Tyrant

23

And later that night before battle, they circled back round to the same again. Ajax couldn’t leave war alone. Kineas, who had commanded men for too many years, knew that Ajax sought to justify on the eve of battle, the death he would face, and wreak, with the dawn.

‘If we are beasts,’ he said, after brooding for an hour, while the others spoke, and sang, and Lykeles danced a Spartan military dance to Philokles’ astonishment. ‘If we are beasts, how do we plan so carefully? ’

Kineas leaned past Philokles, determined to avert disaster. ‘Which plan of mine have you known to carry through the battle?’ he asked.

Niceas laughed with the other veterans. Nicomedes glanced at Ajax as if embarrassed for his friend’s bad manners — and kicked his outstretched ankle.

Ajax shook his head. ‘We plan,’ he began again, and something exploded in Kineas.

‘It’s a fucking shambles!’ he said, too loud, silencing other conversations. ‘Madness! Chaos!’ He pointed at Ajax. ‘You know better! You have seen the animal, night and day, for months. A man has to be in the grip of delusion to believe that order can be imposed on war!’

Philokles put his hand on Kineas’s shoulder. Ajax was recoiling, leaning away from Kineas as if his commander might strike him. Philokles spoke softly. ‘We plan for war — to mitigate the chaos. We train so that our muscles will move in a certain sequence when our minds fall to panic and we become as beasts. In Sparta we perfect the making of men into automata.’

Nicomedes rose to his friend’s defence. ‘A dance troupe does the same, and so does a chorus — they train and train, so that they will automatically do what is right. But they are not beasts.’

Ajax was almost pleading. ‘You,’ he said, pointing across the fire at Niceas and Antigonus, at Lykeles and Coenus and Andronicus, and all the old comrades. ‘You are all men of war. Do you truly hate it?’

Philokles began to stand, but Antigonus rose to his feet — Antigonus, who never spoke in public, because he was ashamed of his bad Greek. He was a big man, covered in scars. He had fought his whole life, and he looked the part.

He liked Ajax — loved him, as they all did — and he gave the young man a smile that no one could resent. ‘Somewhere,’ he said in his bad Greek, ‘there is a man so bestial that on the eve of a great battle, he proclaims his love for war.’ Antigonus gave a rueful smile. ‘I fear death too much to love war. But I love my comrades, so I will not flinch. That is all I can give, and all any comrade can ask.’ He held aloft a skin, and shook it so that they could hear it slosh. ‘No good will come if we talk of war tonight. I have wine. Let’s drink.’

Memnon, who most often professed his love of war, smiled, took a drink, and stayed silent.

Later, Kineas, who wanted no anger on his conscience on his last night, went and flopped on the ground by Ajax. ‘I snapped at you,’ he said, ‘because I, too, am afraid of death, and you seem immune.’

Ajax embraced him. ‘How can they say such things?’ he asked. ‘When they are so like the heroes themselves?’

Kineas’s eyes were suddenly hot with tears. ‘They are better than the Poet’s heroes,’ he said. ‘And they speak the truth.’

Wine and song, and the company of his friends, kept thoughts of death and the absence of Srayanka at bay until they went to their cloaks. Kineas walked among the fires, saying a few words to men who lingered awake, and then, spent, circled back to his own. As it chanced, Kineas chose not to lie in his tent alone, but threw his cloak next to Philokles, and found Ajax on his other side, as if a year had vanished from their lives and they were crossing the plains north of Tomis. He smiled at the warmth of his friends, and before death could haunt him, he was asleep.

But death caught him later, in his dreams.

He was wet with blood, and beneath him flowed a river of the stuff, and it smelled like every festered wound he had ever known, septic and evil, and he climbed to drag his body clear of the corruption. His hands were on the tree, his feet clear of the roots, and he climbed, wishing to take the form of an owl and fly free, but the blood on his hands prevented him somehow, and all he could do was climb. He thought that if he climbed high enough, he might see across the river, count the fires of the enemy, or see the worm, and know.. He couldn’t remember what he wanted to know. He climbed, bewildered, and the blood on his hands ran down his arms, and from his arms down his sides, and it burned where it touched fresh skin, burned like saltwater on sunburn.

Sunburn on his face, clear of the water, salt in his eyes, and his hands tangled in the mane of the great horse, the water dragging at his legs and his heavy breastplate pressing him down at every attempt to mount.

A weapon rang off his helmet, turning it so that he was blind. A blade scored across his upper arm, scraped across the bronze of his cuirass and then bit into his bridle arm. The grey startled, bolted forward and dragged him out of the stream and up the bank he had so recently left, hanging from her mane, which panicked her so that she tossed her mighty head. Luck, and the strength of her neck, dragged him a hand’s breadth higher than his best effort had reached before, so that he got a knee over her broad back.

He glanced around, and all the warriors behind him were strange — all Sakje, in magnificent armour, and he himself wore a vambrace of chased gold on the arm he could see through the slits of his helmet — he was dry, sitting tall on a horse the colour of dark metal, and the battle was won, the enemy broken, and across the river, the enemy tried to rally in the driftwood and by the single old dead tree that offered the only cover from their arrows, and he raised her whip, motioned three times, and they all began to cross the river.

He was ready for the arrow when it came, and he almost greeted it, he knew it so well, and then he was in the water — hands grabbing at him…

Again. He woke because Ajax was shaking him. ‘That was an evil dream,’ Ajax said.

Kineas had thrown his cloak free of his legs in his sleep. He was cold. Philokles had rolled away — probably looking for a quieter partner. A glance at the stars and the moon told him that he had slept well enough, and that dawn was less than an hour away. He rose. Ajax rose with him. Kineas pushed at him. ‘You have an hour,’ he said.

Ajax hung his head. ‘I cannot sleep,’ he said.

