Tyrant: Storm of Arrows by Christian Cameron

Author:Christian Cameron [Cameron, Christian]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Historical, War & Military, Action & Adventure, General
ISBN: 9781409106869
Google: 0TfOaFwD1LwC
Amazon: B002U3CBM0
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2009-01-21T18:30:00+00:00

16

Niceas’s funeral games lasted three days, after two weeks of preparations. Slaves and freedmen and farmers cleaned the citadel, and Kineas declared that all taxes and tribute would be remitted in exchange for a tithe on spring fodder and wagons. Nor did he offer any other choice - his soldiers collected the tithe with drawn weapons. It was ugly, like everything about Hyrkania in the aftermath of the escalade.

Eumenes and Leon seemed reconciled by their shared roles as heroes, but their reconciliation lasted only until they wrestled for the prize of the funeral games on the third day, with Mosva watching them. The bout became ugly and all their wounds were ripped open in a single word when Leon said something while his opponent had his head down in a hold, and then they were fighting like dogs.

Leon won.

Ataelus had returned with the rest of the prodromoi on the third day of games, in time to join all the old hands in throwing torches on to Niceas’s pyre. He wept with them, and threw his best gold-hilted dagger on to the roaring blaze.

Philokles had barely spoken since the storming. He sat in silence and was drunk most of the time. Only Kineas and Diodorus and Sappho knew that he had tried to kill himself with his sword. Sappho had caught him at it and they had all wrestled the blade away from him, Sappho cut and bleeding, until Philokles screamed, ‘Can I do nothing but injure and kill! Let me go!’ and subsided into weeping. That was in the first few days after the action, and Philokles wasn’t the only man in despair.

At the games, he was silent. He stood alone, and when men went to embrace him, he turned away. Kineas failed to move him. It was Ataelus who pushed past his rudeness. He placed himself in front of the Spartan, hands on hips, weeping unabashedly in the Scythian manner. When he had the silent man’s attention, he demanded, ‘Niceas for killing enemies?’

Philokles’s face was streaked with tears in the firelight. ‘Yes.’

‘How many in last fight?’ Ataelus asked. He didn’t seem to know, or care, what Philokles was suffering.

Philokles flinched. ‘Two,’ he said.

Ataelus nodded. ‘Two is good,’ he said. ‘And you?’ He looked at the Spartan curiously. ‘For revenge? You were killing?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Philokles bitterly. ‘I killed quite a few. Six or seven in combat - perhaps twice that in cowering, defenceless men. At least one woman. I am very proud.’

Ataelus, immune to his tone, nodded. ‘Good. Twenty men - good. And you, Kineax?’

Kineas shrugged. ‘The same.’

Ataelus shook his head. ‘For thinking my friend goes to hell alone! Long faces and tears! Dies like airyanãm! Kills two, even for being wounded! And friends who love him kill forty mens to serve him in death? For what crying?’

Kineas took his arm. ‘We behaved like beasts,’ he said. He didn’t know how to explain it to the Sakje.

But Ataelus shrugged him off. He looked around the ruddy faces lit by the pyre.

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