Storm of arrows

26

Kineas’s ribs hurt too much for him to ride, so he travelled in a litter between two horses for three days as they raced north and east along the Polytimeros. Srayanka commanded. He never lost consciousness and there was no fever, but he passed the days in a haze of pain. By the fourth day he could ride, although the pain when his mount mis-stepped was remarkable — if brief.

‘Cracked ribs,’ Philokles said for the fourth time, pulling the bandages tight.

‘A bronze corslet would have turned that point without a bruise,’ Kineas said. ‘But the Sakje scale is easier to wear all day and covers better. Each people has its own ways.’

‘Thank you, Socrates.’ Philokles smiled.

As soon as Kineas was mounted, Srayanka called a ‘moving council’. All the leaders, Greek and tribal, rode to the head of the column.

Leon handed Kineas the Egyptian sword. ‘I thought you’d want this,’ he said. ‘We held the field.’

Diodorus slapped the Numidian on the back. ‘Leon sent one of Temerix’s men for me. I brought the rest of the Olbians and Parshtaevalt here.’ His smug smile shattered into a brilliant grin. ‘Your wife crossed into their flank. Eumenes rode in on the other side. We wrecked ’em.’

‘They didn’t even stand to fight Lot,’ Philokles said. ‘A very poor showing for Macedon.’

Kineas shook his head. ‘That wasn’t Macedon,’ he said. ‘That was a handful of Macedonian officers with a lot of local auxiliaries. Alexander must be stretched thin.’ He coughed and his ribs hurt.

Antigonus gave a very Niceas-like grunt. ‘And we took some spoil. Gold. Horses. And prisoners.’

Kineas looked around, unsure whether he was delighted at the victory or a little peevish that they’d won it without him. ‘How many prisoners?’ he asked.

‘A dozen,’ Philokles said. ‘Just troopers, except one officer. He’s not talkative.’ Philokles gave a wry grin. ‘I like him.’

Diodorus pushed his horse in close. ‘Macedonian bastard.’

All the officers were smiling at some private joke. Kineas ignored them and dismissed the issue of a prisoner until later. ‘I take it there were quite a few more of them than we thought,’ Kineas said.

‘No,’ Diodorus said. ‘Two squadrons — twice your numbers, if you toss in Ataelus’s scouts. You rode rings around them.’ He looked around at all the other officers. Parshtaevalt met his eye and both men gave crooked smiles, as if some new understanding had been reached while Kineas was wounded. ‘We just showed up and pounded the survivors flat.’

‘And now?’ Kineas asked.

Ataelus spoke up. ‘Iskander holds all the south bank of Polytimeros. Patrols all day, but cautious.’ He gave a nod. ‘For pissing themselves yellow after fight, I think.’

Kineas nodded. He could see mountains in the distance — closer now. Achievable instead of impossible. ‘Polytimeros flows out of those?’

‘Yes,’ Ataelus and Temerix said together. ‘And Macedonian forts — close as teeth in your mouth. Six forts and a camp.’ Temerix nodded. ‘I scouted them. Myself.’

Kineas looked at his wife and at Diodorus. ‘Well?’

Srayanka said, ‘We decided yesterday — today we camp early, water up and leave the Polytimeros. Out on to the sea of grass. North and east around the Sogdian mountains and into the desert. We must.’

Diodorus agreed. ‘He’s got to have another cut at us, Kineas. And we’re putting our heads in a noose — the farther upstream we go, the closer we are to his army. His main army.’ He shook his head. ‘Look, we barely hurt him and we see his scouts every day. This isn’t going to work. We have to cut across the desert.’

Kineas rubbed his jaw. He felt terrible — every bone hurt, his muscles were sore and breathing caused a steady pulse of pain in his chest. His head was surprisingly clear. ‘Craterus is still on the Polytimeros,’ Kineas said. ‘But Alexander is moving east. That’s what I’d do. He’s trying to fight the queen of the Massagetae before she joins with Spitamenes.’

Diodorus narrowed his eyes. ‘Heh?’

