Storm of arrows t-2
Page 43
Philokles looked as if he’d been hit with a plank. ‘Didn’t mean — Gods! Srayanka! Sorry!’ He pushed Kineas away roughly and began to try to gather up the pieces of the shelter. He stumbled and managed to pick up a single rope.
Sitalkes emerged from the darkness, and Temerix. Temerix took the Spartan’s shoulder. ‘Come,’ he said in his heavy accent. ‘Come, friend. We fix this. Come!’
Philokles wept. ‘I only break things,’ he cried as the Sindi smith pulled him along. ‘I make nothing!’
Srayanka grinned. ‘Sitalkes, make this right again,’ she said. She turned to Kineas. ‘He’s hurt in his soul, husband. Go and help him.’
Behind her, Sitalkes had his fire kit out and was blowing coals to light, and Srayanka’s eyes glinted. ‘But don’t take too long,’ she said.
Kineas found Philokles by his own fire, with a clay beaker of wine in his hand and Temerix sitting by his side.
‘I’m sorry,’ Philokles said. He was more sullen than sorry, and his eyes were on the fire.
Kineas reached past him and grabbed the wine cup. He took a pull and then emptied the contents into the fire.
‘Hey!’ Philokles shouted.
‘Do you love me, brother?’ Kineas asked.
Philokles stopped moving. Then he drew himself up. ‘Yes. Yes I do.’
Kineas nodded. ‘I love you, too. Too much to watch you kill the hero in your breast with wine. That was your last cup, brother. Swear to me by all the gods and by my children that you will never drink wine again.’
Philokles was aghast. ‘Never?’
‘Never for any reason. Swear, if we are friends.’ Kineas saw an amphora point-first in the ground, and he plucked it free. ‘Temerix, is this yours?’
Temerix spat. ‘Never bring wine to Philokles,’ he said. ‘Friend.’
Kineas tucked it under his arm. ‘Mine now. Swear, Philokles.’
Philokles looked sly and sullen, two casts for which his face was not naturally formed. ‘What if I don’t?’
Kineas shrugged. ‘Maybe I’ll never answer another one of your cursed questions. Or perhaps I’ll simply banish you and fight without you. But if you don’t stop drinking wine, you are no companion of mine.’
Philokles came up. ‘Fuck you,’ he said, reaching for the amphora.
Kineas hit him on the chin. Then he put the amphora into the dirt carefully while the Spartan backed away. Kineas raised his hands. Philokles took another step backwards and stopped. He had adopted the guard stance of the pankration, hands open, held high to guard his face, his left hand stretched forward. Then he came forward, fast, reaching with his left hand for a grapple.
Kineas stepped forward, inside the left, and punched — one, two — staggering Philokles. He retreated a step and Kineas let him.
They stood facing each other.
Philokles bellowed, a shout of anger, almost the cry of a wounded man, and he charged. His two feints were not the feints of a drunk, and Kineas bought the second and in a moment he was on his back in the dirt, but he got his legs around Philokles’ knees and rotated his hips, tripping the big Spartan and pulling him down. He got both of the man’s hands in his own and they grappled, pushing for purchase with their feet and backs, covered in dust.
It was hopeless for Kineas to try to beat the Spartan in a grapple, but he continued to try until Philokles had his head and arm locked under his shoulder and the pain was enough to drive the breath from his body.
And then suddenly Philokles, who had him at the point of submission, sagged away in the dirt and lay on his back as if he’d been hit in the head with a plank. Then he rolled to his feet and held out a hand.
Kineas took it. Their hands clasped.
‘I swear by Zeus and all the gods, and by the shade of my mother who died to bear me, and by the power of my love for you, Kineas, that I will never be drunk again in your presence, that I will never drink wine to excess. And if I dishonour this oath, may all the Furies shred my soul.’ Philokles spoke in his sober voice.
‘May the gods hear you, and support you in your oath,’ Kineas said. ‘But when I am gone, you must stay on this path. Or it will be your death.’
The Spartan and the Athenian embraced.
‘I’m sorry!’ Philokles said, and burst into tears.
‘You need to stop being a soldier, brother,’ Kineas said. ‘It’s the killing that makes you drink.’
