Storm of arrows

33

Even Thalassa laboured over the last of the climb, but before the sun had set another finger’s-breadth, Kineas topped the ridge and the whole of the battlefield was laid out before him, a bowl of war covering eight stades or more from ridge to ridge. And what he saw shook him.

Nearer to him, Scythian warriors on the other slope of the ridge were retreating, shooting arrows, in the face of a heavy line of enemy cavalry — Macedonians and Greeks and Sogdians all intermixed. The Scythians were spread thin, and they gave ground quickly and never tried to rally.

Down in the centre of the bowl, the pikemen of the phalanx had established a line across the ford and had pushed on for some distance. A rubble of dead horses, visible even at this distance, marked the futility of the Sakje resistance. But there was just one phalanx — the other was visible, pikes erect, across the river behind the line of siege machines.

Only far away, at the limit of vision on the Sakje right, did the army of Macedon seem to be getting the worst of it. There, and only there, was the movement of the antlike contestants retrograde. Years of watching battles — and serving in them — had gifted Kineas with an instant grasp of the meaning of the hundreds of signs — sounds, motion, even the quality of reflection of light could tell you which direction a man was moving. The Macedonian left was losing. The rest of their army was at the point of victory.

Over all of it, the fog of Ares rose from the sandy ground to obscure everything but the wraithlike movements and the strongest glints of polished metal. The Sakje still glittered with gold, so that even through the battle haze, Kineas could estimate their positions.

Nowhere could he find Queen Zarina, who should have been in the centre. But just to the near side of the enemy centre, just behind the fighting, Kineas could see a purple cloak surrounded by aides. Even as he watched, Alexander was leading a wedge of Companions into the Massagetae nobles to his front.

And behind the Macedonian lines was the river. Dead trees filled the ford, and across the river, a huge dead tree towered over the field, stark and awesome, and Kineas felt the full weight of his doom. He shivered, and his side hurt — something liquid seemed to move inside his skin, and he swayed in the saddle. He began to turn his horse — he thought of how he might, after all his posturing, leave the field, flee with honour. Or without it.

I do not want to die! he thought. His breath burned in his throat and his heart seemed to pump out the last of his blood, so that he was cold.

The setting sun was red like the blood of a dying man, and it shone on his men as they crested the hill, barring any possible retreat, and they reminded him — more than reminded him — of who he was. They were strong, unbeaten, three crisp triangles that darkened the ridge so that there was immediate commotion in the Macedonian centre and the Sakje on the ridge before him panicked, assuming that they were Macedonians. He looked at his men — the Keltoi and former hoplites of Olbia, dressed in the remnants of Greek armour, with Sakje tack and Sauromatae armour here and there, many in barbarian trousers, some wearing Sakje hats in place of their helmets.

Just beside him, Hama grinned. ‘Now for glory!’ Hama called. He threw his sword in the air and it flew in a wheel of fire and Hama caught it by the hilt. All the Keltoi roared.

Thank you, Hama. Decision made, Kineas took a deep breath. Fear was deep in his guts, but there was elation there as well. There was even happiness, the happiness of a craftsman nearing the completion of a long and heavy task. To his right, the Sauromatae crested the hill and formed their ranks, glittering bronze and iron scales over every man, woman and horse. Gwair Blackhorse, the leftmost man in the front rank, turned and waved. The sun torched Lot’s armour, but however bright his bronze and gold burned, Srayanka was the sun herself as she rode over the crest, her helmet and gorget too bright for him to watch.

Kineas’s throat was heavy with all of it — pride, terror, joy. He could smell apples.

He left the point of the Olbian wedge and rode along the crest, sword in the air, until he was sure that all three wedges were fully formed and ready. If this were their moment, he would not waste it with a simple error. Their cheers followed him, and in the valley at his feet he could sense the change. They were too golden to be Macedonians. Even as he cantered back to his place, the ocean noise of the Sakje cheers began to come back from the centre, as the Massagetae realized that their long fight in the centre was not in vain. And the purple cloak flickered in the setting sun and the dust, but it was moving back.

