Free Tyrant: Destroyer of Cities by Christian Cameron Page B

see.’
    And, of course, she had Thyrsis. He chose his warriors carefully, and offered to bring three times as many, but she shook her head. ‘Bring what I ask,’ she said. ‘I need to know that there are many warriors here, if we’re all killed. So that my son will come to avenge us, in time.’ She thought of young Kineas, left behind again. She’d left him back in Tanais with her brother – in the care of Temerix’s exotic wife, who had been her nurse once, and a circle of Sauromatae matrons. Her brother, who openly accused her of being a poor mother.
    I should not have left Satyrus without making peace , she thought. I should not be riding away from my son.
    She rode easily, breathing deeply of the new grass and the smells of spring – the flowers on every stream bank, the smells of the horses, the woodsmoke at their first campfire. It was hard to concentrate on her winter life as a semi-Greek woman when she was here, doing what she loved, riding the plains.
    It was glorious to be young, and to be Queen, leading an army to the east. Or rather, it should have been glorious, but even while she drank from the spring, she wondered if she had made the right decision. On the word of one mistreated farm girl she was leading the flower of her people east on a war of vengeance. Was she being decisive, or merely reacting from boredom?
    Scopasis rode up behind her. ‘Is the camp satisfactory?’ he asked.
    She nodded. ‘Beautiful,’ she said.
    That made him smile.
    ‘Scopasis, am I doing the right thing?’ she asked, suddenly.
    He sat behind her and his gelding snorted, sniffing her mare with a sort of vague interest. Her mare sidled away.
    ‘You ask me these things,’ he said, when they had both reined in their mounts. ‘But the truth is, I’m no king. I can’t answer. And I only sound like a fool when I try. You must ask Thyrsis or Listra. They are lords. I was an outlaw, and now I command your guard. I can make a good rabbit stew, and I will match any other man arrow for arrow, but in truth,’ and he managed a smile, ‘in truth, I’m not able to advise you.’
    ‘You lay out a good camp, too,’ she said.
    ‘I have much experience,’ he allowed.
    ‘You could learn to be a clan leader,’ she said. ‘As good as Sindispharnax, or better.’
    He shrugged. ‘Perhaps. Yes – if I rode hard this campaign, and started speaking to the young men and the old outlaws of my youth who still live in the high ground.’ He shrugged. ‘I could be that man, I suppose. But—’ He looked around, struggling for words. ‘But that man might not be me. I don’t know.’ He looked at her. ‘If I became a clan leader, would I then be worthy of you?’
    She shook her head. ‘No – or no more than you already are. I’m sorry, Scopasis. Have I treated you badly? I think I have.’
    He grunted. ‘I find it hard to know what you want.’
    She nodded. ‘Dinner,’ she said. And rode away, before she threw her arms around him and started all over again.

 
     
     
     
    4
     
     
     
     
    T en days until he sailed, and Satyrus was meeting with the farmers of his southern shore about taxes.
    They were a special case in a kingdom burdened with more special cases than uniform taxes and laws. All of the other citizens of the Kingdom of the Bosporus (as it said on the coins, of which he was very proud) were really citizens of Greek city states whose loose alliance he headed – Pantecapaeum, Olbia, Tanais – while to the far west, near the border with Lysimachos’ Kingdom of Thrace, and to the far east, near the wild lands of Hyrkania, his ‘kingdom’ possessed ‘citizens’ who had no intermediary. They had no city to which to report or to pay taxes, no easy place for refuge or law courts.
    The westerners were a special case within a special case, as most of them were controlled – ruled – by Sakje overlords who owed their allegiance to his sister, Melitta. And the fact that the King of the Bosporus and the Queen of the