Storm of arrows
( Tyrant - 2 )
Christian Cameron
Christian Cameron
Storm of arrows
329 BC
T he conqueror of Asia stalked into his tent and tossed his golden helmet at the armour stand by the camp bed. It hit the wooden post with a bronze clang. The servants froze.
‘Where the fuck are my recruits?’ he yelled. ‘Antipater promised me eight thousand new infantry. He sent three thousand Thracians and some mutinous Greeks! I want my Macedonians!’
Members of his staff followed him into the tent, led by Hephaestion. Hephaestion was not afraid of his royal master, certainly not his master’s temper tantrums, and his bronze-haired head was high. He was smiling.
Behind him, Eumenes and Callisthenes were more hesitant.
Alexander scratched his head with both hands, trying to get the sweat and the dirt out of his hair. ‘Don’t stand in the doorway like sheep. Come in or get the fuck out.’
Hephaestion handed him a cup of wine, poured another for himself. ‘Drink, friend,’ he said.
Alexander drank. ‘It’s not fair. If people would just do as they were told…’
Hephaestion raised an eyebrow, and they both laughed. Just like that.
Alexander swirled the wine in his cup and looked at Eumenes. ‘Did he say why?’
Eumenes — shorter, not godlike in any way — accepted a goblet from Hephaestion, who rarely served anyone but the Great King himself, and met his lord’s eyes. They were mismatched, blue and brown, the blue eye ringed in black and opened just a little too wide. Eumenes sometimes thought that his master was a god, and other times that he was mad. Either way, Eumenes, a brave man and veteran of a dozen hard fights, disliked meeting Alexander’s eyes.
Eumenes of Cardia was a Greek and not a Macedonian, which made the bearing of bad tidings all the harder. Men competed to bring Alexander good news. When the news was bad, men conspired to avoid being the goat. Eumenes, the foreigner, the smaller man, was the goat.
‘Lord,’ he said carefully, ‘would you like to read the letter, or shall I tell you what I think?’ In the right mood, Alexander craved straight talk. Eumenes lacked Hephaestion’s touch with his lord, but they had an emergency and he needed Alexander to act like a king.
‘Just tell me,’ Alexander shot back.
Eumenes looked at Hephaestion and received no sign at all. ‘Reading between the lines, I would say that Antipater sent an army to conquer the Euxine cities — and perhaps the Sakje tribes.’
‘Sakje?’ Alexander asked.
‘The Western Scyths,’ Callisthenes answered.
‘Amazons?’ Alexander asked.
Callisthenes snorted contemptuously. Alexander whirled on him. ‘Why are you here, sir?’ he asked.
Callisthenes raised an eyebrow. ‘Because you can’t tell the difference between a Scythian and an Amazon.’
Alexander seemed pleased with this remark. He flung himself on a couch. Hephaestion came and lay with him. Servants brought food and more wine.
‘So Antipater made a campaign against the Scythians,’ he said.
‘Not in person. He sent Zopryon.’
‘Shit for brains,’ Alexander said. ‘I assume he cocked it up?’
Eumenes nodded. ‘I think that’s where we lost our missing recruits.’
Alexander snorted. ‘They’re off chasing Amazons, eh?’
Eumenes shook his head. ‘No, lord. If I’m right, and my sources are firm on this point, all our recruits are dead.’
Alexander rolled off the couch and stood. ‘Zeus Ammon my father. Zopryon lost a whole taxeis?’
‘Zopryon lost a whole army, lord.’ Eumenes waited for the explosion. ‘And died himself.’
Alexander stood rigid by the couch. Hephaestion reached out and put a hand on his hip, but Alexander struck the hand away. Hephaestion frowned.
‘They almost defeated my father. Philip, my father. He was wounded — wounded badly.’ Alexander was speaking very softly.
Eumenes could remember it. He nodded. ‘Yes, lord.’
‘And Darius — these Sakje defeated Darius.’ Alexander’s face was immobile. He stood like a schoolboy reciting for his tutor.
Callisthenes shrugged. ‘Not so much defeated as avoided, if Herodotus is to be believed. They made Darius look like an ass, though.’
Alexander glared at him.
Callisthenes raised a shaggy eyebrow. ‘Of course, it took Athens to defeat Darius.’
