Funeral Games

by Christian Cameron

  ‘Right into the flank of the phalanx,’ Theron said.

  ‘It’s not unlike watching the climax of a race,’ Philokles said. ‘Except that the contestants are dying.’

  ‘Diodorus needs to turn into the flank of the enemy phalanx,’ Satyrus added, after a tense silence.

  Eumenes’ elite cavalry were outnumbered, and their dislike of their employer showed in the haste of their retreat, so that his left wing collapsed in mere minutes. Bactrians and Medes surged forward, many units penetrating the line without having engaged at all.

  Melitta was on her feet. ‘They can’t see the elephants!’ she said.

  Satyrus stood up with her. It was like cheering contestants at an athletic event. Thousands of enemy cavalrymen were pouring into the void left by the flight of Eumenes’ left wing, but instead of hitting the flank of the phalanx, they were about to plunge over a very low ridge into Eumenes’ elephant force. The low ridge was scarcely visible - Melitta was guessing that it must be there, because the Bactrians galloped straight at the elephants.

  And on the farthest left, they could see a body of their own cavalry launch their own charge into the now-open flank of the enemy’s Bactrians. Satyrus thought that it was remarkably like boxing - punch and counter-punch. The brave man who was leading the charge right in front of them was throwing a fairly feeble left, but in order to deal with it, the mass of Bactrians and Saka would have to change front and they would lose all the advantage of their position.

  ‘See how the Medes are avoiding a second fight? When men have triumphed in battle, they are often just as finished with violence as men who have lost. So the Medes hesitate and look around for easier meat.’

  Satyrus found that he’d eaten another fig without a memory of picking the fruit from the basket. Dust now hid everything all along the line. He put his cloak on the ground behind him and sat on it. He washed his hands from his canteen.

  Nothing seemed to be happening, although the sounds of combat were now clearly audible, carried on a fresh breeze from the east. The Medes and Bactrians had vanished into the towering salt-dust clouds, and the battle line was hidden from end to end.

  And then the Bactrians came bursting out of the edge of the cloud closest to the camp.

  13

  Philokles watched them for a long heartbeat, and then he grabbed the runner. ‘Go to your mistress, as fast as you can run. Tell her that five thousand Asiatic cavalry are about to hit the camp. She may have ten minutes. She’ll know what to do. Go!’

  The young man was off down the hillside, his tanned limbs flashing in rhythm as he ran.

  Philokles watched the Medes for ten more heartbeats. Then he turned to Theron and the twins.

  ‘Eumenes’ left is broken beyond saving, but the men who broke it have chosen to loot the camp rather than face the elephants.’ He nodded. ‘Very wise of them, actually. But in effect, it nullifies One-Eye’s victory. Unless I miss my guess, that man down there - follow my hand - is Eumenes. He’s trying to stem the rout.’

  ‘Look at those cowards,’ Theron said. Indeed, the cream of Eumenes’ Macedonian cavalry were rallied off to the far left in an old river bed. Many of the units were formed up as if on parade, but they weren’t moving forward.

  ‘Difficult to tell the difference between cowardice and treason,’ Philokles said. ‘Is it our responsibility to tell Eumenes that his camp is attacked? Or even that his phalanx is still in the game?’

  ‘What of your friend Diodorus?’ Theron asked.

  At their feet, a short column of horses and mules was already formed and moving south. ‘Diodorus planned against this,’ Philokles said. ‘As did Sappho.’ He shook his head. ‘Diodorus needs to know that this has happened. Will you go, Theron?’

  Theron looked at the maelstrom of churning salt dust and bronze. ‘I don’t even know who I’d be looking for,’ he said. ‘No. Not my game.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ Satyrus said.

  Philokles didn’t even look at his student. He was looking at the camp. ‘I need to repay an old debt. You stay with the children. Diodorus is a big boy.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ Satyrus said again.

  Already, the word of the catastrophe was spreading and refugees were pouring out of the camp, heading south. To the north, the Bactrians were already in the horse lines, taking remounts. The Saka were riding to the east, coming around the tangle of tents that would impede their horses.

  ‘What old debt?’ Theron shouted. ‘Ares, man, you can’t go into that!’

