Funeral Games (27 page)

Satyrus shrugged twice under his armour, trying to get the chest to fit. It felt tight. He unwound one of the laces and redid it. He didn’t know what to say to the older man, so he ignored him. He was afraid enough without help.

The man walked away.

The two Macedonians made a pretty good show of wagering on which of them could piss the farthest. Then they complained about how long women took, and then they argued over their wager until Philip threatened to piss on his partner.

Satyrus’s brain finally realized that they were going to fight. It hit him between breaths, and his chest grew tighter, as if the armour was still laced too hard.

He met Philokles’ eye.

‘Scared, boy?’ Philokles asked.

Satyrus chose nodding, as being better than squeaking.

‘Me too,’ Philokles said. He flashed a grin. ‘Still, I won’t kill anyone this way.’ He winced as he got his left arm into the armour he had picked up. ‘Pull it tight, boy,’ he asked.

‘That doctor is scared worse than me,’ Satyrus said.

‘Hmm,’ Philokles answered.

Satyrus got Philokles into his armour while Kallista complained about her thighs, horses and the world. Satyrus didn’t think it was an act. The doctor sat on his gelding, glaring around him as if every rock could vomit bandits.

And then Theron yelled at Melitta for being a weak-livered bitch, and she came out from behind her rock, and they were up and moving.

Satyrus could scarcely breathe. He tried to keep his right hand off his sword hilt and his left hand off his bow. The trail was steeper here and the sharp bends were so numerous that sightlines were less than a stade on each turn. There were no trees at all, just scrub and rock and summer meadow grass and more rock.

‘Any time now,’ Philip said, about one breath before an arrow hit Philokles between the shoulders.

The arrow didn’t penetrate the bronze scale, and Philokles gave a shout and pressed his gelding into rapid motion.

Behind Satyrus, the doctor’s horse panicked and he tried to turn the beast on the narrow road, blocking the track.

Satyrus looked all around him, saw an arrow coming in and flinched away, drawing his own bow. His horse leaped forward and he gave it its head, and the beast pushed right past Philokles and he was in the lead - not a position he wanted. Two arrows hit his horse -
thump-crump
- and the beast’s legs collapsed, spilling Satyrus on to the scree of the trail so that he rolled clear of his dying horse and fell over the edge. He fell the length of his own body and all the wind was driven from his lungs as he hit. His head rang.

Time passed as he tried to focus his eyes. He could hear shouts on the trail above him, and then a clash of iron, or bronze. And then he had control of his lungs - and then, a few seconds later, control of his limbs. He was lying on a rock shelf a little wider than his body. He got to his feet and started collecting arrow shafts, as his fall had dumped the contents of his quiver. He grabbed ten or twelve and thrust them back into his gorytos, feeling the press of the fighting above him.

Melitta shouted something and he heard the buzz of an arrow.

He went to the end of the shelf and got a foot up on a projecting boulder, his head throbbing. As soon as he could look over the trail, he saw Theron standing over Philokles. He had his cloak over his arm and his sword in his fist, and a man lay in the trail. Philokles was clutching his knee in the gravel. Draco and Philip were back to back down the trail, with a knot of men around them, and Melitta sat between them, still mounted, shooting arrows.

Satyrus didn’t think anyone had seen him. He pushed himself over the edge of the trail and stood up, just a few horse-lengths from Theron. Then he nocked an arrow, forcing himself to go slowly, to get the nock on the string. He breathed in deeply, raised his bow, only then letting himself look at the desperate fight twenty feet away.

He chose one of Theron’s opponents. The men were in armour, but Satyrus had all the time in the world to aim at the back of the man’s thigh - an easy shot at twenty feet. The man’s leg went out from under him immediately, and he rolled and fell.

They all had armour
- Satyrus was just taking that in when Theron, freed from one opponent, feinted a cut and kicked his other opponent in the shield, so that the man went over backwards. Theron kicked the man between the legs and then finished him with a short thrust to his neck, already looking around.

Theron’s other opponent made the mistake of thinking that Philokles was out of action. When he stepped across the Spartan to attack Theron’s rear, Philokles’ left hand locked on his ankle like a vice and Philokles scissored his feet up and grabbed the man’s waist and pulled him down. Theron stepped back over the Spartan as if they had designed the whole move as a dance and cut the man’s throat.

