Storm of arrows

28

‘ There’s cavalry behind us,’ Diodorus said as soon as he rode up. It was four days since they had left the Polytimeros to ride north, the hills of the Abii on their right and the Sogdian mountains a smudge to the south. Diodorus was so covered with dust that his cloak and his face and his tunic were all the same shade. His wide straw hat had frayed around the edges. ‘ Phewf — riding through our drag is enough to discourage any thoughts of glory.’

‘How many?’ asked Kineas. He looked back, although there was nothing to see but the tower of dust. They were a day and a night north of the last stream, and despite the heaviest load of water they could carry, the dash across the waterless plains had already brought equine casualties.

‘Eight hundred? A thousand? No remounts, according to Ataelus.’ Diodorus used the shawl over his head to wipe his face. ‘They were gaining on us, but Ataelus gave them a sting when they were watering. ’

The last water was almost a hundred stades behind them. ‘They’ll never catch us,’ Kineas said.

Diodorus smiled. ‘That’s what Ataelus said,’ he said, and coughed. ‘And that’s before he lifted fifty of their horses.’

Philokles pulled the shawl off his nose to speak. ‘Don’t dismiss them. They crossed mountains and deserts to get here.’ He nodded. ‘If we get into water trouble — we can’t go back.’

Kineas nodded. ‘I needed more to worry about,’ he said.

‘That’s why you’re the strategos,’ Diodorus said. ‘I used to command a couple of squadrons of cavalry, but now I’m a patrol leader.’ He laughed. ‘At this rate, another few weeks will see me where I started — as a gentleman trooper.’

Kineas wound his own shawl back over his face. ‘Was it so bad?’ he asked.

‘Nope,’ Diodorus said.

That night there was water — enough to madden the horses, but not enough to fill them. There was trouble, even with precautions. People became surly, mounts injured themselves and Greek notions of discipline clashed with Sakje ideas of horse care.

Kineas tried calm authority, and when that failed, he punched a Keltoi who was losing his head and then yelled himself hoarse. Angry with himself and with his command, he went to his cooking fire and sat holding his children while Srayanka checked her pickets with Diodorus. The one sandy hole in the stream bed emitted enough water to please one horse every few minutes — which mostly threatened to keep everyone awake all night.

Srayanka came back after the moon went down. She sighed and sank against his back, and together they watched the stars. ‘They slept?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ Kineas said. He had kept his water bottle for them all day and given them the whole contents before they went down. They’d left enough in the bottle to make an attractive sloshing sound. He handed it to his wife and she took a sip, rolled it around her mouth and swallowed. ‘You take the rest,’ she said.

It tasted like ambrosia.

And then they were all asleep.

He was standing at the base of the tree, and Ajax and Niceas stood before him. ‘Are you ready?’ Niceas asked.

‘No,’ Kineas said.

Niceas nodded. ‘Get ready,’ he said. Beyond him, on the plain, stood thousands of corpses — some rotting, some dismembered. Close to Ajax stood a Getae warrior with a hand gone and a neat puncture wound in his abdomen. ‘Do the thing!’ he said in Greek. Those had been his last words. But they had a certain urgency. He cut at a Sakje warrior in a fine suit of scale — Satrax, of course. But the king broke him with a single swing.

Behind the Getae were more men, mostly Persians. Darius’s half-brother was trying to push past Graccus.

‘These are all the men I have killed,’ Kineas said. He began to be afraid, even in the dream. The men he had killed were so many. And for what? As he stood to lose his own life, he found that he had never valued it more. And every one of them had valued his life the same.

Now they were trying to push past other shades, the rage of combat still fresh on them.

Niceas took his hand and pushed him to the tree. His hands were bony. ‘Go!’ he said. ‘Climb!’ He looked desperate. ‘Don’t let this be for nothing!’ he shouted.

And then Kineas was on the tree, looking down at where a circle of dead friends stood fast against a rising tide of corpses. He tore his eyes from the sight and climbed higher, swinging from branch to branch at a rate that wouldn’t have been possible in the waking world, but feeling fatigue as well. His mouth was dry. He was high enough that the tree itself, despite its immensity, had a motion to it, so that the top seemed to sway like a ship’s mast — or had his thoughts of a ship’s mast imparted the motion?

The climb became much harder as he neared the top, the immensity of the darkening sky filling his head. Lightning played on every hand and the top moved like a wild animal under him.

