King of the Bosphorus t-4

by Christian Cameron

  Melitta came back to Coenus. 'But you do not look like the bearer of good tidings.'

  Coenus squinted in the bright sunlight. 'I don't know if it is good or bad, but you need to hear it. Urvara is taking her Grass Cats and all the farmers in the fort across the river. She's been feeding riders across for two days, raiding Nikephoros's foragers and cutting into his ability to send out parties. Now he has his boats crewed all the time, trying to catch her people, but they swim the river and now they can shoot his rowers from both banks.'

  'And that is why we no longer see boats up here!' she said. She clapped her hands. 'No bad news there!'

  'No. But in pushing so many of her warriors across the river, Urvara is committed to fight. Today, I saw Nikephoros march his whole force out of their fort and form a square. They marched up-country, seizing food. Urvara's men shot at them but did little damage. Now she's determined to cross in force and hem him in his camp. And of course, with Eumenes right behind her, she can do it.'

  Melitta understood. 'Urvara is committing us to a battle.'

  Coenus nodded. 'Yes.'

  'Just to cover her archers, who she needed to close the river, which she did to keep us alive up here.' Melitta ticked the points off with her fingers.

  Coenus nodded again. 'Yes. You are your father's daughter, Melitta. Many grown men with ten campaigns never understand the cause and effect like that.'

  'I love your praise, Uncle. You knew of this in the morning, when you recommended that we close the ford.' She wasn't accusing him, just asking.

  'I didn't know,' he said with a shrug. 'I merely suspected. Urvara means to fight – or close the fort – tomorrow. The Cruel Hands and all of Eumenes' cavalry are riding all day to join her, and the phalanx of Olbia will come when they can. I don't see how we can get them over the river, but we'll do that when we have to.'

  'And the farmers?' Melitta asked.

  'Swimming with the Sakje horses. Not something most Greeks can do.' He shook his head. 'Any movement from Upazan?'

  Melitta looked upstream, where the calm day devoid of dust showed that her enemy was resting. 'Nothing.' She sat on a stump. 'But if Urvara commits to fight Nikephoros – then what? It is a very unequal fight, all cavalry against all infantry.'

  Coenus nodded. 'Just so. It will, in fact, be a race between Eumenes' phalanx and Upazan. Upazan has more cavalry than all of ours combined – twice over, even now. But he has no infantry. If we can destroy Nikephoros before Upazan arrives, he will be helpless. But if Nikephoros holds us until Upazan arrives…'

  Melitta shook her head. 'Urvara has committed us to a mighty risk. What if I call her back?'

  Coenus sat down. Men were gathering around – Scopasis and Graethe, Ataelus, his eyes red with weeping, and Buirtevaert with his hand on Ataelus's shoulder, his son Thyrsis behind him and Tameax the baqca watching from under his eyebrows. But they all stood silent and listened. This was not their way of war.

  Coenus looked around. 'If you call her back, then we face Upazan on this side of the river, and Nikephoros recovers his wits, puts all his men on ships and comes across.'

  'Ahh,' Melitta said. Now she saw it. 'This is not risk. We are, in fact, desperate.'

  Coenus put his hands on his knees. 'Unless your brother comes,' he said, 'we have little choice.'

  Melitta stood. 'Then let us strike with what we have. Upazan has lost a day. We will march at dawn – across the ford. Temerix, your best two hundred, with ponies, to hold the ford. If Upazan crosses north of us, scouts will inform your men and they can ride to join us. Otherwise, you hold the ford until you die. The rest of your archers follow me. Perhaps we can bury Nikephoros in arrows.'

  Ataelus shrugged.

  Graethe looked at the men making arrows. 'Only if we have them to shoot,' he said. Upazan's scouts found them in the dark, but they were ready enough, and Melitta slept through the fight and rose to be given hot wine and a report.

  Scopasis pressed the wine into her hand, and she could see blood under the nails of his hands.

  'We hit them, but many got away.' He shrugged. 'We killed more than some.' He frowned. 'But they saw the stakes in the ford.'

  She kissed him then. He was shocked – he stumbled back. 'Lady?' he mumbled.

  She smiled. 'Life is not all war, Scopasis. One day, we will not be wearing armour.'