Philokles wept for a while, and then he stood straight. ‘What do people do when they don’t drink?’ he asked.
Kineas picked up the amphora. ‘Experiment. You’re the philosopher! ’
31
And at last, after a year in the field, the army of Olbia, as represented by the hardiest three hundred men, and the Western Assagatje, as represented by four hundred riders culled by two summers of war, and the Western Sauromatae, as represented by Lot’s two hundred, came to the gathering of all the Sakje peoples.
Queen Zarina had camped the bulk of her forces in a bend of the Jaxartes, secure that the water at her back was deep and cold, and that the mountains on her flanks were too difficult for any foe. In the vale of the Jaxartes, she had gathered thirty thousand warriors, and as many again lived in satellite camps, as close as a day’s ride away or as far as ten days’ ride, so that if the Sakje had been grains of sand spread across a parchment, it was as if the gods had tipped the parchment so that one corner of it held all the sand — tons of it — in one small area.
The grass was devastated, and twice the whole army had had to move. There were no deer to be hunted for fifty stades, no fish in the river, no wood for fires. Every tribe had sent away its weakest to their winter grounds to lessen the numbers, and even then the queen had to rotate tribes out on to the grass and back to the river to watch Iskander.
Across the river, the army of Macedon concentrated forces from camps along the Jaxartes, the Polytimeros and the Oxus into one single mass of men, horses and machines. The siege of Marakanda had been broken and only the thinnest garrison left. Oxen pulled the king’s siege artillery up to his camp on the edge of the sea of grass, the greatest horde of enemies the Sakje had ever seen — and still the Macedonian officers stared at the dust clouds across the river and shuddered. Even odds against a foe who was mounted throughout her force.
North and east of Alexander’s army, a smaller force — just two thousand men, Sogdians and Bactrians and mercenaries and a handful of Sauromatae — moved along the southern bank of the Jaxartes, searching for a ford, under Eumenes.
Kineas heard it all from scouts, from the Sakje, from Srayanka and finally from Ataelus himself before the last day of march was done. The sun was setting on the valley of the Jaxartes, and below them twenty thousand horses milled, every horse looking for the last clumps of grass along the river. Young men raced and shot bows. Women sharpened weapons and repaired tack. Tents of felt rose from some encampments, and others had a few wagons, but in the main it was a war camp and the people lay on the ground with the reins of their horses near to hand.
Ataelus waved at the whole sweep of the people, who covered the ground as far as the eye could see. ‘The power of the Massagetae, the Sakje, the Dahae.’ Ataelus wore a grin that eliminated his cheekbones. ‘I was for boying here.’
Philokles rubbed his beard and watched, transfixed, while trying to take in what Kineas had just told him. ‘So Alexander will try to turn the Sakje left?’ he asked.
‘Alexander will come right across the river,’ Kineas said with finality. ‘But my guess is that he will send a column to wrong-foot the Scythians on their left. And that’s what Ataelus says.’
Philokles could almost see it. ‘Ares,’ he said. ‘Right across the river here?’
‘No,’ Kineas said with a smile. ‘There’s no ford here. The queen chose her camp well. Upstream ten stades is where he will come.’ He spoke with conviction, and Ataelus nodded.
The Sakje screwed up his mouth. ‘Short ride,’ he said. ‘To battle,’ he added after a pause.
Kineas shook his head. ‘Do I look like a Sakje chief? I will not command here, Spartan. I can only share my views with Queen Zarina. Let’s go and meet her.’
‘But we may defeat him?’ Philokles asked again.
Kineas halted his horse and leaned close. ‘I have no idea, brother. I’m not a seer — I’m the commander of half a thousand cavalry. So perhaps, despite your concern for the triumph of Panhellenism, you could shut the fuck up about the battle?’
Philokles laughed. ‘You’re nervous! I’d never have believed it!’
Kineas glared, but held his tongue.
Philokles laughed again. ‘Let’s go and meet the queen of the Sea of Grass!’
When the column was halted, they had to camp on a site that had already been used and abandoned by other contingents, and it took time to wedge eight hundred people and four times that many horses into the edge of the sprawling camp. The site was good and water was plentiful but the grass was cropped to the roots. Antigonus laid out the horse lines almost in the bed of the river, the only place where there was any grazing not already taken by other groups, and he doubled the horse pickets because Macedonians could be seen just a pair of bow shots away across the river.
