Funeral Games

27

S atyrus rose with the first of the light, feeling as if he hadn’t slept at all, bitten by insects and with his left hip sore from sleeping on the ground. His guts churned, and every time he looked out over the sand towards Gaza, they flipped again.

He went out beyond the horse lines and did his business, but it didn’t help. Before the sun was another handspan higher in the sky, his guts churned again and he felt as if he had the same trots they’d all had camping on the Nile. When he stood still, he shook.

After a while, he ran. It wasn’t a decision – he just dropped his chitoniskos on his pack and ran off, naked except for his sandals. He ran a stade, and then another, along the ‘streets’ where men lay in rows, some awake, facing the dawn, and others snoring in bliss or simply in exhaustion. He ran until he passed the sentries to the west, where the road led towards Aegypt. And then he turned and ran back. Without disturbing Basis or Abraham, he used pumice to polish the scales of his cuirass, and then he buffed the silver on his helmet until it shone like the moon.

Like thousands of other men, he went down to the beach and swam in the cool dawn. Far down the beach towards Gaza, he could see thousands of other men performing the same ritual.

He went back to his pack and took out his best red chitoniskos, and then he put on his armour – all of it, even the greaves, which he had only worn for parades. Then he walked around the Phalanx of Aegypt, feeling hollow, and made sure all the men ate a good meal.

Melitta was up with the dawn, having lain with Xeno and regretted it somehow – not the act itself, but the surrender. The triteness of sex before battle. Xeno was going to face battle with a thousand friends, and he was scared. She understood. She was scared herself.

She and her people were facing the elephants.

Archers, javelin men, all of the peltastai – they were out on the sand, digging pits and putting stakes in the bottom. Ptolemy’s greatest fear was the power of Demetrios’s elephants – fifty of the monsters, where Ptolemy didn’t have a single one. So the light troops went out in the new dawn, each attended by a handful of slaves, and they dug. This time they had tools. Ptolemy prepared for things like this.

She dug and dug. She thought of Argon and his too-shallow hole, and she dug more.

She was soaked in sweat by the time yet more slaves came with food, and she got out of her hole and ate, slurping cool water from a clay cup and then eating mutton soup so fast that barley streamed down her chiton. She regretted every minute that she’d stayed awake the night before, but she found, as the sun rose and the colour of the world changed, that she didn’t have to be worried about being pregnant.

That was for tomorrow.

Today, she had elephants.

Both armies threw out clouds of skirmishers first. Demetrios, with all of Asia in his father’s hip pocket, put out several thousand peasants with javelins and the occasional sling or bow.

Satyrus watched them. He had his shield on his foot and his spear in his hand, but most of his file was still donning armour or finishing a bowl of soup. Rafik stood with Philokles at the head of the parade, the trumpet still on his hip.

Food was not helping. Satyrus felt that if he let go a fart, his breakfast would stream down his legs with the last of his courage. He gritted his teeth.

Abraham came up, put his shield face-down on the ground and raised an arm. ‘Buckle my cuirass?’ he asked.

‘Sure?’ Satyrus said. ‘Where’s Basis?’

‘Praying,’ Abraham said.

Satyrus got the buckle done. ‘Hold my spear?’ he asked. ‘I have to piss, again.’ He ran off to the edge of the parade and ran back, still feeling as if his guts would leak out, picked up his shield, took his spear from Abraham and tried to stand tall.

Rafik blew the trumpet. Satyrus felt his knees lose their strength. He wondered how men who were condemned to death felt. He hated his weakness, but the weakness was real.

‘Priests!’ Philokles called.

One by one, the serving priests came to the head of the parade. All along the line, men sacrificed – a hundred animals died in as many seconds.

Satyrus was surprised – through the fog of his fear – to find that the Phalanx of Aegypt was next to the Foot Companions. The Macedonian foot-guards were just a few paces to the right of his file, silent except for the occasional order. The men in the ranks had their armour on, but their sarissas were being carried by servants.

Their priest cut the throat of a young heifer.

Out on the sand in front of them, men died – javelin men and archers and naked men throwing rocks, four stades from the line of priests. The battle had started.

The enemy light troops were terrible – like slaves driven forward with a whip. In fact, for all Melitta knew, they were driven forward with a whip. All of Idomeneus’s toxotai were together – a better-armoured band than they had been before the ambush – spread at two-pace intervals over several hundred paces of ground. Aegyptian peltastai with small shields and heavy javelins moved through them to face the hordes of Demetrios’s peasants, and the fighting – such as it was – didn’t last long before the peasants ran.

Idomeneus came by and offered her an apple. She smiled at him and took it.

‘I love apples,’ she said.

Another band of psiloi came out of the rising dust and hurled rocks at the peltastai, who charged and drove them off, but this time a few of the peltastai were left to bleed in the sand.

She could feel the earth pounding under her feet before she saw them. They were immense. Too big to be real. They moved with an un-horse-like gait, and they were slow – but they were coming.

Ahead of them came a fresh wave of psiloi – men with light armour and round bucklers who seemed to have some spirit.

‘Stand your ground!’ the Aegyptian officer yelled. His voice was not reassuring.