  She caught a glint – the outlaw lived. 'Lady,' he growled.

  She felt better than she had in days, and she swallowed the wine in four hot gulps. 'Armour,' she called, and then remembered that she no longer had Samahe to braid her hair. She was surprised – appalled, actually – at how quickly the dead were left behind in her head. They died so fast.

  She shook her head to clear it. That way madness lay.

  Gaweint came with her armour, and the day was moving.

  She got her rearguard across the ford without incident, and she clasped hands with Temerix and a dozen of his archers. Then she turned and rode west along the south bank of the river. It seemed odd – a reversal of the natural order.

  Ataelus was closed to her, and she tried to reach him.

  'I missed Samahe this morning,' she said bluntly.

  'I miss her for every beat of heart,' he said in Greek.

  'I-' she began.

  'I want her body back,' he said in Sakje. 'I failed to recover her, and she will go mutilated to the after-life, and wail for revenge, and what can I give her?'

  Melitta leaned close. 'Upazan's head?' she asked.

  Ataelus shook his. 'Upazan will never die by the weapon of a man,' he said. 'It is told. Even Nihmu said it.'

  Melitta summoned her Greek learning. 'If Philokles were here,' she said, 'he would tell you that Samahe lived a good life with you and gave you two sons and a daughter, and that what happens to her body after death means nothing, because she is dead.'

  Ataelus looked at her with a face almost alive, it was so full of grief. 'But you and I know better, eh?' He shook his head.

  'We'll find her and build a kurgan,' Melitta promised.

  Ataelus said nothing, and they rode west. She sent Coenus to find Urvara, or Eumenes, and bring her a report, and then they rode all day. The sun was low in the west, the rays direct in their faces, so that they could hear the fighting and yet not see it.

  Melitta found Thyrsis riding with her baqca, and she smiled at them. 'I need a scout,' she said to Thyrsis.

  Tameax frowned. 'Why send him? He wants to fight and he can't count above ten. Send me.'

  She frowned. 'I need a good account of what is happening in the sun.'

  Thyrsis nodded. 'I'll find a dozen riders, and we'll go together,' he said. She was glad to see how much spirit he had. He was handsome like a Greek, and his armour was clean and neat – mended every day, the mark of a first-rate warrior. He had wounds, and he had killed – he was perhaps the best warrior of his generation. And yet nothing about him moved her in the way Scopasis moved her.

  'Keep my surly baqca alive,' she joked, and rode away, leaving Tameax frowning at her back. How many army commanders have to worry about men competing for their affections? she asked herself. But in an odd way, she was happy. Today, she was in command. Not Coenus, not Ataelus and not Graethe, or even Tameax or Thyrsis. They obeyed.

  It was Scopasis who saw the beacon first. He scratched the scar on his face, and she looked at him, but he was looking south and west.

  'I think that the beacon is alight,' he said. 'The beacon on the fort.'

  'You can see a fire in the eye of the sun?' she asked.

  He shrugged.

  Tameax galloped out of the falling darkness like a raven, all black wool on a black horse. 'Urvara is on this side of the river,' he said. 'I saw her standard but didn't ride in. She is fighting on foot.'

  Melitta felt a chill of fear. 'Spear to spear with a phalanx?'

  'She has dismounted all her household,' Thyrsis said. 'They make a shield wall on the Hill of Ravens.'

  'The beacon on the fort is alight,' Tameax
said.

  'Read me this riddle,' Melitta said. 'Why is the beacon alight? Why does Urvara fight?'

  The other men were silent. Tameax scratched his beard. 'I think that Eumenes must have come,' he said. 'He came and lit the beacon, so that Urvara knows he is here. Now Urvara fights to protect the lowest crossing, so that Eumenes comes behind her.'

  Ataelus spoke up, his voice rough. 'He is a wise man. I think he has this right in his head.'

  Melitta gave Tameax a long look. 'If you are right…' she said.

  He nodded. 'I am right,' he said.

  Melitta looked around. She had about eight hundred riders left. They had been in action for seven days. 'We must appear on Nikephoros's flank and make him draw off,' she said. 'We may have to fight in the dark. Eumenes of Olbia must get across to the south bank and join us.'