Alexander’s face burned as the blood rushed to his cheeks. ‘Athens checked Darius. Sparta checked Xerxes. I conquered Asia. Macedon. Not Athens and not Sparta.’
The philosopher glared at Alexander, who met his look and held it. Long seconds passed. Then the philosopher shrugged again. ‘As you say,’ Callisthenes said, with a nod.
A tense silence filled the tent. Outside, the new recruits could be heard being shepherded to their quarters in the sprawling camp — a camp so big and so well built that men already called it a city.
Alexander sat on the couch again. ‘And Cyrus,’ he said, as if continuing an earlier conversation.
They all looked at him, until understanding dawned on Callisthenes. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, as you say, Alexander. Cyrus lost his life fighting the Massagetae. Well to the east of here.’
‘Massagetae?’ Alexander brightened. ‘Amazons?’
‘The Massagetae are the Eastern Scythians,’ Callisthenes said. ‘Their women do fight, and they sometimes have warrior queens. They pay tribute to the King of Kings. There are Massagetae serving with Bessus and with Spitamenes. The queen of the Massagetae is Zarina.’
Alexander raised his goblet in salute to Callisthenes. ‘You do know some useful things.’ He drank, staring out of the door of his tent.
Eumenes fidgeted after the silence stretched on too long. Callisthenes didn’t fidget. He watched Alexander.
Alexander ran his fingers through Hephaestion’s hair. Then he watched a Persian boy retrieve his helmet and polish it with a cloth before hanging it on the armour stand. Alexander gave the boy a smile.
Callisthenes continued to watch him.
‘Antipater has cost us more than a few thousand recruits,’ Alexander said some minutes later. He leaned back so that his golden curls mixed with Hephaestion’s longer hair. ‘Our own legend of invincibility is worth a pair of taxeis and five hundred Companions.’
‘You are invincible,’ Hephaestion said. From another man, it would have been fawning. From Hephaestion, it was a simple statement of fact.
Alexander allowed himself a small smile. ‘I cannot be everywhere,’ he said. He rolled off the couch again and motioned to the silent slave who waited at the foot of the bed. ‘Take my armour,’ he said.
The silent man opened his breastplate and put it on the armour stand. Alexander shrugged out of his tunic and stood naked, the marks of the armour clear on his all-too human flesh.
Naked, neither tall nor especially beautiful, Alexander picked up his wine, found it empty and held it out for a refill. Slaves tripped over themselves to correct the error.
Callisthenes laughed at their eagerness and their fear. Alexander smirked. ‘Persians make such good slaves,’ he said. He drank off the whole cup and held it out again, and the pantomime was repeated. Even the Cardian had to laugh. The slaves knew they were being made game of, and that made them more afraid. Wine was spilled, and more slaves appeared to clean it up.
‘I can’t be everywhere,’ Alexander repeated. ‘And Macedon cannot afford to appear weak. These Scythians must be punished. Their victory over Zopryon must be made to look the stroke of ill-fortune that it was. When Bessus is brought to heel, we should spend a season crushing the Massagetae.�
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Callisthenes sensed the dismay of the other men. ‘Alexander,’ he began carefully, ‘the Massagetae live far to the north and east, beyond the Kush. And they live on the sea of grass, which Herodotus says runs for fifty thousand stades. We will not crush them in one season.’
Alexander looked up and smiled. It was a happy smile, and it removed years of tension, war and drink from his face. ‘I can only spare them a season,’ Alexander said. ‘They’re just barbarians. Besides, I want an Amazon.’
Hephaestion struck the king playfully, and they ended up wrestling on the floor.
PART I
FUNERAL GAMES
1
The sun shone on the Borysthenes river, the rain swell moving like a horse herd and glittering like the rain-wet grass in the sun. The Sakje camp was crisp and clean after days of rain, much of the horse dung vanished into the the general mud that filled every street, the felt yurts and the wagons bright as if new-made. Kineas had taken the sun as a sign and risen from his bed, despite the fresh pain of his wounds and the recent fear of death.
‘You should find the stone,’ the girl said. She was eleven or twelve years old, dressed in caribou hide, with a red cloak blowing in the wind. Kineas had seen her before around the camp, a slight figure with red-brown hair and a silver-grey horse from the royal herd.
