Force of Kings

21

Satyrus rode up to Seleucus in the middle of his column, with dust rolling over them like storm clouds, and the plains of High Asia stretching on either hand, rolling land as far as the mountains.

Antiochus saw him first, and left the column with a whoop, and then Satyrus was abreast of Diodorus, and they clasped hands.

‘Where, by all the Titans, did you come from?’ Diodorus asked.

‘The west.’ Satyrus felt his heart swell to see them all — to know he’d done it. He’d ridden all the way around Antigonus in twenty days, and unless Lysimachos was asleep, the juncture of the armies was only a day or two away. ‘Lysimachos should be on the Sangarius by now.’

Antiochus had a parchment map. Satyrus got his out of his shoulder bag — it had wine stains, food stains, water stains, but he knew it as if it was his own body.

‘Antigonus is in Arginousa. His rearguard was at Kotiaeio two days ago.’ Antiochus slapped Satyrus on the back again, looked over his shoulder. ‘There’s a woman!’ he said.

‘My sister,’ Satyrus said. ‘The queen of the Assagetae. The Sakje scouts on your right flank are ours, and there will be more coming in.’

‘You all know each other,’ Seleucus said. His normally serious expression was replaced with humour, as Melitta embraced Diodorus and then Crax.

‘Party in the prodromoi camp tonight,’ Crax shouted, ignoring the presence of the King of Babylon. Most of the prodromoi of the Exiles were Sakje tribesmen.

Seleucus put his head down over the notes on the paper. ‘I need to press north up the Doryleaion road,’ he said after a moment. ‘That shortens Lysimachos’s route to me and puts pressure on Antigonus so that he can’t press down the river valleys and fight Lysimachos alone.’ He smacked his fist into his palm. ‘It’s ours to win, now.’

Suddenly, the tribe of rich, aristocratic Macedonian officers around Seleucus came into their own. Seleucus decided his arrangements in seconds, and sent his son and Diodorus north with his guard cavalry, the Exiles, and the cream of his Persian cavalry.

‘As fast as you can go — up the throat. I care not whether you win or lose but I want you to engage his men today.’ His voice snapped like a whip, and a dozen young Macedonian noblemen rode away with particular orders — to the satraps, to the most trusted Persian nobles, to the Exiles and the Aegema and the Companions. The rest of the army — even the elephants — turned almost as one man and left the road. In ten minutes, there was nothing to show but eddies of dust, and then the cavalry came — most of them moving at a fast trot, six files wide, filling the road, their harness making the music of Ares as they went. The Exiles were already twenty stades north. The Aegema had to ride up from the rearguard, the elite regiment changing horses on the march. The Persians were the best mounted and most colourful — four thousand picked riders.

Melitta broke free from Sappho to whisper to her brother. ‘We should go back east,’ she said. ‘Lysimachos needs to know.’

‘The king and queen of the Bosporus shouldn’t have to be messengers,’ Seleucus said. ‘And the Exiles are, technically, your troops.’

‘Thankfully, I am not paying their wages,’ Satyrus said. ‘And Melitta and I know where to go from here. Your scouts might waste a day.’

Seleucus waved to Crax. ‘Tell me the towns north of here — and their distances.’

‘Prumnessos — six stades. You can see the roofs. Then Akroinos — just a border castle. And then Ipsos. About ninety stades.’ He shrugged. ‘But the road curves.’

Seleucus put the point of his dagger on Satyrus’s stained map. ‘Akroinos,’ he said. ‘Ipsos if Antigonus hesitates this afternoon.’

‘Akroinos or Ipsos,’ Satyrus said. He clasped the King of Babylon’s hand.

‘Day after tomorrow dawn,’ Seleucus said.

It was odd to leave the army. But Satyrus was beginning to enjoy the war in the spaces between. A war that depended on stamina and navigation. It was like fighting at sea.

‘This is what the Sakje do,’ Melitta explained. ‘We ride the Sea of Grass, and we come and go. We know where we are — and no enemy knows as much.’

They were back over the long low ridge from which Satyrus had seen Seleucus in the morning. They had fewer than two hundred tribesmen, and fifteen of Draco’s men. Draco had had to bow out.

‘Too damned old,’ he said. ‘It burns me, but I’ll just slow you down.’

Satyrus left him with Sappho.