She found that she’d finished her apple. She dropped the core and kicked sand over it without thinking.

‘About to be our turn, I think,’ Idomeneus said. ‘Luck, Bion. Shoot straight.’

‘Same to you, pal,’ she said. And then she strung her bow.

Satyrus could see the light troops, as far as his eyes could see – several thousand men. Their movement raised a curtain of dust, but it was nothing like what it would be later in the day, and nothing like it had been at Gabiene. Just the thought of the fight on the salt flats made him take a sip from his canteen.

‘The army is going to move forward,’ Philokles called. ‘Be ready.’

This far out, there was no marching. When the trumpet sounded, men lifted their shields and trudged forward in open order, their servants still carrying canteens and food – some men in other taxeis were still making their servants carry their shields. The movement sounded like thunder and the ground moved as sixteen thousand pikemen and their servants and shield-bearers – almost thirty thousand men, and not a few women – walked forward. The polemarchs and the phylarchs watched attentively, and men at the flanks of formations roared at each other, because crowding or bowing at this point could disorder the whole line which had been formed so carefully.

Satyrus saw humps moving opposite him. Elephants. He stumbled and forced himself to stand upright. Ares. Ares, god of war, do not let me be a coward.

Curiously, the elephants had a steadying effect on Satyrus, most of all because he knew that his sister had to face them and he wanted her safe. Thinking of other people was a strange relief from fear, but it was real – as if fear was something selfish.

Aha.

Satyrus smiled. He turned and looked at the pale faces of his companions. Philokles was still ahead of the phalanx, as was Theron on the opposite flank.

‘Watch your spacing, Aegypt!’ Satyrus called. He forced a smile at the front rank. ‘They’re only elephants, gentlemen!’

Fifty paces forward, and then a hundred, and then another hundred. The elephants were two stades away – less – and he could feel it when they moved. In less than a minute, the great brown and grey creatures would be among the Ptolemaic skirmishers – and his sister would be facing the monsters.

‘Halt!’ the trumpets called.

‘Fall out the shield-bearers!’ Philokles called.

This is it.

Abraham reached over, shield and all, and they embraced. Satyrus reached past Abraham to clasp arms with Dionysius and then with Xeno. Xeno held on to his arm. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. Behind him, his boy flashed a shy smile and turned to leave the ranks.

Satyrus grinned and hugged him. ‘Tell me later!’ he said, and his grin wasn’t faked.

All around him, as the servants cleared the files, men clasped hands. Satyrus got a quick squeeze from Diokles and another from Namastis, a kiss from Dionysius, and then the files were clear.

‘Half files, close to the front!’ Philokles called. The same order could be heard from the Foot Companions, who were just to their right.

Namastis marched his half-file forward to fill the opening left by the shield-bearers. Now the phalanx was eight deep but much closer in order. Behind Satyrus, Diokles and the rest of the file shuffled forward to form the close-order battle formation.

Satyrus could see Panion, the commander of the Foot Companions, striding across the sand towards Philokles. His body betrayed rage.

‘You are crowding my files with your fucking slaves,’ Panion said. ‘Double your files again and give me room.’

‘Your men must have drifted on the march,’ Philokles said. ‘We’re matched with the White Shields on our left.’ He shrugged. ‘Open out to the right.’

Panion spat. ‘I’ve had enough of you, Greek. You and your corps of baggage-handlers don’t belong in the line. I told Ptolemy you’d lose him the battle. Now you’re on my flank. And you know what? You and your pack of dogs? Cowards!’

‘Go back to your taxeis,’ Philokles said. ‘We are in the same army. I do not question your courage – have the courtesy to do the same.’

Panion spat. ‘Listen to you!’ He turned to face the Phalanx of Aegypt. ‘Most of you will be dead in an hour! You don’t even have to stand in the line! Your so-called polemarch demanded that you stand in the battle line. Run along home, now, Gyptos!’

The Phalanx of Aegypt shuffled. Panion laughed contemptuously. ‘Dogs pretending to be men,’ he said.

‘Turn and face me,’ Philokles said.

Panion turned.

‘Listen, Macedonians!’ Philokles roared, and his voice carried a stade. ‘I am a man of Sparta. When we charge the enemy, see who flinches. No man in our ranks has a friend across the lines, Macedonians. No man there will offer a single one of our men mercy.’ He walked up to Panion, and stood a half a hand taller. ‘Foot Companions! Your officer is bought and paid for by the enemy.’ Philokles pulled his cloak back off his shoulder.

‘You lie-’ Panion began, and he raised his spear.

‘Let the gods say who lies!’ Philokles roared. Panion struck, but Philokles’ arm moved as fast as a thunderbolt and his spear slammed into Panion’s helmet and the man went down.

Philokles laughed.

Satyrus was an arm’s length from the nearest Macedonian file. They were roiling with fury.

‘Macedonians!’ came a roar from behind Satyrus. He turned to see Ptolemy and Seleucus on horseback, brilliantly armoured and surrounded by Hetairoi. ‘Macedonians! The enemy is Demetrios, who we will destroy in a few hours. The enemy is not next to you in line. The next man who speaks against another is a traitor – mark my words.’ He looked down at Panion, who was rising from the dust.

