Storm of arrows t-2 Page 6

  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.

  When the paean ended, so many men were weeping that it sounded as if the god was mourning, the sound of their laments echoing from the temple and across the agora, the sound magnified by the men too wounded to march but standing in orderly ranks at the foot of the temple steps, and the women, mothers and sisters and lovers and wives.

  The troopers carrying Cleitus’s ashes climbed the steps and placed the ashes where Kineas and Petrocolus had placed a bronze statue of Nike from Nicomedes’ house. The priests sacrificed in the temple and blessed the people and the city, and then Helladius raised his arms and turned to Kineas.

  Kineas dismounted from his Macedonian charger and walked up the steps, his thigh burning at every step and making his climb painful and slow. He stopped below the statue of Nike, so that her wings were over his head, and turned to the crowd.

  ‘I speak to the whole city, the citizens and the wives and the mothers and the farmers and the smiths and the Greeks and the Sindi and even the slaves,’ he said. A year of speaking in public had improved his manner, and the occasion gained him their utter silence.

  ‘Nothing I can say will make the dead greater in the eyes of the gods,’ he said. ‘Cleitus, who gave his life to save you from the tyrant, failed because he was one man. But all the dead, together, drove the Macedonian from the field and slaughtered him. And all together killed the tyrant and freed the city. All the dead sacrificed themselves equally for the triumph of the city.’

  He looked out over the agora with the feeling that he could see many men who were dead, and perhaps even some who were not yet alive. ‘When we faced Zopryon in battle, no man flinched. The Sakje stood and the Greeks stood. The hippeis stood and the hoplites stood. The citizen and the mercenary stood together. Indeed, the slaves stood their ground, and this city has twice a hundred free men today because as slaves they did not cower.

  ‘Virtue — freedom and liberty — is the concern of every man, not a few politicians or a few soldiers,’ he said. ‘I will chide you, Olbia, in full view of all the gods. You allowed a few men to make your laws and paid a few men to guard your walls, and those few became your rulers. Politicians and mercenaries!’ he bellowed, and his words echoed off the walls.

  ‘Cleitus died to pull down the tyrant — and failed, because he was one man, murdered for his voice. We waded in blood to stop Macedon — aye, and lost hundreds of the flower of this city’s best men. But on our return, we overthrew the tyrant in an hour with a thousand willing hands helping us into the city and into the citadel. Women threw down ropes to the army. Slaves led us to the open postern of the citadel. Never let this lesson be lost on you, citizens of Olbia! Women of Olbia! Slaves of Olbia! In your hands are the keys to the city and the keys of your own chains!’

  Chains chains chains echoed off the walls.

  ‘Had Cleitus lived, he would now be archon,’ Kineas continued. ‘He was an honest man, a powerful speaker and a trained lawmaker. But he is dead.’ Kineas paused, and then pointed at another Nike, also from Nicomedes’ house, beside him on the steps. ‘Had he lived, Nicomedes might have been archon. He desired the role with all his ambition, and he had the talents to lead the city to greatness. But he fell in the battle.’

  Kineas looked out over the crowd, where men shouted ‘Lead us, then!’ as if they had been paid. He shook his head.

  ‘I have acted as archon for a few days — to see the dead buried, and to see good laws passed. But I will not be tyrant. And if I stay, either I will make myself
your lord, or you yourselves will make me take the power. I must go east — to fight against Macedon, and to preserve the liberty you have just won. Our allies on the plains still need our help, and I will go with them. And when I return, you will be a strong state, with a free assembly, and I will vote my vote and grumble when my motion is defeated, drinking my wine in a wine shop and cursing that my side had the fewer voices.’

  Then he told the story of the campaign, from the first rumour of Zopryon, to the assembly voting for war, through the campaign against the Getae and on to the last battle — a long story, so that his voice was hoarse when he reached the end. He named as many of the dead as he could — from young Kyros, who had been a great athlete, the first to fall in combat, to Satyrus One-Eye, who died in the courtyard of the tyrant’s palace. He recounted their names and their deeds, until the crowd wept again that so many had fallen. And as he spoke, the sun rose to its full height in the sky.