Kineas pushed him back down and threw his own old cloak over the younger man. ‘It’s a magic cloak,’ he said. ‘You’ll sleep now.’

His fire was burning bright, and a dozen Grass Cats lay around it while two troop slaves heated water in a bronze kettle. One of the slaves handed him a bowl and he took it in silence, wolfed down the contents — odd, how the body continued the tyranny of its needs even when he had only hours left to live. He threw on a cloak and picked up a javelin — not even his own.

He felt very alive. He felt tall and strong, free. Even the fear of the last month — the fear of death, the fear of failure, the fears of love — were far away.

He walked to the horse lines and caught Thanatos. The horse was restless, and Kineas fed him carefully, whispering to him in the dark, and then mounted him bareback and rode down the ridge to the marsh, and across the marsh. A handful of Grass Cats greeted him — they were alert, and they all pointed across the river.

Something in the dark — lots of motion, and a steady hum of noise. The noise of an army. Kineas rode right down to the water’s edge, the Grass Cats hard at his heels. No arrows whistled out of the dark. He could hear the hum even over the river noises.

Dawn was just two streaks of purple-pink against the dark sky, but already there was more light.

He had to know if Zopryon was there. And he suspected that they would be in a state of chaos as their column formed up. He pushed his horse into the stream.

One of the Grass Cats laughed, fear and delight mingled in a single giggle, and all of them slid into the water, their splashes covered by the steady cacophony on the far bank. Midstream, and they were still undetected.

Kineas felt a wild spirit rise in him — as if a god had dared him — and he pushed his horse forward, and the big stallion responded, rising from the water like Poseidon’s own son and springing to a gallop in a few strides.

A man shouted, his guttural Macedonian clear in the dark, ‘Who the fuck is that?’

‘Scouts!’ called Kineas. Thanatos’s hooves were on solid ground now. He could see the head of column, men with their shields propped against their legs and their enormous pikes planted erect in the ground, and other men with torches. Relief washed over him. Win or lose — he had been right. The taxeis were here. Zopryon was here.

He galloped at the front of the phalanx. Men looked up — a little fearful in the dark, but hardly panicked. He put his javelin into a man who looked like an officer and turned Thanatos on his haunches. He saw all of the Grass Cats shooting, drawing and loosing and drawing and loosing with smooth and deadly efficiency, and then he put the stallion at the river. Behind him, he heard the Grass Cats laughing. The air was full of arrows in the dark, coming from both banks. Kineas kept his body low, and something passed a few inches from his face. The stallion hesitated a moment on the far bank and then they were up, safe. One of the Grass Cats had an arrow through his bicep, and another warrior, a woman, cut the head free and pulled the shaft out through the entry hole — all in a few strides of their mounts, without stopping.

Kineas had to prod Thanatos to turn — he was suddenly sluggish. He reined in at the base of the thumb, and Temerix emerged from the dark foliage at his call.

‘Hold as long as you can. They’ll come in half an hour. Then run back south before they cut you off. Understand?’

Temerix leaned on his axe, and the shadow hid his eyes. ‘Yes, Lord.’

Kineas’s horse was already in motion. ‘I am not your lord,’ he called over his shoulder. He thought guiltily that he had never arranged for the Sindi refugees to meet with Srayanka. Another task left uncompleted.

The stallion made such heavy work of climbing the ridge that Kineas dismounted and checked his hooves for stones, but they were clear. The animal’s eyes were wild, and Kineas put a hand on his neck. ‘Today,’ he said. Then he remounted, and the horse finished the climb.

Kineas went straight to his own fire, where most of the officers were waiting. The light was already bright enough to show them the points of the Macedonian pikes across the river.

Memnon swatted him as soon as he dismounted. ‘Are you a boy, or a strategist? Ares’ Prick, that was a stupid thing to do!’ He grinned. ‘Of course, since you lived, and since every spear in the army watched you do it, they’ll all think you are a god.’

Kineas’s face was red. He couldn’t explain what had driven him across the river.

Niceas just shook his head. ‘I thought I taught you better than that,’ he said.

Ajax’s eyes sparkled.

Philokles glared.

Ataelus came up mounted, and pointed to the south and east. ‘Kam Baqca,’ he said. ‘And some friends.’ He leaned down from the saddle. ‘The Grass Cats say you airyanam.’

Niceas touched his amulet and downed some tea. ‘The Grass Cats are idiots, too.’

Kam Baqca came up the ridge in the full regalia of a priestess, with a high helmet of gold, topped by a fantastic winged animal. She had a gorget and scale armour all covered in gold, and she wore it over a hide coat of unblemished white. She rode a dapple grey mare, and behind her came another rider as magnificent, carrying a tall pole decorated with bronze birds and horsetails, and it was covered in bells that made an eerie noise like waves of the sea as she moved.

With her were half a hundred men and women as well armed and armoured as she. Every horse had a headdress that made the animal look like a fantastic beast — horn and leather worked to give each horse antlers and a crest of hair, and their horses, where their skin showed beneath all the armour, were painted red. Their manes were filled with mud and had dried erect. Most of the horses had scale armour of gold and bronze like the warriors, so that they might have been griffons or dragons born from myths.

They were the most barbaric sight Kineas had ever seen.

Behind them came Petrocolus, and the last troop of Olbian horse.

In the wedge of time before the fresh cavalry arrived, Kineas issued his orders, or rather, reviewed them. At his feet, they were already being carried out. Licurgus was forming the Olbian phalanx at the edge of the marsh, and the men of the main force of Pantecapaeum were filing down the hill and over the marsh, forming up as soon as they were clear of the wet ground.

Petrocolus came up on his right hand. He looked down the hill under his hand, and then saluted. ‘We’re in time,’ he said wearily.

