Funeral Games

13

P hilokles 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.

He galloped past and his fears changed from terror of the elephants to concern that his gelding had started to move heavily, starved of air, his flanks heaving and shuddering. Despite his panic, Satyrus got his mount clear of the last elephants and then pulled him in to let him breathe. Off to his right, he could see the flash of bronze and steel and hear, clear as a play, the desperate rage of another kind of monster – the two phalanxes grinding away at each other.

Satyrus’s mind began to function for the first time since he escaped the Bactrians. He felt deeply ashamed at his own panic, but he knew that he had no hope of finding Eumenes in the dust.

On the other hand, Diodorus and the hippeis were just on the other side of the phalanx. The phalanx had sixteen thousand men – at the normal fighting depth, they were a thousand wide, or three thousand podes at battle order. Five stades.

Philokles had said that Diodorus needed to know about the camp.

He rode around the shoulder of the phalanx, pushing the poor gelding as hard as he dared. The horse was used up – the elephants had caused it more fatigue in five minutes of terror than the rest of the ride put together. But he was safe for the moment. He was riding down the back of the army, and he was surprised at how empty the battlefield was. A few bodies lay on the ground, and a few men cried out for water, but his charger’s hoof beats hid the worst of the sounds, and he detoured around the biggest piles of bodies as best he could in the thick salt dust, which bit at his throat and his eyes. He was so thirsty he thought of plundering a corpse for its canteen.

It took him too much time to realize that he had a canteen. He cursed his own panic and got some water in his mouth, even as his mount stumbled from a canter to a slow trot. He could feel the change in the battle line here – he could no longer see the back of the phalanx, and the sound of the shouting to his left was more triumphant. He turned his weary horse towards the shouting, hoping he had ridden five stades. It was hard to measure time in the battle haze.

Ahead, in the white-grey clouds, there was a trumpet call – a familiar trumpet call. That was Andronicus with the silver trumpet of the hippeis.

Wasn’t it?

At his feet, there were smiling men with crescent-shaped shields. They were loping forward and pointing, and they ignored him. He rode past them. Farther on he saw more peltastai, all moving forward, and he guessed that the enemy’s flank was crumpling. The men he passed were drinking water, or shouting to each other, or plundering bodies. What they weren’t doing was turning into the open flank of the enemy phalanx.

He thought about what Philokles had said about men who had won a fight being hesitant to enter a second fight. And he kept his horse moving, because he suspected that when the big gelding stopped, he wouldn’t move again. They kept moving east, or what seemed in the haze to be east, roughly parallel to Eumenes’ original battle line, as best he could tell in the heat and the haze.

Then there were no more infantrymen. He heard several trumpet calls, one of which might have been familiar. Satyrus couldn’t see anything, and he couldn’t hear anything except the sounds of the fighting behind him. So he turned his horse further to the left, hoping that Diodorus had continued to win on his flank, and thinking that he had heard the trumpet in that direction.

If Diodorus had lost the initial cavalry action, Satyrus reasoned, the peltastai would hardly have pushed so deep into the enemy’s lines.

The sun was enough past noon that he began to become confident in directions – even with the haze, the sun was a hard, round, white disc in the sky, and he could reason out north and south, east and west. The phalanx fight was now west. Diodorus’s trumpet was east and north.

Probably.

The longer Satyrus rode, the less certain he became. By the time his canteen was almost empty, he had again begun to wonder where he was. The solidity of the phalanx was long gone, the haze rose like a live thing, choking him and limiting his sight to a few horse-lengths, and the noise of the phalanx was so far away that he might have been off the battlefield.

The Median peltastes arose out of the dust like a mythological creature, stabbing with a javelin, trying to unhorse Satyrus. Satyrus took the first thrust in the centre of his abdomen where his cuirass was strongest and he lost his seat. His gelding stopped, kicked out weakly at the peltastes and stumbled a few steps forward. Then the horse came to a stop and with the slow inevitability of winter avalanche in the mountains, he fell. Satyrus kicked clear and rolled to his feet, tangled in his cloak. When he got up, his side was wet where his clay canteen had broken, and the peltastes was on him, stabbing twice with his javelin, fast as the strike of an adder. Satyrus stumbled back, stunned, with sweat and salt in his eyes. He got his right hand under his left armpit and drew his sword, and the Mede hesitated.

Satyrus wiped his eyes with his damp cloak. The Mede measured him and looked at the dying horse, stepped back and threw his javelin like a thunderbolt, but he miscast and it tumbled, and the shaft struck Satyrus a heavy blow on the tip of his left shoulder, and a lance of pain shot down his arm. Then the man turned to run and hesitated again.

Satyrus stepped forward, pulling his cloak over his left arm, and cut at the man before he could flee. The Mede jumped back, a look of panic on his face, and they both heard a trumpet, quite close.

