Tyrant: Force of Kings

by Christian Cameron

  Scopasis stood behind her, talking to his horse, with Thyrsis on his right. She considered speaking to them about what she saw, but they were too busy preparing themselves to fight – to kill. To rival each other.

  Stupid boys. She loved them both.

  And like the answer to a prayer, Anaxagoras rode out of the dust. He didn’t embrace her – he knew when she was Queen of the Assagetae. Instead, he saluted.

  ‘Satyrus says I may ride with you,’ he said.

  She smiled so widely she felt as if her lips hurt. ‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘But if you love me, you’ll run an errand first.’

  Anaxagoras nodded. ‘Anything,’ he said, with a remarkable lack of male bluster.

  ‘Find Lysimachos and ask him why the enemy is moving so much, and then tell him I think we should attack. Then, when he ignores you, go and tell Satyrus. Then come back to me.’

  He was off at a gallop.

  She saw him reach Lysimachos, with his command group in the centre of the cavalry. And then, on her left, the enemy elephants trumpeted, and rolled forward.

  Anaxagoras was a patient man, but Lysimachos showed no sign of allowing him to approach. He gave no sign, his whole being focused on watching the centre. The Macedonian officers around him looked at Anaxagoras with veiled disdain – he was a Greek on a Sakje horse, and he was already dust covered.

  He waited what he thought was a courteous amount of time, given the circumstances, and then he rode past the line of aides, right up to the King of Thrace. A hand reached out to take his bridle but Anaxagoras was prepared for that, and he made it to his target.

  ‘Melitta of Tanais wishes you to look at the cavalry opposite us. She says that they are moving, and she wishes to attack.’ He spoke too fast, he thought, but the man turned and heard him out.

  Then he surprised Anaxagoras, who had him pegged as an arrogant windbag of a Macedonian, and looked for a long time at the cavalry formed opposite them.

  ‘Eros’s tiny prick,’ Lysimachos swore. ‘They’re either retreating, or changing flanks. Ride to Seleucus and tell him I want to attack, and if he approves, to sound his trumpets.’

  Anaxagoras changed horses and rode for the centre, six stades away. The elephants in the centre were less than a stade apart. Lysimachos sent three of his Macedonians with the same message – the dust clouds were starting to obscure everything, and he wanted to be sure the message got through. As if by agreement, the four men spread out over the plain, going for where they imagined the command group might be.

  Anaxagoras was wrong, and by some distance – too close to the front line, which was starting forward by the time he realised his error, and he could hear the sound of elephants shrieking. A gust of breeze, and a gap in the dust … and he saw one of the other messengers and what had to be Seleucus, and he turned his horse that way.

  Seleucus wasn’t on the hillock where Anaxagoras assumed he’d be – he was well to the left, where he could see Demetrios’s cavalry. Anaxagoras galloped up and dismounted to spare his horse.

  Seleucus looked at him. ‘Ah, the lyricist,’ he said. ‘You are the very scion of Apollo.’

  ‘Today, I’m here for Hermes,’ Anaxagoras said. ‘Lord King, Lysimachos sends—’

  Seleucus was looking past him, to his right. ‘I have heard,’ he said curtly.

  ‘Melitta also wanted you to know. She wished to attack.’ A bit of a stretch, really – Anaxagoras was surprised at his own presumption.

  ‘She is a veteran cavalry commander?’ Seleucus asked. It did not appear to be a rhetorical question.

  Satyrus nodded. ‘Of fifty fights on the plains, and several battles of Hellenes.’

  Seleucus was watching Demetrios’s cavalry.

  ‘In a whole day of battle, a commander usually makes only two or three decisions,’ he said. He watched Demetrios for a while, and the sounds of elephant versus elephant drifted across the ground to them – the shrieks, the trumpeting, the screams of men caught between the beasts. The best of the psiloi on both sides would be pressing forward into the dust. The worst would already be running.

  Satyrus nodded. ‘I know,’ he said.