‘Fucker-’ Panion said, with something incomprehensible.

‘Prove the charge unfounded on the field,’ said the lord of Aegypt. He pointed at the commander of his foot-guards. ‘Myself,’ he said, just loudly enough that the front rank of both taxeis could hear. ‘Myself, I think you probably are a fucking traitor, Panion. Die well and I’ll see to your widow. Try to screw me, and I’ll put my mercenaries right into your shieldless flank and you will all die whether I win or not.’ The lord of Aegypt waved his arm at ranks and ranks of Diodorus’s Exiles, who stood by their horses on the flank of the Foot Companions.

Then the lord of Aegypt waved, and most men cheered – not the Foot Companions – and Philokles stood and faced them. He clasped hands with Philokles and rode away, leaving Panion in the sand.

Behind him, the elephants were closing on the toxotai.

‘Men of Alexandria,’ Philokles said. He paused, and even Panion’s men fell silent. ‘Yesterday, or two weeks ago, or a year ago, you were different men. You lived a different life. Some of you are rich men, and some are poor. Some of you stole, and others drank wine. Somewhere in these ranks is a man who killed for money. Another carried bricks. Some of you are Greek, and some are Aegyptian. A few of you are even Macedonian.’ He paused, and men laughed.

‘Today, no one cares how you lived. All that men will ever say of you is how you fought here, and how you died. Are you in debt? Desperate? The gods hate you?’ His voice rose to fill the air, as if a god was speaking – the voice of Ares come to earth. ‘Stand your ground today and die if you must, and all men will ever say of you is that you served the city. You will go with the heroes – your name will adorn a shrine. Be better than you were. Serve the city. Stand in your ranks and push when I call you. Remember that you will have no mercy at the hands of the men across the sand. Not a one of you will be spared.’

He raised his spear over his head. ‘When I call, every man must push forward one more step. Understand?’

‘Yes!’ they roared.

‘Remember, every one of you! There is nothing but this day and this hour. Show your gods who you really are.’ He lowered his spear and walked to his place in the line, pulling his helmet down and fastening the cheekpieces.

‘Not your usual take on philosophy,’ Satyrus said, when his tutor took his place.

Philokles stood straight. ‘Wisdom has a different look from the front rank,’ he said to Satyrus, with a smile that showed under his cheekpieces. ‘Prepare to march!’ he roared.

The Aegyptian peltastai stood their ground longer than Melitta had expected. Just in front of her pit, they closed their ranks and counter-charged the enemy psiloi, running the bronze-shielded men back among their elephants. Then they lost their nerve and retreated, and their officers couldn’t hold them after a man was caught by an elephant and spitted on her sword-tipped tusks. The animal shook the dying man and he split open.

The peltastai ran back half a stade. Melitta stopped watching them. She had targets.

She loosed a dozen arrows at the leading elephants before she knew that her shafts were having no effect. The lead elephant had so many arrows sticking out of her back that it looked as if she’d sprouted some scraggly feathers, but the beast continued her leisurely stroll forward, still tossing the remnants of the peltastes on the twin swords around her mouth.

None of the other archers were doing any better.

‘We’re fucked,’ she muttered, drawing and loosing again.

Their arrows had cleared the last of the enemy psiloi, so that the monsters strode down the field in a long line with no infantry covering them, but that seemed to be a very minor flaw as the line plodded across the sand towards her pit.

If they go through us, they go into the face of the phalanx, she thought. And we lose.

Next to her, a pair of Greek archers called to each other as they lofted arrows high. ‘Their skin must be thinner somewhere,’ called Laertes, the oldest man among the toxotai.

The beasts were now so close that the archers could try to aim for softer parts – also close enough for flight to seem like an option. She drew to her eyebrow and loosed – to see her bronze-headed barb bounce off the lead elephant’s head.

For the first time she realized that there were men on the backs of the behemoths. Without thinking, she shot one – the range was just a few horse-lengths – and for the first time in fifteen shafts she saw a target go down, the man clutching his armpit as he fell from the beast’s back.

She thought of the elephants in Eumenes the Cardian’s army, and how their mahout said that they were only deadly as long as there were men on their backs.

The lead cow elephant turned her head, as if curious as to what had happened.

Melitta shot two arrows as fast as she’d ever shot in her life. The first missed – right over the top of the cow, who was so close that Melitta was shooting up to aim at all. The second hit the other spearman on the elephant’s back, sticking in his shield but not, apparently, doing any harm.

She looked around her and realized that the toxotai were running. She was the last archer shooting. She turned and ran herself.

Satyrus pulled his helmet down and tied the chinstrap one-handed even as they marched forward. Flute players sounded the step, and Satyrus glanced right and left, his heart filled by the sight. As far as his eye could see, their ranks were moving. The centre was slow, and the mass of the phalanx bowed, but he could see now that the line of his own phalanx – all the army of Aegypt together – was longer than the enemy line.

Off to the right, the cavalry was moving. Off to the left, just a stade away, Satyrus could see Diodorus sitting alone on his charger at the head of the Exiles. He seemed to be eating a sausage.