Lot rode up from the Sauromatae at the back of the column with Lady Bahareh at his side. He clasped hands with Kineas. ‘She and Zarina are old friends. We — Zarina and I — have traded some sword cuts.’
‘Good,’ Philokles said. ‘We can all hide behind Bahareh.’
The Sauromatae spear-maiden grinned. She was as thin as a tree branch and her hair was the colour of iron. ‘I’ll protect you, little prince,’ she said. ‘Greetings, Lord Kineas.’
Srayanka took Ataelus and Parshtaevalt, and Kineas took Leon and Diodorus. Philokles never required an invitation. They took no escort and left their people cooking dinner. They rode hard for the queen’s tent, just a dozen stades away around the next bend in the river.
After travelling more than four hundred parasangs from the Ford of the River God on the little Borysthenes to the upper Jaxartes, Queen Zarina was almost a disappointment.
Qares, Zarina’s messenger earlier in the summer, was the first to recognize them. He ordered a group of adolescent girls to hold their horses and ushered them into the queen’s tent, a magnificent construction in red and white. There were no guards, and the tent was full of tribal leaders and Sakje knights, as well as other Massagetae in simpler dress and a dozen slaves. If Qares hadn’t been standing in respectful silence next to him, his whole attention focused on a short woman in a simple dress, Kineas might have mistaken who among the assembly was the queen. There were several women with regal bearing, two of them in armour, but the queen stood towards the edge of the group, looking at arrow shafts. One by one she looked down the shafts, making quiet comments to a child who stood by her with her gold-covered gorytos, until thirty were chosen. The discards were carried out of the tent. Kineas had time to observe her as she spoke in quiet tones to the child, and to a man of her own age who stood at her shoulder.
Zarina was a short woman with iron-grey hair in straight braids woven tight with gold foil, the only sign of her royalty that she wore on her person. On a lacquered armour stand behind her sat a coat of iron scales with alternating rows of gold, with a golden gorget as rich as Srayanka’s and a golden helmet surmounted by a gryphon whose eyes were picked out in garnets. The child — clearly her squire — replaced the gorytos on the armour stand and brought her a long-handled axe with a double blade. She rubbed her thumb across the blades, first one and then the other, and smiled. As she smiled, she raised her eyes and in one glance took in Qares and then the group with him.
‘You found them!’ she said, stepping forward. The tent fell silent as she raised her voice and every head turned.
Srayanka went to meet her. She inclined her head — the closest any Sakje managed to a bow.
Zarina took both of her hands. ‘You must be the Lady Srayanka of the Cruel Hands,’ she said in Sakje. She had a deep, hoarse voice for a woman, but her tone was warm.
‘I am Lady Srayanka. I have brought four hundred of my people to the muster, and my husband has brought two hundred Greeks, who are our allies. And Prince Lot,’ she turned to invite Lot forward, and the Sauromatae lord bowed his head with a smile.
‘Zarina and I are old friends,’ he said.
‘And bitter foes,’ Zarina said. ‘Sometimes.’ Their eyes locked and the tent was silent. Zarina’s tent — the entire tent — was alternating red and white silk panels, heavily oiled and almost translucent. The light from the coloured panels fell differently on the people in the tent — the queen was brightly lit under a white panel, while Lot was covered in red, like blood. He bowed again.
‘So you have not followed that charlatan Pharmenax?’ she said to Lot. ‘Does he still call himself the king of all the Sauromatae?’
‘Prince Lot has been fighting Iskander all summer,’ Qares put in.
Kineas could see that the claim of an old enmity was founded on something. There was tension in her stance, and Lot was stiffer than usual.
‘Only a fool would follow Pharmenax,’ Lot said.
‘I forbade you to go west,’ Zarina said.
‘I said I would return with allies,’ Lot shot back. ‘And I have.’
Bahareh stepped forward, distracting the queen, and the two embraced.
‘But I forbade it,’ Zarina said.
Kineas thought that she was speaking to Bahareh alone. The Sauromatae woman punched the queen’s shoulder. ‘He did as he said he would. Eh?’
