But the gods did not utterly desert him, and the horse’s weight was shared by his own gelding. They both rolled away, maddened, and yet no hoof caught him amidst the warp and woof of their tangle. He crawled a few feet clear.
‘Brother?’ Philokles asked. He reached down a strong hand and lifted Kineas out of the dirt and up on to his own charger’s back as if Kineas weighed less than Nihmu. ‘I would have sworn by all the gods that you had told me to avoid coming off my horse in a battle.’
Kineas put his hands around the Spartan’s waist. ‘Fuck yourself,’ he said thankfully.
The fight was over before Kineas was rehorsed, and he was the only casualty. His bodyguards were deeply ashamed, as neither of them had seen him fall, and their apologies had all the drama the Keltoi could bring to any theatre.
Lot emerged from the dust and pulled off his helm. His golden armour was scratched in several places and his sword was gone. ‘By the gods!’ he said. ‘That was a fight to remember. Who were they? Your cousins?’
Kineas watched the last of the Greeks crossing the Jaxartes, harried by Ataelus’s scouts and still in good order. ‘Greeks and Persians under a good officer,’ Kineas said. His side hurt when he laughed or breathed. He had broken ribs.
‘This officer?’ Lot asked, leading a horse forward. The man on the horse’s back looked defiant. He had bright blond hair and a heavy face.
Kineas didn’t know him. ‘Ransom?’ Kineas asked Lot, with a grimace for the pain.
Lot shrugged. ‘He was brave. I unhorsed him at the end - I thought I might keep him.’
Back at the ford, Srayanka and Diodorus’s trumpets were busy.
‘Where are you from, Hipparch?’ Philokles asked.
The man looked from one Greek spear to the next with wonder. ‘Amphipolis,’ he said. ‘You’re all Greek!’
Lot spat. ‘Eat my scrotum,’ he said in Sakje.
‘Listen, officer of Amphipolis,’ Kineas said. He felt the goddess at his elbow. ‘Listen, friend. Ride away. Go free. Your ransom is this - to go in person to the Parthenon and sacrifice to Athena.’
The Greek officer sat straight. ‘I will do that,’ he said dully. His elation at escaping death was slipping into an awareness of defeat.
‘I’ll just keep your horse,’ Lot said, pulling the reins. ‘Take him, lord.’
‘Good!’ Kineas said. He mounted the Thessalian gratefully, although he needed help and it hurt. He pointed back to the far ridge where the remounts awaited and touched Philokles on the shoulder. ‘Let’s go and find the others.’
They rode away, Olbians and Keltoi and Sauromatae, leaving one Greek cavalryman alone, dismounted in the dust.
By the time they reached the ford, Eumenes was gone and they could hear his men rallying on the flat ground above the Jaxartes, already three stades away.
‘He won’t come back,’ Diodorus said.
Kineas watched the Macedonians from beneath his hand, breathing hard. ‘Athena, I thought I was done for.’ He kept watching. ‘I’m inclined to agree. He’s going somewhere else.’
Kineas looked back across the ford. ‘How badly did we hurt him?’
Philokles shook his head. ‘Thirty or forty men. A bee sting.’
Kineas nodded. ‘Let the prisoners go - dismounted. They won’t fight us again today if they have to walk.’ He slumped. ‘I need to wash in the river and I need someone - Philokles - to wrap my ribs so that I can ride.’
‘We could just ride away,’ Diodorus said.
Srayanka nodded. ‘We turned them,’ she said. ‘No man can say we have not done our part.’
Kineas dropped from his horse to the ground and Sitalkes helped Philokles strip his armour. They tried to be gentle, but Kineas felt his vision tunnel and twice he cried out from the pain. Free at last of the scale shirt, he picked himself up and walked into the water. The cold helped him, as did the feeling of the grit running away. He splashed water on his torso, wincing as every motion of his left arm sent a pulse of pain down his chest and into his groin.
Srayanka held out a sheet of linen as a towel. ‘All my maidens are jealous,’ she said.