Now that his horse wasn’t moving, Satyrus could hear the sounds of fighting just to the north – horses and men. Somewhere nearby, a maddened steed gave a trumpet of rage. Somewhere else in the murk, men were wounded and screamed their pain, In a matter of heartbeats, the sound was all around him, and so were phantoms of battle, movements in the opaque curtain of salt.

The Mede came back at him, a knife held high in his right hand and his small shield of wicker and hide thrusting from the left.

Satyrus had time to think, He has no training whatsoever. It was a thought that gave him a feeling of calm and superiority, and he side-stepped and cut the man’s knife hand at the wrist. He was too weak to cut through the bone, but the man’s weapon went flying and the man fell to his knees, clutching his maimed hand like a mother with a sick child. In two beats of his heart, the Mede was transformed from a monster of violence to a helpless victim.

Satyrus left him. He stepped past, to the body of his horse, but there was nothing for him to take, and the feeling of success, of survival, left him as fast as it had come.

His breastplate weighed on his chest like an iron anvil, and he was soaked in sweat, and his mouth was dry as sand, and his head ached. His left shoulder hurt as it had after a fall from his horse as a child, and he was afraid to look at it to see if there was blood. And he was still lost.

His father had been famous for his ability to navigate a battlefield on sound alone.

Tears stung his eyes.

‘I will not cry,’ he said aloud, and started to walk forward, towards the sounds of combat. He kept his sword in his hand, more for the symbolism than for any use a sword would be to a dismounted man in a cavalry melee.

A riderless horse ran out of the curtain, eyes white with fear, and knocked him flat. He rolled from under the beast’s hooves and there were horses all around him.

‘Rally on me!’ a voice shouted. ‘Sound the rally!’

The trumpet rang out – a trumpet he had heard a thousand times as a child in Tanais, and he pushed to his feet, heedless of the hooves flying around him.

‘Rally on me! Form a rhomboid! Phylarchs sound off!’ Diodorus shouted.

The trumpet rang out again, a long call. The horses around Satyrus were jostling for position, every man struggling to get his mount to the right place in a haze of dust and a crowd of animals. Satyrus was crushed between two horses, and he ducked to get under a belly and got kicked in the back of his head by a rider.

‘Hey!’ he said. ‘Hey, help!’ The last came out more like a squeak. He was that close to finding his uncle and he was going to be trampled or crushed.

A spear point glittered wickedly in front of his face. ‘Stand where you are,’ Hama said.

‘Hama, it’s me!’ he yelped back.

Hama reached out and grasped his wrist, sword and all, and hauled him up on his crupper. ‘Men die on foot when horses are this thick,’ the big Keltoi chief said. ‘Little lord, what for fucking gods are you here?’

Satyrus got his leg over Hama’s horse. ‘I will not cry,’ he said aloud. The relief was so great that his eyes filled and his throat hurt from more than salt dust.

The trumpet sounded again.

‘Anyone have a clue where the fuck we are? Phylarchs, sound off!’ Diodorus said.

‘File one! Two men missing!’

‘File two! All present!’

‘File three! One man dead!’

‘File four! Four men missing!’

‘File five! All present!’

Hama shouted, ‘File six! Two men missing! Lord Satyrus on my horse!’ He pushed his own horse forward and men made way for him.

Off to the left, file seven and eight reported. Hama got his horse next to the hyperetes. Diodorus glanced at Hama. Satyrus opened his mouth and his uncle’s hand came up like a blow, demanding silence.

‘File nine! All present!’

‘File ten! Three men missing!’

Diodorus nodded sharply. ‘Thirteen are missing out of a hundred. That’s bad.’ He looked around. ‘Anybody see Crax or Andronicus?’

‘No, sir,’ came a chorus of answers. The salt dust swirled.

‘Dion – take file one off to the right. Don’t go far – ten horse-lengths a man. Return on one trumpet blast. See if you can find anybody. Paches – take file ten and do the same to the left. Go!’

He turned to Hama and Antigonus. ‘Where the fuck are we?’ Without waiting for an answer, he turned on Satyrus. ‘What are you doing here, child?’

Satyrus took a breath and concentrated on having his voice level. ‘I came with a message,’ he said.

‘What message?’ Diodorus was all but kneeling on his horse’s back, trying to see over the dust.

‘But first, you are about five stades beyond the rightmost point of the enemy phalanx, Uncle. And all the peltastai have been driven off. I rode from there.’

Diodorus looked at him for a long breath. ‘You are sure? Men’s lives depend on this.’

Satyrus choked a little. ‘No,’ he said hesitantly. ‘I’m not sure.’

Hama steadied him with a hug. ‘But pretty sure, yes?’

Satyrus met his uncle’s eyes. ‘Pretty sure, Uncle.’

Diodorus nodded sharply. ‘If you’re right, I’ll never doubt you again. Hama – get Paches back in and put him in front – we feel our way along the path Satyrus indicated. One troop of horse behind our own phalanx would panic them in this crap. One more trumpet call, hyperetes.’ He took Satyrus from Hama. His hard grey eyes locked on Satyrus’s eyes. ‘Message?’ he said. He held out his hand and a canteen was put in it.