‘A late guest is still a welcome guest,’ Kineas said. He offered his hand and they clasped.

‘We tried to catch Cleomenes,’ Petrocolus said with a shrug.

‘He made it to Zopryon,’ Kineas said.

‘I know,’ Petrocolus said. ‘So we pushed on here.’

Kineas leaned over and embraced the old man. ‘Welcome.’ Then his stomach rolled over, and he made his mouth move. ‘Leucon is dead,’ he said.

Petrocolus stiffened in his arms, and his face was grey as he pulled away. But he was a man of the old school, and he pulled himself erect. ‘He died well?’ Petrocolus asked.

‘Saving his troop,’ Kineas said.

Petrocolus grunted. ‘Cleitus’s whole line, dead. He has no other children alive. The archon will take his fortune.’

‘No he won’t,’ said Kineas. ‘When we are done here, you and Eumenes will go settle accounts in Olbia.’

‘That viper’s son still walks the earth?’ Petrocolus spat.

‘Do not hold Eumenes responsible for his father’s treason,’ Kineas said.

Petrocolus avoided his eye and spat again.

Kam Baqca came up on his left side. Her face was a white mask of paint, and the paint and the gold rendered her inhuman.

‘I thought you would go with the king,’ Kineas said.

‘This is where the monster must be stopped,’ she said. ‘So this is where I will die. I am ready.’ The inhuman face turned towards him. ‘Are you ready?’ she asked.

Their eyes met, and hers were calm and deep. The hint of a smile cracked the paint at the corner of her mouth. ‘I see it to the end,’ she said. ‘And it is still balanced on the edge of a sword — indeed, on the point of an arrow.’

‘I’m ready,’ he said. He had his armour on, and all his finery — a little worn from two days in the saddle, but still fine. ‘And the king?’ he asked.

‘Gone to the sea of grass,’ she answered.

‘Will he come in time?’ Kineas asked.

‘Not for me.’ she answered.

Kineas nodded. He motioned to Sitalkes, waiting patiently, like all the men of his troop, for their turn to descend the ridge. ‘Stay at my shoulder and carry my spears,’ he said.

The young Getae saluted like a Greek and took his javelins. Kineas pushed past the horses of the other officers to where a troop slave stood with Thanatos. The big animal was trembling. Kineas vaulted on to his back, and the stallion grunted, slumped — and fell.

Kineas just managed to get clear without tangling in his cloak.

‘What the fuck?’ he said. He pointed to the slave. ‘Get me another mount.’

There was an arrow. Ironically, it was a Sindi arrow — it stuck out of the big stallion’s chest with just the fletching showing. The poor beast. And he’d never seen.

‘Here they come,’ Cleitus said.

Kineas ran to the edge of the ridge. The taxeis was coming out of the ford. Their ranks were disordered and they were bunching to the north side of the ford. Kineas knew immediately it was the rawer of the two taxeis he’d seen.

He turned back to his officers. ‘Here we go,’ he said, his heart pounding in his chest and all the calm of the early morning drained away. His hands shook like leaves in the wind. ‘You know the plan,’ he said, his voice high with tension and fear.

Philokles had his helmet on the back of his head. Once again, he was naked except for the baldric of his sword over his shoulder. The black spear was in his hand. He handed it to Kam Baqca and stepped forward to Kineas and embraced him. ‘Go with the gods, brother,’ he said. Then he took his spear from the icon on horseback, and clasped her hands. ‘Go with the gods,’ he said to her.

Philokles’ men were already standing in their ranks to the left of the Olbian phalanx. Now Philokles tossed his helmet down over his oiled, beautifully combed hair, tossed his spear, and ran straight down the face of the ridge, disdaining the trail, so that he ran across the face of his men before Arni could bring Kineas a fresh horse. His men roared.

Niceas handed Kineas an apple. It was sound, despite its age. ‘Kam Baqca brought a bag,’ he said.

Kineas took a bite, and the smell caught him, so that he thought of Ectabana and Persopolis, of Alexander and Artemis, and victory.

At his feet, the raw Macedonian taxeis was trying to restore its order. The blacksmith’s men on the thumb were merciless. They poured arrows into the shieldless flank of the taxeis. Men were dying — not many, but enough to make the whole block flinch away from the thumb, just as they had when they crossed the ford. Until their own psiloi came up and cleared the thumb, they had to take the harassment. And having crossed, they had to wheel to the right to face Memnon’s angled line — a difficult manoeuvre at the best of times, rendered more difficult by the arrows of the Sindi.

The raw taxeis was followed by the veterans. They crossed in perfect order and started to form to the left of the younger block. The First Taxeis was supposed to be anchored on the river, while the veterans had the more difficult task of covering the endless open ground on their left, where Sakje scouts already rode in close to put arrows into the phalangites.

From his vantage, Kineas could see the cavalry preparing to cross next. Zopryon was committed now.

‘He’s made a mistake,’ Kineas said quietly. He took another bite of apple.

Niceas was mocking. ‘Enough of a mistake to save us at odds of three to one?’ He waved, and the arc of his arm encompassed the whole field at their feet. ‘How long do you think our city hoplites will hold that? And where the fuck is the king?’

Kineas took another bite of his apple and chewed carefully, because it covered his nerves and put something in his stomach besides cramps. ‘Those are the questions,’ he said.

Niceas nodded. ‘Your stupid heroics cost him time, I’ll give you that.’ He turned to look at Kineas. ‘Will he let you die here to win the lady, Hipparch?’

Red-cloaked companions were coming up on the right, flanking the veteran phalanx, and behind them, more cavalry — companions and Thessalians. Kontos would be there, now, trying to get his men formed to face the Sakje. Men on exhausted horses.