Kineas swept his arm out to the southern bank. ‘We’re not even a pimple on Alexander’s arse,’ he said. When the comment was translated, the Sakje chiefs grinned or laughed aloud. ‘Alexander is marching east. He’s contained the problem at Marakanda and now he’s going to concentrate against Queen Zarina. The plains are dust and dried grass, and forage is brutal — poor and thin. Right?’

Ataelus nodded. They all jogged along for a few strides.

‘Alexander won’t be able to concentrate long. Not enough food. And Zarina has the whole plain north of the Jaxartes to feed her army. And you Sakje are much better at living off these plains than the Macedonians.’

Diodorus nodded. ‘I see it. He can’t turn back to hit us without upsetting his schedule.’

‘We’re racing him,’ Kineas said. ‘My guess is that he’s due south — not a hundred stades distant — moving east behind a screen of patrols. A day’s ride away.’

Srayanka shrugged. ‘And? Does this change anything we have settled?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Not in the least. It means you were right. We must move fast if we are to reach Zarina before Alexander launches his attack. He must mean to cross the Jaxartes and make a late-summer campaign against the Massagetae.’

Srayanka squinted and batted at her braids. ‘Then he’s a fool. There is no water on the plains in summer.’

‘Alexander is not a fool, my dear. He can command man and beast to their limits and beyond. He took his army over the height of the mountains — yes? Even the Sakje speak of it. If he wants them to march out on to the high plains, they will.’ He looked around at them. ‘After all, isn’t this exactly what we intend to do?’

‘We are a few hundred,’ Srayanka shot back. ‘Are you satisfied that we should turn north? Or should we discuss the flight of geese and the movement of the deer on the plains?’

Kineas raised an eyebrow at her. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We turn north.’

When the command group had broken up, Kineas pulled his wife close. ‘I wish you would speak your mind in council,’ he said. ‘I hate the way you stand silent, fearing to interrupt me.’

‘Which side hurts the most?’ she asked, aiming a mock blow at his left.

After the next halt, Srayanka sent the prodromoi off north, leaving Parshtaevalt to screen them from the south. They made camp early at a bend in the Polytimeros, where the ruins of a mud-walled village on the south bank spoke an epic about the years of war this area had already seen. Kineas rejoined his mess group and sat with his back against a sun-warmed rock. Srayanka leaned her shoulder against him and handed him Lita. The rock was the sign of a change in terrain. The ground was rising to the east. They had arrived at the foothills of the Sogdian.

Darius squatted on his heels, drinking captured wine. He was clothed from head to foot like a Mede and seemed embarrassed by the nudity of the many Olbians bathing in the bend of the Polytimeros.

‘Welcome back. You found Spitamenes?’

Darius nodded. Kineas put an arm around him. ‘I gather Spitamenes has sworn to stay clear of us,’ he said, ignoring Darius’s clothes.

‘He is mortified that he has incurred your enmity,’ Darius said. He flicked a glance at Srayanka and then looked away as if Artemis had blinded his eyes. ‘He claims that he had no idea of what Alexander intended with the Amazons — he was led to believe that the king desired only to meet some.’ He drew himself up. ‘He feels his honour is besmirched by what has befallen and he promises any remedy you and your lady require.’

Srayanka was well within earshot. She handed Satyrus to Kineas. ‘That is, as you Greeks say, the stinking manure of a dog. However,’ she smiled, ‘it suits all of us if we pretend to believe him.’

Darius looked shocked. ‘He swore on his honour!’

Kineas was surprised at the young man’s naivety. ‘You liked him!’

‘He will make a great king,’ Darius said seriously.

‘He will end with his head on a spike — or worse.’ Srayanka settled her daughter on her lap. ‘I will not forget that he gave me to Iskander — but I have a long memory and time is short.’ To her daughter, she said, ‘You may have my dislike of this Persian with your milk, little sausage.’

Darius was wearing a fine sword, a straight-bladed xiphos decorated in gold like a Sakje sword. Kineas reached out for it. ‘A gift?’ he asked.

