Storm of arrows t-2

by Christian Cameron

  Where in Hades would he find a new Greek breastplate here, on the edge of the world? On the corpse of a Macedonian, of course. Except that he couldn’t see this fight leaving him time to strip a corpse.

  Thalassa fidgeted. Diodorus had all the Olbian cavalry in place behind the thickets, and four of Temerix’s Sindi were sweeping their back trail. One of them had a wicker case strapped to his back. They’d caught a young hawk and they’d release her to signal that the enemy was in sight — an old Sindi trick, so he was told.

  In the river bed, clouds of flies plundered the rocks where the horse had been butchered and the sound carried up and down the river bed like a manifestation of some evil god. Otherwise, there was silence, punctuated by horse noises — bits on teeth, cropping grass, reins creaking or snapping, gentle whickers and snuffles — and horse smells. The gelding behind Kineas defecated and the clod fell to earth with a heavy plop.

  Kineas had waited in a few cavalry ambushes. This one was too large. The sheer number of men and horses involved raised the likelihood of discovery. He tried to decide what he would do when they were discovered. Sweat ran down his face and neck and down the hollow of his back where armour and tunic didn’t quite meet.

  To be so close to Srayanka without saving her — he banished that thought.

  But when he glanced over his shoulder, he couldn’t make himself think of sacrificing his friends to rescue his wife.

  He farted, long and low, and the men around him laughed. His hands clenched and unclenched on his reins, and he began to tap his whip against his thigh.

  Diodorus came up beside him. ‘We should dismount,’ he said quietly. ‘We’ll tire our horses.’

  Kineas bit back a retort. ‘Yes,’ he said, and suited the action to the word. Thalassa grunted as he slipped off her back. Philokles tied his horse to a flowering bush with shiny leaves and lay down, as if to sleep.

  Kineas hated him for the ease with which he went to sleep.

  Dismounted, he could see nothing but three hundred horses and their riders and a wall of poplar trees. I should have arranged my position with a clear view of the enemy’s approach, he thought. His knees were weak. He looked at the sun, which hadn’t moved a finger’s span against the branch he had chosen as a marker.

  He glanced around at Diodorus. He was flushed and fingering the edge of his machaira. When their eyes met, Diodorus walked his horse to where Kineas stood.

  ‘I feel like a virgin looking at his first girl,’ Diodorus said.

  Philokles stood up from his nap. ‘The Olympic Games will be next year,’ he said, as if this was news. ‘I imagine the athletes have already left their homes for the games at Eleusis.’

  Kineas looked around, mystified. ‘That was two weeks ago,’ he said.

  ‘Hmm.’ Philokles looked around, as if noticing all of the cavalry for the first time. ‘They go to win immortal glory in the striving of peace. All we’re going to do is rescue some barbarian woman from Alexander. Why are you two on edge?’ He grinned. ‘You have chosen an excellent site for an ambush and arranged your troops. All else is with the gods.’

  Diodorus put his sword back in its sheath. ‘Sure. Fucking Spartan.’

  Kineas took a steadying breath. ‘We take a great risk here,’ he began, and Philokles smiled.

  ‘Friends,’ he said, holding up his hand — and the hand shook. ‘I merely hide my fears better,’ he said.

  Kineas performed a quick calculation. ‘I am in the grip of blind fear,’ he said. ‘We must have at least an hour. I am as stupid as the boy who let his horse roll down the riverbank. I should go and see to my men.’ He dusted his hands.

  Then he went from man to man throughout the Olbians, clasping hands with every man and saying a few words. He teased, he mocked, he complimented, and behind him, three hundred Greeks and Keltoi and assorted professional cavalrymen breathed easier and smiled. As he moved among them, a breeze came up like the caress of a friendly goddess.

  Kineas too breathed easier. It took him an hour to circle his troops, constantly on the lookout for the appearance of Ataelus or the sight of a bird rising over the woods in front of him. It kept him busy and he only thought of Srayanka fifty times.

  When he came back, Philokles was making water against a stone and Diodorus was staring at the line of tamarisk trees as if he could bore a hole through them with his eyes. Kineas made a show of fastidiously avoiding the Spartan’s rock, and then he lay down in the shade of a silver-leafed poplar and pulled his broad straw hat over his eyes.

