Tyrant: Storm of Arrows

by Christian Cameron

  Everyone nodded.

  ‘And if Zarina loses, we’ll have a clear road home,’ Srayanka said.

  Kineas nodded. ‘Yes.’ He didn’t elaborate.

  ‘Let us say we meet this Macedonian and rout him back across the ford,’ Samahe asked. She shrugged, looking around. ‘Why do you look at me this way? We have been known to win battles in the past!’

  That got her a laugh.

  ‘Then what? Eh?’ She looked around, defiant.

  Kineas nodded. ‘I really can’t say. We could cross after them and return the favour, but I would expect that any fight will leave us too beaten up to turn their flank - and we’re too few. We ought to be able to turn in on our own side, however,’ Kineas’s knife point traced a black furrow along the Sakje bank of the line that marked the Jaxartes, ‘and strike the flank of their main effort.’

  ‘Our horses would be blown,’ Srayanka said thoughtfully.

  Diodorus had found a heavy basket to sit on. He leaned forward, the basket creaking under his weight, and he pointed a stick at the map in the dirt. ‘What if Alexander’s main effort is the northern ford?’ he asked.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Philokles. ‘How long would we last?’

  Kineas shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t even fight, beyond some skirmishing to make the ford cost him.’ He gave a bitter smile. ‘We wouldn’t last long.’

  ‘No,’ Diodorus said. ‘And it wouldn’t be worth spit, anyway. This Sakje army isn’t a phalanx, Philokles. If you hit the Sakje in the flank, they just ride away and fight another day. If Alexander wants a fight, he has to goad them to it, fix them in place and then hit them.’

  Srayanka nodded, as if she had held a conversation with herself. ‘Listen. Let us fight like Assagatje. Let us move all our remounts to here.’ She indicated a place just west of the ford, then pointed at Diodorus. ‘If Diodorus’s worst instincts are right, and Alexander comes north, we can fight in retreat, change horses and vanish. No pursuit could possibly catch us on fresh horses. Yes?’

  All around the fire, the chiefs and officers nodded. Lot slapped her back. ‘Cruel Hands, you are still the cunning one.’

  She went on, smiling a very unmotherly smile at her husband. ‘If we meet this flanking force and defeat it, we take the time to change horses - and we ride to the battle in the centre on fresh mounts.’

  Kineas grabbed her and kissed her. They kissed, and the other leaders whooped and mocked them. When he left her lips, he shook his head. ‘You kiss better than any of my other cavalry commanders,’ he said, and she kicked his shin.

  Diodorus looked at the map in the sand again. ‘We should move tonight,’ he said. He looked at Srayanka and shrugged, apologetic. ‘Forty stades under a bright moon is nothing to us after the desert. And then there will be no dust to betray us.’

  ‘Odysseus is, as usual, correct,’ Kineas said. He and Srayanka exchanged a long look, because precious hours were being taken from them, never to be replaced.

  ‘We will ride together, as we did when our love was young,’ she said, and she began to choke on her words, but she fought through unbroken. ‘I will ask you the names of things in Greek, and you will ask me the Sakje words, and we will forget the future and know only what is now.’

  Philokles couldn’t bear it, and he turned away.

  Ataelus was already calling for horses, and Antigonus was passing the unpopular news, but the rest stayed by the fire. The night on the plains was brisk.

  ‘I wonder where Coenus is?’ Diodorus asked. He waited a moment, and then decided that Kineas had not heard him. ‘Do you wonder—’ he began, and Kineas turned.

  ‘Coenus should be watching the sun rise over the mountains of Hyrkania in the morning,’ Kineas said.

  ‘Athena and Hermes, have we been riding that long in the desert?’ Philokles asked.

  Ataelus grunted. ‘Yes.’

  Diodorus thumbed his beard. ‘Every time you kiss Srayanka, I miss Sappho more.’

  Kineas slapped his shoulder. ‘There are great days ahead,’ he said. He felt sad and happy at the same time. And then, after a pause, ‘See to Philokles when I am gone.’

  Diodorus coughed to cover some tears that stood bright on his cheeks. ‘It just hit me that it will be as you say - that you do know the hour of your death.’ He sniffled. ‘Are you sure?’

  Kineas gathered him in an embrace. ‘I know this battle,’ he said simply. ‘I die.’

  ‘Philokles?’ Diodorus asked, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘Ares, it’s Srayanka who will need us.’

  ‘No,’ Kineas said. ‘She will be queen, and all the Sakje will be her husband. Philokles will have only you.’