‘Yes. He was amazed — and pleased — to find that one of my blood lived. He treasures his remaining nobles. Many men I once knew ride in his cavalry.’ He smiled at Philokles, who approached from the tamarisk trees on the bluff above them. ‘Spitamenes sent wine!’

Philokles grinned and shouted something that was lost in the sounds of eight hundred horses drinking.

Kineas nodded. ‘Darius — you may go to him, if it pleases you. You have served me well and you owe me no ransom. I killed your cousin — it is always between us. But I will never forget how you held my side in the castle of Namastopolis.’

Darius stood silent. ‘Am I dismissed?’ he asked.

‘Never,’ Kineas said. ‘But I understand the ties of common blood and custom. Spitamenes is a lord of your own people. If you desire to ride with him, go with my friendship.’

‘And mine,’ Srayanka said.

Darius couldn’t meet Srayanka’s eyes, but his glance slid to Philokles’ form walking down the last of the slope and he blushed and bowed and took Kineas’s hand. ‘I think I will ride with you a while longer,’ he said. Then, after an uncomfortable pause, he pointed to the ruins of the town. ‘Bessus revolted against Darius four — five years ago. There’s been no peace on this frontier ever since. Whichever side holds the upper hand, the other side pays the Dahae and the Massagetae to raid. Now Spitamenes continues where Bessus trod.’

‘You rode with Bessus?’

‘My father did,’ Darius said. ‘I rode with the King of Kings.’ He gave a narrow smile that didn’t touch his eyes. ‘It is the way among the Bactrian nobles — one son to each army, or perhaps two — no matter which side wins, the clan remains strong.’

Diodorus and Philokles came up with a bearded man in a dirty red linen robe over a Macedonian breastplate, the star of the royal house engraved across his chest. The man had a hooked nose and a broad forehead. He looked to be forty, or perhaps older, but well built, with an athlete’s muscles.

‘Look who the dogs caught,’ Diodorus said. He was grinning. ‘Remember this cocksure bastard?’

Kineas eyed the man. ‘Ptolemy!’ he said, smoothing his daughter’s head. He didn’t get up, but he gave the prisoner a smile. ‘Farm Boy!’

The Macedonian inclined his head. ‘I remember you, Kineas of Athens,’ he said. ‘Favourite of the gods.’ He inclined his head in mock salutation.

‘You didn’t used to believe in gods,’ Diodorus said, poking him.

Ptolemy rubbed his chin and quoted Aristophanes. ‘“If there weren’t gods, I wouldn’t be so god-forsaken,”’ he said, and they all laughed.

Philokles gave him a bowl of food. ‘Mutton?’ he asked.

‘Horse,’ said Kineas. ‘I’m sorry about the fight, Ptolemy. I didn’t know you in that get-up.’

Ptolemy looked down at the linen robe he wore over his cuirass. Then he glanced pointedly around the fire. ‘You don’t look much like Athenian hippeis yourselves,’ he said. ‘Where are the flowing locks of yesteryear? The fancy cloaks?’

Kineas smiled. ‘“If peace come again, and we from toil may be released, don’t grudge us our flowing locks, and skin so nicely greased.”’

Ptolemy clapped his hands. ‘Well quoted. Not that there’s a flowing lock in the place.’

Diodorus poked him again. ‘The Spartan here has locks enough for all of us!’

‘Last time I saw you, you were modelling a silver-chased breastplate you’d bought from a looter at Ecbatana,’ Kineas said. ‘We’re not the only ones fallen on hard times.’

Ptolemy shook his head. ‘Fucking Sogdiana,’ he said. ‘It’s brutal.’

‘Still in the Hetairoi?’ Kineas asked.

‘I served with Philip Kontos before he went back west.’ The man shrugged in the firelight. ‘After he killed Artemis, I left him for the phalanx.’

Kineas moved as if his side had pained him. ‘She is dead, then?’

The Macedonian shovelled food with his fingers. After he chewed he looked up. ‘She was our luck, just as she was yours. Kontos killed her when she chose to stay with us, the fucker. She wouldn’t go west with him.’