Satyrus had another arrow on his string. His sister shot and missed - an archer standing on the hillside. He ducked. But he didn’t see Satyrus, and Satyrus could still see him. He shot on instinct, a little high, a little wide to the right for the breeze.

He watched his arrow fly, thrilled as it arced and vanished into the bandit’s side. Satyrus saw it all, but he didn’t see the archer who shot him. There was a blast of pain, like falling into cold water, and then he was out.

 

There was a slave market in Krateai, but it wasn’t much, just a red mud-walled barrack with a heavy wooden door. The town only existed because the mountain roads divided here, the northern road going down the valleys to Gordia, while the southern road went past Manteneaon and then turned through the great pass into the plains of Anatolia, roasting in heat at this time of year. A small parcel of slaves - probably taken by thieves, claimed by no lesser being than the tyrant of Heraklea, or so the Macedonian factor said - was bound for Gordia.

Satyrus had a bruise on his side as big as his head, and the centre of it was livid and leaked pus where the scale armour had deflected the arrow’s point - mostly. His ears still rang from time to time and twice he put down his heavy load to vomit, and the guards hit him with their canes and laughed at his feeble attempts to puke.

Melitta wanted to kill them - both of them. She was carrying the heaviest load of her life, a basket full of grain purchased with threats in a village lower down the pass. It was, in fact, about half the food that their little caravan had. And the water was running out. Springs were zealously guarded in these steep defiles, and the petty lords and bandit kings who ruled from their eyries charged heavily for each beaker of water.

But their new owner apparently had a soft heart. He stopped to get them water and a night’s sleep, and bought a quantity of food. Then he offered his whole parcel for sale - Satyrus and Melitta, brother and sister, right on the edge of adulthood, and both startlingly attractive, both virgins - to a pair of Greek merchants. They also offered the other girl - also a beauty, you could tell, despite her pale face and her complaining. Satyrus was naked and had a bad bruise on his side and the girls were clothed, and men in the crowd shouted for both of the girls to be stripped. One of the soldiers in the caravan’s escort used the stock of his riding whip to knock a heckler unconscious, and that was the end of the salacious catcalls.

Men bid - some bid high, for the twins - but the Greek merchants had cash and a seal from some great power down in the green valleys, and the men of the town glared lustfully at the girls - and the boy - as they were shackled and led away.

One of the two merchants was a Spartan by his way of talking. He was the worse for wine, even at the height of the sun, and he probably paid too much for the children, for his partner, a Boeotian, glared at him until their little cavalcade rode off down the south fork. No one thought to ask how the Greeks had happened to have so many horses, or why the merchant’s caravan guards went with the Greeks.

 

‘Was that necessary?’ Melitta asked Theron after they had cleared all possible onlookers.

Theron was still calming Kallista. At some point she had gone from his enemy to his lover, and she had shared his blankets almost every night on the road since the fight with the bandits. She seemed as infatuated with him as he was with her - but even the pretence of a slave auction had driven her into a state not far from madness.

‘Theron is not listening,’ Satyrus said. His skin was burned a deep brown from days of riding and days of walking naked in a pack of slaves. His feet were harder than they’d ever been before, but the first day had been agony for him, and he still had an angry red mark on his left arm where the arrow had gone right through his bicep, and the wound in his side, while not life-threatening, hurt when he breathed heavily.

The soldiers had cooperated to make his journey as easy as possible, but the charade as slaves had been necessary to pass the town. He’d had to carry a load like a slave, and that had inflamed his side and put knots of pain deep into his back. The load had been as light as possible, but he couldn’t be empty-handed without appearing different and negating the whole disguise.

He had muscles in his shoulders that he’d never had working in the gymnasium, and his chest was broader.

‘I did not enjoy pretending to be a slave,’ Melitta said. ‘So - we’re free. Did you worry that we might not ever get free, brother?’

‘I worry about everything now,’ he said. ‘Yes, I wondered what would happen if bandits hit us again. We’d be slaves for ever.’

Philokles swayed on his horse. ‘To some extent,’ he said, ‘we’re all slaves.’