  ‘Is Antigonus reading me, and luring my rash Lysimachos into a trap? Or has he decided to retire his inferior cavalry flank? Or are they unreliable? Or is Lysimachos mistaken, and they are simply late in forming line?’ He sighed. ‘Ares, it is hot. Already. Imagine what it’s like in the phalanx. I don’t even have my helmet on.’ He took a drink of water – Anaxagoras hoped it was water – spat, and looked back at Demetrios.

  ‘Satyrus, tell the reserve that these trumpets are not for them. Do it!’ he said.

  Satyrus, the highest-ranking messenger on the field, rode away. His riding horse was still terrified of the elephants, and he had the hardest time communicating with the Indian prince who led them. It took him several minutes to inform all of the reserve himself. By the time he did, his riding horse was done. But he made it back to Seleucus in time to hear the trumpets sound, all together, with a peal like the music of the gods.

  Lysimachos couldn’t imagine what was taking the King of Babylon so long – especially as it became increasingly obvious that cavalry units were peeling away from the mass opposite him. The enemy cavalry left behind spread out into dispersed bands and started forward, ready to skirmish with javelins and bows.

  He was trembling with a mixture of anxiety and excitement when the distant trumpets sounded, and three more of his young men immediately mounted their horses and rode for their assigned locations, to order his cavalry forward into the dust.

  He waited until he could see the messenger reach Melitta – the best-looking of his cavalry commanders by a long shot, and he hoped she knew her business – and then he took his helmet, pulled it on, and lashed the cheek-plates together. A slave handed him a heavy lance, and he took it. Raised it above his head, and rode to the front of his companions.

  ‘Forward!’ he shouted.

  Philip rode up next to Demetrios as the rest of his Greek cavalry trotted past, headed for the far right.

  ‘I think Lysimachos is on to me,’ he said. ‘I see dust, and there were trumpets.’

  ‘Don’t be an old woman,’ Demetrios said. ‘This is our time.’ He took a pair of heavy spears from a slave and rode the front of his own personal wedge of Companions. ‘Now for victory!’ he said, and led them forward.

  Satyrus had a near-perfect view of the first charge by Demetrios. The new breeze had cleared the dust from the western end of the field, and he could see Diodorus mount his troopers as Demetrios started forward.

  Some of the satrapal levies broke immediately. In heartbeats, thousands of cavalrymen were racing to the rear.

  And Demetrios hadn’t reached his enemies yet.

  The Seleucid counter-charge was too little and too late – even the crack companions were unsettled by the defection of half of the satrapal cavalry, and the reliable Persians raced west, seeking to flank and harass, instead of charging straight forward to a certain doom.

  As Satyrus watched, only Diodorus’s Exiles and Antiochus’s Companions stood in the way of the charge. There were not quite enough of them to face all of the wedges.

  In the last seconds before impact, Andronicus sounded his silver trumpet and the blue cloaks responded like dancers in the Pyricche, ranks flowing right and left – their horses were perfectly fresh, their discipline firm. They formed three deep, wide anti-wedges as fast as a school of fish changes direction in the sea – their points aimed at the gaps between the Antigonid wedges.

  Antiochus and his wedge of Companions crashed headlong into the fourth Antigonid wedge, and the crash, the frightened neighs of riderless horses, and the screams of men rolled across the plain – the war cry of Ares. To their left, Darius and his household cavalry tried to meet the fifth wedge of Demetrios’s men – Darius died there, trying to cut his wa
y to Demetrios himself, the first of the men Kineas had trained to die that day, with his relatives around him – and the fifth wedge was blunted and blown facing them.

  But the rest of the wedges – and the Lydians and the cavalry from the eastern flank – were virtually unopposed, and they swept forward mercilessly, cutting into the stragglers of the Persians and the satrapal troops. The Persians had to fall back, and fall back again, and the victorious Antigonids rolled on, killing the laggards and pressing the fleeing troops as hard as their tired horses would permit.

  And just like that – in one blow – the day was won and lost.

  But Diodorus – the cunning old fox – was not lost. His counter-wedges blew through the gaps between the enemy wedges, threading them so that the deep formations collapsed each other and ended the charge as deep columns – facing nothing. The Antigonids pressed straight on, seeking for the fleeing Persians, or turned into the centre of the fight, where their young king was.

