Tyrant: Storm of Arrows

by Christian Cameron

  Eumenes, translating at his side, paused. Kineas understood him to be explaining to the Sakje why the Greek mercenaries would form a battle line on the other side. Kineas waited for him to finish. The Sakje nodded and pursed their lips in approval of such a professional move - the assumption that every river crossing was an ambush impressed them.

  ‘The Sakje squadron will be behind the island of poplars here,’ he said. They’d be well down the river bed, hidden by the next island to the north and by the habit of scouts to get across watercourses as quickly as possible. The notion that the watercourse was itself a highway might not occur to them. Even if it did, few of them would ride two stades off the line of march to check out an island.

  He hoped.

  ‘When the signal is given, the Sakje show themselves and attack the rear of the first division. Harass them, shower them with arrows, but do not close. All I require is that the first division be unable to fall back to support the second division.’

  Bain agreed, but the gleam in his eye told another story. Kineas resolved to send Eumenes to keep him in check.

  ‘The Olbian cavalry will be here.’ Kineas indicated the base of the woods, just a stade from the crossing. ‘The woods will screen us until it is too late. If they see us early,’ Kineas shrugged, ‘we fight it out. But if they don’t see us, we charge straight for the prisoner escort. If they run back along the road, they’re meat for Temerix. If they flee into the river, we’ll hunt them down. Remember that Srayanka and Urvara are waiting. Pray for some luck.’ He paused. ‘At the same time, Temerix starts punching arrows into the second division. They either counterattack into the thorns or they flee down the sides of the watercourse into the stream bed.’ Kineas pointed at the far side of the diamond. ‘The Sauromatae knights are here, behind the island of roses. If the Macedonians come down into the river, the Sauromatae deal with them. Again,’ and here Kineas turned to Lot, ‘we are not here to fight a battle. We are here to get Srayanka and Urvara. Kill some Macedonians if you can, but listen for the second trumpet.’ He looked around them, Sakje and Olbians and swarthy Temerix, again in the position of maximum danger. ‘When the second trumpet sounds, you break like a cloud of swallows fleeing a hawk on the plains and vanish like morning mist. We rally at the last camp on the Oxus. Unless we fuck up massively, there will be no pursuit because they don’t have the horses to follow us across the plain. Right?’

  Nods and grunts.

  ‘Sounds beautiful,’ said Diodorus. He was grinning. ‘What do you think will really happen?’

  Kineas couldn’t help but grin back, because the dream of the thunderbolt was still with him, and because the power to see Srayanka and hold her in his arms again lay in his own hands, and he was not a boy. ‘It will all go to shit and we’ll fight our way through it,’ he said. ‘Look, friends. If all else fails, cut your way to the middle of the column and get the girls. Unless the gods are against us, they’ll get free of the escort on their own.’

  Philokles leaned in. ‘Srayanka is heavily pregnant,’ he said. He looked around with the embarrassment most men kept for discussions of sex and women’s matters. ‘I may have forgotten to mention this.’

  A thunderbolt. Kineas looked at his friend with his mouth gaping like a landed fish.

  Philokles cocked his head to one side. ‘I did forget to mention it,’ he said. ‘She told Darius that if she weren’t so heavy, they’d all have ridden free weeks ago. They may not be able to escape on their own.’

  Kineas took a deep breath - he had known, in a vague way, that she was pregnant. This was more real. He felt a blow in his gut and the sudden pierce of anxiety like an arrow in his side. But he thought of Phocion and refused to bow to fate.

  ‘Cut your way to the middle of their column. Get the women. And then run like fire on the plain.’ He pointed at Temerix. ‘As soon as they try for you, you run down the trails you’ve cut and out of the back of the woods - right past us and on to your ponies. Understand?’

  Temerix never smiled. He gave a curt nod, like a man given unnecessary and patronizing instructions.

  ‘Hey!’ Ataelus said. He rattled off some rapid Sakje to the chiefs, and they all grinned together. He turned back to Kineas. ‘If the wind for us, give them fire in the faces.’

  Kineas pursed his lips and nodded. ‘Yes,’ he agreed.