‘There are Saka and Bactrians in the camp,’ Satyrus said. His uncle’s beard was grey. It had once been red.

‘Ares’ balls, boy!’ Diodorus looked around. ‘I have a hundred men – less. What the fuck?’

A flash of gold, and Crax cantered out of the dust. ‘You called,’ he said, his armour flashing.

Diodorus laughed. ‘Tyche is smiling!’ he shouted, and there was an answering roar from the rank behind him. ‘You have fourth troop?’

‘Six missing,’ Crax said, with a salute. ‘I’ll get them lined up with you.’

‘Satyrus says we’re on the flank of the phalanx, and that it’s that way. What do you think, Crax?’ Diodorus handed the canteen to the Getae officer.

Crax took the flask, drank deeply and put the wooden stopper back. ‘Sounds right to me,’ Crax said with a wink at Satyrus – a wink that Satyrus appreciated. Suddenly there was a great weight on his shoulders – the burden of everyone’s lives.

Crax was gone into the salt and Diodorus shouted, ‘Remount! Anyone have a horse!’

A trooper that Satyrus didn’t know pushed forward. ‘Here, Strategos!’

Satyrus went straight from his uncle’s crupper to the back of a dark bay with a beautiful animal-skin saddlecloth and silver mounts on the bridle.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘You owe him for the horse, boy!’ Diodorus said. ‘And the tack!’ He gave a wicked smile. Then he got his horse under him and motioned to Satyrus. ‘Someone get him a spear and a helmet. Right up with me, boy. You’re the guide. If we fight, get your animal in behind mine and keep your Ares-addled head down. Put that toy sword away. Now, which way?’

Satyrus found, to his immense joy, that he could feel which direction the phalanxes were. ‘If they haven’t moved,’ he muttered. His heart raced and felt a very different fear from the fear of being torn to pieces by elephants. This was the fear of disappointing his friends – of being a child. He nudged his horse into motion. ‘This way,’ he said.

‘March – walk!’ Diodorus called, and the trumpet rang out.

Satyrus sat straighter. He was actually leading a troop of cavalry.

Men rode up to Diodorus and then rode away, and there were more trumpet calls and more orders. Satyrus, an arm-length from the man he called his uncle, understood that Diodorus was trying to get his two troops aligned while still searching the battlefield for his two missing troops.

‘You know what you’re doing, boy?’ Diodorus asked after a few minutes’ riding.

‘Listen!’ Satyrus said. He could hear a low roar to the front and right.

‘Halt!’ Diodorus shouted. ‘No trumpet! Paches – get out there and tell me what you find – go a stade or two, no more!’

They were halted in a vast, rolling cloud of white and grey. There were bodies under their hooves, and as Satyrus watched, a pair of Thracian peltastai emerged from the white dust. They were so shocked that they stopped.

‘Eumenes?’ one asked. He gestured at the chaplet of roses he wore over his fox-hide cap.

Satyrus nodded. ‘Eumenes!’ he called.

By his shoulder, Crax rattled away in a barbarian tongue, and the two Thracians turned and ran off into the salt.

‘I said we were about to charge,’ Crax said. ‘I’ve found some troopers from second troop, but they’re lost. Maybe ten men.’

Diodorus took his helmet off. ‘I fucking hate this. Somebody could smack us silly and we’d never know they were coming. This dust could hide anything.’

‘Canteen’s empty,’ Crax said. He spat. ‘Worst dust I’ve ever seen. Fucking salt.’

Paches came out of the swirl. ‘Boy’s dead on,’ he said, with a salute towards Satyrus, whose heart filled with joy. ‘Less than two stades – the back ranks of their phalanx. Nothing in our way,’ the man continued, his voice rising with excitement.

Diodorus looked around. ‘Well,’ he said, pulling his helmet back on and tying the cheekpieces, ‘This is where we all get to be heroes.’ He looked at Satyrus. ‘Get in the middle, boy, so I can get you home alive.’ He turned his horse. ‘Everyone get it? Into the shieldless flank. Don’t fuck around. Get in deep and cause panic. Stay with me till you hear the trumpet. When they break, let someone else kill them – go forward to our lines. Understand? If you lose me, rally on the ravine. The camp is gone. READY?’

Two hundred parched throats found the energy to shout, Yes!

‘March – walk! No trumpets!’

They were off. Now Satyrus was pushed back and back until he was in the sixth rank, the very centre of the rhomboid. He knew the drill, but it was different in the dust. He was between two complete strangers, but the one on his left turned a pair of bloodshot eyes from deep within a Thracian helmet. ‘Nothing to worry about, kid!’ he said. ‘Safe as being home. First time?’ he asked.

‘Yes!’ Satyrus shouted over the rising noise of their passage.

‘Careful with that spear, then!’ his new file-mate said. ‘Don’t hit Kalyx with it. He’s not the forgiving kind.’

The other men laughed.

Half a stade passed very quickly.

