Read Online Tyrant: Storm of Arrows by Christian Cameron - Free Book Online Page B

the men of the city. There were gaps in the phalanx just as there were in the hippeis, but in his present mood, Kineas was glad to see that there were also men back standing in the ranks who had ridden into the city in the wagons of wounded.
    Every morning another two or three of the wounded tried on their armour and either crept back to their pallets defeated, or fought their way through a fog of dizziness and weakness to attend the musters. The recoveries had peaked now. Kineas, who visited the wounded twice a day, had little hope for the men who continued to lose weight, or whose wounds were still fevered.
    Sitalkes, the Getae boy, was one. Coenus had been another - with light wounds that had suddenly festered - and he had been down since the army left Marthax. If he had recovered, there was still hope for the rest.
    Movement in the Sauromatae camp roused him from thought. Prince Lot was mounting a captured Macedonian mare. He waved to Kineas, and Kineas waved back. A glance over his shoulder showed him that Memnon was some minutes from having the phalanx in order. He pressed his knees against his own captured Macedonian charger and cantered painfully across the short-cropped grass, his hip burning with the rhythm of his unnamed charger’s hooves.
    Lot raised a fist in greeting. ‘Rain stops!’ he said in Greek. He pointed to the sky over Kineas’s shoulder, where dark blue could be seen at the base of the sky in the east like the glaze on an expensive cup.
    ‘Rain stops,’ Kineas agreed. The Sauromatae had fought in every action that Kineas had led. Their superior armour and battle skills had kept many of them alive despite a battering, and most of their saddles would be full if they mustered. Their horse herd, bolstered by their share of the Macedonian and Getae spoils, numbered almost a thousand, guarded by shifts of well-armed young women, and they were eating Olbia’s farmers out of their grain, yet another problem Kineas had to face.
    ‘Rain stops and ground hard again,’ Lot said. ‘Hard ground makes good road east.’ The Sauromatae prince leaned close. ‘Need to ride - need to be home.’
    Kineas switched to Sakje, a language where he was stilted and Lot was more fluent. ‘At least a month until we ride, cousin.’ Kineas had adopted the habit of addressing the senior tribal officers as cousins, elder or younger as age and rank dictated.
    Lot had a magnificent, if barbaric, blond moustache, and his right hand parted his moustache and then twirled each end, a habit that was sometimes imitated behind his back. ‘Need to ride,’ he said in Sakje. ‘My nephew worries me.’
    Kineas shrugged. ‘Nephew?’ he asked, wondering which of the many Sauromatae or even Sakje counted as his nephew.
    ‘My wife’s sister’s son. My heir. He worries me.’ Lot stared out over the sea of grass as if he could see the man riding in the distance. ‘Never thought to be gone so long.’ Lot looked chagrined. ‘Didn’t know the sea of grass was so big. ’
    Kineas raised a hand to forestall him. Lot had done his share - far more than his share - to win the victory at the Ford of the River God. Since that day, Lot had never ceased to press the Sakje and the Greeks to follow him east, where his tribe and the others of the Massagetae confederacy - the eastern Sakje - were hard pressed by Alexander. And the five days of waiting at Olbia was making him edgy.
    ‘Patience,’ Kineas said. ‘Today we mourn our dead.’
    Lot bowed his head. Then he waved to his own nobles, who began to file out into the column. Niceas had kept a space for them - they were aliens, but they were allies, and with Ataelus’s little troop of prodromoi, they represented the whole realm of the Sakje out on the sea of grass.
    A realm that might now be an enemy of Olbia. Kineas shook his head to clear it, because this was the day of mourning, and politics would have to wait.
    Helladius, now chief priest of Apollo, joined him. Helladius was an old