  When he fell silent, Helladius saluted the disk of the sun, and all the people cheered, and then they sang: I begin singing of Demeter,

  The goddess with shining hair,

  And Persephone, her daughter, fair Slim-ankled, too. Hades took her,

  Zeus gave her to his brother,

  Far-seeing Lord of Thunder.

  They sang the hymn to the end, and another to Apollo, as the sun rose strong on their faces. And then Kineas raised his arms for silence and summoned the assembly for the next day. He bowed to the grave markers of Cleitus and Nicomedes as if the men were standing with him and then he limped down the steps of the temple, mounted his horse and rode away.

  That night, Kineas dreamed again of the column of the dead, and again a dead friend vomited sand — this time Graccus, a long-dead boyhood friend. But the tone of the dream changed, so that he was less afraid. And then a woman came to him.

  ‘I have come to offer you a choice,’ she said. She had the white skin of a goddess and she looked like his mother — or like someone else, someone as familiar as his mother.

  He smiled at her in the dream because it was such a Greek dream, a welcome relief from the strain of the tree and the animal totems and the alienness that had infected his dreams since he came to the plains. She was dressed in a peculiar garment, a bell-shaped skirt and a tight jacket that bared her breasts. Kineas had seen such a costume on a priestess once, and on old statues.

  ‘State your choice, Goddess,’ Kineas said.

  She laughed when he called her goddess. ‘If you remain here, you will be king. You will rule well and wisely, and your city will be the richest in the circle of the seas.’

  Kineas nodded.

  ‘If you travel east, your life will be short-’ she said.

  Kineas interrupted her without intending it. ‘This is Achilles’ choice?’ he asked. ‘If I go east, I will live a short life, but a glorious one? And all the world will know my name?’

  She smiled, and it was an ill smile, the sort that terrified men. ‘Do not interrupt me,’ she said. ‘Hubris has many forms.’

  Kineas stood in silence.

  ‘If you go east, your life will be short, and no one but your friends and your enemies will know your name.’

  Kineas nodded. ‘It seems like an easy choice,’ he said.

  The goddess smiled. She kissed his brow…

  He awoke to ponder the meaning of the first dream — a true one, he was sure. He needed Kam Baqca to interpret it, but it occurred to him that Helladius was not such a fool as he sometimes acted. The second dream needed no interpretation.

  Kineas arose with the kiss of the goddess still lingering on his forehead and a sense of well-being, a very different mood from the day before. The sun was shining on the sand of the hippodrome. And down the hall, Sitalkes sat up in his bed and Coenus asked for a book, and the mood of the barracks changed as if the sun had come inside. Indeed, Kineas wondered if men were simpler creatures than he had supposed, that a day of sunshine could so change their mood, or serve to mend wounded men who had abandoned hope and turned to the wall, expecting to die. Men recovered in the citadel, and in their homes, as if the touch of the sun on their skin carried the healing of the Lord of the Silver Bow.

  Kineas had a morning meeting arranged with the Athenian captains in his role as the acting archon, but well before that he donned his second-best tunic and a light chlamys and slipped out of the barracks alone. He purchased a cup of fruit juice from a stall in the agora, ate a seed cake in front of a jeweller’s stall, purchased a fine gold ring for Srayanka and then climbed the steps of the temple of Apollo just as the morning prayer to the sun was finished.

  Kineas waited until the last of the singers were clear of the vestry before he approached the priest, and he was surprised to see the young Sakje girl walking with the maidens.

  The priest was putting away his shawl, examining the fine wool for cleanliness as he folded it.

  ‘Helladius,’ Kineas said. ‘The Lord of the Silver Bow has seen fit to restore the sun.’

  Helladius nodded. ‘My lord withholds his anger.’

  Kineas raised an eyebrow. ‘Anger?’

  Helladius shrugged. ‘Who can know the thoughts of the gods?’ he said. ‘But I imagine that my lord was less than pleased at the unburied bodies at the Ford of the River God and withheld the sun, just as the Lord of Horses sent his waters to cover the death at his ford.’