Kineas made his decision. He tossed the apple core as far as he could — another boyish gesture — and mounted his spare warhorse, a big Sakje gelding. Big, but nothing on Thanatos. ‘Petrocolus — stay right here. Form to the right of the Sakje.’ He pulled the horse’s head round. ‘Follow me,’ he said to Niceas, and drove the horse down the trail.

Straight across the marsh — the trail was all mud, but the ground was already drier — and then across the front of Eumenes’ troop of horse. ‘Hold here for my order,’ he said to Eumenes.

Eumenes saluted.

Kineas rode to Memnon. The Macedonians were half a stade away, and Memnon never took his eyes from them.

Kineas reined in. ‘We’re going to attack — right now. I need you to push the raw taxeis to the right,’ he said. ‘Every pace matters. Let them come as far down the field as you dare, and then try to push them to the right.’

Memnon still had his shield on his foot and his helmet on the back of his head. He took his eyes off the Macedonian line long enough to flash Kineas a victor’s smile. ‘Didn’t I tell you it would come to this? The spear push. Against Macedon.’ He turned away from Kineas, saying, ‘Best ride clear, Hipparch. This is where things get dirty.’ And as soon as Kineas had his horse in motion, Memnon bellowed, ‘Spears and shields!’ like an old bull accepting a challenge. As Kineas rode down the front ranks, every Olbian pulled his helmet down over his head, set his shield on his arm, and lifted his shield. Kineas drew his sword and lifted it in salute, and they started to cheer.

‘Silence!’ roared Memnon. ‘Cheering is for amateurs.’

And they were silent.

To his right, the phalanx of Pantecapaeum copied their motions. Indeed, not a single pace separated the two formations.

Kineas came to the front of Philokles’ men. Philokles himself was at the front right corner. Kineas leaned down. The eyes in the helmet were alien, ferocious, bestial. ‘When you hit, push right,’ Kineas yelled. ‘Every pace will count!’ Kineas pointed down the field, where the Macedonians were coming on, just a hundred paces or so away. The veteran phalanx marched as if on parade. The other phalanx was still being galled by the arrows of the Sindi, and its files closest to the river were disordered. Men on that flank had their eyes on the oak trees next to them, and arrows came out of the trees at point blank range to punch men screaming from their feet. Not many men, but enough. The front rank had an enormous bend in it, and the middle ranks were not closing up — and the whole taxeis was angling away from their tormentors on the riverbank.

A space fifty paces wide had opened between the rightmost file of the phalanx and the riverbank as they tried to avoid the arrows.

‘I see it,’ said the voice of Ares from Philokles’ helmet.

Kineas rose erect on his mount. ‘Go with the gods,’ he said, and rode down the line to where Eumenes waited. As he came up, Eumenes was pointing at the gap. ‘Don’t point!’ Kineas said. At this range, a single gesture could alert one of the enemy officers to their peril.

Memnon had his men in motion. Their spears were down, their shields up, and the whole line went forward as one. And the Macedonian pikes were coming down, and beyond them, the heavy cavalry was moving toward Kineas’s right flank.

Time for the Grass Cats and the Standing Horses. Time for Nicomedes and Heron.

But they were on their own. Kineas was here.

There was a roar from the Olbians or the Pantacapaeans — or both. And an answering roar from the Macedonians. Just to Kineas’s right, Philokles’ men moved faster, breaking into a trot.

The Macedonian pikes were longer than the old-style hoplite spears. A man had to be very brave to face the prospect of pushing his body, his shield and his head through the wall of pike points.

Philokles’ men were brave, and they had proven their mettle the day before. They went into the iron forest without hesitation, at the trot, and Kineas heard Philokles’ war voice roar, ‘Now!’ and then the lines met, shield to shield. From Kineas’s place on horseback, he could see the Spartan’s transverse plume of scarlet, and he saw the eddy of carnage the Spartan left behind him, and the whole of the epilektoi made a noise like cattle, or thunder, and the Macedonians, whose front hadn’t been perfectly formed to start, moved. It was all a matter of two paces — the epilektoi struck, and then, two paces later, the Olbian spears were in, Memnon’s challenge carrying even over the sound of war. The raw phalanx of Macedonians contracted and men fell as they lost their balance and suddenly Philokles’ plume moved forward three paces — five. The Macedonians were struggling to restore their order. A lot of men were dying.

Kineas rode to the head of Eumenes’ troop. He faced the men. ‘We will go right along the edge of the phalanx,’ he said. ‘At my order, we will turn and charge. There will be no room. There will be no time. The river waits for a man who pushes too fast on the left, and the spears will eat a man who pushed too far to the right.’

Philokles’ charge had gained them another five paces. They had a gap of perhaps sixty paces between the Macedonian flank and the river.

Kineas tried to catch every eye. ‘We will turn the block, just as on the drill field. It must be done well. Everyone see it? This is where you show that you learned your lessons.’

Time was flowing away.

He took his spears from Sitalkes. Even Sitalkes looked grim.

Kineas had no time for men, even those he loved. He turned for Niceas. Niceas nodded, his bridle hand at his throat. He was murmuring his prayer to Athena.

‘Walk!’ Kineas ordered. As soon as the block of fifty was moving, he ordered: ‘Trot!’ To the right, the epilektoi were faltering. Even disadvantaged, the Macedonians were deeper, their files stronger. They were pushing hard.

The transverse plume was still leaving an eddy of death.

Memnon’s men were locked. There were horses dying farther to the right, and Kineas could hear their screams like a demand for his attention, but he had chosen his foe.

And almost at his feet, the terrified eyes of the rightmost file leader in the young taxeis locked with his. Kineas rode past him, along the highway of the empty ground where the new men had flinched from the Sindi.

The deeper he got, the more ruin he’d cause.

