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

is. Follow me.’
    They walked all day, leading their horses. The rain continued, and they crossed muddy fields and walked through dripping woods. Melitta was tired in an hour, and exhausted before they sat under an oak and ate more garlic sausage. Coenus could barely walk. Her brother met her eye and shook his head, but they were too tired to talk. After they had eaten the sausage, they walked again. As darkness began to settle, Philokles and Theron began to take turns carrying Coenus, and then they stopped in a stand of ash and cut poles and made a stretcher out of his chlamys and walked on again, carrying him between them. None of the horses was fit to ride.
    In the evening, they came to a village. Theron went in alone, and came out dejected. ‘Men were here this morning,’ he said. ‘They took all the horses and killed some men.’ He shrugged. ‘I took this,’ he said, and held out a clay pot the size of his hand. ‘I tried to pay, but everyone ran off.’
    They made a camp above the town. None of them had a fire kit, and everything was wet through, and Theron couldn’t get a fire started. He looked at Philokles. ‘You’re the old soldier,’ he said.
    ‘I get fire started by telling a slave to light one,’ Philokles shot back.
    ‘Fine pair of bandits you two will make,’ Coenus muttered. He sat in the dark, shredding bark between his fingers for a long time - so long that Melitta fell asleep, and she awoke to the warm kiss of golden fire on her face.
    ‘He did it with a stick!’ Satyrus said with delight. They gazed at the fire for a while, listening to their bellies rumble, and then they were asleep.
     
    In the morning, they cut north again at Coenus’s urging, into wilder country farther from the river and the shore of the Euxine. Bion had recovered and Philokles and Theron got Coenus up on her, and they made better time. Theron ran down a rabbit and they stopped in the hollow of a hilltop and made fire - quickly, because Coenus had shown them how to wrap coals and embers in wet leaves to carry with them. Rabbit soup in Theron’s clay pot - nothing to eat it with, so that Melitta burned her lips drinking it straight from the pot - and roast rabbit cooked on a green branch used as a spit. Melitta grew used to taking direction from Coenus as he lay on a pile of cut boughs, protected from the rain only by their one spare cloak, which had belonged to one of the dead Sauromatae.
    After the meal they were all better, even Coenus. They slept a little, collected embers and walked on. That night they slept in deep woods, soaked to the skin but warmed by a big fire. In the morning, Coenus was well enough to look over the horses and frown.
    ‘The two steppe ponies are well enough. And Bion is healthy. But we’re killing the other two - they’re too well bred for this life. We should kill them for meat or trade them to a farmer.’
    ‘For meat!’ Satyrus asked, his eyes wide. ‘Our horses? Hermes!’
    Coenus grunted and sat, suddenly and without ceremony. ‘Son, there are no rules now. We can’t get attached to anything. Including each other.’ He looked at Philokles. ‘I’m slowing you, brother.’
    Philokles shrugged. ‘Yes, you are. On the other hand, without your knowledge of hunting and living rough, the children might already be dead - or I’d be driven to taking chances.’ He looked down the hill. ‘As it is, we’ve made time. We’re only a day or so from the ford at Thatis.’
    Coenus smiled grimly. ‘I’ll try and stay useful, then.’
    Philokles grunted. ‘See that you do. Otherwise - well, I suppose you’d make a good roast.’
    Theron turned away from Philokles’ laughter and Coenus’s grunts. ‘You Spartan bastard !’ Coenus spat. ‘You make it all hurt more!’
    ‘They’re joking ,’ Satyrus said.
    Theron shook his head. ‘They’re - not like anyone I’ve ever known,’ he said. ‘I thought that I was tough.’

3
    T he plain of Thatis was an endless succession of