  Diodorus chewed his lip. ‘You remember sword lessons with Phocion?’

  ‘I think of them all the time.’ The two men were still locked in embrace.

  ‘I will be the last left.’ He was weeping, the tears flowing down his cheeks like the muddy waters of the Jaxartes.

  ‘So you must be the best,’ Kineas said. ‘When I fall, you command. Not just for one action, either. I leave you the bequest of all my unfought battles.’

  Diodorus backed away, his hand hiding his face. ‘I was never the strategos you were,’ he complained.

  Kineas gripped his neck. ‘Two years ago you were a trooper,’ he said. ‘Soon, we will fight Alexander. You know how to command. You love to command.’

  ‘Before the gods, I do,’ Diodorus said.

  ‘I leave you the bequest of my unfought battles,’ Kineas said again.

  ‘You should be king. King of the whole of the Bosporus.’

  Kineas felt his own tears as he thought of all he would miss. His children, most of all. ‘Make Satyrus king,’ he said. ‘I’m too much an Athenian to be a king.’

  The other Athenian stood straight. ‘I will,’ he said.

  They covered forty stades in a dream of darkness and the soft glitter of moonlight on the sand, and the hand of Artemis the huntress covered them. Ataelus’s prodromoi waited at every obstacle and every turn, guiding them around a camp of Sakje in the dark, clearing them across a gully with a burbling stream at the base, and around a shaled hill that might have hurt the horses in the dark, until they came to the back of a long ridge running perpendicular to the Jaxartes. Ataelus rode up next to Kineas in the dark.

  ‘For fighting,’ he said quietly. He pointed down the ridge at the river as it bowed through a deep curve in the moonlight. ‘Iskander!’ he said, and pointed across the river, where a thousand orange stars shone in the foothills of the Sogdian mountains - Alexander’s cooking fires.

  They rode on for an hour, the column winding back to be lost to sight in the darkness over the big ridge. Twelve stades later, as Kineas reckoned it, they descended sharply from the path they’d followed towards the river, which they could hear but not see.

  He rode down into the vale, heedless of possible enemy patrols, eager to see the ground as best he could, and Srayanka came with him, her household clattering along behind. They rode hand in hand, almost silent.

  At the edge of the ford, they halted.

  ‘Well?’ Srayanka asked.

  Kineas shook his head and grinned. ‘For whatever it means, this is not the place of my dream,’ he said. ‘Too narrow.’ He pointed across. ‘No downed trees. No giant dead tree on the far shore.’

  Srayanka exhaled as if she had held a single breath all day. ‘So?’ she asked.

  Kineas looked at the sky. ‘I speak no hubris,’ he said. ‘When the Macedonians come, on this field, we will triumph.’

  They turned quietly and rode back across the ridge, to camp and perhaps to grapple a few hours of sleep from the last of darkness and the pre-battle jitters.

  But not for Kineas. He lay awake, his body entwined with hers. He no longer needed sleep. He no longer intended to cede a moment to sleep.

  The end was as close as the point of his spear.

  32

  ‘I want the enemy to see nothing but Sakje,’ Kineas said. Srayanka n
odded, as did Lot.

  Sitting on his cloak, Kineas was fixing his blue horsehair crest to his helmet. He had an odd feeling, as if he had done all these things before so many times that he was an actor, playing the same part on many different days in the theatre.

  All around him, the Olbians were polishing their gear and affixing their helmet crests, the hyperetes of each troop moving among them to inspect their work. Men used ash gathered from their last fire pits to put a fine polish on their bronze. Men skilled with stones put a fine edge on spear points and swords. A few of the Keltoi spoke loudly, but most were quiet.

  Philokles sat on a rock, sober. He was combing out his hair. Behind him, the red rim of the sun rose above the distant mountains in the east.

  Sitalkes, who had once been Kineas’s slave, came up holding a pair of javelins, with long, thin shafts and linen throwing cords. ‘I didn’t think you had any,’ he said, looking at the ground.

  ‘May Ares bless you, Sitalkes!’ The pleasure of a good weapon made Kineas beam. ‘I hadn’t even thought of it. Where did you get them?’ He hefted one. ‘They’re beautiful!’

  Sitalkes glanced at Temerix, who was watching from a distance, glaring at them under heavy brows. ‘Temerix made the points. I set them.’ He grinned. ‘Good wood. Cut-down lances.’

  The two heads were gemlike, gleaming blue-red in the first light, far better work than was usually expended on javelins. Kineas embraced Sitalkes and then walked over and embraced Temerix, who stared at the ground while being hugged and then laughed aloud when the strategos turned away.