  In the morning, he led them on a ride around the invisible boundaries of his diamond until every man understood his orders. At nightfall, Samahe came to tell him that the Macedonian column was camped eighty stades up the Polytimeros.

  That night, he dreamed again of the thunderbolt in his hand and Ataelus awakened him before the sun with a report from the outer pickets. The Macedonians were moving.

  It was difficult to hide eight hundred men. Teams of Sindi brushed the main road clear of tracks while the little army set itself in its positions. Men hurried unnecessarily and were injured. A horse fell down the spring bank of the river and had to be killed, and the process of butchering and disposing of the horse took so long that Kineas was close to screaming with frustration.

  Even after a hundred helmets full of water, the place where the horse had died was a mass of blood and flies.

  Kineas clamped down. ‘Leave it,’ he said, his teeth clenched, glaring at the miserable Sakje rider who had caused the disaster. ‘To your places.’

  Kineas was mounted on Thalassa. It was the mare’s first time in combat, and she stood tall and firm as Kineas mounted. She snorted, raised her head and then settled herself.

  ‘You are quite a horse,’ Kineas said. He clucked his mare into motion and played with the catch on his breastplate. A fine piece of work last spring, the piece of armour had taken so many blows that it was misshapen, and the shoulder catch no longer seated firmly in the back plate. When it popped, the two moving plates rubbed his shoulder raw. He determined to get a new one.

  Where in Hades would he find a new Greek breastplate here, on the edge of the world? On the corpse of a Macedonian, of course. Except that he couldn’t see this fight leaving him time to strip a corpse.

  Thalassa fidgeted. Diodorus had all the Olbian cavalry in place behind the thickets, and four of Temerix’s Sindi were sweeping their back trail. One of them had a wicker case strapped to his back. They’d caught a young hawk and they’d release her to signal that the enemy was in sight - an old Sindi trick, so he was told.

  In the river bed, clouds of flies plundered the rocks where the horse had been butchered and the sound carried up and down the river bed like a manifestation of some evil god. Otherwise, there was silence, punctuated by horse noises - bits on teeth, cropping grass, reins creaking or snapping, gentle whickers and snuffles - and horse smells. The gelding behind Kineas defecated and the clod fell to earth with a heavy plop.

  Kineas had waited in a few cavalry ambushes. This one was too large. The sheer number of men and horses involved raised the likelihood of discovery. He tried to decide what he would do when they were discovered. Sweat ran down his face and neck and down the hollow of his back where armour and tunic didn’t quite meet.

  To be so close to Srayanka without saving her - he banished that thought.

  But when he glanced over his shoulder, he couldn’t make himself think of sacrificing his friends to rescue his wife.

  He farted, long and low, and the men around him laughed. His hands clenched and unclenched on his reins, and he began to tap his whip against his thigh.

  Diodorus came up beside him. ‘We should dismount,’ he said quietly. ‘We’ll tire our horses.’

  Kineas bit back a retort. ‘Yes,’ he said, and suited the action to the word. Thalassa grunted as he slipped off her back. Philokles tied his horse to a flowering bush with shiny leaves and lay down, as if to sleep.

  Kineas hated him for the ease with which he went to sleep.

  Dismounted, he could see nothing but three hundred horses and their riders and a wall of poplar trees. I should have arranged my position with a clear view of the enemy�
��s approach, he thought. His knees were weak. He looked at the sun, which hadn’t moved a finger’s span against the branch he had chosen as a marker.

  He glanced around at Diodorus. He was flushed and fingering the edge of his machaira. When their eyes met, Diodorus walked his horse to where Kineas stood.

  ‘I feel like a virgin looking at his first girl,’ Diodorus said.

  Philokles stood up from his nap. ‘The Olympic Games will be next year,’ he said, as if this was news. ‘I imagine the athletes have already left their homes for the games at Eleusis.’

  Kineas looked around, mystified. ‘That was two weeks ago,’ he said.

  ‘Hmm.’ Philokles looked around, as if noticing all of the cavalry for the first time. ‘They go to win immortal glory in the striving of peace. All we’re going to do is rescue some barbarian woman from Alexander. Why are you two on edge?’ He grinned. ‘You have chosen an excellent site for an ambush and arranged your troops. All else is with the gods.’