Diodorus had known Artemis, as had Antigonus, but the big Gaul was at his own fire. Diodorus snorted to cover his sorrow. Artemis had led the camp followers when they were in Alexander’s army. She had been Kineas’s woman from Issus to Ecbatana. ‘No,’ he said, glancing at Kineas. ‘No, she wouldn’t.’ He raised his cup. ‘Here is to her memory.’

Ptolemy accepted the cup, poured a little for her shade. ‘Aye.’

Kineas slopped some from his own bowl and drank. ‘I put Kontos in the earth,’ he said.

The fireside fell silent.

‘Small world,’ the Macedonian said. ‘Surely the gods must have willed it so — that you, whom she loved best, avenged her.’

‘I doubt that she loved me best,’ Kineas said, pleased despite his own words. ‘I dreamed that she was dead,’ he added. ‘You may go in the morning. Take a horse. Philokles here will see you clear of our pickets.’

Ptolemy stretched his legs out towards the fire. The nights were surprisingly cool, despite the blast of heat every day at noon. ‘I praise Ares that I was taken by Greeks,’ he said. ‘Perhaps there is some point in praying to the gods, after all. I would have expected to have my balls pulled off by now by barbarians. You won’t ask for ransom?’

Kineas looked up at Diodorus and Philokles. They both shook their heads. ‘No. You may ride clear. We took half a dozen troopers as well. You can take them with you.’

Ptolemy nodded. He looked around. ‘Alexander would forgive you like a shot, Kineas. And hire your whole command. Sakje? With Greeks? Name your price.’

‘I am not for sale,’ Kineas said. ‘And I have done nothing that needs to be forgiven, Macedonian.’

‘Is this some misbegotten Athenian plot? Don’t be a fool.’ Ptolemy pressed close. ‘Let me use this god-given opportunity. Listen! We knew somebody was beating up our pickets. Ever since early summer, we’ve had reports of mercenary Greek horse on the Oxus. Now that I’ve found you, come with me! Whatever Spitamenes is paying you, the king will beat it!’

Around the fire, Kineas’s friends laughed.

‘Spitamenes has no friends here,’ Srayanka said. Her Greek was excellent now.

‘You’re the Amazon!’ Ptolemy said. He was typical of Macedonians — Kineas could see that, having ascertained that she was a woman, and a suckling woman, he had dismissed her as being of less importance than the saddle blanket on which he sat. ‘The pregnant Amazon!’ He looked from her to Kineas and back. ‘Your girl?’

‘My wife, the Lady Srayanka, Queen of the Assagatje.’ Kineas gestured towards her.

She chuckled, even as she adjusted her son on her nipple and put a hand under her breast to support him.

Ptolemy looked at her more carefully. Then he looked at Kineas, as if seeing him for the first time. ‘If you killed Kontos, then you defeated Zopryon, didn’t you?’

Kineas smiled slowly and wickedly. ‘I didn’t do it by myself,’ he said.

Ptolemy was pale, even in the ruddy firelight. ‘So…’ he said. All friendliness was gone from his voice. ‘Fucking ingrate. Alexander made you.’

Kineas felt the blood in his face. Nonetheless, he struggled to remain calm — if only because his calm would infuriate the Macedonian all the more. ‘I am an Athenian.’

‘You are a fucking Hellene fighting for barbarians.’ Ptolemy was livid and, like most fighting men, heedless of consequence.

Kineas had no trouble meeting his gaze, even when the Macedonian stumbled to his feet, fists closed and twitching.

‘You are a barbarian, fighting for barbarians,’ Kineas said. He sat up from his reclining position. ‘I owe Alexander nothing. I was dismissed by him — and exiled for serving him. My city has commanded my service against him.’

‘Athens has sent an army into this haunted desert?’ Ptolemy slumped. ‘That’s not possible!’

‘My city is Olbia,’ Kineas said with pride. ‘I am the hipparch of Olbia. Every man at this fire is a citizen of Olbia. The cities of the Euxine united with the Sakje — the Assagatje — to destroy Zopryon. He would have enslaved every man and woman on the Euxine, Ptolemy. He wanted it all.’ Kineas stood up, handing his daughter to Darius, and spat in the fire. ‘We lost hundreds of riders. Not one Macedonian boy lived to see his mother on a farm near Pella. Not one horse trotted across the grass to his pasture in the high hills.’

