Read Online Funeral Games by Christian Cameron, Cameron - Free Book Online

proud. He had fought well.
    I put two in the grass myself, she thought. My mother will be proud, and I will not go to Hades without slaves. Then she thought of her father’s horse - a tangible link to the man she knew only through her mother and Philokles and Coenus’s stories. Dead. She frowned away a new bout of tears.
    As they crossed the farmyard to fetch the horses, she saw a rough bundle on the manure pile. She had to turn her head away, and her eyes met Philokles’. ‘Is that . . .’ She paused, ‘Coenus?’ she asked quietly, so that her brother wouldn’t hear.
    ‘You think I’d leave Coenus on a manure heap?’ Philokles asked, and didn’t meet her eye. He wasn’t sober - she could tell - and there was something wrong with him.
    Melitta made bright small talk to hide the corpse from her brother. She knew who was on the manure pile. The farmer wasn’t going to betray them, because Theron or Philokles had killed him.
    Coenus, on the other hand, had lived through the night. He was stiff, but his wounds had stopped bleeding, and he had the farmer’s whole store of linen wrapped around his torso. He was in better shape than Philokles, who could barely walk.
    They made less than ten stades in the first hour, and if it hadn’t been for Theron’s muscles, they might have done worse.
    Melitta watched her tutor sink into the same kind of sullenness that affected her brother, and finally she spoke up. ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.
    ‘Heraklea,’ Philokles said.
    That was a quarter of the way around the Euxine. ‘That will take weeks!’ Melitta said.
    Philokles stumbled to a stop. ‘Look, girl,’ he said. ‘Yesterday, we were attacked by Upazan. Galleys out of Pantecapaeum sacked the town. What does that tell you?’
    ‘Pantecapaeum is an ally!’ Melitta cried. Her brother raised his head.
    ‘Mother was going to Pantecapaeum,’ he said. ‘To renew the treaty with Eumeles.’
    ‘And now you will be hunted,’ Philokles said. ‘Upazan and Eumeles have made a deal.’ He shook his head, utter weariness getting the better of his good sense. ‘All we can do is run.’
    Melitta’s nails bit into the palms of her hands. ‘What of mama?’ she demanded. ‘She’s not dead? She’s not dead!’ She grabbed her brother’s hand, and he gripped it as if she was a sword.
    ‘She’s not dead!’ the boy shouted.
    Philokles and Theron kept walking, and Coenus raised his head, shook it and looked away.
    ‘Maybe not,’ the old soldier said.
    None of them spoke for a long time. After a while the sun tried to rise on a grey day, and then it began to rain.
    Coenus’s head came up. ‘Rain,’ he said. ‘Cover our tracks - cover our scent.’ He looked at Philokles and drew a deep breath, although they could see that it hurt him. ‘Now you have a chance.’
    Philokles stood on the road in the rain for as long as it takes a good smith to shoe a horse. Then he said, ‘We need to get off the road.’
    Coenus nodded. ‘Cross-country until you have to cross the river,’ he agreed.
    Theron shook his head. ‘We must be ahead of the news - no one else could have swum the river.’
    Coenus’s eyes came up. He was having trouble breathing and his eyes were dull, but he got his head up and he pointed his walking staff at Theron. ‘Listen, boy,’ he said. ‘Eumeles needs these children dead . His whole fucking attack on our town is for nothing if the children live. He’ll be across this morning, if he has to swim himself. He’ll flood this side of the river with soldiers - men he trusts.’
    Theron swished his walking staff in irritation. ‘This is not the sort of expedition I signed on for.’
    But then he saw something in Philokles that changed his mind. Melitta saw him start. He doesn’t want to end up like the farmer. She’d never seen Philokles the tutor - Philokles the drunk - like this.
    He was scary.
    He looked them over and gave a smile - a half-smile, almost of contempt. ‘Cross-country it