  Kineas thought that he’d never heard the Sindi smith laugh.

  As ordered, Srayanka’s people patrolled the edge of the river, their forms visible in a flash of gold or bronze or red leather. Most of her warriors were hidden in stands of trees on the near side of the Jaxartes, and a handful, the boldest, prowled the far bank.

  The enemy force announced itself just before the end of the dawn, when shadows were still long on the ground and spear points winked against the last of the darkness. Their dust cloud showed them to be moving carefully, and their outriders made contact with Ataelus’s prodromoi and drove them back easily. Kineas watched from a stand of trees on the ridge, his helmet under his arm, his reserves hidden in a fold of ground behind him.

  At the water’s edge, an hour later, two squadrons of Bactrians pushed Parshtaevalt unceremoniously across the river, brushing aside his heroics and the feverish archery of his companions in one quick charge that sent the Sakje fleeing for their lives. Srayanka was forced to reveal all of her ambushers to stem the rout. Her counter-charge stopped the Bactrians on the near bank and emptied a number of saddles, but the small size of her force was revealed.

  The enemy commander came up with his staff and more cavalry.

  ‘Eumenes,’ Kineas said with satisfaction. He knew the Cardian immediately from his heavy athletic physique. The story was that Philip, Alexander’s father, had seen the Cardian fighting in an athletic contest and drafted him on the spot. The Cardian had never disappointed the father or the son, and his physique, superb as it was, came second to his brain.

  Eumenes rallied the Bactrians easily and his force began to deploy along the river, easily outflanking Srayanka’s Sakje on both flanks. The enemy commander had men on fresh horses, and quivers full of arrows, and the Sakje began to flinch, giving ground from the riverbank and then abandoning the tree line altogether.

  ‘Pen-pusher,’ Diodorus said with disgust, referring to the Cardian’s post as military secretary. They were lying in the gravel at the edge of the ridge. ‘Caution personified.’

  Kineas nudged him and pointed carefully, drawing his friend’s attention to the bright flash of a golden helmet. ‘He won’t be cautious,’ he said.

  Upazan was waving his lance, pointing across the river.

  Upstream a stade or so, Ataelus’s prodromoi burst from cover into the flank of a troop of mercenary horse, shooting at the gallop. The enemy cavalry detached some files to defeat them.

  Across the river, Eumenes gave a sharp nod, as if the revealing of Ataelus’s ambush had decided him. The Bactrian cavalry put away their bows. Upazan was already in the water with thirty armoured Sauromatae.

  ‘Ares’ balls, Kineas!’ Diodorus rolled off the top of the ridge and got to his feet. ‘He is coming across.’ Diodorus sounded as if he’d just been invited to a particularly fine party.

  Kineas shook his head. ‘He ought to give it up. No point to a flank march that meets resistance.’

  Diodorus stepped into the hand-loop on his spear haft and sprang on to his charger without touching her back, a dramatic mount that brought a rustle of approval from the Olbian troopers. He bowed from the saddle. ‘To Hades with that. He’s coming.’

  Kineas rubbed his beard. ‘Showy bastard,’ he said to Diodorus and leaped on to the back of his second charger without touching the gelding’s back. He grinned at Diodorus, who shook his head.

  ‘Who’s the showy bastard now, Strategos?’ he asked.

  Kineas took his spears from Carlus. ‘Now for victory,’ he said to the assembled Olbians and Keltoi. He touched his heels to the gelding’s flanks and rode carefully to the top of the ridge, until he could once again see into the valley of the Jaxartes.

  Just as on the Oxus, the Macedonians and their allies had formed on a broad front, intending to swamp Srayanka’s thin force. Six squadrons of Bactrians, Sogdians and mercenary cavalry covered almost four stades along the bank, spread out because sometimes the banks were too high or the scrub too thick for cavalry. Eumenes’ trumpeter blew a long call and then repeated it, and the whole force came across in a rush. It showed better discipline than Craterus’s force had demonstrated, and Kineas’s opinion of Eumenes the Cardian went up again.

  Srayanka’s household shot one volley at close range and broke, cantering to the rear, easily gaining ground on the riders coming across the river. The river was only dactyloi deep in most places, but horses wanted the water or they feared what lay beneath and they picked their way across.