Kineas pulled into his place, with Diodorus at one shoulder and Carlus at the other.

‘Athena!’ he called, and men laughed aloud — power flowed through him like the ichor of a god. And the Olbians — Hellenes and Keltoi together — sang Athena’s paean as they started forward, and many among the Sakje and even the Sauromatae took it up, so many times had they heard it around campfires, standing in the rain or the biting heat of the plains, among the snows of Hyrkania. Come, Athena, now if ever!

Let us now thy Glory see!

Now, O Maid and Queen, we pray thee,

Give thy servants victory!

The three wedges came over the crest at a walk. As soon as the horses felt the slope, Kineas let them move, taking the downhill side at a fast trot and then a canter, and he could see Lot and Srayanka at the point of their formations keeping pace.

The cavalry in front of him broke a stade before he could reach them. They had not had an easy day, galled by Scythian arrows and forced to climb the ridge. Now their world had turned upside down and they ran for the ford. Only the Macedonian cavalry stood, then charged back, their tired horses making heavy work of the hill, and the Sauromatae in the centre crashed into them with a sound like summer thunder.

Kineas refused to let Thalassa have her head, and he pulled her up, keeping an eye on Lot’s golden helmet as he used his heavy lance against the more lightly armed Macedonians, already disheartened to find themselves abandoned by their allies. The Macedonians held for a few heartbeats and then a few more, unused to defeat, fighting with their guts, and then they too broke, and the Sauromatae began to re-form their wedge on the move.

The chance of the hill and the ground had pointed their formations more at the ford than at the Macedonian pikes, who were already extending files and facing as fast as they could move to react — far too late, unless their king turned away from the centre to save them — and if he did, the battle was a stalemate.

Kineas could feel it.

He was off the last of the ridge, on the flat and in the battle haze. Off to his right, there were trumpets — Alexander calling his Hetairoi to save the battle. Kineas barked ‘Take command!’ at Diodorus and then ‘Wheel right!’ at Antigonus, who sounded the call. Kineas tapped Thalassa to a gallop and she leaped forward at his order, flying over the ground. Kineas raised his heavy spear over his head, showing all three formations their new direction, and the three triangles wheeled, staggered because of distance and reaction time. Kineas placed himself ahead of the Sauromatae. ‘Wheel, Lot! Wheel right!’

Lot was becoming less visible in the dust, but he raised his lance and a moment later his trumpeter sounded.

Srayanka will hit them first, Kineas thought. He gave Thalassa her head and the mare skimmed the dirt, hooves scarcely touching the ground. How far away were Alexander’s Hetairoi?

He saw the golden glow of Srayanka’s armour first, and he pulled in as he came up. ‘Wheel right!’ he shouted.

She raised her long-handled axe in salute and her trumpet rang out as Kineas closed with her, wheeling Thalassa. ‘Alexander is right in front of us!’

She laughed, a sound of joy. ‘Hephaestion is mine!’ she shouted. ‘Aiiyyeee!’ and she gave her horse its head and the Sakje were off into the dust, Kineas already angling away to the centre. If he had pictured this correctly, the three wedges would hit the Macedonian Companions in three staggered plunges, like three sword thrusts.

He was nearly abreast of Lot when the red-cloaks came out of the haze. He turned Thalassa and settled into the Sauromatae formation seconds before the two triangles crashed into each other.

The explosion of noise as they impacted drowned out thought. Kineas never had time to throw his javelin, and Thalassa crashed breast to breast against a Macedonian horse that she couldn’t avoid as Kineas ducked the point of the man’s lance, and the two beasts went up in a flurry of hooves, standing on their hindquarters. Kineas’s legs closed like a vice and he swept his javelin like a sword — the point caught between the Companion’s arms, and Kineas leaned into it as Thalassa pushed forward on to four feet and the enemy trooper was down, unhorsed but probably otherwise uninjured. Kineas pressed in immediately. Now he threw his javelin into the man facing Lady Bahareh, recognizable from her heavy grey braids, and Kineas’s throw caught him under the bridle arm and sent him into the dust and she pushed forward as well and there was another chaos of noise from their left as the Olbian wedge met the Macedonians.

