King of the Bosphorus t-4

by Christian Cameron

  Abraham had his armour on and a shield on his arm. 'I have two hundred marines,' he said. 'If I can, we'll come into their flank. Right now, we cover the archers.'

  Satyrus snapped a salute and Melitta blew Abraham a kiss. He turned as red as blood over his beard, and men laughed at him.

  And then they saw Upazan's line start forward.

  'Back where we belong!' Melitta called, and they rode like the wind.

  Satyrus got a new horse – his was already blown – but Gryphon was still as strong as an ox, and Melitta stayed with him. She had forty arrows. She loosened her akinakes in her scabbard and watched her brother check his weapons.

  'Long time since I fought mounted,' he said.

  And then Eumeles raised his arm a stade away, and the whole enemy line came forward.

  Satyrus looked at the sky. 'Already late,' he said. He drew his sword – Kineas's sword – and just the sight of it caused men among the Olbians to shout.

  'Nike!' he cried.

  Eumenes' trumpeter sounded the call, and they went forward.

  Satyrus went from the walk to the trot with the front line and let himself obey like a trooper. He saw Melitta's set face – she was aiming for Eumeles.

  So was he.

  He angled to cover her flank, and saw Scopasis, her guard commander, do the same on the other side.

  Ten horse-lengths from the enemy, and they were a wave of riders, their mouths open, the horses as wild-looking as the men. Eumeles was a rank or more back, not in the front.

  Both sides shot their arrows, but the Sakje bows were dry and strong, and the Sauromatae arrows reaped half the shades that the Sakje arrows took.

  Satyrus felt a blow as an arrow hit his chest and all the breath went out of his body. He tried to get his arm up but something hit his head and he almost lost his seat. As his horse burst through the first line of enemy riders he was struggling to breathe but he managed to get his sword up and parry a cut from a man going by.

  Coenus was there, and his arm moved as fast as a striking cat's paw. A Sauromatae knight went down, armour clattering even over the rage of battle, and that fast the air was full of dust.

  Satyrus finally ripped some air into his lungs and the pain almost made him vomit, then he put his bridle hand to his gut, glanced down-

  The arrow was point-deep in the muscle of his stomach. He pulled at it. The barbs ripped his flesh and the leather lining of his thorax – caught. Growing fear and pain powered his arm until he tore the head free and blood coursed out, but he could breathe and he was not dead.

  He dropped the arrow. The fight was all around him. He put his knees to his mount, sawed the reins and caught a long cut from a Sauromatae knight. He pushed forward and cut the man from the saddle, the sword easily penetrating his leather armour. He was deep in their formation now – no fault of his own – but the men around him seemed uninterested in fighting him. He cut down two more, riding in close and stabbing, and saw Coenus's blue plume. He leaned and his horse obeyed his change of seat, turning sharply. He parried a cut and got his charger in close to Coenus.

  And there was Melitta. He watched her shoot a man out of the saddle. She used her bow the way another fighter would use a lance – close in. Even as he watched, she put the point of an arrow almost against a man's chest and released as she rode by, so that he exploded backwards over the tail of his horse.

  And then he saw Eumeles. The tall man was fighting with a mace, a long-handled weapon with a head of solid gold. Whatever his failing, he was no coward.

  If Satyrus had had a javelin, he could have killed the man easily.

  Nothing worth doing is ever easy.

  Satyrus pushed his borrowed horse forward and slammed into Eumeles' horse, head to flank, so that the other horse stumbled – a magnificent white charger, probably a Nisaean.

  Eumeles turned and swung the mace, catching Satyrus's horse a glancing blow on the head – and then their eyes locked.

  'Here's where we settle the battle,' Eumeles said.

  Satyrus's horse was hurt – it bucked, rose on its haunches and shook. Satyrus struggled to keep his seat and Eumeles swung at him with the mace, catching his left hand on the reins.

  Satyrus rammed his heels into his horse to no effect. He cut at Eumeles, but the taller man had a better horse and managed to stay just out of his reach. He flicked the mace and Satyrus only just avoided losing his sword.

  'I kill you, and the rest is easy,' Eumeles said.