Right in front of him, the elephants had broken the line of peltastai and toxotai. His gut clenched, his chest muscles trembled and he had to make himself stand taller. Elephants.

Melitta ran twenty paces and stopped – in part, because Idomeneus was standing there, putting an arrow to his bow, and in part because she had to see what happened when the monsters hit the pits.

‘Stop running!’ Idomeneus yelled. ‘There’s nowhere to go!’ He shot.

Forty paces away, the lead cow shuddered as her front feet slid out from under her. In seconds she had slipped most of the way into the hole – head first, and her head cap of bronze pushed the stake flat and it did her no harm. She bellowed, gathered her hindquarters and scrabbled out of the pit, shaking her head.

Too shallow. Melitta shot. Her arrow struck in a great fore-foot.

But something was wrong with the beast, because she stopped. She rolled her head, looking right and left, as arrows pricked her. Her snake-like trunk touched the prone form of the man who’d come off her head when she’d stepped into the pit – he didn’t move. Melitta almost had pity as the great beast tried to move her driver.

Her driver. Her driver.

‘Shoot the drivers!’ Melitta shouted. Her voice broke – it was the most feminine shout on the field – but it carried, and she didn’t care. ‘Shoot the drivers!’

Idomeneus took up the shout. ‘Drivers!’ he said, pulling his great bow to his ear and punching a finger-thick shaft into the mahout of the next beast in line. The man threw up his hands and fell back, and the beast, riderless, stopped.

‘Be ready!’ Philokles roared beside him.

Satyrus felt his arse clench, felt his guts turn and turn again. Three times now, his fear had fallen away, and every time it came back.

Elephants.

He looked at the front rank, and it was bending because the Foot Companions weren’t keeping up. ‘Dress up, phylarchs!’ he shouted. Really Philokles’ job, but he had his attention on the trumpets and the battle in the front. ‘Theron!’ Theron was a hundred paces distant – a hopeless distance on a battlefield. ‘Theron! Step up!’ he called, and other voices repeated it – the front rank flexed, and there was Theron, waving his spear and pushing forward. The file-followers struggled to close up from behind. A pikeman fell and the whole body of men rippled and someone cried out in pain. ‘Close up!’ Philokles bellowed.

Satyrus tore his eyes off the recovery of the middle ranks – he was drifting left because he’d turned his head. ‘Watch your spacing!’ Namastis growled. A deserved rebuke.

And then, through the limited vision of his close-faced helmet, he saw that the elephants had stopped. ‘Look!’ he said to Namastis. ‘Look!’

The monsters were in the line of pits. Almost half managed to walk right through without touching the obstacles, but they didn’t exploit their success – they had a curious morale of their own, and when the archers began to clear the crews off the backs of the animals in the pits, the whole elephant advance broke down.

Idomeneus was the first man to run forward and Melitta loved him for it. Stripped of their psiloi, the elephants were vulnerable once they stopped. The archers ran in among them in their open formation and began massacring the crews. It wasn’t even a fight – the men on the backs of the huge beasts had no reply to make to the hundreds of shafts aimed at them, and a few even tried to surrender.

No prisoners were taken. The archers slaughtered the crews in a paroxysm of fear and rage, and then the beasts began to turn away, the masses of sharp shafts and the point-blank shots beginning to scare them, and suddenly they were running – away.

‘Halt!’ sang the trumpets.

‘Halt!’ echoed the officers.

The phalanx ground to a halt. All along the line, officers raced up and down ordering the line to dress. The front was disordered everywhere, and the Foot Companions were almost a full phalanx-depth to the rear.

‘If they hit us now, we’re wrecked,’ Philokles said to Satyrus. ‘Gods!’ He ran off along the front of the phalanx, ordering men to dress the line.

The White Shields took up the cry first, and in a heartbeat, all discipline was forgotten. ‘The elephants run!’ men shouted, and the front ranks, the men who would have had to face the brutes first, all but danced.

Philokles roared for silence. Ptolemy appeared from the right and rode down the front rank. ‘Look at that, boys!’ he called. ‘Every man of you owes our light troops a cup of the best! By Herakles!’ Ptolemy halted in the centre of the White Shields. He seemed to be addressing the whole line. ‘Ours to win, boys! Right here! Right now! Remember who you are!’

The White Shields roared, and so did the Phalanx of Aegypt, but Satyrus thought that the other cheers were muted. He hoped it was just his fears.

Philokles reached past Namastis. ‘Don’t point,’ he said. ‘It’s not all good.’

Over to the left, the cavalry fight wasn’t going well for anyone – but suddenly, in a flaw in the battle haze, the whole line of the phalanx could see forty more elephants waiting.

‘Ares,’ Satyrus cursed. His heart sank. Again. So he made himself turn his head. ‘Drink water,’ he yelled.

Philokles was nodding. ‘We have to break the phalanx in front of us before Demetrios throws those elephants into us,’ he said. ‘That just became the battle.’ He drank and spat. ‘When I fall, you take command. ’

‘When you fall?’ Satyrus asked.