  ‘Banugul,’ Philokles said quietly. The name didn’t mean much to either of the twins.

  ‘Mum used to talk about her,’ Melitta said. ‘You used her as an example once, of a woman of power.’

  Philokles didn’t take his eyes off the onrushing enemy. ‘You really do listen to everything I say,’ he said.

  ‘Aunt Sappho said that she ought to be our ally,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘Your father saved her life once,’ Philokles said, his eyes on another fight, far away in time and place. He reached up under his arm and loosened his sword in its scabbard. ‘You children go with Theron. Down to the column and go to the rally point. I’m going to save a gilded harlot.’

  The twins looked at each other. A message passed between them, but they mounted with Theron and started down the back of the bluff, both of them watching Philokles as he mounted and vanished over the camp-side crest.

  ‘Is he insane?’ Theron trotted ahead, muttering.

  Satyrus turned to his sister. ‘I’ll ride to Eumenes,’ he said quietly. ‘And to Diodorus.’

  She nodded. ‘Good. I’ll help Philokles.’ She looked at his borrowed dun gelding. ‘I wish you had a better horse.’

  ‘Me too,’ Satyrus said. They exchanged a smile, and he glanced at Theron and pulled his horse off to the left. On a dun horse, helmetless, with a dun-coloured cloak, Satyrus vanished in the dust as soon as he turned his horse. He was away, back up the slope of the bluff, until he had a view over the worst of the dust and down into the salt plain.

  Eumenes’ silvered helmet was a flash of white light, just a stade or so to the north. Satyrus pointed his gelding’s head at the general and tapped his heels for speed, and they were away

  Melitta watched her brother turn his horse. She reached down and checked her bow case. Theron turned in his saddle. ‘This way,’ he called.

  Melitta followed obediently for another minute, and then, as they entered the dust of Sappho’s column, she shouted, ‘Where’s Satyrus?’

  Theron turned in his saddle, retying his chlamys over his face against the dust. ‘Where’s he gone?’ Theron asked. ‘Ares!’

  ‘He was right there,’ Melitta said.

  ‘Go to Sappho,’ Theron said, turning his horse. ‘Satyrus!’ he bellowed.

  Melitta didn’t answer - she just rode towards where Theron was pointing until the dust swirled around her. Then she slipped her Sakje tunic off her shoulder so that her right arm and shoulder were bare and pulled Bion around in a short turn. Dust didn’t bother her - she’d ridden in the drag position with the maidens and the boys on summer marches with the Assagatje. She wrapped a scarf over her mouth as she cantered back towards camp.

  The dust was thick, and the Saka were close - she could see them shouting to each other just to the east. She waved her bow over her head at them and they shouted. Then they were gone in the dust.

  She had a good idea where the enormous red and yellow tent stood, so she rode on instinct, trusting Bion to move carefully in a forest of tents and stakes and ropes. She didn’t ride fast, but she took the straightest line she could find.

  She terrified a great many camp followers, emerging from the curtain of dust. She looked like a Massagetae. Under her mask of dust and her head scarf, she smiled wickedly, gave a shriek of joy and terrified them a little more. It would only move them faster. That might save their lives.

  Twice, Bion stumbled, catching a leg on a tent stake or a rope, but both times they recovered without a
fall. ‘Good boy,’ she said in Sakje, patting his flanks. She was speaking Sakje and thinking in Sakje, and the Greek of the terrified women around her was almost incomprehensible to her. She felt Bion’s weight change and she got up his neck for a jump - he was up and over, and she never knew what they’d just jumped. Then the gelding turned under her and she almost lost her seat, and they were cantering again.

  She caught a flash of colour to her left, and then another, and beneath Bion’s hooves she was looking at fruits. They were in the agora of the camp, and close to Banugul’s tent.

  Now, where is Philokles? she asked herself.

  Satyrus rode easily, leaning well back as they slid down the face of the bluff and then shifting his weight forward as they got the hard ground of the valley under them. He let his horse have his head, and they were off at a gallop. Satyrus trusted his seat, so he used the gallop as a smooth platform to get his chlamys off his waist where he’d tied it and to wrap it around his head.