The rightmost file was raising their pikes. Kineas didn’t think that one file could stop him, but neither did he care to lose men. ‘Right! Turn!’ Kineas yelled.

Ten paces separated him from the flank of the pikes. An absurd distance. The men behind the right files were already defeated. His heart swelled with a dark joy.

‘Charge!’ he said.

They were only fifty men, but the taxeis couldn’t endure the invasion of their files, and men in a phalanx panic when they sense an enemy behind them — for good reason. Kineas threw one of his javelins into the unshielded side of a pikeman, and then he was among them, wielding his heavy javelin two-handed, reaching out over his horse’s neck to plunge it down into his foes while his horse bowled men over or kicked them. He struck and struck again, more concerned to sew havoc than to finish off wounded men. His good javelin was suddenly gone, jammed into a man’s skull where the helmet failed to cover his cheeks, and then the Egyptian sword was rising and falling — the Macedonians had heavy glued linen cuirasses, and idle blows did no damage to them, but their backs were turning under his weapon.

They broke slowly, a file at a time, and the irony of the Olbian charge was that the collapse of the riverward taxeis occurred after the Olbian attack had lost all of its impetus in the press of bodies. But the pressure on their front was relentless, and the threat of the cavalry was enough. The rear ranks flowed away, and then the whole mass, almost three thousand men, was pouring away.

The Olbian horse had to let them go. They were already spent, and they were only half a hundred. Niceas was blowing his trumpet, and they were slow to rally — the flank of the veteran taxeis was open, but the Olbians were too slow, too tired, and the veterans had seen the threat; their flank files turned smartly and their pikes came down, while their main force pressed to the front, forcing the lightly armed men of Pantecapaeum and the Olbian phalanx back, foot by foot.

Kineas didn’t like the sound of the battle on the right. He glanced at the sun — still early morning, for all that he felt that he had fought all day. Kineas reined in by Eumenes, who had lost his helmet. ‘You have the command here.’ Kineas pointed at the gap, the road that still ran all the way to the ford. ‘Do all the damage you can,’ he said.

Eumenes looked at his tired men and the gap. ‘Are we winning?’ he asked.

Kineas shrugged. ‘You just broke a Macedonian taxeis,’ he said. ‘What more do you want?’

‘Where’s the king?’ asked Eumenes.

Good question, thought Kineas, as he rode for the right flank.

He rode up the ridge with Niceas and Sitalkes at his heels. He had to see.

The rout of the riverside phalanx had evened the score, but no more, and the veterans were holding Memnon’s men or even pushing them back. Zopryon’s main effort was falling to the right of the Olbian infantry.

There was a cavalry melee to the right of the spearmen — companions and Thessalians, Olbians and Sakje. It stretched from the right flank of Memnon’s men all the way to the north end of the ridge.

In Persia, there had always been dust. Dust was kind — it hid the bestial panorama beneath a shroud of earth. The Poet called it the battle haze. The damp ground of the sea of grass was not so kind, and Kineas was looking down at a cauldron of death with no disguise, no shroud of dust. The armoured mass of Macedon had fallen like the smith’s hammer on Nicomedes’ troop and the Grass Cats. Kaliax of the Standing Horse had hidden in the tall grass to the north and west of the ridge, had swept into the flank of the Macedonians, and stopped their advance — but that was all. The whole fight was balanced, a great circular melee of cavalry that stretched from Kineas’s feet to the north of the ridge, three stades of dying men and horses.

The balance was about to be broken. There were fresh Macedonians coming across the ford. They had to push through the broken taxeis, but someone would rally the raw men soon.

Balanced on the point of an arrow, Kineas thought. But only until the fresh Macedonian horse pressed into the Sakje on the far right. Then the cavalry fight would unravel like a skein of yarn, and the Thessalians would fall on the flank of Memnon’s infantry, and the rout would start.

‘Where is the king?’ Kineas asked the sky, and the gods.

Under his eye, Sakje shot Macedonians at arm’s length, and Macedonian lances emptied saddles, and men fought with spears and swords, or bare hands and daggers. Kineas fought the urge to do something. It was hard to sit and watch.

His reserve was pitifully small. His attempt to deliver a great blow against Zopryon’s line and withdraw had gone awry. There was no longer any hope of withdrawal. Like two wrestlers, the two armies could only fight until one was beaten — they were locked close.

Kineas thought he saw Zopryon. A big Macedonian in a purple cloak was pushing up the bank of the ford, and even as he watched, the man pointed at the cavalry melee and shouted. An arrow plucked the man at Zopryon’s side from his horse.

The Sindi on the thumb were still fighting, still slowing Zopryon’s manoeuvres across the ford.

Kam Baqca was at his side. She gestured with her whip — more like a staff of white wood. ‘I curse them, and they die,’ she said. ‘The grass curls around the legs of their horses. The worms open holes for their hooves.’

Kineas drank from a gourd of water handed to him by one of the slaves. ‘Zopryon’s horses are exhausted. Even with his advantage in numbers, he’s having trouble.’ He grimaced. ‘I was a fool to make a stand. I cannot break off. And the king is late.’ He met her eyes. ‘I need you to charge.’

‘Yes. I will charge. I will hold him,’ she answered. But she returned his smile — a singularly sweet smile, like that of a young girl receiving praise. ‘I am ready to die now,’ she said. ‘And now is the time. For me.’

Kineas shook his head. ‘And for me?’

‘Not yet, I think,’ she said. ‘Goodbye, Baqca. Perhaps this will teach you the humility I never learned.’

She motioned with her staff, and her escort formed around her at the top of the ridge. They formed an arrowhead, with Kam Baqca and the standard at the tip.

Kineas wanted to remonstrate that they couldn’t ride straight down the ridge, but they were Sakje, and he knew them.

