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.‘I think so,’ said Kineas.It was the first time he could remember being able to converse with the dead.Seeing them - speaking with them - made him absurdly happy.‘Finish it,’ Graccus said.He was serious, dignified - just like himself.‘We can hold them until you climb to the top.’Nicomedes nodded.‘Alexander must be stopped.You will stop him.’And he set himself to climb.Above him, a pair of eagles shrieked.Kineas awoke to the feel of rough bark under his arms and thighs, and a leaden fatigue in his limbs.On the third night in the caldera, Kineas sat under a rough shelter, with a scrap of animal parchment on which he’d rendered a rough map of the ground from the caldera to the distant Jaxartes.Philokles lay beside him, and Diodorus sat on the ground with Sappho at his shoulder on a stool.Eumenes and Andronicus sat back to back, both of them mending bridles.Leon was off questioning traders - or following Mosva.They all looked at the map and made plans: a quick trip across the dry ground to the edge of the sea where Srayanka’s Sakje were camped, a grand reunion, and then some hard decisions.‘If the pay doesn’t catch up with us, and even if it does, I have to wonder at whether we keep the boys together,’ he said.Eumenes, hitherto silent, leaned into the discussion.‘The men complain that they are too far from home.And many complain that we are not keeping the festival calendar and that the gods will not be pleased.’Diodorus nodded.‘There’s a lot of complaining, Eumenes.But I see it as a sign that the boys are recovering from the march here and the storming of the citadel.Never worry your head about a little bitching.’ But to Kineas he said, ‘I don’t see what we can accomplish here.The Massagetae, all the Sauromatae, the Dahae - they’ve got more horsemen than the gods.They can bury Alexander in a tide of horseflesh.What can we do with our four hundred?’‘We have discipline they lack, and we’ve faced Macedon before,’ Kineas said.‘But I take your point.’ He looked out at the rim of the caldera and the deep blue sky beyond.‘The world is larger than I ever imagined.’Diodorus nodded.‘I’d like to find my tutors and bring them here,’ he said.Kineas went on as if his friend hadn’t spoken.‘But Alexander is still the monster.However great the world is, he seems to bestride it.I will go where he goes.’Diodorus shook his head.‘Then I guess we’ll follow you there,’ he said.He watched the sun for a moment.‘Then what happens? I mean, when we fight Alexander.Then what?’Kineas laughed.‘When we beat Alexander, I will try to persuade Srayanka to ride home.’ He shrugged.‘If I’m alive.’Philokles shook his head.‘Always that old tune.What we’re telling you, Strategos, is that if you want your men to follow you to the end of the world to fight the finest army to stride the earth since the long-haired Achaeans sailed to windy Ilium, you had better have a plan for what we do when we win.’‘Or lose,’ said Diodorus, cheerily.On the next morning, the hyperetes of each troop got the men into column.They grumbled and groaned and cursed their sore muscles and their hard lot as they mounted, but they did it.Kineas watched Leon embrace Mosva, and watched Eumenes’ face darken almost to purple, and Upazan’s match it, but he did not interfere.Leon made a gesture at the Sauromatae chief with his hand - a small gesture of two fingers.Upazan reacted immediately, running at Leon, but Leon was mounted.Smiling, he tripped the Sauromatae with his spear and danced his horse away.An ugly muttering spread among the younger Sauromatae.Kineas thought of interfering.But he didn’t.Before the sun was a hand’s-breadth in the ether, their borrowed Sauromatae scouts were over the lip of the caldera and the great lake of the steppes gleamed like a flat sapphire on the horizon.It vanished as they descended the caldera’s side, but the next day it came into sight again.They made good time on the steppe, the scouts found water and they slept in rough camps with heavy curtains of sentries.Kineas drove them hard.By the festival of Skirophoria they were watering their horses in the Oxus, and across the river they could see horses and men washing shirts.The Olbians and the Sakje fell on each other like long-lost friends and battle brothers (and sisters), so that discipline dissolved as they entered the Sakje camp.Kineas rode straight for the circle of wagons at the centre, his heart slamming in his chest and his tongue thick in his mouth.Why had she not come out to meet him? Her scouts must have seen him a day ago!He dismounted, with Ataelus beside him.Parshtaevalt stood to receive him, and the younger man looked tired.Kineas embraced Srayanka’s tanist, who all but sighed with relief.‘Where is she?’ he blurted out.Parshtaevalt hugged him harder.‘Taken,’ he whispered.‘She is prisoner of Alexander.And we have been betrayed [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]