  Satyrus couldn't control his mount, and Coenus was locked spear to spear with another man. Satyrus's thoughts flashed to Sappho: Eumeles could say the same of your mother! He killed her because he feared her!

  Satyrus's horse was shuddering. The mace blow had hurt it – there was blood in one ear.

  'Kill me, and you will still lose this battle.' Satyrus had to shout, but Eumeles heard. 'And your kingdom. You are a fool, Eumeles.'

  Eumeles flushed with anger. Being smarter – cleverer – than other men was the measure of his life. The word 'fool' carried. It struck like a blow.

  Satyrus followed it up as if it was part of a combination. Just for a moment, the gods gave him control of his horse. He thumped its sides like a boy on his first horse and it leaped forward, breast to breast with the big Nisaean. Satyrus let go of the reins and got his left hand on Eumeles' elbow as he cocked back his mace for the final strike and pushed – the simplest of pankration moves. Then he smashed the pommel of his father's sword into the open face of Eumeles' helmet.

  Satyrus's horse stumbled but he managed to cut the tyrant across the thigh under his guard, then he caught at Eumeles and dragged him from the saddle as his own horse went down. The tyrant screamed, front teeth gone, and rolled clear. Satyrus grabbed his ankle and got a kick in the head from his free leg. Satyrus was on the ground but he cut overhand with the sword in his right hand and landed a blow on Eumeles' breastplate. It held. Eumeles had his hand on his sword and he drew it and kicked Satyrus again. Satyrus rolled and parried. He locked his legs around the other man's trunk and sat up. His side flared like fire, but he got his sword point in under Eumeles' arm-

  An arrow had appeared in Eumeles' throat. Satyrus looked up and Melitta was leaning over, reaching for another arrow.

  'We got him!' she shouted. 'Now it's our time!'

  Satyrus sat still for long heartbeats, looking into the empty eyes of his enemy. There was, truly, nothing there.

  'You need a horse,' Coenus said.

  Satyrus forced himself to his feet, his gut throbbing. Coenus had the tyrant's Nisaean. He looked taller than a mountain.

  I get to try this once, Satyrus thought. And then I just won't be able to.

  He got up on an aspis and flung himself – fatigue, hurt gut, arm wound and all – at the saddle. He got his right knee over the horse's back and clung – a pitful figure of a king, he assumed – for a long moment, and then his knees were locked against the tall horse's sides and he had the reins in his hand. He pulled off his helmet and gulped air. No one was watching except Coenus, who looked concerned, and Satyrus managed a smile.

  He looked around. Eumeles' centre was going with his death. The Sauromatae in the middle had had enough, and they broke, and the Olbians and the best of the Sakje knights exploded through them, shredding their formation and then harrying the survivors. Satyrus let them go, pulling up in the dust to check his own wound. He felt weak. But he was alive.

  The blood from his gut ran all the way down his crotch, but it was slowing. Unless the tip had been poisoned…

  The thought made him feel weak. And it hurt.

  Coenus reined in at his side. 'How bad, king?'

  Satyrus had to smile. 'You've never called anyone king, old man!'

  Coenus pointed behind them. 'Eumeles is dead. You are the king. I ought to get you off the field.'

  Satyrus shook his head. 'No king worth following would quit the field until it was won. Upazan's still on the field,' he said, 'and Nikephoros. Find me that trumpeter
and rally the Olbians. We need to help somebody. My money is on Ataelus.'

  Coenus found the hyperetes, and the trumpet calls to rally rang out over the rout of the centre. Melitta heard the calls and she slowed Gryphon. She was unwounded, and he was still as strong as he'd been when she mounted in the morning. She patted his neck and looked for Scopasis – right at her elbow.

  Behind him, Laen and Agreint and Bareint and all the rest of her knights. No one seemed to be missing.

  No brother.

  'Where's my brother?' she asked.

  Scopasis shook his head. His full-faced Thracian helmet made him look sinister, a monster with a beard of bronze. 'I saw him remount,' he said. 'Coenus put him up on Eumeles' horse.' He shrugged. 'You ride away. I follow you.'

  The Sindi waved an axe. 'We broke them!' he shouted.

  She wished she had her own trumpeter. The Olbian hyperetes was sounding a recall, but he was a stade behind her and half of the centre was with her, the rest far down the field.