Philokles gave him a brilliant smile – the kind of smile his tutor scarcely ever smiled. Then the Spartan ran out of the ranks towards Ptolemy. He grabbed at his bridle, and they could see Ptolemy nod and signal to the trumpeters, and the signal for the advance rang out before Philokles was back in the ranks.

Ptolemy turned his horse and rode away towards the cavalry fight on the left. Way off to the right, Satyrus saw Diodorus. He wasn’t eating sausage any more, but he hadn’t moved.

The Foot Companions were still not in their place.

Philokles jumped out of the front rank, held his spear across their chests and roared ‘Dress the line’ so loudly that Satyrus flinched, helmet and all.

‘Prepare to execute the marine drill!’ he called. He ran along the front rank, heedless of the javelins that were starting to fall, until he reached Theron, and then he sprinted back, fast as an athlete despite age and wine and armour.

‘Spears – up!’ came the order. They were less than a stade from the enemy. A handful of brave or stupid psiloi still stood between the two mighty phalanxes, but they were scattering, running for the flanks. Satyrus watched the last of their own archers running off to the right to get around the killing ground.

Now that he could see the enemy phalanx, he could see that it looked bad – there were ripples and gaps where he assumed the elephants had burst back through, and officers were dressing the ranks.

Half a stade, and he could see the enemy move – they had their ranks dressed – they shivered as if the phalanx was a single, living organism and the whole thing leaned forward as the enemy began their advance, and suddenly everything happened at twice the speed.

The length of a sprint – he could see the emblems on their shields.

‘Spears – down!’ came the command – by trumpet, repeated by word of mouth. And the sarissas came down. In the Phalanx of Aegypt, the men in front had the shorter spears, and they lifted them over their heads in unison – a sight that literally banished fear, as training took over and Satyrus got his shoulder firmly under the rim of his aspis.

‘Sing the Paean!’ Philokles called, and the Alexandrians started the call to Apollo. The song carried him forward a hundred paces – literally buoyed him up – but at its end, in step and facing the foe, he still had ten horse-lengths of terror to face.

Ten horse-lengths, and he was confronted by a wall of spears that filled his mind as Amastris’s body had filled it, so that nothing and no one could take his eyes away from the lethal glitter of twelve thousand pike points.

The White Shields were slowing down. Ares ‘Eyes front!’ Philokles roared. ‘Ready, Alexandria!’

The taxeis growled.

Five horse-lengths. The thicket of steel was pointed right at his throat – his head – too thick to penetrate. Thick enough to walk on.

It was impossible that a man could face so much iron and live.

His legs carried him forward.

‘Charge!’ Philokles’ voice and Rafik’s trumpet sounded together, and the front rank responded like trained beasts – left shoulder down, spear down, head down.

Spears rang against his aspis, reaching for his guts, again and again, and he bulled forward, legs pushing, blow to his helmet, step forward, another blow and another with enough weight to shift him sideways so that he stumbled, but he pushed, he pushed, nothing but the power of his legs and the weight of a dozen spear shafts on his aspis tilted almost flat like a table, and he pushed – Diokles’ shield pushing him forward – through! UP and PUSH and he rammed his spear straight ahead, felt the weight of Diokles pushing him another half pace forward. THROUGH!

To this right, Philokles roared like a bull and his spear hit a man’s helmet just over the nasal and burst it in a spray of blood and the man fell back and Philokles pushed Suddenly, as if his wits had been restored, Satyrus saw the fight for what it was, and in one smooth motion he killed a phalangite – not the man in front of him, but the man in front of Abraham whose shield was open, and then he placed his big shield against the enemy’s and pushed and Abraham pushed forward into the new space, on his own or carried forward by his file, and now he took the file-follower by surprise and simply knocked him down, and Satyrus rammed his spear over his shield, once, twice, three times – connected with something – again and again. Glance at Philokles, cover his shoulder – and then his opponent was down and Satyrus was forward a step. Rafik’s man was uncovered to his right, and his spear was there, scoring a clean hit on the man’s helmet. His point didn’t penetrate but the man’s head snapped back and he stumbled and Rafik stepped on the man and went forward and Rafik’s file-follower put his butt-spike through the man’s chest. Satyrus’s opponent roared, pushed his shield and Diokles killed him over Satyrus’s shoulder and Satyrus leaped forward to cover Philokles, who had put another man down and was moving forward again. The men behind the man facing Philokles were flinching away.

Now Satyrus was chest to chest with another man. His opponent dropped his sarissa and ripped his sword from the scabbard and Satyrus felt the wash of the man’s onion breath on his face and he was pushed back and the ranks locked – Abraham grunting, and Namastis shouting in Aegyptian.

Satyrus’s spear broke in his hands, trapped against a shield. He swung the butt-spike like a mace and scored against the tip of the big Macedonian’s shoulder where his shield didn’t cover it, and then his body moved as if he was making a sacrifice – hand up, grab the hilt under his armpit, sword drawn, down, over, the feint – back cut. The Macedonian missed his parry, his kopis over-committed, and his wrist bones parted as Satyrus’s blade cut through his arm and glanced off the faceplate on the other man’s Thracian helmet. The blood from his severed hand sprayed and blinded Satyrus, and he flinched, stumbled – but forward, because Diokles shoved him and then stabbed at his next opponent over his head, saving his life. A sword scraped along Satyrus’s helmet and he lost a piece of his left ear, although he didn’t feel it.