Kineas was no longer a commander. He retrieved his spear from his left hand and got it up over his head two-handed as the men and horses pressed close — the two wedges were flattening out against each other, and the close-serried cavalry were reduced to fighting like hoplites, cheek to cheek with their opponents, their legs crushed between horses. His next opponent was still fumbling for his sword when Kineas punched his spear — shortened until his left fist was at the head — between face and cuirass. A blow rang off his scaled back and then another. He looked round at where a Macedonian had somehow penetrated their formation and he landed a blow with his butt spike, but it glanced off the man’s cuirass. He took a blow on his raised arms — armoured arms, thanks to Srayanka’s gift — and Thalassa, reading his body, backed up and kicked with her hind legs, both hooves striking home against the enemy’s horse with the sound of an axe biting wood. Kineas thrust back again as a blow rang on the back of his helmet, and his butt-spike caught under the man’s thigh, ripping his leg as his horse failed him, and they went down together. Kineas caught a glint of gold, a flash of a new enemy in his peripheral vision, and he swung the spear two-handed, straight from back to front even as he turned his head, and the whole weight of his cornel-wood spear crashed sidelong into Alexander’s golden helmet, ripping it free against the chinstraps, and the king of Macedon sagged away, a dozen of his own troopers throwing themselves into the desperate press, but Kineas was on him and thrust again at the king’s legs and scored deeply before two swords rang against his helmet — weak blows, but enough to drive him from his prey. He parried, got his spear-butt high and used it like a slave sweeping with a broom to parry, jabbing his point into faces and down into unarmoured thighs, so that men fell into the dust, but Alexander was slipping away, slumped in his seat.

The wall of Sauromatae was pressing forward now — Kineas could feel it. He was too far into the Macedonian formation but he could see Alexander just another rank away, Companions pulling at his bridle. He was hit — hit hard. Kineas took a blow in the side — the wounded side — pain blinded him and training made him lash out with the spear point to cover his agony, and a blow he never saw severed his heavy spear between his hands so that he had two pieces, but this was a moment for which Phocion trained you, and he lashed out with both pieces, raining blows on his opponents, his whole being focused on getting to Alexander, but his vision was tunnelling and he almost lost his seat when a kopis bit into his right side under his arm, scattering scales and drawing a new line of pain on his chest. Thalassa felt the change in his weight and reared, kicking, buying him precious heartbeats. He dropped the halves of his spear and pulled the Egyptian sword easily from its scabbard. He couldn’t breathe.

A long lance reached out from behind him and tipped a Companion into the dust, and he cut at his opponents, missing wildly but still alive, eyes clearing to his peril. He parried, and there were Macedonians on either side of him, so close that his booted knees were crushed against theirs, and his riding whip came into his bridle hand like a gift from Ares. He slashed backhanded to the left and then rammed the butt of the whip under the rider’s jaw and turned back, the whole weight of his body and Thalassa’s motion behind his sword, and he cut through the man’s guard and his blade skidded down the man’s shoulder and still had enough power to cut a long fold of flesh clear of his unarmoured sword arm. Kineas cut with the whip — one, two, three consecutive blows to the man’s face over their locked weapons — and the man fell free, more flesh shredding off his arm as he went, and he screamed but he couldn’t fall because the press of men and horses was so tight. ‘The king is down!’ shouted in Macedonian-accented Greek, and new strength flooded through Kineas. But with Thalassa’s muscles straining between his legs, he couldn’t move, trapped with the men he had put down, and the Companions just beyond the range of his sword were leaning far out over their horse’s heads, trying to cut at him, and he had to parry to protect Thalassa’s head. Thalassa tried to rear and Kineas hung on her neck to keep her down, afraid in this press that she’d lose her footing and fall.

‘Take it!’ over his shoulder. Again the lance struck over his shoulder and he risked a glance back — Lot was behind him. ‘Take it!’ he shouted.