  'We should go to the left,' she said.

  No one questioned her. So they turned their horses east, ignoring the call of the trumpet. Men formed on her household – many of them Sakje, like Parshtaevalt, who came and rode with her as they turned.

  'Lady!' he said.

  'Parshtaevalt!' she called. 'I need to know what's happening on the left!'

  She borrowed his trumpeter and together they rallied much of the centre and faced them to the left. It took time, and she could hear fighting – heavy fighting – in the haze to the east.

  Kairax went himself, and came back when they had three hundred knights, all facing east with the setting sun at their backs.

  'The Greeks are spear to spear and breast to breast,' Kairax said. 'No one will give a step. The farmers carry all before them, but they will not try the flank of the phalanx. And who can blame them?'

  Melitta took a deep breath. With one order, she would expend her last throw of the dice. Could her three hundred break Nikephoros?

  They had failed the day before.

  She rode out a pace and turned her horse so that she faced the Sakje knights.

  'We will go right into the back of the phalanx,' she said. 'There must be no hesitation. No warning. There will be no second time and no arrow rush. Are you ready?'

  Most men nodded, tipping the plumes of their helmets so that they seemed to ripple.

  'Let's do the thing,' Parshtaevalt said. Satyrus felt the pain in his gut spreading to his limbs, and he wondered again if there was poison, or if cowardice was spreading to his groin like the pain. While the Olbian cavalry rallied – slowly, because they were not his father's men, for all they claimed the title – he had time to think about his wound, and Coenus's willingness to take him off the field. To lie in a tent and wait for news.

  The battle was won. Nothing here to fight for, except reputation.

  What if he was poisoned?

  Satyrus sat on the horse of his dead enemy, surrounded by corpses. If I am poisoned, he thought, it is in my blood, and these are my last hours.

  His head came up, and he straightened his back. He was a son of Herakles, and Kineas, and he was not going to ride away and die in a tent, of blood poisoning.

  When the Olbians were rallied, he put them in a rhomboid – a formation they knew – and they walked their horses west into the setting sun, moving slowly, looking for a new foe.

  In a stade, they found one. Upazan had not routed Ataelus – but he had numbers and he had arrows, and only Ataelus's rage and ten years of bitter resistance sustained Ataelus's outnumbered riders. They fought like demons – like dead men. And when their backs were to the river and they couldn't run, they died.

  Satyrus didn't see Ataelus fall. Upazan put him down with an axe, from behind, while the little Sakje commander put an arrow into Upazan's tanist in the swirl of the melee.

  Satyrus didn't see Graethe die. The wolf lord went down covered in wounds, and when he fell the men of his household stood over his body and died with him.

  Nor did he see Urvara die, almost the last warrior standing as her banner was swamped by enemies determined to ride down the flank and win back the battle. She, too, died on the blade of Upazan's axe, her arms too tired to parry it one last time.

  But their warriors didn't break. Some of their horses were up to their hocks in the river, but they fought on, desperate, often out of arrows, sword to sword, axe to axe.

  Satyrus heard the shouts of Greeks before he ordered the charge, and he knew that Abraham was leading whatever he could from the camp by the river into Upazan's flank. It had to matter.

  Satyrus had put himself at the point of the rhomboid. He smiled, despite the pain in his gut. He heard the fighting, and he knew the shouts were Sauromatae, and he didn't need scouts to find the next fight.

  He raised his sword. 'Ready!'

  The Olbians shouted his father's name and charged, and then they were into Upazan's men.

  Satyrus struck and struck again, neither weak nor godlike, but merely the warrior he'd been trained to be, and his father's sword flashed like fire in the red sunlight and his helmet took a blow here and there, but he fought on, looking for Upazan's golden helmet. That was his goal now.

  He had too few men. He could feel it. Just a few hundred more and the Sauromatae would have broken from his impact, but the Olbians were too slow and too few, and although his wedge went deeper and deeper into the horde of Sauromatae, they were not breaking.

  He could hear Abraham and Panther now. They were less than a stade away, all but surrounded, and their charge, too, had lost its impetus, so that they were being pressed back to their camp.

