Tyrant: Force of Kings

by Christian Cameron

‘That can’t be good,’ Lucius said.

  Stratokles turned his head – the effort of it – and saw a riderless elephant wandering back and forth to their right. The beast stopped to trumpet, and headed off into the dust to the north.

  Herakles drank from his canteen. Then he looked around. ‘I suppose that if I have to piss, I have to do it right here,’ he said.

  ‘And then every man in your file walks through it,’ Lucius added. Men laughed. All the mercenaries liked Lucius.

  ‘It’ll help cool their feet,’ Herakles said, and began to take care of it. The man behind him guffawed – quite naturally. Other men in the file caught the joke and they laughed, too.

  ‘Your piss is cool?’ a wag shouted.

  ‘I drink nothing but iced wine,’ Herakles returned.

  ‘Fuck walking through it, I’ll drink it,’ shouted a man who’d lost his youth in the Lamian War.

  Stratokles found that he was grinning. These were men, like the men with whom he’d grown to manhood. Many of them were Athenians or Ionians – a smattering of Spartans and Spartan rejects, some Corinthians. Greeks. Men who knew what a gymnasium was for; men who could read and fight.

  A boy – naked but for a red cloak – came running down the line. ‘Lord Stratokles!’ he shouted.

  Stratokles held up his shield – Athena in gold on red. The boy ran to him.

  ‘We are going forward, lord. The whole line. You are to echelon,’ the boy put especial care into the word, ‘echelon on the taxeis to your right.’

  Stratokles released his cheekpieces and tilted his helmet back. He twirled his pike in his hands – a muscle memory from youth, a display of talent he still had – and placed the long spear horizontal to the ground at his head height – as if bracing the front line. With his back to the enemy, he called out, ‘Ready to march!’

  Men looked right and left, measured the distance, sometimes tapped their shields together. A few of the front rankers had the old aspis – Stratokles did, and Herakles, Lucius, and a pair of Athenian exiles who called themselves Plato and Gorgias. The rest had the smaller, lighter Macedonian aspis.

  Which, of course, had been invented by an Athenian.

  ‘Forward!’ Stratokles called, backstepping in front of his taxeis. He’d never been a taxiarch before – never would have been, in Athens – but he knew the drills and the dances as well as most of the useless political appointees that had led the boys at Chaeronea and all through the Lamian War.

  In fact, he was terrified. But like most men of a certain age, he’d been terrified so many times that terror was an old adversary, one he could best in single combat with more ease than he bested lack of sleep, heat, or insect bites.

  Step by step, forward. His aulos player picked up his steps and played them – a good lad, that one. He looked at the phalanx to their right – still moving, a little ahead, with a gap widening at the critical juncture where the two came together. But to try and fix that now would disorder his men.

  Later might be too late.

  Politics was easier, and at the moment, assassination looked far more efficient.

  The shaft to his back was the first warning he had that there was an enemy in the dust, and then, suddenly, there were Phrygian highlanders – as surprised to have hoplites come at them as Stratokles was to be struck – again – by a javelin in the back. Luckily, his bronze was the best money could buy and all he had to show for the man’s best throws were two deep divots in the surface of his back-plate.

  It took Stratokles a long, long heartbeat to understand that he was in combat.

  Not Lucius. He rammed his spear over the Athenian’s shoulder, catching the crescent-shaped shield of the peltast and knocking the man flat.

  Herakles put his pike point into the man – reversing and shortening his pike in two practised motions, ramming the spear point home, stepping forward over the corpse.

  Stratokles saw it all – running slowly, like a dream – and had time to think, He’s no boy. He’s twenty-seven and this should have been his life. And now I want him to live and get away, not die here trying to be Alexander.

  But he’s more like Alexander every day.

  The Phrygians melted before them, as fast as they had appeared. There was a shower of javelins – blows like punches on the face of his shield – and his golden Athena was no longer unmarred.

  The taxeis had quickened its step – any veteran knew that the way to get rid of peltasts was to plough over them. Not only had they closed the gap with the right taxeis, now they were overtaking it – the front ranks were almost even.