She flashed him one last smile. ‘Charge!’ she shouted in a man’s voice.

They fell down the hill like an avalanche of horseflesh, and they punched through the nearest ranks of Macedonians like a cleaver through meat. Dozens fell. Nicomedes’ beleaguered troop was saved, and the survivors rode clear, dismounted, drank water.

Kam Baqca’s risk allowed her to cut straight into the heart of the cauldron, and her fifty riders were like an arrow of gold flying through swirl of fog and mud.

Kineas sat with Sitalkes at his shoulder and watched the charge. So great was their impetus, and so hot burned their fire, that the cauldron of the melee moved away from the marsh’s edge. In the centre, the Macedonian cavalry flinched away from Memnon’s men.

Kineas pulled his gaze away from the Sakje priestess. At his feet the veteran taxeis was no longer pushing Memnon back. Philokles’ young epilektoi were into their flank files. From the height Kineas could see Philokles’ plume, could hear his battle rage. Even as he watched, Philokles tipped his great shield, slammed it into a new opponent and rolled his enemy’s shield down with the force of his arm and then killed him with a brutal spear lunge into the man’s unprotected throat. The men behind Philokles’ victim shifted uneasily.

Farther to the west, between the thumb of oaks and the flank of the veterans, the empty grass was filling with peltasts and Thrakes, and there were Thrake cloaks amidst the trees, hand to hand with the Sindi, who had stayed at their post to the end, and whose arrows had been the margin on the left.

Eumenes would charge the Thrake, and win, or lose. Either way, the left would hold.

Philokles and Memnon were spear to spear with the best Macedon had to offer, and nothing Kineas could do would change their fight.

At the north end of the ridge, Grass Cats and Olbians milled at the edge of the maelstrom, leaderless.

The golden arrowhead had gone deep, and the beast was wounded, but golden men and women were falling now. Kineas could no longer see Zopryon, but he could read the man’s thoughts. Zopryon must think that the golden arrow was the last throw — and that the golden helm was the king of the Sakje.

And off to the west, another flash of gold came across the river and out on the sea of grass. His heart rose. The king.

It was just mid-morning, and he needed an hour. One more distraction would buy time, and keep men alive. If the right held, then the centre would hold, and the king would come to find the men of Olbia alive. If the right collapsed, then the king would come only to build pyres for the dead. And if the king’s delay was deliberate…

Kineas turned to Petrocolus, who looked older than his fifty years. ‘Follow me,’ he said.

Without a word, he rode down the north flank of the ridge. Even from the last of the ridge he could still see the horsetail standard, well out on the plain. He wondered what would happen if he refused his fate and rode away.

He laughed. He motioned to Nicomedes’ men where they were drinking water, and they remounted to follow him, swelling his numbers.

Farther east, there were Grass Cats getting remounts, and a dozen of Diodorus’s troopers — and Diodorus.

‘These gentlemen gave us fresh horses,’ Diodorus said. His helmet was gone, and his red hair was almost blond in the sun. He had a nasty wound across his shoulder and one of the straps on his breastplate was severed. ‘It’s been warm work here. I thought we were going to withdraw?’

Kineas shrugged. ‘Too late.’

Diodorus started to struggle with his breastplate, and Sitalkes handed him a length of leather. The two of them worked to tie the breastplate tighter. Niceas was organizing the survivors into a single troop.

‘Where’s the king?’ Diodorus asked.

Kineas pointed out to the west with his whip. ‘The king is coming,’ he said. Men stopped what they were doing to listen, and he shouted it, pointing across the melee and the rising dust. ‘The king is coming!’ and the word spread like a grassfire on the plains.

Diodorus gave his cynical half-smile. ‘Of course he is,’ he said, and slapped Kineas on the back plate. ‘Let’s ride to meet him.’

Kineas made a motion with his whip, and the Olbians fell in on him, and Grass Cats rode in a loose knot at their right.

As they rode north, more men joined them — wounded men, and men who had, perhaps, had enough of the fight, and now felt differently. Kineas didn’t harangue them. He just gathered them, his eyes on the horsetail standard.

Every Sakje eye was on the horsetail standard, and every Macedonian eye. Sacred to the one — royal to the other. Kineas gathered his men while the maelstrom swirled to a new centre. He kept them moving north, pecking at the melee to disengage those who could be pulled free.

The ground was losing its moisture, and the dust of the deadly battle haze was finally starting to rise.

Kineas watched the battle as he pushed north. The Macedonian horses were done — ruined by the campaign, not the battle — and they could never pursue when the Sakje gave ground, so that he was able to take men out of the battle lines and the Macedonians could do nothing in response but watch.

It took time, and he saw too much. He saw Nicomedes’ body pinned under Ajax’s horse — just a spear’s length from the mangled remains of Cleomenes the traitor. He saw Lykeles with a broken lance straight through his body, and gentle, priestly Agis would sing no more of the Poet’s words with a sword cut across his face and neck. The Olbian cavalry had held the worst of the first Macedonian charge, and paid.

And Varo of the Grass Cats was surrounded by his household with a ring of dead enemies like a hill fort. The survivors were grim faced, but they rallied under the leadership of Varo’s daughter, Urvara. He gathered them and moved north, while the attention of his enemy was locked on the horsetail standard.

And then the standard fell.

Every Sakje gave voice together, and despite the distortion of a thousand voices, Kineas knew the word. ‘ Baqca! They cried.

By then, Kineas had almost two hundred men — Olbians and men of Pantecapaeum, Diodorus and Andronicus, Coenus, Ataelus, Heron and Laertes with a length of linen tied around his bridle hand; two dozen Grass Cats and a handful of bloody Standing Horses as well as Niceas, Petrocolus and his troop. He was as far around the flank as he could spare the time to go, and he prayed to Athena that his two hundred men would, like Kam Baqca’s charge, distract Zopryon and his army for a few more minutes. The sun was high in the sky above the dust.