‘One more step!’ the voice of the war god said. ‘Now!’

The whole Phalanx of Aegypt planted and pushed. The Macedonian phalanx shuddered, and then, as if, having given one step, they could give another, they fell back.

And now the Aegyptians caught fire. Maybe they’d never believed. Or maybe they’d just hoped – but in those seconds, those heartbeats, the same message went out to every man in the taxeis.

We are the better men.

‘Alexandria!’ Namastis called. He was the first, Satyrus thought, but then everyone was shouting.

Then there was no battle cry that any one man could discern but a roar, a roar of rage and triumph and fear – the bronze-lunged voice of Ares – and the enemy phalanx gave another step, another. Something had broken at the back and the spears were dropping, and suddenly there was Nothing. Scattered men stood confused in front of Satyrus, the enemies too foolish to have broken, and Satyrus killed one without thinking, stepping up to the man and cutting – one, two, three, as fast as thought.

‘Ares,’ Philokles said. He sounded weak. ‘Satyrus! We’re not done. Rally them. Rafik, sound the rally!’

Satyrus looked back. He couldn’t see anything behind him but his own men, but to the side, there were still enemies – some so close that he could hear the orders their officers shouted.

The notes of the rally sounded. Philokles was leaning on his spear. Satyrus thought that he was just breathing hard, but then he saw that there was blood all down the Spartan’s legs – pouring away from under his bronze breastplate.

‘I’ll go for Theron,’ Satyrus said.

‘No time,’ Philokles said. His knees went, and he slid down his spear, but he didn’t turn his head. ‘Right into their flank – now, boy, before they recover.’ His arm shot out, pointing at the uncovered flank of the enemy phalanx, and Philokles fell just that way, his face to the enemy, his arm pointing the path to victory.

And Satyrus did not flinch. He stepped across Philokles, the same way he’d stepped across the deck of the Golden Lotus, as if he’d done it all his life – although the man he loved best in all the world lay in the sand at his feet.

Diokles snapped forward to fill his place.

‘We will wheel the taxeis to the left!’ Satyrus called. ‘On my command! ’

Through the cheekpieces of his helmet, it sounded remarkably like Philokles’ voice, right down to the Laconian drawl. ‘March!’ he roared.

The taxeis pivoted on Theron, the left-most man – unless he, too, was dead. This was the manoeuvre they had so often done wrong – this was where the centre of the line would fold, eager men going too fast, terrified men going too slow.

Halfway around. All the time to consider how much like sailing a trireme it was to command a phalanx. All the time to watch the men opposite him. They were turning, but men at the back were already giving way, running for their lives past their file-closers. There was no hope for a phalanx taken in the flank.

The taxeis of Alexandria pivoted well enough. The centre buckled at the end – someone tripped, a man got a butt-spike in the head and the spears were still down, not erect. Too close for that.

Too late to worry. ‘Three-step charge!’ Satyrus called.

Rafik sounded it.

Only half the files responded. The centre was a wreck, just from two men going down and the spears of their files flying in all directions. Theron’s end of the line never heard the command, or if they did they didn’t respond.

It didn’t matter. Because the fifty files that did respond covered the distance to the enemy at the run, and their shields deflected the handful of sarissas that opposed them, and then their spears were into the flank of the enemy, and the enemy regiment collapsed and ran like a herd of panicked cattle – two thousand men turned into a mob in a matter of heartbeats. Satyrus, the rightmost man of his line, never reached an enemy – by the time he’d crossed the space, they were gone.

They were gone, and the White Shields were unblocked. They had started to cheer. However late they had come into the fight, they were moving – wheeling to the left, just as the Alexandrians had done.

Philemon, the polemarch of the White Shields, was calling to Theron, and Theron came running across the face of the victorious Alexandrians. ‘Drink water!’ Satyrus called. No one left the ranks to pursue the fleeing Macedonians. Instead, a few men cheered, the rest simply stopped. Like exhausted runners at the end of a race.

‘Philokles?’ Theron asked. His nose was broken under his helmet, and blood covered his breastplate. He had blood on his hands.

‘Down,’ Satyrus said.

‘Philemon wants us to march to the right to make space for him,’ Theron said. ‘I’ll take your orders,’ he continued.

‘Good,’ Satyrus said. He stood straight. He wanted to laugh at the notion that the taxeis of half-soldiers from Alexandria were being asked to face to the right and advance by files – a hard enough manoeuvre on the parade square – on a battlefield.

He did what he’d seen Philokles do. He ran all the way down the front rank, repeating the command – again and again. He waited precious seconds, the polemarch of the White Shields yelling from further to the left. He ignored him, waiting for the phylarchs to pass the word back. Then he sprinted to Rafik, cursing his greaves. They were eating his ankles.

‘Face to the spear side!’ he ordered. ‘March!’

As one – almost as one, because he watched Dionysius face the shield side and then pivot on his heel – the Phalanx of Aegypt faced to the right and marched off – one hundred, two hundred paces deeper into the enemy lines.

