Funeral Games (9 page)

‘How are you?’ she asked her brother.

‘Fine,’ he said, and gave her a smile. That smile was worth a great deal. She drew some energy from it.

‘I thought you were dead!’ she whispered fiercely.

‘Me too!’ he said back, and they both smiled, and then it was better.

But Coenus was worse. He began to cough, and to tremble. Immersion was the last thing he’d needed, and now he was gaining in heat what the rest of them lost, and starting to mumble.

‘We need to get him into a bed,’ Theron said. ‘I could use one, too.’

Philokles nodded. They went over the top of the ridge, and then down towards the cook fires of another village.

‘They didn’t follow us over the ridge,’ Theron offered as an opinion.

Philokles shrugged. ‘I’m about to risk our lives on it,’ he said.

They came down on to the muddy road just short of a small plank bridge. Theron went across first, looking at the ground and then at the far tree line before motioning the rest of them to follow him.

The village was so small that they were through it while Coenus was still muttering an internal debate as to whether to steal the town’s single horse. A wealthy peasant watched them ride by from the shelter of his stone house. No one spoke to them.

Theron turned aside and asked the wealthy peasant for lodging. The man went inside and they heard him drop the bar on his door.

‘Every one of these bastards will remember us,’ Philokles spat. ‘Peasants. Like helots. Sell you for a drachma.’

Theron wolfed down warm bread stolen from a farmyard, passing pieces to the children and to Coenus, who ate it ravenously. Other than the bread, they gained nothing from the town. Just beyond was the next river, and the ferry, and then they had to stop and wait for half an hour in the endless rain while Philokles checked it out.

Sure enough, there was a party of cavalry keeping watch on the ferry. Philokles spotted them when their sentry got restless and dismounted in the trees to relieve himself.

‘Now what?’ Melitta asked.

‘We’re already wet,’ Philokles said. ‘We ride upstream and cross with the horses.’

It took them the rest of the day, and they made camp in a tiny clearing between two stones with ancient carving, just at nightfall. Their fire was weak and wet, and smoked constantly, so that it was difficult to sit close enough to get warm, and they had nothing to eat but the last of the bread.

It was the longest night Melitta could remember. Thunder came, and lightning, and whenever it flashed, she woke - if she was sleeping at all - to find her brother’s eyes locked on hers. The night stretched on and on - long enough for her to have an ugly dream about her mother, and another about Coenus, caught by wolves and eaten, and then the sky was grey in the east and the ground was pale enough to see to walk.

‘Nothing to keep us here,’ Philokles said.

Theron sat on his haunches, his fingers clenched until the knuckles were white on his walking stick. ‘We need food.’

‘Any ideas?’ Philokles asked. ‘If not, keep walking.’

When the sun was high in the sky, somewhere beyond the endless grey clouds, they reached another swollen stream.

‘I don’t think this is the Hypanis,’ Philokles said, shaking his head. ‘Ares, I have no idea where we are. I hope I haven’t got you going in circles.’

‘No,’ Coenus muttered. ‘Not circles.’

Every time they awoke, Melitta expected Coenus to be dead. But so far, he wasn’t.

‘Not circles,’ he said. ‘Not Hypanis, either.’

They crossed with the horses, again, all wet to the bone as every person had to swim some of the distance with one hand on a pony.

‘The horses are failing,’ Philokles said when they were done. He was wearing his chlamys like a giant chiton, pinned at the shoulders. It made him look even bigger.

‘We need a house,’ Theron said. ‘I don’t think Coenus will make another night in the open.’

‘I doubt we’re ahead of the bastard’s cordon,’ Philokles said. ‘We’ll never escape them if we spend a night in a town.’

‘Maybe they’re past us,’ Theron argued. ‘They can’t be everywhere.’

‘You just want to sleep in a bed,’ Philokles accused.

‘Is that so bad?’ Theron asked. ‘I’d like a cup of wine, too.’