Srayanka’s voice was angry and arrogant. She didn’t rise. ‘Tell your king that if he comes on to the plains, we will give him the same. The sea of grass is not for Macedon. My father died teaching Philip that lesson — and none of us are afraid to school the son.’

‘Olbia?’ Ptolemy asked. His anger was quenched. ‘Where the fuck is Olbia?’

That made all the veterans around the fire laugh, because just two years before, most of them would have said the same.

Kineas gave half a grin. ‘The richest city of the Euxine.’ Even as he spoke, he could see the city as if he stood on the bluff by the Borysthenes, looking down at the Temple of Apollo and the golden dolphins. ‘With Pantecapaeum, richer than all the cities of Greece combined.’

Ptolemy controlled his anger, aware that he was one captured Macedonian. ‘That’s not saying much,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen Persepolis and Ecbatana. Greece is poor. ’

‘Rich enough, with their Sakje allies, to stop Macedon for ever. ’ Kineas sat again.

Ptolemy’s long and thoughtful face took on an intense look. ‘You may speak your sophistry as you will — the king will never forgive you. We aren’t even allowed to mention Zopryon’s name. The survivors of the fight on the Polytimeros were threatened with decimation — one in ten to be executed. He actually carried out half a dozen before he ordered them stopped. Did you know that? And we were sworn to eternal silence on the defeat.’

Philokles nodded. ‘He guards his myth of invulnerability,’ he said. And then, looking closely at the Macedonian’s face, he said, ‘You hate him.’

Stung, Ptolemy stumbled away from Philokles. Antigonus, arriving out of the darkness with a skin of captured wine, caught his shoulders and steadied him. ‘Careful, laddy,’ Antigonus said in his heavily accented Greek.

Ptolemy looked around and slumped again. He sighed. ‘We all love him and we hate him. He is half god and half monster.’ He raised his head. ‘Like many men, I would like to go home. I would like to stop playing the endless game of betrayal and politics and advantage for power and influence in the army. I would like to build something. Something real.’

Philokles raised an eyebrow, frowned and nodded. ‘So stop?’

Ptolemy shook his head. ‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’ Philokles asked.

‘Because if Ptolemy stops playing, somebody under him will have him killed and move up,’ Kineas said, and Diodorus nodded agreement. ‘We never played the Macedonian game — we’re just Greeks. But we watched.’ Kineas looked at Ptolemy’s face and thought about how often Philokles had asked him questions like this with the same intensity. It was interesting to see him do it to another man, to see the effect, the confusion, the sudden self-doubt.

‘Best join us,’ Diodorus said. ‘We’ve Numidians and Kelts and Megarans and Spartans. There’s a Babylonian Jew in second troop — or so he claims. We’ve a couple of Persians. Why not a Macedonian?’

Ptolemy laughed. ‘You are-’ He looked around the firelight. ‘Hah!’ he laughed, shaking his head. ‘You will actually let me go?’

Kineas nodded. ‘Be my guest.’

Ptolemy stood at attention. ‘I am honour-bound to report everything I have seen and heard,’ he said.

Philokles spoke up again. ‘But will you?’ he asked.

Ptolemy suddenly looked younger and more vulnerable than he had throughout his time by the fire. ‘I–I must,’ he said.

Philokles shrugged. ‘Except that if you tell the king everything, you will never see home. First, because tyrants always blame the messenger. Is that not true, Kineas?’

‘Are you asking me because I know so many tyrants, or because I have been one?’ Kineas asked. ‘But yes.’

‘Which you well know, yes?’ Philokles, in his turn, rose to his feet. ‘And because if you tell Alexander all you know, you will change his campaign. His Amazon — his prize! — is right here. And so is the man who defeated Zopryon.’ Philokles had never looked more like a philosopher, despite his stained tunic and dirty legs, than at that moment, gleaming and golden in the firelight, leaning forward like a statue of an orator. ‘If you tell him, he will drop everything to fight us — out on the grass. And you will never see home.’ Philokles’ eyes were sparkling. ‘And you know it.’