Nightfall — the hardest day yet. Two hundred stades. Satyrus had used all four of the horses he had behind him. They were edging north of their easterly back trail, looking for the men Melitta had sent upriver with Scopasis.

Scopasis’s scouts found them at last light, at the confluence of the Parthenios and the Sangarius. The water roared away, and the Sakje were on the other side of the river. Satyrus prepared himself to ride east to the ford but the Sakje threw ropes to each other, put a line of horsemen across the river to break up the heavy flow, and Satyrus rode across, cooled if not refreshed.

Now they were on the north bank of the Sangarius, with six hundred horsemen.

Scopasis led them to a fire and gave them koumis. Satyrus thought that it tasted so foul that he usually avoided it, but tonight everything was delicious, and he drank deep.

‘Antigonus has horsemen all across the plains to the west,’ Scopasis said, waving his eating knife in the last light of the red sun. ‘They scout like children playing a game — they only ride the easy paths.’

‘Today or tomorrow there will be a fight due west of here,’ Satyrus said. ‘Where is Lysimachos?’

Scopasis sighed. ‘Somewhere behind me. They are so slow, we wish to fight without them.’ Scopasis pointed north. ‘They should be at the ford tonight.’

Satyrus wanted to go to sleep but he was haunted by the idea that after all their work, Antigonus could end up engaging Seleucus alone, because the man had boldly lunged forward to save Lysimachos.

‘If you two took all the Sakje straight west along the river — before first light — moving like Sakje …’ He drew it in the dirt, by firelight.

Scopasis saw it first. ‘With luck, we appear on their flank when they face Diodorus. With no luck, we alarm their sentries and cause them to act like ants in a nest when the bear comes.’ He nodded.

Melitta stretched. ‘Why wait until dawn?’ she said.

They were gone into the moonlight before Satyrus was done with his barley soup.

Satyrus wandered over to his troopers. ‘Relax,’ he said. ‘I’m not riding until dawn.’

That got him a cheer.

Two hours after dawn, and he was embracing Apollodorus, and Charmides.

‘You ride too fast for me,’ Charmides said.

‘I’m getting you ready for a nice Sauromatae bride,’ Satyrus joked. ‘Pack up, gentlemen. The battle is now.’

That stirred them.

‘Where?’ Apollodorus and Anaxagoras asked together.

‘A hundred stades from here.’ Satyrus shrugged.

Apollodorus ran off. Nikephoros came up, heard the news, and ran off to the Apobatai.

Satyrus didn’t dismount. He rode to Prepalaus, who was inspecting his Macedonians, gathered his staff, and Lysimachos. He spent ten minutes explaining. The scraps of his map were redrawn on virgin parchment.

Satyrus writhed in an agony of their indecision for as long as it took a smith to pour a bronze ingot. They were quite a contrast to Seleucus.

He debated saying something — he, the youngest, and by far the least of them — but the one who knew the terrain.

But he sensed that Prepalaus wanted an excuse to delay battle, and that the man’s dislike of him could be the excuse.

Satyrus rode down the column and fetched Stratokles, who was with the mercenaries.

The man embraced him like a long-lost brother. Satyrus was surprised at the Athenian’s enthusiasm.

‘I need you to shepherd the alliance,’ he said. ‘Every minute counts.’

Stratokles had been standing with his men, and with Herakles — now the taxiarch of two thousand Ionian hoplites. Herakles saluted smartly. Satyrus waved, and Stratokles mounted, and they rode back up the column.

Stratokles took Lysimachos aside and spoke to him — low tones, urgency.

Then he came back out of the tent to Satyrus and mounted. ‘The thing is done,’ he said. ‘I’m going to lead my men.’

Satyrus went back into the tent — already too hot. Lysimachos was putting on his armour.

‘You may stay here,’ he told the Macedonian strategos. ‘The Bosporons and my Thracians are marching. And we will march all night.’

The first cavalry skirmish was so obviously a feint that Demetrios ignored it and led his cavalry east, looking for Lysimachos. But before the day was two hours old, his pater sent a recall, claiming that there were thousands — that was the word the messenger said — thousands of cavalry coming up the lake road from Synadda.