Kineas tried to smile. He felt better, but there were so many layers of pain and fatigue that he wasn’t sure he could function. He had lost a great deal in the dust when his horse died under him.
Philokles took another length of linen from Leon and began to wind it around Kineas with the whole strength of his arms. Kineas couldn’t breath much, but the pain in his side diminished.
‘I think we’ve done our part,’ Diodorus said. He obviously didn’t like what he was seeing.
‘What was our part?’ Kineas asked. ‘We did our part when we stopped Alexander on the Oxus - when we rescued you, my lady. When we stopped Zopryon.’ Philokles was binding his chest, winding it around and around his upper thorax. Kineas found it difficult to breathe, and Srayanka could see it.
‘You are wounded. Take the children and the rest of the wounded and start west,’ she said. ‘We will yet cheat this prophecy.’
Kineas took the deepest breath he could manage and was delighted to find no pain at the bottom of the air, even as his twin vision saw things far away. ‘Even now, Zarina is winning or losing this battle,’ he said. ‘Listen to me! She planned to line the riverbank. Alexander has his siege artillery. Guess what will happen! The phalangites will have room to claw a foothold on the bank. When Alexander leads his cavalry across, will the Dahae and the Massagetae hold?’
Diodorus shrugged. ‘So?’ he said. ‘They’ll run, and then they’ll stop. Alexander will proclaim victory. Nothing will be changed. Isn’t that what we’ve learned on the plains?’
Philokles mounted his charger - the same horse that Satrax had given him in the snow, a year and more ago. ‘Now Kineas seeks to teach us a different lesson, my friend.’
Kineas took his children from Nihmu and kissed them both. ‘You will protect them?’ he asked.
‘Until they begin to protect me,’ she said. ‘Goodbye, Baqca.’
Kineas turned for his horse. Philokles gave Kineas a hand and Srayanka pushed and together they got Kineas up on Thalassa.
‘Get the horses watered,’ Kineas said. ‘All of them.’
Srayanka nodded, as did Lot.
Kineas sat silent for a long time, and gradually his friends, his staff, the chieftains and all around him became quiet.
He was about to speak when he saw the eagle.
He pointed off to the south. The eagle was rising slowly from across the river, clearly burdened by something - probably a rabbit. The prey’s entrails hung down between the eagle’s wings, unbalancing his flight. The bird turned and beat slowly towards them, wings pumping the air.
Among the Greeks and Sakje all conversation ceased, and every head watched the bird as it flew slowly, erratically, and as it closed, Kineas could see that the eagle had been feeding on the carcass of the rabbit, whose blood stained its white fur in streaks. The eagle rose again on a draught of warm air as it came over the bend in the Jaxartes where the officers had gathered while Kineas’s wounds were tended. Then the eagle vented a raucous scream, pivoted on a wingtip and dropped the carcass of the rabbit, so that it plummeted to earth, making Thalassa shy and bouncing as high as a man’s head before flopping almost at Kineas’s feet. The eagle screamed again and turned away, leaving Kineas with an impression of fierce, mad intelligence from its golden eyes. Rid of the carcass, it flew like the wind itself, rose into the heavens and raced away.
The waves of pain from mounting had vanished with the eagle. He straightened his back and raised his voice. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Would you leave a brother in a fight? This is not about winning. Winning - it is just as Diodorus has said. This is about virtue.’
‘And you will die for virtue?’ Diodorus asked, but his eyes were on the sky.
‘Wouldn’t you?’ Kineas asked. ‘You never left me in the agora that day, Diodorus. You might have run.’
Diodorus put his hand before his eyes.
Kineas took a painful breath. ‘This is what we do, friends. Let’s do it well.’
Srayanka kissed him. Then she rose, clamping her mare between her legs and stretching her spine.
‘Sakje!’ she shouted. ‘Will you follow the king to battle!’
‘Baqca-King,’ they roared, a long, drawn-out roar like the sound of lions at the edge of night.
She was crying. Many of them were crying, but the dust dried their tears as they rode.