  Up and down the column of Sakje, every warrior changed horses. The farmers, three hundred strong, had only one pony each. Melitta mounted Gryphon and rode to Temerix's lieutenant, a big, ruddy smith named Maeton.

  'Follow at your best speed. When you come, look for my banner. Do you understand? If all else fails, kill as many enemy as you can.' She took his hand, and he bowed his head. Behind him, she could see Gardan. She raised her voice. 'By this time tomorrow, we will be done. Eumenes is here from Olbia. We can win now, and we will never face foreign taxes and raids from Upazan again.'

  They gave a cheer, and she waved and rode away.

  When she got to the head of her Sakje, she drew her axe. 'Now we ride,' she said.

  And they were off. Ten stades of open fields. Twice they crossed farm walls, following Thyrsis, who had left riders to guide them over, and then, faces to the setting sun, they came over a low ridge and they could see two full taxeis of enemy phalangites facing the last ford, and at the ford, Urvara's knights, all wearing scale armour from throat to ankle, standing with their axes at the top of the riverbank. The ground in front of her household was littered with bodies.

  'Follow me!' Melitta shouted. She bent low on Gryphon's neck and kicked her heels, and he went from a canter to the gallop.

  Sakje needed no orders to form for battle. They were in a long column, and now they spread wide across the plain, drawing their bows from their gorytoi as they galloped and nocking the first arrows, the faster horses pulling ahead of the slower.

  Their hoof beats announced their arrival, and long before they neared Nikephoros, his pikes were changing direction, and they faced a wall of spear-points. Melitta was still a horse-length in advance of Scopasis and her knights. She didn't slow the big horse, but leaned her weight to the right and he turned away from the spear-points and she passed an arm's length from the glittering hedge, She shot her first arrow into the blur of faces and leather armour so close that her shaft was in a man's gut before her galloping horse carried her past.

  As she nocked her second arrow, her thumb feeling for the burr on the nock, Scopasis buried his first in a man's shield and cursed.

  'Lock your shields!' a phylarch shouted.

  She she saw him, his mouth open for the next order, but Macedonian shields were small things compared to the great aspis that her brother carried, and she shot him over the rim of his shield – missing the open mark of his mouth, so that her shaft went in over his nose and right out again through his helmet.

  The pikemen could do nothing but bend their heads to put the peaks of their tall helmets into the arrow storm and pray to their gods. The Sakje were riding so close that they could choose where to shoot – above the shield or below – and men fell with arrows through their feet. Eight hundred Sakje thundered along the flank of the phalanx, and a hundred pikemen fell, wounded and screaming, or dead before their helmets hit the ground.

  Melitta released a third shaft, missed seeing the result, and then she was past the last man and in the open. She kept going until she pulled up by Urvara, who stood with a bloody sword between her banner and her tanist. The iron-haired woman pulled her helmet free and dropped her sword to catch at Melitta's hand.

  'I knew you'd come,' she said. 'Between us, we might finish him.'

  Melitta held up her quiver. She had eight arrows left. 'T hat was all bluff,' she said.

  Urvara gave half a smile. 'There he goes,' she said. Even as she spoke, they saw a single figure on horseback arrive in the enemy phalanx.

  'Messenger from the fort?' Melitta asked. 'Shall we harry them once more?' she asked.

  Urvara shook her head. 'They're going to retreat – you can see it in the front-rank men. I've lost a lot of people today – I'm not sure I can help you. Let him go.'

  There were dead pikemen and dead Sakje all the way across the plain – three stades of dead.

  Nikephoros was less than a stade away. It was somehow odd that Melitta knew the sound of his voice. He was shouting at someone. And then the pikemen began to march, their ranks closing up over the dead, and they formed even closer. The back ranks walked backwards as they withdrew, and the spearheads were still steady.

  'Good men,' Coenus said. He was in armour again, and had a fine Attic helmet on his head with a red crest. 'He's going to ride over and ask for a truce.'

  'Give me all your arrows,' Melitta called to her household, and in seconds, her quiver was full – forty arrows, all they had.

  She turned to Coenus. 'You're with me. The rest of you wait here. Scopasis – here!' More kindly, 'Coenus can protect me. And I want him to see a full quiver.'