‘Paean!’ said his uncle’s voice. ‘Make them hear you!’

The Paean of Apollo began with four beats of carefully measured rhythmic silence, and Andronicus beat his trumpet with a knife hilt – crack, crack, crack, crack – and the paean bloomed like a flower in the rising dust, an offering to a god who valued more than just slaughter.

Satyrus sang with them, and he was so moved his voice choked, and he felt as if he was one with all these men around him – one pair of arms and legs in a beast with a hundred arms and legs like the titan of legend.

They began to trot.

‘Close up!’ shouted the man on his right. Satyrus was embarrassed to see that he had lost ground. His horse responded beautifully, closing the gap in a few anxious heartbeats, and they were at a canter, the files a little spread from the speed, and then, in an instant, there were men all around him shouting, screams of terror and panic as if the gods had rendered every man witless. Satyrus couldn’t see anything – there was no one to fight, and then, out of nowhere, a sarissa head slid past his knee, the sharp edges cutting his thigh where one enemy soldier, at least, had tried to change his front.

Then they were plunging through the enemy phalanx – Satyrus hoped that it was the enemy phalanx – among hundreds of men in heavy armour, but they were casting their sarissas to the ground and running or dying under the hooves. There were men on foot all around Satyrus and his horse had almost stopped.

He stabbed overarm with his spear at the first hand to try to seize his bridle. These men were desperate – and terrified. Most of them weren’t even fighting back, just trying to push past him, but some either intended to die fighting or simply wanted his horse. A blow in the back nearly unseated him.

He punched back with his spear on reflex and almost lost his seat again as he failed to hit anything.

It looked to him as if the cavalry had lost all of its momentum and cohesion in the impact and now spilled out along the rear face of the phalanx, but the centre of the rhomboid had penetrated deeply – and Satyrus was in the part that had penetrated, lost in a sea of enemies.

For no reason he could discern, Satyrus was now a file-leader. He saw mounted men behind him. He managed to lock his knees on the dark bay’s back and he obeyed his uncle and put his head down so that oncoming foes had only his helmet to attack – the best armoured part of him – and the charger responded by pushing forward through the press. Twice he reared his charger to clear the men in front, and the second time, she lost her footing on a corpse and they fell heavily. The horse rolled off, uninjured, and a spear-butt rammed into the earth inches from Satyrus’s nose. He had lost his spear, but he got the sword out from under his arm, rolled to his feet, ignoring the pain from the old wound in his side, and parried the next blow, lifting the man’s sarissa shaft high and stepping in under it as Philokles had taught. He cut out, almost blind, and his short sword bit into the man’s hand and he screamed, and then Satyrus’s file-partner, the man in the fancy Thracian helmet, spitted him on a spear. ‘Get your horse!’ he shouted.

The charger with the fancy tack was standing obediently just an arm-length away, and Satyrus swarmed up her side as if he was getting onboard a ship – she was a tall horse. The man in the Thracian helmet knocked another fleeing Macedonian flat, and then Satyrus was up, sword in hand, helmet askew but otherwise none the worse.

‘Come on, lad,’ Thracian helm called, and they were off into the dust. Then there were more horsemen, and more – men in blue plumes and cloaks – and then Satyrus had Crax at his shoulder.

And then there were other men – men with bright white shields – shouting and laughing and waving all around him. An officer was yelling for his men to open a file and let the cavalry through.

Satyrus reined in his charger and simply breathed. He was pressed up hard against the white shields, but they were grounding their spears, pushing the bronze butt-spikes into the salt sand.

‘Ares,’ a Macedonian voice said. ‘Look at this child!’

Satyrus peered down at the dust-covered face. ‘Eumenes?’ he asked.

‘Yeah,’ the Macedonian panted. ‘Yeah, Eumenes, kid. Who are you guys?’

‘Hippeis of Tanais!’ Crax roared by his side. Satyrus nodded proudly.

The man behind him slapped his back. ‘Well done, little lord,’ he said.

The trumpet sounded off in the dust.

‘Fucking dust,’ Hama said. The Keltoi had appeared as if by magic.

‘Try being down in it, horse boy,’ the Macedonian said. Then the white-caked face creased in a smile. ‘Thanks, horse boys!’

Another Macedonian called out, ‘First fucking Greeks I’ve ever liked – you saved our arses!’

They were moving again, because the Macedonians were shuffling to the side, opening a lane. Satyrus followed Hama, who was now, apparently, his file-leader. All the other men who should have been in between were gone.

‘Hama?’

‘Shush, lord,’ was his reply. ‘Listen for the trumpet!’

Melitta could see the length of the main avenue of the camp, and there were Saka coming in her direction. She hesitated as long as it took to push her bow deep in her gorytos, and then she was riding towards them at a smart trot, her male burden bouncing like a sack of potatoes.

‘This is embarrassing,’ he said.

‘Don’t talk,’ she replied. ‘Look terrified.’

She rode right at the lead group of Saka – four men and a deeply tanned elder. She raised her whip and called one word in Saka.