It was Coenus’s fever that convinced Philokles to risk a night in a house. He walked down the trail and found a farmer’s field, and exchanged a few words with the man, and he came back to them where they waited in the trees.

‘I like him. He’s the village headman, and I think he can be trusted.’ Philokles looked at Coenus. ‘We need to get out of the rain.’

‘Don’t take the risk on my account,’ Coenus muttered. Theron ignored him and nodded.

The farmer, called Gardan the Blue for his bright blue eyes, was friendly, and his wife welcomed the twins as if they brought her house good fortune. They sat together in the main room of the house, swathed in dry wool and warm for the first time in five days, enjoying a meal of goat and lentils and barley bread. They ate like hungry wolves.

Melitta assumed that they would buy fresh horses from the extensive string she had seen in the paddocks, concealed in a stand of woods away from the road. She waited for Philokles to mention it, and when he didn’t, she nudged him.

‘If we buy their horses, we can make better time,’ she said.

Philokles looked at her with ill-concealed sorrow. ‘I have the gold from the men we killed, and our gear,’ he said. He nodded in the direction of the farmer. ‘We can’t give him a fair price for his horses. Not and have the money to take a ship.’

Neither of the twins had given a thought to the sea. ‘But where will we get a ship?’ Melitta asked.

Philokles looked around at the farmer, smiled grimly and shook his head at the children. ‘Quiet. He’s a good man, and I don’t want to have to kill him to keep you alive. Understand?’

They went to bed without another word.

 

In the morning, the farmer walked them to the edge of the road. He bowed to the twins. ‘Young master? Young mistress? May I speak freely?’

Satyrus nodded. ‘You are a free farmer,’ he said seriously. ‘You can say anything that you want.’

Gardan tugged at his beard. ‘You’re on the run,’ he said. He looked at Philokles. ‘You don’t have a clean garment among you.’

Philokles nodded, looked around and then said, ‘It’s true. The Sauromatae attacked the city with help from Eumeles. Soon enough, some of them will come down this road looking for us.’ He shrugged. ‘I recommend that you be helpful to them.’

The farmer nodded. He rubbed his beard. He was a short man, swarthy as many of the Maeotae were, although he had the blue eyes of a Hellene and jet-black hair from the age of heroes. ‘My uncle fought with Marthax at the Ford of the River God,’ he said. ‘We remember your father.’ He tugged his beard again. ‘I know what happened at the town,’ he said slowly. He looked at Philokles. ‘Been two patrols through, both Sauromatae. Farmers round here don’t take kindly to such people. A man was killed.’ He shrugged and pointed at the heavy bow that rested on pegs over the door. ‘They may come back to burn us out, and then again they may not,’ he said with something like satisfaction. Then he seemed to gather himself. ‘I’m chattering. What I mean to say is, no one in this steading will give you away. Nor any of our neighbours. We know who you are. And there’s five good geldings down the road in a pasture. No one’s watching them.’ He smiled. ‘I’ll tell the next barbarian that the last barbarian stole them.’

His wife came out of her door into the yard, a bag of feed in her hand. ‘There’s clean fabric and wool blankets,’ she said.

Philokles didn’t answer. Instead he looked at the twins. ‘This is a lesson,’ he said. ‘I have told you of Solon and Lycurgus, and I have read to you from Plato and from other men who account themselves wise. But this is the lesson - that good returns good and evil returns evil. These people have saved our lives because your father was a good man, and your mother has ruled fairly and well. Remember.’

Satyrus nodded soberly. ‘I will remember.’ He extended a hand to the farmer, who clasped it.

Melitta rode forward a few steps. ‘When I am queen,’ she said, ‘I will return this favour a hundredfold.’ She kissed the wife and clasped hands with the man.

The horses were just where the farmer had said, and three of them had bundles tied to their backs.

‘When you are queen?’ Satyrus asked.