Directly in his way, the thin branches of the top intertwined like an old olive tree, making a barrier like a wicker wall over his head, and he paused, trying to push through. The branches seemed to push back, the twigs whipping in the wind and cutting at his face and hands.

He pushed, using the dream strength against the branches, and as he pushed they seemed to consume him — he no longer knew, in the way of dreams, whether he was climbing or falling, trapped in a dark tunnel of branches heaving and pressing against him, and…

Across the river there stood a tree — a lone willow, blasted by lightning in some inconceivably ancient past, for it was a mighty tree even in death — and its cousins lay scattered across the far shore.

The wreck of the enemy cavalry took cover by the dead tree. A warrior in a magnificent suit of armour and a golden helmet tried to rally them, pointing his bow across the river. A few arrows arched at them and fell short, and Srayanka smiled — a tired smile. He returned the smile and motioned to her, and she put a trumpet to her lips. Above the red swirl of dust he could see the last of a blue sky, and high in the sky an eagle circled.

‘Charge!’ he said. He gestured…

And they were in the river, bodies piled like gutted fish in the spring run of the Tanais, their blood making the froth of the river pink in the setting sun. They went forward, splashing through the river, the drops catching the sun like jewels and the cool water a blessing after a day of battle.

The shattered taxeis, the remnants of which had made their way back across, struggled to re-form, with a single officer, sword arm hanging useless at his side, bellowing for them to rally.

The man in the golden helm drew his bow, even as his companions left him…

Kineas was in midstream, his steel-grey charger stepping carefully because of the gravel and rocks, and then he felt a blow in his gut — sky — cold — water…

‘You are waking the children,’ Srayanka said. She sounded frightened. He listened to her cuddling the two babies and he felt — nothing.

He was a long time getting back to sleep.

In the morning, the horses were weak and difficult. There was little water in the camp and two days’ travel until they could get more. The columns set off with a minimum of fuss or orders, as if two years of campaigning had been practice for these few days when every minute counted. The ground was dry grass and hard gravel, and they moved as fast as the state of their horses would allow. Srayanka looked pinched — she was losing fluid in her milk, and she was worried for the children.

‘This is insane,’ Kineas said to her. ‘I ride to my death and you follow me to yours. The children — we must turn back.’ Every word was an effort and his mouth felt like a drunkard’s after a long night drinking.

‘Turn back?’ she retorted. ‘Do you think me weak?’ She turned around and waved a hand at the silent figures jogging along through the dust. ‘Our children are as strong as they need to be.’ She bent at the waist for a moment and then straightened. ‘We must find water.’

Kineas rubbed his beard.

Four swigs of water later, they crossed a low ridge and, meeting with Nihmu, who had been left as a guide, they prepared to turn due east, away from the sun. The mountains remained on their right hand, and all that could be seen in the distance was a shimmer of heat.

Nihmu rode up to Srayanka and silently handed her a wineskin. It sloshed with water.

The column was halted so that everyone could change horses — the only relief any of them had — and every eye was drawn to the wineskin as if it glowed with blue god’s fire.

‘For the children,’ Nihmu said. Her tone was curious — almost triumphant, or gloating.

Srayanka nodded and accepted the skin. Then she beckoned to Samahe — since Hirene’s death, Samahe had become her hyperetes. ‘Everyone take a sip,’ she said. ‘I’ll have what’s left.’ She handed it to Samahe, who tilted it along her arm and handed it to Diodorus. Diodorus looked at it with wonder, and at her. But he, too, tipped it back briefly, before handing the skin to Antigonus, who passed it to Parshtaevalt — on and on, down the column. Kineas could follow the passage of the skin by the disturbance it made among the horses, almost as if a camel was walking among them.

When he changed horses, he chose Thalassa, because she was fresh, head high and seemed eager for him. It took him three attempts to get his leg over her back, he was so tired, and his Getae hack looked ready to drop. He could hear the sound of the skin coming back up the column. It filled his mind like something in a dream and the craving for the water drove all other thoughts from him. He imagined that the water was still cool, crisp, from some mountain stream that Nihmu had scouted.

‘No one will drink,’ Nihmu said by his side. The girl was so darkly tanned that she rivalled Leon’s looks, and she had a straw hat over a linen wimple to guard her face from the sun. ‘The water is for the children, and your people know it.’