Demetrios’s men were in high training, and they responded perfectly, so that his rough skirmish line going west changed front to the south in half an hour, and they began to sweep back south and west. The centre of the line contacted enemy cavalry north of the road, and Demetrios ran out of daylight trying to cut them off. But at nightfall, he rode the line of his campfires. He had secured his father from surprise. And his best men picked up a pair of prisoners that confirmed his suspicion. He was facing Seleucus. From the south.

‘Good for Neron,’ he said.

In the mists before true dawn, he brought up the best of his own Companions. He briefed his officers in the courtyard of the temple at Cybele, and many of them prayed there. The omens were all auspicious.

His enemy’s omens must have been auspicious, too. Demetrios came down the hills into the denser mist of the valley floor, his cavalry line formed parallel to the road, visible across the plain, and the enemy charged him — formed wedges of professional cavalry on superb horses.

Both sides charged twice. They were well matched. Demetrios killed a Macedonian officer in the second charge — someone important — and then there were armoured troopers in blue cloaks on his southern flank, and he extricated his Companions as carefully as he’d engaged them, picked up his Greek mercenaries and came down the hills a third time, to find the road empty.

Throwing out scouts in all directions, he followed them.

He caught them again just as the last mist burned off — a brilliant day with a few high clouds. And there were the blue cloaks — almost a thousand of them. He was close enough to see that their leader was an old man.

Demetrios knew them. They’d captured him as a boy. He nodded.

‘Horns of the Bull,’ he ordered his Greek cavalry on either flank.

And then the folds of earth north of the road sprouted Persians, like Jason sowing dragon’s teeth.

Demetrios had to allow himself to be pushed all the way back to his hills. Only there, when he linked up with his father’s cavalry, could he rally.

But with four thousand more cavalry, he could rule them. He turned about one more time, despite the fatigue of his best men, and pushed down the hills one more time.

The blue cloaks and their Persians had to give the ground now. There was no fighting at all. Both sides were too professional to waste men on a declined engagement. The blue cloaks retreated south down the road, and the Persians covered their flanks.

And then something struck Demetrios in the left flank like a thunderbolt.

Scopasis reined in, wrenching his lance from the corpse of the man he’d gaffed like a fisherman would gaff a salmon in the Tanais River. It took both hands and the strength of his horse to drag the head clear. And the point was bent — the spear ruined.

Melitta put her head down and galloped clear of her own line, headed uphill. Her trumpeter stuck with her. They climbed away from the fight until she could see.

The sun was setting and the road shone like a silver ribbon in the pale green fields on either side. The dust clouds of the cavalry moving below her looked like dandelion tufts.

She was in some enemy’s flank. Her people had ridden all day for this moment, and she wasn’t going to stop them, even though below her a pair of adolescent girls were beheading a man, and another was being scalped, alive.

She took a deep breath.

‘Blow “look at me”.’

The trumpeter put her gold trumpet to her mouth and blew, long and hard, and every tribesman’s head turned.

Melitta raised her spear and pointed south, into the rear of the enemy formation. They outnumbered her twenty to one, but the sun was setting at her back, there was dust in the air, and fleeing men count every foe thrice. Or so the Sakje said.

Demetrios heard the trumpet and his heart sank.

More Persians, or worse, their Saka allies. All the way around his flank — they must have slipped along the ridge.

Demetrios ordered his companions back. The rest, mercenaries and allies, were realists. They’d begun retreating as soon as they heard the trumpet.

They lost men, but they fought through — the enemy were either timid, or far, far fewer than fear had made them. But Demetrios couldn’t risk a defeat — Seleucus was rich in cavalry. So he retired all the way back to his hills, and his horsemen camped where they had started.

But the enemy did not. It was only when dark fell and fires were visible that Demetrios saw that the blue cloaks had broken contact. The road south was empty.

Some of his men cheered. But Demetrios felt alone, and he sent three messengers to his father.

‘You thought perhaps I’d march away and leave you?’ Antigonus said the next morning. ‘We have Seleucus. Lysimachos may still be up near Heraklea — scouts out as far as Gordia and no reports at all.’

Demetrios drew on a wooden table with his dagger. ‘What if Lysimachos were east of us — on the Sangarius?’

Antigonus nodded. ‘It’s possible, but if we strike today, it won’t matter a damn.’

