

  ‘Sorry!’ he said. By way of apology, he handed the Corinthian the reins to his father’s warhorse. ‘Master Theron, this is the smartest horse who ever lived. She’s the mother of half the cavalry horses on this side of the Euxine and she’s still the toughest thing on four legs. Just don’t sit so far back on her rump.’

  The athlete made a poor showing of mounting the tall horse without a step, but he got up on his fourth try. Melitta didn’t hide her laughter. Theron glared at her, and then at Philokles.

  ‘Is this the order you maintain, master tutor?’ he asked.

  Satyrus caught his sister’s eye, and they rode a little apart. Close enough to listen - far enough to give the appearance of privacy.

  ‘If you mean Plato’s views of the soul as he - rather mean-spiritedly, I might add - puts them in the mouth of Socrates, I’d say that they’re interesting, but scarcely irrefutable,’ Philokles said.

  ‘You dislike Plato?’ Theron asked.

  ‘I dislike a sophist whose underlying theme is that he’s smarter than his audience. Name me one dialogue where Plato is bested by a student.’ Philokles wasn’t looking at Theron but at Satyrus, who shook his head and smiled, because no such dialogue existed.

  Theron shrugged. ‘I doubt such a thing happened,’ he said.

  Philokles laughed. ‘Their father studied with Plato until he died. I’m afraid that his tales of his former teacher have left an indelible impression. ’ The Spartan smiled. ‘I prefer Simonides or Heraklitus!’

  ‘That posturer? He only worked for money!’ Theron sounded outraged.

  Satyrus and Melitta grinned at each other, because Philokles said that their father had said that Plato was a pompous ass, which was an image so droll as to evoke giggles even here.

  Theron looked at the children. ‘They’re both quite intelligent,’ he said. It didn’t sound like a question.

  Philokles nodded. ‘Is breeding people any different from breeding horses?’ he asked. ‘Their sire was a brilliant soldier and an educated man - a decent athlete as well, third or fourth in the hundred-and-ninth Olympiad.’

  ‘Really?’ Theron asked. ‘What event?’

  ‘Boxing,’ the Spartan replied. ‘Boys’ boxing. He never competed as a man.’

  ‘Why not?’ Theron asked. Any boy who could make the top tier would have been a front-runner as a man.

  ‘War,’ Philokles said. ‘We had quite a bit of it, back then.’

  ‘No shortage now,’ Theron said.

  ‘At any rate, the mother’s no different. You’ll see when she’s back from Pantecapaeum. She’s not the beauty she used to be, but she’s a first-rate tactician, she gives a fine speech for a barbarian and she’s a brilliant athlete.’ Philokles looked out over the fields and smiled to himself.

  ‘She’s a runner?’ Theron asked. Running was virtually the only sport open to Greek women.

  Philokles’ smile became a grin. ‘She’s an archer - a mounted archer. Perhaps the finest on the sea of grass. And a pretty fair swordswoman.’

  Theron nodded. ‘I see. Hence the daughter.’ He glanced at Melitta. Satyrus watched his eyes.

  The Spartan nodded. ‘Just so,’ he said.

  It took them an hour to ride to the fishing spot, a small bluff at a curve in the Tanais where rushing water from the Spring of Niobe (a local nymph) tumbled down the hillside to swell the river. The spring water ran all year, clear and cold, and small trout congregated in the deep pools just above the confluence.

  The twins dismounted immediately, tethered their horses amidst the lush grass, hung their bows on their saddlecloths and went upstream, bronze knives in hand, to cut rods. When they were satisfied with what they had, they came back. Philokles was laying the horsehair lines out in the goat-cropped grass at the edge of the stream. Then the Spartan deftly attached bronze hooks decorated with red thread and hackles the colour of a bay horse.

  ‘I’ve never seen anyone fish like this,’ Theron said.

  ‘Come!’ Melitta said, taking his hand. He seemed shy of the contact, but he went with her willingly.

  ‘Don’t scare the fish,’ she said in a whisper, and went down on all fours to crawl up the big rock that separated them from the stream. She was up the rock in a moment, just her head showing to the fish. She raised an arm carefully, and when the Corinthian was in place beside her, she pointed. ‘See the trout?’ she asked.

  Theron watched for the time it would take him to fight a bout, following her pointing finger, breathing carefully. ‘I see it,’ he said.

