Tyrant: Force of Kings

by Christian Cameron

  He spared a thought for his ancestor Herakles. He had dreamed of death the night before.

  Anaxagoras turned to Artaxerxes. ‘Tell me about yourself, youngster. Who is your father?’

  The young Mede coloured. ‘My father was Xerxes son of Artaphernes. He is dead. My mother is dead. My brothers and sisters are dead. I was a hostage in Mysia when they were killed, and now I am a prisoner of my great-uncle. May I have a sword?’

  Anaxagoras shook his head. ‘They’re worse than Macedonians,’ he said. ‘You can have a sword when the king and I think you are worthy of it. Do you know how to use a sword?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ the boy said.

  Anaxagoras raised his eyebrows. ‘Really?’ he asked.

  ‘Your first pupil,’ Satyrus said. ‘All boys claim that they can wrestle and use a sword.’

  ‘Can you play music?’ Anaxagoras asked.

  ‘I play the harp. And the flute.’ The boy nodded. ‘And the trumpet,’ he said with disdain.

  Satyrus didn’t like what he was seeing to the west. He rose to his knees, shifted his weight so that he could kneel on the gelding’s back. He needed to see a little farther.

  ‘Would you rather be here with us, or in Mithridates’ tent?’ Anaxagoras asked.

  ‘Here with you, lord! Mithridates has to have me killed.’ The boy shrugged. ‘If I grow to manhood, I will surely kill him.’

  Anaxagoras clucked. ‘So the trumpet has already bought you a few days of life,’ he said.

  There were men in a gully – Satyrus was sure of it. Almost sure of it. The sun was high in the sky, and even this close to autumn, the heat was palpable.

  ‘Sound halt,’ Satyrus said. ‘One long blast.’

  Artaxerxes froze.

  ‘Now, boy,’ Satyrus said.

  The trumpet went to the boy’s lips, and the call rang out – the first time, a spluttering sound like a flock of geese, but the second was a loud clarion that carried across the valley.

  All the Sakje froze.

  A few of the Getae stopped moving. The officers at least looked around.

  ‘Enemy is front. Do you know the call?’ Satyrus asked. This is what the Sakje did – using trumpets to tell distant scouts what to do. The Exiles were masters of the trumpet. Satyrus and Scopasis knew all the calls – not so the rest of the phylarchs. Herakles wouldn’t know five of them, which was one of the reasons he and Charmides were close to the main column.

  Anaxagoras whistled the call, and Satyrus shot him a thankful glance.

  The boy put the trumpet to his lips and played. The first call was halting, but again, the second was high and loud.

  Satyrus took a spear from Charmides and pointed it at the gully, three stades distant, where he had seen flashes. Far away to the front, a mounted man smaller than an insect waved a lance. Sakje riders broke right and left, enveloping the head of the gully.

  They got four prisoners, and the fight was on.

  The Antigonid cavalry was just coming over the ridge. The men in the gully were their prodromoi, and they had a heavy force behind them.

  Satyrus brought his column forward at a trot, heedless of the sun and the thirst of his horses until he had his men well down in the shade of the valley.

  ‘Water them by sections,’ he said, and changed horses to the Nisean – The horse was a pleasure under him – calm, collected, eager. He turned to Charmides. ‘Do not move forward until all the horses are watered. Then come up to me.’ He took Artaxerxes and Anaxagoras and went sloping up the ridge towards the fighting.

  Scopasis had twenty men, a dozen Getae and some of the Bithynians as well. He’d dismounted them in an olive grove – a natural growth of wild olives, high on the flank of the main ridge above the lake. The Sakje had bows, and a few of the Bithynians and Getae did as well.

  The enemy had already made an attempt on his position. It was nigh impregnable; rocks spiked out of the sandy ground, and the trees provided dense cover. The ridge top fell away around them so that the last approach to the summit was steep and rocky – terrible cavalry ground. But just below the summit was a long meadow coated in late-summer flowers, and the drone of bees filled the air. At the far side of the meadow, three hundred enemy cavalry formed in two great rhomboids, and ahead of them came two dozen infantry skirmishers, moving cautiously across the meadow.