‘Pater-’

‘I make the strategy, boy. Knockout blow. We don’t piss on them — we kick them in the crotch. Right down the road, fast as we can — you cover my left.’ He looked at the scratches in the table. ‘With a little luck, we catch them in mid-afternoon and that’s the war.’

The moon was high when Satyrus found Melitta. Her men were mourning their losses — two gone to the shades.

‘You are too far north,’ she said. ‘We need to fall back to the ridges.’

‘I’m already south of here — there’s a village, Malos, twenty stades south. Nikephoros is resting the infantry there. I came for you.’ Satyrus sat like a statue in the moonlight.

Melitta took his hand. ‘You have finally become a Sakje, brother,’ she said. ‘How many stades have you ridden this week?’

‘All the stades the winds crosses,’ Satyrus said, wearily. ‘And now we need to cross twenty more.’

Even in the moonlight, they could see that the plains at the base of the ridges were alive with moving men and fires. Lysimachos had been even more daring than Satyrus had hoped; he’d launched his army in a race across the plains, and trusted that he’d have time to sort them out if a battle occurred. The best units — Prepalaus’s Macedonians, Lysimachos’s veteran mercenaries, the Thracians — had moved almost as fast as cavalry.

Satyrus found Lysimachos, Stratokles and Prepalaus under the vine trellis of a tavern in Malos. The streets were packed with soldiers, and men were simply lying down on their shields and sleeping.

‘If Antigonus catches us tonight, we’re done,’ Lysimachos said. ‘But we marched a hundred stades today, and crossed a river. We couldn’t have done more.’

‘Seleucus fought a delaying action today,’ Satyrus said. ‘We need to march at dawn. I’d like you to agree to give me all the cavalry at first light — even the Thracians. I can be up with Seleucus by midday.’

Prepalaus shook his head. ‘You can have my cavalry and welcome, but it is our infantry that Seleucus needs.’

Satyrus nodded. ‘But our cavalry will show that we are near. And perhaps … perhaps Antigonus will make a mistake.’

Demetrios had to admit that the blue cloaks were excellent cavalry. He ushered them around the valley floor but he couldn’t corner them, and their Persian allies stayed loyal, despite gifts of money sent blatantly across the valley to them. Neron came back from one such foray shaking his head.

‘I spoke to a noble named Darius. They are all named Darius. He said that such behaviour would be despicable, and did he look like a Greek?’ Neron shrugged.

Demetrios sent more and more men up the ridges, trying to flank the Persians or cow them into retreat, and by late morning he had moved them back. But his horses were still tired from the day before and needed water and better food — grain.

The sun was high above them, grilling man and horse together, when the blue cloaks turned by squadrons to the right and formed four deep rhomboids, the points facing him, and their outriders, armed with bows, began to gall his Greek cavalry.

Demetrios looked back up the road to the north. He’d screened his father rather well, he thought — the pikemen were coming on in long columns of files, ready to form at a moment’s notice but free to walk their fastest, and their pikes travelled in carts to save their energy in the broiling sun.

Demetrios shook his head at Neron. ‘He can’t actually mean to make a stand,’ he said, pointing at the old man on the horse, a stade away.

‘That is Antiochus with him,’ Neron said. ‘I have it from a prisoner.’

‘My would-be rival,’ Demetrios said. He rubbed his chin. ‘Apple.’

His groom-slave handed him an apple.

Demetrios took a bite and gave the rest to his horse. ‘Have we got a charge in us, Philip?’ he asked his phylarch.

‘Not unless the horses can smell water, King.’ Philip shook his head and dismounted.

Demetrios agreed, but this was taking too long. That’s all the old bastard over there wanted — to waste his time.

‘That can’t be good,’ Philip said from behind him. Before he was done speaking, Neron swore and galloped away, headed for the ridge, where a little knot of Greek cavalry were rallying, silhouetted against the ridge line.

More men came streaming over the ridge.

‘Lycos, go with Neron. Get me a report and bring it to my father.’ Demetrios turned his horse and trotted his horse all the way to where his father sat, sweltering in his armour. He and all his officers were peering up the ridges.

‘Kick them in the crotch, I said.’ Antigonus shook his head. ‘You’re pissing on them.’

‘Pater, my horses are blown and need water, my remounts are all with you, and the fucking Persians have outflanked my stupid Greeks again,’ Demetrios said.