He pointed to where the standard had fallen. ‘That’s where Zopryon is!’ he called, his voice still strong. Sitalkes put a javelin in his hand.

He looked at his friends. There was no tree across the stream; he was on the wrong horse, no ford, the whole thing was insane. But the feeling of victory that suffused him was the same, and so he knew that this would be the time. And he meant to see it finished.

‘Zopryon’s head is Srayanka’s bride price!’ he yelled, and his voice held. They laughed, because of whom they were, Hellenes and Sakje laughing together, and their laughter was terrible.

‘Charge!’ he said, for the last time.

The Macedonian horses could barely stumble along, and many of the Macedonian cavalrymen were fighting dismounted. His two hundred appeared out of the dust and bit into the red-cloaked companions to his front as a complete surprise, and they were knocked flat. Many died, and many more fought back like desperate men.

Kineas found Phillip Kontos in the battle haze. The man’s horse reared, throwing back his magnificent cloak, and Kineas knew him, and gave a yell. Kontos knew him, too — and they came together with a crash of armour and horses, chest to chest. Kontos was his match, blow for blow, and their horses bit at each other, the enemy officer’s stallion a better mount than his, but luck was against him, and Kineas’s weakest blow went past his guard and fingers sprayed away from his adversary’s sword hand like twigs from an axe — and the man fell against the mane of his horse and from there to the ground. Kineas circled him, wanting his horse and his javelins. Kontos clutched the ruins of his sword hand and looked up at him, battle rage spent, and before Kineas could consider mercy, Ataelus shot him dead.

Kineas whirled his brute of a horse and looked around. The battle had moved past him. Ahead, Coenus was dismounted, collecting javelins, and Sitalkes was finishing an opponent. Ataelus pushed past him to shoot, and every time he had an arrow knocked, he reared his horse for an extra span of height, and every arrow emptied another saddle. While Kineas pushed his horse into motion. Diodorus engaged an officer, cut hard with his heavy javelin, and a Thessalian lance caught him in the back plate and unhorsed him.

Kineas dug in, knees and heels, and his horse responded, flowing over the ground. Kineas’s sword flicked out — right through the eyes and nose of the Thessalian — a blow rang against his helmet and he cut backwards underarmed, and saw Ataelus behind him, rising to shoot even as Kineas’s new enemy whirled his javelin to strike again. Kineas’s sword cut the man’s thigh and Ataelus’s arrow emerged from the bronze of his helmet, and then Kineas had Diodorus’s wrist in his hand and he got him up behind without stabbing him with the sword while Ataelus continued to fire point blank into the melee.

I’m not a general anymore, Kineas thought. He saw Kontos’s riderless horse, rode at it and it shied, but Ataelus was there with a lasso. Diodorus slipped off his gelding and got a leg over the strange horse. ‘Apollo, he’s a giant!’ he called.

They were almost alone — a minute away from the combat and it had moved south. The ground had dried, and the dust was rising faster — the familiar dust that gathered over every melee. Nothing was visible a javelin’s throw away — closer than that, men were just shapes moving in the dust, like ghosts.

Kineas took a breath, looked around, put his heels to his gelding, and the brute responded. Kineas had time to be pleased, and then he was back in the madness.

Something had changed. The noise was different and the whole shifting mass of the fight was moving west like an ocean current. Kineas pressed after it. A flurry of blows — his sword bit deep and locked in the bone of a man’s arm, and it was gone behind him in the brawl. He had no time to regret its loss — he had a dagger, and his whip — and he used both, pressing his next opponent close, slashing the Sakje weapon across the man’s face and then finishing him with the dagger, clutching his mount with his knees to keep from slipping.

Something caught him in the hip — a flare of pain and then nothing more, and there was a javelin trapped between his leg and his horse. He grabbed at it, pulled it clear of his girth strap and fell straight to the ground as the strap gave under him.

He never felt the blow that put him down.

Horses hooves all around him, grunts, the scream of a horse, and he couldn’t get his feet under him — right leg wouldn’t answer. Dust in his mouth, filling his throat — a horse stepped on him and stepped away without testing his breastplate with its whole weight, and he still had no breath — dust everywhere, and hooves, and a javelin.

‘Kineas!’ screamed Coenus. He whirled a javelin, swinging it two-handed like a Thrake sword, clearing a space around his commander, and Sitalkes was there — he still had a javelin to throw, and he threw hard, killing the man at Kineas’s right, and then he unhorsed another and pushed his horse past Kineas, and Coenus had one of his wrists and Niceas had the other — he was up.

Ataelus had another horse. He grinned, his face a mask of grime with two burning blue eyes. Somewhere between him, voices cheered ‘Apollo!’ and Ataelus reached for his gorytos and came away without an arrow.

Kineas’s right hip was aflame and the leg was unresponsive. He could just stay astride the new horse — it hurt his balls to canter because he couldn’t get his knees to lock. He looked right and left — he could see nothing but battle haze and shadowy figures, but the sound to his left was the Paean of Apollo and he could hear as the Olbian hoplites pressed forward. He didn’t need to be able to see what was happening — invisible in the murk, the veteran Macedonians were giving way.

Somewhere in the dust, the king was finally on the field. Nothing else would have the same effect.

They had won. Kineas knew the feeling, having felt it in the dream — the certainty of victory.

He glanced around at his friends, and then, without a word, he pushed into the cloud again, feeling the strength of a god despite his wound, the daimon that lifts a man above himself in the eye of the battle storm, knowing that these were his last moments and determined to ride fate’s horse to the very end. He followed Sitalkes, who left a swathe of dead the width of his reach, because the enemy was in the cloud, and because that’s where the rest of his friends were, now.