  It occurred to Stratokles then that not only were there elephants out there in the dust, but that his taxeis and Nikephorus’s were going to be matched against the very finest soldiers in the world … that is, whatever old One-Eye chose to put on the right of his line.

  Stratokles risked a look to his left … and there was nothing there at all.

  ‘Athena,’ he said aloud. Too late to wonder where in Hades Nikephorus was.

  His men were trotting – well closed up, but moving a top speed. He was proud of them – worried – terrified – but he suspected that hitting at this speed would be an advantage, unless they went into elephants, and even then – he had a thought, under the sweat and grime – elephants might flinch from the wall of spear points if it moved this fast.

  ‘You’ve lost your mind,’ Lucius panted.

  ‘Good to know,’ Stratokles grunted.

  Now his front rank was losing cohesion.

  The taxeis next to him had started to trot, as well.

  ‘Spears! Down!’ Stratokles called, and all along the front, the pikes came down to chest level, throat level, and now they were running, and instead of the paean, the Athenians had started the war cry: eleu eleu eleu eleu in the back of the throat, rising to a scream.

  The hint of a breeze, like a cat making one lick at a sticky spot on her fur – one lick of breeze, and there they were, the front taxeis of the enemy, the rightmost of the line. No, the rightmost but one. There was another, well separated in the dust. And they had the star of Macedon on their shields, and the Ionian war cry rose to a shriek.

  No man in Stratokles’ band had any love for Macedon.

  Too late to stop and dress his line. Too late for order, too late for second thoughts, though his head was crowded with them.

  The enemy made mistakes, too. Like pausing in their advance to rest with their sarauters planted in the deep earth of farm fields. The Ionian mercenaries appeared out of the wall of dust with a shriek. Just to Stratokles’ front, a lone elephant bolted at the shriek – turned, riderless, and ran straight into the Macedonians behind him. The animal’s flanks were gored red – blood flew off her when she turned.

  Just to the left were two dead elephants – mere mounds of meat. But the pair of them were like terrain, covering his flank, if only for a few heartbeats.

  Many of the Antigonids got their spears out of the ground and down. A spearhead struck Stratokles squarely in the shield; he stumbled, twisted, and would have lost his footing except that three or four more spear points hit his aspis and held him up. He raised his aspis until the spears scraped by over his head, and plunged in under their shafts, into the rage of Ares. He was screaming eleu eleu eleu eleu at the top of his lungs, and the world – Aristotle’s entire universe – was only as wide as the eye-slits in his Attic helmet.

  His spear point skipped off a rimless aspis, rose with the working of his hips, and rammed into a man’s undefended throat.

  And he roared.

  Diodorus was already wounded. Something had gone into the gap at the base of his breastplate and scored his thigh – it hurt, and worse, the blood was pouring down his leg and over his white horse.

  He had most of his men together. He’d lost Crax and the heavy squadron in the first fight, and Ares alone knew where the
y were – if they weren’t all dead. But his three line squadrons were well formed, watering their horses in the farmyard by rotation, and his prodromoi were prowling the edge of the dust cloud beyond the farm while he sat and bled and watched Demetrios win the battle.

  The bastard.

  Diodorus turned to Andronicus – technically his hyperetes, the cavalry version of a hypaspist, but the old Gaul was hardly a subordinate in any meaningful way.

  ‘He moved all his left-flank cavalry to the right, to face us,’ Diodorus said with professional admiration.

  ‘He didn’t need them,’ Andronicus the Gaul answered. ‘The Persians were men. The rest of them were like children.’ He spat, drank from his canteen. ‘Retire?’ he asked, after watching Demetrios reforming, his best squadrons virtually untouched.

  Diodorus looked over his shoulder, where Satyrus’s friend Apollodorus garrisoned the farmhouse and walled farmyard and barns, and just beyond, where Nikephorus – a mercenary, but a long-time retainer of both Satyrus and Melitta – had advanced cautiously, keeping one flank of his double taxeis anchored on the farmhouse. The man was clearly trying to cover a gap – he’d already wheeled a quarter to the right, and then he’d extended his right, halving the depth of his phalanx – a desperate move, really.