Kineas crouched down, wincing at the intense pain that shot from his hip, down his leg and through his groin. Everything hurt and most actions made him dizzy. ‘What stone?’ he asked. She had big eyes, deep blue eyes with a black rim that made her appear possessed, or mad.
‘It is a baqca thing, is it not? To find the stone?’ She shrugged, put her hands behind her and rocked her hips back and forth, back and forth, so that her hair swayed around her face. She was dirty and smelled of horse.
His Sakje didn’t run to endearments for children. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand.’
She favoured him with the look that children save for adults too slow to understand them. ‘The stone,’ she said. ‘For the king’s barrow.’ Seeing his incomprehension, she pointed at an old barrow, the kurgan of some ancient horse-lord that rose by the great bend. ‘At the peak of every barrow, the baqca places a stone. You should go and find it. My father says so.’
Kineas grinned, as much from pain as from understanding. ‘And who is your father, child?’ he asked, although even as he said the words, he knew where he had seen that long-nosed profile and the fine bones of her hands.
‘Kam Baqca was my father,’ she said, and ran away, laughing.
He knew as soon as she spoke that he had seen the stone in dreams — seen it and dismissed it. He feared his dreams now, and denied them if he could.
But he gathered a dozen of his Sindi retainers and a few Greeks: Diodorus and Niceas because they were friends, and Anarxes, a gentleman of Olbia, because Eumenes was wounded and Anarxes had the duty. Together, they rode down the river a dozen stades.
‘What are we looking for?’ Diodorus asked. He, too, was recovering from a wound, and his red hair gleamed where it emerged from a bandage that swathed his whole head, under a Sakje cap of fox fur and red wool. Temerix, the Sindi smith, rode over.
‘We’re looking for a stone,’ Kineas said.
‘For kurgan,’ Temerix said, as if this was the most natural thing in the world. ‘Lord Kineas sees it in dreams. We come find it.’
Young Anarxes’ eyes were as wide as funeral coins at this open talk of his hipparch’s godlike powers.
Diodorus raised an eyebrow and nodded slowly. He reached into his cloak and produced a clay flask, from which he took a long pull. He offered it around. ‘Did it ever occur to you that life was simpler when we were just mercenaries?’ he asked.
Kineas and Niceas exchanged a look.
Diodorus pointed with the fist that held the flask. ‘Look. Kineas is wearing a Thracian cloak. Anarxes here, as fine a wrestler as we’ve ever seen — an Olympian, by Apollo — is wearing Sakje trousers as if that were the most natural thing in the world. All our men wear their caps.’ Diodorus touched his bandages and the Sakje cap perched atop them. ‘Are we even Greeks any more?’ he asked. He took another drink of wine from his flask and handed it to Kineas.
Kineas shrugged. ‘We’re still Greeks. Did travel to Persia make you Persian?’
Diodorus was serious. ‘It made me a lot more Persian than I was before I went there. Remember Ecbatana? I’ll never think of Greece the same way again.’›
‘What are you saying?’ Kineas asked.
‘There’s a rumour that you and Srayanka aim to take us all the way east to fight Alexander,’ Diodorus said. ‘I’ve heard you talk around it. You mean it, don’t you?’
Kineas shook his head. ‘Lot is insistent and Srayanka wants to support him. The queen of the Massagetae has sent messengers to the Assagatje. They had another yesterday.’ He drank.
Diodorus grunted. ‘Hey! Hey, that’s my wine!’ He seized the flask. ‘We have unfinished business before we go riding off to fight the boy king. The tyrant, for instance.’ He looked out at the horizon. On their right, the Borysthenes flowed down to the Euxine Sea. On the left, the sea of grass rippled in the wind as far as the eye could see, and then another forty thousand stades, or so Herodotus claimed. ‘I don’t want to fight Alexander. I don’t want to see more fascinating barbarians. I’d like to retire to Olbia and be rich.’
Kineas rode along, hips moving with his mount. He hurt, and despite weeks in a cot in Srayanka’s wagon, or because of them, he felt sore in every muscle. ‘Things change,’ Kineas said.
Diodorus nodded. ‘Too true. The peace faction took over in Athens while we were winning this campaign.’
Kineas laughed, which also hurt. ‘Athens seems very far away.’