  Sure enough, Nikephoros was riding towards them, mounted on an ugly bay. He seemed unconcerned to be alone in front of a host of enemies.

  'I wish that man was mine,' Melitta said.

  Coenus nodded. 'If he lives, make him yours,' he said.

  Nikephoros met them in a clear space among the dead. 'I would like a day's truce to collect and bury my dead,' he said. 'I concede that I was bested.'

  Melitta shook her head. 'No, I'm sorry, Nikephoros. I like you, but no truce. We will finish you in the morning. Unless you'd like to ask for terms.'

  'My master's ally Upazan is coming,' he said. 'You will not finish me in the morning.'

  Melitta shrugged. 'I have no need to bluster or bargain. Begone.'

  She turned her horse, and as she turned, she saw the shock on Nikephoros's face. Even as she saw it, she saw where his eyes were, and she followed them.

  The bay was full of ships.

  And closer, at the seaward edge of Nikephoros's camp, there was fire.

  'No truce,' she spat. To Coenus, she said, 'Ride!'

  They left Nikephoros in a swirl of dust and galloped back across the dead to where her people had dismounted. Most were swilling wine. Tameax spat a mouthful and it was like blood from his mouth – a poor omen, she thought.

  'My brother is here,' she shouted.

  Coenus pulled up behind her. 'Of course!' he said.

  'Satyrus is attacking Nikephoros's camp,' she said. 'We need to harry him every step and slow his retreat, and we may yet have him in the last light of the sun.'

  It is a hard thing for a warrior to believe that he is done – that he has lived another day, that he can drink, sit on the ground, enjoy the small pleasures that make life worth living even in the middle of the unbelievable tension of daily war – and then be summoned back to the risk of imminent death. It is a hard thing, and it is only the best who can rise to meet it.

  'Now for revenge!' Thyrsis said, leaping to his feet as if he'd never shot his bow or ridden a stade all day.

  'One more ride,' Scopasis shouted, and then they were all on their feet. Many changed horses. Many cursed.

  Urvara leaned on her sword hilt and drove the point into the grass. 'We're done.'

  Melitta was sorry, but she forced a smile. 'I can see Eumenes,' she said, pointing across the river, where a long column of horsemen were splashing into the river. 'Send him to me.'

  Then she took her warriors and went back to the pikemen.

  Nikephoros had plenty of time to see her coming, and at her orders all th
e Sakje shot carefully and slowly, riding close to be sure of every shaft, and the pikemen halted and closed even tighter. Melitta rode to Graethe. 'Take your Standing Horses and get arrows from the Grass Cats,' she said. 'Then come back.'

  He waved his axe in acknowledgement and rode away.

  Her numbers halved, she led her people past the phalanx again. Only fifty or so arrows flew, but men fell.

  The phalanx shuffled into motion again.

  She cursed the lack of arrows and rode past a third time. This time, pikemen leaped out of the spear wall and killed Sakje, dragging the victims down with charging thrusts of their spears – but every brave pikeman died, spitted or shot by the following riders.

  And again the phalanx retreated, opening a gap.

  She rode by a fourth time but scarcely a dozen arrows flew, and the phalanx didn't even stop. Nikephoros was on to her. He was going to march away.

  But Graethe returned and led his men straight to the attack, and his first run blocked out the first stars with arrow shafts, and fifty more pikemen fell. Again they halted and closed up.

  'They may be the best infantry I've ever seen,' Coenus said. 'They won't break. By the gods, they're good.'

  Graethe rode back. 'Now what?'

  'Give every warrior one arrow,' she said. 'We'll hit both of their flanks together and try to make them fold.'

  Graethe agreed, and they rode out to the flanks. On the left, where Melitta rode, she could see horsemen crossing the last ridge. She had no idea who they were, but they were clear in the last light of the sun.

  'Rally at the ford if we do not break the Greeks!' she shouted.

  There was no answering shout. Her people had no life in them – they rode, and obeyed. That was all. Every face had the lines of exhaustion.

  She led them wide to the left and the Greeks began to march, and then she turned inward, just as Graethe's men did the same on the right. This time they would go straight at the Greeks instead of riding along the face of their formation. If men flinched, if the arrow storm took enough lives, a rider might slip into the ranks, and then another behind, and then…