And Srayanka.

There were grunts and calls and animal screams, but the song had changed — the battlefield was a hymn to victory for the Greeks, rout for the Macedonians — and there was cheering from the ford. ‘Apollo!’ again from the left. ‘Athena!’ from Coenus at his right hand.

The Macedonian army was dying.

Kineas had a javelin — too long and too heavy and the gods knew where he’d gotten it — he thrust it at a Macedonian face and the man went down, taking the javelin with him, and Kineas’s horse was astride the broken body of Kam Baqca, gold and dirt mingled beneath his horse’s hooves — another red cloak, and Sitalkes swept him from the saddle — the dust was rising faster, or the sun was stronger — the falling red cloak had the horsetail standard in his fist. Kineas hit him — hit him again, lashing him with the whip, screaming his war cry in the man’s panicked face. Sitalkes got a hand on the standard, and together they killed the man, and Sitalkes held the standard high. Sakje voices cheered — fresh voices, and closer, now.

More Macedonians — where were they coming from? Kineas’s head snapped back as something hit him a hard blow — he couldn’t see, but he hung on, his whip rising and falling, and then he was free, like a ship at sea that cuts loose an anchor, and he had his reins and the gelding was still under his command. He whirled his whip, his arm feeling like a chunk of wood; the tendrils of the weapon caught at an enemy helmet. As soon as it tore free, he saw… Sitalkes cut a man from his horse and a dismounted Macedonian cut at his side, clanging against his breastplate, and Sitalkes fell amid the hooves, gone in the dust — the standard going down again. Coenus killed the Macedonian, and Ataelus caught the standard.

Kineas was eye to eye with Zopryon. There was no shock — the man was where he ought to have been, at the centre of the battle cloud. Kineas had long enough to see defeat in his eyes — and rage.

Kineas lashed him with the whip, two quick blows, and one of them went home, a tendril of the lash wrapping under the brim of the man’s gilt helmet and taking an eye, but Zopryon’s back slash with his sword cut through the Sakje whip, leaving Kineas with a handle of gold and no weapon. Kineas leaned forward, and the gelding responded, rushing the bigger horse and catching him broadside on. The gelding’s teeth bit hard, and the stallion struck back — but Kineas caught Zopryon’s rising sword arm with his left hand and trapped it with his right, used the other man’s strength and his strong left leg against his horse’s spine to clasp him tight and pull him down — and they were in the dust, the horses a storm of teeth and hooves above them. Kineas fell on top, and their bronze breastplates bounced and winded them both. Kineas got an arm around the man’s neck — nose to nose, Zopryon’s breath was foul like a bad wound, and his eyes were those of an injured boar.

Zopryon, by luck or skill, forced Kineas back against his injured leg and Kineas screamed. Twice, Zopryon got the pommel of his sword against Kineas’s helmet, and his head rang with the blows, and darkness threatened.

Kineas had only one good leg, but rage and thirty years of wrestling broke the Macedonian’s bridle arm in a scream of sweat and blood. The crack of the arm seemed like the loudest sound on the battlefield — but pain, rage, desperation, strength born of despair allowed Zopryon to roll back, rise to his knees in the dust, and, ignoring his shattered left arm, cock his sword for a killing blow.

Kineas went for his second dagger, trapped by his injured leg — too slow.

The first arrow went into the Macedonian just above the circle where his neck emerged from his breastplate. And then he seemed to grow arrows like some trick of a stage machine — one, then four.

Kineas was on one knee, and he couldn’t think very well, but he raised his head, and her blue eyes were there above a tall horse, and above them the dust rose like a funeral pyre. And even as he looked at her, the dust opened and he was looking at the sky. The sky above the dust was blue and in the distance, far out over the plain, clouds rose in pristine white. Up there, in the aether, all was peace. An eagle, best of omens, turned a lazy circle to his right. Closer, less auspicious birds circled.

A hand grasped his, hard as iron on the calloused side, and soft as doeskin on the back under his thumb.

And darkness took him.

He was sitting on a horse in the middle of a river — a shallow river, with rocks under his horse’s feet and pink water flowing over and around the rocks. The ford — it was a ford — was full of bodies. Men and horses, all dead, and the white water burbling over the rocks was stained with blood.

The river was enormous. He lifted his head and saw the far side, where piles of driftwood made the riverbank look like the shore of the sea, and a single dead tree rose above the red rocks of the shore. There were other men behind him, all around him, and they were singing. He was astride a strange horse tall and dark, and he felt the weight of strange armour.

‘Is this any river you have ever seen?’ Kam Baqca asked mockingly.

‘No,’ he admitted, feeling like a boy with his tutor.

‘The hubris of men, and their vanity, is beyond measurement.’ She laughed, and he looked at her, and the white of her face paint could not obscure the rot that had taken most of the flesh of her cheeks.

‘You’re dead!’ he said.

‘My body is dead,’ she said.

‘And mine?’ he asked. Even as he spoke he looked down, and the skin of his arm was firm and marked with all the scars that life had given him.

She laughed again. ‘Go back,’ she said. ‘It is not yet your time.’

There were three of them, sitting on the branches of the tree, and each was more hideous than the last. The one on the lowest branch reached above her and took something from the crone on the next branch, and when she looked at him, she had just one eye, but that was as bright as a young girl’s. She held up her hand, and from it dangled a thread, or perhaps a single hair of a child, and it was bright gold and shone with its own light, although it was shorter than the width of a man’s finger.

‘Not much left,’ she said, and she cackled. ‘But better than nothing, eh?’

‘Enough to father a child or two,’ giggled one of her hideous sisters.

‘Enough to defeat a god,’ roared the one on the highest branch. ‘But only if you hurry!’