  His stomach roiled and he could feel all of his stress pushing at his colon. His feet felt as if worms were crawling over them and his hands shook.

  ‘He’s over it,’ Diodorus said with irritation. ‘Now he’ll take a nap.’

  Kineas smiled under his straw hat. Over it, he thought. Despite the growing heat, he was chilled to the bone. Over it.

  Ambushes are different. In a field action, the commander — and the trooper — can watch the enemy deploy, can track the enemy’s countless errors and take comfort, can lose himself in preparation, giving orders or taking them.

  In an ambush, he can only wait and the only two options are victory or disaster. No one will stay safely in reserve. No one is likely to escape from the grip of war.

  Sakje and Olbian and Sauromatae, most of them were in the grip of fear and panic, and the trees and bushes moved with the quivering of men.

  Still, all things considered, they were better off than the Macedonian column.

  It was closer to noon than to morning when the hawk burst into the air over the thorn wood to their front, her flight so loud in all the silence that men who had achieved some sort of uneasy sleep were startled awake, all their fears returned.

  ‘Drink water, and mount!’ Kineas said in a fierce whisper. The whisper was passed back. Horses whickered despite the best efforts of their riders, and for a minute, the Olbians made as much noise as a bacchanal. Kineas glared at them, a vein throbbing at his temple, but it couldn’t be helped.

  ‘We’re fucking doomed,’ he said to Philokles.

  The Spartan shrugged and drank water from a gourd. ‘Marching men hear nothing,’ he said. ‘And “We’re fucking doomed” is not a statement to inspire confidence in a commander.’

  ‘Teach that in Sparta, do they?’ Diodorus asked. ‘Oh, for the benefits of your education, Philokles.’

  ‘Shut up, both of you.’ Kineas pushed forward to the very edge of the trees. He handed Philokles his reins and waved at Diodorus. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘You know how to hold a horse, right?’ Diodorus asked the Spartan.

  ‘If I forget, I’ll just run in circles flapping my arms and screaming at the top of my voice until you Athenians come and rescue me,’ he replied in a harsh whisper.

  Kineas belly-crawled forward under the branches of the poplar, his forearms abraded by rose stems. He pushed forward until he could just see over a low ridge of earth. His line of sight was limited to the ford, the island of willows and the far side of the spring banks.

  ‘Philokles is better,’ Diodorus said, and Kineas glared him to silence.

  The damned hawk was now circling the tamarisk wood, screaming her head off. ‘Remind me of this the next time the Sindi have an old trick,’ Kineas said.

  Diodorus gave him a sharp nudge. The head of the Macedonian column was emerging from the gap between the spring bank and the tamarisk wood. Either they were moving very fast or the thrice-cursed bird had been released late.

  There was an advance guard of Macedonian infantrymen mounted on nags. They had javelins instead of their pikes, but their corslets and short, guardless helmets marked them. Their horses were moving carefully, clearly tired. Even as he watched, the scout’s horses became restless with the discovery that there was water and they began to neigh.

  A man rode up the gentle slope from the ford towards the Olbian ambush. He was humming to himself and looking at the ground with professional curiosity. Another flanker joined him. Beh
ind the two scouts, the rest of the advance guard passed, riding quickly, and turned due north to cross the ford, heading for Marakanda. Men fought to keep their horses from drinking and suddenly the advance guard was thrown into confusion. Orders were shouted and any man who stopped lost control of his horse as it started to drink.

  ‘More fucking Dahae?’ asked the first scout. He was pointing at something in the dust.

  ‘Somebody butchered a horse in the stream bed,’ said the other scout. ‘I don’t like it. If they passed that close to us, we should see their dust.’ He looked up, his eyes searching the very ground where Kineas and Diodorus lay. ‘Fu-uck,’ he said, his thick Macedonian accent and his Illyrian hill drawl exaggerated by fear. ‘Unless they’re right here!’

  The first man struck him lightly. ‘Get a grip,’ he said.

  The second man shook his head. ‘Fuck yourself, whoreson puppy. Look at those prints — erased. No dust cloud. Dead horse.’

  Behind them, the last of the advance guard turned and headed across the ford, the horses complaining. The last of their horses splashed into the shallow brown water and the smell of mud carried back to the two men lying in the briars.