Melitta shrugged. ‘It is a role, brother. We are exiles. Perhaps we will return. Those people just gave us all of their profit from a year of farming - the whole generation of their horses, the wool from their sheep - there’s linen here that was grown as flax in Aegypt and paid for with the wheat. They gave it all in one open-handed gesture, like heroes - because of who we are.’ She shrugged. ‘They are more like heroes than we are.’

Satyrus spent too much time gulping against sobs. Now he did it again. They rode through the rain in silence.

Philokles was quiet too.

‘Why are
you
crying?’ Satyrus asked.

Philokles met his eyes, not even trying to hide the tears. ‘All we built,’ he said heavily. ‘A decade of war to create peace. Gone.’ He took a rasping breath. ‘You have no idea what was given to gain this land and the peace it deserves.’ He shrugged. ‘Leave them Hermes and the other horse - they’re good beasts, and then Gardan won’t be at such a loss.’

Satyrus nodded. He took his tack off Hermes and put it on the strange gelding, and then whispered to the old cavalry horse for a bit. He looked sheepish when he was done.

‘Mama says Pater always talked to his horses,’ he said defensively. Then he gave a wry smile. ‘At least Hermes will survive this adventure, if we don’t.’

‘We’re doing pretty well, I think, given the odds,’ Theron said. With a meal in him and a dry chiton, he was a new man.

‘Our father gave his life for this country,’ Melitta said.

‘Not just your father, my dear.’ Philokles managed a smile. ‘A great many men, and no few women.’ He looked back into the rain, and his smile faded, and he seemed to be watching something else, somewhere else. ‘I hate the gods,’ he said.

Coenus shook his head. ‘I hate impiety,’ he said. ‘It’s foolish for a man to hate the gods.’

‘Someone’s feeling better,’ Theron said.

 

Five fresh horses made all the difference. They rode hard, but the horses were changed regularly. The blankets and clean clothes and the gold pins they were wearing made them look prosperous instead of desperate, although the wiser elders on the road wondered quietly why they were out in the rain at all, or moving at such speed.

They were eight more days from the Hypanis River, and as they trotted over the rain-sodden landscape, Melitta knew that she couldn’t have walked the whole way. And Coenus - despite his fevered wound, was better for the saddle and for sleeping dry. Gardan the Blue had packed them a heavy wool blanket, carefully felted, as big as the roof of a small house - the work of four or five women for a whole winter. It made a waterproof shelter.

They were in better shape when they came down the last slope to the Hypanis, a small party with packhorses and good clothes and enough rest to make good decisions.

‘I’m afraid of the ferry,’ Melitta heard Philokles say to Theron and Coenus. He sent Theron ahead, but Theron came back with the news that, aside from outrageous rates, the ferry was safe.

‘We’ve ridden clear,’ Philokles said. He shrugged. ‘They have so much ground to cover - Eumeles can’t be everywhere.’

Theron bargained with the ferryman the way a slave bargains for fish in the agora, hectoring the man and threatening to swim the river himself on horseback until the man conceded, a copper obol at a time, and finally they were crossing with their whole train for a single silver owl. Coenus watched in silent disapproval, but his fever was so high that he couldn’t contribute much. His face said that they should be above such things.

The rain stopped while they watched the brown Hypanis flow past their broad raft. It took the effort of the ferryman, both his sons and Theron to wrestle the unwieldy thing against the current, and they had to make two trips, because the rush of water prevented the horses from swimming well.

Philokles paid down a second silver owl without being asked, and the ferryman bit it with a knowing smile.

‘You overpaid,’ Theron said.

‘He risked his boat for us,’ Philokles said. ‘And no one will follow us for a day or so.’

Theron pursed his lips. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘The river will go down if the rain stops.’

Coenus roused himself. ‘The river will go
up
for another day, as the water comes down from the hills.’ He pointed at the loom of the mountains to the east and south, where the foothills of the Caucasus were visible even in the clouds.

‘And I put a cut in the pull rope,’ Philokles said with a shrug. When Theron glared, Philokles shrugged again. ‘I paid for the rope. And he was an arse-cunt.’