  He had just got the length of wool around his face when he burst into a crowd of Bactrians. He knew them from their long burnooses and their trousers, and then he was through them, moving so fast that they had little chance to catch him. His heart raced and for the first time the foolishness of what he was attempting rose with his gorge to choke him.

  I could die doing this, he thought. It was very different from being hunted by assassins - this was a risk he had incurred at his own will, and it felt stupid. It’s not even my battle! some part of his mind shouted at him. Too late now! another part answered, and he came out of the protective wall of salt dust as if shot from a bow.

  Instantly, he felt naked. There was a breeze here, and it had ripped the veil of salt asunder and left him riding alone with a thousand Bactrians in full view to the west, less than half a stade away. His bare legs proclaimed him a Greek and probably an enemy, and a dozen of them turned their horses and came for him with a series of shrill whoops.

  Ahead he saw the body of men he was aiming for - Macedonian cavalry in white leather spolades and bronze helmets. The man at their head had a silver helmet, but at this range it was obvious that he was not Eumenes. He was ten horse-lengths away, and he was shouting orders in a voice as young and shrill as Satyrus’s own. His cloak was purple.

  Satyrus got up on his knees, pressed his heels into his gelding’s flank and raced for the narrowing gap between the Macedonian cavalry and the Bactrians. Behind him, a dozen Bactrians were down on their horse’s necks, calling to one another in hot pursuit, but he was a lighter rider on a better mount. It occurred to him that he ought to shoot at them, but he didn’t have the nerve to spare. He was too busy being one with his horse.

  The young officer whirled around, and Satyrus passed him at javelin-toss. The pin on his purple cloak would have ransomed a small town.

  In a flash he was through the gap, riding along a file of Macedonian troopers. Every head turned and some men pointed, and the Bactrians on the right started to turn, and more Bactrians, so close that they could almost touch him, turned their horses as he went by, and then he was past, out on the salt pan beyond, and the breeze was gone and he was back in the towering clouds of dust.

  He galloped long enough to wind his mount, and then he curved carefully off to his right, slowing gradually and listening as hard as he could. He could hear fighting to the right, and his horse, though tired, was fidgeting hard. He couldn’t imagine why she was so restive, but he curbed her hard while he got his wits about him.

  He was lost on the battlefield, somewhere in the battle haze.

  Melitta remembered the red and yellow tent as being at the south end of the agora, and she rode in that direction. The agora was already empty, except for rubbish and a dead child of six or seven with his throat cut.

  That gave Melitta a shock. She looked at the little body too long, and then pushed on. Across the last food stalls, she could see the roof of the red and yellow tent. In front of it were a dozen horses. Men were shouting. And there was a rising sound of a panicked mob coming from the north. The Medes must be in the camp.

  Suddenly the impulse to help Philokles rescue Banugul seemed foolish. How would she ever find him? How could she take on a dozen men? And she had no time - the wail of mass despair was right behind her.

  ‘Were the fuck is she?’ came a shout from the complex of tents clustered around the red and yellow. She knew that voice. That was the doctor - the false doctor, Sophokles.

  ‘She ran!’ another man said.

  ‘Get her brat!’

  ‘He’s got a sword!’

  Melitta was on the point of fleeing down the long avenue that ran back towards the gully when she heard Sophokles’ voice, and the power of her brother’s oath washed over her. She got her bow up, drew her akinakes and rode right up to the side wall of the great pavilion, Bion picking his way among the spiderweb of supporting stays. When she got there, she reached out and slit the walls of the tent from top to bottom so that they folded away on their supports, and then she was in the tent. She let the knife dangle from its wrist strap, nocked an arrow and watched a man chasing a boy a little younger than her brother - a bronze-haired boy with a sword. He turned and slashed at his attacker.

  ‘Just kill him,’ Sophokles shouted.

  Melitta’s first arrow hit Sophokles in the side just below his pointing arm. He never saw the shot and he went down in a heap and then her second arrow was in the man chasing the boy.

  ‘Come with me!’ she shouted at the boy. She dropped her bow into the gorytos at her waist and extended her left hand.

