Christian Cameron: Storm of arrows

She turned to face him. ‘Instead, they fear you.’

‘Because I am foreign?’ he asked, tracing a finger along her flanks.

‘And because you are baqca, and because you love me. You are like a creature from a song of heroes, and you bring change.’ She kissed him. ‘Because you could rule them with a rod of iron, and they fear that.’

He shook his head. ‘I have no desire to rule,’ he said.

‘But you would, if you thought it was for the good of all.’ She rattled off the phrase ‘good of all’ in his own intonation.

He shrugged. ‘Listen, my love. Together, we could force the will of the army. Make it your army.’ There, it was said. His own officers wanted to be gone, but he had to offer — to support her claim.

She took his head in her hands and kissed him. ‘No, Airyanam. I thank you, but no. It was Satrax’s army — and he is dead.’ She made a motion with her hand indicating the unknowable will of the gods. ‘If he had lived another year, I would have been his heir — we would have been.’ She shrugged again. ‘I will not pit Greek soldiers against clansmen.’

Kineas sat up with her. ‘What will you do?’ he asked. ‘What will we do?’

She was silent for a long time, and they could hear thousands of horses cropping grass — the ever-present sound of the Sakje camp. Somewhere, men shouted by a fire.

‘I will go east,’ she said. ‘Many of the younger warriors are still willing — even eager — to fight the monster in the east. I will tell Marthax that I will lead them, and he will accept, because that path avoids war.’

Kineas had felt the decision coming. He had known from the first that Srayanka favoured sending an expedition east to support the Massagetae. He hadn’t imagined that she would go herself.

‘But…’ he said. And stopped himself. But what of us? was too selfish for him, or for them. Her choice was clear, and she had made it like the hero she was. Could he do less?

‘I must seize Olbia from the tyrant,’ he said. ‘Then I can join you.’ Just like that — and the future was set. Join you echoed in his head — echoed in the world of dreams, like prophecy, and suddenly he was cold.

She shook her head. ‘No. That is — what is the Greek word? Folly? Madness? You Greeks have so many words for stupid thinking. You can be the tyrant of Olbia — you can be king. They worship you like a god. You have made their city something, and your army is now a strong one. The grain will make you rich, your hoplites will make you secure and your alliance with the Sakje will make you great.’

Kineas knelt and took her hands. ‘I don’t want to be rich,’ he said, and even as he said the words, he knew that they were as true as they were trite. The image of a long trek east to fight Alexander at her side stretched away like a dream, and beside it, the day-to-day world of patronage and politics seemed like a nightmare. ‘I don’t want to be tyrant, or king. I want you.’ He grinned like a boy. ‘I have had a dream that I will defeat Alexander.’

She smiled then, and he feared her a little, because it was not the smile of love, but the smile of triumph. ‘Then you shall have me, Airyanam. And we will go far,’ she said, and put her lips on his. ‘Even to the mountains of the east, and Alexander.’

When they had made love again, she wrapped herself around him despite the damp heat and their sweat, and together they fell asleep. And no sooner had he acknowledged the pleasure of such sleep, her smooth, hard leg pinned between his, than instead he was… astride the tree, a branch clenched between his legs. Farther along the branch, two eagles demanded food from a nest between Srayanka’s thighs. Their screaming demands drowned out her words. When he reached out to her, the larger chick nipped him, and he fell…

He glanced around, and all the warriors behind him were strange, all Sakje, in magnificent armour, and he himself wore a vambrace of chased gold on the arm he could see through the slits of his helmet. He was dry, sitting tall on a horse the colour of dark metal, and the battle was won, the enemy broken, and across the river, the survivors tried to rally in the driftwood and by the single old dead tree that offered the only cover from the bronze rain of Sakje arrows, and he raised Srayanka’s whip, motioned three times and they all began to cross the river. He was ready for the arrow when it came, and he almost greeted it, he knew it so well, and then he was in the water — hands grabbing at him…

He was dead, and walking the battlefield, but it was another battlefield, Issus, and the dead were rising all around him like men woken early from rest. And then they began to walk, rubbing at their wounds, some stuffing the intestines into their guts. They tried to speak but failed, and many shrugged, and then, Greek and Persian, they all began to walk away from the battlefield… and they were joined by the dead of Gaugamela, more Persians and fewer Greeks and Macedonians, all shuffling along in a column of the wretched dead.

A single figure emerged from the column. He had two deep wounds, one in his neck and another under his armpit, and his breastplate was gone, and his face was slack and empty of feeling, rotted and black, but Kineas could recognize Kleisthenes, a boyhood friend who had fallen in a nameless fight on the banks of the Euphrates. Kineas could feel that Kleisthenes was sad. Indeed, sadness came off him like heat from a fire. His jaw, almost naked of flesh three years after his death, was working, but no sound emerged. He reached out a hand and rested his finger bones on Kineas’s deeply scarred forearm.

‘What?’ Kineas demanded. ‘Speak!’

Kleisthenes’ jaw worked again, more like a man chewing meat than a man attempting to speak. His mouth opened, and sand came forth. The rotting figure gathered the sand as it vomited from his mouth, catching it in his hands. He held it out to Kineas as if it was a payment, or an offering.

Even in a dream, Kineas was terrified. He stumbled back.

‘Wake up now, or die in your sleep!’ said the voice of Kam Baqca..

Noises in the dark, and too much motion, and the wagon moving as if a man was climbing aboard. Kineas rolled off the furs and his hand was on his sword as the heavy felt that covered the wagon was ripped back and an arrow skidded along his back with a line of pain. There were torches in the dark, and the glint of weapons.

Srayanka was just coming to her knees and he pushed her down as another arrow bit deep into the wood of the wagon bed. Kineas roared ‘The dead!’ in Greek.

A black shape came up on to the wagon bed with a sword in each hand. Kineas was still half asleep, his mind in another world.

The creature’s face was black. The thing hesitated — an all too human reaction — and then he swung both weapons together. The fog of the dream dropped a little more from Kineas’s eyes and he saw that his opponent was a man with charcoal on his face. Even as he realized this, he sensed that the man’s clumsy attack was a distraction, and as he ducked and parried he turned his head to see another black figure at the other end of the wagon, illuminated by the oil lamp. It was raising a bow, also hesitating, as if unsure what to shoot.

Kineas didn’t hesitate. He cut at his first adversary, a long overhand cut with a wrist rotation at the end, so that the man’s clumsy parry failed to stop the reversed curve of the Egyptian blade from cutting into his neck. He fell without a cry, his head half severed and black ink pouring out in the light of the moon.

Kineas leaped back and cut at the archer, and his blow severed the bow at the grip. One end of the cut bow snapped back and raked his hand, making him drop his sword with the pain, and the other end slashed across the bowman’s face. Kineas kicked him and the bowman fell back off the wagon. Another arrow whispered out of the darkness and passed between Kineas’s legs.