Funeral Games by Christian Cameron, Cameron Page A

from his right thigh to his brain. Theron lay breathing beside him. Philokles dragged himself to his feet. He went to Hermes, the big gelding, and pulled the Sauromatae spear from the horse’s saddlecloth where he had bundled it with the gear of the other men they had killed.
    Satyrus rolled over, ignoring the pain, determined not to be afraid this time. He looked for his other horse, and she was gone - lost in the river. So much for dry bowstrings. He pulled his bow out of his gorytos, which was still full of water. All his arrows were soaked and his bow felt odd, whipping in his hand, the bindings wet through.
    Strapped to the outside of his gorytos was the short, sharp steel akinakes that Ataelus had given him. He drew it. It was no longer than his forearm, a pitiful weapon against a grown Sauromatae warrior coming up the bank. He stumbled to the edge.
    There were four riders in the water, and they had had as hard a swim as he had. They were not armoured. Most had cast their helmets aside and only their heads and the heads of their horses came above the water. The Sauromatae didn’t even seem to know where they were. They let their horses swim them to shore, and the first horse touched the mud at the same spot where Thalassa had touched, scrambled in the shallows and then swam the last few lengths to the bank.
    Philokles leaned over the edge and killed the lead man while his horse gathered itself for the scramble up the bank - a single punch of his spear.
    The other Sauromatae milled around a few horse-lengths from shore, calling to one and other.
    ‘Come and die,’ Philokles yelled. ‘Did Upazan send you?’
    The barbarian warriors swam their horses back to the drowned meadow and got their legs under them. Then the one with gold in his hair shouted back. ‘Let us ashore and we swear not to harm you!’
    They were only a few horse-lengths apart. It was an easy bow shot - but no one had a bow that would function. Satyrus, exhausted, managed a laugh.
    ‘Did Upazan send you?’ Philokles called again.
    ‘Yes!’ the barbarian returned.
    ‘Then you can swim back to him,’ Philokles called. He stepped away from the edge. He sank on his haunches and looked at the children and Theron. ‘We can’t let them up the bank,’ he said. ‘I can’t go on much longer.’
    Theron looked around. ‘I can,’ he said. ‘Who has a javelin?’ The water was drying from his body. He looked like a god.
    Philokles went to Hermes, moving like an old man, and took a javelin out of the kit strapped to the gelding. He walked with an unaccustomed heaviness.
    Theron looked them all over. ‘We won’t get far,’ he said. ‘That house will have to shelter us.’
    ‘We can only stay a few hours,’ Philokles said. ‘Sooner or later they’ll send a ship.’ He gave the athlete the javelin.
    Theron unbound his hair and took the leather thong, wrapped it twice around the spear and made a loop. Then he tied the loop off. He appeared unhurried. He walked to the bank, measuring off his strides, right out to the edge and then back. After three times, he hefted the javelin, well out of sight of the barbarians. ‘I assume that if I kill one, the other two will charge us,’ he said.
    Philokles was silent. He took a deep breath and stood, the big spear in his fists. ‘Do the thing,’ he said.
    Theron ran three steps, skipped once and threw the javelin. It flew like a thunderbolt and hit one of the barbarians so hard that it went a third of its length through his body before he fell into the water.
    ‘Nice throw,’ Philokles said.
    The other two came forward. They were brave, and they knew they had no choice, so they urged their horses forward across the last stretch and up the muddy bank. The first man came up just where Thalassa had come up and died there, spitted on Philokles’ spear. The second man’s horse took him further upstream to an easier climb, and he made it up the bank. His horse had spirit, and he turned the animal and went