‘Mine!’ she said, pointing at the boy across her lap. The elder smiled.

She rode past them without a challenge – she rode the length of the street without so much as a question. At the far end, the avenue was plugged with a roiling mass of Saka who couldn’t decide what to loot first. She pushed forward, her boots rubbing against their boots.

‘The red and yellow tent!!’ she called. ‘Gold and silver!’ Her Sakje had the western accent, but that didn’t bother anyone. She turned and pointed her whip. ‘All the way through the market, cousins!’

‘Thanks, little bride!’ shouted a warrior with tattoos of dragons twined up his arms. Sauromatae warrior maidens were often called ‘little brides’ because in war they earned the right to choose their husbands. Voices laughed, but again no one raised a hand against her – much the opposite. Men moved their horses to let her pass, and she left the crush with nothing bruised but her feet. Once free of the press, she urged Bion to a trot and then a canter, and when she was beyond the rows of cook fires, dangerous pits in the murk, she gave the big gelding his head and his legs opened into a long gallop that ate the ground.

‘It’s like flying!’ the boy at her back said. ‘Are you really a Saka?’

‘I’m Assagatje. My mother is the queen of the Assagatje. Of course, she’s not really a queen. Sakje really don’t…’ She was babbling. She cut herself off. He was very warm, pressed against her back, and calm, in a way she liked. Solid, like her brother. ‘My mother is Srayanka,’ she said.

‘I’m Herakles,’ he said. ‘My mother is Banugul, and my father was a god.’

‘Banugul?’ she said. ‘That’s good. It’s nice to know I rescued the right boy. Try to move your hips – it’s easier on the horse.’

The gully was just beyond the bluff on her left – she could see the loom of the bluff passing her shoulder, and she began to swing the horse wide to the right to avoid the inevitable calamity. The ground changed and she slowed Bion and pulled his head ever further to the west as she felt the horse’s weight change. She was riding right along the edge of the gully.

She was just picking her way south again when she was challenged.

‘Who are you?’ called a voice with more fear than authority.

She could see riders, and carts. ‘Melitta of Tanais,’ she called. ‘With Herakles.’

Women gathered around her.

‘What the fuck?’ Crax croaked. The dust was not subsiding. They’d been an hour in one place, just a stade from where they’d shredded the enemy phalanx. For no reason that they understood, they were waiting near their starting position in the battle line of the early morning. Diodorus had ordered the halt and told men to dismount and other men to get out and scout, and then he’d left Crax in charge and ridden off with Hama. Stragglers wandered in, both their own and other mercenary cavalrymen who’d been in Diodorus’s command, or Philip’s, when the day began.

Dismounted men prowled the ground around them stripping the enemy dead of loot – and water. Other parties searched the salt flats for their dead, and buried them. A young trooper from Olbia went down with heat sickness and suddenly the phylarchs were everywhere, demanding that men empty their canteens.

Andronicus spoke up to Crax. ‘The horses won’t last much longer,’ he said.

Satyrus wondered what his eyes looked like. All the men around him had the eyes of mourners – red-rimmed, red-creased, with red blood in the corners. The salt was vicious. He wiped his eyes on his arm again and felt the burn on his eyelids and his hands and winced.

‘Did we win?’ he asked the man next to him.

‘We won, son. That doesn’t mean the whole army won,’ the man cackled. ‘Got any water?’

‘No,’ Satyrus admitted.

‘I do,’ he said. ‘Cleitus,’ he said, extending an arm.

‘Satyrus,’ he answered, clasping the man’s hand. He felt like a grown man.

The other man offered his water and Satyrus took a swig, and then another before he could stop himself. He handed it back. There was wine in the man’s water – it tasted divine, as if Dionysus had blessed it himself.

‘We’ve found most of our dead, and buried them,’ he said. ‘We didn’t need to ask for a truce to do it, either. In my book, that’s a victory.’

‘We plundered their dead, too,’ another man said.

‘Here comes the strategos,’ Crax called. ‘Stand by your mount!’

Diodorus came up in a new cloud of salt. ‘Call in the scouts, hyperetai. Satyrus, on me. Everyone not actually doing anything, get the fuck off your mount now.’ He turned to Crax. ‘Report!’

‘Most of second troop is in, but not Eumenes,’ Crax said. ‘He vanished in the first melee. Otherwise, we’ve buried our dead.’

Diodorus shook his head. ‘He’s been with us since we started,’ he said. ‘Well, almost.’ He looked around. ‘Not finding his body is hard.’

Crax nodded. ‘Since the first winter in Olbia,’ he said. ‘Maybe he’ll turn up. Anyway, otherwise second is down seventeen. We’re down nine, and first is down thirteen. Third is nowhere to be found, and I swept all the way back to where we hit the Medes in the first hour.’ The Getae officer looked around. The hyperetai of all three troops were shepherding the dismounted men into a column, every man leading his horse. Beyond them, the phalanx was seething as if it was still in combat, and the settling salt dust revealed an angry agitation.