  Satyrus could see it, as if he was above the battle – could read the sounds, the shouts, the screams. Ataelus's flank had held long enough. Upazan might win here, but he could no longer win the day.

  Tired men swung heavily at tired men. The Olbians were better armoured and fresher.

  It wasn't quite enough. But for a while, it was better than nothing, and the Olbians were lifted above themselves, possibly just because they were the men of Olbia, who had once been Kineas's men. They pushed forward, even when they should have been stopped.

  Satyrus cut a man down – the man had a wolf-tail banner, and Satyrus could only hope it was Upazan's. His sword arm was bloody to the elbow. His shoulder was weak, the muscles burned with the effort of a thousand overhead cuts, and he could barely manage his captured horse.

  But he could feel Herakles at his shoulder.

  I am going to die well, he thought.

  He blocked a blow, catching a heavy axe blade far back in its cut, and his blade slipped down the haft so that the head caught him a weak blow in the left shoulder. Most of it fell on the yoke of his corslet, but the axe blade still sliced his skin. He got his bridle hand up and on the shaft of the axe, and his sword went up and over the haft, only to have his wrist grabbed by the axe-man.

  Upazan.

  Their eyes came together as they caught each other's attempted death blows – arm to arm, hand to hand.

  Upazan rose on his horse's back, trying to use his immense strength to bear Satyrus down.

  At a great distance, Satyrus heard Greek singing and wondered what it meant. Then his full attention was on Upazan. He met him, strength for strength, and their horses moved under them, and then Satyrus's arms began to break Upazan's hold. Upazan redoubled his effort, and he gave a great shout as he threw his weight on Satyrus.

  Satyrus held him and bore him back.

  He lost Upazan's left hand – their horses were pulling apart – and he snapped a short cut with his sword. It went home, cutting deeply into Upazan's left arm just as Upazan rammed a dagger with his own left, so that it cut right into Satyrus's sword arm and he dropped the Aegyptian sword to dangle from its chain around his wrist.

  Satyrus's horse stepped back and a blow hit his side, but Coenus was there. He hit Upazan twice – hard blows to the helmet that rocked the big man in his saddle. And then,
as if he'd practised the move all his life, Coenus cut back into another Sauromatae, using the bounce off Upazan's helmet to speed his back cut, and he lost his sword in the man's head – it sheered into the helmet and wouldn't come free.

  Satyrus stripped the chain off his right wrist and took the sword in his left. He was backing his horse now – the captured Nisaean responded beautifully, turning on its front legs. Satyrus managed a clumsy parry that saved Coenus from a spear in the side.

  It was getting dark. He fought on, determined to save Coenus, who had always been there for him and who had done as much to win this kingdom as any other man.

  Coenus took the dead man's spear from his limp fingers – the press was now so tight around Upazan and Satyrus that the dead could not fall to the ground, and a man's knees could be broken by the press of horses.

  Upazan was recovering. He had his axe in a short grip, one-handed. He landed a weak blow against an Olbian, who fell backwards across the rump of his horse but could not fall to the ground.

  He cut at Satyrus, and Satyrus blocked it.

  The sound of the melee had changed. The horses were moving and suddenly Upazan was slipping away, but Satyrus, wounded and without the use of his sword arm, followed him, cutting almost blindly at Sauromatae who were as tired and used up as he was.

  'UPAZAN!'

  Satyrus stopped and let his sword slump to his left side.

  'UPAZAN!'

  Now the Sauromatae were giving way. Something had happened. And Satyrus knew that voice.

  'UPAZAN!' shouted Leon the Numidian as he burst through a ring of Sauromatae, the only man in the fight with a big round oxhide shield, his spearhead glinting in the red sun, his beard white.

  'You!' Upazan growled in recognition. He turned his horse to face his nemesis and lengthened his grip on the axe.

  'Remember Mosva?' Leon said.

  Upazan swung, the whole weight of his axe up.

  Leon pushed in close and the tip of his spear rammed into Upazan's face and out through the helmet. Blood fountained. 'T hat's her spear!' Leon shouted, but Upazan was already dead.

  And all around them, the Exiles rode through the Sauromatae like a Sindi farmer's scythe goes through ripe wheat in the last days of summer.