Diodorus, still reclining, said, ‘There is a god at your shoulder, Philokles.’

The others were silent. Some slurping and gurgling from Lita broke the solemnity of the moment.

Ptolemy was gone in the morning with the other prisoners. Philokles rode with him to the south, accompanied by Ataelus, and returned alone at midday, when the whole column was so far out on the sea of grass that the trees of the Polytimeros valley were lost in the haze. Only the mountains to the east marred the perfect bowl of the earth.

It was not until evening that the desert nature of the ground began to take its toll. The scouts had found waterholes, and their camps were based on those, but no single place gave sufficient water for eight hundred horses. Kineas had to fragment his command into four groups, based more on horse strength than on manpower. Srayanka and the Sakje were at another waterhole. He lay awake listening to the restless, under-watered horses. He was unused to sleeping alone, already missing his children. He awoke with a dry mouth. He drank water from the spring after the horses were clear, and there was more silt than refreshment.

By noon his mouth was like parchment, his tongue had taken on a presence in his mouth it had never had before and his clay water bottle, sized for Greece where dozen of streams crossed the plains, was almost dry. He had travelled through deserts before, in Persia and Media and west, by Hyrkania, so he knew to put a pebble under his tongue and to ration his water skin and pottery canteen carefully. He made sure that Antigonus and the under-officers checked the Greek and Keltoi troopers constantly, made them drink, watched them for signs of sickness.

Even with a host of water problems, they flew. Released from the rough ground at the foot of the Sogdian mountains, the four small columns moved at a pace that could only be maintained when every man had at least two mounts. Their second camp on the sea of grass came after what seemed like three hundred stades of travel — an incredible march for one day. The prodromoi rode back and forth between the columns, reporting on the water ahead and the distance that each troop had left to reach their camp, but soon enough the horses smelled the water and then they saw a stream rushing out of the hills — hills that had shifted from the eastern horizon towards the south, and were closer. The stream was still cool and the horses trumpeted when they smelled it and could barely be controlled.

‘For worrying,’ Ataelus confessed, as they watched the horses charge into the stream. ‘For one day on Great Grass.’ He pointed mutely at the chaotic drinking. ‘Next time, four days. And one night — no water.’ He shrugged. His shrugs were so Greek now that he could have sat on a wall in the agora of Athens.

‘We’ll survive,’ Kineas said.

Ataelus gave him a look that suggested that no amount of command optimism was going to cure a night without water.

They all camped together, because of the stream. Kineas snuggled up to Srayanka, and she snuggled back. ‘I missed you,’ she said. ‘I know I will lose you — so I resent being parted. I will yet be a silly girl.’

‘No,’ Kineas said, smelling the sweet grass and woodsmoke and horse smell of her. ‘How were the children?’

She rocked her hips, pushing back against him. ‘They were like babies. When their mouths get dry, they cry. Worry more when they don’t cry.’ She rolled her head back to him. ‘Most of the women who have borne children are gone — the only other women are spear-maidens. I wish I had someone to ask-’

‘Ask what?’ Kineas said.

‘Lita doesn’t — move — as much as I am for liking.’ She kissed him. ‘I am being a mother. Pay me no heed.’

Kineas lay still for a little while.

Srayanka rolled on to her back. ‘What are you for thinking?’

Kineas watched her in the starlight. ‘I’m thinking how many things there are to worry about. Babies and water, horses and water. Alexander. Death.’

Srayanka put her hand behind his head. ‘I can think of something we can do to stop worrying,’ she said, her right hand already playful. ‘But you must be quiet!’

Kineas chuckled into her lips. He started to say something witty and then he wasn’t thinking about much of anything.

About two minutes later, something hit Kineas’s rump. ‘Keep it down!’ Diodorus called, and forty men and two women laughed.

‘Told you to be quiet,’ Srayanka said. But her chuckles didn’t last long.