From here, on the front right of the phalanx, Satyrus could see all the way to the cavalry fight on the left – could see the forty-elephant reserve.

‘Theron,’ he shouted. Satyrus pulled his helmet off. ‘Face to the shield side! Restore your files! Dress!’

They knew the facing order was coming and they did it like professionals, and then the ranks dressed. Next to them, the White Shields wheeled up into the new line, while to their front, the next enemy phalanx began to shirk and flutter and men on the flanks realized what was coming.

Theron appeared from the dust as if by the hand of some god. ‘Polemarch?’ he asked.

‘Go and find Philokles. Save him if you can.’ Satyrus had his war voice on – no quaver of emotion. Why can’t you be like this all the time? Melitta had asked him once. He wondered where she was and if she was alive.

‘I’m the left phylarch-’

‘If we don’t flinch from the contest, nothing on earth or in the heavens can save the army of Demetrios,’ Satyrus said. He pointed to where, before they were even charged, the centre phalanx of the enemy was melting away, throwing down their sarissas. Even the sudden arrival of the reserve elephants might not save Demetrios now. His centre was lost.

Satyrus looked back to where the Foot Companions waited in the sand, unblooded, less than a stade away.

Theron needed no second urging. He turned and ran off towards the site of the first fight. Around Satyrus, all his men had canteens at their lips.

Satyrus sprinted out to the ranks and found the White Shield polemarch.

‘My men need a minute,’ he said. ‘I’m going to go shame the Foot Companions into joining the line.’

Philemon had a helmet shaped like a lion’s head. He tipped it back on his head and glared at the Foot Companions. ‘They’re supposed to be our best,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘We won’t beat the elephants without them.’

Satyrus saluted the older man and ran back across the sand – just a stade, the same distance as a hoplitodromos, the race in armour at the Olympics. A stade had never seemed so long.

The Macedonians stood in neat ranks, their plumes undisturbed by a breeze. Panion was nowhere to be seen.

Satyrus pulled his helmet off his head. ‘Do you want men to say that we won this battle while you watched?’ he shouted. ‘Or are we better men than you?’

He spat, turned on his heel and ran back to his own taxeis. When he reached his place in the ranks, he was so tired that his knees shook.

‘The Foot Companions are wheeling into line,’ Diokles said.

Satyrus pulled his helmet back down, got his aspis back on his shoulder – a shoulder that hurt as if it had been burned – and raised his spear.

‘Alexandria!’ he shouted, and fifteen hundred men roared.

And then they were moving forward, the White Shields strong on their flank, the Foot Companions on their other side, and Satyrus could all but see Nike holding her wreath over the end of the enemy line.

Melitta and the rest of the toxotai finished their battle when the elephants broke. When the phalanxes started forward in earnest, the light troops ran in all directions, and Melitta wasn’t ashamed to run with them. They ran so far to get around the flank of the Foot Companions that she was severely winded. They all were. It beat being dead. She knelt on the ground, breathing so hard that she almost retched.

‘Look at that,’ Idomeneus wheezed. She followed his gaze.

The Foot Companions had slowed to a walk, and the Phalanx of Aegypt moved away from them.

Idomeneus spat. ‘Fuckers been bought,’ he said, sitting back on his heels. ‘We beat the elephants for nothing.’

And then they watched as the Phalanx of Aegypt charged home. Dust rose, and the sound of a thousand cooks beating a thousand copper pots. Satyrus. Xeno. The Foot Companions halted just short of contact with their opponents.

Watching the rear ranks, Melitta had no idea what she was seeing. Idomeneus walked off and started collecting archers, and then she saw that her uncle Diodorus was sitting on his charger just a dozen horse-lengths to the right, watching the other side of the field and then watching the dust cloud where the phalanxes had engaged.

There was a roar – something had happened – and she saw the rear of the Aegyptian taxeis ripple as if a breeze had stirred wheat on a summer day, and then they roared again.

She felt the shadow and looked up. Diodorus loomed over her.

‘You fought the elephants,’ he said.

‘We did,’ she said with pride.

Diodorus pointed at the back of the phalanx. The Foot Companions were moving forward now, as if they could no longer resist the attraction of the enemy. ‘Philokles has just given us the chance to win the battle,’ Diodorus said with quiet satisfaction.

‘What?’ Melitta asked.

Diodorus turned and looked across the field, where squadrons of enemy cavalry sat motionless. He raised his arm. ‘See that cavalry? They outnumber me. And they aren’t coming forward.’ He gave her half a smile. ‘I’m just supposed to keep them in check – but I think that Philokles has just broken golden boy’s centre. I think I may just go and widen the hole. Care to come?’ He grinned. ‘Let’s go and show Macedon why we’re the best.’

Melitta sprang to her feet, fatigue forgotten. ‘Of course!’

Diodorus waved to Crax, who trotted up with a cavalry mount. ‘Ah, the mysterious archer,’ Crax said when he handed her the reins. He grinned at her. ‘Some people think they can fool other people,’ he said.