They rode five stades or more, seeing only the ephemera of battle - a fleeing rider, a wandering horse with its entrails dragging behind, screaming in pain. Time had flowed away under them like the rivers of the steppe, and it was afternoon, and despite fresh horses, they were tired.
And then they could hear the battle before they could see it, a cacophony of horse noise and metal that filled the air. Swirls of dust came floating over the low ridge in front of them as if ejected from the battle, or as if the spirits of the dead were fleeing.
Kineas stopped his horse at the base of the ridge. He waved to Ataelus. ‘Go and be my eyes,’ he said.
Ataelus gave a sad smile. ‘For you!’ he called, and he and his wife galloped diagonally up the ridge.
Kineas turned to the officers. ‘Dismount. Have the troopers take a drink,’ he said. ‘When we go over the ridge, we’ll have the Sakje on the right, the Sauromatae in the centre, and the Olbians on the left, where they are least likely to get entangled with the Massagetae or the Dahae.’ He looked at them all. ‘Unless Ataelus tells me something that shocks me, we will go over the ridge and straight into the maelstrom.’
Diodorus was ash-straight, sitting his horse as if on parade in Athens. ‘What is our objective?’ he asked.
Kineas raised an eyebrow. ‘I intend to cut my way to Alexander,’ he said. ‘But failing that, remember what Zarina said. You are warriors. Do as you will.’ He allowed himself a small smile. ‘Obedient warriors in crisp formations!’
He won an answering smile from Diodorus.
He was considering a farewell speech - a classic battle oration - when he saw Ataelus careering down the ridge, Samahe at his heels. The man’s body language screamed of disaster and Kineas abandoned his notion of a formal goodbye. ‘Mount,’ he called.
He waited until the slackers were mounted. ‘Walk,’ he called. He waved his arms to indicate that the Sauromatae and the Sakje should form arrowheads to the right as he had described. Srayanka reached out a hand - a hard hand with a doe-soft back - and they clasped hands like soldiers. ‘Goodbye!’ she said. ‘Wait for me across the river!’
‘Live long, Queen!’ he shouted back in Sakje, and they were parted, her column forming to the right as his bore straight up the ridge.
Ataelus pulled up next to him. ‘The Zarina’s standard is down,’ he said. ‘The Dahae are leaving the field.’
‘Ares wept!’ Diodorus said.
And Kineas thought, This is not what I saw.
33
Even Thalassa laboured over the last of the climb, but before the sun had set another finger’s-breadth, Kineas topped the ridge and the whole of the battlefield was laid out before him, a bowl of war covering eight stades or more from ridge to ridge. And what he saw shook him.
Nearer to him, Scythian warriors on the other slope of the ridge were retreating, shooting arrows, in the face of a heavy line of enemy cavalry - Macedonians and Greeks and Sogdians all intermixed. The Scythians were spread thin, and they gave ground quickly and never tried to rally.
Down in the centre of the bowl, the pikemen of the phalanx had established a line across the ford and had pushed on for some distance. A rubble of dead horses, visible even at this distance, marked the futility of the Sakje resistance. But there was just one phalanx - the other was visible, pikes erect, across the river behind the line of siege machines.
Only far away, at the limit of vision on the Sakje right, did the army of Macedon seem to be getting the worst of it. There, and only there, was the movement of the antlike contestants retrograde. Years of watching battles - and serving in them - had gifted Kineas with an instant grasp of the meaning of the hundreds of signs - sounds, motion, even the quality of reflection of light could tell you which direction a man was moving. The Macedonian left was losing. The rest of their army was at the point of victory.
Over all of it, the fog of Ares rose from the sandy ground to obscure everything but the wraithlike movements and the strongest glints of polished metal. The Sakje still glittered with gold, so that even through the battle haze, Kineas could estimate their positions.
Nowhere could he find Queen Zarina, who should have been in the centre. But just to the near side of the enemy centre, just behind the fighting, Kineas could see a purple cloak surrounded by aides. Even as he watched, Alexander was leading a wedge of Companions into the Massagetae nobles to his front.