He had taken a cut in his leg in the fight and Theron had given him wine for the pain, and now he was drinking as hard or harder than before his fight with the Corinthian.

Satyrus was indignant. ‘I didn’t see you walking naked in the sun,
tutor
. I saw you drink wine in the shade, though!’

Their Athenian doctor laughed aloud, a nasty laugh. ‘Ditch him,’ he said. ‘He’s a drunk.’

That brought no reply, and they rode in silence while the sun sank.

There was an old Persian station house on the road just south of Geza, a tiny hamlet that had probably existed to serve the needs of the Great King’s messengers. But a Macedonian veteran and his local wife kept the station house, and they camped in the yard and the woman fed them on beans and bread.

‘We should fight,’ Theron said, after dinner. He drank some water from the well and handed the dipper to Satyrus. ‘You’re bigger and stronger.’

Satyrus shrugged. ‘Whatever,’ he said.

Theron hit him. Not hard, but hard enough to hurt. ‘That was the response of a child,’ he said. ‘I am your athletics coach. You are Satyrus of Tanais. Not a slave, and not an idiot. Act the part.’

Satyrus of Tanais sat for a moment in the mud by the well. He thought of thousands of replies - bitter, sarcastic, cutting, outrageous.

‘You’re right, of course,’ he said after a pause.

‘Good for you. Let’s go.’ They walked past some low scrub where the animal pens were, to a cropped lawn kept by goats, and stripped. Melitta followed them.

Satyrus hadn’t fought anyone since he took the wound in his arm. He took his guard carefully, and the bigger man circled him, and Satyrus found himself viewing the fight from a very different perspective than he had the first time the two of them had faced off on the sand in Tanais. Most of all, he couldn’t see it as a game any more. People could die in a fight. He knew that now.

Theron had a long reach, and he stepped in and grabbed with both hands. Satyrus blocked and kicked, and after a pair of exchanges, he was down in the grass, a recent contribution from the goats warm and liquid on his thigh, and his left side and shoulder screaming with pain.

‘Don’t be so cautious,’ Theron said. ‘Be confident.’

‘Easy for you to say,’ Satyrus grunted as he twisted around one of the Corinthian’s long legs.

Theron tipped him and put him down while he was trying to dodge all those kicks.

He got up and tried again. This time he moved in close, trying to get inside his coach’s reach. He tried to be confident and got a mouth full of grass for his efforts.

He got up and they began to circle again. He decided to go for a hold.

That ended quickly.

They went ten falls. Satyrus’s new muscles served him well, in that he could continue, and for a blow or two he could match the bigger man. But experience told every time, and weight, and reach. And pain. His shoulder wound hurt all the time.

‘Let’s just practise some holds,’ Theron said after the last fall. ‘You are tiring, and we are boring your sister.’

So they stood in a line and practised guards, and Theron moved back and forth between them, making simple attacks so that his hands and feet could be blocked. When all three of them were breathing hard, he picked up his canteen from his clothes and handed it around.

‘I never meant the two of you to remain on the road so long,’ he said. ‘But Draco was sure we were followed until we crossed the mountains. We should have gone south after Bithynia.’

Satyrus shrugged. ‘We’ll live,’ he said, and a little happiness began to grow in his heart. He turned to his sister. ‘We will live!’

They had barely spoken in days, and they shared a long embrace.

Melitta kissed him on the nose and turned to Theron. ‘We have to stop Philokles from drinking,’ she said. ‘For good.’

Theron hung his head. ‘He - he and I - it is hard to say this to a child. He thinks he failed you, and then - he feels I have spurned him for Kallista.’ He looked at both of them. ‘And there is more to this than meets your eyes. Trust me. And - trust Philokles.’

‘I do,’ Satyrus said.

‘I can see that you have a plan,’ Melitta said.

Theron wiped sweat off his face with his forearm. He paused a moment and said, ‘Perhaps I have, at that.’

Melitta turned on her brother. ‘Kallista wasn’t for you, anyway. Why not Theron? And Philokles drinks because he is cursed, not because of a silly girl with big eyes.’ She turned back to the Corinthian, and Satyrus thought that she was getting more and more like their mother.