  ‘Pharnuches is a useless fucking cunt,’ the first scout said. His voice had a hard edge of fear now, too. ‘Even if you’re right-’

  The second rider turned and dashed for the trade road. Behind him, a full squadron of mercenary cavalry rode down the defile, two by two, moving fast. The men had their helmets on and their armour and they were looking to the left and to the right. Their horses were just as eager for water as the last unit’s.

  ‘Cavalry is in front,’ Diodorus whispered.

  Kineas grunted in reply, his voice now covered by the trotting cavalry. That meant that the infantry would be in the second division — almost immune to Temerix’s arrows, if they had their armour on.

  Nothing he could do about it now.

  A large group of riders halted in a tangle at the edge of the ford with the two scouts shouting at them.

  ‘Hetairoi,’ Kineas said. He began pushing himself backwards as fast as he could.

  Five Royal Companions in dun-coloured cloaks and white tunics with heavy armour, a richly dressed man in a purple and yellow cloak and a breastplate, and another in a red cloak. Three women in Sakje dress on good horses, one bent over her saddle, face grey with effort — Srayanka — and another, clearly Urvara, flirting with the Royal Companions. Diodorus crawled backwards.

  ‘Doesn’t matter!’ Kineas said. He was, in his nerves, answering his own question, unvoiced. It no longer mattered if the ambush was discovered.

  As if on cue, he heard the shrieking cry of Bain’s elite Sakje, and the ground shook with their hooves. Kineas threw himself up on to his tall charger. He glanced back. They were all there.

  ‘Walk!’ he ordered, and they started forward without Andronicus’s trumpet. They were in a tight column of fours — that’s what they had cut a path to fit, the path that the scouts had no doubt noticed. He had traded rapid deployment for perfect concealment. As soon as his horse emerged from the gap into the clear ground just south of the ford, he called, ‘Form front!’ and the column began to knit itself into a rhomboid behind him as the head continued to ride forward at a walk.

  He turned his head in time to see Bain’s Sakje loose a flight of arrows into the mercenary cavalry. They were caught facing the wrong way, with many of their horses head-down in the water, drinking deeply, and their horses suffered terribly in the first volley, their unarmoured rumps feathered like hedgehogs. Two dozen horses went down and the Mercenary cavalry behind dissolved into chaos as the Sakje galloped past along the river bed. Now every warrior shot for himself and some rode ridiculously close. Bain himself, wearing the transverse plume of a long-dead Macedonian officer, leaned so close to an armoured officer waving a sickle-bladed kopis that it seemed that his arrowhead brushed the man’s cloak before he loosed with a whoop that sounded across two stades and hundreds of men.

  Kineas took in Bain’s attack in a glance. He pulled his helmet’s cheek plates down on his head and fastened the chinstrap. The enemy’s command group was now cut off from their cavalry. The thing could be done.

  The command group and the Hetairoi had not failed to note that hundreds of well-trained cavalry were emerging from their flank. Their commander in the purple cloak gesticulated, turned and yelled.

  Kineas’s men were less than a stade away. Srayanka appeared injured — he could see something terribly wrong in her body language. He raised his right fist holding a javelin. ‘Trot!’ he shouted.

  Urvara ripped a Macedonian kopis from the scabbard of one of the Royal Companions. She removed one of his hands on the back cut and reared her horse. Behind her, a second Hetairoi trooper drew his sword and moved to execute Srayanka. Hirene, Srayanka’s trumpeter, her grey braids flying, tackled the Macedonian, wrapping her arms around him to pin them. They fell to the ground together and vanished in the rising dust.

  Srayanka, free, cut at a third Royal Companion with her riding whip, whirled her horse and rode for the willow trees on the island. The command group was in turmoil — Urvara cut at a second man, her blow sheering through the layers of leather on his corslet and drawing blood.

  Macedonian contempt for women was costing them heavily.

  ‘Charge!’ Kineas roared. His horse flew like Pegasus over the gravel and sand.