  Diodorus took his helmet off and tossed it to his field slave, Justus. He accepted water, poured some on his head. Emboldened, he raised the edge of his corselet, terrified that he would see a curl of intestine. His hands shook.

  He had a scar like a woman’s birthing scar, where the spear point had crossed, riding on the inside of the bronze instead of punching through his body.

  ‘Gracious Athena,’ he said, immediately feeling better. Far from a mortal wound – a contemptible wound. Hurt like fire. No matter. ‘If we bugger off, the whole flank goes,’ he said. He was a far more confident man than he had been moments before.

  Andronicus shrugged. ‘Battle’s lost,’ he said with professional acuity.

  Diodorus tucked a knee carefully under his backside and stood on his horse’s back. The animal was patient – they’d done this a hundred times.

  To the west, Demetrios was preparing his second strike: the hammer blow to finish Seleucus.

  To the east, Prepalaus had given the order for the phalanx to advance. He probably had no idea of the disaster on his western flank. Or he knew about it, and by advancing, made Demetrios’s job more difficult, and hid the disaster from his own men.

  To the south, suddenly, out of the dust came a thick column of elephants, fifty animals, at least, every one with a heavy war harness and a crew of four or five – pikes and bows, javelins. They were forming line from column even as he watched. Squadrons of cavalry were forming at either end of the massive beasts.

  Diodorus pointed his spear at the nearest.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘It’s us.’ He laughed, and Andronicus laughed too. The Olbians – younger and prettier – wore the same blue cloaks over beautiful armour, a fortune in horseflesh.

  ‘Back when we were young and beautiful,’ Andronicus said.

  Diodorus couldn’t tell whether that was Gallic sarcasm or genuine regret.

  Diodorus nodded, flexed his hand on his spear shaft, and looked out under his hand, trying to read the signs. Out in the dust, past Nikephorus, he heard the war cry of Athens – eleu eleu eleu eleu. He smiled.

  ‘This is our fight, my friend.’ Diodorus had made his decision.

  Andronicus burnished his trumpet on a scrap of cloth. ‘Or rather, these are our friends, so we fight,’ he said.

  Diodorus took one last look. Demetrios’s squadrons were starting forward – eight wedges, with solid blocks of lesser cavalry on either flank.

  ‘It will happen here,’ Diodorus said. ‘If the farm is lost, the day is over.’

  Andronicus laughed. ‘The day is already over. You are like a pankrationist who refuses to accept the choke hold until he falls, unconscious or dead.’

  Diodorus sat carefully back down in his seat and took his helmet from Justus. ‘Perhaps. Sound attention.’

  Now Demetrios’s cavalry were rolling forward at a fast trot. Diodorus cantered to meet his squadron leaders.

  ‘That flank cavalry – Lydians. Horses already blown. Let them come to the edge of the farm fields – let the archers in the farmyard gall them. Then charge. We’ve practised it a thousand times – straight to a gallop from the stand. Got it?’

  Then they were gone, back to their commands, and he was alone.

  Once he sent them in, there would be no way out.

  He thought of Kineas.

  Satyrus led the Olbians forward, watching Demetrios, whose line of elite cavalry stretched away to the north and south, overlapping both ends of Seleucus’s reserve line. He had big blocks of Lydian or Phrygian cavalry at either end of his line of wedges – already cocked slightly in, like the horns of a great equine beast, planning to envelop the reserve.

  Satyrus smiled an acknowledgement that Demetrios was responding brilliantly to Seleucus’s reserve ploy.

  Diodorus was going to send the Exiles into the Lydians at the north end of Demetrios’s new line.

  Satyrus aimed his rhomboid at the tip of the northernmost Antigonid wedge.

  He wished he had more men, but he didn’t.

  He lowered his lance, grabbed it with both hands, and rested his lower back against the pads of the Sakje saddle. ‘Trot!’ he called.

