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.He waited.Another head came up - a young buck.He took a step towards Kineas, and turned his head as if trying to see something across the river.Kineas remained motionless.The doe’s head went down, back to drinking, and then the young buck moved a step and did the same.Kineas took a step, and then another, now almost flat to the ground.A head came up.Kineas couldn’t see as well, having sacrificed line of sight for his own cover.He stopped moving.He was in range now, but awkwardly placed behind a hillock of grass where a great tree had fallen, probably during a spring flood, and then rotted into the loam to leave a miniature ridge.Above him, just a plethron away on the bluff, Niceas rose to his feet and stretched.The heads came up, watching this new movement.Across the river, the eagle, freshly gorged on salmon, let out a raucous screech of contentment.As the herd’s heads turned together, Kineas rolled from behind his hillock to his feet.In their panic at his appearance, the young buck fouled one of the does and both stumbled, losing a stride, and his javelin flew, arcing into the heavens before falling to strike the young buck between the shoulder blades.He took one stride and fell, legs splayed, already dead.The doe leaped his corpse and ran.Kineas opened the buck, giving a prayer to Artemis he had learned as a boy, and gralloched his kill in a nearby tree.He left the buck hanging there and washed in the river before climbing the bluff with a pair of steaks wrapped in oak leaves.‘Somebody’s feeling better,’ Niceas said.He was huddled in his cloak with a horn cup in his fist.Kineas laid the steaks on their leaves by the fire.‘Yes,’ he said.He wore a grin that split his face like an athlete’s crown of honour.Niceas began cutting green branches from the alder at the top of the bank.‘If you wanted to go hunting, you could just have said,’ he joked.Kineas shrugged, still looking across the river.‘I didn’t know what I wanted,’ he said.‘Fair enough,’ Niceas answered.He speared the deer meat carefully, putting three of the springy sticks into each steak and then putting the sticks deep into the loam around their fire.In the fire pit, he pushed the coals from Kineas’s earlier blaze into deep piles, one each under the lattices supporting the meat.The meat began to sizzle almost immediately and Kineas’s stomach made a wet noise.They both chuckled.‘It’s hot,’ Niceas said.He’d boiled water in a copper mess pot and added the herbs he’d learned from the Sakje and some honey.It was a good drink in the morning, and it saved the wine.Kineas took the cup from his outstretched hand and drank.He smiled.‘We’re going to end up becoming Sakje,’ he said.‘What’s the herb?’‘Something the Sakje call “garella”,’ he said.‘I found some growing here when we made camp.’‘Bitter,’ Kineas said.‘Good with honey.’Niceas shrugged.‘It’s warm and wet.Srayanka - your Medea - likes the stuff.That’s how I learned about it.’Kineas nodded and drank more.It tasted better.Or was that his imagination?‘We could go back to Athens,’ Niceas said.Kineas stepped back from the fire as if he had been burned.‘What?’ he asked.‘We could go back to Athens.Your exile is lifted - all your estates restored.Right?’Kineas looked at the other man.‘Where is this coming from?’Niceas shrugged, pulled the sticks from the ground and flipped one of the pieces of meat.It smelled delicious, and it had very little fat.‘The plains aren’t good for you.All these dreams.And war.We’ve had enough war, haven’t we?’Kineas looked at his hyperetes as if seeing him for the first time.‘Have you had enough war?’‘The first time I saw it, that was enough,’ Niceas said.‘But like Memnon, it’s the only life I’ve ever known.I keep waiting - waiting for you to retire, so that I can retire, too.’Kineas was watching his friend’s face.‘I will not be going back to Athens, old friend.’Niceas shook his head.‘Of course not.Silly of me to mention it, only - only I don’t see an end.We ride east.Then what? You find Medea and live happily ever after.What about the rest of the boys? Do we just pick a Sakje bride and settle down, or what? Do we fight Alexander? Do we just go on fighting Alexander? Maybe keep moving east? Come back here and make war on Marthax?’ Niceas was growing angrier as he spoke.‘It won’t ever end, Kineas.You’ll become fucking Alexander, at this rate.What’s it for?’Kineas rubbed his beard, stung.‘I promised Srayanka.’Niceas nodded.‘You promised her.Did you promise her Eumenes? Diodorus? Antigonus? Coenus? Me?’ At each name, his voice rose.‘We’ll leave our fucking skulls out east in some Tartarus of wilderness beyond the world, won’t we?’Kineas drained the garella and sat.He pulled his legs up close and put his arms around them [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]