Crax pointed at the activity. ‘This looks bad,’ he said. ‘How bad is it? Did we lose?’

‘Rally point,’ Diodorus said tersely. ‘And we walk to save the horses. It’s bad.’

Crax looked back again. Men in the phalanx were shaking their fists and cursing at each other. ‘How bad?’ he asked.

‘The Macedonian fucks just handed Eumenes to One-Eye. Alive,’ Diodorus said bitterly. ‘I was too late to stop them, the treasonous cunts.’

There were shouts from the phalanx behind them, and then more shouts, and an ugly murmur.

‘Just keep moving, boys,’ Diodorus said. ‘March!’

Crax shook his head. ‘How can such men make their peace with the gods?’ he asked.

Diodorus shook his head. ‘Antigonus took our camp,’ he said. ‘The Argyraspids traded Eumenes for their loot from years past. Can you imagine?’ He went on, ‘If they’d stood their ground, we could have had it back at spear point in the morning. That army was beaten. Listen – every man in our phalanx knows that they’ve been robbed.’

Crax swore expressively in Getae.

Diodorus walked silently, and Satyrus kept his head down to avoid being sent away.

The column of troops set off. They were short of men, missing or dead, but they had also collected several dozen cavalry stragglers and Crax formed them into a fourth troop. Many of them protested against walking in the salt dust, and a few mounted their horses and rode away in disgust, refusing to accept discipline that they felt was foolish. The rest obeyed, obviously glad to have someone to follow, another lesson that was not lost on Satyrus, although he was now so tired that he couldn’t remember what he had done or the order in which it had happened or whether he had been brave or cowardly, but only that he was alive.

Word of the betrayal of Eumenes the Cardian by his own officers began to filter down the column, so that men shook their heads or cursed.

The sun was well down in the sky, and Satyrus couldn’t account for all the hours of the day.

Next to Satyrus, his uncle gathered his officers and issued orders as he walked.

‘When we get to the gully, water the horses by troop, fast as you can. Crax, you cover us while we water. Then we retire past the gully in column till we find the girls, and camp. Every man grooms his mount before he sleeps – we’ll fight again tomorrow. And we’ve lost all our remounts. This is what we have.’

‘Lost our remounts!’ Antigonus said. ‘Zeus Soter, strategos. That’s bad.’

‘Worse than you think, brother,’ Diodorus spat. ‘Don’t let anyone stop. Don’t let anyone fall out. Use force if you have to – we can’t spare a man, even the lost sheep back there. Understand?’

The hyperetai and the troop commanders all nodded, saluted and walked back to their places in the column, and a litany of ‘Close up!’ and ‘Move your arse!’ started to roll up and down the small column.

‘Uncle Diodorus?’ Satyrus asked quietly.

The strategos turned his head and raised one salt-crusted eyebrow.

‘Did we win?’ Satyrus asked.

Diodorus shook his head. ‘I don’t think we won enough,’ he said.

The stream at the bottom of the gully flowed clear and bright despite the events of the day, and Satyrus and his new bay drank greedily. Satyrus washed his face and hands in the crisp water and found that the burns around his eyes were far worse than he’d expected, and he poured handfuls of water over his eyes until a Keltoi trooper pulled him firmly from the stream. He collected the reins of his mare and led her up the far bank of the watercourse.

‘That horse looks like she has some life in her,’ Diodorus said. He had a fig in his fist and was eating it. Between bites, he gave orders. ‘Boy, take that nice horse and go and find the baggage. Should be less than a stade, over the ridge. Then double back and tell us where they are.’

Satyrus took two tries to get himself up on the big mare’s back – his arms were too weak to vault. But he got up, and he pleased himself immensely by giving his uncle a salute. Then he pulled his broad felt petasos hat off his back where it had rested uselessly all day while his face burned raw and pulled it down over his eyes.

The water made a difference. He set his mare at the slope and she got up it with style, her haunches pushing powerfully as they climbed. He patted her neck. ‘Good girl,’ he said.

All her tack was mounted in silver, with silver belt ends and Saka-style buckles. The Greeks seldom used buckles, but they looked wonderful. And the leopard skin made him smile.

As soon as he emerged from the gully end he was in the midst of a horde of camp followers, and there were more all along the trade road going south, hundreds of women, some with children, many crying and more walking in a worse silence. They shied off the road as soon as they saw an armed man, except for a few too tired or too victimized to flinch.

A stade past the eastern end of the gully, he saw pickets – a dozen cavalrymen in three posts. He rode towards them, urging his mount into a canter. She responded easily, crossing the low scrub grass like the wind – the very wind that was dispersing the clouds of salt dust, so that for the first time in eight hours, the Plain of Gabiene was again visible.

Satyrus rode up the ridge to see Tasda, a Tanais-Kelt he’d known all his life, greeting him from the picket.

‘Tasda!’ he called, and his voice cracked. He clasped hands with the man, who removed his helmet.