  She was conscious of the warmth of a grown man next to her on the rock. Something to be aware of, she thought. ‘Watch,’ she said. Different from lying next to my brother.

  Time passed. She was conscious that he must be bored, annoyed at the passing insects for failing at their duties. But at last a fly slowly came down, one of the big brown flies that the fish loved. It trailed across the water, its abdomen brushing the surface from time to time. Melitta assumed that it was laying eggs - eggs so tiny she couldn’t see them, although she had watched this dance many times.

  Her brother crawled up the rock on her left side. ‘Any luck? Oh!’ he exclaimed, as one of the pool’s residents powered up from the dark at the bottom of the pool and took the big insect right off the surface of the water and rolled away in a red-orange flash, leaving a growing circle of ripples in its wake.

  Melitta grinned in delight, slipping back down the rock and clapping her hands. ‘See?’ she asked, or rather demanded.

  Theron’s grin was lopsided and far friendlier than either of the children had seen from him yet. ‘I do see. This isn’t fishing with nets - it is fishing with insects!’

  ‘Not real insects,’ Satyrus said. ‘For some reason, even if you catch them, the fish won’t take them. But if you tie some feathers to a hook . . .’ He pointed at the rods of young cornel that Philokles had rigged. The dogwood sticks were the height of a grown man, and the horsehair lines were the same length.

  ‘And if you dabble the bug on the surface like the real ones...’ Melitta added.

  ‘Then sometimes - bang! - you get a big fish. They strike like a bolt from Zeus.’ Satyrus took one of the rods eagerly. Melitta grabbed another and untied her sandals.

  ‘I’m going upstream,’ she said.

  Philokles nodded. ‘I’ll go with the young lady.’ He followed her. He seemed sober now, and Satyrus thought that his tutor was as happy as he’d ever seen him. Perhaps he needed company. Adult company. The thought saddened the boy a little. He wanted to be adult company, but he loved the big Spartan, drink and all, and if Theron of Corinth made him happy, so be it.

  Satyrus went back to the rock, pondering the Corinthian and his odd reactions to his sister. He moved carefully up the rock, brought his dogwood rod level with his shoulders and flipped the hook over his head. The feathered hook sank through the still air and landed lightly on the water, the feather of the hackle resting on the surface tension.

  After a heartbeat, Satyrus gave the gentlest of tugs and the bug skittered across the surface. He t
ook a breath and repeated the motion.

  Nothing. He sighed softly and popped the fly back off the water and over his shoulder, the hook arcing through the air and tiny drops of water brushing his skin. Using just his wrist, he flicked the hook back on to the water, took a breath and skipped the fly.

  The movement of the fish was so fast that only long afternoons spent at this pastime enabled the boy to pull the hook just right and he had a fish the length of his arm pulling at the end of his rod. He raised the rod and dropped the fish on the cropped grass behind the rock. ‘Will you take it off ?’ he asked Theron, who wasn’t fishing but just watching.

  The big man knelt in the grass and took the hook from the fish’s mouth. He bashed the fish on a rock, then pulled out a bronze knife and gutted the fish in two strokes.

  ‘You’ve done this before,’ Satyrus said accusingly.

  Theron smiled. ‘I’ve never seen anyone use a fly like that,’ he said. ‘But my father had a fishing boat. Cleaning fish is the same everywhere, I’d wager.’

  Satyrus held out his rod. ‘Want to try?’ he asked.

  Theron rinsed his hands in a side pool and reached out for the rod. ‘I’d love to.’

  ‘Why don’t you like my sister?’ Satyrus asked as the Corinthian flicked his hook on to the water.

  ‘I don’t dislike your sister,’ the man answered. ‘Do you know that in Hellas, women do not go fishing with their brothers?’

  Satyrus could see a rider across the stream. He was a couple of stades away and he was moving so fast that he raised dust.

  ‘I’ve been to Athens,’ Satyrus said proudly. ‘The girls all had to stay at home.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Theron said.

  ‘I thought it was stupid,’ Satyrus added. ‘I think that’s Coenus!’ he said, sliding back off the rock.

  ‘Who’s Coenus?’ Theron asked politely. A fish chose that moment to hit his lure, and despite his inexperience, he jerked the rod and he hooked his prey - a trout at least as long as his forearm.