  ‘They tried the road,’ Scopasis said, pointing to the gap between two enormous rocks. The gap was filled with dead men and horses. ‘Nice horse,’ he said, and smiled.

  ‘He’s a pleasure,’ Satyrus said.

  Scopasis nodded. ‘Don’t get him killed,’ he said. ‘I like him.’

  Satyrus nodded. He unslung his gorytos, rode over to a Bithynian trooper.

  ‘Know how to shoot?’ he asked.

  The man grinned. He had two gold teeth, and he looked particularly rapacious. ‘Aye, King!’ he said.

  Satyrus gave the man his bow. ‘I’ll want it back,’ he said. ‘So try not to die.’

  Again, the gold glinting grin. ‘Aye, King.’ The man said again.

  Satyrus rode back to Scopasis. ‘How’re the Bithynians?’

  ‘Not bad at all. Some of them can ride.’ From a Sakje, this was praise. ‘How long?’ he asked.

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘I told Charmides to water all the horses,’ he said. ‘And Stratokles is already west of here – he may not even know we’ve stopped.’

  Scopasis nodded. ‘He’ll know,’ he said. ‘Here they come.’

  The enemy cavalry – mostly Mysians, and some Persians, with Greek officers – came forward and met with archery. They tried to circle around the summit and found less resistance.

  After fifteen minutes, they retired, leaving a dozen dead and wounded.

  Scopasis puffed up his cheeks and blew out. ‘Fools. Now their horses are blown and unwatered.’

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘Remember that up until now, they’ve had it all their own way,’ he said. ‘No reason they should expect anything else.’

  The Getae and the Bithynians were beside themselves with joy – forty men against three hundred, and holding their own.

  The Sakje were methodically stripping the enemy dead.

  Now the enemy hipparch sent his infantry scouts out – carefully probing the ground all around the summit. They were fixated on Scopasis, and missed the main body of the allied cavalry until it was almost on them. Satyrus leaped up, gathered his reins, and wriggled onto his horse’s back. His legs were already tired. It made him feel old.

  ‘Come when you can,’ he called to Scopasis. He found that his trumpeter was right with him, and he rode along the road, over the fly-infested corpses from the first attack, and into the field of bees.

  Charmides was forming his files. It was odd – more like a dream than a real fight. They were on a hilltop meadow in the sun, so that all Satyrus could see was a field of flowers and distant mountaintops, as if they were fighting in the heavens for the entertainment of the gods. The drone of bees filled his ears.

  Charmides was appalled at the responsibility – he’d never commanded so many men, and he’d dismounted to organise them, unsure of his seat.

  They were forming well – the professional Greeks in the centre, and the Sakje and Getae on the flanks. They were still outnumbered two to one, but their horses were fresh and all the Sakje had bows. Without orders, they cantered forward and loosed a volley.

  Satyrus was too late to stop them, and he shrugged.

  ‘Surely they are helping you win this action,’ Anaxagoras said.

  ‘We didn’t need to fight,’ Satyrus said. ‘Their horses have no water. They should have retreated. But now we’ve stung them, and their hipparch is inexperienced, so he’ll come forward, and men will die.’

  ‘Surely that is war,’ Anaxagoras said.

  ‘Will you be so philosophical
if it is you?’ Satyrus asked, somewhat pettishly.

  The Corinthian pursed his lips, then fumbled for his helmet. The enemy was coming.

  The first clash was hard fought. The enemy may have been tired and their horses unwatered, but they had weight of horse, numbers, and a certain determination, and the mêlée was desperate. Satyrus led the counter-charge from the centre – he put himself in front of Charmides’ little troop of bodyguards, took a spear from the phylarch, snapped his cheek-plates down and pointed with the spear.