Kineas didn’t want a lance in this insane press. ‘Cover me!’ he shouted, parrying again to protect his horse, and the Sauromatae prince drove his lance into the Macedonian’s unprotected head, killing him. And then Darius was there, and Carlus, and then Sitalkes, clearing his way through the press like a young Achilles, his helmet lost and his spear red and gold in the setting sun.

Darius did an insane thing, rising on his own horse’s back and then jumping to the horse of the last man Kineas had dropped, moving like an acrobat. His sword licked out, blinding a man and then showering blows on his helmet until he ducked and fell away.

Carlus, on his elephantine horse, simply pushed through the press, and for heartbeats it seemed that he might unhorse Kineas in his eagerness. Next to him, at the edge of Kineas’s awareness, was Philokles, raining blows without pause on his opponents like Ares come to earth.

Like a log jam in a Thracian river in spring, the Macedonians gave slowly. Thalassa went forward a short lunge — a single step. Kineas could only parry, his arms too weak to make the strong cuts required to put an armoured man down in the dust. But there were no blows coming at him to parry. Darius and Carlus had taken his place in the line. He hauled on Thalassa’s reins and let Lot squeeze past him, thrusting strongly. Sitalkes cut down the trumpeter even as he set the instrument to his lips, and Sitalkes snatched the golden trumpet and raised it high, exulting, and died like that with a Macedonian lance in his side.

When another Sauromatae knight pushed past him, Kineas sagged and let them all past as the melee grew farther and farther away — a few feet, and then an ocean of sound away. He took a blow on the back from a Sauromatae who thought he was the enemy and he reeled, and the man apologized and rode clear with him, holding him against Thalassa’s back.

‘You did me no damage,’ Kineas said.

‘You are badly wounded,’ the man said. Decorus — he had a name that sounded like that. Kineas couldn’t get his head up.

‘No,’ he said. He was, in fact, wounded, somewhere under his shirt of scale armour. High on his left side, something wet had happened and there was a cut on his right side as well, and a lot of bruises. And breathing hurt again — more — more still. ‘Go back to it, Dekris.’

‘Thank you, lord.’ The young man tipped his helmet down, pulled his lance out from under his thigh and looked right and left. ‘Sounds more open over there,’ he said, and plunged away to the left.

Kineas sat on his charger, alone, long enough to wish that he had a skin of water. Some random blow had cut the strap to his clay bottle. He got his head up, blew the snot from his nose and looked around. There was still no wind and the hanging dust made the air seem heavy and sick.

The prodromoi were still behind the fighting formations. While he took deep breaths, Ataelus came up, and Samahe, and Temerix. They competed to give him water. Temerix had some wine. He felt better immediately. Temerix gave him a piece of sausage with garlic in it — loot from some skirmisher fight, because the Sakje had nothing like it — and he wolfed it down. He hadn’t eaten in hours — so he sat a quarter stade from the hottest cavalry fight he’d ever seen, sharing a sausage with his scouts. His sense of the battle began to return despite the dust.

The sun was setting and the air on his sunburned, dirty face seemed cooler. ‘Thanks for the sausage,’ he said to Temerix, who grinned. ‘Let’s go and win this thing,’ he said, which sounded pompous, but that’s the way it looked to him.

The melee had left him behind. The Companions weren’t breaking — they were simply losing. All around Kineas, Scythian horsemen and women — not armoured nobles, but simple warriors from all the tribes — cantered up. Some peered at him. A few saluted him and called Baqca, and all threw themselves into the melee, often shouting for the prodromoi to join them. But the scouts waited with the discipline of two years of campaigns.

This, he knew, was what Zarina had meant. The Scythians had a lifetime of coordinated hunting on the plains. They knew when a beast was wounded, and they rode to the fight, every warrior choosing their own moment. His few hundred were now just the tip of the spear, and thousands of Dahae and Sakje were coming in behind them, riding into the war-storm to fire arrows or thrust with their swords. Many had changed horses after their initial panic, and they were comparatively fresh. The shock was over and they scented victory.

Kineas could smell it too, and it smelled like horse sweat and dust, and a hint of apples far away. Thalassa gave a cry and took a step forward — rare for her to move unbidden — and Srayanka came out of the murk.