Kineas looked at her, stunned to silence. He didn’t think that he had the discipline to pass on a mouthful of water.

The water skin was already back to Carlus. Carlus looked at it with obvious longing, but he didn’t put it to his mouth. Instead, he handed it to Kineas. The skin was more than half full — some of the riders had taken a sip. But their discipline was remarkable, and humbling. Kineas took enough water to loosen his tongue in his mouth.

‘We must have water tonight,’ Nihmu said. ‘Or many will die.’

Kineas looked at her. ‘Why don’t you find water?’ he asked.

‘I did,’ she said. ‘That water.’ The wineskin was still in his hands, and he passed it across to Srayanka. ‘It is a long ride to that water, lord. I can take you there. Ataelus will help. But you must lead.’ Nihmu turned her head away to look at the horizon.

‘Thank you,’ Srayanka said. ‘But do you think I could drink when all my people were thirsty?’

‘All have had their fill, lady,’ Kineas said. ‘Now you drink.’

Kineas’s eyes burned with unspent tears and Srayanka hung her head.

But she drank.

As she drank, her throat moving with the gulps of water, her drinking noises and the sounds of horses and conversation and Nihmu’s light voice wove themselves like the border on a garment, so that in one moment they were disparate threads and in the next the voice of the god.

‘ The time is soon. It is time to be complete.’

Kineas stiffened, and the hair on his neck rose like the hackles of a dog, and his stomach recoiled.

None of them would forget that afternoon, because it seemed to go beyond a tale of hours. The sun beat down as if the gods had a burning lens focused on their column, and the heat was reflected off the scrubby grass like light from a bronze mirror. The horses took shorter strides and the dust of their passage rose to the skies like the smoke of a funeral pyre.

At the edge of dark, Kineas called a halt. The horses protested. He pushed Thalassa — still as brave as she had been at noon — through the throng to Diodorus. ‘Two hours,’ he said. ‘Then we mount and ride on. The thirst,’ he paused to rub his heavy tongue over his throat, ‘it will not get any better,’ he said.

Diodorus nodded.

Philokles waited until Kineas had dismounted and picketed his charger. Then he came up to Kineas and held out a cup. ‘Drink, brother,’ he said.

‘I will not,’ Kineas said. ‘I will not drink your water.’

‘You must command. And this is watered wine — the last from Coenus. Let us pour a libation to the gods and drink.’

Kineas took the Spartan cup and tipped a healthy portion into the dust. ‘By Zeus who shakes the heavens and Poseidon who shakes the earth, Apollo, Lord of the Silver Bow, and Hera whose breasts are as white as the snow on Olympus, Athena wise in war, Ares clad in bronze, Aphrodite who riseth from the waves and Hephaestion the lame smith, Artemis the huntress, Hermes, god of travellers, who might relieve us in this waterless desert, and all the gods,’ he said. And he drank.

Even as he handed the wine to Philokles, it went to his head, so that he threw his dirty cloak on the warm ground by Srayanka and before she had fed Lita, he was…

In the mud at the base of the tree amidst the terrifying silence of the dream’s battle haze, a hundred maimed and bony hands reached for him. A knot of dead friends struggled back to back — Ajax and Nicomedes and Niceas still stood, but Graccus was gone…

He had the sword in his hand and he cut at the hands that tried to restrain him, and they flung themselves at him as he backed to the tree, and the stench rose through the dreamscape into his nostrils, so that all of the foulness of all the charnel pits in the world, all of the carnage of every battlefield, seemed to fill his nostrils, and above the sky was dark like the blackest storm at sea, and lightning forked across the dark iron of the heavens.

Something was on his back, something too horrible to contemplate, searching for his throat and his mind with its tendrils — hands — claws — and then it was gone, ripped free like the rising of a veil of mist, and he spun and fell to his knees in the muck. Immediately, he began to sink into the foul stuff.

‘Get up,’ said a familiar voice. ‘Did I die so that you could fail?’

Artemis stood over him, her slit throat the least awful of the wounds around him. New forces were in the field, and the wall of silently screaming dead foes had been pushed back several strides. She wore the armour she had worn the night before Arbela, when she had danced the Spartan dances like a man and two thousand soldiers had called her name.

He rose to his feet. She turned her back to him, but she looked back as he set his foot on the trunk. ‘I had a lot of friends,’ she said with a smile.