  The two forces met with a crash like an avalanche in a winter valley, and the meadow packed them so tight that men were brought to a stand or knocked flat. Satyrus was at an advantage, mounted on his magnificent new Nisean, and he knocked aside a Lydian noble in scale armour on a much smaller horse. His spear glanced from the man’s aventail, the man’s lance missed over his shoulder, and then he was reining frantically, his hands in the Nisean’s mane, trying to keep him upright as he trampled the smaller horse.

  He’d lost his spear, so drew his sword – the good sword Demetrios had given him. The Lydians were well-armoured men, and the sword’s point was quickly dulled against the bronze breastplates most of them wore.

  Then he was in the midst of the enemy. Both sides had threaded each other, so that their files were intermixed, and his back-plate rang with blows; he was face to face with a Macedonian officer, and Satyrus got his bridle hand on the other man’s elbow, put his pommel in the man’s face, and took his spear from his unresisting hands as the man fell. It was a good spear, short and needle sharp, and Satyrus used it against the unarmoured rumps of the Lydian horses around him, twisting and stabbing like a viper.

  And then he heard Charmides shouting to his right – he had both hands on the spear haft, and he shifted his weight and the stallion backed a few steps, as nimble as a dog, and Satyrus loved him. He shifted his weight and he backed again.

  A terrific blow on his head and he was on the ground, on his feet, but a horse stepped on his foot and he was down in the dust.

  The stallion stood over him.

  He must have lost consciousness for some time – heartbeats or more – suddenly Charmides was right over him, and Satyrus got his feet under him and got to his feet, although his head was spinning and his foot hurt so badly he couldn’t put his full weight on it. But the Macedonian’s spear was right there and he got a hand on it, used it to hold his weight and then, as he had been taught as a boy, he put it against the stallion’s back and stepped up onto the spear with his good foot, gritted his teeth against the pain in his other foot and got his leg over. He barely clung on, hung there a moment like a sack of wool, but he was up, and despite the pain reached behind and retrieved the spear.

  Scopasis had come into the flank of the enemy. He could see where they were falling back, and how they had been disoriented by Scopasis’s charge.

  He looked around. His trumpeter had blood running down his neck – an ear, cut clean off. And his trumpet was cut in two. He had used it as a club.

  ‘Rally!’ he began to call. It hurt his head.

  16

  Satyrus rallied them all the way back to the summit end of the meadow, and hoped that the enemy hipparch would have the sense to just ride away. His foot hurt as if every bee in the meadow had stung him, and he had a dent in his helmet so deep that it looked as if it had been hit with an axe. The side of his head was mushy with blood.

  ‘Send all the Sakje along the edges of the meadow into the rocks. Greeks in the centre, with the Getae and the Bithynians, formed close. A wedge.’ Satyrus pointed, his voice already hoarse.

  Scopasis got it, organised the flank detachments, and the Sakje slipped from their ponies and began to push forward in the rocky ground. The enemy’s light infantry were there, but their javelins were no match for bows and armour, and they lost the rocky edge.

  Satyrus placed himself at the point of the wedge. Some jobs came with being in command.

  He had the most shocking fear. He felt lethargic, and he was afraid. This little skirmish was of no real moment to the campaign. And he might die here. Men said his father had taken a wound in one fight and that had left him too weak to last a second fight, and that’s how he died.

  He kept the fear from his voice and straightened his shoulders. Charmides and Anaxagoras were the next men in the wedge. Both of them were grinning like fools.

  Satyrus thought of a thousand things he wanted to say. Many of them were about Miriam.

  The Sakje edged along the meadow. He could see them rising to shoot – flushing the enemy psiloi from their cover – often simply running at them in short rushes, cutting down the slowest. The enemy psiloi were heavily outnumbered and finally they abandoned the fight, the remaining two dozen breaking and running for the safety of their cavalry.

  Satyrus took two shuddering breaths. He reached out for his god … for the smell of wet cat, the eudaimonia that lifted him into combat and made him one with his god.

  There was nothing there, and he shuddered as if cold. His fingers were sticky on the haft of the Macedonian officer’s sword. He had blood under his nails and in the fissures of his hands.

  He wanted to go back and tell Miriam that he’d rather go to Alexandria with her than be King of the Bosporus.