Zarina’s brows narrowed, but then her face cleared. ‘So you have. Welcome!’
As if every breath had been held, there was a sigh throughout the tent and then conversation started again.
Queen Zarina beckoned and Kineas stepped forward in his turn. Close up, he became aware that she had the darkest green eyes that Kineas had ever seen on a human being. Her hands were as hard as a woodcutter’s. ‘You have truly come all the way from the Sea of Darkness?’ she asked.
‘Mother of the clans, we have indeed ridden from the Western Sea,’ Srayanka responded. ‘I promised to come, and I am here, though less than a tithe of our strength has come with me.’
Zarina waved her hand as if this loss of strength was of no import. ‘And the cities of the Western Sea sent a contingent? So that Greeks will ride to fight Greeks? This has been reported to me all summer and still I find it a wonder.’
Zarina’s gaze returned to Kineas and gave him the sort of careful examination that a Sakje gave a horse she considered buying — or stealing. ‘You are baqca,’ she said. ‘This I have heard.’
Kineas bowed. ‘I am the strategos of Olbia,’ he said. ‘A war leader.’
‘Hmm,’ Zarina replied. Then she dismissed Kineas as other leaders were introduced by Srayanka — Diodorus, whose red hair and beard made the queen laugh, and Parshtaevalt, and Leon, whose dark skin she touched several times. Next came Ataelus. She raised an eyebrow. ‘Surely you are of my people?’ she asked.
Ataelus gave his Greek shrug. ‘Many years ago I rode west, lady,’ he answered. ‘Now I serve the Lady Srayanka.’
Zarina pursed her lips and motioned for the next man to be presented, and Philokles stepped forward. She looked him up and down. ‘You are a Zpar-tan?’ she asked.
‘I am,’ Philokles answered, obviously pleased that here, at the edge of the known world, the barbarians still knew the word Spartan.
‘Hmm,’ she murmured. The two women in armour laughed — a tough-looking pair. One of them pushed past to feel Philokles’ arm muscles. She nodded approval. ‘That’s what a man should look like,’ she said to Srayanka. ‘Why didn’t you marry that one?’
Srayanka snorted. ‘He didn’t know how to ride!’ she laughed.
Zarina laughed so hard she had to cross her arms on her gut. When she recovered, she was still smiling broadly. �
��I welcome all of you to my camp,’ she said. ‘I’ll see if my slaves can find space for you for dinner. Tonight we set the battle order. Are your horses ready to fight?’
Srayanka nodded. ‘Ready enough. We miss the grain of home. None of our chargers are at their best.’
Zarina nodded. ‘We’re at the end of the grazing. Iskander is at the end of his. The fight must come soon.’
Dinner was simple and reminded Kineas of dinners with Satrax — spiced mutton served in the same bronze cauldron in which it had been cooked, and every man and woman dipping their flatbread into the pot. The mutton was delicious, but there was no wine and no oil. No one spoke. The gathered guests ate quickly and efficiently, and then sat quietly until Zarina rose to her feet.
‘Now,’ she said to her guests, ‘we will discuss how to show Iskander our strength.’
The meeting of the chiefs of all the Scythians reminded Kineas that he was truly among barbarians. Everyone spoke at once — on and on. No considerations of tactics ever rose to the surface of the meeting, but rather, chieftains demanded precedence in battle — the left of the line, the right of the line, the position guarding the standard — based on ancient custom or hard-won privilege shouted and debated from one bearded warlord to another.
Queen Zarina appeared indifferent, watching her tribal leaders with obvious pride, sure of her strength. Kineas stood silent, with Diodorus, Srayanka and Philokles around him, whispering from time to time in disgust at the chaos and the arrogance.
Lot gave a wry grin. ‘I’d forgotten what it was like,’ he said.
Ataelus shook his head. ‘Fight for too long with Greeks,’ he said. ‘Sakje for talking.’
‘Do they know who Alexander is?’ Diodorus asked. ‘Do they think they can just ride around the plain and shoot arrows and call it a victory? ’
Philokles had remained silent for over an hour. ‘I admire these people,’ he said, ‘but no one here has proposed that we simply ride away and leave Alexander to starve on the high plains. Where is the wisdom of the Assagatje? Where is their Satrax?’