And then he was climbing, flying, riding a nightmare beast that climbed for him, swarming up the trunk like a lizard or a misshapen squirrel, right into the top and up to the barrier of thorns and branches interwoven like a farmer’s wall, and then he was mortal, no longer flying, bereft of his mount. He pushed his head into the branches and they fought him, but he gave a great heave, as Philokles might have done against a shield wall…

The arrow fell from the sky, burning like a meteor in the last of the sun and he fell…

Sitting on the ground as the alien spearmen pushed the javelin home in his guts…

Alone in the courtyard, cut off from his friends and so tired, as blow after blow fell on his head and arms, and then…

Standing over Nicomedes’ corpse, each blow sending another foe into the dust with a clash of bronze, and the cry of the army, ‘Apollo!’, and he knew that victory…

An arm around her throat, she lashed out with feet, hands, everything, panic not quite winning over cunning, but the other hand held iron and it burned across her throat and warm wetness fell on her breasts and she screamed but no voice came and she fell into the dark

…

Alone under the standard, and all around kin fell, protecting, covering, armour a blaze of gold…

The shock of the cold iron in his guts — killed in a winning fight — he might have laughed but there was nothing…

A child’s cry…

Screaming, red everywhere and pain like lightning in her flesh, waves that came so close that there was no rest and nothing but the lightning and the waves, moist waves of pain that carried her closer to the tunnel — an answering scream from beneath her feet, and the pressure lifted, but not the pain, and all her life pouring away between her legs…

A child’s cry — familiar — and death all around him, the iron tunnel gripping him with a rider’s legs on the whole of his body, arms trapped. A child’s cry…

Standing frozen with fear as the man in the red-crested helm beats the file-leader to the ground — the sick noise as the man’s spear crushes his breastbone and he rips it free, gore spraying — shield too heavy to lift to parry — frozen — the sudden…

A child’s cry…

Light.

Three old crones and the end of a thread and the straight-limbed goddess with an owl fluttering by her shoulder, and she smiled…

Light…

He awoke to darkness and children crying.

By his side, Nihmu squatted, the thin hide of her leggings, worked with a thousand animals whirling in a geometric tangle of hooves and antlers and gold cones, tinkled at her shins and ankles. ‘We must ride, lord,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ Kineas said. He felt that he was speaking down a tunnel, an endless tunnel lined with sound and light and motion and life — too much life.

He turned to Srayanka, and there were tears in his eyes. ‘I have done it,’ he said. There was awe in his voice, and for the first time in his life, Kineas felt no fear.

Srayanka rolled to her knees from her cloak. She reached out and touched his face. ‘Ahh!’ she said. ‘How the people will worship you.’

Kineas held her in his arms. ‘Hush,’ he said. ‘Let’s get these people to water.’ His mouth was dry, but he could speak, and he could still taste the wine, and he gave the goddess a silent prayer and a smile in the dark.

They stumbled twenty stades in two hours, the worst time they had ever made, and then they rode another ten stades in a matter of minutes, because the horses could smell the water. This time, there was no holding them, no discipline, no attempt to stop the beasts or the people. Kineas gave Thalassa her head and she lengthened her stride, galloping the last stades in a few heartbeats. Even Kineas could smell the water. It gleamed like liquid pitch in the light of the new moon, a broad pond dug by the prodromoi, and they stood well clear as the horses rushed upon it and drank, more and more of them pouring in behind so that the first comers were pushed right out of the water and the weaker horses were knocked down. A mare screamed and her desperation drove other horses back, and her rider tried to get her to her feet, but the horses were mad with thirst.

‘Here! Here! For more water!’ Ataelus was shouting, over and over, because there was a second hole just a hundred strides away in the dark. Kineas had to drag Thalassa, usually the most obedient of horses, by her halter. He put both hands on the bit and pulled, abraiding her mouth until he got her head up and away from the water and moving, and then she finally got the message that there was a second source of water and she let out a shrill cry and ran, leaving Kineas with his hands skinned raw, lying in the sand. Another mare following her lead stepped very close to him and a third kicked him where his ribs were hurt and he screamed, and then Ataelus and Leon were dragging him clear of the horses as many of the lead stallions and mares dashed for the second waterhole.

Kineas lay on the sand.

‘Is he hurt badly?’ Diodorus asked fearfully.

‘He has lost his breath,’ Philokles said. ‘I think he was kicked.’

Both of them were very far away.