  Diodorus reformed his columns, turned, and came trotting back to the farm. Satyrus was relieved to see him still with his men, and then the breeze died, and the dust came again.

  The skirmishers were coming back through the gaps that some of the taxeis of pikemen had left. They looked like ants scurrying out of a series of holes – like water leaking through a dyke.

  No one seemed to care about them, so Satyrus changed horses, left his helmet and his charger with the Olbians, and rode forward with Charmides and his horse marines.

  If the peltastoi were surprised to be greeted by new orders, they weren’t disobedient. Just tired and elephant-shocked.

  ‘Over to the left. Form on the hillock. See it?’ Satyrus said, over and over. By his tenth or twelfth group of tired men, the first group was already on the hillock – some of them sitting, some lying down, but their position was obvious. Men started heading there before he even reached them, and he swung wide, up the low ridge into what had been their camp the night before, to get a view west to where Melitta and the Sakje glittered in the sun.

  The enemy cavalry – those that remained – were heavily outnumbered, but they were resilient and had no intention of fighting a head-on cavalry charge and losing. Rather, they dispersed along the front like professionals then tried to skirmish, closing to throw javelins into Lysimachos’s Companion cavalry and the Greek mercenaries.

  But when they did the same to Melitta’s knights on the left end of the right-wing fight, they discovered that every Sakje had a bow.

  In two volleys, the Lydian cavalry opposite them was shredded – decimated, or worse, and the survivors broke – destroyed without being able to reply.

  Melitta swept forward, widening her wedge to cover more ground. The enemy phalanxes were echeloned away from her – a long, angled line of dust and glittering pikes. The far end, twelve stades away, was level with her new position after her charge – the nearest end was still two stades distant, disciplined and professional and already forming a neat and virtually impregnable orb.

  She looked to her left, where the Antigonid elephants and the slightly fewer Seleucid elephants were tangled together with all the psiloi. The Seleucid line was getting the worst of it. But the Antigonid light infantry and their elephants were more than a stade in front of their own pikes – more like two.

  All this in a glance, dust or no dust.

  ‘Thyrsis!’ she shouted.

  Her Achilles came up from his place.

  ‘Back to the boys and girls – all the skirmishers. Left – right there – into their skirmishers and plough a furrow, as deep as you can. Don’t fight the elephants – fight the men.’

  Thyrsis saluted. His eyes sparkled. ‘I will!’ he shouted, and rode away to where her adolescents waited in the rear. There were more than five hundred of her light cavalry – fresh, eager, and too young to know that they couldn’t face elephants.

  Then she wheeled her knights the other way, to the right, and pushed forward, using her knights and their bows to clear the Lydians away, like a farmer’s-wife shooing flies with a broom.

  Satyrus saw the Sakje outriders pouring into the gap on the Antigonid western flank, and rode his second horse of the day to exhaustion to tell the King of Babylon.

  He nodded. His whole attention was on Demetrios and his cavalry. Antiochus was wrecked – the young man himself was missing, and no messages were emerging from that flank. Demetrios’s golden helmet and his trumpeter’s golden trumpet were already two stades behind the Seleucid line, threatening to roll up the allies like a carpet. And Demetrios didn’t hesitate to savour his victory. His men were rallying like professionals … at least, the professionals were. The Lydians and Mysians and Phrygians were already three or four stades away, on blown horses, pursuing the broken satrapal levies.

  But his elite cavalry, and Philip’s, had turned to face east.

  Seleucus watched for another minute. He turned, looking over the whole battlefield.

  ‘Lysimachos is victorious?’ he asked.

  Satyrus nodded. ‘Sweeping the enemy cavalry away.’

  Seleucus grunted. ‘I hope he remembers to fall on the rear of their phalanx,’ he said. ‘Battles are not won by cavalry.’

  He watched the battle for as long as a man might dicker for a sausage in the agora. Then he nodded sharply.