‘Your sister will rejoice,’ Tasda said soberly. ‘Keep going over the ridge. We have a laager.’

‘Is Antigonus here?’ Satyrus asked.

‘And Eumenes – our Eumenes, that is. We’re all that’s left of our cavalry,’ Tasda said soberly.

Satyrus grinned through his fatigue. ‘Diodorus and the rest are right behind me!’ he said, and all the pickets turned their heads, and Dercorix, another childhood acquaintance, came trotting over.

‘The strategos lives?’ he called.

‘I’ll be back,’ Satyrus said, and turned his horse down the hill.

In a quarter of an hour, they were all together. The officers strained their voices and their authority to keep men from embracing their women and their comrades, and despite the trials of the day, the hippeis got enough eudaimonia from the discovery of their missing comrades to get their horses groomed and their tack stowed before they collapsed to lie sprawled on the ground and be fed by their equally exhausted slaves and followers.

Satyrus and Melitta embraced while Theron berated them.

They ignored him. ‘I rescued this prince Herakles,’ Melitta said proudly, indicating a blond boy smaller than Satyrus who stood behind her. ‘The son of Iskander, no less!’

Satyrus grinned and hugged her again. ‘I didn’t manage anything so heroic,’ he said. ‘But I got to ride in a cavalry charge!’ He looked around. ‘Where’s Philokles?’

Theron spat. ‘Sitting with the women, basking in admiration,’ he said. ‘You are all insane.’

Satyrus couldn’t stop smiling, although he found that he was sitting and couldn’t get up. ‘You came with us of your own free will,’ he said.

Theron shook his head. ‘So I did,’ he said.

Melitta tugged his arm. ‘Come and meet Herakles,’ she said. ‘I like him.’

Just for a moment, Satyrus was jealous. He had never heard his sister like anyone with such fervour. ‘He can’t be much if you had to rescue him,’ Satyrus said.

Melitta gave him a look that indicated that he didn’t know much. ‘He was as smart as you,’ she said. ‘He didn’t lose his head.’

Satyrus was mollified by the comparison. He hugged his sister again. ‘Zeus, that was stupid, sister. What possessed us?’

‘The oath, silly,’ she replied. ‘We swore, right? So every time we have the ability, we have to fight.’

They came to Herakles, standing alone and self-conscious. He was a tall boy, blond like his father, but gawky, his features too sharp and his shoulders too narrow to be the child of a god. Some of the Olbian veterans were watching him, a few staring openly. He was, after all, Alexander’s son.

‘I hate being stared at by common people,’ Herakles said.

Satyrus felt an immediate contrariness for this awkward boy – an unfair dislike. He succumbed to it anyway, as he was tired and beginning to lose the daimon of war and to feel the collapse that followed. ‘No common people here,’ he said. ‘That big man staring at you is Carlus. He was my father’s bodyguard when he defeated your father at the Jaxartes River.’

‘My father was never defeated,’ Herakles responded hotly.

‘Have you ever met anyone who was there?’ Satyrus asked with lazy contempt. ‘Shall we ask Diodorus? Hama?’ He put a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

‘My father is a god!’ Herakles said. ‘You are just a decadent Greek.’

Something about the boy’s defiance made Satyrus smile. ‘Hey – Herakles. It’s okay. We’re alive and a lot of people aren’t. Assassins didn’t get us. Relax!’

Herakles looked around. ‘Why won’t my mother let me in the tent?’ he asked. ‘I hate it when she does this.’

Melitta rolled her eyes behind her new friend’s back, and Satyrus shook his head. ‘Let’s go and get some kykeon,’ he said, taking the boy by the shoulder and leading him away. Melitta shot him a look of thanks, and he shook his head.

It was odd, having a younger boy to support, because Satyrus’s feeling of disorientation vanished when he had to lead the boy. He walked straight up to Crax, who was surrounded by soldiers, and asked where he should put his blanket roll and whether he and the boy could get some food, and Crax dealt with him as if he was any other soldier.

‘Do I look like a hyperetes?’ Crax said. Then he scratched his dusty blond beard and relented. ‘Your baggage and your sister’s is in first troop’s row. There’s wine and salt-fish stew at the head of every street.’ He grinned. ‘Your Aunt Sappho did well for us.’

Satyrus walked down the rows of blanket rolls and packs that littered the ‘street’ (there were no tents) of his troop. He felt like a man. He found his sister’s red wool pack and then his own, opened his leather bag and removed the carefully wrapped gold cups. He also pulled out a wooden plate and a horn spoon.

‘Let’s eat,’ he said, walking back towards the head of the camp.

All around him, men were eating and then going straight to sleep in the evening sun. There was little talk and less laughter. Most men prayed, and many libations were poured in the white sand by men who had felt the hand of a god keeping them alive.

‘Why are they so quiet?’ Herakles asked suddenly. ‘Soldiers are usually so – boisterous.’