  Eumenes, visible in a purple cloak and a silvered bronze Boeotian helmet with a gold wreath of bravery atop it, sat peering under his hand, watching the ridge where Kineas sat on the back of his horse. He turned, shouting something at his hyperetes. Kineas felt like hiding, an irrational desire given that it was almost certainly too late for Eumenes to save his force from Kineas’s trap.

  Kineas muttered a prayer to Tyche that she not punish him for this mental hubris. Of course, it was all still in the hands of the gods.

  The trumpeter raised his trumpet at virtually the same moment that Diodorus led the whole of the Olbian cavalry over the ridge at the trot and put them straight into a gallop. The ridge was nothing - a few men high at its highest point - but it was sufficient to add momentum to the Olbians.

  Eumenes’ trumpet call rang out.

  Kineas watched as hundreds of enemy horsemen hesitated, in the river or just reaching the top of the bank. The signal was obviously a recall.

  Kineas turned to Darius at his side. ‘Tell Lot, now,’ he said.

  Darius grinned and pushed his horse into a gallop.

  At his side, Philokles laughed. ‘All morning,’ he said, ‘I have been dreading the fact that I would finally have to fight on horseback.’

  ‘You’re a fine horseman,’ Kineas said.

  ‘The best in Sparta,’ Philokles said. He was laughing.

  The Olbian cavalry struck the Bactrians and Sauromatae at the edge of the Jaxartes and blew through them, unhorsing dozens of men and knocking horses to the ground or into the water. Their wedge was scarcely disordered, and Diodorus led them on, right into the Jaxartes, an arrowhead pointed at the enemy commander.

  Off to Kineas’s right, Srayanka rallied her household with a raised hand, turned her horse under her like a circus performer in Athens and led them straight back at the enemy. Her household formed its wedge at the trot and she kept her force slow, so that they hit the shattere
d tangle of the Bactrians and stayed to kill them.

  Kineas could see Upazan’s helmet in the mêlée, and he saw Leon pushing to meet the Sauromatae boy. Leon downed a better-armoured foe with a spear thrust to the face, recovered to parry a lance thrust from an unhorsed man, and had to sidestep his horse to avoid being unhorsed himself. Sitalkes finished the man with the lance and Leon pressed in, but Upazan turned his horse, parrying blows from three Olbians, and ran.

  Baulked of his prey, Leon reared his horse and threw his spear. It went over the Keltoi in front of him and struck Upazan squarely between the shoulders - and bounced off his scale thorax.

  Eumenes the Cardian was looking around for support, and then he was riding away, followed by his staff, with Diodorus hard on his heels. The Athenian caught Eumenes’ trumpeter at the edge of the rising battle haze and tipped him out of the saddle with a swipe of his spear.

  To the north, the enemy’s mercenary cavalry were across the stream and rallying on Srayanka’s flank, coming forward at a collected trot in a strong tetragon. Unlike Eumenes, the mercenary commander saw his part of the trap in time to respond, and he wheeled to face Lot’s Sauromatae on the flat ground a stade north of the ford, and both forces vanished in a towering cloud of dust.

  Across the Jaxartes, Antigonus was sounding the rally call.

  Kineas looked over the battlefield one more time. ‘You can’t have everything,’ he said. ‘The Sauromatae are in for a fight. Let’s go!’ He waved to his escort - the only reserve he had - and they were off, over the ridge and through the dust cloud of Srayanka’s last mêlée. Her golden gorget shone like the sun, and he found her easily.

  ‘I need to help Lot,’ he shouted.

  ‘Our horses are tired!’ she called, but she sent dozens of her household knights to swell his ranks as they rode north along the Jaxartes. The mercenaries were holding their own, their backs to the river, visible through the battle haze like spirits in the underworld.

  ‘Trot!’ Kineas ordered.

  He had fifty men, and they began to pull in on either side of him to make a wedge. He wheeled his horse to make sure - sure! - that he would punch into the mercenaries and not disorder the Sauromatae, and then the dust stole his sight and he was in a tunnel of sound and fury and fear. A spear came out of the scrum and tore into his Getae gelding’s neck just as he threw his first - he never saw whether he hit his man or not - and then he was sword to sword with a Greek, and the Getae horse was sinking between his legs. He took a blow on his bridle gauntlet and hacked the man between his helmet and his cuirass and they went down together and he was punched off his feet by the next horse in his file riding over him. He curled into a ball, his side almost numb with pain where a horse hoof had hit him for the third time in four weeks. He tasted grit between his teeth and tried to spit. His own dying horse screamed as yet another horse trampled it and fell, and the weight of the horse’s rump crushed Kineas to the earth, drawing a scream of pain from him.