Tyrant: Storm of Arrows Read Free

think of Greece the same way again.’>
    ‘What are you saying?’ Kineas asked.
    ‘There’s a rumour that you and Srayanka aim to take us all the way east to fight Alexander,’ Diodorus said. ‘I’ve heard you talk around it. You mean it, don’t you?’
    Kineas shook his head. ‘Lot is insistent and Srayanka wants to support him. The queen of the Massagetae has sent messengers to the Assagatje. They had another yesterday.’ He drank.
    Diodorus grunted. ‘Hey! Hey, that’s my wine!’ He seized the flask. ‘We have unfinished business before we go riding off to fight the boy king. The tyrant, for instance.’ He looked out at the horizon. On their right, the Borysthenes flowed down to the Euxine Sea. On the left, the sea of grass rippled in the wind as far as the eye could see, and then another forty thousand stades, or so Herodotus claimed. ‘I don’t want to fight Alexander. I don’t want to see more fascinating barbarians. I’d like to retire to Olbia and be rich.’
    Kineas rode along, hips moving with his mount. He hurt, and despite weeks in a cot in Srayanka’s wagon, or because of them, he felt sore in every muscle. ‘Things change,’ Kineas said.
    Diodorus nodded. ‘Too true. The peace faction took over in Athens while we were winning this campaign.’
    Kineas laughed, which also hurt. ‘Athens seems very far away.’
    Diodorus nodded. He handed his flask to the silent Temerix. ‘That’s what I mean. When I left Athens with you, I thought my heart would break. When we were cracking Darius’s empire, I used to dream of the Parthenon. Then we fought this campaign. Now Athens is too far away to remember and I’m a gentlemen of Olbia. Now I dream of finding a wife and buying a farm on the Euxine.’ He paused. ‘I’m afraid that I’ll end up in a yurt on the sea of grass.’
    Kineas had stopped his horse unconsciously. He was looking straight at the stone he’d seen in his dream, and the day seemed colder. ‘Hera,’ Kineas said. He spoke aloud a prayer for divine protection.
    Diodorus was looking at him.
    ‘It’s just as I dreamed it.’ Kineas’s voice was hushed. ‘The stone is broader at the top. When we dig it up, the bottom will be shaped like a horse’s head. We’ll flip it over and the horse head will mark Satrax’s grave.’
    Diodorus shook his head, but as the Sindi dug away at the deep soil around the stone, he became thoughtful, and when the shape of the stone’s hidden base was revealed, he rubbed his beard in annoyance.
    ‘Remember when we were just mercenaries?’ Diodorus said, again.
    They buried the king in the old way. It was the last act of the army that had won the battle at the Ford of the River God, and even as the men cut turf in the rain, Kineas could feel the spirit that had animated them flowing away like the rising river at their back carrying the rainwater to the sea.
    The Greeks did their part. Diodorus, Niceas, Philokles and Kineas cut turfs side by side, their cloaks soaked through and the rich loam under the grass turning to sticky slime on their hands and feet. Around them, for stades, Sakje and Greek worked together, every warrior cutting enough turfs to cover a man and his horse. Then the cutters carried the turf to the builders, almost all of them Sindi tribesmen from the farms up the river - earth people, the Sakje called them - or dirt people. They dug out the chambers of the barrow and reinforced them with heavy timbers floated down the river from the forests in the north.
    Once, Satrax had stood at this ford and asked Kineas if he would like to go north to see the forests.
    And now the king was dead. Kineas shook his head at the ways of the gods, at Moira and Tyche, fate and chance. He straightened and rubbed his hip, which hurt like fire with every trip he made back to his own pile of turf. He could only carry one block of earth and grass at a time - his right shoulder was better, but the long cuts on his bridle arm and his left leg still gave