Satyrus looked at the other boy and felt old. ‘They fought a battle,’ he said. ‘You did too, or so my sister says.’ He looked at Melitta, who was walking with them, being silent and a little gawky – not herself at all. ‘Nobody feels like talking after a battle. Right?’

‘I do,’ Herakles said. ‘I never get to talk to anybody,’ he said. ‘And I didn’t get to do anything. Your sister rescued me.’

Melitta was starting to look uncomfortable. ‘You helped,’ she said. ‘You didn’t lose your nerve.’

‘My father would have killed them all and laughed,’ Herakles said miserably.

‘You need food,’ Satyrus said, trying to sound commanding. He scooped his wooden bowl full of kykeon, a rich porridge of soft cheese, barley meal and, in this case, wine. ‘Eat!’

Philokles walked up to the fire, filled his bowl and sat down. ‘Good evening,’ he said formally.

‘Good evening,’ Satyrus replied. He was a little shy of the Spartan, aware that he was guilty of gross disobedience.

‘The Lady Banugul is concerned for her son,’ Philokles said. ‘Herakles, you should go to her.’

‘She told me to leave the tent,’ Herakles said, between spoons of porridge.

‘She has just been made a widow,’ Philokles said. ‘Your stepfather-’

‘I have no stepfather. My father is Alexander, the God. My mother should never touch another man.’ Herakles spat the phrases as if he had learned them by rote.

Philokles took a deep breath. ‘Young man, you are not my pupil. But if you were,’ and he gave Satyrus a significant look, ‘I would tell you that your father’s godhood is neither here not there for you – that you are responsible only for your own acts, and need have no concern for your mother or your father. And condemning your mother to a life of celibacy is unfair.’

‘Easy for you to say – you just want to fuck her like every other man.’ Herakles turned his head away.

‘I assure you that I have no interest in sex with your mother. And if you were my pupil, I would now proceed to beat you to obedience.’ Philokles shot Satyrus a look, and Satyrus sighed.

‘Why did you rescue her then?’ Herakles asked. ‘Men only do things for her for one reason – she says it herself!’

Philokles smiled – a look that neither Satyrus nor Melitta had seen in a long time. ‘Once,’ he said, ‘your mother made a poor decision, and tried to kill Satyrus’s father – and me.’ He raised an eyebrow at Herakles. ‘This is an adult explanation. Are you prepared to be an adult, young man?’

Herakles looked around – at Melitta, most of all. ‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Your mother tried to kill us. Instead, we killed all her soldiers. Then, Satyrus’s father gave her an escort and let her go. I wanted her killed.’ Philokles sat back.

Herakles swallowed, hard.

‘When time had passed, I saw how Kineas’s – how Satyrus’s father’s mercy had been the right decision, for gods and men. And then I decided that if I, in my turn, could ever do her a service, then I would gain honour with the gods.’ He nodded brusquely. ‘In this way, I share in the honour of my friend, Satyrus’s father. Understand?’

Melitta nodded. ‘And you have,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ Philokles said. ‘Herakles, if you have finished that bowl, you should give it to Satyrus, so that he can eat, and I will take you to your mother.’

Herakles rose to his feet and handed Satyrus the bowl. ‘Thanks,’ he said.

‘Come back and sit with us,’ Melitta said.

Herakles smiled. ‘Thanks, Lita,’ he said.

Philokles was only gone for as long as it took him to walk to where Sappho’s slaves had pitched a small tent for Banugul and back.

‘Have you eaten?’ Philokles asked Satyrus.

‘Yes,’ Satyrus said.

‘Come with me,’ Philokles said. He didn’t say a word as they walked through the camp, until they came to a third troop mess where Theron sat stirring fish stew. Theron looked at Satyrus and then looked away.

‘Well?’ Philokles asked.

Satyrus hung his head. ‘Master Theron, I come to beg your forgiveness for my bad behaviour.’

Theron nodded. ‘Lad, I am going to offer you the same choice that a tutor once offered me. I know that your actions, and your sister’s, saved lives. I also know that the gods must have worked extra hard to save you from death, and that I gave a year of my life in worry. You understand, boy?’

‘Yes, Master Theron.’

‘Good. Here is your choice. A beating, now, or I leave your service.’ Theron stood up. He was very large.

Satyrus didn’t hesitate. ‘I’ll have the beating,’ he said, head up.

Both men nodded, obviously pleased. Theron had a switch, cut from poplar. He hit Satyrus ten times. It wasn’t a particularly savage beating – Satyrus had had worse from Philokles – but neither was it symbolic. It hurt, and then it was over.

Afterwards, he lay down on his blankets – face down, because his whole back hurt – and Melitta cried a little.

‘Why don’t they beat me?’ she said. ‘It was my idea!’

Satyrus laughed through a sob. ‘You’re a girl,’ he said.

‘Stupid Greeks,’ she said.

After a while, Theron came and massaged his back, and helped the twins put a pair of cavalry javelins up like an X with a third for a tent pole. ‘You were both very brave today,’ Theron said.

Despite the pain in his back, Satyrus went to sleep with a smile on his face.