  Her brother would have known what to do, but this boy just looked at her. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

  Sophokles was up again, holding his side. Her light bow hadn’t put an arrow through his thorax. ‘Who the fuck are you?’ he said. He was two horse-lengths away.

  ‘Up!’ Melitta said to the boy. ‘Now!’

  ‘Do I have to do everything myself?’ Sophokles said, stepping over the body of the other man. Two more men came into the tent at his shoulders. He scooped a spear off the floor.

  He was distracted for a vital second when a third man pushed into the huge tent from the largest side corridor with a struggling woman in his arms. ‘I have her!’

  ‘Just kill her!’ Sophokles called. ‘Ares! Are you fools?’

  Finally, after a hesitation that seemed to Melitta to last for aeons, the boy reached up and took her hand, his eyes fixed on the struggles of the woman. Bion moved under her, and she gave a heave and he was up, grabbing her waist and almost pulling her off Bion’s back. Bion backed a step and another. She grabbed at her bow, her own dangling knife cutting the top of her thigh.

  Sophokles cocked back his spear. ‘That boy is not for you,’ he said. ‘Hand him over - I’ll pay you gold. Gold! Understand?’ He pointed at a gold armband he wore. ‘Gold, you stupid barbarian.’ Aside, he said, ‘Fucking barbarians.’

  ‘One-Eye said to capture the woman and her son,’ a Macedonian accent said - one of the men behind the Athenian assassin. He was armoured like an officer, with fine gold bands on an iron cuirass. ‘Do not kill her.’

  Sophokles looked around like a man who has suffered one indignity too many. ‘Fuck you, Macedonian,’ he said. He whirled and plunged his spear into the neck of the officer, downing him instantly.

  Melitta got her bow in her hand. She caught a flash of movement from the far doorway, and there was Philokles with a sword in his hand. He kicked a man in the back of the knee and the man went down with a curse.

  Of course, Philokles had no idea who she was. He glanced at her and grabbed the woman on the ground. ‘My son!’ she shouted.

  ‘I’m rescuing you, you stupid bitch,’ Philokles said. At the word rescue, every head in the tent turned, and the action seemed to Melitta to speed up. Sophokles and Philokles recognized each other.

  ‘Enter the drunk,’ the assassin said.

  ‘He’s trying to kill them because he works for Olympias,’ Philokles called out. �
��Not for One-Eye. Kill him!’

  ‘Hermes, you are a pest,’ the false doctor said. He cocked back the spear he held and threw it.

  Philokles managed in one athletic twist to let go of the woman, bump her with his hip hard enough to knock her flat and deflect the spear.

  ‘Damn you!’ Sophokles cursed. ‘You have the luck of Tyche herself !’ he said.

  Melitta shot him in the back of the knee. It was the least armoured part of him that she thought she could hit, and the man had turned his back on her. Then, with the surge of elation that came with a really good shot, she backed her gelding out of the slit in the tent, wheeled her horse and rode.

  Satyrus took too much time - a subjective eternity - to realize that his horse was thrashing like a mad thing because he was almost surrounded by elephants. They were in two long columns, each of twenty or more beasts, and he was between them, however he had managed that. There were men around him, on foot - skirmishers or psiloi or just men who had lost their way as he had - and none of them offered him any threat. He passed a Median peltastes in spotted trousers so close that the weary man’s shoulder brushed his horse.

  He got his horse under some semblance of control just as the elephants, obeying shouted commands, began to shamble from their deep files into an open line. His gelding broke into a panicked run, headed past the elephants and there were bellows of rage - elephantine rage, monster noises from legend in the dust that frightened him as thoroughly as they spooked his mount. He had no control of his charger, and the big gelding passed elephant after elephant before bursting through their line, so close to one great beast that Satyrus, had he been less afraid, might have touched the legs of the behemoth as he went by.

  To his left, a pair of the animals were fighting, both creatures on their hind legs, tusks locked, blood weeping from their hides, the men on their backs clinging for their lives. As he watched, one serpentine trunk grasped a mahout, coiled around his arms and ripped him screaming from his perch on the head of the enemy elephant. Satyrus watched in horrified fascination as the man’s body was dropped at the elephant’s feet and meticulously trampled.