  Diodorus put his sword back in its sheath. ‘Sure. Fucking Spartan.’

  Kineas took a steadying breath. ‘We take a great risk here,’ he began, and Philokles smiled.

  ‘Friends,’ he said, holding up his hand - and the hand shook. ‘I merely hide my fears better,’ he said.

  Kineas performed a quick calculation. ‘I am in the grip of blind fear,’ he said. ‘We must have at least an hour. I am as stupid as the boy who let his horse roll down the riverbank. I should go and see to my men.’ He dusted his hands.

  Then he went from man to man throughout the Olbians, clasping hands with every man and saying a few words. He teased, he mocked, he complimented, and behind him, three hundred Greeks and Keltoi and assorted professional cavalrymen breathed easier and smiled. As he moved among them, a breeze came up like the caress of a friendly goddess.

  Kineas too breathed easier. It took him an hour to circle his troops, constantly on the lookout for the appearance of Ataelus or the sight of a bird rising over the woods in front of him. It kept him busy and he only thought of Srayanka fifty times.

  When he came back, Philokles was making water against a stone and Diodorus was staring at the line of tamarisk trees as if he could bore a hole through them with his eyes. Kineas made a show of fastidiously avoiding the Spartan’s rock, and then he lay down in the shade of a silver-leafed poplar and pulled his broad straw hat over his eyes.

  His stomach roiled and he could feel all of his stress pushing at his colon. His feet felt as if worms were crawling over them and his hands shook.

  ‘He’s over it,’ Diodorus said with irritation. ‘Now he’ll take a nap.’

  Kineas smiled under his straw hat. Over it, he thought. Despite the growing heat, he was chilled to the bone. Over it.

  Ambushes are different. In a field action, the commander - and the trooper - can watch the enemy deploy, can track the enemy’s countless errors and take comfort, can lose himself in preparation, giving orders or taking them.

  In an ambush, he can only wait and the only two options are victory or disaster. No one will stay safely in reserve. No one is likely to escape from the grip of war.

  Sakje and Olbian and Sauromatae, most of them were in the grip of fear and panic, and the trees and bushes moved with the quivering of men.

  Still, all things considered, they were better off than the Macedonian column.

  It was closer to noon than to morning when the hawk burst into the air over the thorn wood to their front, her flight so loud in all the silence that men who had achieved some sort of uneasy sleep were startled awake, all their fears returned.

  ‘Drink water, and mount!’ Kineas said in a fierce whisper. The whisper was passed back. Horses whickered despite the best efforts of their riders, and for a minute, the Olbians made as much noise as a bacchanal. Kineas glared at them, a vein throbbing at his temple, but it couldn’t be helped.

  ‘We’re fucking doomed,’ he said to Philokles.

  The Spartan shrugged and drank water from a gourd. ‘Marching men hear nothing,’ he said. ‘And “We’re fucking doomed” is not a statement to inspire confidence in a commander.’

  ‘Teach that in Sparta, do they?’ Diodorus asked. ‘Oh, for the benefits of your education, Philokles.’

  ‘Shut up, both of you.’ Kineas pushed forward to the very edge of the trees. He handed Philokles his reins and waved at Diodorus. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘You know how to hold a horse, right?’ Diodorus asked the Spartan.

  ‘If I forget, I’ll just run in circles flapping my arms and screaming at the top of my voice until you Athenians come and rescue me,’ he replied in a harsh whisper.

  Kineas belly-crawled forward under the branches of the poplar, his forearms abraded by rose stems. He pushed forward until he could just see over a low ridge of earth. His line of sight was limited to the ford, the island of willows and the far side of the spring banks.

  ‘Philokles is better,’ Diodorus said, and Kineas glared him to silence.

  The damned hawk was now circling the tamarisk wood, screaming her head off. ‘Remind me of this the next time the Sindi have an old trick,’ Kineas said.

  Diodorus gave him a sharp nudge. The head of the Macedonian column was emerging from the gap between the spring bank and the tamarisk wood. Either they were moving very fast or the thrice-cursed bird had been released late.