  The enemy hipparch – too inexperienced or perhaps simply too stubborn to know that he was beaten, was organising another charge. His horses were blown, but he seemed to have some fresh men. Now they filled the field flank to flank – three deep or more.

  The Sakje were emptying their quivers into the Antigonids, and the Lydians, despite their armour, were suffering.

  Satyrus found that his hands were trembling. It made him angry.

  Was he afraid? Or was he about to charge an enemy that outnumbered him heavily because this was the moment?

  He could no longer tell.

  ‘Remember who you are,’ he said aloud, and men around heard him, and took it as his pre-battle speech, and hands closed on spear hafts.

  ‘If we just wait,’ Anaxagoras said, as another flight of Sakje arrows fell on the Lydians.

  ‘Walk!’ Satyrus ordered. The wedge started forward, the men at his flanks pressing in. He looked back. As far as he could see, the formation was tight.

  A little less than a stade.

  The Lydians started forward. They were being galled by the Sakje, and the open ground invited them.

  Anaxagoras was, of course, correct.

  Satyrus swallowed the lump in his throat. ‘Trot!’ he ordered. His horse was perfect for the point of the wedge – he was a line breaker. He had heart, and he responded instantly between Satyrus’s legs, a fast trot that threatened to leave Anaxagoras and Charmides behind. Somehow the magnificent horse put heart into the man.

  Satyrus had never led a wedge before, except on a drill field. But he knew the feeling of being alone, mounted on a massive monster that rode behind him and made the earth shake. He looked back, almost lost his seat as the stallion leaped something on the ground – a corpse from the first clash.

  Half a stade.

  The biggest error in a cavalry charge was to gallop too early. His mother had taught him from youth, and his sister, and Coenus and Diodorus and Crax and all the Exiles … oh, to have them at his side now.

  The Lydians launched into their charge, and now the fatigue of their horses showed in the whites of their eyes and their hesitation. Right in front of Satyrus, a man spurred his charger to a gallop, went a few plunges, and was back at a trot.

  Half a stade. Close enough to see the whites of the horses’ eyes, the sweat on their flanks, the desperation in men’s faces.

  Twenty horse lengths, and Satyrus knew which man he would engage – flicked his head around to see his wedge still well closed up, even the Bithynians keeping their places in line.

  His hands were no longer shaking. There was only th
e man on a bay horse opposite him, and the point of his spear coming at his eyes, and his own spear.

  He let the horse have his head. ‘Charge!’ he roared. The fear was there but mostly he had conquered it.

  The stallion was all heart. He bounded forward, and Satyrus raised his spear two-handed, letting him run …

  He caught his opponent’s spearhead with his own, swept it up two-handed and buried his spear point in the man’s body, scales flying from the point of impact like rain from a tent hit with a stick, ripped it clear of the man’s corpse and got the spear haft across his body to block the sword-cut of the next man, and his mare danced under him. The rear ranker tried to overbear his horse and Charmides killed him, and the point of the wedge was through the enemy line, and the stallion was still flying along the ground at a gallop. Satyrus gave him a knee and he turned to the left, skimming the ground like a flying thing.

  An arrow flashed past his head.

  Satyrus put himself low on the horse’s neck and pounded along the meadow in a wide curve, and he had fifty horsemen behind him – Charmides and Herakles’ men all mixed, and they made the turn and came down on the rear of the Lydian line, and the Lydians broke. Then there was desperate fighting – man to man, horse to horse, and a press as tight as Satyrus had ever experienced on foot.

  He saw Herakles fall. The young man took a spear wound that pinned him to his horse, and the horse fell, and he fell with it. Satyrus’s mount seemed to follow his thoughts, and he leaped over the prone prince and Satyrus unhorsed one of his attackers and the other turned away.

  The dust was so thick that Satyrus couldn’t see. He almost couldn’t breathe but the pressure of the fight was less.

  The little trumpeter was still with him – he had a spear and a sword, now. Satyrus flashed him a smile. ‘Don’t be a hero,’ he said.