  He smiled at Satyrus. ‘Well, here we go. I will send all the elephant reserve into Demetrios. If you will take the right with your Companions, I will take the left with mine.’

  Satyrus bowed in the saddle. ‘I’m honoured.’

  Seleucus shrugged. ‘It’s where they are posted. Go, now.’

  The reserve changed front to the left with surprising fluidity. The elephants were fast – well watered, well led, and rested, they wheeled ponderously, but Satyrus was surprised by their speed. He brought his cavalry over the hillock where the rallied peltastoi waited.

  ‘Hold here,’ he told them. He identified a Greek officer – at least, the man spoke good Greek, although he was dressed like a Thracian. Satyrus reined in and changed to his beautiful warhorse while he explained.

  ‘Organise them as best you can. What’s your name?’ he asked.

  The man grinned. ‘Alexander,’ he said. He had a lot of teeth missing, and he seemed to be the size of an elephant, and Satyrus wasn’t sure if the giant was mocking him or not.

  ‘Fine. You’re the strategos of the peltastoi. Form a line right here – four deep or whatever suits you. See the farmyard?’ he said.

  Alexander grinned. ‘I grew up on a farm, boss,’ he said. ‘I know what a farm looks like.’

  ‘When I say, you will go down there and help the men in the farmyard fight the enemy infantry,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘Sure, boss,’ the Thracian said. He grinned again, and Satyrus had no idea whether the man understood, or what he intended.

  Satyrus vaulted into his high-backed Sakje saddle on his magnificent Persian charger.

  Gap-tooth Alexander saluted smartly.

  Satyrus took his long-handled Sakje axe from where it hung at his saddle bow and saluted. ‘Just be here and ready when I come back,’ he said, and trotted forward to where Eumenes had his Olbians formed in a rhomboid, half a stade on and half a stade distant from the elephants – the closest the cavalry could go, even after a morning to get used to the big beasts.

  ‘Ready?’ Satyrus asked Eumenes.

  As a reply, Eumenes pointed to the front, where Demetrios was already coming forward, elephants or no elephants. He had completely turned the Seleucid flank, and his second charge was already into Diodorus and the Exiles, who were making a counter-charge at the edge of the farm fields, protecting the flank of the infantry.

  Satyrus could see that if he waited for the elephants, Diodorus would be swept away. Seleucus was probably willing to sacrifice a mercenary, for a prize this big.

  Satyrus was not.

/>   It was hot.

  This had become the defining point of Stratokles’ existence; the heat, the weight of his panoply, the sweat that rolled down his back and between his pectoral muscles, down his groin, down his thighs. His bronze thorax sat well on his hips, but he had lost weight and gained muscle in the last year, and the armour, so carefully fitted in a shop below the Hephaestion in Athens, now needed padding where the shoulders latched and down along his belly – padding that was made of lamb’s wool, hot and itchy and now sodden with sweat.

  He had a Phrygian cap under his helmet, and it fitted well enough but it was wool, and it, too, was full of the water of his body. His helmet weighed twice what it had when he donned it, an hour before when the peltasts ran by; he cursed the brave display of horsehair on top, adding a pound to the weight.

  He had greaves on his legs, shining bronze with silver buckles, and on each leg was a standing figure of Athena worked in silver, holding Nike aloft. Lined in leather, padded in wool felt.

  On his shoulder was a bronze-faced aspis, half a man’s height in diameter, with a bronze porpax and bronze fittings over willow wood. It weighed more with every hour.

  Over his shoulder was a sword of Chalcedonian steel, gifted him by Satyrus, and in his hand – wet with perspiration – was the shaft of a pike, three times a man’s height in length. Not a proper Macedonian sarissa. Stratokles’ mercenaries preferred a shorter pike – lighter, easier to wield close in.

  He knew that he looked magnificent. But he hadn’t shifted by so much as a foot, and he was soaked in sweat, pounded by the sun that seemed to rise ever higher just to slay him, uncooled by the fitful breeze.

  And Stratokles was not a new boy. He was an old veteran. This would mark his third time in the front rank, and he knew that the men in the middle of the formation were hotter and had no chance of the breeze.