  Kineas nodded slowly. His mother and his uncles had been such believers — those who saw the hands of the gods in everything. ‘It might be as you say,’ he admitted.

  ‘Or not,’ said Helladius. ‘I commit no hubris. What brings you here to honour my morning prayers?’

  ‘Who is the Sakje girl?’ Kineas asked.

  ‘Her father was a priest — a great seer, despite being a barbarian. His daughter is always welcome here.’ Helladius smiled at her retreating back.

  ‘You knew Kam Baqca?’ Kineas asked.

  ‘Of course!’ Helladius said. ‘He travelled widely. He wintered here with us on several occasions.’ He took Kineas’s arm and led him into the temple.

  ‘I think of Kam Baqca as a woman,’ Kineas said.

  ‘We knew him before he made that sacrifice,’ Helladius said, and then shook his head. ‘I don’t think you came here to discuss a barbarian shaman, no matter how worthy.’

  ‘I have a dream,’ Kineas said.

  ‘You have powerful dreams, Archon. Indeed, I saw when the Sakje treated you as a priest.’ Helladius turned and began to walk towards the temple garden. ‘Come, let us walk together.’

  Kineas fell in beside him. ‘Yes. The gods have always seen fit to provide me with strong dreams.’

  Helladius nodded. ‘It is a great gift, but I feel the gods’ will towards you, and it is strong. I don’t need to be a priest to tell you that the interest of the gods is not always a blessing.’ He gave a half grin. ‘The poets and playwrights seem to be in agreement on that point.’

  Kineas stopped and looked at the priest as if seeing him for the first time. Helladius was hardly a humble man, and the wry humour he had just showed was not his public face.

  Helladius raised his eyebrows. ‘Do you receive more than dreams, Archon? Does the will of the gods come to you awake? Or the voices of the dead?’

  Kineas rubbed his chin. ‘You make my head spin, priest!’ He looked around the quiet temple. ‘I do not — how can I say this — I am not aware of other messages from the gods. But perhaps I do not pay attention properly. Tell me what you mean.’

  Helladius rubbed his chin. ‘Listen, Archon. You have priestly powers. I have seen this happen elsewhere — among the Medes it is common. Not every man with priestly powers becomes a priest. Do you know of all the types of divination?’

  Kineas shook his head. He felt like a schoolboy. His tutor had taught him about divination. ‘There are three types, I think.’

  ‘You were tutored by a follower of Plato? Not a Pythagorean, I hope. There are as many types of divination as there are birds in the air, but I w
ill tell you a little of the three main types so that you may be on your guard.’ His voice took on a professional tone. ‘My father taught me that there are three types of divination. There is natural divination — the will of the gods shown in the flight of birds, for example. I perform this right every day. Or perhaps in the entrails of a sacrifice, such as I performed for you in the field. Yes? Then there is oracular divination — the will of the gods spoken directly through an oracle. These can be difficult to interpret — rhymes, archaic words, often they sound like nonsense or leave the hearer more confused by a riddle than ever he was by the question. And finally, there is the divination of dreams — the will of the gods spoken through the gates of horn into our sleeping minds.’ Helladius shrugged. ‘The dead may also speak in any of these ways, or rather, we may divine their speech. For instance, there is the kledon, where a god — or the dead — may speak through the mouth of a bystander, or even through a crowd, so that a priest may hear the speech of the god in random utterings.’ He smiled. ‘I am waxing pedantic, I fear. Tell me what you dreamed.’

  Kineas told him his dream about his dead friends.

  Helladius shook his head. ‘I have seldom had such a strong dream myself,’ he said in irritation. ‘I see why the barbarians treat you as a priest. And you have had this dream twice?’

  Kineas nodded. ‘Or more.’

  Helladius furrowed his brow. ‘More?’

  Kineas looked away, as if suddenly interested in the mosaics of the god that covered the interior walls of the temple garden. He didn’t want to say that he had had the dream every night since the attack on Srayanka. Or that he had heard voices in the mouths of other men — the kledon.

  Helladius rubbed his hands together. ‘It seems possible to me,’ he said carefully, ‘that the dead of the great battle wish to be buried. And they speak through your old friend.’