  His Olbians – half Sakje, half Greek, horsemen from birth – went forward. They were not untried – most of them had served as bodyguard at Tanais River, nine years before. The men in the centre of the rhomboid would be readying bows, lances upright in lance buckets and straps, bows out of their gorytoi. Even a few arrows lobbed high in the moments before contact could wreck an enemy formation – plunging fire into the rumps of enemy horses. Kineas, his father, and Eumenes, and Urvara and Srayanka his mother had perfected it, out on the Sea of Grass before he was born.

  The leather lace that held his cheek-plates together was loose and cut into his neck under his chin at every rise of the trot, but this charger had the finest, lightest trot he’d ever known.

  ‘All closed up!’ Eumenes called. Satyrus managed a glance over his shoulder – the rhomboid was like a single living thing.

  A stade.

  He could see the man who would be his first opponent – the point of the Antigonid wedge. An aristocrat, a man born for war.

  Through the narrow opening of his helmet, what Satyrus saw was a man who did not ride well, on a horse far smaller than his.

  Individual shafts began to hiss past him as the best archers let fly. Hard to miss, even at this range and from a moving horse, against a target that filled the horizon.

  The Antigonids had no bows.

  More arrows, now – half a stade, and there was nothing to life but the rhythm of the trot, the ripping cloth sound of the arrows in flight, the man he would fight.

  Fifty horse lengths.

  Twenty horse lengths.

  ‘Now!’ he shouted to Artaxerxes, his trumpeter.

  The calls rang out, and the tip of the wedge gave their horses their heads, and in one stride his charger was at a gallop – whistle arrows screamed over them in a volley, making untrained horses shy. There were tumbling horses all along the Antigonid front, their wedge tearing itself apart as rear rankers tried to ride over the dead, or worse, wounded and thrashing mounts – Satyrus’s lance crashed through his chosen opponent, the point of the enemy wedge – crushed his breastplate and then burst through like an awl punching heavy leather, carrying the man right off his horse …

  Satyrus dropped the lance – the head would never come back out of the wound – and drew his sword as his horse rose on her haunches and punched with her feet – two rapid blows and an enemy stallion dropped, dead, rider trapped under the hooves, and Satyrus
was up on his horse’s neck, chopping with his sword – heavy blows, falling on men’s helmets and armoured backs, but they were shattered and his men had knocked them flat. Their horses were tired, smaller, had come further across the plain, and the arrows from the sky were a surprise, the whistling arrows spooked their horses, and they were dead men.

  Panic, his charger, carried him effortlessly, despite his armour, seeming to skim the ground. It was like elation, like the daimon of combat magnified by the daimon of speed.

  But I’d rather be on the deck of a ship, he thought, inconsequentially. He wondered where Abraham was – where Miriam was. He had a firm picture in his mind of the meadow below Tanais, where he’d ridden as a boy – where he’d killed a Sauromatae girl.

  He was clear of the tail of the Antigonid wedge. Instead of going straight through, he could see that his rhomboid had collapsed the wedge and then gone at an angle. He looked back – the tired enemy horses were unable to flee, caught against the bigger mounts, going down into the dust.

  Even as the victor, it was horrifying.

  To his left, Demetrios’s men were throwing spears at the elephants, clearing their crews. It was hardly one-sided – only the bravest of the Antigonids dared face the beasts, and many horses baulked or fled – but the elephant crews had a hard time inflicting casualties on the riders, too.

  Satyrus couldn’t see Seleucus at the other end of the line.

  Closer, on his right, Diodorus charged the Lydians, and the fight flowed right to the walled enclosure around the house – men pressed in close, horses breast to breast, the fire of the Exiles against the depth of the Lydians. The Marine archers in the farmyard poured their shafts into the Lydians’ unprotected horses from the flank.

  And then something gave. The Lydians shifted – even through the dust, Satyrus saw the movement. He’d been about to order Artaxerxes to rally his knights to the right, to support the Exiles, but the Lydians bulged, and men began to look over their shoulders – terrified men.

  Crax had ridden into the rear of the Lydians, out of the olive grove below the farm where he’d lain concealed, a Sakje trick. They were a hundred men against two thousand, but their flashing scale armour and their appearance in the enemy’s rear turned the fight, and suddenly the Lydians were urging their tired horses back – back.