And behind the Macedonian lines was the river. Dead trees filled the ford, and across the river, a huge dead tree towered over the field, stark and awesome, and Kineas felt the full weight of his doom. He shivered, and his side hurt - something liquid seemed to move inside his skin, and he swayed in the saddle. He began to turn his horse - he thought of how he might, after all his posturing, leave the field, flee with honour. Or without it.
I do not want to die! he thought. His breath burned in his throat and his heart seemed to pump out the last of his blood, so that he was cold.
The setting sun was red like the blood of a dying man, and it shone on his men as they crested the hill, barring any possible retreat, and they reminded him - more than reminded him - of who he was. They were strong, unbeaten, three crisp triangles that darkened the ridge so that there was immediate commotion in the Macedonian centre and the Sakje on the ridge before him panicked, assuming that they were Macedonians. He looked at his men - the Keltoi and former hoplites of Olbia, dressed in the remnants of Greek armour, with Sakje tack and Sauromatae armour here and there, many in barbarian trousers, some wearing Sakje hats in place of their helmets.
Just beside him, Hama grinned. ‘Now for glory!’ Hama called. He threw his sword in the air and it flew in a wheel of fire and Hama caught it by the hilt. All the Keltoi roared.
Thank you, Hama. Decision made, Kineas took a deep breath. Fear was deep in his guts, but there was elation there as well. There was even happiness, the happiness of a craftsman nearing the completion of a long and heavy task. To his right, the Sauromatae crested the hill and formed their ranks, glittering bronze and iron scales over every man, woman and horse. Gwair Blackhorse, the leftmost man in the front rank, turned and waved. The sun torched Lot’s armour, but however bright his bronze and gold burned, Srayanka was the sun herself as she rode over the crest, her helmet and gorget too bright for him to watch.
Kineas’s throat was heavy with all of it - pride, terror, joy. He could smell apples.
He left the point of the Olbian wedge and rode along the crest, sword in the air, until he was sure that all three wedges were fully formed and ready. If this were their moment, he would not waste it with a simple error. Their cheers followed him, and in the valley at his feet he could sense the change. They were too golden to be Macedonians. Even as he cantered back to his place, the ocean noise of the Sakje cheers began to come back from the centre, as the Massagetae realized that their long fight in the centre was not in vain. And the purple cloak flickered in the setting sun and the dust, but it was moving back.
Kineas pulled into his place, with Diodorus at one shoulder and Carlus at the other.
‘Athena!’ he called, and men laughed aloud - power flowed through him like the ichor of a god. And the Olbians - Hellenes and Keltoi together - sang Athena’s paean as they started forward, and many among the Sakje and even the Sauromatae took it up, so many times had they heard it around campfires, standing in the rain or the biting heat of the plains, among the snows of Hyrkania.
Come, Athena, now if ever!
Let us now thy Glory see!
Now, O M
aid and Queen, we pray thee,
Give thy servants victory!
The three wedges came over the crest at a walk. As soon as the horses felt the slope, Kineas let them move, taking the downhill side at a fast trot and then a canter, and he could see Lot and Srayanka at the point of their formations keeping pace.
The cavalry in front of him broke a stade before he could reach them. They had not had an easy day, galled by Scythian arrows and forced to climb the ridge. Now their world had turned upside down and they ran for the ford. Only the Macedonian cavalry stood, then charged back, their tired horses making heavy work of the hill, and the Sauromatae in the centre crashed into them with a sound like summer thunder.
Kineas refused to let Thalassa have her head, and he pulled her up, keeping an eye on Lot’s golden helmet as he used his heavy lance against the more lightly armed Macedonians, already disheartened to find themselves abandoned by their allies. The Macedonians held for a few heartbeats and then a few more, unused to defeat, fighting with their guts, and then they too broke, and the Sauromatae began to re-form their wedge on the move.
The chance of the hill and the ground had pointed their formations more at the ford than at the Macedonian pikes, who were already extending files and facing as fast as they could move to react - far too late, unless their king turned away from the centre to save them - and if he did, the battle was a stalemate.
Tyrant: Storm of Arrows Page 46