  There was an advance guard of Macedonian infantrymen mounted on nags. They had javelins instead of their pikes, but their corslets and short, guardless helmets marked them. Their horses were moving carefully, clearly tired. Even as he watched, the scout’s horses became restless with the discovery that there was water and they began to neigh.

  A man rode up the gentle slope from the ford towards the Olbian ambush. He was humming to himself and looking at the ground with professional curiosity. Another flanker joined him. Behind the two scouts, the rest of the advance guard passed, riding quickly, and turned due north to cross the ford, heading for Marakanda. Men fought to keep their horses from drinking and suddenly the advance guard was thrown into confusion. Orders were shouted and any man who stopped lost control of his horse as it started to drink.

  ‘More fucking Dahae?’ asked the first scout. He was pointing at something in the dust.

  ‘Somebody butchered a horse in the stream bed,’ said the other scout. ‘I don’t like it. If they passed that close to us, we should see their dust.’ He looked up, his eyes searching the very ground where Kineas and Diodorus lay. ‘Fu-uck,’ he said, his thick Macedonian accent and his Illyrian hill drawl exaggerated by fear. ‘Unless they’re right here!’

  The first man struck him lightly. ‘Get a grip,’ he said.

  The second man shook his head. ‘Fuck yourself, whoreson puppy. Look at those prints - erased. No dust cloud. Dead horse.’

  Behind them, the last of the advance guard turned and headed across the ford, the horses complaining. The last of their horses splashed into the shallow brown water and the smell of mud carried back to the two men lying in the briars.

  ‘Pharnuches is a useless fucking cunt,’ the first scout said. His voice had a hard edge of fear now, too. ‘Even if you’re right—’

  The second rider turned and dashed for the trade road. Behind him, a full squadron of mercenary cavalry rode down the defile, two by two, moving fast. The men had their helmets on and their armour and they were looking to the left and to the right. Their horses were just as eager for water as the last unit’s.

  ‘Cavalry is in front,’ Diodorus whispered.

  Kineas grunted in reply, his voice now covered by the trotting cavalry. That meant that the infantry would be in the second division - almost immune to Temerix’s arrows, if they had their armour on.

  Nothing he could do about it now.

  A large group of riders halted in a tangle at the edge of the ford with the two scouts shouting at them.

  ‘Hetairoi,’ Kineas said. He began pushing himself backwards as fast as he could.

  Five
Royal Companions in dun-coloured cloaks and white tunics with heavy armour, a richly dressed man in a purple and yellow cloak and a breastplate, and another in a red cloak. Three women in Sakje dress on good horses, one bent over her saddle, face grey with effort - Srayanka - and another, clearly Urvara, flirting with the Royal Companions. Diodorus crawled backwards.

  ‘Doesn’t matter!’ Kineas said. He was, in his nerves, answering his own question, unvoiced. It no longer mattered if the ambush was discovered.

  As if on cue, he heard the shrieking cry of Bain’s elite Sakje, and the ground shook with their hooves. Kineas threw himself up on to his tall charger. He glanced back. They were all there.

  ‘Walk!’ he ordered, and they started forward without Andronicus’s trumpet. They were in a tight column of fours - that’s what they had cut a path to fit, the path that the scouts had no doubt noticed. He had traded rapid deployment for perfect concealment. As soon as his horse emerged from the gap into the clear ground just south of the ford, he called, ‘Form front!’ and the column began to knit itself into a rhomboid behind him as the head continued to ride forward at a walk.

  He turned his head in time to see Bain’s Sakje loose a flight of arrows into the mercenary cavalry. They were caught facing the wrong way, with many of their horses head-down in the water, drinking deeply, and their horses suffered terribly in the first volley, their unarmoured rumps feathered like hedgehogs. Two dozen horses went down and the Mercenary cavalry behind dissolved into chaos as the Sakje galloped past along the river bed. Now every warrior shot for himself and some rode ridiculously close. Bain himself, wearing the transverse plume of a long-dead Macedonian officer, leaned so close to an armoured officer waving a sickle-bladed kopis that it seemed that his arrowhead brushed the man’s cloak before he loosed with a whoop that sounded across two stades and hundreds of men.