‘Aiiyee!’ she shrieked and they embraced. And then she backed her mare. ‘You are injured.’

Kineas just smiled at her. Then he reached out with his right hand and pulled her close, her gorget scraping dully against his scales, and they kissed like people who might have lost everything, despite everything.

‘We could ride away!’ she said when they parted. Her hand where she had embraced his left side was covered in blood.

‘Too late, my love,’ he said.

‘I cut that fuck Hephaestion,’ she said, as if passing the time of day. She handed him a javelin. ‘A late wedding present,’ she said. Her mouth thinned. ‘Lot went down to the grass,’ she said.

‘Ahh,’ he said, pain banished for a moment. Trumpets were sounding a recall. ‘I put Alexander out of the fight.’ He would mourn Lot later. And then he thought, I will join Lot soon enough, and he hurt, and it was wet, but he chuckled again. His grin was real. His fear was gone — really, he was already dead, and this last embrace was Athena’s favour. He sat back on Thalassa, legs still strong. ‘Let’s finish it,’ he said.

Srayanka’s eyes locked with his, one last time.

‘Take us!’ Ataelus said at his side. ‘Fresh horses!’

Kineas looked around. ‘Form a wedge then,’ he said, and Ataelus and Samahe barked multilingual commands and the scouts formed up. They advanced at a trot.

Side by side, Kineas and Srayanka pushed forward into the storm of Ares. The whole melee had motion now, and warriors made way for them as they pressed forward. All of their forces were intermixed, pressing forward with the strength of victory as the sun set red as a gaping wound behind them, blinding their opponents when it could penetrate the dust, and the daimon was on them all, and the Olbians shouted ‘Apollo’ and ‘Nike’ and few shouted ‘Athena’, while the Sakje and the Sauromatae began to shout something else — something that seemed wordless and built towards a word as they pressed forward, so that all the unfocused shouts began to be a word, repeated over and over, a thousand thin and tired voices making the voice of the war god.

‘BAQCA!’ they shouted.

And the sound carried him forward. He had time to think, This is what it is like to be a god, and he felt Nike, the euphoria of victory, suffuse him. And the Macedonians were breaking, having covered their retreat, exhausted, professional, superb, but now finished. Philotas might have held them longer, or Parmenion, but Hephaestion had already left the field with what he called wounds, and the thousand fickle spirits that warp even the best moved them to flow away.

Kineas broke through into the front rank and he threw his javelin, a long, high throw that caught the rump of a fleeing horse and stuck there.

‘Good throw,’ Philokles said. ‘I find it little different,’ he said, as if continuing an earlier conversation.

Kineas’s vision was tunnelling from the pain of the throw, but he managed a smile for the Spartan. ‘Hmm?’ he said, as if they were standing on the porch of the megaron in Hyrkania, talking philosophy.

‘A cavalry melee. Just the same. A lot of pushing, but with an animal doing the work.’ Philokles smiled. His right hand was red, the wrist was red and the arm that held his spear was streaked with blood drips to belie his tone. ‘I think I like it. A good way to fight one’s last battle.’

Kineas laughed, and it hurt. ‘You’re a good man,’ he said.

Philokles smiled. ‘I can’t hear you say that too often.’

The haze was clearing because the Scythians were too fatigued to pursue, and besides, the water of the Jaxartes was up to the hocks of their horses. Phalangites scrambled across the ford that they had won at such cost. Alexander’s charge had saved them, but they had no order and they were done for the day.

Kineas turned his head and he knew them all — every man and woman — and he saw how the dream was true and not true. He looked to the front and he saw a beaten army, awaiting only the last blow. Just at the base of the great dead tree a lone horseman sat on an armoured horse, his gold-covered helm red in the last of the sun. He had a bow.

Leon’s voice, away to the left, called through the red murk, ‘He’s mine!’ and started into the water.

Diodorus said, ‘Keep the line, by Ares!’

Kam Baqca was at his shoulder. ‘ It is time to cross the river,’ she said.

Kineas raised his sword, though the pain came in like the sea at flood tide. 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…