Diodorus nodded. He handed his flask to the silent Temerix. ‘That’s what I mean. When I left Athens with you, I thought my heart would break. When we were cracking Darius’s empire, I used to dream of the Parthenon. Then we fought this campaign. Now Athens is too far away to remember and I’m a gentlemen of Olbia. Now I dream of finding a wife and buying a farm on the Euxine.’ He paused. ‘I’m afraid that I’ll end up in a yurt on the sea of grass.’
Kineas had stopped his horse unconsciously. He was looking straight at the stone he’d seen in his dream, and the day seemed colder. ‘Hera,’ Kineas said. He spoke aloud a prayer for divine protection.
Diodorus was looking at him.
‘It’s just as I dreamed it.’ Kineas’s voice was hushed. ‘The stone is broader at the top. When we dig it up, the bottom will be shaped like a horse’s head. We’ll flip it over and the horse head will mark Satrax’s grave.’
Diodorus shook his head, but as the Sindi dug away at the deep soil around the stone, he became thoughtful, and when the shape of the stone’s hidden base was revealed, he rubbed his beard in annoyance.
‘Remember when we were just mercenaries?’ Diodorus said, again.
They buried the king in the old way. It was the last act of the army that had won the battle at the Ford of the River God, and even as the men cut turf in the rain, Kineas could feel the spirit that had animated them flowing away like the rising river at their back carrying the rainwater to the sea.
The Greeks did their part. Diodorus, Niceas, Philokles and Kineas cut turfs side by side, their cloaks soaked through and the rich loam under the grass turning to sticky slime on their hands and feet. Around them, for stades, Sakje and Greek worked together, every warrior cutting enough turfs to cover a man and his horse. Then the cutters carried the turf to the builders, almost all of them Sindi tribesmen from the farms up the river — earth people, the Sakje called them — or dirt people. They dug out the chambers of the barrow and reinforced them with heavy timbers floated down the river from the forests in the north.
Once, Satrax had stood at this ford and asked Kineas if he would like to go north to see the forests.
And now the king was dead. Kineas shook his head at the ways of th
e gods, at Moira and Tyche, fate and chance. He straightened and rubbed his hip, which hurt like fire with every trip he made back to his own pile of turf. He could only carry one block of earth and grass at a time — his right shoulder was better, but the long cuts on his bridle arm and his left leg still gave him trouble.
Diodorus and Niceas and Philokles had wounds too, and they were working by his side. Kineas was determined to do his part without complaint, but on his next trip his left forearm hurt so much he had to put his turf on the ground and sit in the rain. ‘I want a bridle gauntlet,’ he said. ‘Parmenion had one.’
Philokles nodded. ‘I suppose Temerix could make you one,’ he said. His tone expressed his view that too much armour was effeminate.
‘Look at that,’ Niceas said, pointing at the new kurgan.
At the mound, Marthax, the old king’s warlord, and Srayanka, the old king’s niece, were bickering, their fists raised and their voices audible across half a stade.
The two had shared the burden of design and construction, but they could agree on nothing. They quarrelled about the kurgan’s size and shape, about the location of the internal chambers, about the orientation of the door and their own roles in the final rites. When Kineas saw Srayanka, whether in fleeting assignations or carefully arranged chance meetings, she smelled of loam and spoke only of Marthax’s perfidy. She tried to hide her anger, but out on the plain, the warriors knew too much of the quarrels of their leaders. They cut the turf, and mourned, and worried about the future.
In addition to turf, each warrior was expected to bring a gift to the king’s barrow. Around the base of the square of earth, more Sindi dug a trench. A long row of tethered horses — most of them chargers, all brilliantly accoutred — waited to be slaughtered for the burial.
The battle had cost the allies thousands of men, but the campaign as a whole had bound them together, Sakje and Sauromatae and Euxine Greeks. Today, they all laboured together, almost without orders, to build a mighty grave for the dead king of the Sakje. The turf bricks rose from a wall to a block and then to a squat pyramid of grass as ten thousand men and women made their offerings of earth and gold. And as the afternoon dripped into the evening, the clouds began to break and the weeks of drizzle gave way to a soft evening. The last courses of turf went up to the truncated top and torches were lit, then Kineas and a dozen of the lesser baqcas of the various clans hoisted the stone he had chosen and dragged it up to the top of the kurgan and positioned it carefully. None of the baqcas questioned his choice or his right to be there, and they were a silent and worshipful coven as they did their work.
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