Antigonus cursed. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you needed to water your horses?’ This from a man who grumbled ‘don’t trouble me with details’. ‘Aphrodite’s quivering cunny, boy, if we need water, we’ll water. I’ll push the pikes at them. Bring the cavalry back through us. I’ll put elephants on my flanks. They have no infantry — they’re not going to stand, are they?’ He motioned for his officers.

Neron rode into the command group like a lightning bolt. ‘It’s Lysimachos,’ he said. ‘The cavalry behind our flank are Thracians.’

Antigonus paled under his tan. Demetrios thought he saw something go out of his father then — perhaps the daimon that men spoke about.

‘Lysimachos,’ Antigonus said. He was looking down the road towards the blue cloaks, who had just faced about and begun to retreat. And they were cheering as they went. ‘Ares fucking Aphrodite and all the gods watching. Missed him by that much.’

Demetrios sighed. ‘We can still push forward.’

Antigonus shook his head. ‘No. No … we’ll roll the dice we have. Camp here, rest everyone. Fight tomorrow. Edge us west until our flank’s on the Kaistros river. And fortify the front. Let’s not make it easy for them.’

Six stades away, Satyrus sat with Diodorus and Antiochus, Crax and Melitta, Andronicus and Scopasis, Calicles, Anaxagoras and Charmides. On the ridge just east of the extreme flank of Demetrios’s cavalry line, the rightmost file of the Persian satrapal cavalry was linked up with the leftmost file of Satyrus’s bodyguard and the Thracians. Their line was continuous, and Melitta’s knights had already turned the flank further north. The Greek cavalry were retreating as fast as they could out of the shower of arrows, and Melitta’s men were stopping to retrieve every shaft they shot. The impetus had already gone out of the fight.

Coenus rode up out of the dust with his Tanais hippeis, and Eumenes of Olbia with his. Satyrus embraced them both.

‘Will your men be my Companions?’ Satyrus asked Coenus. ‘Will you command them?’

Coenus shook his head. ‘No. I dislike command. Let Eumenes have it — he has the spark. But I’ll ride at your side.’

Satyrus turned to Eumenes. ‘It seems rude to offer second best,’ he said.

Eumenes smiled at Coenus. ‘It would be odd if you offered it to me before you offered it to my teacher.’

Charmides was delighted at the news. ‘Too much responsibility for me,’ he said.

Eumenes put his arm around the young man. ‘You remind me of a young man I once knew.’

Coenus remained mounted. ‘That’s the problem with age and nostalgia, Eumenes. After a while, they all remind you of someone.’

Almost at his feet, Apollodorus came toiling up the ridge, two hundred hoplite-armed marines at his back, running like the athletes they were, and behind them, the Apobatai, running just as hard, with Nikephoros.

Apollodorus stopped at the top of the hill, tilted his helmet back on his head, and bellowed, ‘Finish as you started!’

The laggards put on a burst of speed, and the column closed up. Apollodorus stopped at Coenus’s feet and saluted.

Coenus laughed. ‘You want to impress the crap out of the King of Babylon,’ he said, leaning from his mount. ‘He’s the well-dressed fellow — right there.’

Apollodorus smiled and led his marines over the ridge.

Coenus watched as he ran up to Seleucus. Saw Seleucus salute.

Satyrus came up next to him. ‘I have that feeling,’ he said.

Coenus nodded. ‘As do I. Do me a favour?’

Satyrus turned to the older man. ‘Anything.’

‘The night before battle, your father did a thing: he gathered his friends and made sacrifice to the gods. And we sang — sometimes the Iliad. And then we drank together. Do it tonight. Most of us are here.’

There were tears in the old man’s eyes.

‘Most of us still alive, I mean. And the shades of the rest … they’ll be here, too.’

Satyrus looked over the fields below him on the ridge. Almost at his feet, a stone-walled farm with a big yard was like a small fortress at the edge of the plain, and the dusty Asian fields rolled away, littered in shining scarlet poppies as far as the eye could see to the haze raised by the opposing army. In the distance, the small hamlet of Ipsos rested on dry stream bed. Irrigation made the farther fields a lurid green, while the higher fields of poorer farmers were a greyer, sparser colour. All would be tramped flat on the morrow, rich and poor together.

Satyrus thought on that a moment.

‘There will be more shades yet, this time tomorrow,’ he said.