  The general’s bodyguards were both brave and skilled. They formed well, even as Urvara’s brilliant riding and frenzied sword cuts were bringing chaos to their rear ranks, and they launched themselves — all fifty of them — in a counter-charge. But the front rank had only ten strides to gain momentum and Kineas’s Olbians had the whole gentle slope behind them and half a stade at the gallop, and they threw the bodyguard flat at the impact, their horses smashing chest to chest with the Macedonian chargers like warships using their rams, bearing them over. Kineas didn’t throw his javelin — he used it to parry the xyston of a Companion and got himself a painful thrust at his badly protected left shoulder from a lance as he closed, but Thalassa did the work and his first two opponents didn’t stay upright to face him. Only when the mare’s momentum was spent climbing the shale on to the willow island did he have to fight hand to hand. A Royal Companion, his helmet gone, stood his ground on a heavy gelding and struck out hard with his long xyston, rising and thrusting two-handed. Kineas parried and got his helmet under the point and let his charger carry him in. Close up, belly to belly, the two horses reared, their hooves milling. Kineas caught his own spear up in two hands, left hand near the head and right hand on the butt, and thrust, his point ripping at the man’s arms, cutting his reins, punching in over the top of his bronze breastplate and into his throat.

  And then another man, with a red cloak. Kineas tried to sweep him out of the saddle with the haft of his spear and the man cut the shaft in two with a powerful sword cut. Kineas leaned out to avoid the man’s back swing and Thalassa backed away. Kineas got his Egyptian machaira clear of the scabbard in the pause and then the two men closed, their horses whirling around each other like fighting dogs. Red Cloak was no master swordsman, but he was strong as an ox, heavy, tough, well armoured, and even when Kineas landed a heavy blow on the point of his shoulder, the man only grunted. He had a short dagger in his off hand now, and he leaned in close and punched the dagger at Kineas’s midriff, but Kineas’s bronze corslet turned the stroke. Kineas cut again, a high feint that he turned into an attack, using the man’s strong parry against him and reversing his cut so that the Egyptian sword went in under the man’s sword arm, but Red Cloak’s corslet held. Thalassa was backing away, Kineas’s eyes were full of sweat and he ducked his head and launched a flurry of blows. Red Cloak took a cut high on his arm and then cut back hard, and Kineas’s parry wasn’t strong enough to stop the blow from shearing his plume and ripping the helmet free against the chinstrap, snapping Kineas’s head back. He saw white, and again Thalassa saved his life. He felt his mount r
ise up and thrust with her legs. As the horse fell forward on to its front feet, Kineas’s vision cleared and he parried high, and the two blades locked, the hard edge of the Egyptian sword biting into the soft iron of the Macedonian kopis’s forte, and the two riders came together. The bigger man tried to grapple with his dagger coming in at Kineas’s thighs, and Kineas ripped his whip from his sash and slashed the man’s reaching arm left-handed and was rewarded with a grunt of pain, and then both horses tumbled together and righted themselves with scrambles and kicks that pushed them apart. Kineas was past Red Cloak, free of the melee. He looked back and Diodorus was thrusting at the big man repeatedly with a javelin, keeping him at arm’s length. Red Cloak was yelling in Macedonian Greek for some help.

  Kineas turned Thalassa with just his knees, intending to finish Red Cloak. He wiped at his eyes with the back of his unarmoured arm, feeling the pain in his left shoulder for the first time, and came face to face with Purple Cloak, who had only a short sword and was fully engaged with Urvara. She threw Kineas a look — exasperation or desperation — and Kineas rode into the enemy general’s flank, tipping him to the ground without a blow, where Carlus finished him with a spear thrust. Legs locked on Thalassa’s barrel, Kineas found himself in a knot of desperate Macedonians in dust-coloured cloaks, probably Purple Cloak’s bodyguard. He cut right and left, took another blow on his left shoulder that cut the leather straps on his armour and kneed his charger into a run, bursting through the enemy and into the clear, blind with pain. He grabbed for his lost reins, missed them, but Thalassa turned under him like an equine acrobat, wheeling so sharply that Kineas almost lost his seat. The three bodyguards were locked with Carlus and Sitalkes. Kineas could see the blue plume on Diodorus’s helmet beyond Carlus’s giant form. He leaned forward on his mare’s neck, gasped a gulp of air and glanced at his left shoulder, which appeared uninjured despite the pain. Then he tapped Thalassa’s barrel with his heels and the horse responded with another powerful lunge forward, so that he crashed full into Sitalkes’ opponent, knocking the man’s horse back and losing the enemy rider his seat. Sitalkes put the man down with brutal economy while Kineas engaged his other opponent, trapping his sword in a high parry, cutting his bridle hand with a circular overhead feint and then killing him with a blow to the neck.