Melitta was briefly abashed. ‘I just wanted to-’

‘Save it for Sappho,’ Diodorus said. ‘Myself, I wouldn’t keep Kineas’s daughter off a battlefield any more than Kineas’s son. Second squadron, third rank. Go and find your place, Now.’

Melitta saluted and followed Crax. She waved to Idomeneus, who shook his head and then waved back.

Behind her, the Phalanx of Aegypt surged forward. She caught the movement, and Diodorus nodded. ‘Just as I thought,’ he said. ‘Ready to move, hippeis!’

The enemy’s centre taxeis never fought – they just melted away, the rearmost men running first, so that the whole regiment seemed to unravel like moth-eaten fur in a strong wind. Satyrus halted when the White Shields halted. He was amused to see the Foot Companions close up on his right at the double. He wondered if the bastards had even seen any fighting. But they were there and now they were committed.

Then the whole right of the army, formed at a ninety-degree angle from their original line, swept from right to left, and the rest of the enemy centre collapsed. The enemy’s easternmost phalanxes were heavily engaged against Ptolemy’s loyal Macedonians and they had no chance to run and many were cut down and more of them surrendered rather than be butchered from the open flank.

Satyrus had no idea what the cavalry were doing, but the infantry battle was over, and the enemy’s infantry were gone, destroyed or surrendered or run. His taxeis was now in the centre of the canted line, facing a wall of dust and whirling sand. All he wanted to do was walk back and find Philokles, but he knew his duty and when the line halted he ran down the front rank, all the way to the left, where he found the polemarch of the White Shields.

‘Now what?’ Satyrus demanded.

The polemarch had a purple shield with inlaid ivory. He looked like Achilles come back to earth, but when he took his helmet off, he was bald as polished marble. ‘Fucked if I know, son,’ he said. ‘You in command of those Aegyptians, right? Those boys are on fire.’ He grinned. ‘Not that we did too badly ourselves. And I’m so pleased that our Foot Companions chose to join the dance. Where’s your big Spartan?’

‘Wounded,’ Satyrus said. He got his canteen to his lips – no easy feat in armour – and drank deeply.

‘Hope he makes it. Don’t know. Never been in a battle like this. Never seen the enemy phalanx so badly broken. It must be over – what can they do?’ He shrugged. ‘What have they got left to fight with?’

Just then, some of the Macedonian file-leaders started to shout, and Satyrus turned to look.

Demetrios’s other forty elephants were shambling out of the battle haze.

Diodorus had the hippeis – the Exiles – and six other squadrons of mercenary cavalry. From the third rank, Melitta couldn’t see much, but she thought that they were all going forward together. They rode forward at a walk, and when she knelt on her borrowed charger’s back, she could see over the left squadron to the phalanx.

They moved and then halted, then moved at a walk again – and then halted. She drank water and waited.

‘You look bored,’ Carlus said from two ranks ahead. He laughed his big laugh.

Tanu, the Thracian who was just ahead of her, turned and joined in the laugh. ‘Don’t be in such a hurry to fight!’ he said. ‘Pay’s just the same!’

‘I can’t see!’ Melitta said.

‘The cavalry in front of us are unsteady,’ Carlus said. ‘Their whole centre is gone.’ The big man shook his head. ‘Never seen anything like it, and I’ve been in a few fights.’

Diodorus cantered over to Crax at the head of her troop.

‘Melitta, front and centre,’ he called.

She rode out, sure that she was about to be sent to the rear for all his protestations. But he waved her forward impatiently.

‘You know this Amastris?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Good. Stay with me. I’m going to have a go at breaking right through into his camp. If we make it through that cavalry, I don’t think there’s anything to stop us – and then, my dear girl, we’ll all be rich.’ Diodorus smiled and his beard, which was mostly grey, glinted with red.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘we are mercenaries. But shouldn’t we be finishing off those infantrymen?’ She waved at the thousands of broken pikemen who were racing, weaponless, for the safety of the fortified town of Gaza.

Diodorus shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. He grinned. ‘If you kill them, who will you use to retake Tanais? What we need is the money to pay them.’ His grin grew broader, and Crax’s grin and Eumenes’ grin echoed his. ‘And there it is – Demetrios’s camp. Let’s go and get it, shall we?’ He gave orders and turned back to her. ‘Stay right at my stirrup,’ he said. ‘Your friend the princess ought to be close to golden boy’s tent. We need to get to her before all of Ptolemy’s other cavalry.’

He turned and backed his horse until he was facing his squadrons. ‘Over there,’ he cried, his voice carrying easily, ‘are all the riches of Asia. All you have to do is take them!’ They were the words of Miltiades at Marathon, and the Exiles roared their approval.

They went from walk to trot, and then from trot to canter, the files opening uncontrollably the farther they moved, but the enemy did not await their onset. Rearguard squadrons who had stayed together this long fell apart when they saw themselves charged. No one stayed to fight a lost battle – especially against the same cavalrymen who had harried them for weeks out in the desert.

Crax dropped off five files to round up prisoners – mostly men whose horses were so poor that they couldn’t outrun their pursuit. And then the whole line was rumbling up the long, gentle slope towards the fortified town of Gaza.

The gates were open.